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Leviticus chapter one verse three. If his oblation be a burnt offering of the herd, he shall offer it a male without blemish. He shall offer it at the door of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the Lord. Verse eight. And Aaron's sons, the priests, shall lay the pieces, the head and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar, but its inwards and its legs shall he wash with water, and the priest shall burn the whole on the altar for a burnt offering, an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord.
And if his oblation be of the flock, of the sheep, or of the goats for a bur- for a burnt offering, he shall offer it a male without blemish. Verse fourteen. And if his oblation to the Lord be a burnt offering of fowls, then he shall offer his oblation of turtle doves or of young pigeons. And the priest shall bring it unto the altar and wring off its head and burn it on the altar, and the blood thereof shall be drained out on the side of the altar, and he shall take away its crop with the filth thereof, and cast it beside the altar on the east part, in the place of the ashes. And he shall rend it by the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder, and the priests shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire.
It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord. Chapter two and verse four. And when thou offerest an oblation of a meal offering bacon in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil. Verse eleven: No meal offering which ye shall offer unto the Lord shall be made with leaven, for ye shall burn no leaven nor any honey as an offering made by fire unto the Lord. As an oblation of first fruits, you shall offer them unto the Lord, but they shall not come up for a sweet savor on the altar.
And every oblation of thy meal offering thou shalt season with salt, neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meal offering. With all thine oblations, thou shalt offer salt. And if thou offer a meal offering of firstfruits unto the Lord, thou shalt offer for the meal offering of thy firstfruits, corn in the air, parched with fire, bruised corn of the fresh air, and thou shalt put oil upon it and lay frankincense thereon. It is a meal offering. And the priest shall burn the memorial of it, part of the bruised corn thereof, and part of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof.
It is an offering made by fire unto the Lord. May God give us good understanding of his word. To help us be more specific in our adoration of our Lord Jesus Christ. We turned last week to consider the symbolism of the Old Testament sacrifices. Those sacrifices, we found, had a double purpose. In their own day, they served the needs of the Israelites as they approached God to worship him.
At the same time, they were designed of God who foresees all that should happen. They were designed by God to be a pointer towards the coming sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord. To act as a kind of a magnifying glass, looking through which we shall see more detail in the person and work of Jesus Christ, our Lord, than otherwise we might see. Putting those two aspects of their usage together, we may immediately learn some exceedingly practical lessons about our own worship.
As the Israelite approached God, in spite of the fact that he had once upon a time been redeemed by the Passover lamb from Egypt. He would be made aware of his own personal and then of his national sin, and would need a sacrifice to cover his sinfulness as he approached God's presence. Therefore, God gave him these sacrifices by which he might approach God. To us, our, our God has given the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is not, of course, that we constantly have to repeat that sacrifice, for the New Testament is abundantly clear that whereas those Old Testament sacrifices were constantly repeated, the sacrifice of our Lord was offered once and for all.
And since it brings to those who trust him complete and utter forgiveness, the New Testament informs us that there is no more offering for sin. And yet, as we come to the presence of God as his redeemed people, it is inevitable that the nearer we come to the presence of the Lord, the more we shall be made conscious of our sinfulness. That is incidentally why the exercise of worship is an exceedingly practical thing and promotes like nothing else the ongoing holiness of the believer.
Stay at a distance from God, though you'll be surrounded by all his manifold gifts and are a little grateful for them. Yet if you stay at a distance from God, you will never become aware of your sinfulness. Like those become aware of it who constantly come near the divine presence. For the nearer we dwell with the Lord, the more will the light of his own presence convict and expose us of our inadequacies. It is therefore an important duty, as well as benefit, that constantly we come near to the Lord to worship him.
Then being made conscious of our sin, as so we come, God, uh, will point us once and again to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord that covers all our need as sinful people coming near to worship their God. And with relief, we turn from those many aspects of life in which we fail. With relief, we turn from those many features about our characters and personalities that are ill-adjusted and bad. With relief, we turn from them to the contemplation of Jesus Christ our Lord and his perfection.
You see, the nearer I come to Christ, the more I shall appreciate my own shortcoming, but the more I appreciate my own shortcoming, the more I shall appreciate him. When I listen to a piece of music myself, yes, so long as it isn't too high brow, I am, uh, delighted therewith. But with that delight peculiar to an innocent who doesn't know much about the difficulty of actually playing the piece. But you who are experts that know how difficult such and such a phrase is to get your fingers round in the playing of that particular piece of music, and how easily you could come unstuck and make a fool of yourself if you were trying to play it in public.
