St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church – Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Good Friday – March 25^th, 2005

Dear Children of God,

"It’s not fair!" How many times have we uttered these words? How many times have we heard our children utter these words? How many times have we heard our friends or relatives utter these words? If we are honest, there are many situations in which we complain about the unfairness of life. But this evening I want to focus on one situation in particular: choosing a scapegoat. Nothing is more unfair than making one person suffer for a whole group’s foolishness and sin. Unfortunately, self-preservation is a natural human response. When bad things happen, we want to point the finger at someone else. When a company gets into trouble, it’s hard for the boss to resist the temptation to single out one or two employees and make them scapegoats. Firing them might save the boss’ job. When we’re on the outside looking in, we see how unfair that is. But when we’re on the inside, we’re just as likely to point the finger at someone else and blame him or her. It’s not fair. B! ut we still do it.

Tonight we want to consider what human eyes have to see as the most unfair event in all of history: Jesus’ crucifixion. To do that, we’re going to look at the most unique holiday that God gave his Old Testament people. Throughout the season of Lent, we’ve been considering Jesus’ work through the eyes of the Old Covenant. Our focus for this evening is on the Old Testament holiday known as Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. In this holiday we’re going to see how God did what to us was the most unfair thing possible. What do we see in this shadow?

When God destroyed the world in the great flood, he did it because of human sin. The human race had grown so evil that there was only one believing family left. So God punished the world. A young Christian once thought that it was unfair for God to kill millions of innocent animals because humans disobeyed him. I wonder what that young man would have thought about the entire system of Old Testament sacrifices? Again and again God commanded his people to kill innocent animals for their own sins. Now, in truth, during the entire 1,500 years between Moses and Jesus, the Israelites rarely came close to fulfilling everything that Moses commanded. All the evidence of the Scriptures indicates that, except for a few generations that lived under remarkable spiritual leadership, the children of Israel ignored or corrupted this entire system that we’ve been studying for the last six weeks. But God still commanded sacrifices. They were full of shadows of Christ. In the Day of Ato! nement, that’s doubly true, because there we see Jesus twice. What do we see in this shadow? We see Jesus taking our place. He died our death.

The Day of Atonement draws together all the different strains that we have been looking at this Lenten season. It took place in the tabernacle. It was the one day out of the year when the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place and stand in the presence of God. To do that he had to offer sacrifices. First of all, he had to offer a sacrifice for his own sin. That’s the bull that Moses mentions. If you can remember back far enough, you may recall that a sin offering was the offering God commanded for unintentional sins. By commanding the high priest to offer this bull before entering the Most Holy Place, God was not saying that the priest had been unfaithful. Quite the contrary. If he had been unfaithful, God would have required a guilt offering. But even the most committed and faithful high priest was still a human being. He was still a sinner. So before he could come in and offer atonement for God’s people—before he could remove God’s anger against them—he had to get ! rid of God’s anger toward his own hidden sins. Even if he never realized that he had sinned, God knew he had. And any high priest who dared to come into God’s presence without first washing that sin away died. So the high priest had to do something unfair: he had to transfer his guilt onto an animal that had nothing to do with his sin. He had to kill a bull and burn it up on the altar. He had to take its blood with him into the Most Holy Place and sprinkle it seven times before the atonement cover on the ark of the covenant. He sprinkled that blood before God to show that the bull, ceremonially speaking, had paid for his sin. All of that had to happen before the high priest dared to deal with the sins of God’s people.

Once that was done, the high priest had to bring in a second sin offering, this time a goat for the people’s sins. The really unique feature of this part of the sacrifice is the fact that he actually brought two goats to the sanctuary and then cast lots for them. He let God choose which goat would die and which goat would live. The one God chose took the people’s place. It died. Its blood was sprinkled before the atonement cover. Again, God was not saying with this ritual that his people had been deliberately unfaithful to him. That certainly was true for most of their history, and God knew that it had happened. But this ritual was for unintentional sinning. God was making them pay for sins they didn’t even realize they were committing because they were a sinful people. God commanded the high priest to sprinkle the blood of the goat in the Most Holy Place, and he said: "In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebel! lion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been. He is to do the same for the Tent of Meeting, which is among them in the midst of their uncleanness" (verse 16). In fact, he had to do the same for the entire sanctuary complex. The tabernacle, the house of God among his people, was stained by contact with sinners. It had to be cleansed with blood because the holy God appeared inside it.

