Dorothy Sayers was an English author and poet in the 20th century. She's best known for a series of mystery novels and for an English translation of Dante's Inferno that was published by Penguin up until recently. But outside of her fiction and her academic work in medieval studies, she also wrote as a literary critic and essayist. In one such essay, entitled The Greatest Drama Ever Staged, she pens this opening paragraph. She writes, official Christianity of late years has been having what is known as bad press. We're constantly assured that churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine, dull dogma, as people call it. The fact is precisely the opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man. the dogma is the drama and quote the dogma is the drama and so far in our study of Leviticus we've seen hints of that maybe we we've seen two men struck dead when they entered the tabernacle and we've seen some discussions between Moses and Aaron but for the most part it's been a lot of laws and regulations. We haven't seen much drama but at the beginning when we started this three sermons ago I told you that Leviticus as the center of the Pentateuch was full of drama. It was full of drama because it solves a problem that Exodus leaves readers with. Exodus is a book we're familiar with, it's the leaving of Egypt, it's the parting of the Red Sea, it's manna, it's all of these wonderful things but Exodus ends with the people not being able to enter the tabernacle. They're supposed to be a people that God dwells among and they can't have fellowship with him. And so we've seen that so far Leviticus has involved a vast series of vicarious offerings. It's involved a particular part that priests play in their life and it's seen that it's required a special measure of holiness and cleanliness. Each of these we've said has been a step up a mountain, so to speak, that as we ascend, we get closer and closer to the core part of Leviticus, the center of the drama. And if you stuck with us this far, you've made the drudgery up the mountain, hopefully tonight we'll see some of the vistas, we'll see some of the drama that comes with it. Tonight is the fourth and summative act. Now, Pastor Liam spoke about Midwest flyover states today. I'm from one of those, so if I'm misusing act and scene, forgive me, but we're gonna roll with it. What we've covered so far has been something of the background, something of the scene setting. And tonight's scripture reading, what we read, Leviticus 16, one through 10 especially, is something like the bulletin for tonight's performance. It sets the stage and gives hints about what's to come. It lets you know what's about to happen. It starts with this reminder of the sins of Nadab and Abihu. And so it's putting the whole context of what's about to happen in Leviticus 16 in a stark, dramatic contrast. We're about to do something that the last time it was done, two people died. And It puts also in the context that the previous chapters that we looked at last time, chapters 11 to 15, were in some ways needed to bridge the gap between what happened in chapter 10 with Nadab and Ubayhu and what happens tonight. There was needed to be a series of cleanliness that people needed a way to wash themselves. And yet when we come to Leviticus 16, when we come to the passage tonight, one of the things that's presumed is that all of those laws in Leviticus 11 to 15 will inevitably be broken. No matter how hard the Israelite tried, no matter how hard they worked, how closely they paid attention, they would end up accidentally committing things that made them unclean. Not necessarily sins, but they would commit things that made them unclean. And so the passage tonight assumes that there is unintentional, unatoned for sin that is corrupting Israel's worship. And so tonight's climactic event is really about letting Israel continue to worship their Lord. It's a cleanliness of the clean people. And really, tonight's act, this culminative act, will come in three scenes. It'll come in a scene describing the offering for the priest's sins. It'll come with a scene describing the offering for the people's sins. And it'll come with a scene that tells us and narrates for us the scapegoat. Let's first look at scene one. Scene one describes 11 to 14 and describes the preparatory parts and the offering for the priests. And in this, we see first the prep of clothes and the prep of the goats, right? So we see that Aaron's not supposed to wear any fancy clothes, that he wears a linen undergarment and a linen garment and a linen belt and all of these things. And if we have Exodus in the back of our minds, if we have other places, this prep is interesting because normally Aaron is clad in kingly garments. Normally Aaron's garments are full of jewels and rubies and emeralds and he's all decked out and he looks like a king and he's wearing a breastplate with the name of the people on them. Before men, Aaron is like a king normally. But on this one day, in this day of atonement, Aaron wears simple clothes. He wears clothes like a slave. And this is to remind him, to remind the people that when he approaches the Holy of Holies, when he enters the Holy of Holies, he enters as a servant of the Lord, not as a king. Before men, Aaron may be a king, but before the Lord, he's a servant. We also see this prep of casting lots. This is somewhat described earlier on as well where Aaron casts, verse 8 reads, Aaron cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel. So there's this prep, he's prepping one, the two goats to look exactly the same, they're