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Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16)

5/27/2019

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On the day of atonement, the high priest, by Himself, did all the work required by God to make atonement for the sins of the children of Israel. While the high priest did this work, the people were outside of the tabernacle. There was no man with him when he went in to make atonement until he came out and had made atonement (Lev. 16:17).

When you consider the fulfillment of this ceremony by the Lord Jesus Christ, our eternal High Priest, does this give you the greatest peace and joy in your soul, to know that Christ, by Himself, propitiated God and purged our sins (Heb. 1:3; 9:12)? Christ made atonement on one day. He made it by Himself. The people were outside. No man was with Him. When He came out, when He rose from the grave, He had made atonement for all the sins of all the people of God.

This is the Gospel. God was pleased to appoint one Mediator, one Surety, to anoint one High Priest for all of His elect people, for all of eternity. All that they did by sinning became His debt of sin to pay. All that He did in obedience and sacrifice became their righteousness before God. It was all done by Christ on the cross, all complete and perfect when He cried, “It is finished” (John 19:28-30; Heb. 9:12; John 10:11, 15; Rom. 8:32)!

To know Christ in His atoning work by the God-given persuasion of faith, to see that He made atonement for His people, and to trust Him alone in that work as all of my satisfaction and cleansing and covering of all of my sins before God, is to be free from all condemnation and to possess eternal life in Him. It is to see the glory of God (John 5:24; 2 Cor. 4:6).

On that day, the high priest was to take two goats from among the children of Israel. Both made up one sin offering (Lev. 16:5). He was to present both goats before the LORD at the door of the tabernacle (Lev. 16:7) and cast lots on the two goats. He was to offer the goat on which the LORD’s lot fell as a sin offering. The other goat was the scapegoat (Lev. 16:8).

Thus, the atonement Christ made by His blood accomplished two things in one day. God was propitiated; sin was “expiated.” To propitiate God means to satisfy God in justice and thereby appease His wrath. To “expiate” means to take away, to cleanse, to blot sins out of the account God maintains (Isa. 44:22). It means God forgives the sins of His people on the just ground that He received full payment from Christ for them (Matt. 20:29; 26:28; 1 Pet. 1:18-20; Acts 20:28). The two goats of the one sin offering represent these two aspects of atonement: propitiation and cleansing. “On that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD” (Lev. 16:30).

Can there be any greater news to a sinner than this? Christ, by Himself, purged our sins. He blotted them out in the account of God. He removed them from God's accounting. He cleansed our record in God's sight. Proof that He did so is that He now sits on the right hand of God (Heb. 1:3). Because our High Priest sits as King on His throne as God-man, His glorious high throne is our great sanctuary (Jer. 17:12). We have access to God by Him (Eph. 3:12). He is our refuge from all condemnation (John 8:11; Rom. 8:1, 34). God communes with us in the sanctuary of His throne of grace where Christ offered Himself. We see the Son of God in His glory, and the Father in Him (John 6:56; 2 Cor. 4:6; Heb. 1:3).

The high priest killed the goat of the sin offering. He took coals from off the altar and put them in a censor. He filled his hands with incense beaten small, and brought it within the veil that covered the holy of holies. Upon entering the holy of holies, he put the incense on the coals, so that a cloud of incense covered the mercyseat that was upon the ark of the testimony, which is also the ark of the covenant. The incense cloud had to cover the mercyseat or the high priest would die. With the cloud of incense covering the mercyseat, the high priest entered into the holy place and sprinkled the blood of the sin offering upon the mercyseat, the “propitiatory.” The blood sprinkled on the mercyseat made atonement for the holy place because of the sins of Israel.

Christ fulfilled this law when He entered heaven once, with His own blood, and obtained eternal redemption for us  (Heb. 9:12). Christ obtained our redemption when He answered God as our Surety with Himself as the ransom price of our redemption by His blood (1 Pet. 1:18-20), when He made intercession for His people, when He was accepted for them (Isa. 53:10-12). After the high priest made an end of reconciling the holy place, he was to “lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness” (Lev. 16:21-22).

