Lev 16:30, …for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you shall be clean from all your sins before the Lord. 
Our reading this morning details all the requirements of the priests in order to fulfill the sacrifices required for the atonement or the cleansing of the people’s sins. This would take place on the specified day each year. The intensity of the preparation and the required stipulations of meeting the holiness of God’s righteousness and perfection had to be painstakingly undertaken. Nothing could be shortcut or missed because the very life of the ministering priest hung in the balance. If all was not done as specifically ordained and required by God, that priest would be consumed by the holiness of God. 
All of this was in order that the sins of the people in the previous year would be washed away in accordance with their desire to please God. Sadly, this would eventually become just a ritualistic custom that was done because it had been done for generation after generation as habit and tradition. There would be those few who saw it as their way of maintaining a relationship with God in accordance with that which would please and honor Him. They would hearken back to the days in which God so fixed this means of showing His grace and mercy in cleansing His people from their sins.
The Psalmist gives voice to this attitude which honors God and desires to be cleansed from all unrighteousness in Ps 51:1-3. Ps 51:1-3, Be gracious to me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Thy compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. 
There is the evident realization within this Psalm that the need for cleansing by God is a reality. It is not just a custom or a ritual. It is a requirement in order to have any relationship with God in terms of His lovingkindness and His grace and His mercy, rather than His righteous judgment of the sin that so stains and destroys mankind. 
The Psalmist, in Ps 51:7-10, continues with the full recognition that only God can do the work and only He can create the heart that will be utterly honoring to God. Ps 51:7-10, Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, Let the bones which Thou hast broken rejoice. Hide Thy face from my sins, And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. 
All the work of God to make this a reality will require severe testing and scrubbing away of that sin which has tainted and defiled the relationship for which God had created humanity. It is a complete death to self-interests and selfish intentions that would be required, as stated with the broken bones and the need for a clean heart and renewed spirit.
The blood sacrifices of the Old Testament were indicative of the truth that man had to come to God for any chance of being completely and absolutely cleansed. Nothing mankind can do will ever negate the effects of the nature of sin under which mankind is born. Everything he does is defiled by that curse and under the sentence of death. Even in the sacrifice of the animals, as stipulated by God, there was a need to recognize that only God could cleanse and He, Alone, would receive or reject that which was offered based on His holy ordinances. Therefore, man must face the truth that God is the only source and He is the only means of salvation. Apart from His working power, even throughout the Old Testament practices, it was God Who worked to bring the cleansing power of His Holy Spirit into action in the lives of those who were seeking to honor Him.
The Prophet Jeremiah gives voice to this truth in Jer 33:8+9. Here is the recorded voice of God manifested through the prophet telling the people of their absolute need for His work in their lives. Jer 33:8+9, 'And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned against Me, and I will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned against Me, and by which they have transgressed against Me. 'And it shall be to Me a name of joy, praise, and glory before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear of all the good that I do for them, and they shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the peace that I make for it.' 
    	This is a prophecy of the fact that God will make the way for a living relationship with Himself through His promised Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The need was evident and all the provisos of the Law showed clearly that man was unable to save himself. There is no human way to cleanse his soul and his being from sin with its just curse of death. Man needed a Savior, an eternal source of Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent working power that could wash away all the filth forevermore. There needed to be a completely new nature instilled into humanity as was promised by another of the Prophets.
	In Ezek 36:24-27, the Prophet Ezekiel gives voice to the words of God to the people so lost and mired in their sin and shame. Ezek 36:24-27, "For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. "And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. 
	Here, we have the promise of the new life consisting of a new heart and a new spirit given to us by God. We know that this is what has happened by our believing upon the Only Begotten Son of God sent forth from the heart of God to such as us. Despite our animosity toward God and all that He represented in the death of our self-lives, God caused His so great love to be lavished upon any who would turn to Him. He will save anyone who will receive the free gift of His redemption instituted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
In Him, we have been gathered from all the nations. In Christ, we have been thoroughly purified from all iniquity by the cleansing washing of His own blood, shed forth on the cross. In Christ, we have been given that pledged new heart and new spirit that desires to honor God and to walk in the manner which serves to please and glorify Him. In Christ Jesus, we have been brought into the familial relationship with God that could never have been possible if God, Himself, had not created us anew into it. 
