Sermon: Why Is Atonement a Fall Festival?

Different Emphases on Christ's Sacrifice
#1675
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 05-Oct-22; 82 minutes

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Have you ever thought about what it would be like to live in, say, Australia or New Zealand or Southern Africa (like the Richter's did) or southern South America, and keep God's feasts? Australia especially, but all those other places also, are down under the equator. They are in the southern hemisphere. And so because of Earth's tilt, I believe it is 23 degrees, different parts of the earth get more sun and warmth than others. And as things go around, changes throughout the year, and so we have seasons. So they get more direct sun and thus warmer temperatures—I am talking about the southern hemisphere here—during our winter. So during our winter they enjoy summer and that is totally opposite to our experience here up in the northern hemisphere. So spring and summer to them are colder, but fall in winter are warmer. If they get snow, it is in July, August, or September perhaps, summertime to us. It is kind of strange to us.

Please go to Exodus 23 because thinking about the southern hemisphere and the keeping of the holy days brings up a bit of a quandary. Let us go to verses 14 through 16. God says here to the Israelites:

Exodus 23:14-16 "Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year: You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib [Abib means spring], for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty); and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field."

These are three of the major holy day seasons or holy days, festival seasons, and they are put on the Israelite agricultural calendar, if you will. Just a little background here, something kind of a little interesting, is the word "times" there in verse 14. I thought it meant seasons, but it actually does not. It is the Hebrew word for foot or feet. Is that not funny? Three feet in the year you shall keep a feast to Me.

Well, the reason the word is feet is because it is talking about a time of travel. So the way the Hebrews put it was three feet, three times to travel, three pilgrimages. And so what comes then in verses 15 and 16 are the three pilgrimage festivals that we know of from Scripture: Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and the Feast of Ingathering or Feast of Tabernacles. So God placed these holy days on the Israelite agricultural calendar, beginning in the spring, and they run through late spring and then skips over into the fall with Trumpets, Atonement, and the Feast. Those are in the fall. These pilgrimage festivals occur at harvest times.

Let us think of this, put these two thoughts together. Those in the southern hemisphere keep Passover/Unleavened Bread in the autumn and they keep Pentecost on the brink of winter, and Trumpets, Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles occur in the spring. From our point of view, that is a little wacky. But we are just lucky enough to live in the northern hemisphere, the same as Jerusalem was, and so we keep the same times, but they have to do a mental dance a little bit to make sure they understand that they are actually keeping them at the right time, but not in the right season, and they are just following God's commands for the northern hemisphere. So they have to make an adjustment in their minds to relate it to seasons that are offset by six months. That would be like, for us, adjusting to keeping Thanksgiving at the end of May or Independence Day at the height of winter. It would take a little bit of adjustment to figure all that out and to enjoy it in a similar way.

Now, some people have picked up on another oddity (or supposed oddity) in the holy days and this has to do with the present day we are keeping now—the Day of Atonement. When a person gets knowledgeable enough about the Day of Atonement and what it means, it can seem that this holy day would actually fit better in the spring and not in the fall. It would be better kept alongside Passover rather than alongside Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles because it does appear that Atonement and Passover deal with similar themes. They seem to have overlapping meanings because both have to do intensively with Christ's sacrifice—the redemption price the Creator paid to clear us of guilt and open up a way so that we can have a relationship with the Father.

So that is our question for today. Why is Atonement a fall festival rather than a spring one? Why do we keep Atonement, why do we observe Atonement in the fall? What are the differences between the two, Passover and Atonement? What makes Atonement a better companion to Trumpets and Tabernacles rather than to Unleavened Bread? Perhaps I can provide some clarity to these questions before we close services today. And I hope I am not dragging you too much through all the detail. We have had a lot of that lately, but the detail is where all the important nuggets are. So we need to be able to get into some of these things.

Let us go where we all have a marker at, Leviticus 16. But we are going to read verses 29 through 34. These are the first instructions about Atonement and then we will go to Leviticus 23 and read those instructions about Atonement.

Leviticus 16:29-31 "This shall be a statute forever for you: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether a native of your own country or a stranger who sojourns among you. For on that day the priest shall make atonement for you, to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It is a sabbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls. It is a statute forever."

"It is a Sabbath of solemn rest," this is repeated, "for you, and you shall afflict your souls," that is repeated. "It is a statute forever," that is repeated. I think God wants us to remember a few things here.

