Now, it's not my intention as
we go through these foundational books of Moses to impress anybody
with whatever talents I may or may not have or bring some new
thing out every week so we can talk about it and debate about
it the way they did at Mars Hill where Paul went to preach, gathered
there to tell or to hear some new thing. These precious books
of Moses are filled with beautiful pictures, patterns, and types
of our Lord Jesus Christ and His work, both accomplished on
Calvary's cross and accomplished in us. And these things are pictured
in these Old Testament books. And it's my intention to show
you how God saves sinners. That's what I want to do when
I go through here. I want to look at these verses
and examine them in the light of the New Testament. And here
are pictures, unmistakable pictures. And if I'm able to get that picture
out, if I'm able to get it across and tell it and make the right
application, you'll have something that will stay in your mind and
stay with you forever. It's so easy, just like that
story Bartimaeus. I got letters last week of people
inspired by listening to that message and listening to that
story and being able to identify and place themselves right there
with Bartimaeus. And now they're looking at making
Sunday school lessons from it and writing books about it and
all this type of thing. That's my intention as I go through
these things is to inspire you and preach to you and show you
those things of Christ. The same gospel that I preach
to you was preached to them. I don't think most people realize
that. Do you? Who read the Old Testament? The
same gospel I preach to you every week was preached to them. The
same gospel that is revealed to you by God's Spirit was revealed
by God's Spirit to them. It says in Hebrews chapter 11,
and I just want to take some examples here from the scriptures
and make this point, the gospel that I preached to you was preached
to Israel, and it was preached to Abel, it was preached to Enoch,
it was preached to Noah, it was preached to Abraham, and it was
preached to Moses. In Hebrews 11 it said, By faith
Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,
by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying
of his gifts. And by it, by that sacrifice,
by that faith that he had, he being dead yet speaketh. This gospel is still being preached. And it's being preached, and
the results of it being preached is declared exactly like it was
in the days of Abel. Enoch, Jude said Enoch, prophesied
concerning false prophets who would deny the coming of
the Messiah. And he had this to say concerning
their lives. He said, Behold, the Lord cometh
with 10,000 of His saints. Who said that? Enoch. Do you
know how far back Enoch is? Way back yonder, just shortly
after Abel. Abel was still alive. Or not
Abel, but his kindred were still alive. And then Noah. Peter said
Noah, the 8th person, or the 8th generation from Adam, was
a preacher of righteousness. Now we all know there's just
one righteousness, and that's the righteousness of Christ.
Noah preached his righteousness. He was a preacher of righteousness.
And Christ is said to have went with Him in His ministry and
preached the just dying for the unjust to the captives of this
world's curse. Read about that in 1 Peter 3,
18-20. And then what about Abraham? Well, our Lord said in John 8,
verse 56, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day. That's
what he rejoiced in. He saw that promised seed. He didn't see that seed as being
all of his sons, but he saw that seed, and that seed is Christ.
And Abraham knew that. And he rejoiced to see his day,
and saw it, and was glad. And then Paul tells us about
our spiritual father Abraham being justified by his faith
in God as a result of his seeing and perceiving God's promise
seed, and that God charged it to him for righteousness, and
used his faith to point us to Christ. And then what about Moses? Well, that's what we're studying
tonight, the book of Moses. We're studying the book of Exodus.
Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, and we're studying
one of those tonight. But our Lord said to the Jews,
for had you believed Moses, you would have believed Me, for he
wrote of Me. Well, now wait a minute. I thought
He was writing about high priests and priests and oil and ointment
tabernacles and gold and silver and colors and curtains. No, He wrote of me. That's what
He said. He wrote of me. Verse 47, now
listen to this, but if you believe not His writings, how shall you
believe My Word? And then turn with me to this
reference over in Hebrews chapter 4. Paul is using unbelieving
Israel as an example and a warning to all who resist and rebel against
the Gospel of God. Hebrews 4, verse 1. Now, if you
want to get the whole story, you can read Hebrews 3. And it
will tell you about those rebels who stood up and opposed Him,
and how their carcasses fell in the wilderness, and how God
swore by Himself that they would not enter into His rest. But
this down here in Hebrews 4 is kind of a summary of that. Now
he said in verse 1, "...let us therefore fear, lest a promise
being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem
to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached..."
