Sermon Tone Analysis

Symbolism in the Day of Atonement - ceremonies of old

Ref. 1669

*BIBLE READING*: Leviticus 17:11

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INTRODUCTION:

The Day of Atonement had as its leading character solemnity.

It was celebrated on the tenth day of the seventh month when the people would afflict their souls.

It was not expressly said that they should fast (nor is fasting an ordinance prescribed in the Penteteuch) but in later times it came to be observed in that way.

The main part of the service was the presentation of a sacrifice as an offering for sin.

It is deeply interesting to know that the New Testament view of sacrifices is entirely in accordance with that of the ancient Synagogue.

At the threshhold we here meet the principle: “There is no atonement except by blood.”

In accordance with this, we quote the following from Jewish interpreters.

Rashi says: ‘’The soul of every creature is bound up in its blood; therefore I gave it to atone for the soul of man - that one soul should come and atone for the other.”

He was quoting from Lev 17:11.

Similarly, Aben Ezra writes: “One soul is a substitute for the other.”

And Moses ben Nachmann: “I gave the soul for you on the altar, that the soul of the animal should be an atonement for the soul of the man.

“ The soul or life has through sin been forfeited to God, and as a debt due to His justice, it should be given back to Him who gave it, but God mercifully appoints a substitute - the soul or life of a beast, for the soul or life of the transgressor, and as the seat of the life is in the blood, so the blood of the beast, its life blood, was given to be shed in death, upon the altar of God.

This transaction covered the sinner from God’s wrath.

It is clear, however, that while in one respect the life or soul of the sacrifice was a suitable offering or atonement for that of the sinner, as being unstained by guilt, innocent; in another way it was entirely the reverse and could not in any proper and satisfactory sense take away sin.

This imperfection or inadequacy arose from the vast disproportion between the two - the one soul being that of the rational and accountable creature, free to think and act, to determine and choose for itself; the other that of an irrational creature, destitute of independent thought and moral feeling and so incapable alike of sin or of holiness.

The life blood, then, which God gave for this purpose upon the altar, must obviously have been of a temporary nature and His offended holiness could not rest in that, nor could He have intended more by the appointment than the keeping up of a present testimony to the higher satisfaction which justice demanded for the sinner’s guilt, and a symbolical representation of it.

There was, necessarily the wanting of oneness of nature between the sinner and his substitute, and in the latter that consent of will to the mutual interchange which is behind the idea of a perfect sacrifice.

Even the furniture and utensils and sanctuary needed cleansing by blood sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, in the holy of holies (in the very presence of God), for they were ever contracting defilement from remaining among men in the midst of their uncleanness.

The structure and arrangements of the tabernacle proceeded on the idea, that the people there dwelt (symbolically) with God, as God was with them; and consequently, the sins of the people in all their families and habitations were viewed as coming up into the sanctuary, and defiling by their pollution’s, the holy things it contained.

No separate offering was therefore presented for these holy things, but they were sprinkled with the blood that was shed for the sins of the land.

Atonement was made and accepted for sin in all its bearings - for the high priest and his house, for the people in all their families and for the tabernacle and all its furniture and utensils.

!! This service foreshadowed the all perfect atonement of Christ

and the high point of the solemnity, was the appearance of the high priest before God, offering the blood sacrifice, standing as it were, in the place of the people.

He was sanctified by first offering for his own sins, having prior to his entering the Most Holy Place, been purified by symbolical washings.

Had it been possible to secure really greater godliness in him, it would have been demanded.

But what could not be secured in reality, was expressed in symbol.

To exhibit the purity needful on the Day of Atonement he divested himself of his beautiful garments, and stood clothed before the Lord in linen clean and white.

!! The meaning of the sacrificial system

This was instituted because the nation occupied a covenant relation between themselves and God.

Though in covenant, the people were not regarded as sinless.

For sins of weakness or ignorance, as they were called, an atonement was provided in the system.

For some sins there was no atonement.

Sins committed with a high hand (b’yad Ramah), that is purposefully, cut a man off from the people.

The fundamental idea of sacrifice in the Old Testament is that of substitution, which implies atonement, redemption, vicarious punishment and forgiveness.

