So we are in Exodus chapter 30
and verse 17. and thou shalt put water therein. For Aaron and his sons shall
wash their hands and their feet thereat. When they go into the
tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water that
they die not, or when they come near to the altar to minister,
to burn offering made by fire unto the Lord. So they shall
wash their hands and their feet, that they die not, and it shall
be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout
their generations. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading also. Well, we are going to be thinking
about this piece of furniture, this instrument in the tabernacle
today called a laver or a laver. And it might come out both ways,
just as I hit the word from time to time. But we spoke previously
about the tabernacle or what's also called in scripture the
tent of meeting. And that's a good description
because it says exactly what it was. It was a tent. and it
was movable like a tent, and it was a place where the Lord
met his people. And God instructed Moses to build
this tent of meeting, this tabernacle, for his presence amongst the
children of Israel. And we learned previously that
it was a large, movable building where the Lord met his people
during their wilderness journey. And they were heading, of course,
to the Promised Land. They had come away from Egypt.
They were heading to the Promised Land. And while they travelled,
this was the place where God would meet with them and where
they would focus their attention in their worship. And as we've
seen, God gave Moses the design of the tabernacle. He provided
the dimensions, the shape, the structure, the materials. He
supplied the craftsmen and the craftswomen and he specified
the patterns of worship that were to be followed. And then
we saw how God also directed what furniture or instruments
were to go inside the tabernacle and in its surrounding area. And there were seven pieces of
furniture, each pieced each item symbolic of the Lord Jesus Christ
and intended to highlight and emphasise how men and women and
boys and girls might come to God and worship God by the Saviour
Jesus Christ. So as the people approached God,
employing these seven pieces of furniture, not all the people
did because there was parts of the worship process that were
only to be done by the priests, Aaron, the high priest and his
sons who were priests, so they served in the tabernacle. But
as the priests were the representatives of the people, so as they approached,
these different pieces of furniture typified and signified what true
worship and coming to God meant. They came by the cleansing blood
and the merits of Jesus Christ. And last week we looked at the
bronze altar or what is also called the altar of brass. And there's some question about
what metal was actually used in these constructions. and I
called it bronze last week. Well, today I'm going to revert
to the authorised version word and I'm simply going to call
it brass. So it was a laver or a laver
of brass. And this brass laver was a brass
water container built on a brass plinth. It appears to have been
made from mirrors which would have been polished metal, or
it's called looking glasses, brought by the women from the
Children of Israel out of Egypt. and it was designed for the washing
of the hands and feet of the priests who acted on behalf of
the people in their approach and their worship to God. And
we read today that it stood between the altar and the tabernacle
or the tent of meeting. So there was this tent of meeting
within the parameters or within the curtains which made the edges
of this large triangle. and the altar was near the front
end where the door was. Then there was this brass laver
and then the tent where the priests entered to make an offering to
the Lord. So there was to be a certain
position as well as far as these pieces of furniture within this
enclosure were concerned that their position within the enclosure
was fixed. So it stood between the altar
and the tabernacle and you would have had to pass by it going
from one to the other and the sense of that is that the priests
were to wash their hands and to wash their feet as they moved
between the different tasks that they performed. After making
a sacrifice at the altar, the priest washed himself as he passed
by the laver as an act of purification so that he would be clean and
symbolically fit to enter into the tabernacle itself. So the
priest must wash his hands and his feet. Now we don't actually
know what this laver looked like. It might have been a large bowl
shape or some sort of container out of which water poured. I don't know whether you noticed,
probably not, I had to have it brought to my attention by someone
that I was looking at, that I was reading, but it says in verse
19 that the priests washed at the lather, or the laver, not
in the lather. the piece of the instrument.
