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Let us begin our study by reading in the Old Testament and the book of Leviticus, chapter two. Leviticus chapter two. And when anyone offereth an oblation of a meal offering unto the Lord, his oblation shall be a fine flour, and he shall pour oil upon it and put frankincense thereon. And he shall bring it to Aaron's sons, the priests, and he shall take there out his handful of the fine flour thereof and of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof. And the priest shall burn it as the memorial thereof upon the altar, an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord. And that which is left of the meal offering shall be Aaron's and his son's. It is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire. 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. And if thy oblation be a meal offering of the baking pan, it shall be of fine flour, unleavened, mingled with oil. Thou shalt part it in pieces and pour oil thereon. It is a meal offering. And if thy oblation be a meal offering o- o- of the frying pan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil, and thou shalt bring the meal offering that is made of these things unto the Lord, and it shall be presented unto the priest, and he shall bring it unto the altar. And the priest shall take up from the meal offering the memorial thereof, and shall burn it upon the altar, an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord. And that which is left of the meal offering shall be Aaron's and his sons. It is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire. No meal offering which he 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 shalt thou 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 first fruits unto the Lord, thou shalt offer for the meal offering of thy first fruits corn in the air, parched with fire, bruised corn of the fresh air. And thou shalt put oil upon it and lay frankincense thereof. 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 holy word. In the course of our study of the topic of worship in these past weeks, we have more than once observed that worship is always the stronger and the richer, for being not simply a general response to the general goodness and glory of the divine person, but rather a particular and specific response to one or more of their particular glories and excellences, excellences that we have noticed. Now, as a help to us to perceive the particular glories of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and the wealth of wonder that is in him and in his sacrifice, the New Testament here and there points us to the ancient Jewish ritual, to parts of Holy Scripture that are not frequently read, because as they stand upon the page, they seem to be obscure and quite irrelevant to our modern times. Yet they, of course, were not the simple inve- invention of a pagan people. These were rites and ceremonies and symbols that God himself in divine wisdom created. They served the people of that far off day in their worship and approach to God. But the New Testament quite clearly indicates that as well as serving those ancient people in their worship, they may serve us in this day as symbols of Jesus Christ our Lord. For knowing that in the fullness of time he would send his son to be our savior, God himself devised that the Old Testament ritual should be a kind of prototype of Jesus Christ our Lord. That now, as we look back from our age to the age before he came, we might see eloquent evidence that this Jesus Christ, our Lord, is no sudden will of the wisp, but that he was indeed the Lamb foreordained before the very foundation of the world. That Lamb for whose preparation and coming God himself spent ages upon ages, that men's minds might be prepared to understand him and to enjoy him when he came. That is, thus it is, for instance, that in the New Testament we read that Jesus Christ our Lord is our Passover. We are aware at once that we do not need a literal Passover of a woolly lamb, nor its blood sprinkled upon the doorposts of our houses in the manner of the ancient Israelites. But we do understand thereby that what that Passover was to the Jew in the far distant age, that Jesus Christ is for us now. That just as that Passover lamb and its blood saved Israel from the wrath of God against a guilty world, and set them free for a new life, and opened up to them a glorious future. So Jesus Christ and his death does that for us, saving us from the wrath of God and opening out a future for us, and eventually an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. But there is more, of course, in the work of Jesus Christ, our Lord, than saving us from the wrath of God. And so it comes to pass that Paul can exhort his fellow Christians in these terms. Now, my beloved friends, he says, you be imitators of God. Do be imitators of Jesus Christ our Lord, and live and serve your fellow as Jesus Christ lived. And pray, how did he live? Why, he loved us and gave himself for us. And in the process of giving him- giving himself for us, did something else indeed that was indescribably marvelous. He gave himself for us a burnt offering, wholly acceptable to God, an offering of a sweet savor. Paul is pointing us once more to ancient Israelite ritual. One of their main sacrifices was a sacrifice, the whole of which was burned upon the altar, and in the technical language of their ritual, ascended to God as a sacrifice of a sweet smell. Think of it, says Paul, and you will perceive what was going on when Jesus Christ walked this earth. Watch him now, in his infinite compassion, going out to seek the lost, sitting on a well side, tired and hungry and thirsty, but overcoming nationalistic prejudices and religious bigotry and reaching out to