The high priest confessed all the sins of all the children of Israel over the head of the goat that was sent away into the wilderness. See Christ our great High Priest in this law of God. He is not only the High Priest, but He is the Lamb of God who bore our sins (Gen. 22:8). As High Priest, He willingly took our sins from us and made them His very own. He confessed our sins as His own before God (Psa. 31:5, 10; 40:6-8, 12; 69:5-7; Matt. 26:28; 1 Cor. 5:7; 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 2:24). God imputed all the sins of all of His people to Him. God laid our sins on Him (Isa. 53:6). Christ was thus made sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Our Savior bore the guilt of them and felt the shame of them before God (Matt. 26:39-44). He was made sin for us by God’s sovereign act of imputation (Rom. 5:12-19). Our High Priest, the Lamb of God, owned our sins willingly. The High Priest of our salvation confessed all of our sins upon His own head. He died. Our body of sins died then with Him. He was buried. Our sins were then buried with Him. By these, He removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psa. 103:12; Rom. 6:3-11). Thus, Christ, our High Priest, the Lamb of God, made atonement to God. He is therefore now seated because the work is complete and perfect.

Do you now see by this scripture that all of your justification before God is what Christ did by His offering of Himself to God for His people? Do you see that the success of atonement depends only on Christ crucified, and what God thinks of Him? God is satisfied with Him. Does His atonement satisfy you? Is He your only access to God? Is He all your coming to God? Do you come to God now and always by the blood of Jesus in full assurance of faith (Heb. 10:14-23)? Is He your only hope (1 Tim. 1:1)? Is this the truth that compels you to trust and love Him? Is He your life (Gal. 2:20; Php. 1:21)?

The day of atonement in Leviticus 16 is a God-given picture of the atonement Jesus Christ made to God for the sins of His people, the elect of God. Scripture calls them “the children of promise” (Rom. 9:6-8; Gal. 4:28), “the true circumcision” (Php. 3:3; Rom. 2:28-29), “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). All who flee for refuge to Christ in their conscience, looking only to Christ in His finished work; all who come to God pleading Christ crucified as their propitiation (Rom. 3:25), their sin covering, their only cleansing for sin before God, the only answer in their conscience and in the Day of Judgment; all they are the Israel of God. They are God’s elect. They were ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48). That is why they believe. They were given faith to see and persuade them and compel them to gladly embrace Christ crucified, risen and reigning as all.

May God give you and me this most precious faith to rest the entire weight of our souls on Christ’s obedience in His atoning work as our everlasting righteousness before God. May we find joy and peace in believing Him (2 Cor. 4:6).

Rick Warta

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“The LORD, He is the God; the LORD, He is the God” (1 Kings 18:39)

5/27/2019

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When the people of Israel saw God’s answer to Elijah’s prayer; when they saw His answer of fire from heaven that consumed the sacrifice with the wood and the altar and the stones and the water that Elijah poured upon it all, they cried, “The LORD, He is the God; the LORD, He is the God.” They worshipped Baal. They were idolatrous sinners. But by God’s answer of fire, they were jolted from the deception of idolatry to the truth of God. They were immediately convinced that “the LORD [Jehovah] is the God.” Sadly, most of them were convinced only that the LORD was the God. Unlike Thomas, they did not know Him as “my God.”

Jesus told Thomas to reach out his finger and see the place where the nails pierced His hands. He told him to thrust his hand where the spear pierced Jesus’ side to see that He who bore reproach, conquered death for His people by  His atonement to God for their sins (Psa. 69:7, 9, 20). It was then that Thomas answered, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

To see Christ risen, having suffered and died a ransom for many for the remission of their sins, is to see the exceeding greatness of God’s power toward us who believe (Matt. 20:28; 26:28; 1 Cor. 15:1-4; Eph. 1:19). To see Christ risen is to see God’s accepted sacrifice for sinners (Rom. 4:25; 1 Cor. 5:7). Isn't that the only issue: did God accept the sacrifice of Christ for sinners (2 Kings. 18:38; 1 Cor. 5:7; Rom. 4:25; Ex. 12:13)? To see Christ risen is to see the triumph of the Lord our God over our sin, over death and the grave and hell, over this world with its philosophies and religion and its hatred of God. To see Christ risen is to see my justifying righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). To see Christ with God-given faith is to see “my Lord and my God.” Thomas’ words in the original are emphatically personal: “The Lord of me and the God of me!”

