It is a joy to be here. And I will say with Todd and
with Marvin, that my anxiety has increased as I've gotten
older about preaching. When I first started preaching,
I was telling Todd that I was very anxious, but mainly it was
out of pride. I just didn't want to fail. Nobody
wants to fail. And I just had so much pride,
it just grieved me to death to think about failing. I got tired
of being so grieved about failing. So I thought, what of it? What
if I fail? I'm a failure anyway. But this
business of representing the Lord, the anxiety of that has
increased in my heart. That when I look at a passage
of scripture that I'm going to explain to you, that scares me
to death. Is this the true sense? Is this
the meaning of this? Am I misrepresenting God's Word? And if I do, somebody's going
to believe me. And that scares me to death.
It just scares me to death. But the Lord helps us. He helps
us. And when we stand up and just
give ourselves, He helps us. He seems to enlighten our understanding
to take away some of that dread that we won't be overwhelmed
with it. I've got a passage of scripture
I want you to turn to in Leviticus chapter 16. This is a lengthy reading, but I want to read the whole
chapter. If you'll turn to Leviticus chapter 16 with me. I thought at first about just
pointing out some verses here, but my word, this is God's Word. And I want to look at the whole
chapter in different places. So let's just read it together.
Leviticus chapter 16. This is about the Day of Atonement. This was the most important day in the Jews' life. He did not
want to miss this day. They made a special effort to
be here this day. It's a day the priest made an
atonement for the congregation of Israel. And it represents,
it's a picture, it's a shadow, it's a type of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, taking to himself our humanity and obtaining eternal
redemption for his people. That's what we see in here. This
law that I'm about to read, it was a shadow of good things to
come. It was a picture of a person
that was coming. And as we read this tonight,
I hope just as I read it, you see the Lord Jesus Christ in
this. I thought I didn't even think
about this until I got almost over here today. This really, just over 1900 years
ago, sometime around this time, they tell us on a Friday, is
when the Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself a sacrifice to God. It
was the Passover. Wouldn't it have been amazing
to know what you know now, and to have been looking on, to have
known about Leviticus 16, and been looking on as our Savior
hung on the cross, knowing what He was doing. Well, we can go
there. We can go there in this shadow
tonight and look at it. So let's read it together. I'll
try to read it correctly but quickly. Leviticus chapter 16
in verse 1, And the Lord spake unto Moses after the death of
the two sons of Aaron, when they offered before the Lord and died,
The Lord said unto Moses, speaking to Aaron thy brother, that he
come not at all times into the holy place within the veil, but
for the mercy seat which is upon the ark, that he die not. For I will appear in the cloud
upon the mercy seat. Thus shall Aaron come into the
holy place with a young bullock for a sin offering and a ram
for a burn offering. He shall put on the holy linen
coat, and he shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh, and
he shall be girded with the linen girdle, and with the linen mitre
shall he be attired. These are holy garments, therefore
shall he wash his flesh in water, and so put them on. He shall
take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of
the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burn offering,
and Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering which is
for himself and making an atonement for himself and for his house. And he shall take the two goats
and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle
of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon
the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the
scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat
upon which the Lord's lot fell and offer him for his sin offering.
But the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall
be presented alive before the Lord to make an atonement with
him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. And Urn
shall bring the bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself,
and shall make an atonement for himself, and for his house, and
shall kill the bullock of his sin offering, which is for himself. And he shall take a censer full
of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord,
and his hands full of sweet incense, beaten small, and bring it within
the veil. He shall put the incense upon
the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may
cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die
not. And he shall take of the blood
of the bullock and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy
seat eastward. Before the mercy seat shall he
sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times. Then shall
he kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring
his blood within the veil, do with that blood as he did with
the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat
before the mercy seat. And he shall make an atonement
for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children
of Israel, and because of their transgressions and all of their
sins. And so shall he do for the tabernacle
of the congregation that remaineth among them in the midst of their
uncleanness. and there shall be no man in
the tabernacle of the congregation when he goeth in to make an atonement
for the holy place until he come out and have made an atonement
for himself and for his household and for all the congregation
of Israel. And he shall go out into the altar that is before
the Lord and make an atonement for it and shall take of the
blood of the bullock and the blood of the goat and put it
upon the horns of the altar round about. He shall sprinkle of the
blood upon it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it,
and holler it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. And
when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle
of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live
goat, and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the
live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children
of Israel, and all their transgressions, and all their sins, putting them
upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand
of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon
him all their iniquities into the land not inhabited. And he
shall let go the goat in the wilderness, and Aaron shall come
into the tabernacle of the congregation and put off the linen garments
which he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall
leave them there. And he shall wash his flesh with
water, in the holy place, and put on the garments, and come
forth, and offer his burnt offering, and the burnt offering of the
people, and make an atonement for himself and for the people.