a Samaritan woman to bring her the thirst-quenching draught of God's Holy Spirit. Wonderful, you say, for that woman. Ah, yes, but you've forgotten, haven't you? Wonderful for God. For as God looked down on that well in Cyprus, smelly little village, and saw his magnificent regal son, Jesus Christ our Lord, going out of his way and sacrificing his time and comfort, and putting the needs of that one stray, forlorn woman before his own pleasures. Why, the whole activity came up to God as an offering of a sweet smell, and God was delighted. It's true we made it very difficult for Jesus Christ, God's son, to serve some of us, didn't we? What with the kicks and the ingratitudes, the stubbornness and the willfulness. And yet, as he gave himself for us, he did more than just release us from the wrath of God. It filled God with utter delight. It is within your compass, my good Christian friend, and mine too, this coming week, so to sacrifice ourselves for others. That we shall not merely do them good, but in the process be offering God a sacrifice that delights his heart. And of that particular sacrifice in Israel's ritual that so vividly portrays Jesus Christ our Lord, we shall think on another occasion. This morning, let us think of that sacrifice that accompanied all others, the so-called sacrifice of the meal offering, and ask ourselves what its prototype can tell us of the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord. The symbolism is not difficult to interpret, for this offering was made up of two major constituent parts. There was, on the one side, flour or bread. Corn in some form or other formed its first constituent. And the other major constituent was oil. Now, if we search our New Testament for guidance as to how to understand that symbolism, we shall not have far to seek. On the very night in which our Lord was betrayed, he took bread, and he said, this bread is or represents my body. Or again, the Apostle Paul in one Corinthians fifteen uses the analogy of a corn of wheat or some other kind of corn that falls into the ground and then rises again in greater glory. And Paul uses this analogy of the human body. The body of our Lord, and eventually the body of all believers that falling into death and being put in the ground shall yet rise again. That is why, of course, the third division of this sacrifice is the offering of first fruits. And the New Testament takes that offering of first fruits and once more uses it as an emblem and symbol of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and tells us, now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. Corn, flour, bread. Consistently in New Testament symbolism, it represents the body of Jesus Christ, our Lord. I shall not need to spend time with you at least, who know your prophets, to demonstrate that Zechariah, for instance, in his chapter four, uses oil explicitly as a symbol of God's Holy Spirit. I hasten to put those two symbols together, body on the one hand, represented by bread, and spirit on the other hand, represented by oil. And find in those two symbols combined a vivid, if simple, picture of the human personality of Jesus Christ our Lord. Of any human personality, if you care. For what is human personality if it be not made of these two constituents, at least, body on the one hand and spirit on the other? There is, you notice, in this symbolism another element called frankincense. It is not the merely the clock that forbid me, forbids me to speak thereon, it is the fact that in the ancient Jewish ritual, that particular part of the symbolism was regarded as being utterly forgotten, and none other was an- was to attempt to use it. So let us take these two symbols. They will point us to the personality of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and to those excellences in him that qualified him to be our redeemer. Let us celebrate again in our hearts the wonder that he who was the transcendent Lord of time and space, ever condescended to become human. That the Word was made flesh and had a human body as we have a human body. That he was born of the virgin. Man of very man, as well as God of very God. Therefore, our blessed Lord had a body, and immediately that speaks to us. We have bodies, don't we? Sometimes we're proud of them, and sometimes all too aware of them. Because it is, do you know, one of the great elements in our behavior, isn't it, our body? And if you would know why I am so odd on times and behave so queerly, you would be wise to consider whether it isn't my poor specimen of a body that's gone wrong. A great deal of human behavior is based upon the body, isn't it? The physicians and the surgeons have shown us that in remarkable fashion in more recent times. Perform the now outmoded operation of leucotomy upon the brain, and you will transform, transform a person's, uh, personality and behavior. Let the old adrenaline ad- adrenal glands get in disorder, or the thyroid as well, and the effect it will have upon our behavior is most unfortunate. Sometimes, you know, we don't make enough, uh, allowance for the fact, do we, that we have bodies. And some of the peculiarities of our behavior depend upon that very thing. Sometimes, you know, we don't make enough, uh, allowance for the fact, do we, that we have bobbies. And some of the peculiarities of our behavior depend upon that very thing. Some of our good points as well, but it's humiliating to be reminded of it, isn't it? Here's a man that is valiant for the Lord. He would face Goliath himself and testify boldly to the Lord, and he exhorts his dear sister in the Lord sitting in the front pew to be thus bold in her testimony for the Lord, why if she saw a giant, her legs would quiver. And he thinks it's because he is so remarkably spiritual that he