Sacrifices necessarily pointed to a mediatorial priesthood, through whom alike they and the purified worshippers should be brought near to God, and kept in fellowship with Him.

Yet these priests themselves continually changed; their own persons and services needed purification and their sacrifices required constant renewal, since in the nature of it, such substitution could not be perfect.

In short, all this was symbolical (of man’s need, God’s mercy, and His covenant), and typical, till He should come to Whom it all pointed, and Who would give reality to it, Whose priesthood was perfect, and Who, on a perfect altar brought a perfect sacrifice, once for all - a perfect Substitute, and a perfect Mediator (Heb 10:1-24).

In some of the sacrifices, specifically of the “guilt offerings,” the removal of men’s sins was symbolised by the taking away of the sacrificial victim’s body and by its burning outside the camp.

The ultimate demonstration, however, of God’s acceptance of atonement was provided by the empty tomb, when Christ the Messiah, was raised for our justification (Rom 4:25).

The living Saviour becomes the final proof of the reality of God’s reconciliation with men.

It is Christ’s propitiation that lies at the heart of the sacrifice.

God, the loving Father, rejoices in forgiveness (Ps 103:13; Hos 11:8, 9); but because of the continued sin of mankind, the people were never allowed to approach His holy Presence without atonement first having been made by their representative (the high priest).

God’s warning was explicit: “None shall appear before Me empty I” (Ex 23:15).

In the fullness of time Jesus the Messiah came and shed His blood as the perfect sacrifice and thereby confirmed the new covenant, and once and for all replaced the old which had anticipated the new.

He caused the sacrifice to cease (Dan 9:27).

!! Religious truths needing more light

The inferiority of the Old Testament religion lay in its symbolism being accepted for the reality.

This condition of inferiority endured until Christ came, when there passed over the Old Testament a transformation, and it became new.

God did not suspend the law or make it in any way diminutive; but Christ came and fulfilled the patterns of the Old which lacked strength for perfect accomplishment.

Another point of inferiority lay in this, that the truths had been made known piecemeal, and were not understood in their unity.

But with Christ, the scattered fragments came together, bone to his bone, and stood upon their feet, organic bodies, articulated and living.

All Israel knew that the enacted typology had a future reference.

They were present religious truths needing more light.

The very symbolism was prophetic.

There were defects and imperfections attending the sacrificial arrangements but they were merely of a temporary nature and were not intended to mock the worshipper of old; and although pardon was secured, the conscience was still laden with guilt and that in itself proved the insufficiency of the sacrifice year after year.

But there had already been provided in God’s eternal counsels, to be in due times manifested to the world, a real and adequate sacrifice for human guilt.

Such a sacrifice, we need scarcely add, is to be found in the Messiah of Israel; Who is therefore called emphatically “the Lamb of God” - foreordained before the foundation of the world’’ - and of Whose precious blood is written, that ‘’it cleanseth from all sin.

“ This rich provision was declared to Abraham by God on Mount Moriah when he was about to sacrifice Isaac.

God said the He would provide Himself a Lamb for sacrifice, and Isaiah 53 clearly points to this event.

!! Substitution in modern Judaism

The Old Testament sacrifices were not only symbols, but they also conveyed to the believing Israelites, the blessing that was to flow from the future reality to which they pointed.

Hence the service of the letter and the work-righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees ran contrary to this hope of faith and spiritual view of sacrifices, which placed all on the level of sinners to be saved by the substitution of Another to Whom they pointed.

Afterwards, when the destruction of the Temple rendered its services impossible, another and most cogent reason was added for trying to substitute other things, such as prayers, fasts, and good deeds (Mitzvoth) in the place of sacrifices, surely as a grim reminder to its people that they have not lost their witness to God’s requirements), though now fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah.

Now, although none of the older Rabbis ventured on such an assertion as that of modern Judaism, the tendency must have been increasingly in that direction.

In fact, it had become a necessity-since to declare sacrifices of being the essence of Judaism, would have been to pronounce modern Judaism an impossibility.

