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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > God graciously gives the Scapegoat we need for atonement | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) All songs are from the CanRC/FRCA Book of Praise Psalm 29 Psalm 25:4 (after the law of God) Hymn 25:1-3 Psalm 103:1,4 Psalm 33:1,6 Scripture reading: Leviticus 16 Text: Leviticus 16:7-10, 20-22 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
Imagine for a moment a boy named Luke. Luke is 12 years old. He’s always getting in trouble. When his parents tell him to do something, he never listens right away. When he stays home from school, the teacher is relieved. One day, Luke and some other students get into trouble and have to stay inside at lunch. While the teacher is gone for a few minutes, one of the other students steals the teacher’s phone. After lunch, that student goes and hides the phone in Luke’s locker. Soon enough the teacher is looking for the culprit. Luke is right away the first suspect. He gets questioned and denies having done it. But the other students, when they’re questioned, they all point the finger at Luke. Then when the teacher asks another teacher to call his number, the phone starts ringing in Luke’s locker. Luke is obviously the guilty student. But even though no one believes him, he’s not guilty. He’s getting the blame and taking the punishment for something he didn’t do. We’d say that he was the scapegoat.
Our English word “scapegoat” comes from our Bible passage in Leviticus 16. Bible translator William Tyndale invented the word in about 1530 to describe this goat sent out alive into the wilderness. He called it the “scapegoat” because it was the goat which escaped. Over time, the word has come to mean someone or something which takes the blame – an idea that’s still there in our text.
The biblical scapegoat appears in the context of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement was the most important Jewish feast day. This is reflected in where it’s found in the Bible. It’s at the center of the book of Leviticus. But it’s also at the center of the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch or the Torah. The Day of Atonement is the heart of all the Old Testament ceremonies and rituals.
The Day of Atonement was all about ensuring the Holy God could continue to dwell in the Tabernacle in the midst of his sinful people. The sin of the people polluted everything. Unless it was dealt with, sin would be a problem in having God dwell with his people. So once per year, on the Day of Atonement, all of the sins of the people would be addressed, atoned for with blood and sacrifices. The pollution of the Tabernacle, the priests, and the people would all be completely gone. God would continue to fellowship with his people.
As part of the Day of Atonement, there was a ceremony involving two male goats. Lots were cast over them. One goat was chosen to die, one goat was chosen to live. The first goat represented propitiation – the turning away of the wrath of God and the return of his favour. The second goat is the one we’re going to focus on. It’s the scapegoat. This second goat represented expiation and expulsion. As I preach God’s Word to you this morning we’ll see how God graciously gives the Scapegoat we need for atonement.
We’ll look at how the Scapegoat is our substitute for those two things:
- Expiation
- Expulsion
I’ve already used the word “expiation” twice and some of you may not know what it means. Let me define it for you. Expiation refers to the cleansing of sin and the removal of sin’s guilt. When expiation takes place, sin is wiped away, the pollution is gone.
That’s what the scapegoat represents in Leviticus 16. Let’s look at it a little closer. The two goats were to be set before God at the entrance of the tent of meeting or tabernacle. Then the lots would be cast – sort of like picking a name from a hat. One goat would be for Yahweh, the LORD, and the other would be for Azazel. Now who or what is Azazel?
This is another one of those great debates on Leviticus. Bible scholars have several different theories about Azazel. I’m not going to go into all of them with you. You can always research that for yourself if you want. I’ll just give you what I think is the best explanation.
Azazel seems to be a proper name for someone. In verse 8, one lot is for Yahweh, and other is for Azazel. So if the LORD is a proper name, it would seem that Azazel is too. So we’re dealing with the question of “who is Azazel?” and then also “what type of creature is Azazel?” Jewish literature from between the Old Testament and New Testament understood it to be a demon thought to dwell in the wilderness. This makes the most sense grammatically and linguistically. But having said that, we shouldn’t get the idea that this second goat was somehow a sacrifice or offering to a demon named Azazel. It wasn’t. In the next chapter, in Leviticus 17:7, God explicitly forbids the Israelites from offering sacrifices to “goat demons.” I’ll explain it more in a minute, but for now sending the goat to Azazel represented sending sin to its proper home.
