The Day of Atonement

[0:00] So for those of you who come every week, you'll know that we've been going through all of the Jewish feasts to work out what they mean, what we're supposed to learn from them, what they are supposed to tell us.

[0:13] And today we're going to look at the Feast of Atonement. Now up to now, and for those of you who are not familiar with this, God put in place feasts that the Jews were supposed to keep.

[0:26] And they happened at the same time every year. And they prophesied to the Jews things that were going to happen in the future. So as the Jew was celebrating a particular feast, he knew, first of all, with many of them, he knew that this looked back to a previous historical event and gave thanks for the outcome.

[0:48] But that it also looked forward to a future event that they would come across, not necessarily even in their own lifetimes, but that the Jews as a nation would come across.

[0:59] I have to say, this is a bit of a confusion for the church. Often the church says God's finished with Israel and all the promises to Israel are now conveyed upon the church.

[1:13] I'm here to tell you that is error. That is not right. So we've been through the four of the spring feasts, which were all fulfilled by Jesus's first coming.

[1:28] And we're partway through the latter three feasts, which are all fulfilled by his second coming. But I discovered that that statement is a little bit misleading because it is fulfilled.

[1:41] Could I have the first picture up, please? It is fulfilled by the second coming. If you look here, we looked at trumpets last week and we're now on the day of atonement.

[1:53] It says it's future. But it says that the feast speaks of Messiah saving Israel, not Messiah saving the church.

[2:04] Now, that's an important distinction because what we're going to discover as we go through the feast of atonement is that we are already living in the fulfillment of it. Because the feast of atonement takes people's sins and basically covers them up.

[2:22] All right. The Jews didn't stop sinning because they celebrated the feast. They carried on sinning. But from God's perspective, from God's eyes, they were shielded from God's eyes.

[2:34] And he chose to turn a blind eye to them for one year. And then at the end of the year, they would celebrate the feast again. So this went on year, on year, on year.

[2:46] But then Christ came. And after he came on the feast of Pentecost, you remember when we studied the feast of Pentecost, the church was born. And when the church was born, people got the opportunity to be born again.

[3:02] And when you are born again, your sin is completely covered by God. Now, we're going to look at a time when the Jews were continuing in sin year upon year.

[3:12] And every year they celebrated this feast, which gave them some rest and gave them some peace that God was overlooking their sins for the next year.

[3:25] When it comes to the church, there's a difference, isn't there? Because, I mean, put your hand up if you have stopped sinning. Yeah, it's, we can't go, yeah, that's me, I'm fully righteous now.

[3:39] So for the moment, God is turning a blind eye to my and your sins. With a view to bringing about a time eventually, when, as it says in 1 Corinthians 15, somewhere between verses 50 and 58, this corruption that's in my heart will be replaced by incorruption.

[4:02] This mortality will be replaced by immortality. So the purpose of the feast of atonement was to cover the sins of Israel. The purpose of the birth of the church and the baptism of the Holy Spirit was to cover our sins until the rapture of the church.

[4:20] So, yeah, that was not the introduction I planned for today. So I'm already completely at odds with my own notes, but most of you who know me will not be at all surprised by this.

[4:34] So we've had three feasts. We've had the feast of Passover, which spoke of the coming crucifixion, at which the price for the sin of mankind would be paid by the shed blood of Jesus.

[4:48] We then came to the feast of unleavened bread, which was a metaphor for the burial of Jesus. Then on the third day of unleavened bread, we saw the feast of first fruits, which spoke to us of the resurrection.

[5:01] Then we had the feast of Pentecost, which is where the church was born, which we've already given a mention to. Then we have the autumn feast and the feast of trumpets.

[5:12] We discussed at some length that this is speaking of Jesus's second coming to the earth. He promised he would come again. Those people who saw him ascend, the angels at the time said he will come back exactly as he left.

[5:28] He'll come back on the clouds and he will return to earth. And the feast of trumpets forecasts that. And if you want to know more, get this study.

[5:39] It's online. And so these feasts were in the book of Leviticus. If you turn quickly to Leviticus 23. And as you will have noted in previous sessions, the feasts of Israel are enumerated in Leviticus 23 in chronological order.

[5:59] And this feast is slightly peculiar because it's recorded in chronological order, but it wasn't born at this time. It was born earlier. And we'll look at that in a moment.

