Lessons from Leviticus: The Power of Ritual

SPEAKER 01 : 0:12

The sermon today will be about, naturally, the Day of Atonement. So if you’ll turn back to Leviticus 16, that famous and much-discussed passage of Scripture by us and hardly anyone else. The ceremony, the actual service that was done, the ritual that was performed on the Day of Atonement is described in great detail in Leviticus, the 16th chapter. Actually, most people who start out reading the Bible all the way through never get this far. They get along about Leviticus 6 and grind to a halt in all of the burnt offerings, sin offerings, and they lose heart in the process of reading the Bible. And unfortunately, I don’t know that this chapter would do an awful lot for them either when the time comes down to it. But it’s an important chapter in very many ways, and having to do, of course, with the Day of Atonement in particular. The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they offered before the Lord and died. And the Lord said to Moses, Speak unto Aaron your brother that he come not at all times into the holy place within the veil before the mercy seat which is upon the ark that he die not. For I will appear in the cloud which is above the mercy seat. I think it’s very hard for us in the 20th century to appreciate what was actually happening with Israel at that time. When these laws were given and when they were still wandering around the wilderness as they were when this event took place, they had the pillar of fire by night, they had the cloud by day, and this was always there. And you have to understand, nobody could go near the pillar of fire. No one could go near that cloud. There was far too much power that was there. And I think, I don’t know what we think of necessarily when we think of people dying in God’s service or being dangerous to do certain things in God’s service. It’s as though, well, there’s a spirit world here and our world here. And if you do something, if you get one detail out of the things that God has told you to do out of order, that God himself will deliberately step forward and whack you, perhaps kill you. I think this is the way people think about this. But I went back last night and I was reading in Leviticus 10 because this is where the story is that leads into Leviticus 16. I’m going to take you back there. These are the two sons of Aaron that are mentioned right at the very beginning of that chapter saying that they were killed. And this is what God told Moses right after this event. So maybe there is something for us to gather from this event that will help us understand what’s happening here. Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and they put fire in them, and they put incense on them, and they offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. This is a simple little mistake, apparently, these guys make. And there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. And then Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord said, I will be sanctified in them that come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified. In other words… Too much information has been long since lost. We only can read between the lines. We can try to peer beyond the veil. We can try to grasp in some element what is happening here. But God has basically told Aaron and Moses, has given them a very specific way in which things are to be done. If you’re to come in here, you’re to come in here very carefully under certain circumstances, and you’re to do things in a very specific way. Why? Because I will appear… Between the cherubim above the mercy seat. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that the most incredible, unbelievable, incomprehensible concentration of power that can be known to man will be in that spot. You approach this power in the wrong way and it will kill you. Now, what’s fascinating is you read on along in this, you know, he says, I’ve told you how to do this. You come before me this way or your life is at stake. And Moses then, Moses said to Aaron, this is what God said. He called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uziel, the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, you come near and you carry your brother from before the sanctuary out of the camp. So they went near and they carried them in their coats out of the camp. As Moses had said, and Moses said to Aaron and to Eliezer and to Ithamar, his sons, don’t uncover your heads, don’t tear your clothes. In other words, they had the holy mitre on their head for the priesthood that they had to have. He said, don’t take those off, don’t rend your clothes, like what you normally would do at time of a death in the family. Don’t do that lest you die, and don’t let wrath come upon all the people. But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord has kindled. You shall not go out of the door of the tabernacle lest you die, for the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you. And they did what they were told, which sometimes in human circumstances seems rare, but I guess they were frightened enough to do what they were told. We have created a crisis here. These two boys have died. Wrap them up in their coats, take them out and bury them, but don’t take your covering off your head. Don’t go outside the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. You can mourn and cry and weep in here, but we’ve got to do this by the book or else we are all going to be dead men and it’s going to reach out to all the people who are out there as well. And the Lord spoke to Aaron, who at this time is in the holy place. Not in the Holy of Holies, but in the tabernacle area, where he’s been told, don’t you go out. And the Lord said, don’t drink wine or strong drink, you nor your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations, in that you may put difference between the holy and the unholy, and between the clean and the clean. Now, I read that. I’ve read it many, many times before. And I’ve always taken it that the priesthood were told, you don’t drink before you go in to serve God, makes sense to me, and so forth. And I’ve oftentimes thought that although I’m not a priest in any shape or form, nor a Levite, that it’s a good idea, frankly, to follow this procedure and don’t drink before I go in to speak to God’s people. And I think that’s what we all should do. But that’s not what this is about. What this is about, and its context, and while nothing is said about it earlier, you can infer very quickly from this that these boys, Nadab and Abihu, may very well have been drinking. And they decided, well, this is no big deal. You know, we don’t have to do this exactly that way. We can do this another