Episode 5
Azazel, The Scapegoat and Atonement
Reading: Job 1:5
5 And it was so, when the days of their
feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early
in the morning and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all,
for Job said, it may be that my sons have cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job
continually.
In the course of our meditation in this book of Job we came
upon the truth that the burnt-offerings-way of drawing close to God was a
revelation made known to the ancients: Abel, Noah and so on. This we discovered
pointed to the Lamb of God who , in the future, would take away the sin of the
world; His blood had been shed from the beginning of the world; this was a
hidden mystery, a dark parable to the people of old, yet potent in its power to
deal with the sin question.
As we continue in this issue, we
shall find ourselves focusing on sanctification and on burnt offerings; we
shall also be going further afield to related issues of national atonement of
Israel, the priestly office and calling and
parts of the priestly garments called the ephod and the breastplate. We
wait with all humility on the Lord to know what He will have us known in these
meditations.
“…Job… offered burnt offerings…” Job
kept this going to ensure continuous flow of God’s grace from the throne of
mercy as well as to prevent His wrath; this also gave the Almighty, the just,
His judicial right of interaction with the man Job and his household as well as
the land of Uz. As for Israel, the whole nation would need a yearly atonement
offering to secure the same. All these represented God’s wisdom-principle
called Christ Jesus. In the household of Job, the man was the priest while in
Israel, Aaron and his children were the priests. Aaron, the high priest
sanctified himself – even if just mere rituals of washing himself with water, ensuring
that no sudden death occurred around him, avoiding to touch a dead body or carcass and seeing to it that he had
no night emission and so many other observations more. It goes to show that
there was a need to keep the body under in order to come to this denouement of
experiencing God, shouldering the sin-responsibility of a nation and
representing humanity to divinity just as the Lord Jesus represents man and
ministers His life to him today. “…Job … offered burnt offerings…” The
offerings offered the Lord His rights of righteous Lordship on the land; it was
the confession of the one who offered the offering that the Almighty was the
Lord and that he had submitted to His Lordship and had harnessed his puny human
forces with His. It was for this purpose of taking His rights among His people
that the Lord spoke to Moses: Let them
make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. In the end of the age, the
Lord realises this long-deferred dream as celebrated with glee in the book of
Revelation: ..But the throne of God and
the Lamb shall be in it. This is the ultimate realisation of divine purpose
for man: the throne of God; God and His Christ the temple of the city of –
blood-bought, born-from-above – beings called the saints of God. What a purpose
for living. It means that these beings have been completely transformed to His
likeness, upgraded and made to come to glory.
“…Job…offered burnt offerings…” Hidden
in the mystery of the burnt offerings of Job was the specialised Mosaic offerings
for atonement of the latterly Israel. In connection to this we shall be reading
from Leveticus, chapter 16, from verse the 4th to verse the 28th. Since we cannot read all of the verses, we
shall summarise them. The high priest washes himself in water, puts on his
priestly holy garments that represent divine character or nature and first
offers a bull as a sin offering for himself and his family, the priests. This,
as the book of Hebrew will in future, reveal, is because he himself is encompassed about by infirmities. He takes this shed
blood of the bull beyond the veil to sprinkle on the Mercy Seat seven times,
using his finger. He also offers a burnt offering of a ram. Now the nation
offers two kids of goats upon which he casts lot. One is for God and the other
is to be used as scapegoat. The one for God is to be used as sin offering and its
blood sprinkled seven times on the Mercy seat as the burnt offering. The two
victims of the sin offerings – the slain bull and that of the kid – are taken without the camp by the hand of
somebody and burnt in fire. We shall now
turn aside a little to consider Azazel, the scapegoat.
Leveticus 16: 21: And Aaron shall both hands upon the head of
the live goat and confess over him all the iniquities of the Israelites and all
their transgressions, all their sins; and he shall put them upon the goat (the
sin-bearer), and send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is
timely (ready, fit)
The goat shall bear upon himself all their iniquities, carrying them to
a land cut off (a land of forgetfulness and separation, not inhabited) - Amplified
Version. The blood of the bull and that of the kid was to bring pardon, to
expiate or pacify. The sin-carrier goat, the azazel is part of the picture of removing, carrying
away or putting away of the ugly and the evil that stands against man; this is
to immediately result, before God, the emerging of a new nation forgiven whose
sins have been carried away, a nation transfigured, a new reality and entity in God. Jesus Christ in the future
will be this azazel, the sin-bearer or carrier upon whose head we will lay both
hands and confess our iniquities, transgressions and sins. It speaks of them
that will muster enough faith to believe that God is no respecter of persons
and therefore will dare to lay both sinful hands on Christ and confess. The
Centurion of Acts sent for Peter and discovered that he too and his family can
lay their hand on Him and be saved, changed and transformed. This is called at-one-ment or reconciliation. It is
about becoming one with God; it is the reality of divine nature conferred and
worn by man; it is coming to the family of the Living God. Azazel, the
sin-carrier, bears all – ripples generating sins, imperturbable sins,
generational sins, ancestral sins… all, all… When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His
Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. I dare come also by faith to lay my
sinful hands on the head of the sin-bearer confessing my iniquities, transgressions
and all.
