Doug, read us in prayer. Our Father, we thank you, Lord,
that in your good powers, Lord, that you brought us to this place
this morning. And Lord, may we come for no
other reason than to worship the true and holy God, Lord, we come in our name, our
median. Lord Jesus Christ, who loved
us and gave himself for us, loved us to uphold the foundation of
the world. Lord, help us to worship you, our great God. Lord, help my brother this one.
Help him to dig deep into the minds of the richest of Christ. Lord, we pray for those that
are less fortunate than we are. We pray for our families and
our children. May thy will be done. We give
you all the glory and praise. Turn to Leviticus chapter 8. Leviticus chapter 8. In this chapter, we have Aaron,
the high priest, and his sons. And they are going to be consecrated
to the service of God. And it's not going to be without
blood. It will be consecrated to God's service through the
blood. And we have in this chapter a
very clear picture of our Lord in the sin offering, and in the
burnt offering, and in the consecration offering. There's three things
going on here in verses 1 through 24. And so we start out with Aaron
and his sons being consecrated to the priesthood in the service
of God. And they represent Israel, just
as our Lord is the high priest represents his church. And everything
that Moses does in these verses, he does so according to God's
command. God gave this. This is not heathenism. This is God given. God gave these
commands. He gave these offerings to represent
the Lord Jesus Christ. And they are a beautiful picture
here. And it's a picture also of all
believers who are separated by God, chosen of God, sanctified
and separated. You know, you are a separate
people. We are separated from this world. God separated us. At one time, we were part of
it. But God has separated you from the world. He has made a
difference between Israel and Egypt. There's a real difference
between God's children and the children of the devil, children
of this world. And it's a picture here of how
God has separated us, sanctified us, justified us, and consecrated
us unto the Lord and to His service. You know, you are in the service
of God. Not just me. Not just me standing
here in the pulpit. Every one of you who believe,
you have been separated unto the service of God. You are His
servant. God has sanctified you, justified
you, separated you, For himself, you are for him. That's a thought
that ought to just consume us. I am for him, whether I'm standing
here in his pulpit, in my home, out in the community, in public,
I'm his. I'm separated for him. Now verse
six, Moses, now listen, go home and read this. I have found it
to be helpful that when I hear a sermon or a Bible class taught,
to go back home, when I go back home, to read it again, especially
after I've heard it preached on and taught on. So here, verse
six, Moses washed Aaron and his sons, it says, with pure water. And what this is showing us is
all whom the Lord saves, all who are His, are to serve Him
with a pure conscience and a godly life. That's how we walk, and
that's how we serve our Lord, with a pure conscience, being
cleansed by the blood of Christ, and we serve Him in a godly life,
in a godly walk. Now in verses 7 through 9, Moses
takes all the garments that belong to the high priest, and he puts
them upon Aaron. He puts upon Aaron the coat of
fine linen, and you know all of these, all of these mean something. All the collars mean something. It would just take too much time
to go into every detail of it, but all these mean something,
and they are put upon Aaron, and it says they're put upon
him next to his flesh he's covered with from head to toe. And then
the girdle of needlework and the robe of the ephod, which
had at the hem of the garment the bells of pomegranates. It's
something to see. I remember one time Frank Tate,
you know, he's pastor of Hurricane Road. He taught the children's
Bible class at 13th Street once. And he came in dressed as the
high priest. It was really interesting. And
he took each of the garments that he had on, and he, you know,
he pointed out what they meant. But he dressed up like the high
priest was dressed up, and he stood before those children and
explained what they meant in reference to Christ. And all
of these have reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. And over in
Exodus 28, you can read that chapter and you read all these
things here. He then put upon him the ephod
made of gold. It was made of gold, blue, purple,
scarlet, all those colors mean something. Fine twine, linen,
and it had two shoulder pieces. And he put upon him the breastplate
upon him, and it was all made of the same material as the ephod
was. And he put upon him the Urim
and the Thummim, which according to Exodus 28 seems to be the
12 stones that was put upon the breastplate. It had the 12 tribes
of Israel, their names on them. And Aaron bore them before the
Lord when he went in to the tabernacle, when he went into the holy to
put the blood of atonement, those names were on him. The name of
Egypt wasn't there. The name of the Philistines wasn't
there. This is so clear. He represented a people that
God had chosen, God had called. And that's the ones he represented,
the children of Israel. And our Lord, our great high
priest, represents the true Israel of God. which is everyone who
believes the gospel. You are the true Israel. You
are the true circumcision. That's what Paul said. We are
the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and have no
confidence in the flesh. And then he put upon him the
miter of fine linen with the plate of gold declaring holiness
unto the Lord. Now that That is written in Exodus
28. They engraved upon that this sentence, this phrase, holiness
to the Lord. Christ is our righteousness.