way. And so they did, and as a result of it, they died. And I thought about it, and I thought, you know, this is a very poor comparison in a way. But if you work in a nuclear power plant, if you’re one of the boys that work down there on the floor with all the dials and the lights and the flashings and all the stuff that’s going on in there, I would presume they do not want you to be working there in that place when you have been drinking. They would want you to be clear-headed, clear-eyed. They’d want your mind on your job. They wouldn’t want you getting excited and pulling the wrong lever. They wouldn’t want you to lower the level around the reactor core when you ought to raise the water around the reactor core. I think of the movie, which was The China Syndrome, which kind of illustrated what could happen in one of those situations. And a stuck needle caused them to make a bad decision. And in a momentary panic or excitement, of what was happening inside the reactor. And I think to myself, here’s a situation in the real world where a person who is drunk or on drugs, who is in a critical place dealing with enormous amounts of power, could do a lot of harm to himself, to his co-workers, and in fact could actually cause deaths in the community for miles around the reactor. God only knows what happened when that big meltdown took place in Russia, at Chernobyl, in that particular situation. And it just dawned on me that this warning about drinking wine or strong drink when you go in to serve God comes in the context of two boys who had been told specifically what to do in relation to the service of God, what to take in there, when to take it in there, how to do it, how not to do it. And they possibly had been drinking and carelessly did some things that got them killed. Their attitude may not have been all that bad, but they may have made a serious mistake. He said, I want you to do this so that you can be able to distinguish between the holy and the unholy, between the clean and the unclean. Now, there’s something I feel that a lot of people probably do not understand. It is not a sin to be unclean. In the Bible, a woman is unclean after the birth of a child. A man is unclean if he has an emission out of his flesh that he has no control over one way or the other. That all of us in various ways in our lives have a lot of different ways in which we could become ceremonial or ritually unclean and it not be our fault. A woman was unclean once a month and she was unclean for so many days once a month. That was not a sin. Okay, what was a sin is that if you were unclean to engage in certain acts of worship of God, of the handling of holy things, of going into holy places, of approaching God, of various things that the priests and worshipers did relative to the tabernacle at this time. So the uncleanness is not the problem. What you do while you are unclean is the problem. And the priests had to have a clear head. They had to know what they were doing because their job was to make a difference between the holy and the unholy, between the clean and the unclean, and that you may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord has spoken by the hand of Moses. And Moses spoke to Aaron and Eliezer and Ithamar and his sons that were left, said, take the meat offering that remains of the offerings of God made by fire and eat it outside without leaven beside the altar. It is most holy. In other words, there were certain things that they were required to do. He says, take these things, take them out by the altar and eat them there. These are holy. Then they tried to impress it upon their mind. You shall eat it in the holy place because it is your due and your son’s due of the sacrifices the Lord made by fire, for so I am commanded. It was not merely their due, we find out, to eat it. It was their responsibility to eat it. And I don’t know that I have ever explored this particular concept before myself. He said, the waved breast, the heaved shoulder, shall you eat in a clean place, you and all your sons, your daughters with you, for they are your due and your sons’ due, which are given out of the sacrifices of the peace offerings of the children of Israel. I’ve heard these read many times, but they are read as generalities. Whereas, in fact, these statements that Moses is making at this point in time are specifics. They’re not generalities. They are dealing with this situation, what we need to do to get this thing taken care of, get these bodies out of here, you sit down and eat these holy offerings, because this must be done. It is not only your due, it’s your responsibility. Then he said in verse 16, Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering after this, and behold, it was burnt. And he was angry with Eliezer and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron that were left alive, saying, Why haven’t you eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy? And God has given it to you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord.” Now, you can wonder, as I did when I read this, if the event took place, if this event took place on the Day of Atonement. And that the instructions that come about in Leviticus 16, the very explicit instructions come about as a result of this disaster that took place on this day. But if you do your Bible studies on this, you will find that atonements are offered more times than you can shake a stick at. I mean, there were hundreds of atonements offered every year. It was the job of the priests to make sin offerings, to kill goats of the sin offering on almost daily basis for people who ever came at the time. And these things were done to make an atonement all the time. And yet, one still wonders… what were those boys doing heading into the Holy of Holies, which apparently is where they got burnt? Behold, the blood of it was not brought within the holy place. You should have eaten in the holy place like I told you to do. Go out by the altar, sit down there, and eat this thing. And Aaron said to Moses, Look, this day they have offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord, and such things have befallen me. that if I had eaten the sin offering today, would it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord? With the attitude, with the heart that I have, On this day, and when Moses heard that, he was content. So what you have here is a major crisis that has developed, that could have developed still further. I don’t mean to naturalize something that is spiritual in the sense of the fire of God, but it was very literal, very physical, and very real to Nadab and Abihu. as it burned them both to a crisp and left them smoldering on the ground. You know, we’re dealing with a real source of real power that must be handled with extreme care, and you have to be very careful to do the things which God told you to do, or else people are going to die, which Israel learned again and again, regrettably, in the course of time of their wilderness wanderings with God. So, back to Leviticus 16. The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they offered before the Lord and died. He said, The implications of this is that if he comes through those curtains into the area where the mercy seat is on July the 4th, God would appear at that time and he would die. He would die, not specifically because God intended to kill him, but he would simply die because he could not come into the presence of God improperly and without proper protection and live. Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place, with a young bullock for a sin offering, a ram for a burnt offering. And he shall put on the holy linen coat. He shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh and shall be girded with a linen girdle, and with linen mitre shall he be attired. These are holy garments. Therefore shall he wash his flesh with water and put them on. He shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering. Now, I don’t know how familiar you already are with Leviticus the 16th chapter, but let me point out something. He said you have two kids of the goats for a sin offering. There is an assumption made by some students that both goats together formed the sin offering. I do not think this is the case. I think you have two goats for one sin offering. One goat will die, the other goat will not. The goat that died is the sin offering. Because sin offerings were either eaten or burnt. They died. Death and the shedding of blood is an important part of the sin offering. And frankly, I don’t quite understand how there could be a sin offering, based upon what I know of Scripture at this time, for that to be the case. So you have two kids of the goats for a sin offering, one ram for a burnt offering. And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself and for his house. Now the word atonement has been played with a lot. People talk about meaning at one meant. It means reconciliation. It means lots and lots of things to many people. The Hebrew word means cover. You know, it means a cover or a covering or to cover. And it’s really a relatively simple concept. You know, you’ve done something wrong, we’re going to cover it up. Sins have taken place, we’re going to cover it up. Things are unclean, we’re going to cover them up. The whole idea is one of… of reconciling, of putting things right that have been wrong, of clearing up whatever problems we’ve got here. In other words, we’re going to make an atonement. So the first thing that he has to do is to make an atonement for himself and for his house. The reason for it is not that difficult to understand. Aaron was a man. Aaron lived in a real world. Aaron would have, in the course of the past months, have made himself unclean on any number of occasions. It may have happened on purpose. It may have happened accidentally. He may have had sex with his wife, which was a natural course of things and approved by God, which would make him ineligible for service for a short period of time. So that you would have this problem of uncleanness that was a part of what he did. Aaron in this ceremony is actually going to represent the work and the ministry of Jesus Christ. And so before he can do these things, before he can actually act as Christ might have acted, before he can carry out the atonement for the people, he first has to make an atonement for himself. It has to be cleansed. The atonement involves cleansing, a covering. He has to make himself clean before God so that he can come before God. And he shall take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. Now, scapegoat’s an interesting term, and I think, in fact, I think the term in our language comes from this particular passage. It is the, literally, in Hebrew, it is the goat of departure, or the goat that leaves. That’s basically what azazel means in Hebrew. They translated it scapegoat, I think, because of the fact that later the priest will confess all the sins of Israel upon this goat, and this goat will be sent away bearing all the sins of the people. And so, In our language, when we pick someone out and blame him for what has happened, we have made him the scapegoat, right? And we punish this person because of what everybody else has done. We call him a scapegoat. No matter how innocent he may be, he is the scapegoat. It comes, oddly, into our language from the word scape. from Old English, which is escape, and it means the escape goat or the goat that escapes or the goat that leaves or gets away. So you have these two that are here. Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord’s lot fell and offer him for a sin offering. Now, there’s been an enormous amount of discussion in the church in years gone by over did one of these goats represent Christ, the other goat represent Satan, and I’m not going to try to resolve that question for you today. I will discuss it to some degree. The fact of the matter is that the one who is actually representing Christ in this scenario is the high priest. We also know of course that a lamb was slain which represented Christ relative to the Passover. Now once again we have a goat that is selected for the Lord, actually for Yahweh is what it means. The other goat presumably was not selected for Yahweh but rather was to be the goat that escaped. And what that symbolizes is another question. So Aaron brought the goat upon which the Lord’s lot fell and offered him for a sin offering. And here’s where you get to the question of what was going on back in the 10th chapter. For there was a goat, a kid, for a sin offering there that was not properly eaten at that time because things didn’t happen like they were supposed to happen. Normally, blood from the kid of the goat would be taken in and sprinkled upon the Holy of Holies after incense had been taken and all the things that had to be done. In this case, that was not done. Notice the second goat, whatever it is he does, is also involved in making an atonement. We have more atonements being done here than you can shake a stick at. First of all, the high priest has to be atoned for before he can even do his things. He’s then got to atone for the altar. He’s got to atone for the Holy of Holies. He’s got to atone for all that he’s dealing with out there. He has to then make atonement for all the children of Israel. And this goat somehow is involved in this process of making an atonement. And again, the atonement process is a reconciliation, of putting things right that were wrong, of making clean what was unclean, of the forgiveness of sin. It is a catch-all term for that. Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself. Now, there’s a curious break in the action in this thing. I mean, this doesn’t go straight through a narrative style. First of all, it sets it up for you, and then it narrates the events. And here we begin, I think, right here with the narrative. Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin offering for himself, and make an atonement for himself, for his house. He shall kill the bullock of the sin offering for himself. He’ll take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar of the Lord, his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil. He shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat upon the testimony that he died not. So here we come to the interesting contrast with what Nadab and Abihu had done. They offered strange fire before the Lord. Here is explicitly the way in which it was to be done. He was to take a censer. It was to be the high priest and him only. He was to take a censer. He was to take incense beaten small. He was to put it upon this within the veil so that there was a huge cloud of smoke that would come up around the mercy seat. The idea is that he can then come in there. to do his duties and not be blinded or killed by the glory of God, which God said would appear above the mercy seat. Kind of a, you know, it’s beyond our ken. It’s completely out of our reach. It’s beyond our ability to grasp what this must have been like or how it might have worked. But anyway. Having done this, he puts the incense upon the fire and covers the mercy seat. Then he takes the blood of the bullock and he sprinkles it on the mercy seat eastward, and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle with the blood of his finger seven times. He comes back out. He kills the goat of the sin offering for the people, and he brings that blood within the veil and does with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock and sprinkles it upon the mercy seat and before the mercy seat.” Now, the first step was to prepare himself so that he could, in this ceremony, represent Christ. The next step in the ceremony involves the killing of the lamb, or actually the kid in this case, which in Passover, by the way, could have also been a kid of the goats. And that blood is then taken. And the implications of this to a New Testament reader would be that it’s like the blood of Christ being carried in through the throne of God, sprinkled there, presented there before the throne of God as the token, as it were, of the death of the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world who died on our behalf and who covers our sins by his death and by his sacrifice. And so that part of it is relatively easy, I think, to follow. Now he then says, having done that, he make atonement for the holy place. Sorry, I think I’ve lost my place here. He should make an atonement for the holy place because… of the… First of all, he kills the goat of the sin offering for the people, brings that blood within the veil, and does with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkles it upon the mercy seat before the mercy seat. And he makes an atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel. Now, mind you, there’s an initial aspect part of this is not necessarily sin. It’s uncleanness. It’s the fact that they are not holy at a given point in time because of things sometimes that are out of their control. Also, it is because… of the transgressions and for all their sins. So he has to do this. For the tabernacle of the congregation that remains among them in the midst of their uncleanness. In other words, the tabernacle sat right in the middle of Israel’s camp. And all around them was normal everyday life with all of its dirt, uncleanness, natural functions going on continually. The things that happened that as a result of it all make a people unclean. unclean, for want of a better word. Not necessarily sinners, because what depends then on whether they’re sinning or not is what they do in that unclean condition. But he says the tabernacle lives among them, and so the tabernacle has to be cleansed. That is, a covering made for. He has to make an atonement for the people. The symbolism involves the clearing up of all the sins, all the guilt, all the uncleanness, and the realization that one must come before God clean. Holy, set apart. There shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation when he goes in to make an atonement in the holy place until he has come out and has made an atonement for himself and for his household and for all the congregation of Israel. He shall go out to the altar before the Lord and make an atonement for that. He shall take the blood of the bullock and the blood of the goat and put it upon the horns of the altar round about. He shall sprinkle the blood upon it with his fingers seven times and cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.” And so there’s a realization that’s to be driven home to everybody on this day that everything here, I mean, even the tabernacle, even the very altar of God, is polluted because it sits in the middle of our camp. It sits amongst us who are an unclean and polluted people. And then in the course of the natural living of our lives, we perpetually and continually and repeatedly become unclean. And then we must realize that the glory of God, that God is hallowed, that he is separate from sinners, that he is separate from the unclean. And all these lessons are to be driven home and were driven home for Israel again and again and again so they would know that their God was separate from this kind of thing and above this kind of thing. So the laws of uncleanness were once again driven home. That was this, however, the one day out of the year when it is done for everyone, for the whole camp and for the tabernacle. Throughout the year, if you sinned and you repented and you were brokenhearted, you can go get your own sin offering. You can take your own sin offering down there on any day of the year and offer that sin offering to God. You can make you do cleansings for yourself. You can go through the purification process. You can approach unto God. You have to do all those things, and you can do this because you’re approaching where God is, and God is holy. But there’s once a year when the whole nation had to be gathered together and be clean at once. I think I understand this. At a human level, I don’t think we necessarily grasp all that God is trying to do. But I can sort of grasp this, that you clean one thing here