Two Goats But One Offering

The sermon presents a profound theological connection between the Old Testament Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ as revealed in Hebrews 9 and 10, illustrating how the shadow of ritual sacrifice points to the substance of Christ's redemptive work. Through the dual symbolism of the two goats—one slain to satisfy divine justice and the other sent into the wilderness to carry away sin—the Old Covenant ritual prefigures Christ's dual role as both the sacrificial Lamb who bears punishment and the living High Priest who removes guilt forever. Jesus fulfills this pattern not through repeated earthly rituals, but through His once-for-all sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection, and His eternal intercession in heaven, where He now sits at God's right hand, having completed the work of atonement. The result is not merely ceremonial cleansing, but the purifying of the conscience, enabling believers to serve the living God in true worship. This eternal redemption, accomplished through Christ's perfect sacrifice, renders all other offerings obsolete and establishes a permanent, definitive reconciliation between God and humanity.
The Day of Atonement and its ritual of the two goats were a prefigurement of the actual atonement made by Jesus Christ on the cross followed by his death-burial-resurrection and ascension into heaven.

Bible Insights with  Wayne Conrad
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Transcript

Title:  Two Goats but One Offering

Date: March 24, 2026

Scripture: Hebrews 9, Leviticus 16

AI TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad. God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. As we approach the season where we remember the passion, suffering, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we find ourselves at the very heart of the Christian faith. It's a vital story, the gospel story, to get right. And to misunderstand the atoning work of Jesus Christ is to actually misunderstand Christianity itself and miss the salvation that Christ himself brings.

Today, we're exploring the powerful relationship between the Old Testament shadow and the New Testament fulfillment, the shadow and the substance. We're primarily focusing our attention on the two goats, but the one sin offering of the day of atonement.

There is a profound connection between the Old Testament Day of Atonement, known as Yom Kippur, talked about in Leviticus chapter 16 in detail, and listed as one of the festivals in Leviticus 23, and the New Testament fulfillment through Jesus Christ our Lord. I want us to see how the shadow in Leviticus 16 becomes the substance in Hebrews 9. So, I would encourage you to open your Bible to Leviticus 16 and then to Hebrews 9. And even after you've heard this podcast, that you would read over these chapters and ponder them again. So, the shadow is found in the day of atonement. but the substance is found in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to Hebrews chapter nine, verse 24. For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, such as the tabernacle, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

We're accustomed rightly so, of thinking about the sacrifice of Christ on the cross in terms of the Old Testament Passover. After all, Jesus was identified as a Passover lamb by John the Baptist at the very beginning of his ministry. And in the New Testament ordinance, or the gospel sacrament, known as the Lord's Supper, or the Great Thanksgiving, the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, the Lord Jesus Christ, in his last Passover supper with his disciples, took two of the elements from that sacred meal, and he constituted a new ordinance for his people. He called himself, the said of himself, this bread is my body and this cup of wine is my blood. So, the body and blood of Christ represented by these symbols, the bread that was broken and shared with the disciples and the wine that was passed around and shared by them.

To understand the connection, we need to go back to the original, which is the law that was given to Moses to share with Israel to guide their lives as they lived with the holy God in their midst. How can a sinful people live with a holy God in their midst.

Well, God made that possible through the ritual of the Day of Atonement. So, I want us to consider Jesus as a fulfillment of the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus. In the Old Covenant, it was the day of solemn fasting. In fact, it's the only commanded fast in the Old Testament.

And it's the only time each year when the high priest, beginning with Aaron, could step behind the heavy veil that was in the tabernacle at first and then later in the temple that separated the holy place from the holy of holies. There was certain furniture attached to both the holy place and to the holy of holies. But the furniture in the holy of holies consisted of the Ark of the Covenant, which is basically a wooden chest covered with a golden lid and engraved with it was two angelic beings known as the cherubim with wings outstretched. And the presence of God lived in the midst of the people in this, the Ark of the Covenant. Once a year, the high priest would enter this sacred space where the Ark of the Covenant sat beneath the wings of the golden cherubim, and he went there to present the blood for the sins of the people.

But the most striking part of this shadow was the requirement of the two goats that constitutes a single sin offering. Now this is key to the interpretation, the right interpretation, of the whole meaning of the shadow found in the requirements of the Day of Atonement listed for us in Leviticus chapter 16. Today I'm going to be using the New International Version because of the clarity of the sentences and the flow of them. But here's what it says in Leviticus chapter 16 and verse 5.