And the fat of the sin offering shall he burn upon the altar. And he that let go the goat for
the scapegoat shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh
in water, and afterwards come in unto the camp. But the bull
for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin offering whose
blood was brought to make an atonement in the holy place,
shall one carry forth without the count, and they shall burn
in the fire their skins and their flesh and their dung. And he
that burneth them shall wash his clothes and bathe his flesh
in water, and afterwards he shall come into the camp. And this
shall be a statue forever unto you, that in the seventh month
On the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls
and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country
or a stranger that sojourneth among you. For on that day shall
the priest make an atonement for you to cleanse you, that
you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord. And it
shall be a Sabbath of rest unto you, and you shall afflict your
souls by statute forever. And the priest whom he shall
anoint and whom he shall consecrate to minister in the priest's office
in his father's stead, shall make the atonement, and shall
put on the linen clothes, even the holy garments. 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 priest,
and for the people of the congregation. And this shall be an everlasting
statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of
Israel. for their sins once a year. And he did as the Lord commanded
him. The Day of Atonement. I thought
it was very fitting the way the Holy Spirit was pleased to begin
this Day of Atonement. The day when the Atonement was
to be made for the children of Israel. And here in verse 1 and
verse 2 it begins with death. These two sons of Aaron, we're
told here in verse 1, died before the Lord. Now we've got a record
of that. Turn back in chapter 10, the
10th chapter, and this tells what happened to Aaron's two
sons. They were two priests under their father, Aaron. Back in
chapter 10 in verse 1, their name was Nabab and Abihu. And Nabab and Abihu the sons
of Aaron took either of them censers, and put fire therein,
and put incense therein, and offered strange fire before the
Lord, which He commanded them not. And there went out fire
from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.
And Moses said unto Aaron, This is that which the Lord spake,
saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near me, and
before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held
his peace. I think it's amazing that the
Day of Atonement was given to us in the light of God killing
Aaron's two sons. They put their strange fire. I have no idea what that was.
They put incense upon it that God did not command them. And
they went flippantly into the presence of the Lord. The Lord
looked upon them and fire went out from the Lord and burned
them up. And Moses said, Aaron, you know why God did this. God
is not like us. God is holy. And if you come
into His presence, you must recognize who He is. He's separate from
us. He's a holy God. He's a just
God. And when they put the strange
fire in that censer and their own incense upon it, they did
not worship God as He commanded. And therefore, He burned them
up. He killed them. That scares me. that makes me
afraid of God. I'll be honest with you. How
many of us have in the past, even now, how we would err if
the Holy Spirit didn't direct our thoughts? How many times
have you and I presumed to go into God's presence with our
own merit? Him things that if you'll just
give me this, if you'll just do this for me, I promise I'll
be a better man. I promise I'll do this and that.
Isn't it a wonder that God hasn't killed every one of us? Are we
any better than these two people? We're really not, aren't we?
We're not. Sunday morning, the pulpits will
be full of preachers that have their own censers that they have
kenneled themselves. A fire that they have kenneled,
they put on it the incense of human merit and they are presumed
to go into the presence of a holy God. And the only reason God
doesn't send fire out and burn them is He just doesn't look
upon them yet. He's long suffered and doesn't
look upon them yet. But when God looks upon a man,
when a man comes into the presence of God with his own merit, in
his own human efforts, God will kill them. I'll be sanctified. He's a jealous God, isn't he?
