The basic prerequisite to enjoying God is to take the offerings. In the last message we saw that there were five main offerings: the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. But you shouldn’t consider that the five offerings are separate offerings, having nothing to do with one another. No, they are offerings related to one another. Actually, they are just a group of offerings. You must see that this group of offerings is the way to enjoy our processed Triune God. Christ came as the tabernacle, and as the tabernacle He is all the offerings. These offerings are for us to enter into the tabernacle. We need to see how to participate in all these offerings. In other words we need to see how to enjoy all these offerings.
The sin offering always directs us to the burnt offering, and the burnt offering is always reflected in the sin offering. Leviticus 16:3 and 5 put these two offerings together. Whenever Aaron as the high priest offered the sin offering, he also needed to offer the burnt offering. This means the burnt offering goes with the sin offering, and the sin offering directs us to the burnt offering.
This kind of light has come not just from the study of the Scriptures, but also from experience. From my experience I have realized that there is no way to encounter the sin in our nature but by being absolute to God. If we are absolute to God, this kills our sinful nature. Christ could be the sin offering for us because He was altogether absolute. So when we realize that we have sin in our nature, that our being is just sin, then we realize that we need the Lord Jesus as our sin offering. At that time we might pray, “O Father, I am so sinful. I am just the constitution and composition of sin. I am just the totality of sin. How could I be for You? It is impossible! Yet, thank You, Lord Jesus, You are absolutely for God. And You are absolutely for God instead of me, on my behalf.” By this kind of prayer you offer Christ as your sin offering to God, and at the same time you participate in Him as your burnt offering.
The sin offering directs us to the burnt offering, and the burnt offering is always reflected in the sin offering. If you offered Christ as your sin offering this morning, you surely realized that the Lord Jesus is also your burnt offering. When you taste the Lord Jesus as your sin offering, surely you also enjoy Him as your burnt offering. You have a sweet sensation in you that you are acceptable to God not because of what you are, but because of Him and because of what He is. This is to enjoy Him as the sin offering directing you to the burnt offering. And this is to enjoy Christ as your sin offering with the burnt offering reflected in the sin offering. In experience you cannot divide the sin offering from the burnt offering.
We also have seen that the trespass offering directs us to the meal offering, and that the meal offering is reflected in the trespass offering. These two offerings also go together as a pair. The more you realize that you have a lot of trespasses, the more you will be directed to the meal offering. The more we contact others the more opportunity we have to transgress and trespass. Forty-seven years ago in 1935 I went to the Lord in prayer. I just couldn’t get up. The more I confessed, the more I had to confess. I confessed many trespasses against my brothers, against my wife, against the brothers in the church, against so many others. I saw that I had trespassed in everything. Right away there was such an appreciation of the Lord Jesus. I am so imperfect and full of defects, but the Lord is so perfect. What is this? This is the meal offering reflected in the trespass offering.
If you would offer these two offerings, the sin offering and the trespass offering, again and again and again, eventually you would have all five offerings. You would have the sin offering with the burnt offering. You would have the trespass offering with the meal offering. In addition to these four you would also have the peace offering as a result of the other four offerings. Eventually the peace offering is the all-inclusive composition of the other four offerings. It is composed of the sin offering and the trespass offering and the burnt offering and the meal offering. All the elements and substances of these four offerings are composed together in the peace offering.
When you offer the burnt offering, you seldom offer it directly. Mostly you offer the burnt offering when you offer the sin offering. It is the same with the meal offering. You seldom offer it directly. Mostly you offer the meal offering when you offer the trespass offering. This means that within the peace offering you have the sacrifice of the sin offering and the sacrifice of the trespass offering and the sacrifice of the burnt offering and also the present of the meal offering. There is the food supply of the cakes and the wafers, and there is also the blood of the sin offering and trespass offering. Furthermore, there is the burnt offering with the fat and the inwards which had to be burned on the altar as an offering by fire as a sweet savor to God. The burnt offering is an offering by fire, so a part of the peace offering is also a burnt offering.