 Any sensitive human being will be concerned about this question. Any sensitive human being is going to be weighted down by the sins of their life. Not just because we hurt ourselves and we often hurt other people, but we understand that these sins interrupt, they get in the way, they disrupt our relationship with God. If sin basically is a violation of the will of God, a transgression of the will of God, these sins, these transgressions get in the way, they really, they in many ways sabotage our relationship with God. And so the sensitive person asks themselves, how can I stand before God in the wake of sin? How am I able to stand in the presence of God and be in good standing and have a good relationship with God when I've sinned? There is one place in our Bible where this question is raised directly. There's one place where in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the Tanakh, this question is directly raised. What do we do to get out from under the weight of our sins? How are we able to stand before God after we've sinned? And this question and its answer can be found in the 33rd chapter in the prophet Ezekiel in Yaheskel, verses 10 and 11. And the prophet answers the question directly. And the prophet does not give a Christian answer. The Christian answer would be the only way to respond to your sins is by having an animal or a sacrifice die on your behalf. Or more precisely, more specifically the Christian answer would be the only way to get out from under the burden of sin is to believe that Jesus was the sacrifice that died for your sins. But the focus of Christianity is upon sacrifice as the response to sin. The prophet Ezekiel in addressing this question does not mention the institution of sacrifices. Either the sacrifices of animals or the future sacrifice of Jesus or any Messiah. The prophet Ezekiel says that if you are weighted down by your sins, the prophet says turn from your sins, repent and turn back to God. And the prophet repeats it. He speaks in the same verse twice about repenting, turning away from your sins. We don't find any stories in the Bible that describe, that speak about someone who sinned and the way they are able to restore their relationship with God is they went and they offered sacrifices. You don't find stories like that. But you do find stories of people who sin in the Bible and their response to the sins is to repent, is to return to God, to turn away from their sins and then God forgives them. We see this in the book of Jonah which we read on Yom Kippur where Jonah the prophet, Jonah comes to the city of Nineveh and tells the people God is very angry with them. He doesn't tell them that if they want to really get right with God they better start offering sacrifices. The people immediately change their behavior. They turn away from their sins we're told. They begin to fast and to pray to God. And God sees that they turned away from their sins and we're told in the book of Jonah that God forgives the sins of the people of Nineveh. And throughout the Hebrew Bible this is the single solitary response to sin. The prophets all tell us with one voice that the real response to sin is Chuvah is turning away from your sin and turning back to God. The prophet Zechariah, Zechariah in the first chapter says, has God saying, turn to me and I will turn back to you. That God will turn back to us. God will restore our relationship with him if we turn away from our sins and turn back to him. What then is the purpose of sacrifices? Well it's important to remember that sacrifices were not simply a universal response to sin even when they were brought in the times of the temple. There was never a simple quid pro quo that if you sin you bring a sacrifice. There were many kinds of sacrifices. Some were there to celebrate various holidays. Some were there to offer thanks to God when a miracle happened to you. There were sacrifices that specifically dealt with sin. The most important one being the Corban Chattat, the sin offering. And yet that was not brought for all kinds of sins. It was only brought for unintentional sins. And even when sin offerings were brought, the sin offering in and of itself did not get a restored relationship with God. The mistake that all the prophets spoke about, every single prophet of the Bible practically said, don't think that what God ultimately wants from you is your sacrifices. It says in the book of Proverbs that the sacrifice of a wicked person is an abomination to God. That for God, for you to think that the real response to sin is simply to bring a sacrifice. And once you offer that sacrifice, everything is hunky-dory. The Bible is saying to us that's not how it works. And if you think that you can restore your relationship to God simply with a sacrifice, that's an abomination to God. The purpose of the sacrifice was to be essentially both a teaching tool, was a pedagogic tool that God used to help us understand the gravity of sin for us to go through, to help us go through the process of repentance and ultimately to be an external symbol of the internal change that's going on inside of us. But if we don't have that change and we only have the symbol, the prophets say that that sacrifice is an abomination. But to have the essence, to have the change, to have the repentance, to have the chuva and you don't bring the sacrifice either because in some cases you couldn't afford the animal sacrifice or that you don't have access to the temple. You're either living in a different country where there is no temple or the temple's been destroyed. That eventuality is dealt with in the Bible. When Solomon builds the first temple in the first book of Kings chapter 8, Solomon says, and if the Jewish people are taken far away from Israel and there is no temple there, they simply turn to God, they turn away from their sins and God will hear their prayers and God will forgive them. So sacrifices are never the primary response to sin in the Bible. We don't have any of the prophets, any of the prophets telling the Jewish people that you people sinned, you better start bringing sacrifices. However, the prophets all warned us. Don't think that the sacrifice by itself will forgive you. And you have all the prophets telling us that the real, essential, core response to sin is repentance is turning away from the sins and turning back to God.