I think it's very telling that before we read anything about
an atonement, we read you the need of it. And I just about
imagine poor Aaron as he stood there and his lips were quivering,
not because God slew his sons, of course that broke his heart.
But what concerned him more than anything was this, how am I going
to approach him to such a God? He'll kill me too. He's a jealous
God. And so he stands here and we're
reminded of his son's death. And then Moses said, Aaron, I
have a word from God. He has told me how we can go
into His presence and be accepted. And that brings me here to my
first point about this message. The Gospel is a revelation. This Day of Atonement was not
something that Moses in his human wisdom concluded. It surely wasn't something that
Aaron had conjured up. This is what the Lord told Moses. The Lord said unto Moses, it
was God's revelation of the way that he was going to put away
sin, the way that he was going to be sanctified so unsanctified
people could come into his presence. And that's what this chapter
here is about. Well, when Adam sinned in the
garden, and you and I fell, Adam hid himself among the trees
of the garden. He knew that he couldn't face
God, didn't he? He cannot face God. So he hid himself among
the trees of the garden, and the Lord came, called him, Adam,
who art thou? And Adam said, I was naked, and
I hid myself. I was naked. And the Lord has given us a gospel
here in this chapter to tell us how we can be clothed. But
you know something? It's a revelation from God, and
aren't you glad for that? It's not man that cooked this
up. It's God that gave it to us by His will and by revelation. Isn't it always God that takes
the initiative? It wasn't Adam, and it's not
us, and it wasn't Moses or Aaron. The Lord said, here's what you
must do, and He gives them the whole day of sacrificing the
Day of Atonement. Nothing is left to the wisdom
of Moses, and it's not left to our wisdom, it's not left to
chance, it's not left to our imagination, it's a revelation
of God, the Day of Atonement. is because the Lord spoke and
revealed what He was pleased for them to do. First thing,
it's God. It's God. Isn't salvation of
the Lord in His planning, in His purchase? The Father planted,
the Son purchased it, the Holy Spirit executes it. The whole
of salvation is of the Lord. And that's what we see here.
The Lord spake. And notice this, the Day of Atonement
was set for a specific time. Look in verse 29 again. Chapter
16 and verse 29. And this shall be a statue forever
unto you that in the seventh month on the tenth day of the
month. This was the seventh month, the
tenth day of the month. It was a set time when the Passover
was to be offered. In Exodus chapter 12, when they
first offered the Passover, even the time of day was set. They
killed the lamb in the evening. It was God's time when He would
have the offering to be offered. And when did our Lord come into
this world? When did the Father send Him?
In the fullness of time. The Jews used to have a saying
that they said God would never send the Messiah until all the
hearts of the children of Israel were turned to the Lord. When He came to Nazareth, would
all the hearts turn to Him? They were going to kill Him,
throw Him over the brow of the hill. He came unto His own, and
His own received Him not. God has not left anything to
chance or to man's time or to man's condition. When He came
to you to save your soul, did He wait on you, for you to meet
some sort of condition? Never does, never has. He said,
here's the time, I'm giving you the time that this sacrifice
to atone for your souls will be offered. Fourthly, think of this. There
was only one day of atonement for each year. Look here in verse
34. And this shall be an everlasting
statute unto you to make an atonement for the children of Israel for
all their sins once a year. Moses and Aaron didn't say, man,
I've never been to service like that. Somebody come up and say, boy,
when Aaron come back out and raised up his hands and blessed
us, man, you talk about a blessing. Could we do that again next month?
It never happened that way, did it? Once a year, the priest took
the blood into the most holy place and sprinkled the altar. And what a blessing it was, but
it only happened once a year. Doesn't that tell us something?
Isn't that a beautiful picture about the Son of God? What he
did, and he did it only one time. Listen to these scriptures. Once
in the end of the earth hath he appeared to put away sin by
the sacrifice of himself. He'll never come for that reason
again. Once in the end of the earth.
