Well, we'll make a start this morning. Others will join us. I see other vehicles still coming, but we'll start and they can join in as we begin this morning. Let's turn in our Bibles to the Old Testament and we'll turn to Exodus 27. We'll read the first eight verses and then ask for the Lord's help in our study of His Word this morning. Exodus 27, verse 1, And thou shalt make an altar of scythe and wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad. The altar shall be four square, and the height thereof shall be three cubits. And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof. His horns shall be of the same, and thou shalt overlay it with brass. Thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels, and his basins, and his flesh-hooks, and his fire-pans, and all the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass. And thou shalt make it for a great network of brass, and upon the net shalt thou make four brazen rings in the four corners thereof. And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath, that the net may be even to the midst of the altar. And thou shalt make staves for the altar, staves of chitin wood, and overlay them with brass. And the staves shall be put into the rings, and the staves shall be upon the two sides of the altar to bear it. Hollow with boards shalt thou make it, as it was showed thee in the mount. So shall they make it." Amen. Word of God opened before us. Let's now ask for the help of the Holy Spirit in our time together this morning. Gracious Father, we are thankful that we have opportunity of gathering together on thy day. Lord, we truly need the help and power of thy Spirit as we would come to minister thy Word. Lord, we come to seek thee. We come to hear from heaven. We come to have the Holy Spirit take the things that are revealed in thy Word and illuminate them to our hearts Lord, we would come and ask at the very outset of our gathering that we would know a fresh cleansing of the blood of Christ and that we would know the ministry of the Holy Spirit, teaching us the Word of God and helping us to understand all that we have in Christ and all that is required of us as thy people. Lord, come and help us this morning. Help our other cyber school teachers as they labor in thy Word. We ask, O Lord, that you would give them unction. We ask that the students, children would hear affectionately, that they would have their hearts open to the Word as you opened Lydia's heart, and that, Lord, we would have a day today whereby we are not merely hearing thy Word, but doing thy Word, where thy Word is indeed having a powerful impact upon our souls. Lord, come and help us. Come and give us grace to focus upon thee and to glorify thy name. For we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. This morning we're going to begin looking at, for lack of a better term, one of the pieces of the furniture in the Old Testament. Now, I've given you a two-page handout, if you count the fact that it's on front and back, a four-page handout. But on the second page, you're going to see a picture of the bronze altar. It's also called the altar of burnt sacrifice, burnt offering. That's the title given to it later on in Exodus chapter 38. These pictures and the description that's given there come from a book put out by the company of Bristleworks Rose Publishing. I am not breaking copyright by copying this and giving it to you. You'll see at the bottom of the page, they say this may be reproduced for classroom use only and not for sale. So this is classroom use. We're right within our rights to use it this way. And this is a hint that this is a good book to go and buy. You can purchase it online. You can also buy this where I bought it, which was out at the Tabernacle in Lancaster, they have a mock-up of the tabernacle, and in the bookstore they have this particular book, A Rose Guide to the Tabernacle, they also have one for the temple. Now, we don't know exactly what the bronze altar looked like. What we have is a description, and the description is followed by the design here that you see in the pictures, both in the front and back. But, the ornate making of this bronze altar is not necessarily exactly what you see in the picture. We don't know whether it had the certain designs. We do know that it was four square. We know how high it was. We know how wide it was. We know how far across it was for the men to work on it. We do know there was a grate halfway down. which was probably for the sake of the fact that the animals would be put there. An animal is a big animal. You don't want it rolling off from the altar. You had horns on the altar. We'll give a suggestion as to what that actually may mean, at least from a practical standpoint. But I give you some pictures here so that you can see that this was a large piece of furniture or an object in the tabernacle. In fact, when you actually look at the other pieces of furniture, this is the largest, by far the largest. That's probably why it was said that it had to be hollow with boards. You wouldn't want something this big, solid, made out of bronze. If you had it that way, it'd be too heavy to