Day of Atonement – Jesus and Yom Kippur • What is Yom Kippur?

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Shabbat Shalom, everybody. We're so glad you're joining us today. If this is your first time visiting or watching online, welcome to Found on Truth Fellowship. We are a group of believers, a community with a diverse background that somehow found a way to come together with the sole goal and focus in mind to orbit the person of Yeshua and how we live, how we interact with others, and carry on the mission of the kingdom in this world. So welcome to Found on Truth Fellowship. So today I figured it would be appropriate because tomorrow is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, also known as the Day of Purging, Purgations, or Cleansing, to speak about the Day of Atonement.

And I hope that I am able to bring justice to how significant the day is in the biblical context by giving you a background of the day, why it is so significant, and as believers, what it has to do with us. So first, I'm going to start in Psalm 27, verse 4. And the psalmist says: "It is what I desire to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the Lord, seeking him in his temple." And so we have this cry, this desire: all I want to do is dwell in the house of the Lord. Forever. Forever. Dwell in the temple forever. To be in God's presence forever. It is this heartfelt cry.

But how? How? How does he do that? Because we know the temple is a sacred space, right? Only the priests and high priests can go in there. So what is this desire?

The Yearning to Dwell with God

And then we go to Psalm 15. The question lingers. In verse 1: "There is a yearning from the biblical authors, those who have worshiped before us, to stand on this cosmic divine real estate, this cosmic mountain of the Lord—not only that, but to dwell with the Lord in his residence so that the Lord will dwell with them." And so what is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement? It's a day that's listed as one of the cultic festivals of Leviticus 23, but it's emphasized in detail in Leviticus 16. All of the sacrifices, all of the ritual, all of the workflow, and every single bit of it is significant. And Yom Kippur in the Bible is a day that restores hope.

And it was meant to instill the realization that God dwells among us. And we could start in Leviticus 16 and read about this day of blood and ritual, but I think that would be doing an injustice for understanding the weight of the day and especially its significance to believers and Christians. And so, guess where we're going to start? Where do we always start? Genesis. Genesis. The story of the Bible is a story of God making his good, good world and humanity pushing that goodness away. It's a good summary of the story of the Bible. And this constant struggle and tension of God yearning to have humanity a part of his good, good creation and dwell with humans, but humans just having a tendency to always push back while simultaneously trying to grow closer to it.

The Garden of Eden

And it all starts here: in a garden, in Eden, the mountain of God. And we have, of course, Genesis 1. I love Genesis 1. We talk about Genesis 1 maybe too much. Nah, I can't talk about the Bible too much. So what's beautiful about the story of how the Bible was put together is that the authors tell the story, but they also tell different layers and hyperlinks of the story to try to bring a bigger meaning, a more in-depth meaning out of it. Sometimes when the authors are writing the story of the Bible and we have these little snippets of different characters and different scenarios that are going on, sometimes you'll see stuff that links to other stories in the Bible.

And it's like, well, these are connected and there's a bigger story that's forming and there's bigger significance. Now we have this story that gives another story way over here, under this part of the Bible, a huge amount of emphasis that we never even knew. But the sad part about all of those types of connections or hyperlinks is that a majority of them are written in a language that we don't read or speak, known as Hebrew or Greek. And so when we read the creation story of Genesis 1, it is a story of how God brought forth all of the majestic creation of his goodness into physical form in this world and the planets and all of this, and how it continues to grow, grow, grow until finally, finally mankind has an environment that we can dwell in with God. And the crown that is put on that accomplishment and culmination is known as the Sabbath, where man and God find rest with each other eternally.

Because if you notice, every single day in creation, it always has an end. Morning and evening was the first day. Morning and evening, or evening and morning was the second day. Evening and morning was the third day, except the Sabbath day. They leave that part out because, well, the theological implication is it's never supposed to end.

Hidden Meanings in the Hebrew

And so there's a few things in the Hebrew that are super fascinating about the first chapter of the Bible. The first is that we have light being created, but light is not designated in the form of luminaries in the sky until day four. So time doesn't even really exist, I guess, from Earth's standpoint, until day four, right? We don't have any because the sun's not in the gravitational pull. Neat. But the word that's used for these things, these two things that rule the day and the evening and the seasons, is ma'or or ma'orot—luminaries. So it's not just lights in the sky, they're luminaries. And every single place in the entire Torah where this word appears outside of these three verses, it specifically has to do with the lamps and the light of the tabernacle.

