THE INSTITUTE BIBLE COURSE.

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM R. NEWELL.

LESSONS X.-XIII. Leviticus: The Book of Sanctification.

The book now before us is an exhaustless mine of precious gold. To the Christian who has come into the spiritual understanding of it, it presents constantly increasing beauties and ever fresh delights. It is so full of Christ-of His Blessed Person, as well as of His priceless work; and its many ceremonies present Him to us in such a variety of aspects, that the faithful heart which loves its Lord is ever constrained to cry out, "Oh, the depth of the riches!" "He is the chiefest among ten thousand!" "He is all and in all!" We would naturally expect it to be full of Himself, since He Himself has been made of God our sanctification. I Cor. i. 30. It was in Him as Head of the new creation that we were chosen-that is the lesson of the book of Genesis. It was through Him we were redeemed, by His precious blood, Eph. i. 7; 1 Pet. i. 18, 19; and so brought up out of the world through baptism into His death (the Red Sea, 1 Cor. x. 2); Rom. vi. 3, to enter the heavenlies and partake in His resurrection life and victory, Eph. ii. 5, 6; Rom. vi. 4; Col. ii. 12-that is the lesson of the book of Exodus. (Let us remember always that the law came in beside, Rom. v. 20; it was added. Gal. iii. 19. Its provisions are not expressive of any part of our salvation in Christ, which is all of grace, Titus iii. 4-7; but only of certain preparations to salvation. Gal. iii. 22-25.) Next, it is in Christ Jesus that we have been sanctified, or set apart forever to God, 2 Cor. i. 2; that is, in His sacrifice of Himself He forever secured for and to His Father, those in Him, Heb. x. 10, 14-this is the lesson of Leviticus. As we know, there are two aspects of our sanctification: one from the standpoint of what Christ has done for us, which is perfect, and is forever finished this is our standing; the other, from the standpoint of what we have permitted the Holy Spirit to accomplish in us, which may be very incomplete this is our experience. It is the former of these of which the book of Hebrews speaks, which in the New Testament corresponds to Leviticus in the Old. They should be read and studied together. In this larger and primary sense of sanctification, Christ is

I. Read most prayerfully, patiently and carefully, at least seven times over, these opening chapters. Picture before your mind the priest fulfilling the various directions in each offering. Do not be content until you have so mastered the details of these chapters that you could go through with any one of the sacrifices yourself. Indeed, you will find added delight in reading this lesson, if you will imagine yourself one of the priests, and this lesson your book of directions. It is of the utmost importance that we get well before us the particulars concerning each offering, in order not only to the study of the typical meaning now, but to be prepared to understand the frequent and always meaningful references to these offerings in the later books of the Bible. God expects us to read carefully what He has here written for our learning; if we fail to do so, let us not be surprised if we do not find profit or interest in some other parts of the Word. Our Father is not partial to one part of His revelation above another. If you and I are, let us not expect sympathy from Him in it. He has uttered it all. It is all equally holy and precious. Every word of it will abide forever. There are three great steps in coming to understand these types and shadows: mastering the contents; finding the key to it all; then, using the key. Take the first step first. This faithfully done, the rest is simple and easy. Again, let me urge you, read the chapters over and over, till all their details are familiar.

II. The chapter names are at once seen I., Burnt-Offering; II., Meal-Offering; III, Peace-Offering: IV., Sin-Offering; V., Trespass-Offering; VI., VII., Laws of Offerings.