Leviticus 16:32-34 "And the priest, who is anointed and consecrated to minister as priest in his father's place, shall make atonement, and put on the linen clothes, the holy garments; and he shall make atonement for the Holy Sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tabernacle of meeting, and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year."

That is a lot of "make atonement." Make atonement, make atonement, make atonement. It is there 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times in those few verses. Let us go to chapter 23 and we will read verses 26 through 32, this whole section on the Day of Atonement.

Leviticus 23:26-32 And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, "Also the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. [today] It shall be a holy convocation for you [that is the first time that is mentioned here]; you shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire to the Lord. And you shall do no work on that same day, for it is the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God.

For any person who is not afflicted in soul on that same day, he shall be cut off from his people. And any person who does any work on that same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be a sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your sabbath."

Both of these passages mentioned some of the same detail and they mentioned them very frequently. It is repeated. God wants us to understand that these details are very important. The way we respond to this Day by fasting, by afflicting our souls, by doing no work—all of these are very important in understanding the Day and being humbled because of the import of the day; what it means for us personally and for the church, yes, but even for the whole world. So we have things that we see like, the day of the year, tenth day of the seventh month, I have mentioned afflicting our souls and doing no work, that it is a Sabbath of solemn rest. This is one of those Hebraisms where something is doubled up. So this is a Sabbath Sabbath. This is a Sabbath rest. This is a, as I have been saying over the last couple of services, a Sabbath of Sabbaths. It is the most important Sabbath, if you will.

And of course the one that I emphasized most of all as I was going through chapter 16, this phrase "make atonement for you." So besides the details of the ritual in which the sin offerings are made, Leviticus 16 especially emphasizes this atonement is "to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord." This idea, which I had pulled out of the middle of the chapter and now he repeats it there at the end of the chapter in verse 34, "to make atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins" is the basic emphasis that we see in Leviticus 16 as opposed to what is emphasized in Leviticus 23.

Leviticus 23 emphasizes the afflicting our souls and especially doing no work was mentioned several times in that short passage. The two passages emphasize different things, but they are on the same page, obviously, coming from God.

You understand this, we see the details there. What is atonement? What does atonement mean? I think we should know this, but I found that a lot of people really do not. It is one of those theological words that people use, but they really do not understand what it implies.

Now, Hebrew uses the word kapar, and there is a scholarly debate about which root this word actually comes from. It is one of two. One suggests covering or hiding or concealing. This one is used back in Genesis 6:14, I believe it is, where Noah put pitch on the ark. So he covered the ark in pitch and made it water tight. This idea also has the similar idea of hiding or concealing.

The other root indicates appeasing or pacifying an offended party. It is like paying a ransom or a settlement if you have done something wrong to somebody and instead of you going to jail for whatever it is you did wrong, you would appease the person by giving them a certain amount of money, let us say, and so you would appease their wrath. You would pay for your transgression against them. The Scandinavian countries and even the English for a while had a wergild, where if you killed somebody, let us say by accident, the price of a person was a set fee and you would pay this to the family of the person you had killed or if it was not that bad, but you stole something or whatever, you could pay money to appease them and settle matters. That is the idea of the second root.

The Hebrews thought of atonement as a way to appease or put off God's justice and righteous wrath through a substitutionary animal sacrifice. And both of these meanings can work—that it is covered over in a way. That it does not mean that it is forgiven, it just means that it is kind of hidden. The sin is put to the side. The other one would be that the animal sacrifice is made as an atonement, not to pay for the sin in full and be cleansed, but to at least to appease God's wrath.

We know that the sacrifices did not cleanse from sin; they were symbolic only. But God used them to teach the Israelites of the greater Sacrifice that was coming. They all pointed to Him, and their animal sacrifices was a ritual means to recognize those sins and to, in a cheap way, pay for them, if you want to put it that way. The writer of Hebrews says such animals were merely reminders of sin. (And if you want to jot down the citation, that is Hebrews 10:3.) They are just reminders of sin every year because animal sacrifices have no power to pay for human sins. They are not worth enough, their value is not high enough to pay for any human sin since humans are higher than animals. So these animal sacrifices were no more than ritual acknowledgements of sin.

