SWEET ODOUR
[p. 30] SWEET ODOUR
2 Corinthians 2:14 - 16; Genesis 8:20,21; Genesis 27:26,27; Exodus 30:22 - 38
These scriptures speak of odour, and the object of this meeting is to seek to show how the thought applies now. I have selected the scripture from the New Testament because it brings the subject before us in one person and in the direct and literal meaning to be inferred; that is, we see a servant moving about in this wicked world which is full of all that is of ill-savour that the place is capable of. The Western world, led by the Romans associated with the Greeks, developed sin as it had not been developed perhaps hitherto, having the culture which man is capable of and the means too, the wealth of the world, so sin has become developed. I suppose the Lord came into the world as sin had reached its height in that sense, its development. Then since the introduction of christianity the principle has gone on and the world has kept pace, so that sin has reached a peculiar height in our time with all its accompanying nauseous obnoxious odours. And this servant of the Lord can speak in these remarkable verses of what he was in the sense of an odour to God. But he dwells first on the effect on man of the knowledge that he proclaimed in ministry; he stresses the odour of that, a heavenly fragrance brought in, as he says, “in every place”. God does not only appeal to man’s intelligence, to his mind, but to his sense of smell, as if He would include all the senses in His testimony. There are five, as we know, and they are all in mind in the testimony, hearing and seeing and feeling and tasting and smelling, God in His grace and in the richness of this dispensation appealing to men in their entire being in His testimony. So the apostle can speak of [p. 31] God leading him in triumph and of the odour of God’s knowledge, and then, following that up, of making him an odour of Christ to God in those [p. 33] that were saved and in those that perished, “to the one an odour from death unto death, but to the others an odour from life unto life”. So that there was odour, both in regard to men, for there was the odour of God’s knowledge spread abroad in every place — what a testimony, dear brethren, as to God’s thought for man! — and then an odour for Himself at the same time.
I hope to come back to that remarkable passage, but I want to show how this thought of odour runs through the Scriptures, hoping that each one will see that it fits him; and first to show how, in Noah, we have the principle of effulgence in this sense. Noah’s father had spoken prophetically about him, and I suppose prophecies going before apply to every one who is especially used of the Lord. There is the forecast in a prophetic way, and then the committal of the saints to each one, “imposition of the hands of the elderhood” (1 Timothy 4:14), and what the elderhood would discern is what it would prophesy; there must be perfect agreement with the prophetic announcement as to a man and the practical working out in the person in mind in his service. This was seen perfectly, I need not say, in the Lord Jesus, concerning whom there had been great prophetic announcements beforehand, and not the least were those uttered by Simeon as he took Him in his arms, yet a Babe, but what wonderful potentialities in that Babe! What effulgence in glory and odour to God was to shine out in His service! How the saints from the outset have committed themselves to Jesus from the standpoint of service! We have committed our souls to Him; we have committed ourselves to Him in view of eternity, but there is committal to Him from the standpoint of service, and this is [p. 32] represented in the house of Simon the leper. It is a remarkable thing, but it is there the Lord is anointed on the head by a woman whose name is not given. We may infer who she was, but the point is that she committed herself to Him discerning the ability to serve; turning away from the whole hierarchy in Jerusalem, which claimed so much, she committed herself to Him. She anointed Him on the head and the Lord said, “Wheresoever these glad tidings may be preached in the whole world, that also which this woman has done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her”, meaning that she was an odour in that she would accompany the glad tidings of the Christ; wherever it was preached she must be mentioned. He says, “What she could she has done” — that is, she was not assuming to be able to serve, yet she did what she could, and that was that she committed herself to Him who could serve and serve perfectly in every respect. It is in the apprehension of that that I think you will follow what is about to be said as to odour.
