Day 41: Leviticus 16 - The Day of Atonement

I am amazed by the unstinting faithfulness and attention to detail shown by Moses. Although we conclude that the slave nation of Israel was not homogeneous, with some evidently more wealthy than others, Moses was an intellectual giant among them.

He had been the heir apparent and would have inherited the throne of Egypt if his (step) ‘mother’ had had her way. As such, he had been afforded the best possible tutelage and education, which was way out of reach to the average Hebrew slave.

That taught him attention to detail, but his exile taught him humility. He was exiled for getting ahead of himself and the scriptures are silent on how damaging that was, but I suspect it was the pretext that his main rival needed to eliminate him.

It is not impossible that God had another plan for Moses, to do through his office what he once did through Joseph. We will never know, but regardless of that Moses would never have qualified to lead God’s people without a long period of spiritual tutelage.

That taught him to take God’s instructions very, very seriously. He emerged as a true shepherd, having learnt what that meant, and he was meticulous in stewarding what God gave him. He was one of the greatest men to have graced our planet, and one of its humblest.

If only leaders today could learn that none of this is ours. Our original ideas and the territorial markings of our own visions, is irrelevant. All that matters in true leadership is to steward His priceless legacy and to shepherd His sheep. 

The day of atonement

In Chapter 16, he extended his roll out of the patterns that God had revealed to him, to the highest day in the Jewish calendar.

It was a truly solemn day and the only day that the High Priest, and he alone, went through the veil of the Holiest Place into the presence of God, to atone for the sins of Israel. He took a censer of incense but no light, for the chamber was lit by the glory of God.

All other offerings were personal and regular. The Day of Atonement was a national memorial day and it occurred once a year only.

The sacrifices and preparations relating to sin offerings were meticulously applied and the Kohen or High Priest  had to be doubly prepared and set apart for the moment. He made atonement for himself and his family, before being able to mediate on behalf of Israel.

Cleansing rituals used the glycerin from the tallow: rendered sacrificial fats. Its detergent characteristics emerged when it mixed with water in the troughs. Tallow decomposes slowly and needs only an airtight container, not refrigeration. Sadly, it is now also used to make explosives. 

The blood of both the bullock and ram of sacrifice, was sprinkled seven times respectively on the mercy seat. Another ram, the scapegoat, had all the sins of nations symbolically laid on it, before it was sent away from the camp to take their sins away.

The picture is of Jesus being our High Priest

He was the only one who ever penetrated the veil of heaven to mediate on our behalf before God. As the lamb of God, he was proven before Satan, the Sanhedrin and Rome, to be worthy and blameless, before His blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat.

He was also led out of the city to bear our sins away.

Most notably, once done, He rent the veil. He offered, once and for all, a sacrifice capable of cleansing our conscience from dead works or religion, to serve the living God (Hebrews 8-10). The Old Testament required recurring sacrifices, but Jesus ended that.

He was made a better priest, of a better covenant, by which He mediated between us and God and thus reconciled us to His uncompromising standard.

In contrast to the hopelessness of the leper, the cherubim that overshadowed the mercy seat witnessed the way back that Eden once obscured. Whatever our wretched state, whatever reduces us to lepers, there is a way back to a place of value, purpose and meaning in Christ.

However, as the Old Testament contextualized the New, so our journeys contextualize sin and amplify the power of the cross. Only in that will we be truly free and only then will the gospel find its teeth. Memorializing the historic Christ will never do it.

I really feel there is nothing more to follow on today

This festival, Yom Kippur, was by far the most significant, pinnacle event in the Jewish calendar.

It mirrors the pinnacle event of history, when the lamb of God bore our sins away and reconciled us to the righteous standard of God.

It gives context and is given context by, the revealed standard of God in the life and thought of Israel. Had God compromised that standard and not been resolute in His stance, the cross would have been watered down to an impotent gesture.

We needed to understand sin to understand the sacrifice

Paul saw himself as a wretched man (Romans 7), so did Job. Well, no matter how much the cross addresses our legal standing in God and our historic sins, its real and ultimate power is to deliver us from the wretchedness within us.

The old man will not fall away when we convert. It will take a lifetime for some and a great personal wrestle to cast off that old man and walk away. The cross is our Jacob’s Mizpah, which keeps the past from us as we go on in our faith towards our spiritual and prophetic destinies.

Oh to be free from that dark force in our lives, the wretched man inside us that Job accepted as the greater reason for his crisis than the incidents of sin that his friends witch-hunted for but could never find. It is not what we have done that matters, it is who we are.

Thus with Jacob, Moses, Paul, Job and Peter, God inquired “who are you” and related that to who He is. That removed any challenge to His divine prerogative, but it also reinforced His truth, justice and righteousness. The cross reconciled all of that to make salvation possible.

As such, Jesus is our atonement

Thank God for that. It is not lightly achieved, but was the costliest and more poignant intervention for the human condition in all of history - and its ultimate purpose.

(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com