transport, and they were in a tabernacle, the tents of Israel were moving and moving and moving. And so was the temple of the Lord, or the tent of the Lord. It too, at this point, was moving. And so you had this, from a practical standpoint, hollow altar. And it was overlaid, the wood was overlaid with bronze. If you go to the notes I've given you, you can look at the pictures again later. We'll begin there this morning. You'll see that it's described in actually two places. We read chapter 27 verses 1 to 8 of the book of Exodus, and that is the description given to Moses as to what he was to build. But when you come to chapter 38, after they build it, it tells you how they built it, and you have almost a word-for-word description again of this altar. Now, the description in chapter 27 and in chapter 38 are descriptions of the whole tabernacle, that is, the curtains, the altar that we're looking at here, the laver, the other pieces of furniture inside the holy place and inside the most holy place. The tabernacle, as we have said, was a place of order, separation, salvation, and communion. It was a place of order. God was the one who established where that tabernacle was to be placed and where you were to be in relationship to that tabernacle. You just couldn't live anywhere you wanted in the nation of Israel. If you're of the tribe of Reuben, you had to be on a certain side and living there. If you're of the tribe of Judah, you had to be at a certain side and living there. God ordered how they were to live and He ordered then how they were to worship. And this is important for us today because we are not here called upon to try to dream up ways of worshiping. We have God's orders given to us, His ordinances, His word, and we are to follow that. It was separation. It was to teach the people that God was holy. There was a holy place that no one else could go into except those who are descendants of Aaron. You just couldn't go in there. And when a king tried to go in there, a king who had been a very powerful king who had ruled for a long while. When Uzziah tried to go into the holy place, God smote him. God was indicating, this is my place, this is the way that you approach me and you do it my way. When the sons of Aaron, the two oldest sons of Aaron, decided to do what they thought was okay in the tabernacle, God smote him. And what God is telling us is, he is a holy God and he determines the way that we approach him. So, this was a place teaching the people about God's holiness. Obviously, it's teaching about salvation because it's teaching about blood atonement. I've said all of that to get to the last point. It was a place of communion. And for the nation, for the people, the individuals in that nation, this was its primary focus. It was teaching the people how to commune with the Lord. And when you came into the tabernacle, everything in that tabernacle, had significance as to the walk you had with the Lord and what the Lord was doing in heaven and how the Lord was going to receive you. The first piece of furniture you met as you came in through the opening of the curtains was this piece that we're looking at this morning. It was the altar of burnt offerings. Now, there are really six pieces of furniture, if you add them up. And if you put the curtains, as it were, as another piece, there are seven divisions that you could make to the tabernacle that you would have to study to have a full picture of what was going on in this place of communion. But the first thing God wanted us as Israelites, if we were living in that day, the first thing he wanted us to note was that you cannot approach me apart from the blood. There must be a blood atonement. Even if you have not sinned and your life is dedicated to the Lord, there is still a need of a blood atonement day after day after day. That is what was being declared to Israel through this altar where there was a sacrifice burning continually. Now, this obviously, as we'll see in the New Testament, pictures and portrays for us the work of Christ. We can't approach God apart from His sacrifice. And Hebrews 10 makes much of that. So this morning, you do have a blood atonement, not an atonement that continually is offered. It was offered once, but atonement that continually has power before God so that you can come to God on the basis of that atonement. Now, this first piece of furniture that the people met as they came into the courtyard is called the ultra burnt offerings. It's called that because of what was put on it. One of the sacrifices was called the burnt offering and it's also called the brazen altar It was overlaid with brass bronze So as the Sun would reflect upon it, this would truly have a beautiful Significance as you were looking at it That's why it's called the brazen altars because it was overlaid with brass. I On this altar, the nation continually offered different sacrifices depicting the future atonement of Christ. These different sacrifices helped to define the purpose and the importance of this piece of furniture to the people. It wasn't just that God put this there and they came in and they saw what a nice piece of furniture. It