THE GOAT THAT GOT AWAY
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to blame all your troubles on someone else? You know, when you fail at some project, pass the blame off on someone who caused you to mess up. Maybe you do that anyways. The truth is we all do that at some point.
Some psychologists will counsel you to look into your past and pull out your old wounds. This is not a bad thing per se. It is only a real problem when the counselor, whom we assume is not a Christian, encourages you to blame your parents for the way you are. Part of who you are is in fact due to the way your parents raised you and influenced you in your formative years. But to blame them for your present problems is to deny any responsibility for who you are and the decisions you make.
To lay the blame for our actions on someone or something else is a very common reaction. Murderers will blame drugs, alcohol, abuse as a child, or violent TV or video games for their crimes. Employees will blame fellow employees for making them miss deadlines. Parents will blame their own parents for their inability to raise their children. In every walk of life we are prone to look for a scapegoat, as we call it, a person to lay the blame on.
Wayne Dyer challenges this propensity of ours saying “All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty of something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.
There’s the problem: we feel inadequate, like failures, like we have fallen short of the standard others have set for us so we need to blame someone. And the truth is that in some cases someone has to pay the price for our mistakes and our failings.
The Israelites actually had a day set aside for laying all of their sins and failures on something else. In Leviticus 16 it is called the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur. As we study this passage we will learn that there is a scapegoat provided that bears all the blames of the world.
1. The Alienating Nature of Sin
Aaron’s two sons died before the Ark of the Covenant because they approached the LORD in an improper way. God is holy – He is pure and sinless. Moses is thus told that there is a right way to approach God and offer sacrifices for sin. Once a year, Aaron, the high priest, is to purify himself and offer a sacrifice for the nation to make them acceptable to God again. This year, Yom Kippur is in late September. Though Jews no longer are able to sacrifice (no temple) they still consider this the holiest day of the year. They fast for 25 hours and do not work on this special day.
The reason for this day is to deal with the sins of the past year. Because God is holy, sin separates us from God. We cannot have relationship with God since we are guilty of breaking his commands. So on this day, Jews confess their sins and plead for God’s mercy so that they can have relationship with him again.
Leviticus 16 confronts the all encompassing scope of sin. To use a baseball analogy, it covers all the bases. There are four descriptions of sin that leave nothing out:
a) Uncleanness – In v. 16 sin is called spiritual pollution; uncleanness. This refers to the dwelling place of God, the temple. We don’t know what it was that the Jews did, but they might have allowed some impure thing, like farmer sausage into the temple. Or they failed to offer a proper sacrifice. The dwelling of God has become unfit for his habitation of it. If the temple is polluted where do you go to meet with God?
b) Rebellion – Sin is called rebellion in v. 16 & 21. Uncleanness may have been unintentional; this sin is outright and willful disobedience. Men and women know they are doing wrong when they rebel. This is more than breaking a law, it is a relational sin. It is more suitable to think of it as our infidelity to God as a lover, our disloyalty to God as friend, and our ignoring God as a generous Father that places a barrier of conflict and anger between us. It is the anger that we as friends experience when a friend wrongs us and is quite right.
c) Wickedness – In vv. 21-22 sin is called wickedness. It carries the idea of the perversion of our fallen human nature. We are capable of making decisions and choosing our paths. This word then lays the blame solely at our own feet.
d) All wrong doing – Sin is a general word uses several times in this chapter. It is used to include all wrong-doing, serious or trivial, deliberate or unintentional, conscious or unconscious, visible or invisible, and even of omission.
This is the total spectrum of sin. It is serious and costly. Sin is failure, rebellion, transgression, trespass, stain, infidelity and so much more. All are guilty of it and it comes with a price.
2. The Reconciling Work of Atonement
The effects of sin are what trouble us the most. It is all too easy to sin in the first place. Then our memories of our shameful habits cloud us over and veil us from the face of God. He seems so far away and yet it is only the fog of guilt that blinds us to how close he is. What we have done haunts us and interferes with our boldness and confidence to come before the Lord and speak with him.
That’s it! We have a troubled conscience. And what do we desire in our hearts? A clear conscience! This is what God wants to give us, and he provides a way. Take away the guilt. Take away the blame. Take away my inadequacy, we cry.
This is what atonement is supposed to do. Yom Kippur’s primitive vehicle of sacrifice is the method Israel used to receive God’s atonement. What is atonement?
It has been described as “at-one-ment”. The term is supposed to convey “being in a state of friendship” and of reconciliation. This is true but it is not enough. In Hebrew the word is more precisely “to cover” as in a debt covered in payment. It could also mean to “ransom” or the payment of a bribe. Or it may mean to wipe away or purge. Any of these images would help us to get the idea. And that idea is that it is possible to have our sins wiped away, paid for or covered so that we could reconcile with our loving God.
For as long as the earth has spun around the sun, humankind has understood that the spilling of the lifeblood of an animal helps this reconciliation. I don’t pretend to understand this practice. It was the Jewish understanding and teaching though, that instituted a ritual for atonement. The priest was to kill a bull for his own sins and sacrifice two goats for the sins of the people. The blood of this sacrifice was sprinkled on the altar and somehow this cleansed the conscience of the average Jew.
