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The ceremonies and services undertaken on Yom Kippur are a live-action tutorial God used to show us how He addresses our willful infractions, misdemeanors and felonies. The sin offerings that were offered in the Temple the other 364 days of the year were to atone for accidental, absent-minded mistakes.
We all have our weaknesses, our rebellious moments, those “I don’t want to do the right thing and you can’t make me” kind of unforced errors.
The regular sin offerings don’t atone for these more serious breaches of the Torah. Once a year, God instituted a way to atone for the willful, rebellious transgressions and iniquities that we all do.
The what of Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16)
Leviticus 16 lays the foundation for our Yom Kippur lesson today.
The objective of Yom Kippur is for the High Priest to cleanse himself, the congregation and the Temple itself from all of their sins before YHVH.
How can inanimate objects such as an altar, a building, structures made of wood and cloth become unclean?
God knows us better than we know ourselves. Our brains are extremely good at rationalizing ourselves to anything imaginable. We can convince ourselves that our accidental sins were truly accidental, when most of the time, they were actually willful. Our brains are very powerful. We can convince ourselves anything is true, even if it’s dead wrong. Our brains very good and God made them extremely powerful. So I can convince myself that I did something accidentally, though in reality, God knows better. I did it on purpose. I can rationalize away a large transgression and fool others into believing that it was trivial. I can offer an offering whatever animal for the “accidental sin” or the “unintentional sin” but in reality, it was intentional.
When we give a sacrifice for an accidental sin that was actually willful, we have killed an innocent animal for no good purpose. When you kill an animal for an insincere offering, what have you done? As the Torah points out, when you kill an animal with insincerity, you’re just spilling blood, you’re guilty of murdering the animal. You’ve brought a false sin covering. By giving an offering that had no real value, you’ve contaminated the Temple with your insincerity.
The Israelites could fool themselves, they could fool the High Priest, but no one can fool God.
When the High Priest confesses the sins over the goats, what sins are he confessing. He’s not confessing his own, because he already did that when he sacrificed the bull. Since he can’t possibly know the sins of each individual Israelite, he is confessing them all.
However, since the High Priest is doing all the hard work, can we just kick back and relax? No, we are told that we are to “afflict our souls.”
Why would we bother to afflict our souls if the High Priest is already doing all the work? What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?
The Torah mentions that the High Priest had to cast lots to chose which goat went to the wilderness and which goat was sacrificed, but there’s a long standing Jewish tradition, that provides a lot more detail. The Talmud tells us more about how the process of casting lots worked. There were two stones in a black bag, one stone was black, the other white. The black stone was the stone for Azazel and the white stone was the “lot for the Lord.”
Normally, you would have a 50/50 chance of pulling out either the white stone or the black stone first. That’s the law of averages.
“Our rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple the lot [‘For the Lord’] did not come up in the right hand; nor did the crimson-colored strap become white; nor did the western most light shine; and the doors of the Hekel [Temple] would open by themselves”
Yoma 39b, Soncino version
If the High Priest chose the white lot with his right hand, this was auspicious, meaning that God would accept the Yom Kippur offerings on behalf of the people, and God would forgive all their sins, but if the High Priest chose the black lot first, this was considered a sign to the High Priest that the children of Israel were not sincerely repentant.
During the two hundred years before Yeshua’s crucifixion and ascension in 30 CE, when the High Priest picked one of two stones, again this selection was governed by chance, and each year the priest would select a black stone as often as a white stone. But for forty years in a row, beginning in 30 CE, the High Priest always picked the black stone! The odds against this happening are astronomical. The chances of this occurring are 1 in approximately 5,479,548,800 or about 5.5 billion to one!
This was God’s way of letting the High Priest know whether the people were repentant or not. Anytime the black stone was drawn first and then the white, he knew something was wrong this year with either the people or the priests themselves. Many people aren’t being sincere about repenting of their screw ups. The high priests would know that the majority of the people were not sincerely repentant, were not sincerely afflicting their souls for the sake of Heaven.
During the 30 or so years of the reign of Simon the High Priest, he always drew the white lot with his right hand, which meant that his sacrifices were always found acceptable. Now, whether that was because of Simon’s righteousness, the people’s righteousness, or both, you can find arguments for any of those.
The key point is that after the Messiah died, during those approximately 40 years between 33–70 CE, the priest would always draw the black stone first, which meant that God no longer accepted the Yom Kippur offerings.
The whole point behind it was that the priests themselves may or may not be aware of the sins of the people. The priest’s job was to confess general sins it as best he could but ultimately, the sinner is responsible for confessing his own sins.
