You will open your Bibles with
me to the book of Leviticus, chapter 6. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. I'd like to read verses 8 through
13. Verse 13 will be my text. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Command Aaron and his son, saying, This is the law
of the burnt offering. It is the burnt offering because
of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning. And
the fire of the altar shall be burning in it. And the priest
shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall
he put on his flesh, and take up the ashes which the fire hath
consumed with the burnt offering on the altar. And he shall put
them beside the altar. And he shall put off his garments
and put on other garments and carry forth the ashes without
the camp unto a clean place. And the fire upon the altar shall
be burning in it. It shall not be put out. And
the priest shall burn wood on it every morning. and lay the
burnt offering in order upon it, and he shall burn thereon
the fat of the peace offerings. Here's my text. The fire shall
ever be burning upon the altar. It shall never go out. The fire upon the altar of God,
the brazen altar, it shall be burning, it shall never go out. We're going to use this passage
this morning to consider four things that this fire may symbolize
to us, four things that, as that fire was to never go out, four
things that will never go out. But before we look at these four
things, I want to point out two truths about this fire. this
fire which was to never go out. God commanded Moses to speak
to Aaron the priest, and command the priest that the fire on that
altar was to never, ever go out. Perpetually, it was to be burning. The first thing I want to point
out about this fire on this altar, if you look to chapter 9, of
Leviticus in verse 24, it was fire which came out from before
the Lord and consumed the offering upon the brazen
altar, verse 24. And there came a fire out from
before the Lord and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering
and the fat, which when all the people saw, They shouted and
fell on their faces. The tabernacle that God had commanded
Moses to rear up gave him all the specifications of that tabernacle
had been set up, and now they've come to consecrate Aaron and
his sons in the priesthood, and God sent fire. The scripture
tells us it came out from before the Lord. We're not sure. Exactly
what that means. It could have been fire like
came down on Mount Carmel when Elijah confronted those false
prophets of Baal. And he prayed a very simple prayer
there. Remember, and fire came from
heaven, consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and licked
up the water that was around the altar. But most likely it
came out of the Holy of Holies. That place in the tabernacle,
that compartment where no one entered except the high priest
and he only once a year and never without blood. Between the cherubim,
God took up his residence there. That's where God manifested his
presence, the Shekinah glory. And it could be that this fire
came out from there. But it did so in such a way that
all the people were so awed, so overwhelmed with this fire. They shouted and fell on their
faces. So the first thing about this
fire, which was to never go out, God commanded these priests every
morning there to put wood on this altar or on this fire so
that it will never go out throughout all your generations. This fire,
keep it burning. It was special fire. It came
out from the Lord. The second thing about this fire,
it was a sanctified fire. If you notice in chapter 10,
just after that last verse of verse 9, and Nadab and Abihu,
the sons of Aaron, this was his oldest two sons of the high priest
Aaron, they took either of them his censer and put fire therein. and put incense thereon. Now
notice this, and offered strange fire before the Lord. Where did
they get that fire? We don't know, but we do know
this, they did not get it from that fire on the altar. It was
strange fire. It came from somewhere else.
