(Leviticus 16:1–16, 33-34)
Each of the offerings has its own particular presentation of the truth regarding Christ, the burnt offering bringing to us the death of Christ as a sweet savour to God, and through which we are accepted before Him. The meat offering presents the perfect Manhood of the Lord Jesus, conceived, indwelt and anointed by the Holy Spirit, and living in a life of constant obedience to God which yielded an unbroken savour of delight for the pleasure of God the Father as seen in the frankincense which was all for Jehovah. The sin and trespass offerings clearly indicated that the claims of God’s throne regarding man’s guilt could only be met by the blood of Jesus; and the peace offering teaches that God would have men in communion with Him in relation to the death of His Son.
The work of Christ on the cross, both for the glory of God and for our blessing, is also brought out in the special presentations of the Passover, the continual burnt offering, the Red Heifer and the Day of Atonement, each giving its quota of divine truth; the Passover teaching how God can righteously shelter His people from judgment by the precious blood of Christ, the “Lamb without blemish and without spot…foreordained before the foundation of the world”. The sweet savour of Christ’s death for God’s glory is portrayed in the continual burnt offering, offered morning and evening to Jehovah; and the Red Heifer signifies the provision that God has made through Christ’s death for the restoring of His people who become defiled in their pathway through the wilderness.
There is both type and contrast in the Day of Atonement: the type foreshadowing what took place at the cross to glorify God and enable His people to come before Him as worshippers; the contrast revealing the distance in which Israel remained, and the exclusion of the priests from the immediate presence of God, which is so different from the Christian’s place of nearness and his having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus.
The holy linen garments of Aaron and the washing of his flesh in water surely speak of the practical righteousness and spotless purity of Him who alone could enter God’s presence having “obtained eternal redemption”. Although the Lord did not properly enter into His priesthood until resurrection, His work on the cross was indeed a priestly work, for He was not only the offerer and the offering, He was also the offering priest.
There were two sin offerings, a bullock for the priestly family and two goats for the children of Israel. The blood of the bullock and that of the goat that was slain was taken into the holiest and sprinkled once upon the mercy seat and seven times before it, manifesting how the claims of God’s throne would be met, and how His people would be able to stand before Him in redemption.
For Israel it was necessary that the scape goat should, as it were, clear the scene of their dwelling from sin, so that they might be blessed on earth as God’s redeemed people. There is no need for a second bullock for the priestly family, which represents the church, the heavenly family, as their blessing is with Christ “inside the veil” (Heb. 6: 19-20).
But the two goats also bring out two distinct aspects of the atoning work of Christ; the goat that was slain, and whose blood was sprinkled in the presence of God, is evidently propitiation, the work that enables God to offer blessing to all men, for He has been infinitely and perfectly glorified regarding the whole question of sin by the death of His Son. Moreover, all the efficacy of the work abides in Him who has in it glorified God, for “He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The live goat, on whose head the sins of the people were confessed, gives us the truth of substitution, as when Paul says for himself, “The Son of God…loved me, and gave Himself for me, ” and collectively, as in 1 Thessalonians 5:10, “Who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.”
On entering the presence of Jehovah, Aaron required the golden censer “full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small.” The burning coals from the brazen altar teach us that the same fire that brought out the fragrance of Christ’s death, as found in the burnt offering, might be distinguished, but could not be separated from the rich perfume of Christ’s Person and from all the details of that holy life in which all His perfections brought constant pleasure to His God and Father.
As we enter the holiest, the immediate presence of God, it is to be hidden in the cloud of Christ’s perfections, accepted in the Beloved, and to know something of the deep perfections of Him who is so precious and pleasurable to God. Our privilege is to be before God at all times, a privilege that belongs to every saint of God; but there is a peculiar charm about the collective aspect of it when, in the assembly, in the company of “the Great Priest over the house of God” we enter as worshippers.
In the holiest we may gaze upon the ark and ponder its contents, all of which bring Christ in some way before us. We can contemplate there His glories and His graces as portrayed in the variegated colours of the sanctuary, and see, in the veil, the holy Manhood of Christ, the One who became flesh that we might have the revelation of God, and enter with Him into God’s holy presence.
