Aren't they lovely words? Their
beauty this, their glorious dress, Jesus thy blood and righteousness. The issue, the big issue that's
before us in this passage of scripture is the issue that has
challenged people in religion for a long, long time, in fact,
ever since we were in the garden. How does a man, how can a man
born of a woman be just with God? How can a sinner be righteous? He might have picked up, as I
was reading in Acts 21, that they purified themselves. And
Paul, in verse 26, was to purify himself with them. He entered
into the temple. to signal, signify the accomplishment
of the days of purification that an offering should be made for
every one of them. Ever since we fell in the garden,
man has been doing something about purifying himself. I was
thinking during the week that the only people who I know of
in this district who are concerned about dying, really concerned
about dying and meeting God in judgment are the people that
I have the responsibility and the privilege to speak to each
week. And I mean that very seriously,
isn't it? If people were really concerned about death and really
concerned about the judgment of God that is promised in Hebrews
9, isn't it? It's appointed to man to live
and to die and then to face judgment. You would think You would think
that people would leave absolutely no stone unturned to make sure
that that was a settled matter in their minds and settled completely. And yet the reason they aren't
here and the reason they don't have those concerns on their
heart obviously it's a spiritual thing and it's the work of God
the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin and righteousness
and judgment of sin because they believe not on him but they actually believe They
actually believe that they have purified themselves, or they
are purifying themselves, or they might purify themselves
in the future. So there are two... It is the sign of the fall, isn't
it? What did Adam and Eve... What
was the first thing that Adam and Eve did in the garden? after
they were deceived by Satan. The very first thing they did
is they sewed fig leaves together. They stitched fig leaves together. And the fig leaves were designed
for a purpose, weren't they? The fig leaf was designed to
cover their nakedness, to cover their shame. And so it's not
any surprise that all of humanity born of Adam will seek to purify
themselves in one way or another. And the offence of the Gospel
and the offence of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, that's
what offends men, isn't it? It offends men because we are
saying, as the scriptures say, that all of your righteousness
are filthy rags and if you dare turn up before God with anything
of your doing or your works that are meritorious in your eyes
or meritorious in the eyes of men, you will hear those fateful
words of the Lord Jesus Christ that he said to those people
in Matthew 7.21. You know the verse as well, don't you, Matthew
7.21? He says at the end of the sermon,
he says, many will come to me in those days. Many will come. Many will come. And he says,
in verse 21, not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of
my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? And he's not denying
that there were prophecies. And in thy name cast out devils,
and he's not denying that they did some exorcisms. And in thy
name done many wonderful works. Look at the quantity of them,
many. Look at the quality of them, wonderful. Who said they
were wonderful? Other people told them they were
wonderful. They told themselves that they were wonderful. And they've done them in His
name. They've named something of the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And then I will, then will I
profess unto them, says our Lord Jesus Christ on that great day,
I never knew you. I never knew you. Depart from me. And what they
thought were many wonderful works, the Lord Jesus Christ says, ye
that work iniquity. The Lord Jesus Christ has cleansed
these people from transgressions, sins, and iniquities. Again and
again you read those three things in the scriptures. Transgression
is your breaking of God's law, and you're doing it all the time,
and you have done it all the time, and don't ever kid yourself
that you don't do it all the time. That's your transgression. Your sin is what you are. People
sin because they are sinners. Sin comes naturally to sinners. But iniquity, which is the word
the Lord Jesus Christ uses here, is that word that comes from
the root to be equal. It's somehow I've managed to
balance the things that you do, but somehow you manage to balance
the equation. We hear again and again of people
who have gone from this earth into eternity and people say,
well, he was a good man. He did some bad things, but basically
he was a good man. There is no such critter on this
earth, brothers and sisters. The Lord Jesus Christ, when that
rich young ruler came up to him, didn't he? He says, what must
I do to inherit eternal life, says the rich young ruler. And
the Lord Jesus Christ gave him the second table of the Ten Commandments,
didn't he? And that young man said, I've
done them all from my youth up. See the reason he was saying
to the Lord Jesus Christ good teacher is because he believed
himself to be good. He was saying good teacher to
the Lord because he was expecting him to tell him how good he was. That young man, it's only speculation,
I don't like to speculate from here, but that young man may
well have been the Apostle Paul. There's some sort of evidence
to indicate that that man went away sad, but it also says in
the scriptures that the Lord loved him. The Lord loved him. The Lord loved him. The Lord
loved him eternally. The Lord loved him infinitely.
