Christ Church

The Priesthood of Christ & All Believers (King’s Cross)

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INTRODUCTION

The central message of the Bible is God’s victory over death through resurrection. As the ministers of God in the Old Testament, the priests of Israel were required to picture God’s coming victory over death in a number of ways. While some of the particulars have changed in the New Covenant, the principles really have not. What the Old Testament pictured, Christ has accomplished as our High Priest, and He has made us a holy priesthood for God.

THE TEXT

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel…” (Lev. 21-22).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

These instructions are given to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and they begin by forbidding touching dead bodies and being defiled and imitating the mourning practices of the pagans (21:1-6, 10-12). Their marriages were to be pictures of purity, and their children were to be faithful (21:7-9, 13-15). Priests who served in the sanctuary were to be physically whole (21:16-24). The priests were to honor the ceremonial cleanliness laws and follow the purification instructions just like the rest of Israel (22:1-9). The privileges of the priesthood belonged to the priest and his household, not visitors or daughters who married out of the priestly tribe (22:10-13). Accidental profaning of holy things required restitution with 20 percent added to it (22:14-16). All offerings were to be males without obvious reminders of the curse of death – no blemish, bruise, spot, or deformity (22:17-25). God required His people to practice a measure of compassion and reverence for new life and motherhood even with animals, permitting newborn animals to be offered only after a week old, and a mother and baby could not be offered on the same day (22:26-28). Sacrifices of thanksgiving were to be offered and eaten on the same day because God is holy and He brought Israel out of Egypt (22:29-33).

DO NOT SORROW LIKE THOSE WITHOUT HOPE

What the priests were required to practice in the Old Testament with regard to death really is wonderfully fulfilled in Jesus and the principles that continue to apply to us are glorious. The central application of these laws to the New Testament Christian priesthood (all Christians) is that we may not sorrow over death like pagans, like those who have no hope: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” (1 Thess. 4:13-14). The death and resurrection of Jesus has radically altered the world and death itself.

This language of “sleeping” is also related. After Jesus conquered death, those who die in Him are not said to really die anymore, only sleep (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:6). Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn. 11:26-27, Jn. 6:40-58). When Jesus came to the house of the little girl who had died, He said, why are you making such a commotion with all your weeping, she is not dead but only sleeping (Mk. 5:39). Then putting everyone out of the house except her parents, he took the little girl by the hand and told her to arise (Mk. 5:40-41). Did Jesus, our Great High priest touch a dead body? No, because in the presence of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, His touch is life. To Him, and to all who are in Him, death is merely sleep. So neither do we defile ourselves when we are in the presence of those who die, and we do not mourn as those without hope. We may certainly weep as Jesus did at the grave of Lazarus, but it is not a grief of hopeless despair. And our memorial services do and should reflect that. Because Jesus had not yet come, the priests were required to keep themselves from dead bodies (Lev. 21:1-5, 10-11), and all that resembled the curse of death – those with diseases and deformities could not serve in the tabernacle (Lev. 21:17-23). But now in Christ, those born with disease or deformities are reckoned whole in Him and therefore most welcome in worship and in the worshiping community.

ONE BAPTISM & ONE SACRIFICE & ONE PRIESTHOOD

In the Old Covenant, there were many baptisms (Heb. 9:10). In fact, that was how you became ceremonially clean, you had to be baptized repeatedly, every time you became unclean before coming to the sanctuary for worship (Lev. 22:6). This is part of the glory of “one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). And Hebrews says that it wasn’t just the washing that purified but it was also the offering (Heb. 9:13). This is why the offerings of the Old Covenant had to be without blemish (Lev. 22:19-25), but if God accepted the blood of bulls and goats without blemish as faint shadows for purification, “how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:13-14). Jesus is the priest, and Jesus is the sacrifice.

CONCLUSIONS

And notice what you need to be cleansed from: dead works. Dead people do dead works. Outside of Christ, people are dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1-5). Outside of Christ people are not sick, not merely confused, not merely on life support. Outside of Christ, people are dry bones scattered on the ground (Ez. 37). But people do not think this is what they are since they can still go to church, sing in the choir, vote conservative, and lead small groups. But what they are offering is their own dead works full of blemishes, spots, bruised, crushed, broken, and cut (Lev. 22:24) because they are dead themselves. And therefore, your works will not be accepted by God. This is why you often need to be forgiven for what you think of as being your virtues. Even your righteousness is like filthy rags, full of death (Is. 64:6). You must be raised from the dead and cleansed from your dead works.

