the beauties and the glories
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's read verses 6-10 and then
verse 17 with it. Verse 6-10, Abram believed in
the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he
said unto Abram, I am the Lord that brought thee out. of Ur
of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. And
Abram said, Lord God, whereby shall I know, or how shall I
know that I shall inherit it? And the Lord said unto him, Take
me an heifer of three years old, a she-goat of three years old,
a ram of three years old, and a turtle dove and a young pigeon. And he took unto him all these,
and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against
another. But the birds divided he not."
Now down to verse 17. It says, it came to pass that
when the sun went down and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace
and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. We're so
blessed here, as other true churches are, to hear and see the things
that we do. How blessed. What are these sacrifices? What is this burning lamp, this
smoking furnace? You know what these things represent,
or rather who. They're things that are concerning
Christ and Him crucified. We're going to see that clearly.
And so many others, these things are blinded or hidden from them. The law of first mention in Scripture
and in Genesis is very important. The way that God established
everything from the first is the way he continues it all through
Scripture. It first mentions someone believing
God in verse 6. Abram believed in the Lord. That's
the Lord Jesus Christ, right? That's who appeared to him. Our
Lord said, Abram, rejoice to see my day. He saw it, and he
was glad. He said, Moses, who wrote this
book, wrote of me. So the Lord here is the Lord
Jesus Christ. God is Spirit. No man hath seen
the only begotten Son. He hath declared it. He came
and revealed himself to Abram. Abram believed on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and it was counted to him, first time ever mentioned,
righteousness. What did Abraham do? Nothing. He believed. And it was counted
to him for righteousness. And so it is all who are blessed
with Abram to believe, Galatians says. And then covenant. First
mention of the word covenant. That's an agreement. That's a
contract. That's a pact made. The Lord
made that covenant. He said to Abram, with thee have
I established my covenant. Here's my covenant. Here's my
pact that I have been the author of. And I'm making it concerning
you. Covenant. Concerning Abram's
seed. And let me read this to you in
Galatians. It says in Galatians 3, the scripture,
seeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached
the gospel unto Abraham, saying, in thee shall all nations be
blessed. So then they which be of faith
are blessed with faithful Abram." As I said, if you know these
things, if you hear these things, if you believe these things,
if the Lord shows you these sacrifices, that is Christ, he has made a
covenant concerning you. You are in the covenant. And
then it says in Galatians 3 verse 15, A man's covenant, if it's confirmed,
nobody can change it. Even if a man makes a covenant,
a will and a testament, nobody can change it. And so God made
this covenant to Abraham and his seed, the promises were made. He didn't say seeds as of many,
but one. And that seed, he said, was Christ. So this is that covenant. And he goes on to say, I'm reading,
I should have had you turn. He said the covenant was confirmed
before of God in Christ, and even the law can't make it of
no effect. It's the first covenant, the
covenant of grace. So he says to Abram in verse
7, now Abram is a believer. Why did he believe? He was an idolater. The Lord
chose him. The Lord elected him. That's the covenant of grace.
Elect according to the foreknowledge of God. Whom he did foreknow. He predestinated. He predestinated.
He called. He called Abraham out of darkness,
out of idolatry, to know the true God. And this is what he
reminded him of. Verse 7. He said, I am the Lord
that brought you out. You would still be in error
if I hadn't brought you out. And you people in here, all of
us in here, would be somewhere, anywhere but here if the Lord
hadn't called us out. And he said, I have called you
out to do what? To give you something. By grace,
you say. Oh, it's not at works, lest any
man should boast. Abraham had nothing whereof to
boast. He was an idolater called by
God, brought out. He bought him, brought him, and
taught him everything he knew. Who make a bid of it? What do
you have that you have not received? So he said, I am the Lord that
brought you out to give you something, this land to inherit it. I have
given you an inheritance, Abram. You see how it is by grace? And
here's what Peter wrote. Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1, our
favorite scripture. According to the foreknowledge
of God, through sanctification of the Spirit, separated by the
Spirit, unto obedience of the faith, that is, by the sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus Christ, he goes on to say, we've been
blessed because we've been given an inheritance, incorruptible,
undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you who
are kept by the power of God. So we're just like Abraham. We're
blessed with Abraham if you believe. Oh, blessed are you if you know
these things, if you believe these things. I do believe. I
do believe. We've received the promises like
Abraham, haven't we? And I believe, don't you? Don't
you? I do too, but help my unbelief. Lord, help my unbelief. I do
believe. I believe and am sure that he
is the Christ, but Lord, Would you show me or tell me again,
I want to know for sure that I'm going to inherit the promise.