Now watch this, "...as well as unto them." What was preached
to them? The gospel. But the word preached
did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them to heard
it. For we which have believed do
enter in to His rest." These books of Moses and all the prophets
and the Psalms are just filled with gospel pictures, gospel
stories, gospel prophecies and declarations. Our Lord, beginning
at Moses, you remember after His resurrection over there in
Luke I think it's Luke 23 or 24. Luke 24, I think it is. But anyway, He appeared to His
disciples, and beginning at Moses, and then the prophets, and in
the Psalms, and He showed them those things concerning Himself
in those writings. Then, it said, opened He their
understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. Both
our Lord and His disciples preached the Gospel from these Old Testament
types and pointed men to Christ and exhorted these young preachers,
which were under their authority, to do the same. He told Timothy. Now, keep in mind, there wasn't
a New Testament yet. He told Timothy, he said, search
the Scriptures. All Scripture, he said, is given
by inspiration of God. Preach the Word. What Word? Genesis
through Malachi. Now, tonight I want to talk to
you for a little while about something absolutely necessary,
both to the salvation of your souls and the service that we
do for our Lord and the worship we give Him when we gather in
His name. And that something is the anointing
of God. Now, the charismatic folks in
our day have a lot to say about the gifts of the Spirit and the
anointing of the Holy Ghost. And they ignorantly try to make
some application of the apostolic gifts which were given to some
of the men in the early church. And they try to make that application
as an evidence of God giving us the Holy Spirit. if we can
speak in tongues. And notice when they do this.
Just notice when they do this. I tell you, if you want to stop
one of these tracts, get him by the arm and say, just hang
on a minute. I know a little bit of something about these
gifts. And let's go down here to the cemetery. If you can raise
any man, any dead man in that cemetery, if you can raise him,
then I believe you have apostolic gifts. If not, you need to just
go away somewhere. These men raised the dead. They
cleanse lepers. They give hearing to the deaf.
These men, all their miracles that they do, all these things
that they do, are things that nobody could ever know whether
they did them or not. They try to make these applications
and they talk a lot about this anointing. That's it. And they love to ask this question.
Now ask it in different ways, but here's what they're asking.
Do you have this anointing? Do you have the anointing of
the Holy Spirit? And they say it very softly and seriously. And you know what it's designed
to do? Make you feel incomplete. That's
what it's all about. They want to make you feel a
little dirty, a little worldly, a little incomplete. And so they
ask you about this anointing. That's their intention, to get
you to feel incomplete, unforgiving, and unwashed. They want you to
seek their anointing. Now, my intention tonight is
to show you that there is an anointing declared in the Scripture.
There is an anointing of the Holy Ghost without which we ought
to feel dirty. We ought to feel incomplete.
And we ought to feel unwashed, and we ought to feel uncomfortable. Do I have this anointing? That's
my question tonight. Do I have this? Well, let's look
back to our text here in Exodus chapter 30. Let me see if I can
show you in this picture what this work is all about. Now, in Exodus 30, 22 through
38, we're told that two things were necessary for the consecration
of the priests who are representative of all God's elect, all who are
called of God to be saints. He talks about holy oil and holy
perfume. Now, we're just going to get
to talk about one tonight, the holy oil. Now, let me tell you
something. Somehow in the minds of twisted,
deceived men, people have gotten the idea that justification and
true saving faith is necessary to the salvation of the soul,
but that inward work of grace which turns men from this world
and from their old lusts and desires is optional. That's just
a lie out of hell is what that is. The sanctifying work of God
in us in regeneration which makes us new creatures in Christ, partakers
of the divine nature, forming Christ in us, I'm just giving
you several bits and pieces of scripture here that describe
this work is just as necessary to the saving of our souls as
the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. There is in the anointing of
the Holy Ghost a righteousness imparted to us which is as needful
as the righteousness of Christ which is imputed to us in the
free justification of sinners. And this holy oil and this fragrant
perfume were used in conjunction with the sacrifice of the substitute
and upon them for whom this sacrifice was given. Now first of all,
let's look at this holy anointing oil and look at it a little closer.
In verses 22 through Verse 33, the Lord commands Moses to make
a holy oil. It's called an oil of holy ointment. It's called a holy oil because
it was to be used to sanctify. This oil was going to be used
to sanctify what? The tabernacle, all of its furnishings,
the labor, that old burnt altar outside, that altar of burnt
offering. Also, both Aaron and all his
sons, all the priesthood had to be anointed with this oil.
And this sanctification was to set them apart for divine use
and to distinguish them from all the rest. And I read that
one verse to you twice. He said, it is holy and it will
be holy to you. You see that? Whatever God anoints
with this anointing is holy. And that's talking about that
imparting, that imparting of righteousness that He puts in
you, that imparting. We're partakers of the divine
nature. And that divine nature that's
in you is holy. And it's to be treated as such.
