Atonement Offering

Num 29:7-21         12/25/2017

Instructions for the burnt offerings during annual feasts, especially for the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur.

Atonement:

So, is it God’s anger that is assuaged by an atoning sacrifice? Or is it my sense of guilt and shame?

God the all loving, all merciful, all knowing, all powerful: He doesn’t need my food. Doesn’t need any food. He doesn’t need anything. He is God – Self-existent Creator.

The human tendency is to equate my moral failures as the source of God’s wrath. I tell myself: “I sinned so God must hate me.”

On the other hand, I tend to see outcome failures as the result of God’s wrath. “God must be angry with me because nothing’s going right. He’s angry, or He hates me, or He doesn’t care about me.”

Not much room for God to be God.

Who Thinks Like This?

I project my thinking on God without realizing that He doesn’t think like I do.

I’m closer to the truth when I see the essence of moral failures as failed response. No more or less. Omission. Commission. I’m given an opportunity and I blow it. It happens all the time.

Outcome failures? My plans have gone awry either because of poor execution or because of stuff that was outside my control. Doesn’t mean the disvalue I’ve created is imaginary. It’s there. It’s real. It really does require redemption. It really is a cause for salvation.

But, the only truly acceptable sacrifice for my failures is a broken and contrite heart. An openness to rethink. We don’t slaughter bulls and rams and lambs anymore. What once was appropriate is no longer effective.

Now and forever; Jesus is the effective atonement. Meeting Jesus in the Word, in the Flesh, in the ordinary circumstances of my life. Me meeting Jesus.

You meeting Jesus.

“My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn.” Psalm 51:19