Many people have pointed out that Jesus never did funerals. Jesus attended or showed up in the midst of funerals, but they never stayed that way. Whenever Jesus shows up in the gospels where someone has died, death never has the last word.

In the New Covenant, all Christians are priests, and we all offer our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1-2). And what you do all week long is what you are bringing to offer, and that will either be the perfection and purity and resurrection life of Christ or else dead works. What do you have? What is in your hands? What is in your heart? If you call on the Lord, you will be saved.

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Death Penalties & the Cross

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INTRODUCTION

Modern man prides himself in not being violent and savage, and yet we have butchered 60 million babies and counting. We have high rates of drug and alcohol and porn addiction, suicide, incarceration, and so on. We sacrifice babies to our Molech, and we sacrifice millions more in the slow cooker of government programs and prisons. We have rejected Jesus and His easy yoke, calling it harsh, and we have demanded the demented yoke of humanistic hubris and tyrannical government. And the only way out of this mess is through the Cross of Jesus.

THE TEXT

“And the Lord spake unto Moses saying, Again thou shalt say to the children of Israel, whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death…” (Lev. 20:1-27).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The text opens with a prohibition against offering children to Molech and against turning a blind eye to it, as well as all idolatry, since the people are to be holy and keep God’s statutes (Lev. 20:1-8). Seven crimes are listed with death penalties (20:9-16), and five additional sins are listed, with the community sanctions of being “cut off from among their people” and “bearing their sin” (Lev. 20:17-21). “Dying childless” could imply the possibility of a civil penalty, but it is probably a direct sanction from God since it identifies one of those instances as being “unclean,” which is a ceremonial status (20:21). God reminds His people that He is giving them life and blessing in a good land through His law, which is why they must remain separate from the other nations (20:22-24). The daily sign of the distinction was their diet (20:25-26), and that was to remind them to remove all idolatry out of their midst (20:27).

COMPARED TO WHAT?

“Molech” is related to the Hebrew word “melech” which means “king.” The fires of Molech are most likely a generic reference to the various cults of the nations. Dedication of children to Molech seems to have included both child sacrifice as well as temple prostitution. And right on schedule our nation is actually debating the appropriateness of Drag Queen story, so-called gender “transition,” and the furies are out in full force demanding abortion as “health care.”  This is nothing short of the new dedication of children to Molech.

You can always tell the god or gods of a culture by where coercion and violence are accepted and obedience and submission are required. Even in relatively conservative churches, if a woman says she must obey her husband, she will sometimes get concerned looks and questions about whether everything is OK (same with obeying a pastor or elder). But if you mention a court order or taxes (with threat of violence/prison), the assumption is that you better just submit. The fact that many modern Christians are embarrassed that God would require death penalties for certain crimes but just shrug when our civil government sends thieves to prison for decades, tells you who our god is, who we see as holy.

In these laws we see God’s requirement that we hallow Him particularly in our families and sexuality. Over the centuries, acts of treason and desertion from an army in time of war have been punished with death, subtly insisting that civil loyalties are the most sacred. Instead of accusing God of harshness, we ought to assume that He is warning us and the world about the potency and sacredness of marriage and family (Heb. 13:4). Jesus also makes it clear what cursing father or mother looks like: “For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: But ye say, if a man shall say to his father or mother, it is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightiest be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother” (Mk. 7:10-12). Jesus is clearly implying that certain forms a high-handed neglect of elderly parents are the kind of cursing of parents that might be tried as form of murder.

CRIMES & SINS & JUSTICE

This text distinguishes between crimes that require a civil penalty (20:9-16), and sins that require a ceremonial or familial penalty (20:17-21). The distinction between crimes and sins designates different jurisdictions: the state, the family, and the church. Sins are to be adjudicated and addressed by individuals, families, and churches as appropriate, while crimes have civil penalties and are the proper jurisdiction of the state. God has given the civil magistrate the sword of vengeance, which means that the state is only good at violence and coercion (Rom. 13). This is why the Bible requires a fiercely limited civil government. In a Christian land, all crimes would also be sins, but not all sins are crimes. In a pagan land, it’s more of a Venn diagram, and not all crimes are really sins.