The five great offerings of chapters i.-v unite to present to us the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in its great five-fold character. In the burnt offering we see

Christ offering Himself without blemish unto God (Heb. ix. 14) as a sweet-smelling savor (Eph. v. 2), delighting to do His Father's will in the sacrifice of Himself (Ps. xl. 6-8; Heb. x. 5-7). The flaying, dismembering and washing show Him gladly laying open to His Father's infinitely searching sight and requirement His whole being. The burning of the whole on the altar signifies God's entire and glad acceptance of Christ's willing offering of Himself, as whatever was burnt on the altar was sent as acceptable up to God. In the meat, or, better, meal offering (see Revised Version) Christ, seen by the Father as the perfect Man, is set before us. Flour, the earthly fruit, proclaims His real humanity; fine flour, the perfect character of His manhood, as even, harmonious, one with itself throughout; the mingled oil, the Holy Spirit working in His conception and birth (Luke i. 35), and the poured oil, the Holy Spirit poured upon Him at His baptism (Luke iii. 21, 22; Acts x. 38). God's memorial handful, burnt on the altar with the frankincense, shows Christ living His human life for God's glory first, as the chief end of it; though afterward the priests (types of all true Christians, Rev. i. 6) feast on it also (John vi. 50-58). Since honey symbolizes natural earthly sweets, and leaven always sin, (Matt. xiii. 33 is by no means an exception!) both were excluded from the offerings, as Christ partook of neither; but salt, the preserver and purifier, was always to be used, as setting forth the abiding character Christ's work. The peace offering shows Christ as our peace, the reconciler of God and man, satisfying God's holy claims and bringing us nigh in Himself. (See Eph. ii. 13-20; Col. i. 21, 22.) Of this offering God took the fat, which signifies His delight in the devotion and excellencies of Christ; the priests the shoulder and breast, showing His strength and affections given us as our proper and sustaining portion. The offerer was allowed to feast together with God on this offering, as the prodigal's father said, "Let us eat" (Luke xv. 23). These three-the burnt, the meal and the peace offering-are''sweet savor offerings" and set forth what Christ is as toward God in all His work; the last two, the sin and the trespass offering, show us what Christ was made for us. (See 2 Cor. v. 21; John i. 29; Isa. liii. 6.) In the sin offering we see Him

dealing with the question of sin; in the trespass offering with individual sins. He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and bore the sins of many. (Heb. ix. 26-28.) He dealt with sin in the root (Rom. vi. 6) in the sin offering, and with sin in the fruit in the trespass offering. (1 Peter ii. 24.) By the laying on of the offerer's hands he became identified with his offering, which was then put in the place of death in his stead. So Christ became one with us (Heb. ii. 11; 2 Cor. v. 21) and was punished in our place to satisfy God's holy and righteous wrath against our sin. As the burnt offering Christ absolutely satisfied and delighted His Father, and the whole burnt on the altar expresses it; as the sin offering His Father's face was turned from Him. He was in the place of judgment. God could not look upon sin. Compare (1) Matt. xxvii. 45, 46; (2) 2 Cor. v. 21; (3) Hab. i. 13. So the sin offering was burnt without the camp, where those unclean, or those under sin's judgment, were relegated. (Cf. Heb. xiii. 11, 12.) But even in the sin offering the fat was burnt on the altar. God delighted in the inner devotion and affections of Christ, which the fat seem to represent, through all His awful visitation of our sin upon Him. It should be noted that the blood of the sin offering alone was taken inside the veil. Only as the Sin Offering could Christ bring us into God's presence.

The order of the offerings expresses what Christ is to Godward; and then, reversed, how man apprehends Christ. In the burnt offering Christ is seen doing His Father's will; in the meal offering He appears as the perfect Man, the Father's delight; in the peace offering, bringing God and sinful man together; in the sin offering, being made the world's Sin Bearer; in the trespass offering, bearing individual sins. But the sinner first finds Christ as His trespass offering, the bearer of his particular transgressions-that is salvation; then as his sin offering—that is victory over sin itself; then as his peace offering-that is fellowship; then as his meal offering, the perfect man into whose image the Holy Ghost is ready to fashion him-that is sanctification; and finally in the strength of the Great Burnt Offering he offers his own body as a living sacrifice to God -the highest Christian duty and privilege. Rom. xii. 1, 2.

LESSON XI. Leviticus viii.-xv. Priests and Purification.

