A Sermon by George Innes
Psalms 40:6,7. Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; mine ears hast Thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me.
Among the many irrefutable proofs that we belong to a fallen race is the misconstruction which men have put upon the clearest revelations of God’s will. The eye that is in us is darkness, and the depraved intellect of man has distorted every leading doctrine of Scripture into a thousand monstrous shapes of error.
The Lord had appointed that the Israelites, in their approaches to Him, should offer sacrifices as an acknowledgment that their sins could not be forgiven without the shedding of blood, and as a declaration of their faith in the Lamb of God, who should take away the sins of the world. The sacrifices both made clear expression of the fearful guilt of sin and foreshadowed the atonement Christ should make for the transgressions of His people. But the Jews, as a nation, were not impressed with a horror of sin; neither were their thoughts led forward to the promised Redeemer. In their shameful misconceptions of God’s character, they often impiously imagined that, if any of them committed a trespass, he had no more to do than to kill a bullock or a sheep in sacrifice, and his guilt would be forgiven. So also, among us, a deluding spirit is always creeping in to whisper false comfort in sin – by the assurance that we have only to ask and it will be forgiven. Thus the disobedient children of Israel make use of the sacrifices to lead them on in sin, because grace abounded.
Therefore the Spirit of the Lord strove with them, saying, “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” As their history advanced, God’s contentions with them on this point became innumerable. Often did God admonish them that the sacrifice of the wicked was an abomination to Him. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me, saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. . . . Bring no more vain oblations . . . they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them. . . . Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well.”
1Taken from The Free Church Pulpit, vol 3. Innes (1819-51) was the Free Church minister in Cannobie, Dumfries-shire, from 1844.
Thus this intolerable perversion of God’s institution of sacrifice, which represented it as giving licence to sin on certain easy conditions, was strongly rebuked. But another error was intimately connected with it, which looked on the typical sacrifices as possessing a virtue in themselves to blot out transgression; this was also exposed and condemned. It is only by looking to the sacrifice of Christ that the fearful nature of sin can be fully understood. So long as the Jews fancied that it could be removed by so trifling a remedy as the blood of bulls and of goats, they could not but think lightly of guilt. Therefore Scripture was given in order to correct their pernicious mistake; in the words of our text, Jesus speaks to God in the words of the Psalmist.
The Psalm from which these words are taken is a devout expression of gratitude on the part of the Redeemer, as Head of His elect people for the deliverance granted to Him when He was brought back again from the dead. And being thus delivered from the horrible pit of corruption, and the miry clay of man’s iniquities, He had His goings in the course of His mission established, that He should bring “many sons unto glory”. For this is a new song put into His mouth “even praise unto our God”.
As chief among His ten thousand brethren, casting His eye over the many wonderful works and thoughts of God, which have been “to us-ward”, and finding them more than can be numbered, He yet sees one thought, one work, conspicuously pre-eminent above them all, as worthy to be praised. That is the love wherewith God so loved the world as to give Him, the only begotten Son, to death for sinners; and He abruptly breaks out in praise of this: “Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; Mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me.”
The allusion in the words, “Mine ears hast thou opened”, is to the practice among the Israelites of making an opening in the ears of a servant, who submitted to his master, pledging himself never to quit his service until released by death. When Christ undertook the work of redemption, He took on Him the form of a servant. “Being in the form of God, [He] thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2:6-8).
In this assumption of the form of a servant, a body was prepared for Him, and so the different translation of our text adopted in Hebrews 10:5 may be explained. Both expressions refer to the same thing, and the one simply makes clear the meaning of the other. Both direct our attention to the assumption of human nature by Him of whom God says, “Behold My servant, whom I
uphold; Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth”. He Himself, in speaking to the Father of His work, says, “Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; Mine ears hast Thou opened . . . .”
In these words we find two things stated: (1) the Jewish sacrifices were not sufficient to atone for sin; (2) therefore Christ came, conscious of being a sufficient sacrifice. In the volume of the book of God’s eternal decrees, it was written that the Lamb should be slain, and that His blood should cleanse from all sin those to whom the blood is applied. In the words here spoken, according to the inspired writer, “He taketh away the first” kind of sacrifice, “that He may establish the second”.