identical and pure, but one will go and be sacrificed in the tabernacle, and one will go into the wilderness. The Lord chooses this through the rolling of lots. We see some of the description of the prep. We see some description of the offering of the priests. Only after that prep is done do the priests begin to make their offerings. And it's something that we've seen before. The priests were holy, they were set apart from the people, and the high priest even more so. But the priests were still sinners. They still needed to make offerings for themselves. And so Aaron is supposed to take a goat, a bull, sorry, and make atonement for himself and his house. Before he can do his duty as a priest to care for the people, he has to make atonement for himself. And so he does this and then begins to move in. The prep is done. He's able to enter the Holy of Holies. But looking forward to the New Testament, we see that Jesus has no such need. Aaron and his sons will always have to first offer bowls for their own sins. But Hebrews reminds us that it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separate from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once and for all, offered for himself. There's a drama building, there's a need for something more. And while it is a great and holy day for Israel, it's pointing towards something else. The fourth act, scene one. With his own sins cleansed, Aaron enters into the veil. He starts by going into the deepest part of the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies. And this would be something that the people wouldn't be able to see. They would miss the drama of this. And it would be such a... Think about Aaron walking into the tabernacle for the first time. The last time that somebody tried to do that, his two sons died. And now he's going to do this again. Think about the trembling that he must've had. This was an act that was so holy, he even had to, he carried a censer that would swing back and forth and put incense into the air so that he couldn't see God. He had to hide himself in smoke for fear of dying. The people wouldn't have seen this, but Aaron certainly felt it. And the reader is brought in to this. He starts in the holiest of holies and with blood from that goat he makes, he cleans the tabernacle. Again it's important, he's not making necessarily atonement for the people but he's cleansing their place of worship from their sins. That the people have made implicit, they've made accidental sins, they've forgotten to make offerings and so by forgetting the very place that they worship is decimated by sin. And so once a year, this is kind of the spring cleaning act of the tabernacle, where they have to come in and make atonement. So he's cleaning the holy of holies. Once that's done, he moves into the holy place, a place where people, the priests normally could enter, but for this time they would be emptied. If the priests, even the priests would have entered, they would have contaminated it. And so it's empty for a time. And Aaron continues, the high priest would continue and make cleansing. He continues out, he goes further out and cleanses the altar and we're told of a perfect cleansing, a seven fold sprinkling of blood. Step by step, moment by moment, these elements and places, these holy places of Israel are cleansed. Aaron could only enter once a year. Christ entered the true holy of holies for eternity. See, this holy of holies was just a pattern, was just a shadow of what's to come. A shadow both in that it was not substantive compared to what we look forward to. It was lacking substance, but also that it was reflecting what's to come. The heavenly holy of holies, the heavenly tent that Christ enters into is one of substance that reflects and reflacts, refracts. down onto the tabernacle in Israel. Christ entered eternity, and again, the author of Hebrews helps us. He says, when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through a greater and more perfect tent, a tent not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once and for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood. thus securing eternal redemption. See, Aaron passed through the veil temporarily as a trembling servant. Jesus Christ passed through the heavenly veil permanently as a triumphant son. Act four, scene two. Finally, we come to scene three. Scene three opens with the scapegoat. That's probably a term that we're more familiar with than what has been in a lot of English translations. or a goat for Azazel. But who is Azazel? If you don't know, that's okay. He's an unexpected character, an unknown character. He's sort of like Tom Bombadil when you're reading Lord of the Rings and he comes up and you're just like, ah, who is this guy? He shows up and scarcely appears afterwards. We're familiar with the word scapegoat and maybe in our families we talk of somebody being the scapegoat. My sister's not here so I can say I was the scapegoat and always got in trouble when she did things that were bad. But there's debate around this and unfortunately I think scapegoat misleads us. Some of you might have a footnote and it might say that this is either a place or a demon or something like that. And so there's a question of why or where the scapegoat is going. And because of the Hebrew construction, it's actually much more likely that this Azazel is a proper name and that it's opposed to the Lord. And so there is an offering to the Lord and there's a goat sent to Azazel. Azazel is likely a demon and we know this from other areas in scripture other areas in ancient Near East and I want to