The Red Heifer and The Work of Jesus Christ - Numbers 19

foreign I'd like you to open your Bibles to Numbers Chapter 19. when's the last time you were cruising around Numbers Chapter 19. okay so as Pastor Paul mentioned I have a commentary on the Bible it's available online absolutely free there's not even any paid ads on the website we have an app it's available for free but it's an ongoing work I mean I have something that I'm at least okay with on every book of the Bible it took me a long time to get that but I'm always going through my oldest work and thinking you know I could I could probably do it better if I went through it again so most recently and this is just a couple weeks ago that I finished completely revising my commentary on numbers and what a delightful time it was and when I was back in Numbers Chapter 19 I was blown away by what I hadn't understood but what I hadn't really grasped from this chapter and so from the Overflow of that I want to share with you this evening about the red heifer and Jesus Christ Numbers Chapter 19. you ready for this verses one and two now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying this is the ordinance of the law which the Lord has commanded saying speak to the children of Israel that they bring you a red heifer without blemish in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come the law that God gave to the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai actually had three distinct components to it you could say that the Covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai had three distinct covenants one was the law itself and and that's the Commandments do this don't do that the other part of it was sacrifice and of course the priesthood is being part of sacrifice but because when God gave them the law God knew and Israel knew that they weren't going to be able to keep the law so there had to be a system of sacrifice to address the sins that Israel committed there was the law there was sacrifice and the third aspect was really the choice that God gave Israel you find this in particular in The Book of Leviticus and in the book of Deuteronomy where God basically tells Israel if you obey me I'm going to bless you so massively that the whole world will know that you're my people because you're so blessed that was sort of fulfilled at its highest point under the Reigns of David and Solomon but God also said to Israel if you disobey me I'm going to curse you so severely that the whole world will know number one that no Nation could ever be so cursed unless God was behind it some way and no Nation could ever survive such curses unless God was behind it in some way the law the sacrifice and the choice blessing or cursing what we deal with here in Numbers Chapter 19 of course has to do with the aspect of sacrifice and if you've been through the Book of Leviticus if you've been through the Book of Numbers there's a lot about sacrifice there's this bull getting slaughtered and this Ram getting hacked and this sheep and this whatever oh it's sacrifice all over the place to use a phrase It's a bloody mess over all of those books but this sacrifice in Numbers Chapter 19 is different than any other sacrifice given under the Mosaic law it's out of place number one because there's chapters in Leviticus the first several chapters deal with the whole sacrificial system and other chapters throughout the the first five books of Moses but here is something completely almost out of place and describing a different kind of sacrifice you see the red heifer would not be killed to drain its blood and then offer the animal at the altar at the Tabernacle that was not the purpose of the red heifer instead the red heifer would be completely burned and the ashes that remained from the red heifer would be used in a ritual cleansing now when it says there in verse 2 a red heifer I need to be clearing something in the Hebrew it doesn't exactly say heifer you see a heifer and by the way I'm the furthest thing from a farm boy you can imagine I had to look this up a heifer is a cow which has never been pregnant and thus it cannot yet give milk now the Hebrew does not specifically say that this had to be a heifer it just simply says that it was a young female cattle and the assumption is that it's a heifer fair enough but what's fascinating about it was that it had to be a red heifer I want you to think about that for a moment the color of the animal was absolutely Irrelevant in every other sacrifice that Israel performed in every other sacrifice there was no instruction given regarding the color of the animal this is the only one and not only did it have to be red but look again at verse 2 it had to be without blemish in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come now those requirements made the animal even more rare the red heifer had to be a valuable animal a young female cattle presumably never made pregnant and had never had a yoke put upon it it never pulled a plow of any kind or pulled a cart or anything else and plus it had to be without blemish it had to be worthy of sacrifice and according tradition to Traditions doesn't exactly say this in text but according to rabbinic tradition it could not have even a single hair on that animal that was not red okay do you have that in mind now now let's go verse 3 through 10. you know I'm giving this to you because I figure the Sunday night crowd you can bear this all this evening okay starting at verse three now you shall give it to Elias or the priests that he may Take It Outside the camp and it shall be slaughtered before him and Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood seven times directly in front of the Tabernacle of meeting then the heifer