We go ahead and turn to Leviticus 16. Leviticus 16, our study resumes again at verse 5. Just to remind you of the subject matter being addressed here, the Lord's giving Moses instructions to pass along to Aaron concerning the Day of Atonement. And we've already discussed the Lord's initial instruction, which was that Aaron and every other high priest after him would only be permitted to enter the Holy of Holies one day a year, which was designated as this Day of Atonement. On that special day, Aaron was required to bring into the Holy of Holies the blood of a bull for a sin offering and that of a ram, which had been sacrificed as a burnt offering. And remember what I said about the significance of these particular offerings. The sin offering was made to symbolize the Lord's atonement for sin and the burnt offering indicated the willingness of the one presenting the offering to submit themselves or to give themselves entirely. to God. The burning up of the animal was to symbolize our willingness to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, with everything we are. It's a complete abandonment to God and not to ourselves or those things around us. As we learn in verse 6, these initial offerings were to be made for Aaron and his household. And we'll talk more about that in just a minute. But in preparation for the performance of his sacred duties, after bathing, which again is symbolic, Aaron was to bathe to signify that he was entering into God's presence in a pure and clean way. This is another step, another observance, another ritual to ensure that Aaron doesn't go into the presence of the Lord just as he is. He is to prepare himself meticulously to be in the presence of God. Also, we talked about the high priest being dressed very plainly. in his linen tunic, linen undergarments, linen sash, and linen turban. As we discussed in our last study, this humble dress was a foreshadowing of Christ himself. As one commentator said, this is a beautiful foreshadowing of Christ, our high priest, who laid aside his glory, even as the high priest took off his glorious garments, replacing them with the holy linen tunic. Christ laid aside his glorious royal robe and took upon himself the form of a man, that he might qualify as the sacrificial lamb on the cross. Another commentator said, beautiful colored materials of the normal priestly garments, intricate embroidery, gold and jewelry made him look like a king. On the day of atonement, he looked more like a slave. And you'll recall that's exactly what Jesus said. Jesus himself said, I did not come to be served, but to serve. He came as a slave, a slave of God's will, which had he not come as a slave to God's will, you and I would not have the atonement that we have by his grace. As I pointed out last week, the more I thought about this, my thoughts were drawn to Isaiah 53. You don't have to turn there, but remember what is said of the Messiah in verse two. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. Jesus didn't come as a knight in shining armor. He didn't come as the handsome prince of Disney fame. He came as one of us. And there was nothing remarkable about him that would have set him apart from other mere mortals. I then went on to talk about the stark difference between the foreshadowing in the temporal earthly high priests and the fulfillment of those types and shadows in Christ. And to that end, we looked at three of what I believe are the most helpful contrasts between the two, primarily from the book of I'm not going to go back into all that this morning. If you missed that message, though, I would go to our sermon audio site as well as our YouTube channel and give that particular lesson of viewing or listening as the Lord allows. I would also encourage you, just incidentally, to make it a point as we go through these books of the law especially, make it a point to reacquaint yourselves or acquaint yourselves more thoroughly with the book of Hebrews. There's so much within the book of Hebrews that explains the things that we're looking at, namely here in Leviticus. And your life will be a lot easier if you can view these Old Testament passages in the light of the New Testament, namely the book of Hebrews. So I would encourage you to look at that as the Lord allows you to do that as well. Well, this brings us to verse 5, where we read this. He shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering. Then Aaron shall offer the bull for the sin offering, which is for himself, that he may make atonement for himself and for his household. He shall take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat. Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot for the Lord fell and make it a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell should be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement upon it, to send it into the wilderness as the scapegoat." Back in verse 3, Aaron was instructed concerning what kind of sacrifice he was to bring for himself and his household, and here he's told what to do with those sacrifices. And here's another important contrast that we can make between the earthly priest, the high priest, who served temporally at God's pleasure, and Christ as our great high priest. Unlike the mere mortals who served as high priests over the centuries, who were in constant need of atonement themselves, Jesus, our perfect high priest, needed no such sacrifices. Jesus didn't require atonement. Why? Because he