The Truth of Atonement

 

A day of great wrath and fierce battle, a day of celebration and a day of mourning, a day that is a thousand years. The day of Atonement has so many layers to it that one study or explanation would be offensive if it were to suggest that’s all there is to the meaning of the day. It’s the same for all of the feast days; as soon as we settle on what they picture and wrap it up all neat with a bow, we prevent further learning about those days. We like to have things all neat and decided and finished, but there are so many more deeper layers to these days. We shouldn’t be surprised by this; after all, God created the Holy Days, and anything He creates is wonderfully complex in its makeup. The thing we have to remember is that different Holy Days can picture and point to things that do not actually happen on that day. 

As with all the Holy Days, Atonement is not so easily or neatly tied up with a bow. There is a lot of discussion about what different things mean or represent, and there is not enough time to go further into that today. The point of today is the Truth. All of our lives until it finally caught up with us, we were running from the Truth, and most of the world around us is still running from the Truth. We run because the Truth hurts; it tells us that we have been doing something wrong and we actually need to change. We need to walk a different way, and there is a God and a set if rules that we have to follow. Walking contrary to the Truth will always bring pain and suffering, yet most of the world prefers that rather than the pain of the Truth convicting their mind. They don’t want to know that there is something required of them. 

Yes, the world has a responsibility. With the conviction that the Truth brings, it brings something else with it. What is the Truth? God is Truth, and His Word is true. He cannot lie, and so His Word is the only constant source of Truth that we have. Without His Word that does not change, we toss about in the sea of doubt and false doctrine with nothing to anchor us, and eventually, we drown. 

Psalm 119:160 NKJV — The entirety of Your word [is] truth, And every one of Your righteous judgments [endures] forever.

John 17:17 NKJV — "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

God’s Word is the only source of Truth because it does not change. Everything else in the world around us changes rapidly every single day. Without the Truth, men think they can become women, cats, or babies. 

Numbers 23:19 CSB — God is not a man, that he might lie, or a son of man, that he might change his mind. Does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill? 

1 Samuel 15:29 CSB — "Furthermore, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind."

Since God is Truth, and He created us in His image, that means that we are constantly laboring to become like Him. We are laboring to become Truth. Now we start to see an inkling of where we are headed with this. This is what people are so afraid of. They don’t want to have to change, yet that is exactly what the Truth requires of them. God requires a change of heart, known as circumcision of the heart, and a change of life. This is only possible through baptism and the application of the shed blood of Christ. Nothing else can take away the sins of men, and everything else has always been inadequate. With every sin in the past, an animal would have to be offered, and then the next time you sinned, another animal would have to die. Christ died once for us all, so we no longer have to slay an animal every time we sin. There is something required of us, though. There is still something that we have to do, even before baptism. We must repent. This is what the Truth requires of people; repentance, which leads to baptism and a change in their lifestyle. This hurts! It’s really uncomfortable, and no one wants to change! No one wants to deny themselves the pleasures of life, no matter how damaging those pleasures might be! It’s hard to follow a diet; it’s even harder not to have a diet at all, as when we are fasting. Let’s turn to Leviticus 23:24. These are the instructions for the Day of Atonement, and we find something really uncomfortable that’s required of us. 

Leviticus 23:24-25, 27-32 CSB — "Tell the Israelites: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you are to have a day of complete rest, commemoration, and trumpet blasts ​-- ​a sacred assembly. 

25 "You must not do any daily work, but you must present a food offering to the LORD."  ... 

27 "The tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. You are to hold a sacred assembly and practice self-denial; you are to present a food offering to the LORD. 

28 "On this particular day you are not to do any work, for it is a Day of Atonement to make atonement for yourselves before the LORD your God. 

29 "If any person does not practice self-denial on this particular day, he is to be cut off from his people. 

30 "I will destroy among his people anyone who does any work on this same day. 

31 "You are not to do any work. This is a permanent statute throughout your generations wherever you live. 

32 "It will be a Sabbath of complete rest for you, and you must practice self-denial. You are to observe your Sabbath from the evening of the ninth day of the month until the following evening."

This affliction of our souls that we see here is fasting. My CSB version puts it as self-denial, and I like that. We are denying ourselves food for a day, a single day, and yet it’s extremely uncomfortable, and many of us might think that we are actually dying. Lots of people in the world, and even we in our own lives, feel like this when we are asked to give up sins. When the Truth catches up to us and lets us know that there are changes that need to be made, we are afraid of giving up our sins. In this scenario, food and water become somewhat representative of sin, just as in another earlier feast this year, leaven was representative of sin. The point is that we are denying ourselves things that we think we need, things we think we can’t even live one day without, and we are relying upon God, that what He says is true and that what He has to offer is better than the temporary pleasures we receive from sin. 

 Now what if we or those around us don’t respond when the Truth catches up to us? What if we ignore it and turn our backs on it, preferring to remain in our disease even though the disease hurts far worse than the cure and the work it would take? But at least we know this pain; we are comfortable with this pain. On the day of Atonement, there are two goats, and we can take a metaphor for what happens to us from one of these goats. 

Leviticus 16:21-22 CSB — "Aaron will lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the Israelites' iniquities and rebellious acts ​-- ​all their sins. He is to put them on the goat's head and send it away into the wilderness by the man appointed for the task. 

22 "The goat will carry all their iniquities into a desolate land, and the man will release it there.

If we don’t repent and seek forgiveness for our sins through the shed blood of Christ, then who bears our sins? We do. 

We bear our sins, and we die apart from God. The Truth hurts, it’s uncomfortable, and it takes work, but it hurts far less than the result of our hanging tightly onto the disease of our sins. 

As we have received the Truth and repented for our sins, we have been gifted with more Truth, and we have a responsibility to offer the life preserver of Truth to those around us. We have to make sure that we are repenting and coming to terms with the Truth before we can do this; however, so every year, we get two reminders to deny our fleshly nature and turn back to God. One with the days of unleavened bread in the spring and one with Atonement in the fall. We have a journey of repentance, and each time we go through this, we grow in the knowledge of the Truth. We start out by giving up leaven as babes in the Word, and by the time the fall comes around, we are ready for a complete and utter rejection of our sinful natures as mature men and women. God knows how short our memories are, so He gave us the gift of His Holy Days to give us road markers to turn back to Him and to keep learning more and diving deeper into His Truth. 

The Day of Atonement is a day of judgment, a day of wrath, and a day of battle for the world around us, but for us who have accepted the Truth, it is a day of repentance and turning back to God, a day that we draw closer to our creator. It is a day that brings lasting peace and a day that points back to the sacrifice of Christ and our commitment to Him. It is a day of rejoicing for us, and it is a day of mourning for those of the world. It is the beginning of our reign with Christ, and it is the great and mighty day of the Lord. As we are afflicting our souls today, let us remember why we are celebrating this day. We are celebrating because when the Truth caught up to us, we turned to face it, and we accepted that we had things we needed to change. That is not the end of it or the last time the Truth will ever require a change of us, and we need to be ready to answer and accept its conviction when it does, lest, as the Azazel goat, we bear our own sins and die apart from God.