Next let us turn to the feast of verses 15 et seqq.: “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering, seven sabbaths shall be complete.” There is the peculiar expression of fullness here, such as we hear of nowhere else. This feast only is marked out by seven sabbaths intervening. It is the feast of weeks, but among the Hellenists, or Greek-speaking Jews, the number fifty, as is well known, has given the name to this feast, which is therefore called “Pentecost.” What then was fulfilled when the day of Pentecost was fully come? The Father made good His promise, that incomparable promise of which the Lord Himself had said, “It is expedient for you that I go away.” What could outweigh the blessedness of His presence with His disciples on earth? The gift of the Comforter, not merely gifts but Himself baptizing them, no longer in hope but accomplished in fact.
Therefore they were told on that day to offer a new meat-offering. I daresay you are all familiar with the repugnance that many, believers even, have, to looking at the church as a new thing. They like to think of it as that which has always been and which shall always go on till eternity. Yet it is remarkable that not only does Paul give it the name of the “one new man,” but Moses here calls it a “new meat-offering?” There was a meat-offering before, unambiguously shadowing Christ, as on the day of Pentecost. What did “the new meat-offering” mean? I leave it to yourselves, to your own conscience and intelligence: the answer is so certain that one need not say, more about it. At that day began here below a thing so new that it was entirely without precedent.
Again, in verse 17, we hear of “two wave-loaves.” Mark the association with Christ. He was the wave-sheaf, and He alone: these were wave-loaves, and there were to be two. Do you ask if it be not said that the church was a mystery hid for ages and generations? How then can it be thus typified here? My answer is, God took care, though giving this type, not to reveal the mystery. He did show some important truths that meet in the mystery, but never disclosed itself. For instance, if He had meant to reveal it in this type, He would (as it appears to me, if I may reverently so speak,) have spoken of “one loaf.” Certainly, when the mystery was revealed, it was marked as “one new man,” “one body,” etc.; and in the sign of the Lord's Supper we have, not two loaves, but one bread or one loaf as one body. The time then had not come to reveal the mystery, for Christ had not been rejected nor redemption as yet wrought. Consequently the Spirit of God has only given us here the witness of our association with Him; what may be called a shadow, not the very image. The symbol was plain in the one loaf when the church began.
I am aware that some excellent men have supposed the two loaves to be the Jew and the Gentile; but it seems to me to be incorrect. No doubt ecclesiastical history will tell you as much; but I do not believe men but God. Ecclesiastical history may assure us that Peter and Paul founded two churches at Rome; but we know that the church at Rome was founded by neither apostle, and indeed by no apostle. It is perfectly certain from scripture that the saints in Rome were gathered long before an apostle went there; and it is very hard to learn on what ground they ever went there, except as prisoners of the Lord. Peter may have been crucified there; Paul may have gone to prison and to death there; but as to founding the Roman church, they never did, and no claim is put in for any other apostle.
Further, in the Book of the Acts, so called, we have the fullest evidence of the care then taken to avoid having two churches anywhere. When Philip went down to Samaria, though people were converted and baptized, there was no church formed till the apostles Peter and John went down. Thus the link was kept up with the church in Jerusalem in the most careful manner. Of laying on of hands we hear not in Jerusalem, there being no necessity for it that day: in Samaria there was, or there might have been ground taken for an independent church, of which there is no trace in scripture. Geographically there may be ever so many churches, but there is only one church of God, only one communion recognized on earth. I know there are persons exceedingly sore as to that point: it is usual when people feel their weakness. What they need to see is that it is no question of opinion or will, but of submission to God and His word.
I say then, the two wave-loaves do not mean two churches, a Jewish and a Gentile: the very worst notion possible, one may add, as it kept up the old distinction; while the very essence of the Gospel, as well as of the one body, is to break all this down forever, as well as to save, in Christ.
When God gives a witness, His regular way is by at least “two.” So we read “that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” When there was to be a full witness, and not a barely valid or sufficient testimony, there were three. So the Lord was three days in the grave; there was the fullest witness to His death. Two witnesses were necessary. And so it will be by-and by, when things come to a serious pass for the Lord in Jerusalem. There will be “His two witnesses:” not that I understand this to be said numerically, but according to the figure of adequacy. Here Christ was risen—the wave-sheaf. What witness was given next of the power of His resurrection? Ourselves, as the two wave-loaves. The Christian company are witnesses, not to the law of God like Israel, but to His grace in Christ risen from the dead. Such is the contrast that Paul brings out in 2 Cor. 3, where he speaks of our having Christ written on us. He takes particular pains to show that it is not on tables of stone. He leaves this to the Jew, who, without doubt, was called to be a witness to the law of God, as the Christian is to a dead and risen Christ in the power of the Spirit.