It’s worth noting that only murder required a mandatory death penalty; all of these death penalties are maximum sentences (Gen. 9:6-9, Dt. 19:11-13). We can see this in another law regarding Sabbath breaking which also called for a death penalty (Lev. 24:11-22, cf. Num. 15:32-36), however in the days of Nehemiah, he suppressed Sabbath commerce but didn’t institute a death penalty (Neh. 13:19-21). We see something similar with the death penalty for homosexuality in our text (Lev. 20:13), but the good kings Asa and Jehoshaphat exiled the sodomites from the land (1 Kgs. 15:12, 22:46), and Josiah tore down their houses of prostitution (2 Kgs. 23:7).

CONCLUSION

In the New Testament, we do not see the apostles lobbying for death penalties. What do we make of that? Paul does say after listing a number of crimes and sins, “that they which commit such things are worthy of death” (Rom. 1:32), and elsewhere he says the law is good, so long as it is used lawfully, to prevent lawlessness and everything that is “contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel” (1 Tim. 1:8-11).

Therefore, we conclude that the law (with its death penalties) remains the perfect standard of justice and reveals God’s wrath against our sins and crimes. We affirm the goodness of the law for public policy and all morality, but we affirm it first and foremost as that which drives the world to Christ and His glorious gospel. There is no life outside of Christ, and all who hate His wisdom love death. The world says believe in yourself, re-invent yourself, find yourself, and the end of that road is nothing but sadness and death: rage and shame, sickness and scars, mutilation and murder. And the law drives sinners to despair.

The law drives sinners to the cross, to the place of execution and there the gospel proclaims: Christ died for guilty sinners. Christ died for lawbreakers. Christ died for the unclean, the profane, the obscene, the sodomites, the pedophiles, the prostitutes, the liars, the idolaters, the proud, and all who have dishonored their parents. The law cannot save, but what the law is powerless to do, God has done by sending His Son. Christ has received the death penalty for us. And this is why it is only those who know their guilt who are the ones who are in.

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Love Your Neighbor (King’s Cross)

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INTRODUCTION

Leviticus 19 is sometimes called the Sermon on the Mount of the Old Testament, since like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, it is a collection of moral instructions for God’s people, including the specific command that is the second greatest commandment: “love your neighbor as yourself.” Repeated twice in this chapter, we should understand the whole chapter (and Jesus says the whole Old Testament) as a lesson on that point.

THE TEXT

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy…”

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Since piety begins at home, God’s people are to fear their mother and their father, keep God’s sabbaths, and not turn to idols (19:1-4). When they offer peace offerings, they may only eat the feast for two days, preventing overindulgence, laziness, and greed – probably implying the need to share and be generous (19:5-8). Related, God requires business owners to leave leftovers for the poor (19:9-10). God’s people must not steal, lie, swear falsely, or rob anyone, even by being slow to pay what we owe, particularly to the poor (19:11-13). All cruelty, especially to the disabled, is condemned, as well as all injustice through favoritism or partiality (19:14-15). All gossip and slander are prohibited as forms of murder and hatred, and if you have a problem with someone, you must talk to them directly (19:16-17). God’s people are to reject all vengeance and grudges, and love their neighbors as themselves (19:18).

While mixing seeds and fabrics may have been prohibited as a sign of distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, this law also points to God’s insistence that His people not confuse and mix the “fabric” of the way God made the world, e.g. male and female (19:19). While justice is to be without partiality, God insists that those with less power (e.g. slaves) be granted greater benefit of the doubt, particularly in cases of sexual immorality (19:20-22). The people were required to trust God for the fruit of their newly planted trees, waiting until the fifth year to eat it (19:23-25). All idolatry is prohibited: whether through consuming blood, pagan hairstyles, tattoos, prostitution, or witchcraft (19:26-31). The chapter returns to where it began, reminding the people to keep sabbath, rise up before the elderly, love strangers as themselves, and keep justice, since God is the Lord and brought them out of Egypt (Lev. 19:32-37).

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF

Jesus and the New Testament writers repeatedly insist that the whole law is found in this summary: love your neighbor as yourself (Lk. 10:27-28, Gal. 5:14, Js. 2:8). This is the law and the prophets, and all the laws are summarized and fulfilled in this one: love your neighbor as yourself (Mt. 22:39-40, Rom. 13:9-10). Love is more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mk. 12:29-33). This completely contradicts those who claim that the law of God is opposed to love, or that the Old Testament was not about the love of God. Love is obedience to God from the heart. But to truly understand the law of God is to see how far short we fall of God’s love.

