Stress Test Devotional May 11
May 11, 2024
LEVITICUS 16:21-22 | 21 Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. 22 The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.
The awareness of our brokenness is sobering, no doubt. It puts us in touch with a central reality about human behavior, human societies, and the evil that pervades them. But despite the difficulty of this truth, the Day of Atonement was not a grim affair in ancient Israel, just as the Christian understanding of the cross is actually encouraging.
On the Day of Atonement, Aaron would bathe, don white garments, sacrifice an animal to purify himself and his family and the Holy of Holies, and then offer a goat to satisfy offenses against God by the people. Then he’d pray over a second goat, the scapegoat, which was released into the wilderness carrying away and abolishing all the collective wrong of the nation. These rituals carried not only a message about the ugliness of human sin and its life-destroying capacity, they also conveyed the superior power of God’s mercy to give each and every Israelite a fresh start.
Can you see the encouragement in these rituals?