and clean one thing there and clean something over here while this is getting dirty, that there is some time when you really finally want to have it all. cleaned, gathered up, straightened out, put on the right path at the same time. He goes out to the altar that’s before the Lord and makes an atonement for it. And he shall take the blood of the bullock and the blood of the goat and put it upon the horns of the altar round about. And he shall sprinkle the blood upon it with his finger seven times and cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel, which apparently it’s that way just simply because it sits in the middle. of all these people. When he has made an end of reconciling the holy place and the tabernacle and the altar, now he brings the live goat. And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions and all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited, and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. Now, you know, There has been so much discussion about this over the years, sometimes you can get a little confused, I think, about what some of these things mean. There are those who believe that both of these goats represent different aspects of the sacrifice of Christ. They believe that because the goat bore our sins away into the wilderness, that since Christ is our sin-bearer, that that goat also symbolizes Christ being born away into the wilderness. There are others who look at that and say, well, no. Christ bore our sins to the tree, and he died there. And, of course, it’s hard to argue with that, because you get into Passover symbolism, and there Jesus Christ dies for all of our sins. He carries them. God places, the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all, and he went there and he died. Now, this goat… And again, the next question, and one that I have always asked about this question right at this time is, that if the first goat was a sin offering, if the first goat made an atonement for the people of Israel, if Jesus Christ is our Passover sacrificed and his death was sufficient for all of our sins, why are they still there to be laid on the head of that second goat? Why aren’t they gone? One of the reasons, I think, I mean, there are many things, I’ve thought about it in many different directions in the past. is that sin seems in many ways to have a life of its own. And just because you have been forgiven of your sins, let’s put ourselves in a world where we are right now, which, you know, similar like these people were as well. You’re living in the world. You’ve committed sins. You’ve gone through the process, the cleansing process. You’ve done all the washings, all the purifications, offered all the animals, given all the sacrifices, dipped the bird in blood, let the bird fly away. Whatever it is that has to be done, you’ve done that, and you believe that God has forgiven you of your sins. Problem. Your sins are still with you. They’re still with you in the consequences. And you still know you did it. You can believe right down to the core of your being that God has forgiven you of committing adultery with your neighbor’s wife last year. And you will still remember that you did it. And it will still have an effect on your life. It will still have an effect on the way you think. It will still have an effect on the way you render judgments on other people, for good or for evil. It will affect you in ways you can’t even imagine. Everything that ever happens to you, everything you ever see, everything you ever hear, goes into your mind, and it stays there forever. It’s a closet you can’t clean out. And so consequently, the forgiveness of sin doesn’t solve the problem entirely. And so there seems to be a second step, where before all the people, he brings this goat and he confesses on this goat all the sins of the children of Israel. And I’m standing here next to you, and we’ve had our problems in the past. We’ve had our disagreements, and I’ve done things that I shouldn’t do, you know, where you’re concerned. And I know you’ve done things that you shouldn’t have done where I’m concerned. And we’ve been having a hard time forgiving one another. And we stand there and watch this priest up here, and we’ve got to realize that as he confesses sins upon this goat’s head, mine are there and so are yours. You realize that this was not a matter of the forgiveness of your sins and the non-forgiveness of yours. This atonement was made for everybody. And I can’t help but think of that when I think of the Lord’s Prayer, when he says the way you should pray is, forgive us of our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. It’s a collective prayer. It’s a prayer that I’m not asking you to forgive my sins while you hold him accountable. When we’re going to do this, we’re going to ask for God to forgive us of our sins. This is what’s going on the Day of Atonement. So that symbolically, all of our sins are put on the head of this goat, and he is taken away and let go in the wilderness. The reason why I tend to have difficulty accepting that this goat symbolizes Christ is this goat doesn’t die. The idea is that he takes these things away and he bears them forever. There is no indication or nothing that this goat can somehow get rid of those sins, symbolically speaking. The goat that is for the sin offering, you can confess sins on this goat if you wish, and you kill him, he’s dead. It’s over. For the other goat, it’s never over. It’s almost as though that there’s a symbolism here of explaining to mankind that sin has a life of its own and sin never dies. You may send it away, but it never dies. It impresses, in many ways upon my mind, more than I would like to have it impress sometimes, that sin has permanent consequences, and it does not go away easily, and it dogs your step. It’s one translation that lies in the weeds trying to get at you, and it is always there. So there is a beautiful symbolism, though, in this. And the easiest and the simplest symbolism is to see in the ceremony that’s done here, all of our sins are placed on this goat. This goat is taken away and let go in the wilderness. All of our sins have left with it. And from an Israelite in the Old Testament who knew nothing of Jesus, the realization that every debt that you owe me went with that goat is really clear. And that I can’t hold you accountable for sins that went with that goat into the wilderness. Not any longer. Whatever sin you did against me, I can’t hold you accountable for it anymore. I think it’s a beautiful symbolism. It’s a great ceremony. And I imagine it was very meaningful for Israel as they stood out there before the place in the camp of God. And the priest went through the ceremony. And they