was sinless. And once again, go back to Hebrews 7. Hebrews 7. Read with me beginning at verse 23. Hebrews 7, 23. Here the writer says the former priests on the one hand existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing. So all those temporal high priests died. And what did that mean? Well, time for another high priest. And that would have been laborious in and of itself, if you understand all the requirements that needed to be met to serve in that role. But Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore, he is able to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens, who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, then for the sins of the people, because he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men as high priests who are weak, but the word of the oath which came after the law appoints a son made perfect forever. In the most unimaginable divine twist of irony, our perfect high priest was not just the high priest, he was also the sacrifice. I don't know that we're capable of grasping that completely, but in the genius of our omniscient God, the only way that he deemed appropriate for your sins and mine to be atoned for was for the high priest, the eternal high priest, his only son, to also be the sacrifice. Aaron was to take the sacrifices, and as feebly as he performed his duties, all he had was hope beyond hope that they would be acceptable to God. Christ knew that what he offered would be acceptable to God, which is why he went willingly as the sacrifice himself, performing those priestly duties upon himself. And you might ask, well, how is that possible? Remember what he said, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down and I pick it up. I mean, it's astounding that we have such a high priest, such a sacrifice, Paul said to the Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians 5 21 he God made him who knew no sin Jesus to be sent on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him that goes back to the ask the pastor question you want to know why it is that you're deemed worthy that you're deemed as one who will escape the wrath to come It's because Jesus became sin on your behalf so that you might become the righteousness of God in Him. I really fear that, and this doesn't go back to the question that was asked, but in a way it does, because I really fear that the beauty of the gospel over successive generations has just been clouded over by what people deem to be the simplicity of the gospel. And the gospel is simple. You're a sinner in need of a Savior. That Savior is the Lord Jesus Christ and none other. And to be saved, you must call upon him and he will save you. That's as simple as it gets. But it's also incredibly complex. In that, we don't spend near enough time, I don't think, thinking about exactly what it costs our triune God to secure our salvation. You know, the angels themselves, we're told, long to look into our salvation. They don't even understand it. And I've said before, somewhat comically, but not disrespectfully, I mean, it's as if the angels are in heaven and God saves one of us. And the angels are like, Really? I'm sure that when the Lord saved me, the angels were laughing in heaven. Really, God? You saved that? And I don't say this again to disrespect what goes on in the heavenly realm. I say this as a way of expressing my awe and my wonder and the unbelievability of the gospel. I mean, one of the beauties of the gospel is God takes the unbelievable and makes it believable. But let us all maintain this sense of complete bewilderment. Why me? Why would you put your only son to death for the likes of me? I mean, the beauty of the gospel is there. We just have to look for it. and appreciate it and truly understand it in the very core of our being, not just up here where we have this head knowledge and we've allowed things like easy believism and decisional regeneration to flourish in this land because we've not appreciated the gospel. We've not appreciated the extent to which God has gone to redeem us in Christ. And we should do a much better job of that, again, in my opinion. Now, we learned already about the sacrifices that were to be offered for Aaron and his family, but what about the sacrifices that were to be offered on behalf of the people? Well, this is where the two goats come into play. Aaron was to take two goats from the people and present them before the Lord at the doorway of the tabernacle. He was then to cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat. Now just stop there. What are lots? What is the casting of lots? Well, this is a practice mentioned 70 times in the Old Testament and seven times in the New Testament. In the New Testament, A few of those times are when the Roman soldiers were casting lots to see who would get Jesus' robe and tunic. But lots themselves were just objects. We don't know what they were. Maybe they were flattened sticks. that you would kind of shuffle around in your hand and throw them on the ground and see how they all turned up. Maybe they were little stones. A lot of people think that we have our modern understanding of the coin flip, the coin toss, in this practice of casting lots. Dice would be another object that might be used in the casting of lots. This was God's prescribed method. for allowing his people to know what his will would be in a particular circumstance. Now, let me just say this. God no longer uses these means. I mean, don't, you