From time to time, the Lord will lead me to worship Him with songs about the power of His blood. This attention to the blood is both an act of warfare and preparation. It’s always a reminder that the Lord is doing something new and redemptive.

I was once invited to preach in a church in Europe where the pastor told me that preaching about blood was not a popular subject since it reminded people about what happened in World War II. After I heard the pastor’s prohibition, the Lord led me to change my sermon topic and preach about the power of His blood. As a result, people got saved, and hopefully, the pastor changed his mind about the blood.  

We forget about the realities of what happened when animal sacrifices took place in the Old Testament. Solomon performed an immense sacrifice: “The king and all Israel with him offered sacrifices to the Lord. Solomon offered to the Lord a peace offering of 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats” (I Kings 8: 62-63). Over the week it took to slaughter all those animals, it produced an immense amount of blood. 

The average cow contains about 4 gallons of blood. Sheep and goats contain one gallon. Simple math tells us that when the cattle were sacrificed, the priest spilled 88,000 gallons of blood. The blood from the sheep and goats drained another 120,000 gallons of blood. The floor where the sacrifice took place was a bloody and coagulated mess. It was also noisy when the cows bellowed in distress and the sheep bleated their despair.

We have a tidy and unreal image of how the priests performed those sacrifices. It is an image without all the blood and the continual sounds of resharpening the blades used to slit the animal’s throats. For the week of Solomon’s sacrifice, blood was continuously sloshing around the priest’s feet and staining their robes.  We are seeing only a sanitized Hollywood version of what happened.

When Jesus was crucified, it only took one drop of His blood to fulfill the requirement of His sacrifice. As soon as the first drop of Jesus’ blood was spilled, our redemption was secure. That is why I changed my sermon topic that day and preached about the power of Jesus’ blood, “For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22).