Let's begin tonight in Exodus
chapter 29. Exodus chapter 29. Throughout the Mosaic dispensation,
every day in the Jewish nation opened and closed with the sacrifice
of a lamb at the altar of God. A lamb was offered upon God's
altar at the door of the tabernacle every morning at the beginning
of every day. Every day was concluded with
the lamb again being sacrificed and offered to God at the door
of the tabernacle upon his altar. And with that, each day was concluded. The Lord God said, I will meet
you to speak there unto thee. The lamb sacrificed was the place
where God met with men. spoke to men and made himself
known to men. The lamb sacrificed at the altar
of God is the place where men came to God, worshiped him, spoke
to him, and were received by him. There was no other place
given, no other promise of God meeting with men except in that
lamb sacrificed at God's altar as God commanded. And the Lord
God declares that this land is that by which his tabernacle,
his people were all accepted before him and sanctified. The priest, the people, his prophet,
they are sanctified, he said, by my glory. Read it with me. Exodus 29 verse 38. Now this is that which thou shalt
offer upon the altar. Two lambs of the first year,
day by day continually. Verse 39. The one lamb thou shalt
offer in the morning, and the other lamb thou shalt offer at
evening. And with the one lamb, a tenth
deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of a hen of beaten
oil, and the fourth part of a hen of wine for a drink offering
and the other lamb thou shalt offer and even and shalt do thereto
according to the meat offering of the morning and according
to the drink offering thereof for a sweet savor an offering
made by fire unto the Lord. This shall be a continual burnt
offering throughout your generations at the door of the tabernacle
of the congregation before the Lord where I will meet you to
speak there unto thee, verse 43. And there will I meet with
the children of Israel and the tabernacle shall be sanctified
by my glory. And I will sanctify the tabernacle
of the congregation and the altar. I will sanctify also both Aaron
and his sons to minister to me in the priest office. And I will
dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God. They shall
know that I am the Lord their God that brought them forth out
of the land of Egypt That I may dwell among them that I may be
the Lord their God. I don't miss this in verse 43
the Lord God declares in this typical revelation given by his
law that sanctification was by the sacrifice of a lamb and And
we're told in verse 43 that it is by God's glory. That's what
he's referring to. He says you're sanctified by
this lamb and he's telling us that his lamb is his glory. Does he mean for us to understand
that the whole revelation of God, the whole of his glory is
wrapped up in the sanctification of his people? and that the sanctification
of his people is all together in a lamb, that's exactly what
it means for us to understand. The whole of God's glory as it
is revealed and known to men is wrapped up in the everlasting
salvation of his people. And the salvation of his people,
the whole of God's glory as it is revealed and known to men
is wrapped up in a lamb. Turn with me, if you will, now
to our text, Exodus chapter 13. And I want you to just hold your
Bibles open here, and I want to talk to you, if God will enable
me, on this subject, a lamb for an ass. A lamb for an ass. Look at verse 2 of Exodus 13.
The Lord commands, sanctify unto me All the firstborn, whatsoever
openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of
beast, it is mine. Sanctify to me all the firstborn,
both of man and of beast, it is mine. But in the book of Leviticus,
we won't turn there and look at it. You can look at verse
11 of Leviticus 27 later. God gives another command. He
says the unclean cannot be sacrificed to him. But what about the unclean
beast, the firstborn of the unclean beast? What about those beasts,
those beasts that don't chew the cud or split the hoof? What
about those beasts? How are they going to be sanctified
unto the Lord if God says you cannot give me the unclean beast,
you cannot sacrifice to me the unclean beast? How then is it
possible to sanctify the unclean as that which belongs to God
and yet the law be maintained that says you cannot bring the
unclean to me. How can the firstborn of all
be sanctified to the Lord and yet no unclean thing be offered
to him? The Lord God himself answers
that question. In our text this evening he tells
us that the ass was to be redeemed and made clean and accepted by
God through the sacrifice of a lamb in its stead. Verse 11,
Exodus 13. And it shall be when the Lord
shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites as he swear
unto thee and to thy fathers and shall give it thee. that
thou shalt set apart unto the Lord all that openeth the matrix,
and every firstling that cometh of a beast which thou hast, the
males shall be the lords, and every firstling of an ass thou
shalt redeem with a lamb. And if thou wilt not redeem it,
then thou shalt break his neck. and all the firstborn of man
among thy children shalt thou redeem. The Lord Jesus came to fulfill
God's law. The types and the pictures and
the ceremonies all speaking of him. And this is what the Lord
Jesus declares in Hebrews chapter 10. Lo, I come to do thy will,
O my God. and the Holy Spirit interprets
those words like this he taketh away the first that he may establish
the second by the which will we are sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all for by one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified I want to show you four things
clearly set before us in this beautiful picture given in the
law of God concerning the sacrifice of a lamb for an unclean ass
by which the ass is made clean and acceptable to God. Here's
the first thing. The ass because it is an unclean
animal could not be accepted by God Almighty. The ass was
unclean. It could not be accepted. The
law prohibited any man from offering the sacrifice of the unclean
ass at God's altar. And so it is with fallen man. Unclean man cannot be accepted
by God. God will never accept the unclean. God will never accept the impure. God will never accept that which
