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Yom Kippur Questions
"Sacrifices, New Covenant & The Temple"
by Sam Nadler
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the ‘High Holy
Days’ in Judaism and are both traditionally celebrated as days of solemn
personal evaluation of our souls before God. On Yom Kippur the desire of
every religious Jew is to be made right with God. In traditional Judaism,
repentance, charity, and good deeds are thought to bring about
forgiveness, with fasting considered the major element. However, fasting
on Yom Kippur is not the specific scriptural command, though fasting is so
commonly identified with this day, that Yom Kippur is even called “the
fast” in the New Covenant (see Acts 27:9). Biblically, Yom Kippur was
the day God set apart to restore relationship between Himself and His
people.
Is Blood Atonement
Necessary?
So how can sinful people be ‘made right’
before a Holy God? The concept of a vicarious blood sacrifice is
considered by many as ‘slaughterhouse religion,’ and viewed as archaic
by most people, including many in traditional Judaism. Besides this, the
traditional rabbis contend that the Bible provides atonement without a
bloody sacrifice, even in biblical times. But the Scripture is clear:
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you
on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by
reason of the life that makes atonement” (Lev. 17:11).With the
destruction of the Temple by the Romans in ad 70 there has been no
acceptable place for blood sacrifice, thus the rabbis concluded that God
no longer required blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins,
notwithstanding what the Scriptures say on the subject.
Final Sacrifice, New
Covenant
The book of Hebrews, written while the
Temple was still standing, addresses this issue clearly:
For the Torah, having a shadow of the good to come, …can never with the
same sacrifices year by year, …make perfect those who draw near…, For
it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away
sins.” But “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body
of Yeshua the Messiah once for all” (Hebrews 10:1, 3, 4, 10). In
Messiah’s sacrifice the New Covenant was established: “Behold, the
days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel, and with the house of Judah... for I will forgive their
iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more” (Jer.31:31-34).
Memorial Sacrifices
Often the question comes up, ‘So why are
there to be sacrifices made at the future Temple during the millennium,
since Yeshua has already made the ultimate and final sacrifice?’ (see
Ezekiel 40-48). The Millennial Temple will have sacrifices that will be
memorial in nature, symbolizing Messiah’s true and final sacrifice. Even
before Yeshua came the sacrifices were memorials in that they were never
efficacious in themselves, but as types, pointed to the true sacrifice of
Messiah. He paid off the ‘promissory notes’ of all the sacrifices
before Him. Thus Messiah is our atonement, and ‘whosoever’ can be made
right with God and enter into His rest, simply by trusting what Messiah
has already done for each of us.
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