Ishtar, Azazel, And The Battle For Your Purity | Yom Kippur | Jonathan Cahn Sermon

The Scapegoat, the Gods, and the Call Back to Purity | Jonathan Cahn Sermon

Your sins carry the name of Messiah, Yeshua—Jesus—upon them. That means they already belong to Him. If you hold on to them instead of surrendering them, you are clinging to what is no longer yours. In truth, you are in possession of stolen property.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is unlike any other day in Scripture. It was the only time when the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies and behold the Ark of the Covenant, the very dwelling place of God’s presence. Once a year, and only then, the veil that separated God and man was undone. What was lost in Eden—our exile from His presence—was symbolically reversed. On this day, humanity could return to God.

The rituals were filled with mystery and prophecy. Two goats were chosen. One was sacrificed to the Lord, and the other—the scapegoat, Azazel—was sent into the wilderness, carrying the sins of the people away. Both reveal the mystery of Messiah. He is the sacrifice who dies for our sins, and He is also the scapegoat who bears them away, never to return.

The priest laid his hands on the head of the goat and confessed over it every form of sin—wickedness, rebellion, and habitual transgressions. Then it was sent into a desolate land, never to be seen again. This is what God does with our sins when we give them to Him. He receives them, He accepts them, and He cuts them off forever. No one can visit them, no one can resurrect them. If you keep revisiting your past, you are dwelling in a land that God has already made uninhabitable. Stop feeding what He has removed. Let it die.

The Hebrew word for “send away” is shalach—to cast out. If the goat tries to return, you must send it away again. Do not entertain it. Do not nurture it. Declare with authority: You have no place in my life. You are gone forever.

But the mystery goes even deeper. In Hebrew, the same word that means “sin” can also mean the offering for sin. Messiah became sin itself, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. That means every sin you carry already bears His name. It is His, not yours. Give it to Him fully—your sin, your shame, your guilt. You no longer have the right to hold on to them.

And yet, there is another side. If a people, a culture, or a nation drives God out, then the spirits return. Messiah warned that when an unclean spirit is cast out but the house is left empty, it returns with seven worse than itself. That is exactly what we have seen in our time. America and the West were once delivered from paganism by the gospel, but over the last half-century we have been casting God out of our culture, our schools, and our lives. We have performed a reverse exorcism.

And when God is driven out, the ancient spirits return. One of them is the goddess known in the Bible as Ashtoreth, also called Ishtar, Aphrodite. The spirit of immorality, the destroyer of marriage, the one who blurs gender, turns men into women and women into men, and exalts pride under the sign of the rainbow. Her influence has returned with power because we emptied ourselves of God.

But the message of Yom Kippur is still true: atonement has been made, the scapegoat has carried it away, and the sacrifice has already been offered. Messiah has conquered. The call now is to return—fully, completely, with nothing held back. Purity, holiness, and victory are found only in Him.