In Thee all sacrifice centres; from Thee the four great offerings
all should come to repentance,' had been Messiah's feeling towards them in all their apostasies; and in that coming day, when we shall get behind the outward into the inward, and see the true interior of Christ's dealings with men, and the unseen beatings of His gracious heart toward the chief of sinners, who are repelling all His advances, we shall know how sincere His long-suffering has been, how profound His pity, how earnest His proposals of reconciliation, how tender His yearnings, how honest His tears over the rejectors of His love.
God's eternal purpose shall stand; His election, according to the good pleasure of His will, shall be carried out; but not the less shall it be found true, that the wings extended by Messiah over Jerusalem, under which He would fain have gathered her children, were the wings of truest tenderness as well as of almighty power. The day for the reconciliation of all these apparent difficulties will come, and we shall know the harmony between the purpose and the love.
4. Thou art the great Sacrifice
In Thee all sacrifice centres; from Thee the four great offerings spring, and into Thee they return. Thou art the burnt-offering, the peace-offering, the trespass-offering, the sin-offering, all in one. Thou art also the meat-offering and the drink-offering. In Thee we see the double offering of the day of atonement, and the paschal lamb with its unleavened bread. In each of these we discern some special feature of Thy work for sinners, and some peculiar characteristic of Thy person as the sin-bearer. Yes; if Jesus of Nazareth be the Christ of God, then is He the propitiation for our sins,—the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. Of Him the book of Leviticus is full.
Of Him the whole tabernacle speaks,—specially the altar, and the laver, and the mercy-seat. There Christ is all, and in all; and every vessel there points to His sin-bearing work. It is the tabernacle of the Substitute; for, take away the idea of substitution, and the
tabernacle, with its varied furniture and sacrifices, is an unmeaning fabric,—a mere national tent, round which the people gather, and where the tribes celebrate some unmeaning rites, as useless as those of the heathen around. The complete bearing of sin by another; one life for another; the just for the unjust: this is the great truth embodied in the tabernacle. Substitution, ransom, sacrifice, propitiation, atonement, suretyship: these are words whose meaning comes fully out in connection with the tabernacle and its services. They are inscribed on every vessel and every curtain; they speak out in every ceremony, and in every victim, in every priest and Levite. The fire, the smoke, the incense, the blood, declare the truth contained in these words beyond mistake or doubt.
The Psalms, too,—at least such as the twenty-second, the fortieth, the sixty-ninth, and eighty-eighth,—unfold the sufferings of the Substitute when bearing our sins; as when He says, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' (Ps. 22:1); and, 'Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves.… I am afflicted, and ready to die from my youth up' (Ps. 88:7, 15). And then the fifty-third of Isaiah gives the key both to the book of Leviticus and Psalms: 'He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.… Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.… He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.'
In connection with all these, we hear the cry on the cross, 'It is finished!' We see the veil rent in twain, and we learn that 'this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God' (Heb. 10:12). Now, then, there remaineth no more conscience of sins (Heb. 10:1) to them that receive the divine testimony to the finished sacrifice. In believing the record, they obtain the forgiveness and the 'no condemnation' which come through Him who was 'delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.' O perfect sacrifice, what is there that a sinner, burdened with guilt, and weary of the evil within him, does not find in Thee? Peace for trouble, liberty for bondage, righteousness for