For now we’re going to move ahead to verse 20 and the description of the ritual involving the scapegoat. It happened after the various parts of the tabernacle had been cleansed from sin’s pollution. Aaron would place both his hands on the head of the scapegoat. This action symbolized that a transfer was about to take place.
The High Priest would then “confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins.” Notice the mention of iniquities, transgressions, and sins. We shouldn’t get caught up in trying to distinguish each of those. The point is that this confession wasn’t a quick and easy matter. It was serious and it took time. It was a comprehensive confession of sin. It would have undoubtedly involved confessing sins directly against God and sins against human beings. It would have involved confessing sins in thought, word, and deed. The High Priest would have mentioned sins of omission – failing to do what God had commanded. He would have confessed sins of commission – doing what God had commanded not to be done. He’d have mentioned sins committed inadvertently and those committed intentionally, with what the Bible calls a “high hand.” No sinful stone would have been left unturned.
We should pause and note how serious sin was taken here. We should compare that to the attitude of the world around us towards sin. The world rarely even uses that category. After all, the whole idea of sin implies someone who is being sinned against. If you have don’t have someone to sin against, how can you have sin? The category doesn’t even make sense.
But sadly even many Christians are losing sight of the seriousness of sin. It’s a sad fact that so many churches today don’t even have a dedicated time for the confession of sin in public worship. What happens then to confession of sin in the lives of Christians from Monday to Saturday? But let’s look at ourselves. Do you take sin seriously? Do you confess your sins regularly to God and do it in a meaningful way? When we confess our sins together in public worship, are you engaged with that in a personal way? You see, even if we maintain the practice, if we’re not praying along for ourselves, then there’s no real confession taking place. Then we’re not really taking sin seriously either.
So in our passage, there was this long and meaningful confession of sin. But then something was done with all that sin too. It says in verse 21 that Aaron put the sins on the head of the goat. All of it was ceremonially transferred to the scapegoat. In Christian theology we would say that all that weight of sin, all that pollution, all that guilt, it was all ritually imputed to the scapegoat. “Imputed” means it was placed on the scapegoat, transferred to it. The people didn’t carry that sin, pollution and guilt any longer. Instead, the goat carried it for them as their substitute.
The goat was then sent away into the wilderness, to a remote area. In Hebrew it literally says that the scapegoat was sent to a land “cut off.” That connects to what I was saying earlier about Azazel being a demonic creature. The land “cut off” is a barren land of infertility. There’s no life there, only death. It’s the haunt of demons like Azazel. Sin is death and so it’s appropriate that sin gets carried out to this realm of death and demons and barrenness. It’s where sin and all its guilt and pollution belongs. You could say this is a picture of hell. Inhabited by demons, hell is the proper home for sin and all it involves.
The scapegoat would be set free there and never return. There is an early rabbinic tradition which says the man who drove the scapegoat into the wilderness would push it over a cliff as well. Perhaps that happened from the beginning of the Day of Atonement. Regardless, the idea was that the sins of the people had disappeared, vanished out of the dwelling of God with his people.
The idea was expiation. It’s the same idea we find in Psalm 103. In Psalm 103:12, we find expiation when David writes about how God removes our sins “as far as the east is from the west.” Sin has been completely cleansed and removed. It’s out of sight. We find the idea of expiation in Micah 7:19 when the Holy Spirit says God will tread our iniquities underfoot. If they’re under his feet, he can’t see them. The image is intensified in the next part of Micah 7:19 when he says all our sins will be cast into the depths of the sea. That’s expiation. Just like the scapegoat bore all the sins of the Israelites way out into the desert, so God will cast all our sins way down into the depths of the ocean.