When you hear a past master playing that particular piece of music, and the way he makes even that difficult phrase seem as easy as easy could be. You are open-mouthed in your admiration because you saw the difficulty that I didn't. And only they who are trying to live a holy life will begin fully to appreciate the marvelous expertise of Jesus Christ our Lord. Going through life and its difficult patches. In the way that somehow made it look easy.
And our hearts are drawn out in admiration and worship of him. And therein lies another of God's practical secrets. Another reason that makes the worship of our Lord an exceedingly wholesome as well as practical thing. It happens to us all frequently to fall and to fail and to feel miserable with ourselves. Therefore, if we've any conscience left at all, being miserable with our own failures, we turn to confessing them and to complain and to humble confession before God.
And that is good. But it can be taken to extremes. And our enemy, the devil himself, is not unaware of our efforts to be godly, and if he cannot trip us up by sheer worldliness and carelessness, then he will spoil us by pushing us over the edge of some extreme or other in our spiritual exercises. And he commonly does it with younger believers. They fall and fail. Do we not all? And then they feel miserable about it. Some of us are a bit hard-skinned and don't feel as miserable as we should, but they feel miserable. And therefore they start to confess their sins before the Lord today, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, until their exercises before God are one long concatenation of ugly things, telling God at length how bad they are.
And it leaves them in the end worse than when they were started. But what you constantly think of, that you become like. Get obsessed with your faults and failings, and you'll become very good at faults and failings. God's way is better. As we approach the divine presence, aware of our faults and failings, God, so to speak, puts into our hands that great sacrifice for sin. And points us back to Jesus Christ, our Lord, himself all sinless, and says, God, please now, I've had enough of listening to all your badness.
I knew it long since. Please change the tune. Don't go on forever talking to me about your ugly. I know it, and I don't like it. But talk to me about the excellence of Jesus Christ, your Lord. Have you not seen that where you failed, he was perfect? And do you not admire him for it? As we change the center of our preoccupation from our sinful selves to the perfect Christ, our hearts begin to respond in admiration to him. And presently, little by little, we find ourselves becoming more like the one we constantly think about and the one we admire.
Not only did the Israelite offer these sacrifices when he came aware of his sinfulness. He offered sacrifices when he came to express his gratitude to God. When he came to bring his thanksgiving, God directed that he should offer such and such sacrifices. Gave the man something to do. It filled his hands. He had something to offer. So it is surely with us when we come in our holy exercises of thanksgivings and praises. One of the reasons why so many, in public as in private, are so slow at in prayer and praise.
Is that common human weakness that when we would give thanks, we don't know what to say. We'd love to praise the Lord and stand up in the middle of the congregation and praise him, but we we don't know what to say. I'd like to tell the Lord how grateful I am, but I stutter and I stammer, and I I I don't know what to say, and I feel a little bit odd and something less than sincere, so I don't, uh, do it. Hm. If I might descend from high heights and come down to lowly matters, uh, it is the same sometimes, isn't it, when you get a Christmas present, sir. This Christmas, I'm sure you'll get one, all wrapped up with blue ribbon from your wife, and, uh, opening it her and your present there is the tin of talc from Boots.
And of course, now you've got to be grateful for it. You feel a little bit awkward, you, you don't know what to say. Oh, I am, uh, I am delighted, my dear. And of course, gentlemen of that order have means at their disposal uh, that others haven't to express their gratitude by. But what do you say? Oh, I'm glad. That doesn't sound too good. Well, I'm deeply grateful. Well, what else can you say? Well, I'll give you a hint, old chap, if you want something to say. Take the old talcum powder and start talking about that. You see? Look at what she's given you, man. The beautiful tin, the flowers on it.
Open the old lid and sprinkle it. Oh, it smells delightful. Rub some on your hand and see how smooth it makes. Yes, talk about the gift. Then you'll have forgotten your own embarrassment. You'll find plenty to say. And as we come to God, and you don't know what to say, oh man. As it does embarrass you to get up and say I'm glad and I'm thankful. Well, stop talking about yourself and your feelings and talk to God about the gift he's given you. That's the highest way you could possibly express your gratitude to God.
It will, of course, demand that you know about the gift. Once more, as you get to know about the gift, and you stop talking so much about you and your reactions and what you feel, and put the greater emphasis on the magnificence of the gift. As you do so, God is beginning to correct that fatal flaw in our makeup that makes us self-centered, even in our religious exercises. Whereas what we desperately need is to be taken out of ourself and our self-centered preoccupations.
