Numbers 19:1-10, 17-19 And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,… This law respecting, the purification of one who has contracted uncleanness by contact with the dead must have been familiar to every Israelite. Death with impartial foot visits every house. No one can long remain a stranger to it. There is evidence, moreover, that this law did not fail to impress devout hearts, deepening in them the feeling' of impurity before God and unfitness for his presence, and at the same time awakening the hope that there is in the grace of God a remedy for uncleanness. Hence David's prayer, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." The law gives direction regarding - I. THE PURIFYING ELEMENT. 1. It was water, pure spring water (verse 17). A most natural symbol, much used in the Levitical lustrations, and which is still in use in the Christian Church. At the door of the sanctuary there is still a laver. In the sacrament of baptism Christ says to every candidate for admission into his house, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." 2. In the present instance the ashes of a sin offering were mingled with the water. A heifer was procured at the expense of the congregation, - red, unblemished, on which never yoke had come, - and it was slain as a sacrifice. The red heifer was a true sin offering. It is so named in verses 9, 17 (Hebrew). But in several respects it differed remarkably from all the other sin offerings. Although the priest was to see it slain, and with his own finger sprinkled its blood toward the holy place, he was forbidden to slay it himself; it was slain not at the altar, but outside the camp, and the carcass was wholly consumed without being either flayed, or cleaned, or divided, or laid out in order. Besides, every one who took part in the sacrificial act was thereby rendered unclean; for which reason Eleazar, not Aaron, was to do the priest's part - the high priest might not defile himself for any cause. The ashes of this singular offering were carefully preserved to be used to communicate purifying virtue to the water required for lustration from time to time. None of these details is without meaning, if we could only get at it. The points of chief importance are these: - (1) The sin offering prefigured Christ in his offering himself without spot to God (Hebrews 9:14). The singular rule which forbade the slaying of the red heifer within the precinct of the camp, who does not see in it a prophecy of the fact that the Just One suffered the reproachful death of a malefactor without the gate of Jerusalem? (Hebrews 13:12, 13). (2) Without prior expiation there could be no purification, and, conversely, expiation being made, the way was open for purification. So when Christ had once offered himself without spot to God, provision was thereby made for purging our consciences. There is a cleansing virtue in the blood of Christ. The man who believes in Christ is not only pardoned, but is so purified in his conscience that he no longer shrinks in shame from the eye of God, but draws near with holy confidence. II. THE PURIFYING RITE (verses 17-19). Nothing could be more simple. A few particles of the ashes of the sin offering were put into a vessel of spring water; this was sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop on the unclean person on the third day and. again on the seventh, an act which any clean person could perform in any town; by this act the uncleanness was removed. A simple rite, but not, therefore, optional. Willful neglect was a presumptuous sin. General lessons: - 1. There is something in sin which unfits for the society of God. One of the chief lessons of the ceremonial law. When the grace of God touches the heart, one of its first effects is to open the heart to feel this. "Lord, I am vile." As habits of personal cleanliness make a man loathe himself when he has been touched with filth, so the grace of God makes a man loathe himself for sin. 2. There is provision in Christ for making men clean. His blood purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 3. Of this provision we must not omit to avail ourselves. Willful neglect of the blood of sprinkling is presumptuous sin. - B. Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, |
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