be clear it's not an offering to the demon even Leviticus 17 which we'll cover the next time says don't make offerings to demons but rather this is a goat that as we we saw in the first few chapters that there's a vicarious offering that needs to be made and so when an individual would make offerings he would put his hand on the head of the goat and confesses sins over the goat or the ram or the bull. Here this is happening as well, but it's happening with sins that have already been atoned for. Aaron already cleansed those sins, he already atoned for those sins. And it's happening for the sins of the entire people. And so when the goat, when this goat is going into the wilderness, when this goat is going to Azazel, it's not going as an offering, it's not going as a ransom, Sins are being returned to where they came from. It's as if Israel is putting their hands on the goat and saying, go back to where you came from, go back to the wilderness, go back to the devil. You don't have a hold here anymore. It's a declaration rather than an appeasement. It's declaring that Satan, that Azazel, that this demon can no longer accuse Israel of these sins. They've been ransomed, they've been atoned for, they are sent back to where they came. And it's on this day, this only this day of the atonement, that the full symbolic geography of Israel's worship is explored, right? So we talked last time about how that with cleanliness, that cleanliness corresponds to parts of Israel's tabernacle. And so you have the Holy of Holies and you build out and then you have to be more and more clean to go in. So you have the Holy of Holies in the center, the wilderness on the outside. And so part of the Day of Atonement ritual, Aaron moves from the Holy of Holies progressively out, all the way out into the wilderness. This full symbolic geography of Israel's worship is encompassed, is cleansed, is brought to bear in their worship of the Lord. And on that final great Day of Atonement, the Day of Atonement that Christ offered up on the cross. So to the full symbolic geography of the cosmos was brought into play. We already heard about Christ once and for all entering into the heavenly places, being seated at the right hand of God, the father. But we also know from scripture elsewhere that he descends into the dead, right? We confess this every morning in the Crete, he descends into hell. And so not only is Christ lifted up into the heavenly places, but he also goes into the lower places. We see in first Peter, three and four, that Christ goes down to declare, just like the goat that goes to Azazel that declares the victory that says these sins no longer have any hold over Israel. Christ goes and declares to the spirits in the dead. He has won. He declares his gospel to the people in the dead. Christ underwent our punishment as an offering to God, but bore our sins as a declaration to the devil. This is what it means that Christ has separated our sins as far as the east is from the west. Act four, scene three. Nearly 50 years ago, Dorothy Sayers wrote about the drama of dogma, hoping to press against the prevailing winds of the day that said to be a Christian was to be boring. More recently, New Testament scholar Kevin Van Hooser took up the similar language, but to a different end. In his book, The Drama of Doctrine, Thinly Veiled Illusion, he contends that not only does drama make things interesting, but it's also inviting and commissioning, that it's not just an interesting thing, but the fact that our doctrine is dramatic, that our drama is doctrine, tells us how to live, that it's not just a thing that we think about, but that it actually commissions our lives. And so, to that end, he writes, Doctrine is direction for fitting participation in an ongoing drama of redemption. Doctrine, something like atonement that we're seeing in this passage is conveyed to us by drama and doctrine. That doctrine directs us for how we're supposed to act and live, how we're supposed to participate in an ongoing drama of redemption. And so in this passage it ends and we see that there's small ways that the people even participate in the drama of the Day of Atonement in Israel. They're supposed to rest, it's a day of Sabbath for both the native and the stranger. They're supposed to fast, they're supposed to afflict themselves as a part of penance and they're supposed to observe it annually. While the priest, the high priest is doing most of the work, the people participate in this drama. It's pressed home to them and they're reminded of this. And we've seen that in Jesus Christ, the symbols, the signs of the day of atonement are brought to its fulfillment. And so Jesus administers a better covenant. He's a better high priest. He's a better offering. He's a better scapegoat. And in all of these things, he invites us to participate in this great drama of redemption that he started. Again, the author of Hebrews reminds us that when there's a change in a priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. And so when, Aaron administers his priesthood. There's a law and a doctrine, a dogma, a way that the people participate. But when Christ administers a new priesthood, we participate in a new way. And so this is where it really counts. This is where the rubber meets the road and Leviticus becomes practical. The new law that Christ administers under his new priesthood is a law of liberty and freedom. So Leviticus 16 in this great drama of the day of atonement gives us as the body of Christ, the blueprint allowing us to understand in which ways Christ is better. That is an every way and