“The goat shall bear…” Christ
Jesus bore and still continues to bear our iniquities, our sins and our
transgressions. Iniquity is to bend or deviate from the way; it is a coldly
calculated and planned thing. Transgression is wilful rebellion against God.
Sin, according to Austin T. Spark, is anything that contradicts Christ,
anything not in character with Christ who is God’s holiness revealed. Azazel
does not only bear away sins; he becomes sin – that nature or law or principle
that produces sins. That nature was judged in both the sin offering kid and the
azazel; that nature was judged in Christ Jesus. For he had made him to be sin
for us, who knew no sin; that we might be righteousness of God in him. God has
done what the law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the
entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise
of sinful flesh and as an offering for
sin , [God] condemned sin in the
flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accepted
that sacrifice ]. Christ came that
we may become the righteousness of God; Christ is God’s righteousness expressed
in human form.
“…and send him away into the
wilderness…” Away into the wilderness. The wilderness speaks of the zone of
death… land cut off from the source of life. It means vanity; it means that
this is how far you can come and no more; it means you have a limit placed on
you; it is to be cut off from the joy of
the knowledge of God. The azazel roams about in the wilderness, away from life.
The tragedy of azazel is that he once existed in the life of God; he once knew
the joy of living in the presence of Him in whom all of life consists or coheres. Now, he is cut off
and away into darkness, absolute. This is the true essence of hell, not only the burning
Away into the wilderness. This is
separation that is final and conclusive from God; a separation from God, from
the joy of His face. Modern man has a vacuum in him that is yearning to be
filled though he is so soulical that he cannot bear to accept the reality. He
is preoccupied with researches, urged on by his razor-sharp intelligence that
has succeeded in making him fiercely independent of God’s thoughts; he sees himself
as equivalent of God or gods. What with several civilisations he has reared up
in his severance from God – and that with defiance and impunity. What with the
crowning glory of his intelligence looming large on the horizon: the near
possibility of playing god able to create himself, his ability to create yet
new creatures and plants through his knowledge of genetic and its
engineering and cloning; his plan to change the orbital course of the planets
and domiciling, in future, in space; then there is his super-communication
wizardry. He has conquered and subdued many diseases as well as possessing the
awful power to wipe out his existence in a split second several times over. These are glorious things and, at least have
helped him to endure his azazel-zone of existence, the condition from
which the Lord is trying to save him. One of these days he will have to give an
answer to this question: after this that I have done and achieved, what more
and to what purpose? Then he will find out that it is all vanity: this far he
can come and no more. It is the zone of death.
Land cut off… of forgetfulness… This
is decay and death; it is corruption in its conclusion and finality. It is so
out of synch with divine nature which is incorruptibility. No one of divine
sphere will in his right mind contemplate visiting the land cut off. Christ would not go there except that He had to
obey and do the Father’s mind. He prayed,
Father if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. This awful
possibility of being separated from his Father, this becoming the azazel, the
sin-bearer, this coming horror of becoming sin and be removed away from His
Father so that sin might be judged in him
was so lurid that, in His prayer- agonies, He sweated blood, suffering
from fear-induced rupture of blood veins.
It is God the only wise who could
accomplish this awesome salvation for man. Angels, in their different degrees
of splendours, wisdom, power and authority failed to fathom how man could be
made to share with God in His immortality and divinity, weak man! O the wisdom of the of the Eternal one, how
unsearchable! Today, the manifold wisdom
of God becomes obvious to principalities and powers through the church which
the accomplishments of these things through Christ have established.
Father we thank you for our
azazel, Christ Jesus who was obedient even to the ignominious death of the
cross. He became sin that we will never experience corruption and death, the
absolute cut off from the Eternal, from life; He was severed from the presence
of the Eternal that we may savour the ethereal light of the presence of the
Father; He was fashioned as a servant that we may become kings. For our sakes,
He became devoid of power and glory, He became poor and weak like us that we
may be rich with His power, wisdom and nature. We sing the same song as will be
sang at the end of all the age: Salvation
(due) to the Lord who is seated on
the throne and to the Lamb forever. The Lord died, cut off, removed out of
the sight of God so that we will not know loneliness away from Him, but will be
at one with Him. We value our placement in the sphere of Life and we receive
the grace to keep this position. We are being drawn closer to you, Lord, every
day. It was only you who knew what you passed through in the process of
redemption of man. We appreciate this and receive the grace to keep it. Thank
you, again our Lord.
Exodus
25: 8
Revelation 22: 3
Hebrew 5: 22
Romans 5: 10
2corithian 5: 21
Romans 8: 3
Colosians 1: 7
Luke
22: 42
Revelation 7: 10
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