Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Alright.

Go ahead and grab a seat.

We are in the middle of our Christmas series called The Promised Christ where we are taking an in depth look at how Christ serves us as our Mediator between us and God.

All throughout the OT, God promised to save his people from their sins by sending the Christ, by sending his Messiah, the savior of the world.

And God ultimately fulfilled this promise by sending his Son, Jesus, who was born of a virgin around 2,000 years ago in the small town of Bethlehem.

nd God ultimately fulfilled this promise by sending his Son, Jesus, who was born of a virgin around 2,000 years ago in the small town of Bethlehem.

Jesus is the Christ who was promised.

He is our Mediator who reconciles us to God through his sinless life, sacrificial death, and bodily resurrection.

Without Christ, you and I would not be able to worship the One True God because throughit is in him alone that we are reconciled to God He has reconciled us to God through his sinless life, sacrificial death, and bodily resurrection so that we could be forgiven and worship the One True God.

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

As our Mediator, Jesus reconciles us to God by serving us as our Prophet, Priest and King.

Theologically, these are referred to as the three offices of Christ.

You see, in the OT, God lived in relationship with his people through three types of mediators.

There were the prophets who spoke God’s Word and called Israel to repentance.

There were the priests who led God’s people in worship and offered sacrifices on their behalf.

And there were the kings who led God’s people to obey the covenant and walk in relationship with God.

And Christ, being our perfect Mediator, fulfills all three of these offices in one person, Jesus, the Son of God.

To help you understand, think of Christ like Jesus’ job title, and of the offices as his job description.

As our Prophet, Priest, and King, Jesus serves us as our perfect Mediator and saves us from our sin as the Christ of God.

Last week, we focused on how Christ is our Prophet who revealed God’s glory and prophesied, or spoke on God’s behalf, that he alone gives eternal life.

This week, we are going to focus on Christ as our perfect Priest who atones for our sin through the sacrifice of his blood.

In the OT, the priests were the ones called to lead God’s people in worship and most of their job dealt with offering sacrifices for sin.

It wasn’t that these sacrifices actually saved people.

After all, the author of Hebrews said it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

But what the sacrifices did do, was point God’s people to how the Messiah would ultimately save them from their sin as their perfect Priest, while at the same time providing a temporary way to deal with Israel’s sin until God sent him.

So even in the OT, God’s people weren’t saved by obeying the law or through animal sacrifices.

They, like us, were saved through faith in the Messiah.

They just happened to look forward for a Messiah who was to come whereas we look backward to the Messiah who has come, Jesus Christ, who atoned for our sin through his death on the cross.

And the absolute pinnacle of the ministry of the priesthood, the clearest picture of what the Messiah would ultimately do for God’s people as their perfect Priest, was the Day of Atonement.

And as we study the Day of Atonement, my big Idea for this sermon is that Christ is our Great High Priest who makes atonement for our sin by offering his own blood to forgive us and make us clean.

So I want you to turn to so we can see just what God was trying to show his people about the Christ through the Day of Atonement and how he would ultimately save them from their sin.

First let me give you a little bit of background of the book of Leviticus.

My big Idea for this sermon is

Leviticus is one of those books of the Bible that really confuses Christians and is even very difficult for many Christians to read because it essentially is a book of commands that the people of Israel had to obey to worship the Lord.

It is usually the killer of your Bible reading plan because most Christians can’t seem to see why the book of Leviticus is beneficial to them and their walk as a Christian.

For them it is little more than a book that details all the Laws of the Old Covenant which Christians are not bound to obey because Christ has already obeyed them perfectly on our behalf.

But Leviticus really is a glorious book of the Bible and some have even gone so far to call it the seedbed of New Testament theology.

So Here’s why Leviticus is so beneficial for you as a Christian to understand.

If there is one big idea that permeates every word in the book of Leviticus it is that God is holy.

That God is pure and perfect in righteousness, that he is light and in him there is no darkness at all, and because of that, his very nature abhors the presence of sin.

Thus, Leviticus teaches us some pretty bad news.

That God in his holiness, cannot accept sinful people into his presence.

But on the other hand, Leviticus also proclaims good news.

That God provided a way to deal with sin and allow sinners into his holy presence through sacrifices.

