Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1846
“For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Hebrews 9:13,14.
SOME of you may remember that six years ago I preached from this text, principally dwelling upon the type of the red heifer. “The Red Heifer,” No. 1481, Vol. 25. We then tried to show how, in these ashes of the heifer, laid by in store and applied to the unclean with water, God gave to His people in the wilderness a purification of the flesh whenever they had defiled themselves by touching any dead thing. This was the great instrument by which they were delivered from a ceremonial quarantine under which they were kept apart till they had been purified. I am not going to enlarge upon that type today. I felt, when preaching upon it, that I had not reserved due space for the latter and more important part of the text—it is my purpose to make amends this morning. May we be helped by the Spirit of God to yield our earnest attention to the deeply important subject now before us. The red cow may roam out of notice and the Christ of God shall, alone, be seen!
“To serve the living God” is necessary to the happiness of a living man—for this end were we made—and we miss the design of our making if we do not honor our Maker. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” If we miss that end, we are terrible losers. The service of God is the element in which, alone, we can fully live. If you had a fish here upon dry land, supposing it possible that it could exist, yet it would lead a very unhappy life—it would scarcely be a fish at all! You could not tell of what it was capable. It would be deprived of the opportunity of developing its true self. It is not until you put it into the stream that the fish becomes really a fish and enjoys its existence.
It is just so with man—he does exist without God, but we may not venture to call that existence, “life,” for—“He shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him.” If he lives in pleasure, yet he is dead while he lives. He is so constituted that to develop his manhood, perfectly, as God would have it to be, he must addict himself to fellowship with God and to the service of God! Many ways have been tried by men to make themselves perfectly content, but they cannot find satisfaction out of God. When a man gets to serve God and, in proportion as he thoroughly does so, he is peaceful, restful and happy. Man is a fallen star till he is right with Heaven! He is out of order with himself and all around him till he occupies his true place in relation to God. When he serves God, he has reached that point where he serves himself best and enjoys himself most. It is man’s honor, it is man’s joy, it is man’s Heaven to live unto God!
God’s idea of what a nation should be was set forth in the camp in the wilderness. If God’s command had been fully carried out, the desert would have exhibited a scene of highest blessedness. We would have seen a holy people surrounding the central abode of the Holy God—a people, everyone of whom was a servant of God and a priest for His worship— a people whose ordinary everyday life was sanctified by the Presence of God. We would have seen a people whose shadow by day was God in the cloud and whose light by night was God in the pillar of fire—a people to whom God was Leader, for whom God was the vanguard and for whom God brought up the rear. There would have been a people who lived upon the Bread of Heaven—a people who drank of water which leaped by Divine power from the Rock—a people having God to be their glory and their defense. Happy had they been if they could have carried out the Divine ideal! It would have been well with them in the highest degree.
Alas, they were always seeking to be as the evil nations around them! They could not rest till they had descended to the level of the common mass of mankind! If only they could have risen to God’s intent, so that the Divine purpose of love had been fully carried out in them, they would have been the happiest of all the sons of men! We, ourselves, as a Church, if we can fulfill the type—if we live with God in the midst of us, if He is our dwelling place throughout all generations, if we fetch our supplies from Him, if we move only at His bidding, if we intensely love Him—we shall be a people to be envied by all who know us!
But, alas, a great difficulty comes in the way—and of that I am going to speak this morning—in order to the removal of it. Our text very plainly points out the sad hindrance in the way of our service—we need that our conscience be purged from dead works or else we cannot serve the living God. Secondly, our text leads us to consider the true purgation from this evil—if the blood of bulls and of goats purged the flesh of men so that they could draw near to the visible Tabernacle of God, much more shall the blood of Christ purge our conscience from all that spiritual defilement which prevents our heart-worship of God! When these two things are spoken of, I shall ask you, in the last place, if time does not fail us, to consider the kind of service which we ought to render if we have been cleansed by such a costly purification and purged from all conscience of dead works. Oh, living Spirit, help us, now, to think living thoughts and so to carry on the worship of the living God while we are hearing Your Word!