When scripture declares who God is, we discover that He is not like us. We are evil. He is holy. We are sinful. He is righteous. We hate Him who is only good (Rom. 1:30; 8:7; Titus 3:3). He is love (1 John 4:16). We are ignorant. He is wisdom. We are withering grass, unstable as water. He is eternal and unchanging. He is all. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD” (Isa. 55:8). When we learn who God is, it produces shock and awe in us. At first we are confused, because He is so much not what we expected. And we are amazed because He is so far beyond all we could imagine (1 Cor. 2:9-16). We wonder that He is so unlike us, but is in fact infinitely beyond us in His character and nature. Our ignorance confirms His word: “There is none that understandeth” (Rom. 3:11).

Someone asks, How can God command men, “Thou shalt not kill,” and yet command Israel to destroy nations in Canaan? Our question reveals our opposition to God. We have low thoughts of God. We therefore have low thoughts of sin. We are full of self-righteous, arrogant, high thoughts of ourselves. We vainly imagine we can fairly determine whether God is “fair” and right. We forget this most fundamental of all principles: "God is greater than man" (Job 33:12). “The LORD, He is God!”

Yet a more difficult question arises. The answer to this far more difficult question reveals God’s character and His transcendence above all that we are and all things. Far more difficult and far more instructive is the question, “Why did God, according to His determinate counsel and foreknowledge, ordain that wicked, hateful men would cruelly murder His Son” (Acts 2:23)? Surely, it was to save His people from the hell our hatred and envy and cruelty deserved! Surely, it was to make known the glory of God’s grace and His power and victory over our sin by Christ!

It is hard for us to accept that God would kill sinful people, because we are sinful. It should be much harder to believe that God would save His sinful people from their sins by the death of His own Son (Rom. 5:9-10)! God’s justice and goodness so far transcend our imagined self-righteousness that our hearts are put in the dust in awe of His justice and grace in Christ. On the one hand, we see the severity of God and tremble. On the other hand, we see the goodness of God by His severity towards Christ our Substitute, who made compensation for our sins, and we worship (John 4:22-24)!! “Behold, the goodness and severity of God” (Rom. 11:22). “Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him” (Psa. 33:8).

This is the most fundamental principle: The LORD, He is God! And this is the most gracious truth: though I am a great sinner, by His grace and love and substitution of Himself for His people, the LORD Jesus Christ is my Lord and my God!

Rick Warta

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Spend and be spent

5/27/2019

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“And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved” (2 Cor. 12:15).

When Christ ascended on high (Dan. 7:14), He gave gifts unto men (Eph. 4:7-9). The Apostle Paul was one such gift. He was glad to spend whatever he had for the Corinthians, even though the more he loved them, the less they loved him. Not only was he glad to spend what he had, but was glad to spend himself. This is the mark of a true servant of Christ. "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves, your servants for Jesus' sake" (2 Cor. 4:5). John the Baptist said his joy was to see Christ's people, as the Bride of Christ, joined to Christ the Bridegroom (John 3:29-30). John wanted to decrease in the eyes of men that Christ might increase in the eyes of men. He wanted to decrease in his own esteem that Christ might be all to him. These are marks of the man given grace to serve Christ by serving His people in whatever way the Lord enables him.

Where does this attitude come from, this attitude of Paul and John and every man given by Christ upon His ascension: that a man would be ready to spend and be spent for Christ's church? It is not of man; it is not of ourselves (1 Cor. 15:9-10; Eph. 2:8-9). It comes from the Master. It comes to the disciple from the Master. It comes from Him who calls to the man who is called. It comes from Him who puts a man in that place to which He calls him. This attitude began in the heart of our Savior. He is Himself God, the express image of God the Father. All that God is, Christ is (Col. 2:9). He accomplished His Father's work to save His people from their sins (John 4:32; 5:36; 19:30; Heb. 1:3; 10:14). He is the Man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14). This attitude springs from the heart of the Son of God, the heart of God, from His condescending grace. We see it in our Master, Jesus Christ the Lord (Matt. 20:28; Php. 2:5-8; John 14:6-9). 

