Faith meets fullness of mercy in Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)

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There are three ways that we as human beings move away from God, and all of these are the focus of Yom Kippur: 

1. Sins: missing the mark, like one aiming for a target and missing the bullseye. You truly meant to hit the bullseye, but for whatever reason, the arrow deviated from the target just a little bit or a lot, but the aim was genuine.
2. Transgressions: these are more willful wrongs against God. You simply don’t want to do what is right because you’ve been dragged away and enticed to either refrain from doing what you know is right or to do something you know is wrong but somehow justified it for a while.
3. Iniquities: This level of wrongdoing against God is on a whole other level. Iniquities are acts of treason against God, actively rebelling against heaven. An example of this is the example of Korach when he instigated a rebellion against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. HaSatan is another example of what it means to be in active rebellion against Heaven. 

When we studied through Leviticus 1–6, we read through all the different sacrifices and how they were to be performed. What is one thing they had in common? What was their purpose?

They were instituted to deal with unintentional wrongdoings.  

But as we have prayed through the traditional Yom Kippur prayer Kol Nidre — and the long list of sins there — which one of us have committed intentional sins? All of us are in that camp. All of us are in need of a High Priest, who is the only one who can atone for intentional sins. Because of this, you have to trust that God’s way is the right way to live, that his words show us how to walk towards eternal life rather than eternal death. 

Once you restore that trust in God, you can return to the path. God is not in heaven with the big, red, smite button waiting for an excuse to snuff you out. 

When you return to the path, admitted your failures, the Creator of Heaven and Earth is more than willing to accept you back. 

There are several layers of trust that the people of Israel had to walk through on Yom Kippur. 

First of all, before the high priest could even start to atone for the sins of the nation, he had to atone for his own sins, and he had to do that every year and he had to do that all by himself, with no help or supervision. They had to trust that he was doing exactly what God commanded in Leviticus 16. You had to trust the high priest’s integrity. 

You have probably read about how in the 30–40 years after Yeshua’s death and resurrection the Day of Atonement did not work the way it did before. During those years, if you depended on that ceremony to atone for you, you were out of luck, because Heaven signaled its displeasure with the proceedings. 

The temple on earth was a shadow or representation of the temple in heaven and heaven no longer accepted the sacrifices of the earthly high priest on Yom Kippur during the years leading up to the final destruction of the temple in 70 AD. 

‘Will you call this a fast?’

There’s one component to the observance of Yom Kippur that the people perform physically — on the outside of themselves. It is a fast — traditionally of food and water — for the whole day. (See “Is fasting on Yom Kippur biblical?” in this primer on the day.)

In Isaiah 57-58, this fast was not a work to earn salvation but a tool of spiritual reflection and transformation. 

Yom Kippur is a day to make the conscious decision to turn away from doing what is wrong and return to what is right, both for ourselves and for those in our sphere of influence. 

On Yom Kippur, the High priest is to make several kinds of sacrifices, which culminated with the presentation of two goats. Both were to be perfect — without blemish. Only casting a lot would determine which goat would be sacrificed “for the LORD” and which would be cast out of the camp “for Azazel (scapegoat).” (See “Does the scapegoat symbolize Satan?” in the Yom Kippur primer.)

The point of casting the sins out of the camp is that shows that God is not keeping tabs of our sins to stick them in a file cabinet and pull them out to say “I gotcha” with later. That is not Heaven’s goal. 

Rather, Heaven’s stated goal is to create a “new heart” in us and transform us so that God’s instructions are internal, coming from the inside out, rather than something external that we wear from time to time like one wears a garment. 

That’s the beauty of the new covenant, explained through to Prophets (Jer. 31:31–34; Ezek. 36:25–26) before being put into action fully by the Messiah (Luke 22:20; 1Cor. 11:25). From Heaven’s point of view, our sins, transgressions and iniquities are gone, as though they never happened. 

Yom Kippur is in the middle of the fall feasts, which start with Yom Teruah, or Rosh Hashanah. After Yom Kippur, we look forward to Sukkot. What we are going through now is a yearly rehearsal of what will happen on the Day of the LORD.¹A common phrase in the Prophets referring to the events that bring in the Messianic age, or the “second coming.”

At Rosh Hashanah, we heard the shofar blasts to wake us up, sending out the alarm that God is turning His attention to us and to deal with those things that are in error and to clean that up. This is the start of God’s clean up operation. 

Those who truly want to repent and want their sins removed will obtain mercy and receive the judgement that leads to eternal life, but what about those who don’t want to repent and want to continue sinning? What about them? 

The point of this exercise is that God is inherently holy and He wants to live in the midst of His people but those who are not willing to be made holy can’t survive in His presence. One of God’s titles is Emmanuel, God with us. 

Cleaned from the inside out

Those who want to live in God’s presence have to be cleaned from the inside out. This is a part of the transformation and the renewing of the world. 

But this renewal can’t be crammed down from the top down. We have witnessed in history that such efforts result in rebellion. People find lots of ways around such efforts. 

Renewal has to come from the inside out. That is what Messiah Yeshua does. He is the greatest expression of God’s desire to dwell with His people, that He became a man to live as we live and to experience what we experience. 

One of Yeshua’s last conversations with His closest Apostles was answering Phillip’s request to see the Father. Yeshua told him “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” Yeshua prayed just before His crucifixion that everyone would know the Father. 

When John the Baptist referred to Yeshua as “The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” John is teaching us that Yeshua’s ministry was not just about blocking death but transforming humanity and restoring fellowship between Heaven and mankind. This title that John gave to Yeshua blends together the two great memorials of Israel’s calendar: Pesach and Yom Kippur. 

The truth is that on our own we will never measure up to the holiness God requires, but we also have the assurance that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

Summary: Tammy