That's what that's what Abraham said, he already told him God
who cannot lie, but Abraham said, but but but. How can I know? All right, look
at it, and this is what this is all about. The Lord is giving
him a token, a sign of the covenant. A sure token. In verse 8, he
said, How shall I know that I shall inherit the land? How shall we
know? Verse 9, the Lord said unto him, Take me. Do this unto me. And he gave him five things to
bring. Five sacrifices to bring. The sign of the covenant. A sure
token. of the mercy of God, of the promises
of God. And the promises are the same.
The promises are sure to all to see. The token, the sign,
is the same. Our Lord said, An evil and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign. That is, show us some miracle,
some sign, some wonder. But the Lord does show His people
a miracle, a sign, a wonder of all wonders. The only sign that
he gives, the sign of the prophet Jonah, the sign of Gideon, the
sign of Manoah and his wife, the sign of Abraham, it's Christ
and him crucified. That's it. Christ is the redemptive,
his redemptive work is that scarlet line that runs through all the
scriptures, that all his Rahab's hang on, that all the law and
the prophets hang on like those two spires. It's a scarlet lance,
a river of blood running through all scriptures that leads all
the way to Calvary where Christ ratified that covenant and leads
all the way to glory that will bring us into the promised land.
That's what this book is all about. The Lord God gave us this
sure token which is Christ and Him crucified. Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies
it. Who is He that condemns it? Here's how you know you will
not be condemned. The promise is sure to all to see. Here's
how you know. Christ died. Christ died. Well, show me again, Lord. Just
show me again the sacrifice, would you? Show me again. Well, all right, the Lord said,
take me, verse 9, an heifer of three years old. Do this unto
me. Do this unto me. You know, the
Lord Jesus Christ, he's the one telling Abram this, just like
he's the one in the garden that told Adam and Eve, that showed
Adam and Eve by taking that lamb and killing it right before their
eyes and skinning that lamb and covering them, isn't it? He's
the one that preached the gospel and told them the promise of
the covenant of a woman's seed coming to crush the serpent's
head. The Lord Jesus Christ is one
here, and he says, you do this as unto me. Like Manoah, remember
that? He said, if you sacrifice, you
sacrifice unto the Lord. And he entered into it. That's
how we knew it was him. This is how we know it's him.
This is the Lord. Do this to me. Take me a heifer. All right, stay with me. Please
don't leave me. All right. Take me a heifer of
three years old, a she goat of three years old, a ram. of three
years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Did not our Lord
say of everything, it testifies of me? When I first looked at
these things, I thought, what could they mean? And I thought,
well, stupid, you know what they mean. They all have something
to do with Christ. Everything does. They are they
which testify of me. Christ is all and in all things. First mention of everything,
every one of these sacrifices is right here. First mention
of a heifer, first mention of a goat, the first mention of
a ram, the first mention of a turtle dove, the first mention of a
pigeon, and from here on out, these things will be mentioned
hundreds of times. But this is the first. Well,
who's the first? And who's the last? These things
will be mentioned all through the scriptures. They will be
offered unto the Lord all through the scriptures as types, as pictures,
as symbols of Christ and Him crucified, until in glory we
will see one thing, a lamb, as it had been mentioned. The consummation,
the epitome of the sacrifice is in the lamb. Now these things
were imperfect, and nothing can represent the Lord Jesus Christ
perfectly, but the lamb does it most clearly. But these five
things, now the first thing it says, the Lord says to bring
him was a heifer of three years old. Now each one of these animals,
the heifer, the goat, and the ram were three years old. That's
prime. Prime. Any animal that's three
years old is in its prime. Heifer. Young, full of life heifer. A prime. Heifer. What's a heifer? Well, once it's been bred, it's
not a heifer, is it? It's a cow. A heifer is an unbred,
a virgin. Take me a heifer. One other place
in Leviticus says a red heifer. The color is significant. A red
heifer. And all through Scriptures, the
heifer is mentioned. And every one of these animals,
is a sacrifice at all, a sin offering, a burnt offering, a
peace offering, for purification. It all has something to do with
the putting away of sin. That's why Jesus Christ came
in every facet of His life. Every part of Christ is for the
putting away of sin. For this cause, I came into the
world, Christ, to put away sin by the sacrifice of sin. Christ
is all those, sin-offering, burn-offering, peace-offering, purification.
