Exodus (Lesson 56)

Welcome to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.

Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delant, Florida.

Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.

Now here's your host, Pastor James W.

Knox.

The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.

This is the preaching of the cross radio broadcast.

So happy, so very happy that you've tuned into the program today.

We hope that you can stay with us for the next half an hour as we continue our study of the Bible book of Exodus.

The Bible book of Exodus.

We're in the 30th chapter.

In this chapter, matters pertaining to the altar of incense and the holy anointing oil in the tabernacle that God had his people, the nation of Israel, to build, so that he might meet with them, commune with them, and fellowship with them throughout the course of their history.

If you can follow along, that'd be great.

We're going to read starting at Exodus 30, verse number one, and thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon.

A shit of wood shalt thou make it, a cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, four squares shall it be, and two cubits shall be the height thereof, the horns thereof shall be the same.

And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, the top thereof and the sides thereof round about, and the horns thereof, and thou shalt make unto it a crown of gold round about, and two golden rings shalt thou make to it under the crown of it.

By the two corners thereof, upon the two sides of it, shalt thou make it, and they shall be for places for the staves to bear it withal.

And thou shalt make the staves of shitam wood and overlay them with gold, and thou shalt put it before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I will meet with thee.

And Aaron shall burn thereon sweet incense every morning.

When he dresseth the lamps, he shall burn incense upon it, and when Aaron lighteth the lamps, and even he shall burn incense upon it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.

Ye shall offer no strange incense thereon, nor burnt sacrifice, nor meat offering, neither shall ye pour drink offering thereon, and Aaron shall make atonement upon the horns of it once in a year, with the blood of the sin offering of atonements.

Once in the year shall they make atonement upon it throughout your generations, it is most holy unto the Lord.

So, with the priesthood being instituted in the two previous chapters, we are now introduced to the position of true priestly worship and communion.

The order is very instructive, and precisely corresponds with the order of the experience of the born-again believer.

At the brazen altar, he sees the ashes of his sins.

He then sees himself linked with one who, though personally pure and spotless, so that he could be anointed without blood, one who has nevertheless associated with us and associated us with himself in life, righteousness, favor, and finally, he beholds in the golden altar the preciousness of Jesus Christ as the material on which the divine affections feed.

Now think of it.

That brazen altar where the sin offering was made, and where that sin offering left nothing, listen, that that altar burning, that sin offering left nothing there but ashes.

You move from there, from there, to the high priest, bringing God and man into fellowship one with another in all of his holiness and all of his separation, and then we move to this altar of incense, pleasant aromas and sweet spices offered unto God, as God and man enjoy one another's company.

This is how it always has to be.

There has to be a brazen altar where sin is paid for, and a priest to bring God and man together before there can be a golden altar of incense.

Very many of God's people have never passed the brazen altar.

They have never yet entered into the power and reality of true priestly worship.

They do not rejoice in a full, clear, divine sense of pardon and righteousness reached at the golden altar.

Oh, they hope to reach it when they die, but it's our privilege to be there now.

The work of the cross has removed, taken out of the way, everything which would act as a barrier to the free and intelligent worship of God, everything that would stand between God and man fellowshipping together.

If you're a believer, if you're a believer, why keep going back to the brazen altar where sin was paid for?

Why keep searching for a priest or a religion to bring you to God?

Your sins were paid for at the cross of Calvary.

Your great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, has brought you into a reconciled position and into restored fellowship with God.

Why not move to this altar of incense and enjoy the sweetness of fellowship with your Savior?

This altar in type shows the position of wonderful blessedness.

It is for the saved child of God to enjoy the reality of Christ's intercession, forever done with self and all pertaining to the flesh, so far as any expectation of good is concerned, we can now be occupied and should be occupied with what we are before God.

No self, no pride, no glory in the sinful passions and appetites of our past.

You see, everything about the flesh is defiling, but it's been condemned and set aside in the judgment of God.

Nothing thereof is to be found in the pure incense and the pure fire on the altar of pure gold.

It couldn't be, it shouldn't be.

We've been introduced by the blood of Jesus Christ into a sanctuary of priestly service and worship in which there is not so much as a trace of sin.

We see the pure table, the pure candlestick, the pure altar.

But there's nothing here to remind us of self and its wickedness.

All of that is left behind as we enter into this holy place.

Were it possible for anything of that of that brazen altar to meet our view in this holy place, it would only prove to rob us of true worship, it would mar our priestly food, it would dim our light.

What we were by nature can have no place in the sanctuary of God.

It, together with all its belongings, has been consumed to ashes, and we leave that brazen altar behind.

And we now come and have before our souls the fragrant odor of Christ ascending in grateful incense to God.