So all of those commands in the book of Leviticus that seem foreign or confusing are meant to show you just how holy God is, and all the instructions about sacrifices show how God, in his grace, atones for his people’s sins so they can worship him.

Leviticus is a book all about Jesus because it points to how God would ultimately atone for sin in the death of Christ and invite us to worship him in holiness, and this is most clearly seen in the Day of Atonement.

I.

The Day of Atonement

The Day of Atonement occured once a year and was performed by the High Priest.

It was the highest holy day of Israel’s worship and the biggest day on their calendar every year because it was the day that laid the foundation for the rest of Israel’s worship.

The Day of Atonement did a few things:

The High Priest

For one, it atoned for Israel’s sin so that God could continue dwelling in the midst of his people.

It also purified the tabernacle (and later the temple), as well as all the instruments Israel used to worship the Lord so that the worship they offered to God would be holy and acceptable to him.

Basically, The Day of Atonement was the ceremony that allowed God’s people to live in relationship with him in his presence and worship him as God.

and the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die.

For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat.

And it all started with the High Priest preparing himself to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people.

He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body, and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist, and wear the linen turban; these are the holy garments.

He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on.

Now ordinarily, when the priests would offer sacrifices they would only wash their hands and their feet.

But on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would bathe his entire body.

This was to make sure that the high priest would not enter the Holy of Holies with any kind of dirt or impurity on his body because the Holy of Holies was where God’s very presence dwelt in the midst of his people.

And if the high priest entered into God’s presence unclean or impure in any way, then he would literally die for his sin.

Not only that, but the high priest also took off the high priestly garments that he normally wore to show dignity and glory as the religious leader of the One True God, and instead would put on a simple linen outfit.

The simplicity of these clothes were meant to remind the high priest and the people that they could not enter God’s presence arrogantly.

It was solely by God’s grace that they were able to live in relationship with the living God.

Then, after the high priest would prepare himself, he would offer sacrifices for his own sins.

; But in this way Aaron shall come into the Holy Place: with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering... Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.

So the priest would make two sacrifices for himself.

The first was a bull as a sin offering and the second was a ram as a burnt offering.

The sin offering was a sacrifice that paid the penalty of sin on behalf of the one offering it.

The wages of sin is death so when someone would kill an animal as a sin offering that animal would serve as a substitute for the sinner dying in their place.

A bull was offered because it was the most prized sacrificial animal, and if the priest was going to offer sacrifices on behalf of all the people of Israel, then they had to offer the best sacrifice possible for their own sin.

And the high priest would take the blood of the bull and enter the holy of holies.

Now, if you look on this picture (Tabernacle), the holy of holies was where God’s very presence dwelt in the midst of his people so in order to protect himself from looking upon the glory of the Lord and dying for his sin, the priest would take a censer full of coals to fill the holy of holies with smoke to veil God’s glory.

Then he would take the blood of the bull and sprinkle it on the mercy seat which we will talk about in a moment.

After that, the priest offered the ram as a burnt offering to make atonement for the himself.

Atonement is the word we use to describe how we are reconciled to God.

The Hebrew word for atonement means to purge or wipe clean.

So when someone has their sin atoned for, their sin is purged and through the blood of the sacrifice they are made clean.

Basically, the burnt offering was an offering that cleansed someone from their sin and reconciled that person to God to worship him.

Then, after the priest offered sacrifices for his own sin, he would offer sacrifices on behalf of the people.

; And he shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering...Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.

So after the high priest offered sacrifices for himself, he took the sacrifices from the people to offer to the Lord.

Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.

9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

And these sacrifices were two goats and one ram.

The ram was used for the same purpose as the priest’s ram.

It was to be sacrificed as a burnt offering to the Lord after all the other sacrifices to make atonement for Israel so that they could once again worship the Lord.

Where we want to focus our attention is on the two goats.

Each goat had a specific purpose to symbolically deal with Israel’s sin.

Upon receiving the two goats, the high priest would take each goat to the entrance of the tent of meeting where the Lord’s presence dwelt and he would cast lots for each goat.

Think of lots like rolling the dice or drawing straws.

And casting lots determined which goat was to be for the Lord and which was to be for Azazel.

Azazel is a debated word that we don’t exactly know the meaning of, but most likely it is the general name used to refer to the desolate wilderness far from God’s people which we will see the importance of in just a moment.