THE GOAT HAS LEFT THE BUILDING By Rob Bell Text: Leviticus 16 Topic: Why we should rejoice in the work of Christ. Big Idea: We can live in forgiveness and freedom, because Jesus took away our sin. ©2009 Christianity Today International PreachingToday.com Sermon Outline: The Day of Atonement celebrates God cleansing his people from their sin. • Leviticus 16:3–4 • The sights and sounds and ceremony combined to make an awesome event. • Illustration : The ancient letter to Aerasaus describes the high priest in action. • Leviticus 16:7–10, 20–22 • The scapegoat carries the sins of the people, and is led away. Jesus is the scapegoat for our sins, and our high priest. • John 19 describes Jesus being condemned and led away. • Hebrews 10 declares that Jesus, our high priest, completed his work. • Legend indicates the Levitical system stopped working around A.D. 30. The goat has left the building. • In Christ we have been made holy forever. • We must not live in shame and guilt, because the goat has left the building. • In Christ, we become new creations, fundamentally defined as saints. • Jesus, the ultimate scapegoat, took our sin so we could live free. Rejoice, because our great high priest completed his work and sat down. • Our world needs to see people who celebrate that Christ has set us free. • The goat has left the building The Goat Has Left the Building | Rob Bell | PreachingToday.com 2 Sermon Transcript Leviticus 16 deals with the Day of Atonement. In the Jewish feast calendar there are seven major feasts—four in the spring, three in the fall. The fall feasts begin with the Feast of Trumpets, also called Rosh Hashanah. The Feast of Trumpets inaugurates the ten days of awe, which is ten days of repentance, of soul searching. They begin the New Year getting right with God. You fast, deny yourself, you search your heart. God, I want to start the New Year right. We as a community want to start the New Year by letting you clean us. This leads up to the Day of Atonement, which is in Leviticus 16. It’s called Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur centers around several animals and the high priest. We need a high priest, a person who speaks on behalf of the people. The High Priest Represents the People Before God Verse 3. "This is how Aaron is to enter the sanctuary area: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He is to put on the sacred linen tunic, with linen undergarments next to his body." The only reference to underwear I know of in the Bible. “He is to tie the linen sash around him and put on the linen turban. These are sacred garments; so he must bathe himself with water before he puts them on.” We have to understand the picture here. Some scholars believe that at the time—this is the second temple period—you could fit 210,000 people on the temple mount. When Herod was done building the temple, 18,000 people were unemployed. They used 2.3 million stones to build it. Some of the stones are ten feet by ten feet by eighty feet—hundreds of tons. They don’t even know how they were moved into place. One historian says that when the temple was built, not the sound of a chisel was heard in Jerusalem. They carved the stone somewhere else because you wouldn’t want to have that going on in the holy place. Then they moved them into place. To this day we don’t have machinery strong enough to move some of the stones dug up in the temple area. Imagine this massive, huge place. Josephus, one historian, says that the gold at the top of the holy of holies were clusters the size of a grown man. Picture a couple of hundred thousand people, gathered after ten days of weeping, fasting, and denying themselves—soul searching so they can come before their God to have their sins removed. One man, the high priest, is going to go into the presence of God on their behalf. You’d better hope he’s got sacred underwear on. If this dude is offering on behalf of the people, you had better hope he’s got everything together. Remember that the temple is a place where the heavenly and earthly line gets blurred. The temple area is a merging of several different realms. The heavenly and the earthly are colliding. They made sure the sacred undergarments, garments, linen, and the headpiece The Goat Has Left the Building | Rob Bell | PreachingToday.com 3 were crafted exactly how God wanted because they understood there was something unearthly going on. If you scour the ancient sources, you can find accounts of people who described what they saw. One of them is a letter to Aerasaus, a firsthand account of the high priest in action. He says: It was an occasion of great amazement to us when we saw Eleazar engaged in his ministry and all the glorious vestments, including the wearing of the garment with precious stones upon it in which he is vested. There the priest’s appearance makes one awestruck and dumbfounded. A man would think he had come out of this world into another. I emphatically assert that every man who comes near the spectacle of what I have described will experience astonishment and amazement beyond words, his very being transformed by the hallowed arrangement on every single detail. There was something about the high priest working on the Day of Atonement in the priestly function that led people to sense, I am seeing another realm colliding with this realm. Look at what Josephus said, “If one reflects on the construction of the tabernacle and looks at the vestments of the priests and the vessels which we use for the sacred ministry, he will discover that every one of these objects is intended to recall and represent the universe.” It’s not just a priest. It’s not just a sash. It’s not just bells around the base of the garment. There is something else going on here, because everyday, normal occasions can take on holy, sacred significance. The high priest is going into God’s presence on your behalf. Notice what he has to go through. Verse 6, “Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household.” Aaron has to go through a series of rituals to make sure he is cleansed, power washed, sanctified; so he can go in on behalf of the people. The Scapegoat Carries Away the Sins of the People Verse 7: Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat. Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat. Imagine hundreds of thousands of worshipers, come together to begin the year by having their sins atoned for, covered over, cleansed; to be reminded of God’s grace and mercy. The The Goat Has Left the Building | Rob Bell | PreachingToday.com 4 high point is when the high priest is brought a goat—one of them is sacrificed; the second goat is brought to him alive. We need a live goat because when you see how the goat and the high priest interact it will start to bring to light what’s happening here. Remember, the Eastern mind thinks in terms of pictures. We in the Western world were educated by definitions. When we think about theology, we often think of God systematically. We think in terms of Define it. Give me three points. Give me four insights. Give me two things to take home. The Eastern mind thinks in terms of picture, thinks in terms of metaphor, thinks in terms of image. So instead of Jesus saying, "God is really forgiving and I want to give you four reasons why," Jesus says: There’s this guy who has two sons and the one son says, “Dad, I wish you were dead. I want all your money.” Verse 20: When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites— all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place, and the man shall release it in the desert. Who is going to be the man appointed to the task? If this goat has got the sins of all your neighbors on it, do you want to be leading that thing out into the wilderness? Tradition has it that the man appointed to the task would be a Gentile who had no connection with the people of Israel. Because the community, when they send that goat away, doesn’t want to see that goat walking around in town three days later.