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We begin our study this evening by reading from the book of Leviticus and chapter two. The book of Leviticus and chapter two. The offering which we are about to consider this evening is called the meal offering, MEAL. Though in some of the older translations, you will find it described as the meat offering, simply because in those far off days, the word meat in English meant something to eat, that's all, and not necessarily flesh. Nowadays, to get the exact meaning, we shall have to translate it meal, for this was an offering composed of corn of some kind, and it could be in three different forms. So there again, I shall be asking you to notice, if you will, that in this chapter two of Leviticus, there are three sections to this meal offering. The first one is the flour offered, the corn offered to the Lord in the form of cakes, baked or fried or griddled. And the third is the corn offered to the Lord in the green ear, roast with fire, as an offering of first fruits. So let's read our chapter two, beginning from the, uh, from verse one. And when anyone offereth an oblation of a meal offering unto the Lord, his oblation shall be of fine flour, and he shall pour oil upon it and put frankincense thereof. And he shall bring it to Aaron's sons, the priests, and he shall take there out his handful of the fine flour thereof and of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof. And the priest shall burn it as the memorial thereof upon the altar, an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord. And that which is left of the meal offering shall be Aaron's and his sons. It is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire. So far then the first division. Now the second. And when thou offerest an oblation of a meal offering bacon in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil. And if thy oblation be a meal offering of the baking pan, it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil. Thou shalt part it in pieces and pour oil thereon. It is a meal offering. And if thy oblation be a meal offering of the frying pan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil. And thou shalt bring the meal offering that is made of these things unto the Lord, and it shall be presented unto the priest, and he shall bring it unto the altar. And the priest shall take up from the meal offering the memorial thereof, and shall burn it upon the altar, an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord. And that which is left of the meal offering shall be Aaron's and his son's. It is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire. No meal offering which you shall offer unto the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven nor any honey as an offering made by fire unto the Lord. As an oblation of firstfruits, you shall offer them unto the Lord, but they shall not come up for a sweet savor on the altar. And every oblation of thy meal offering shalt thou season with salt. Neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meal offering. With all thine oblations, thou shall offer salt. So much then for the second division, and now for the third and final division. And if thou offer a meal offering of firstfruits unto the Lord, thou shalt offer for the meal offering of thy first fruits, corn in the air, parched with fire, bruised corn of the fresh air. And thou shalt put oil upon it and lay frankincense thereon. It is a meal offering. And the priest shall burn the memorial of it, part of the bruised corn thereof, and part of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof. It is an offering made by fire unto the Lord. And to help us put this into context, let's read now a few verses from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter twenty six. Deuteronomy chapter twenty six. Beginning Beginning from verse one. And it shall be, when thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it and dwellest therein, that thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the ground which thou shalt bring in from thy land that the Lord thy God giveth thee, and thou shalt put it in a basket and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there. And thou shalt come unto the priest that shall be in those days and say unto him, I profess this day unto the Lord thy God that I am come into the land which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us. And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord thy God. And thou shalt answer and say before the Lord thy God, a Syrian ready to perish, or if you like, a nomad, a wandering Syrian, was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there few in number, and he became there a nation great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians evil entreated us and afflicted us and laid upon us hard bondage. And we cried unto the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction and our toil and our oppression. And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with great terribleness and with signs and with wonders. And he has brought us into this place and hath given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the first of the fruit of the ground which thou, O Lord, hast given me, and thou shalt set it down