CEREMONIAL, unless it have a meaning, is mere folly. In religious life, it is true, that there frequently lingers some observance which has lost its ancient meaning and intention, and which is performed by the many without thought or purpose, but every ceremony in religion has some significance attached to it, and this is so, whether that which the ceremony signifies be considered or not by its observers.
All the ceremonial under the law, as recorded in the Old Testament, possessed a sacred meaning. No breach was allowed in its observance. Severe penalties were attached to its non-observance. The idea of observing a ceremonial being a matter of option or indifference did not enter the mind of those worshippers of old.
The manner of the priests in slaying the victim, and in placing its blood by the altar ; incense, vestments ; were all ordered by God, and were ordered by Him to teach lessons concerning Himself and His Son, and concerning the needs and comfort of His people. It was impossible for the high priest to carry out his priestly functions unless attired according to the character of the office he had to fulfill. Whether he wore the white robes, or the garments of glory and beauty, was all-important. The white robe was employed for sacrifice, the garments of glory and beauty for mediation; the two could not by any possibility be interchanged. So with every detail of his dress; each had its meaning, and none could be confounded with the other.
We read, in the eighth chapter of Leviticus, how Aaron was arrayed in the garments of glory and beauty (Ex. 28:22And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty. (Exodus 28:2)). There, the coat and the girdle, the robe, the ephod and its curious girdle are specified (ver. 7); also there, the breast-plate, and the Urim and the Thummim thereon are specified, (ver. 8); and the golden mitre for the head, and upon the mitre the plate and the holy crown (ver. 9). We see him thus, the High Priest of God for Israel, arrayed to appear in the presence of Jehovah, "that he may minister," said God, " unto Me in the priest's office " (Ex. 28:44And these are the garments which they shall make; a breastplate, and an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, a mitre, and a girdle: and they shall make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, and his sons, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. (Exodus 28:4)), having the names of Israel upon his shoulders (vers. 9-12), and upon his breast (vers. 14, 21, 29).
The color of these robes was divinely ordered, “the robe of the ephod was all of blue” (ver. 31). The lace that bound the breastplate to the rings of the ephod was blue (ver. 28), that also of the mitre was blue (ver. 37). The ephod itself was of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twined linen (ver. 8).
Blue, we know, is the color of the heaven above us; it is essentially, and in all lands of the earth, the idea of the heavenly. So arrayed the high priest was to appear in the presence of God for the people of God. In attire that spoke of the heavens above, he was to bear in to the divine presence the names of all Israel. Israel rested before God, as it were, upon the shoulders of the high priest; Israel lay before God, as it were, upon the high priest's heart.
This most lovely type is so apparent that it is impossible to question it. Jesus Christ, our High Priest in heaven, bears us up in the presence of God in His own strength and love.
The ephod was a garment of glory—it was composed of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twined linen. The gold, the divine glory of Christ; the blue, His heavenly character; the purple and the scarlet, His royal glories ; the fine twined linen, His perfect humanity. Our Mediator is the God-Man; He is the Lord from heaven; He is entitled to all dominion.
Now, it is a very remarkable fact that Aaron did not enter the Holiest of All thus attired, on which fact we will enlarge presently. But we see his antitype, Jesus, crowned with glory and honor in heaven; we rejoice to know that all that those garments of glory and beauty signified-all that the wearing of the ephod and the mitre by the high priest signified—all that the shoulder-pieces and the breastplate engraven with the names of Israel signified—all is fulfilled and displayed to faith as we see our great High Priest in heaven in the presence of God for us.
He ministers in heaven for us in all His mediatorial excellence. Our names, “according to our birth” (Ex. 28:1010Six of their names on one stone, and the other six names of the rest on the other stone, according to their birth. (Exodus 28:10)), from the first day of our being born of God, are graven upon what should indeed be “stones of memorial “unto us. Ever let it be a memorial to us, that from the first day until we reach the glory, we are upheld with the everlasting strength of our High Priest. Further, our Aaron bears our names before the Lord upon His two shoulders as a memorial to God. (See ver. 12.) His strength maintains us before God to the end. The strength of Christ is a memorial to us and to God!
Further, again," Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the Lord continually” (ver. 29). Our High Priest is now in heaven presenting Himself in His love with our names upon His heart to His God, who is love. The heart of Jesus, with our names borne upon it, is “a memorial before the Lord continually”; He bears our “judgment...upon His heart before the Lord continually" (ver. 30). We have His heart ever to fall back upon—nay, whatever we are, He changes not, He bears us up before the Lord continually, and this is a "memorial before the Lord." The heart of the high priest sparkled with precious stones, engraven with names more precious, before Jehovah. What a picture to us of our Jesus in the presence of God for us!
As we meditate upon these things we see a little into the excellence of the ceremonial ordained by Jehovah, and the importance of all its details, as for example the color of those sacred vestments in which the high priest of Israel was robed.