had a purpose and it was that purpose that really defined what this altar was all about. Now, we're going to look at both the description and the design of this altar as it relates to the communion that God's people had with the Lord. In its description, as we have already said, the altar was the largest of the objects in the tabernacle. The altar was square. Now, when you come to chapter 38, that's what we meet there when it's described. When you come to chapter 27, same thing right away. It says that it was four square. You see that in verse one, the altar shall be four square. The altar was five cubits on its side. Each cubit, each side was five cubits, five in its breadth, five in its width. What is a cubit? Most authors feel a cubit would be about the length from a man's elbow to the tip of his finger, which would be around 18 inches. So you had your measuring stick with you from the elbow to the tip of your finger, 18 inches. Foot and a half. If it was a foot and a half, 18 inches, then the sides of this were seven and a half feet long. That's a fairly good sized piece of furniture. seven and a half by seven and a half feet. But then again, you're going to be putting big animals on this piece of furniture, not just little lambs. You're going to have some larger animals, full grown sheep, full grown rams, oxen that will be put on the altar for burning. It was three cubits high. Again, using 18 inches, we're talking about something four and a half feet tall. I'm not quite six feet, a little bit two inches under six feet. So you're looking at something that would come up to almost here on me. And in the picture that I've given you, you see that that is indeed the height of the altar. This meant you're going to have to lift the animal. And there was, as it were in the lifting, a presenting almost to the Lord. You're lifting it up to him and putting it on the fire. It's an offering. It's something given to the Lord. It also had four horns on the corners. In Scripture, horn was often symbolic of power. For many animals, it was their only defense. And the horn then became symbolic of power. Well, obviously, there's great power in the altar in that it's making an atonement before God. It's only a picture, but it is picturing the real atonement. Some would also say that the significance of the horn was a practical significance. And if you look here, I gave you the verse in Psalm, but look at what it says in verse 27 of Psalm 118. Psalm 118, verse 27, God is the Lord, which has showed us light, buying the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. It is thought by this description that one of the things the horns was used for was to take that sacrifice and keep it from moving or rolling, and they would bind it to the horns. What was it that bound our Lord to the altar? It was cords of love. And you'll hear that expressed at times in poetical form as we sing about His love. And obviously, there are those who speak about the cords of love binding us to Christ and, of course, binding Christ to the altar. The material, the frame, as we have said, was chitin wood, acacia wood is what would be the terminology used today. It was overlaid with bronze or brass, and then the utensils that were used for this altar were also made of the same substance. Now, the altar itself is a picture of Christ. We have that in the New Testament from Hebrews chapter 13, verse 10, where the apostle says, We have an altar. Who is our altar? Christ is our altar. Where they have no right to eat would serve in the tabernacle. Just serving in the tabernacle doesn't give you a right to eat at this altar. This altar requires faith in Christ and his finished work. Now, it's obviously a picture of not merely a piece of furniture, but all that transpired on that piece of furniture, in this case, the atonement. And so the altar we have had a sacrifice on it, and the sacrifice was of Christ. And we can come and eat at that altar. Now, there was a peace offering, and we'll get to that in another Sunday, but there was a peace offering whereby you could come and eat at the altar, as it were. Part of what was sacrificed was given to the Lord and burned up. Part of it was given to the priest. Part of it was given by the worshiper. And therefore, you had a communal meal indicating all was at peace, all was at fellowship. God has made a complete atonement, a complete at-one-ment. And everybody is now satisfied. God satisfied. The mediator is satisfied. And the one worshiping is satisfied. What a beautiful picture. of your reconciliation. So, we do have an altar where we can eat, where we can feast. We're feasting on Jesus Christ, our sacrifice. This is the description of the altar, briefly given. And you have that description given to you in chapter 27. And then again in chapter 38, where in chapter 38, Moses is telling us what was done. What is the design of the altar? Why was it made? The altar was the most varied portrayal of Christ's Atonement. Now, obviously, the Ark of the Covenant was also a picture of Christ's Atonement. That Day of Atonement pictured for us the once for all finished work of Christ. But on this burnt altar, on