And the Lord loved him despite the fact of his pride and his
arrogance and his sin. So there are a couple of questions
I'd like to deal with in this first section of our time together.
And the first one, of course, is what is this vow? You see,
what James says, this is how you're going to solve the problem
of these people who are upset about you coming to Jerusalem,
Paul. This is how you're going to solve the problem. We have
four men. We have them here in our church.
We have four men which have a vow on them. And Paul is instructed,
he's commanded, in fact is the language, he's commanded by James
to take these men and to join with them and to pay for their
expenses and then turn up at the temple with them on that
last day at the end of that sacrifice where they purify themselves
and they provide a sin offering, a blood sin offering is what
they're providing that day. So Paul took these men, verse
26, and purifying them, purifying himself with them to signify
the accomplishment of the days of purification. It is a lovely
picture of the gospel in Numbers chapter 6. So turn to number
6 with me briefly, and we have not a lot of time to study this
in great detail, but I'd like us to see what this vow is. Numbers chapter 6, Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. So it's the fourth book of Moses'
Pentateuch. I'll read some of the verses,
but some of the critical verses in it is in verse 11. The priest shall offer the one
for a sin offering, the other for a burnt offering, to make
an atonement for sin. It's a purification in verse
11, and it's an atonement by a sin offering. Verse 14, and
he shall offer his offering unto the Lord, one he lamb for the
first year without blemish, for a burnt offering, and one you
lamb for the first year without blemish, for a sin offering and
one ram without blemish for a peace offering. You can see why James
is saying to Paul, you pay for these expenses. You've got to
buy a flock of sheep, Paul. Put your hand in your wallet
and help these men out. So let's just go back to the
beginning of this chapter. This chapter begins with this
interesting description. The Lord spoke unto Moses saying,
speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, When either
a man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a
Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord, he shall separate
himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar
of wine or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink
any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes or dried grapes.
All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is
made from the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk,
and all the days of the vow of his separation, there shall no
razor come upon his head until the days be fulfilled in which
he separateth himself unto the Lord. He shall be holy and shall
let the locks of his head grow." You might be thinking instantly
of Samuel, I mean Samson, Samson, was a Nazirite from his mother's
womb, and Samson retained his strength until his hair was cut,
if you recall. Samson was a Nazirite. All the
days that he separated himself unto the Lord, he shall come
at no dead body. He shall not make himself unclean
for his father or for his mother or for his brother or his sister
when they die, because the consecration of his God is upon his head. And all the days of his separation
he is holy unto the Lord. And if any man die very suddenly
by him, and he hath defiled the head of his consecration, then
he shall shave his head in the day of his cleansing. On the
seventh day he shall save it, and on the eighth day he shall
bring two turtles or two young pigeons to the priest at the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest
shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a
burnt offering. and make an atonement for him for that he sinned by
the dead and shall hallow his head that same day and he shall
consecrate unto the Lord the days of his separation and shall
bring a lamb of the first year for the trespass offering but
the days that were before shall be lost because his separation
was defiled. So if he had promised to separate
himself for 365 days And on day number 364, he is
standing beside someone and they die. all of his 364 days of purification
are gone. He has to start all over again.
That's what it's saying. This is the law of the Nazarite
when the days of his separation are fulfilled. This is the fulfillment
that we're reading about here in Acts chapter 21. He shall
be brought under the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
You remember there was a riot at the door of the temple. And
he shall offer his offering unto the Lord, one he lamb for the
first year without blemish for a burnt offering, one you lamb
of the first year without blemish for a sin offering, and one ram
without blemish for a peace offering. And a basket of unleavened bread,
cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, wafers of unleavened bread
anointed with oil, and their meat offering and their drink
offering. And the priest shall bring them before the Lord and
shall offer his sin offering and his burnt offering. And he
shall offer the ram for a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the Lord
with a basket of unleavened bread. The priest shall offer also his
meat offering and his drink offering. And the Nazirite shall shave
the head of his separation at the door of the tabernacle of
the congregation, and shall take the hair of his separation, and
put it in the fire which is under the sacrifice of the peace offerings. And the priest shall take the
sodden shoulder of the ram, and one unleavened cake out of the
basket, and one unleavened water, and shall put them upon the hands
of the Nazirite after the hair of his separation is shaved.
