Leviticus: The Day of Atonement | Associate Pastor: Matt Armstrong

Amen.

Exciting.

I can't wait to hear the report when you guys get back.

I want to go to Guatemala, don't you?

I love, uh, as I was preparing for the sermon this week, uh it reminded me, thinking about Leviticus 16, uh, the movie Oceans 11.

You guys know that movie?

I think we've got a little slide to remind you.

Um, man, classic, actually old now, which makes me old.

Um I love this movie because it's a heist movie.

Uh it's got these 11 kind of um co-conspirators, I don't know what you call them, team, who are pulling off a heist in Las Vegas, breaking into a high security um uh casino.

And it's funny, it's fun, uh, great characters.

But what's fun about the movie and why I can watch it over and over again is because it's this meticulous plan where everything has to fall into place just so, and you're on the edge of your seat wondering how they're gonna pull it off.

And there's lots of movies like this, maybe more recently, Knives Out, Knives Out 2.

I I love these kind of whodunits where the things kind of unfold before you in a mystery.

And that's not unlike the book of Leviticus.

Russ has mentioned multiple times that this book, this ancient uh hundreds and thousands of year-old book, is meticulously uh structured and planned.

Every bit of it from beginning to end.

And we've got a this this slide that we've seen before, and it's he shaped it like a mountain, and we've been climbing the mountain of Leviticus, and the structure of the book puts chapter 16 at the peak of the mountain because it's the Day of Atonement.

And this is absolutely intentional.

The author, the human and divine author of the book of Leviticus, structured the book this way to show us where we are headed and what the heart of the message he had for his people, Israel, and for us even this morning.

And today of all days, we have reached the summit.

We've come to chapter 16.

But guess what?

Chapter 16 itself is meticulously structured to point us not just to the summit, but to the very peak, the very tip top of that summit.

And so here's the structure of chapter 16.

We will go up from this high base camp to the very pinnacle, the making of atonement with two goats, and then we will descend and begin making our descent down through the rest of the book.

And the reason I point this out, and the reason Russ has pointed it out multiple times, is sometimes when we go to these Old Testament books that we have very little background and context for, we we kind of miss the message.

But not only is the gospel there, but the depth and the wisdom of God.

This is what David wrote in Psalm 1.

Oh no, Paul in Romans 11, he exalted about the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

We get to see it here as the book of Leviticus unfolds.

And as we see God's gift of salvation laid out for the Israelites and its full blossoming in the coming of Christ, we should marvel at the glory of God and all that he's done for us.

So let's jump back into our passage, Leviticus 16.

We're going to read the first two verses.

The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they drew near before the Lord and died.

And the son and the Lord said to Moses, Tell Aaron, your brother, not to come at any time into the holy place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die.

For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat.

Point one of our sermon today Sin is a real and existential barrier to relationship with God, and don't let anyone tell you any different.

Our passage opens, kind of, I would say, controversially, maybe shockingly, with reference to the death of Aaron's two sons.

Aaron was the high priest.

It was next to Moses, he was at the highest place in the people of God.

And as God is about to give instructions for this special day, the Day of Atonement, he references the death of his sons.

And this might have been a bit embarrassing for Aaron because his sons were told in chapter 10, six chapters earlier, that they had offered unauthorized sacrifices, or some translations say, strange fire before the Lord.

In addition to that, God tells Aaron in the passage we just read not to enter into the holy place, to be careful lest he die.

Why is God pointing out this embarrassing part of Aaron's family and giving him this explicit instructions?

Well, first we need to understand the holy place.

This is a great image of what the tent of meeting looked like.

It had this outer barrier, which was a larger tent.

Within there was an altar for sacrifice.

And then there was an inner sanctum, an inner sanctuary, and inside that thing in the back was the holy place.

Some translations call it the holy of holies.

And that's where the Ark of the Covenant, if you've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's where that dwelt.

Inside the Ark, this little box covered in gold was held the Ten Commandments, among some other things.

There's a picture of that.

On top of the ark were these two statues of cherubim, these flying angels with wings or whatever.

And God called that the mercy seat.

And what he's just said to Moses and to Aaron is that that is where his presence dwells among his people.

It is where God sits with his people.

And so at the center of the camp of all the tribes of Israel is the tent of meeting.

At the center of the tent of meeting is the Holy of Holies, and in the center of the Holy of Holies is the Ark of the Covenant, and on the Ark of the Covenant, God's presence dwells.

This is what made Israel unique and special, chosen among all the peoples of the earth.

And yet it also meant something for Aaron as he was getting ready to go into this place.

That's why his sons were referenced and why God gave explicit instructions.

That going into God's presence without attending to the laws and the customs that God was giving them meant mortal danger to Aaron.

One screw up, and it would mean his life.

The stakes couldn't be higher, and the message is clear that sin and a holy God do not mix.

Let's keep reading in verse three.

But in this way Aaron shall come into the holy place, with a bull from the herd for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.

He shall put on the holy linen coats, and shall have the linen undergarments on his body, and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist and wear a linen turban.

