Observing the Ten Days of Awe – Yom-Kippur, the Day of Atonement
Observing the Ten Days of Awe – Yom-Kippur, the Day of Atonement. (this post is in process and will be completed soon)
“Seek the Lord while He lets Himself be found. Call upon Him while He is nearby. Let the evildoers abandon their ways, and the sinful ones banish every evil thought. Let them turn to the Lord, and He will have merciful compassion on them. Yes, let them return to God, for He will lavish forgiveness upon them.” (Isaiah 55:6-7).
While He is Near. This theme verse in Isaiah sets the stage for The Ten Days of Awe. Jewish believers considered these Ten Days to be a time when God drew especially near to His people. God is always near at hand, but it was believed he Lord was more intimate with them during these high holy days, and He expected His believers to draw close to Him for this yearly season of spiritual renewal.
The Ten Days: This season of high holy days started with two days of Rosh-Hashanah, the Jewish New Years. This was followed by seven days of increased Torah study, a focus on performing good deeds, reconciling with others, reciting special prayers, and attending services to prepare for the holiest day of all… Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. All of these aspects of The Ten Days of Awe will receive more particular focus in other articles in this blog category.
“Lord Yahweh, there is no God like You! You are wondrously great, and Your name is mighty in power. You are unrivalled in Your greatness! Who can fail to be impressed by You, King of the nations. It is completely proper to reverence You, for who could fail to stand in awe before You! It is in Your very nature to be worshipped. Among all the elite of the world, there is still no one as magnificent as You, no one who could compare with you.” (Jeremiah 10:7).
AWE: To encounter vastness, something beyond one’s frame of reference, outside of one’s mental grasp; inspires a profound curiosity, a desire to stretch into and explore the source of the awe; surrendering reverently to something greater than oneself; an outward-focused sense of wonder and astonishment; not just a momentary feeling, but a spiritual way of life. So, Jewish believers might say that these Ten Days of Awe is a season of gravity, a time of standing naked in the Divine Light in a state of reverence, humility and fear before God. These high holy days are focused on spiritual accountability, of self-examination, of not being paralyzed with terror before God but instead inspired to consider a deeper walk with the Lord as they are forgiven by His grace.
Main Themes of the Ten Days: Remembrance; Repentance; Judgment; Forgiveness.
“Be careful to celebrate the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of that same month—nine days after the Festival of Trumpets. You must observe it as an official day for holy assembly, a sacred day to deny yourselves and present special gifts to the LORD. Do not do any work on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the LORD your God. “ (Leviticus 23:27).
ATONEMENT: Reconciliation between estranged parties; to ransom by mean of a substitute; to remove barriers of separation; to redeem by paying someone’s debt; to cleanse from sin and have the guilt removed; to cover the guilty by shielding from judgment; to purge sin by sacrifice.
The Day of Atonement is the Bible’s Centerpiece. Yom-Kippur is literally in the center of everything… The Bible passages describing it are in the middle of the Torah. The ritual takes place in the Holy of Holies, which was in the center of the Tabernacle, which is in the center of the Israeli camp. That Holiest Place is still traditionally considered to be in the center of the universe. And there is no doubt that the idea and reality of atonement is at the center of both the Jewish and Christian faiths.
The Biblical Event. Yom-Kippur is considered the holiest day of the High Holy Days, and the most sacred day of the Jewish year. Only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, and at that only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. After many elaborate rituals to purify the sanctuary, the altar, the people and himself, the high priest sacrificed a bull for his own purification before the main event in that Most Holy Place behind the veil. After removing his special high priestly garb and cleansing himself with holy water five different times, he put on a simple white tunic. The main event was begun at that point by his selecting two identical goats and casting lots over them to determine their part in the atonement sacrifice. One goat was selected to be the “Lord’s Goat” and was sacrificed as a sin offering for the people. The high priest would take that goat’s blood into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle it on the Mercy Seat over the Ark of the Covenant. In God’s eyes this blood would not only purify the sacred space but also serve as a purifying agent covering over the sins of the Israelites. The second goat was termed “Azazel’s Goat” apparently named after the demon god of the wilderness. The high priest would place both his hands on this goat’s head, confess all the sins of the people over it, and then send the goat away into the wilderness where it will meet his fate soon enough in the middle of nowhere. This “scapegoat” was a symbol of Israel’s sins being carried away, never to be seen again in God’s eyes. So in this atonement ritual, the Lord forgave the people’s sins, removed their guilt, and cleansed them from the sin’s spiritual defilements. Not only that, but their sin and shame were removed and sent away for good, carried away to the sin’s true source. The scapegoat took their sins back to the devil where they belong. Through this atonement ritual, God and the people were reconciled, their relationship was reset and back on track, united once again. The two vital topics of blood sacrifice and the Mercy Seat are given special attention in other articles in this series on Yom-Kippur. And since many rabbis think of the Day of Atonement as reconciliation with God and thus the renewal of their covenant wedding vows on Mt. Sinai, there is an article in this series on the Ketubah, the wedding ceremony between the Lord Yahweh and His chosen people Israel on that holy mountain.