From the Israelite community, he, that is the high priest, is to take two male goats for a sin offering, notice the singularity, not offerings, but for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. So, we have two goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering. So, there's two different offerings, but the sin offering is first and it constitutes the offering of two goats. So, we have two goats, but one sin offering.

Now, it goes on with the ritual that Aaron is to perform with a bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and for his household so that he could be cleansed of his sin and then could minister as the high priest for the people. After doing these things, he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord, present them before Yahweh, the covenant God, at the entrance to the tent of meeting. So now the high priest takes these two goats, and he's to cast lots for the two goats. One lot is for Yahweh, for the Lord, and the other lot is called the scapegoat, and it is to be used in the ceremony.

It is also part of the offering, but it's the live goat. So, Aaron shall then bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord, to Jehovah, or Yahweh, and he shall sacrifice it as a sin offering. That is, he should kill it, butcher it. But the blood but the goat chosen by Lot as a scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat.

So, the ceremony of the sin offering has two goats with two phases. The first phase is the goat that was chosen for the Lord, for Yahweh. He was to be killed, and his blood will be presented before the Lord in the Holy of Holies by the high priest on this one day of the year known as Yom Kippur. But the second goat will be used after he has made the sacrifice and applied the blood, where he will go out in front of the people at the entrance, and there he will confess the sins of the people on the head of this goat. The goat will then be led away by a chosen person from the group.

This is what the text says in Leviticus 16, verse 15. He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people, and take his blood behind the curtain, and do it as he did with the bull's goat that was for his own household. And he shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. And in this way, he'll make atonement, not only for the people, will also go about and make an atonement or a cleansing for the elements that are used in the tabernacle and later the temple in the worship of God. And then he shall come out after he's done all of this, and he will even anoint the horns of the altar on which the animal was slaughtered. When Aaron has finished making atonement for the most holy place, the tent of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring forth the live goat.

I'm reading at verse 20. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and the rebellion of the Israelites, all their sins. he is to put them on the goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. And the goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place, and the man shall release it in the desert.

So, you see, there's two goats, one's killed, but one is led away. The two goats constitute the atoning sacrifice for the people on this day of atonement. So, the two goats of Leviticus, they're very important. They represent two aspects of God's action for and with his people.

The first goat designated for Yahweh, the goat that was slaughtered as a sin offering and whose blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat, was to satisfy the divine justice. This represents what is known as propitiation, the turning away of God's just wrath against sin through a substitute, an innocent substitute. an animal substitute. The second goat, the scapegoat, Azalea, this is the goat of removal. The high priest would lay his hands on his head, confessing all the sins and rebellions of Israel. The goat was then led into a solitary wilderness, carrying the people's guilt away forever. This represents expiation, the total removal of guilt. The sin has been paid for, By the death of the first goat, the sin is removed by the live goat that carries it into the wilderness. It's one offering, but it is two goats used in this offering.

This is the shadow that's found for us in detail in Leviticus chapter 16. The reality of this, the substance, is found in the writing called Hebrews in the New Testament. And so if you turn to Hebrews chapter 9 and 10, you will find the meaning of this day of atonement that meets its fulfillment in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially his work on the cross, his death, his burial, and his resurrection on behalf of his people. Hebrews 10, 1 says, the law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. but Jesus Christ and his work is the reality itself. So, I encourage you to read carefully in detail Hebrews chapter nine.

At the very heart of it is the explanation concerning these offerings. So, these rituals that I'm talking about were never meant to be the final solution. They were shadows, Leviticus, 16 is a shadow pointing toward the coming reality, which is the person and work of the Messiah, the mediator, the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Now, the author of Hebrews explains that the earthly tabernacle was merely a copy of the heavenly one. And when Jesus arrives, the shadow then meets its substance. The reality comes to pass.

How does Jesus fulfill these offerings? As to the first goat, Jesus fulfills this on the cross. Jesus was slaughtered for his people. He took the penalty of our transgressions upon himself, thus satisfying the holiness of God. He paid the debt we owed. He suffered the punishment due us. He does this vicariously in us and for us on our behalf. and he does it before God, and he does it to satisfy the justice and holiness of God. He endured the penalty on the cross, even descending to its depths, when he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But it is completed when, toward the end of that ordeal, he cries out, it is finished, one word in the Greek, meaning the debt is paid. The transaction is complete. It is finished. It's over. The sacrifice is done. So as the first goat, the slaughtered goat, Jesus was put to death on the cross.