This love requires strict justice and fairness in some matters (19:11-13, 15, 35-36), but also loves mercy and generosity (19:9-10, 20-22). Even manners are love in the little things: clothing, hair, standing for the elderly (19:19, 27, 32). Love works hard, honestly, avoiding the need to receive charity, with the goal of being able to give generously to those in need (Lev. 19:5-6, 9-10, 34, cf. 2 Thess. 3:5ff, Eph. 4:28). While civil magistrates have a duty to love God by enforcing strict justice, they have no business coercing the “love” or charity of others. Government programs and the taxation they require only robs people of the opportunity to love freely.

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

When the lawyer asked Jesus who his neighbor was that he was to love, Jesus famously answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:29-37). The striking thing is that Jesus shifts the question from “Who is my neighbor?” (object) to “Who acted as a neighbor?” (subject) (Lk. 10: 29, 36). The point is that we are required to have a certain disposition, ready to love. Notice that the so-called rule-followers (the Levite and Priest) are the ones who fail to be neighbors, and the one notorious for breaking rules (the Samaritan) is the one who loves the nearly-dead Jew. The Samaritan is incredibly lavish, and Jesus emphasizes this: bandages, oil, wine, transportation, lodging, further care, future care, and all expenses paid (Lk. 10:34-35).

Most interpreters take the Samaritan to be a type of Jesus, an outcast, come to rescue the nearly-dead human race in Adam, which certainly works. It may also be the case that Jesus intends to be prefigured in the stripped, beaten, and robbed man among the thieves, setting the goal of neighbor-love as ultimately aimed at loving Him, through the least of these my brethren (Mt. 25:40). In either case, the conclusion is that in order to love your neighbor as yourself, you must reckon yourself an outsider, a foreigner, a threat, a criminal, already rejected, having nothing to lose (Gal. 2:20). In other words, love means reckoning yourself as among the rescued, as among the slaves because you were freed from Egypt (Lev. 19:34, 36).

CONCLUSIONS

As we consider our duty to love, we should remember the difference between refugees and apostles from the world. Refugees are fleeing from the world and frequently show up looking like the world, talking like the world, and full of the confusions of the world but they are teachable and hungry to learn. Apostles show up with a message from the world about how backward and narrow-minded Biblical thinking and living is. Refugees are welcome to come and learn and grow; apostles should be corrected a couple times and then not given the time of day (Tit. 3:10).

Throughout the text, the line is repeated: “I am the Lord,” and it seems that this should be taken as shorthand for the bookends: “I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2) and “I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt” (19:36). God’s holiness is directed at saving His people, and God’s holiness is bound up with His love. But this holy love is not content to merely “affirm” anyone just as they are or in whatever they want to do or be. No, this holy love is determined to bring Christ into every moment, to see Him in those around us (however weak or foreign or unlovely) until His image emerges clearly in them. We are called to this love because it is precisely the kind of love that God has bestowed upon us.

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Blood, Marriage, and Worship (King’s Cross)

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INTRODUCTION

These two chapters are the hinge of the book of Leviticus, the first half broadly sketching our duties to God (1-17) and the second half our duties to our neighbor (18-27). In this, we see the great indicative/imperative distinction that echoes through the rest of Scripture and Christian theology. We do because of what God has done. We do because of what God has made us to be. So the center of life is the blood of Christ, and everything else flows from there.

THE TEXT

“… What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle…” (Lev. 17–18).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

God prohibits His people from offering sacrifices to other gods (Lev. 17:1-7), as well as offering sacrifices in any other place than He designates (17:8-9). God also forbids eating or drinking the blood of animals whether sacrificial animals or animals taken for food, since the life is in the blood (17:10-16). Those who disobey these commands are to be cut off or excommunicated from the covenant people (17:4, 9, 10, 14). Paganism and idolatry are always trying to trick life out of lifeless and dead things, and next to blood, sexual rites are the other common talisman of the nations. So God forbids His people from imitating the sexual confusions of the Egyptians and Canaanites (18:1-17), particularly through tribalistic marriages (18:18), or any other vile perversions (18:19-25). By these, the earth is defiled and vomits out its inhabitants (18:26-30).