before the Lord thy God and worship before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice in all the good which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee and unto thine house, thou and the Levite and the stranger that is in the midst of thee. What a happy portion of scripture it is. God fill our hearts with a similar joy. And so we come to the study of the second of the major offerings described for us in the book of Leviticus. And we are using these offerings in the first place to tell us something of Israel's experience as they came to God who dwelled among them, came at his invitation to contemplate his glory, the glory of his holiness, the awesomeness of it and the beauty of it. And as they came to him, perceiving his holiness and his glory, they were to bring their offerings, their gifts, as well as their sacrifices for sin, that they might cultivate the fellowship with God that God had graciously opened to them. Then we're using these offerings to apply to ourselves, for we too are invited to come near to God, not now in some literal tabernacle on earth. You're invited to come into the very holiest of all in heaven, to stand in spirit in the immediate presence of God, that we too might consider the beauty of God and the awesomeness, the loveliness of his holiness. As we do so, like Israel, we shall find that the holiness of God not only fills our heart with amazement, but fills us with a sense of our own shortcoming. And therefore, as we will bring our gifts of praise and worship to the Lord, nevertheless, our hearts will, from time to time, be filled with a sense of their own unworthiness. And thank God, at that stage, God will be able to point us to the sacrifice, not now of animals or cereals, but to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord, offered once and for all upon the cross for us, but valid still and valid eternally. That sacrifice through which we came to God first as sinners, that sacrifice now in the merits of which we come to God as his saints, as his people. And then, as we remember how the sacrifice of Christ meets our need before God, we observe that it does something else. For these sacrifices had each one to be perfect in its way, that it might rightly represent the Lord Jesus. And so it comes about that as we feel our need and shortcoming, and God points us to the sacrifice of Christ, then the Holy Spirit will go further and point out to us how it is the Lord Jesus was able to be our sacrifice. For this reason that where we come short, he was perfect. And our hearts, as we perceive it, will be enthralled by the wonder and the perfection of his living. And the more we know how hard it is ourselves to live to the glory of God, and the more abysmal failures we feel, the more we shall admire the wonder of the perfections of our Lord Jesus, and long, of course, to be like him. Indeed, as we lose ourselves in thinking about him, in admiring him and worshiping him, perhaps unconsciously, we shall become more like him. Now, last week, when we were considering the first offering, we found that this first offering was the one that had to be offered entirely to God, everything offered to God except the skin. And it reminded us, of course, of God's claim upon us. Not only the first offering, but the offering to be offered entire. It spoke to us of the demands of God's holy law, that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. So you say to me, well, now look here for a moment, sir. If the first offering tells me that really I ought to give God everything I've got, well, then I can't, you can't have any more offerings because I haven't got anything left to offer. So, how do you come, how do you manage to have a second offering as well? Yes, that's a bit curious, isn't it? I think you'll see the point if, first of all, we come and consider the name of this sacrifice. It's called in Hebrew a minkah, which means a gift. It can be a gift that is a free will gift, a present, just as when you like somebody and you want to show how much you value them and how much you love them, you think of some lovely present that you could give them. Sometimes, of course, it can be used in the sense of tribute, like those presents we give the income tax inspector. Isn't he a lovely man, the income tax inspector? And now and again, just to show how much we love him, we, uh, pay our taxes. Hm. Yeah. There is just the other consideration that if we didn't, uh, the law would be after us. Yes. Presents then or tribute. But of course, while God required these presents from time to time, there were certain days, certain times, morning and evening, when the nation were required to bring one. With other sacrifices, they had to bring one. But a great deal of it was left to Israel's voluntary behavior. For instance, in that passage that we have read, when they came and took their first fruits, then they could come and bring a present to the Lord. For God, I suspect, thought simply like this, that because he had blessed his people with innumerable blessings, his people now and again would feel in their hearts they'd like to give God a present, you know, something they didn't have to, but they they wanted to do it anyway. Have you never felt like that, my brother? The law comes along