Atonement

Leviticus 16:15-22                              Atonement

May 24, 2015              D. Marion Clark

Introduction

Jesus and his disciples continue their walk along the Emmaus Road. He is interpreting to them the “things concerning himself” in Moses and the Prophets, i.e. the Old Testament. He has demonstrated how he fulfilled the expectation of being the Offspring of Eve who would strike the serpent’s head while his own heel is struck. He has explained how he is the long looked-for Redeemer who would redeem his people from bondage but with the twist of purchasing their freedom with his blood. In each case the disciples would have responded with something like, “Now we understand what we were expecting came to be fulfilled.”

The next lesson, though, would have taken them to a text they never would have considered. Indeed, what had for centuries been the clearest object lesson of the Messiah’s work is something that no one connected with him.

Text

Our text presents the origin of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Through Moses, God had presented an elaborate system of offerings and sacrifices. They had various functions, but the underlying premise was summed up in these words, “be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45).

God is holy. It is true that God is love, but his love is in conformity with his holiness. When God gave the plans for the tabernacle, which would later be made the permanent building of the temple, he labeled the two inner rooms the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, or Holy of Holies. The latter room was his throne room, and it is holiness that characterizes his presence.

God is holy; therefor his people must be holy. Now we are getting to the necessity of redemption. If God is to dwell with people and they with God, then they must be holy. God redeemed the Hebrews from bondage to Egypt not simply for the purpose of their liberty but that they may fulfill his purpose for them. Here is that purpose:

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.  Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine;  and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:4-6).

There is an obvious problem. The Hebrews were not holy. They were sinners. How then could God dwell among them and they with God? There were two means. One was to develop a system by which things and people could be consecrated – set off for God and protected from becoming unclean. So there is the tabernacle and everything associated with it that must be kept clean so as to be used for holy purposes. The second means addressed the obvious problem presented by the first means – what to do when the consecrated items and people became tainted by being in contact with sinners and anything unclean. There needed to be a system to remove the uncleanness and to remove the stain and guilt of sin.

The system for both revolved around sacrifices. Through the shedding of blood of innocent and unstained, unblemished sacrifices, the tabernacle and its objects and servants (the priests) could be consecrated for holy service to God. And when sin defiled God’s holy objects and his people, the same shedding of blood could make restitution for those sins and render the people holy again, as well as the objects, which were sprinkled with the sacrificial blood.

It was an elaborate and onerous system. It required constant vigilance to maintain the purity of the tabernacle, which represented God’s presence, and he required constant vigilance to offer sacrifices for sins that were committed daily. The Day of Atonement took place annually and was the catch-all effort to cover all the sins of all the people that were missed through all the year. Here then is what took place.

 “Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. ¹⁶ Thus he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses. ¹⁷ No one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement in the Holy Place until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for all the assembly of Israel. ¹⁸ Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. ¹⁹ And he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleannesses of the people of Israel.

The “he” is the High Priest, in this case Aaron. He sacrifices a goat to accomplish those two purposes mentioned. With the goat’s blood he sprinkles the holy items of the tabernacle including the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies, as well as the altar on which the sacrifice is made. He purifies these holy objects tainted by being in the midst of a sinful people. They can now be used in service to the Lord. That is what is meant by making atonement for the Holy Place. These objects are literally covered by the blood of the sacrifice and cleansed.

But remember, there is also the objective of making restitution on behalf of the people for their sins. The sacrifice serves as their substitute, taking upon itself the guilt of their sins. God uses a second goat as an object lesson for this aspect of making atonement. Let’s continue reading.

²⁰ “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. ²¹ And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. ²² The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

This second goat visually represents what the first goat accomplished when he was sacrificed. Aaron, the High Priest, lays his hands on the head of the live goat and confesses the sins of the people. As the next sentence explains, he was symbolically transferring the sins of the people onto the goat. As the people watch the goat being led into the wilderness, where they will never see him again, so they are watching their sins disappear. The sins are gone. But they are not merely watching their sins pass away; they are beholding what ought to have happened to them with their sins. The goat was being cut off from the presence of God and from God’s people. Throughout the book of Leviticus, it speaks of a sinner being cut off from the people of God. “If he does such and such, he shall be cut off from his people.” The people were watching the scapegoat bear their sins and be cut off from God’s covenant.

That is what happened to the Messiah on the cross. He was the sacrificial goat who shed blood for the people’s sins and who bore their sins. He was sacrificed on the cross; he was cut off on the cross. He atoned for their sins. He was their propitiation and their expiation.

He was their propitiation in that he appeased the just wrath of God for the people’s offense. The instigation of the Day of Atonement was an event in which two of Aaron’s sons were struck down by God for offering “unauthorized fire” before the Lord. The holy God was angered that his laws were violated. Propitiation was needed to be made for such sins. Romans 3:25, Hebrews 2:17, and 1 John 2:2 speak of Jesus as making and being the propitiation for our sins. He appeased God’s just wrath by taking that wrath upon himself.

The Messiah was their expiation, meaning that he atoned for or made amends for their sins, so that those sins were as if they were removed. It is what we mean when we say, “I will make it up to you.” The scapegoat was the visual symbol of the sacrificial goat making it up to God so that the sins are regarded as no longer existing.

And this is the reason for the sufferings and the cross, Jesus would have noted as he concluded his lesson in Leviticus with the disciples.

Lessons

Let’s turn to us. What Jesus is impressing upon his two disciples is how his work on the cross had been foreshadowed all along by Israel’s sacrificial system. And no doubt, once they made the connection, then all the puzzle pieces fit together. God is holy; his people must be holy. His people are not holy, thus the sacrificial system. On the cross was the supreme sacrifice made so that his people truly would be made holy. It all fits!