[6:09] But in verse 26, the Lord spoke to Moses saying on exactly the 10th day of this seventh month is the day of atonement.

[6:20] It shall be a holy convocation for you and you shall humble your souls and present an offering by fire to the Lord. You shall not do any laborious work on this same day, for it is a day of atonement to make atonement on your behalf before the Lord your God.

[6:38] If there is any person who will not humble himself on this same day, he shall be cut off from his people. As for any person who does any work on this same day, that person I will destroy from among his people.

[6:51] You shall do no work at all. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places. It is to be a Sabbath of complete rest to you.

[7:02] You shall humble your souls on the ninth of the month at evening. From evening until evening, you shall keep your Sabbath.

[7:15] So this instruction is given in this chapter of Leviticus to keep people celebrating the feast in order. A couple of things to remember. Whether it says it's a holy convocation, that word, one of the translations of that word is rehearsal.

[7:31] This is a rehearsal for a future event that hasn't yet happened and is going to happen. You're rehearsing things.

[7:44] The word atonement is an interesting word. The word atonement in Hebrew is the word kaphar. And kaphar is the same word for it means to cover.

[7:55] So everything that we're about to read is not dealing with sin. It's not getting rid of sin. It's covering sin. The same word is used when the building of Noah's ark is talked about.

[8:09] And it says the ark shall be covered within and without with pitch. The word is kaphar. So it's a cover up. It's the equivalent of sweeping the muck under the rug where you can't see it.

[8:20] And you may then ask, well, what's the point then? Well, the point is God has chosen not to look upon it until such time as he can deal with it. And as I've already said, he's already dealt with it as far as the church is concerned.

[8:34] When we become born again, our sin is covered for the moment. I had a conversation with someone a little while back who was worried about their ability to stay out of sin.

[8:47] And I've said, you don't need to worry about that because God has it covered. That doesn't mean you go about and sin as if nothing's happened. You know, you don't. As the apostle Paul said, should I sin more so that grace may increase?

[9:01] Never. Never. So the point is, you're not going to overcome sin in your own strength anyway. So worrying about it's not going to help you.

[9:12] And for the moment, he's covered it. But he hasn't yet for the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel are still in this place where they have rejected their Messiah.

[9:23] And they still have a time to come where they will be reintroduced to him when he comes again. And that's what these feasts speak of. Now, if people are going to seek forgiveness, they need to know what they're seeking forgiveness for.

[9:39] And in the last session, we realized that for about a month and a half before this feast, they spent time examining themselves.

[9:50] You know, the word that we read where it says you must humble your souls. Has anybody got an old King James? Can you tell me what word is used in Leviticus 23?

[10:03] Where he says you need to humble your souls. Verse 26. Afflict your souls. Which is a stronger word than humble, isn't it? Humbling your souls just suggests, oh, I need to take a humble attitude.

[10:17] Afflicting your soul tends to have with it a kind of a beat yourself up over this connotation, doesn't it? Take yourself to task.

[10:29] So the word afflict there is a better translation of the Hebrew. It means sort yourself out and fess up to what it is that you're doing wrong. Hold yourself to account by God's standard.

[10:42] And, you know, we all have a problem with God because he's perfect. So his standards are perfect. Put your hand up if you're perfect. No, me neither. But God's calling is to be perfect.

[10:56] So how on earth can we? Well, we can't. Unless he says, I'll cover that for now. And at some future point, I will make you perfect. And I'm so glad the responsibility for that is with him and not with me.

[11:10] Because I would mess it up. So the Jews' status before God depended upon him getting to the Feast of Atonement, having for the previous month and a bit examined his heart and afflicted his soul.

[11:26] So that when it comes to the Feast of Atonement, he's putting himself before God saying, God, this is what I am like and I really don't want to be this kind of person.

[11:38] I am so far from your perfection. And that honesty is what God requires for him to say, that's okay. And part of saying that's okay always involves a sacrifice of blood.

[11:52] Because without the shedding of innocent blood, sin cannot be forgiven. Now that picture was always in Scripture because the innocent blood of bulls and goats was only able to cover sin for a year.

[12:06] But it led up to the shedding of the innocent blood of Jesus Christ, which covered sins once and for all. And we will return to that a little bit later. So we read about the Feast in Leviticus 23, but it's actually born in Leviticus 16.