Christ is our righteousness. He's our holiness before God.
Now, we are made the righteousness of God in Christ. We are actually
made that spiritually in the new birth. But He represents
us as a high priest who stands there holy and harmless and undefiled
and separate from sinners. What a beautiful picture this
is of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in verses 10 and 12,
Moses took the anointed oil and anointed the tabernacle. Listen,
everything that God uses, everything that's His, that's separated
from Him is anointed and sanctified and set apart for him, for his
use. Every one of you, whom the Lord
has saved, you're anointed with the Holy Spirit. You have the
Holy Spirit of God. God dwells, and it's hard to
conceive this, I know, it's hard to conceive this in this flesh,
because we, by nature, are so sinful. We are aware of our sinfulness. We are aware that Christ has
put our sins away. We are aware of that. He has
put them away, even though we don't feel it. You feel like
you're sinful, don't you? You feel your sins, they bother
you, they trouble you. But our Lord has put them away,
and you know that. And we're gonna see something
of this here in a little bit, when Aaron and his sons put their
hands on the head of the sin offering. and their sins, representatively,
are transferred to that sacrifice. And that sacrifice dies. I'm
getting ahead of myself, but that's what it shows. So here,
Moses, he anoints everything, tabernacle, everything in it.
Aaron, his sons, they're all sanctified, setting them apart
for holy use. Scripture says this, you're not
your own. You're not your own. So often
we think, well, what am I going to do? Especially when you're
younger, what career do I want to have? What career am I going
to pursue? I tell you what you're going to do, you're going to
do exactly what God has purposed for you to do. Whether you're
saved or lost, you're still going to do what God purposed. God
purposes all things. People are not just willy-nilly
out there living and doing whatever they want to do. God's hand is
in everything. Everything. But the believer
says, Lord, what would you have me to do? Where would you have
me to go? I'm yours. I'm set apart for
your use. I'm not my own. It doesn't matter
what this flesh wants to do, because this flesh wants to do
that which is totally opposite of our Lord, of his will. But now that new man, that new
man is born of God, says, Lord, what will you have me to do?
I want the Lord's will to be done. And so do you. Now back
in verse two, the Lord instructed Moses to take the oil with which
he anointed Aaron, the bullock for the sin offering, and two
rams, one for a burnt offering and the other ram for an offering
of consecration. So we have three offerings that's
going to happen here. Here's the beauty of this. There's
three, there's a bullock and there's two rams, but all three
of these represent one person. Christ is all three. Christ is
all in all. Christ is everything we need.
Everything that all the types in the pictures that we have
in the Old Testament, they all find their conclusion, their
fulfillment in that one man, Jesus Christ. All of that is
in Him. Now in verses 14 through 17,
and it's one thing you'll notice, Every one of them were slain.
Moses slew the bullock. He put the blood on the horns
of the altar, and he poured the blood at the base of the altar.
He took the rest of it and poured it at the base of the altar.
And by doing this, he's separating it for holy use. You see, the
altar's got to be sanctified. on which the sacrifices are going
to be offered. The two rams, this altar right
here, where this is happening, is for no other use. It's for
no other use but for the sin offering, the sacrifice, the
blood atonement. It's for no other use than for
that. It's set apart for that purpose. Who's our altar? You know, years and years ago
before I heard the gospel, I went to a place, and you can go to
any missionary Baptist church, you can go to any of these Baptist
church or Methodist church, and they got a wooden altar up front.
At least the old ones did. They had a wooden, then they'd
get people to come up to that altar, come up to the altar,
and Christ is our altar. There's no, that wood is not
an altar, Christ is our altar. He's our altar. He's the one
who's sanctified. He's the one. God and man in
one person on which the sacrifice was offered. He's the one. The humanity of Christ was offered
upon the deity of Christ. Isn't that a mystery? It's a
mystery, but it's so. But he slew the bullock. And
the body of this Bullock, for a sin offering, was taken without
the camp to be burned. See, this first one here, the
Bullock, was taken without the camp. You know Aaron and his
sons, they laid their hands on it. They laid their hands on
it. And I'll get to that in a minute. But this Bullock was taken without
the camp and his body was to be burned. You see, this is a
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered without the gates
of Jerusalem. He was taken without the gates.
And he suffered a painful and a shameful death, the death of
a criminal. He died the death of a criminal.