I. Read the chapters, as usual, seven times over. Your appreciation of and delight in these beautiful truths of Leviticus will grow in direct proportion to the conscientious, prayerful attention you bestow on all the details in your reading. If I should have my choice of accomplishing one of two things by this Bible course: either to bring those who follow the course into possession of all the truths of each lesson; or simply to succeed in persuading them to read over each lesson the required number of times,-I should most unhesitatingly choose the latter. The reason why God's people do not understand the Bible is because they do not read it. The Holy Ghost has come to teach each one of us, John xiv.26, and those who receive Him in His blessed anointing are kept from error through His abiding vigilance and enlightening, 1 John ii. 20, 26, 27; and guided by Him into all truth, John xvi. 13, 14,—even into the deep things of God, I Cor. ii. 9-12. If we will faithfully read the Word He will open it to us. For Christians to neglect the Holy Ghost as their teacher and run to human sources as they do is a great sin against the loving, tender Comforter, who yearns to have the unbounded, trustful confidence of every one of us, and our joyful surrender to His direct presence and teaching. In James iv. 5, R. V., margin, last reading, this is touchingly set forth. See also John vi. 45. A large part of the lessons this month seems, you may say, to be taken up with exhortation. Be it so. Have you read the chapters over and over, as we have begged? If so, you will have found such delight in the very Word itself, that you will not greatly miss aught we might say. If you have not so read and reread the lesson, then you are just the one whom we are seeking to persuade of your duty and privilege, by all we are saying. Why will men not see that the very first thing necessary in order to understand and enjoy the Bible is to read it? God will not bless the soul of the so-called Bible student who seeks to get at the system of truth taught in the Bible through what other men have written, while slighting both the Word itself, and the personal Holy Ghost who wrote it and has come to open and explain it. If this Bible course fails to induce you to do the thorough

reading and rereading so constantly urged in it, it has vitally failed with regard to you. I do not think I could believe it right to take my time and this valuable space to carry on this series of lessons if they failed to get people to begin faithful Bible reading. "SEEK YE OUT IN THE BOOK OF THE LORD AND READ." Oh. that that word were cried up and down this land till every Christian, and especially every Christian worker, should hear and obey! Then would come the revival that cannot come so long as the present ignorance of God's blessed Word prevails. Read these chapters seven times. You will be glad you did it.

II. The chapter names: viii., Priestly Consecration; ix., Holy Fire; x., Strange Fire, xi., Clean and Unclean; xii., Natal Cleansing; xiii., Leprosy; xiv., Leper Cleansing; xv., Personal Cleansing.

III. Topic names. Seek to discover the heart of the lesson, and find if the great themes treated do not fall at once about it. We will suggest chapter x. 3, first apart from, and then with, its context, as setting forth the great central truth of the section. Go over the chapter names, in the light of this text, and see if it is not so. Make a careful topical outline of the lesson on some such basis.

IV. In chapter viii. we see Aaron at last dressed in the high-priestly robes. All these garments are wonderful types of the character and work of our Great High Priest, and should be studied in detail as to the significance of their materials, colors, patterns, use and prominence. See Ex. xxviii. and all other Scripture references to any of these garments. We shall not enter upon the exposition of their meaning, except to suggest the general typical character of the chief parts of the dress. The ephod, with its two shoulder-pieces and graven stones (Exodus xxviii.), seems to represent Christ's mediatorial power supporting His people in access to God and fellowship with Him. The breastplate, with its individual names on the precious stones, speaks of the particularly near and dear relation Christ's people bear toward Him, and into which He has brought them with the Father, and in which He constantly sustains them by His power as Mediator (the breastplate hung from the ephod). Happy the Christian who has learned boldly to write me in such passages as Heb. vii. 25 and Rom. viii. 34! The robe of the ephod,

"all of blue," the heavenly color, speaks of Christ as the Man from heaven. 1 Cor. xv. 47. The "diadem of holiness," as the forehead plate of gold is called in Ex. xxxix. 30 and Lev. viii. 9, is said in Ex. xxviii. 36-38 to signify the bearing by the high priest of all the responsibility for the worship of the people"Aaron shall bear the iniquity of the holy things." What a source of joy it is for us that upon Christ is all the burden of making our worship and service acceptable to the infinite God with whom we have to do! Heb. ix. 24; xiii. 15; 1 Pet. ii. 5; iv. 10, 11; Eph. i. 6. It is such knowledge that gives the heart rest and joy, and inspires us to devotion as nothing else can. It is not that we have to work to be accepted; but, finding that we are accepted, how can we but work!