this altar burnt sacrifice, you had picture after picture after picture of what Christ was doing for his people. You had the burnt offering. You had the meal offering. You had the peace offering. You had the sin offering. You had the trespass offering. I'm giving you that list in the order that it was given in the book of Leviticus. We'll turn to Leviticus here now to the first chapter. Because for us to understand about this piece of furniture, we have to understand all that was done on it. And perhaps on this piece of furniture, more was described about this piece of furniture than any other piece, because here was all the sacrifices laid to make atonement for the people on a day-to-day basis. Leviticus is named obviously after the idea of a Levite. You see that in the name. And it's thought to be the manual, at least in some portions of it, the manual to the Levites as to how to conduct their office. It is perhaps that reason why you have the different sacrifices listed in this order. This is not the order. And we're going to see the order that you would actually give the sacrifices if you had sinned. But you have here the sacrifices being grouped together. And in being grouped together, it would seem that this is the easiest way for a Levite to master the list and to master the material that has been given to him as to what he was to do on a daily basis. We're not going to go through every verse on the different sacrifices, but we want to just touch some of the highlights, and I've listed them for you here. As concerning a personal burnt offering, and we'll touch on the meal offering, and the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. But this morning, let's just look at the burnt offering. First of all, in chapter 1 and verse 3, You are to bring a male without blemish. Now, we readily see what that has reference to. It was the man Adam who stood on our behalf and sinned and plunged the whole human race into darkness. There would be another man of the seed of the woman and he would come and he would crush the head of the serpent. And this man who would stand on our behalf would be the Messiah. He'd be the anointed of God. He would be the one who would be our mediator. He had to be male and he had to be without blemish. Now almost all the sacrifices are that way. There are a few where the female animal is allowed to be sacrificed, perhaps because the imagery is not so much of male versus female, but merely sacrifice and substitution. At that point, the Lord is allowing other animals to be given because the fact that it's a male without blemish has already been established, both in the Passover as well as in these other sacrifices. It was a voluntary offering. It was not for sin. You sinned. There was no volunteering. You had to give sacrifice. But you could give a burnt offering indicating your dedication to the Lord anytime you wanted, whether you had sinned or not. And so you have been in this sacrifice, dedicating to the Lord. This reminds us then of Romans chapter 12, where in the sacrifice of Christ, because of the sacrifice of Christ, you and I are to give ourselves a living sacrifice. Paul says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, based on the mercies that you and I have received that is talked about in the earlier chapters. He goes on to say that he presents your bodies a living sacrifice. You're presenting your body a living sacrifice based on the sacrifice of Christ and all the mercies that are flown to us because of that sacrifice. And so, when you came with the burnt offering, that was what was being depicted in the book of Leviticus. Now, make that qualification. Because before the book of Leviticus, the burnt offering seemed to be the offering that was made for everything. They didn't have a burnt offering, meal offering, sin offering, peace offering. They just had one. It was called the burnt offering. So everything that we are looking at in these five offerings was done before the tabernacle was set up in the one offering that is the burnt offering. And it's as if God is saying, right, you've been offering a burnt offering all this time, but I'm going to now show you all the different facets of Christ's offering by giving you five offerings to help you understand His one offering. Before the tabernacle was built, the offering was called the burnt offering. And afterwards, the burnt offering became one of five. What was it symbolizing? It was symbolizing the consecration of the worshiper to the Lord, the dedication and how that that dedication needed atonement. Because you see, in verse four, atonement certainly is being mentioned as you start in verse four and read down to verse five. He put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering. Now, why did you put your hand on it? It was an indication you were laying upon that animal. your sins, that animal now was representing you as atonement. And as you go then, in verse 4 it says, "...he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord, and the priest and Aaron's sons shall bring the blood and sprinkle the blood around upon the altar. It is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. They