Now, in the secular world, atonement describes the act or process of making up for a wrong. Let us say two friends were, you know, palling around and there were also two girls they were interested in, but actually both of them were really interested in the one girl, and the one guy got the girl and he felt a little guilty about it. So he atoned for that by doing something to help the other guy understand that he really had not cheated him, but he was sorry that he had. That is kind of how we do it, how we think of atonement here in the secular world. It is doing something to kind of make up for something we feel we have offended another person over.

The word atonement does come from Middle English, the language of Chaucer, and it is indeed constructed from at- and -one and -ment, which is a noun marker indicating a result or a goal or a method. So at-one-ment is how it began. But at the time it did not mean what we think of it to mean. It just simply meant reconciliation and was used in the similar way that I just mentioned, about trying to get two people back together and making some sort of an offer of something to bring them together.

Today it means something a little different after 600 years from Chaucer. Today it means the reparation for an offense or injury, or it can be the means of reconciliation. So this is my atonement for whatever, for making you look bad at work in front of the boss or something along that line.

Now, in the church, because there is all kinds of different meanings flowing here, different ways it can be used, they are all similar, but because of the context, they might mean something a little different. In the church, we use it to describe the means by which people can be reconciled to God. There is a specific person we are trying to reconcile with and there is specific theology that we have to understand about how we can be reconciled to God. And the reason we need to be reconciled is that He and us, we human beings, are separated by a deep and wide chasm of offensive sin. But through atonement, that chasm is bridged and the two parties can be then brought together, uniting them into a relationship that works.

So in Christian theology, it is often capitalized because they understand that the atonement refers specifically to Christ because He is the bridge, the one who gives Himself so that we can be reconciled to God. He is the sacrifice for atonement and He is the mediatorial bridge between us and God. Now, theologically then, atonement through Christ's blood is a cleansing, a purging, or purification from all iniquities. In the context of Leviticus 16, the sin offering prefigures making atonement for the iniquities of the children of Israel, the people God chose as His own. And as we have taught, the Day of Atonement sacrifice, the Atonement, pictures both the cleansing and the removal or bearing away of sin.

The author of Hebrews, likely Paul, clarifies this in Hebrews 9. I would like to go back there and we will hop, skip, and jump through this chapter, beginning in verse 11. Now I want you to notice here, throughout this passage, the words that Paul uses to describe this atonement.

Hebrews 9:11-15 But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience [or purify your conscience or cleanse your conscience] from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

Hebrews 9:22 And according to the law almost all things are purged [or purified or cleansed] with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.

Hebrews 9:26-28 [we will start in the middle of the verse] but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

Like I said, the author uses many different ways to describe this atonement. He is describing the same result of the offering, or the sacrifice. He says it is a cleansing. It is a purification. It is a means of remission. It is a payment for forgiveness. He did not use those words, but that is basically what remission implies. It is a putting away. If we flip back to chapter 1, verse 3, we would find that Christ said there that He purged our sins, He Himself purged our sins. In chapter 10, verse 10, he uses the word sanctified and he also used that in chapter 9 as well, meaning set apart.

The sacrifice does all of these things, different facets of what the sacrifice of Jesus Christ accomplishes. Many things. God never uses something that great for only one purpose. But it does all these things and the chief thing that it does, as we see it from Leviticus 16, is that it cleanses us. It is a cleansing offering. It cleanses us of sin. It purifies us because those sins, then, are paid for through His blood, the most valuable thing in all the universe. And it pays for all those sins.

So the Day of Atonement is a memorial of our Savior becoming the propitiation. We could call it the appeasement and the expiation or the means of atonement for sin.

Let us go to Romans 5. Paul puts this in a nice box here in Romans 5. We will start in verse 6.

Romans 5:6-9 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

So that is what the sacrifice of Christ accomplishes. He died for us. His blood justifies us. That is, we are brought back to dead center. We are legally proclaimed righteous under the blood of Jesus Christ. It is not our own righteousness but His righteousness that covers us in that and makes us able then to come before the Father. And from that point then, we can be saved from the wrath of God which comes upon all sinners because those sins have been wiped away. We have been cleansed of them.

That sounds like a great deal, however, like what most think the Passover sacrifice accomplishes. We were going through the Atonement sacrifice, not the Passover sacrifice. Without understanding the Levitical sacrifices and offerings, we might agree with this—that the two sacrifices sound the same. That is because most people ignore all the other sacrifices. The only one they concentrate on is the sin offering. That is the only one they key in on because theologically most people are more interested in our sins being forgiven than anything else. And so we want justification. We want to come before God and have those sins cleaned, but we do not think about what else comes with it, what else that sacrifice accomplishes.