and tells us that we ought to love the Lord our God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength, and we strive to do it and often come grievously short. There are other occasions, aren't there? Haven't, have I misread you? I haven't, have I? There are other occasions, my brother, my sister, when you feel in your heart that even unasked, you'd like voluntarily to bring God a present and say, there you are, God, there's a lovely present, I, I, I'd just like to give it to you. Don't you feel like that? And of course, as I say, the third division of the sacrifice reminds us that amongst the many presents they could give to God, it was, uh, especially in connection with the first fruits that they frequently, the individuals that is, frequently gave their presents to the Lord. You'll see in Israel, first fruits, there were two kinds of first fruits. There was when the green corn came up and grew until now the ear was fully formed, not yet ripe, still green and luscious. And they took a omer of it, a sheaf of it, and waved it before the Lord, and along with that they offered offerings of first fruits. And then there was the occasion when, at the beginning of the harvest, when they were reaping their corn harvest some fifty days later, that they took their, uh, corn and they ground it into flour and they baked their cakes and they came and offered first fruits to the Lord. And Deuteronomy pictures the scene. Can you see it a moment? Here's farmer Zedekiah and, and he's now inherited his own farm, you see. Perhaps his father has died and he's come into this farm, and this is the first year, and it's been a bumper crop, and he's got his house, and he's got his cows, and he's got his cattle and his sheep, and there's his wine press already waiting for the grapes that are forming on the vine, and there's the figs, and there's his two acres of corn, and and he reaps it, and his wife proudly takes the flour and bakes such superb cakes. And then, for the sheer joy of it, he he can't contain his heart. And he says, you know, this is tremendous, this. I'm really here. God's redemption of me is is real. It it it's worked, you know. You know my father? Who was he? My father was an old wandering Syrian with no two acres on earth to call his own. And then we went from bad to worse, and we got down in Egypt, and we were slaves in Egypt. And then God came and swore that our to our fathers that he would redeem us. And it sounded a tall story to start with, but he did it, and he brought us out of Egypt, and he brought us through the wilderness. And look, we're here. Look at this corn, and I'm eating it. Oh, it was tremendous. And in the sheer joy of it, he thought he'd like to give God a present of his first fruits. And he put them in a basket, and he'd go up to Jerusalem, and he'd set it down before the priest. He said, you know, priesty, your God has actually done it. It's real. Oh, I'm enjoying this. Let me give a, I'd like to give some first fruits to the Lord. And the priest, being very severe and reverent, of course, he said, well done, my son, you see, and and took these first fruits and offered them to God. Perhaps it's along that route that we shall first find the application to ourselves. We have many material blessings to praise God for, haven't we? Compared with some. Well, mercy, we don't live in Ethiopia, and we've got cornflakes to put into our mouths, and comfortable homes and carpets, and goodness knows ten thousand other things in God's mercy. How does it come that we have them while others don't? They never make you feel that you'd like just to pause a minute and thank God and give God something, just because he's given you so much. Not now because his law requires it, but because the sheer gratitude of your heart inspires you. You'd like to make God a present on the side without telling anybody much for his sheer goodness to you. But it's not merely, uh, the Lord's goodness to us in terms of hoveas and, and vegetables and homes and furniture and things as he. We have another kind of first fruit that Israel perhaps never dreamed of, though some of them might have dreamed of them, I suppose. Don't you think so? I, I, I imagine old Zedekiah, the farmer you know, and now he's grown old, he's about seventy plus. He's leaning over his farm gate one morning and looking at the corn now coming through the ground. It's springtime, and there it is shimmering in the sun, all the little sprouts of the green corn coming up through the land, and old Zedi Kaya is looking over the gate and saying, Marvel, isn't it, you know? Marvel. I've seen it now seventy times over. Never cease to be amazed at the miracle of it, you know? You put the seed in the ground, maybe of wheat or of barley or something, and it appears to die. And then, and then come the springtime, the miracle happens, and up it comes. Isn't it magnificent? That magnificent miracle. We couldn't, we couldn't do it ourselves. And yet our continued existence depends on this marvellous miracle of nature, that the corn goes into the ground and dies, and then in springtime it comes up again and yields much fruit. Marvellous. And then Zedekiah begins to think, ha, seen it a lot of times now, but you know what? I shan't see it through many more times. Seventy plus, you know. One of these days now they'll take me and my body and sow it in the ground. And when they sow me in the ground, will I ever come up again? Man dieth and wasteth away. If a man die, shall he live again? Yes, the Old Testament gave certain answers to that question, but not anywhere near so clearly as the New Testament does. What a, and oh, what a marvel it is. We know the answer, and we know it's real. For standing with our basket of first fruits. Ah, we think of another greater first fruits. Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Ah, us older folks, we wouldn't be too happy, would we, just now? In spite of all the many gifts we've known in life, but soon we've got to leave. And if that was the end, we should be a bit gloomy now, shouldn't we? Oh, thank God. No, it's not the end. No, because all the tremendous mercy of God, now is Christ risen and become the first fruits. It actually happened. It's not some vague hope for the future. It is one of the greatest and best recorded events in history, that Jesus Christ, who died for our sins according to the scriptures and was buried, he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Now is Christ risen and become the first fruits of them that slept. Sure as the first fruits of the corn leads on to the harvest, so shall the resurrection of our Lord lead on to the resurrection of all his people, each in his own order, first of all Christ the first fruits, afterwards those that are Christ's at his coming. Hey, my brother, if this is true, and you feel you'd like to give God a present for it somehow. Oh, I know you'll tell me it's all by grace. Doesn't it make you feel you want to give God something? Yes, you say, but it's a long way off, perhaps, the Lord's coming. I guess there's another kind of first fruits, though. When the corn was green, now come into the ear, they took it, and they waved a sheaf of it before the Lord, the wave sheaf, and they offered their first fruit sacrifices on the altar. Fifty days later, when the corn was ripe, they cut the harvest. And as I say, when they had cut it and threshed it and then milled it and got the flour, they made it into cakes. But the first of those cakes was given to the Lord, first fruits to the Lord, on the day of Pentecost, as the New Testament calls it, the feast of weeks, fifty days after the first fruit, where the sheaf of the first fruit. And the whole thing becomes a transparent parable to us, doesn't it? For our Lord rose from the dead, the first fruits of them that are slept, three days, on the third day he rose again. fifty days after that, what happened? You say the feast of Pentecost came, and yes, and what happened on the feast of Pentecost? Why, you say the Holy Spirit came down from heaven. He did indeed, and by one spirit were you all baptized into one body. Oh, the wonder of it. Let me just pick out one feature, one significance of the coming of that Holy Spirit, and it is this. We have, says Paul, Romans eight twenty three, we have the firstfruits of the Spirit. Oh, we've got two lots of firstfruits then. We've got Christ the first fruits, bodily risen from the dead, promised that one day we too shall be raised and changed. And while we wait for his coming, we have the Holy Spirit, first fruits of all those greater glories that are yet to be. Oh, what a folks we are. Waiting for the Lord, waiting for our resurrection, or if we have not died when he comes, waiting to be changed to have a body like the body of his glory, and already here and now, the first fruits of the spirit in our hearts. My brother, my sister, when you feel you'd like to give God something, I know you can't repay him. You'd like to come and celebrate, wouldn't you? Put your basket down for five minutes and say, look here, the Lord has given me so much before he gives me any more, as he's likely to do now soon. Ha ha. Let me, let me, let me give him something, if it's only a thank you from my heart. What can we give him? Compared with what he's given us, very little indeed. So now I proceed, and I want now to come to this offering in Leviticus two and take it not so much now from a practical point of view, borrowing my lessons from Israel. I want to come and take it in its strictly typical viewpoint. Like all the other offerings, it speaks not merely of what Israel gave to God, it speaks of the Lord Jesus, who gave himself for us. And here it's very easy to interpret this type, this ninka, this meal offering. Let's notice its major ingredients. It was made of corn in various forms. The corn could be milled and offered as flour. The corn could be offered as flour, now bacon into cakes. Or in the third division, the corn could be offered as it was in the ear before it was milled. And you say, Mr. Preacher, that's a funny way of organizing the chapter, isn't it? Why didn't Moses start the logical way round? And why didn't he start with the corn in the ear? Isn't that where we have to start anyway? And start with that at at the first level, the corn in the ear, and then proceed to the corn threshed and milled into flour, and then finally with the flour baked into cakes. Isn't that the order we know in life? Old farmer jars up the road, he grows the corn, what ho, and it comes on here. That's the first stage. And then he