Christ is made unto us, justification, sanctification, peace with God. I do want you to turn to Hebrews
9, and here's one last mention of a heifer. All right? Hebrews
9. Go over there. I'm losing you, but that's not
my fault. Hebrews 9. Oh, wind, blow where
you list, but blow on this garden that the spices may flow out.
Hebrews 9, look at verse, and this whole book of Hebrews is
about this blessed covenant ratified by the Lord Jesus Christ by His
blood. A summary of all the Old Testament, of all the sacrifices
made, Hebrews is. But in Hebrews 9, the last mention
of a heifer, verse 13, if the blood of bulls and of goats and
of ashes of a heifer. That heifer was burnt to ashes. If that sprinkling of the unclean
sanctifies to the purified of the flesh, the Lord said, take
a heifer, burn it, sprinkle the ashes, mingle it with water and
purify sinners that come before me. Oh, he said, how much more
shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
himself without spot to God, not man, to God. Purge your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God. Has God shown you
the heifer? Then he mentions in our text
a she-goat. The Lord says bring a she-goat. When is the next mention you
hear of that you can think of a goat in Scripture? That's right, Tammy. A scapegoat
in Leviticus 16. I'll never forget the first time
I heard the message of the scapegoat. Now, the Lord said, you take
a goat. You take a goat. And all the children of Israel
will come and stand there as the priest confesses their sins
and lays his hands on the head of that scapegoat. All the sins
of God's people were laid on Christ, our scapegoat. That priest
would designate a fit man, one who's able, one who's willing,
who's able to take that scapegoat with all the sins of all of God's
people laid on his head and take him out in the wilderness and
separate that goat as far from them as the east is from the
west so that that goat can never be found. That's Jesus Christ. He's the goat. He's the fit man.
Oh, my. Take a goat. A she-goat, once
again, a virgin. A she-goat. A goat, I thought
about that. A goat is about one of the most
hardy animals on earth. Very hardy. And, you know, it's
a very useful animal. Its coats, its skin is very useful. It's a tough, tough, protective
garment. Goat hair. The Scriptures tell
us very clearly that the tabernacle was covered with goat's skin,
goat hair, the curtains of the tabernacle. You know, I have
about six or seven Bibles all over, and they're made of different... This one's cat skin. I have eel. I have seal. I have what have
you. Bonded leather. Boy, that's cheap.
That's something mixed. Not pure leather. But the toughest
hide of all, the one that has lasted longer than any other.
Goat skin. Goat skin. Our Lord's covering
will last. Goat skin. Next thing our Lord
says is, you bring a ram. Bring a ram. Three-year-old, young, in its
prime, ram. What's a ram? It's a male sheep.
A ram. A male sheep. Strong, brave. A ram has horns, doesn't it? There's a reason for those horns.
He protects the foal, the flock. Male sheep. Strong, brave, protector
of the flock. Horns, too. Those horns God designated
a ram have horns so that when they were removed they would
be placed where? On the altar. So that when a
sinner would come in and lay hold of it, he had something
strong to hold on to. A ram's horn. Incidentally, the tabernacle
was also covered in ram skin, dyed red ram skin. Do you recall
Abraham seeing a ram a little later? God said, you take your son,
your only son whom you love, up on a mountain and offer him
for a what? A burn offering unto me. And
Abraham went three days' journey and went up that mountain. And
it says he started to take that knife and plunge it into his
son Isaac's breast. And it says, behold, the Lord
said, Abraham. And he looked behind him, behold,
a ram caught in the thicket by his horn. And Abraham laid hold
of that ram and, it says, slew that ram in the stead of his
son and offered him as a burnt offering. The ram. The old blessed ram. He showed
Abraham the ram. Has he shown you? Do you have
a ram? Do you lay hold of the horns,
the power of the Lord Jesus Christ? There is power in the blood.
soul-cleansing power in the blood. The ram. The burnt offering. Christ is that ram, just as He
is the lamb. And He's our covering, like those
skins that cover the tabernacle. What about the turtledove? Turtledove. Would you turn to the Song of
Solomon? And I'm going to take all the
time I need this morning because I'm enjoying this. In the Song
of Solomon, turtledove. Some of you know this and love
it well. Song of Solomon. Turtle dove is an innocent bird,
a meek and mild, sweet and harmless bird, isn't it? It's also a poor
man's sacrifice. Turtle dove, if somebody in the
Old Testament, they were told to bring a lamb or a calf or
a bullock or a heifer or a goat, but if they were too poor, Even
the poorest of the poor could bring a dove, because they're
sold just like for a fart. Just a fart. That's what poor
men say. A turtle dove. Oh, my, look at the Song of Solomon,
chapter 5, verse 9. They asked the Shulamite maiden
who represents the church, what is your beloved more than another
beloved? Oh, thou fairest among women?
