Sunday 10 • 28 • 18

That has where to register. And lastly, really quickly, Monday nights are starting up for women and we're calling it At The Well. We're gonna gather together once a month on Monday nights starting November 7. First Monday in November from seven to nine o'clock at Melissa Kilpatrick's home. This will be a time for sharing, connecting. We'll hear from other women. So do join us. Thanks.

You should have an index card in your bulletin. If you don't, I'm going to ask a couple of people to hand these out. If you'll just raise your hand, I'm going to send these around with a few folks. Just raise your hand if you don't have one of those. This is for audience participation time during the sermon.

We're going to turn our attention to God's word. Elliot Grudem is going to come and read for us from Leviticus chapter 16 as it's printed there in your bulletin and up on the wall right behind me.

Scripture Reading: Leviticus 16:1-10, 15-22

The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they drew near before the Lord and died. And the Lord said to Moses, tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time to the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. But in this way Aaron shall come into the holy place: with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist and wear the linen turban. These are the holy garments. He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on. He shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering. Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting and Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats. One lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel and Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering. It is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. Then he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, for their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness. For no one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement for the holy place until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for all the assembly of Israel. Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it and he shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat and put it on the horns of the altar all around and he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with a finger seven times and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the people of Israel. And when he has made an end of atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat and Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions, all their sins, and he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area. He shall let that goat go free in the wilderness. — Leviticus 16:1-10, 15-22

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you would come by your power, that you would open our hearts to your word as we open your word today. Father, we ask that we would leave this place knowing for sure that we have been in the presence of the Lord God and that we would be changed. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

So I feel like I should go running through the crowd this morning and high-fiving you—that you made it. You made it halfway through Leviticus. I honestly was not sure. We've been working on Leviticus since September 1 and we've done all the stuff on shellfish and menstruation and skin eruptions and priests and their garments and all kinds of sacrifices and how you burn the liver.

Congratulations on making it this far. Well done. You've made it to the very most important part of Leviticus—chapter 16, which is the central part. How do I know that? Well, way back at the start of the series, I pointed this out: the Hebrew writers emphasized things by creating a sandwich structure to what they wrote.

Here's what I mean by this. You know how you make a sandwich—two pieces of bread, right? You put your cheese, maybe your lettuce on the bottom, and you put your meat in the middle. That's how you make a sandwich. The Bible is structured this way in lots of places, and if you were a good Jewish reader of this text, you would go, "I know exactly what's going on," because you read the sandwich and the sandwich always functions to highlight the middle part.

The Old Testament begins with five books. We call them the Pentateuch, which really just means five scrolls, and they're built like a sandwich. There's Genesis on one piece of bread and Deuteronomy on the other piece of bread. Both about the same length. Both of them end with a patriarch blessing the people of Israel. Move one stage in—you have the cheese and your veggies. You have Exodus and Numbers. Exodus ends with the setting up of the tabernacle. Numbers begins with the taking down of the tabernacle. Almost the same number of words in those books, down to the very jot of the letter. And then finally, you get to the meat—Leviticus, which is the heart of the sandwich.

Leviticus itself functions like a sandwich. There are eighteen passages where God speaks before this section and eighteen after. So if you're reading along and you're a good Jewish reader, you're like, "Leviticus 16—this is the center, not just of Leviticus, but of the whole Pentateuch." Everything is pointing right here. This matters so much.

The Central Question of the Pentateuch

Leviticus 16 is answering the big problem of the Pentateuch: How is a holy God going to live together with these people? How is a holy God going to be with, together with, among these people? That's what Leviticus is all about. This is why a leading Jewish writer from a Jewish theological seminary, Benjamin Sommer, says this is the most Christian section of the Hebrew scriptures because it's all pointing to this—how does a holy God deal with the sinfulness of people and reside among them?

Leviticus 16 is about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in Hebrew. It's about two goats, and this is quite frankly kind of foreign material to most Christians. You know, Passover—we get Passover. Passover is something that makes sense to a lot of Christians. It's filled with symbolism that we understand. That's natural because Passover is the story in Exodus where the last of the twelve plagues that God executes upon Egypt results in Pharaoh letting the Hebrew people go.

