Leviticus 16:3-34 Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.… We cannot regard the symbolical arrangements of this Day of Atonement without feeling that it is a matter of supreme importance, of urgent, indispensable necessity, that some means be devised whereby man may be separated, and separated for ever, from his sins — their guilt, their power, their memory. All the ceremonies of this day declare this fact, as do all the arrangements of the old economy, and indeed all the utterances of God's Word. What is the meaning of those abortive attempts to discover some scapegoat, who, if he cannot wholly bear, may at least share the burden and the blame? The religions and the irreligions, the beliefs and the infidelities of men declare the same fact with unmistakable plainness. Nothing can be more evident than that men have the haunting consciousness of sin, from which they seek to escape; some in one way, some in another. Man everywhere has knowledge enough of sin to feel that it would be indeed a good thing to be separated, if not from sin itself (and from that the sinner is not willing to part) at least from those wretched, miserable consequences which follow in its train. Turning away from the vain and fruitless efforts of men in this direction, we find that what is impossible with men is possible with God. We find, indeed, that God has interposed in a very wonderful way to secure this result — the separation of man from Bin, and all the hateful and deadly consequences of sin, and that by the sacrifice and substitution of His own Son, our Saviour. And the arrangements of the Day of Atonement were Divinely ordered that they might prefigure, in its character and consequences, that true atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ — that complete and finished sacrifice offered once for all by Him, "who is a priest, not according to the law of a carnal commandment, but according to the power of an endless life" — "a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizelek." And, as we have already remarked, our attention is especially directed to two things — the means of atonement, and the result, the consequences of atonement; in other words, to the sacrifice for sin, and the separation from it. We have a picture of the one in the goat slain and the blood sprinkled; we have a picture of the other in the leading forth into the wilderness of the sin-burdened goat, to return no more. The truth to which there is need for the most express testimony to be borne is the atonement of Christ — atonement by means of blood-shedding and blood-sprinkling. Whether men bear or forbear, whether it seem to them wisdom or foolishness, we must everywhere proclaim the same truth, that the only atonement made known in God's Word is atonement by sacrifice by the substitutionary sacrifice of God's own Son. (T. M. Morris.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering. |
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