So as regards Noah, his father carefully intimated his ministry; he said, He is to be a comfort to us on account of the ground which the Lord has cursed. There would be no special fragrance in the ground as cursed of God, but Noah would change that, and hence the prophecy going before in due course was fulfilled and manifested. It came out in the way of unselfishness: he built an altar and took of every clean beast and every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings, and it says, “Jehovah smelled the sweet odour”, a savour of rest, that is a savour of Noah, for that is what his name meant, it was what had been announced; that was the name given to him, it was the shining out of glory in him. And so the savour of Paul too, and of every servant who serves according to God; there was a savour of Paul, he was a savour of Christ — it was that kind — in those that were saved and in those that perished. Well, Jehovah spoke in His heart about this; there is something very interesting in what Jehovah says in His heart. He had said so much by His mouth, and the Lord Jesus said that man is to live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; that is to be the food for man. But He spoke here in His heart-a very remarkable thing, as if there was something He treasured and perhaps would not say much about, but the result would show what was in His heart, and that is that He would not curse; there was to be henceforth something to carry on this savour, not only in the way of offerings through death. Noah’s offerings were not agricultural like Cain’s; not that agricultural-offerings were not accepted, for all the meat-offerings are from the ground; they are the accompaniments of death-offerings, of the shedding of blood. And so there must be meat-offerings, dear brethren, and these must be marked by sweet savour too. The shewbread in the tabernacle was marked by frankincense spread over the twelve loaves. So Jehovah said this in His heart. I want you to dwell on that, dear brethren, how God would draw us near to Him that we might know something of what He says in His heart. It will come out. Whatever God says in His heart will find expression, but it is very interesting that He said this in His heart and that was that He would not again any more curse the ground for man’s sake, and that “all the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease”. That is, there would be a means of carrying on the sweet savour on the principle of meat-offerings. I do not say that is all that is in the passage, but it certainly is in the passage, for Exodus and Leviticus contemplate the need for fine flour and if there is to be fine flour, there must be seedtime and there must be seed,
[p. 34] there must be harvest, and then all that follows on that, that is cold and heat. The allusion really is to ourselves, to the people of God, that, if He is to have us for His pleasure and for odour in His nostrils, there must be the seed sown, and then the cold and heat, the cold necessary in the way of discipline, and the heat, the warm breath of the south, as it were, developing the growth, and then the persons having intelligence to know what to call these things, to know how to name the discipline of God that is in view of our growth and formation, and, on the other hand, to name the heat and call it summer. We arrive at intelligence when we begin to name things. And then there is “day and night”, a constant changing experience whilst we are down here. So there is to be a continuance of the savour, not only in sacrifices such as Abel’s and Noah’s, but in agricultural sacrifices, as I might say. If we have the basis of the death of Christ, dear brethren, then we can look for fruit in man. There could only be fruit on the basis of a vicarious sacrifice. It could only be confined to Christ aside from the vicarious death of the Lord Jesus; if He falls into the ground and dies He brings forth much fruit, and that fruit is of His own kind, and that is wherein lies the meat-offering.
I pass on to chapter 27 so that we may see how a young christian comes under God with a view to all this. God has ordered things so that Isaac is now ready to bless — not that he knew Jacob, but he discerned he had the smell of blessing. It was not a new thing with Jacob: he had a history, God had been with him before, before he was born he was a subject of the work of God in this sense. It is a remarkable thing that we have such suggestions in Scripture; how far back God goes — to the source of our being, so that He begins His work and secures us for Himself. “The elder”, it says, “shall serve the younger”. Jacob was the younger, and he was a supplanter before he was born. Where did he get the instinct? Not from Isaac or Rebecca, but from God. We have to remember that even as ordinary men we get things from God; we get our spirits from God. Jacob got the power of supplanting from God, and that is what is to work out; the smell was there, so Isaac says, “The smell of my son is as the smell of a field which Jehovah hath blessed”. What a thought for every young one here! Who knows how far back God has gone with you? How early at times we see instincts developing in the young! Before God formally commits Himself to that one, there is something there; those near him notice it; there is something different. What a difference there was between Jacob and Esau! Jacob was a plain man; where did he get that plainness? He aspired to no show in this world; where did he get that instinct? He got it from God, he got the power of supplanting from God. And now the time comes when Jehovah will bless in a special way. It is a very solemn matter; someone was to be blessed. It was in Isaac’s mind to bless the wrong man, and this is very often the case with us, alas; but not with God for God never fails, nothing can interfere with His purpose, in spite of the greatest difficulties God reaches His end. Let every one of us accept that; He will see to it that what He has in His mind about us will come about and even an Isaac is able to smell what was there.
