Why the Day of Atonement is Still Important. (Leviticus 16: 1-34)

Yom Kippur, what exactly is that all about and what  does that have to do with us. So, let's turn to the passage where Moses talks about this day. Today it is called Yom Kippur by modern Jewish people, but back in our English language versions of the Old Testament it’s called, ‘The Day of Atonement’, and it’s described for us in Leviticus Chapter 16. The first thing I want to say is that the Day of Atonement took place six months after Passover. These were the two great feasts, in the Jewish calendar and they were six months apart. Passover was a day of rejoicing, celebrating deliverance from slavery in Egypt. On the other hand, the Day of Atonement was a day of great solemnity in Israel. In that sense, they were exact opposites.

The opening verses introduce what is called the preparation phase. It begins with a precaution. Having given him that warning, Moses then details the preparation. Verse 3 states, 'Aaron shall come into the holy place with the blood of a young bull as a sin offering and a ram as a burnt offering.' So, in light of the preceding verses, when Aaron does come in, he must bring a blood offering of a young bull as a sin offering. The offerings were given outside in the courtyard. The burnt offering was now going to be part of a ritual that involves blood within the holy of holies. In verse 4, it continues.

'He shall put on the holy linen tunic and the linen trousers on his body; he shall be girded with a linen sash, and with the linen turban he shall be attired. These are holy garments. Therefore, he shall wash his body in water and put them on.'

(Hebrews 16:4)

At this stage, he's to wash his body in water. Remember, there was a basin outside the Tabernacle where ceremonial washing of the body took place. Then, he is to change clothes. Aaron, as the high priest, had a distinctive costume - official high priest garments. When entering the holy of holies, he was to remove these and don simpler linen clothing. Shirt, shorts, sash, and turban. These garments were even plainer than those worn by the ordinary priest. His high priestly garments were ornate, worn while performing regular duties. The uniform he wore for this ceremony consisted of simple white garments, making him appear as a servant, not a king.In fact they were even simpler than the clothing worn by the other ordinary priests. The whole idea was that in the presence of God, he was stripped of all honour and became a humble servant before the King of Kings. This humble status was symbolized by the simplicity of his attire. All of this is preparation. The details continue in verse 5.

'And he shall take from the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats as a sin offering and one ram as a burnt offering.' Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself, making atonement for himself and his house. He shall then take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the Tabernacle, the first compartment of the tent.

(Leviticus 16: 5-7)

Verse 8 reveals the next step, 

'Then Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats: one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat.'"

(Leviticus 16: 8)

Now, we use that term in modern English, no doubt taken from this very text of scripture. In the modern sense of the word, a scapegoat is one who gets the blame for something he didn't do or for someone who was willing to take the blame in order to spare somebody else. That's sort of what's going on here.

As a matter of fact, the word 'scapegoat' is comprised of two words: 'scape' and 'goat'. So, one goat is going to be sacrificed, and the other is going to be sent out into the wilderness. It's going to depart. The symbolism is really obvious. The scape goat' symbolizes the removal of sin of the Israelites in the presence of God, and the other goat symbolizes the fact that the sin is sent away; it departs.

'And Aaron shall bring the goat on which the Lord's lot fell and offer it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement upon it, and it will be let go as the scapegoat into the wilderness.'

(Leviticus 16: 9-10)

All of this is simply the preparation for a procedure, which we'll get to in just a minute. The order of events is not easy to follow, but the following is a general outline of the ritual:

Now, what was the procedure? Well, that starts in verse 116. He says,

'And Aaron will bring the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house. And he shall kill the bull as a sin offering, which is for himself.'

(Leviticus 16: 11)

This verse makes it very clear that the sprinkling of blood was for Aaron and his house. Now, that's going to go through verse 14. The rest of the procedure is: we're going to do the same thing for the people (that's in verse 15), for the Tabernacle (that's in verses 16 and 17), and for the altar (in verses 18 and 19). So, this procedure amounts to the sprinkling of blood for the cleansing of these various entities: his house, the people, the Tabernacle, and the altar. So normally, we think of the blood offering covering people, and it does. In this case, on the Day of Atonement, it's going to be for Aaron, his family, his house, for the people, for the Tabernacle, and for the altar. It's picking up. The Day of Atonement: he first cleanses himself, and then he goes through this ritual to cover the sins of the people. So far, so good. What I might expect: if you're in the ministry, you cleanse yourself first before you minister to others. Not many people; they are the ones who have sinned that need to be cleansed.

'So, he shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, because of their transgressions, for all their sins.' So, he shall do for the Tabernacle of meeting, which remains among them in the midst of their uncleanness.

(Leviticus 16: 16)

Wow! The actual Tabernacle, the holy place, needed to have an atonement. I found that very striking. It needed to be cleansed, according to verse 16, because it was in the midst of a holy people. Wow! The presence of these sinful priests in this holy place made it sinful. These people were sinful who went into the holy place; they were just the priests. But their presence contaminated the holy place, and it needed cleansing." So what did the people do on the day of atonement? Well on that day, a priest made an atonement. By fasting was an indication that the person recognised their need to seek God as more pressing than his need to eat. So, he's not going to eat, and the idea is, 'I'm going to seek the Lord,' and that's more important to me than eating. Now, I would suggest that to most people, that means this is very, very important, because eating is important to most people, right? Well, if you're going to do without it, something's gotta be more important than that. I love that explanation.

'On that date, the priest will make atonement for you, that is, the people, to cleanse you that you may be clean.'

The promise is you're going to be cleansed from all your sins. You just fast and know that you're going to be cleansed from all your sins. Interesting.

Verse 31: 'It is a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls. It is a statute.