This is what the Lord delights in.

You see, too many saved people, they want Jesus as their savior.

The brazen altar.

And then they want to turn from that brazen altar and go backward and live in sin and live after the flesh until a trumpet sounds or death calls and they get to go to heaven.

But my friend, in the tabernacle, we see that a man leaves the brazen altar and he then enters into a holy place where God is worshipped and where nothing of that past sinful defiling life is present.

Too often God's people have been occupied with their failures and their infirmities.

You know, if ever the work of indwelling sin is suffered to rise to the surface, we got to deal with God about it.

We can't go on.

He can't go on with sin.

He can forgive it, he can cleanse us from it, he can restore our souls by the gracious ministry of our great high priest, but he's not going to keep company with sin.

Light and foolish thoughts, as well as unclean and covetous thoughts, are all amply sufficient to rob a Christian of the purity and full blessing of his worship.

Should these thoughts spring up, they need to be judged and confessed, or we'll never know the elevated joys of the sanctuary.

A heart in which lust is working is not enjoying the proper operations of the sanctuary.

When we're in our proper priestly condition, nature, human nature, why it's as though it didn't even exist.

Then we feed upon Christ, we taste the wonder of being completely free from self and wholly occupied with Jesus Christ.

All this can only be produced by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There's no need to seek uh working up devotional feelings in the flesh.

All this modern business of getting you to uh to uh sway to the beat and and uh tear up at the slideshow and all the rest of that.

That's just carnal, fleshy substitutes.

Turn from your sin.

Abandon self, become holy and completely devoted to Jesus Christ, and you won't need these fleshy external stimulants.

Why God's people used to ridicule the papal churches for their aids to worship, we would say you don't need those candles, you don't need that special water splashing about, you don't need those icons and images and statues and hangings and groves and you don't need all of that.

You have the Lord.

Ah, but now, now, churches that that uh once denounced such follies, now you have to have your light show and your drums set and your fountains and your yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've got all the carnal attractions, we've got all the appeals to the flesh.

What more could you possibly need to stimulate and provoke you to worship God than looking at the charred ashes beneath that brazen altar, than looking at the body of Jesus Christ being taken down from that cross, to look at the blood that flowed from the precious Son of God to pay for your sin?

How could you possibly desire to continue in sin?

And what could you possibly need to stimulate you to worship when you have such a savior?

All efforts at worshiping God by the unholy powers of the flesh are the strange fire spoken of in the Exodus passage that we read.

Properly speaking, in the brazen altar we have Christ in the value of his sacrifice.

In the golden altar, we have Christ in the value of his communion, his fellowship.

Now, again, this is why the priestly office is introduced in between the two altars.

You might expect an intimate connection between the two.

Christ's intercession is founded on his sacrifice.

Communion with Christ is only possible because he died to pay for our sins.

But Hebrews 9, 22 and 24 reminds us that everything rests upon the immovable foundation of the shed blood.

Almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission.

It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with ease, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these, for Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

So what do we have?

We have the brazen altar explained, then we have the high priest and his garments explained, and then we have the altar of incense.

It's the perfect order.

Jesus died for our sins, he lives as our high priest, and we have communion and fellowship with God because of our Savior's sacrifice and because of his living intercession.

All right, verses eleven to sixteen.

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord.

When thou numberest them that there be no plague among them.

When thou numberest them, this they shall give.

Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a sheikl after the sheikhyl of the sanctuary, a sheikl is twenty giras, and half sheikl shall be the offering of the Lord.

Every one that passeth among them that are numbered from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord.

The rich shall not give more, the poor shall not give less, than half a sheikl when they give an offering unto the Lord to make an atonement for your souls.

And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the Lord to make an atonement for your souls.

So the atonement money for the congregation.

All were to pay alike.

All were to pay.

You see, in the matter of atonement, everybody stands on one common platform.

There's no one who needs atonement more than someone else.

There's no one who needs more of an atonement than someone else, and no one is going to pay a different price for atonement than someone else.

There may be a vast difference in knowledge, in experience, in capability, in attainment, in zeal and devotedness, but the ground of atonement is the same for everyone.

The great apostle of the Gentiles and the feblest lamb and all the flock of Christ stand on the same level regarding atonement.

This is a very simple and a very blessed truth.

Everybody may not be as devoted, and everybody may not be as fruitful, but the precious blood of Christ, not devotedness, not fruitfulness.

The precious blood of Christ is the solid, everlasting, and only ground of the believer's rest.

The more we enter the truth of this and the power of this, the better off we'll be.

Now, you've got to understand this.

We're talking about some of you see money and your mind just sidetracks.

All you want is to hear something about money.