That fire upon the altar was sanctified fire. It was set apart
by God. And it was to never go out, and
these two men, they offered strange fire before the Lord, and God
killed them. Immediately, the scripture says,
they offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded
them not, and there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured
them, and they died before the Lord. It's a serious matter,
isn't it? You know, everything about God
is serious. Everything about your relationship
to God, my relationship to God, is serious. We see these services or these
churches advertising contemporary and traditional worship. I'm afraid that most of them
by contemporary mean a type of worship where the reverence of
God, the awe of God, is not to be observed. There's more time
of back-slapping hula rather than bowing down
before the Holy Lord God to hear from heaven and to worship Him. Well, there's four things I want
this fire upon the altar, which was to never go out, to symbolize
this morning. There are other things I know,
but first, it may be typical of the written word of God. That
is, that book that you have in your hands this morning, that
book that I have open before me on this desk today, that fire
which was to never go out, it may be a type of the written
word of God, which shall never go out, which shall never go
out. The Lord Jesus Christ declared
heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. People change, traditions change,
society changes, what is accepted changes, God's word never changes. It's settled forever in heaven. This fire is to never go out
and will never go out. And the Lord himself compared
his word to fire. In Jeremiah chapter 23 and verse
29, he said, is not my word like as a fire? Isn't my word, this
written word, isn't it like a fire? Fire, when we think of God's
written word, and this fire which would never go out, being typical
of the written word, let's remember this about fire. Fire gives off
light and it gives off heat. Light and heat. The psalmist
said this, The entrance of thy words giveth light. It giveth understanding to the
simple. The word of God gives light,
gives understanding to the simple. You know, in 2 Corinthians chapter
4, the apostle Paul tells us that the same God who in the
beginning, Genesis chapter 1, God created the heavens and the
earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered
the face of the deep. And God said, let there be light. There was no light until God
said, let there be light. And just as soon as God said,
light be, light was. The Apostle Paul tells us that
the same God who shined in the beginning, in that first week
of creation, He must shine in our hearts. If a person is to be saved, if
a person is to be forgiven their sins, and know God as their God
and Father, then God, He must command the light, the written
word of God He uses to shine into our hearts. Paul said, to
see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But listen,
the light must shine in our hearts, first of all, to teach us why
we need a Savior. Why is it? Preacher, you're up
here talking about a Savior. Every Sunday, you're here speaking
about a Savior. Why do we need a Savior? Well,
apart from the written word of God, Men will never know. God uses his word to teach us,
to show us. You're not going to learn it
from society. You're not going to learn it
from philosophy. You're just not going to learn
it. These things of the world will tell us we're all okay.
We've made a few mistakes. Sure, we have. Nobody's perfect. We need the word of God to shine
in our hearts to tell us what the problem really is. It's not our environment. We can't put this off on our
parents or our grandparents or... No, no. The problem is we all
come into this world depraved. People don't like that word depravity,
do they? But it's a good word. It teaches
us that when Adam sinned, when man fell in the garden, we became
totally depraved. That doesn't mean every man is
as bad as he could be. There's some men that are Hitlers. Not everyone is. Some men are
Stalins. Some rulers over the years have
killed their millions of people. Not everyone could do that. But
we are totally depraved. That is, we fail. And our minds
were darkened. And our hearts, our affections
were turned in on ourselves. We love self rather than God. And our will. is in bondage. It's in bondage to our affections
and to our understanding. The problem, we need the light
of the Word of God to shine into our hearts, to show us why we
need a Savior. Why we owe the debt, as they
sang that hymn just a few minutes ago, why is it, how is it that
we owe the debt that we couldn't pay? We learn the reason, don't
we, from the Word of God. Because God is absolutely righteous. We think about the holiness of
God, and I learned this years ago and it stuck with me. But all these attributes of God,
all these characteristics of God, they're all precious. They're all beautiful. His love,
His judgment, His wrath, His mercy, His grace, His wisdom. All these attributes of God.
Think of them as a wagon wheel, if you will. All these spokes
going out from the center, and there in the center, the hub.
What is it? The holiness of God. And every
one of these attributes going out. God's love is holy love. His peace is holy peace. Every one of these attributes
is holy. God is holy. And man, by nature,
we are unholy. And to come into His presence,
we must be as holy as He is. The light must shine into our
hearts, and it shines into our hearts through the word of God,
through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then it shines in our heart
to give, as Paul said there, the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ, the face, the person of Jesus
Christ, the glory of God. Now that God, through him, through
Christ, how God, his holiness is intact. How can he forgive
a sinner? How can he receive a sinner?
Because Christ took the sins of his people and paid for them,
satisfied God for them. And not only that, but he brought
in an everlasting righteousness. We see him, we see Christ as
the one mediator between God and man. When the word, the light
shines into our heart, we see how Christ, Now he's a perfect
savior, the perfect mediator because he is both God and man. He can lay his hand upon God
and he can lay his hand upon me. He's a God-man, the one mediator,
only one between holy God and you and I. We see him fulfilling
all the Old Testament types. He's the ark. Noah and his family,
they were saved in the ark. What does that picture? Christ!
There's therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ.
Just as Noah was saved inside the ark, so all who are in Christ,
there's no condemnation. He's the Passover lamb. We see
that from the Word of God, don't we? How God passed over Egypt
that night, and in every house where there was no blood applied,
what happened? Death. The firstborn in that
house died. But where there was blood, and
it was a particular kind of blood, wasn't it? It was the blood of
the Lamb, that perfect Lamb that was put upon the doorpost. And
in the New Testament we read Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed
for us. We see him fulfilling that type
of that serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness when those
snakes, poisonous snakes, bit the people and there was no remedy.