The lamps on the candelabra. The luminaries, right? The lamps. So some Hebrew professors would argue that it should be the lamps in the sky because they give light. One for the day, one for the night. And what is the point? They rule the day and the evening, but it also says that they designate the seasons as a sign. And we're like, okay, winter, spring, and fall, right? That seems like a logical way to translate it, and some Bibles do. The word there is moedim, and again, out of the 160 times it is mentioned in the Torah, 131 of them specifically reference the festivals of Leviticus 23, and the remaining indirectly connect the festivals to the gathering at the tabernacle.

So the point of Genesis 1, again, is not only that God has created an atmosphere of humanity to draw together and dwell with in the Sabbath, but it's also to call people together in a constant state to join with God and commune with God. And it's hyperlinking all the way over to Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, where that takes place through the form of God dwelling with his people in the tabernacle. Are you still with me? It's just neat stuff. So yes, it's talking about the sun and the moon. Yes. But there's kind of a deeper hyperlink there of the intentionality that God yearns to dwell with his people. He likes to be among a community.

The Menorah and the Table of Showbread

And it's so neat because one of the examples of the lamps going forward is in Numbers chapter 8. Aaron is told that he should go in and tend to the lamps of the menorah. Everyone knows the menorah, the seven lamps on a big lampstand in the middle of the tabernacle. And it has a very interesting command for Aaron. His commission is to make sure the light goes forward from the menorah. Which I don't know how he did that. Did he have like reflectors everywhere, right? But what was across from the menorah? You know, Bible nerds in here. This table of showbread. And how many loaves of bread were on the table of showbread?

Twelve. Two piles of six, which represented the twelve tribes of Israel, the people of God. So now here we have even another layer inside of the tabernacle. What were the lights shining on? The light of God is now shining on the people of God in community and dwelling with him. It's a dead horse. I'm kicking really hard because I want to get that through because that is the journey of the story of the Bible, which culminates in John 1, right? We also have the light in Numbers chapter 6 with the blessing of Aaron, the benediction over the people: "May the Lord make his face luminous, that shining that happens."

So mankind finds themselves dwelling in this land of Eden, in this holiest of holies, if you will, and outside of Eden is the wilderness, right? So we have this plain here. We have the wilderness that Cain ended up going to and creating this city. And then we have the land of Eden. And then inside of Eden there's a garden. And that's where we find mankind dwelling intimately with God in this Sabbath type of rest. And what does it say the garden is watered by? It's a river. It flows out of Eden and it splits into the four massive rivers that water the world. So the depiction in Genesis 2 here is that all of the water, all of the life-giving living water is sourced from this place, the Garden of Eden or somewhere around there.

Do rivers flow from valleys? Where do rivers flow from? They've got to be a mountain. Mountain. This is a cosmic mountain of God. Cosmic mountain where God dwells with mankind. In Ezekiel, in Ezekiel chapter 28, he gives this metaphorical description of the king of Tyre. And he uses imagery to describe the fall of Adam. And he describes kind of a different tradition or a different angle of Adam's responsibilities being covered with the high priest's garments, being the guardian cherub, if you will, because remember the cherubs were the ones on top of the ark that lift up the throne of God. And so you have Adam in the garden lifting up, if you will, the presence of God and how he found pride and fell and was cast out of the garden.

But here's how Ezekiel describes Eden and the garden within it. He says, you were in Eden, the garden of God. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked among fiery stones. So we see that it wasn't simply a garden just in the middle of a desert or something. It was a holy mountain of God. It was a garden mountain, if you will, a high place of the Lord. And that becomes significant because if you notice moving forward, "go up to the mountain of the Lord." Mount Sinai. When Moses was tending sheep, he found the Lord on the mountain—the mountain imagery of God's presence. And we know what happened.

Mankind, instead of choosing to rule and reign in sync with God's goodness in his good world, we chose to determine good and evil for ourselves and rule autonomously from God. We took the fruit. We ate the fruit. And we disrupted that Sabbath. And where was mankind? Where were they told to go? Out of the garden. Which direction? East of the garden. And to guard the entranceway back into this intimate realm of God's presence, there were two cherubim, two guardians—angels, if you will—with fiery swords. Two angels. We know the story of the flood where Noah goes through the water and lands on a mountain, Mount Ararat.

