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Good Friday 2025 Reflections on Repentance Message: Restored by His Sacrifice What did king David see and hear and smell every time he went to the tabernacle? No doubt there were a variety of sounds: people talking, moving around, animals making noises. No doubt there were a variety of smells. Animals tend to bring with them certain odors. People could also. The scent of incense must have wafted past from time to time. As for sights, there was a bronze basin and a bronze altar. There were the linens and curtains that encased the inner rooms and surrounded the outer courtyard. There were the priests and the animals and the people. There was commotion. And there was blood. There was no escaping it. It poured out of dying animal victims. It was sprinkled and splashed and poured in various places at various times. It dried on the altar and on the priest’s garments. Its stench punctuated the experience. Its bright reds and deep browns caught the eye. At times, perhaps even the sound of the pouring or sprinkling reached David’s ears. No one should have ever mistaken what God was teaching his people at the tabernacle or at the temple that would one day replace it. The wrongdoing of the people required the sacrifice of an innocent victim. The sin of the people required the blood of lambs and bulls and goats. The guilt of the people needed atonement day after day after day, week after week, year after year. God took sin seriously. Deadly seriously. I suppose even when David was hiding his sin he still made regular visits to the tabernacle. He had appearances to keep up. He had routines to maintain. How many times did he visit that place and ignore all the signs, all the sights, all the sounds, all the smells? How often had he closed his heart and his mind to the blood that cried out: “you deserve this and you deserve more”? Repentance came when God led David away from that refusal to listen. Repentance came when God held David’s guilt before his eyes, and his heart knew that he deserved bloodshed. Repentance meant turning away, confessing, asking for—begging for—mercy. Repentance shouted in the Psalm: “Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, the God who saves me.” In repentance, David did not depend on his offerings and sacrifices. He acknowledged that God wanted most a pure heart, a sacrifice of spirit. He wanted David to confess and know his unworthiness and to trust in God for forgiveness, for everything. He led David to confess that. And only when David’s heart was made right would God also be pleased with his sacrifices and offerings. Tonight we are not going back to the tabernacle. We are going to what the tabernacle taught and what it represented. We are going to a place bathed in blood. It is there in the sights and