It's holy. And He said you'll treat it as
holy. It is the sanctifying work of
the Holy Spirit that sets us apart from other men and enables
us to serve the living God. You know, when I first began
to look at these things, and I didn't know a whole lot about
them, I got in the Scriptures and I would run references down.
I would use words and run references down just to see what the Bible
had to say about these things. And I ran on to this thing in
Hebrews 9 where Paul said, they are not all Israel that are of
Israel. They are not all Israel which
are of Israel, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called. What in the
world does Isaac have to do with these men who are called of God? Why is his name used here in
Romans 9? Because he was the son of promise.
And his appearance in this world was by a divine birth. His mother
was barren. She couldn't have children. And
somebody might say, well, you know, nature just fixed itself
and she had a child. To keep that from being a possibility,
God waited until she was 100 years old. She not only was past
the time of childbearing, but she was past the time even thinking
about childbearing. She laughed in the door of the
tent. Do you remember that? God waited until she was too
old to have children, and then He fulfilled His promise in her
and by her. saying, at this time will I come
and Sarah shall have a son. So the first act of this sanctifying
work of the Holy Spirit is in the new birth. In the new birth. There was about to be born in
Israel a priesthood. You see what I am getting at? This is God's church pictured
here. There is about to be a new birth take place. And this new
birth begins with that sanctifying work of God upon them which is
pictured in this holy oil. How in the world are we sanctified
in the new birth? Well, turn with me to 2 Peter
chapter 1. Am I sanctified by receiving
gifts and evidences, speaking in tongues and that type of thing?
Am I sanctified by speaking in some kind of heavenly language
that nobody else can understand? How are we sanctified in this
new birth? I Peter 1, verse 2. I Peter 1, verse 2. He said, Grace and peace be multiplied
unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Now listen. according as His
divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto
life and godliness through the knowledge of Him that hath called
us to glory and virtue." These gifts of the Holy Spirit, whereby
we're actually sanctified in regeneration, all have a vital
connection with a knowledge of Christ. Do you remember me telling
you that not too long ago, preaching on that subject? That the gospel
is the seed of regeneration. Here it is. It is just as plain
as the nose on your face. It is through the knowledge of
Him that hath called us unto glory and virtue, whereby are
given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. that by
these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that's in the world through lust." That man
who sees and hears the leper, the leper's warning. Now just
listen to me for a minute. Here he goes, and the leper has
the rag on his face, and he's crying according to the law,
unclean, unclean, unclean. The man who hears the warning,
And who knows what that's all about gives that man a wide berth,
don't it? It gives him a wide berth. That
man who sees the cliff won't walk off of it. The man who sees
the ditch won't fall in it. And he won't lead his brother
to fall in it either. We escape the corruptions of
this world because we are born of God, given the revelation
of God, and eyes, therefore, to see what we are and who He
is. Listen to this scripture, Titus
chapter 3, verse 3. He said, for we ourselves also
were sometime foolish. Titus chapter 3, verse 3. disobedient, deceived, serving
divers' lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful
and hating one another. But after that, the kindness
and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he
saved us by the washing of regeneration. and the renewing of the Holy
Ghost. And again, we are washed in the
experience of regeneration having been enlightened to see the revelation
of God in Christ and to know firsthand of His love and mercy
and grace to worthless beggars like ourselves. These are the
things that are necessary to serve God. You have to have your
heart is involved in this thing of service. And if you have no
understanding of grace, if you have no experience of God's mercy
and love and grace in your heart, of His forgiveness, of His kindness
and love toward you, if you have no experience of those things,
you can't serve Him with your heart. Your heart has to be moved. We're washed in that experience
of regeneration, being enlightened to see Him. How were we sanctified
in this new birth? By making us new creatures in
Christ, alive from the dead, seeing now who were once blind. They was worried about the Pharisees.
He said, I ain't talking to the Pharisees. I'm talking to you.
These parables ain't for them. They're for you. Unto you, it's been given. Unto
them, it's not been given. We see who were once blind. We're
alive who were once dead. We walk who were once lame. We know who were once ignorant. And then secondly, we are made
meet, he says in the book of Colossians in chapter 1, we are
made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of saints in
light, or enlightened saints. God hath made us meet or able
to be partakers of the inheritance of His saints. How? How did He
do that? By making us willing in the day
of His power. by giving us the spirit of wisdom
and revelation and the knowledge of Him, Ephesians 1, 17. By working
in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure, Philippians
chapter 2. By making us receptive to His
Word, His means, and His messengers. He told that old proud Pharisee
who came to Him at night Oh, Nicodemus, he said, Nicodemus,
except you be born again, you cannot perceive the kingdom of
God. And all those who do believe
and do bow and are given the power to become sons of God are
born, John said, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God. And then thirdly, the Holy
Spirit sanctifies us by taking the things of Christ and showing
them unto us. He teaches us in Christ. We don't
ever leave Christ. That's foolish to get off. One fellow said, now, I get it.
