Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 3.81 → restored 4.41
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
This is now the third time today in which I am honored by being allowed to address you, and I do count it a great honor thus to be allowed. You may have a different view of the situation. It may well appear to you that the Great Tribulation has already started. It isn't because the organizers of the conference wished particularly to annoy you or to torture you.
It is one of those things that illustrates that sooner or later we all have to endure tribulations in this life, and we might as well get used to it. So for my third section, I recur to the book of Leviticus once more, and we shall read there in chapter six. Now, as we have discovered on our two earlier occasions, the book of Leviticus is a foundation for many Christian doctrines that are enunciated in the New Testament.
But this evening I shall not be talking about profound doctrines, because the book of Leviticus also supplies us with some very practical reminders of our responsibilities. And so let us read a short passage from chapter six, beginning in verse eight. uh And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command Aaron and his sons, saying, This is the law of the burnt offering.
The burnt offering shall be on the hearth upon the altar all night unto the morning. And the fire of the altar shall be kept burning therein. And the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall he put upon his flesh. And he shall take up the ashes whereto the fire hath consumed the burnt offering on the altar. And he shall put them beside the altar. And he shall put off his garments and put on other garments, and carry forth the ashes without or outside the camp unto a clean place.
And the fire upon the altar shall be kept burning thereon. It shall not go out. And the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and he shall lay the burnt offering in order upon it, and shall burn thereon the fat of the peace offerings. Fire shall be kept burning upon the altar continually. It shall not go out. The Lord give us good understanding and application of his word.
The offerings are described for us in the early chapters of Leviticus, and its details are directed to the people in general, because they would need to know what kind of a sacrifice to bring for their various offenses. But there follow here what are called the laws of the offering, and they should be distinguished from what is told to the people, because these laws apply to the priests.
The offerings were an elaborate series of ceremonies, sacrifices, prototypes, though Israel scarce knew it, of the sacrifice of Christ. And the people would need to know what sacrifice to bring for particular sins and offenses, and what sacrifices to bring for a thank offering or a vow. But behind the scenes, the priests were responsible for all the practical things that had to be done to make this system of sacrifices feasible.
And so the first thing that the priests are told here in this special part for them, was the law of the burnt offering. And we're told the burnt offering shall be on the hearth upon the altar all night until the morning. And the thing is repeated in verse thirteen, as you notice, fire shall be kept burning upon the altar continually. It shall not go out. So here we have instructions to the priests how to keep the fire burning.
It was only a ceremony, or in New Testament language, a type, but it had its practical implications. Do you see the fire that originally came down from heaven had to be kept burning at all costs and at all times. When the tabernacle moved, the fire was put in a specially designed, uh, holder so that it could be transported, and then at night, when the evening sacrifice was required, it could be added to the wood on the altar.
The fire should never go out. It was the priest's job to see that it never went out. You just imagine. Here comes a couple, and they have become conscious before God of their lack of devotion to God. They have, in fact, been compromising his unique deity and have joined in some idolatrous practice. And now they are repentant of it, and they come to offer God their burnt offering.
And what a thing it is. Can you picture them standing there by the priest, and there's their offering, and they kill the offering, and the priest takes it, gets its blood, dismembers the thing, and puts it on the fire. Poor, what a heartwarming experience. As the priest pronounces the forgiveness of God, and as they stand there and watch the sacrifice burn, the heat of it, of course, is warning, warm- warming them. Suppose. because some priest hasn't done his job, halfway through the service, the fire begins to blikk and blikk and then goes out.
Be embarrassing, wouldn't it? I think by comparison of the best man at a wedding, I I I don't know if they call them these days best men. Uh, they, they join in this ceremony, and there is a best man, or that's what he used to be called, who was in charge of the ring. And you can imagine when the point comes in the wedding ceremony, uh, that the officiant, uh, uh, says a monster pronounce the man and wife, and uh, the bridegroom is pre- is meant to say, with this ring I thee wed.
And of course, the best man is supposed to, uh, supply the ring, so he feels in his pocket. Well, it's not in that pocket. Oh, oh, where is it? Oh, it's not there either. Where, wh- wh- what has come of it? Very embarrassing, wouldn't it? Suddenly remembers he's left it at home. It's not that the ring is in itself anything. What it symbolizes is important. It would be desperate if when the moment arrived for the sacred ceremony, he had forgotten the ring.
So it was with the priests. They had to keep this fire burning. How did you keep it burning? Well, night, the fire had to be kept burning all night until the morning. Then in the morning, the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall he put upon his flesh, and shall take up the ashes where to, uh, where the, uh, where to the fire hath consumed the burnt offering on the altar.