This is what it really means to afflict our souls. We are to confess our sins to God, and to repent to each other for the sins we have committed against our neighbor. If we fail to confess or accept our mistakes and actually address them and try to fix them, why bother wasting our time fasting and refraining from work and whatever we would rather be doing today?
If you aren’t willing to address your failures and repent of them, you’re just wasting your time. You might as well be at work, making money. You might as well be eating a good meal and drinking good wine.
You’re wasting your breath and your effort. A unexamined life is not worth living, right? If you’re not willing to examine your life, you’re wasting your time suffering needlessly on Yom Kippur, for appearances only.
Don’t waste this appointed time. Don’t cover it with fake sincerity.
Now imagine you are in the shoes of the High Priest. All the other offerings are done and now he is ready to cast the lots for the goats and you see him pull up the wrong stone. You have to imagine what is going through his head. Is this because of my sin? Is this because of the sins of the people? Are most of them sincerely repentant or not? Every year he has to go through this analysis. He is aware something is wrong.
It is the natural human instinct to try to figure out how to make it better so God will be pleased next year. If we enact more fences around the Torah, more restrictions on myself to do a better job next year.
It’s one thing to work on one’s own weaknesses but how can you work on the weaknesses of others if they are not honest with you or themselves about what those weaknesses are? I’m sure that the High Priests faced these issues felt like failures.
However, there were High Priests who saw problems and faced them head-on, as Aaron did when the plague came through the camp. He immediately ran straight into the danger with only an incense burner and he stopped the plague.
Aaron was a leader, Yeshua was a leader. Yeshua came to those who acknowledged they needed a physician for their souls.
The biggest problem that Yeshua ran towards was death. He faced it head on and conquered sin and death in His crucifixion, death and ressurection.
He was not like Eli the High Priest, who failed to address the problems his sons were causing. Instead, he ran away and hid from his sons. He didn’t want to talk to about it. He refused to address their failures and the tabernacle and the people who came to seek God suffered as a result.
The why behind Yom Kippur (Hebrews 9–10)
The entire book of Hebrews addresses the topic of the High Priest and His role in the Temple. I want to take a deeper look at Hebrews 9-10.
God does not want a person who is insincere, who refuses to admit and address failures. People who don’t really want to change anything or improve their spiritual walk. He is not drawing us to Him so we can go about our own regular life.
It’s our job to address our physical failings, such as not eating healthy or exercising enough but Yeshua is there to help us address our spiritual failings, but He can only address what we are ready to confess.
Now the thing is that even back in the days of the Temple, if everything went right on Yom Kippur, if God accepted the people’s repentance because it was honest and sincere, people will still sin again the next day.
Only the Messiah can address the root cause of sin. We can fix the outside, but only Messiah can heal the inside. Only one offering for sin, transgressions and iniquities is perfect.
Fasting as a lesson on setting boundaries
It’s a waste of time to fast and gather on Yom Kippur if you expect to High Priest to fix everything if you are not willing to acknowledge your brokenness.
We need to set reasonable boundaries for ourselves. For example, if you are one of those people who can’t eat just a small handful of potato chips. If your self control in that area is lacking, you don’t buy them and bring them into the house. You don’t allow a bag of potato chips to cross the threshold of your door. It’s not illegal to buy or eat potato chips but if that is your weakness, then setting a strong boundary around that weakness is perfectly reasonable.
This is also true on the mental and spiritual level. If you have a spiritual weakness in a particular area, you have to address it regularly and prevent the situation from entering your world.
For example, people who are addicted to internet porn may have to draw a strict boundary by not owning a computer or a cell phone so that can’t gain a foothold into their sphere.
The apostle Ya’akov (James) warned us of the danger of looking at ourselves in the spiritual mirror and then walking away and immediately forgetting what we saw (James 1:21–25). There’s an inherent problem there. You can’t address a problem if you see it and then ignore it and forget it.
We have to acknowledge that we don’t really have the willpower to avoid all sin. When we say “God willing, I will see you tomorrow,” we are acknowledging that we have no control over whether we will wake up tomorrow. We have no control over whether we will get into our cars and drive safely to work.
If we can’t control such basic life functions, how can we control all of our actions over the course of a lifetime.
Since you need God’s help to wake up in the morning, you also need to acknowledge the fact you need God’s help to do anything else, whether it’s avoiding the temptation of a large bag of potato chips or overcoming any other temptations or besetting sins.
Just remember that God will carry you through this. Is it easy? No. Is it supposed to be easy? No. Is it worth it. Absolultely.
Messiah Yeshua didn’t come to help those who arrogantly assume they are strong. He came for those who are humble enough to admit their weakness. This is the spirit of Yom Kippur. Admit your weakness, and acknowledge that Messiah Yeshua is the only one who can help you overcome them.
Summary: Tammy