This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name.
Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Leviticus, chapter 23, working through the feast, and we have finally gotten to where what most people would consider as far as the year, or, well, it would be the year. It's the year of feast and celebrations, the most holy of days, which is Yom Kippur. It is a kippur. It is a high holy day. It is the. What is what is called the day of atonement. It is the day where they come in and the high priest enters into the holy of holies. It's the only day of year where the high priest enters into the holy of holies. We've already kind of gone through earlier in leviticus how. How that is done. The high priest, lots of symbolism. Lots of symbolism. You have the symbolism of the scapegoat. You have the symbolism of the high priest washing and putting on white lemon. You have the picture of the sacrifice of the bur. And the SacrifICe of the goat. And then finally you have the picture of. And by the way, these pictures of. Of the bull and the goat is a picture of. Is a picture of sin. Bull being the flesh, the goat being the sin of God's people. They sacrifice the bull, and that is for the priest to place his sin on the bull. And then the bull be sacrificed. And then finally there is a goat that is sacrificed, and those are mixed together, and blood is taken into the holy of holies behind the curtain, as we've been talking about in Hebrews, as we've been studying through that in our January Bible study, that. That all that symbolism is a picture of God's atoning sacrifice for us through the great high priest or the high priest of Israel. So you go, well, I don't understand. What is the difference between this and Passover? Well, Passover is the picture of Jesus being the lamb of God. That takes away the sin of the world. Now, the day of atonement, or Yom Kippur, is a picture of him taking his sacrifice, really, and going into the holy of holies and providing that sacrifice through the attainment of the sin of the world. So you have separate actions. You have Jesus being the lamb of God and being the sacrifice. And then in Yom Kippur, you have Jesus being the high priest who takes his sacrifice into the holy of holies and makes atonement for the sin of his people. He atones once and for all, once and finally for the sin of all of his people. So that it. Sometimes, especially when you're not jewish and we're not, you kind of mix the metaphors. And I'm quite sure I do that myself oftentimes when I'm teaching, because. Because we haven't really gone through the feast and thought through the feast. But as we mix those metaphors, what you really have is two metaphors that are important. Jesus is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And Jesus is the great high priest who goes in and performs the act of atonement so that we can have relationship with him. So what does it say in. In Leviticus, chapter 23? And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, also, in the 10th day of the 7th month shall be the day of atonement. It shall be a holy convocation for you. You shall afflict your souls and offer an offering made by fire to the Lord. Now, the affliction of the soul is. Is the. The initial place of repentance. It is the place where we deal with our sin. Now, oftentimes in church, we have. We have. Where we created an environment where we are dealing with our sin in such a way that we are not convicting of sin, we're condemning of sin. And as far as our understanding of that, I think we have left some of our societal symbols that help us understand that there's a difference between being convicted and being condemned. A person is convicted when they're found guilty in a jury trial. In the state of Alabama, if you're convicted, then there will be a time period in between that conviction and that sentencing or that condemnation. Because. Because there needs to be time to determine where that person stands and what should be the condemnation or what should be the sentence that they're given. They are separate acts. The act of convicting, meaning the realization that I'm in sin and the act of condemning are two different things. And so, understanding that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, convicts us of our sin, but Jesus takes on the condemnation for our sin as the atoning sacrifice for it. And that takes place at the day of atonement and the reason our soul is afflicted. Because we need to be convicted of our sin. We need to have the Holy Spirit showing us how we're walking in sin and walking in darkness rather than being light and walking in the life that we get from Jesus Christ. So I'm convicted, but I'm not condemned. I'm convicted so that I might repent and so that I might walk in the life that I'm given. The condemnation is placed on Jesus Christ. My sin is remembered against me no matter, but it's placed on Christ. The sin of the whole world to include mine is placed on Christ the, the son of the whole world placed on him. And he, he takes that sin and atones for it. He takes it both as the lamb that is the sacrifice and the high priest who presents the sacrifice on thereafter. Verse 29 says in verse 1828 says this, and you shall do nowhere on that same day. For it is the day of atonement to make atonement for you before the Lord your God. For any person who is not afflicted in soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people. And any person who does not, who does anywhere on the same day, that person shall be. I'll be destroyed from among his people. What I'm saying is, is that it is a, it is a day of self reflection. Now, we don't, we don't practice the day of atonement because that day has already been finally done for us. But the affliction of our soul is something that should go on during our worship. Now, that doesn't mean that it may. It is everything that we do in worship. But there always should be a time doing worship where the consideration of our sinfulness is, is done where we, where we are considering the sacrifice that we need to make as God's people and present our bodies as living sacrifices. So that practice of going through the conviction of our servant is a continual practice that needs to be wrong. And the, the practice of atoning for our sin has passed because we do not atone for our sins anymore. Jesus has done that. And so he says in verse 31, it says, you shall do no manner of work. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations and all dwellings. And that Sabbath rest is still today. He says, it shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls. Notice he said this three times in here. You shall afflict your souls. You shall, you shall struggle, you know, I guess that's the best way for me to describe it. You shall strangle with your unholiness so that you might experience the holiness that you find in Christ. On the 9th day of the month, at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate the Sabbath. So you have these, this dichotomy here of celebrating what God is doing and the affliction of soul. That should happen during worship. That should happen during worship. There should be. There should be the worship, the celebration of God, the celebration of the relationship with God, the, the cleansing from, by the Holy Spirit, the washing in the rain. But all that, all the wonderful parts of being part of the kingdom of God, being part of believers, should take place in worship. Yes, but as a part of that process, our soul, remember, our soul is our heart and our mind, our thoughts and our passions should be. Should be placed in, in a place of, of affliction of conviction, where we consider those things and consider how our lives might be more like Christ, how our lives might be more in his character, how our lives might walk toward him. As we do that, as we do that, we experience the powerful work of God in our hearts. We experience that and the power, powerful life change that takes place. Now, what would happen is that the high priest would, he would sprinkle that blood of that goat and that bull. He would sprinkle it on the propitiation spot. That is the spot between the two angels on the ark of the covenant. It is a place where the eternal meets the physical. It's the place where God meets humanity. It's the place where the creator touches his creation. That spot that existed in the holy of holies now is in the hearts of men. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so that place is still here on earth, but it's no longer in a building now. It's in our own very hearts. And so that, that blood would be sprinkled there. It would be sprinkled right outside the. Right outside the. The veil that separates the inner courts and the holy of holies. It would have been. It would have been rubbed on or placed on the horns of all the altars, the altar, the altar of incense, the altar of sacrifice. Outside in the outer courts. It would. It would have been poured out right before the actor of sacrifice. And then finally, the priest would place his hands on the scapegoat, and the scapegoat would be released to wander into the wilderness and die. And that is a beautiful picture of our sins being placed on the goat, and our sins being carried away from us and remembered of against us no more. And so that affliction of Saul is not for God to recompense himself, meaning it's not for him to get the consequences and the payment of sin that's already been done. The affliction of your soul is so that it can be placed on the scapegoat and carry away so that that which is not God, that's a part of your life could be carried away to that which is God. And so if you're. As you're thinking about these things, as we ought to always think about these things, that affliction of your soul that should happen at worship in every possible way it should happen that should be going on at some point in time in worship, that affliction of your soul is a powerful moment for God to remove that and carry it away and remember it against you no more. And for you to move into the life he has for you, and you slowly forget those things and remember them no more, not walk in them anymore, not. Not allow them to have a place in your heart and in your mind, in your soul, not, have, not allow that to be there anymore, but to move past it. And I love that. When someone is in the midst of just the worst part of their lives, we look at them and we go, man, I don't. I don't know. Sometimes, you know, you look at them and you go, I don't. I'm not sure they're ever going to get out of it. And then I say this all the time to, to the leadership of the church. I say it to people that I'm talking to, and then just all the. All the sudden, it seems like that sin just kind of gets carried away and they grow up, or they become what God wants them to become. And are they perfect yet? No. No, no, they're not. They're still them. They're still themselves. But it's like something has changed. And what has changed is that affliction of their heart that made them seem so terrible, that that struggle that they were in made them seem so unworthy, unwantable, undesirable. That part of them kind of moves away. And then you see the part that God loves, and they begin to be who they should be. Slowly but surely, that sin just moves away from them and is no more. And so I would just say to you, as you're. As you're thinking about Yom Kippur, it's not the time of year for it. It's in the fall. But as we're thinking about that, I want you to think about the times that you have been afflicted of soul during worship, during a time where God's people were meeting together, during what we see here as a holy convocation, a gathering together of God's people. And what resulted of that? What resulted in the affliction of that soul? Well, usually most people, when they kind of look back on it and see those times and those seasons, they realize the very best happened, then the very best of the best happened. And, wow, why wouldn't we want that? We would. It's. It kind of wears you out. It is. It is a energy drainer, but at the end, it's an energy giver. It's the energy of life. It's the life that was the light to men that makes us come back over and over and over again, because it is a powerful, powerful, life giving force, the atoning for our sins, and then be carried away and remembered against us no more. I would just say to you that if you're not in a place where that's happening, you need to be in one. You need to be there. Because without the affliction of the soul that happens on the day of atonement, without that, there is no change. And if there is no change, if there's nothing new, if there's no. You know, James says, if the. You know, if your faith does not have any. Anything that happens from it, no work, nothing, that's obvious, it doesn't manifest itself in your life, then your faith is not being. Is not being grown. It's not being strengthened. It's not being made into what it should be. And without the affliction of our soul, our faith oftentimes becomes stale and unused. So the affliction of the soul must take place, because in the end, it brings about the newness of life that God wants for us. Without the day of atonement, there can be no life. So let us be diligent in seeking God and seeking all the works that he has for us. And not just the ones that are fun, not just the ones that make us feel good, but the ones that make us hope. As you go today, I pray that.
The Lord will bless you and keep.
You, that he'll make his face to.
Shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace. Today, in Jesus name.
