William Ng
Structure
1-2: Warning about God’s holiness
3-5: How to enter relationship with God
6-22: Dealing with sin (6-10)
Atonement for Aaron’s sin (11-14)
Atonement for People’s sin (15-19)
Sending away their sin (20-22)
23-28: Returning to daily relationship with God
Aaron
Burnt Offerings
Goat-bearer
29-34: Lasting Ordinance
Hebrews 7-10: Jesus our Atonement - Priest, Sacrifice, Holy Place & Lasting Covenant
The Day of Atonement, from a God who forgives all sins
Talk Outline
1) A holy God and a sinful people.
Warning: Abihu & Nadab
Death
How to enter Most Holy Place?
2) A sacrifice and a scapegoat.
Blood is payment for sin
Priest
People : MHP, Tent, Altar
Sin is removed from camp
Transferance
Sending out evil
3) An annual and lasting ordinance?
Yearly Reminders: why?
Psalm 40:6-10 Future Godly sacrifice in Man after God’s heart/laws
Isaiah 53:5-6; Ezekiel 36:23-25; Jeremiah 31:34b Future atonement of sins
Jesus the true sacrifice
Jesus the sin-bearer
Jesus’ sacrifice once-for-all
4) A holy God and a holy people.
Our eternal guiltless, sinless holy states
Access to the Father
Jewish friends, Catholic friends
Our inmost beings
What to do with our holy lives?
Moses’ obedience
Talk on Leviticus 16: The Day of Atonement, from a God who forgives all sins
1) A holy God and a sinful people.
You may remember one of the Bible’s little quirky events. This time, in verse one, it’s Nadab and Abihu. Who? Exactly, not many know of this event, but it goes like this. Aaron, Moses’ brother, has been chosen to be the priest of God’s altar. He has these 2 sons, Nadab and Abihu, their names sound pretty quirky already. They go into the Tent of Meeting, borrow some of those pots and pans made for cooking the sacrifices, and they start a fire. Little bit of incense, little bit of spice here and there. They merrily heat up their pans, probably for some deep-fried quail, Israeli style… suddenly this huge flame spills out from their fire and engulfs them, they fry, alive, and painfully and slowly, they are reduced to ashes, dead, not even the bones are left.
God, is a holy God. Anyone who enters into relationship with God must watch out. A holy God cannot stand sinful people. Nadab and Aibhu graphically illustrate the consequences of sinful people encountering the holy God, that is death.
Now this must have caused some terror in the camp. Can you imagine the news spreading in the camp, “Did you hear that Aaron’s two eldest sons got burnt alive because they showed contempt to God?” The Israelites would think twice before entering the Tent of Meeting to offer their sacrifices to God.
But God wants a relationship with these sinful Israelites. Imagine an onion, with God being in the very centre, where He symbolically dwells in the Ark. The next layer is the Most Holy Place, separated from the next layer, the Holy Place, by a curtain. This is surrounded by the whole yard within the Tent of Meeting. Lastly, the outermost layer around the Tent is the Israelite community.
How could this sinful people enter into relationship with their Holy God? Sure it’s fantastic to be near God, close to God, comfortable with God, talking with God, but what good is it when anyone who draws near to Him is consumed, burnt up and totally destroyed? The answer is provided by God, He provides the Day of Atonement for the Israelites so that “atonement is made once a year for all the sins of the Israelites.” (v.34) And on this Day, sacrifices of goat, bull and ram are made for the atonement for all the sins of the Israelites.
2) A sacrifice and a scapegoat.
We’re up to point 2, a sacrifice and a scapegoat. We’re going to concentrate on these two goats in verse 7 and follow their paths to death and exile. Because they are a substitute for the people of Israel. Verses 8 to 10 tell us that both are for atonement of sin. If you understand the fate of these goats, you will understand what God means by atonement.
The goats are chosen perfect, without defect and acceptable offerings in God’s sight. The first goat is slaughtered by the High Priest and its blood, the blood that signifies the death of a perfect substitute- its blood is sprinkled on the Ark in the MHP, on the Tent of meeting and on the Altar. Verse 16 says “In this way he will make atonement for the MHP because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been.”
For some of you animal lovers out there, Dr Harry and DoLittles, this death is brutal, cruel and gross. Why so much blood shed? The reason for blood or death is because sin & rebellion are serious to the holy God. The wages of sin is death. The payment for all the sins of the Israelites is the blood of the perfect sacrificial animal.