Aaron is now anointed before the rest of the priestly family, and before the shedding of blood, as was Christ. His anointing was lavish, as was also Christ's. See Psalm cxxxiii. 2; Acts x. 38; John iii. 34. After the sacrifice the other priests were sprinkled with the same oil. Compare Pentecost after Calvary. The bloodsprinkled ear, hand and foot show heart service and walk given to God in the power of the cross. 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20; 1 Pet. i. 18, 19; 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. This is a sweet picture of real consecration; which, while always actuated by gratitude for redemption, as a motive, must first be made possible by redemption, as a realized fact. Rom. xii. 1, 2.

The eighth day (chapter ix.), is a beautiful outline picture of the whole work of Christ for Israel. In verse 22 we see Aaron giving the people the priestly blessing, after the sacrifice, and then entering into the tabernacle from their sight. But the glory did not appear till Moses (the type of Christ the King, as Aaron of Christ the Priest), comes forth with Aaron to the people. Thus Christ, having accomplished the sacrifice, blessed His people Luke xxiv. 51, and then passed into heaven, the true tabernacle. Heb. viii. 1,2. Anon He will come forth as the Great Priest King, and then will Israel be blessed indeed, and all flesh shall see His glory. Isa. xl. 3, 4, 10. God speed that day!

The tenth chapter proclaims first God's attitude toward will-worship-it was not fire which was commanded against, but which was simply not commanded. How much such

fire is being offered in churches today! Imagine a "Sunday evening sacred concert" in the Pentecostal church! The other great truth enforced is, that God's glory is infinitely higher than nature's ties. Compare the equally solemn and even more touching story of Ezekiel xxiv. 15-24. Also Luke ix. 57-62. This

is a much needed lesson in these days.

In the double mark of clean animals (chapter xi.), is seen the two proof-marks of the real Christian: rumination or meditation in the Word (Ps. cxix. 97) and a divided or separated walk (2 Cor. vi. 17). Both these characteristics are set forth together in the first Psalm, verses 1 and 2. The clean water-creatures, again, must have both armor for protection from the elements they inhabit, and means to advance through it. "In the world, but not of it," as one has said, and "Pressing onward." Study all these details, as also those of the twelfth chapter, where the utter defilement of human nature at birth is shown, and that the only means of escaping it is by death to it, as figured in the circumcision. "Every child born into this world only increases the sin in the world." Only in the death of Christ, who has died out to the old creation, is there escape from the defilement of nature. (Cf. Col. ii. 11 with 2 Cor.v. 17.) In the diligent investigation demanded in the case of leprosy, we see on the one hand the necessity of diligent scrutiny of all that seems evil among ourselves as the people of God; and on the other, the great care necessary lest we condemn as lepers those not really such. Contrast I Cor. v. 11, with Gal. vi. 1. The two birds (the heavenly creatures), in the lepercleansing ceremony, most beautifully set forth Christ from heaven dying in the flesh (the earthen vessel), 1 Pet. iii. 18, in the power of Spirit (the running water, John vii. 37-39), Heb. ix. 14; thus utterly condemning the old creation throughout ("from the cedar to the hyssop," I Kings iv. 33), and all the glory of earth, "the scarlet," (see Gal. ii. 20; vi. 14); and then (in the freed bird) rising and going back to heaven. It is in the realization of all this, as new creatures in Him, that those Christians who become defiled by sin (for the leper-cleansing has reference to God's people, not the world), find their cleansing and restoration. Chapter xv. vividly speaks of that holiness in walk that God must have in His people, as

well as their constant liability in this earthly life, to defilement. Besides the spiritual teachings of this chapter, it gives in connection with chapters xii., xvii.-xxii., the best sanitary code ever written. IV. Topics.

