Leviticus 4

Chapter 4. The Day of Atonement or Complete ReconciliationLeviticus 16-17These chapters stand in the center of the book of Leviticus and are expressive, above all other ceremonial rites, of the great principle of our perfect reconciliation to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. The day was called Kipporim, meaning “the atonement,” and the rabbis have given it the distinguishing name of Yoma, or “the day,” thus distinguishing it from all other days. It was sometimes called the festival of feasting. To us it is significant of the finished work of redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ. The word atonement finely expresses this thought by its very structure: it means literally, “at-one-ment,” and expresses the great fact of our reconciliation to God.

Section I: The Day

Section I—The DayLev_16:29-34This was the 10th day of the seventh month, both numbers being symbolical and both expressing the same idea of completeness. The seventh month was the culminating month of the Hebrew calendar. Its imposing rites terminated with the Feast of Tabernacles, the very crown of all the festal year in its joyous significance. It was the Sabbatic month of the first seven, and the 10th day added a still higher emphasis to the idea of completeness which this whole service symbolized. Its highest spiritual teaching with respect to the redemption of Christ might be expressed in the words “Once for all;” Christ’s own dying cry, “Finished,” signalizes the same victorious fact. It denotes the eternal accomplishment of His redeeming work, by the one complete sacrifice. There is nothing to be added to it. His finished transaction made an end of sin and brought in everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:24), and the sinner has only to enter upon His accomplished work 191 and receive the salvation of God so fully prepared for him. It was kept as a fast day as well as a feast day, and the Jews were required to observe it as a Sabbath of rest and to afflict their souls and do no servile work therein (Leviticus 16:29-31). It was thus to be marked by a deep sense of sin, and also by an entire cessation from all their own works; and so it expressed the two great spiritual thoughts of repentance and of absolute trust in the finished work of Christ, with the renunciation of all our righteousness and the works of the flesh. The apostle expresses the same truth in Romans 4:5, “To the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”

Section II: The High Priest

Section II—The High PriestChrist’s Solitariness (Leviticus 16:17)