is not perfect. It must be perfect to be accepted. That means, James Jordan, you
and I are shut out altogether by ourselves. Anything that is
unclean or maketh a lie or worketh abomination cannot enter into
God's presence. The plainest statements in Scripture
make that clear. According to the law of God,
no animal was considered clean except the animal which both
divided the hoof and chewed the cud. And by that standard, every
man is unclean. But the Lord God sacrificed a
lamb, even his own dear son, for chosen sinners and made the
unclean altogether clean. I've got to say this first. I've
got more to say and I'll come back to this, but I've got to
say this first. This is the wonder of grace. Being redeemed by the
precious blood of Christ, we who are by nature altogether
unclean and unfit, unacceptable to God, We who can never approach
Him and can never be approached by Him except in wrath. We who
can never offer Him anything or do anything that He will accept
through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ the
Lord, He has made us every whit clean. Clean before God. made us now
fit to sit down above all principality and power in heavenly places
with Christ. Indeed, He has seated us with
Him in the heavens, so that we who by nature are nothing but
unclean before Him, by grace are altogether clean, without
spot, without blemish before God. Now I had to tell you that
first, but my point for now is this. Like the unclean ass, fallen
man is incapable of acceptance with God. Because as the prophet
said, we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses
are but filthy rags. We are unclean at heart, unclean
in thought, unclean in all our nature, unclean in every deed
of our hands. Out of the filthy, polluted fountain
of humanity, nothing clean can come. Who can bring a clean thing
out of an unclean? Not one. It's not possible. What does that mean? That means
that it's impossible for a human being, man, woman, or child,
it is impossible for a son of Adam or a daughter of Adam, no
matter their age, it is impossible for a human being to do anything
acceptable to God Almighty. So much for works religion. So
much for works religion. What are you going to do? that
will give you approval with God. What are you going to do that
will put away your sin? What will a man do that God will
accept? Say, well, I don't know. I know
we're not perfect, but surely that doesn't mean we can't do
anything good. That's what God said. There is none that doeth
good, no, not one. Now, we measure ourselves with
ourselves and we Don't have any trouble finding somebody we can
look at and say, well, at least I'm not like him. Because we
don't all behave the same way. The problem is we begin the measurement
in the sewer line. And we're all unclean. We are
all unclean. And everything we do is unclean. We cannot obey God's law. We
cannot do good. We cannot justify ourselves.
We cannot make ourselves clean. Now, stay with me as we are in
the text here. A man might take his filthy donkey
and make him smell better by washing him up, but it's still
an unclean donkey. He might separate his filthy
thing from other filthy things like it and put it in the flock
with his sheep and cause it to graze with his sheep all the
time, but it's still an unclean ass. He might even, by torturous
devices, take some measure and cleave the filthy thing's hooves
so that it looks like an animal whose hoof is divided and now
he's clean. But he's still just an unclean
beast. That's all. And so it is with
man. By all the outward things that
they do are The outward things that are done to them by religion,
by morality, by education, all of them do nothing to change
the unclean nature of the beast called humanity. Man by nature,
strive as he may, can never be made clean before God, accepted
with the thrice holy God, except by the precious blood of Jesus
Christ, God's lamb. Turn to the book of Job. We won't
look at others, just the book of Job. Job chapter 9. The psalmist said, enter not
into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man
living be justified. Job says in verse 20 of chapter
9, if I justify myself, his fake friends were accusing him of
attempting to justify himself. And before men, that's not hard. And it was only right. Job had
been falsely accused and he justified himself before his accusers.
He didn't do so thinking that he was justifying himself before
the ungodly and his enemies. He was justifying himself before
his friends who misunderstood things. But when he speaks of
justifying himself before God, he said, if I justify myself,
my own mouth shall condemn me. If I say I am perfect, it shall
also prove me perverse. Verse 30, if I wash my hand myself
with snow water and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou
plunge me in the ditch and my own clothes shall abhor me. By the works of the law, there
shall no flesh be justified. If righteousness comes by the
law, then Christ died for nothing. If there's something that men
can do, if there is the possibility of something men can do to make
themselves righteous before God, there was absolutely no reason
for the Son of God to die. All right, here's the second
thing. The Lord God would not receive the unclean ass. He refused
to accept it because it was unclean. Yet, look at verse 2, in the
very last line of verse 2, God would not relinquish his claim
upon that ass. He said, it is mine. It is mine. He said, the firstborn of every
man The firstborn of every beast is mine. It's mine. Sanctified
the firstborn, it's mine. The unclean ass, sanctified,
it's mine. The unclean son, sanctified,
he's mine. Every firstling that comes forth
from the womb, God says is mine. And he would not relinquish his
claim upon it. He claimed the firstborn of man and beast, the
clean and the unclean. And yet, The unclean ass, he
would not accept. He would not receive. And nothing
has changed. God still claims you and me. He still claims possession of
every human being, the clean and the unclean. He still claims
possession of everything on this earth and still makes the same
demands of men as he did of old. He said to Abraham, walk thou
before me and be thou perfect in all your life. That was his
command. You can read it in Genesis chapter
17, verse 1. And his command hasn't changed. Turn to 1 Peter.