I think many of us assume that the Passover offering is a sin offering, but the details argue otherwise—that the Passover offering is not a sin offering. Sin is definitely not front and center in that offering. It does acknowledge sin in a small way, but it does not picture the sacrifice for sin. In fact, it pictures something that comes as a result of the sacrifice for sin, and that is the resulting relationship once sins have been passed over through the blood of the Lamb. So when we take the Passover, which is the New Covenant Passover offering, if you will, we are not in a great way talking about the cleansing of our sins. We are talking about something else. We are talking about the relationship we now have with Christ and the Father.

We are here in Romans chapter 5. I want you to look at verse 1.

Romans 5:1-2 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Let us go down to verse 10, right after this section we read earlier about being justified.

Romans 5:10-11 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Now, that first verse is what I am really keying in on here. But both of these little sections we just read tell us what the sacrifice for sin accomplished and that is that it made us have peace with God. That we are now able to have a peaceful relationship with God. And we rejoice in that relationship because of what it means. It means that we are, with God, able now to live His life. That is why I included verse 10 in there, "that we shall be saved by His life." The only way we will have salvation, even with the sin offering being made for us, is if we continue in a righteous, peaceful relationship with God. And it is through that relationship that we are sanctified and moved towards complete salvation.

So now, with the sacrifice for our sins given, we now have a satisfying relationship with God and rejoice that we share life with God and will, if all things go properly, for all eternity.

Why do I say this? What is my background here? What is backing me up in terms of the sacrifices and the Old Testament examples that we have? And not just Old Testament, we will get to a couple of New Testament ones too. But I want to show this to you. We will go back to Leviticus 3 where the peace offering is being described. Let us start in verse 6. This is the one that has to do with the lamb or a peace offering from the flock.

Leviticus 3:6-11 'If his offering as a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord is of the flock, whether male or female, he shall offer it without blemish. If he offers a lamb as his offering, then he shall offer it before the Lord. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the offering and kill it before the tabernacle of meeting; and Aaron's sons shall sprinkle its blood all around on the altar.

Then he shall offer from the sacrifice of the peace offering, as an offering made by fire to the Lord, its fat and the whole fat tail which he shall remove close to the backbone. And the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails, the two kidneys and the fat that is on them by the flanks, and the fatty lobe attached to the liver above the kidneys, he shall remove; and the priest shall burn them all the on the altar as food, an offering made by fire to the Lord.'

Let us go to chapter 7 where there is more information about this peace offering. We are just going to pick up one verse and then go down and pick up a few more.

Leviticus 7:15 'The flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offering for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day it is offered. He shall not leave any of it until the morning.'

Leviticus 7:28-34 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'He who offers the sacrifice of his peace offering to the Lord shall bring his offering to the Lord from the sacrifice of his peace offering. His own hand shall bring the offerings made by fire to the Lord.

The fat with the breast he shall bring, that the breast may be waved as a wave offering before the Lord. And the priest shall burn the fat on the altar, but the breast shall be for Aaron and his sons.' Also the right thigh you shall give to the priest as a heave offering from the sacrifices of your peace offerings.

He among the sons of Aaron who offers the blood of the peace offering and the fat, shall have the right thigh for his part. For the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of the heave offering I have taken from the children of Israel, from the sacrifices of their peace offerings, and I have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons from the children of Israel by a statute forever.'"

These passages that I have read contain many details but we need to highlight only a few. The first is that the offerer lays his hands on the animal before killing it to show a transference to it or an identification with the animal that it represents the offer. So it is a symbolic expression of the substitution of the animal for the worshipper. But note, when we read that passage, that even though the man who is making the offering puts his hands on the animal, sins are not confessed over it. Not like the atonement offering when the hands were laid on the animal, all the sins of Israel were confessed over it and it was led into the wilderness. That is in chapter 16, verse 21.

In the peace offering, the hands are laid on it but no sins are confessed over it. Now, the offerer has surely committed sins but the peace offering does not really contemplate them that seriously. And the assumption is that they have already been forgiven, they have already been dealt with. And how do I know that? Because the peace offering is called a sweet aroma to the Lord. That is in Leviticus 3:5. It indicates that the offering pleases God as it is. He would not be pleased if it contained sin. The sin offering, even though it was made, was burned outside the camp. God wanted it as far away from Himself because it was full of sin. That is in chapter 4, verse 12.