cuts it and thrashes it, and the miller grinds it and delivers it to you in the supermarket market in your nice paper bags of flour, what ho. Then finally, the housewife takes it home, and with her consummate skill, she bakes it into a cake, and there it is sitting on the table, the pièce de résistance, to the admiration of all her guests, you say, that's the final great, uh, crowning triumph. Yes, you would have thought it would have been that way, wouldn't you? And Moses has gone and put it another way. How odd. We might even discover why presently. And the anyway, it is made of corn in various forms, of flour or bread or corn in the air. And what shall that speak to us of? Well, of course, we cannot resist, can we, the parallel. When they baked it into their cakes of bread, then they were to break it in pieces. We Christians have a ceremony, don't we? It isn't a sacrifice, it's, it's not an offering to God, it's simply a memorial feast when we take bread and we break it. And the bread is a symbol of what? Pray notice, you theologians, not of our Lord's character, is it? It's a symbol of his body. He took the bread and he said, this is my body, yes? Or again, we think in one Corinthians fifteen, where Paul uses corn as an illustration. He says, you know, uh, the thing you get out of the ground is not the thing you sow, for you sow may be a bare grain of wheat or something else. God giveth it a body as it is pleased him. What's he talking about? You say he's illustrating the resurrection of our bodies, not the resurrection of our characters, no? The resurrection of our bodies, resurrection of our bodies. And as we have already seen, the third division of this sacrifice is the offering of first fruits, and when we think of first fruits, we think first of all of our blessed Lord. Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits, and we're thinking not of the resurrection of his character, we are thinking of the resurrection of his body. If then the New Testament is consistent in its use of symbols, the first ingredient of this sacrifice talks to us about the body of our Lord Jesus. And then there was oil. In the actual practical sacrifice of the Israel, the oil was offered, doubtless, because it spelt to the Israel something exceedingly rich, and he wanted to give a rich present to God. In symbolic language, as Zechariah chapter four tells us, oil is a symbol of spirit. You remember the vision of Zechariah with the great lampstand fed by two olive trees that poured the oil constantly into the lamps. And the lesson was, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. Put those two things together, flower representing body and oil representing spirit, body and spirit, and you will have what adds up to a human being. There was a third element, and that was frankincense, but it was all offered to God, a sheer delight to God, on that therefore, tonight I do not comment further, save to say this, that when we come to consider the person of Jesus Christ our Lord, there's a something about him that is solely for God, you know. As he himself remarked, no one really knows the Son except the Father. Let us remember now, as we pause a moment, that there are mysteries about the person of our Lord Jesus that surpass our fathom- fathoming. Only God understands them. But reverently we may consider him who was perfect in his manhood, perfect body, unfallen spirit, and he gave himself for us. By the which will, says Hebrews, we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. Oh, that lovely person, that lovely, holy body, born of the Virgin, born taintless and sinless. How carefully does the Holy Spirit guard the flesh of Jesus Christ our Lord. When he speaks in Romans chapter eight, he puts it this way: God sending his son not in sinful flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, truly human, with real flesh, a real body. But with this difference, that his flesh wasn't sinful flesh like ours. Perfect in his humanity. What a wonderful thing those thirty three years were. Do you know, for all the thousands of years that had passed since Adam, this earth had never seen a perfect human body and hasn't seen one since. Oh, we've seen some lovely specimens, haven't we, from real he-men, strong and beautiful, and ladies charming in their delights, yeah. The best we've ever seen have been bodies broken by sin. His body was perfect. And still in glory he has a body, for after his resurrection he came to his disciples and said, look, handle me and see. A spirit doesn't have flesh and bone like you see me have. I have flesh and bone. It tells us that God intends a human body eternally. It is an integral part of what it means to be human. Ah, with what, uh, with what relief we contemplate the Lord. We too have bodies, don't we? It's good that we don't forget it too. Because, you know, much of our behavior depends upon our bodies, doesn't it? And our bodies being broken, sometimes it puts our behavior out of gear. You know, sometimes, uh, when things are going very well, we feel ourselves very spiritual. It can be because we're making great progress in the things of the spirit, of course. Sometimes it can be simply because we had some lovely sausages for dinner, and we feel very good, and we haven't got the flu or