took that goat away, and they went home, waiting for the sun to go down to have their evening meal, in the realization that they had been forgiven, they had been reconciled to God, they had been reconciled to one another, and the goat that carried their sins into the wilderness was gone, and their sins gone with it symbolically. Humanly speaking, they had to know that they still had some problems to deal with. And of course, we will have problems to deal with way out into the future from our sins. We are still here. We’re still flesh and blood. We’re still waiting for the return of Christ. And this is where we begin to wonder more. Remember, and the way I’d always heard this explained was that the high priest went in there and sprinkled the blood of the first goat, symbolizing Jesus Christ presenting his blood before the Father as the sacrifice, as his death in our place, so that we are considered as having died before God and therefore no longer guilty of anything. the high priest coming back from the Holy of Holies, representing the return of Jesus Christ to this earth, and the final accounting for some of the things that have to be done at the end time. So, anyway, this goat was let go in the wilderness. And Aaron came into the tabernacle of the congregation, put off all the linen garments which he put on when he went out, and left them there. He washes his flesh with water in the holy place. He puts on his own clothes and comes out and offers his burnt offering and the burnt offering for the people to make an atonement for himself and for the people. Notice how we keep atoning and keep atoning and keep atoning. The fat of the sin offering shall he burn upon the altar. He that let go the goat for a scapegoat shall wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in water, and only afterward can he come back into the camp. The bullock for the sin offering, the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make an atonement in the holy place, somebody’s got to carry outside the camp and they burn it in the fire with their skins and the flesh and the dung. He that burns them shall wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in water and afterwards shall come into the camp. All this stuff is being done, by the way, on Sabbath day, which involves a certain amount of work. This shall be a statute forever for you. In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country or a stranger that sojourns among you. For on that day the priest will make an atonement for you to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It shall be a Sabbath of rest. You shall afflict your souls by a statute forever.” And I think universally, especially when you compare it with Ezra 8.21, where he says we fasted in order to afflict our souls, this is understood to be a time of fasting. I will stop just momentarily, or digress momentarily, to say that I think there’s a reason why in Leviticus 23, where it says, calls this afflicting your soul, and here where he calls it afflicting your soul, it does not specify no food, no water, like it might. God’s quite capable of saying, you shall eat no food, you shall drink no water, you shall do this, this, this, and this. He could have said that if that’s what he had meant. fasting exists at many levels, and I think he probably said afflict your soul to give you a certain amount of latitude in your fasting depending upon your health conditions or your circumstances because some people are afflicted at one level and others are at another. I think it gives latitude to the person who is a diabetic. It gives latitude to people who have other kinds of health problems that they may be afflicted at a lesser level or they may be just as afflicted with a little bit of food as you and I might be. A healthy person might be afflicted with no food at all. So I do think that he left a certain amount of latitude in there, but at the same time I have absolutely no question at all that what he means, you’re to fast on the Day of Atonement. It’s a Sabbath of rest. The priest will consecrate you. He says in verse 34, Now the most interesting commentary is, on this passage, and I imagine you’d like to have a good commentary on it, is found in the book of Hebrews. By the way, one more point on the question of fasting. I’ve often thought, in the face of the questions that people raise about whether you really need to fast on the Day of Atonement, the day when they came to Jesus and said, why is it that the scribes and the Pharisees fast and your servants don’t fast? And Jesus said, well, because I’m here with them right now. The time will come when my servants will fast. And so my thought is that if Jesus’ disciples were going to fast any day, certainly why not on this day? But that’s another topic for another day. Hebrews chapter 9. Now this is a long section. It begins much earlier than this. It talks in a great deal about the new covenant in chapter 8, the old covenant and the contrast. But it begins to get to the Day of Atonement service in chapter 9. Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service and a worldly sanctuary. There was a tabernacle made, the first wherein was the candlestick and the table and the showbread, which is called the sanctuary, and after the second veil the tabernacle, which is called the holiest of all. I think most of you are familiar with the design. It was like a rectangle, and the rectangle divided into two squares. The inner square, which is where the Ark of the Covenant was, was called the Holy of Holies. The outer square inside this rectangle was the Holy Place, wherein were these things that God, the Hebrews, described. They had the golden censer and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, verse 4, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant. And over it the cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy seat of which we cannot now speak particularly. Now when these things were thus ordained, the priest went always into the tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God. Into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the errors of the people. So the blood is involved in this because we have to offer blood for the errors of the high priest and for the errors of the people as well. And we’ve just seen in Leviticus 16 all those things that he had to do. The Holy Spirit signified by this, by what? Presumably by the fact that he only went in there once a year. He signified by this that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was standing. In other words, the real way to the holiest of all, that is to the very throne of God, was not clear while Israel was following the tabernacle around the