Passover is that night. God tells the people, "Put the blood—sacrifice a lamb, put the blood over your doorpost—because tonight, the angel of death will come over all of Egypt and the firstborn of every household, from the pharaoh to the lowest slave, even of male livestock will die. But those people who put the blood of a lamb over the doorpost, the angel of death will pass over, pass by, and that child will live."

It's a big picture of how God delivers us from death. We get that. Jesus is called the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The New Testament is rife with all kinds of symbolism about Jesus as the lamb. But nobody calls Jesus the goat, right? No one calls him the goat of God. Even though this—Yom Kippur—is like the literary and thematic center of the Pentateuch, for a lot of Christians, this is kind of foreign material.

But I want to tell you this, brothers and sisters of Jesus: this is absolutely yours. And if we miss out on this, we may miss out on some beautiful notes of gospel grace that God gives to us to live into.

So here's my outline very simply today: the three goats—not the three billy goats, but the three goats, okay?

So, those of you taking notes, before we jump into that outline, let me do a little setup work because this begins with preparation for Yom Kippur. Verses one through four set the scene.

Rosh Hashanah, which was celebrated by the Jewish community here back in September, is the beginning of the Jewish New Year and it's signified by the blowing of the shofar, the ram's horns, calling the people to ten days of repentance and reflection. It's a time of searching your heart, a time of introspection and preparing. Think about it—we start our New Year with champagne and parties and dropping a big ball, right? They started with ten days of repentance, of looking inward and saying, "What do I need to do to make my heart right with the Lord?" That's how they began, and it culminated in this one day: Yom Kippur. Ten days after Rosh Hashanah—we're talking October 9, just this past month when the Jewish community celebrated here. So it's all coming to this one day when on Yom Kippur, the high priest, Aaron or the current high priest, was allowed to go that one day into the most holy place in the tabernacle. And that was the only day that anybody entered in there.

Now, this is a big deal and it's hard for us to understand. But let me put it this way: if this guy is offering one sacrifice, this ultimate sacrifice in the Holy of Holies, if this is happening one time a year, you better hope he's got his stuff together. So there's a lot of prep for this coming into it. He had to purify himself from his sinfulness. He sacrifices a bull and he better get dressed and wear all the right things.

He is to put on the sacred linen tunic with linen undergarments next to his body. — Leviticus 16:4

The only place in the Bible I know that talks about underwear—right here, okay? And then it goes on:

He is to tie the linen sash around his waist and put on the linen turban. — Leviticus 16:4

These are sacred garments. He must bathe himself with water before he puts them on. Now look, this is how the Jewish mind works. They don't think of this as empty ritual. He's going to go do these things. In their mind, this man is entering into the one place on the entire planet where the heavenly realm intersects the earthly realm. The Holy of Holies was not just a room behind a curtain. This is the place where two realities, two dimensions come together. So this is an enormous deal.

It sounds like they're power washing this guy, and for good reason. We've read other places where, hey, you kind of rush into the Holy of Holies kind of unprepared—good for that guy or bad for that guy? Bad. Very bad for that guy, because he's entering into a completely other dimension. So all this preparation—it's not just a sash, it's not just a headband, it's not just taking a bath. These are instructions: do these things exactly how God has said, because this man will represent you before God, will take your sins to the Lord and atone for them. This is a big deal. It's a big, big deal.

So then the last thing we read here: the high priest is to take lots and cast lots—think about it, something like dice, right?—and cast lots for the selection of these two goats. He's going to select these two goats and both of them have different functions.

The Goats

The first goat is called the goat of Azazel. Say Azazel with me. Azazel. See, you're speaking Hebrew this morning. That's a bonus. Look at verses seven through ten and verses 20 through 22 in your passage.

That word, Azazel, is untranslated in your version and I think that's right. Azazel is a word that a lot of Bibles translate as "scapegoat," and that sort of captures some of the meaning. But actually, a lot of biblical commentators say we don't exactly know. This is the only place this word is used, and it really means something more akin to "the taking away"—the taking away goat.

