SPEAKER_00: All right, as we go to Leviticus chapter 16, we have a particular set of instructions to the Levites about a particular type of sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And it is a sacrifice rite that only takes place once a year.
SPEAKER_00: And if God says, I want you to do this once a year, then it's pretty important.
SPEAKER_00: It would become a feat what they would call a feast day.
SPEAKER_00: Leviticus goes through the list of the different feast days, the high holy days of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 16, we get this story of a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Before we go to Leviticus chapter 16, though, we're going to take just a short detour in the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk a little bit about the difference between the sheep and the goats.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with your Bible reading, you know that the Bible makes a distinction in a lot of ways, symbolically, between the sheep and the goats.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew chapter 25, for instance, verses 31 through 33.
SPEAKER_00: When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.
SPEAKER_00: All the nations will be gathered before him.
SPEAKER_00: He will separate them one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.
SPEAKER_00: Pause here for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those stories that recounts the judgment that is coming, the final judgment, when the Lord is going to reward those who have his righteousness and punish those who have rejected his righteousness, dividing the sheep from the goats.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are a sheep in this situation, things are going to go well for you.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a goat in this situation, things are going to go very poorly for you.
SPEAKER_00: Why do the goats, why do the ones who are going to be punished, why are they called goats?
SPEAKER_00: Did goats do anything particularly horrible in Scripture to deserve this designation?
SPEAKER_00: You know, we talk about the good shepherd and we talk about the lost sheep and the one lost sheep, and the sheep are actually, for the most part, depicted in a positive way.
SPEAKER_00: They're depicted as not very smart, but they are depicted in a positive way in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Goats, on the other hand, more often than not, are portrayed as not as good as sheep, and they are subjects of wrath, subjects of punishment.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 33, continuing here in Matthew, he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
SPEAKER_00: And as you read further in there and in other stories in Scripture, you see that again and again and again, whether it be Old Testament or New Testament, whenever sheep and goats are mentioned together, the sheep are going to be rescued and the goats are going to be punished.
SPEAKER_00: So where does this thinking come from?
SPEAKER_00: Well, when we get into Leviticus chapter 16, a lot of this becomes more clear to us.
SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 16, starting in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: 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 to let it go as the scapegoat into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Pause right here.
SPEAKER_00: This particular sacrifice that we're reading about in Leviticus 16 involved two goats.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the picture that we started with had two goats on it.
SPEAKER_00: These two goats would be brought together as one sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And one goat was going to be butchered, and the other goat was going to be allowed to live, taken into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And the word that's used here is scapegoat.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some Bibles use a word called Azel.
SPEAKER_00: And some people make a big deal about this name, Azale.
SPEAKER_00: Azaleel is actually just two Hebrew words put together.
SPEAKER_00: Az means goat, and Zael means to go away.
SPEAKER_00: And so Azaleel is the goat that goes away.
SPEAKER_00: Some people say, oh, it's a demonic name.
SPEAKER_00: It's a name that means that has magical connotations.
SPEAKER_00: It basically just means the goat that goes away.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: And if people want to argue with you about that, they'll probably argue with you about other things as well.
SPEAKER_00: But I would just recommend that you sort of stick with what's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: So there's two goats: the goat that's going to be butchered and the goat that is going to go away.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the word that's used here in the New King James for the goat that goes away is called the scapegoat.
SPEAKER_00: We know what scapegoats are in our regular English language, right?
SPEAKER_00: The scapegoat is someone who did not do something, but nonetheless is going to be blamed for something bad that has happened.
SPEAKER_00: And so that person is the scapegoat.
SPEAKER_00: And as we talk about politics, as we talk about business, as we talk about places of power, we see from time to time these stories where something has gone wrong and they are looking for a person to be the scapegoat, to blame for everything that's gone south, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in this particular passage in Leviticus 16, it means something quite a bit different.
SPEAKER_00: In Leviticus 16, we see that the one goat is going to be offered or butchered as a sin offering, but verse 10 says, the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall be presented alive, to make atonement upon it, and to let it go as the scapegoat into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into a little bit more detail here.
SPEAKER_00: You jump forward into verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: He shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil, do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat before the mercy seat.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: So he shall do for the tabernacle of meeting, which remains among them in the midst of their uncleanness.
SPEAKER_00: Start, we'll pause right here.
SPEAKER_00: So this sacrifice that's taking place is taking place for multiple reasons.
SPEAKER_00: It's taking place for the sins of the people, and as you read through chapter 16, you realize that they are even making a sacrifice on account of the uncleanness of the tabernacle, and the only reason the tabernacle is unclean is because it's in the middle of all the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought to yourself that uncleanness in the Old Testament is so pervasive among the people that even the things that are among the people from time to time have to be atoned for or cleansed because that's how serious the matter of sin is among the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: They offered a sacrifice to cleanse the tabernacle itself.
SPEAKER_00: And they had to do that, the Bible tells us, because the tabernacle was there among the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God's view of cleanness and uncleanness isn't about sanitation so much as it is about the matter of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And what you see with all of these sacrifices throughout Leviticus, whether it's the early chapters or the later chapters, all of these sacrifices are connected to the idea of sacrifices because sin is present.
