CHAPTER 6: 8 - CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 6: 8 — CHAPTER 8
In chapter 6: 9, the point is (and a very important one it is) that the fire was to be burning always. As in Isaiah 6 all was from the brazen altar. There is no real prayer or praise, or anything of the kind, save in connection with the sacrifice of Christ; so in Revelation 8. He takes the fire from the brazen altar in verse 5. The altar in verse 3 seems to me to be the altar of incense. Take it as a rule: no fire is used save off the brazen altar.
Continuous burning gives no cessation of the judgment by God according to a holy nature. It is burning all night, and, in a certain sense, for Israel, who are kept by Christ now, kept through His sacrifice which is perpetual in value.
One other point: in the meat offering the frankincense went up to God entirely. The priests ate of the flour, but all the grace goes up to God. It was holy; and when the priests offered a meat-offering, it was all burnt. It is Christ Himself: there He is offerer and offering; and it was for no one save God Himself so to speak.
Israel really took up little of these things. Even the instructions of Deuteronomy are very different. All this is written for us. I doubt very much if any offerings, save the official offerings, were offered in the wilderness at all. Stephen in Acts 7 quotes Amos, and asks, “Have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, which ye made to worship them; and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.”
Before the strange fire there was more freedom for access, but it was not made use of.
[p. 215] So in the peace-offering; they were iniquities if they went beyond the second or third day, because they were not connected with the sacrifice (chapter 7: 15-18). If the sacrifice were a vow, it might be eaten on the next day as well as the first; if a thanksgiving, it must be eaten the first day. If there be more energy in the worship, you may carry it on longer (as here two days instead of one); but if it is practically separated from the victim burnt on the altar, it is unclean altogether and is rejected. You cannot separate praise or worship from the offering of Christ: without this it becomes a positive abomination. A man may be singing a sweet hymn with a thought of Christ in it; but being disconnected from Christ Himself, it is a mere piece of music and offensive to God. It is possible to make requests that the Holy Ghost gives to be asked, and to find that you are losing the sense of the Person to whom you are speaking. Worship must be in spirit and in truth. It is solemn to give out a hymn. Take Hymn 151: are you speaking truthfully in singing it? ‘Each thought of Thee doth constant yield, Unchanging, fresh delight’? Perhaps you may be able to go up to it. Suppose I sing “O teach me more of Thy blest ways,” this is very different: what are these “blest ways,” and am I learning them? Then again take “O Lord, how blest our journey”: I may ask, Is this true of myself? I do not say, Is it true? but, Is it true to me?
The waving is presenting before God; and the heaving is a little stronger. It is all owned as Jehovah’s — all for the priests’ eating, and then they eat it.
The drink-offering is universally the joy of God and It was thorough action between God and the people.