And he offers sacrifices to the Lord. This is where God is meeting him, on another mountain.

The Westward Call

Abraham is called from Babylon, which is probably the epitome of eastward from the garden, right? Abraham is called to return back toward the place of God, to come westward to the land of Israel so that his descendants can dwell in the mountain of the Lord and become the light and blessing to all nations. We know that this people find themselves in Egypt and they become enslaved. And the entire Exodus event happens with the Passover. They leave and go through the water into the wilderness and they come to a mountain. Which mountain? Mount Sinai, the mountain of God. And on this mountain, you have three different divisions of where the people are, then halfway up the priests, and then Moses gets to go to the top. It's just like the outer area, the inner area of Eden, and the holiest of holies. It becomes more holy the closer you get.

What Makes Something Holy

Do you guys know what makes something holy? What holy means? Set apart. It's set apart. So you have clean and unclean things in the Bible. It's always confusing why certain foods. Why is it? And then you have holiness. And if something is holy, it means it belongs to God. It's devoted to God. It belongs to God. You are to be a holy people so that his name is upon you. You are belonging to God. And if something is clean, then it can be devoted to God. It can become holy. And if something is unclean, then it cannot cross that boundary to become clean or to become holy. Does that make sense? So you have the very confusing—I will say confusing because I don't understand them—food laws in Leviticus.

We can eat some things, but we can't eat others. I do it as a form of worship for my household. We don't touch the pig. It's fine. I just don't get it. Can I admit that? I don't get it. However, if there are unclean foods and there are clean foods, and then we look over and we see the sacrificial system, and God wants us to come to his table, his altar, to fellowship and dwell with him, guess what's on the menu and what's not? Clean foods only, right? So God wants to share the same menu with his people so that we can be holy, we can connect. It's just an observation. It's kind of neat. But you have this set of holiness where God invites humanity to come in and be his, to have his name on us.

Building the Tabernacle

And so they're at Mount Sinai. They've come into the mountain of God, and God wants his people to build him a tabernacle, right? And this theme continues because the tabernacle is going to be a place where God does what with his people? He says it right here in Exodus . You probably already guessed it. Did I have that slide? Maybe? Yes. "So I will consecrate the tent of meeting. This is what I want you guys to build. You're at this mountain. I'm up here. You're down there. You're going to have an altar. You're going to consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. Then I will..." We just have this pursuit that God is pursuing you to dwell.

He wants to be among his people. So they want to build him a microcosmic mountain, if you will. And of course, this moves on to Shiloh, and then ultimately to Mount Moriah, which is the mountain of the Lord where the temple is built. But he commands them to build this new type of dwelling space. And of course it has three levels of graded holiness. You have an outer area, a court; an inner area, the holy place; and then you have the most intimate space, the holiest of holies. It's a connection to the Garden of Eden.

Aaron: The New Adam

And Aaron is appointed to be the new guardian and caretaker of that garden as the high priest. He is the new Adam in the tabernacle. And the high priest—specifically that position—is the only one in the Torah that's actually called the Messiah, HaMashiach, the anointed one, because the priest is anointed. Later on in tradition, it became associated with kings, but here we have the Messiah, this Adamic character that tends to the garden and leads humanity into the dwelling and atmosphere of God. I get excited about the Word. I get excited about this stuff. So is everybody still with me? I know it's thick.

I know. Oh yeah, this is a neat graph from an amazing resource by Dr. Michael Morales, Who Will Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? It's great if you want to go in-depth on this topic. He lays out the overlapping of the tabernacle with the Garden of Eden. I love it because you even have the details of the tabernacle having cherubim guarding the entrance. You enter through veils—that tapestry—until you finally go into the holiest of holies. And of course, you have the throne of God, if you will, or the ark where God speaks or makes some type of theophany above it, above the cherubim, above the two angels guarding the path, if you will.

The Golden Calf: When We Make God in Our Image

And that's what made the golden calf incident right after the commanding of the tabernacle to be built so horrifying in the narrative. So Moses is up on the mountain. The command to start building this mishkan, this tent, this micro-garden that God can dwell among his people has been given. It has already started. But the people instead choose to manifest another way that God can dwell with them. And so they make a golden calf. And they say, "Look, now God's dwelling with us the way that we want God to dwell with us, in the form of a calf. Look, Yahweh, this is the God that brought us out of the land of Egypt."