You would think that God’s holiness would be stronger than human sin. And, of course, you would be right. But God did all this to teach his people just how serious their sin really was. And he built into the ritual of the Day of Atonement the key to understanding that all this blood was just a symbol: the censer with the incense. Before he came into the Most Holy Place the first time, the priest had to take some live coals from the altar. He then would put handfuls of incense onto them and let them burn in the Most Holy Place. The smoke was supposed to hide the presence of God. The kind of incense they sell at places around here don’t really give you an accurate idea of what this was like. Smoke filled this closed-up little room so that the high priest couldn’t see, so that this sinner couldn’t look at God and die. Even though he had killed a bull to pay for his sins, he still couldn’t stand in God’s presence. The blood of an animal simply wasn’t enough for him. And it wa! sn’t enough for his people either.

These sacrifices were really shadows of Christ. The Day of Atonement couldn’t really make atonement; it couldn’t really get rid of God’s anger and bring us safely into God’s presence. The Day of Atonement was a prophecy that commemorated another day, the single darkest day in all of history—the day we are commemorating today. The Day of Atonement was a prophecy of Good Friday—when heaven and hell, sin and grace, met at the cross of Christ. There Jesus did what no animal sacrifice could ever do. He erased our sins. Like God’s Old Testament people, we are sinners. Now that doesn’t mean that we’ve totally ignored God’s covenant. It doesn’t mean that we’ve engaged in active rebellion against him. We aren’t trying to erase his Word and drive out faithful pastors and replace them with people who will preach what we want to hear. But even the most faithful, committed Christian is still a sinner. Our hearts are still corrupt. Our sins stain everything that we do, everything that ! we touch, everything that we are. If God treated us justly, there’s only one thing that could happen: we would die and go to hell.

But God, humanly speaking, did the most unfair thing in history. He did something that no human court would ever allow. He let a completely innocent person step up and take our punishment for us. Can you imagine that happening in America? After the jury convicts a murderer, can you imagine any judge letting his lawyer volunteer to be executed for him? That’s what God did. He transferred our guilt to Jesus. Then he rained all his anger and hatred of sin and sinners down on his beloved Son. He didn’t hold anything back. He piled all the hell of every sinner who has ever lived on top of him. Then he killed him. When he was done, our sin was paid for. When he was done, Jesus’ blood—the blood of God’s Son—had washed our guilt away. God no longer had anything to be angry with us about. He did all that because he loves us. And all of us who put our faith in Christ will live with him in joy forever.

Just to make sure we understand all this, on the Day of Atonement, God pictured Jesus’ crucifixion twice. First he used the familiar symbol of blood and sacrifice that pervaded all of Jewish worship. But then he added a second ritual that was unique in all the Scriptures. Our Bible calls it "the scapegoat." That is a second picture of Jesus. What do we see in this shadow? We see Jesus taking our place. He carried our sins.

The high priest brought two goats and then cast lots over them. One died. But the one that lived was brought to the sanctuary where the high priest laid his hands on its head. He then confessed all the sins that God’s people were guilty of. This part really strikes me, because doing it honestly would have run the risk of enraging people. Can you imagine if I made a public confession of all the sins that I think our congregation is guilty of? Even if I limited myself to things we’ve done together, rather than each individual’s sins, you might disagree with what I called sin and rebellion. God never tells us how the high priest was supposed to determine this, and we have no record in Scripture of it ever being done, so we don’t know how detailed the lists ever were. But I think it’s something that would make us uncomfortable.

After this public confession of corporate sin, the high priest gave the goat to another man who led it out into the wilderness. He was supposed to take it far enough away that it would never find its way back. The picture here is beautiful. God piled all the sins of his people onto the scapegoat. That goat took all the sins so far away that they could never get back to his people. Of course, that’s Jesus! Isaiah knew that. He said, "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted" (Isa 53:4). Jesus was afflicted by God on the cross like no other human being before or since. And in the process, he carried our sorrows away. David wrote, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" (Ps 103:12). That’s what Christ did!

The Day of Atonement is about the guilt that we feel in our hearts as well as the sin that we deserve to be punished for. God took away our sin. We aren’t guilty in his book anymore. But day by day, we still struggle with our guilt. Sometimes when I’m in my office or driving my car, without any provocation, something will turn my mind back to conversations I’ve had. Sometimes I shudder at the things I’ve said to people. Sometimes I wish that I could erase those things from my personal history. Have you ever had conversations like that? Do you wish you could undo the sins of your past? Well, Jesus did. They are as far away from you as the east is from the west. They are gone forever! They’re gone because of what Jesus did on the first Good Friday. He died for them. He paid for them. And the following Sunday he guaranteed that they would never get back to you by rising from the dead. Whenever your heart troubles you with your past, God points you to Jesus, who took your pla! ce. That’s where you find peace.

Humanly speaking, it wasn’t fair. Jesus never should have carried our sins. Jesus never should have died in our place. The only fair thing would’ve been for us to die and go to hell. But Jesus did do those things. God’s love sent him to do those things because God knew that was the only way to satisfy his justice. God is love. Love dies for us and carries our sin and guilt away. Amen.