In the burnt offering we have seen how we are accepted in Christ. The hand was laid upon the head of the burnt offering, wholly offered up to the Lord, a sweet savor. In the meat offering, how we receive from His fullness, Jesus, the bread from heaven. In the peace offering, how we have communion with the Father and the Son. Wondrous provisions for a redeemed people! But if a priest, or a ruler, or one of the redeemed people, should sin, is there a provision for that? Now, whether we look at Israel as redeemed from Egypt, or those for whom these types were written, there was and is this most serious question: we have indeed, redemption through his blood, but in how many things we fail. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Now the unspeakable riches of the grace of God, not only reveal to us His provision for His people as to their sins and trespasses against Him, and also against one another; but the sin offerings in all their varied aspects show out in type the one sacrifice for sin as the BASIS of all relationship with God.
No doubt the blood of the paschal Lamb, redemption, is that basis; but in Leviticus the various aspects of atonement are brought out, as meeting the claims of God, and our need. It must not be overlooked that these offerings were not for willful, presumptuous sins. Let not the desperately wicked heart of man presume that, since God has made an infinite provision for the sins of His people, therefore he may go on in a course of willful sin. Such an one will find at last, to his eternal cost, that the devil has deceived him.
In these short notes, we can only dwell on the leading principles of this deeply interesting subject. It is found as a matter of experience that sin is more terrible, in proportion as we know our relationship to God: “If the priest that is anointed do sin.” Do we know that He “hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father” (Rev. 1:55And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, (Revelation 1:5)), a royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:99But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: (1 Peter 2:9))? That we are anointed, intelligent worshippers, in spirit and in truth? Well, the provision in such a case is first brought before us. “Then let him bring for his sin which he bath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin-offering.... unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord: and shall lay his hand upon the bullock’s head, and kill the bullock before the Lord.” There is thus the identification. He shall lay his hand on the bullock’s head. Sin is thus imputed or transferred to the victim unblemished in itself. What a picture of the holy, blameless One! “For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” At this point let us well understand the difference between the laying on of hands of the burnt offering, and the sin offering. In the burnt offering, we are identified with Christ; in the sweet savor, acceptance of Christ: in the sin, or trespass offering, Christ became identified with us in all the loathsomeness of sin. In the actual approach of man to God, it is always the sin-offering first, and then the burnt offering. In the unfolding of the riches of His grace, it is, as we have seen, the burnt-offering first. This was the eternal purpose of God, to bring us into favor in the Beloved.
But if such an one, who has been brought into favor in Him, should sin or trespass against God or man, and this comes to his mind in the light, he is sorely distressed. He knows he has redemption, he knows his relationship—a child of God: this only the more distresses him. The inmost desire of his heart is to be upright, and this only makes his sorrow the more bitter and unendurable. What then is the remedy for such an one? Not certainly another sacrifice, “for there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” We must not here forget that the one sacrifice of Christ has more than taken the place of all these sacrifices; and that one sacrifice once offered was for ALL our sins. He once “bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” By faith we are identified with Him, like the priest that laid his hand on the victim’s head. As that bullock was delivered, bearing the priest’s sin before the Lord, so has Jesus been delivered before Jehovah, bearing our sins and made sin for us. That bullock must be killed, accounted as sin. Jesus, bearing our Sins, must die, must suffer. Expiation must be made. The blood of the bullock was sprinkled before the Lord, and some of the blood was put upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense. Thus Jesus, by His blood once shed, and He entering as man for us, entered by, or with, His own blood. Thus worship and communion can be, and are, restored to us.
And though made sin, yet the fat and inwards of the bullock were to be offered on the altar of burnt offering, wholly a sweet savor to God. The same Jesus who was made sin, and took the loathsome place of the cross, was the same Jesus offered up a sweet savor to God, as the burnt offering. Never was the obedience of Christ more perfect, or more precious to God, than in becoming sin for us. What was the inward thought of His tender heart? That the Father might be glorified in our eternal salvation. Could anything be more precious to God who so loved?