We must understand how unclean the rebellion of all the Israelites is to God. Their sins collected, hour after hour, day after day, all the lies they’ve told in that year, their foolish thoughts, their lustful hearts, their meanness to each other. God has not forgotten any of these sins. That’s why the Holy place, the Tent and every other part is unclean (v.16) to the holy God. Every single sin, let alone the compilation of all their sins and rebellion, deserve death.
But atonement, that is the paying1 for the penalty of sin and the turning away of God’s holy anger2 from sinful people- atonement is achieved when the substitute goat dies on Israel’s behalf for their sins and its blood sprinkled on the parts of the Tabernacle to make it acceptable in God’s sight. Without this atonement, God would have consumed the whole Israelite camp with a holy wrath greater than the fiery lava of a volcanic eruption. It’s just like how His holy fire consumed Nadab and Abihu! But by the blood of the goat “he will make atonement for the MHP because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been.”
Now to the second goat, commonly called the scape goat. He is exactly like our own rubbish tips. Think of the stink of the rubbish tip: week in, week out, we dump our food scraps, babies’ nappies, our tissues filled with the exciting stuff from our noses. Think of the stink. This scape goat is like that rubbish tip, but worse. Imagine what would a physical rubbish tip that contained a year’s worth of refuse look and smell like? That’s what’s happening on the Day of Atonement. When the High Priest lays his hands on the goat’s head, all the wickedness and rebellion of Israel, is dumped into it. Every single act of rebellion, not of one week, but of a whole year’s worth is transferred to the goat. And it’s not only of one family, but of a whole nation. It is an absolute stink in the Holy God’s eyes.
Yet when the scapegoat, who bears the sins of the whole nation is sent out from the Tent, out through the surrounding camp of the different tribes, out into the desert- Israel’s sins are taken away. God provides the scapegoat, so that “all their sins” may be ridden off on this Day.
3) An annual and lasting ordinance?
[Example of Lucy-Smith: she comes back week-in, week-out. Useless suturing jobs, reminders of our failure to treat]?
This annual ritual is to be a lasting ordinance for the people of God. But if you look through the writings in the Psalms and the Prophets, God hints at the obsolescence of this ritual, or the use-by-date of the ritual.
Psalm 40:6-10
David
God does not desire goats, bulls…
Isaiah 53:1-6
Servant
Bear the iniquity of us all
Pierced (slaughtered) for our sin
So if the Levitican Day of Atonement doesn’t really work, how can it be lasting? Why have a yearly reminder of sins if those goats, bulls and rams can not atone for sins? The reason is these are shadows of the real thing, the real sacrificial lamb and the real sinbearing scapegoat. These are shadows of the Lord Jesus.
Hebrews 10:1-4
Shadows
Not effective
Hebrews 10:5-10
Jesus, the real thing
Effective sacrifice for sins
When Jesus died in Easter, he showed us, all of us, that he is the true sacrifice for sins. Because the perfect Son of God was slaughtered as our substitute for our sins. That’s how the holy God punishes the wickedness and rebellion of us sinful people. Only Jesus’ perfect sacrifice can pay for the sins of the whole world for all time. Jesus is the sacrificial lamb, whose blood and death atoned for our sin.
Jesus is also the true scapegoat. It was Jesus who took on our wickedness and rebellion on Himself3. It was Jesus who was led outside of Jerusalem to be crucified at Easter. It was Jesus who was banished by God into the Hell of God’s judgement. Jesus is the true sin-bearer, whose death took our sins away from us.
And the best thing about Jesus’s sacrifice is that it’s once-for-all, completed, finished, forever. Verse 10, “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” So perfect was Jesus’ body, so pure was His heart, so precious was His life that His sacrifice was once-for-all, one life for all sinful lives of the the world, one time for all the time of the world’s existence. Christians have been made holy, once-for-all, acceptable, right and with clean hearts and minds (consciences) in the sight of God. We can finally enter into relationship4 with the holy, awesome and righteous God.
4) A holy God and a holy people.
Trust. Easter. Do not miss out.
Thanks. Our eternal guiltless, sinless holy states
Use our access to the Father5
Pray
Read
Draw near
Jesus’ sacrifice: answer to friends
Jewish friends (yearly reminder).
Catholic friends (mass as reenactment of sacrifices. Helpful or unhelpful?),
Religious/good works friends (good works aren’t sufficient offerings to God),
Chinese friends. (offerings to gods vs. Jesus is the offering to the Most Holy God)
Warning
Hebrews 10:26
God has not changed
Our conscience sins: pray
Fear and gratefulness
Our inmost beings: made clean, realise the cleanliness in holiness6.
