The Day of Atonement

I'm a sinner rotting in a body of death.
Cheerful thought, heh? But it's a fact (Romans 3:10-19), and one that I'm coming to realize more and more as I look into the perfect Law of God.

His Torah not only shows me my sin,though, but it also amazingly demonstrates how to crucify it! Not leaving me to walk in my own understanding, which leads to death (Proverbs 14:12), but giving me the exhortation and understanding to walk in His light (Psalm 119:105-107).

Through the years I have come to find myself agreeing more and more with what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 7.

"For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God - through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." - Romans 7:22-25

Paul is not giving the o.k. to walk in hypocrisy, as some might try and say. Serving both the law of God and the law of sin as if that were acceptable. On the contrary, he's simply stating a fact that exists in the life of every believer in Messiah. A person who wants to serve God while still struggling against the flesh. But we can only serve God through the work and power of the Holy Spirit who then causes us to walk in His commandments (Ezekiel 36:27). True, biblical grace: God's influence on our hearts which then reflects through our lives.

So why am I saying all of this?
The Day of Atonement.

The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) is a sabbath rest that the LORD has commanded us to fast on, afflict our souls, and offer a burnt offering unto Him. We know how to fast (though, do we understand why?), but how and why do we afflict our souls and offer a burnt offering to the LORD?

In order to understand those we must first understand what atonement means, and so we have to go beyond the dictionary definition and look directly to our Savior.
Jesus died for us and we have to try and realize just how big of a statement that really is.

Think about it for just a moment. The Creator of the universe and all mankind, the Judge of both the living and the dead, the Beginning and the End of all things, the great I AM died on a cross to save us.
Yeshua the Messiah, our salvation, gave His very life to defeat sin and give us the chance to live.

And He didn't die peacefully. He died the most excruciatingly painful and horrific death that mankind has ever known. And He did it for us. If that doesn't afflict our souls then nothing will.

And that's the commandment for the Day of Atonement...that we afflict our souls.

We have to focus on the fact that we didn't deserve what He did for us. He was betrayed and abandoned by His closest friends, He was scourged, spit on, laughed at, beaten, and finally crucified. The wrath of God was poured out on Him because He took OUR place! That should have been us that went through all of that, yet He paid OUR debt!

As any person might ask, "Why did He do that?"
Because we couldn't...
and because He would not leave His creations in a place of hopelessness. Yeshua did not create us with the intention of letting us die. Man chose death for himself, unable to pay the price for his redemption.
But Messiah died to give us life....if we believe in His sacrifice.

Atonement has been made for us, even while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8)

Afflicting our souls for the Day of Atonement is something that matters a great deal to the LORD because He knows the benefit it has in our lives. And realizing that not only did God die for us (who don't deserve it) but He also died for all of mankind, even those who reject Him. Many will go to hell, separated for eternity from the LORD who died to save them, because they refuse to let go of their flesh (which is dying anyway).
This should also cause affliction in our souls.

We can read in Isaiah 58 and Psalm 25 about true affliction of the soul and see that God's concern and compassion for those who are lost should be our concern as well. He wants to give people freedom from their sins and draw them closer to Himself and life eternal.

God didn't die so we could keep living in sin, but so we could be free from it!! Hallelujah! But our enemy, our flesh, and the world will not let up. We are in a constant war, and when we lose a battle, we have to get back up and keep going. But we have to remember that we can only do that by the power of God's grace in our life! We won't be perfect on this side of eternity, but we are to walk as He walked and He is perfect.

There is much to grieve about on the Day of Atonement: the sacrifice of our Savior for sinful man and the rejection of that sacrifice by much of sinful man. That's why the feast is called a sabbath of solemn rest.

But if we have been saved by the blood of the Lamb, then we can offer up our lives as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable (Romans 12:1-2) to God, who is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29), thereby obeying the command to offer a burnt offering on this day. Then we can look forward to the next feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the joy that awaits us in the Day the LORD returns for His people to dwell with us forever. Yes, we can look forward to that great Day, but not without looking upon the sacrifice and atonement that was made for us.

For a more indepth look at the Day of Atonement, click on the title of this blog to visit my site, ezekielthree.com where you'll find a study on this Feast day and more.