Christ has once offered, he was once offered to bear the sins
of many. He'll never offer himself again.
Christ was once offered for the sins, the just, He once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust. And listen, He'll never suffer
again. Only one time. We are sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. No sense to repeat it, is there?
This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever,
sat down on the right hand of God. And why did he sit down?
It's finished. Once. Brother Jim Wilson used
to travel abroad a lot, and he came home from traveling somewhere
in some little country, and he said, you ain't gonna believe
what I saw. while I was traveling this time. And I said, what did
you see? And he said, we heard this racket,
this noise and people crying and carried on. And he said,
these men, a group of young men dressed in a white gown had whips,
was whipping their backs. And he said, blood had literally
drenched those white outfits that they had on. And he said,
I asked somebody that was familiar with that, what are they doing?
And he said, they're atoning for their sins. atoning for their
sins. Catholicism does that all the
time. Every time they have mass they turn it into the literal
body and blood of Jesus Christ and they say just as real a sacrifice
is made in that wine and bread as it was upon Calvary. He suffers
again and again and again. The Lord said to Moses one time
once a year Will you offer these sacrifices only one time? Because
Jesus Christ came to this world and offered himself one time. And you know something? You know
it. That was enough, wasn't it? Nothing else needed. The sword
of justice bathed itself in his blood. It said, that's enough. I'm satisfied. Nothing else to
suffer. Nothing else to atone for. Along this same line, it was
the high priest alone, and I love this, who made the atonement
for the people. Let me read that to you again
in verse 15. He, Aaron the high priest, shall
kill the goat of the synagogue, and that is for the people, and
bring his blood within the veil, and do with that blood as he
did with the blood of the bulwark, and sprinkle it upon the mercy
seat before the mercy seat. And he shall make an atonement
for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children
of Israel, because of their transgressions and their sins, and so shall
he do for the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among
them in the midst of their uncleanness. And there shall be no man in
the tabernacle of the congregation when he goeth in to make an atonement
for the holy place till he come out, and have made an atonement
for himself, and the household, and all the congregation of Israel."
The Apostle Paul made reference to this in The book of Hebrews
when he's talking about the earthly sanctuary, and he said the common
priest Went into the holy place Accomplishing the service of
God, but into the most holy When he pulled that veil out and went
in where the mercy seat was he said only one went in there And
that was the high priest He went in there alone and He by Himself
sprinkled that blood and made the atonement and came out and
said, God has accepted me. God has accepted the blood. You're
blessed. I remember I was reading this
verse 17 one day and I just kept looking at it. No man shall be
in there when the priest goes in and by Himself makes an atonement. I just kept reading that and
kept reading it and looking at it and hit dawn just like the
sun in the blue sky at noonday just shined in my heart and I
saw Jesus Christ going into God's presence on my behalf and sprinkling
his blood and listen, doing it all by himself. And here's the
blessing that was to me. I had been trying all through
my teenage years to save myself. I was trying to make an atonement
to God for my sins. And I finally come to see, I
can't do it. And then I got this wretched
idea, Jesus will help me do it. And me and him together, we got
our own thing going, George said. And we can do it together. And
I saw that was just as bad as me trying to do it by myself. And finally I seen. that He did
it Himself. He by Himself purged our sin. I tell you that was the most
wonderful thing I've ever seen in my life. I love when Todd's
got one of the favorite messages. I guess it's still so to him.