[12:25] But don't turn to 16 just yet. Turn back to chapter 9. Chapter 9 is another place where the principle of atonement is talked about.

[12:37] And in chapter 9, if we start at verse 1, what God does is he gives instruction as to how a Jew must approach him.

[12:50] Now, of course, latterly, after the crucifixion and when the veil in the temple that separated man from God was torn into, all this was superseded. But at the time, if you were going to approach God, you had to do it on his terms.

[13:04] Because unrighteousness cannot stand before a holy God. And so these were the instructions given to Aaron the priest. It came about on the eighth day that Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel.

[13:17] And he said to Aaron, Take for yourself a calf, a bull for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering, both without defect, and offer them before the Lord.

[13:29] Then to the sons of Israel you shall speak, saying, Take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both one year old, without defect, for a burnt offering, and an ox and a ram for peace offerings, to sacrifice before the Lord, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the Lord your God will appear to you.

[13:50] So what were they trying to achieve by all this sacrifice? To get God to appear to them. But the thing to note is, they couldn't stand before God unless innocent blood had been shed for their sins.

[14:03] And even then, it was only a temporary provision. The blood was shed. Sin was covered long enough for God to meet with them. Meeting with them under any other circumstances would have resulted in their death.

[14:17] So, if we then, actually, we'll read on, because if we go on to verse 23, Moses and Aaron went out into the tentative meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.

[14:33] So God had made them a promise that if they approached him correctly, he would appear to them. And then they gathered, and they had done everything that was bidden of them. And so the presence of the Lord appeared to them.

[14:47] And there are lots of places in Scripture, I don't have time to go through them this morning, but there are lots of places in Scripture where people died because the Lord appeared to them. Or because they were in the presence of the Lord without being in a right situation.

[15:01] So, then what happened, if you just look at chapter 10, Now, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respected firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

[15:21] So these two guys, sons of Aaron, went before God in a manner that he had not sanctioned. So they went in all their sinfulness.

[15:33] Verse 2, And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, It is what the Lord spoke, saying, By those who come near me, I will be treated as holy, and before all the prophets, I will be honored.

[15:51] So Aaron therefore kept silent. So, what you have here, apart from a couple of, you'd have to say they were foolish men, who'd gone into the presence of God and taken no notice of his instructions, and just put themselves there before the Lord, and the fire came out of heaven and struck them both dead.

[16:12] Interesting, if you read on, they were eventually carried out of that place, still wearing their tunics. So that fire didn't touch their clothing, it just dealt with them. But fire came out of the presence of the Lord and consumed them.

[16:26] All the Jews who had witnessed what Moses had said, all the Jews that knew that Aaron had been into the Holy of Holies and done business with the Lord, and that had brought the presence of the Lord before all of the people, because he'd done it the way God said.

[16:43] And by the way, we still need to do things the way God says. Because the way God says is, you need to honour my son, my son who I gave to die for you.

[16:54] You need to honour him. Those that honour him are blessed. Those who don't are doomed. It's very, very simple. Ah, it doesn't mean it. Yes, it does.

[17:05] It does mean it. I sometimes have conversations with non-Christians who say, I just don't believe in God. You will. One day you will. And I just hope that it's before you face him as your judge.

[17:19] You know, while you face him as your saviour, it's a lot easier. So that happened in, recorded in chapter 10.

[17:30] If you now turn to chapter 16, and the reason I've gone the long way round the barn here, is because the Lord refers to this event. He calls Moses' attention back to this event and says, Now the Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they approached the presence of the Lord and died.

[17:51] The Lord said to Moses, Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter at any time into the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat which is on the ark, or he will die.

[18:04] For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. In other words, when you walk in there, you're not just going to encounter some kind of ethereal presence, but you're going to encounter me in all my glory.

[18:19] And it'll kill you, because sin cannot stand in the presence of a holy God. And part of the ritual involves burning some grain offering with incense, which creates a cloud so that when the presence of God is there, people are shielded from it.

[18:36] Reading on. Verse 3. Aaron shall enter the holy place with this, with a bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen tunic, and the linen undergarment shall be next to his body, and he shall be girded with the linen sash and attired with the linen turban.

[18:58] These are holy garments. Then he shall bathe his body in water and put them on. He shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering.

[19:12] Then Aaron shall offer the bull for the sin offering, which is for himself, that he may make atonement for himself and for his household. He shall take the two goats and present them before the Lord in the doorway of the tent of meeting.