But he not only bore the penalty of our sin, but he bears our guilt away. And this is the application of what he did on the cross to the people. What is the result of it? God cancels our sin. We are declared righteous in Christ before him, but he also bears our guilt away. By his death and burial, he removes the stain of sin from the believer, thus reconciling us to God.

Then on the third day, he is raised from the dead as the great high priest. Unlike the ancient priest who entered an earthly room with the blood of animals, Jesus then, in his subsequent ascension to the Father, entered the true heavenly sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and bulls, but with his own blood. That means the evidence of his sacrifice that is marked in his immortal resurrected body, with the scars in his hands, and his feet and in his side. The same scars that he showed to Thomas on the second Sunday after his resurrection from the dead. So, 40 days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into the very presence of the Father in heaven.

And there he intercedes for his own. There he sits at the right hand of the majesty on high. Jesus doesn't sit down because he's tired. Jesus sets down to indicate his work is complete. He is set down because there is no more sacrifices to be made for sin because he has made the one required sacrifice and he's perfect and complete. Here are the words that are written in Hebrews chapter one, where it says, after he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven.

And there he is the object of the worship of the angels and of the redeemed themselves. And we see that even unfolding in the book of Revelation. Jesus Christ made the one required sacrifice for the forgiveness of the sins of his people. He did it on the cross, and through his death, burial, and resurrection, the one sacrifice for sin has been made. There is an old hymn that says, it's written by Isaac Watts, and it reads, not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain. But Christ, the heavenly lamb, takes all our sins away, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they. That's Jesus on the cross bearing the guilt of our sin.

But then listen, not only has he satisfied God's justice, but he has removed our guilt from us. That was symbolized by the second goat, the scapegoat in Leviticus 16, 21 and 22. So Jesus himself fulfills both goats, the goat of the sacrifice, the goat that was murdered, that was killed and the goat that was let loose. So, this ritual of the two goats on the day of Atonement point to the one ultimate and all-sufficient sacrifice of the work of Jesus Christ as our atoning sacrifice for sin that was accomplished on the day of his death, followed by his and then followed by his glorious resurrection from the dead.

So, you see there is a continuity between what the Old Testament high priest did, and the heavenly high priest Jesus Christ did and is doing. One entered a sanctuary that was on earth, a man-made tabernacle, a later temple. Jesus entered the greater and more perfect tabernacle in heaven, Hebrews 9, 11. The most holy place was entered once a year on Yom Kippur, year by year by the high priests. But Jesus Christ, having died once for all, enters once for all into the heavenly temple, having obtained eternal redemption through his actual atonement on the cross.

In the sacrifice of the earthly priests, there was the offering of the blood of bulls and goats, and then the sacrifice of the animal that was led into the wilderness and let go. So, the offering of the blood and goods were fulfilled by Jesus Christ offering his own blood on the cross.

The personal state was that the high priest of the old covenant was a sinner himself. He had to offer a sacrifice for his own sins, but Jesus Christ is the perfect mediator between God and man. He is one person with two natures, both deity and humanity. He offers himself without blemish to God. He was put to death in the body for not his sin, for he had no sins. He's a sinless son of God, but on behalf of his people, bearing their sins in his own body on the tree.

The effect? of the old covenant was that it purified the flesh, the body, the ceremonial cleansing of the priesthood, of the vessels of worship, and the people for one year. But the effect of Jesus' ministry is that it purifies the conscience of all who are united to him by faith from dead works in order to serve the living God. The outcome on the day of atonement was to remind the people of their sin year after year, but God's gracious forgiveness and covering over of their sin until the true sacrifice could come in the promised Messiah. In the heavenly work of Jesus, the great high priest, he has put away sin forever by the sacrifice of himself. That's found in Hebrews chapter nine and verse 26. then Christ, he does not have to repeat his sacrifice year by year, because that would mean that it was not complete. But Jesus Christ, having completed his one sacrifice, he appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with the sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Two goats, one offering, symbolizing Jesus Christ, both goats symbolize the work of Christ in his work as our great high priest. He is both our offering, he made the offering to God, and he is our great high priest who applies to us the benefits of his own death through the ministry of the blessed Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God for such a savior as has been provided for us in the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who takes away the sin of the world by means of his once for all sacrifice for sinners. 

This has been Wayne Conrad with Bible Insights.