And he shall put them beside the altar. And he shall put off his garments and put on other garments and carry forth the ashes without the camp unto a clean place. The one thing that could stop the fire burning is the ashes of yesterday's sacrifice. Now I must call upon my superior wisdom, because a lot of people nowadays don't have fires in their grates. But it used to be the responsibility of the head of the house, in when I was a youth, to keep the fire burning in the hearth.
And Papa would come down in the morning, you see, and there was yesterday's fire, still a bit of a glimmer, and he tried to take a shortcut. Instead of removing the ashes, he tried to poke it and, uh, get the thing going. Generally difficult because the ash would tend to stifle the flame and the thing go out. So the priest, when he came in the morning, had to take away the ashes of yesterday's sacrifices, so that the fire should not go out.
And then he had to have another sacrifice. When it comes to practical things, preachers are allowed all sorts of license, you know. The one that springs to my mind is the importance of having new experiences of Christ. I know Christ is the same, and what I learned of him sixty years ago is still true.
But if we try just keeping that up and relying upon it to supply the fire of devotion to the Lord, we might find yesterday's ashes tend to put the fire out. I need new material. Is that not obvious? How do we come by new material about the Lord? Something that shall make our hearts burn within us once more.
That is what the two on the road to Emmaus said, after Christ had taken them through the Old Testament and begun to expound it, and it all began to make sense. And as they returned that night to Jerusalem, they said, did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us by the way? By God's grace, I have known such experiences. I don't pretend they are easily come by. We shall have to work to go on with the Lord, and let him teach us ever more of his ways.
The fire shall be on the altar, says verse twelve. it shall be kept burning thereon, it shall not go out, and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning. Now, as far as I'm aware, there was no redemptive virtue in the wood. The sacrifice itself would remind us of the sacrifice of Christ, but the wood? It was simply there to make the fire burn.
Why, gentlemen that are old enough to know the responsibility of keeping the fire burning in the grate and get it burning before the wife came downstairs and all that, do you see? Will know the thing to do is to scrape away the ashes first, and then to put the wood on because it easily casts light. So? Whereas if you put a lump of coal on, you'll put the flame out. So you had to put the wood, uh, juicy on the altar.
Burn wood on it every morning. There were some people in Israel who had the responsibility of bringing the wood offering. That was hard work, wasn't it? Cutting down the trees, splitting the wood, and this, that, and other. There was no pretense that it didn't mean much work to burn wood on it every morning. So must we to keep the fire Burning.
Study, of course, can be hard work, can't it? Well, perhaps it isn't for you, it always was for me. And so sacrifice can be hard. And disciplining our time can be difficult. But as priests of the Lord, we must see to it that there is wood, so to speak, ready to be burned. And then it says, he shall lay the burnt offering in order upon it.
Well, that's common sense, such as every Boy Scout knows how to keep a fire burning. And in my day, every farm laborer would know how to do it. If you wanted to burn up half of a tree, you had to be careful which way you put the wood. Otherwise, you would get the fire burning the middle out, and all the rest of the branches would be outside, and they wouldn't burn up, and then it was a terrible difficulty sorting them out. You had a kind of expertise in knowing how to put the wood in the right position so that it would all catch fire and produce the maximum, uh, flame, you see, and burn up the stuff.
And, uh, if we would keep the fire of our testimony going with God-given zeal and burning grace. Then we must take attention to what our lecturer this afternoon told us. We must think how to order the sacrifice of Christ. Not that we're in control of his sacrifice, but which shall we present first and which second? Because, as our lecturer warned us this afternoon, you can stop a conversation with an unconverted man very easily by landing a lot of truth that he couldn't possibly understand on his mind, who doesn't really have any effect.
Suppose I'm talking to my friend, and I say to him, well, you know, you must be prepared to suffer for Christ. I mean, that will be true of the church in the Great Tribulation, you know. Oh, really? Oh, well, well, some people think they're, uh, believers will go through the tribulation, and some people think they won't go through the tribulation. But you see, um, well, there's Gog and Magog to come, and well, okay, that's all for, all for the appropriate occasion to discuss Gog and Magog, but not necessarily if you're leading someone to Christ and hoping his heart will catch a fire with the glory of Christ's gospel.
You have to put the wood in order, and then the burnt offering in order. The priests became expert at it. You imagine having to get a bullock and cut it all in pieces. Well, you'd have to be a skilled butcher to do it properly, wouldn't you? And then you've got the big, uh, leg and thigh of a bullock, and you had to get that on the altar, and in the precise place where it didn't put the fire out, but how it would burn, because you weren't roasting the sacrifice, you were burning it.