	The Apostle Paul details the essence of this in his letter to the Church at Ephesus, Chapter 5, verses 25-17. He compares the marriage bond and the work of Christ to what has been accomplished in our new life in Jesus. Eph 5:25-27, Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. 
    	Think on this for a moment, in the light of all that was required as detailed in the sacrificial atonement that was repeated year after year after year. The sins of the people could never be washed away by the blood of the animals so slaughtered in numbers beyond reckoning. Always, there was a need for another sacrifice because man was unable to abide by the every detail of the Law. Man could not help but sully himself continuously, being indwelled by the old nature of sin and depravity. 
However, in Jesus Christ, by His perfect sacrifice, we have been utterly and forever sanctified once and for always. His love for us, His Church, has been so effective …having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. We are now and forevermore holy and blameless, covered in His holiness and His righteousness and His perfection. 
	The manner in which this cleansing is so effective in every practical sense, in our day to day walk on this earth, was described to Titus by the Apostle Paul. Titus 2:11-14, if you would care to follow along and rejoice in what is now true of us because of the washing away of all the filth that once so caused us to sin and to sin and to sin all the more. 
Titus 2:11-14, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. 
    	This salvation was not some theological or doctrinal statement of what should be true. It is the very newness of the life that is now ours in Jesus! It is the daily outworking of the new heart and new spirit that has been created in us by God, Himself, through the effective work of our salvation. Gone is the curse of sin with its sting of death. We are a new creation, fully cleansed by the very Hand of God upon us. 
	The Writer to the Hebrews, in Heb 9:11-14, gives specific details comparing what was true under the Law and what is now true of us in Jesus Christ. Heb 9:11-14, But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 
    	Because of His perfect sacrifice, we are enabled to serve the living God. This is not a service of those who have to constantly offer sacrifices over and over just to be enabled to come into the holy place. Rather, it is a continual abiding in the very presence of God, never having to leave and never being limited as to how often we may enter, as were those priests under the Law. We are fully and eternally cleansed and serving before the very Throne of the Lord God Almighty.
	Then the writer continues in Heb 10:1-3 with the comparison of what was true and what is now reality in Christ. Heb 10:1-3, For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never by the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. 
The Old Covenant served to show with each sacrifice that sin ruled in the lives of the people. They had to continuously offer those sacrifices because they were continually reminded of the issue that plagued them. This is one of the great differences in the Old versus the New Covenant. Under the Law, sin and the need for cleansing from that sin is the continual focal point. Over and over again, it is evident and it is the cry of the people for cleansing in order to have a relationship that honors God. Each sacrifice only further details the need for more sacrifices as the sin abounds within the hearts and the minds of the people.
However, under the New Covenant, instituted by God in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sin is dealt with once and for always. There is a complete cleansing, as we have seen, and the focal point of life, each day, each minute of the day, is to be centered in the manner in which we can further please the One Who has so cleansed us. We no longer need to focus on our inadequacies and our filth. Rather, we are freed to just serve and honor and adore and bring glory to our God! 
This does not mean that we deceive ourselves, thinking that our earthly life is perfect. We know that there is a residue from our old nature that is being dealt with in order that we more and more are brought into line, in our physical lives, with the truth of what is now our spiritual certainty. The Apostle John makes this evident in 1 John 1:7-9. 1 John 1:7-9, …but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
The reality of our new life in Jesus Christ is that we no longer need to keep dealing with sin as the focal point, reinforcing a continuous need to be cleansed. God has done it once and forever! What we need to learn is to obey Him in order to please Him in the living relationship that is the glory of Jesus Christ being our lives now and always. So be it!
…for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you shall be clean from all your sins before the Lord. Amen. 

This morning’s benediction is Deut 1:11. 'May the Lord, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand-fold more than you are, and bless you, just as He has promised you! Amen.