shall be burned in its sight in his sight it's hide its flesh it's blood and its awful shall be burned and the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and Scarlet and cast them into the midst of the fire burning the heifer then the priest shall wash his clothes shall bathe in water and afterwards he shall come into the camp the priest shall be unclean until evening and the one who burns it shall wash his clothes in water bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening then a man who is clean Shall Gather up the ashes of the heifer and store them outside the camp in a clean place and they shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for the water of purification for it is for purifying from sin and the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening it shall be a statute forever to the children of Israel and to the stranger who dwells among them all right before I get into the particulars can we agree on one thing this was a lot of work I mean God describes a lot of work I mean you could just imagine the priests engage in slaughtering and burning and sprinkling the blood and Gathering the ashes this was hard sweaty work that they had to do but let's take it apart piece by piece first verse 3 says that he may Take It Outside the camp and it shall be slaughtered before him this was more of a slaughtering than it was a sacrifice you know Israel had a sophisticated sacrificial system where the animal would be cut up in a certain way you you would you know cut the belly I suppose take out the energy do a certain thing with them take certain organs you'd burn them in a certain way you would take the hide off the animal do that you'd cut up the animal and pieces offer certain parts depending on the offering maybe other parts of the animal the nice meaty portions might go to the priests and their family something special would happen for the blood not really this animal this animal was different it says it shall be slaughtered before him most of the blood of this heifer remained with the animal at its burning all the other sacrifices the idea was to drain as much blood as you could and you would pour out the blood usually at the base of the altar not this you would take a little bit of the Blood Out use it to sprinkle towards the Tabernacle because remember verse 3 says that this happened outside the camp this didn't even take place at the Tabernacle or at the altar but outside the camp and they would sprinkle it in the direction of the front of the Tabernacle of meeting as the animal was slaughtered outside the camp and again this whole procedure is dramatically different than most every other offering under the law of Moses it was a sacrifice but a very unique sacrifice in many ways this offering demanded as we said before an animal of a specific color this offering demanded a female young cattle not a male not a bull as most of the other sacrifices did this offering was slaughtered more than sacrificed this offering was killed outside the camp not at the altar this offering was burned whole not cut into pieces this offering's Blood was not drained completely from the animal and this offering's Blood was not applied to the altar but sprinkled from afar towards the Tabernacle now again it says here that it's blood shall be burned unlike every other sacrifice in the Old Testament the blood of the red heifer was burnt along with the sacrifice instead of being completely drained out at the jugular and then poured before the altar ashes that remained after they've been contained at least in some way the blood from the carcass of that animal and then there's more if this isn't unique enough look at verse 6. and the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and Scarlet and cast them into the midst of the fire burning the heifer you can imagine this Mass burning can't you There It Is Burning outside the camp again we're not in front of the Tabernacle we're not at the altar we're outside the camp and there's the priest elies are presiding over this Burning animal and what does he take he takes Cedar he takes hyssop and he takes scarlet and he throws it into the pile of that burning animal now in Leviticus chapter 14 Verses 4 through 6. each of these three items Cedar hyssop and Scarlet were used in the cleansing ceremony for a leper and each of these items has a special significance Cedar Wood again mentioned in verse 6 is resistant to disease and rot and it's well known for its quality and preciousness these properties may be the reason for including it here but there are some people also see this looking ahead some thousand years or more 1500 years actually to the time when wood would be involved in the greatest sacrifice that God would offer for Humanity the sacrifice of Jesus on a cross some people suppose that Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross made of cedar wood there's no way to tell but that's the supposition of some people so you have Cedar secondly you have hyssop hyssop was used not only for the cleansing ceremony for lepers but it was also used symbolically therefore David says in Psalm 51 7 Purge me with hyssop therefore he's associating himself with a cleansed leper Cedar hyssop and Scarlet Scarlet the color of blood may be a ribbon maybe a piece of fabric maybe some kind of thing but what was all put together a matter of fact Charles Spurgeon said that according to maimonides the 12th century Jewish writer hyssop was bound around a piece of cedar wood and then wrapped in a piece of scarlet Fabric and they would throw all of that into the fire but don't miss the color Scarlet Scarlet was in the veil and the curtains of the Tabernacle Scarlet was in the garments of the high priest Scarlet was in the