[19:26] Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat. Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot for the Lord fell and make it a sin offering.

[19:39] In other words, that goat's going to die. But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement upon it, to send it to the wilderness as the scapegoat.

[19:51] So we'll just pause there for a moment. The instructions are, first of all, you're doing this so that you don't finish up in the same place as the sons of Aaron, right?

[20:02] You're going to do it properly, and this is how I, the Lord, want it done. Then the first thing he says, and I want to draw your attention. In fact, I'll have the second picture up, and I'll talk while it's there.

[20:16] He says to these guys who are priests by inheritance, and they haven't done anything special to be priests. In fact, we just learned about Nadab and Abihu that they were not immune from sin.

[20:32] So they would, what they're being instructed to do here, first and foremost, make an offering for yourself. If you go in there without your own self being purified by the shedding of innocent blood, a type of the later shedding of Christ's blood, if you don't go before God, if you don't go before God purified by this sacrifice, you will not even live.

[21:00] So that was the first thing. Now, the priest is a type of Christ, but there are, of course, strict limitations to the priest being a type of Christ, because the priest at the end of the day was a human being and was fallible.

[21:14] So the first difference is, he had to make a sacrifice to cover his own sin before he could act as a priest for you and me. It's one of the reasons why we are very foolish to entertain priests in today's church.

[21:26] They are obsolete. The high priest was Jesus Christ. There are no successors to Jesus Christ, except he said, you're a nation of priests.

[21:37] So we are all supposed to be priests to one another. But the priest, the head honcho, who sits there in his dog collar and has all these fine robes and so on and has some kind of headship over everybody, that is not biblical.

[21:54] Priesthood became obsolete after the death and resurrection of Jesus. But once the sacrifice had been made, now the priest would normally wear these garments.

[22:09] This doesn't, the picture doesn't do it justice, but this is almost certainly the most expensive garment in the world at the time. All right?

[22:20] Silver pomegranates and gold bells around the bottom, precious stones on the breastplate, right throughout the cloth, gold thread, not gold coloured thread, but gold thread.

[22:33] If you were to buy this garment today, a gold thing on his headrest as well, on his headdress rather, not headrest, headdress. If you were to buy this today, first of all, you'd have a job to find anybody to make it.

[22:46] But if you did, it would cost millions. This wouldn't be, you know, Diana's wedding dress would pale into insignificance beside this. This is hugely, hugely valuable.

[23:02] And if we just briefly turn to Exodus chapter 28, book of Exodus chapter 28. And I'm not going to read the whole of it because it waxes on about the precise details for this dress that the priest had to wear.

[23:21] But start with verse 1. Just let me check my own notes now that I've caught up with them. Yeah. Particularly verse 2. We'll start with verse 1.

[23:32] Then bring near to yourself Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him from among the sons of Israel to minister as priests to me Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, Eliezer, and Ithamar, Aaron's sons.

[23:47] You shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, and here's the important few words, for glory and for beauty. So, the reason this is a type of Christ is that you take a man, a normal, sinful man, like you and me, who's only there because his daddy was there and he's not there because he's done anything special.

[24:10] He's just a person like you or me. And these garments were created for the priest so that he would become glorious and beautiful.

[24:22] Someone who was not at all glorious and beautiful would become glorious and beautiful in order to minister to us as a priest. Now, just think for a moment.

[24:33] Jesus was inhabiting the glorious place next to the Father in heaven. It contained the kind of opulence that we can only, you can't even imagine.

[24:46] And the purpose of this garb is to give us some idea of how opulent it is to be in the presence of the Lord. And only when you are that kind of person that has been elevated to this place of glory and beauty can you represent others before God.

[25:05] So, if we then go back to chapter 16, you'll find another reference to glory and beauty in verse 40, by the way, in Exodus. But go back to Leviticus 16.

[25:16] So you've got this glorious and beautiful human being and the typology associated with Christ begins to emerge.

[25:31] So, verse 11. Then Aaron shall offer the bull of the sin offering which is for himself and make atonement for himself and for his household. He shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering which is for himself.

[25:44] He shall take a firepan full of coals and fire from the altar before the Lord and two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense and bring it inside the veil. For those of you who don't know, there was a veil in the temple, a very thick veil and no one was allowed inside it apart from the priest on this occasion once a year.

