Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 739
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, MARCH 10, 1867, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people; then let him bring for his sin, which he has sinned, a young bull without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering.”- Leviticus 4:3.
In the previous chapters of the book of Leviticus you read of the burnt offering, the peace offering, and the meat offering—all types our Lord Jesus Christ as seen from different points of view. Those three sacrifices were sweet savor offerings, and represent the Lord Jesus in His glorious Person and perfect righteousness as an offering of a sweet smell unto God. The chapter before us, the whole of which we shall require as a text, describes the sin offering, which, although quite distinct from the sweet savor offerings, is not altogether to be separated from them, for the Lord Jesus Christ viewed in any light is very dear unto His Father.
And even when beheld as a sin offering, He is elect and precious unto God, as we shall have to show you in the type before us. Still, the sin offering does not set forth the acceptance of the substitute before the Lord, but rather brings out the abhorrence which God has towards sin, the putting away from His holy Presence of everything upon which sin is laid. This morning, if God shall enable us, we hope to impress upon your minds, first of all, the great evil of sin. And secondly, the great and wonderful power of the blood of atonement by which sin is put away.
Without any further preface we shall invite you, in meditating upon the type before us, first, to consider our Lord Jesus as made sin for us. Secondly, we shall ask you to observe, carefully and prayerfully, His blood in its efficacy before the Lord. And thirdly, we shall bid you look at His substitution in the shame which it involved.
I. First, Brethren, let us, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, view our blessed Lord as made sin for us, as He is here typified in the bull.
1. His personal Character is set forth before us in the victim chosen, namely, a young bull without blemish. It was a bull, the most valuable of the sacrifices—an animal laborious in life and costly in death. It was a young bull in the fullness of its strength and vigor. It was without blemish and the slightest fault disqualified it from being laid upon the altar of God. Behold, O Believer, your Lord Jesus, more precious by far than ten thousands of the fat of fed beasts! A Sacrifice not to be purchased with gold, or estimated in silver! Full of vigor, in the very prime of manhood, He offered up Himself for us!
Even when He died, He died not through weakness, for that cry of His at His death, “with a loud voice,” proved that His life was still firm within Him and that when He gave up the ghost, His death was not one of compulsion but a voluntary expiring of the soul. His glory is as the firstling of the bull, full of vigor and of strength. How distinctly was our Lord proved to be without blemish! Naturally born without sin,practically He lived without fault. In Him there was neither deficiency nor excess. In no virtue did He come behind, and no fault could be found in Him. The prying eyes of the prince of this world could find nothing in Him, and the still more accurate search of the all-seeing God found no fault in
Him.
This spotlessness was necessary, for how could He have been made an offering for our sin if it had not been true that personally, “He knew no sin”? Shall one bankrupt stand in the debtor’s court as a substitute for another? How shall one penniless wretch pay the debt of another who is about to be cast into prison? If the king requires service of any man, how shall another from whom service is equally due, offer himself as a substitute for him? No, the Savior of others must have no obligations of His own. He must owe no personal debts. There must be no claims on the part of justice against Him, on His own account, or He cannot stand “the Just for the unjust,” to expiate the sins of men.
You holy souls, feast your eyes upon the spotless Son of God! You pure in heart, delight your purified vision with a sight of His perfections! You shall one day be like He—this will be your Heaven! Meanwhile make it your rapture, your
Paradise on earth, to gaze upon the unrivaled beauties of the Altogether Lovely. “In Him was no sin.” In Him was all excellence. His body and soul are alike—white as the lily for holiness—though made by suffering red as the rose. Alabaster and bright ivory overlaid with sapphires are but dull and soiled types of His purity. Come, you virgin souls, and let the eyes of your holy love survey Him that you may see how fit He was to suffer as “the Just for the unjust, to bring us to
God.”
The act of transference of sin to the victim next calls for our attention. You will have noticed, in reading the chapter, that our Lord’s being made sin is set forth to us by the very significant transfer of sin to the bull, which was made by the priest, or by the elders of the people, as the case might be. We are expressly told, “He shall lay his hands upon the bull’s head,” which act, our good Dr. Watts has interpreted in his well-known verse—