anything else, and all the old glands are working well, and we feel tremendous. It's not necessarily spirituality, my brother. I don't want to disappoint you, but it simply could be that your body is in good health. Yeah. Here's a, here's a good man, and he's, he's full of anxiety and apprehension and full of fears and nervous, and he can't sit still, and he's all worked up. You say, what a wicked man. You know, my brother, if only you had the Holy Spirit within you, you would be calm and peaceful. Go easy, go easy, go easy. Yes, if the doctors were to come along and take a little bit of one of his glands away, the adrenaline maybe, or the pituitary gland, then he'd be as calm as you, perhaps a little bit calmer. Why? Because these funny old things called glands in our bodies affect our behavior more than we think, don't we? You're as bold as a lion, my brother. You would face anybody, Margaret Thatcher even, and without trembling you'll preach her the gospel. You see that other good lady over there and you say, my dear sister, pluck up your courage, woman. Get hold of the Lord and trust the Holy Spirit and witness to everybody. Well, yeah. But you say you never did know what nerves were. You never have, not since your cradle. And she, poor woman, has inherited a body and a nervous system that's been broken by generations, perhaps by the sinning of her parents and grandparents. Well, pray let's remember that a lot of our behavior and a lot of our very poor behavior is in part the result of the fact that our bodies are broken. And remembering that, you know, we shall be a little bit more merciful with one another. At least I hope we will be with me. For we inherit er fallen bodies, ever since Adam and Eve rebelled against God in the garden, and man fell. And instead of his, and here we come to the second element, man is body and spirit, isn't he? And as originally made, his spirit meant to be in touch with the Father of spirits and in control of his body, but man rebelled against the Father of spirits, and as Ephesians two would have it, became spiritually dead, dead in trespasses and in sins, and became a carnal man, not having the spirit, and in consequence a man's own spirit is fallen, and instead of being in control of his body as it should be, is very often little more than a prisoner in the castle. How lovely to think of our blessed Lord, with what superb control did he control his body and all its appetites. Witness his temptations in the wilderness, where he was conceived of the Spirit and anointed of the Spirit and led of the Spirit, his own spirit being utterly unfallen, perfect in his control of his body, and he gave himself for us. What is the program for, so to speak, our redemption, my brother, my sister? Well, the program is that God is going to put us right both in spirit and in body. God's program is that he starts first of all with our spirit. That's where God starts. He doesn't start with our bodies necessarily at all. Starts with our spirit, doesn't he? And we are born again by God's Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and witnesses with our spirit and helps alongside of our infirmity, and the work of remaking, of redemption is already begun. Has it not, my brother, my sister? Oh, you say to me, yes, but I'm far from perfect as yet, but, but yes. Already you have sensed the renewings of God's holy Spirit within, new desires, new powers, new energies. Though far from perfect, you have the first fruits of the Spirit in your heart. Now, I mustn't depress you too much, but I have to tell you that just as of now, you cannot claim healing for your body through redemption. The atonement of Christ guarantees that one day our bodies will be redeemed. But the redemption of our bodies lies still in the future. We wait for our adoption. That is the redemption of the body. Oh yes, God in his mercy has put all sorts of mechanisms in our bodies, hasn't he, so that they can get better. How many colds have you, uh, recovered from? Thousands, you say. Thought so, because God in his mercy put the old processes in the body, didn't he, so the body could recover. And what is more, God in his kindness is prepared now and again to intervene and do a miracle to heal his people bodily. Only we can't claim it now, can we? Give us all fifty years, most of us will have been gone home, yes? It's not as if God's program has come unstuck. For the redemption of the body waits for the coming of the Lord. Meanwhile, our Lord leaves us in these broken old bodies. And they're difficult to, to control sometimes, aren't they? At least mine is. Yours may be a Rolls-Royce affair, you know. Air brakes and power assisted steering and automatic change of gear, and you go down the road smoothly, and here I come in my old banger of a mini miner, the steering wheel, I mean to go over there, and it goes over here. You know how it is, and uh, when you're least expecting, I change gear and rev up, and you say, ooh, he's a funny chair. But I tell you what, my banger of a Mini is more difficult to drive than your beautiful Rolls-Royce. Don't you forget that. And you know, if only I had your Rolls-Royce, I might be able to drive it beautifully down the street. Who knows but what I might turn out a better driver in the end, for