The Day of Atonement was a very important part of the Law. Although we don’t observe it as God’s New Testament people, it is important for us because it helps us understand the work Messiah has done to accomplish our great salvation.
The Day of Atonement was a solemn occasion, requiring rest and reflection. All the other holidays were to be celebrations and remembrances, but the Day of Atonement was a day of humbling themselves and confessing their sins. It was needed because of the people’s impurity – a condition -, and their willful acts of sin. It was the only provision God made to pay for willful acts of sin.
Atonement is cleansing from sin. The priest had to make atonement for the place and articles of worship as well as for the people. Atonement was made with blood. Reflect on each element of the ceremony and consider what it reveals about what the worship of God requires of man. Further, consider what Jesus has accomplished for you.
Making atonement for the people’s impurity and sins was serious business for the priest. Mistakes were deadly. Before the priest entered the Most Holy Place inside the veil, the practice was to tie a rope around him so that if he was struck dead his body could be pulled out. The people understood the danger, and waited anxiously for the priest to emerge. When he did, they knew that God had accepted his efforts on their behalf, and there would be great relief throughout the community.
God’s requirement that sacrifices were to be offered in one place only is important to remember. The nation would suffer in the future for failure to do so. God imposed that restrictive requirement so that the people would not make sacrifices to other gods.
Verse 17:7 tells us that although the people had said they would do whatever God required them to do as part of the covenant, they were still worshiping goat demons. Such hints and open statements throughout the history and prophecy books reveal that God’s Old Testament people were never faithful to Him. As incredible as this sounds, we must recognize that this lack of faithfulness also is our own tendency because of our fallen nature. Apart from the help God gives us through the transforming work of our Savior and through His Holy Spirit living in us, we could never be any more faithful to God than they were.
The ceremonies of animal sacrifice are not understandable to us except if we pay attention to verse 17:11. When man sins against God, man does not decide what is acceptable to make it right. God decides. And in His sovereignty, God has decided that payment for sin will be in the form of blood. The shedding of blood took a life. God is not cruel to decide that another life is the only acceptable payment for our sin; no, He is teaching us that sin is a serious and an awful and a costly business.
God required His people to be different from the people around them then, as He does us now. They were to look different and behave differently. The reason He gave His people for being different was two-fold: the moral reason that He was Jehovah God, their God, and the practical reason that the land would be defiled with their sin and “spew them out.” Both are worth our consideration.