And the reason he died the death of a criminal, because he died
for a bunch of criminals. You ever really see yourself
as a criminal? Really? I am a criminal before God. And
I assure you, if your life was laid wide open, most of you probably
did something that could have put you in jail anyway. Most
of us. Most of us. But Christ died for
criminals. So he died the death of a criminal.
He died the shameful death of the cross. And God's wrath was
poured out upon the Lord Jesus Christ to make atonement for
our sins. You know, not one sin, not even
a sinful thought was passed by. This is how thorough the death
of Christ is for everyone for whom he died. Not even a thought
is gone unpunished. Everything about me, what I am,
What I have done, what I've thought, things I've said, all of it was
punished on Christ, all of it. Not one thing was left undone. And this bullock is a sin offering. Now we come to the rams in verses
18 through 21. The first ram was slain as a
burnt offering. You see the bullock, it was slain
And then this body is done. All that was taken without the
camp and burned. This is our Lord was taken without
the gates of Jerusalem and God's wrath burned on him. But this
one is a burnt offering. His blood is sprinkled upon the
altar, but the body of this one is not taken without the camp.
The body of this ram is burned right there upon the altar. It's
burned right there upon the altar. You know why? Look in verse 21. And he washed the end, that Moses,
he washed the inwards and the legs in water. And Moses burnt
the whole ram upon the altar. It was a burnt sacrifice for
a sweet savor, a sweet smell, a sweet savor, and an offering
made by fire unto the Lord as the Lord commanded Moses. You
see, the bullock was a sin offering. and it was taken without the
camp and his body was burned. The second one is burned upon
the altar for a sweet smell, a sweet smell. The death of Christ
is a sweet smell to God. His justice satisfied, his law
honored. God's law that I've broken, that
I have broken many, By the time I wake up and time I go to bed,
I break God's law. Then what? Then I start to dream
and I break God's law. You know, Henry said one time,
he said, we are responsible even for our dreams. What passes through
our mind. Yeah. That's how strict God's law is.
That's how strict it is. But this, this ram is burnt. completely upon the altar for
a sweet smell. Christ crucified outside the
camp. Christ burned upon the altar
as a sweet smell of fragrance. It's a sweet fragrance to God.
Why would I not want to preach Christ crucified when it's such
a sweet fragrance to God? So many will not do it because
it's such a bloody religion. They move on. I don't want to
move on. It's a sweet fragrance. It's the fragrance that fills
this worship service. It's the fragrance that makes
it a worship service. God smells it. It just fills
the whole room. All of it. And this clearly also
shows the delight and pleasure that the Father has in the death
of his Son. Here in Ephesians 5, 2, And walk
in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself
for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor
fragrance. Now the second ram, we come to
the second ram. The second ram was brought forth,
And it's called the ram of consecration. And there's three things we need
to see here. We need to see and understand the transference of
sin. Only God, only God can take my
sins and make them his. Only God can take my sins and
transfer them to himself. Only God can do that. I can't
transfer my sins. I can't undo them. Only God can do that, and we
see this here. Now, in one sense of the word,
our sins were transferred by God in that eternal covenant
of grace when Christ was made our surety. When David sinned,
when he committed murder, when he had Uriah, the husband of
Bathsheba, when he had him killed, and he committed adultery with
Bathsheba, Nathan said, die art a man, but you're not gonna die. God has put away your sins. When Christ was made our surety,
our sins were made his. Our sins were laid on him. There's
a sense in which that's so. That's the reason why when Adam
sinned, that this world was not destroyed like that. Just in
an instant, he heard the voice of God walking in the cool of
the day. And the reason why is because God already took care
of it. This matter has already been taken care of. Christ is
a lamb slain from the foundation of the world. So our sins were
transferred then. But then in another sense, there's
a real sense in which our sins were completely transferred to
Christ. It was completed when he died
on Calvary's cross, when God took out his wrath on his son. He was taking out His wrath on
Him for our sins, because they were laid on Him. Scripture says
our sins were laid on Him at Calvary's cross. That's when
it was completed. But now listen, there's another
one. And this is important. All this is important, but this
is important that we understand this. And this is the part I
think we have trouble understanding. Because of our sin nature, we
still have, we still wanna drag Him along with us. I know, I
do it. But here, there's a real transference
of our sins to Christ, when we, by faith, receive Him as Lord
and Savior. When we, by faith, listen, when
we, by faith, in a spiritual sense, lay our hands on the head
of Christ, our sins, our sins are transferred to Him, listen,
and we leave them there. We leave them there. I know we
want to drag them back with us. But brethren, I tell you, if
you want to really glorify Christ, trust Him that He has taken away
all our sins. He's taken them away. And we
in Christ, we in Christ now have no more sin. It's gone. Did you hear what Jesus said?