But this offering was not, this was accepted by God. He ate part of it. Remember I showed you there, it said it was burned on the altar as food—meaning food for God. Then a portion of it was given to the priest for his food and the remainder came back to the offerer for his food and all those he asked to join in the feast to eat the remainder of that animal, that lamb.

Now, this is kind of interesting because this shows up actually in John 13 after the meal was eaten. I want to to show something here, just to see that the Passover service that Jesus kept there with His disciples followed this. And it it appears in the foot washing. He had gotten the towel and everything and brought the water over and He was at Peter. Peter said to him in the earlier verse, "Lord, are you washing my feet?" He was astounded!

John 13:7-10 Jesus answered and said to him, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this." Peter said to Him, "You shall never wash my feet!" Jesus answered, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me." [Remember it is a cleansing, right? The sacrifice of sin is a cleansing.] Peter said to Him, "Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."

You see a little problem with that? The little problem is that cleansing was not to happen until the next day, not the full cleansing of Jesus being the sin offering. But He pronounces them at this point clean. So He was not considering sin during the Passover service. They were already clean in His mind. He would make the sacrifice the next day and they would be clean.

We can take that back to the peace offering in Leviticus 3 and 7 and consider, conclude that the peace offering contemplates sin only in the fact of it is assumed that the person has already been cleaned, it has already been dealt with.

The second thing we need to look at, or at least note among these two passages in Leviticus 3:7, did you notice that the animal's blood was sprinkled around the sides of the altar? And probably it was done that way to present a life given to God. The animal did die. A life was taken and the blood, which is the life of the animal, is sprinkled around the altar as a means of saying that this life was sacrificed. But it was not sacrificed for sin. In the sin offering the blood was sprinkled on things to cleanse them. This was not sprinkled on anything for cleansing.

The commentators are kind of funny about this. They say that the animal's blood was probably thrown against the sides of the altar because when these things were happening, let us say on the Passover or any time there was a pilgrimage festival, there were a lot of these peace offerings being made, and the fire, the holocaust, of that altar was so hot because of all the fuel that was being put on it. And a lot of that fuel was fat, there was a lot of fat being put on the altar as food for God because that was a great part of what was given to be God's portion. It was a roaring fire and they could not get close enough to just put it on the sides of the altar. They had to stand back good ways and kind of fling it at it because it was so hot.

But my point here it was not sprinkled or thrown against the altar for cleansing but to show the sacrifice of a life.

The third thing is its name. It is a peace offering. Believe it or not, the word for peace offering is very close to the word for shalom. It is a shalom offering, if you will. It is also called a thanksgiving offering or a fellowship offering. It pictures the offerer, the priest, and God Himself in fellowship eating a meal together. Each of the parties receives a portion of the lamb to eat. And it depicts all three of these parties in an amiable relationship, in fellowship with one another, like our Thanksgiving dinner should be. I do not know if they always are (if you like the Cowboys, they are probably not). But when you eat in fellowship with people you enjoy, you have a really good time. It is a great setting. You get along, you rejoice, you feel a great deal of well being and satisfaction when all the elements come together and you have this peaceful meal of good fellowship. And that is why it is called a shalom offering because there is well being and satisfaction among all the participants—the offerer, the priest, and God.

So in this peace offering, there is no taint of transgression. There is no dark side bringing down the joy of this offering and meal. It shows a harmonious relationship of peace and instead of being angered or offended by sin, God is pleased. He is grinning from ear to ear, if you will, because now His child and His great Son and He are sitting around the table eating together, talking, having a good time. So God is pleased and He participates in the rejoicing of the feast. Everyone is on good terms and the offerer especially is thankful to God for what He has brought about. And so all of these ideas of peace, thanksgiving, and fellowship are all intertwined in this peace offering, shalom, well being.

Our heads are full of knowledge now. Let us go back to Exodus the 12th chapter where God introduces the Passover offering—the Passover lamb.

Exodus 12:3-14 "Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, 'On the tenth day of this month [which is interesting, the lamb was chosen on the tenth day of Nisan or Abib and we keep the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of Tishri. So they are exactly six months opposite to one another.] every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for household.

And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man's need you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month.

Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat it raw or boiled at all with water, but roast it in fire—its head with its legs and its entrails. You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire.

And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord.

Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.'

The Passover lamb, the Passover offering, is not an exact match to the peace offering. There are differences, but there are many similarities as well and I think those are fairly apparent. In this case, the head of the family acts as offerer, and believe it or not at this point, he also acts as priest. The Passover, the lamb, is a meal eaten on one night, it cannot be held over to the next day. There is no mention here, or in any of the places where this particular sacrifice is described, about it being any kind of atonement for sin. It is never mentioned. This lamb is not a sacrifice atoning for sin. A life is given, like in the peace offering, and the blood is used as a sign of the family's self-identification as part of God's people. They are, we could say, in a relationship with Him. They put this on their doorpost and lintel to tell God, "Hey, we're Your people," and this blood of the lamb says, "Please pass over us because we are Your people."

And so what does that accomplish? They are given life rather than death by the Death Angel. And surely they consider what God was doing for them a great blessing and they were quite grateful for what had been offered to them. Like I said, it is not an exact match, but it is close enough to show that these people were doing a form of an in-home peace offering, where there was no altar to sacrifice this lamb at, but many of the same details about how this offering was treated are very much like the peace offering. It does not parallel any other kind of offering that God ordered Israel to make.

This is all Old Testament stuff, these are all the types. Let us go to Jesus actually doing this in the book of Luke at His final Passover service or Passover meal. I am not going to go to John because Luke gives the most complete, the fullest account of Christ last Passover meal. I do not know if you are aware of it, but in the book of John, the account of Christ's last Passover actually begins after the meal is ended. I mean, that is the first thing that comes out of John's pen after saying that He loved His disciples so much, supper being ended, and he goes into the foot washing. So in this account, this is actually Luke's account of the meal itself.

Luke 22:14-20 When the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. [So immediately we are told it is a meal—they sat down, like at a table with them, and he tells us] Then He said to them, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God."

Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you."

That is all we we really need right there. So Luke's account begins with Jesus' exclamation about how "deeply [He] desired to eat the Passover with you." The first thing we understand from this passage is Jesus' emotion, His longing, His desire is the word that is used there, that He wanted to have this meal with them. He wanted the fellowship with them. He wanted this peaceful time of good fellowship with them because it meant so much. He was looking forward to it with great expectation. He wanted to experience close fellowship with His disciples—His true friends—before He was left alone to suffer and be forsaken by the Father, who was the third party in this fellowship feast. There was Jesus the Son, there were the disciples, they made up another party, and there was the Father. Did He not say that He is always with the Father, the Father is always with Him?

So this seems to be a meal of a peace offering and He tells them that He will not participate in such an event until the Kingdom of God comes. Could that possibly be the Marriage Supper of the Lamb? Would you not look forward to a meal like this if you knew that you were not going to have another for another 2,000 years?

Now, the change of the symbols to the bread and the wine points to the fact that the Passover lamb was now Christ Himself, because He says that they represented His body and His blood. So the lamb symbol was revealed, if you will, to be Him. He pays for the price of our redemption, and by partaking of the bread and the wine we come into communion or fellowship with Him. Let us go to I Corinthians 10 and see how Paul explains the Passover. Very briefly, very succinctly. He says in verse 16, he is talking about idolatry here, but that is probably not necessary to know.

I Corinthians 10:16-17 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion [or the fellowship or the sharing] of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion [or the fellowship or the sharing] of the body of Christ? For we, being many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.

In simple terms, our eating of this meal brings us all into unity, brings us all into one, and makes us fellowship with one another. It is a symbol of us coming into the Body of Christ and working under the blood to do His will. And then he goes on to say that the cup represents the New Covenant and a covenant is something you make drawing you into one purpose, one goal. More of this unity and getting along together comes in here and He makes it among His disciples and ratifies it or seals it with His own shed blood.

These details that we are seeing show the formation of not just a church, but a family that He has drawn together by Christ. So you have the Father, the Son, and His wife, if you will, the church—all of the elect, all the brethren. He is drawing them all into one close partnership, if you will. One very close relationship, and the covenant is what gives that relationship its boundaries.

Now, if we were to go through John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, that address to His disciples on that Passover evening, we would find that He repeats many of the similar ideas that we have seen come out of the peace offering. He speaks only a little bit about sin. He mentions it in John 16:8-9, that the Holy Spirit will convict you of sin and that sort of thing. That is the only time it is ever mentioned.