Sin—the pursuit of selfishness in our own lives—doesn't it always just get in the way of dwelling closer and closer to the Father? And it's not so much that God is not wanting to dwell with us as it is us pushing away the entire reality of God dwelling with us because of our own sin. We push it away. We don't want it to be that intimate because then we can't be in control. And then we can't control others. And then we can't have the things that we want that we shouldn't want. But we also have insecurities about ourselves that cause us to respond in sinful ways. And it's a constant tug of war between God's goodness and good creation and us being a part of it, and us wanting to push it back to kind of create a space for our own world or our own creation or our own kingdom to have some type of foothold.

Our grasping of power, the lust of our eyes, the maliciousness of our hearts, the violent brutality of our mouths that we speak forth—these all stem from inside. They push a divide between who God is and the dwelling of God's intimacy in his good creation. And it's the struggle. That's the struggle. And the world doesn't want to have a God that rules over them again because we are more preoccupied with making room for our own kingdom than dwelling in his.

Worshipping God in Our Image

And even among believers, we struggle because a lot of times I would dare say we choose to make God into our image, and that's who we worship every week. We worship a God that would destroy all our enemies but would never judge us for being enemies to someone else. We would worship the God that would bless us but cheer on the murder and bombing of people and nations that are also just trying to worship the same God. We would thank God for all the blessings he's poured out on us and worship him in church with Klan uniforms on in the 1920s in the Bible Belt. We make God into the image of us, and that's who sometimes we end up raising our hands every single week worshiping.

We are children of hell lighting God's good world ablaze in the name of God the Creator. And at the same time, as humanity struggling forward toward a goodness we know is there, but we just don't know how to put ourselves aside. And this is the background that leads us to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the tabernacle, the cosmic mountain garden of God dwelling in the midst of the Israelites. Can you feel that tension when we come to the story in Leviticus? How can the garden of God withstand the human condition and the horrifying things that we are willing to become because of our own selfishness?

How can the garden of God not be overwhelmed with the pollution from our corrupted pursuits? How can it not? Well, it has to be cleansed. If that's the reality, then there has to be some way to remove the pollution from our own evil hearts that overflows into the presence of God who is trying to dwell among it all. Leviticus 16 is the pinnacle of the book of Leviticus, and some would dare say the pinnacle of the entire Torah. The first 15 chapters of Leviticus deal with the atonement process, how to clean your mess up when you make it, and the remaining chapters in Leviticus deal with how to live holy now that the cleansing has taken place.

It's an intentional direction in how the book is structured. And it's beautiful. There we have a graph here. First part of Leviticus going up to Leviticus 16 is how to approach God. And the latter is communion with God and holiness.

From Cover to Purge

And when we talk about atonement, for a long time, atonement was thought to come from a word that meant to cover. So if you make atonement for your sins and you put a blanket on it so no one can see it, which worked in a lot of theological preaching for a long time, but we've come to realize that it more likely comes from an Akkadian word that means to purge out completely. And so when we talk about the blood in the Torah, in the Old Testament, symbolically atoning for sins, I don't want you to picture someone putting a tarp over it and pretending it's not there. I want you to picture spraying bleach on mold. And that was the symbolism that went along with this concept of blood in the sacrificial system.

A New Adam Tending the Garden

But we have an Aaron now with Leviticus 16, and we have this tabernacle structure that God has made himself manifest in for the purpose of dwelling in the center and among his people who are humans just like us. And he's a new Adam. He's another Adam character, tending to the mountain of God, tending to the garden of God. But on this day, he doesn't simply wear his entire outfit that is beautiful with his crown that says belonging to Yahweh. He doesn't wear his jewels all day long, his beautiful, beautiful attire. On this day, he removes it and he moves his status from being up here to down here and he washes himself and puts on the common garments of the priest and he enters in to the temple or the tabernacle multiple times, but specifically he moves into the holiest of holies, this one day of the year, and it's beautiful.

