“…and they brought Him up… to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.’”
Luke 2:24
What? Shall the Redeemer be redeemed by a couple of pigeons? Such irony! Jesus, who would redeem us by His own blood, was, if such a thing were possible, redeemed according to the Law of Moses with a couple of birds. Not even a proper lamb, but rather the poor man’s provision of two pigeons. Little did Joseph and Mary know that this baby they were redeeming with inexpensive birds was Himself the perfect Lamb of God. As the necks of these birds were nipped, and their blood ran down upon the altar, so too this child’s blood would run, for the Lord was providing Himself a Lamb for the offering.
It was both proper and required by the Law of Moses to offer these two birds. Required though it was, the author of Hebrews reminds us that the blood of animals was never effective in itself. The spilling of such blood merely foreshadowed the blood of the one and only Lamb which takes away the sins of the world.
On the one hand, these two birds were perhaps the most unnecessary, and ineffectual sacrifices ever made. For what sacrifice can be made for the perfect son of God? And how shall God’s perfect and eternal high priest be redeemed from the Lord’s service? If ever a firstborn was sanctified to the Lord, Jesus was fully and entirely the Lord’s. Offering or no offering, Jesus was set apart for the Lord.
Yet on the other hand, these two birds where perhaps the greatest, most honored sacrifices ever made. For if every animal sacrifice was intended to point to God’s one and only true sacrifice, how much more directly can such appointed sacrifices point to Jesus than these two birds did with their blood? How fitting too, that such an honored sacrifice as these should take the form of the humble, substitute, poor man’s offering. As the King of kings came into the world within a meager stable, so His “redemption” was to be a meager sacrifice.
O my soul – do not think highly of the sacrifices you are called to make as you follow Christ. Are such sacrifices any more than a couple of pigeons to the Lord? Are they any more impressive to God? Do not think that the living sacrifices of your life have any more merit before the Lord than the sacrifice of these two birds. The Lamb Himself has been offered for you, what will your two birds add? Yet, in as much as a small, humble, insignificant and ineffectual sacrifice of two pigeons can point so clearly and directly to the one true Lamb of God, let your sacrifices point to Jesus. The blood of pigeons cannot redeem the Son of Man but they can testify of Him. So too, let the humble sacrifices of your life testify to the one glorious and all powerful sacrifice of God’s own Lamb. Amen.
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