1 Peter chapter 1. Hold your hands here. The command
of the law reads like this sanctify yourselves therefore and be ye
holy for I am the Lord your God first Peter chapter 1 verse 15
as he which hath called you is holy so be ye holy in all manner
of conversation in all the ways of your life because it is written
be ye holy for I am holy." God won't receive the unclean sinner.
It'll never happen. And yet God commands the sinner
to be sanctified, to be holy before Him. Now there are many
who tell us that God doesn't require more of man than man
has the ability to perform. That God will never command a
man to do something he is not able to do. We're told that the
gospel of God's grace lowers the standard. The gospel doesn't
demand the same things the law demands. But those things simply
are not true. God has not and will not lower
his standard. That very same gospel that says
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord
precedes that statement by declaring the wages of sin is death. God says, be holy, for I am holy. He says, walk before me and be
perfect, because I, the Lord, your God, am perfect. Your inability
to pay your debt before God does not remove your debt. Our inability
to obey God's law does not relieve us of the responsibility of obeying
God's law. Can you imagine? Sometimes the
fellows would just stop and think about things a little bit. Can
you imagine some some thief standing before a judge in the most liberal
court in this land, and that's saying something. Can you imagine
some thief standing before a judge and saying, Your Honor, sir,
I have such an inward, overwhelming, irresistible tendency to dishonesty
that I just cannot prevent myself from stealing every time I get
a chance. Therefore, the law doesn't apply to me. Well, the fellow, we won't put
him in jail, we'll put him in a nuthouse. What foolishness! And yet, folks, you have us to
believe that God's law is altered because man hasn't the ability
to obey His law. Nothing of the kind. I hasten
to add this. The sinner's inability to trust
Christ as his Savior and Lord doesn't relieve him of the responsibility. Now, I want you to turn again
and see this. Proverbs chapter 1. I want you to see it for yourself. People tell me all the time,
well, they don't tell me, they tell others about me. That's
not consistent. That's not consistent. You can't
say a man has no ability to believe and then say he's responsible
to believe. You can't say a man has no ability to come to Christ
and then say that God's going to hold him accountable for not
coming to Christ. I wouldn't think about saying such a thing,
but God says so everywhere. Now, this is the revelation of
scripture. If you go to heaven, if you're
saved, it will be God's doing alone. And if you go to hell,
it'll be your doing alone. Your responsibility and no one
else's. Proverbs 1 verse 23. Turn you at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my Spirit
unto you. Did God say that? Read it again,
will you? Turn you at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my Spirit
unto you. Does that mean if right now You
turn to Him, He will pour out His Spirit on you. That's just
what it means. That's just what it means. Oh,
but Brother Don, you know that if a man turns, it's because
God's poured out His Spirit on him. I know that. I know that. I know that. And I know God said
if you turn to Him right now, He'll pour out His Spirit on
you. That's what He said. Well, I can't reconcile those
two things. I might not be able to, but I can believe them. I
can sure enough believe them. This is what it said. Now watch
what it says. I will make known my words to
you. Verse 24, because I have called
and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no man regarded. Have you ever been embarrassed
by Stretching out your hand for somebody and they refuse to take
it. Embarrassment quickly turns to
anger, doesn't it? Stretch out your hand and
they refuse to take it. If I wouldn't get arrested, I'd knock your
head off. That's exactly right. Well, God's going to knock your
head off. Rita, you've said it not on my counsel and would none
of my reproof. I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh.
When your fear cometh as a desolation and your destruction cometh as
a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you, then
shall they call upon me, but I will not answer. They shall
seek me early, but they shall not find me. How come? Look at verse 24 again. Because
I called and you refused. How come? Look down here at verse
29. For that they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of
the Lord. They would none of my counsel.
They despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat the
fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices.