Observing Yom-Kippur Now. The Day of Atonement is the only Biblically mandated fast day, which is to last for a full 25 hours. The fast day is set apart on the night before Yom-Kippur at home with a holiday meal before sundown. Like other sacred meals in the Jewish tradition, the table is set with the best white linens, the festive candles are lit, and the blessings are said over the wine and challah bread. The Day of Atonement officially starts after the meal just after dark, and the fast day ends at sundown on the next day. The usual custom is to spend the Day in the synagogue services that are filled with various traditional prayers and Scripture passages focusing on remembrance of God’s great deeds, repentance and confession, and seeking forgiveness. Special attention in the services are given to “The Thirteen Attributes of Mercy,” the Al Chet prayers of confession, and the story of Jonah (all of which are discussed in detail in other articles in this series on the Day of Atonement).
Atonement the Jesus Way. “Once a year on Yom-Kippur, in the Tabernacle’s most sacred place, the Holy of Holies, the high priest would enter and drench the Mercy Seat with the blood of the animal sacrificed to make atonement for the people. This is the physical place where Yahweh met the high priest and where He forgave the sins of the people of Israel. The Mercy Seat prefigures the eternal mercy, grace and hope that alone came through Jesus the Messiah, through His shed blood, making atonement once and for all, placing the weight of humanity’s sins on Him.” (notes from the Complete Jewish Bible, Dr. David Stern). Yes, we Christians believe that the Atonement is fulfilled in Jesus Messiah. The Tabernacle atonement was good for its time but temporary, and the high priest Jesus provided the permanent atonement through His blood sacrifice. Christ is the fulfillment of Yom-Kippur, reconciling us to God, purifying our souls, paying our debt, redeeming us from slavery to sin, covering over our much-deserved judgment, and removing our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. Jesus was “the Lord’s Goat” whose blood atoned for our sins, and He was also “the Azazel’s Goat” our scapegoat who bore our sins and carried them away, never to be seen again. “For all have sinned and come short of earning God’s praise. By God’s grace, without earning it, all are granted the status of being considered righteous before Him, through the act of redeeming us from our enslavement to sin that was accomplished by the Messiah Jesus. God put Jesus forward as the atonement for sin through His faithfulness in respect to His bloody sacrificial death.” (Romans 3:24-25).
When was our atonement accomplished? “The Book of Life… that Book belongs to the Lamb who was slain before the creation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8). On the one hand, the Atonement occurred around 33 AD on Golgotha with Jesus’ crucifixion on the Cross. So if someone asks me when I was saved, I can accurately respond, I was saved in 33 AD. On the other hand, the history of blood atonement in the Bible actually begins with a pre-history, a beginning that occurred even before creation. Creator God knew before the first official day that a sacrifice would have to be made in order to restore what was inevitable… a broken relationship between Creator and created. God loved creation so much that He was planning our redemption before there was even the first sin. God had a divine plan in place before He invented blood, and sure enough, blood was at the center of His plan. Innocent blood would have to be spilled for the guilty. God put into place His destiny for Christ, who “was slaughtered before the world was founded.’” (Rev. 13:8). Of course, we are confronted here with a deep, impenetrable mystery: that Jesus was somehow slain outside of time. When God put this plan into play before the foundation of the world, He said it’s as good as done. So, incomprehensibly, the Cross is an eternal event. The Cross has been somehow in the continuous present before there was even the presence of time itself. God had a divine mission in mind before creation, to enact a blood sacrifice before time that would finally be revealed in time through Jesus. When Jesus said, “It is finished!” on the Cross, He signaled the triumphant conclusion of that mission, the eternal reality of redemption that included the empty tomb. This is why blood has represented the sanctity of life literally forever. St. Peter puts it this way, “… the precious blood of Christ, who like a spotless and unblemished lamb was sacrificed for us, a part of God’s plan. For Christ was chosen and destined for this before the foundation of the earth was laid!” (1 Peter 1:18-20).