January 7, 2007
Scripture:
Can we turn for a moment to a verse in Song of Solomon; we have been remembering this morning the death and sufferings of the Lord. In our last hymn, we were exhorted to remember another thing: “Thy rich, Thy precious love.” What I want to read is the latter part of verse 4: “we will remember thy love.” It was His love for us that made Him come down to earth and bear our sins on Himself. “We will remember thy love.”
EG Hymn 347 – Jesus when He left the sky, Prayer • Today we are going to look at the sin offering. This offering (and the trespass offering) is not a sweet savour offering. Leviticus 4:1–12 • Firstly, what is sin? Sin is our nature to not please God. God cannot just forgive sin; He has to judge and condemn it with death. On the cross, God made Jesus sin for us. It was buried with Him and is gone before God. Now God can forgive sins, the fruit of sin. So, with our sin judged, and our sins forgiven, where do we stand? In a sweet savour before God. We are reminded that this has all been taken care of in the Lord’s Supper: the bread is His body, which was made sin, and the wine is His blood, which washed our sins away. What is the purpose of the sin offering for Israel? It was to restore communion after sinning. V.6 tells us that some of the blood was sprinkled in front of the veil (because of the Lord’s work, we can go right into the Holiest). Then they put some on the horns of the altar of incense and poured the rest at the bottom of the altar of burnt offering, v.7. In this ritual, we can see the death of the Lord, restoring our communion with God. Why was the law not a perfect picture of Christianity? 1) It did not bring people into the Holy of Holies. 2) There was constant repetition. They offered the sin offering over and over again, whereas the Lord only had to do His work once. It took care of our sins, past, present, and future. So we can remember that the Lord became a man so that He could take our sins on Himself and so we could be in Heaven with Him.
Hebrews 12:25–29 • We have been looking at the list of things we have come to, in vv. 22–24. This is quite a difference to what the Jew’s came to. We finished with the Lord’s blood. Jesus’ blood was sprinkled in as much malice as that of Abel, but it does not cry for vengeance. Now we continue on to our last warning in Hebrews: denying. V. 25 speaks about Him who spake on earth. We saw that in chapter 1: “God … hath … spoken unto us by his son.” We have two instances of someone speaking in these last few verses of chapter 12. This is the first one; the other is in v. 26. V. 25 exhorts us not to refuse “him that speaketh”; this is the Lord. The rest of the verse reminds us that those who refuse will not escape; a whole company fell in the wilderness because of this. When we have these warnings, we must remember that this is written to not only Christians, but also professing non-Christians. This is really simply just an exhortation to listen to and accept the Lord. In our times, the Day of Grace, His words are nicer than they were then. We have grace where they had law. Yet man seems to like law to an extent better than grace. Now v. 26 speaks about the voice from Heaven. That was heard at Mt. Sinai; it frightened the people so that they asked for Moses as a mediator. But we can now go into God’s presence and have no need to be shy; we can and should have boldness. This is our new and living way. We can, as we had this morning, remember His love, not law. We are sons of God, and no longer servants of the law, Galatians 4:6. We are not as servants preparing a meal, but as sons sitting at the table in communion and relationship with the Father. In v. 26, we have a “then” and a “now.” The things that shook and will shake again are the things that will be taken away. It is the unshakeable things that will remain. This makes us ask, where are we building our treasure? The Lord has said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). As v. 28 tells us, we have a kingdom in Heaven. In that verse, there is a “let us,” which we find quite often in Hebrews: “Let us have grace.” Now a moment ago we said that we are in grace and Sonship, not law and servant-hood. Here it says that we have grace to serve God. We no longer have to serve to receive salvation, but we can serve out of love. Our last verse says: “For our God is a consuming fire.” Well, He definitely can be. That fire came down on Jesus at the cross for us. Also at Mt. Carmel, Elijah called down fire from heaven. The prophets of Baal had tried, but they couldn’t get fire. There were a whole crowd of unbelieving Israelites there, who couldn’t care less. Elijah called the fire—shouldn’t it have fallen on them? But it didn’t, it fell on the sacrifice. At Calvary, shouldn’t the judgement have fallen on those around? Yet it fell on the Lord. In the end, the elements will all melt because of god’s fire. Yet we can be thankful for the promise of an unshakeable, eternal, kingdom. Hymn 99 – My soul, repeat his praise, Prayer