Following the Feast of Trumpets and Israel’s preparation to meet with God, nine days later God commanded His people to observe on Teshri 10 The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur- Literally the Day of expiations or The Day of Atonements).
On the first day of the seventh month, they blasted the Shofar to alert Israel of God’s visitation. He was scheduled to pay them a visit in a few days and they needed to get ready to meet with God.
The Day of Atonement was the one day each year that the high priest was permitted to enter into the Holy Place.
Even though God ordained regular burnt offerings and sin offerings to atone for the sins of Israel, propitiate His wrath, and cleanse the people of their wickedness (Lev. 1; 4:1–5:13), it is clear from the book of Leviticus that even all these rituals were not enough. Sins could be forgotten and not confessed when laying hands on the offerings. The ultimate inability of the blood of bulls and goats to deal with sin (Heb. 10:4) meant that animal sacrifices did not go far enough but were only a temporary measure to cover transgression. Finally, the repeated sins of priests and people alike could build up to the point where not only the tabernacle but even the throne room of the Lord — the Most Holy Place or Holy of Holies — would also be contaminated. The Day of Atonement was designed to deal with all these realities.
More details can be found in Leviticus 16…
Leviticus 16:11–16 (ESV)
11 “Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. He shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself. 12 And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil 13 and put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony, so that he does not die. 14 And he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side, and in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.
15 “Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. 16 Thus he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses.
Leviticus 16:21–22 (ESV)
21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. 22 The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.
Leviticus 16:29–31 (ESV)
29 “And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you. 30 For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins. 31 It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves; it is a statute forever.
The Day of Atonement was not a day of festivities but instead a day of affliction. It was a somber and serious day. It was the day when the burden of sin was to be felt by Israel and a day when she would turn to her God in repentance.
Israel has been getting prepared to be visited by God.
1. God’s People are to Gather Together for Atonement and Restoration (23:26-27)
26 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 27 “Now on the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be for you a time of holy convocation, and you shall afflict yourselves and present a food offering to the Lord.
Holy Convocation- announcement of their sacred assembly. Here, after they have been in preparation for 9 days since the Feast of Trumpets, they were to come together as a very humble and solemn group. Their sins were in view and there were many. They were to have a spirit of mourning and grieving for their sins.
and you shall afflict yourselves and present a food offering to the Lord.
This affliction means mourning over their sins and probably included fasting and humility.
It is very important to realize that at the Day of Atonement, the priest made the sacrifice for the people and entered the Holy of Holies on their behalf. But the people had to also be repentant and afflicted due to their sin. They had to be sincere and not approach this day with the wrong view or attitude. In other words, the forgiveness of sin was not something that just happened automatically.
We also must see here that atonement was only possible through the shedding of the sacrificial blood. The High Priest made the sacrifice and took the blood into the Holy of Holies.
2. God’s People Must Not Do Any Work (23:28 & 30-32)
28 And you shall not do any work on that very day, for it is a Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God.
30 And whoever does any work on that very day, that person I will destroy from among his people. 31 You shall not do any work. It is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwelling places. 32 It shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict yourselves. On the ninth day of the month beginning at evening, from evening to evening shall you keep your Sabbath.”
We are reminded again that on these special days, the people were not to do any work. This was so important that God uses very severe language…they will be cut off from My people and I will destroy them.
Their basic concern on that day was to afflict themselves. To see their sin for what it is. To feel the weight and judgement that justly belongs to the sinner. To understand that if God does not do something, we will be judged for our sins and they are many.
Their concern was to be for spiritual things and not earthly works.
Refrain from doing any work. Work can distract us from our spiritual needs. There are people who are purposely so busy that they are distracted from ever considering the condition of their souls before God. I know some lost people who never stop doing things. They never stop because if they did, they would feel the weight of their lost condition.
For us, we must guard against being so busy that we forget what matters most. Listen to me…There are no works, no matter how good, holy, and righteous they are that has any value whatsoever when it comes to atonement of sin and entering into God’s rest.
Rather than work, worship. Give thanks and give God His due credit. Do not seek to rob God of His glory by works.
They were not to work…No distractions, no excuses (I could not be at Church, I had to work)
There was no confusing salvation by grace with salvation by works.
3. Atonement in the New Testament
We may define the atonement as follows: The atonement is the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation.
The NT shows us why God desired for the sins of His people to be atoned for.
Love-
John 3:16 (ESV)
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Justice-
But the justice of God also required that God find a way that the penalty due to us for our sins would be paid (for he could not accept us into fellowship with himself unless the penalty was paid). Paul explains that this was why God sent Christ to be a “propitiation” (Rom. 3:25 NASB) (that is, a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath so that God becomes “propitious” or favorably disposed toward us): it was “to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Rom. 3:25). Here Paul says that God had been forgiving sins in the Old Testament but no penalty had been paid—a fact that would make people wonder whether God was indeed just and ask how he could forgive sins without a penalty. No God who was truly just could do that, could he? Yet when God sent Christ to die and pay the penalty for our sins, “it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
Therefore, both the love and the justice of God were the ultimate cause of the atonement.
