A Christian friend in Norway, a good preacher, once said, “If you don´t appreciate the book of Leviticus and its teachings of Christ and how it foreshadows Him in his many relations, something is missing in your Christian life.”  I was very young at that time and thought he was exaggerating.  I hadn´t “got into” Leviticus or much of the Old Testament – but I knew the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior of my lost soul.

Yet my friend had a point.  The Spirit of God is not mentioned in Leviticus, and yet He is active there in enlightening the renewed mind about the work of the cross foreshadowed in the many offerings.  There´s a lot I don´t understand, and yet there´s a lot He makes me understand little by little.

Today I paused as I read the words, “The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting….”  (Lev. 3:1). I suddenly rejoiced.  He didn´t speak to him from the Sinai of thunder, but from “the tent of meeting”, i.e. that tabernacle, where the very first thing mentioned, among many other things, was the ark (Ex 25:10) and its “mercy seat” (v.21), and the Lord had said, “There I will meet with you.”  (v.22).  That´s why the tent, filled with the glory of the Lord, was called “the tent of meeting.” Moses heard the voice of the Lord from the blood sprinkled mercy seat.  (Nu. 7:89)

I once listened to Billy Graham in a British church.  I didn´t see his face, I just listened to him through a transmission from elsewhere in U.K.  I didn´t have to see him either.  The simple message was about “The Blood of Christ”.  That was enough. I used to think of Billy as the streamlined American evangelist with a lot of shining glamour around him, but now he held forth Christ crucified and His blood as the answer of man´s guilt. Praise God.

There´s a lot of empty “Jesus noise” around.  What kind of Jesus is all that?  The apostle asked that question in 2 Cor. 11:4.  He talks about “another Jesus”, but he doesn´t belong to the fraternity of the propagators of that false Jesus.  A woman visiting me at the hospital said with a shrilling voice, “I love Jesus!” But it soon became evident to me that her voice had a false ring, and I just wished she let me alone.

“He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.”  (Lev. 1:5).  He laid his hand on the head of the burnt offering and thus identified himself with that sacrifice which foreshadowed Christ.  O, let us by faith lay our hands on that message and be identified with it as needy sinners.  That will give our testimony the right ring in the ears of other lost sinners.

-jn-

Febr. 11,2010.