Gooding, David: 8 - A Sense of the Holy

Let us then briefly, in that same spirit, look at that second law. That is the law of the sin offering. And now you will notice the difference that in this law, it is not said that the fire shall be kept burning forever. That isn't the point. In the law of the sin offering, I don't know if you noticed it, but what the Holy Spirit keeps emphasizing to the priest is this: priest, do pray remember this is most holy. That then is the point that we have to get. Let's think then what it means to be holy. In Old Testament, holiness contrasts with two. You can have something that is holy in contrast to something that is unclean. Or you can have something that is holy contrasted with something that is common. You see, here is a man who has been defiled by some immoral pro- behavior, by contact with a dead body or something. He is unclean and fit to, unfit to come into the presence of God. If you like to say his uncleanness is a form of unholiness, well, okay. And so when God is talking to the priest about his duties with the sin offering, what he stresses is, my good man, you must be holy. You must carry out these things in a holy place, and that will, of course, mean that the man must be clean. It means something else. Holiness in that other sense. So let's illustrate that. Do you know Mrs. Brown? Well, Mrs. Brown's kitchen is beautiful. There isn't a speck of dust in it. All the pots and the pans are brillowed every other half day, they shine, they are immaculate. And should Mrs. Brown have cooked, uh, some sausages in the aforesaid pot, and they become a bit greasy, Mrs. Brown never puts them back, but watch, she has got all the grease off, and there they are shining again. No one would ever think that Mrs. Brown's pots weren't clean. Yes, that's okay. Doesn't necessarily mean they're holy, though, does it? In Israel, the priests in the temple, as they went about the sacrifices, they used to have to use pots of various kinds. Says God, those pots are holy. What do you mean they're holy? Well, not merely that they're clean, but they're mine. Absolutely consecrated to me. Set aside for me. They're not common old pots, they are sacred pots. The work in which they are ga- engaged is sacred work. To that end, God is working with us, isn't he? Not merely with our c- pots, but with our vessels that are our bodies. If we have been redeemed, he is beginning to teach us the lessons of holiness, that we should be consecrated to the Lord, sacred to him, not merely clean of all negative stain, but positively devoted to him. The prophet Zechariah looks forward to the day when Israel being redeemed, the very pots in Jerusalem in which they cook the Brussels sprouts, the very pots in Jerusalem shall be holy to the Lord. And the old horses that pull the carts around the city will have on their harness holiness to the Lord. Such holiness our Lord already seeks with us, didn't he? As he did with his disciples in the cornfield. When the Pharisees accused his disciples of breaking the Sabbath because they were rubbing the ears of corn, our Lord defended them in this guise. No, they weren't breaking the Sabbath. Except in this sense, that like the priests in the temple have to work constantly for God, whether it be Sabbath or not, so said our Lord, my disciples here working at that corn are working for me, and I am greater than the temple. Therefore, their humble act of grinding the corn is a sacred act, done for me, who am greater than the temple. God aims at holiness, at the sense of sacredness in our lives. Now watch. Here comes an Israelite. He's been burdened with his sin and his guilt this last nine months. At long last, he's come to repentance, and he's decided to obey God's Old Testament law. He's going to go up to Jerusalem. He's going to buy there a sheep as as much as he can afford. He's going to find the temple. He's going in, find a priest, and he's going to ask the priest to offer this for his sin. So here he comes, and all is solemn. And he confesses his sin before God, and he lays his hand, like the priest tells him, on the head of the animal. And then he kills the animal before the Lord, conscious that the eye of God is upon him. Oh, I know you'll say it's only a symbol, but it's serious. And for him, it's a real spiritual experience, and he's beginning to do it and cut the animal. Oh, look here, says the priest, hurry up, man. It's getting time for tea, and I'm meant to be home. Oh. Oh, you say, what's happened now? Well, you see, the Israelite, he didn't come many times, he couldn't afford many times to offer a sheep. Now for him, it's a wonderful thing, holy moment. The priest has done it ten thousand five hundred and sixty seven times, and now he's another time. He's