That was a different thing, wasn't it? With all its blood and wetness, you had somehow to get it there and burn it. Difficult task. The priest became expert in, and they had to do it that way, they threw on the leg of a lamb or a bullock and could land it in exactly the right place, so it didn't put the fire out, but could catch the fire and burn. And, uh, he shall therefore put, lay the burnt offering in order upon it and shall burn thereon the fat of the peace offerings.
Why so? Well, here you must forget for a moment all the spiritual interpretations of the fat. You put the fat on because it helped the fire to burn, didn't you? In my youth, you see, um, people trying to light the fire, and it didn't go very well, and they poked it and it didn't flame, would go out, it was quite a bad thing to do, but they would go out and get a lot of paraffin and throw it on the fire. They had to be very careful it didn't scorch their eyebrows off and explode in their face, you see, a paraffin, but it helped the thing get going, you see.
So the fat. None of the Israelites was allowed to take the fat from any offering. It was the Lord's. But you see, one of its uses was to keep the fire burning. Fat was regarded in ancient Israel as the best of anything. You talked about the fat of your wheat, for instance, meaning the best part of your wheat, the most luscious part, the very good wheat was the fat of your wheat, w- your wheat.
Fat represents the health of the bullock, and so forth and so on. My brothers, my sisters, if we want to keep the fire going, how shall we do it? We shall bring and prepare to sacrifice the best we have, yes? The best we can do. Is that too much? Shall burn thereon the fat of the peace offerings.
The peace offerings were an elaborate system. They could be used to thanksgiving to God for all his benefits. They could be the basis of a meal where you invited your friends around to celebrate with them God's goodness to you, and you could make a feast for others. The best we have. Given over to Christ. To keep the fire going.
Our zeal for the Lord. Our zeal for the lost. Our persistence in Sunday school teaching, or whatever it is we do for the Lord. Our persistence in looking after the elderly believers. But, it will require the best we have. Fire shall be kept burning upon the altar continually. It shall not go out.
They were busy priests, weren't they? It wasn't just a question of leading the singing when the nation came together. It did involve that, particularly with the Levites. But behind the scene, the priests were kept very busy at hard work to keep the whole system of these divinely given symbols in use. The fire shall be kept burning.
It shall not go out. You say, Mr. Preacher, aren't you aware that it is God who gives the fire? Yes, I'm aware of that. It was God that gave the fire in the first place for the Israelites. When they offered their first sacrifice, fire came down from heaven and consumed it, and that fire was never to go out. But you see, one of the ways in which God took care that the fire should not go out was the instructions given to the priests that they keep the fire burning.
The ashes of yesterday taken away. New material put on the fire. Have you got tired of reading Ephesians? Well, try Ezekiel. Well, depends who you are, doesn't it? But that also is in scripture, or a bit of Isaiah or something. New material we do need from time to time. We must prepare for the hard work.
Mm. Take for ringing, for instance, our singing of gospel songs. Well, it's good that it comes from the heart, yes? But if we wanted to convey the gospel to our unsaved friends, wouldn't be wi- wouldn't it be wise of us to do a little bit of practice so that we could all sing the same tune for the same hymn, so to speak, and not halfway through run off in diff- different directions.
You say that won't convert anybody our singing, but I know that. The wood had no power of forgiveness that they put on the altar. It will take all the fat you've got. The best given for the Lord.
So may we learn from the book of Leviticus. Not merely its doctrinal passages, they are, though they are supremely important, but the practical hints that were given to the priests and the Levites in those ancient days, they also speak to us of our practical duties to keep the fire burning. Shall we pray?
Our Father, we thank thee for every occasion when listening to thy dear son through thy word, we have found our hearts burning as he spoke to us. For the inspiration of thy spirit, we bless thee. Now we ask thy special grace as thy priests, burdened with the responsibility to keep the fire burning. Help us, Lord, in the practical things thou has given to each one of us to do, that we may be faithful therein, counting it a great honor to make any contribution whatsoever to thy divine work and witness in this world.
So bless us, bless today's conference, and from it all, blessed Lord Jesus, wilt thou be pleased to select what each one of us particularly needs? That from this day forward, there may be found in our lives spiritual growth and maturity and increased knowledge and increased zeal, that we in our generations will not allow the fire to go out, but shall keep the fire of the testimony alive in this province and throughout the world.
Hear us, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
