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SCRIPTURE READING: Psalms 51.
General Text: "I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world; but he ye trans- formed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable and perfect will of God." Romans 12: 1 and 2.
Subject Text: "Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." Acts 5:31.
In this series of sermons on the Sacrifices the text in Romans 12: 1 and 2, may stand as the general text of the series to which we will refer more or less each time, even though we take a special text for the immediate subject in hand as the one in Acts quoted above.
Paul was a Jew, perfectly familiar with all the sacrifices and services of the Jews, and born anew into the understanding of the Christian and everlasting gospel significance which the ceremonial Jews had almost entirely lost. And Paul, far more than any other New Testament writer, has drawn the imagery of his language from the sacrifices and the services of the sanctuary, and so made the understanding of them necessary to the understanding of this gospel, and he has told us plainly that their true glory and significance is veiled to the Jewish people, and when Moses is read their eyes are blinded; nevertheless when their hearts turn to Christ the veil shall be taken away.
It was with the spiritual significance of these ancient sacrifices before his mind that he spoke these words quoted above in our general text: "I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice." God is the same; man is the same; sin is the same; salvation is the same now as it ever was. The true gospel is not sectional or dispensational but it is everlasting. It may be revealed under different forms, and by the use of different figures, but the thing revealed is precisely the same. And so, though we do not as they did then, bring a bullock or a sheep or a goat as an offering at the door of the tabernacle, we are, in the full significance of those sacrifices to present our bodies a living sacrifice.
The first thing that startles and surprises us in this is that those sacrifices should mean anything living, or done in the living. In so far as we have been taught concerning them, we have been taught that they mean just one thing only, death, the death of Christ. Let us not fear that anything will detract from the glory of Christ. We shall find in the end that these sacrifices show us infinitely more of Christ than we have ever seen before. Not only do they show us the eternal working in us of the Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever, but in the earthly life and death of Jesus type met antitype in a fuller, larger way than we have ever thought.
There are five of these sacrifices. The sin offering, the trespass offering, the burnt offering, the meat offering and the peace offering. In so far as we have been taught, or read in any book until God directed me to the truth of these from the Word, all these offerings were classed together and mixed up indiscriminately, and we were told that they were types pointing forward to the death of Christ.
Now the fact is that we have given these in the only order in which they can be given at all. They represent so many successive and progressive steps in the spiritual experience of the things of God. Primarily they were not types at all, but present revelations and expressions of the saving everlasting gospel of God. The gospel presented in these sacrifices was and is the gospel today, a spiritual ideal, experiences by many in part, but by no man fully and completely. It did not lower the standard, it held it high. Christ was the first of human kind in His life and death to realize them fully so they became types of Him.
By saying we have given these offerings in the only order in which they can be given, we mean that a man could not bring any offering he might happen to choose to bring, and be accepted in so doing. He must bring the offering that suggested his true experience up to date. If he were a sinner, he must come bringing his sin offering, and could be accepted in no other. When he sincerely brought his true, appropriate offering, the same was accepted for him, to make an atonement for him from that point in his experience onward.
But every man must bring his sin offering first, and this is true today. We read, "Now we know that God heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth." Is there any exception to this law? If there were not God pity us all, for there would be no salvation. We could none of us ever be anything but sinners unforgiven. Christ tells us of the two men who went up into the Temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a Publican. The Publican was a sinner and knew it and acknowledged it, bringing his sin offering and God heard and forgave. God will hear a sinner pray when he bring his sin offering and prays for forgiveness.
Now we can see why God heard Abel and accepted his sacrifice and did not hear Cain and accept his offering. The offering that Cain brought was an all right offering to bring but it was not right for Cain to bring then. Some critical students of the original here assert that Abel brought the same offering Cain brought, but he brought first of all his sin offering. The offering Cain brought spoke of a higher experience of fellowship and union in God. Cain was willing to come like this, with no sense of sin, with no feeling of his need for forgiveness, and claimed a fellowship with God which he did not possess. But Abel came as a sinner, seeking forgiveness and found acceptance. Then he could bring his offering of communion and fellowship and be accepted there also.
Is this not a message for the Church today? Is this not the very weakness of the Church now? Is it not full of men and women who have never had any real sense of guilt and sin, and who have never therefore known the rapturous joy of forgiveness. They are willing to come in a respectable, social way and join the Church, and claim a fellowship and a communion with God which they do not possess. Some may have been raised among Christians and grown up more gradually, as Christ did, into goodness. But even here, if we have not had the sense of guilt and unworthiness and then the joy of forgiveness, we have not "done our first works." Revelations 2:5. The foundation for high experience has not been laid. Job was a good man, but hear him "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." Job 42:5,6. And Isaiah, says "Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." Isaiah 6: 5.