done it so frequently. It's become common, Ordinary. ordinary. It's lost the sense of the sacred. And you'll see those priests, when it came to sin offerings, you know, they were allowed to have the animal, most of the meat, and eat it. That's how they earned their living. Desperately easy for them, for it to become nothing but a professional matter, cold, formal, official, a business thing, and the whole sacredness gone out of it. You ever sense the danger like that? Of becoming so familiar with divine things that the sense of the sacred goes out, becomes ordinary. We who preach know the danger. Can happen to other folks, can't it? Oh, it's just another breaking of bread. Oh, you've been to so many thousands. Lost the sense of the sacred? How do we maintain the sense of the sacred? If we are constantly engaged in divine things. Here now a few practical counsels from the Lord to this priest. First of all, priest, he says, when you have that sin offering killed, it is to be killed before the Lord in the place where the burnt offering is killed. May I interpret the algebra? The burnt offering tells us about the devotion of Christ, his obedience unto death. Now, says God, when you kill the sin offering, I want it killed in the place where the burnt offering is killed, please. And it reminds us of this. We sin very easily, don't we? In two ticks and we've sinned. Our sin wasn't put away so easily, was it? Come with me to where the burnt offering of our Lord was killed. Listen to him. As he kneels in Gethsemane and he prays, not like people saying, yes, I'm ready, I'm ready to go into prison or death, of course I am. Oh yes, I'm ready to go. Of course not. He comes to Gethsemane, and he kneels. He says, Abba Father. Abba Father. Appealing to God by his love. As a father. All things are possible to you, appealing to God's infinite power. Then by your love and by your power, let this cup pass. Pass. It cannot pass. Then thy will be done. And the blood came out like sweat. Let me never forget it. When we stand to speak of holy things and the matter of forgiveness, and we quote our John three sixteen. oh God forbid it should ever become ordinary. Let me as a priest constantly ca- recur to Gethsemane and Calvary and see the devotion that it cost Christ to put away our sin. And you, priest, says God, when you eat that sin offering, you have a right to eat it. It's right that they that preach the gospel should live of the gospel. But priest, says he, you'll eat it in a holy place. You won't take it home as your Sunday joint. There's nothing wrong with Sunday joints, but this is sacred. Do you know your brothers and sisters in Corinth? I'll tell you a secret about them. In the early days in their church at Corinth, they began to remember the Lord Jesus with the bread and the wine, and then they did it at the end of a social gathering. And they brought their food, and they brought their drink, and they had a social gathering, and they attached the Lord's Supper to the end of it. And you know what happened in the end? They forgot which was which. And the sacred thing of the Lord's Supper got all mixed up with their social gormandizing. Now you don't any longer, says Paul, you separate that out. You keep the Lord's Supper distinct, for that's sacred. Oh, my dear young folks, there are many joys in Christ, but take the advice of an old gray head. Keep what is sacred, sacred, won't you? The joys of Christ are not just one more joy added onto your football and your guitar, you know. These are sacred things. Pray God that we never let the sacred lose its sacredness by being confused with the secular. And when you come to eat it, says God, any part that the anything that the flesh touches shall be holy. Now, that's not a command, that's a statement. It's not saying if you want to touch the flesh of this sin offering, you'll have to be holy in order to touch it. No, it's not saying that. It's saying it the other way around. It says if you ever happen to come in contact with that flesh, forthwith you shall be holy, meaning you shall be consecrated to God. Remember Mrs. Brown and her pots? Beautiful pots. But of course, while they stayed in her kitchen, she had the control of them. Should it have ever happened one of these days that Mrs. Brown's pot got confused with the Levitical pots, and some Levite got a hold of it and used it to cook the sacrifice in, do you know what would happen to Mrs. Brown's pot? She'd never get it back again. It would be dedicated to the Lord hereafter. She'd never get back to her kitchen. It would be the Lord's after that. You can see why Mrs. Brown didn't like her pots coming anywhere near the sacrifice, can't you? She lost them. My dear brother, have you come anywhere near the sacrifice of