1. The high priest alone was allowed to perform the sacrificial and priestly offices of this day, no man being permitted in the tabernacle when he made atonement. This implies the absolute solitariness of our great Redeemer in the hour of His suffering and the fact that He is the only Savior, and unaided by us or any other creature, has Himself accomplished the mighty task of man’s eternal salvation. There is a touching solemnity in the thought that on that great day the sanctuary which was usually crowded with priests was deserted by all but the single form of the high priest alone. It was a solemn type of that awful hour when the Redeemer trod the winepress alone, and in the anguish of the garden and the desolation of the cross there was no man at His side, and even the Father had for a moment deserted Him. None but He might enter the Holy of Holies. Those mysterious curtains barred every other visitor from entering, on penalty of instant death, beneath the consuming fire of God’s holy presence. The strain of sin is on every human spirit, and no breath of evil can live in the presence of the Holy God. But on this day the high priest entered even this innermost shrine, because his person had been cleansed in the symbolical water, and he held in his hand the blood of the sacrifice and the incense of the golden altar, which proclaimed complete propitiation for the sins which He represented. He stands as the representative of our Great High Priest. His is the only figure that the eye of faith can behold in the hour of its conscious guilt and the only one on whom the eye of God can gaze with complacency and acceptance. The Father beholds Him and is satisfied. The sinner beholds Him and is saved. In the center of this ancient picture we behold one form and hear but one name, “Jesus only” (Hebrews 9:24 and Hebrews 10:20). Once for All (Leviticus 16:1-2)
2. Only once in the year might even he enter those sacred precincts, namely: on this appointed day. This was the divine foreshadowing of the fullness of the time when our great Sacrifice came to redeem His sinful people, and of the fact that His sacrifice, as already shown, was complete and final. The Hebrew year stands for the entire Christian age, and this one sacrifice represents the moment when on Calvary Jesus made entire and complete reconciliation for us. For unbelief or superstition to question this, or attempt to throw a doubt upon the efficiency of this sacrifice, or to renew the offering of the atoning blood, is to insult the very blood and crucify the Lord afresh. This is what Romanism does in the sacrifice of the mass, which is an ignorant, profane and blasphemous renewing of the sacrificial death of Christ in symbol, as it was done in the ancient Jewish rites. It was right that they should renew the sacrifice from year to year, because the great Victim was not yet offered; but when He actually consummated His one sacrifice, the hand of God rent in twain the veil of the temple from top to bottom, and showed that the work was done, and that no other high priest should ever enter officially this sacred enclosure again, as the prophet Daniel had predicted. He made the sacrifice and the oblation to cease by the “everlasting righteousness” which He Himself now brought in (Daniel 9:24, Daniel 9:27; Hebrews 9:26-28). In the experience of the believer there ought also to be the same definiteness, completeness and once-for-all-ness in the committal and acceptance of appropriating faith. Our Lord’s blessed Word has authorized this decisive trust and everlasting rest of faith and its full assurance. “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). His Spotless Purity (Leviticus 16:4)
3. The high priest first arrayed himself in the plain linen robes, which consisted of a linen coat, undergarments, turban and sash, differing but slightly from the garments of the other priests. They were expressive of our Savior’s personal holiness. The figure was still further enhanced by the symbolical act of washing his flesh with water before he put them on. The whole representation expresses the personal purity and perfect sinlessness of our Lord Jesus in His human character and life before He suffered as a sacrifice on Calvary. This was indispensable to the efficacy of the sacrifice. “Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26). The High Priests Personal Offering
4. Having thus arrayed himself in his personal robes of immaculate purity, the high priest next offered the sacrifice prescribed for his own personal sins. This consisted of a bullock by which he made atonement for himself (Leviticus 16:3, Leviticus 16:11). This of course was unnecessary in the sacrifice of Christ. He had no personal guilt to expiate by His sufferings. And yet may it not be that the personal atonement made by Aaron was designed to prefigure the fact in our redemption that the Lord Jesus Christ recognized our sins the same as if they were His own, and that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Two Goats (Leviticus 16:5, Leviticus 16:7-25)
5. Having presented his own personal offering, the Hebrew high priest next selected the offering for the people’s sin. This part of the ceremony contains the very essence of the whole type, and requires our most careful attention and intense interest, and the very anointing of the Holy Spirit that we may both apprehend and spiritually apply it. This offering required two sacrificial animals in order to embody the whole meaning that was to be afterward fulfilled in one person. It was necessary to express the two thoughts of Christ’s offering to God and also His substitution for the sinner. And so two goats were chosen, the Hebrew language in which they are described literally meaning, “two shaggy he-goats.” The rabbis tell us that both were required to be exactly alike, of the same age, color, size and appearance in every way. They were not intended to represent two Christs, but two aspects of the one Christ. The first of these goats is described as the goat “for the Lord” (Leviticus 16:8). This represents the aspect of Christ’s death which has reference, primarily, to the claims of God, His justice and holiness. The Lord Jesus Christ came to satisfy these, even if no sinner ever should be saved. He gave Himself as an offering and a sacrifice unto God as well as for men. The successive steps with regard to this sacrifice are very significant. The Sin Offering First, the goat was slain as a sin offering. Then its blood was brought within the veil, accompanied with the incense from the golden altar and sprinkled upon the mercy seat under the very eye of the fiery Shekinah which represented the immediate and holy presence of God. This whole act vividly prefigured die death of Jesus Christ on die cross, and then die offering of His life as a pure and perfect gift in the immediate presence of the Father. Was this what He meant when He said to Mary, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father” (John 20:17)? Was He on His way to lay that precious life before the throne as a ransom for His people, and as an answer to all God’s demands and rights? Or had He done so in the interval between His death and resurrection? We know, at least, that in some way at this time He passed within the veil and through the eternal Spirit (perhaps that means in His own eternal and spiritual life) offered Himself without spot to God (Hebrews 9:14). The Scapegoat Having presented the first of these two goats, the high priest next took the other goat, which is described in our version as the scapegoat, but literally in the Hebrew as the goat for Azazel Laying both his hands upon its head he confessed over it all the sins of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; then he sent it forth into the wilderness by the hand of a selected person, and the goat was to bear upon it all their iniquities into the land not inhabited, and so to be let go into the wilderness. This was intended to denote the fact that Christ, having died on the cross for our sins, has thus borne them away, no more to return to us, any more than the goat returned from the solitude of the desert. Christ took our guilt into the depths of His bottomless grave, and there it is sinking still and will never rise again. This idea of eternal redemption is the specific thought of the day of atonement. “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalms 103:12). “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud” (Isaiah 44:22). “[I] will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). “Search will be made… for the sins of Judah, but none will be found” (Jeremiah 50:20). “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). “[I] will hurl all [their] iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). These are some of the figures in which the significance of this solemn ceremony is amplified throughout the Scriptures. It is blessed to know that the goat carried the sins of Israel into a land not inhabited. They never fell on anybody else, and it is blessed to know that the sins we lay on Christ are so canceled that not only shall we be saved from their consequences, but no other shall bear them for us. Azazel But what is the meaning of that strange expression “Azazel”? Who was “Azazel”? This has been one of the controversies of exegetical theology. The word occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament, and probably should have no translation. The most judicious authorities apply the word to a personal evil spirit, to be understood as the opposite of Jehovah. This is the natural construction of the language. One goat was for the Lord, the other for the other person. Origen held that Azazel denoted the devil. We know that evil spirits are believed to inhabit desert places, and the root of the Hebrew word seems to be connected with the sense of banishment and separation. Is it taught by this awful figure that Christ was delivered up in the hour of His Crucifixion to absolute and unlimited malignity of the very prince of wickedness and cruelty? Was there a sense in which, for a moment, our Substitute was handed over to the torments which we should have borne and should eternally have suffered in the world of the damned? Is the sinner the subject of Satan’s awful dominion, and entitled to the torments of his power and hate? And did our Lord take our place in this real sense, when He entered the regions of the kingdom of darkness, that He might rescue us from the tyrant who had enslaved us? What a lurid light these very questions cast upon the dark hour of His sorrow! Truly, None of the ransomed ever knew, How deep were the waters crossed; Nor how dark the night that the Lord passed through Ere He found the sheep that was lost. Resurrection Robes (Leviticus 16:23-24)6. The next act of the high priest was the changing of his garments, the washing of his flesh in water and the putting on of his garments again. This very beautifully and truly represents the putting off of Christ’s robes of flesh by His literal death, and then the putting on again of the garments of His humanity through His glorious resurrection. All this accompanied the sending forth of the scapegoat, and so is spiritually associated with the consummation of Christ’s sacrificial work. It was after He had borne away our sins that He put on again His resurrection body. The Sacrifice Accepted (Leviticus 16:24-25)
6. The crowning act of all these sacrifices immediately followed and consisted of the sacrifice of the burnt offering and the fat of the sin offering on the altar of the tabernacle. This was expressive of the acceptance of the sacrifice as a sweet smelling savor in the presence of God, and the complete obliteration of all the guilt of the people and even the very consciousness of their sin.

