Introduction
1. Do you feel separated from God? That there is a distance between you that stops you from experiencing His presence or His love and mercy?
2. Today we consider what it is that separates you from God and how that separation can be destroyed. How we can be near to God and enjoy Him and worship Him. The answer is found in our passage we just read.
3. For those of us reading through the bible this year, we have spent the past week reading about various offerings and sacrifices that the people of Israel. These included sin offerings guilt offerings, burnt offerings, fellowship offerings, grain offerings, and others. We may have felt lost in the details and wondered why this was all placed in the Bible. After all we do not make these offerings any more today.
4. There is much we can learn about God, ourselves and our relationship with Him through these offerings. And this most evident in the offerings or sacrifices which were to be made annually on the day of atonement.
Teaching
1. Two of Aaron’s sons had been put to death by God for taking their censors, vessels in which hot coals were placed, and offering the to God. They had been told when and how to make offerings to God but they decided to do this on their own. Perhaps it should not sound like a big deal, but God was inaugarating the system of offerings with the people. And it was important for the to know from the offset that we cannot come to God and worship Him on our own man-made terms but only on His terms and in His ways. Almighty God has provided us with a way to approach Him. We must follow that way. And that is still the case for us today.
2. God tells Moses to tell Aaron that he cannot come into the Holy of Holies anytime that He chooses. It was in the Holy of Holies that the ark of the covenant was kept. It was the place were God’s was present in the cloud. It was the most holy part of the tabernacle, the place of worship and the sign of God’s presence.
3. God is a holy God. He demands holiness. Sinful man cannot stand before a holy God or he will die. It is our sin that separates us from God and failing to experience His presence. And so God says, in order to live, Aaron can only come before Him when and how God chooses.
4. But the good news is that God does provide him with a way. A way which is described in our passage.
5. The passage is very detailed. Aaron has to follow a number of instructions. My NIV notes list 14 steps that must be followed.
6. Why all the details? To remind Aaron that God decides who he can come before Him. But also that we are not to take coming before God to lightly. It is an awesome thing to come before our holy God.
7. To do so Aaron had to be clean and set apart. He had to be outwardly clean - washed and wearing sacred garments. But he had to be inwardly clean as well. Aaron was going to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people. But before he could do that he first had to make himself acceptable to God. He first had to offer a sacrifice, a bull for his own sins. This sacrifice was to atone for his sins. To remove the sins that separated Him from God. The sins that prevented him from being in God’s presence. Without atonement we can never be right with God.
8. Aaron was to take a censer with some of the coals from the altar and some incense. The smoke from this would conceal Him from the presence, the glory of God.
9. Aaron was to take some of the blood of this bull and sprinkle it on the atonement cover which was above the ark and before the ark. Sin can only be atoned for by the giving of life and the blood represents life.
10. Aaron then was to take the two goats for the sin offering of the people. He was to cast lots to decide which one would be for the Lord and which one would be the scapegoat. Again this shows that it is God’s choice not man’s choice as to how the sacrifice is made.
11. And before Aaron makes the sacrifice for the atonement of the people’s sins, he makes atonement for the Holy of Holies, the Holy Place and the altar. In other words because they were sinful, even the means and tools used to offer sacrifices were stained and needed to be atoned for. Just like we say that the corporate sins of the church need to be confessed and forgiven . Everything we touch becomes unclean because of our sin and can be accepted only by God through atonement, by Him making it acceptable. The one goat has already been killed and its blood sprinkled.
12. Aaron then is to bring forward the live goat. Let's read again what he is to do
Lev 16:21-22 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. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.
By laying his hands on its head and confessing the wickedness, the rebellion, sins of the people he is transferring all those sins upon the goat. He removes them from the people. And the goat is led away into the desert were he is released. The sins are taken far away from the people.
13. And after that both the fat of the killed bulls for the sin offerings and the dead goat are burned on the altar. This altar is in the outer part of the tabernacle so all the people can see these sacrifices being burnt up. And after they are burnt, the flesh, the hide and other parts are taken out of the camp and completely burnt up.
14. This was to be an annual event on the tenth day of the seventh month. And this day was to be a day of rest. A sabbath of rest. For the work of atonement would be complete.
15. Now what does this day of atonement have to do with us today? As with all of the offerings, this offering was a symbol of something much greater. Do we think we can sacrifice and animal and all our sins are forgiven? Of course not. This atonement sacrifice is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice that was made by Christ. The sacrifice we remember during this season of lent.
Heb 13:9-12 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.
16. On Calvary Jesus would be sacrificed to atone for our sins.
1 Pet 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
He died in place of us just as the animals died on behalf of the people. We should die for our sins. But Jesus took upon Himself to die in our place.
17. And unlike Aaron, He was sinless and did not have to make a sin offering for Himself.
18. Because of His sacrifice, we who believe will live. And not only that but we can now experience the presence of God.
Heb 4:16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
In fact God even dwells within us, we are His temple.
19. Christ was represented by the goat that was sacrificed. But He is also our scapegoat. When He died, He took upon Himself all of our sins. He carried them away from us, never to be seen again. Praise be to God!
Psa 103:11-12 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.
God made a way for us to come into the Holy of Holies. Through Jesus Christ. Jesus satisfied the holy demands of God by dying for our sins.
20. This means that we no longer need to be separated from God. We can enjoy His presence.
21. But do we? Do we sense a close fellowship with God?
22. If we do, we need to look at ourselves. For we still have a role to play. Yes we must receive Christ as Lord and Saviour. We need to admit we are sinners and seek to live for God in a holy way.
23. But even then we still may feel distant from God. Why? Because we sin. But there is more to it than that. How do we respond to our sin? How do we deal with our rebelliousness and lack of love for God and others?
24. There are two wrong ways to deal with them that can separate us from God.
25. One is to take our sins lightly. To say they are no big deal. That we have been forgiven and its only human to fail. That leads to no real confession. It means that we do not lay our sins upon Christ as Aaron did with the goal. It may mean that we think we are ok and that yet we still feel separate from God. We need to face sin and then only can we let go of them and t experience the fullness of God’s mercy.
26. But we can also hold on to our sins. We can be so overwhelmed with our sins or with the consequences of our sins, that we cannot let them go and receive forgiveness. The problem is not just that we are separated from God but that we also are not separated from our sins.
27. Christ has taken away our sins. God sees us as sinless because of the righteousness of Christ. Yes we have sinned and we are still sinners. But do not let the weight of these sins bear you down. Rejoice that you are forgiven in Christ. That your sins have been removed. That they are carried out of our camp.
28. In Setting Your Church free we must renounce our sins but we also claim the forgiveness that is ours in Christ.
29. As we accept that, we remove the veil that separates us from Christ. The veil of holding on to our sins, then we experience His presence more and as a result, we are able to grow in holiness and start seeing victories over our sins
30. How are you dealing with you sins? Admit then and give them over and leave them at the cross.