covering of the table of showbread Scarlett was the sign of rahab's Salvation in Joshua chapter 2 and Scarlet was the color of the mocking robe that they put Upon Jesus by the Romans shortly before his crucifixion so there's this fire burning outside the camp Ellie is the high priest he tosses in this little package of cedar wood wrapped in hyssop coated around with Scarlet fabric it's all burning together out there and when the fire is all out they carefully go and gather together the ashes they sweep them together and they put them in a container why look at verse 9 because those acids shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for the water of purification it is for purifying from sin that residue of the burning carcass the cedar the hyssop the Scarlet all of it together would make a lot of Ash and that Ash was gathered and bit by bit it was sprinkled into water suited for the purification ceremonies of Israel now by the way that water of purification was only made effective in a ceremonial sense when the ash was added to it now why did they need a water of purification then this is a whole another dimension of this red heifer thing that fascinated me because there is a very real sense in which God was providing nothing new by this earth now in one sense it was new in another sense it wasn't new let me give you a sense in which it was not new there were already ways to become ceremonially purified in Israel God had already provided ways for example Leviticus gives a ritual for cleansing that included washing and water and waiting until evening and in more serious cases such as contact with a dead body you had to be washed with water and wait seven days and then you had to offer an animal sacrifice what God did with this water of purification with the ashes of the red heifer described here in numbers 19. what he did was this was provide an alternative to the long and expensive ritual described back in Leviticus 14. with the water of purification instead of being cleansed by a sin offering the unclean person was sprinkled with a sacrifice that had already happened and now they were cleansed and when you take this all together you come up with a few principles first of all let me give you one principle here there is no purification without a blood sacrifice friends you understand that principle I I wonder if there was a time when at least in in in our part of the world that was more broadly understood but we are a people of self-improvement we are people can turn over our own New Leaf thank you very much we are people can make our own way we're the people of the self-made man and woman and here God says loud and clear there is no purification without a blood sacrifice because that water of purification was effective but only because it was connected to a blood sacrifice that was made with the ashes of the red heifer we also see in this that the offering of the red heifer and the water of purification that came from it are powerful pictures pointing towards the perfect work of Jesus Christ you see what God says through the whole sacrificial system and in particular through this is he says listen you can't cleanse yourself you can't cleanse yourself with good intentions with your sorry feelings with your resolutions you can't cleanse yourself by making yourself pay a price or some kind of penance you can't cleanse yourself you must receive a cleansing and someone else must pay the price for you under the system of animal sacrifice under the old Covenant that animal paid the price but only imperfectly all of this was set up for God to establish and provide for mankind a perfect sacrifice in Jesus Christ an ultimate sacrifice that could be once forever and didn't have to continually be made friends like the red heifer Jesus was read so to speak in his sacrifice I I don't mean to sound morbid or grotesque but as Jesus was on the cross you can imagine his body Scarlet with his own blood John Trapp a Puritan commentator I like to read he said Christ covered with his own blood points to the red heifer like the red heifer Jesus was pure and without spot like the red heifer Jesus was never under the Yoke of sin like the red heifer Jesus was sacrificed outside the camp outside the city walls of Jerusalem like the red heifer the sacrifice of Jesus was unique like the red heifer Jesus was completely offered and like the red heifer the sacrifice of Jesus is effective for all who claim it including the stranger or the Sojourner it's effective for the Jew and the Gentile it says for the whole world look to Jesus and you can be cleansed from your sins there you must receive Jesus's cleanse can you imagine somebody under the old Covenant law somebody in ancient Israel they commit something that puts them under this unclean state but they just flaunt it that they just say to Moses or Elias well you know what next time I really try to do better well you know you know what it's okay I I know that's a thing for other people but not for me I meant well I didn't mean to do it I'll do better next time what they would cast that person out of the community of Israel no God has made a provision for cleansing and you must do it you must be cleansed by the work of someone else and God offers it to us perfectly in Jesus Christ now you could say that this water of purification that's mentioned here in Numbers Chapter 19. did not make a different kind of ritual uh cleanness in some sense it did what the longer costly and more elaborate ceremony of Leviticus 14 did but what this one did is it did it better it made a better and more accessible way for people to be ritually clean and to come back in the community of Israel and the worship of God you might say that what these Waters of purification