THE COUNCIL OF JERUSALEM

The council of Jerusalem clearly affirmed the ongoing relevance of these chapters: “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication…” (Acts 15:28-29). While fornication often refers to sex outside of marriage, it also refers to any kind of sexual immorality, which would include all the incestuous prohibitions in our text. While it may have been tempting to dismiss these prohibitions against blood and incest as a lot of archaic oddities in previous decades, these have actually been the marks of paganism throughout history, and they are currently in the process of being mainstreamed again as we speak. The council was not prohibiting eating rare steak, but clearly we may not dismiss these prohibitions as mere ceremonial law. God’s people must always abstain from idolatry, including the bloodlust and sexual deviance that accompanies it.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

We should never forget is that it is not whether there will be blood, but which blood, whose blood. The life is in the blood (Lev. 17:11, 14), and in this fallen world man wants to trick life out of blood apart from the God who gives and upholds all life. The fires of Molech (Lev. 18:21) and all abortion is the attempt to trick life out of blood and death. Cultures of sexual deviance are also always cultures of death and dying, and the diseases and ailments and shorter life spans that accompany them are no accident (Lev. 18:22-24). As Romans 1:27 says, they receive the consequences in their own bodies by their actions. It is simply a fact that the widespread culture of piercing and tattooing has also grown out of this bloodshed. Despite great progress in medical science, pseudo-scientific witchcraft is also on the rise. We reject the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ complete ban on blood transfusions, but we absolutely agree that the perennial scientific hubris of man must be rejected: trying to be lord of life and death, especially attempts to conjure up life from the bodies of murdered babies. But we have all this bloodshed because we have rejected the blood of Jesus. We have been embarrassed and ashamed of the blood of Jesus, and so now we have blood running in our streets. It is not whether but which.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

When one extreme rears its ugly head, you can bet that others are preparing their pitch. We live under a regime of statism (worshiping the power of the state), but right on schedule, we have some beginning to preach the power of familialism or tribalism. While statists worship the blood of the sword, another ancient demonic impulse worships the blood of kin, and incest has historically been central to that quest for power. While there are sexual deviants who pursue perversion for mere kicks, we should not be naïve to the power plays at work in the current sexual cesspool. The statists and globalists are currently using sexual deviance to grasp for power, but one reaction to that tyranny collapses into an idolatry of tribe with its own attendant sexual maladies (e.g. polygamy, incest). But we are not tribalists, we are covenantal Christians.

Human society is built on flourishing families, but families cannot flourish apart from the blessing of God, apart from the blood of Christ (and neither can nations). The blood of Christ does not obliterate natural affections for family and culture or nation, but natural affection certainly must die and rise again. Jesus said that unless we hate our father and mother, we cannot be His disciples (Lk. 14:26). The Kingdom of God is an international, global, and pentecostal mission. We believe that the nations (as nations) will bring their glories into the New Jerusalem, but those Christian nations will be united by the Spirit of God indwelling them, joint missionary work, tons of neighborly commerce, and boatloads of cousins.

CONCLUSION

Never forget that God made the world such that you become what you worship. Psalm 115 says that those who make idols and serve them become like them, and when you reject the Living God, you can only go down. You can only change the glory of the incorruptible God into images of corruptible man, birds, beasts, or creeping things (Rom. 1:23). But when you worship man divorced from His Maker, you are worshipping a man descending into beastlike vulgarity. When you worship animals you become like them.

So we are here to worship the Living God who made us, who knows what we are for, and who has come and dwelt among us, so that we might become like Him. Creation itself groans for the redemption of the sons of God because when we worship and act like animals we only harm and misuse creation and so it vomits us out. But the blood of Jesus cleanses every stain, and by His blood we have eternal life. And under that blessing, we work and marry and exercise dominion until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

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Jesus Our Scapegoat

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INTRODUCTION

We must never forget that separation from God is the cause of the divisions in the human race. God sent Adam and Eve out of the Garden, and almost the next thing we are told is Cain killed Abel. The Devil was a murderer from the beginning with his lies (Jn. 8:44). Those lies tempted Eve to lust for the fruit and Adam plunged himself and the whole human race into death (Gen. 3:6); those lies tempted Cain to lust and murder his brother (Gen. 4:7). In the beginning, God gave the human race desire, as a holy appetite for His good gifts and for Himself (Gen. 2:17). But those desires, being twisted, have become the source of our wars and fights and murder (Js. 4:1-11). These cheap, craven lusts create cycles of violence that are only temporarily relieved by sacrificial scapegoats. Therefore, Christ is the only path to reconciliation with God and men. There is no true human community apart from the Cross of Christ.