In other words I want you to do this not once, I want you to do this again and again and again.'So, he concludes beginning in verse 32 by saying, 

'And the priest who is anointed and consecrated to minister as a priest in his father's place will make atonement and put on the linen clothes and the holy garments. Then he shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, for the Tabernacle of meeting, and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priest and for all the people of the sanctuary.

(Lev 16: 32-33)

' So, it concludes in verse 34 saying, 

'And this will be an everlasting statute for you to make atonement for the children of Israel from all their sins once a year, as he did, as the Lord commanded Moses.'

(Leviticus 16: 34)

This is the third time in this paragraph that it stated that this is an everlasting covenant, a statute. The other observation you need to know is that this was an atonement for all their sins.  And the third observation you need to make is, to be done once a year, every year, six months after Passover. The Israelites repeated year after year, year after year, year after year. So, what's going on in this passage is, once again, the ancient Israelites were to observe the Day of Atonement to make an atonement for their sins and cleanse the Tabernacle and the altar, once a year.

Now, what happened after that? What goes on here? Now, let me make some observations. Tradition says that on the Day of Atonement in Jesus' time, no less than 500 priests assisted in the service.  This was a big deal in Israel. Now, I said that because in AD78, the Romans destroyed the temple, and from that day till this, they've not been able to observe the Day of Atonement because they haven't had a temple. The rabbis wanted to preserve the rituals of the Day of Atonement for future generations. They could not, of course, continue the practices as specified without a temple.  So,they substituted prayer, repentance, and giving to charity for sacrifices and rituals that they could no longer practice. They also preserved the description of the ritual in a special prayer book that's used on Yom Kippur. So today, Jews have substituted for animal sacrifice, prayer, repentance, and giving to charity, because they don't have a tabernacle anymore.

Alright, what can we learn from this? 

I suppose you would say that the one thing we would get, real quick, is that this has to do with the word. I would like to suggest, number one, I think this illustrates the nature of sins. As I pointed out as we went through the passage, it contaminated everything. The holy place simply because it was in the midst of sinful people.The sacrifice and offering that Moses described in the law were not sufficient to cleanse all the defilement of the people ,this  much sin, this much uncleanness still needed to be removed. Therefore, God appointed a yearly sacrifice that cleansed all the sins and impurities not covered by the means that the Israelites committed ignorantly.' The sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was the most comprehensive. As you go through this passage, and it says, 'All of the sins of the people' in verse 20 and in verse 30.  So, all the sins. It affected everything. We talk about the doctrine of total depravity, and basically what that means is that every part of the human being is affected by sin: their mind, their emotions, their will, their body, their conscience, and senses. Romans 8 says, 'The whole creation groans for the Redeemer to come back and redeem it.' 

We polluted the planet, people. That's the truth. 'Why does the God need to create a new heaven and a new earth?' Could it be because we polluted this place? And we're not only polluting the planet, but we’re also not satisfied to be throwing our junk on the moon, we are throwing junk into space now as well. So, I think the world is contaminated, the whole thing, and God has to start over.

I just think this passage really illustrates the nature of sin. The holy place, sin contaminated the altar; it needed to be cleansed. Well, I could go on, but let me make a second suggestion." I think this suggests another lesson we could learn here: the need for atonement. And these two things go hand in hand.  Because sin is pervasive; atonement needs to be comprehensive. The comprehensiveness of sins atoned for on the Day of Atonement ritual was staggering. One might expect that a certain sin would be excluded, even those already atoned for by individual sacrifice. I think he's put his finger on it: there needs to be an enormous atonement because of the pervasiveness of sin.

They had to do it every year. Now, what does that tell you? If they had to do it every year, what does that tell you? It didn't work last year. Didn't work last year. So, we gotta do it again and again and again and again. So, I want you to turn to the book of Hebrews for a second. I want to look at Chapter 9, and I want you to look at verse 11:

'But Christ came as a high priest of good things to come, with a greater and more perfect Tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say of this creation, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.'

So, the writer to the Hebrews, says this is a direct reference. Jesus is the high priest, and He only went in once, and He paid for the whole.'! Drop down to verse 24:

'For Christ has not entered the holy place made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place every year with the blood of another—He then would have to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.'

There it is again. He only had to do it once. 

Verse 27: 'It is appointed unto men that die once, but after this the judgment.' So, Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; to those who eagerly wait for Him, He will appear second time, apart from sin, for salvation.'

So, repeatedly, the writer to the Hebrews says it was once, in stark contrast to the Day of Atonement in the book of Leviticus. 

Now, turn to chapter 10 and look at verse 12:

'But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.'

So, I don't have to wonder what the New Testament writers would say if they were expounding the Day of Atonement. What they would camp on is that it 

'The blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctify for the purifying of the flesh. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?'

Once,  to cleanse us, so that we could serve. The other application He would have made from the Day of Atonement in Leviticus Chapter 16: now, He died once to completely pay for all sin. That's the message of the Day of Atonement. When Jesus died on the cross, he put down everything it takes to pay for all of our debts for all of our lives into eternity, and He only did it once. So, we could serve.  What does that service look like? Read the New Testament. But since we're looking at Hebrews, go to Chapter 10 for a second, and there's 22:

'Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another; and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.'

Chapter 9: this was all done so that we can serve (9:14). And the service is given in 10:24: 'consider one another, love, and good works.' And these people were Christian Jews thinking about going back to Judaism, saying, 'Don't forsake Christianity, but exhort one another as you see the world's coming back.'  That's our service: we love each other until he comes back. You don't have to worry about the sin debt. You don't do any of this to take care of this, and that's taken care of, so that now you are free to go serve.  That is the Day of Atonement that took place not in Moses' day, but on a cross Called Calvary"