So He's referring here, and the book to Hebrews was written to people who understood their heritage and their history, so they understood the law of Moses, and all the things that perhaps you and I are not so familiar with. So they understood that all that they had learned in the past, was a picture of something that would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. They were told by God when they came out of Egypt to build a tabernacle, a place where God would dwell, and there was a protocol for coming into the very presence of God, which the High Priests followed. If you broke that protocol you died, so once a year the High Priests would go into the very holy place, where the presence of God shone and lit this place up, and he would make offerings on behalf of the nation, with the blood of goats and heifers and bulls and calves. He would do it once a year, and that would sanctify the people for one more year. It never solved sin. It never dealt with the root problems. What it did was, legally before God, made provision for the nation for another year, but God was using these things as a picture of something that was to come. So when you study these things in the Old Testament, they are a vivid prophetic picture of the reality of what Jesus has done, and I want to lay that out in a bit more detail today.
So go into Leviticus, Chapter 16 and it'll become quite practical in just a moment when you start to see, how this translates into realities for us today. In Leviticus, Chapter 16, it is a description of what would happen on the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement was the one day a year when the High Priests came in and had to deal with sins of a nation. There'd be a lot of sins wouldn't there? Two or three million people, and everyone's sinning every day. Man, that's a lot of sins. So once a year he'd come, and this was the big day - and God describes exactly what he's got to do, and notice what he says, Verse 7; Take two goats and present them before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of the meeting. Two goats - then he'll cast lots for the two goats. He'll throw a lot - one for the Lord, and the other for the scapegoat - so he'd have two goats. The two goats were presented to the Lord, one offering. So when you think two goats, one offering, okay? One offering.
Then they would get the dice, throw the lot, and one of them would be chosen, and one of them was chosen to shed its blood, the other was chosen to be the scapegoat, but it was all a picture of the same and one offering, what Jesus would do for us. So they would take the goat that was chosen to be the offering, the sin offering for the people, and in Verse 15, he kill the goat of the sin offering for the people, and bring it's blood inside the veil, and do with the blood what he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat, seven times. So the Priest would take the two goats, present them to the Lord, one offering. He'd take one of them and that one would be slain, take the blood and he would go into the very holiest where God was, and he'd take the blood - he had it in a basin - and seven times he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, on the ark where the presence dwelt, and then right down on the ground before it, seven times. We'll come back to that in a moment.
Then the second thing he did after that, in Verse 20, when he made an end for atoning for the Holy Place and so on, he'd bring the live goat and he'd lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the inequities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions, all their sins, and he'd put them on the head of the goat - ooh, that's a long, long list. Imagine going around the nation finding out what did you all do wrong this last year? That's a lot of sinning has gone on among two million people in one year. You can imagine that.
So he would lay hands on the head of the live goat. Notice what he'd do - laying on the hands always is impartation. He'd put his hands on the head of the goat and he would speak or decree these are the sins: lust, pride, fornication, adultery, perversions. He'd go through the list of what had been going on in the nation for a year and he would speak them over the live goat. Then the live goat would be released or go into the wilderness. He would never be seen again - so notice two pictures: two goats, one offering. One goat would be slain and shed it's blood, and the blood sprinkled seven times. The other goat, hands laid on it, and now the work becomes complete, the sins are imparted to the goat. The goat goes, never to be seen again. A picture for us of Jesus Christ who shed his blood, and when you and I apply the blood to our life, our sins are taken away, never to be remembered any more - a most amazing picture, amazing Old Testament picture.