provided was a better way to be cleansed it was something of a god-appointed shortcut but listen it was no shortcut for that red heifer the red heifer had to offer everything now that red heifer and its ashes and the water of purification that come from it what a wonderful illustration of the perfect work of Jesus Christ as a substitute for his people a better sacrifice replaced a previous system for cleansing let me read to you from Hebrews chapter 9. verses 13 and 14. the writer of the Hebrews says for if the blood of bulls and goats goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh how much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God cleanse your conscience from dead Works to serve the Living God there is a sense in which through this sacrifice of the red heifer God was saying to Israel you know that whole sacrificial system I gave you it was deliberately designed to be incomplete deliberately designed to be imperfect let me give you a slight Improvement on some aspects of it with this ashes of the red heifer and the water of purification but I want you to know that this all anticipates a perfect sacrifice that will one be one day be provided in the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided as God said to Abraham a perfect sacrifice the Messiah the Son of God laying down his own life at the cross that will be the Perfection of it now sometimes there are modern news stories about rabbis searching for and perhaps finding the perfect red heifer I remember some years ago they found one in Texas and rabbis were were flocking there to inspect this young female cow this young cow this is a female cow that's a redundancy but you could see what a city boy I am but but they they come inspecting this cow to make sure and they're inspecting what are they inspecting well no flaw no blemish and not a single hair upon that cow that was not read and if they found it well I don't know would they repeat this ceremony would they keep those ashes on hand but you know the fact of the matter is even if they found the perfect candidate for sacrifice even if they followed this ritual just as well it still would do nothing because Jesus Christ has superseded he has fulfilled this entire system and so we look at this as a curiosity isn't it curious that rabbis are searching for this but we don't take it seriously as a continuation because Jesus Christ has fulfilled and superseded all of this well let's take a look at a few more things in this chapter here verses 11 through 13. again we're back at Numbers Chapter 19. he who touches the dead body of anyone shall be unclean seven days he shall purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day and he'll be clean but if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day he will not be clean whoever touches the body of anyone who dies and does not purify himself defiles the Tabernacle of the Lord that person shall be cut off from Israel he shall be unclean because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him his uncleanness is still on him now as I said before in the prior rituals for purification given in Leviticus chapter 14 additional animal sacrifices would have to be offered but now God says no a sacrifice from the past can be applied to the present just like we understand now under the New Covenant we receive the great sacrifice of the past being applied to the present and here in verses 11 12 and 13 he's just pointing it out in the most extreme case of uncleanness that someone could imagine that is the touching of a dead body and if that person did not purify himself as verse 13 says that person shall be cut off God has made provision for you to be cleansed if you don't take advantage of it then you'll be cut off from among his people that's a heavy word is it not verses 14 15 and 16. this is the law when a man dies in a tent all who come into the tent and all who are in the tent shall be unclean seven days and every open vessel which has no cover fast not unclean whoever in the open field touches one who's slain by a sword who's died of a bone of a man or grave he shall be unclean seven days now verse 17. and for an unclean person they shall take some of the ashes of the heifer burnt for the purification of sins and in running water shall be put on them in a vessel a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water sprinkle it on the tent and on the vessels and on the persons who were there we're on the one who touched the bone or its slain or the dead or a grave the clean person shall sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day and on the seventh day shall purify himself wash his clothes bathe in water in an evening he shall be clean in other words the power of what was accomplished through the work so to speak of this red heifer could not only be applied to people but to all things in Israel all things could be brought under the power of that sacrifice and what a likeness we see to the work of Jesus Christ it's as if this is an Old Testament way of saying I want you to bring everything under the authority of Christ everything in your life every kind of uncleanness to take if I could use this just speaking very directly to you and after all you guys are the Sunday night people to cleanse not just the church you but the seven day a week you it's really what we need isn't it the the church you of all of you here gathered here to see me well you look like fine upstanding people I'm sure you are but you know what sometimes there can be a difference between the church you and the Monday through Saturday you this points to the fact that the sacrifice that Jesus superseded goes beyond just the persons connected with the Tabernacle but all of the life of Israel