The DATE of Atonement

No, that's not a typo in my title. 

People praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall on Yom Kippur
(photo (c) Menahem Kahana)

The Day of Atonement - Yom Kippur - begins tonight.

Proscribed by God in Leviticus 16, it's still the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. It is the day of national fasting and repentance, on which the High Priest used to purchase atonement for the people by bringing perfect blood behind the veil into the Holy of Holies.

But The High Priest would enter the inner Tabernacle once a year by himself with blood, which he was offering in the place of his soul and in the place of the evil doing of the people. 
Hebrews 9:7 Aramaic Bible in Plain English

But today, I want to talk about the date of the Day of Atonement, hence the title of this post. Because the date God set wasn't arbitrary at all. In fact, the date God assigned to Yom Kippur points powerfully to both Israel's past and its messianic future. 

You see, according to rabbinic scholars, an incredibly significant event occurred on the tenth of Tishri, long before God assigned it to the Day of Atonement. And by choosing that date for Israel's annual atonement ritual, God provided a vivid picture of exactly how He would one day provide atonement for all of mankind.

It is a breathtaking glimpse at how unarbitrary God's timing is.

So let's go back to Genesis. Back to Abraham, the first man of the Covenant. In Chapter 22, we watch him make the trek up Mount Moriah. We watch the aging patriarch obey God's command to offer his son on the altar. Until, of course, the angel of the Lord cried out to stop Abraham's obedient, raised hand. Mercifully, lovingly, God provided a ram in a thicket to take Isaac's place on the altar.

 Judaism teaches that Abraham and Isaac experienced that most memorable day of faith and mercy and salvation on the tenth of Tishri. The date that would eventually become the Day of Atonement. 

God made sure that this date on the calendar would always mark His merciful acceptance of a substitute in place of human blood: the blood of a ram for Isaac. Then year after year after year, the blood of a lamb for the Israelites. On Tishri 10.

 So over these next twenty-four hours, as your Jewish friends fast and repent and pray in the synagogue, I invite you to ponder Tishri 10. Ponder an earthly father's obedience to offer up his son, and the Heavenly Father's intervention to provide a substitute. Ponder His acceptance of a lamb's blood every year in the place of His children's, because He is loving and merciful and compassionate.

 But don't stop pondering there. Because thirty-three generations after Abraham and Isaac, our Heavenly Father accepted the ultimate substitute on our behalf. His own Son, the perfect Lamb.


"Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!" John 1:29

This time, the Lamb wasn't caught in a thicket, He willingly walked to the altar and took our place. 



Abraham the father embraces Isaac
the son after God provided a substitute.
In the same way, our Heavenly Father
embraces us when we come to Him,
accepting our substitute - His Son.
(Otto Stemler, 1927)

And not in the cloud-filled confines of the Holy of Holies, but in broad daylight on a Roman cross. As a watching nation sacrificed their Passover lambs.

Yes, the eternal fulfillment of that day - the Day of Atonement - took place in the spring, on Passover, beautifully tying together the truth of these two holy Old Covenant days. Because on the Cross, our perpetually broken human nature was atoned for, through an eternal exodus from sin.

Atonement was finished.  Is finished.

Forever.