This idea of expiation comes to fulfillment in Jesus. He was prophesied in Isaiah 53 as the one upon whom all our iniquity was laid. He was the one to whom all our sins were imputed or transferred. Like the scapegoat, he wasn’t responsible for all those sins. But he carried them. You could say he carried them out to hell. While he was on the cross, he carried our sins to where sin belongs under the wrath of God. God has graciously given us this Scapegoat as our substitute, for the expiation of our sins. Loved ones, as we look to Christ and his cross, we have expiation. Expiation -- all our sins are cleansed and removed out of God’s sight. They’re put out as far as east is from west, sent into the depths of the ocean never to be brought up again. So we have atonement. In Christ, we’re able to dwell with God and enjoy fellowship with him. All because the ultimate Scapegoat has carried our sins into the wilderness once and for all. Look to Christ and this gospel benefit is yours.
Now there is another aspect to the ritual involving the scapegoat and this has to do with expulsion. To understand this, we have to back up and remember the nature of the tabernacle. This was God’s dwelling in the midst of his people. The tabernacle was a sort of replica of the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, God dwelt with Adam and Eve in perfect peace and harmony. When sin intruded on this, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:24 says, “He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” So Adam and Eve were expelled towards the east of Eden. East of Eden is considered to be the appropriate place for sin and sinners.
If we look at the tabernacle, we find something remarkable. It had one entrance. That one entrance was on the east side. Wherever the Israelites set up the tabernacle, the entrance was always to be on the east. The tabernacle was a temporary dwelling – it was a tent. Later on the temple replaced it as a more permanent place for God to dwell among his people. With the temple too, the entrance to the temple was on the east. There is something about that direction and it has everything to do with the Garden of Eden. The tabernacle – and later the temple – are meant to symbolize God’s dwelling with people like he did with Adam and Eve in the Garden.
Now like Adam and Eve were expelled to the East because of their sin, the scapegoat is driven out of the entrance to the tabernacle and expelled east into the wilderness where sin belongs. The goat and the sin it was carrying were excluded from the camp and as a result of this, there would be continuing fellowship with God.
Sometimes you hear about alternative histories. People will write books about how history would have turned out differently if this or that hadn’t happened. Well, imagine an alternative version of Genesis 3. In this version, God doesn’t expel Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because of their sin. Rather, he decides to transfer their sin to a goat and send it east of Eden as their substitute. That’s what’s happening in Leviticus 16 with the scapegoat.
In this picture we have in Leviticus 16, God was inching closer to what Christ would do for sinners. On the cross, Christ was expelled, cast out in our place. The cross is a picture of expulsion. The person who hangs on a cross is suspended between heaven and earth. The community of human beings doesn’t want you – they’ve hoisted you up, cast you out in a sense. But heaven doesn’t want you either. You’ve been forsaken, accursed. That’s what Christ experienced in our place. We deserve to be expelled because of our sins. But our sins were imputed to Christ, transferred over to him, and so he was expelled instead of us. The blame that should have fallen on us fell on him, and he was driven out from the land of the living.
Loved ones, as you look to Christ in faith, you can be sure that you’ll never be driven away or driven out. You’ll never face expulsion. Jesus said it in John 6:37, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” If you have been brought back to Eden, so to speak, you can never again be kicked out. If you’ve been brought into fellowship with God through Christ, living with him as your God, you cannot be expelled from that fellowship. As someone once said, if you were to be cast out, you would be the first one in all of human history. It’s just not going to happen.
The day will come when we arrive at the New Jerusalem, the ultimate Eden. Sin will not exist at all within the walls. As a result, no one will ever be sent out east. No one will ever be expelled. Rather, all who dwell there in the holy presence of God will have joy, peace, and eternal security. It’s something really beautiful, something to look forward to.
God has given us all of this in his grace. It’s grace for which we should be thankful. We show our gratitude by realizing that sin has no place with us as we dwell with our God here and in the future. Sin has been driven out in principle in Christ – but in practice in our lives too, sin has to be expelled, has to be purged.