The atonement is a complete work of God. He does it all. In this subject, we see that there are two aspects that Jesus fulfills for us. It’s not the shedding of the blood of bulls and goats that bring God’s forgiveness of sin. It is what theologians call the work of Christ. This is the obedience of Christ to all the Father sent Him to do.
Christ’s Active Obedience- Living without sin and in perfect conformity to God’s Law
Here, we see why the New Covenant was needed. The Old Covenant only could delay judgement, it could not actually pay for sins and it could not make the worshipper righteous. If Christ had only earned forgiveness of sins for us, then we would not merit heaven. Our guilt would have been removed, but we would simply be in the position of Adam and Eve before they had done anything good or bad and before they had passed a time of probation successfully. To be established in righteousness forever and to have their fellowship with God made sure forever, Adam and Eve had to obey God perfectly over a period of time. Then God would have looked on their faithful obedience with pleasure and delight, and they would have lived with him in fellowship forever.
For this reason, Christ had to live a life of perfect obedience to God in order to earn righteousness for us. He had to obey the law for his whole life on our behalf so that the positive merits of his perfect obedience would be counted for us.
Philippians 3:9 (ESV)
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
1 Corinthians 1:30–31 (ESV)
30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Romans 5:19 (ESV)
19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Christ’s Passive Obedience, His Sufferings for us…
In addition to obeying the law perfectly for his whole life on our behalf, Christ also took on himself the sufferings necessary to pay the penalty for our sins.
a. Suffering for His Whole Life: In a broad sense the penalty Christ bore in paying for our sins was suffering in both his body and soul throughout his life. Though Christ’s sufferings culminated in his death on the cross (see below), his whole life in a fallen world involved suffering. For example, Jesus endured tremendous suffering during the temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11), when he was assaulted for forty days by the attacks of Satan. He also suffered in growing to maturity, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). He knew suffering in the intense opposition he faced from Jewish leaders throughout much of his earthly ministry (see Heb. 12:3–4). We may suppose too that he experienced suffering and grief at the death of his earthly father, and certainly he experienced grief at the death of his close friend Lazarus (John 11:35). In predicting the coming of the Messiah, Isaiah said he would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).
b. The Pain of the Cross: The sufferings of Jesus intensified as he drew near to the cross. He told his disciples of something of the agony he was going through when he said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matt. 26:38). It was especially on the cross that Jesus’ sufferings for us reached their climax, for it was there that he bore the penalty for our sin and died in our place.
Actual physical pain…the absolute worse pain imaginable
Pain of bearing sin…
Now Jesus was perfectly holy. He hated sin with his entire being. The thought of evil, of sin, contradicted everything in his character. Far more than we do, Jesus instinctively rebelled against evil. Yet in obedience to the Father, and out of love for us, Jesus took on himself all the sins of those who would someday be saved. Taking on himself all the evil against which his soul rebelled created deep revulsion in the center of his being. All that he hated most deeply was poured out fully upon him.
Scripture frequently says that our sins were put on Christ: “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6), and “He bore the sin of many” (Isa. 53:12). John the Baptist calls Jesus “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Paul declares that God made Christ “to be sin” (2 Cor. 5:21) and that Christ became “a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). The author of Hebrews says that Christ was “offered once to bear the sins of many” (Heb. 9:28). And Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).
c. The Pain of being abandoned…
Jesus was abandoned by His disciples
Mark 14:34 (ESV)
34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.”
When Jesus was arrested…
Matthew 26:56 (ESV)
56 But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled.
But far worse than desertion by even the closest of human friends was the fact that Jesus was deprived of the closeness to the Father that had been the deepest joy of his heart for all his earthly life. When Jesus cried out “Eli, Eli, lama sabach-thani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46), he showed that he was finally cut off from the sweet fellowship with his heavenly Father that had been the unfailing source of his inward strength and the element of greatest joy in a life filled with sorrow. As Jesus bore our sins on the cross, he was abandoned by his heavenly Father, who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” (Hab. 1:13). He faced the weight of the guilt of millions of sins alone.
d. The Pain of Bearing the Wrath of God
Yet more difficult than these three previous aspects of Jesus’ pain was the pain of bearing the wrath of God upon himself. As Jesus bore the guilt of our sins alone, God the Father, the mighty Creator, the Lord of the universe, poured out on Jesus the fury of his wrath: Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world.
Romans 3:25 tells us that God put forward Christ as a “propitiation” (NASB) a word that means “a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath to the end and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor.”
Resources Used:
https://learn.ligonier.org/devotionals/day-atonement
Holiness to the Lord Ross
Leviticus Andrew Bonar
Atonement Wayne Grudem
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