I just know it is. It's my favorite message. I heard
a preacher preach on the triumph of Christ out of Hebrews chapter
1 and he talked about Christ being the expressed image of
God's person when He had by Himself purged our sins. Oh, to think
about that, brothers and sisters. It's not that you would do no
good if you tried to lift a finger. You must not lift a finger. You're
sinning to lift a finger. We must sit still and do nothing
and see Jesus Christ going by Himself into the very presence
of God and offering Himself in atonement for our sins. He did it all by Himself. We weren't even there, were we? Well, I tell you, all through
the ministry of the Lord Jesus, You see other people aiding Him
and helping Him. In the garden of temptation,
angels came and ministered unto Him. When He was there sweating
blood in the garden, the angel came and strengthened Him. No
angel hung with Him on the cross. No angel was there to speak to
Him and comfort Him on the cross. He took a great delight in His
disciples. He loved His disciples. But they
all forsook Him. were at the cross. Women ministered
unto him. Those women who were at the cross
could do nothing but cry and groan. He hung there by himself
and he suffered by himself until all the sins of all his people
were purged away. That's the most wonderful good
news I ever heard in my life, that my sin that now I weep over,
and we confess it, and we desire assurance that we're forgiven.
But as the preacher said, the only way, honestly, before God,
that we're allowed to consider our sins is 2,000 years ago,
outside the old walls of the city of Jerusalem, our sins were
purged away. And they were purged away by
one man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Brother Henry used to
say, if Christ paid my debt, think of that a minute. Did Christ
pay the debt? I can't understand why the Holy
Spirit would put in here that one man is going in to represent
the whole congregation, and then when he come out, he didn't really
represent them. Did Christ represent His people,
brothers and sisters? Yes, He did. And in representing
them, He paid their debt. Sin is a debt, and you can't
pay it. John, I quote you all the time.
John said, I don't know how much I owed, I just knew I couldn't
pay it. I knew I couldn't pay it. If
Jesus Christ paid my debt, I don't owe it anymore. And if I don't
owe it anymore, God will not charge me with it. That's what we see in this priest.
Don't nobody dare go in there with him. Don't you dare go to
the cross with him. That's the work that only one
can do. Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior. He did it all by
himself. And I for one think he did a
right good job of it, don't you? What was the response of the
people? Look at this, here in verse 29. And this shall be the
statue for Aaron to you. In the seventh month, the tenth
day of the month, you shall afflict your souls. And that word there,
afflict, means to humble. You shall humble your souls. In other words, when Aaron, the
high priest, went in and obtained this atonement for them, There's
no room for them to brag or boast. There's no room for them to get
proud. What have they done? Nothing. And brothers and sisters,
some people say, well, if I believe that Jesus Christ did it all,
I would just do this and that. How do you know when you don't
even believe He did it all? When you believe He did it all,
you're so humble and so thankful and so gracious and so merciful,
you can't help it, can you? Humble yourselves, and look in
verse 29, and you shall do no work at all. I was raised up in a free will
Baptist congregation, and looking back on it now, I see, I see
just how to deal with a free will Baptist. If you know any
free will Baptist and have any free will Baptist friends, deal
with it like this. Ask them, do you believe God
is holy? You really believe God is holy, that His eyes are too
pure to behold sin? I believe that. Do you believe
yourself to be a wretched, hell-deserving sinner? They may twist their
rubber lips a little bit, but they'll have to acknowledge that,
yeah, I'm a sinner. Then how are you going to be
accepted of God? I'll tell you the answer you'll
get. Jesus did His part, but God expects me to do my part.
No work at all. Nothing. You and I must stand
still and seeing someone else represent us before the throne
of God by his own life laid down and do nothing. Move a muscle.
No, not one muscle. Jesus did it all. And we must
cling to him that way. Don't bring these centers in
our hands from afar that we've kindled ourselves. Put this human
merit of incense upon it. And verse 31 said this, it shall
be a Sabbath of rest unto you and you shall humble your souls
by statute forever. This is a Sabbath of rest. You
know, the first Sabbath was where God rested from all his work. Remember that? Six days he created
the heavens and the earth, and he rested the seventh day from
all he'd done. This year was the Jewish Sabbath,
Sabbath where you'd worked all week, and the seventh day God
said, rest yourself. You need to rest, rest yourself.