These are the holy garments.

He shall bathe his body in the water and then put them on.

He shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering.

Point two.

Overcoming sin required perfect obedience and meticulous attention to detail.

You see, here now God begins to tell Aaron how he might, how he may, how he must enter the holy place.

Three things.

He must gather the required animals for sacrifice.

He must bathe ceremonially, and he must put on the special clothing.

There were five animals he was to gather, a bull, two rams, and two goats.

The bathing represented that ceremonial cleansing, that purity that was needed, required to enter into God's holy presence.

And the clothing, though it says linen, and when I read this, I think, oh, this must be nice.

It was actually more akin to what a servant or a slave would wear, and it marked the high priest apart as the Lord's servant for this unique task set before him.

And as we began to see Aaron hike up this last portion of the mountain of Leviticus in chapter 16, I'm reminded of those clean rooms in semiconductor labs.

You ever remember the old Intel commercials?

Again, I'm dating myself.

This is probably the early 2000s or the 90s, those bunny suits that they wear.

And it's if you're familiar with these labs where they work and develop microchips, the scale on which they're working is so small that even the smallest speck of dust that gets into this microchip can cause it to fail or malfunction.

And so they enter this clean room, they they get totally clean, they put on these specially clean suits, and they enter and they do their work.

Everything in this ritual needed to be followed to the letter, lest Aaron die.

Let's keep reading in verse 7.

Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting.

And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats.

One lot was for the Lord, and the other for Azazel.

And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell to the Lord and use it as a sin offering.

But the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness of Israel.

Now before this Aaron was to make a sacrifice of that bull, and that bull was to cover his own sins and the sins of all the Levites.

But then he took these two goats, and he he set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and he cast lots.

This is where you threw bones or something like dice, and the Lord would speak through the casting of lots to convey his will.

And based on these lots, these two goats had two different roles.

One would be sacrificed as a sin offering, the other would be allowed to live, and it would become the scapegoat.

And in doing this, the Lord is enacting a drama so that the people of Israel could see in tangible, concrete terms what he is doing for them in the spiritual realm.

So, first, one goat would die, the other would live.

This was to communicate to Israel what was about to happen.

One goat would die, and the shedding of its blood would allow them to live.

Just as Aaron had to enter in after the bull sacrifice, God's people were being taught that their relationship to the Lord, their sinfulness, was only sustainable in the presence of the Lord because of another's death.

Aaron would take the blood from that first goat, he would go into the holy place, and he would sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the Ark of the Covenant, effectively tainting God's throne on earth with blood.

So that as God sat upon that throne, day in and day out, there was a reminder to him that his people's sins had been covered, at least for that year.

Next, Aaron would take the second goat, the goat that would live.

But he would put his hands on the head of the goat, and we continue reading, confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, all of their transgressions and all of their sins.

Can you imagine?

How long did that take?

How specific did he get?

Did he ask for input?

Please turn in your sins from this year, so that I can read them over the I have no idea what that looked like.

He shall put them, the sins, on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness.

The goat shall bear all the iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

This scapegoat embodied what David would reference or write about in Psalm 103, when he said, As far as the east is from the west, so far does he, the Lord, remove our transgressions from us.

You see, with these two goats, the Lord is showing to his people what is required to be in relationship with him.

First, that there is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood.

And second, by accepting this sin offering, the Lord is taking the sins of his people and sending it to a far country, saying, They no longer have right over you, they no longer have hold over you.

You are free.

Continue.

Then Aaron shall come to the tent of meeting.

He shall take off the linen garment and put that he put on when he went into the holy place, and he shall leave it there, and he shall bathe his body in the water, in water in the holy place, and put on his garments, and come out, and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people, and make atonement for himself and for the people, and the fat of the sin offering he shall burn on the altar, and he who lets the sheep go to Azazel shall wash his clothes and bathe his bathe his body in the water, and that afterward he may come into the camp.

Having ascended to the heights of the Day of Atonement with the two goats, Aaron begins the return trip to the land of mortals.

And he does it in reverse order, if you'll notice.

First, he removes the garments that he put on last in the holy place.

He bathes again, and then he gathers up the remaining carcasses of the animals that he gathered at the beginning.

They take them outside the camp.

We didn't read this part.

He takes them outside the camp and they are rightly disposed of.

Just as Aaron entered through the clean room to ascend to the top of the mountain now, he goes back through the clean room in reverse order.

I would just want you to see this meticulous detail here in the instructions.

And we're told that this is to be a statute for the people of God forever.

This day of atonement, once, one day a year, this is to happen again and again.

And again, I want you to imagine yourself as an Israelite standing there outside the tent of meeting, watching the high priest lay his hands on the head of this goat, knowing that the sin offering goat has already been sacrificed.

And then watching a member of your community lead this scapegoat out into the wilderness beyond what you can see and being set free.

For one whose conscience understood sin and the holiness of God and their absolute need for relationship with Yahweh.

This is incredible.

This dramatic enactment of what God has just done for them ceremonially.