But then with Isaac it was just one kind of odour, and I am going to speak a little about the great variety of odours in the compound that God has in His assembly. You can understand, dear brethren, that every such one, every one like Jacob whom God has blessed, has an odour of his own, so to speak. In Genesis we get isolated cases, but we get the aggregate in Exodus, the collective thought, the gathering up of all that there is in unity, so that we [p. 36] have a compound. With Isaac it is just an agricultural idea, as I said before, there is the smell there; that is the rich field. I suppose farmers and agriculturalists understand; but at any rate, spiritually we can understand what potentiality there is in a young christian; we see the germ there, and so we look for the results. A field has great possibilities; the Lord bought a field, you know; He calls it the world. There are great possibilities in it, and what He has been doing for eighteen or nineteen centuries is getting out of it those possibilities. What glories, dear brethren, have shone, what wealth He has secured as He worked the field and is working it, and what a privilege it is to have part in these workings to bring out its glories, the fulness of the earth, as we may call it! There is just one thought in Jacob, that is a field, but when we come to Exodus, as I said, we have added measure. It is not that God has to put up with everything: that is the principle in Genesis; He takes what comes, the mixture; but when we come to Exodus, God is the God of measure, and He will have what He wants. So we may as well understand this, that we are now to place ourselves on His altar; it is our intelligent service to present our bodies a living sacrifice to God. He has something to work out that is great and glorious, and surely I would not hinder Him! I want to have part in that; He is the great Architect of what He has in mind, and I want to be in His hands. That is Exodus and He is the God of measure. Perhaps we have not thought much of that, but it is most important to have in our minds that God is the God of measure, and when we come to measure we come to accuracy. So we have this refined thought of the heavenly Apothecary, the work of the perfumer; these words are found in this passage in the proper reading of it, that is to say, you come to the God of measure in regard of odours; it is a matter of the apothecary. I suppose we would [p. 37] call that a science; certainly it is a very refined matter. And so the anointing is the first thing. “He that establishes us with you in Christ”, says the apostle, “and has anointed us, is God, who also has sealed us” (2 Corinthians 1:21,22). Now, if we are to understand this word ‘anointing’ we shall need to look into Exodus 30, because it is written for us; I can put myself into it, I have a part in this. Notice there are two words used in regard of spices in the passage I read. The Authorised Version says the “sweet spices” for both compounds, but in the New Translation, the second compound, that is, the incense, is “fragrant drugs” with frankincense. The elements of the ointment are spices, with the one added element of olive oil. You say, These are beyond us, but, dear brethren, what I am endeavouring to bring before you is that you are the person, I am the person; these matters refer to us. God is saying to us that He has great thoughts; He has the most refined holy smell, for His nostrils are spoken of, and He is thinking of us as to what part we have in it. How searching this is, as to whether I have, in my clothes the smell of an Esau. Sure enough he is a man of the field, but that is not the smell that Isaac smelled; this was not the field in that sense; the field in that sense is covered by the word ‘turf’, the tennis court and that sort of thing; it is not the productivity of the field that is in mind, but the surface to be used for man’s pleasure. That is what Esau was; it does not say he cultivated the field; he was a man of the field in the sense of being a hunter, for he came from Nimrod. We are told, over against that, that Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents. So it becomes searching; can I come into this compound? The first is said to be liquid myrrh, five hundred shekels. The last is said to be cassia, also five hundred shekels. That is, it is so many shekels of that kind of thing. Then two hundred and fifty shekels of two other spices; and finally, olive oil [p. 38] a hin. What part have I in that? You say, Well, that is beyond me. But it is written for us, dear brethren; it is a question of the compound; it is the fruit of the field that the Lord has blessed. These things are to work out of the field, and what a variety there is in the field, if we take all these spices and these fragrant drugs. So there is perfect measure, and the first — it ought to touch our hearts — is undoubtedly the spirit of the suffering Christ, the myrrh: how fragrant that is to God in that holy Sufferer! And then the other two half as much, and the final one equal, what can they be? Well, something corresponds to cassia, perfect in measure with God, but found in this dispensation; there can be no question about it. Where do I fit? Whether it be in my household or my business or my pleasure, what about the odour? — but above all, as I have part in the assembly, for that is in mind. You will observe that the ointment is made of this compound, and then we are told what it was to be used for, all the items in the tabernacle, and