We tend to want to find another way to relationship with God besides sacrifice and shedding of blood. We look for a backdoor to heaven by trying to make ourselves good enough for God, hoping to find a way around the bloody, smoky altar of sacrifice. There is no other way for sinners to come into relationship with a holy God without atonement being made for their sins through the shedding of blood. The Altar was the first thing they saw. It stood in between them and the presence of God, reminding them that sin must be paid for with blood. This is the price of sin since the fall. God instituted it by making the first sacrifice in Genesis 3 to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, and God finished it by sending Jesus to pay for sin once for all on the altar of the cross. Through belief in the gospel, we can now enter into relationship with God forever.