Never take the work of God in the heart of a man for granted. Never take the ascension gift of Christ to His church for granted. It is a rare thing. It is a most blessed gift of His love and grace. In answer to this gift of the Son of God and Son of Man (1 John 4:9), and for such gifts of Christ in men, “we are bound to give thanks to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord” (2 Thess. 2:13).

Rick Warta

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"I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil" (1 Kings 22:8).

5/15/2019

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King Ahab hated Micaiah because Micaiah only told him the truth about God's will and the truth about God's judgments against him. Micaiah did not prophesy good concerning Ahab, but evil. Micaiah only said what God said, no matter what it cost him. I have always greatly admired Micaiah for that. May the Lord enable us at all times to speak the truth in love, and not be afraid to speak the truth though men hate to hear it (Eph. 5:14).

Like Ahab, by nature, we hate God and hate the Son of God. This is the greatest of all crimes. Paul said, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha” (1 Cor. 16:23). “Anathema” means to be cursed of God. Maranatha means "our Lord will come." Paul is saying that all who hate Christ will be cursed of God at Christ's coming. Hatred in the heart is murder in the heart (1 John 3:15). God’s assessment of humanity is that they are “haters of God” (Rom. 1:30). To fail to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength is to fail to keep all of His commandments (James 2:10). And who among us can claim to have ever loved God with all that we are?

The fact is, unless we are born of God, we only hate God. “We ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). But when we are born of God, the Spirit of God in us gives us grace to believe Christ. By this grace of faith, we no longer hate Him, but rather, we see that Christ is altogether lovely, and so love Him (Song 5:16). Who wouldn’t love Him?! He is good in all His ways. He is full of compassion. He gave Himself to God for those that hated Him to save them by His grace and faithful obedience in His death. And yet, it is not our love for Christ that removes God's curse. It is Christ's sacrifice of Himself to God for us (Gal. 3:13). Our love for Him is but the fruit of His love to us.

Believing Christ is to believe the love God has for us in Christ. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us” (1 John 4:16). “The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20; Jer. 31:3). Thus, the Spirit of Christ in us makes this love known to us through His gift of faith. By faith we see and are persuaded that we are all God says we are as sinners. And by faith we also see and are persuaded that Christ is all to God for us, and that He is all from God to us, as God says that He is (1 Cor. 1:30; Col. 2:9-10; 3:11).

The world and every natural man only hates God and hates God’s Son. But believers are born of God and therefore love God because they have known God’s love to them in Christ. “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). If we have been forgiven much, we know it is owing to God’s great love of mercy and grace. We therefore love much (Luke 7:47). The converse is necessarily true. If we love little, we have been forgiven little. If we have been forgiven only a little, we have not been forgiven enough, because we have sinned greatly and sinned much. May the Lord Himself dwell in us by His Spirit that we may have grace to receive His testimony against ourselves and know that our sin is great, and receive His testimony of Christ that we may know our Savior is greater than our sin because of His great love wherewith He loved us (Psa. 25:11; Heb. 1:3; 9:24-28; Eph. 2:1-10; 3:16-21)!

The one thing that has struck me above all else while reading the life of Joseph (Gen. chapter 37; Gen. 39:1-50:21) is how Joseph did only good, only loved and obeyed his father, and loved and saved his brethren, though they only hated and envied him. They hated Joseph so much that they could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to their own brother, and conspired against him to kill him (Gen. 37:4, 11, 18). This is the sad, sad picture of our natural heart (Rom. 8:7)! Yet on his part, Joseph loved his brethren, and took great joy in knowing that God sent him to save them through his humiliation and sufferings at their wicked hands. So it was with Christ, our heavenly Joseph (Acts 2:23; 4:28; Gen. 50:20). I believe that Joseph, by the Spirit of God, understood in his sufferings that the dreams God gave him of his exaltation and honor and rule over his brethren, and mistreatment at their hands, all pointed to our heavenly Joseph, the Lord Jesus Christ (Psa. 40:6-8; John 5:46; 1 Pet. 1:11; Matt. 26:54).