Section III: The Meaning of the Blood

Section III—The Meaning of the BloodLev_17:11-14The 17th chapter of Leviticus expounds with great fullness and beauty the reason why the blood is so constantly emphasized in this and all other Levitical sacrifices, for “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22), and almost all things were purged with blood. To the coarse sensibilities of the merely natural mind all this is offensive and seems to be unworthy even of a great God or a refined nature. But the Holy Spirit explains to us that the blood means the life (Leviticus 17:11-14). For this cause they were prohibited from eating or drinking blood. It was separate and sacred as a special token of this idea of atonement, and the reason was that the blood was recognized as the life, the very vital element of the human body. The shedding of blood, therefore, represents the idea of the laying down of life. So Christ’s blood means the sacrifice of Christ’s life instead of ours. Our life was forfeited, both in the natural and spiritual sense; and for us He gave His own as a ransom, thus purchasing back our spiritual and also our eternal life. The blood was not only shed, but also sprinkled; not only was it poured out upon the altar outside of the holy place, but also sacredly gathered again and carried into the most sacred precincts of the inner sanctuary, and there kept in drops of sprinkled freshness on the mercy seat between the cherubim. This sacrifice is the second great aspect of the blood of Christ, namely: His life taken up again in His resurrection and presented to God as a living and perpetual sacrifice in the Holy of Holies. Not only is it presented to God, but it is also imparted to us as our life; so that the blood of Christ applied to us is not merely His death for us, purchasing us back from condemnation, but it is His life in us, continually applied as our true life and imparting to us in our very being a continual spring of purity, peace, power and even physical vitality if we will so receive it. It is in this higher sense that the blood of Jesus Christ keeps cleansing us from all sin; and it is in this sense that His flesh is meat indeed and His blood is drink indeed. “Whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and… remains in me, and I in him” (John 6:54, John 6:56). All this has come to us through Christ’s one offering. We need only add that our Great High Priest has not only entered, like Aaron, into the holy place and presented His precious blood as a ransom for our perfect salvation, but He has left the door forever open; and as we drink that blood and receive that indwelling life, we too may enter in where He is gone and dwell in the perpetual fellowship of His abiding love and the Father’s benignant Presence. Let us conclude with God’s own commentary on the meaning of this ancient type. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take away sins,… For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? (Hebrews 10:4, Hebrews 10:1-2) But when this priest [Christ] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Hebrews 10:12-14) 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. (Hebrews 10:19-22)