But thereby also the Synagogue has given sentence against itself, and by disowning sacrifices, has placed itself outside the pale of the Old Testament.

In fact, sacrifices constitute the very centre of the Old Testament.

!! From Symbol to Reality

In the worship of the Old Testament, where everything was symbolical, that is, where spiritual realities were conveyed through outward signs, every physical defilement would point to, and carry with it, as it were, a spiritual counterpart.

The law made exceptional provision for contact with a dead body for purification.

The laws in regard to defilement were primarily intended as symbols of spiritual truths.

Sin had rendered fellowship with God impossible; sin was death and had wrought death, and the dead body as well as the spiritually dead soul were the evidence of its rule.

Very briefly then, we will discuss two of the ceremonies that took place on the Day of Atonement, involving the Red Heifer and the ‘Scape Goat.’

The Red Heifer.

The sacrifice of the red heifer differs from all other sin offerings.

The sacrifice was to be of pure red colour, one of which had never borne a yoke; and a female, whereas all other sin offerings for the congregation being males (Lev 4:14).

These particulars symbolically point to life in its freshness, fullness and fruitfulness.

But what distinguishes it more from all others was, that it was a sacrifice offered once for all (at least so long as its ashes lasted); that its blood was sprinkled outside the camp; that it was wholly burnt, along with cedar wood, as the symbol of imperishable existence, hyssop, as that of purification from corruption, and ‘scarlet’ which from its colour is the emblem of life.

The gathered ashes, with running water were sprinkled on the third and seventh days on that which was to be purified.

Assuredly, if death meant ‘the wages of sin,’ this purification pointed, in all its details, to ‘the gift of God,’ which is eternal life,’ through the sacrifice of the Messiah on the Cross, outside the camp.

This parallelism between the blood of Christ and the ashes of an heifer, on the one hand, and on the other, between the purification of the flesh by these means, and that of the conscience from dead works, is ex-pressed in Heb 9:13, 14: ‘’If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the defiled, sanctifieth to the purifying on the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? “

 

The ‘Scape Goat’.

A part of the Day of Atonement ceremony was the casting of lots upon two goats - one for Jehovah and the other for Azazel.

The goats formed parts of one and the same sacrifice.

The lot having designated each of the two goats, the high priest tied a tongue-shaped piece of scarlet cloth to the horn of the goat for Azazel (Scape goat) and another round the throat of the goat for Jehovah, which was to be slain.

The sins of the people were then confessed over the head of the goat for Azazel and he would carry them forth into ‘a land not inhabited.’

Assuredly a more marked type of Christ could not be conceived, as He was brought forth by Pilate and stood before the people, just as He was about to be the forth, bearing the iniquity of the people.

And, as if to add to the significance of the rite, tradition has it that when the sacrifice was fully accepted, the scarlet cloth which the Scape goat had borne became white, to symbolise the gracious promise in Isaiah 1:18; but it adds that this miracle did not take place for forty years before the destruction of the Temple.

The sacrifices brought cleansing to the people and the priests and the utensils of the sanctuary and enabled the continuance of typical communion with God.

But the consciences were not yet free from a sense of personal guilt and sin.

The scape goat was to remove the personal guilt of the Israelites and the red heifer was to take away the defilement of death, as that which stood between God and man and their essentials completed outside the sanctuary.

In other words, the Old Testament dispensation had confessedly within its sanctuary no real provision for the spiritual wants to which they symbolically pointed,- their removal lay outside its sanctuary and beyond its symbols.

Spiritual death, as the consequence of the Fall, personal sinfulness, and personal guilt lay beyond the reach of the Temple provision, and pointed directly to Him who was to come.

Every death, every Day of Atonement, was a call for His advent, as the eye of faith, would follow the goat into the wilderness or read in the ashes sprung from the burning of the red heifer the emblem of purification from spiritual death.

Under the Old Covenant, sin was not really blotted out, only put away from the people, and put aside until Messiah came, not only to take upon Himself the burden of transgression, but to blot it out and to purge it away with His own blood.

He had come, to whom the reality of these types and symbols pointed, and ‘now once at the end of the age hath been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself’ (Heb 9:26).