Butchered a cow today. We hung it up in my pump house that I made into a “cool room,” where we will let it hang for a week before we cut all the meat off of the bones and run it through my grinder for hamburger. I insulated my pump house real good, put an air conditioning unit in the wall and purchased a thing called a “coolbot” which overrides the thermostat on the air conditioning unit so that it will go down to 40 degrees. Letting the meat hang for at least a week makes the meat quite a bit more tender than it would have been otherwise.

I try not to do this, but I accidentally poked a hole in the ponch with my knife and “stuff” sprayed all over me! Whooooeee that was smelly! It took us about three hours to finish the job and we had a tractor with a front end loader and a chain.

In the book of Levitucus they butchered thousands of bulls. Those priests must have been amazing when it came to butchering a critter.

Leviticus 1:3-9
If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer it, a male without defect; he shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the Lord. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf. He shall slay the young bull before the Lord; and Aaron’s sons the priests shall offer up the blood and sprinkle the blood around on the altar that is at the doorway of the tent of meeting. He shall then skin the burnt offering and cut it into its pieces. The sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Then Aaron’s sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, the head and the suet over the wood which is on the fire that is on the altar. Its entrails, however, and its legs he shall wash with water. And the priest shall offer up in smoke all of it on the altar for a burnt offering, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the Lord.

Have you ever wondered about this system of dealing with sins in the Old Testament? It is strange that the killing of a bull and sprinkling his blood around would be a “soothing aroma” for God. But all the instructions on what to do and how to do it were God’s idea.

A couple of observations: sin was a big deal to God, and it needed paid for and the price included death and thousands of bulls were killed because of all the sins of the people. Jesus was 100% God and 100% man and He lived a perfect life, not sinning even once and He became our sin for us, God looked at Jesus as if He actually committed my sins and then God the Father killed His only Son to pay for my sins. That is amazing and strange all at the same time. My sins certainly are a big deal to God, but I get to live with God forever with a body like Jesus’s because He died for me, and I have believed that to be true and have accepted that amazing gift.

I am so thankful that I wasn’t born in the Old Testament as a Priest who had to butcher all those bulls, just one old cow was a chore today.