Death was sure. No, no. God gave a remedy. Make
a serpent, a brazen serpent, Moses, put it on a pole and then
send the message through the camp. Everyone who's bitten,
look, look to that serpent and be healed. Even our Lord used that, didn't
he? We saw that in the Bible study class earlier this morning.
As Moses lifted up the serpent and the wilderness, even so must
the son of man be lifted up. That whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have eternal life. Fire gives light, but fire
also gives heat. The written word of God, when
anointed of the Holy Spirit, it warms our heart. It inflames
our love. When we hear the word, when we
read the word of God, hear the word of God. When we get cold,
and spiritually I'm speaking about cold and indifferent to
the things of God, what do we need? We need the word of God. We need to get in the word, to
read the word, to hear the word. God, his word gives fire, puts
off warmth into our souls. We see this especially those
two disciples on the day of our Lord's resurrection. You're familiar
with this. Those two disciples were walking
along the road going to Emmaus and they were sad and they were
dejected. Their spirits were downcast and
the Lord came along and walked with them, but their eyes were
holding. They didn't recognize it was
the Lord who was walking with them. And the Lord told them
their problem was, you have failed to believe the prophets. What you're talking about, this
one who was crucified in Jerusalem, this one that you had thought
would be the Messiah, would be the Christ, you have failed to
believe the prophets because the prophets spoke of him as
a suffering savior. And then the scripture says,
the Lord began at Moses and expounded unto those two men the scriptures,
all in the scriptures, the things concerning himself. And then,
you know, at the end there, when he broke bread with them and
they recognized who he was, and then he disappeared out of their
sights. One said to the other, did not
our heart burn within us? Did not our heart burn within
us? When did your heart burn within
you? While he talked with us by the
way, and while he opened unto us the scriptures. Thy word is
like a light, and it is like fire. I'll tell you something
else about this word here. And using that fire, which was
to never go out on that altar, men have tried their best to
snuff out God's written word. Over the years, haters of God
have done their best. I remember, I can't recall the
man's name, but he was a famous atheist in, I think, probably
the 1700s now. But he predicted, he said, in
a hundred years you won't find a Bible. It'll all be gone. It'll be a thing of the past.
And yet in a hundred years when he was lying cold in his grave,
the very place where he had said those words they were using to
store Bibles in. God's Word. Oh no. It's like a fire, it's never
going to go out. Men may try. And I think Satan
maybe learned a lesson then, and since that time, he's tried
to destroy this fire by all these so-called new Bibles that have
come out. New translations, which are not
translations for the most part. Paraphrases. Thinking that somehow
we can make the Bible, the word of God understandable to lost
men and women by the language No, the Spirit of God must work
in a person's heart to give a person light. You must be born again,
Nicodemus, or you cannot see the kingdom. You cannot perceive
the kingdom of God, the gospel. Well, here's a second thing that
I want to speak to us about, that fire that was to never go
out. It may be typical of Christ's
love for his own. That'll never go out. In John
13 in verse one, we read these words. Jesus, having loved his
own which were in the world, loved them unto the end. Having loved his own which were
in the world, loved them unto the end. What do those words
his own mean? Is not all mankind His? Yes, He's the creator of all
men, no doubt about that. But these words, His own, having
loved His own, they refer to those whom the Father chose from
before the foundation of the world and gave to Christ to be
members of His mystical body. His own, having loved His own,
which were in the world. And Christ's love for his people
is pictured by this fire that shall never, ever go out. Nothing shall separate one of
his own from his love. Nothing. This fire will never
go out. This is the fire in the Song
of Solomon. We read about this love that
Many waters cannot quench, neither can floods drown it. There's
a fire, just picture in your mind, I like to think of those
ships when there's a fire on a ship and they bring one of
these fire ships, I guess you call them along, and they're
just sucking water up out of the ocean, you know, out of the
bay or wherever it is, and they've got plenty of supply of water
and they're putting it on the fire, putting it on the fire.