And the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the
Lord. This is holy for the priest, and the wave breast, and the
heave shoulder, and after that the Nazarite might drink wine.
This is the law of the Nazarite who hath vowed, and of his offering
unto the Lord for his separation. Beside that his hand shall get
according to the vow he vowed. He must do so after the law of
his separation. So, it's a ceremony and it's
a lifestyle for that person for the time that they have vowed.
It's a lifestyle to separate themselves, to separate themselves
unto the Lord, to vow some vows. The thing that's extraordinary
about this Nazirite separation is we read about Samson and him
having a Nazirite vow upon him and then defiling himself. But
the real, the fascinating verse is in Matthew chapter 2 verse
23 and it speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ being brought back
from from Egypt, and he came to dwell, and dwelt in a city
called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken
by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene." One of the
glorious things about the law of God is it has glorious pictures
of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's why they use this as a
term of derision, don't they, Jesus of Nazareth? Can anything
good come out of Nazareth? That was the sign above him at
his crucifixion, and Bartimaeus called out to him, Jesus of Nazareth,
thou son of David, have mercy upon me. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Nazarite of God, One of
the glorious things about the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
and one of the things that causes us to find great delight in the
Old Testament Scriptures is that everywhere we see a passage of
the Old Testament Scriptures and everywhere we see a purification
procedure like this, we find The one true one who fulfilled
this law perfectly. He said, didn't he, in the Sermon
on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, he said, don't you dare think
that I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I didn't come
to destroy the law and the prophets. Think not that I came to come
to destroy the law or the prophets. I came not to destroy, but to
fulfill. verse 17 and when he the resurrected
Lord walked upon that road to Emmaus he said to those two disciples
whose hearts were burning he says you fools and slow of heart
to believe all that the prophets have spoken They all spoke of
Him. All of the Old Testament scriptures
are about Him. No doubt many men participated
in a Nazirite vow, but who was devoted to God? Who was devoted
to God? Who was separated to God? What man that ever lived in this
world is holy by anything he does. The very ceremony which
is about devotion and about separation involves, as we read there in
number six, it involves an atonement for sin. At the end of it, having
done all that you've done, you then need to bring before the
priest, you need to bring before the priest a blood offering.
That signifies that all of what you've done, no matter how devoted
you were in all of that time, all it ever was, was sin. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the
true Nazarite. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
this Nazarite vow in every way. He said at the
end of his life, didn't he, in John 17, 19, he says, for their
sakes, I sanctify myself. I set myself apart as holy for
God's use and purpose, that they also might be sanctified through
the truth. He sets himself, he separated
himself. He alone was devoted to God. He alone was devoted to God.
No wonder Lamentations can say of the Nazarites that are all
joined to him, her Nazarites, Lamentations 4.7, her Nazarites
are purer than snow, her Nazarites are whiter than milk, more ruddy
in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire. One of the things that you'll
see in our passage in Acts 21, and it's here repeated in number,
it's a repetition of the demands in number six, excuse me, was
that there was to be no razor, no razor to be put on his head. No razor, verse 5, no razor will
come upon his head until the days be fulfilled. Our Lord Jesus Christ has a people
who are joined to him. He's the head of a body. We are one with him, brothers
and sisters in Christ. The Lord says, the hairs of your
head are numbered. the hairs of your head are numbered.
All of God's children are numbered. Not only are the hairs of my
head numbered, and they're diminishing, but the hairs of your head are
numbered, but the hairs of the head of the Lord Jesus Christ
are numbered. You see, when no raiser shall come upon his head,
it's saying that we are joined to him, brothers and sisters
in Christ, and we are joined to his head, and we adorn the
head of the Lord Jesus Christ. He will not be complete and not
be fulfilled until all of his sheep are gathered to himself
because that's where they've always been. We are talking in
the Gospel about a manifestation of a reality in our Lord Jesus
Christ that happened before the foundation of the world. If you
were saved, you were saved a long, long time ago. If you were saved,
you were saved at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you
were saved, you were saved when the Holy Spirit came and opened
your eyes to see who the Lord Jesus Christ is and who you are.
And you're going to be saved forever. But we're saved in Him.