See, here's the problem. I think we use the word "scapegoat" today in politics and in sports in ways that are sort of different from what's being identified here. For example, take the Steve Bartman incident—anybody know who Steve Bartman is? Alright, the Steve Bartman incident from 2003 in the National League Baseball playoffs. Here's what's happening: the Cubs are leading, they're playing the Marlins, it's game six, they're leading the series three to two, and the game score is three to zero. So you get to this inning where one of the Marlins hitters, the second baseman, hits a ball, tips it off his bat, it goes pop fly, and it comes near the stands. And a bunch of fans at the same time do what you all would do and I would do if we were there: lean over to try to catch it, right?

And one of the guys who leans over to try to catch it, it bounces off of his glove and deflects it so that the Cubs player is not able to catch the ball. This guy's name is Steve Bartman, and his life was ruined after this because what happened was instead of getting another out—which would have been out two, and the Cubs would have been then four outs away from winning the National League Championship Series—instead, what happens is they give up eight runs in that inning, they go down eight to three, lose the whole thing, and you know the rest is history. Steve Bartman had to go on police protection. How many people threatened his life? We're all about going after this guy. And you know what they called him? The scapegoat. They call him a scapegoat, and you know what they mean by that? Here's the guy we're all going to blame.

And that's sort of what we see with the goat of Azazel. There is a goat that is taking the blame, but it's not the goat's fault. It was not Steve Bartman's incident—it's much bigger than that. The goat is taking the collective blame of all the people. You could refer to this not as the scapegoat, but rather the escape goat, because he's being sent out of the community.

The Goat of Azazel

Here's what happens: Imagine later in Israelite history, hundreds of thousands of people gathering in Jerusalem. Nine days of repentance for their sin, they come together on this one day, and the high priest comes and puts his hands on the goat. This is what we read. He puts his hands on the goat and declares on the goat's head all the sins, all the guilt, all the transgressions of the people, and then they send the goat away. The goat is the goat of Azazel, the taking away goat.

There are some sources of Jewish tradition that say that at this moment, they would put a red cord around the goat's head, symbolizing all these sins being put on this goat, and then they would send it off. The goat carries all the sins off to a solitary place and will be released into the desert.

Now, think about the person whose job it is to take the goat out. Nobody wants this job, right? No Israelite is like, "I'd like to take the goat with all my neighbor's sins on it and mine." So they would, in later tradition, get a Gentile—someone who is not part of the Jewish community—and they'd hire this person to come in. You take the goat out. That is one loaded goat, right? Nobody wants that goat to show up like several days later. You're sitting on the front porch and you look up and the goat of Azazel is eating your grass. Nobody wants that. So they hire this Gentile to take it out, make sure it doesn't come back. And actually, later generations, the guy would be tasked with pushing it off a cliff—make sure we do not want the sins back into this gathering.

This is so weird for us, isn't it? You could imagine. So, funny moment from this week: I texted our staff—I was out of town Monday—and I texted CTK staff, "Can anybody get me a live goat for Sunday?" And I was joking, but there were other people on staff who were all ready to bring a live goat in here for this morning. So, yeah, not doing that.

But what is this about? This is again, like all of Leviticus. We've walked through these pages. This is high-level performance art. There is something being demonstrated to the people in these actions that conveys spiritual truths on a real and profound level, and it reflects the problem of sin. It reflects how deeply sin destroys, the way that sin works, and therefore what the remedy for sin must be.

Sin as Spiritual Disease

Let me show you this. Last week, I'm going to dip a little bit into this—last week we talked in chapter 13 about leprosy. We talked about how the Israelites were required to treat leprosy. Leprosy was likewise a parable. Let me tell you the parable of what was going on with those skin disorders. The way that leprosy shows up on the skin and the way it works is akin to the way that sin works in the heart. So leprosy on the outside—a parable for what sin does on the inside.

This is how it played out: How does leprosy start out? It starts off as a little spot, right? You don't wake up one day and you're absolutely covered. It starts as a spot and it spreads. Over time, it begins to take over. And it's not just right here on your hand—it's suddenly on your arm, in your chest, in your back. And this is a picture for us of how sin begins. Sin begins with little decisions, a little lie, a little untruth. But over time, this begins to spread, and it spreads all over, and it takes over. And this is what James describes in chapter one of his epistle.

