IN THE burning of the red heifer we have an illustration of the purity of God’s nature. His standard of holiness must be maintained whatever it might cost His people. The seraphims in Isaiah 6 cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,” and here we see something of what that holiness is. It is not a question of the measure of a man’s guilt, but entirely a question of the nature of God. How little is this understood even now in these days, but may we desire to know more of it ourselves as we journey on heavenward.
To touch the dead body of a clean beast rendered the person unclean until the evening, but to touch the dead body of a man, however good he might have been, rendered the person unclean seven days. How humbling this is to the pride of man! To touch “the bone of a man” might seem to be a little thing, but it is not only greater failures that defile but also much lesser things that are allowed to come between us and God our Father, so that counion is broken. Still there is the gracious remedy for every defilement, the remembrance of the death of Christ which has met all.
Perhaps one might think he could purify himself on the first day, but no, not until the third day was the water of purification sprinkled upon him. God allows the sin to remain on the conscience for a time in order that one might feel his sin and realize fully how he has failed. A hasty confession does not always show true and deep repentance; on the contrary it might indicate a shallow work in the soul and light thoughts of sin.
On the third day the man was to go to a clean person who took some of the ashes of the red heifer and running water and sprinkled him with them. As those ashes speak of the death of the Lord Jesus and of the consuming wrath of God which He bore for our sins on the cross, this tells us what God would have us to feel when we have sinned, how much it cost our vlessed Saviour to be “made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:2121For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)). The water of purification applied by the hyssop ought to humble us when we think that it took the utter humiliation of the Son of God to put our sin and defilement away.
Then on the seventh day the man was sprinkled again, being made to feel the exceeding sinfulness of sin, but also reminded of the love even unto death that provided for his cleansing. Sin in the believer is seen as sin against the Father’s love and these two sprinklings set for how sin had brought shame on the grace that saved us, but that that same grace has triumphed over our sin.
If one refused to be cleansed from defilement in the way God provided, he was to be cut off from Israel. He chose to remain unclean. How sad and solemn this is! A child of God will never be lost, and yet how many have gone on with some unjudged sin for a long time, until God finally has to deal with them in His government in order to produce repentance and bring about restoration.
The ordinance of the red heifer was to be a perpetual statute and this would remind us that we are never to allow ourselves to become accustomed to the evil we see and hear and become careless about it ourselves. May we ever keep a tender conscience and remember that we have a holy Father who loves us and a Saviour who not only died for us but is soon coming for us.
O holy Father, keep us here
In that blest name of love.
Walking before Thee without fear
Till all be joy above.
ML-01/13/1974