While the brother is living a life of being conformed to the death of Christ and of being cut into pieces, he will realize that he surely needs wisdom. A foolish person cannot live a life which is the experience of the life of Christ. Living such a life requires the highest wisdom. Human wisdom is not adequate; it does not avail. This kind of living requires the very wisdom with which Christ lived when He was on earth. The four Gospels reveal that the Lord Jesus is the wisest person who ever lived. Everything He did was right and was done at exactly the right time. He never spoke a wasted word, and He never did anything in a vain, unwise, or meaningless way. He was One who lived a life altogether in wisdom.

This wisdom is typified by the head of the bull used for the burnt offering. The brother whose living is an experience of Christ’s life will experience Christ’s head; that is, he will experience Christ’s wisdom. Under God’s sovereignty, this brother’s family, including his parents, wife, and children, may be difficult to deal with. Since he lives in such an environment, he realizes that he needs Christ’s wisdom. In his relationship with the members of his family, he spontaneously experiences the head, the wisdom, of Christ. The wisdom by which Christ lived in relation to His family thus becomes this brother’s experience in his daily life.

The brother who offers Christ as a bull will also experience the washing of the legs and the inward parts of the burnt offering. This means that the continual washing of the Holy Spirit as the water will keep him from defilement both outwardly and inwardly. As he is living a life of being conformed to the death of Christ, he will experience the Holy Spirit’s keeping, preserving, and protecting him from defilement. The washing of the Holy Spirit will keep him from defilement outwardly, and this washing will also annul the defiling factor of anything that may get into him from the outside.

When this brother comes to the church meeting to offer Christ, he will offer Christ not merely as the trespass offering but also as the burnt offering. As the brother presents his burnt offering, he will slaughter it, skin it, cut it into pieces, and wash its legs and its inwards. His slaughtering of the burnt offering will be a review of his experience of Christ’s death. His skinning of the offering and cutting it into pieces will be a demonstration, a display, of his experience in his own daily life of Christ’s sufferings. His washing of the offering will likewise be a review of his experience of the washing of the Holy Spirit outwardly and inwardly, that is, his experience of the washing that Christ experienced when He was on earth. Therefore, the way the brother presents the burnt offering will be a display of his experience; it will be a review of his daily experience. Without the daily experience there could not be such a review, for there would be nothing to display or demonstrate. Everything that this brother does in offering the burnt offering is a review, a display, and a demonstration of his daily experiences of Christ. However, he does not offer his experiences to God; he offers the Christ whom he has experienced.

Leviticus 1:4 says that the offering from the herd would be accepted for the offerer “to make propitiation for him.” Verse 5 goes on to say that after the offerer had slaughtered the offering, the priests were to “bring the blood and dash the blood all around on the altar which is at the entrance of the tent of meeting.” This sprinkling of the blood was for propitiation, which is needed by every offerer. Because we are still lacking in the sight of God, we all need propitiation. Hence, the first thing the burnt offering does for the offerer is to make propitiation for him so that God may be pleased and happy with the offerer.

A brother who offers Christ as a lamb or a goat is not as experienced as the brother who offers Christ as a bull, but his offering is still very good. His slaughtering of the offering indicates that he also has experienced Christ’s crucifixion. However, with his offering there is no skinning. Since skinning signifies stripping off the outward expression of the human virtues, the lack of the skinning of the offering indicates that this brother has not experienced Christ’s being stripped of His outward beauty, stripped of the outward expression of His human virtues. Regarding this matter, the brother does not have anything to review or to demonstrate when he offers his burnt offering. Nevertheless, this brother’s offering is cut into pieces, signifying that to some extent he has had the experience of being cut into pieces. Furthermore, he has had some experience of Christ’s head, of Christ’s wisdom. His offering of Christ, therefore, is a review, a display, and a demonstration of his daily experiences of Christ.

Let us now consider the situation with a brother whose offering of Christ as the burnt offering is typified by turtledoves or young pigeons. Such a brother may have been saved only recently. He is very zealous, and he comes to all the church meetings. However, in his daily life there is no appreciation of the fact that on his behalf Christ lived a life which was absolutely for God. Eventually he learns something of Christ as the One who lived such a life, and he begins to appreciate Christ in this respect. Since he now has some appreciation of Christ as the One who lived a life which was absolutely for God, he brings an offering to the meetings, but his offering is a pair of birds. The serving priests then wring off the head, remove the crop and the feathers, and tear the offering by its wings. This indicates that when this brother comes to offer Christ as his burnt offering, he has nothing to review or to demonstrate.

At the Lord’s table meeting, we rarely hear one pray in such a way as to offer Christ as the burnt offering with a rich review, display, and demonstration of his daily experiences of Christ. The reason for this shortage is that not many among us have a rich experience of Christ in His crucifixion, in His being stripped, and in His being cut into pieces. Since our experience of Christ is not adequate, we do not have much to review, display, and demonstrate. Rather, often much of the praise at the Lord’s table consists of the prayers of zealous young ones offering Christ as a pair of birds without any review of the slaughtering, skinning, and being cut into pieces.

Those who offer the burnt offering in the church meetings do not offer themselves or their experience. Paul, for example, offered neither himself nor his experiences of the burnt offering; he offered the Christ whom he had experienced. When we offer the burnt offering, we should not offer to God ourselves or our experiences. Instead, we should offer Christ to God as our burnt offering, yet this offering should not merely be Christ but should be the Christ whom we have experienced. We cannot offer to God for a burnt offering a Christ whom we have not experienced. On the one hand, we should not offer ourselves and our experiences; on the other hand, we should not merely offer Christ. We need to offer to God as a burnt offering the Christ whom we have experienced in our daily life.

We have pointed out that the slaughtering, the skinning, the cutting into pieces, and the washing all denote the offerer’s experience of what Christ suffered and passed through in His life on earth and in His death on the cross. When the offerer presents Christ as his burnt offering, he reviews his experience. What he reviews will match what he has experienced of Christ. He has experienced Christ to a certain degree, and his review will equal that degree. The review, however, is not itself the offering. Rather, the offerer’s review of his experience will determine the size of his offering, and it will also determine the way he offers it.

The offering of the burnt offering requires that a certain step be taken by each of two parties. The first step is taken by the offerer, and the second step is taken by the priest. The offerer always takes the first step to bring the offering to the tent of meeting and, in the case of the offerings from the herd and from the flock, to do what is required to prepare the offering to be offered. However, just as the offerer does not have the right to sprinkle the blood, so he does not have the right to actually offer the offering. This is the service of the offering priest, who places the offering on the fire to be burned.

Now that we have covered the crucial matter of the different ways of offering the burnt offering, we may proceed to consider some other aspects of the burnt offering.
Home | First | Prev | Next