I get it. He got four or five messages
with just Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ. And all of a
sudden, he just stood up one night. He couldn't take anymore.
And he said, I get it. I get it. Now let's move on.
And preachers said, you don't get it or you wouldn't want to
move on. He teaches us in Christ. The Holy Spirit is not going
to speak of Himself. Anybody, when you hear them preach
and all they've got to talk about is the Holy Spirit, the Holy
Spirit, the Holy Spirit, they don't know the Holy Spirit. Our
Lord said when He's come, He's not going to speak of Himself.
But rather, He's going to take of the things of mine and show
them unto you. He's going to be silent in this
matter. And He's going to take those things of Mine and show
them unto you. And then again, He said, He shall
glorify Me. He shall glorify Me. Because
in doing so, the Holy Spirit glorifies Himself. You remember
there in our Lord's high priestly prayer, when He said, Father,
He said, I can't quote it. Let me just
read it to you. John 17. Just take me a second. The hour has come, glorify thy
son, that thy son also may glorify thee. He not only glorified the
Father, but he glorifies the Spirit. We not only know the
Father through His actions, but we also know the Spirit through
His actions. The Spirit sanctifies us by taking
the things of Christ and showing them unto us. This holy anointing
oil was made up. Now, listen to this and I'll
wind this study up. This holy anointing oil was made
up of olive oil, pure myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus,
and cassia. Now, Brother Mahan had a message
on this years ago, and here's one of the statements that he
made in this message. I thought it was an outstanding
statement. He said, the spirit pictured
by the olive oil always brings into focus the excellent virtues
and work of Christ our Redeemer which are pictured in all these
other spices. The Comforter will speak of me
and take of mine and show them unto you. Now let me just touch
on a few of these spices. Myrrh is derived from the sap
of a tree. obtained by making incisions
in it, kind of the way you do with maple syrup. You know, they
go out and they drive that little half funnel looking thing in
the tree and then they hang a bucket on the end of it and that sap
runs out into the bucket. And that's where this myrrh comes
from. And the word myrrh comes from
a word that means bitterness. Bitterness. And all through the
Song of Solomon, the Beloved is spoken of as one saturated
with myrrh. His garments smell of myrrh. He cometh out of the wilderness
perfumed with myrrh. His lips are like lilies dropping
sweet drops of myrrh. And the sweet myrrh speaks of
our Lord's infinite and everlasting and eternal love for His church
poured out at Calvary in a bitter but a fragrant death. That's
what that myrrh stands for. He speaks of the reality of his
sufferings and at the same time the sweetness of what was accomplished
in them. And then secondly, sweet cinnamon. The word cinnamon carries with
it the meaning to build, to build. Now my wife's a cook so she ought
to pick up on this. There's hardly any dessert coming
and going that don't have a little bit of cinnamon in it. Use that
cinnamon to build. whatever it is that you're going
to prepare. So the word carries with it the
idea of building, to build. And the spice is used to make
things. And even so, the Holy Ghost,
He moves to accomplish this and builds the church with Christ's
purchase with His own blood. He builds things. And that's
what this sentiment pictures here in this oil. And this He
does by the gifts of His grace, repentance and faith and love
and mercy and kindness and longsuffering where His workmanship, our Lord
said, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in. And then back in Proverbs
chapter 7, And also in Revelation 18, if you care to read those
two after a while when you get home, the harlot church of Babylon
pretends to have the cinnamon that sinners need to consecrate
them in both places. And these, with their lies, try
to entice the church into her bed with this cinnamon. Come
with me. And then the third ingredient
in this holy oil is sweet calamus. Calamus comes from sweet cane,
which grows commonly in miry soil. You go down toward Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, and you'll see those big cane fields out
there. And the incense comes by crushing
the cane. We used to have cane mills up
in Kentucky, and they'd have an old donkey or something there
going around in a circle, pulling this big mill and crushing that
cane, and make that old cane syrup. We called it Sargum molasses,
what we called it. But it comes from crushing the
cane. Our Lord grew up in this miry
world to be taken and crushed, and in that bruising, He spilled
heaven and earth with the sweet fragrance of His sacrifice. You can see it. And I'm just
mentioning, I'm just barely touching the outside of what I've read
here by 8 or 10 different authors. In these things, when you go
back now and read in Proverbs and read in Psalms, you'll begin
to pick them out. You'll begin to see how they,
and especially in the Psalm of Solomon. And then last of all, Cassia,
C-A-S-S-I-A. And the word cassia means to
bow down or to stoop low. Whatever it was as it grew, it
bowed over. It kind of weeped like a weeping
willow tree, whatever this plant was. And the name means to bow
down or stoop low. And this spice speaks of our
Lord's days of humiliation as He stooped in obedience unto
death, even the death of the cross to save His beloved church. And when the Holy Spirit comes,
In the saving operations of His grace, He reveals to us the Lord
Jesus Christ in all of His glory, the glory of His person and work,
and He causes us to know that in Him we are a sweet-smelling
savor to our God and fit by His grace to serve Him. There is
not a one of us here tonight and there is not going to be
a one here Sunday who is fit to serve Him apart from this
anointing. Apart from that understanding
of Christ, You know, that's what I want folks to tell me. Tell
me how God saved your soul. Tell me that. Tell me that experience
of grace. Give it to me. Tell me how you
learned mercy. Tell me what grace means to you. Tell me what mercy means to you.