I was hoping I had the verse. I guess I didn't. That's fine. And so in Leviticus 16, we see Aaron or the high priest moving forward. And you can put that graphic back up actually. Because there are three different places. You could call them three different altars, if you will. Three different significant structures that he touches with blood. He touches the outer altar first, and then he moves in to the incense altar before the veil in the holy place. And then he moves into the holiest of holies. And can I get geeky with a few details real quick? I just heard one person say yes, so I will do this for you.

How to Clean Your Mess Up

So when you begin reading the book of Leviticus, because I know that's all something we always do and we love to do, all the details. In Leviticus 4, we begin seeing instructions of sacrifices for atonement. And if you accidentally sin, okay, if you do something not intending to, and you are a lay person, one of us, then you would bring a goat and when you would confess your sin, so on and so forth, try to resolve it, the priest would help you, but the blood of the goat would be manipulated, and the priest would take that blood, and it would be placed on the horns of the exterior altar. And then your unintentional sin would be atoned for. As if your unintentional sin splattered some type of pollution on the altar of God, and now it is taken away from the sight of God.

What mercy. If you were a community, a community did something, or a priest did something, or a king did something, someone with status, right? So if a whole community is involved with sin or some injustice, it's kind of a bigger deal, right? You would assume that it would be a bigger splatter of pollution. You with me? A little goat in the outside altar is not going to fix this, right? We need a bull, right? And so the priests were instructed to bring a bull for a community offering or if it was a king or a priest, right? Someone with status impacts God's dwelling with the Israelites more. And this blood would not simply be placed on the exterior altar because the idea, and if you can follow me, the idea is symbolically the pollution would move past the outer altar and penetrate into the holy place.

And so the blood of the bull would have to be taken into the holy place and put in the horns of the incense altar to remove that out of the space of God. What grace. But these are just unintentional, if you will, sins. These are not wanton, unrepentant sins. These are not intentional, malicious, I'm going to do this and I'm never going to bring an offering for it and I'm never going to ask for it. Awful things. There is no prescription in the Torah for you to bring a sacrifice that atones for them. If you have unrepentant sin or it's a malicious intentional sin, there's no prescription of a goat or a bull that can do anything about that.

Yom Kippur: The Most Holy Day

And so on Yom Kippur, we see the high priest taking a bull for himself in the priesthood and taking a goat for the people and manipulating the blood on the exterior altar. And then he moves into the holy place. And he places the blood on the interior altar. And then he does something. He mixes the blood together and he goes to the veil, which is not opened but once a year. And he moves in very slowly. The prescription from the Mishnah tells us how intricate this was in the first century. He moves in with the coals of the altar and places them on the ground. And he has a very specific amount of incense that he lays in the coals so that, as if it's an explosion, incense smoke fills the holiest of holies as if he's creating a division between himself and the presence of God, because even in this state of blood atonement there is still pollution and there's still a threat, if you will, the divine power of meeting with God.

And in the holiest of holies, he sprinkles the blood of the bull and the blood of the goat onto the ark, the mercy seat of God. This is what purifies or purges the pollution of the intentional and malicious and unrepentant sins from the sight of God in ancient Israel. And he takes all of these things, he does all of this ritual, and then he backs out of the tabernacle of the temple. As if he is now a mediator carrying the pollution upon himself, he walks out where there are two goats that are identical with each other.

Two Goats for Two Destinies

They cast lots—throw some lottery numbers down, dice lots, as it were. It's such a biblical word. They throw the lots and randomly select two identities for the goats. One is going to be a goat for Yahweh, the God of Israel, and one is going to be a goat for Azazel, which we can talk about another day. But let's just say where sin goes, not holy. And you have these two goats and Azazel. One goat ends up being offered up to God on the altar. But the other goat, the goat for Azazel, the high priest comes. Again, as if he is carrying all of the pollution that has just been wiped from the sight of God.

And he places his hands on the goat and he pronounces this pollution—the sins of Israel, the sins of leadership, the sins of the priest, the sins of the people that God chose to dwell with—onto this goat. And the goat is released eastward, away from the tabernacle, away from the inner courts and the outer court. All of that pollution is now moving outward—out of the gates of the city into the wilderness—to where it belongs, out there, not in the dwelling place of God. Do you feel the weight of the day and what it represents? It's not simply a day where God forgives sins—of course it is—but why would God make a day where he wants to push away any sight of pollution in our dwelling with him?

