by Noel Rabinowitz

To be honest, I knew very little about Yom Kippur growing up. Of course, when I became a new believer in Yeshua people assumed I knew a lot about the subject. I began to receive invitations from my Christian friends to speak about the holiday. Never being one to allow ignorance of a topic to stand in my way, I was more than happy to take them up on the offer!  After skimming through some Christian commentaries on the Leviticus, I was more than confidant that I understood the subject.  The focus on my devotional was, more or less, always the same-I'm a dirty rotten sinner and I need a sacrifice to atone for our sins.

That's true of course-we are sinners and we do need a sacrifice to make atonement for our sins.  I was rather impressed with the deep spiritual insights I had to share about the sinfulness of man-in other words, poor sinful me. The truth is I still didn't "get it." I didn't understand that the real focus of this holiday is not the sinfulness of man, but the holiness of God.

Chapter 16 of Vayikra begins with a flashback to the untimely deaths of Nadav and Avihu, who improperly entered the Tabernacle and offered "alien fire" before the Lord. The Lord consumed Nadav and Avihu with fire and their deaths served as an object lesson for every future priest. If they failed to respect God's holiness, they would meet with a similar fate.

The focus of this chapter, of course, is on the Day of Atonement ceremony.  During the first stage of the ceremony, a purification offering was presented on behalf of Aaron and the priests (6, 11 - 14). During the second stage of the ceremony, two goats were presented and the High Priest cast lots to determine which would be killed as a sacrifice and which would be sent into the wilderness (7 - 8). During the third phase of the ceremony, the designated goat was sacrificed and its blood used as a purification offering on behalf of the people of Israel. The High Priest entered the Holy of Holies and sprinkled the blood on the Mercy Seat (9, 15). During the fourth and final phase of the Yom Kippur ceremony, the High Priest laid his hands on the second goat's head (the scapegoat) and confessed all of the nation's sin. Symbolically bearing the nation's sins, the scapegoat was driven into the wilderness, never to be seen again.

The purpose of this ceremony-to state the obvious, was to make atonement for the people of Israel so that they could remain in fellowship with the Lord for another year. A holy God cannot remain in fellowship with an unclean and sinful people.  When I taught about Yom Kippur my focus was just that - the sacrifice wiped away sin so God forgave the Israelites. And that's what we tend to focus on - I'm a sinner. Woe is me! Coming to terms with my own sinfulness, made me feel deeply spiritual.  In the back of my mind, I was certain God was deeply impressed. Well, I was wrong. The focus of Yom Kippur is not my sinfulness, but rather God's holiness.

If we understand how atonement actually worked and what the purification offering actually did, our perspective suddenly changes. The God of Israel manifested his presence first in the Tabernacle and later in the much larger Temple in Jerusalem.  Because He is holy, God's dwelling place must be holy as well. And beginning in Vayikra 11:44-45 the Lord reminded Israel that they also must be holy.

Why must they be holy? One of the reasons has to do with the fact that God's holiness requires that he destroy any impurity or uncleanness that he comes into contact with.  The problem was not necessarily that a person had become temporarily unclean or even that they sinned. The problem was that they had dared to approach God in that state of uncleanness or sin. God's holiness requires that he destroy and devour unholiness. This is why He instructed Moses to keep the sons of Israel away from the Tabernacle in their state of uncleanness. If they had approached him in that condition, he would destroy them:

"Thus you shall keep the sons of Israel separated from their uncleanness, so that they will not die in their uncleanness by their defiling My tabernacle that is among them" (Lev 15:31)

How was an unclean person restored to fellowship? Here is how it worked: When a person became unclean or had sinned, their uncleanness or sin polluted and contaminated God's dwelling place.  In effect, human beings are like little factories whose smoke stacks pump out all kinds of pollution. That pollution drifts through the atmosphere until it reaches the Tabernacle and covers it.  Sin and uncleanness symbolically pollute and contaminate God's dwelling place.  If that situation is not remedied, God's wrath will break out against all those who have defiled his dwelling place.

The sacrificial system was a constant reminder of the seriousness of uncleanness and sin.  Blood, as we know, represents life. The worshipper was permitted to live only because an innocent creature had died on his behalf.  But what exactly did that sacrifice accomplish? Why was the blood of the Yom Kippur sacrifice sprinkled over the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies?  This is where our understanding of the sacrifice system gets a little muddled.  In college I was taught that the sins of the worshiper were transferred to the innocent animal and it died in the worshipper's place. However, if that's true this means that the sacrifice was now unclean and therefore no longer a suitable sacrifice.  The sacrifice needed to remain pure.

A careful study of the Hebrew text reveals a better solution. The purification offering cleansed the Tabernacle from the pollution of uncleanness and sin. The purification offering functioned like a sort of "spiritual detergent" that washed away the pollution that had defiled the tabernacle.  Technically speaking, "atonement" was made to the Tabernacle on behalf of the individual. Because the purity of God's dwelling place had been restored, He was free to forgive the sinner and restore them to fellowship. Thus we read in Vayikra 4:20 that "the priest will make atonement for them (on their behalf)" and "they will be forgiven."

On the Day of Atonement the stakes were much higher.  The nation's uncleanness and transgressions had penetrated into the very heart of God's dwelling place, the Holy of Holies. Unless it was purged of this spiritual pollution, God's fellowship with His people could not endure. For that reason, the High Priest entered the most sacred place on earth and sprinkled the blood of the purification offering on top of the Mercy Seat.

Because his dwelling place was purified and decontaminated from the pollution of uncleanness and sin, God was free to forgive his people. It was only then that the High Priest could confess the sins of the nation over the scapegoats head and drive it from the midst of the congregation.

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