Dawn in the Desert - Part 3
- Bible Prophet
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship [Romans 12:1].
The whole burnt offering represented the offerer—in the case of the daily morning and evening offerings, the entire congregation of Israel was represented. Because it was entirely consumed in the fire of the bronze altar, it typified that the offerer was entirely offered up to the Lord.
The sin offering was presented to typify the Lord’s judgment on the offerer’s sin. That wasn’t the main thing portrayed by the whole burnt offering. Rather, by presenting to the Lord a whole burnt offering, the offerer signified his whole (or total) dedication to the Lord. The Israelite’s entire being was devoted to the Lord. Nothing was left out, except, of course, the skin (which typified a facade of mere appearance, so it was not burned on the bronze altar).
Let’s refresh our memories as to what this study is about. We are assaying Paul’s exhortation to the Christian to present himself to the Lord as a living sacrifice. Is the issue starting to lose its fuzziness and come into focus now? The Israelite of old symbolically presented himself to the Lord wholly, entirely, by means of the Lord’s whole burnt offering ritual. The ritual typified this on the part of the Israelite.
The Word of God for the Israelites (i.e., the Law of Moses) authorized this process as legitimate. The Israelite believed the Word of God to him (i.e., faith in the Word of God); so he performed the ritual precisely according to the Lord’s directions (obedience to the Word of God). The priests stood between the Israelite and the Lord to insure nothing was done in contradiction to the Word of God. This was the Lord’s way under the Old Covenant.
Under the New Covenant we don’t present animal substitutes on a bronze altar. The Lord Jesus Christ is God’s once-for-all perfect offering. The Lord Jesus fulfilled the entire Law on man’s behalf. This included fulfilling the spiritual truth behind every different type of offering. The cross of Christ is the antitype of the bronze altar, where the Lord Jesus was offered up to God on man’s behalf.
The eternal Son of God took upon humanity and became one of us. He remains God’s Son still, but at a point in time He also became true man. He is the God-man. He is the only way to reunite God and man, even as He did so in His own Person.
When He became a man, the Lord Jesus temporarily set aside His prerogatives of deity. He didn’t stop being God: He temporarily stopped exercising His power and authority as God. Instead He walked in His human body, living according to the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Hurray for Jesus! All hail our King! Let’s bow before Him now. We’ll continue this topic on the morrow.
To further research this issue, I direct you to my book Numbers: Volume 4 of Heavenly Citizens in Earthly Shoes. To purchase my books please click on the "Shop" tab at the top of this page, where you will find a complete list of my books. Each book is available in both paperback (Createspace) and eBook (Kindle).
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