The seventh day was the day for them to rest. There is a gospel Sabbath. And you know what it is? The
work has been accomplished. The work of redemption has been
perfected. Sin has been put away. God has
been reconciled. He's not angry anymore. Come
unto me and I will give you rest. This is the gospel rest. It's
not a Sunday Sabbath. It's a spiritual rest for your
conscience. for your soul, for your heart. A day of rest, a Sabbath of rest. Can you rest in Christ? Can you
rest in Him? You know, we just enter into
His rest. It's His rest. He finished the work and sat
down and He's resting because the work is finished. We enter
into His rest. Nothing else to be done. Boy, Bruce, if I believed that, I
tell you, I'd just live like you. How do you know what you
do when you don't believe that? That's what I tell my pre-Web
Baptist friends. How do you know? I'd just live
like the devil if I believed that. Since you don't believe
that, how do you know? Consider this, back in the third
and fourth chapter, and I can't really explain to you what the
high priest looked like in his apparel. Aaron, the high priest,
man he had beautiful garments. Probably most of you have seen
it. If you haven't seen the dress of the high priest, go to the
internet and pull it up on your phones or something and look
at a beautiful outfit that God described to Moses in the mount
for the high priest to wear. absolutely gorgeous outfit, the
white gown, the white breeches underneath it all, and the turban
on his head, and had the stripes here of gold, and said, holiness
unto the Lord. And he had the plate on his breast
here made out of precious stones with each name of the tribe of
Israel. He was a gorgeous, gorgeous man standing there, beautiful
apparel. And the Lord said, Aaron, on
the Day of Atonement, you take that off. Take that beautiful
outfit off, that beautiful uniform, and you lay it aside, and you
put on yourself the apparel of the common priest. Every one of us here knows what
that means. when the Lord Jesus Christ laid
aside, as it were, His glory, veiled it, however you want to
look at it. He was made in fashion as a man. He took upon Him the form of
a servant and being found in a fashion as a common man. You couldn't tell the difference
between Him and anybody else. He humbled Himself and became
obedient unto death. even the death of the cross. Here, he told Aaron, when you
take off that beautiful outfit, you put on this common, what
the common priest wears, and he called them holy garments. Put on the holy garments. And
when Jesus Christ laid aside, veiled his eternal deity, you
know something? In his humanity, he was holy. He was holy. The Bible says that
everywhere, doesn't it? The just for the unjust that
He might bring us to God. He offered Himself with that
spot to God. He put on our humanity. But in
that humanity, He was absolutely holy. He could not sin. He never sinned. He was God in
our humanity. That's what He offered to the
Lord his humanity, his body, his soul, his spirit. He laid
it down before God as a sacrifice for our sins. He sacrifices Aaron. He offered
four sacrifices. Here in verse 3 and verse 5,
he had four sacrifices. He offered a bull, he offered
a ram, and he offered two goats. The bowl was said to be for himself
and his family. Before he did anything else,
Aaron had to take this bowl, cut his throat, take his blood
into the mercy seat, and he did that for himself. He had to offer that for himself.
Now this tells us something, doesn't it? Don't you imagine
Aaron got lifted up in pride sometime? How could he not? He represented millions of people. One time when God sent a plague,
and I mean it was sweeping like a wave, and people were dropping
like flies, dying immediately, and Aaron put coals in his censer, sprinkled
sweet incense in, and ran and stood between the dead and the
living, and the plague stayed. Now if you could do something
like that, wouldn't you get just a little bit lifted up in pride? He was a sinner just like the
rest of us. Great man, represented the children
of Israel before God, but he had to have a sacrifice for himself. And what does that tell us, brothers
and sisters? No matter who we are, no matter what position
we may hold in this lifetime, we cannot approach unto God,
we cannot be accepted of God without a sacrifice. I don't
care if you're the President of the United States. They call
him the most powerful man in the world. I don't care who he
is. He cannot approach unto God to
be accepted without a perfect sacrifice. The Pope of Rome may
brag about absolving people of their sins. He can't even absolve
himself. He cannot. He needs a sacrifice
just like you do and just like I do. I'm not trying to be funny, but
if you'd take off that dress and come and sit with the rest
of us poor sinners and look to Jesus Christ alone for his acceptance
with God, I'd not only kiss his ring, I'd kiss his lips. But
until he does that, we ain't having nothing to do with him,
are we? Everybody must have a sacrifice to approach unto God. He had a bull, he had a ram,
and he had two goats, and I'll have to tell you about these.