[26:05] The crucifixion, that veil was torn in two from top to bottom. More of that on future studies. Anyway, verse 13. He shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the ark of testimony otherwise he will die.

[26:22] In other words, he had to be shielded from God's glory. Moreover, he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side also in front of the mercy seat.

[26:32] He shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times. I'm going to pause there because I've missed a bit. Go back to verse 4. He shall put on the holy linen tunic and the linen undergarment shall be next to his body and he shall be girded with the linen sash and attired with the linen turban.

[26:54] These are holy garments. Once, effectively, he could have gone in like this in all the glory and beauty that a priest is supposed to represent and his normal duties as a priest would be conducted wearing this but on the day of atonement he went dressed like this and he had a pair of undershorts to protect his nakedness and that was it.

[27:18] Now, these are holy garments too. That's why they're white because white garments in scripture are always considered to be robes of righteousness but the point is with Jesus he'd come from heaven reflected here but when he came to pay the price for our sins he was a humble man who was dressed humbly in linen.

[27:41] He climbed down condescended is another way to put it. He climbed down from his high estate to come to earth and represent you and me and to get our sins forgiven.

[27:53] So it's a type of Christ. Now, of course, the priest is engaged in the feast of atonement dressed in effectively his underwear it's the best way I can say of describing it's not quite right but the garments that are normally not seen in humility you know you can almost imagine standing there in his white nighties saying I'm normally glorious and beautiful but the purpose of being there is to do what Messiah was going to do Messiah was going to pay for their sins by putting himself forward as a sacrifice for sin and it doesn't get more humble than that.

[28:36] He was going to be put to death. So this is a forerunner of this. So reading on chapter 16 so he's made a sacrifice at the end of verse 14 he's made a sacrifice for himself so he is now ritually pure.

[28:52] The other thing he had to do was wash himself with water so he's had a wash he's been purified he's had innocent blood shed on his behalf so for the moment he is purified he's also shielded from the glory of God that might kill him and he's ready to then make atonement for the people.

[29:13] Jesus came from heaven and humbled himself as a human and was ready having left his glorious estate with the father he's now ready to make sacrifice for the people except he's not sacrificing goats he's sacrificing himself the blood spilled is not that of a goat it's his own blood.

[29:34] In the feast of atonement however they selected two goats and the purpose of these goats was to make atonement for the people. So verse 15 he shall slaughter the goat of the sin offering which is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the impurities of the sons of Israel because of their transgressions in regard to all their sins and thus he shall do for the tent of meeting which abides with them in the midst of their impurities so he is not only making atonement for the people for himself and the people but he's also making atonement for everything they've touched they have made the holy things unclean by touching them and we we've lost this appreciation of how God views sin because God was saying that thing that you've touched is not clean until I've purified it doesn't matter what it is the tent of meeting the door handles you name it it all had to be cleansed and made pure before God could deal with it and we don't understand that the what we consider to be piffling sins there's a scripture that says if you if you break if you break the law in any respect you've broken the whole law

[31:00] God doesn't differentiate between these things he doesn't doesn't say well you're okay because you only nicked a mars bar when you were five or whatever it's it's sin and God's attitude to sin is it's got to be eradicated now for us that's yet future for the Jews it's yet future so as a Jew in these days what you were being told was that this goat represents you or rather these goats so the first goat goes in and is slaughtered and the blood is collected and taken inside the holy of holies probably with fear and trembling and I will just nail a couple of myths by the way you will have heard the stories that oh they used to tie a rope around his leg and pull him out if he died or you could hear the tinkling bells on the hem of his garment it's all rubbish I'm sorry but he didn't have the garment with the bells on he wasn't wearing that when he was in making the atonement sacrifices he was just in his underwear so it's a it's a it's a false myth and he wouldn't have been allowed to have a rope around his neck he was told what he had to wear around his neck around his leg he wouldn't he wouldn't have been allowed to have a rope around his leg the whole point of this exercise is learning to trust God as a God who keeps his promises learning to be faithful which of course is what we're all learning all the time to trust him

