Word of Salvation – Vol.38 No.44 – November 1993

 

Trusting in the Sacrifice of Christ

 

Sermon by Rev. A. Esselbrugge on Leviticus 4:29

Readings: Leviticus 4:27-35; Hebrews 10:1-18

 

Brothers and sisters, young people, boys and girls,

What we have before us in our verse for this morning is a symbol and example of the way in which a sacrifice becomes available, and what we see there is repeated and commanded in four other verses of the chapter before us (vs 4, 15, 24, 33).  It is therefore something important and something we can learn from.

Whenever we are privileged to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper we share in the death and resurrection of our Lord, communing with the Body and Blood of our Lord through the very ordinary but highly significant act of taking a piece of bread and drinking grape juice or wine.  Today we want to take another step in coming to terms with the importance of sacrifice for the Christian, particularly the sacrifice of Christ Jesus, the Son of God, for the people of this world.

The question many people are asking today is: How can we not only have a comfortable physical life, but how can we also have a satisfying and peace-filled spiritual life?  All the interest in New Age ideas and phenomena tells us that there is a vast mass of people out there who have come to the conclusion that material wealth and popularity, and the current concepts of success are failing our society.  Life just hasn’t improved to the extent people once thought it would.  Even if we could solve the problems to do with adequate food, clothing and shelter, there would still remain a basic desire and craving in people for something deeper and lasting that physical things can’t satisfy.

We have the solution and answer to that desire, and it is the God-given duty of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ to go out and share that solution without fear or favour or selfish hoarding.

The great question for many people is how to obtain an interest in Christ, and to obtain such an interest, as to be saved by Him.  There is no doubt at all that this is absolutely necessary.  There is but one way to find rest and peace for the soul.  There is but one way to gain meaning and significance for life and living, and that way is through the active involvement and intervention of Christ.  Never could there be a more important and crucial question a person can ask, but it is being tragically neglected by so many.  Christ died for nothing, if He isn’t believed.

The question needs our immediate attention.  It’s not just for the people out there.  It’s for us all.  Do you have an interest in Christ?  If you haven’t, then listen to what the Lord has to say in His Word, the Bible.  Perhaps you have confessed for some time now, that you have an interest in the Lord?  Then test your confession, and if it is found wanting, there is an urgent need for you to return to Him.  And if you feel yourself secure in the Lord, confirm your confession of the Lord Jesus Christ again and again.

Our verse for this service gives us a pictorial answer to the question how Christ’s sacrifice can become available for us.

The act of laying a hand upon the sacrifice was a symbolic act and we need to understand what it meant, so that we may follow this with Christ, who took the place of all the Old Testament sacrifices and did what all of them could merely point to.

The first thing we must understand is that laying a hand on the sacrifice was a confession of sin.  That’s what the whole thing was about.  When the people sinned, either as a whole community, as leaders, as priests or as individuals, they were to take a young bull, or a female goat or female lamb, without defect, and to offer it before the Lord as a sin offering.  But what can happen so easily with this kind of thing is that it becomes a mere ritual.  So the people had to lay their hand on the offering and confess that sin deserves punishment.  And, as they stood there, the ugliness of their sin looming before them, they were to lay their hand upon that animal and it would be put to death for them.  In a symbolic act, the punishment for sin was borne by the animal.

If only there was another way.  Can you imagine what it must have been like?  If you have any feeling at all for animals, especially young animals, then it can seem horrible to put that innocent cuddly thing to death for something it never did.  But you see, that’s just the lesson God drives home to us.  There is no other way to remove sin.  If it was in our power to pay the penalty and remove the guilt of wrong and evil from our souls, and at the end stand before the Holy Almighty God, cleansed, pure and holy, don’t you think God would have commanded it?  But in that we are helpless paupers, dead in sin.

There is only one way!  God gave that way because of His love and mercy.  ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.’

Christ is that sin offering now.  Christ alone.  There, in Him alone, in Him who is the beautiful Lord of creation, innocent, King of Glory, in Him sin is put away forever.  He is the substitute for what ought to be put upon us.

So not only are we to confess our sin, but the laying of a hand upon the offering is a consent to the plan of another taking our place.  Some people raise a question about the justice and certainty of this method of salvation, but those who are being saved never do that because they see that God Himself, who devised this plan, is the best judge of its rightness.  And if He is, then we can also rest easy and accept that it truly is the right way.

There is no other plan which meets the problem of our sin.  There is nothing that even looks like it, or comes close to it.  The sense of guilt people have is immense and crushing.  This is the experience of everyone who has come to Christ, and has been brought to their knees, to confess their sins.

A third thing we need to understand from the picture presented to us in our verse here is that laying a hand on the offering was an affirmation that the victim was accepted.

Jesus is the most natural substitute.  He was sent by God the Father.  He is the second Adam.  He is the head and ruler of all mankind.  He, as God, having a perfect humanity united with His Godhead, is the only person able to offer God the Father the satisfaction.  The entire penalty against sin has been paid.  He alone is acceptable to God.

Is He not then to be acceptable to us?

Only as we accept the Lord, will we also believe that sin is transferred.  By laying on of hands, sin was laid on the victim.  It was laid there so as to be no longer on the one making the offering.

So far we have said that there were four things signified by the laying on of hands upon the offering.  It was a confession of sin.  It was a consent to the plan of substitution.  It was an acceptance of the victim.  It was a believing transference of sin.  We have one other point to make: it was a dependence, a leaning on the victim.

Faith is leaning.  It doesn’t take any power to lean.  It’s a giving up of our own strength and allowing our weakness to depend on the power of another.  No-one is ever to say, ‘I can’t lean’, because it is not a question of what you can do, but it’s a confession of what you can’t do.  It’s a leaving of the whole matter with Jesus.  No-one can ever say, ‘I can’t faint.’ It is not a matter within your power to make it happen or to prevent it from happening.

We are to live in Christ; to let Him be our all, while we are nothing.  Think about the manner in which the Lord suffered, think of Him and who He is; think about Him dying, and how by His suffering and dying He made peace with God for all who by faith lean on Him.  And, remember this, not one of the saints now in heaven have had any other sacrifice for their sins.  Their motto before God has been and always shall be, Christ alone, by faith alone.  That is the motto of everyone who is saved and resting in Christ alone.  We would call on everyone to lean on Him.

There could be nothing simpler about what we see there in our verse.  There were no special rites or preparations to be made beforehand.  The victim was there, and the hands were laid on it.  Nothing more.  No introduction or appendices can be added to Christ.  He is the Alpha and the Omega.  He is the beginning and the end.

The offerer came with all his sin: ‘Just as I am, without one plea’.  It was to have his sin removed that caused the offerer to bring the sacrifice.

He came because he himself couldn’t remove it.  ‘Nothing in My hand I bring’; no merit, no gift or price.  Nothing in his hand or on his hand.  No symbol of power, nothing at all, and whether he was educated or not, rich or poor, the offerer came as a simple human being in need of the Divine power of God to be exercised for him.

Congregation, we must make sure that we come to Jesus in simple faith.  Our trust is not to be upon the ceremonies.  Our trust is to be upon the sure power of God and not on what our hands can bring about.  Pardon rests in the work of Christ alone.

So, whatever you have been able to take in from what we have said, and whether you regard yourself as a saint or a sinner, lean hard on Jesus.  He takes away the sin of the world.  Trust Him with your sin, and it is put away forever.  Put out your hand now, and adopt the cleansing sacrifice of the redeeming Lord as your salvation.

AMEN