They're all taken away. We've seen that, don't we? They
are all taken away. One day, I know as I preach this,
in comparison to what we're going to see in glory, we're cold.
Aren't we? We're cold. This ought to just
take our breath. This literally ought to take
our breath. And yet we have a hard time listening. We have a hard
time grasping it. It troubles me that I'm like
that. It troubles me. When such a one as Christ died
for my sins, put them away. I stand before God holy. I stand
before God without blemish. And I'm going to live on a new
earth here in a little bit. I'm going to live, go to, I'm
going to be in paradise where that thief is. Lord said today
shall thou be with me in paradise. I'm not going to purgatory. I'm
going to paradise. And that's real. That's real.
would God we would live in the in the in the reality of that
more than we do but our sins are transferred on him and we
are to leave them there and this is what's demonstrated in verses
14 18 and 22 when Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the
head of the ram both the bullock of the two rams and they were
and they were slain they were slain You can see that in verses
15, 19, and 23. Every one of them says, and he
slew it. And he slew it. Which declares
that the sacrifices were all killed. None of them were let
go. Our Lord died. Our Lord died. He was put to death, it says,
in the flesh, quickened by the spirit. But here's what this
shows. The one that bears the guilt,
is the one that has to die. The only reason you and I will
not die, we will not perish, is because Jesus Christ bore
our guilt, the guilt of our sin, guilty, what it is, guilty. He
became guilty because our sins by God the Father were laid on
Him. They were laid on Him. And he died for them. He died
for them. Our Lord, now listen to this.
Our Lord's righteousness, his perfect life, he lived a perfect
life from his birth up, is not enough. You know it's not enough? Because the law says, the soul
that sinneth shall surely die. Though he lived a perfect life
for 33 years, he's got to complete it by dying. The full obedience is unto death. And he has to die. Because the
soul that sinneth shall surely die. He can't just live for 33
years of righteous life and then just go back to heaven. He has
to die. That completes it. That completes
it. Now, last of all, this ram of
consecration, this is so interesting in verses 23 and 24. Let me read
them. And he slew it, let go 22, and
he brought the other ram, the ram of consecration, and Aaron
and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram. And
he slew it, and Moses took of the blood of it, and put it upon
the tip of Aaron's right ear, and upon the thumb of his right
hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot. And he brought
Aaron's sons, and Moses put of the blood upon the tip of their
right ear, upon the thumbs of their right hand. and upon the
great toes of their right feet, and Moses sprinkled the blood
upon the altar round about. You see, the blood has been put
on the horns of the altar, the blood has been poured out at
the base of the altar, the blood has been put on the altar, and now
the blood is put on the right ear, it's put on his right hand,
and it's put on his big toe of his right foot. And here's why,
here's why. The right ear shows this, that
our ears are now tuned to His Word, tuned to His voice. Does God have your ear? Does
God have your ear? If God has your ear, He has your
attention. If He truly has your ear, He has your heart. There was a time you and I didn't
hear God at all, did we? God's Word, we didn't hear anything
in God's Word. We went away just as dead as
we came. But now, speak Lord, thy servant heareth. My ears
are tuned to his voice, tuned to his gospel. You know, I tell
you this, you know when you hear the gospel. And you know when
you're hearing a lie. You know it. And then the thumb
of the right hand indicates that all, all my gifts, all my ability,
all my service belongs to Him. It's all His. What do you have
that you didn't receive? My hand is, my hand and our hands,
which, you know, our hands, they serve His body, used to serve
the flesh, but now they, they're His. You see, my ears his, my
hand his, my skill, my gifts, my talents, whatever you want
to call them, they're all his. They're dedicated to the Lord. And then the great toe of the
right foot shows us this. Our walk has now been changed. Our walk has been changed. We
don't walk to the same places we used to walk or in the same
manner we used to walk. He owns this lock, stock, and
barrel. My ear is tuned to His Word, my hand is dedicated to
His service, and my foot, the big toe of my right foot shows
this, that I am consecrated, my life is consecrated to the
Lord Jesus Christ. And my walk is a walk of godliness. It's not a walk of sin no more,
even though we do sin, but it's not our life. It doesn't, listen,
sin does not define your life no more. If it does, you're in
trouble. If it does, you're in trouble. Godliness as a whole
defines the life of a believer because the blood you have been
consecrated to God, you're his, set apart and for his service,
his use. Isn't that a beautiful picture?
I looked at this and I went over this this morning so much And
I thought, there is so much here. I mean, just to take the priest's
garments, you could spend a long time on it. All right.