The fat of the sin offering was to be burned on the altar, the inward excellency of the victim to be treated as the burnt offering had been, for God would have all His people know that He found infinite pleasure in Him who gave Himself for our sins, and who brought to Him through His death the glory of redemption. It is to be noticed that it was after the burnt offerings were offered that “the fat of the sin offering shall he burn upon the altar” (verse 25); emphasising the holy delight that the Father found in all the inward springs of Christ’s holy nature in the giving of Himself in death to carry out all His will in relation to every question that sin had raised in the universe of God.
Having so clearly indicated the Father’s pleasure in all that the Son was for Himself in His death, we are then reminded that the death of Christ involved for that Holy One the unsparing judgment of God, for “the bullock of the sin offering, and the goat of the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall one carry forth without the camp; and they shall burn in the fire their skins, and their flesh, and their dung.”
The consuming of the sin offering outside the camp tells us that death was real for the Son of God; it was not only a death of shame and a martyr’s death, it was death at the hands of a holy and righteous God in judgment upon sin, even as we read, “He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). The darkness over all the land from the sixth until the ninth hour, and the cry of the Lord, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” speak eloquently of the awfulness of divine judgment to Him who knew no sin while the sin bearer for us and for the glory of God.
There was no intrinsic value in the blood of the bullocks and the goats slain on the Day of Atonement, even as it is written in Hebrews 10:4, “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins;” but they pointed forward to the one sacrifice of Him who said, “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared me.” And the Son of God laid down the holy body in death in which He had glorified God in His life, that we might be “sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
The extent of the work of the cross is indicated to us in verse 33 of Leviticus 16 where it is written, “And he shall make an atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the tabernacle of the congregation, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation.”
Atonement for the holy sanctuary related to the immediate presence of God. Man was made for the earth, but the work of Christ, the precious blood of Jesus has opened up heaven to those who by sin have unfitted themselves to live on earth. We are not only able to enter the holiest now by the blood of Jesus, but heaven is to be our dwelling place for evermore in the riches of the grace of God. Such is the infinite value of the precious blood that has secured the eternal purposes of God.
The tabernacle was God’s dwelling place, and atonement has enabled God to dwell with His people now, those who are a habitation of God by the Spirit. In the millennium the glory of God will fill the temple, for He will again have a dwelling place among His people Israel, but this will be on the ground of the New Covenant ratified in the blood of Jesus. Then for eternity the “tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). Here we have another eternal result of the redemptive work of Christ.
Connected with the tabernacle was the altar, for which also atonement was made. God will have us to understand that there is no other way of approach to Himself, no other order of worship, but that which belongs to the redemption accomplished by His Son. This is true for the present age, for the millennial age, and for the age of ages.
Lastly, the atonement was made for the priests and for the people. The favoured company of the heavenly saints, who shall surround the Lord Jesus in heaven will be there because of the work of the Saviour, and in heaven they shall celebrate what He has done, singing, “Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open its seals; for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed to God, by Thy blood, out of every tribe…and made them to our God kings and priests” (Rev. 5:9-10). Israel too, God’s earthly people, will be brought to acknowledge that they owe their blessing to the One they crucified and slew, and whose precious blood has atoned for their sins.
Atonement is the basis of reconciliation, and the whole universe will ultimately be reconciled to God, even as it is written in Colossians 1, “All the fulness (of the Godhead) was pleased to dwell in Him, and by Him to reconcile all things to itself, having made peace by the blood of His cross – by Him, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens” (Col. 1:19-22). While we wait for the day when every sphere of rule and government will be reconciled to the Godhead, we have now been reconciled, “in the body of His flesh through death; to present you holy and unblameable and irreproachable before it” (verse 22).
May we seek to have a deeper realisation of all we owe to the work of atonement, wrought out by the Lord Jesus alone upon the cross, and know too something more of what has been brought to God in the glory of that great work with its eternal and infinite results for God’s pleasure.
Revised notes of an address by Wm. C. Reid at Bristol 16.5.64