We observed that Aaron did not enter into the Holiest of All thus attired. He did not fulfill that part of the type which shows the entrance of Christ into God's holy presence for us as Mediator. We have but to read the opening of the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus to learn this fact. "The Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the veil before the mercy seat, which is upon the ark; that he die not for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat." There had been grievous sin in the priesthood, and God had smitten the priestly family. Strange fire had been offered, and the priesthood of Israel had had sin branded upon it even in its earliest commencement. Into the Holiest of All Aaron could henceforth enter but "once every year," and then “not without blood"; "the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest." (Heb. 9:7, 87But into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people: 8The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: (Hebrews 9:7‑8).) No, only Jesus could make that way manifest. None but He is our High Priest before our God.
Now when Aaron did enter into the Holiest of All, where Jehovah appeared in the cloud upon the mercy-seat, how did he go in? How was he attired? In blue? In the robe that speaks of heaven? No. The Lord said, "He shall put on the holy linen coat, and he shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh, and he shall be girded with a linen girdle, and with the linen mitre shall he be attired." (Lev. 16:44He shall put on the holy linen coat, and he shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh, and shall be girded with a linen girdle, and with the linen mitre shall he be attired: these are holy garments; therefore shall he wash his flesh in water, and so put them on. (Leviticus 16:4).) He was robed in white. He was robed in sacrificial garments, not in mediatorial robes. He went in, not with the names of Israel upon his shoulders and heart, to carry the people in the excellence of his own person (figuratively) before the Lord; but he went to deal before God with their sins. With sweet incense (16:12) covering him as a cloud, for he was but a type of Christ, he went in with blood for himself and for the people (16:15). By blood he made atonement. And when he had made the atonement he came out. He did not abide in the presence of God making a continual atonement.
Further, he was alone while he did this work, no one was allowed by God within the holy place while this work was being accomplished. No, God would not allow in the type that any one besides should have any part, however remote, in the great question and work of carrying in the atoning blood into His presence.
And having accomplished the work, he put off the linen garments, which he put on when he went into the holy place," and left them there (ver. 23), i.e., in the court of the Tabernacle. The purpose of the white and sacrificial robe was fulfilled when the offerer had presented the blood to God, and God had accepted it.
Do we fail to see the perfection of this ceremonial of Jehovah's ordering? It speaks in the most precise manner of Christ's sacrificial work, which was accomplished once and for all on the great Day of Atonement, when He offered Himself without spot to God, when His blood effected and completed the atoning work. Then was He alone, and none was with Him. The Christ of God, by His blood, magnified God in His infinite holiness as to our sins. And having done this work He left, as it were, the linen garments where none may touch them more. Speaking figuratively, none but He could wear them, and having done the work, none shall remove them from the presence of God.
On the cross Christ appeared for our sins; in heaven He appears for us, for whose sins He has made atonement.
The atonement being accomplished, henceforth our High Priest appears in the presence of God for us, crowned with glory and honor. Our Aaron goes into the Holiest of All in the garments of glory and beauty, and with our names upon His shoulders and His heart—a memorial to us, a memorial to God.
Ceremonial in religion is of the utmost importance. If divinely ordered, it speaks for the honor of Christ; if merely humanly ordered, it usually detracts from Christ's honor. By studying the ceremonial under the law, and reading the New Testament, we are taught its hidden significance, and see how excellent it is, and how important is the whole of it, whether the subject in hand be a mitre, or a blue or a white garment.
To the Christian, the ceremonial under the law that teaches of sacrifice and priesthood is, perhaps, more deeply significant and important than it was to the Jews of old. We are not to suppose they understood how these things all pointed to Christ, but let anyone ask a godly Jew whether one of their high priests dared enter the Holiest of All other than in white linen garments, and he will see at what high value such ceremonial observance was held. May we, who are Christians, value the substance at least as highly as the Jew values the memory of the shadow.
A sacrificing order of priests within the Holiest of All—and there, and there alone, is God to be sought and found—have no garments of sacrifice wherewith to clothe them. The high priest left the white robes in the court of the Tabernacle. In the days of old, these garments were worn once a year in view of the necessity of the great Day of Atonement, and could not be used after the atonement was made. “Christ has entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." (Heb. 9:1212Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews 9:12).) Who, then, is bold enough, in the daring of unbelief, to assume the office of sacrificing priest? And who is so untrue to Christ as to deny Him the glory and honor of His sacrifice and its effects towards God and man?
As ceremonial grows in our land, let none be so dull as to say it means nothing. We could not accuse Romanists or Ritualists of mere folly in their solemn acts of religion!
Their ceremonial means a very great deal, and its whole tendency, as it surrounds the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is to deny that Christ has made atonement once for all by His own blood; and that now He Himself, and none other, bears up upon His heart before the Lord God the names of all God's people, who are His, and His forever.