wilderness. So that this once a year that he went in there signified that the way to the holiest of all was not yet available to man. It was coming once in the future. It was a figure for the time then present in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience. No kidding. That’s just what we’ve been talking about, isn’t it? You can’t go in there and offer a lamb or a kid and so forth and have it blood, blood sprinkled all over the place, go away from there knowing God’s forgiven me, I know I’m guiltless, but you cannot go out of there without your conscience still bothering you about stuff that you have done. As I’m certain of that, as a minister, I’ve had to counsel with far too many people who feel that God has not forgiven them for the simple reason that they have not been able to forget the things that they did. For the simple reason they still feel guilty for the things that they have done. And I suppose, in a way, it’s only right that we should continue to feel guilty for some of the stupid things and the sins that we have committed in our life. Even though we know we have been forgiven, even though God has taken away, and God’s not going to hold it against us. I think one of the reasons why we feel guilty about them is because we realize that even though God doesn’t hold it against us, our body may. Even though God doesn’t hold us against it, the Internal Revenue Service may. And so on and so forth. There are consequences for the stupid things that we do, even when we have been forgiven by God, who will no longer hold us accountable for it. All right. That’s what he’s talking about. So, sorry, I lost my place on the page. Coming down to verse 9. This tabernacle that was standing was a figure for the time then present in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him as did the service perfect as pertained to the conscience. They stood only in food and drink and various washings and physical ordinances. imposed on them until the time of reformation. But Christ being come a high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, not this building, not even the temple, neither by the blood of goats or calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. Now it’s utterly inescapable that the person who wrote Hebrews at this point considers that priest going into the holy place on one time in the year, on the Day of Atonement, and sprinkling that blood there was typical of Jesus Christ and what he is talking about right here. That he goes in there once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. He doesn’t have to do this again year after year after year after year. But if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Now there’s a promise in here of even being able to clear up the conscience, which the blood of bulls and goats was never able to do. And I suppose that even though… we carry the knowledge of what we have done, and even though to some degree we carry the guilt for the things that we have done, that there is a peace that can come to us. There is a peace that can come to the conscience of knowing that I don’t have to flagellate myself on this anymore. I don’t have to penalize myself anymore. I may have to, if I did something stupid and lost my arm, I’ll go through the rest of my life with only one arm, but my conscience can be cleared. For this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death for the redemption of transgressions that were under the First Testament, they who are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there must be of necessity the death of a testator. You know, he’s mixed his metaphor here. He’s actually moved into an idea that really doesn’t exist in the Day of Atonement at all. And that’s the idea of obtaining an inheritance. For we are not merely sons of God. We’re not merely human beings who are sort of sons of God. We actually are members of the family and actually written into the will and are heirs of his. A testament is a force after men are dead, otherwise it’s of no strength at all while the testator lives. Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood. There had to be blood there. When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats and water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled the book in all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God has enjoined unto you. Moreover, he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of ministry, and almost all things are by the law purged with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. And that is as fundamental a Christian doctrine as anything could possibly be. For we understand that there could be no remission of our sins without the shedding of blood. We understand that the shedding of the blood of bulls and calves and goats can be nothing but symbolic and cannot be real. It is the real blood of the real Jesus Christ. that does forgive us or actually takes away our sins. It was necessary, therefore, that the patterns of the things in heaven should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. And I cannot honestly tell you that I really understand why it is necessary for the tabernacle or the things or the altar or the ark in heaven, because apparently they are there because what Moses made were patterns of things above, why those things needed purification. It’s not entirely clear to me. But perhaps it has something to do with the… It can only really have to do… with the ongoing impurities of human beings, our uncleanness, our sins, our humanity, our failures, that as we reach up to God, as we pray to God, that our sins even reach up to high heaven, they are known to him, and that the process of maintaining holiness is a process that must be followed in heaven, even as it must be followed on earth. So Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands which are just figures of the true. He’s entered into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer himself often as the high priest when in every year then he had to suffer since the foundation of the world. But now once in the end of the world has he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Now, what’s interesting about this is that right here, the Hebrews ties Passover and atonement together. A lot of people are really puzzled by that. They don’t understand why there are two instances of a sacrifice or the blood of Christ being used in two different holy days having to do with atonement, reconciliation, and making people right with God. But it is very clear… that the writer of Hebrews attaches the Jesus Christ coming to earth and dying at Passover, which he did, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and he ties the significance of