Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) is unique among the appointed times of the LORD. It’s the only holy day in which the people do very little, while one man, the high priest, does everything. Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus), our high priest, sacrificed Himself for us and carried our sins away too, as the symbols of Yom Kippur memorialize. All the people are asked to do is humble themselves, do no work and bring an offering to the Tabernacle/Temple.

Without a Temple, what can we bring to God? It’s not about following the Torah to the letter with a physically perfect abstinence from food and water, but as Yeshua taught us, it’s about caring for those around us as we want them to care for us.  The Torah is a covenant of life, not of death.

Every Yom Kippur, it’s obligatory to read through the texts in the Torah that tell us what Yom Kippur is and how God instructs His people to celebrate it. We look to Him to show us how to celebrate it; we don’t define it ourselves. Leviticus 16 tells us how the High Priest (including our Messiah Yeshua) was to celebrate Yom Kippur, while Leviticus 23 tells us how the people were to celebrate Yom Kippur.

“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘On exactly the tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atonement; it shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall humble your souls and present an offering by fire to the LORD. You shall not do any work on this same day, for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement on your behalf before the LORD your God. If there is any person who will not humble himself on this same day, he shall be cut off from his people. As for any person who does any work on this same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. You shall do no work at all. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places. It is to be a sabbath of complete rest to you, and you shall humble your souls; on the ninth of the month at evening, from evening until evening you shall keep your sabbath.’” (Leviticus 23:26–32 NASB)

The people were given three instructions on how to celebrate Yom Kippur:

* Humble or afflict the soul

* Do no work

* Bring an offering by fire to the Temple

Since the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 and therefore the furloughing of the Aaronic priesthood, we are prohibited by other texts of the Torah from bringing an offering to HaShem at the Temple on Yom Kippur.

However, we still are obligated under the “perpetual statute” to afflict our souls and to refrain from work on Yom Kippur.

We also can read Hebrews 7–10, which goes into great detail about how Yom Kippur is supposed to work internally, inside your person in your body and your mind and your soul rather than externally.

Getting your goats

There are strange things going on inside the Day of Atonement that don’t make a whole lot of sense when you look at them in detail. For example, the two goats. There’s one for HaShem, which is slaughtered on the altar. The other is cast out into the wilderness.

On the surface, which would you rather be? The one in the wilderness, right? It’s the one that gets to live a while longer, rather than the one given to HaShem that dies shortly after it’s chosen.

However, the goat that is sent into the wilderness, the one that is not given to HaShem is the one that carries all the burdens the sins with it.

Neither goat is actually guilty for your mistakes, is it? No. Both goats were sinless, just as Messiah Yeshua is sinless. The goat given to HaShem dies on behalf of the people, and the goat sent out into the wilderness to carry away the sins of the people is also an act performed on behalf of all the people.

What are the common people doing throughout Yom Kippur? Watching? Praying? That’s fair. There’s not much to do. It doesn’t involve you, right?