United by the Ark

By an unusual set of circumstances, I was introduced to a young Christian by email. He and his wife moved the same time as our daughter and her hubby to the same area. We decided to meet with this couple for a meal yesterday. It was as if we have known them forever. This is the grace of God. When He brings people into His family, we become just that — family.

This morning’s devotional gives a reminder of how that works. It is found in the story of Noah. This man’s life is summed up in the NT:

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (Hebrews 11:7)

MacArthur goes on to explain that the ark is a picture of salvation by grace through faith. In the text describing its construction, an unusual word is used:

Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. (Genesis 6:14)

The Hebrew word for pitch is from the same root as the word for atonement or a covering, which is what Jesus does to our sin. However, this word is also translated as a protected village, which is what God does for His people. Pitch kept the waters of judgment from entering the ark, just as Christ’s atoning blood keeps judgment from the repentant sinner. Pitch, or the word for it, also surrounds and protects God’s family, speaking of our protection and hinting at our unity, just like the people in the ark were protected from judgment, together in that protected place, emphasis on together. Shared atonement gives a sense of oneness even among people of different cultures, backgrounds, education, and often varied views of many things. This “pitch” not only suggests the presence of oil in the middle east, but it speaks of the covering and uniting power of God’s grace!

Noah’s task was enormous. Some say this ark was bigger than a football field and more than four stories high. It had more than enough room for the animals and people in it. Engineers say its structure was incredibly stable . . .  just like the structure of salvation. This is why it illustrates what God has done in Christ.  

Even at that, only eight people entered it. There was room for more and God would have welcomed them because “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient . . .  not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) He also says: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37) but “The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:14)

The story says that Noah “was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. He walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9) That does not mean he was sinless and some of that showed up after the flood, but like every true believer, he was justified by God’s grace, his faith being counted as righteousness. That has always been the basis of salvation.

And (Abram) believed the Lord, and (God) counted it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)

And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, (Romans 4:5)

And that faith produces a unity between people who are otherwise strangers, a blessed sense of being “in the same village” even with our many differences. Atonement, like the ark, is our covering and protection. Because of God’s grace we are saved and given the mind of Christ so when we get together we are aware of belonging together in His ‘walled city’ of unity and fellowship.

PRAY: Jesus, I see Your hand in all things, in our dinner last night with people we’d never met, in our mutual edification as brothers and sisters in You, in the saving grace and life of Noah and his family, in the power that still saves people though the atonement that is ours in You. What a lovely wonder You are, a gift from the Father that never stops giving.

PONDER: Romans 4:1–8 is the gospel but it also explains why the members of God’s family have a unity that goes beyond common interests and mutual agreement. According to this passage, what gives us the status of being covered and living together in a walled city?

 

 

Forgiven — all of it . . .

 

 

READ Leviticus 1-4

Jesus said that evil comes out of the heart. The psalmist asked God to search his heart and reveal any wicked way that was there. When a person dreams of doing sinful things, is that God’s way of answering that prayer?

I had a dream where I was not doing anything evil, but I was thinking of it, even wishing I could. When I woke up, I felt guilty, as if I had done the awful thing. Thinking of the Cross and what Jesus did there for me helped, but oddly enough, so does today’s reading.

There were seven types of OT sacrificial offerings including sin, guilt, burnt, peace, grain offerings and more. Leviticus 4 focuses on the sin offering and says, “if a person sins unintentionally in any of these things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and commits any of them,” they must present a sin offering.

The meaning behind this offering could be sinning through ignorance, hurry, want of consideration, or carelessness, but also sinning unintentionally. It is an offering for sins that spring from the weakness of being a sinful human being who means will as distinguished from sins committed in defiance and haughty rebellion against God and His commandments. In contrast, those sinners were cut off from God’s people (see Numbers 15:30-31).

This sin offering was for forgiveness and cleansing from sin’s pollution. It marked the ideas of propitiation and atonement, and presupposed that the person offering it knew they had done wrong. (see 4:14 and 23). The offering included rituals such as the guilty person laying their hands on the offering. This typified that the sin was transferred to the sacrifice and it became sin and suffered the consequences for it. The sprinkling of the blood represented the soul of the sinner brought into fellowship with God’s grace which was required for its atonement. The fat was also burned. According to a Bible dictionary:

“The burning of the fat of the sacrifice upon the altar as an offering made by fire for a soothing aroma unto Jehovah (Leviticus 4:31) was symbolic of the handing over of the better part of the man, the part that is susceptible of renewal, to the purifying fire of the divine holiness and love, in order that the inward man might be renewed from day to day by the Spirit of the Lord and at length be changed into the glory of the children of God.”

The sacrifice offered was regulated by who gave it and the nature of their sin. For instance, a young bull was offered for the sin of a high priest or the sins of the entire congregation. A male goat was offered for the sin of a leader, a female goat for sin by one of the common people, and so on. Without blemish was a common requirement. Regular and special offerings were made in a ritual manner. These rituals also varied with the type and occasion for the offering and included the declaration that “whoever touches them shall become consecrated” and instructions saying what to do with the offering after it was presented.

While an important part of OT covenant, these sacrifices are typology. That is, they point to Christ. The sin offering represents Christ atoning for the guilt of sin. “For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.” (Hebrews 13:11–12)

 It portrays Jesus burdened with a believer’s sin, standing in the sinner’s place yet being Himself without blemish and the One “who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:21) The theological words describe these sin offerings as “efficacious and substitutionary and in their expiatory aspect vindicate the law through substitutionary sacrifice” meaning they were effective in taking what sinners deserve and making amends to satisfy the wrath of God against sin.

The sacrificial system was never intended to be complete. As the NT says, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.” (Hebrews 8:7) and “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (Hebrews 9:13–14)

The NT verifies in many places that “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

As for that dream, both Leviticus and the NT declare that even had it been an actual sin committed when I was awake, the blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient. He covers all sin — everything that this sinful person might do or dream that is contrary to godliness. I am joyful at the wonder of God’s grace . . . from Leviticus to this present day!