When sinners go to hell, they shall eat the fruit they've chosen
and be filled with the devices they have chosen. That's what
it says. He that being often reproved,
hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without
remedy. You see, man's inability is not
his misfortune. It is his sin. And the first
thing the Spirit of God does when he comes to sinners in conviction,
He convinces us of sin because we believe not on Christ. That's the very first thing,
of sin, our sin, our rebellion, our inward enmity in our hearts
against God. And it's revealed in not believing
on the Son of God. The ass could not be redeemed
or could not be accepted. It could not be accepted, but
it still belonged to God. And God demanded either redeem
it or break its neck. The Lord says, for every idle
word that men speak, they should be called into judgment. Man
is responsible before God in his uncleanness, though he has
no ability to change his uncleanness. Here's the third thing. God met the difficulty. He said in verse 13, in the very
opening line, every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with
the Lamb. What a beautiful picture of God's
free grace. The Lord Jesus Christ has taken
such things as we are and redeemed us and made us clean before God. Often in the scriptures, man
is compared to an ass. Job said, vain man would be wise
though man be born like a wild ass's coat. And such we are by
nature. You and I by nature are senseless,
stubborn, unclean, obnoxious, utterly unacceptable to God,
and incapable of making ourselves acceptable to God. But the Lord
Jesus takes such unfit things and makes them clean. God commendeth
his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. This is how God opens up and
shows his love. Christ died for us and this is
God's glory. Christ has redeemed the people,
redeemed us to himself by the sacrifice of himself. How? He
who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. Now this is the gospel I preach
to you and I call on you to declare to this generation, to everyone
you hear. Christ Jesus died that we might
never die. He was cursed that we might be
forever blessed. He was rejected that we might
forever be accepted. He died that we might live forever. He was made sin that we might
be made righteousness in him. He took our place. that we might
forever stand in his place. He became what we were to make
us what he is. And that's the only way there
is for a sinner to be accepted with God. Salvation is by the
substitutionary work of Jesus Christ. Mr. Spurgeon once said,
the heart of the gospel is redemption and the essence of redemption
is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. If you would understand
this book, you must begin here and end here. Sanctification,
the salvation of sinners, is by the sacrifice of a lamb. And
that's what this book is all about. And in the sacrifice of
that lamb, the glory of God is revealed. Because in the sacrifice
of that lamb, the unclean are made clean. Oh, God help you to see it, to see
Him and to believe Him. Christ took our place on the
curse tree. Maybe you think, well, Brother
Don, how can I know He died for me? Do you believe on the Son
of God? Do you trust Him? Do you believe
Him? Will you now believe Him? Will you now cast your soul on
His blood and righteousness? If you do, if you believe the
Son of God, the Lamb of God was slain for you, And your faith
in Him is the evidence of God the Holy Spirit written on your
heart that He died in your stead and has made you clean before
God. And if He died in your stead,
you shall never die. If Jesus Christ died in my room
and in my stead, if he bore all the hell of God's wrath for me,
if he bore all the judgment for me, if he bore all the condemnation
of me until justice is satisfied and God says fury is not in me,
then it is not possible for me to die under God's wrath. Jesus
Christ is the Lamb of God who satisfied justice for his own. Bless God for that good news. Every firstling of an ass thou
shalt redeem with the Lamb. But there's a fourth thing in
the text, and I've got to tell you that too. The law declares, and if thou
wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck. No alternative. The firstling of the ass must
either be redeemed by a lamb or it must be slain at God's
altar. Why at God's altar? Right here. Right here where God accepts
the sacrifice. right here where God Almighty
reveals his glory, right here at the altar, at the door of
the tabernacle, right here in Jesus Christ, God's son. The ass must either be made clean
or it must be slain. How come? Because God Almighty
will never give up his claims. He'll never give them up. Either
you must have Christ as your substitute or justice demands
that you must be forever slaughtered in your uncleanness. Forever
clean or forever unclean. Either Christ or hell. There's no alternative. Believe
on the Son of God and live forever. or refuse to believe and forever
be damned. And if you refuse to believe, if you will not trust God's Son,
and your neck is broken forever under the wrath of God in hell,
you will have obtained exactly what you've chosen by your willful
unbelief. you will eat the fruit of your
own way and you will be filled with your own devices and everybody will say amen that's
right how they deserve the deepest
hell who hate the Son of God I've had more than one person
say to me on more than one occasion, you can't tell me my daddy, my
mama, my brother, my sister, my son, my daughter deserves
to go to hell. I won't worship a God who would
send my child to hell. I won't worship a God who'd send
my mama to hell. How they deserve the deepest
hell who hate the son of God. what chains of vengeance they
must feel who trample on his blood. Oh, God help you now to
believe his son. God help you to believe his son. You who are unclean, who hate his name and your uncleanness,
in all your behavior is but the revelation of the hatred of your
heart for him and the uncleanness of your heart. God help you to
believe who deserve his wrath. Christ the clean was made unclean
that he might make the unclean clean forever. Blessed be His
name forever. Amen.