It's an act of mercy because he yearns to dwell among his people, and that's why this day is so heavy. Even if there's no temple or sacrifices or whatever, the story is where it carries the weight. And that's the meaning and the character of our God and the pursuit of our God.

The Intentionality Behind It All

And so that's Yom Kippur. And so... In the Torah, it says that Israel would afflict themselves. They would humble themselves. And a little bit of debate about what that means. Generally speaking, Israel fasted. Historically, they would fast for 24 hours. And that's what we do here as a community. I invite you to join us if you've never done it. Tomorrow, at nightfall, the day of Yom Kippur, we will enter into this most holy day, remembering the character of our God and the pursuit of our God and the dwelling of God among us, and we will fast together. And it's a beautiful thing for 24 hours, and it's doable. I promise it's doable. But that's the intentionality behind all of that.

Restoring the Garden

The day when Adam went into the garden to cleanse out the evidence... that the fruit had ever been eaten. Adam would go into the cosmic mountain of God to restore the status of the people of God, being his image bearers, being his ambassadors of his kingdom, and him dwelling with them like it was in the beginning. A memorial, if you will. Maybe this is why in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45, Paul refers to Yeshua as God, the last Adam.

A Repetition Moving Forward

He doesn't say the second Adam or the third or the fourth or the fifth because there were many Adamic characters according to the book of Hebrews. One priest would come up and he would be the new Adam serving in the cosmic realm of God, this symbolic temple of God or garden of God, and then he would die. And we'd have to get another one to fill this position, and then he would die. And year after year after year after year after year, there would be such a repetition moving forward of going in with the blood of bulls and the blood of goats again and again and again and again, hoping one day we can actually find an intimacy of dwelling with God that we don't have to keep cleaning up our mess because we keep pushing it away. And the New Testament authors were convinced that has taken place with the person of Yeshua.

Because the mission of Yeshua was to usher in new creation. And not simply a new creation, but a new humanity along with it. With a new spirit, according to Ezekiel. Yeshua's mission was to embody God's good world where God's kingdom was seen and felt. And the mercy and the grace and the love was a constant. And he brought a new type of spirit that invites us to die to this old world and become born again as a new type of human being with a new breath of life and a new heart that beats with the intimacy of God dwelling among us now. This is what Paul encourages the church in Ephesus in chapter 4. It says, "...you were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self."

Worship in Spirit and in Truth

See, the Father's house was the goal of Yeshua's journey. While at the same time, he himself finding his place in it eternally, dwelling there. Remember when Yeshua interacted with the Samaritan woman in Samaria, right? Which was a huge no-no. You don't talk to them. Pollution, humanity, push away God's creation. Them, us. I worship a God who loves me and not them. No one else? Okay. Well, John chapter 4, verse 23. "Yet a time is coming, he says, and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth. For they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God in spirit and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and truth."

And the context of this discussion is her talking about, well, you say we got to go worship God in Jerusalem because that's where he dwells. But we say you worship him up here in Mount Gerizim because we think that's where he dwells up here. And Yeshua is saying, yeah, the time has already come where that doesn't matter because the whole mission was that God would no longer dwell on a mountain or in a tent, but that he would dwell among his people wherever they might be.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

The pastor who wrote the sermon we call the book of Hebrews spoke a lot about Yom Kippur in relation to Yeshua. And I want to reference some so that you can go home and maybe read a few chapters of it and see those correlations of what the heart was of this pastor. But in chapter 9, verse 24, we're going to read a few verses and then jump over to chapter 10. And hopefully what we have just read from the Torah and the Old Testament will resonate in a new type of light. And it says this. "Otherwise, Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Just as people are destined to die once and after that face the judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many. And he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him." In chapter 10, verse 19. "Therefore, brothers and sisters... Since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way open for us through the curtain that is his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us." So much on this topic, but it's beautiful.

The Temple of God

Because John starts out his account of Yeshua going straight to the temple and flipping tables and saying, "Made my father's house into a den of thieves." But remember the commentary that John says. He says, yeah, after he raised from the dead, we remember that he said this, that he said that he was speaking about himself because he's bringing a new dwelling place where man can meet with God and it is through him. And through him, we become that dwelling place— that's what Paul says—this temple of God. So much more on this topic because it is reflected in the garden. It's reflected in the story of the Tower of Babel and Abraham, the Exodus story, Mount Sinai, Shiloh, the temple in exile in Babylon. There are references that connect to this story and hyperlinks throughout the entire New Testament.