these, dear brethren, refer to the saints; the true tabernacle which the Lord has pitched refers to the saints. It is His own action; the Lord has pitched it and not man. It is God notifying us that, while He values every little thing in each of us, He has His own measure and place for each one of us; and, as each is filling his niche, he is anointed with this holy compound; every item of the tabernacle is anointed. What fragrance there is with that! I do not say that fragrance is all, but certainly these spices emitted fragrance, even in the public aspect of the tabernacle there is fragrance ascending all the time. That is over against the obnoxious odours around. God finds pleasure in His people viewed in this collective way. How great the thought is, dear brethren, and how one can dwell on each to see how he fits in this holy ointment, as it is called, this “perfume of perfumery after the work of the perfumer”; it is “an oil of holy ointment”, as if God would impress upon us that all other odours must be denied. It is not indeed to be applied to man’s flesh; it alludes to us as after the order of Christ. And then the incense is more for the inside of the tabernacle, the holy sphere of the divine presence within. It is a very refined measure and it involves increased spirituality; it is composed, as I said before, of fragrant drugs; there are three named beside the frankincense, five ingredients in the ointment and four in the incense, and it is prescribed that it is to be inside. God says to Moses, “Where I will meet with thee”, in the very holiest of all this holy odour was to be, where God met with Moses. Then again we have it in the holy place too, for there was an altar, as we are told in this chapter, of incense, which alludes to our seasons of prayer. You see I am giving a practical application to all this to bring out what God has in this world at the present time, however little, whether publicly or privately, whether it be the innermost place of our privilege, this holy odour is there. So the incense is burnt in the holy place; as we learn in Revelation, the prayers of all saints were caused to ascend in the fragrance of that incense by the great Priest, our great Priest, at the altar there. What a character, dear brethren, this gives our meetings for prayer. Then the whole week, as I may say, is filled out for God. What He has in the assembly! What pleasure publicly as well, in the anointing. So the priest takes the incense and burns it in the holy place, and even in the book of the Revelation, and this is very significant, there are golden vials containing the prayers of the saints. Think of what God has in the prayers of the brethren! The use of these vials suggests that the prayers are to be carried forward and remembered; they are always there in fragrance. I speak of all these things, as I said before, so that we might have before us {40} [p. 40] what God has in us publicly and privately, as typified in these wonderful things: it is a holy ointment and it is holy incense, the incense being the most refined of all, belonging to the inside, the place of the most holy, as I might say, where we carry on the service under the direction of the Minister of the sanctuary, all is fragrant.
Now I come back just for a moment to the apostle to bring out the thought in regard of those of us who are more specifically privileged to serve the Lord and to serve His people, first as to the character of knowledge, whether it is free from all that is merely intellectual, whether it is fresh, whether it is free from stain, whether it is in the freshness and energy of the Spirit of God and so emitting a fragrance in every place, for that is the idea. The idea of ministry is that ministers go from place to place; the Lord sent the seventy two by two before Him “into every city and place where he Himself was about to come” (Luke 10:1). As He came to the town, there would be that fragrance, the freshness and knowledge they had from heaven to convey to men. And then, secondly, as has been said, how the apostle was himself fragrant, no doubt carrying on the thought of the knowledge, but he himself was fragrant, that is in keeping with the knowledge that he has spread abroad — I suppose the allusion is to the triumphal entry accorded to returning victors in the Roman era — they were honoured in this way. But how great is the thought of God leading us in triumph, as the apostle said — God doing it. Whatever the opposition, all is well, even if there were no converts, even if there were dire opposition — always led in triumph by God, and the savour of divine knowledge shed abroad, so that there was in truth a triumphal return from every service, whether it was a successful service, or whether it seemed to result in very little. There was a savour of life unto life, and of death [p. 41] unto death. You may say, Surely there is nothing in that savour of death unto death for God! but it refers to the one thing that had resulted in the presentation of Christ in a living way; even although death followed, there was a savour in it.
That was all I had to say, dear brethren; I suppose it can be easily followed. One can only make a few suggestions; the gain would follow in looking into these things and seeing how they apply, whether I can have part in this holy fragrance for God that is to continue till the end. There is no doubt that the Lord is aiming at perfecting us so that we shall have this testimony before our translation that we please God.