Have I sinned, then, as a child of God, a worshipping priest? This sin gives me a deeper sense of my old sinful nature—I am overwhelmed with shame and sorrow.
What do I learn in these types? That God has met me just there; provided for me just there, in the fullest discovery of my utter vileness, as to the flesh. How? By the Holy One made sin for me, and in taking my every sin and making them all, as it were, His own. And after “He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God.” (Heb. 10)
Is not this remedy as real, this deliverance as real, this deliverance as if He were to come down from Leaven again, and endure the wrath due to that very sin we mourn over? Has He not done this once forever? How blessed, then, to learn these lessons by the way. Needful lessons they are—the provision of God for a redeemed sinner.
As a worshipping priest, if I have the thought of sin, communion and worship are, and must be, interrupted; but the application of the water of the word restores both. Yes, He has made our sins His own. By a sacrifice, also for condemned sin. And, oh! think what it cost Him! The very prospect made Him sweat as it were great drops of blood; for He had to become truly man to do this. See Him, though God over all, yet so truly man as to kneel down in prayer; “and, being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood down to the ground.” (Luke 22:4444And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Luke 22:44))
The laughter, the mocking, the curses, the spitting, and smiting of men, could not quench infinite love to us. He must, He did, glorify God in our full eternal redemption. See those ferocious soldiers nail Him to the tree! See Him lifted up, and in His agony derided and mocked by man! All this might have been, and He only a martyr: but now, forsaken of God, bearing sin, atoning for our sins—well might the heavens turn to blackness and darkness. But it is finished, the veil is rent, and now He is risen, yea, ascended, and sitting at the right hand of the majesty on high.
Verse 13. “And if the whole congregation of Israel sin,” &c. Not only might the individual priest sin, but the whole congregation might sin. Just so, as we well know, not only may the individual Christian sin, and a worshipping priest, but a whole assembly may fail, and sin. Well, it is the same sacrifice, an offering for sin, that must be offered. When our hearts are overwhelmed with a sense, both of our own individual share, and of corporate failure, it is well to remember how God has provided for this in the same one sacrifice. The hands of the elders must be laid on the head of the bullock, before the Lord. The blood must be shed and sprinkled before the Lord, and the fat burnt on the altar of burnt offering. Do we not often forget what it cost the Lord for the failure of the church, though that be in ignorance? Are there not many things of which men boast, for which Jesus had to bleed and die? Perhaps nothing: would be more astounding, if we understood this better—the sins of ignorance of the congregation. Compare the whole professing congregation now, with the church in the word of God in the beginning. If we look at the perfect Servant, who surely is our example, we find the, principle of His obedience was to do nothing for which He had not the word of His God and Father. It might even be good in itself, and needed. Bread was good, and He needed it; but would He turn the stones into bread without, the word of God?
Now, in the congregation of Christendom, is it not the exact reverse of this? If it only seems, good for the church, and it seems as if the church needs it, there is scarcely a thought as to the will of God in His word. How many things there are practiced, that would be found to have no authority in the word of God; and which cannot be of faith, and therefore must be of sin, for’ whatsoever is not of faith is sin. No doubt much of this is sin of ignorance.
It may be hid from the eyes of many readers of these lines. But mark, there was no excuse when the sin which they had committed became known to them. (Ver. 14.) Is it a light matter, fellow Christians, that we should do these things and boast of them, for which Jesus had to suffer the atoning death of the cross? God grant that we may be more exercised by the word of God. Whatever is practiced ecclesiastically that is not according to the word of God, is sin. What a searching fact is this! And it is sin that needed the blood of expiation. Perhaps no person on earth, but the Son of God, would have refused—who could do it—to turn the stones into bread after fasting forty days, without the word of God. We feel assured it would lead to much confession and humiliation, if all congregations would test what they are doing by the word. Have we the Lord’s ‘command for this, and that? How much of Judaism, yea, heathenism, would have to be owned as sin. Is it not high time to awake?