When we see Christ through Joseph, we see the radiance of Christ’s goodness and His perfections reflecting from one vantage point to another, as a diamond reflecting light. We see all of these angles of reflection reinforcing the same grand, endearing and glorious truth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ: He saved His people from their sins, even His people who hated Him in their heart, and whose hands killed Him. All that Christ said and all that He did and all that He suffered and when He laid His life down in His death; and then all that He did and said after He rose again, is all because He loved those God gave Him before the foundation of the world, and for whom He gave Himself to God in sacrifice in righteousness. He "loved righteousness and hated iniquity" (Heb. 1:9). Therefore, God His Father "anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows" (Heb. 1:8-9). He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, His Father highly exalted Him (Php. 2:5-11). He tasted death for every son. Therefore, His Father crowned Him with glory and honor (Heb. 2:9). And His exaltation and rule over all things is by the eternal love and compassion of His heart to His sinful people, who by all they were by nature, hated Him, but are now saved by His obedience and sufferings for them in love, and therefore love Him.

As Joseph knew his brethren, Christ knew us. As Joseph pitied his deceitful, hateful, envying brethren, Christ pitied us. As Joseph comforted his brethren, Christ comforts us when by His grace we see the evil of our nature and our sins against Him. Like Joseph’s brethren, all that we thought, said and did, we meant for evil. But The Lord Jesus Christ meant all that He thought, said and did for our eternal good. He bore all that we were and all that we did, at full, personal cost to Himself. Can anyone so seeing Christ not love Him?! Is not this, therefore, the greatest crime and evidence of wickedness, that we would fail to love the Son of God? Surely, that is why Paul pronounces "Anathema" upon all who do not love Him. Knowing this makes me so ashamed of my unbelief and sin, which are the result of my paltry love for Christ.

May the Lord our God and Savior, deliver us from the spirit that was in Ahab, to hate the Son of God, the Prophet of the LORD (Acts 7:37; Heb. 1:1-2). The first lesson Joseph’s ten brothers learned, and that we must learn, is that they were great sinners. The second lesson we must learn, by the life-giving grace of the Spirit of God, is that Christ is all-glorious in His salvation. He is our only and all-sufficient Savior because for His great love, by Himself, He answered God with Himself for us, in our place, instead of us. In so doing, He saved us from our sins. And because of His unceasing love, will yet save us to the uttermost (Psa. 21:1-6; Matt. 1:21; Acts 4:12; Rom. 5:9-10; Heb. 7:25).
Rick Warta
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"None saith, Where is God my Maker" (Job 35:10)?

5/15/2019

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One of the things that strikes me as I listen to the pundits of this world is that “none saith, Where is God my maker?” Sin has ravaged the heart of man and this present world. Deceit, confusion, sorrow, sickness, distress, anxiety and fear abound. Men assert their rights. They demand their entitlements. They defend their self-righteousness by trying to shame all who decry their shameful ways. The wisest among men and all religions of the world start and end with man. “But none saith, Where is God my maker?!” Man’s misery is great. Yet men look to men to solve the problem. Wickedness abounds. Mothers murder their unborn babies. Children do not fear God nor obey their parents. Politicians practice deceit. Man’s own heart deceives him. He is a victim in his own mind. He innately believes and is told by the great deceiver that he deserves better. Injustice is measured by its effects on man. Whoever and whatever promises to alleviate man’s temporal problems is worshipped. Thus, men worship the "saviors" of their own making. “But none saith, Where is God my maker?” The great missing element is the life of God in the soul of man. The great missing purpose of all that we were made to be and do is to the praise and worship of the LORD our Maker (Psa. 95:6). My Maker must be my Redeemer (Isa. 54:5). He must occupy the throne of my heart and the worship of my life (Rom. 12:1-2; John 4:21-24). His person and will and work and word and promises must be the love and desire and confidence and trust and hope of my heart.

May we ever lift our eyes to God our Maker. May we see that He alone has become our Savior. May we worship Him alone. May this passing world appear to us in its true light, that it was brought forth and will be brought to its conclusion by the good will of our holy and great God, our Savior, for the salvation of His people and for His great glory (Matt. 6:9-13; Col. 1:15-18; Heb. 1:2-3, 8-12). He is Christ the Lord, the Son of God. We can only know God the Father in and by Him (John 14:6-9).
Rick Warta
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