From Garden to City

And then at the end of it all—the end of the story—and John's apocalyptic symbolic vision of the New Jerusalem. God loves the New Jerusalem and it has the architecture of something a two-year-old would build with blocks, the size of the walls because it's a vision, but it represents the community of God, the temple being cleansed so that God dwells among them. The sun—we've got something brighter than a star that has a gravitational pull of a whole solar system and creates nuclear fission that produces photons in the form of waves or particles, depending on if you look at them. We have something brighter in this city, and it is the Lamb. We have no need for the sun, right?

This is where the Lamb dwells. And the gates, the 12 gates that represent the people of Israel, they stay open 24-7. They don't close at night because the sun never sets. The gates can't close because all the nations are funneling in at such a massive concentration that you can't close them. It's that amazing—the mission of God and what is now and what is yet to come and what is the whole point of the entire story—that mankind would dwell intimately in the rest of the ultimate Sabbath day called Yeshua with God. Man dwelling with God and God dwelling among his people. And that's the story. And I get excited about it because it's beautiful.

Yom Kippur Is Now

And sin and death will be permanently exiled into the wilderness once and for all, but not just because it's not yet. That's a reality that we live in now, and we will soon see come to its fulfillment for all of creation. We live in a space in time where Yeshua reigns and sin has been conquered, and that reality will be manifest for the rest of creation in the end. In Christ, Yom Kippur is not simply a day that happens once a year. In Christ, Yom Kippur is now. It's now. It is the Sabbath of Sabbath rests. It is the day when the pollution has been taken away. And once again, we have the dwelling with God. It has not been replaced, nor is Yom Kippur outdated, but it is the culmination of God's mercy to meet with us. And so tomorrow night, we will enter into that sacred time that memorializes the reality that we live out every single day as believers and followers of Yeshua. And we will afflict or humble ourselves in awe of his mercy and repent and draw near to God as God yearns to draw near to us.

Outside the Gates

But there's also a warning with the vision of the New Jerusalem, the community of God where the Lamb dwells. There's also a warning because outside the gates of the New Jerusalem, there are those who are not able to participate in embodying the dwelling place of God. It's those who are unbelieving—they don't give their allegiance to God: the cowardly, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice sorcery and idolatry. And in John's vision, it says all liars will be consigned to the wilderness of the lake of fire, if you will, along with sin and death itself. And it's a warning.

Dwell on the Mountain of God

And so with that, I'd like to close, and please stay with me as we close, with Psalm 15, which is how we started the message. And it says, "Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? Those who walk blameless. Who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart, whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor and casts no slur on others, who despises a vile person but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps an oath even when it hurts and does not change their mind, who lends money to the poor without interest and who does not accept a bribe against the innocent, who does these things—they will never be shaken."

We are called to dwell on the mountain of God. And as we enter into tomorrow night, it's an appropriate time to check yourself. It's an appropriate time to remind yourself how easy it is to make God in your own image. It's an appropriate time to identify the things in your life that don't need to be there, that would prevent you from being inside the city, inside the tent on the mountain. That pushes that reality away. And so I don't know where you're at today, but if you find yourself with something you'd like to leave here today, you can do so. We're going to end with worship. We're going to have a prayer team on either side of the stage.

If you need prayer for anything, or if you would like to come up and kneel and simply have a time to yourself meditating and leaving something on the altar, it's an appropriate time to do so. Alvina Macheno, our Father, our King, Father, we thank you for this most holy time of the year where we're reminded of your goodness, we're reminded of your mercy, but we're reminded of your mission, the thing that you seek to make happen, and that is dwelling among your people, that you would instill in us that spirit that brings life and not death.

And that spirit would give us strength to grab hold of the reality that we're called to live out, to grab hold of the reality of the king that we serve, to grab hold of the reality of the last Adam, the Hamashiach, the anointed one that brings us to you. We thank you, Father. In the name of Yeshua, our king, we pray. Amen.

The Shema and Blessing

Sing the Shema with me. Shema Yisrael Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom for all eternity. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance toward you and give you his peace. In Yeshua's name, Shabbat Shalom, family.