has this great courage. Well, perhaps it is, but it could be, but his jeans were jolly good jeans. I mean, GENES. His nerves are the nerves of a rhinoceros, and his skin as well. And this poor woman has been afflicted with weak nerves all her days, and for her to do so much as give the gospel tract to somebody takes her an enormous amount of courage. It could be that she's the more spiritual of the two. Alas, we race of men and women born because of the fall with imperfect bodies that make us less than we would like to be. And then we look at him. All praise God for that marvelous gift. God incarnate, see him with a perfect, unfallen, holy, sinless body. Perfect in all his ways. Pledge to us that one day God will not rest content till he have conformed us, even as far as our bodies are concerned, to Jesus Christ, our Lord. But it wasn't merely that our Lord Jesus had a perfect body. The other element in the symbolism reminds us that human behavior is not just accountable for in terms of physical mechanism. There is a spiritual part to human personality, and in Jesus Christ our Lord, it was utterly sinless, and therefore in majestic and perfect control of his physical body. You will remember how all three gospels tell us that in the wilderness Jesus Christ was tempted. And the first temptation came at him at the level of his bodily appetite. And after forty days of abstinence, he was hungry. There's nothing wrong in being hungry. There is nothing wrong in any of the physical appetites that God, by his creative wisdom, has placed within the human personality. The wrong comes to be when a fallen man allows his physical appetites to become master and to control him instead of he controlling them. Until such point as what would have been a delightful thing placed within the human personality by God for man's enjoyment becomes a hideous master, and in the process takes that man away from God and dumps him a wreck sometimes. On society's scrap eats. Who of us has not known physical appetite of one form and another, carry us away like straws in the wind and make of us something less than a human personality and peris- perilously nearer to an animal. Then we look at Jesus Christ our Lord and see how he was led of the spirit into the wilderness and was tempted. Being tempted in all points as we are, was tempted, of course, on this matter of the control of his body, the control of physical appetite, and remained sinless. You'll say it was easier for him than it would be for me. No, it wasn't. You've been ever tempted to make loaves into bread? I haven't. I've frequently been tempted to do all sorts of things and have fallen, I say it to my shame, but I've never in all my history been ex- been tempted to make loaves into, uh, make stones into bread. For the simple reason, I haven't got the power to make stones into bread. He had the power to make stones into bread, and therefore knew temptation larger than any of us know. Do not suppose that he was sinful because he was tempted. Adam was not sinful when he was tempted. There is no sin in feeling the power of any physical appetite. The sin would be in indulging the appetite against God's will. Now Mark, his superb triumph. The complete control by his spirit of his physical body. Being an hungered and having the power to turn stone into bread, and tempted to do it by the devil himself, saying, if thou be the Son of God, make these stones bread. He answered, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. And we are saved because of it. For in that moment, had he dithered and fallen, and for the sake of a crust of bread to satisfy those gnawing pangs of a physical app- appetite that drove him, had he fallen in that moment, then never could he have been our saviour, and we must have been lost and something less than human beings for all eternity. With tremendous admiration that deepens into worship, we consider him. We have not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our weakness. Today, as we go out into the world, human beings, two feet very much on the ground, with a physical mechanism that is full of desires and appetites, and sometimes a very unruly mechanism. A mechanism that has been wounded and put off balance by the fall. A mechanism that some of us have to struggle with day in and day out. A mechanism in which we have known so much defeat. Ah, let us pause a moment and consider him. That perfect specimen of humanity. And rejoice. The very fact that God has sent him to be our savior is guaranteed that one day we shall be like him. Meanwhile, as we go forth to face this coming week's battle. To try, by God's grace, to live as redeemed human beings should live. We have one in heaven who understands the battle and can grant us the help and spiritual strength we need in time of need. You say, Mr. Preacher, it would be far easier if God were to not to wait. Why doesn't he give me a perfect body right now? It would be easier, wouldn't it? That is not God's intention. Yet, Yet. and as we shall see on another occasion, God willing, it is God's intention to go about our redemption first by renewing us in spirit, and then finally renewing us in body. But the struggle is not in vain. And as by God's Holy Spirit we learn to struggle to attain control of our physical bodies and their mechanisms, their desires and their appetites. The struggle is not in vain. By God's great spirit and by the intercessions of Jesus Christ, our perfect advocate, those very struggles themselves are beginning to produce a renewed humanity within us. Struggles in which we shall learn the lessons necessary to control that lovely new body that one day we shall be given when the Lord comes. The Lord fill our hearts with admiration of his son and a burning desire that we shall live like him.