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The Great Day
1-2 Two of Aaron's sons had already lost their lives for disobeying the Lord, so the Lord told Moses to say to Aaron:
I, the Lord, appear in a cloud over the place of mercy on the sacred chest, which is behind the inside curtain of the sacred tent. And I warn you not to go there except at the proper time. Otherwise, you will die!
3 Before entering this most holy place, you must offer a bull as a sacrifice for your sins and a ram as a sacrifice to please me. 4You will take a bath and put on the sacred linen clothes, including the underwear, the robe, the sash, and the turban. 5Then the community of Israel will bring you a ram and two goats, both of them males. The goats are to be used as sacrifices for sin, and the ram is to be used as a sacrifice to please me.
6Aaron, you must offer the bull as a sacrifice of forgiveness for your own sins and for the sins of your family. 7Then you will lead the two goats into my presence at the front of the sacred tent, 8where I will show you which goat will be sacrificed to me and which one will be sent into the desert to the demon Azazel. 9After you offer the first goat as a sacrifice for sin, 10the other one must be presented to me alive, before you send it into the desert to take away the sins of the people.
11You must offer the bull as a sacrifice to ask forgiveness for your own sins and for the sins of your family. 12Then you will take a fire pan of live coals from the bronze altar, together with two handfuls of finely ground incense, into the most holy place. 13There you will present them to me by placing the incense on the coals, so that the place of mercy will be covered with a cloud of smoke. Do this, or you will die right there! 14Next, use a finger to sprinkle some of the blood on the place of mercy, which is on the lid of the sacred chest; then sprinkle blood seven times in front of the chest.
15 Aaron, you must next sacrifice the goat for the sins of the people, and you must sprinkle its blood inside the most holy place, just as you did with the blood of the bull. 16By doing this, you will take away the sins that make both the most holy place and the people of Israel unclean. Do the same for the sacred tent, which is here among the people. 17Only you are allowed in the sacred tent from the time you enter until the time you come out. 18After leaving the tent, you will purify the bronze altar by smearing each of its four corners with some of the blood from the bull and from the goat. 19Use a finger to sprinkle the altar seven times with the blood, and it will be completely clean from the sins of the people.
20After you have purified the most holy place, the sacred tent, and the bronze altar, you must bring the live goat to the front of the tent. 21 There you will lay your hands on its head, while confessing every sin the people have committed, and you will appoint someone to lead the goat into the desert, so that it can take away their sins. 22Finally, this goat that carries the heavy burden of Israel's sins must be released deep in the desert.
Reflect
This passage relates all sorts of sacrificial detail in precise and unalterable terms as much of Leviticus does. What makes this set of verses unique is that the sins of the people are not laid upon the head of a blood sacrifice but upon the head of a male goat that is released to wander in the wilderness. It is by this wandering in the wilderness that the goat makes atonement for the sins of Israel.
We focus so much on the blood sacrifice of Jesus we may forget there were other sacrifices he had to make for us. He had to put aside his glory and limit himself to the frailty of a human body – he felt hunger pangs, he got thirsty, he sweat, got tired, he wept, he bled, felt pain. He was a brother to brothers who did not believe in him and a son to a mother who, despite the events of what we call the Christmas story, did not understand who or what he was. He could not trust anyone and at the end, all his disciples deserted him and left him alone to die. He knew rejection and he knew loneliness. In a very real sense his entire life was like the life of the scapegoat – his time on earth was a wandering in the wilderness, a life that cut him off from his home in heaven and from his Father, a life that restricted who he really was. He had something else in common with the scapegoat – both were innocent. They suffered because of the sins of others and not for any sins they had done.
This is not only about how much the Father loves us. It is about how much Jesus loves us. He not only took the Cross upon his back for you and me and felt the sting of the whip and the stab of the nails. He took loneliness and rejection upon himself for us. He was cut off for us. For our atonement, Jesus became a wanderer in the wilderness of a sinful earth, an earth that did not want him. He came to that which was his own but his own did not receive him (John 1:11 NIV).
Respond
Jesus, to keep me from being cut off from God and heaven, you agreed to be cut off from your closeness to God and heaven. To keep me from an eternal loneliness, you agreed to become lonely. To end my wandering in the wilderness of my soul, you took it upon yourself to become a wanderer in the wilderness of a world that didn’t understand you. Jesus, thank you for all you have done for love of me and love of the world. Amen.
Murray Pura
Murray Pura, a native of Manitoba, is an ordained minister with Masters degrees from Acadia University and Regent College in Vancouver BC. At Regent he studied under JI Packer and also produced a thesis on William Wilberforce which was subsequently published under the title "Vital Christianity". Murray has served churches in Canada and the US. A writer in Christian theology and Christian fiction both, he currently writes full time and is represented by Steve Laube Agency in Phoenix, AZ. Murray has published with HarperCollins, Zondervan, HarperOne San Francisco, Baker, Barbour and Harvest House, to name a few. He has won the Word Guild Award for Best Historical Novel and has also been shortlisted for the Kobzar Literary Award of Toronto. His devotional writings include the books "Rooted" (Zondervan), "Streams" (Zondervan), and "Majestic & Wild" (Baker). He also wrote the study notes for Exodus and Luke in The Life With God Bible (Harper Collins).