YOM KIPPUR – The Day of Atonement

Dan O’Deens

What a great reminder for people of faith.   Today is not simply a Jewish Holiday, it is a day of remembrance.  Atonement is necessary.   In the Old Testament God’s people offered sacrifice. The word for that kind of sacrifice is the word, kaphar.  It literally means ‘to cover’, just like it sounds.  Even the high priest knew this sacrifice was only temporary and would cover the sin of the person offering the sacrifice.

A great sacrifice would be necessary.  The sacrifice of a perfect and spotless lamb.  That Lamb was to come.  We might remember the story of Abraham and Isaac, where God asks Abraham to take his one and only son, to Mount Moriah and offer Isaac as a sacrifice.  Abraham is obedient.   On the way up the mountain, Isaac asks his Dad and important and extremely insightful question.  “We have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb?”

Abraham is a loving father, yet completely in submission to his Heavenly Father.  He lifts the knife and in this final act of obedience, the LORD, stops him.   There in the thickets, God provides for Abraham a ‘ram’ for the sacrifice.  Did you catch it?   Even here in this story, God has not yet provided the LAMB!   This sacrifice was still a sacrifice of kaphar…a temporary covering.

The final offering of Redemption is provided in the pages of the New Testament.  “Behold, the LAMB OF GOD, who takes away the sin of the world.”   The precious blood of Jesus, the perfect Lamb, was slain and ANYONE who looks to the cross would be saved.

It was true in the OT and the NT.  John says it this way, ‘just as the serpent was raised in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up.’   To look at the Savior on the Cross and to acknowledge that this Jesus was in fact the Son of the Living God and to place your faith in trust in this sacrifice alone is the ONLY way to experience redemption.

Today…YOM KIPPUR is a day to remember the sins of this past year, and to thank God for taking care of your sin.  Your sin is now covered once and for all.

Today…YOM KIPPUR offers you a chance for a clean spiritual slate, to repent and turn from your sinful ways and to lay down your life and surrender it to Jesus.  He was hung up for your hang ups, so you can quit hanging yourself up.

Today…YOM KIPPUR provides a great opportunity to offer to others the same thing that Jesus offered to us…Forgiveness.

To all of our Jewish friends…Happy Yom Kippur.

To all of my Christian friends…Happy Day of Atonement.

Leviticus tells us that the ‘life of the flesh is in the blood.’  Hebrews tells us ‘that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.’   Receive His forgiveness today.  Accept the Atonement that the precious LAMB OF GOD has so freely given to everyone who believes.