take that blood and they sprinkle it. Now, the dedication you're giving to the Lord isn't perfect. And so that dedication needs to be cleansed with blood. None of us have ever dedicated our Lord perfectly. I'm not saying that when you dedicated yourself that you were thinking that I'm leaving this out. I'm going to keep this sin. I'm going to hold this to myself. That's not dedication. What I am saying is that when you and I have dedicated ourselves fully, give yourself another day or two and you're going to look back on that and you're going to say, you know, my heart wasn't right in this. My heart could have been full of more love toward Christ when I did this dedication. In other words, even with our greatest dedication, it's tainted with sin. It needs atonement. And that's what the burnt offering was all about. You're coming and you're giving the Lord back your body. Your mind, all that is you, you're giving it to him to use for his glory. And in doing that, you need cleansing. Cleansing. I'll show you a verse, I believe it deals with this in just a minute. But the imagery is that you need cleansing. Now, as we're going to see in a minute, the order of sacrifice, if you had sinned, was not burnt offering. The first offering was the sin offering or trespass offering where you were confessing your sin. After confessing your sin, something else has to happen. You have to give God back the instruments, the body that was being used for your sin. And so when we come to God for cleansing, Can you then say, Lord, I want cleansing, but I'm going to continue on in this sinful way. I'm going to continue on speaking the way I speak. I'm going to continue on living the way I live. I'm going to continue on. If the sin I'm confessing is stealing, I'm going to continue on stealing. I'm going to continue on lying. I'm going to continue on. No, you can't do that. So in our confession, part of our confession is doing what? It's giving back to God what belongs to Him. The mind, the hands, the feet, that we used in the sinning. Because when you sin and when I sin, we do use our bodies. We do use our minds. Whether it's the immaterial part of us or the material part of us, it's being used in the sin. And to write what has been now used in a wrongful way means, yes, the record has to be cleansed, but it also means that we have to give back to God that which rightly belongs to Him. Our minds, our hearts, our hands, our feet, whatever it was that we used, it goes back to Him. That was being depicted in the burnt offering. As I said, it was not the first offering that was offered if you had sinned. So this burnt offering did have a measure of atonement in it. It was depicting your consecration to the Lord and the fact that the blood covered that consecration. When you come to verse 6 and 7 on the back page, if you flip it over, it spoke of the burnt offering being all burned on the altar. The burning of it all, again, was symbolic of consecration. You're giving to God everything. Everything. Now, that's the way it's described in verses 6 to 9. We find later that there was one thing left out. The skin was taken from the burnt offering and given to the priest. Now, where do you see that? Well, you have to actually read all that is given to the Levites. Again, if this is a manual, that would not necessarily be needed at that point. But when you come to verse 8 of chapter 7, And the priest that offereth any man's burnt offering, even the priest shall have to himself the skin of the burnt offering which he had offered. Skin went to the priest. Now, how would the priest use that? If he used it for a garment, you have here then a picture of the imputed righteousness of Christ. It's hard to picture the imputed righteousness of Christ. When you look through the sacrificial system, it's hard to get the picture that would actually depict that you have had imputed to you righteousness. Yet that righteousness that is imputed to you is described in Isaiah as a robe, a robe of righteousness. And here you would have, in the dedication, it's not perfect. The blood is covering you. That's why the atonement is being made. But there is given to the priest that which will cover him. Now, we're all kings and priests, as we looked at last week. And you have been given to you a robe to cover you through this burnt offering. The fire on the altar obviously is symbolic of wrath. You have that in chapter 9 where the Lord sends out fire and it consumes the sacrifice. And then you have right after that, if you look at verse 24, there came out fire from before the Lord. This is chapter 9. Consume the altar of the burnt offering. consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat, which when the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces." Right? That's not the only time fire came out. Two verses later, the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, are giving a strange fire. And what do you have? There came out fire from the Lord, devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Clearly, our God is a consuming fire. Fire is symbolic of wrath. And so you have wrath, as it were, being