We have never experienced a sacrificial system. The killing of animals and shedding their blood is alien to us and for many of us outright offensive. There are many who reject Christianity for that reason alone. The cross symbolizes for them a wrathful, bloodthirsty god whose barbarism reaches so far as to sacrifice his own son.

As understandable as these sentiments may be, what they really stem from is the belief that we are not so bad and that God is not so holy. The modern view of God is that of us – nice grandparents who, though we wish the kids would behave better, easily forgive and forget. In other words, we have made God in our own image.

The value of the scriptures in the Old Testament in this regard is that they project a clearer understanding of God’s holiness and our sinfulness. Because God must speak to us and present himself in terms we can comprehend, there will always be limited understanding. We cannot shake the concept of wrath as mere vengefulness. We cannot help but see ourselves as reasonably good people, even as we admit ourselves to be sinners. And so, God can appear to be like the unreasonable and malicious gods of the cultures surrounding Israel.

But take the effort to get through these simplistic views and listen to what the Old Testament is conveying. God is holy. He really is holy. It is the essence of his nature. He cannot, will not abide sin of any form, of any degree. And to try to come into his presence without atonement for sin is to invite death.

The Day of Atonement was the only day of the year that the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies. The Lord instructs Moses to tell Aaron that if he should enter into that Most Holy Place any other time, he will die. If he enters on that day without following precise instructions, he will die. The High Priest is a sinner, and he must first make atonement for his own sins before he can make atonement for his people’s sins.

God is holy. The seraphim who wait upon him must cover their eyes; they cannot bear to look straight at him. They continually call out “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God.” Angels who reflect a portion of God’s holiness fill the humans they greet with fear because of this holiness. No man can look upon God and live because of this holiness. It is real. It is tangible.

God is holy; anyone who then is to be accepted by him and come into his presence must be holy. But we are not holy. And so Isaiah, when God’s holiness appears before him, cries out in alarm, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5).

But are we really that bad? We look at the Ten Commandments and rate ourselves fairly high. I remember in a Sunday class that was studying the commandments, one church member stating confidently that he kept the commandments. If you have the same delusion, I recommend reading the questions and answers in the Larger Catechism covering the Ten Commandments. It will cure you of any false confidence.

That is what the law, as presented in the Old Testament, was intended to do. Law after law after law; transgression after transgression after transgression of the law are intended to ingrain in us that our feeble attempts to be holy are futile. We cannot live up to the holy, righteous standards of the holy, righteous God. It cannot be done.

The temple with its sacrificial system and all of the laws are meant to lead us to the same conclusion as the prophet of God, Isaiah. “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man (a woman) of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; and some day I must appear before the King, the holy Lord of hosts!”

“Well, that’s not how I see God or myself.” It does not matter how you see God or yourself. What matters is how God sees himself and you. Here in these scriptures, with all of the details about the temple and sacrifices and laws, is the presentation of God to all who will hear. He is holy; we must be holy. We are sinners and those sins must be atoned for if we are ever to be accepted by him.

The Israelites depended upon their High Priest to make atonement for them on the Day of Atonement. They depended upon their many priests to mediate for them and to offer sacrifices in the temple. They dared not enter themselves. When scriptures speak of the people going up to the temple, it meant the temple courts. They dare not enter into the temple rooms of the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. God was too holy and they too sinful, even if sacrifices were made.

But the Messiah has come; he is both the sacrifice and the High Priest who offers the sacrifice. Listen to what we have in him:

Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. ²⁵ Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, ²⁶ for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. ²⁷ And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, ²⁸ so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him (Hebrews 9:24-28).

What this passage is telling us is that what we thought was the real thing is the shadow, and what we think of is but a picture is the real thing. The earthly temple was but a shadow of the real heavenly temple of God; the physical bloody sacrifices were but object lessons of the real sacrifice. The High Priests and all other priests were but actors portraying the real High Priest of God. Christ is our real High Priest. His sacrifice of himself is the real sacrifice that makes real atonement for all of our sins. And he has entered into the true Holy of Holies of the true temple of God, making atonement with his blood.

And here is the real marvel of it all. Our High Priest has torn down the curtain that separated God from his people. After the temple was built, no one ever saw the mercy seat – the gold lid that covered the ark of the covenant and which was itself covered by two gold cherubim. Right there, on that seat represented the presence of God, and no one, not even the High Priest could look upon it. The one time he entered each year, he carried smoking incense that prevented his eyes from gazing on the seat. But our High Priest was not a sinner, though he bore our sins. He entered into the presence of God his Father. And now he has opened the way so that we – yes, we! – may follow him in.

How ironic it was that what was called the Mercy Seat brought judgment to all who would actually come before it and gaze upon it. Because of our Messiah, through the blood of our Messiah, we now may…well, hear what God’s Word has to say:

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16).

We are bid to follow Jesus, our High Priest, into the Holy of Holies before the mercy seat and find mercy, not judgment. Think about this. When we take Scripture seriously and believe what it says and emphasizes about God and about us – that God is holy and that we are sinners who must be holy; when we take such concepts as truth, then our eyes and hearts are raised to understand how truly great is the love and mercy of God.

The Apostle John brings out this marvel:

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

God’s love is so great, that he provided his own Son (who was willing to do so) to be the propitiation of our sins – to appease his own just wrath that those sins incurred. God is holy; we must be holy. We cannot become holy without the atoning sacrifice made with the greatest cost by God the Father and Son. This is the costly love of the holy God.