But He speaks far more about those companionable things that are there, that exist in the peace offering. He talks about love a lot, peace a lot, joy, service, the giving of His Spirit to help them communicate and get along and do God's work and bear fruit. He talks about overcoming so they will be more like Him and like God. And He talks throughout John 17 about oneness with Him and with the Father. These are all things that are contained within the peace offering, not within the sin offering. He does mention the bitterness of betrayal by Judas, but that just shows you negatively how close He wanted the relationship to be. But He was being betrayed by this one who did not want it, who had rejected it.

So, the essence of the peace offering was on our Savior's mind on His final earthly Passover evening. He would deal with sin. That was something for a little ways off. But while He was with His disciples, He would concentrate on their relationship and He would deal with the sin offering while He was heading to Gethsemane where He would be arrested.

I have done a lot of explaining here. It has probably been boring. I am sorry about that. I do not mean to bore you with with too many details, but they were necessary as background for this final part that I have of my sermon because we have to take what we have learned so far and put it back into the holy days, into the plan of God. We understand that the holy days show us God's plan in macrocosm and then in each particular holy day shows us a lot of the details of how that plan is going to be worked out.

We understand that the spring holy days and festivals will include Passover. So Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost depict God's work with His elect in this age. Right? They show how God works with people on a personal basis, on a personal level, especially in this age. They are called, they are brought into a close fellowship with God and Christ, they are delivered from this world and justified obviously, but sanctified too through overcoming sin and putting on righteousness. God gives them help through His instruction, through His law, and by giving them the Holy Spirit, forming them into one body, the church, the called out ones. These are all seen in Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost—all these various things that we have pulled from the instruction for these days.

Now, consider the fall holy days. What are they? Trumpets, we have learned, is the pivot or the keystone holy day. It marks the line or the division, we could say, between this age and the age to come. That is, Christ's return is the central event in history, dividing our time with His time on this earth when He will be King. So when He does return, His saints are resurrected as firstfruits and His work with them and bringing them to glory is finished. That is done as soon as He returns because as He is coming, we rise to meet Him in the air and we help Him with his work that He does from that point forward. We are in, at that point, a close spiritual relationship for all time. The ultimate peace offering, if you will, the ultimate meal, if you will, of getting together and having a wonderful relationship for all time. So at the Day of Trumpets, those He has worked with in this time have become His glorious brethren—the sons and daughters of Almighty God—and we will assist Him from that point on ruling Israel and eventually, all humanity.

This is important to grasp. Trumpets divides the work of God between His elect and the rest of mankind. He gives His elect, and the work that He does with His elect, three holy days. Two holy days of Unleavened Bread and the holy day of Pentecost, as well as Passover. Those are focused on us and what He does for us, what He does in terms of a personal relationship with those He calls. On Trumpets, not only do we understand it as the time we are changed, but the bigger picture on that day is that Christ intervenes in a massive way into world affairs and takes the reins of direct rulership.

This division, if you will, is what makes the difference between us as firstfruits and all of those others that will be converted after the Day of Trumpets. The firstfruits have a far greater reward than those afterwards, because they have managed, by God's help, to have a close personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the Father amidst the sin of this world and Satan's deceptions and all of those other things that we have to fight day and night to overcome. And so He is going to reward us for that in a glorious way. But those afterwards, those who come in the Millennium and then the Great White Throne Judgment, yes, they will be given salvation, but their reward is not nearly so great.

So from the point of His return on into eternity, He will no longer work on a small, intimate scale. He is going to work in macro with the whole world. Like I said, this is why the first resurrection is such a special and wonderful reward because we are getting His personal attention all the time right now. This is why we will be in intimate fellowship with God forever.

After Christ defeats His enemies and gets the world's attention, the Day of Atonement comes picturing the cleansing and removal of all sin. That is where God put it in His plan, that we should memorialize the sacrifice for sin, the atonement that Jesus Christ brings us at that point—after Christ returns and before the Millennium, shown in the Feast of Tabernacles.

Let us go back to Hebrews 9 and I just want want to emphasize something here. The Day of Atonement pictures the cleansing and removal of all sin. If you would go back to Leviticus 16 and see what it says there about that sacrifice. It says, it cleanses all your sin. Speaking specifically about the children of Israel, but it encompasses every sin of the Israelites.