Later, in the book of Deuteronomy, God gave commands about what to do with false prophets. They were to be put to death. Then Moses said in Deuteronomy 13:5, “So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” That language comes back several times in Deuteronomy and then it reappears in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 5 when Paul is discussing the incest happening in the Corinthian church, he quotes from Deuteronomy, “Purge the evil person from among you.” In New Testament terms, Paul was referring to excommunication. Discipline is necessary in the church to expel sin, to purge it. Loved ones, unrepentant sin can’t be permitted to go on in the church. We have to address it. Our prayer is that when it’s addressed, the person involved with repent and stop living in that sin. Church discipline is always done in love with the hope that it will result in change. But if it doesn’t, then sin has to be driven out just like the scapegoat was driven out into the wilderness.
If that’s true of us as a church, it’s also true of us as individuals. There’s church discipline, but there’s also self-discipline. If you think of yourself as a temple of the Holy Spirit, then it makes sense that in this temple there should be no place for sin. Sin should be driven out of the temple. Through the help of the Holy Spirit, every Christian is called to do exactly that. Romans 13:12 says that we’re to “cast off the works of darkness.” Drive them away out of where they don’t belong. Works of darkness belong in the darkness, not in the life of someone who claims to believe in Christ. You have to send those sins packing.
Honestly, this is easier said than done. What’s left of our sinful nature still wants to hold on to those sins in the temple of the Holy Spirit. There’s something in us that doesn’t want to let go. Only the Holy Spirit can break sin’s hold on you. Constantly we need to pray for his strength and his work in our lives to drive out our sin back into the darkness where it belongs.
But the Holy Spirit also gives us a whip of sorts. In Leviticus 16 there was that man in readiness, prepared to drive out the scapegoat into the wilderness. In ancient times if you were to drive an animal somewhere, you would use either a prod or a whip to keep the animal moving in the right direction. The Holy Spirit has given us a similar tool. He has given us the Word of God. As we continue reading and studying Scripture, the Holy Spirit uses that to motivate us and equip us for driving out sin from our lives.
In general it works like this: you come across a passage that confronts you with a particular sin. You become aware of it, you take it seriously, and you confess it. You ask God to forgive you through Christ. Then you also ask for the strength and help of the Holy Spirit to push it out of your life. Because of what the Bible says, you desire that. You start looking into Scripture more to see if it has anything to say about how you might best push that sin out of your life.
It might be helpful to give a brief example – it might not apply to everybody, but it will give you the basic idea of how it works. You’re reading the Bible and you’re in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. You read what Jesus says about adultery and lust. If you even look at someone you’re not married to with lust in your heart, you’ve committed adultery. That confronts you with the sin of what you’ve been doing. You humbly confess your sin to your Father in heaven and ask for his forgiveness through Christ. Then you pray, “Please help me with the Holy Spirit to drive this sin out of my life.” You keep studying the Bible. You read further in Matthew 5 about how Jesus says to cut off something if it’s causing you to sin. You think about that. Are there things in your life that are constantly leading you to lust? It could be a social media app. Christ says, drive out the sin in your life by cutting it off. You could apply Christ’s words like this: “For it is better that you cut off Instagram or TikTok than that your whole body go into hell.” Loved ones, be serious about sin and driving it out with prayer and the Spirit’s whip, the Word of God.
Leviticus 16 is indeed the highlight of the whole book. It’s central because of the way it describes how God has made a way for comprehensive atonement. It all points us to the gospel. In the gospel, God in his grace has given everything we need to have him dwell with us in peace. Sin has been driven out through Christ. May our love for this God of grace continue to grow today and each day. AMEN.
PRAYER
Gracious God,
We’re grateful to you for fulfilling the picture of the Scapegoat in the person and work of Jesus. Thank you that in him, we have atonement. Thank you that in him, we have the expiation from our sins. Thank you that he was expelled so we would never be. Father, help us all to believe and continue believing this gospel of grace. Help us with your Holy Spirit always to take sin seriously in our lives. Please help us as a church to care about church discipline. Help us so that unrepentant evil may never be allowed to go unchecked. We pray that you would help us with self-discipline too. With your Spirit, strengthen us to identify sin, hate sin, and drive out in our lives. We look forward to the day when the struggle will be over and we’ll live in the New Jerusalem with you, enjoying perfect peace and joy. In your grace, please hasten that day.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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