The wave-loaves, we see, were to be of fine flour baken with leaven. Here are two constituents in the types, so opposed to each other that one who knew their use elsewhere might wonder what to think of them here. Fine flour!—why, that is like Christ, pure, without sin: and leaven!—that is like ourselves, naturally corrupt and corrupting; and is not this just what scripture teaches? Yet there is where so many find a difficulty about the two natures; but really I am unable to find an excuse for their want of light as to both scripture and themselves. I do not think that Christians ever so young in truth should find it hard to believe that they have two natures within them, one craving after what is evil, and old habits of self, the other delighting in the will of God and loving what is of Christ. We do not need to go to Epistles, like those to the Romans, Corinthians, or Galatians: here we have the type wrought out that the wayfarer may not err. I know that a short time ago some zealous folk came over from America to preach up that the Christian might be a perfect being without any sin. Moses refutes it all. Here we have two seemingly contradictory things mingled in what typifies Christians—fine flour and leaven. Experience tallies with it. Not that there is the least excuse for sin; but sin is there, set out by leaven, not at work but baked in the bread.
Thus we see how truth all hangs together, and from first to last God only speaks perfect truth; and man, without Him, can only find out and utter what is not true in spiritual things. Our part in the things of God is not to theorize, but to believe. But the Spirit is as necessary to the understanding of the word, as the word is the necessary material for the Spirit to use. Yet I am sure that one safely finds the truth not as a student, but as a believer. God is dealing with the heart and conscience. You cannot separate real growth in the truth from the moral state of the soul: if we essay it, we may appear to get on very fast in learning the Bible, but it is to be feared that the next step will be a fall.
Again, in ver. 18, we read, “And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs, without blemish, of the first year; and one young bullock, and ten rams: they shall be for a burnt-offering unto Jehovah.” The Christian should have the sense of complete acceptance before our God and Father; and even this is not all. In verse 19, “Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin-offering, and two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace-offerings.” In the case of the wave-sheaf, as we saw, there was enjoined a burnt-offering and a meat-offering. It is just the same here: the church by grace has the same acceptance as Christ had in Himself. The object of redemption was that we might be even now as completely free from charge of sin before God as the blessed Savior; but He in His own perfection, we in virtue of His work for us. Nothing can be plainer than the type, unless it be the divine explanation in the New Testament. Consequently we have the same figures and similar language used; but now we come to a different thing, for there is a most striking difference. With the wave-loaf there was to be a peace-offering and also a sin-offering; there was none in the case of Christ. In Him was no sin. It is not merely that Christ never sinned, but in Him was no sin; and I particularly press this. He never had a sinful nature, else He must have required a sin-offering for Himself. But it was absolutely needful that an offering for sin should be essentially sinless. And again, when it was a question of Him or of His person, peace-offerings have no place. The peace-offering was when communion was restored, or in communion; but it followed the sin-offering of course. The application is to us and not to Christ.
On another word of the Spirit I must be brief. It is verse 22: “And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field.” What is the meaning of this? Does it not seem rather singular that, after the two wave-loaves have disappeared from the scene, good corn should be found still in “thy field?” The wave-loaves, we all agree, mean the Christian body. Some may go farther back than others, but none deny that they are Christians at any rate. How comes it, when these are gone, that we hear of grain left in the corners of the field? Can the wave-loaves typify all saints? Do you not see that such an instance as this proves that there will be true believers on the earth after the church has disappeared? There will be here below good corn. Of course they are not members of the one body; but God has other purposes, and purposes both for the Jew and Gentile; as here some corn was to be left for the poor and the stranger. The Apocalyptic saints may illustrate this—saints during the last week of Daniel's seventy, after we see the elders in heaven.
Tomorrow, if the Lord will, I hope to enter on the revelation of what is entirely future. We have had the past, and the present too, before us. This last verse touches on the cut-off week in the future, but it does not develop the great and distinct plans which God has unrolled that we may learn in the closing feasts.