So that the locus, the focus of our thinking is not ourselves so much as Jesus Christ, our Lord. Say not that worship is a waste of time or that worship is something impractical. In the ongoing salvation of our personalities, worship is perhaps the most important thing. For that reason, then, we come to these detailed pictures of Jesus Christ, our Lord, that we might see details in the gift that otherwise might escape us. And we thought last week, did we not, of the flour and the oil of the meal offering, that together begin to talk to us of the person and the personality of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And first of its constituent parts, the bread, the flour, the corn, speaking of his body, the oil speaking of his spirit. And they pointed us to our Lord with his holy human body, utterly sinless and unfallen, that holy thing that was born of the Virgin Mary. And yet with all a genuinely human body with its appetites and instincts. And the glory that in Jesus Christ our Lord we have a specimen of humanity, unfallen and sinless.
We have never yet seen with our visible eyes a perfect human body. All we have seen have been more or less wrecks. But in Jesus Christ we have a perfect human body. Praise God, one day we shall have a body like it. But a body and its appetites that were under perfect control of his spirit. And therefore, Jesus Christ, a veritable king in life. Not the miserable slave that we often are, dragged along by our bodily appetites, but one, uh, in whom his spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit, was perfectly in control.
There are two other divisions of this particular offering. They speak to us still of Jesus Christ our Lord. There are two other divisions of this particular offering. They speak to us still of Jesus Christ our Lord. What do they tell us? The third of them is easy to interpret. Because the third division of this offering was the, uh, the offering that was offered particularly as the offering of first fruit. So that whenever Israel offered a first fruits offering, they offered this. And the New Testament is our guide in the interpretation, for it says, now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruit of them that slept.
Marvelous as was his body when he appeared amongst us in Nazareth. The third division of this sacrifice will point us to his risen, glorified resurrection body with all the exceeding wonder of him. And more of that in a moment. Because before we come to that, there is a middle part to this. And what shall that tell us? We may start with the simple observation that of the three parts of this sacrifice, the first represents the raw material, the flour and the oil. But the second, that raw material processed, cooked or baked or fried in some manner or other.
That bids us again for a moment to send to humble matters. Humble, of course, but basic and very necessary and full of art. The cooking that goes on in our household. A necessary thing it is, but how carefully it needs to be done if it is not going to end in disaster. It's got to be done. The flour might be the very best, the currants and sultanas and the oil and the margarine be of the highest quality. But who would want to eat them in their raw state? Good as they are and perfect of their kind, before they shall become completely palatable, they must be cooked somehow.
And the housewife goes about it, and when at last the cake comes out, all nicely risen and looking very brown and tempting, you will observe two things. It's the same stuff that has went in the oven that comes out. Yet, though it is the same, it is, uh, very different. It comes out so much more wonderful, most of the times. Well, sometimes it comes out differently and is discreetly and quietly given to the dog. Which is sad, but sadder still when it happens with a human life.
What is a human personality? Well, its constituent parts are body and spirit, you say. Very good. But that's not all a human personality is. Upon birth, there comes another process designed to complete and to perfect that human personality, and that is life's experience. That tests and cooks and bakes and fries. And it's a doing something to the personality every day of the week and every year of one's life. You point me here to a young maiden, oh, how beautiful she is, in the flower of her youth, delightful.
You point me here to her mother. Ah. Well, still beautiful, of course. The sun has done its work, however. There's a wrinkle or two. Mm. But why is it that sometimes mother is much more easy to get on with than the daughter? And why is it you would go to mother in your troubles for her advice and not to the daughter? And why is it that mother will main m- remain calm in a difficult situation and prove a tower of strength to her family, whereas the daughter couldn't possibly? And you say the key is in what life has done to mother.
It has ripened, matured. Until now, there is in that personality a something that wasn't there at the beginning. That was what life was meant to do. And it's a delightful thing when it goes well. It is a disaster when it goes wrong. Who hasn't known of a young man in his youth full of promise, but see him thirty years later and pray what's gone wrong?
All life's success got at him. And instead of making him more mature, more humble, more likeable, it has turned him into a hard, proud, arrogant man. Cooking has been a disaster. Who hasn't known, and I speak with great compassion, of a life that began well, but there came life's difficulties and problems. There came bereavements and tests and disappointments.
There came days when friends and fellow Christians seemed to leave him in the lurch. When God himself seemed not to answer his prayers, and the man now is an embittered, sour, very difficult and touchy character. The personality gone wrong. In the cooking. Oh, my dear fellow Christian, how is life cooking you? Is the old self-rising flower doing its job?
Are, are, are, are you daily enlarging with a greater breadth of mind and kindliness of spirit and sympathy and strength. Or is life on the way to making you silly, proud, arrogant, jealous, embittered? Oh, look not at my cooking too well. Give, give the great cook another hour, please. There are days when I don't taste very nice.