Listen, listen.

This atonement money is a picture for you living in this New Testament age.

The tabernacle's a picture, the candlestick's a picture, the showbread is a picture, the brazen altar is a picture, the altar of incense is a picture, the high priest is a picture, the the curtains of the it's all a picture.

And some of you guys understand every bit of that, and then when you get to the money part, you don't want the picture, you want the money.

Now come on.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.

Why does it always have to be about money?

Okay, so so we we dealt with that.

What's the picture?

Every single one of them needed atonement.

Every single one of them had to pay the same price to receive the atonement, and every single one of them who paid the price received that atonement.

Now, now that's a picture.

Picture of what?

Every sinner needs an atonement.

You cannot spend eternity with God unless someone or something should make atonement for your sins.

You can't do it.

You're a sinner.

I can't do it.

I'm a sinner.

No one can make that atonement for you but the sinless Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who needs him?

Everyone.

Who needs him more than someone else?

No one.

Every single sinner needs Jesus Christ and his atonement just as much as every single sinner.

There's no one who's a greater sinner.

There's no one who's nobody's more lost than somebody else.

No one is more dead in trespasses and sins than somebody else.

Everyone stands in equal need of Jesus' sacrificial death and shed blood.

Not only that, every single one who comes to God with that atonement price paid, not silver, not gold, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, everyone who brings that price receives the atonement.

And then, and then what do we do?

We live our lives.

We live the rest of our days in light of and in the sacred memory of that atonement.

It is a memorial.

We remember what was done to pay for our sins.

Now that's far more that's that's far more important than using this verse of scripture to get some more money out of people.

Oh yeah, there's some lessons here about money.

Are you a member of the congregation?

Then if you're over 20, you ought to give.

It just makes sense.

Why wouldn't you give?

And you're to give.

Listen, they weren't to give at the grocery store, the ball game.

They weren't to uh mail their atonement money to uh you know to uh feed the poor in Peru somewhere.

You under you understand?

It was for the worship of God, it was for the the ministry of God.

So we get that.

We understand that.

Everybody brought it and and everybody gave, and nobody was giving we understand all that.

And and we could preach on that if that was our heart's desire, but it's not.

Our heart's desire is that you uplift and magnify and glorify Jesus Christ.

I believe if you do that, people will give.

I don't think we'd have to preach so much about give your money if people just fell in love with the Lord.

You don't have to preach to a boyfriend to spend his money on his girlfriend.

You don't have to preach to grandparents to spend money on their grandchildren.

Why do you have to preach to Christians to give money to Jesus Christ?

Must be they don't love him.

So the thing does get people to fall in love with the Lord.

Now, blessed be God.

All his claims have been answered.

Every one of them.

All his claims have been answered by one, Jesus Christ, who was at once the representative of his claims and the exponent of his grace.

The one who finished the work of atonement upon the cross is now at the right hand of God.

Here's the sweet rest for the heart and conscience.

Atonement is the first thing to get a hold of.

You get a hold of that, never lose sight of it, everything else will fall into place.

No matter how broad your range of intelligence might be, no matter how deep your experiences may be, no matter how devoted you may become, everything always falls back on one simple, God-given, unchangeable, soul-sustaining doctrine.

The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.

It's ever been this way in the history of God's people.

It is so today among God's people.

It ever shall be among God's people.

That the greatest, the greatest thought, the greatest truth, the greatest principle, from which all Christian life, worship service, and activity springs, is that Jesus shed his blood to pay for our sins.

That's your motivation, my friend.

That's your call to worship.

That's what provokes to love and to good works.

It's the knowledge, the blessed knowledge, it's the joy, the supreme joy of knowing, the forgiveness of sins through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who needed who needed that atonement?

Everyone.

Who needed it more than another?

No one.

Everyone needed to have the same price paid.

Everyone needed that price.

Look, you can't say, well, I I need it, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna.

They couldn't say, I need to bring the atonement, but I'm not gonna do it today.

No, no, no.

There's it now now's the appointed time.

Now's the set day.

You, every one of you, bring the atonement money and they did.

And they did.

Now, what about now?

Right now, today.

Now is the accepted time.

Today is the day of salvation.

Have you come to God?

Have you come to God with the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, your hope, your confidence, your trust.

Nothing else, nothing else.

In your hand you bring, simply to his cross you cling.

It's Jesus Christ who made atonement.

It's Jesus Christ who paid the sinner's price.

Thanks be to God.

I don't know what you've done, God does.

You know worse, you know worse in God's eyes than anyone else, but you're certainly no better in God's eyes than anyone else.

Everyone must be born again.

How about you?

Have you taken care of that?

I hope you'll do it today.

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