He says, "No one should say when he's tempted, 'I'm being tempted by God.' God doesn't tempt. He himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted while he is lured away and enticed by his own desire."

Listen to these words: lured away and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it's conceived, gives birth to sin. Sin, when it's fully grown, gives birth to death. See, it's an increasing way that it spreads. Sin also doesn't just show up and spread. It also disfigures.

The diseases described in all those horrible things in chapter 13—all those skin eruptions and leprosy—those are disfiguring diseases. They have a way of causing the person on the outside to look less and less like a person. So sin is on the inside. Over time, those things which are secrets make us sick. They have the ability to transform us so that we turn in on ourselves. It has a dehumanizing effect on people. The way that sin works in the heart.

And then finally, sin also isolates. This is really figured for us here in that the leper is sent outside the camp. And again, that's hygienic on one level—it's about isolation of the contagion. We don't want that spread to the whole camp. But it's also a parable, because sin also isolates. It isolates us from God. It isolates us from other people.

Any Harry Potter fans? There's this scene in one of the later Harry Potter books where Harry has a face off against Voldemort, who is the axis of all evil in the wizarding community. And in order to do so, his mentor Dumbledore gives Harry a lot of understanding of the background of Voldemort—like, was he always this way? How did he grow up? And this is what he says about Voldemort:

I trust that you noticed that Voldemort as a boy was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and apparently friendless, isolated. You'll hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they are close to him, even understand him. They're deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe he ever wanted one.

See, this is how the slow process of sin works. It starts as a spot, it spreads, it disfigures us on the inside, and it isolates us. And it's really, really dangerous.

So what did Israel do? They put them outside the camp. They're symbolizing that there's a boundary that's been crossed, and that person needs to be brought back in. The boundary person outside the camp—what is their number one thing that they really, really want? To be brought back in. They're being shown in this parable: isn't this what you want? To be returned, to be brought back in.

So why was the goat of Azazel sent outside the camp? Because sin that destroys us must be removed from us. The Hebrew people watched once a year as the high priest put his hands—all our sins on this goat—and send it away. And God is saying, "For me to be with and among and together, I have to remove something from you so I don't remove you from my presence." This is exactly what the goat's about.

And yet, here's the thing: the goat of Azazel didn't fix everything. Lots of good Christian people, if you ask them, "What does it mean for your sin to be atoned for?" they will say something akin to forgiveness. And man, that's great. That is true. But it's not all the truth.

See, there's not one but two goats in this passage. It's clear that the goat of Azazel—the removal of sin—is not all that we need. Forgiveness is not all that we need from God in order for him to be present with us. Rather, you get two because there's something more wrong with us than just our guilt. There's also the stain of sin, uncleanness.

This is verses 15 through 19. This is the goat of sacrifice. When your body gets dirty, you can tell. You tell your kid, "Hey, you need to go take a shower. You stink." You can tell when your hair is getting greasy. Those things are true on the outside. It's harder for us to tell on the inside. It's harder for us to understand that there's a sense of being dirty internally.

The Bible here deals with not only an objective sense of guilt but also an internal sense of being dirty, of shame. This may sound really primitive for us, but it's not so far from our experience. There's a guy who's written an article—Chenbo Zhang—on metaphors. He wrote this for Scientific American, a great article called "Metaphors of the Mind: Why Loneliness Feels Cold, Why Sins Feel Dirty." He talks about how we use these things even today in our sophisticated culture. We're talking about, "I just need a clean record. I don't have a clean record."

We talk about how dirty hands and clean records have a psychological basis such that people make sense of morality through physical cleanness. Psychological academics have noticed there's a connection between feeling dirty and unethical behavior. We talk about washing our hands of something. Have you ever seen a movie that you're like, I just wish I hadn't seen that? I feel kind of dirty. I just wish I could take a shower. There are things that we see that we're exposed to that make us feel unclean.