SPEAKER_00: That Levitical housewife who is trying to wash out the bloodstains from the white garments, as she is trying to wash the bloodstains out of the garments, she may be thinking to herself, if only we weren't such a sinful people, we wouldn't be having to make all of these sacrifices at the tabernacle all the time.
SPEAKER_00: That Levitical priest, as sacrifices are being brought to the temple, and as he is perhaps from time to time in his sandals slipping a little bit on the surface of the ground, because the ground is soaked in the blood of all of these sacrificed animals, he is thinking from time to time, oh, our sin before the Lord is so serious that it takes this much blood to atone for what it is that we are doing.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, if only a day would come when the matter of sin could be done with once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: And then they go right back to sacrificing some more animals.
SPEAKER_00: That Levitical housewife goes right back to trying to get those bloodstains out of those white garments.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go jump forward a few more verses from verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Let's jump forward to verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: When the high priest has made an end of the atoning for the holy place, the tabernacle of meeting in the altar, he shall bring the live goat.
SPEAKER_00: Aaron, the high priest, Aaron, shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all of the iniquities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: Pause there for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: So one goat of the two is butchered, it is sacrificed, its blood is shed to pay the price for the sins of all the people, all their sins.
SPEAKER_00: That phrase, all their sins, is repeated, all their sins.
SPEAKER_00: Then Aaron takes his hands, puts them on the head of the live goat, and says loud enough for anyone who's listening to hear, he goes through the idea of these are the sins of the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't know if he named each one of the sins individually, or if he simply read the, he recited more or less what we would call the Ten Commandments and basically said, these are the rules which our people have broken.
SPEAKER_00: But one thing's for certain, anyone who was within listening distance understood that what Aaron was doing was he was he was reciting the fact that Israel was guilty of all sins.
SPEAKER_00: And then he would take his hands off of the goat and they would find a man that they could trust, someone that would be taken as serious by the people of Israel, and that man would then begin a journey leading that goat deep, deep into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: He is the goat who goes away into the wilderness, never to be seen again.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look here, let's uh look at verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: He who released the goat as the scapegoat shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, afterward he may come back into the camp.
SPEAKER_00: Pause here for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is happening with this sacrifice?
SPEAKER_00: And how does this point to Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: How does two goats being brought into a once-a-year ritual point us to Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Jews still practice a feast day in honor of this ritual every year.
SPEAKER_00: They call it Yom Kippur.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you heard of Yom Kippur before?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: It is also in our English language called the Day of Atonement.
SPEAKER_00: And what the modern-day Jews who have some leanings toward the Old Testament, there's a lot of modern-day Jews who don't, but the modern-day Jews who have a leaning toward the Old Testament, they consider this to be one of the high holy days of their whole year.
SPEAKER_00: And they will take the day before Yom Kippur to reflect on their lives, to confess their sins, to admit before God that they need forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And then on the next day, the day of Yom Kippur, they continue to observe being separate from the world and receiving the atonement that God offers.
SPEAKER_00: They don't necessarily do the bit with the two goats anymore, because the temple is not set up that way anymore.
SPEAKER_00: But what is this with the two goats?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what we see with the two goats, first off, let's talk about the goat that gets butchered.
SPEAKER_00: That poor goat.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Larry and Steve, the goats, go up to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: What do you think we're going to do today, Larry?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I guess we're both going to die.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we got about a 50-50 chance of that, you know.
SPEAKER_00: And it ends up being that way because one goat dies, one goat lives.
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the goat that dies.
SPEAKER_00: That goat is butchered, and its blood is sprinkled on the holy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the holy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, if you've seen pictures of the Ark of the Covenant, you have that box with two angels, each one spreading wings out to create a seat, a throne seat for Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they call it the holy seat.
SPEAKER_00: Inside of that box, you have a jar of manna, you have the rod of Aaron, and you have tablets of the original Ten Commandments, the second set of Ten Commandments that were placed inside of that box.
SPEAKER_00: You have a representation of God's law inside of that box.
SPEAKER_00: And so that priest comes in with that blood and he sprinkles that blood on the top of the box containing the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to get a little bit poetic and creative with you here, if you imagine God in heaven looking down upon that box, looking through the lid of that box, on the law that's contained within, God is now looking upon his law through the blood of sacrifice that has been sprinkled on top of that box.
SPEAKER_00: And all of this is a picture of sacrifice that's going to take place with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus shed his blood and died.
SPEAKER_00: He took the penalty for our sins upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, from time to time, I'll hear a Christian say, Well, my sin's not going to be punished because I believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I understand what it is that they mean, but that's a false statement.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a Christian, then your sin has been punished.
SPEAKER_00: It was just punished on Jesus rather than being punished on you.
SPEAKER_00: But your sin was punished.
SPEAKER_00: Don't think for a minute that your sins weren't judged by Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: They were just judged upon the person of Jesus rather than being judged upon you.
SPEAKER_00: If you walk out and that's the only thing you learn here today, I'll consider myself to have done a decent job.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: But let's go a little further.
