Yom Kippur ~ the Day of Atonement.~ Ganeida

In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and you shall not do any work ... For on that day he shall provide atonement for you to cleanse you from all your sins before the LORD. -Leviticus 16:29-30

Before Paul laid out his doctrine of salvation by grace, Jesus declared a new covenant: for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins ~ Matthew 26:28. Jesus death was the once & for all sacrifice.  There is now no other. As High Priest he entered the Holy of Holies in the heavenly temple & made atonement for us, once & for all.

So what are we to make of Yom Kippur ~ a day that is all about repentance.  All about a failure to keep the Law of Moses.  All about a need for forgiveness. A day that has been the holiest day of the Jewish year for centuries.

I think for us who are under the New Covenant it centres around 1 John 1:9 ~ But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

We don’t hear much about sin these days.  We don’t hear much about repentance.  That is a great pity because we have lost the heart of gratitude that understands exactly what Jesus has saved us from & how wonderful that redemptive act was & is.  We end up somehow thinking we are entitled to our salvation & losing our awe of God who will judge both the living & the dead.

Being human, we sometimes find it difficult to walk out a balanced scripture where we are at one & the same time, made in the Image of God [Gen.,9:6], The righteousness of Christ [2 Cor., 5:21] yet believers who on occasion still sin.

What Yom Kippur does then is give us an occasion to examine ourselves as 2 Cor.,13:5 exhorts us: Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith.

Now I don’t want to spend our time covering the way the temple service was organised.  By now we are mostly conversant with the symbolism that points directly to the Messiah.  Instead I want to go to the heart of Yom Kippur.  All the sacrifices, all the glitz & glitter is designed for one purpose & one purpose only: to help people realign their hearts correctly with God.

At the core of Yom Kippur is the Amidah.  We have discussed this when we looked at what we erroneously call The Lord’s Prayer.  What Jesus was discussing was the Amidah. Jews refer to it simply as The Prayer. It is made up of 3 main parts: Praise, petition, thanks.

If the Amidah is the heart of Yom Kippur then understanding what we are to pray, meditate on & fast about will help us orientate our own hearts.  It gives us insight into what the Father expects of His children.

In Hebrew the term usually used for father is Av.  Abba is the term used by small children.  We have been taught it is a term of intimacy, of closeness ~ & that is correct.  However it is never meant to be used presumptuously or in such a way that it diminishes God’s glory. This is immediately obvious as we follow the prayer through because the Holiness of God’s name, the exaltedness of his position, are the first things mentioned.

The first thing we need to understand is that the Amidah is not a liturgy set in stone.  It is an outline.  The Jews often begin their prayers to *The Creator of the Universe*.  We saw this in the Passover.  We remember that God dwells in the 3^rd Heaven.  He is over All.  He made All.  Everything is & was & will be because everything is generated from the thought & will of the Father.

The next thing is we are to keep The Name holy. We tend to think in negative terms, that simply we are not to blaspheme. That is only a very small part of it.  The Lord generally issues more positive instructions than negative ones.  We are meant to remember the names of God as Healer, redeemer, saviour, comforter, shepherd etc.  There is a covenant contract with the Names of God.

Hebrews 13:20 Now may the God of peace--who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood-

Or

"for all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us [2 Corinthians 1:20].

Or

Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises [1 Timothy 2:5]

Or

"if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" [Galatians 3:29].

The promises are conditional.  If we are His then…

This is the blessing of Yom Kippur.  It is time to asses ourselves before the Lord & as Paul says, examine ourselves in the light of God’s Word, in the light of His covenant promises to His people.

Yom Kippur deals specifically with sins between man & God, not with sins between people. Any unforgiveness, any fault between people, is meant to be dealt with before Yom Kippur during The High Holy Days. Technically we are still there as Yom Kippur falls on Wednesday this year.

In The Prayer we pray for forgiveness & also that we forgive but during the recitation of the Amidah during Yom Kippur there is an insertion   emphasizing communal responsibility for sins. Forgive us as we forgive… As the salt & light of the earth that Jesus commanded us to be we can stand in the gap for our nation shouldering our share of the responsibility for our nation’s sins: abortion, homosexuality, war… sins we may not be personally guilty of but sins the nation as a whole is guilty of.  Scripturally we are our brother’s keeper.[Gen 4:8~12]

Yom Kippur is also a day to focus on charity & social justice because it reflects God’s heart of Mercy towards His people.

‘His tender mercies are over all His works’ (Psalms 145:9)

Having received mercy we are ourselves to be a merciful & compassionate people.

The Amidah concludes with thanksgiving. Traditionally this will be the Priestly blessing from numbers:

“May the Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord cause His favour to shine upon you and be gracious unto you
May the Lord lift His favour unto you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26).

Finally our focus is very different to that of Jews on this special day.  You see God ordained that there was only one place where sacrifice could be made for the atonement of sins: the temple in Jerusalem.  There has been no temple in Jerusalem since 70AD.  There has been no sacrifice offered for sins since 70AD.  There has been no way to receive forgiveness since 70AD.  There has been no blood poured out in the Holy of Holies since 70AD.

All have sinned.  There is none righteous, no not one ~ Romans 3:10

Yet Romans 3:23-25 says:

²³ For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. ²⁴ Yet God freely and graciously declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. ²⁵ For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past…

A sacrifice has been offered.  One that is perfectly acceptable to the Father.  One that never needs to be repeated.  One that is actually able to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  We have no need to offer the blood of bulls & goats.  We have no need of a human High Priest to intercede for us.  Jesus has become our atonement.  His blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness.  He is able to present us faultless before the Father.  He has torn away the curtain that separated us from the Holy presence of God.

For us Yom Kippur is as much as anything a day of celebration.  We can rejoice that we do not have to wait a whole year to be cleansed.  We do not have to wait for sacrifice to be made.  It is already done.  It has been accomplished.  If we sin we have immediate access to the blood of Jesus.  We confess, are made clean, we go on.

Repentance, for us, is more than a ceremonial ritual for Jesus has declared us a new creation.  When we turned away from our old life to follow Jesus ~ that is repentance.  That is the true repentance God desires. We have put our faith in the One who is able to cleanse us of our sin.  We no longer trust in our works.  We no longer have to carry our guilt. It is Jesus who said:

34…"Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. 35"The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. 36"So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed…

Has the son set you free?  Then rejoice, for you are free indeed.  You are granted the status of sons of the house & you remain forever.