We talked about this last week—this category of something that is unclean. Last week, all those passages referred to uncleanliness that is a result of just being a fallen person living in a fallen world: contact with a dead body, the flow of blood, skin eruptions. Those things are not caused by sin, and yet they render a person unclean because it's life in a fallen world. You're being touched by the fall, and there's something that needs to be cleaned. We feel polluted as a result of that. But this passage shows us that there's more to that. There are several categories of uncleanness. There's uncleanness related to the effects of the fall, and there's uncleanness related to sin.

Last week I was really careful to say this, but look: not all uncleanness is a result of sin, but all sin leads to uncleanness.

The Bible speaks in a lot of places about being polluted. Think about a little bit of toxins. Why don't you go eat lots of fish out of the Neuse River? Because there are signs that say these fish have a little bit of toxin in them. I don't want any, right? Because they're polluted.

But the Bible also speaks in this category of defilement. Defilement is not what you have done. It's not a result of the fall, but it's a category of what has been done to you. What's been done to you is the category of being sinned against in a way that makes the person feel unclean and experience that.

I want to be really careful with this because I know this touches people here. But why is it when a person is a victim of a sexual assault—something done to them sexually—that the victim feels like they are unclean from that point forward? Why does the person who's done nothing feel like, on some level, I deserve this? On some level, I'm full of shame. I am unworthy. There's a condition, a feeling of being unclean here that points to how sin taints everything. The whole world is polluted. Each of these things—whether it's as a result of the fall, as a result of our own sinning, as a result of someone sinning against you—all of these things—defilement, uncleanness, pollution, filth, feeling dirty, feeling corrupted—it produces shame in a person.

Some of you know this. Every Sunday you can come in. You could tell me all about what Jesus has done for you and how he forgives your sins. You could tell me how the goat of Azazel makes lots of sense to you. Yes, Jesus has paid it all. And yet you have this ongoing sense that there's something wrong with you.

See, guilt is about: I have done wrong. Shame is about: I, as a person, am wrong. There's something really wrong with me. And all the talk of forgiveness doesn't seem to touch it.

This is why there have to be two goats. The second goat, the goat of sacrifice, was for uncleanness. This is listed twice in verse 16, once there in verse 19. They're like, this goat is about purification—about God declaring someone clean from the stain of sin, theirs or somebody else's, just life in a fallen world.

In theological terms, the goat of Azazel is about propitiation from guilt. In theological terms, the goat of sacrifice is about expiation from the stain of sin.

The Cord That Changed Color

One fascinating tradition comes from the Mishnah, which is like a commentary on the scriptures—an extra-biblical source recorded by the Jews. If you read in the Mishnah, they talk about how the priest would put a cord on the head of the goat of Azazel. It was a red cord, symbolic of laying all our sins on it. Well, later traditions would take that cord before they sent the goat off into the wilderness. They would put it in the temple in front of the altar, and over the course of the year—I don't know, Jewish folklore—but over the course of the year, that cord would turn from crimson, from red, to white. The people would look at that and say, see, this is God doing away with our sins.

Yet the Mishnah also says that forty years before the destruction of the temple, it stopped working. It stopped changing.

Does anybody know what year the temple was destroyed in Jerusalem? A.D. 70. What happened about thirty years before that? Who came about thirty years before that? This is what takes us to our third goat.

Now, as I said, Jesus is never called the goat of God anywhere in the Bible. And yet, I have a friend who was an elder for Wildeye Church and he had a dog named Goat. I was always like, why is the dog named Goat? He's like, "Greatest of all time, right?" And so this is how Jesus is the goat. He is the greatest of all time. This is where we're going today. So humor me with my corny sermon illustration. How is Jesus the goat? How is Jesus the greatest of all time?

See, we read in Hebrews, which is a commentary on all of Leviticus, that says this:

It wasn't possible. The blood of sheep and bulls and goats couldn't take away sins. — Hebrews

It was always a placeholder. It was always a type that pointed forward in history. There's something coming that will do away with this once and for all. The goats, all the goats can do in Leviticus is just represent. They're only types of Jesus that is to come.

So if you have your Bible with you, turn with me to John 19. If not, write down John 19 on your bulletin because John 19 walks us through the crucifixion of Jesus and I want you to see this through the lens of Leviticus 16. It's all about it.