Christ? Have you touched him? Then I have to tell you that you're not your own. Your vessel isn't yours anymore. For if you have touched the sacrifice of Christ, then listen, says God, you are not your own. You have been bought with a price. And to take something that isn't mine and run off with it as though it were mine, that's robbing God. Says God, you know, that sacrifice is so holy that if any of the blood got sprinkled on the priest's garment as he was attending to the sacrifice, then he had to wash it in the holy place. He mustn't go out back home with that blood on his garment. That blood is holy blood, not to be mixed with common things. It must be washed in the holy place, so holy is that blood. Oh God, maintain in us, surely, the sense of the awe at the sacredness and the holiness of the blood of Christ. Bible tells of some people who count the blood of the sacrifice a common thing. Says God, for them there awaits the fire of judgment, immeasurable. No believer would count the blood of Christ common, would he? But how easy for me to find the sense of its value become lessened in my mind. God forbid it to happen. Oh, precious is that blood, all precious is that flow that makes me white as snow. No other font I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. You've been redeemed with precious blood, says God. Now be careful how you live, because, says Peter, God is critical, and he judges every believer according to his works, and rightly critical, will see the cost that he has paid in the blood of Christ to redeem us. Finally, says God. If you cook it in any vessel, an earthen vessel must be broken, a brazen vessel must be scarred, lest anything of the sacredness of that sacred sacrifice be conveyed outside and become common. So they cooked their sacrifice, and it was, in a sense, the priest's daily food. It remained a sacred thing. I have a word with the theologians present. You're a young man, are you reading theology? And you have to process your subject, don't you, theology? Just like the the the engineer is learning about mechanics and engineering, and you write essays and he write essays, and you pass exams and he passes exams, and what's the difference? Oh God, save us. Who in any sense professionally study holy things, lest they become for us just one more subject. And the thing loses its sacred dimension and becomes merely a secular means of getting a good degree and a good job. Alas for our theological schools and universities, where theology has ceased to be a sacred subject and become almost secular. There were sacrifices that the priest was not allowed to eat. Those whose blood was taken into the holy place had to be taken out, the bodies of them had to be taken out and burned outside the camp. We're not left to decide what that means. The Holy Spirit in the Epistle to the Hebrews in chapter thirteen tells us, Jesus, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate, outside the camp. Let us come forth to him and bear his reproach. And still today, the Holy Spirit will ask us thus to walk consistently with the gospel. The gospel is not merely a theoretical thing that I work out in my study, and I get it all complete, and I can preach nice sermons on it. There comes the practical side, and I must see to it that my behavior and walk and ways in this world run absolutely consistent with the sacrifice of Christ. You say, in what sense? Well, the early Christians, they come to believe the Lord Jesus as the sole sacrifice for sin. Right ho, says God. Now you'll show you stand with him by removing yourself from a Judaism that rejects him. And so you will behave consistently with the gospel, not preaching justification by faith one day, and then on Tuesdays so behaving that people think that you see no difference between the gospel and what they preach in Judaism. But that your behavior is one hundred percent consistent with the gospel and the sacrifice of Christ, who for our sake suffered outside the camp and outside the gate. And so we've been thinking of very practical things and very solemn things. And yet God fill our hearts as we go home tonight with a sense of the wonder. How ever was it, my brother, my sister, when you think of us, for all these were once sinners, defiled in his sight. How did it ever come that God not only saved us, but gave us this ministry of reconciliation to be holy priests and royal priests, to handle holy things and be able to point our fellow men and women to the great sacrifice of Christ. God, so fill us with the sense of the glory and the wonder of that privilege that no duty will prove too hard that God asks of it, nor any zeal too much that we might discharge our responsibility and so honor him as priests. For the Lord's name's sake. Amen.