Hebrews 9:26-28 He then would have had to suffer once since the foundation of the world; but now, once [and notice this] at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.

That is another one of the Bible's understatements. Yes, it is many, but it is nearly all. I do not know how many will not accept the blood of Jesus Christ, but I expect it will be a miniscule number compared to those who do accept it.

Hebrews 9:28 To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

So He is coming again, not having to make the sacrifice for sin anymore. Now He is coming to bring salvation to the many.

Hebrews 10:11-14 And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

It took one offering to justify everyone—all men, all their sins. Christ's sacrifice for sin was a one time universal act. It just took one stupendous, awesome sacrifice to cover all sin, of all people, for all time! Do you wonder, then, why He tells us to fast, to afflict our souls, to be humble before the great God for the wonderful things He has done in becoming that sacrifice, for fulfilling what was said there in the Old Testament, and being so perfect in it that it is available to all men, for all time? That finished work is an event to memorialize on the grandest scale. That is why it appears among the fall holy days. Because it is effective for all humanity, not just for us, while the intimacy of the peace offering is awarded to the elect, who are only a few. That fits in the spring holidays.

Let us go back to Jeremiah the 31st chapter. We should not forget that the Atonement offering is specifically said to be to cover or to cleanse all the sins of Israel, of the children of Israel, and there is something that will happen right after the Day of Trumpets is fulfilled that will fulfill that part of the prophecy of Israel's sins being forgiven.

Jeremiah 31:7-12 For thus says the Lord: "Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, "O Lord, save Your people, the remnant of Israel!' Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the ends of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and the one who labors with child, together; a great throng shall return there.

They shall come with weeping, and with supplications I will lead them. I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters, in a straight way in which they shall not stumble; for I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn. Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, 'He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd does his flock.'

For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of one stronger than he. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, streaming to the goodness of the Lord—for wheat and new wine and oil for the young of the flock and the herd. Their souls shall be like a well-watered garden, and they shall sorrow no more at all."

Let us drop down to verse 31. He has come, He has called for the children of Israel to return to Him and He will pardon them. He says He will save them, He will save the remnant of Israel, and this is what He says happens next.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

And this is only one of several passages throughout the prophets that foretell God bringing Israel back to the land and offering them salvation, forgiveness, and/or the New Covenant, Like I said, remember that the Atonement offering in Leviticus 16 specifically atones for the iniquities of the children of Israel, and in this way, as even was alluded to in this passage, after Christ returns, not My people will once again become My people. You want to check out Hosea 1 and 2. That is where that prophecy is laid out pretty fully.

Let us s go to Romans 11, verses 25 through 27. This is Paul getting to the end of his explanation to the Romans about where does Israel fall into all this because the church has come in and become God's people.

Romans 11:25-27 [he says] For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness [hardening] in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written. "The Deliverer [that is, the Christ] will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins."

At this time after, right after the Day of Trumpets is fulfilled, this is one of the first things that is going to happen. The message is going to go out from Jerusalem for all Israel to return there so that God would once again make a covenant with them. And in this covenant was the forgiveness of sins, which was not there in the first covenant, but now it would be, and they would be able then to live with Him and do the things that He wanted them to do. They will at this point be the model nation He wanted them to be in the first place.

But the Atonement offering is not limited to just Israelites. We know that in our own case many of us are Gentiles and so the offering covers Gentiles. The Feast of Tabernacles, which we will keep here in a few days, pictures the time in the middle of the Millennium when Israel will function as the model nation again (or for the first time since they failed the other time) and Gentile nations like Assyria and Egypt will be converted. The process will continue as other nations submit to Christ's rule as King of kings and Lord of Lords, until the whole earth comes under His rule.

Then in the Great White Throne Judgment pictured by the Eighth Day, all historical humanity will be raised to physical life and offered salvation. Even then God will begin with Israel, as He shows in Ezekiel 37 with the valley of dry bones, and repeat that process that He had made during the Millennium and the Great White Throne Judgment, and by the end of that period, every human being on the earth will have been offered salvation and a chance to accept Christ's atoning sacrifice.

After Christ's intervention and establishment of His rule, the Atonement is the vital universal element in the salvation of all humanity. God thinks and plans big. That is why we keep Atonement in the fall because it is part of His greater plan to save all humanity, not just us. So that is why it is a fall festival, not a spring one.

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