Leviticus 16:3-34 Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.… By referring to ver. 29, you will find that this Day of Atonement was appointed for "the seventh month." Seven, as you remember, is a symbol of completeness. This location of these solemnities in the seventh month, would therefore seem to refer to the fact noted by the apostle, that it was only "when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son to redeem them that were under the law." He lived when. the world was sufficiently at peace to give Him a hearing — when the human mind was maturely developed, and competent to investigate His claims — when the ways were sufficiently open for the immediate universal promulgation of His gospel — and when the experience of four thousand years was before men to prove to them how much they needed such a Teacher and Priest as He. His appearance, therefore, to take away our sins, was in "the fulness of time" — in the Tisri or September of the world — when everything was mature and ripe. He put the Day of Atonement in "the seventh month." You will also notice that this great expiation service occurred but once in a complete revolution of time — "once a year." A year is a full and complete period. There is no time which does not fall within the year. And the occurrence of the Day of Atonement but once in the entire year plainly pointed to another great fact noted by the apostle, that "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." There is no repetition in His sacrificial work. "Christ was once offered"; and in that one offering of Himself, all the eras of human existence were condensed and included. It was the event of this world's year. It is also to be observed, that the atoning services of this remarkable day had respect to the whole nation at once. They were "to make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation." Most of the other offerings were personal, having respect to particular individuals, and to special cases of sin, uncleanness, or anxiety. But on this day the offerings were general, and the atonement had respect to the entire people. This recalls another great evangelic truth, namely, that Christ "died for all" — "gave Himself a ransom for all" — "by the grace of God tasted death for every man" — and "is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world." I. IT WAS TO THE HIGH PRIEST A DAY WHICH IMPOSED NUMEROUS INCONVENIENCES, ANXIETIES, AND HUMILIATIONS. And so was it with our great High Priest when He undertook to expiate the guilt of man. Separated from His heavenly home, He became a suffering, laborious, self-denying servant. No gold glittered upon His brow, or tinkled with His steps, or mingled its glory with royal colours to adorn His robe. No jewelry sparkled on his shoulders or on His breast. No chariots of grandeur bore Him to the place of His mighty deeds of love. And thus amid privations, humiliations, and anxieties which made Him sorrowful even unto death, did He go through with the services of the great day of the world's expiation. 2. It was to the high priest a day which imposed all its services upon him alone. Thus, when Jesus undertook the expiation of the world's guilt, "of the people, there was none with Him." Isaiah says, "I looked, and there was none to help." His "own arm brought salvation." He "His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." 3. The Day of Atonement was to the high priest also a very oppressive and exhausting day. His duties, in his complete isolation, were really crushing. So laborious and trying was his work that after it was over the people gathered round him with sympathy and congratulation that he was brought through it in safety. But it was only a picture of that still more crushing load which was laid upon our great High Priest when making atonement for the sins of the world. None among all the sons of the mighty could ever have performed the work which He performed, and lived. All His life through there was a weight upon Him so heavy, and ever pressing so mightily upon His soul, that there is no account that He ever smiled. Groans and tears and deep oppression accompanied Him at almost every step. And when we come to view Him in His agonising watchings and prayers in the garden, and under the burdens of insult and wrong which were heaped upon Him in the halls of judgment, and struggling with His load along that dolorous way until the muscles of His frame yielded, and He fell faint upon the ground, and oppressed upon the Cross until His inmost soul uttered itself in cries which startled the heavens and shook the world; we have an exhibition of labour, exhaustion, and distress, at which we may well sit down and gaze, and wonder, and weep, in mere sympathy with a sorrow and bitterness beyond all other sorrow. II. We come now to LOOK AT THE ATONEMENT ITSELF. Here we find that several kinds of offerings were to be made. The object was to make the picture complete, by bringing out in different offerings what could not all be expressed by one. They were only different phases of the same unity, pointing to the one offering of Jesus "Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God." There is a multiplication of victims, that we may see the amplitude and varied applications of the one great atonement effected by Christ Jesus. The most vital, essential, and remarkable of these atoning services was that relating to the two goats, as provided for in vers. 7-10, 15-17, 21, 22. One of these goats was to be slain as a sin-offering, and the other was to have the sins of Israel laid upon its head, and then to be taken away alive and left in the wilderness. The one typified the atonement of Christ in its means and essence; the other the same atonement in its effects. III. A word now with REGARD TO THE PEOPLE TO BE BENEFITED BY THE SERVICES Of this remarkable day. That the services and offerings of this day were meant for the entire Jewish nation is very clear and distinct. But not all were therefore reconciled and forgiven. The efficacy of these services, in any given case, depended upon the individual himself. The atonement day was to be a day of contrition, of weeping, of soul-sorrow for sin, of confession, reformation, and return to God, a day of heart-melting and charity. Without these accompaniments its oblations were vain, its incense useless, its solemnities but idle ceremonies. And, as it was with the type, so it is with the Antitype. Would you, then, have Christ's atoning day to be a blessing to thy soul, come to it with a moved and melting heart; come to it with thy spirit bowed for thy many, many sins; come to it as the humbled prodigal came back to the kind father he had wronged; come to it as the poor heart-broken publican came, smiting thy guilty breast and crying, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" (J. A. Seiss, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering. |
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