Yom Kippur 2026

Hey church family. I wanted to take a moment to come to you today and tell you the importance of today’s date on God’s calendar. Today is Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. This is the most solemn day on God’s calendar and is a time of introspection and the culmination of the Days of Awe, which begins with the Feast of Trumpets and culminates with the Day of Atonement.

We first find instructions for Yom Kippur in Leviticus 16. God instructed Moses on how He should be approached. Everything about how the priest entered the Holy of Holies mattered, even down to how he should be dressed. The High Priest could not simply enter the Holy of Holies whenever he wanted. He had to approach God exactly as God had instructed, or he would die.

The High Priest had to offer a bull as a sin offering for himself. Then they would take two goats and present them before the Lord. The High Priest would cast lots for the two goats, and one of them would be selected as a sin offering for the people. The other goat would have the sins of the people confessed over it and would then be sent away into the wilderness, carrying those sins away.

Past Fulfillment:

The amazing thing is Jesus fulfilled this for us. He became the sacrifice for us, and we, like the scapegoat, can now go free because He has paid the price that we deserve.

And there is something else that makes Jesus different from every High Priest who came before Him. The High Priest had to first offer a sacrifice for his own sins before making atonement for the people. Jesus didn’t have to do that because He was without sin. He didn't enter the presence of God carrying His own sin. He entered on our behalf, offering Himself once and for all.

Under the old covenant, this sacrifice had to be made again and again. But Jesus became the perfect sacrifice that would never have to be repeated.

Paul writes in Romans 5:

6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. 10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11 And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Future Fulfillment:

However, there is a future fulfillment that is still yet to come. The Day of Atonement was not only about blood. It was also a solemn reminder of sin, accountability, and standing before a holy God. It was a time when the children of Israel would humble themselves before God and atonement would be made for them.

Everyone understood what a solemn day Yom Kippur was. Had it not been for the High Priest following God’s instructions, the children of Israel would not have been in right standing with God, leaving them out of relationship with the Creator and their Protector.

We need to understand that no sin can stand in relationship with God. His holiness will not allow it. God placed His wrath upon the sacrifice that was offered on behalf of the children of Israel. If it wasn’t for the sacrifice, that same wrath would have been placed upon them.

God was dealing with the sins of the people.

In the future, there will be a day when the Lord will return, and then we will be judged for the sin that we have in our life.

The writer of Hebrews says:

27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, 28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

There is something powerful about that.

Jesus came the first time as the perfect sacrifice for sin. He will come again.

The first time, He came to bear our sins. The next time, He will come, and we will stand before Him.

Picture a courtroom where there is a perfect judge. The accused (you) have committed a crime, and the just judge will sentence you on the crime. It will not matter how much good you have done. You can’t say, “Well, I volunteered at a soup kitchen, or I gave my money away to the poor.” Those are good things, but the truth is you still committed a crime, and you have to do the time for the crime you committed. You deserve a punishment, but all of a sudden, a man walks in who has never committed a crime and says, “I will serve the punishment for the convicted.”

That is a picture of what Jesus did for you and I. He took the punishment that we deserve, and because of this, we can go free.

Now, this is not an excuse for us to keep on sinning just because the price has already been paid. Paul writes in Romans 6:

1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

Grace doesn’t make sin less serious. Grace shows us how serious sin really was, because it took the blood of Jesus to deal with it.

We should live like a people that have been redeemed, with gratitude to our Lord. That means we need to get the sin out of our camp. We need our lives to look more like Christ every day.

It is my hope that we as a church begin to grasp the seriousness of our sin and begin to live in the reality that we were bought with a price. Share the good news of the gospel today with someone and have a conversation about the importance of this day.

In Love,
Pastor Devin