The Scapegoat

The Scapegoat

He will lay both of his hands on the goat’s head and confess over it all the wickedness, rebellion, and sins of the people of Israel. In this way, he will transfer the people’s sins to the head of the goat. Then a man specially chosen for the task will drive the goat into the wilderness. As the goat goes into the wilderness, it will carry all the people’s sins upon itself into a desolate land.

Leviticus 16:21-22

He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.

Psalm 103:12

Have you ever heard someone described as a scapegoat? It’s someone who takes the blame that really belongs to someone else. For example, when the teacher demands to know who turned all the desks upside down while she was gone and one student steps up and says he did it, when really a large group of students participated, he’s the scapegoat.

The Bible says that all of us have sinned. We’re all guilty. And the punishment for sin is death. But God has provided a scapegoat—someone who will take on himself all the blame for our sin. He gave us a visible picture of this in the Old Testament observance of the annual Day of Atonement. On that day, two goats were chosen. One goat was killed to provide a picture of the death of a substitute for sin. The priest put his hands on the other goat—the scapegoat—and confessed the people’s sins. By doing this, he ceremonially transferred the sin to the goat. Then the scapegoat was sent out into the wilderness to take the sin away from the community.

When Jesus died, he became the scapegoat for all the wrongs we’ve done. Like the goat in Old Testament times, he was innocent but he took the blame for our sin on himself. And through his death, he carried our sin far away so that we don’t have to live under a heavy weight of guilt and shame. Just as the guilt for sin was placed on the scapegoat and it went off into the wilderness never to be seen again, so Christ has taken on our sin and removed it so that it can never be thrown back in our faces. Now we can enjoy the complete forgiveness of God.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

Have you ever observed a person or group be made into a scapegoat?

In what ways is Jesus as our scapegoat better than the scapegoat the Israelites had in Old Testament times?

What difference does it make in your life to truly understand that your sin is gone?