You can read them, we've just read them here. But this ram,
I think probably of all the offerings, this was, to me, when he took
this ram and skinned it and gutted it, and they took the skin on
the outside of the camp and all the intestinal and burned it
all there, but he took this ram and they heated that brazen altar
up, and they cut that ram in pieces, and they laid the whole
body upon that burnt offering, that brazen altar, and they burn
it up, and that was called the burnt offering. Sometimes I like
to think of this offering representing the sufferings of Jesus Christ
more than anything else. You know when he died, he underwent
the fire of God's wrath. Listen to this passage. Is it
nothing to you that pass by, behold, and see if there's any
sorrow like unto my sorrow? Wherewith the Lord hath afflicted
me in the day of his fierce anger, from above he sent fire into
my bones. And He prevailed against me. We couldn't see it. Human eyes
couldn't see it. But the wrath of God fell upon
His Son and it's though He burned Him up to ashes. When Noah got
out of that ark, he took those clean animals and he put them
on an altar and he burned them up. And God smelled a sweet savor
and said, I'll never curse again. I don't know of anything that
shows that God has punished sin as well as these burnt sacrifices. There's something that will not
satisfy God, and that's the flames of hell. But there's something that did
satisfy Him. That's the sufferings and death
of His own precious Son. You trust in Him with all your
heart, and He said, I'll never curse you again. I've already
cursed you. in my son." Already cursed you. Then these two scapegoats, let
me tell you about them quickly because I'm keeping you too long.
They took the one goat, cast lots for it. One lot fell on
the goat, they took his blood, took him into the holiest of
holies and sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat. Comes back
out and they take the skin whole goat outside the camp and burn
it, take the bullock outside the camp and burn it. The only
thing they burnt whole was that ram for a burnt offering. And
then they took the live goat and I love how he does this. He brings the live goat and Aaron,
representing the people, comes up and confesses all of their
sins and all of their iniquities and all of their transgressions
and puts them on the head of that scapegoat. And then the
scapegoat takes all of those sins and iniquities into a land
that's not inhabited and the man who took him out there left
him and come back without him. Isn't that the gospel of substitution? Brothers and sisters, I hold
to this just as firmly as I can, that God give me grace to, because
I see this in the scripture. I don't think I'm wrong according
to my understanding. I believe in the absolute, literal
transfer of sin. Jesus Christ did not suffer the
wrath of God without first suffering the guilt of sin. And the reason
he suffered the guilt of sin is because sin was upon him.
All we lack sheep have gone astray, and God has laid on him. What they did here was typical.
Aaron couldn't put anybody's sins on that goat. With man this
is impossible, but listen, not with God. One dear brother told
me, he said, I just don't believe in the transfer of sins. He said,
that's impossible. I said, with man, but not with God. And I'll tell
you one thing, if God leaves them on us, we die. But if He puts them on Jesus
Christ, which He can because He's God, and He can gather them
all up because He's got this all seeing eye, you say, but
that was 2,000 years ago. Time is no limit to Him. He gathered every sin, every
thought of foolishness, every hateful word, every sin that
every elect soul had committed. The all-seeing eye and the long
arm of God wretched out and searched every crack and crevice and gathered
them all up and put them all up on the head in the body of
His dear Son. And they became His. And if they're
His, they're not mine anymore. Now He stands. He stands with
sin. Now, Lord, what are you going
to do now? You said you come to be a Savior
to save your people. Well, there's their sins. What
are you going to do with them now? I'm going to shed my blood
for them. I'm going to undergo the awful
wrath of God for them. I'm going to be punished for
them. And I'm going to put them away, never to be remembered
against you again. You believe that? What these tops and shatters
taught, end top and shatters, really happened 2,000 years ago. Really happened. And that's what
this Day of Atonement is all about. Well, I had one or two more,
but I quit. I quit. Lord bless you.