used with this animal. You just didn't kill the animal, slay and drain the blood and then go bury it. You put it on this altar where it was burned up. Picturing, again, the work of Christ on our behalf. Now, our God is said to be a consuming fire. We have that in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 29. And those who will not take Christ's atonement, that was consumed, as it were, on the altar, consumed on the cross of Calvary, they then will go to a lake of fire. Again, symbolic of his eternal punishment. A lake of fire held forever. Now, it's said to be a sweet savor. We have verses that deal with that. We'll have more to say about that later. But a sweet savor was something that indicates that in the nostrils, this is pleasing to the one who is smelling it. It's placating the one who is smelling it. It is making him happy where once he was angry. And so we have then these descriptions of the burnt offering. We can also say at this point that the meal offering was always joined to the burnt offering. The meal offering had a symbolic significance for helping us understand the perfect human nature of Christ as it was offered there. Meal offering never was offered by itself. It's called a meat offering in our authorized version. They understood meat as referring to more than just what we think of as flesh, the whole meal. Some would say it was a grain offering because that is indeed what it was made of, the grain that came out of the ground. You remember that Cain, when he offered the fruit of the ground, was not accepted. There was no blood atonement. Abel was accepted. There was blood atonement. But that didn't mean that the Lord couldn't use something coming out of the ground as help for our understanding as to the atonement of Christ. And so the meal offering was offered. It had no blood in it, but it was always joined to an offering that did have blood. That is the burnt offering. And in doing so, it helped, again, give a bigger picture, a more complete picture of the work of Christ. the meat offering or the meal offering was very much like the bread put on the table of showbread. It was symbolic of the fact that we feast on Christ. And it's His perfect humanity, His perfect atonement that satisfies God on our behalf. Now, when you come into the order of sacrifice, I have said that the first sacrifice given was the sin offering. And then it was the burnt offering. And then it was the peace offering. Peace offering sometimes is broken down itself into an offering of vows. If you're making vows, everything is at peace. And now you vow to God, indicating you're not trying to, by the vow, purchase blessing. It's already been purchased. The sin offering, the burnt offering, the peace offering have been given. You now are in favor with God. God has been reconciled to you. Then you would offer the offering of vows to the Lord, which often was grouped as part of the peace offering. Also, Thanksgiving. Your praise was not some way of trying to merit God's favor. You already had His favor. You've already done the sin offering, the burnt offering. And now, as part of the peace offering, Thanksgiving was given. Turn, if you would, then, to 2 Chronicles, where you'll see this order being given. 2 Chronicles 29. Dealing with Hezekiah, you remember Hezekiah's father was a very, very wicked king. When you read about Hezekiah's restoration, he was going against the family he was raised in. His dad was so wicked, he actually shut the doors of the temple when he just got bored with it, after he'd already corrupted the temple in his worship. Ahaz was his father's name, a very wicked king. So when Hezekiah comes, he's got to restore everything. He's got to go back into the temple and put things in their rightful place. He's got to remove things from the temple that his father put in there. He's got to reestablish the worship of the priesthood because his father had destroyed that. All these things had to be put back in place, and the people then, in their own personal lives, had to be made holy. That is, they had to get rid of sins, idols, and things that Ahaz had allowed and brought into the nation. The people now had to get rid of those things. And when you say Hezekiah had a reform, you can say that very easily. But when you actually start looking at what happened, this was a national reform that took time, took effort. And there was probably a lot of people that may have said, what in the world is this king doing? He's upsetting everything. Well, it needed to be upset. And the reason why things needed to be rectified was because God was upset. So when you come to chapter 29, you have then Hezekiah cleansing the temple and then offering sacrifice for the sins of the people. Turn to verse 27. Well, why don't we start with verse 21. Then Hezekiah the king rose early and gathered the rulers of the city and went up to the house of the Lord. And they brought seven bullocks and seven rams and seven lambs and seven he goats for a sin offering." You see, that was the first thing offered. Sin offering. Now, we haven't gotten to that in the book of Leviticus yet. It's not listed that way in the