Speech
Eyes
Not greedy but generous
Not bitter but gracious
We can do these because our Holy God has cleansed our consciences by Jesus, who is our sacrifice and scapegoat, whose death has made atonement for all our sins forever7, so that we may serve our Holy God.
Prayer
Holy God
Day of Atonement
Jesus true sacrifice & scapegoat
Once-for-all
Help
Trust
Draw near
Fear & respect
Away with personal sins
Live out our holy lives
Easter:
Psalm Slide
Psalm 40:6-10 (NIV)
6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but my ears you have pierced [a];
burnt offerings and sin offerings
you did not require.
7 Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.
8 I desire to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart."
9 I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly;
I do not seal my lips,
as you know, O LORD.
10 I do not hide your righteousness in my heart;
I speak of your faithfulness and salvation.
I do not conceal your love and your truth
from the great assembly.
Footnotes:
Psalm 40:6 Hebrew; Septuagint but a body you have prepared for me (see also Symmachus and Theodotion)
Isaiah Slide
Isaiah 53:1-6 (NIV)
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Hebrews Slide 1
Hebrews 10:1-10 (NIV)
1The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, 4because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. …
Hebrews Slide 2
Hebrews 10:1-10 (NIV)
… 5Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
"Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
6with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, O God.' "[a] 8First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made). 9Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Hebrews Slide 3
Hebrews 10:26-29 (NIV)
26If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
1 Mark 10:45b
2 Romans 3:25
3 Hebrews 9:28
4 Matthew 27:51
5 Hebrews 10:22
6 Mark 7:23
7 Hebrews 9:14
Leviticus 16: The Day of Atonement (NIV)
1 The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they approached the LORD. 2 The LORD said to Moses: "Tell your brother Aaron not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud over the atonement cover.
3 "This is how Aaron is to enter the sanctuary area: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. 4 He is to put on the sacred linen tunic, with linen undergarments next to his body; he is to tie the linen sash around him and put on the linen turban. These are sacred garments; so he must bathe himself with water before he puts them on. 5 From the Israelite community he is to take two male goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering.
6 "Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household. 7 Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 8 He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat. [a] 9 Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice it for a sin offering. 10 But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat.
11 "Aaron shall bring the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household, and he is to slaughter the bull for his own sin offering. 12 He is to take a censer full of burning coals from the altar before the LORD and two handfuls of finely ground fragrant incense and take them behind the curtain. 13 He is to put the incense on the fire before the LORD, and the smoke of the incense will conceal the atonement cover above the Testimony, so that he will not die. 14 He is to take some of the bull's blood and with his finger sprinkle it on the front of the atonement cover; then he shall sprinkle some of it with his finger seven times before the atonement cover.
15 "He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull's blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. 16 In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been. He is to do the same for the Tent of Meeting, which is among them in the midst of their uncleanness. 17 No one is to be in the Tent of Meeting from the time Aaron goes in to make atonement in the Most Holy Place until he comes out, having made atonement for himself, his household and the whole community of Israel.
18 "Then he shall come out to the altar that is before the LORD and make atonement for it. He shall take some of the bull's blood and some of the goat's blood and put it on all the horns of the altar. 19 He shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times to cleanse it and to consecrate it from the uncleanness of the Israelites.
20 "When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. 21 He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. 22 The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.
23 "Then Aaron is to go into the Tent of Meeting and take off the linen garments he put on before he entered the Most Holy Place, and he is to leave them there. 24 He shall bathe himself with water in a holy place and put on his regular garments. Then he shall come out and sacrifice the burnt offering for himself and the burnt offering for the people, to make atonement for himself and for the people. 25 He shall also burn the fat of the sin offering on the altar.
26 "The man who releases the goat as a scapegoat must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterward he may come into the camp. 27 The bull and the goat for the sin offerings, whose blood was brought into the Most Holy Place to make atonement, must be taken outside the camp; their hides, flesh and offal are to be burned up. 28 The man who burns them must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterward he may come into the camp.
29 "This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: On the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves [b] and not do any work—whether native-born or an alien living among you- 30 because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the LORD, you will be clean from all your sins. 31 It is a sabbath of rest, and you must deny yourselves; it is a lasting ordinance. 32 The priest who is anointed and ordained to succeed his father as high priest is to make atonement. He is to put on the sacred linen garments 33 and make atonement for the Most Holy Place, for the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and for the priests and all the people of the community.
34 "This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: Atonement is to be made once a year for all the sins of the Israelites."
And it was done, as the LORD commanded Moses.
Footnotes:
Leviticus 16:8 That is, the goat of removal; Hebrew azazel ; also in verses 10 and 26
Leviticus 16:29 Or must fast ; also in verse 31
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