We join to Him. And so what is the shaving of the head in
the Nazirite vow? Obviously it was indicative of
this person having set themselves apart and then at the very end
when the head is shaved there is this sin offering. You see
the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin. His head was shaved. We do love quoting that amazing
verse in 2 Corinthians 5.21. God says, for he hath made him
to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. Christ was made sin. And when he died,
we just sang about it in that hymn by Kemp, when he died, we
died. When he was cut off and separated
from God, we were cut off and separated from God. It's one
of the glorious pictures, isn't it, in the scriptures of the
union of the Lord Jesus Christ with his people. When he walked
this world 2,000 years ago, every single one of his people walked
in him. That's what it is to him to be the Christ. Jesus is
the name of his humanity. Christ is the name of his officers,
and none of his officers are in any way and can ever in any
way be separated from him and his union with his people. He's
called the Lord Jesus Christ, which means he's God. He's God. He is completely and perfectly
human, and as the Christ, He has this extraordinary office
of union with His people. And so we walked with Him. He
kept the Nazarite vow, brothers and sisters, and all of God's
people have kept the Nazarite vow. It says in Acts 21, on that seventh
day, the seventh day is the day of grace. and perfection in the
day of completion. And see this sin offering in
Numbers 21, this sin offering is brought before the Lord. You see what it says in Numbers
6.14, it says, and he shall offer his offering unto the Lord. See the offering of the body
of the Lord Jesus Christ was an offering to God. It was an
offering to God. He wasn't offered to this world
as if somehow when this world accepts him, it will be accepted.
He was offering himself to God. This sin offering and this peace
offering, it's brought before the Lord. When the Lord Jesus Christ died,
we suffered the full fury of God's wrath in Him. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
died, God's justice is fully satisfied, and all of the sins
of these separated people are put away. We read later on that
this, in verse 20, this is going to be waived. It's the open acknowledgement,
isn't it? On the cross of Calvary, the
Lord Jesus Christ openly acknowledged the sins of all of his people,
and they were there displayed. Open acknowledgement of sin before
God. And there is, there is in the
Gospel a celebration. of sins, pardon and removal by
precious blood. The Lord Jesus Christ said, didn't
he, just before he went to the cross, he said, I will drink
no more of the fruit of the vine until I drink it anew in the
kingdom of God. See this vow, this vow that these
men were participating in Jerusalem was a Nazirite vow with their
heads shaved. I love what the Apostle Paul
said in Romans 3.31. He says, Do we then
make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish
the law. So through faith we establish
the law of the Nazarite. Perfectly. Completely. And it's all done by our Saviour. While you have your hands there
in Numbers 6, I just want to read these verses at the end.
I think they're just glorious. And the Lord, verse 22, Numbers
6, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and
unto his son, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children
of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless thee, and keep
thee. The Lord make His face to shine
upon thee. This is what happens when the
Nazarites completed His work, brothers and sisters, and we've
been separated. That sin has been separated from
Him and separated from us. The Lord make His face to shine
upon thee. Wouldn't it be glorious if he
made his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto thee? The Lord lift up his countenance
upon thee and give thee peace. And then I love this. It's a
picture of marriage, isn't it, between the Lord Jesus Christ
and his people. They shall put my name upon the
children of Israel We're married to him. We bear his name. Put
my name upon the children of Israel and I will bless them. So there are two issues here,
aren't there? One is the Nazarite vow and the other one is this
whole business of purification. He's told, Paul is told in Acts
21 verse 24, you take them. You take these church members.
And you purify thyself with them. The word to purify means to cleanse,
doesn't it? To be pure. So how do you be pure? How do you
be cleansed before God? Peter says in 1 Peter 1.22, he
says, Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth
through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that
you love one another with a pure heart fervently. when Paul had
previously been in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15, when there
was a problem in the church, a problem that came from people
in Judea going to the churches of the Gentiles, saying that
for the Gentiles to be saved, they have to be circumcised and
obey the law of Moses. That was what it says in Acts
15.5. It was needful to circumcise
them and command them to keep the law of Moses. And there was much disputing
in verse 8, and Peter says, And God, which knoweth the heart,
bear them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did
unto us. He was talking in reference to
what happened in Acts chapter 11. You might remember the stories
on that house in Joppa and the sheep comes down and it's full
of unclean animals. It's full of pigs and it's got
prawns and all sorts of other things that Jews weren't allowed
to eat or touch. And you take and eat and kill, kill them and
eat them. And Peter says, no way in the
world. I'm not going to defile myself.
I'm a Jew. I've never been defiled. I've
never done all these things. Nothing common or unclean at
any time has entered into my mouth, says Peter. And then God
answers him. And it's a glorious answer, isn't
it? But the voice, the voice answered me again from heaven.