know, somebody says, hey, are you coming to church next week? I don't know. I mean, you know, heads yes, tails no. I'm sorry, God doesn't want me to be there. That's silly, right? But back then, without the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit, at least the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the same way that we experience it post-Pentecost, back then they had to have ways for God to reveal His will. The Word was not yet inscripturated in its full form, and so the Lord Himself instituted these means. Now you might think, well, so the Lord's condoning gambling? So the Lord is relying on games of chance to make his will known? Well see, here's where the interesting thing comes in. It's not a game of chance to God. The Lord knows exactly how those lots are gonna turn up. In fact, the Lord has ordained and decreed how those lots will turn up. Every roll of every die that has ever been made on planet Earth, God is sovereignly in control of that. Now, not in the way, again, that we can discern his will from that. But if God causes all things whatsoever that shall come to pass, if he causes those things to happen, they happen. And this is what's happening here. You'll recall that Judas's replacement, Matthias, was selected by the casting of lots. And so, When the lots were cast, it was probably heads this guy, tails this guy, and that's how it ended up taking place, and they took that as a sign from God as that being his sovereign will. In this case, Aaron would have said something like, heads means the goats to be set apart for the Lord as a sin offering, tails means the goat will be used as the scapegoat. Pretty simple. How else are you going to determine what the will of God is to be, right? What was the scapegoat, though? Well, the scapegoat is yet another beautiful picture of the atoning work of Christ. The goat would have the blood of the first goat put on it. The scapegoat would have the blood of that first goat, the one that belonged to the Lord, put on it, and it would be sent into the wilderness, never to be seen again. And what did that prefigure exactly? Well, it prefigured God's plan in and through Christ to cleanse us from sin so completely and to remove it so thoroughly that He would never again call it to mind or hold it against us. I hope you understand that. This goes back to our understanding the depth and the width and the breadth of our salvation. God has so removed your sin and mine that he will neither call it to mind or hold us responsible for it ever again. Now, how do we know that people don't really understand this? Well, just look at the places. I mean, if you're on social media, especially news and chat going back and forth, you've no doubt seen where, you know, somebody gets saved, somebody, only recently there was a young lady who was saved and proclaimed Christ, and before that she had been a woman of ill repute, fairly popular, I guess, with men who are into that kind of thing. But a lot of Christian men began piling on and saying, no, no, She can't be. She can't be truly redeemed. This is just a game. It's like those criminals on death row, you know, right before they're put to death, they make a profession of faith thinking that that's going to get them into heaven. Folks, let me just tell you something. Again, this goes to really a failure to understand your own deplorable condition prior to being saved. But secondly, let your default position be praise the Lord. When anyone makes a profession of faith and says, I have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, our only response is not skepticism. Our only response is not judgmentalism. Our only response, biblically, is welcome. Until. God forbid, they might prove to not be the genuine article. That happens, right? But why do we have to jump always to the default? No, you know, God saves people like me, but he doesn't save people like you. You know what that sounds like? Does that not sound like the Pharisee standing next to the tax collector? God, thank you, you didn't make me like that person. God, thank you that I was found worthy in and of myself, and that's why you saved me, because this person is just such an unworthy wretch. No, our automatic response should be welcome. Praise the Lord. Now let's get to work. What work? Discipleship. Let me show you. the riches of Christ. Now that you've come to know him, let me shepherd you, let me guide you, let me help you on your way as the Holy Spirit works in both of us to accomplish God's purpose and will. Why all the skepticism? Why all the negativity? It's really, it's getting tired. It's just a horrible way to live. If you profess Christ and someone makes a profession of faith, let your response be immediately, praise the Lord. How did David feel about this idea that his sins were removed and cast so far away? Well, Psalm 103. Psalm 103, verses 10 through 12. You want cause to rejoice? Here's cause to rejoice, and oh, by the way, David was every bit as guilty, or if not more guilty, as an adulterer and a murderer. David himself was at the top of the list of people who should have received the double whammy from God, right? But listen to what David says, Psalm 103, verse 10. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. How far is the east from the west? We have a master of the obvious among us. But it's exactly right. It's far. I mean. Jonathan, if I if I send you east and I tell you OK now for all eternity. Keep going. And then Steve, I say now Steve, you go West for all eternity and keep going. You know one thing you can't say. See you later. you'd still be going in your respective directions. But think about how far that is in terms of how God has dealt with your sin and mine in Christ. He's removed your sin and mine so far that it can never be retrieved. It can never be called back. This is not the only place where God's complete removal of our sin is taught. How about Micah chapter seven? Micah, chapter seven. Unless you're reading through your Bible in a year or whatever, let this be maybe the first of only a few times you'll probably read from Micah, right? I would encourage you to read it more though, it's so rich. Micah, chapter seven, verses 18 and 19. The prophet exclaims, who is a God like you? I mean, you could just, we could preach, I could preach 10 messages on that. Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious acts of the remnant of his possession? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, you will cast all their iniquities into the depths of the sea. You know what that means. I was watching some documentary the other night on the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, miles and miles down. So far down that human beings can't even think about going down there. except in those little round bathyspheres or whatever. I'm not going down there anyway. I forget how many millions of pounds per square inch the pressure is on things that live down there. And it just got me to thinking more, having studied this, it got me to thinking when he's saying that he'll cast our sins into the depths of the sea, he's saying that he casts them into a place where no one can ever retrieve them. And you know what, here's another thing. If God has cast my sins into the depths of the sea and no one can retrieve them, you have no right to retrieve them either. You know, we practice forgiveness in this place, right? Our forgiveness should mirror God's forgiveness. Our forgiveness should be complete and utter absolution. We should never, ever go to another person and say, yeah, you know, I'm, you and I have a pretty good relationship, but remember that thing you did way back when? That's demonic. That's not godly. Instead, we should say, praise God that you and I have such a good relationship. Isaiah 43, 25. The Lord says of himself, I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Do you know how astounding that is? Here is an omniscient God, not only omniscient, but immutable, unchangeable, who is electing not to remember our sins. It's beyond amazing. Well, Mike's not here, I can use the word, unfathomable. He told me long ago, he said, you use that word a lot. It's a good word though. In Jeremiah 31, go ahead and go over there, Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34, the prophet foretold of a day that would come when such complete eradication of sin would be a reality. When is this? At the end of all things? Nope. It's with the first advent of Christ and his having made atonement for us, his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and Pentecost. Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more. The Lord is talking about you and me and every other person who has benefited from God-given faith on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ. Now he is talking about also future generations who will come to know him. But it's all under the purview of this new covenant that's in Christ's blood. Not like the old covenant where we were beholden to laws written on tablets of stone. Those laws still apply, praise God, because they've never been abrogated, they've never been taken out of the way. And won't be, not one jot or one tittle until all things come to pass. but we've been removed from this realm of being beholden to the ritual and the ceremony and the civil laws and all of these things, the sacrificial system with its built-in futility. We've been spared those things and instead of having this inscripturated codified law of God on tablets of stone that really only a few were able to put two and two together and realize, okay, I'm to see these through the eyes of faith and not just on the surface. Now, God is pleased to write his law on our hearts where it stays forever and ever and ever. And oh, by the way, we have the Holy Spirit who lives in us and reminds us of what's written there every step of the way. Again, mind boggling. Now just to clarify here, when the Lord says that he won't remember our sin, that doesn't mean he's capable of forgetting. Aren't you glad for that? If that were the case, he could no longer be omniscient. What it means is that he has sovereignly decreed that once your sins and mine are forgiven through the atoning work of Christ, He will never again call them to mind or hold us accountable for those." Now, how would God accomplish this to the extent that would result in such gracious, divine forgetfulness? How is it that God can do this? Well, look at Colossians chapter 2. Paul explains exactly how this happened. Colossians 2, 13 and 14. Paul writes, when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him. Having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Your every sin, past, present, and future, as one of God's elect from before the foundation of the world, your sin and mine was nailed to the cross. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross. And what? And I bear it no more. And what follows that? Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Oh my soul. Think of it this way. Whenever you pay off a debt, the debtor closes your account. Can that debtor ever hold your previous debt against you? No. No. It's illegal. They can't. To make sure they can't, usually they have to supply you with a receipt. And on that receipt, it'll say, paid in full, right? And you know the same thing happened in Jesus's day. Archeologists have discovered in various places of commerce where things were sold and bought, they found clay tablets. And on these clay tablets was a single Greek word that was scrawled across the length of the tablet. And that word was tetelestai, paid in full. The debt has been sufficiently paid. Well, you know what Jesus said among his last words on the cross? It is finished. You know what single Greek word that is? Tetelestai. And again, that should just boggle your mind. that as he hung in great agony on that cross, becoming sin for us, atoning for your sins, past, present, and future, he took it upon himself to announce, Father, their debt is paid. Spurgeon noted, He said, the brightest day that ever dawned on us was that day when we saw all our sins numbered on our blessed scapegoat. Those sins, he says, were carried away into the wilderness of forgetfulness. I don't know about you, but I thought I was grateful for my salvation when I came here this morning. This just renews my gratitude. Focus on these things. I mean, is there one among us who can't say that these things are so encouraging, so uplifting, so God honoring? Can you not think on these things as opposed to all the other things that go bump in the night, all the other isms out there in the world that have us at each other's throats fighting about this, that, and the other thing. Encourage one another with these words. Your sins have been forgiven. And as we'll talk about in the next hour, your worthiness is in Christ. Doesn't get any better than that. Doesn't get any simpler than that. Oh, but that person doesn't look like I look, or they don't believe exactly what I believe, or they don't act the right way. Folks, that's all in the Lord's domain. Think about how blessed we are to have a God who not only forgives, but forgets. in a way that still preserves his omniscience and immutability. Well, this brings us to verse 11 of our text. Then Aaron shall offer the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself and make atonement for himself and his household. And he shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself. And just stop there. Is this a different bull from the first bull? No. No, Moses writes this way. You know, I've made comment about this before. Moses often writes in a kind of disjointed way. It's almost like, and again, I don't mean any disrespect by this, but I think Moses might have suffered from some form of ADD. And who can blame him? When you're writing under inspiration and you're attempting to capture everything it is that the Lord wants to say to His people through you, it can probably come across as rather disjointed. And what do I mean by that? For example, this is a case in point. Moses has earlier talked about this bull that was to be offered on behalf of Aaron and his family. And now he's talked about the scapegoat, the two goats, on behalf of the people. And now he returns again to talk about the bull. Why did he not talk about the process with the bull in the first reference that he made to the bull? We don't know. I mean, I really love it because this is the way I think most of the time, right? I have no fingers to point because I'm the first to say squirrel, right? And you ought to see my messages on like Thursday. No, you shouldn't. I mean, it's like that thought and that thought, you know, and bringing them all together is truly a work of God. Truly. But I kind of feel for Moses here in this respect. And again, no disrespect intended. You know, he's obviously writing what the Lord has commanded him But again, this is not a different bull from back in verse 6. It's the same bull. Moses is simply taking this time to elaborate even further on the process that he only began to describe in verse 6 before parenthetically taking the time out to address these two goats. And again, it's important that we understand things like this lest we get confused and think, oh, well, wait a minute, he was actually to offer two bulls. No, no. The one in verse 6 is the same one that we read about here in verse 11. So, he resumes by telling us what Aaron was required to do once this bull had been killed. Verse 12, he shall take a fire pan full of coals of fire from upon the altar before the Lord and two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense and bring it inside the veil. He shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the ark of the testimony. Otherwise, he will die. Now, why was the incense necessary? for a couple of reasons. First of all, let's make clear God doesn't have nostrils or olfactory receptors that allow him to declare one scent sweet to him and another not sweet to him. That's all symbolic language. That's the first thing we need to get in our minds. This is all symbolism. The sweet aroma produced by the incense is actually another kind of foreshadowing of Christ Himself and His finished work. You'll recall Paul writing in 2 Corinthians 2.15 that as believers we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. It's as if God receives from us the