the tents the objects everything and the promise is very simple here in verse 19 and at evening I love this declaration he shall be clean the ashes of the red heifer combined with the water to bring ceremonial cleansing it could cleanse even the uncleanness brought about by Death death was not more powerful than what this red heifer and the Waters of its cleansing pointed forward to so obviously this is a powerful prophetic picture of the work of Jesus under the New Covenant one can say that the ashes of the red heifer Point towards the work of Jesus and you could also say that the water of cleansing points toward both the word of God and the work of the spirit of God because both of those are are replicated or or are indicated are displayed through water later on in the New Testament the person and work of Jesus Christ together with the work of God's spirit through the word of God brings cleansing to the life even from the power and impurity of death so friends what amazing points of application we have here for us today let me give just a few general principles as we wrap this up number one not everything is the same don't you think it's significant that God makes a distinction between the clean and the unclean we live in an age that loves to either blur or move the lines between the clean and the unclean but God has established there are lines between clean and unclean and we must recognize that difference you must make a distinction between the clean and the unclean we also see here that ritual uncleanness is the individual's responsibility but it mattered to the whole community if you love your church family then confess your sin to the Lord and receive the cleansing work of Jesus Christ because you benefit not only yourself in a wonderful way of course but you benefit your entire church family ritual impurity must be recognized and dealt with and God provided a way with this red heifer a easier way again I want to stress it wasn't easy for the red heifer but it was easy simply to receive this this cleansing would come by a reference back to a past offering and it would come by both the remains of that past offering and running Living Water all of it looking forward as we saw in Hebrews chapter 9 to that perfect fulfilled work of Jesus Christ on the cross I want to conclude with one last verse to read to you it's such a precious verse in the Bible to me it's precious not only because of its meaning of course but it's one of the first Bible verses that I just really remember grasping when I was a young believer first John chapter 1 verse 9. if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness we should realize and appreciate how easy God has made it for us to be cleansed here's someone in ancient Israel oh I'm unclean I'm excluded from the fellowship with the community as I got to make myself clean oh man it's going to take a lot of days but worse it's going to be expensive I got to sacrifice some animals I got to do this whole ritual threes I gotta take time I gotta think of this God says no no just use those ashes of the red heifer in water and you'll be cleansed by pointing back to a sacrifice that's already been made it's as if God said this to Israel I love you so much that the cost the pain the trouble of purifying you from sin I will bear that cost God says Jesus did it on the cross I'll bear it you just have to come and receive it because I want to walk with you I want to be close to you I don't want anything to hinder my relationship with you and more importantly God says to us your relationship with me the Lord would say if we confess our sin he's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness so we see that God gave this to ancient Israel and to us as an Ever ready way to be clean to him God gave this to ancient Israel and to us through a unique sacrifice a better sacrifice and God gave this to ancient Israel and to us to keep the door of Fellowship as free as possible God loves you what's more he likes you he likes when you are in close communion with him you know I make the distinction between love and like because there's people in your life that you love but you don't particularly like God wants you to live in close you know I run through the thesaurus in my mind close relationship close communion close Fellowship to walk close whatever term you want to use God wants to live with you in the daily things of your life but really what I'm talking about is you living with him in the daily things of your life and he's made the way wide open because Jesus Christ was offered a much better sacrifice than the red heifer so you don't need to go around to the cattle ranches around here and look for any kind of red young cow no instead look to Jesus in his perfect work and live that life of close connection with the Savior who loves you so much Father in Heaven this is our prayer as much as you longed to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden as much as Enoch walked with you and was not as much as Abraham was called your friend as much as David was the man after your heart as much as all those things that indicate the close relationship of your people with you as much as John the disciple with the disciple whom you loved Lord we're not here just to get things from you but to live life with you so rule over our soul and thank you for a sacrifice that speaks of greater things than even the ashes of a red heifer we pray this Lord in Jesus precious name amen [Music]

Channel: David Guzik

Views: 5,197

Keywords: enduring word, david guzik, guzik, bible answers, bible commentary, jesus, god, gospel, christianity, red heifer, numbers 19

Id: 2mUrxpNikeI

Length: 40min 59sec (2459 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022