And I'll tell you if you're fit to serve him. I'll tell you as long as we're
looking down our nose, we ain't fit to serve him. And I don't
speak much of any kind of an experience of grace that I've
ever had. Everything this oil touched,
it sanctified. Everything upon which it was
sprinkled was holy. This holy oil was Jehovah's claim
upon that which was his. Everything he put this oil on
was his. It was his. Let me leave you
with this. This holy anointing oil was to
be put upon no one but Aaron and his son. All private use
of this oil is forbidden. Exodus 30, verse 32. He said,
upon man's flesh shall it not be poured, neither shall you
make any other like it. Now what does a man do? I'm just
going to ask you point blank. When a man stands up and begins
to talk about being born again when he was seven years old or
nine years old and out under the brush arbor, what's he doing? He's preparing an ointment like
this. What God say? You shall not make
anything like it. Nothing like it. Not after the
composition of it. It's holy. And it shall be holy
unto you. And whosoever compoundeth any
like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger. And
there's the second thing. I tell you what I fear more than
anything is giving a man an unsanctified mercy, an unsanctified peace
through the gospel. I want to preach this gospel
exactly as it's set forth in the Word of God. I don't want
that man to go out of here with a false peace. I don't want to make some kind
of an anointing oil of my own and sprinkle it on him and say,
you're okay. You're okay. Now get on out of
here. You don't do that with strangers. You don't do this
upon a stranger. And if you do, you'll be cut
off from your people. To me, this speaks of the untold
millions today who are compounding their own anointing oil, talking
about being born again, contrary to the way the new birth is described
in the scriptures, and talking about being born again, listening
to lies and listening to false prophets, or just minding their
own business out on the lake one day. And it also speaks of
those who anoint strangers, Those not set apart of God, those not
called of God, those not loved of God. It's not talking about
a pastor baptizing a man or woman or taking them into the church
who lied about their anointing. I'll tell you right now, if a
man comes to me and he's listening to me preach and he's come in
here for a little while and he comes up here and he says, Pastor,
I believe what you're preaching. You think I got some special
vision that I can look through and see his heart? I'm going
to take him at his word. But I tell you this, when I go
back here and baptize him, here's what I'm going to say. Upon the
profession of your faith, I baptize you, my brother. Your faith,
not mine. And not my evaluation of your
faith. Upon your profession of faith,
that's what I'm going to baptize you on. But what this is talking about
here is compromising his gospel and compromising the character
of our God to let men be priests and ministers in God's house.
That's what this is talking about. I can't see your heart and if
you come to me and tell me these things, I'm going to baptize
you. You come to me and you say, I'm satisfied with my baptism. I heard the gospel and all that,
and I want to be a member of this church. Hey, I'll put your
name on the roll. I can't see your heart. I don't
know what your heart says. And if you lied, you haven't
lied to me. You lied to the Holy Ghost. And
we all know what happens when a man does that. The result will be this. They
shall be cut off. from their people. God is holy,
and I tell you, don't play games with God. There's just no reason
for it. That's the most unreasonable
thing in the world for a man to start playing games with God. Just be yourself. Be that old
rotten sinner. Be that old beggar, whatever
it is. Be truthful with God. And this all the work of the
Holy Spirit is holy, He said. It's holy and He said it shall
be holy to you.