The Day of Atonement

We're reading Hebrews right now, and so we listened to one of Pastor Schissel's sermons on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Becuase he's a Jew, he makes a lot of connections we don't. He's so interesting to listen to. He read a piece out of the Talmud about Yom Kippur. It seems to have been general practice to tie a scarlet cord on the outside of the door of the temple courts after the high priest had gone into the Holy of Holies and done the sacrifice for the Day of Atonement. And they said that whenever that cord turned white, it meant God had forgiven their sins. After a while, they moved the cord to the inside of the doors, since the people's mood on that day would be determined by the colour of the cord. Then, finding that the people still would peep through to see the colour, they tied part of the cord to the altar, and part to the horns of the Azazel, the scapegoat. The rabbi expounding this practice said that for 40 years before the destruction of the temple, the cord had never turned white. It was always scarlet. And thinking back, we see that 40 years before was when Jesus died. So the Jews themselves had proof, in God's Providence, that the sacrifices were only a sign pointing forward to Jesus. After He was sacrificed, no other sacrifices could be useful. I found that very interesting.