According to 20:24-26, the altar and sacrifices for the worship of God indicate that in order to worship God fallen man must be redeemed, terminated, and replaced. God requires man to worship Him through an altar and with a sacrifice. Furthermore, the one who worships God must lay his hand on the head of the sacrifice and thereby identify himself with it. The sacrifice is then slain and placed on the altar. All this indicates that fallen man needs to be redeemed, terminated, and replaced by Christ with His cross. We are redeemed and terminated by the altar, but we are replaced by Christ.
Before we can appreciate these matters, we need to realize that we are sinners and that our case is hopeless. If we were not sinners, there would have been no need for God to redeem us. If we were not hopeless, God would not require that we be terminated and replaced. The fact that we need redemption, termination, and replacement indicates that we are sinful and hopeless.
It is wrong for a brother to expect his wife to improve. Instead, recognizing that her case is hopeless, he should see that her need is not improvement but termination. We are all a hopeless case, and the case of our husband or wife is likewise hopeless. Thus, we should accept the fact that we need to be terminated. But after we are terminated by the cross, we enter into resurrection, and in resurrection we can be replaced by Christ. A brother needs to see that his wife cannot improve, but she can be replaced by Christ. Likewise, a sister should not pray that the Lord will improve her husband. This kind of prayer is merely ethical and religious. Rather, she should pray, “Lord, I thank You that You are able to replace my husband with Yourself. I ask You, Lord, to replace him.”
The altar and the sacrifices imply redemption, termination, and replacement. Furthermore, as we have indicated, the need for redemption indicates that we are sinful, and the need for termination indicates that we are a hopeless case. Whenever I read of the altar and the sacrifices, I see Christ, my replacement, with His cross. Now I can say, “Praise the Lord that even though I am sinful, I have been redeemed, and even though I am hopeless, I can be terminated and replaced. Lord, I thank You that the process of being replaced by You is still going on, and one day it will be completed. The time is coming when I shall be fully replaced by You.”
The freeing of a slave in a sabbatical year signifies that fallen man under bondage may be freed by God’s rest (21:2), which is Christ. We know from Genesis that, after laboring for six days, God rested on the seventh day. Hence, the Sabbath denotes God’s rest. In the seventh year, a sabbatical year, a slave would be set free. What good news this was for a slave! A slave knew that after serving six years, in the seventh he would be set free. By God’s rest, he would be liberated.
In the ordinance dealing with the freeing of slaves in a sabbatical year, we see the good news of the gospel. Fallen people are slaves. In Romans 7:14 Paul describes himself as “sold under sin.” Every sinner has sold himself under slavery. Do not think that you have been enslaved by others. No, you have enslaved yourself. You have sold yourself into slavery. But the gospel declares the good news that when Christ, God’s rest, appears to us, our slavery is ended, and we are set free. This indeed is good news!