And so it may well be that water poured from it and that they
washed from the water that poured. Nevertheless, whatever the lava
looked like and however the water was taken from it for washing,
Cleaning was obviously very important and the Lord told Moses that
Aaron and his sons who served as priests must wash or they
would die. There was no point in them doing
the jobs around the tabernacle if they were not purified. And that's what this picture
means. And here we note the seriousness
and the importance of these rituals. This wasn't just a game. These
men could lose their lives if they didn't do their jobs properly. The Lord was teaching the people
what it meant to come into His presence. The presence of His
holiness. and all who approach God must
do so with the knowledge of His holiness and our sinfulness. We must appreciate something
of the distance between God's holiness and our unworthiness,
so that all who served the Lord must be clean and pure, They
had to have clean hands and they had to have clean feet. The hand
is a picture of our actions and our deeds. And our feet are a
picture of our conduct and our attitude. And the priests, of
course, were mere men, sinful men like all others. And so we
learn that cleansing is necessary. for all people and especially
anyone who is serving before the Lord. By washing, these men
expressed an awareness every day that they must be clean in
heart and thought to serve the Lord. They must be humbled for
their sin before the Lord and they must come with a clear conscience
through the cleansing that the Lord had set before them. And this is true today for all
who minister in the church. Those who serve as preachers
and ministers of the gospel, they must be cleansed men. They must be saved men. They
must be made clean by the blood of Jesus Christ. But two, they
should be men whose reputations are clear of open sin and whose
witness to others and whose example to others is honouring to the
Lord and does no discredit to their labour, their preaching
or their ministry. And if a man has no personal
faith in Christ and he has no confidence in the cleansing blood
of Christ to cleanse him from sin, he has no right and he has
no ability to minister to others about such matters. David tells
us in the Psalms that true worship is with clean hands and a pure
heart. These are gifts which come from
the Lord. But again, the fullness of this
meaning, or the anti-type, or the anti-type of the type, this
instrument speaks to us of Christ. What we see in this symbol is
the perfections of the Lord Jesus in his priestly and his high
priestly role. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who
enters the Father's presence for his people and he does so
sinlessly. He does so perfectly. The Lord Jesus Christ in his
holiness is prefigured by the cleansing and the purification
that these sinful men had to go through and the Lord Jesus
Christ represents sinners before his father as he offers his own
blood to cleanse us from our sin. It's the blood of Christ
that cleanses us from all sin. That water was just a picture. The water in the laver was a
picture. Because no amount of water, no
amount of washing the body can cleanse us from sin, can cleanse
our hearts or purify our souls. The water in the laver was symbolic
of a much deeper, durable and spiritual cleansing that comes
only from Christ and is experienced through faith in the cleansing
power of his blood. The Apostle John says in 1 John
1, verse 17, the blood of Jesus Christ, that's God's son, cleanseth
us from all sin. It's the blood of Jesus Christ,
not the water in the laver, but the blood of Jesus Christ, the
water in the laver, pointed to the cleansing that we would find
in the blood of the Saviour. Do you see what's happening here
in this tabernacle? God ordained the structure and
the instruments and the practices in order to point sinners to
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now when we read the Bible, when
we preach the Gospel, when we come and study the Word of God
together, it's with the idea that we're pointing each other,
we're pointing men and women and boys and girls to the Lord
Jesus Christ, that we might see him more clearly. And that's
what these implements were doing for the Old Testament people
as well. Even so many years ago, long
before the Saviour came into the world, the Old Testament
people of faith were being given pictures in the offering of innocent
animals, the sacrifices at the altar, the cleansing at the labour,
the labour of what Christ would do for his people so that they
could enter freely into God's presence and have fellowship
with him. And just as by faith we believe
in the things that the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us, so the
Old Testament people understood that they looked forward to a
greater sacrifice and a purer cleansing than the blood of animals
or the cleansing power of water. Today we look back on the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ and we trust in the power of his
blood to make us fit for God's presence and glory. The Old Testament
people looked forward upon exactly the same basis. May God the Holy
Spirit show us Christ in this symbolism and help us to see
Jesus by whose blood we are cleansed and by whose death we are redeemed. And may we have faith to trust
and believe that through the blood of the everlasting covenant
we are made perfect in every good work to do his will through
Jesus Christ. Amen.