THE TEXT

“And the Lord spake unto Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they offered before the Lord, and died…” (Lev. 16:1-34)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Leviticus 16 picks up from Leviticus 10 where Nadab and Abihu were killed when they offered strange fire before the Lord, and God says that priests may not come into the Most Holy Place at any time lest they die because God will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat (Lev. 16:1-2). On the day that God appoints, the priest must wash and put on special linen clothes, and he must bring animals for sin offerings and ascension offerings for himself and for the congregation (Lev. 16:3-6). Lots are cast upon two goats: one is designated as the congregational sin offering, the other is the scapegoat (Lev. 16:7-10). Aaron then cleanses the tabernacle with the blood of the sin offerings by sprinkling blood on the mercy seat seven times inside the veil, as well as the altar before the Lord, to cleanse all the uncleanness of Israel and to make atonement for all of their sins (Lev. 16:11-19). Finally, the priest is to lay his hands on the head of the scapegoat and confess all the sins of Israel, and the goat is to be released into the wilderness (Lev. 16:20-22). The priest is to change his clothes and bathe and offer the ascension offerings, along with several other final instructions (Lev. 16:23-28). This is to be an everlasting statute for Israel once a year, a sabbath of sabbaths, a day of afflicting their souls, on the tenth day of the seventh month (Lev. 16:29-34).

ATONEMENT & COMMUNITY

The scene opens with two dead brothers (Lev. 16:1). While the emphasis is certainly on who may draw near to the Lord and not die, there is also simultaneously an underlying message here about who may draw near to the Lord together and not die. In other words, as we come to the climax of the teaching of Leviticus on clean and unclean, we should not miss that God is also teaching His people how to be a congregation, the only way to be a true community (Lev. 16:16-20, 29-34). This is exactly how the New Testament talks about the sacrifice of Christ: “that He might reconcile both [Jew and Gentile] unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby… For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:16, 18). “And, having made peace through the blood of the cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto himself” (Col. 1:20).

A SCAPEGOAT SOCIOLOGY

Rene Girard has described the core conflict between people as “memetic desire.” It’s no accident that the 10th Commandment is “Thou shalt not covet…” God made people with desire, hunger, ambition, and people tend to imitate the desires of others. We see what appears to us to be the happiness, success, blessing of others, and so we desire the things they appear to have desired and acquired. In a fallen world good desire (imitation) easily turns to envy, lust, jealousy, covetousness, hatreds, fights, wars, and murder (Js. 4:1-11). You can see this with little kids in a room full of toys, and one child is playing with one toy (perhaps rather apathetically), and another child enters the room and is immediately drawn to the one toy the other child has, and despite that child’s previous indifference to that one toy he was playing with, the sudden interest of the new child in that one toy incites a strong desire to keep that one toy, and that response only incites a stronger response in the new child and the cycle escalates from there. This is the essence of memetic desire and rivalry, and while we are often told by modern secularists that difference breeds distrust and animosity, memetic rivalry is actually the fiercest in those we are most alike: siblings, family, roommates, neighbors, fellow church members. And it tends to grow in communities like static electricity until it bursts out in violence, and we call the victim of that violence the scapegoat.

THE GOSPEL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT

The purpose of the Day of Atonement is to allow access to God’s presence (Lev. 16:2) and to cleanse the tabernacle from all the uncleanness and sin of the people (Lev. 16:16, 19). While Israel was required to keep the purity codes because God lived in their midst, the Day of Atonement indicates that the uncleanness of Israel is still accumulating at the tabernacle. We can also see that same basic goal of cleansing in the parallels with the cleansing for leprosy: sprinkling seven times (Lev. 16:14, 19 cf. 14:7, 51) and the doubled animals: one dying and one released outside the camp (birds/goats). This doubling should be seen as a simultaneous action: they are both the sin offering (Lev. 16:5). Atonement is God’s act of bringing sinners near while taking away all their sin. So the blood must go all the way into the presence of God, and the sin must be carried all the way out of the camp to an uninhabited land. And Jesus does both. He is the priest and He is the sacrifice: His blood purifies the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 9:24), and He was led outside the gate of the city (Heb. 13:11-13).

CONCLUSION

The Day of Atonement was a type of Good Friday. When Jesus died on the cross the veil in the temple tore from top to bottom (Mk. 15:38), but Hebrews says that the real veil was His flesh. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Heb. 10:19-20). This is how all envy, covetousness, rivalry, bitterness, hatred, and murder ends.

The only way into the presence of God is through the torn flesh of the only innocent victim, and precisely because He was innocent and died for all our sins, He brings us near together. This is the only basis for true human community. There is no Kingdom apart from the King, and the Kingdom flows directly from the King’s Cross.

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