What God hath cleansed, what God hath cleansed, what God hath
purified, don't you dare call that unclean. Don't you dare
call it common. Don't you dare call it common.
And Peter goes back to Jerusalem and he finds the Jews offended
that he's actually defiled himself by going into a Gentile house
and being polluted by their pork and their prawns. He has to defend
himself and he repeats it, doesn't he? What God has cleansed. See purifying, purifying is a
heart act and purifying is an act of God. Go back to Acts 15 with me just
briefly. And God which knoweth the hearts, bear them witness,
giving them the Holy Ghost even as he did unto us, and put no
difference between us and them, purifying their hearts. How does
he purify their hearts? By faith. By faith. Purifying their hearts by faith. No wonder David, after his sin
with Bathsheba, would cry out to God, isn't he? He said, create
in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. He had a right spirit within
him, and he had lived by faith, and he had trusted God, and he
had fallen appallingly, and he says, you renew a right spirit
within me. A right spirit that looks to
the Lord Jesus Christ and looks to Him alone for all the purification
and acceptance with God. A right spirit that looks to
the Lord Jesus Christ to bear all of our sins and to bear them
away. You see one of the problems we have
with regard to holiness and with regard to righteousness and with
regard to sanctification is that we have no ability to see it
through the eyes of this flesh. The Lord Jesus Christ lived for
33 years amongst those people in Nazareth. He lived there with
his brother James, who's mentioned in Acts 21. And he lived there
with those people. And never once, never once did
they ever see a sin on him. Never once was there an evil
and wicked thought that crossed his mind that was betrayed on
his face. Never once. Never once. No sin in thought and word and
deed. He looked at the law of God and
he loved it and obeyed it with ease and delight. Our Lord Jesus
Christ did. And did anyone there know it? Did anyone in that town know
it? The point is simple, isn't it? That our understanding of
what is righteous and what is purifying is not God's standard. We look
through the eyes of faith, brothers and sisters in Christ. Holiness
is not seen by men. He went to Jerusalem, didn't
he? He went amongst those people for three years and he declared
the most remarkable things and did the most remarkable things
amongst them. And they had absolutely no idea, even when he told them
he was God, even when we did the miracles that showed that
he was God. that he was righteous and they
weren't. So what stopped them from seeing
his holiness? What stopped them from seeing
his righteousness? What stopped them from seeing
his purification? Their fig leaves, brothers and
sisters, their own sense of their own religious worthwhileness. Our God, How God purifies the
hearts of His people. And purified hearts come to the
Lord Jesus and they look away from everything in their flesh
and they look to Him. And then when they look to their
flesh and find it withering before their eyes, they look away and
they look to Him again. And so they go through these
trials, don't they? Daniel says, many shall be purified
and made white and tried. Blessed, says our Lord Jesus
Christ, are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And that's why Paul enraged the
Jews in Antioch. when he said in Acts 13.39, he
says, by him and by him all that believe are justified from all
things which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. And they were enraged. They were
enraged because their fig leaves were being taken from them. And
as quickly as they're taken from them, the religious people are
out there stitching them together. Stitching them together. That's
what religion is doing all the time. And that's what you and
your Adam Flesh is doing. You're stitching your fig leaves
together. It's that glorious picture that we often quote in
Genesis chapter 3, isn't it? What happened to those fig leaves
in the garden? Those two were brought before
God, Adam and Eve, with their fig leaves and all of their sin. And they stood before God, exposed
for what they really are. And the Lord took their fig leaves
away and made them naked before Him to know what they really
were. And then what did He do? on them. He killed a lamb to
cover their shame. That's how God saves sinners
today. That's how God still does it. The Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is washed and sanctified and cleansed. James will go on
to say, isn't it, cleanse your hands and purify your hearts,
you double-minded A double-minded person is someone who's looking
to their works and looking to the law and looking to other
things and trying to look to the Lord Jesus Christ at the
same time. You can't do it. You'll get cross-eyed, brothers
and sisters. You look to one place. You fix your eyes on Jesus,
who's the author and the perfecter of faith. You purify your hearts
through faith. He's the only one, and God has
accepted him. And when he accepted him, brothers
and sisters, he accepted all of us. And we're made accepted
in the Beloved. May the Lord bless his words
to our hearts. Let's have a break and a cup
of tea.