The Crucifixion Through the Lens of Leviticus 16

Look at this very familiar story. Jesus is first mocked and as he is mocked by the guards, what do they put on his head? A crown of thorns. They press this crown of thorns down upon his head. What would be left on a person's head when you've taken a crown of thorns and pressed it in? A red circle. Just like the goat of Azazel.

Jesus is then beaten and scourged. It's very clear in the account of his death that Jesus was dying even before he got to the cross. The Roman guards used a cat of nine tails, which was designed to pull off as much flesh and to inflict as much punishment and to pull as much blood from his body. It was so severe that when Jesus was told to carry his cross, he could not do so because he was dying from blood loss.

We talked about this last week, but the loss of blood is one of the things that renders a person unclean. The Jewish people believe—this is Leviticus 17:14—that the life of a person was in that person's blood. So Jesus is going to the cross and what is he rendered? He's rendered unclean, ritually unclean, for us. Even in his beating.

Then Pontius Pilate brings Jesus out to the crowd one final time. He's trying to wash his hands because he wants nothing to do with the blame for Jesus' death. And he's going to get them to make a decision. So he says, "What should I do with this Jesus?" And what do they shout at him? Crucify is what they shout second. But what do they shout first? This is John 19:15. Take him away. Azazel. Take him away. And then to his death, Jesus is taken away like the goat of Azazel. He's led away by whom? A Gentile, a Roman guard who leads him out.

He's taken like the goat of sacrifice, but not in Jerusalem—outside the camp where the lepers go. And so we read in Hebrews 13:

When he died on the cross, he went outside the gate to sanctify people with his own blood. — Hebrews 13

In Hebrews 12:

He scorned the shame of the cross. — Hebrews 12

My shame, your shame, for our uncleanness, so that we—the unclean ones, the unrighteous ones—could be made right with God.

In 1987, there was an American artist and photographer named André Serrano who produced a piece of art that he didn't realize was going to get as much attention as it did. He filled up a jar and he put a crucifix inside and urine in it. He closed the lid and he took pictures and put it in a museum. This became a national news piece and it was scandalous. This is what he said: "I had no idea the piece would get all the attention it did. Since I meant neither blasphemy nor offense by it, I've been a Catholic all my life. I'm a follower of Jesus."

What he meant by that was, for him, there was a very vivid depiction of Jesus taking his uncleanness so that he might be made clean. It's a very vivid piece of worship for him. Like, "This is what my savior did for me."

This is why Jesus—who was always the one who didn't need to be power washed, was always the clean one—who's made unclean ritually, but was able in all those accounts we talked about last week to touch the lives of people who are unclean and yet he didn't become contaminated. He brought cleansing to them.

This morning, I'm going to give you an opportunity to respond in a way that we don't usually do in our church.

I've given you an index card, and I want you to pull that out. I'm going to ask you to use it in just a moment.

For some of you, you need to know the forgiveness of sins this morning. You need more than anything else the goat of Azazel, and there are things that you have done that you've told no one about, that you're carrying with you like invisible luggage. These are secrets that are eating you up, and they're bringing a sense of being turned in on yourself. They're isolating you from other people, and there are things that you need to take off and put on to Jesus this morning. You need to ask his forgiveness and experience his healing in your life.

For others of you, you need to know cleansing from the stain of sin. Things that have been done to you that make you feel defiled. Things you've experienced from your own sin or the sin of others that make you feel unclean, unwanted, dirty. You walk in this place and you can sing all the songs about Jesus' forgiveness, and yet you always feel less than in this place. You need the goat of cleansing, the sacrifice this morning. And again, I want you to be able to take off your shame and put that on to Jesus because he is the clean one. He wants to touch you in those places. He wants to make you whole.

So I'm going to give you two minutes. I'm going to ask you to pull out your index card. Nobody's going to read this but you. And I'm going to ask you to put on that card either your sin or your stains. Then when we take communion together in a few moments, I'm going to invite you to bring it forward and take communion and remember what's been given to you. Then come lay these things on the table as the first service is done and give these things away, because you don't need to be carrying this anymore. You need to give this stuff up.

So would you take two minutes?