having had to drive a poor old banger of a mini of a broken body and personality. Yes? But God doesn't leave us here in these bodies to torment us, but to train us. And the training is going on, and the inner man is being renewed, even though the outer man perished. Ah, but before I let you go tonight, I have talked, haven't I, of the first division of what a man is, body and spirit, and how our Lord was perfect, truly human in this respect, a perfect body, sinless and unbroken, and an unfallen spirit. And in perfect control all his life, when it came to the end by the eternal spirit, he offered himself to God, the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. Yes. And we have thought of our bodies, how they're broken, and God's way and program for putting them right and eventually redeeming us completely. A reborn spirit and a body fashioned like to the body of his. And we have thought of Christ then as our first fruits, and that is the third division of our offering, is it not? And if you offer a meal offering of first fruits, you shall bring it to the Lord, green ears parched in the fire. And we think of the Lord Jesus, the first fruits, already risen and at home in heaven. But there is a middle division, isn't there? Pray, what is that about? It's about the flour taken and now processed and put into cakes. Grilled, if that's what you do with cakes, I don't know, and griddled and baked and fried and various other things that the ladies all know about. Absolute experts on it, on it, aren't they, what ho? All this cooking affair. But I say, now, what's that got to do with me? And why does it come in the middle? For do you follow the notion, if the first bit tells us of the constituent parts of a human personality, body and spirit, that's what we are already. And the last bit is going to tell us of the resurrection of the Lord, the first fruits, and presently we shall have a body like his. Yeah. What lies in between? You say life lies in between. Yes. Life. Can be hot sometimes, can't it? Life's experiences, life's sufferings, life's happinesses. You know, I know nothing very much about cooking, say the results can be nice if the ladies do it. But this I know, that when you get oil and flour and all the other things that ladies get and put in the cherries and the sultanas and who do you know what, the raising flowers and things, and there it's all in the bowl, all mixed up, you see. Then you put it in the oven, and when you take it out, it's the same stuff as went in, isn't it? Isn't it? Well, yes, you say it's the same stuff as went in, but but it comes out very different, doesn't it, somehow or other? Yes, because the fire has done something to it, made it a lot pleasanter to eat, really, much pleasanter. What a parable it is. We start off body and spirit, don't we? See it in a child, he's only a little child born, body and spirit, yes. Is that all a human being is? No. As life goes by, you'll see that human being begin to change. You'll not only grow up physically, he will mature psychologically, mentally, as a person. Yeah? Here's a beautiful young thing. She's eighteen, you'll see. Oh, delightful. Body and spirit. Yeah. Here's mum. I won't tell you how old she is. There is a gray hair or two visible if you look very closely. She's still very attractive looking, but she's different from the girly, isn't she? Ha. Well, you say, lovely as the girly is, there's a bit more to mum, you see. She's had these sixty years of experience, and it's done something to her. Yes, of course it's done something to her. It was meant to do something to her. It isn't an accident. It isn't that life has come along and spoiled her necessarily. That is what a human being is. You start off with body and spirit and a tremendous memory and a capability of a personality, and then life comes along with all its different pressures and its heats. The heat of success and happiness, the heat of sorrow and failure. And the human personality goes through it, and as it goes through it, it begins to change, doesn't it? It was meant to change. It's not necessarily an accident, you know. You ladies, when you've mixed the old mixture, the flour and the oil and stuff, and you put it in the old pan and in the oven goes, you don't stand there wringing your hands and say, poor, poor old cake, look at that, ooh, it's going through the heat now. It's not, Louisa silly, not. It's meant to go through the heat. How on earth do you expect to get a decent cake if it doesn't go through the heat? God is looking for mature sons and daughters. How do you suppose he's going to get them? Without putting us through the heat. You won't take me up wrong in what I'm about to say now, will you? But I speak very reverently. But life did that for Jesus Christ, our Lord himself, didn't he? He was perfect in all his ways, constitutionally perfect, but as a little boy, I'm told, he grew. He grew in wisdom, says Luke's holy word. And the epistle to the Hebrews, explaining how it is that he can become for us such a merciful high priest, says he learned obedience, learned what it costs by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect. That is, life's experiences marked him, didn't they? They were meant to. And all my brother, the glorified Lord Jesus in heaven, carries