The love that God has, the love that Christ has for his people,
many waters cannot quench. It'll never be put out. Never. He loves his people with
an everlasting love and in spite of our sins, in spite of our
many failures, and all of us have many, don't we? Our many
failures. Sometimes I think, oh, I'd love
to just start all over, but I'd do the same thing again. There
are many failures, mistakes, sins, disappointments, but it doesn't quench his love. He loves his own unto the end
and there is no end. From everlasting to everlasting,
nothing can separate us from his love. It's like that perpetual
fire, it shall never go out. I remember years ago we visited
Arlington Cemetery and I believe this is so, there was a a fire
burning there at the gravesite of President John Kennedy's. And it is to never go out. It's a perpetual fire. But it
will go out one day. It really will. God burns this
old earth and the heavens and the world. It'll go out. But I'm telling you, the love
that Christ has for his people, it will never go out. And the third thing, I want to
use this fire that is perpetual to be a type of the love that
the child of God has for Christ. It will never go out. It will
never go out. It will, no doubt, our love for
Christ, it will at times burn brighter and at times it will
burn dimmer, sad to say, but it's so. But it will never, ever
go out. It just won't. We sang that hymn
this morning before class. I'm thine, O Lord. I've heard
thy voice and it told of thy love to me. But I long to rise
in the arms of faith and be closer drawn to thee. And then on one
of the verses, of course, Mrs. Crosby, Miss Crosby said, There
are depths of love that I cannot know till I cross the narrow
way. That's true. That's certainly
true, isn't it? God's love. Think of it like
the Pacific Ocean. There's depths to it. There's
width. We'll never know in this world. But the love that we have for
Christ, it'll never go out. The Apostle Paul said, being
confident of this very thing, and I'm confident of this, that
he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until
the day of Jesus Christ. We start a lot of projects and
we quit and we fail and we give up. God never does. When he starts
out to save a sinner, He's not going to stop. He's not going
to quit until that sinner is at home with him in heaven. That
love's not going to go out. You might ask, but how's that
possible? Do you remember in Pilgrim's Progress? And I encourage
you, as always, read that book, read it again. You say, I've
read it once, read it again, read it again. But in the interpreter's
house, Christian went in there, and in one of the places that
he was conducted, a room, he saw a fire in the wall, a fire
in the wall. And there was a man standing
there just pitching water, buckets full of water, buckets full of
water, and the fire never went out. What's the deal here? So the
man takes him around to the other side of the wall. What does he
see? He sees there's a man there pouring
buckets of oil on the fire. That fire's never going to go
out. The love that we have for Christ. One of the many new covenant
promises is, God said, I will not I want to tell you something. When God says something, you
can take it to the bank. Right? You can take it to the
bank. I will not turn away from them
to do them good. But I will put my fear in their
hearts. Now listen, that they shall not
depart from me. They shall not depart from me.
Some of God's children, many, have gone through fiery trials.
And Satan has been allowed to sift them like he did Peter.
But remember when the Lord next appeared to Peter, he said, Simon,
do you love me? Do you love me? What was the
final conclusion? You know all things. You know. You know I love thee. He hadn't acted like it, maybe. But that love was there. It'll
never go out. And the fourth thing that this
fire may be typical of is the fire of God's wrath that shall
never go out. The fire of God's wrath shall
never go out. When the Lord Jesus Christ was
hanging upon that tree, bearing the sins of all of his covenant
people, all of his chosen people, suffering the fire of God's wrath,
what happened? The Lord Jesus Christ, he swallowed
up that fire for his people. He received and satisfied the
fire of God's justice, God's wrath for his people. But know
this, my friend, the same Greek word which is translated eternal,
when it speaks of the righteous, the righteous shall go away into
eternal life. That same word, eternal, is translated
everlasting. Some shall go away into everlasting
punishment. But preacher, you say the righteous
shall go into life eternal? No, the Lord said that. The Lord
said that. But doesn't the Word of God also
say there's none righteous, no, not one? Sure does. Sure does. Well, how then are there any
righteous? There are none righteous by birth.
There's none righteous by our own works. There's none righteous
who do not need to be made righteous. Well, how is that possible? How
is anyone made righteous? very same way that Abraham, the
father of the faithful, was made righteous. Abraham believed God,
and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Those without this righteousness
shall go away into everlasting punishment, the fire which shall
never go out. That fire did go out, that fire
on that altar. They did their best, even when
they went into captivity, they did their best from what I've
read to preserve that fire. But it eventually disappeared. But the fire of God's love will
never go out. Aren't you thankful today? Amen. We're going to sing hymn
number 506. Meet me there where the tree
of life is blooming. Meet me there. Number 506. And
let's stand as we sing.