Leviticus 16

As I read the beginning of this chapter I am saddened for Aaron and the other Israelites but also realize how blessed we are because of Jesus.

Chapter 16 starts off talking about the Aaron’s sons that came into the LORD’s presence and died. Verse 2 we see that God tells Moses to tell Aaron that he cannot go into the holy place whenever he wants. If Aaron does he will die. God then gives guidelines of what he has to do to be able to go into the holy place. Special clothes, a sacrifice and if this is all done correctly he then can go into the holy place.

Can you imagine having to put on special clothes and then giving a sacrifice just to enter into God’s presence. We enter into God’s presence weekly, without special clothes and without bringing a sacrifice. I am afraid sometimes we take the fact of entering into the holies of holies too lightly. I am not saying that we have to be all stiff. God ask that we come as we are but many times we come into his presence flippantly. When we come into God’s presence we must enter humbly and deal with our sins first. We are entering into the presence of the almighty God.

Something that was interesting in this chapter is the name Azazel. I did some studying of this word and found it is a noun and a proper name. Some scholars see it more as a symbolic illustration of what God does with our sins when he forgives them. He sends them far away from us, never to be seen again.

When we look at the word and Hebrew tradition this goes beyond symbolism. The word itself is referring to and evil spirit of the wilderness which the scapegoat was sent. This evil spirit had little to do with the atonement of the sins that came through God. It is from this passage that we get the term scapegoat. The purpose of the scapegoat was to send the sins away. Not unlike the way an individual is used by someone so they can get away with someone.

The rest of the passage continues the requirements that must be done by Aaron. We come to the end of the chapter and we see that on the 10th day of the 7th month the Israelites and all who are with them were to humble themselves and not do any work. On this day Aaron was to make peace with the LORD. Then they would be clean from all their sins. This is the most important worship festival.

Application

We are a blessed people because we don’t have to do the things Aaron did to enter into the holy place. This does not mean that we should be flippant about entering into God’s presence. We must take and seek forgiveness for our sins when we enter into God’s presence. This does not mean just on Sunday but daily. We have the blessings of entering into God’s presence at any time. Because of this we must take care and enter it humbly.

God restored unto us the ability to enter in to his presence through his son, Jesus, dying on the cross. We should treat this as a privilege and an honor not a right. Let us go boldly but humbly into God’s presence and realize what we enjoy is only because God gives us the ability to do so.