with him still the marks of his experience here on earth. He remembers it still. And being made perfect. I don't say being made sinless, he was always sinless, but as a human being, he grew up as a child, grew in wisdom, and went through circumstances ordained of God, and eventually Gethsemane and Calvary, and now he's qualified to be your high priest through what he experienced. That's how life was meant to be. He came through perfectly. Alas for us sometimes. You know, some cakes, when they come out of the oven, they behave very well, haven't they? To confess my sins, I made a cake once. Well, it wasn't a cake so much, it was one of those things that we in England call Yorkshire puddings. I don't know what you call them. The intention was good, but I know not whether it was the old recipe book, which tends to be silly, or it was the oven was wrong or something. I had the very best of intentions and put this marvelous mixture into the oven, and lo more when the thing came out, it was as flat and as leathery as you can imagine. Stupid thing for reacting like that, you'll see. Not even the dog would eat it. There's no use. I never tried again because if Yorkshire puddings are going to react like that on me, I give them up. Do you know when we go through the fire of life, be it success or failure, we can react well, can't we? And come through matured. And our fellow believers can see it, and they say, you see Mrs. So-and-so over there, ah, what a time she's been through, but you know, she's a better woman for it. She was good before, but she's better now. She tastes better, if you see what I mean. Melower, kindlier if possible, more understanding. Yeah. And brother so and so, he used to be a bit bunches, you know, in the youth, but then he had one came a cropper once or twice, and now, do you know what a lovely man he is and how sympathetic he is with other folks? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've been through the fires and they're reacting right. It can happen that when we go through the fires of success or suffering, we react wrongly, yes? Like my old Yorkshire pudding, we go a bit flat, sour, embittered, full of self-pity and complaint, with endless sense of injustice about other people, what they've done to us, and why didn't God do better for me than this, and all that kind of thing. Oh, what a pity. You see, we are being prepared for eternity, aren't we, my brother, my sister? And life and its experiences are part of that preparation. They are making us for eternity. Oh God, give us the grace to react rightly. To enjoy the success, but not let it spoil us, to make us proud and arrogant and selfish and self-centered. To endure the suffering and not make it, and not allow it to make us full of self-pity or to break our faith. How shall I react rightly? Our ancient passage says this, that with all your sacrifices you shall offer salt, and you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of thy God to be absent from any one of your sacrifices. So salt had to be offered with every sacrifice, but the Holy Spirit chose to mention it here in connection with the cooking of the cakes. Yeah. When I'm going through the fire, then I shall need to lay hold upon the covenant of God, shall I not? His absolute faithfulness, that he will neither leave me nor let me down. That's what brought Paul through, wasn't it? I see Paul in my mind, he's a floating around in the, uh, Mediterranean, holding on for dear life to a bit of old wood. Ha! I say, hello, Paul. You're having a rough time down there, aren't you? Hm. Some God, Paul, I heard you, uh, preaching an early sermon to the Thessalonians. Yeah, so it's all right to preach, isn't it? You were saying how marvelous God is and how you love to serve him. Mm. Some God, Paul, to let you down there in the soup like that old chap, holding on to a bit of wood and drowned near it. What do you think of God now? And what do you think Paul would say? I can't understand why God has done this to me. There's old Demas, and he's forsaken me and gone out of this world. He's driving his old Rolls-Royce about the place and got a palatial house, and he isn't serving the Lord as he should. And there's me, and I've given everything I've got for the Lord, and here I'm in the soup. And this isn't the first time I've been shipwrecked before and beaten with rods and stoned. And this isn't good enough. Yeah, don't you suppose he would talk? Well, if he could get the seawater out of his mouth, he'd be more likely to reply, you stop that, you start criticizing God, for I am persuaded that neither life nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor mights, nor dominions, nor things past, present, or future, nor height nor depth, not even this Mediterranean can separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, my Lord. And he went home triumphant. Oh God, give me the grace that I may come through life like that and go home a well-cooked and mature cake. There then, let us leave our study and praise God for him upon whom our hopes depend. He knows what it is like to be tempted. He has been through the fires himself. We are told that because he has suffered being tempted, when we go through the fires, he is able to help and to suffer those that are tempted.