sweet aroma of Christ Himself. Again, it's purely symbolic language. This pleasing aroma of the incense was actually meant to foreshadow the atoning work of Christ, and thus all who are in Christ are viewed by the Father as being pleasing as well. Because the sacrifice of Christ is considered to be a sweet aroma to the Father, those who benefit from the sacrifice are also seen as that same sweet aroma. The other symbolism that we often use is the righteous robes of Christ. As God looks at us who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, he sees us as clothed in Christ's own robes. Do we really have robes of righteousness? No. It's symbolism. It's a way of conveying to us, it's really condescension too, it's a way of explaining to us something that we can't possibly understand as fully as we need to using relative human language. The second reason for the incense is simply a practical consideration that was to benefit Aaron directly. You'll note that here in verse 13, the handfuls of incense placed on the burning coals would create a cloud of incense. that would cover the mercy seat upon which God chose to dwell. And what was that cloud intended to do? Well, it was intended to protect Aaron from certain death in the presence of the Lord. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, yeah, well, I don't see how a cloud of incense could actually be successful as a barrier between a thrice holy God and a sinful man like Aaron. But remember, again, these are all symbolic. Of course, a cloud could not protect us from the wrath of a thrice holy God, even from the presence of a thrice holy God, unless God deemed that it would. The only reason Aaron survived, this is the point I'm trying to make, wasn't because of the cloud of incense that Aaron survived, that was only symbolic. The reason Aaron survived being in the presence of God is because God was pleased to let him live. But remember, again, all these things are more symbolic than they are effective in and of themselves. In truth, there's nothing that can protect us from God's wrath except God's sovereign good pleasure. Again, what we have here is simply a case of God's prescription for the regulative principle of worship. God says, Aaron, Moses, tell Aaron, this is the way I am to be worshiped. and no other. And so, it's really a test of Aaron's fitness as a high priest and his willingness to obey and have his life spared by God. Well, moving along here in our text, what follows is a description of Aaron's responsibility to take the blood from the bull and sprinkle it seven times in various places in the Holy of Holies, including the mercy seat itself, The number seven there shouldn't come as any surprise. You know that the number seven is a sacred number. It's the number of perfection. You see it throughout the scriptures, referring to completion, thoroughness, perfection. And so he was to sprinkle the blood seven times, namely because the number meant something, but again, because God said, sprinkle it seven times. He was also to take the goat and do the same thing that he did with the bull. He was then to go outside the Holy of Holies and repeat the process in the holy place, that's that outer sanctum, as well as the area beyond where the altar was. In verses 20 through 22, we have the precise instructions regarding the scapegoat. See, once again, okay, we're talking about the bull, Now we're talking about the scapegoats. Oh, before I forget, let me talk about the bull again. And now let's talk about the scapegoats again. Now, I might get to heaven again and find out, you know, Moses is like, no, I didn't have ADD, you silly man. You know, he might say, this is just the way it was meant to be recorded. And I'll be like, amen, yes, sir. Wow, are you really Moses? Anyway. Again, no disrespect intended, but it's very curious, at least in the way that the Word of God has been preserved for us, that we notice all these little idiosyncratic things. But anyway, he says here, when he finishes atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall offer the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins. And he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land, and he shall release the goat in the wilderness." Again, what a beautiful foreshadowing of the atoning work of Christ. In fact, this work is featured prominently Also in Isaiah 53, remember there in verses five through six, he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our wellbeing fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. In verse 12, when we're told that he bore the sin of many, He bore it away as our scapegoat. I think this is even more poignant when you consider the fact that the scapegoat was to be taken and cast out, run away into the wilderness, never to be seen again, and yet Christ is our scapegoat, has gone away to a faraway place, again, symbolically, but He will return for us. the scapegoat himself will return to the very people that he carried their sins away to take us to be with him in glory. Well, I think that's enough to think about for one sitting. Lord willing, we'll resume our study at verse 23 in our next time together. Until then, let me just encourage you again to think more seriously about the atoning work of Christ. I really do want us all to think more seriously about the beautiful things that Christ has done for us, that he is doing in us and through us. And again, all of that for our edification and for God's glory.