It was like Christmas morning, right?

It's that one day of the year where you wake up and you say, Oh my goodness, look at this gift.

This gift of salvation, this gift of forgiveness.

It's like that spring cleaning.

God has now gotten into every nook and cranny.

You know, above the ceiling fan, you know, have you ever looked at the top of a ceiling fan?

It's disgusting.

You know, and I would have never known if I hadn't seen my wife clean that one time.

And I was like, what are you doing?

And she was like, come, come and see.

So that's what the Day of Atonement was.

It was these sacrifices that that reached into every crevice, every nook and cranny of the hearts and lives of God's people and said, It is clean.

Now they could they would go back to sacrifices and they would continue to sin, but they knew this one day of year that God had wiped the slate clean.

It was a day of celebration, it was a day of fasting, it was a day, it was a Sabbath day of rest.

It was the highest day in the calendar of God's people.

That brings us to point four a better sacrifice.

Now, as incredible a privilege as this day was, these sacrifices, as meticulously outlined and carried out as they were to be, year after year after year, what the people of God didn't know yet was that something far better was coming.

As the scriptures continue to be written, as the prophets come and go and the scriptures expand, this nagging question becomes more and more prevalent in the Bible.

How can the blood of one goat, and how can the sending away and the exile of another goat cover the sins of all of God's people?

Israel needed something more.

And that something more came in the gift and the coming of Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Let's read from Hebrews chapter 9 that unpacks all that Jesus brought with him.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

Now listen to the words of Hebrews.

We we read from Hebrews almost every week in this sermon series, and from what we've just read, listen, this Hebrews was obviously written by a Jewish Christian who knew these laws well.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that had come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by the means of goats and calves, but by the means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

For if the sprinkling of defiled peoples with the blood of goats and bulls, and with the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our consciences from dead works to serve the living God.

In every way, the author of Hebrews is telling us, Jesus brought a better sacrifice.

Jesus is our high priest entered a better tent.

Did you notice what he said?

He didn't just enter, or he did not enter the human tent, the human temple.

We're told in the scriptures that that tent of meeting and later the temple that Solomon would build, that these were shadows, these were mere earthly replicas of the real things in the heavenly realms.

And that's where Jesus went.

Not built by human hands, not built by defiled peoples where sin can corrode, but into the most holy of places.

Second, Jesus entered that better holy place with better blood.

We're told he didn't enter with the blood of bulls and goats, but by means of his own blood.

Now, why is that important?

Well, Jesus was absolutely the perfect sacrifice.

The only way you can have true and pure atonement is to have a human sacrifice for human atonement.

But not only was he human, he was human without sin.

He was the perfect lamb without blemish.

And so his blood was of a different quality as he entered into that most holy place.

Not only that, he offered a better atonement.

We're told, once for all, securing an eternal redemption.

Right?

As good as and as real as the Day of Atonement was, it was beautiful and real and effective for the people of God prior to Messiah's coming.

It needed to be repeated year after year.

It was never sufficient.

Something more was required.

And that was Jesus' sacrifice.

Rather than needing it again and again to cover over the never-ending flow of our failures and sins, Jesus' sacrifice was once and for all.

Never to be repeated again.

And that's why he gave us the Lord's Supper.

Something to point us back to the cross, back to his sacrifice, but never needing to make that sacrifice again.

Because once we have put our faith, just as the people of Israel put their faith in God's word, that these sacrifices of these goats and these bulls would cover over their sins and allow that relationship to be free-flowing.

So when we put our faith in Jesus' death and resurrection, our sins are covered for eternity.

Beloved, God's people experience the Day of Atonement like a Christmas morning.

A beautiful time of celebration and joy.

But for those of us who are in Christ, a Christmas morning is every moment of every day.

Amen?

Your sins and the past, the present and future are covered by the blood of Jesus.

You don't deserve it.

You shouldn't take advantage of it.

But it's true.

And we can revel, we can celebrate, we can rejoice.

That we are free in Christ.

That we never need to fear the wrath of God.

And I know that is often such a stumbling block, right?

When we see what happens when sin enters into holiness.

We see it even in the New Testament.

It can often cause us to step back in fear.

And yet what we must never forget is the only way that sin was overcome was because of the heart of the Father.

God moved towards us.

He said, yes, to overcome sin is a huge barrier.

It takes perfect obedience, meticulous attention to detail.

But I am willing to go there so that you and I can be united and one in the heart of God's love.

Beloved, this is what God has given us in Christ.

This is what the Day of Atonement pointed to.

This is what Good Friday achieved and what Easter Sunday put a spotlight on for all the world to see.

Beloved, remember what God has done for us and celebrate every day of our lives that we are free in the love of God.

Amen.

Our Father and our God, we marvel at what you have done to be united to us.

Lord, we didn't deserve it.

But you put your love on us before the creation of the world, and you saw it through.

And so we give you thanks, and we walk rejoicing, singing hallelujah for your love, for your sacrifice, for all that you did for us.

We give you thanks in Jesus' name.

Amen.