How, then, was the sin offering offered to signify all this and more? The sinner brought his sin offering to the door of the sanctuary and the sinner laid his hands on the head of the sin offering, transferring himself to it, as it were; and then the sinner killed the offering. Always the sinner killed his sin offering. If it was a collective offering for many people the leaders of the people did this for the people, showing that it is SIN that kills. The theology of the world has not yet learned this simple, primary lesson. In nine cases out of ten, men, women, and even theologians talk as if God damned men, even as if God killed his own Son to satisfy His wrath. It is SIN that damns. It is Sin that kills. "The wages of sin is death". "Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." All that God has done is perfect and pure but it is sin that has brought into this universe all the misery and suffering. It was the sins of the world that killed Christ and broke His heart; just as the sins of the world right now is crushing and killing ten million innocent women and children. It is an unavoidable law that the innocent always suffer for the guilty, even so, Christ also once suffered the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God. He was bearing our grief and carrying our sorrow.
When the sin offering was killed there were three parts to the sin offering. The flesh, including all the inner parts and the skin; the blood and the fat. These three things were handled differently, each teaching a wonderful lesson.
FLESH: What does the flesh mean? Do you recall the many times Paul uses the word and its adjective. "I know that in me, that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing." "The carnal (the fleshly heart) is not subject to the law of God, neither can be". "So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God." But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you." "The Spirit lusteth against the flesh and the flesh against the Spirit, and the two are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." The flesh is the "old Adam", the "first man", the "Gentile man", the carnal nature which must be given up to crucifixion if we are to serve God. All these figures and this use of them were borrowed by Paul from the sin offering and he evidently had that in mind when he used them. We can only understand them fully as we understand their source.
The flesh of the sin offering, representing the sinful carnal nature of the man who brought it, was given up by him unto destruction. It was taken without the gate, without the camp, and burned as an unholy thing. The man who did this must cleanse himself, wash his flesh and change his clothes before he could be clean to have part in the after service of the burnt offering. To be accepted must not the sinner come to God today in this very same way, yielding up his carnal nature to crucifixion, saying "Lord, I do not want this any longer, take it from me." This is repentance.
"Him hath God exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sin". A false and heathen theology has placed a wrong and an external interpretation here. God set up Christ to appease himself so he could forgive us. NO, He has exalted Christ to so reveal His love to us as to break down the barriers of hardness in us so we can repent and so He can forgive. "Know ye not that the goodness of God leads us to repentance." God gave Christ to manifest that goodness. "No man knoweth the Father but the Son and He to whom the Son will reveal Him." And the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. That is, they are back of repentance and include it. God's tender Spirit, given us in Christ, calls after us when we are wandering and straying, to bring us to repentance so He may forgive.
What is repentance? A turning of the heart away, and disowning our sins. Just what the sinner does when he gives up the flesh to crucifixion. When our heart gives up a thing it is not ours. God looks at the heart. How many loving words die between the heart and the tongue because we are not brave enough to speak them, but God sees them.
But there are many evils in the heart, which have not been brought out, that God sees, and knows our need of crucifixion even when we know it not ourselves, so He says "As far as the East is from the West, so far will I remove your transgressions from you."
"The Blood": "The blood is the life" What must the repentant sinner do with his life? Yield it to God to be purged and purified and then poured out in His service. What was done with the blood of the sin offering? It was poured out at the bottom of the altar, as our life should be poured out in service for God.
"The Fat": All through the Bible fat or oil signifies the Spirit of God, and the graces of the Spirit. The pouring out of the Spirit is called an anointing, and anointing simply means bathing or rubbing with oil. There is some of Christ and of the Grace of Christ in every sinner that comes to the Lord. If there were not, the Spirit could get hold of nothing by which to draw him." Christ is the light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world; but if that light that is in them becomes darkness how great is that darkness."
Consider this wonderful contrast between the way of the flesh and the way the fat is dealt with.
Trespass offering versus Sin offering. The same law governs both. Why are they not both one. The fact is they are not very carefully distinguished. The same offering is sometimes called a sin offering and then a trespass offering. We use words the same today. We know that by Sin we mean the inner condition, not the outward manifestation of it in an act. Such an evil act is a trespass against the law; but we also call that act a sin, thus confusing sin and trespass.
The trespass offering was offered in the self same way as the sin offering, and was accepted if brought in the right way.
Oh, Friends, will you bring your sin offering, and your trespass offering, which is yourself, and lay it on the altar of love and know the joy of forgiveness!
George E. Fifield.