This was the price for a clean conscience.
3. The Sacrifice and the Scapegoat
The two goats tell an interesting story of paying for sin. Two male goats were taken from the community and presented before the LORD. Then the high priest cast lots, rolled the dice or dealt the high card for the goats to see which goat would meet which fate.
“He is to cast lots for the two goats – one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat. Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice it for a sin offering” (Vv. 8-9).
This goat for the LORD is sacrificed to clean up the pollution, the uncleanness that we talked about earlier. These are the sins of omission, or unintentional sins that have messed up the Holy Place. Rebellion was part of this too, the willful sins, but it all focused on the LORD’s dwelling.
“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” (v. 10).
Unfortunately our translations of the Bible miss the original word for scapegoat and what it does. The scapegoat is Azazel and its meaning is somewhat unknown. Azazel was not a goat. Azazel was thought to be a being that existed in the wilderness. Early Jewish writings before Jesus was born of Mary tell of angels being led into lust and sin by Azazel. His name means “fierce shadow” and he was a demonic figure who represented evil and sin.
Aaron put his hands on the head of the goat and symbolically transferred the sins of the nation onto this goat. It was then led out into the wilderness, the Jews seeing the wilderness as haunted by demons, and the goat was never seen again. The sins of Israel were carried far away from them. In later centuries the designated person would lead the goat out to a cliff, tie a rock to it and push it off, thus making sure it would not return. The picture is effective: the scapegoat carried the sins back to the source, the people saying we want none of this, and they have no power over us any longer.
It is what Psalm 103 celebrates where it says, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (11-12).
Both the goat that was sacrificed and the goat that was sent into the wilderness solve the same problem. The dwelling place of God is cleansed of the pollution of sin and the sin itself is carried far away. If only it were that easy.
All of us would be sure to own a goat come the season of Yom Kippur. Whatever it was I was supposed to have done I blame the goat. The goat did it. Unfortunately it was a temporary remedy to be repeated annually.
4. Another Tale of Two “Goats”
Like the story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac as a burnt offering, the image of the two goats foreshadows a better reality yet to come. There is another story of two goats that will be familiar to you in Matthew 27:15-22.
Now it was the governor’s custom at the Feast to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, "Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?" For he knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him.
While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: "Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him."
But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.
"Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" asked the governor.
"Barabbas," they answered.
"What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?" Pilate asked.
They all answered, "Crucify him!"
One goat was to die; one goat was to live and be sent back to its source. When Barabbas was chosen to be released to the people, Pilate claimed to be innocent of the blood of Jesus. The people responded, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” (25). In the same way that the sins of the people were placed on the goat sent to Azazel, the spilling of Christ’s innocent blood was upon the heads of those who handed him over to the cross.
Barabbas was the scapegoat. The sin that was in him, the violence and rebellion and corruption, was sent back to the source that bred him – the corrupt society of people in need of salvation. Barabbas was the goat that got away because Jesus took the place of both goats – the goat that was sacrificed and the goat that bore all of our sins. This is why Jesus is called the sacrifice of atonement – he covers all our sin.
A human does not plan this kind of event. What I mean is you can’t make this happen and orchestrate these events to parallel so perfectly. This is the result of prophecy. Even Pilate plays a role that could not be coerced. In Lev. 16:24, the man who sends the goat into the wilderness washes before coming back to camp so that he does not contaminate the camp again with sin. Pilate when he hands Jesus over washes his hands of the guilt. How ironic is that?
More importantly is the image of our own cleansing. From 1 Corinthians 6:19 we understand that we are now the temple, the dwelling of the Lord. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. But God cannot dwell in a place that is polluted by our sins. How could the living God makes his home in us? Our guilty consciences are not appropriate rooms for a Holy God.
But like the tabernacle was cleansed by the blood of a goat we too need a cleansing and have one as Hebrews 9:13-14 declare, “The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremoniously unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God.”
And then we have a greater confidence to grow our relationship with God, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:19-22).
Put it all together
Who is the scapegoat for all our sins, mistakes, failures, problems and troubles? Are we to blame Jesus for our disappointments? Certainly not, I am saying nothing of the kind.
Rather we are taught by these scriptures that there is a new way to think and to see ourselves. This is a way that may be foreign to many of us. Though I have preached for many years I am only now beginning to learn this. The truth is this, we are responsible for our actions and decisions but the consequences of our actions are paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. Not only that, but you have been purchased by his death and you are no longer your own. You are incredibly loved and valued.
We do not need to be afraid of failure anymore. We do not need to live up to anyone’s standards or approval. The power of fear and failure and sin has been cancelled and your consciences have been cleared. You do not need to feel guilty or ashamed if you live as though you have died with Christ.
George Muller was asked, “What is the secret of your service to God?” Muller’s response was this: “There was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Muller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will…died to the world, its approval and censure…died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends…and since then I have studied to show myself approved only to God.”
Your worth, your significance, is found in Jesus. All fear is gone; all blame is null and void. It is only God’s approval that matters now. Will you die to everything else?
AMEN