I. Aaron. It is time to take up the life of Aaron for careful study. Proceed according to the method before stated. (Lesson II). Refer to all past passages regarding him. Find his strong and weak points, thus far. Study especially chapter x. of our present lesson, for the secret springs of his character. It is in the time of crucial trial that man displays his real self. Compare Aaron here

with himself in Ex. xxxii. Find, with a concordance, God's estimate of him. The Psalms are a biographical dictionary of these times. Carry along the study of Aaron's character, as well as that of Moses, as we proceed. You will note Moses gradually retreating into God, in these days. Num. xii.

7, is the reason for Num. xii. 8, and Deut. xxiv. 10-12. As you go through the Pentateuch, mark the expression, "As the Lord commanded Moses," in connection with his actions. Compare John viii. 29. In God's service literal obedience is the key to everything.

2.

Nadab and Abihu: Study the nature of their sin; the occasion of it (is first public service often dangerous?); its motives; the probable immediate causes of it (x. 9, 10); the punishment of it-how connected with ix. 24, and whether temporal or eternal in its character; the results of it-on Aaron, Moses, Israel. Why does God visit condign punishment at the beginning of a dispensation on some one and then wait? Compare Uzzah, 2 Sam. vi., and Ananias and Sapphira, Acts v. Whom had these sons of Aaron seen? Ex. xxiv. 9. Why did not that vision keep them from presumption? Cf. Ex. xx. 18 and xxxii. 1. Does exalted privilege preserve us from the most awful sin? Whose history is the best proof that it does not? Luke x. 18; Ezekiel xxviii. 14-17.

LESSON XII. Lev. xvi.-xxvii. Atonement, Holiness and Glory.

I. Read these chapters the usual number of times.

II. The chapter names are: xvi., Atonement; xvii., Blood; xviii., Abominations; xix., Righteousness; xx., Abomination Judgments;

III.

son.

Prepare a careful outline of this lesThe basal thought of the maintenance of God's holiness in His dealings with His people underlies the whole section. Mark all the passages containing the words "I am the LORD," and "Be ye holy," and this will be apparent. With this thought as a central theme, see if you cannot readily group the whole body of truth of the lesson about it.

IV. It will be well now to sketch through the truth of the lesson, emphasizing what seems most important in order to the grasping of the book as a whole, and especially dwelling on the day of atonement, which, in a real sense, is the key passage of Leviticus.

We have seen in chapters i.-vii. of this precious book the person and work of Christ in the offerings, and in chapters viii.-xv. the priestly association with Him in service and fellowship of His people. In the second great section of the book, that before us now, we have the practical side. We are here shown first how we are saved by the atonement of Christ alone (chapter xvi.) by the precious blood (chapter xvii.); that therefore God expects us to live holy lives as His people (chapters xviii.xx.) and to keep ourselves clean by His grace for ministry as His servants (chapters xxi.xxii.). We are given in the great feasts (chapter xxiii.) a wonderful panorama of the history of God's people, from the dark hour of Calvary in the passover, to the glorious millennial morning, in the feast of tabernacles; while in the next chapter we see that although God keeps the memorials of Israel ever before Him (in the oil and the bread), yet they are found blaspheming His name (Thess. ii. 15). But in the very next chapter we have God reiterating the wonderful prophecy of future blessedness for Israel in the jubilee-year directions. "The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine" (xxv. 23). God is always faithful, man always faithless! God will yet have the nation of Israel back in Palestine for the grandest jubilee this world has ever seen. (See Ezek. xxxvi.; xxxvii. 21-28; Jer. xxxiii. 7-26; xxxi. 114; Isa. Ix. entire; also xl. and xxxv. entire; also Isa. lv. 18-25). These passages cannot be made to refer to the past, except by doing