therefore allows us to be bold. The day of atonement is a blueprint for the body to understand which ways Christ is better and therefore allows us to be bold. But how do we be bold? What does boldness look like for the Christian? Let me put forward three ways. We ought to be bold in drawing near to Christ. We ought to be bold in our petitions and our prayer. We ought to be bold in our understanding and our application, our apprehension of our union with Christ. This is our life. We have been made new in Christ. There's no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. We need to be bold in our apprehension of Christ. We need to be bold in holding fast to our confession. Bold in who we are as Christians. We need to not lose our first loves. And we need to be bold in stirring one another up for love and good works. Christ has given us a body. We are members of his body. We need one another to stir each other up to love and good works. We need to be bold because sometimes we're timid. Some of us just naturally are more timid. Maybe we've never drawn near to Christ before. Maybe we're an unbeliever and this is a new thing for us and we're not familiar with it. And so, The Day of Atonement gives us a blueprint on how to be bold as the body of Christ or how to be bold in coming into the body of Christ. Because the Day of Atonement shows us how Christ has separated sin. In Jesus Christ, there's an offer in the gospel where you can find meaning in life. You can find a place where your sin is cast off and where you are made a new person of a purpose. we might be timid the first time but we're meant to be bold, we're meant to draw near to him with boldness but he calls us to do that. Maybe we're timid and holding fast to our confession, we want to have friends, we want to be liked by our co-workers, maybe our parents push back against something that we believe and so we're timid and but Christ offers us a new family, right? We're called into the body of Christ, and so there's a boldness and a new life, a new family that we look forward to, the new heavens and the new earth, and there's a boldness that we're called to have against all temptations to timidness. There's a boldness that we need to have when we're stirring up one another to love and good works. We need to not be scared. Discipline is a wonderful and good thing that the Lord has given us, and we need to stir one another up in that thing. So we might be tempted to avoid boldness because we're timid. We might also be tempted to avoid boldness because we're tired. Maybe you have countless times drawn near to Christ in prayer. Maybe it's for a lost loved one, a child who is backsliding or walking away and you have gone before the throne time and time again in prayer and you're tired. Maybe you're tired of holding fast to your confession. Maybe you're beat down by it. Maybe you're tired of stirring somebody up to love and good works. Maybe you've gone over and over and over again to a friend, encouraging him to love his brother, to repent, to pursue good works. Maybe you're with a sister and just time and time again you've encouraged her to hold fast to her confession, to love her brothers and sisters in Christ and it's not happening and you're tired. We're called to be bold. Christ has entered into a throne room. He's offered us up and he's given us the spirit. One of the wonderful things that Hebrews reminds us of that this new law under this new priesthood is that we have a clean conscience. The spirit comes and doesn't just sprinkle our bodies with blood and cleanses, but cleanses our consciences. The spirit works within us and gives us motivation. The doctrine and dogma of our faith is one that's dramatic. The apostle Luke writes his gospel. He ends and begins the book of Acts and says the previous book was where I began to start to write about the things that Jesus Christ was doing. He continues in Acts, but Jesus Christ now acts, now works through the body. Christ is at work now in this drama of redemption through you, through each and every single one of you as the Spirit indwells you. You are like little Christ working out God's will in this earth. There is a drama to the doctrine that you're called to, and the doctrine guides how you're supposed to live. Leviticus 16 in symbols and signs helped Israel look forward to Christ, helps us understand Christ. It gives the body of Christ a blueprint for understanding how Jesus is better in every way and allows us to be bold. Let's lean on the Spirit tonight and be bold, bold in drawing near to Christ, bold in holding fast to our confession, and bold in stirring one another up to good works and love. Let's pray. Oh God, you are very, very great. And our lot is to approach you with godly fear and humble confidence. Lord, we know that we're unworthy. Sin still hinders our relationships with you and with one another. Sin is crouching at the door, desiring to lead us astray, and yet you welcome us and are merciful to us. We ask that tonight, through strong gales of the Spirit, you would drive us onward to approach you. to approach you in boldness, for we have in Jesus Christ a greater High Priest who ever lives to intercede for us. And Father, we ask that having drawn near to you, we might also be made bold to hold fast to our confession, to not lose sight of our first love, and that we might be bold in spurring one another on, on in love that the world might know us by our love, and on in good works, that your kingdom might come here on earth as it is in heaven. In the blessed name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, amen.