Focal Passage: Leviticus 16:1-10, 29-30
Liberal theologians reject the idea that God would sacrifice His own Son as our substitute (II Corinthians 5:21) to appease His own wrath toward sinners, calling it “slaughter house religion” that is beneath the loving God of the Bible. Yet even a cursory reading of the Old Testament law reveals a people whose lives centered around the sacrificial system.
The unfolding of Old Covenant revelation exalted a Suffering Servant (Isaiah 3) who would suffer and die for the atonement of His people. Instead of contradicting the loving nature of God, the Bible paints the picture of the epitome of a loving God who would die to deliver sinners from their iniquities and make them righteous in His sight (I Peter 2:24).
The Old Covenant prescribed strict guidelines for the day, the wardrobe, and the sacrifices for the atonement of the peoples’ sins. Only one man (first Aaron, later the high priest) could go into the presence of God one day of the year (the Day of the Atonement).
This day, Yom Kippur, required the priest to first present a bull to sacrifice for himself and his family so that he would be pure to enter the holy place and make atonement for the people of Israel before sacrificing a goat for the sins of the people and sending a second goat into the wilderness.
Rust
Aaron would lay his hands on the head of the scapegoat, confess the sins of the people of Israel over it, and then send it out into the wilderness to bear their sins to a solitary land. Aaron would then burn the fat of the sin offering on the altar, and the remainder of the bull and goat used for sin offerings were taken outside the city and burned.
Jesus fulfilled each of these roles as the sacrifice who died for our sins (I Peter 3:18), the One who removed our sins “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12a), and “suffered outside the gate, so that He might sanctify the people by His own blood” (Hebrews 13:12).
Accuracy was a life and death matter. Anything other than strict adherence to God’s guidelines meant death to the people involved. And yet perfect adherence to God’s commands did not keep the Day of Atonement from being an annual necessity. When Jesus came in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, the pattern was broken.
What the priests did annually, Jesus did once for all! He fulfilled the external, repetitious Old Covenant and became “the mediator of a better covenant, which has been established on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6b). His one act of obedience forever established the New Covenant written upon our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).
We praise God that Jesus “entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12b).
Accuracy is still a matter of life and death. Although Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial system as both the high priest and the sin offering, we are still responsible to obey His commands.
Just as Aaron and all the priests who followed Him had no right to change God’s guidelines for the Day of Atonement, so we have no right to change God’s way of salvation: “Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15b). B&R
