Dr. James Boyce airs on Family Radio at 10 AM Sunday morning; his broadcast home is The Bible Study Hour.
Today, his 24-minute sermon is rich in understanding of the sacrificial system prior to and including the final sacrifice, Christ at Calvary.
If you are a Bible reader, then this sermon may tie together a lot for you. His focus was on Leviticus 16.
I linked his site; and also linked a paper I wrote on Bible covenants which will benefit new Bible readers, at the end of this post.
Highlights from the mp3:
*How did the Day of Atonement, recorded in Leviticus 16, point to the final atonement to come?
*Lev. 16 contained the instructions for the priests
*The sacrifices are part of how one becomes right before God, prefiguring the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ
*The Day of Atonement (doa) was a time of great solemnity, unlike the other feasts; the people stayed home – other feasts required traveling to Jerusalem
*The doa was the feast in which the people were commanded to fast; they were also required to examine themselves and their sin
*It was the only time of year when the high priest could enter into the holy of holies
*They were to confess their sin while sacrifices were being made
*A foundational connecting point of the Old and New Testaments is that all the sacrifices pointed forward to the Lord Jesus Christ
*Therefore, Leviticus 16 is the most important chapter of the Old Testament to enable one to understand what the Lord Jesus Christ actually did on the cross, when he fulfilled all the Old Testament (OT) types
*The first feast of the year was Passover; it was the most joyful because it commemorated deliverance from Egypt
*Passover was held in the first month, it was 7 days long: the first day was the Passover celebration and 6 days were the feast of unleavened bread
*In 1 Corinthians 5:7, Paul calls Christ our Passover sacrifice for sin
*The second feast was the feast of first fruits, an early harvest festival
*The idea of the first fruits is found in 1 Cor. 15 where Jesus is called the first fruits of the resurrected believers that will follow – they are the harvest
*The third feast is the feast of harvests; it commemorated the wheat harvest that came later
*The feast of harvests was observed seven weeks and one day after the Passover, or 50 days later; the word Pentecost means 50th
*The Holy Spirit inaugurated the Christian church age at Pentecost
*That is – “we have a harvest festival called Pentecost at which the Holy Spiri was the divine vehicle by which this great harvest of salvation among Jews and Gentiles was going to take place”
*The fourth festival was called feast of trumpets: a special day of rest held on the first day of the 7th month, halfway through the Jewish calendar
*It seemingly had no religious significance, but it did inaugurate other festivals that took place during that month: the Day of Atonement and the feast of tabernacles
*The doa occurred 10 days after the feast of tabernacles
*In Leviticus 23, where all the festivals are listed, the doa is described from the perspective of the Jewish worshipper, emphasizing fasting and work cessation
*The feast of tabernacles is in the fall of the year at the end of the growing season, the last harvest
*The Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving to commemorate the harvest, they got the idea from the Bible feast of tabernacles
*Sacrifices at the feast of tabernacles were made for the nation as opposed to other feasts in which sacrifices were made for the individual
*This feast represents an important step forward in God’s revelation of the doctrine of salvation in the OT
*Pattern of sacrifices in the Bible: 1. Adam and Eve required animal sacrifices to pay for their sins, the skins of these were used by God to clothe them (individual sacrifice for sin); 2. at the time of the Passover, God told Moses to have each family prepare a lamb for sacrifice (family sacrifice for sin); 3. In Leviticus 16, the sacrifice was for the entire nation of Israel; 4. and in the NT, John the Baptist addressed Jesus as the Lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world.
*At the doa, Aaron firstly offered a sacrifice for himself, so he could enter into the holy of holies
*Dr Boice articulated another pattern related to how sacrifices were carried out involving the incense sensor and sprinkling of blood – his description was easier to understand than reading the scriptures
*Two goats were used in the sacrifice of the doa; one was slaughtered and one was led into the wilderness and released
*The goat released in the wilderness was the “scapegoat”
*The slaughtered goat died for the sins of the people; the goat that was released in the wilderness carried the sin and guilt of the people
*The sins of the people had been symbolically placed on the head of the scapegoat which bore them into the wilderness
*Jesus did both these things for His people at Calvary [and I think I rightly understood that the goat that was led into the wilderness symbolized Jesus being crucified ‘outside’ the camp
*Dr Boyce spent time specifically discussing the symbolism involved in the types that Jesus fulfilled
*Hebrews 9:28, Jesus’ sacrifice occurred once to take away the sins of His people, whereas the doa occurred every year
*The blood of Christ gives redemption (1Pet 1:18,19); forgiveness (Eph. 1:7); justification (Rom. 5:9); spiritual peace (Col. 1:20); and sanctification (Heb. 13:12)
*Hebrews 10:21, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin…. No one else but the Lord Jesus Christ could to this for us
*One must come to him by faith for salvation; or one has to pay for his sins with his own blood
*The epistle of Hebrews was written to enable Jewish believers to see that their former ceremonies and sacrifices were useless after Christ’s once for all sacrifice; that all the types were fulfilled by Christ
*In 10:26, they were warned about turning back to the Jewish sacrificial system: Hebrews 10:26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
[That system consisted of types that Christ fulfilled; there was no value in it for dealing with their sins]
LINK TO THE BIBLE STUDY HOUR FOR CURRENT AND PAST SERMONS OF JAMES BOYCE
https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/the-bible-study-hour/player/?type=branded#now
From this blog, a paper on the Bible covenants:
Covenant with Bible refs.pdf 4.2.20
Featured Image: https://www.ivpress.com/foundations-of-the-christian-faith