What is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost
so charge us? And she went on to describe her
beloved. And she went down in verse 12
and said, His eyes are as eyes of the pure, pure, innocent,
sweet, meek, lowly, holy, harmless, separate, from sinners. You look
into the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ, you would see nothing
but purity, holiness, separate from sinners. My, my. And then, as he is, Scripture
says, so are we. We are his beloved. And he describes
us in chapter 6, verse 4. He says of his bride, whom he
made beautiful through his comeliness. Thou art beautiful, O my love,
as Tersa, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners."
And verse 5, "...turn away thy eyes from me, for they have overcome
me. Thy hair is as a flock of goats."
That pure goat's hair. And verse 9, "...O my dove, my
undefiled." She's the only one for a mother. She's my choice.
Did not our Lord say to his disciples when he sent them out, be ye
wise as serpents and harmless as devils? Pigeon. Back in our text, the
pigeon. A pigeon. Do you think a pigeon's
a pretty bird? Anybody care anything about pigeons?
Again, it's a poor man's bird. That's about the poorest bird
on earth, isn't it? A pigeon. The poorest of the
poor. An ugly bird, if you will. When
our Lord had a body created for him, a body has to be prepared
for me. Scripture says I have no form,
no comeliness, no beauty that we should desire him. It's common. as common can be, like an old
pigeon. A young pigeon. A poor man's sacrifice. Oh, I'm
glad. Aren't you? This poor man cried
and the Lord showed him, me, his pigeon. The Lord Jesus cried. The poor man's sacrifice. I thought about this. How significant. You know what the pigeon has
been used for over the years? Have you ever heard of a carrier
pigeon? They put a message on that little
old bird. You think it's a dumb bird? No.
It has some instincts given to it by God, unlike any other bird. If it leaves its home, given
a message, and as far as it goes, sent out by the owner, it will
come back home. And our Lord said, The messenger
of the covenant. And he left, went to the Father.
He said, if I go, I'll come again to receive you unto myself. That's not stretching it, is
it? All these animals, though, had to die. Every one of them
had to die to ratify God's covenant with Abraham. It was the bloodshed. It was their blood that was shed
that made this promise sure to all to see. It was their blood. Look at verse 10. When Abram
took the sacrifices, he said he divided them in the midst.
That is, cut them down the middle, down their breasts, cut them
open, cut their heart. They were sawed asunder. Cut down the middle. They died. Their blood was shed, every one
of them. And that's why Christ came. He came to die as our sin
sacrifice. They were parted down the middle,
verse 10, divided in the midst or down their breasts. Oh, how
the dagger of God's wrath and justice was laid in the breast of our Lord
Jesus Christ. So they were divided in the midst
and laid. They weren't separated. No, that's
not what it means. They were killed. because they
were laid each piece one against the other. See that? They were divided, but yet they
were laid one against the other. All these pieces were brought
together, laying together. Now, the church is the body of
Christ, isn't it? The church is the body of Christ.
Well, is the body of Christ divided? Paul said no. There is a church
in heaven. There is a church on earth. Are
we divided? No. No. There is a veil that
separates us. It separates us from view. I don't know if they see us.
I don't think so. I don't think so. For the former
things are not remembered. I don't think so. Nevertheless,
there is just a thin veil that separates us, but we are not
separated. We are all together. We haven't been separated. Just
like Christ said, I'll never leave you no forsaken. Christ
is in heaven and we're on earth, yet we're not apart, are we?
It's just the veil covering our eyes, which veil is removed in
the Lord. He said we're not separate. We're
together. And we're going to sing a song
this morning about this mystic, sweet communion we have with
those whose rest is won. Oh, my. Church is won in heaven. and in earth. And the verse 10
says the birds he divided not. And I looked at that and looked
at that until I finally looked at the reference, Leviticus 1.
You see that? That's why these references are
given. Thank God for them. The work was done for us. I went
over there and looked at Leviticus 1, and it told me, the Lord said
to Moses, that these birds were not to be cut up But rather,
their heads ringed off. Take the head off and wring the
blood out, pour the blood out all over the altar. The head
was removed, but the body was intact. Well, there's your answer, isn't
it? Christ is our head, isn't it? We're His body. Well, the
head's in heaven, isn't it? The body's on earth. But we're
not separated. Because they were all still together.