book of Leviticus. As I said, it's a different listing, perhaps, grouping of the sacrifices for the things that are similar, so it would stick easier, perhaps, in the mind of a Levite. Be that as it may, sin offering is given, and verse 24, the priests killed them, and they made reconciliation with the blood upon the altar. All right, there's the sin offering. Then you come to verse 27, and Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord began also with the trumpets and the instruments ordained by David the king. And all the congregation worshiped, the singer sang, the trumpet sounded, all continued until the burnt offering was finished. Now, in verse 31, then Hezekiah answered and said, Now you have consecrated yourselves to the Lord. We have said that the burnt offering has to do with consecration, dedication, giving yourself back to the Lord. It ought to be a joyous thing, giving yourself back to the Lord. You ought not be coming to the Lord and saying, Lord, you know, I used this mind in sin, and I'm really begrudging the fact I'm giving my mind back to you. Well, Lord, I used my tongue in sin, and I'm begrudging the fact that I'm giving it back to you. No, no, no. He has now made an atonement for you, a sin offering. Now you're coming to the Lord and you're saying, Lord, I freely and willfully and joyfully, Give myself back to you. My mind, my tongue, my eyes, my hands, my feet, whatever it was that I've used for doing my will, I'm giving it back to you for your will to be done. After the consecration and the burnt offering, you then had the peace offering. You see that in verse 35. And also the burnt offerings were in accordance with the peace offering and the drink offering and every burnt offering. So you have everything done here. The thank offering is also mentioned in verse 31. As I have said, the thank offering was part of the peace offering. So after they had consecrated themselves in verse 31, it says they came near and brought sacrifice and thank offerings into the house of the Lord. Thank offering was part of the peace offerings. And so it says in verse 35, they also brought burnt offerings in abundance with the fact of what? The peace offerings. The fat of the peace offerings is what was burned to the Lord. The other part of the peace offering was divided between the priest and the worshiper according to what God dictated. Now, you can see this order of sin, burnt, and peace offerings in the consecration of Aaron in Exodus 29. And you can see it again in the people's consecration as it's spelled out in Leviticus chapter 9 and verse 15. So, that is instructive to us. When you come to confess your sins, you are indeed turning from those sins while you're confessing it. You're actually giving back to God that which rightfully belongs to Him. And you're pleading the blood over your imperfections even there, your confidences in the blood. Now, is there a sacrifice? Is there a picture of the sacrifice in the New Testament that actually deals with this? I believe there is. Turn, if you would, to 1 John chapter 1. And verse 7, verse 6 says, if we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and deny the truth. You can't walk in darkness and fellowship with Him. But if we walk in the light, there's consecration. You're walking in the light. This morning, I am walking in the light as I am teaching this. And yet, when I get done, I'm going to analyze what I have done today, and perhaps I'll see, well, I didn't love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength when I taught that. Perhaps there was something in my life that wasn't completely given over to the Lord. As I go back and analyze, I'm not conscious this morning of sinning in any way, as I teach you. But am I doing it perfectly? If I am not, then I need cleansing. So if I take an exam, and it's a theological exam, and I get all the answers right, but I'm not loving the Lord when I'm answering those exam questions, I'm still in sin. There's still imperfection. And so here, you're walking in the light. You're not conscious this morning of sin. You've come to the house of God. You're trying to worship. You're trying to give the Lord the glory that's due His name. And the blood is cleansing you while you're doing that. All of your worship is being cleansed by the blood as you're walking in the light. Now, what happens when you do know you've sinned? When it comes to your mind, I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have thought that, I shouldn't have said that, I shouldn't have... What happens when it does come to your mind? Now you're dealing with the sin offering and you're dealing with what is described in verses 8 and 9. When you know you've sinned, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So there's a cleansing going on that's cleansing all of your service as you're walking in the light. And then there's a cleansing when you confess your sin as well. The burnt offering, the sin offering. Interesting enough, the burnt offering was being used every day in the nation. Why? Because the nation was to be under the blood. Every day, burnt offering was being offered, not in connection