Numbers 19:2-6, 9 “Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke. Give it to Eleazar the priest; it is to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. Then Eleazar the priest is to take some of its blood on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. While he watches, the heifer is to be burned– its hide, flesh, blood, and offal. The priest is to take some cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet thread and throw them onto the burning heifer….A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and put them in a ceremonially clean place outside the camp. They shall be kept by the Israelite community for use in the water of cleansing; it is for purification from sin.”

According to a Jewish legend, King Solomon was able to explain the reason behind all the laws of Moses, but this one had him stumped. Whether or not that is true, the key to understanding this sacrifice and the water it produced is to realize that it is a picture, a prophecy, of the work our Savior has done for us.

First, there was the sacrifice. A completely red heifer, a young cow that has never given birth, without any spots or any blemishes, is an extremely rare and special animal. Only seven to nine of these animals have been identified and sacrificed since the time of Moses. They brought a high price from the temple treasury when one was found. The last one was over 2000 years ago. Today’s Jews are eagerly seeking an animal like this because these purification ceremonies are necessary before they begin building a new temple. Decades of searching have not turned up a suitable candidate yet.

I don’t have time or space to go into all the details of the sacrifice and what they mean. But there are obvious allusions to Jesus’ person and work that are easy to see, aren’t there? Jesus was a unique and rare person not only in his time, but in every age. As the Son of God and only perfect human he was a person of infinite value. His moral record had no spot or blemish on it. Spiritually he was perfect in every way. That perfection, that value, makes him qualified to stand before God as our substitute, not just until our next sin, not just until the next person dies, but forever and for all. Like the red heifer, he did not die because of anything that he had done. He had to give his life because of the sin, the impurity, and the death of others. This is God’s everlasting source of purification for us. Jesus’ death is the solution for our sin and death.

But unlike the red heifer, Jesus’ death was not merely ceremonial, symbolic, or prophetic. It really and permanently removes our sin in God’s site. Our death has really lost the ability to separate us from God any longer. In fact, now it actually brings us closer to him. Here we see Jesus making us clean from the stench of death by applying his death to us.

Does the contrast between our condition and the great value God has placed on us strike you at all? We live in a world that less and less wants to invest its medical or financial resources in dying people. Just kill them, euthanize them, and be done with them already. We live in a throwaway society that doesn’t fix things. It just disposes of them when they break. I once threw away a 2-year-old television, not because it was beyond repair, but because the cost of repair rivaled the cost of a new one.

How worthy of repair could we have appeared to God, slowly decaying with death, thoroughly corrupted by sin? Maybe it seemed worth risking a few expensive cows, but the red heifers didn’t actually change anything. Sin and death remained. That God would sacrifice the priceless gift of his Son to reclaim people who had become spiritual road kill speaks of love beyond our comprehension.