SPEAKER_00: When that blood is on that mercy seat and God is looking at his law through the blood of sacrifice for us who have the blood of Jesus applied to us, then God looks at us and looks at the way that we've lived according to his law, or the way that we have not lived according to his law through the blood of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That is a picture of God's righteousness in Jesus Christ being applied to us, even though we don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: So we have that butchered goat.
SPEAKER_00: Then we have the scapegoat, the Azaleel, the goat that goes away.
SPEAKER_00: And we have Aaron putting his hands upon the head of that goat and reciting all of the sins of all of the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm emphasizing the word all, and I'm going to come back to that in just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: He's reciting all of those sins.
SPEAKER_00: And then that goat is taken away, never to be seen again.
SPEAKER_00: In a room as large as this, I'm going to guess that I've got a man or two, maybe a man or ten, that still deals with some guilt in their life over some sin that you committed in the past.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you committed that sin before you came to Jesus in salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you committed it after you came to Jesus in salvation.
SPEAKER_00: But that sin is something that causes you great feelings of guilt even to this day.
SPEAKER_00: And you wonder, why do I feel this guilt if the matter of my sin has already been taken care of by Jesus Christ the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that you have accepted the idea that your sin has been paid for, but you have not received, you have not accepted the idea that that sin and has now been taken far away, never to be seen again.
SPEAKER_00: God looks at our sin.
SPEAKER_00: People often say, Well, does God know that I sinned?
SPEAKER_00: Well, of course he does.
SPEAKER_00: He's God.
SPEAKER_00: He knows.
SPEAKER_00: But in the matter of the way that he relates to us, in the matter of does he love us despite that sin, well, in God's eyes, that sin has been taken away, never to be seen again, because of what Jesus did in shedding his blood and dying for us.
SPEAKER_00: He took that judgment for that sin upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we have here in this very strange chapter of Leviticus is we have a picture reminding us that Jesus pays the penalty for our sin with his blood, dying on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And also our sin has been taken away as far as the east is from the west, as the Bible says, never to be seen again.
SPEAKER_00: Guys who are struggling with guilt, you need to embrace that second goat.
SPEAKER_00: You need to embrace the idea that that sin has been taken away.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to be living with this idea.
SPEAKER_00: Has God forgiven that sin?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's forgiven that sin, and it's been taken away into the wilderness never to be brought up again.
SPEAKER_00: Guilt can be a crippling thing for a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Guilt can be a crippling thing for a man in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00: It can keep us from doing things that God is calling us to do because we think that we're unworthy.
SPEAKER_00: I got news for you.
SPEAKER_00: You're always unworthy.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the first goat had to die in the first place, because there's sin.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: But in terms of worthiness, if you're reflecting back on back sin, on old sins, you need to remember in God's economy, that's been taken away, never to be seen again.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a part of your life moving forward.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: Let's uh kind of wrap things up here with a passage from Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: Christ does not enter the holy places 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.
SPEAKER_00: As a high priest enters the most holy place every year with blood of another, he would then have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: But now, once, at the end of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
SPEAKER_00: As it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.
SPEAKER_00: To those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You notice the emphasis on the idea that Christ offered himself once.
SPEAKER_00: Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, Leviticus 16, they had to do that every year.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: With Christ, Christ died, shed his blood for your sins once.
SPEAKER_00: And when he did that, he shed that blood for your past sins, for the sins you're committing right now, and for the ones in the future that you haven't even committed yet.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad that Jesus doesn't have to go to the cross and die repeatedly so that you can be cleansed from your sin?
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad that your sin is taken away from God's economy and the way that He's dealing with you because of what Jesus did on the cross?
SPEAKER_00: So, in this story of two goats, as strange as it is, as bloody as it is, as cryptic as it seems to be, what we have here is a picture of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here is a picture that reminds us of how God views our sins if we have received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you haven't received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, then probably nine-tenths of what I've said hadn't made much sense to you.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, feel free to talk to me or some of the gentlemen here in this room.
SPEAKER_00: Learn more about what that's about.
SPEAKER_00: That's more important than anything else you'll do today, this week, rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because I can promise you, you want that salvation that Jesus offers.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be able to say, that one sacrifice from that one perfect man, he suffered the penalty for my sin so that I don't have to.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Let's close in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you for the men in this room.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you'd bless them in a mighty way.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I am reminded, forgive me, Lord, I am reminded of a man who is in the hospital by the name of Rodney that I visited with this morning, who is in tremendous pain as he battles cancer.
SPEAKER_00: And I promised him that this group of men would pray for him today.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, we pray for Rodney.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you would keep his pain at bay, and we pray that you would heal him.
SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, Lord, we would pray that you would bring him closer to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, if Rodney needs to be saved, we would pray that that happens.
SPEAKER_00: If he is already saved, then we just give you praise and honor for that, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the fact that we don't have to bring sacrifices to a temple or a tabernacle, because you are the final sacrifice, the greater sacrifice, the sacrifice once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: Let us never take that for granted, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let's be people who rejoice in what it is that you've done for us.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we also rejoice that you rose from the dead, proving everything that you said about yourself.
SPEAKER_00: We love you, Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's in your mighty name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: God's men said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We are dismissed.