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The Tabernacle is nothing that you or I can add to what He has done! It is all of grace. And our eternal security depends not upon us, but upon Him who bears the marks of Calvary in His hands and feet and side. "There is no more offering for sin" (Heb. 10:18). We can not know the depths of suffering which Christ bore for us. He endured the :fires of judgment that no human being can fully comprehend. Fire is a symbol of judgment in the Word of God. N adab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, offered strange :fire before the Lord, judg- ment in death fell upon them in the form of fire (Lev. 10: 1, 2) . Fire and brimstone fell upon wicked Sodom and Gomorrah, and consumed them. The wicked will spend eternity in a place which our Lord described as a lake of :fire and brimstone, "where their worm dieth not, and the :fire is not quenched" (Mark 9 :48). Upon the altar of burnt offering, in the very heart of it, the :fire burned. In the heart of the sinless Son of God the :fires of judgment burned-not for His own sins, for He had none-but for the sins of a guilty world. Not the physical suffering alone, not the mocking and shame which He endured; but the anguish of soul when He be- came "an offering for sin"-that was the real suffering of the cross for the sinless Son of God. (See Isaiah 5 3: 10. ) There are those who :find fault, saying that it was not just for God to lay the sins of the world upon Jesus. But they do not know what they are saying. Jesus was God; and He took the sins of the world upon Himself. Has God not a right to do what He pleases with Himself? In the eternal counsels of the eternal Holy Trinity God took upon Himself the sins of the world. And Christ Jesus was "God manifest in the flesh."
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The Tabernacle
The Removal of the Ashes to a Clean Place After the burnt offering had been accepted by God and burned upon the altar, the priest, in white linen gar- ments, took the ashes out from underneath the grate, and they were taken to a clean place without the camp. ~e ashes were precious because they were to be used 1? sprinkling the unclean, as in the case of th: leper.. ~his part of the ritual speaks to us of our Lord s crucifix10? "without the gate" of the city of Jerusalem, and of His burial in Joseph's new tomb, wherei~, "corr_upting flesh had never lain." It was "a clean place provided by lov- ing hands for Hirn whose body "saw no corruption.': "The value of the ashes does not lie in what we think of them, but in the high estimate put on them by God Himself." And how precious in the eyes of the Father were "the ashes of the whole burnt offering," when the fires of judgment had consumed the Sacrifice! "If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much mor~ _shall the bl?od of Christ, who through the eternal Spmt o~ered him- self without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Heb. 9: 13, 14) • Thus the Holy Spirit speaks to us concerning the efficacy of the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus! From the Altar to the Throne-Room . If we could have been a witness to the ministry of the priest in Israel, we should have seen him going from the altar of burnt-offering on into the sanctuary day after day; but :first he ministered at the place where the blo~d was shed. That blood was sprinkled on all the vessels m the tabernacle by the high priest, as on the Day of Atone-
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