Day Three Hundred Twelve “Promissory Note”

            I would learn the definition of this legal term soon after I crossed the finish line of high school and approached the threshold of college.  Before you can receive an student loan, you must sign a promissory note.  A promissory note is a financial tool used to put the terms of a loan in writing, the amount borrowed by one party, as well as how and when the money will be paid back.  That legal contract binds the borrower by law.  Those were empty words to me until I held that diploma in one hand and the loan payment book in the other hand.  It would take ten long years until I had the sheer pleasure of tearing up that note; it was paid in full at last!

The Day of Atonement, known today as Yom Kippur, was the most holy day in the complicated religious calendar of the Hebrew nation.  On this special day, a day of solemnity, reflection, fasting, humility, and prayer, atonement was made for the sins of a nation.  The priest had to follow God’s instructions meticulously, for he would be the mediator of this sacrifice, entering the Holy of Holies, the most sacred place in the Hebrew economy.  The priest would bathe completely, washing his entire body, and put on “the holy linen coat…holy garments.”  He would offer “a young bullock” for his personal sin and the sin of his family.  But the most interesting actions concerned “two kids of the goats.” 

Two goats were brought to the priest and the sins of the nation were symbolically transferred to each animal in a different way.  Aaron would “cast lots,” selecting the goat that would then be slain as “a sin offering,” its blood sprinkled before the mercy seat.  Aaron would then place his hands upon the surviving goat, the “scapegoat,” and “confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel.”  The scapegoat would not be slain, but sent “away…into the wilderness,” carrying those sins with him.

The awful reality of that day was that the people were never fully cleansed of their sin, those sins were only temporarily covered and sent away on the head of that scapegoat.  The debt remained unpaid, much like my promissory note that was deferred year after year while I was in college.  That ritual was “a shadow of good things to come,” for One holy Priest would offer “one sacrifice for sins for ever” on the cross of Calvary, for “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”

Praise God, “the wages of sin,” the promissory note, was paid in full, gone as far “as the east is from the west.”

Psalm 103:12  As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

Thank You, Lord, for paying the high price of my sin on Calvary!

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