Leviticus 16:20-22 And when he has made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar… I. THE TYPICAL SACRIFICE HERE ENJOINED. 1. Appointed by God. Therefore an atonement fully equal to our guilt; a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice; an oblation which satisfies the unbending law and even the infinitely holy mind of the great Jehovah, which leaves justice nothing to ask for, and the redeemed sinner nothing to dread. 2. The efficacy of the sacrifice enjoined in it must be traced to the Divine appointment. II. THE CONDUCT WHICH AARON WAS COMMANDED TO OBSERVE WITH RESPECT TO IT. The mere appointment of these two animals as a sin-offering was not sufficient to atone for the transgressions of the Israelites: the one must be slain, and the other must be presented before the Lord and have particular ceremony performed over it, before Israel can be pardoned. 1. A part of this ceremony consisted in the confession of guilt. We are called on to be very earnest in our efforts to become acquainted with the full extent of our depravity; to be often looking into our hearts and reviewing our lives, and to be particular and minute in acknowledging the sins which we discover there. 2. It tells us that the high priest, slier having confessed over the goat the sins of the people, was to transfer them to the victim before him; he was to put them on its head, thus intimating that their guilt no longer rested on them but on the devoted animal on which his hands were laid. The spiritual meaning of this part of the ceremony is plain. It was designed to teach us figuratively the same blessed truth which has now been revealed to us without a figure, and which constitutes the substance and glory of the gospel, that "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"; that, "He bare our sins in His own body on the tree"; that the Lord hath laid on Him "the iniquities of us all." III. THE BENEFITS WHICH RESULTED FROM AARON'S OBEDIENCE TO THE INJUNCTIONS GIVEN HIM. After the appointed confession had been made over it, and the sins of the people put upon its head, the goat was to be sent away into an uninhabited wilderness. 1. This was undoubtedly designed to show us the completeness of that pardon of sin which Christ has purchased by the sacrifice of Himself for the believing sinner. It is a pardon extending, not to a few iniquities, but to all. 2. But the pardon the believing penitent receives through Christ is an everlasting, as well as a complete pardon. This is strongly implied in the text. The goat was not only to bear away all the iniquities of the children of Israel, but it was to bear them away into "a wilderness," into "a land not inhabited"; a land cut off from all other countries; a desolate, unvisited, and almost inaccessible region, in which the devoted animal was to be let go, and where it would remain unseen and forgotten till it perished. The Israelites therefore had .not only the assurance that all their past iniquities were pardoned, but they were taught also by this ordinance that they had no reason to fear the return of them, or the revoking of this pardon. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat: |
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