Nevertheless, the head removed, the body intact, yet they're
all still laying together on the sacrifice. In other words,
all these pieces were brought together and united by sacrifice. It all came together for one
purpose and one end. Sacrifice. Everyone in here, the reason
you're here, if you're one of God's people, is sacrifice. And you know, they're all different,
aren't they? A heifer and a goat, a ram, a turtle dove. Boy, a
heifer is as different from a pigeon as a goat is from a turtle dove. But they're all one in sacrifice. Look at you. They're all different.
There's a Yankee from Connecticut, two of them. Southern bell from
Alabama. But you wouldn't even know each
other if it wasn't for the sacrifice. Brought together by the Lord
Jesus Christ. It had to be burnt. It had to
be burnt. Now, verse 17 says, when the
sun went down, it came to pass. Like everything, it came to pass
because the Lord brought it to pass. The sun went down and it
was dark. in the midst of darkness. This
world was a dark place in it. Our Lord came to it. Light shone
in darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not. Here is
condemnation that men love darkness rather than light. I'm glad He
opened my blind eyes, aren't you? I'm glad He showed me Christ
and Him crucified. Well, when the sun went down,
it was dark. Behold, a smoking furnace. And a burning lamp that
passed between those pieces, right in the middle, came this
smoking furnace and consumed the sacrifices, all of them,
burnt them up. And this shining light, it says
a lamp of fire, that Abram could clearly see what was going on. He saw the sacrifice consumed,
burnt by the fire of God. He saw a great light in all of
this in the midst of the sacrifice. And God has shown us how Christ
went through the fiery furnace of His wrath, that Christ suffered
the wrath of God against our sin, and we enter into the fellowship
of His suffering. We go through a furnace of affliction.
that he puts us in like Chadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, or Hananiah,
Azariah, and Mashael, and there's a fourth man in there with us. As he is, smoking furnace, but
a lamp of fire, we see clearly why, what this is all about,
a great light in the midst of darkness. In thy light, David
said, we see light. In light of Christ and him crucified,
we see clearly who God is, what we are. What puts away sin? The covenant of God. The Bible
is open to us to see clearly that it's all of Christ in light
of the sacrifice. If you don't have that light,
you're in darkness. And the same day, verse 18 in
our text says the Lord made a covenant with Abram. That same day he
made a covenant. Oh, I had to look at this. And the Lord said this. And you
can turn to, in closing, you can turn to Psalm 18. While you're
turning there, let me read this to you. In Matthew 27, the account
of our Lord being crucified. It says this in Matthew 27. It says, from the sixth hour,
There was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And
in the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani. That is to say, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? That's when the Lord suffered
hell, separation from God. And then he cried with a loud
voice and yielded up the ghosts in the veil. was rent. And that holy of holies that
was dark, light shone in so that all could see. And the graves
were opened and the bodies of the saints arose. But look at
Psalm 18. This is the psalm on the cross,
one of several, like Psalm 22 and others. But Psalm 18 says
in verse 5, the sorrows of hell encompassed me about. Snares
of death prevented me. In my distress I called upon
the Lord and cried unto my God. He heard my voice out of his
temple. My cry came before him, even unto his ears. Then the
earth shook and trembled. The foundations of the hills
moved, were shaken because he was wroth. Then there went up
a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured. Coals were kindled by it. He
bowed the heavens also and came down. Darkness under his feet
rode upon a cherub and did fly. Yea, he did fly upon the wings
of the wind. He made darkness his secret place.
His pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds
of the sky. At the brightness that was before
him, his thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave his voice,
hailstones and coals of fire. Verse 17, He delivered me from
my strong enemy, and from them which hated me, for they were
too strong for me. They prevented me of the day
of my calamity, but the Lord was my staff. He brought me forth
also into a large place. He delivered me because He delighted
in me. And the Lord rewarded me according
to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands,
as He recompensed me." That's Jesus Christ. The Lord rewarded
us like He said to Abraham. I am thy reward. The Lord rewarded
us for His righteous descent. And the Lord is pleased with
us because He's pleased with Christ. Amen. And then the last verses
in Genesis says, and then there's these Kenites and the Kesites
and the Kedmonites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Ruppians
and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Gergesites and the Jebusites.
I'm going to give them all to you, Abraham. We'll give them
all to you. You're going to take their land. What could that mean?
What else could it mean? But Christ said, God said, Ask
of me, and I'll give you the heap of your inheritance. Yea,
to this end Christ both died and was buried and rose again,
that he might be Lord of the dead and the living. All souls
are mine, he said. My, my. Okay.