But everyone who is conscious that he's a long way yet to go before, before his personality is as pleasant and presentable as it should be, will turn now with relief, with admiration, with wonder to Jesus Christ our Lord. Did he go through the process? Sure he did. Sure he did. Bible says that too in the days of his flesh, when he'd offered up strong cryings with prayers to him that was able to save him out of death, being heard for his godliness, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect.
Yes, we understand, of course, that from the very beginning he was perfect in the sense of sinless. But there are different kinds of perfection, are there not? And the little child Jesus that was perfect in body and perfect in spirit, yet Luke records of him how he grew in wisdom as in stature. And all the heat that eventually came onto that life of Jesus Christ our Lord in those early days of his ministry, with the crowds flocking round him to listen to his preaching. Such popularity has undone many a preacher.
And not Jesus Christ, our Lord. Surrounded by the insistent crowds, Mark tells us how eventually he went away into a quiet place and rested and prayed. And when they came seeking him with all the insistent demand that a crowd will exert, he left them. Not mistaking the crowd's popularity for the will of God. He left them and said, but I must preach to other places, for therefore am I sent. If popularity could not pervert him, neither could its opposite.
A thousand and one instances now begin to spring to your mind, do they not? Oh, my dear fellow Christian, take every one of them and treasure it and admire it and turn it into the worship of Jesus Christ our Lord. Tell God what you found in Jesus Christ. That's worship. I must select but one. There came the night in which he was betrayed. And that dark, execrable, filthy act. And a man who had eaten his own bread should lift up his heel against it.
And now the whole thing had been exposed by our Lord offering him again the sop of his friendship. And Judas took the sop, but not the friendship, and rose and was making for the door when our Lord rose from his seat and said some words as Judas went out into the dark. And the apostles weren't quite near enough to hear the words he said, and so they had to guess what it was he was saying to the traitor himself, as the traitor went out to organize Calvary. And they had to guess at what our Lord was saying from the tone of his voice and the look on his face.
And I come as near as I can get because I want to know what this has done to Jesus Christ, what this dastardly piece of betrayal has done to Jesus Christ. Has it embittered him? Has it at last provoked in his heart blind revenge. Has the cake been flawed by the cooking? Well, we can't hear what he says, but he's saying it with that tone of voice and with that, uh, gesture of body that Peter and John, pondering the matter, decided he must have been saying, give something to the poor.
Can you imagine the tone of voice in which Jesus Christ would normally have said to his disciples, give something to the poor? Oh, with what divine generosity and compassion and kindness would he have said it? And he said it a thousand times. And I couldn't see any difference in his tone of voice and in his gesture as he said his last goodbye to the traitor. Oh, what a cake, utterly unspoiled in the cooking.
Pray God that life would treat me thus. How shall it be except by his grace and strength? The last division of that sacrifice bids us see our Lord as now he is, risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. No longer a piece of corn, nor even that corn ground into flour. But this time, a full ear of corn in the flush of its full growth, still green and full of sap, with the blossom upon it. Vigorous, not just one grain, but a whole host of grain.
Lovely picture of our Lord's resurrection body. Artists have grown wild depicting the beauty of an ordinary human body in its day and age. It is a magnificent thing if you see it in health and in its prime. But our present body is but a bare grain of wheat compared to the full ear of corn with all its a hundredfold times potentials that shall be our body when it is made like unto his glorious body.
One thing touches our hearts perhaps more than another as we leave that marvelous topic. The Israelite was instructed that as he took that ear of corn, green and full of sap and beauty, he was first to beat it and bruise it, and then he was to scorch it in front of the fire. Why so? To be an apt symbol of this. Now the Lord Jesus Christ, who now reigns with the Father and with the Holy Ghost and sits at the right hand of God in his glorious resurrection body, bears still within his personality, the results of his experiences here on earth.
That makes him a high priest that can be touched with the feelings of our infirmity. Guarantees that he understands us even now and can sucker us with his sympathy, but it tells us more. Whatever the mystery of death, though after our flesh worms destroy this body, and hardening of the arteries destroys our brains. And old age perverts our personalities.
Deaths in the end destroy our memories. It does not mean that life has been in vain, that all life's lessons are lost. For in this thing, Jesus Christ our Lord is our example too, and all those rich lessons of life that he learned, and having learned them, became perfect through his sufferings and carries them with him still in glory. They tell us that for us too, life's lessons and all their benefits shall be preserved through death and in resurrection to our eternal enrichment.
In what pessimistic mood would some of us sit here this morning, whose hairs are more than a little gray, had we not before us the example and the forerunner, Jesus Christ himself, truly human, sinless, triumphant, and now eternally glorified.