that event also to the Day of Atonement and the things that had to be done on that day. As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. And unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. For the law, having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices they offer year by year make the comers thereunto perfect. If they could have, they wouldn’t need to do it anymore. Because the worshipers once perished should have had no more conscience of sin. But in those sacrifices, there is a remembrance, again, made of sin every year. It’s not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin. And, you know, when you read the book of Leviticus, this is puzzling. Because it says if a man comes down to the temple, he kills this animal and offers a sacrifice. If he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. And the only thing I can conclude from that is that his sins are forgiven him, not because or not by the blood of this animal, that the blood of the animal was symbolic of a sacrifice far off into the future that was to come. And it’s through God’s mercy and through the sacrifice of Christ even then that he could be forgiven of what he had done. Wherefore, when he comes into the world, he says, Sacrifice and offering you would not, but a body you have prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have no pleasure. Then said I, I come in the volume of your book it is written of me to do your will, O God. You know, there’s a funniest thing about this. The prophets are absolutely full. I mean, they’re just sprinkled with comments about how God is not particularly pleased, doesn’t really care for burnt offerings and killing of animals. And here it is right here. He says, I really don’t give a hang about these things. And you wonder, well, then why did they play such a dominant role in the history of Israel? And I’ve often wondered that. You know, the question has to arise at some point in time, and I can’t tell you that I have the answer to it, but the question has to arise is were the offering, were all the law of the offerings and the sacrifices and the rituals in the Old Testament of the Bible really God’s idea, or were they God’s regulation of, use of human customs to accomplish his own ends? I know it sounds almost heretical, but when you go back to the book of Genesis, you find men beginning to offer sacrifices and offerings, and you find not one word of instruction from God that they should do so. that men wanted to do it. God says, okay, we’ll do it. You know that David wanted to build a temple. And God says, I never wanted to build a temple. The thought of building a temple never crossed my mind. I never gave you a commandment to do it. In fact, you’re not going to do it. I will let your father do it, but you’re not going to do it. So there was never his intention to have a temple. It was never God’s intention to have a king. And yet there are all kinds of laws in the Bible about kings. It was never his intention to have a temple. There are all kinds of laws in the Bible about temples. It was never his intention in the Bible, in his life, and what God intended for man, for one man to be a slave to another. But you will find laws in the Old Testament about slavery. They are there because men sin. That’s why these laws find their way into existence and find their way, their manifestation to us. I’m not offering that to you as some kind of a new truth, but I do think sometimes when we read these things, we don’t think carefully or diligently or far enough back and consider the depths of them. It’s entirely possible that animal sacrifices were really something that man originated, and God says, okay, we will take this thing, we will take this custom, and we will use this custom to demonstrate my glory and what I am going to do and help you to understand what I am planning to do in the future. I don’t know. I may be entirely wrong on that. In order to be wrong, of course, I would have to believe that. I really don’t. I’m just saying, how do we know that that is not the case? So, as we go on down, he says, let us draw near. First of all, verse 19. Brethren, boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh. Having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Obviously an allusion to the acceptance of the sacrifice of Christ and going through the waters of baptism. Let’s hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful that promised. Let’s consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as you see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. It’s striking that this admonition comes right at the end of a long discourse of the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement. You know, when you have come to this place, and when you have turned to God, and when you’ve turned your life over to God, and you’ve decided, I’m going to cleanse myself, I’m going to try to live a clean life, I want to be holy as He is holy, to then turn back like a sow to a wallowing in the mire, like a dog to its own vomit, to use those biblical expressions on it, to turn away and to forsake God and sin willfully after that, There remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose you, shall he be thought worthy who has trodden underfoot the Son of God and has counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was put apart? an unholy thing, and is done despite to the Spirit of grace. For we know him that has said, Vengeance belongs to me, I will recompense, and again the Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. These are really sobering scriptures here. I read them not because I believe anyone here really has done so or is in any danger of doing so. They often, though, in people’s minds cast a great deal of fear. You know, that old cold fingers of fear clutch a person’s heart when you start talking about the unpardonable sin and to worry about it. I can only say that if you’re worried about it, you have it. And if you’re worried about it, there’s hope. If you’re worried about it, there’s time to do something about it and to turn your life around and to turn back to God. Paul… who may have written Hebrews or maybe not, says in verse 35, cast not away your confidence, which has great recompense and reward. I mean, you have faith, you have confidence, you put your trust in God. You have need of patience. After you’ve done the will of God, you might receive the promise. Yet a little while, he that shall come will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith. But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we’re not of them that draw back. We are those that believe to the saving of the soul. And I am persuaded that of you as well.