with sin offering and peace offering. Just by itself, it was being offered for the nation. Why? They were a people consecrated to the Lord. That is, again, symbolic of 1 John chapter 1 and verse 7. We're walking in the light and the blood is cleansing us. And so you had in the morning the daily sacrifice, morning and evening, that was indeed a burnt offering. And you see that described in Exodus 29. It's also described in Numbers 28. And then the morning sacrifice was also mentioned in Leviticus chapter 6. So every day, regardless, if nobody sinned in the nation, nobody had to come with a sin offering. Every day they were still offering being burnt. What was being burnt? The burnt offering for us, the sins of an imperfect people. The nation was the Lord's, they were to walk in holiness and the blood was cleansing them every day. You have on the Sabbath, then, that offering being doubled, and you see that as you go to Numbers 28. Rather than one offering in the morning, they had two. Rather than one offering in the evening, they had two. It was a day dedicated to the Lord. It was His day. It was a day where more worship would go on. If you lived in the surrounding community, you could actually come and not have to worry about your labors in the field or your harvest, because that wasn't being done on this day. You could come and worship. You could come and focus on what was being done at the temple. And in doing so, God made sure you didn't miss the picture of the blood. The blood atonement ought to be a part of our preaching. And as you go through preaching, there are times you're dealing with a passage and perhaps it's not clearly stated there and you're expounding that passage and the blood doesn't get much mention. But God put a communion table in our midst where the church has to come and see the blood and think on it, has to meditate on it. The communion table brings us back to the blood. Preaching should take us back to the blood. Our singing ought to have hymns about the blood. Why? You need the blood every day. But as you come to worship, it ought to be the main focus of our worship, the blood atonement. And so you have that. And the people would meditate on that throughout the day. It was something they could not miss. And then in the festive, you have festival burnt offerings. where the order was burnt, sin and peace. And again, in this reversing of the order, it was indicating that at that particular festival, that particular celebration, the most important thing that was going on was their dedication. Did they need a sin offering? Yes. There would be imperfections. Did they need the peace offering? Yes. Peace was the final result of all the offerings. But they started with the burnt offering. because that was the focus of that particular feast. Now, Passover, it's obviously in the Passover picture of atonement, but Pentecost is dedication. Tabernacles is dedication. And when you look at the burnt offering in the Feast of Tabernacles, wow, what a burnt offering. I say that to say, Tabernacles is a picture of a perfected state when you and I, this was in the seventh month, seven, the number of perfection. In that perfected state, you and I will be in our tabernacle, using the imagery even of Revelation 7. We'll be there looking back at our wilderness wandering, thinking of God's provision, and rejoicing in the blood that got us to where we are. And in the time of tabernacles, they offered 70 bullets. fourteen rams, ninety-eight lambs. Blood was flowing during that week. And then the day after, they offered one more bullet, one more ram, and seven more lambs. It shows us that when we get to glory, the lamb will be all the glory in Emmanuel's land. And you go to the book of the Revelation, what are they crying? Worthy is the lamb that was slain. We say that now. We sing that now. But when we get there, you and I will then understand perfectly how much we owe to the blood of the Lamb. The Burns Offering was helping the people understand that they were a dedicated people to the Lord and that that dedication was cleansed in the blood. Well, we'll try to look at some of the other offerings offered on this altar and what they pictured as well. Let's bow our hearts in a closing word of prayer. Father in heaven, we are thankful that there is a blood atonement to take away our sins. There is a blood atonement whereby we can come and present ourselves back to Thee. It is the one finished work of Christ. And Lord, we're thankful this morning that we have been reconciled, that we are at peace with Thee. Even though at times our memory would smite us, our conscience would smite us, yet, Lord, we are thankful that the sins that have been confessed, the sins that have been turned for, truly have been put under the blood, and your people have a right into your presence to worship and to praise thee and to glorify thy great name. Help us today to sing and to glorify thee even as we come to worship. May we know your help and power and ministry in the midst of your people. May we know great liberty even as we are here, singing to Thy name. For we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.