[32:29] God said if you do it my way you'll be fine so they did it his way and guess what they were fine and they all learned that they could trust God so he's been temporarily declared righteous and he's made these offerings for the people and for everything human hands have touched and then there's this one goat which is the Lord's goat which is going to be slain slit throat catch the blood sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat inside the Holy of Holies I cannot believe that the priest wasn't just a little bit nervous going in there because he knew what had happened to Nadab and Abihu did I get it right did I do it the way the Lord actually wanted me to do it and then there's this other goat which is referred to as the Azazel in Hebrew and it simply means scapegoat or perhaps a better way to say it is escape goat and as we read on verse 15 we got to didn't we he slaughtered the goat of the sin offering which is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull sprinkling it on the mercy seat verse 16 he's made it atonement for the holy place and everything else that humans have touched verse 17 when he goes in to make atonement in the holy place no one shall be in the tent of meeting until he comes out that he may make atonement for himself and for his household and for all the assembly of Israel

[34:03] I find it interesting by the way that the priestly offering was a bull whereas the offering for the common people was a lamb or a goat and the only I kind of tried to do some research into why the difference and I think one of the differences or the only one I could really find is that if you're acting as a priest there is an even higher expectation on you and that kind of converts into New Testament teaching in that those who teach are held to double account for what they teach which is one of the reasons that I am often very afraid when I teach because I don't take it lightly at all I would hate to be the carrier of error so this scapegoat reading on verse 20 when he finishes atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar he shall offer the live goat then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of

[35:07] Israel and all their transgressions in regard to their sins and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man my version says who stands ready or stands in readiness some of your versions will say hands of a suitable man the point here is that symbolically having sacrificed the goat for the sins they would then pray over this other goat and symbolically burden it with the sins of the people so that first of all must have been an incredibly long prayer but at the end of it symbolically that goat is standing there carrying all the sins that have been cast upon it by the people in prayer now another little myth some people say the second goat is a type of satan no it's not these two goats were one offering and part of that offering it had to be slain for the blood to pay for the sins of the people the other part simply demonstrated if you think of these two things one demonstrated the means of forgiveness the shed blood of the goat the other demonstrated the effectiveness of the forgiveness which was all our sins are now on this goat symbolically now take the goat away and in the early days of this they would take the goat something like ten miles away and release it and so this goat had gone carrying all the sins of the people never to be seen again there are various myths some of them might not even be myths they might actually be true but the people have said on at least one occasion the goat wandered back and therefore everybody was we don't want that to happen again but there was a fear that the goat might come back bringing with it all the sins that had been forgiven so they got into the habit then of leading it to the edge of a cliff and then making it go backwards over the cliff so that it would die so it couldn't possibly come back carrying their sins now all of that indicates to us the seriousness with which this community took sin they didn't they didn't deal in things like oh well I only fill in the blank or it was only a no they looked upon sin as sin and as unacceptable to God and for the time being they had to have that sin covered and this was their method of having it covered now alongside all of this back in

[37:51] Genesis chapter 3 God said he would send let's turn there if I try oh no I've run out of time and I'm nowhere near finished we'll just carry on next week you have Satan you have the fall of man verse 8 this is after they've been disobedient they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden then the Lord God called to the man and said to him where are you he said I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked so I hid myself and he said who told you that you were naked they didn't even have a concept of nakedness until they sinned who told you that you were naked have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat the man said the woman he's big brave man the woman whom you gave me to be with me she gave me from the tree and

[38:52] I ate then the Lord God said to the woman what is this that you have done and the woman said the serpent deceived me and the Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you more than all the cattle more than every beast of the field on your belly you will go and dust you will eat all the days of your life now here is the key verse and I will put enmity between you and the and between your seed and her seed he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel and I'm not going to read on just for the sake of time but what he said here was through the seed of a woman now that in itself is a weird concept for a Hebrew because everything was put through the seed of men but through the seed of a so there was this promise lingering in the background as they're going through all of this that one day

[39:54] God would send a permanent solution that he wouldn't require sacrifices to be done year in and year out that he would deal with sin in its entirety not by covering it but by eradicating it and I'm going to finish with the verse from and I might revisit this next time I speak because I feel maybe that's a bit wrong Jeremiah 31 we'll finish with because they also had other places in the scripture where God promised to bring something totally new in amongst all the celebrations of the old Jeremiah chapter 31 and verse 31 I turned to the wrong book myself Jeremiah 31 verse 31 and he says he's introducing the concept of a new covenant behold days are coming declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the church the house of

[40:55] Israel and with the house of Judah not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt my covenant which they broke and sharing this word in the mighty name of

[42:49] Jesus Amen