Day of Atonement

Background

The Day of Atonement (known to many by its Hebrew name Yom Kippur) was the most solemn festival of the calendar, and it was followed by the most joyful festival. Minds attuned to the ways of God easily recognise this pattern. The pangs of labour must come before the birth of a child.Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Jesus had to suffer and die before he could rise and ascend to his Father.

The Day of Atonement differed from other festivals in being the one absolutely compulsory festival in the year. According to the law, anyone who didn't observe it was to be 'cut off from among his people'.

It was also different by being neither an agricultural festival, nor a festival of national remembrance. It was related to the serious subject of sin. It was a time of fasting and repentance.

In Jewish tradition the ten days from the Festival of Trumpets to the Day of Atonement are days of preparation. They are a time for self examination. The Jewish new year occurs at the Festival of Trumpets and so the Day of Atonement is a time for blotting out all the sins of the previous year. Just once every year on the Day of Atonement the high priest went into the Holy of Holies to make atonement for himself and for the whole people of Israel. On this day their sins were cleansed. To quote Leviticus 16:30, because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.

Freedom and Deliverance

Cleansing from sin is the necessary preparation for the greater blessings of the Festival of Tabernacles. At the beginning of our relationship with God we recognise that we have sinned and offended him. With great relief of mind and conscience we see that the Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us for our redemption and forgiveness. With joy we go on to experience the provision of God and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Then comes shock as we gradually discover a sin principle that still rules and dominates our lives. Paul acknowledged that the good he wanted to do he could not do, and that the evil he did not want to do he did. We need more than forgiveness. We need inward cleansing. We need deliverance from the power of indwelling sin. Its grip on our lives must be broken. That is what we find at the Day of Atonement.

This thought of total forgiveness and restoration is emphasised by what happened every 7th year on the Day of Atonement. Every Hebrew slave was set free. The 49th or Jubilee year was even more important. In that year on the Day of Atonement every slave was set free, and any land that had been sold returned to its previous owner.

This was all a marvellous provision for the ancient Jewish people and the foreigners who lived among them. However in picture language it pointed to something infinitely greater, which Paul describes in Romans chapter 8. There he tells us that the whole creation is groaning and travailing in bondage waiting to be set free into the perfect liberty of the sons of God (vv 18-22). The sons of God will be the first to be set free into this wonderful liberty. The whole creation is then to follow. The Hebrew slaves picture the sons of God who are set free first. The foreign slaves correspond to the rest of creation, whose freedom eventually follows.

This truth is very great and hard for us to grasp and believe. The following facts (taken from the works of Arthur Ware and Frank Paine) bear additional witness to it. An extra year was added to the 49 years of jubilee, which were therefore considered as 50 years. A jubilee of jubilees (or 50 times 50 years) is thus 2500 years. Guess what happened at the jubilee of jubilees (2500 years) from the fall of Adam.

It was exactly the exodus of Israel from Egypt. That was, in the natural, the greatest setting free of slaves in all history. Exactly 80 jubilees or 4000 years from the fall of Adam something even greater happened. Jesus died on the cross to set creation free from the bondage into which Adam's sin had plunged it. Read Bible Chronology and The Year of Jubilee for separate articles on this subject.

Suffering and Humiliation

How may a man or woman be set free from sin? Paul answers, 'He who has died is freed from sin' (Rom 6:7). Physical death totally separates us for ever from everything to do with this world. Dead men do not sin. Some people say that we will only be free from sin when we physically die, but Paul says otherwise. In Romans 6 he speaks of freedom from sin by being dead, buried and risen with Christ. That is the death that sets us free and the Day of Atonement speaks of it. The Festival of Tabernacles is the resurrection.

What does this death mean in our experience? As you study the lives of the great men and women of God, you will see them passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Joseph's youthful dreams were shattered when he found himself unjustly accused and thrown into a dungeon in a foreign land.

He had to suffer before he could rise to the right hand of Pharaoh to deliver his people from starvation and death. Moses also had to experience the death of his plans and ambitions as he moved from the highest position in Egypt to the despised labour of a shepherd in the barren and inhospitable wastes of the Sinai desert.

This suffering and humiliation was the path to the greatest physical display of God's power recorded in the scriptures, and the greatest revelation of his will ever expressed in human words. Before David could sit on the throne of Israel he had to hide in caves from the wrath of Saul and share his life with a company of down and outs. He even had to leave the land of Israel and live with his people's enemies the Philistines before God exalted him and made him the most famous king in history.

These men and others like them suffered before their time of blessing and exaltation. Their sufferings were not pointless or purposeless, but God used them to bring an end to their pride, their ambitions and their self-will. Something in them died. Their lives were no longer their own. The world lost its claim on them. They belonged totally to God and became fully available to him. Their very death to the world was their qualification to rule over it in righteousness and impart to it God's blessing.

Jesus made it plain to his disciples that they must not expect popularity. 'They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God', he told them (John 16: 2). Opposition and rejection were to come from those of their own society who seemed the keenest to serve the very God they themselves worshipped.

Suffering and humiliation will definitely come to all who seek to follow the Lamb wherever he goes. To each the outward form of this suffering will be different and the intensity may be more or less. God knows what he is doing and will tailor his work exactly to what each one of us requires. We must not therefore be discouraged by our afflictions or compare our lives with others who seem to have an easier or different pathway. Rather we must welcome them as we would welcome the surgeon's knife that removes a life threatening cancer. They are sent by a heavenly Father whose one purpose is the good of his children. Our inward sin must be removed, and our omnipotent Father has no other way of doing it.

We must add another thought to our theme of suffering. The day of Pentecost was one big party with 120 people in an upper room looking much as if they were drunk. On the Day of Atonement the high priest went alone into the Holy of Holies. Joseph, Moses and David were alone in their sufferings. Jesus, as he poured out his soul in death cried out, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' At Pentecost our fellowship is largely with man. On the Day of Atonement we walk alone with God.

This solemn day in which the Jews had to fast and humble their souls ended in the most wonderful release. They were not only forgiven but also cleansed from all their sins and set totally at liberty. This was the preparation for the joyful festival that was to follow. Paul speaks of the whole creation groaning and travailing as it waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. These sons of God are those who have passed through the purging and liberation of the Day of Atonement and entered the Festival of Tabernacles.

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