Let us then, who have been given to see this dispensation of God, enquire reverently: (1.) What kind of atonement was needed for sin? (2.) How have all the qualities met in Christ that are necessary for a sufficient atonement?
1. What kind of atonement was needed for sin? The ransom to be given must be costly, though men seem to treat it lightly, for the guilt to be remitted is indescribably great. Man, a creature made by God, who crowned him with loving kindness and tender mercy, had set himself in opposition to his Creator. Let each of us reflect how we have given our hearts to be filled with ungodly and polluting imaginations, incapacitating ourselves for the worship and service of the holy Lord of heaven and earth, erasing His image from our natures, banishing remembrance of Him from our customary thoughts, removing ourselves as far from Him as we could, and selling ourselves as slaves to His, and our, most bitter enemy. And when, at times, conscience has spoken and rebuked us for our wickedness, reminding us of the justice and power of Him against whom we have been offending, have we not hardened our hearts and been in enmity against God?
Have we not resolved that, let Him punish us as He may, we would not love Him? But even in the depths of misery, would we not find a secret pleasure in hating Him who had brought this woe upon us? If our miserable hearts are stripped of their subterfuges of lies, it will be seen that they hate God, that they raise themselves up in daring rebellion against His holiness and justice, treating His love and His goodness with neglect – almost with contempt – abusing His longsuffering, and encouraging themselves in worldly-mindedness and abominable licentiousness. For these things, our lives are forfeited and we are justly subject to the wrath of Him who can destroy us, soul and body, in hell. It is graciously proposed that our guilt be remitted through the offering of an atonement.
(1.) The atonement to be offered must be equivalent in value to the souls of the redeemed. In accepting an atonement, it is indispensable that the majesty of God’s holiness and justice is vindicated as completely as if justice had
been executed on man himself. Therefore any propitiation that is not equal in value to the immortal souls of men is inadmissible. This evidently excludes all atonements devised by man.
All attempts to atone for sin by burnt offerings, including thousands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil – or by severe lacerations of the flesh or toilsome pilgrimages or by large donations to charity, or by a careful routine of lengthened devotions – must be vain. Redoubled zeal in the performance of rites – or giving multiplied sacrifices to feed the flames of the altar – can never take away sin. For, when all is done, the question still comes and breaks up peace of conscience: What have you given that you have not received? Have you not a soul given you by God? All that you have is forfeited, and if you are to appease God by your own doings or givings, all that you have must be given and your soul must be yielded to undergo the wrath it has provoked, even to the uttermost.
Such is the stern doom of justice. Unless man can find something to give as his ransom which he has not received – something that is equivalent in value to his soul – he can never save himself from going down to the pit. It would be evidently beneath the majesty of heaven to accept any other than a proportionate atonement. The justice of God has been insulted, His holiness has been treated with contempt. He had said, “The soul which sinneth it shall die”; and can it be proposed that he shall receive anything as an atonement whose acceptance would leave a stain on His holiness and His justice, if it is not fully vindicated? These attributes of God’s character must be maintained unblemished at whatever cost. If a ransom is to be accepted for the souls of men, it must be such as will leave God’s government at least as majestic and great as if man had been given over to wrath.
(2.) In the atonement to be offered there must be a connection between those for whom atonement is made and the party who suffers. This requirement is clearly right; it is obvious that the sacrifice of animals is inadequate to take away sin. What connection, it may be asked, is there between the sin of a man and the death of bulls and of goats? And what equivalence is there in value?
The same reason would have made it plainly improper to visit for our iniquities any portion of the angelic hosts who never fell. Even if they had been willing to stand as our sureties, yet the absence of any connection and the lack of power on their part to ensure that their suffering would have the effect of bringing us back to God, would have rendered it manifestly unsatisfactory. In human affairs, where even very defective arrangements are allowed – when a father becomes surety for his son, or one partner liable for the dealings of another – it is expected that the surety may exercise some
influence over the one for whom he becomes surety. There may have been little connection between the parties before, but a bond of union between them is felt to be proper.
God’s actions are perfect; so there must be a recognisable connection between him who was to make propitiation for sin and those who were to reap the benefit of that propitiation. If he was a different kind of being, with no part in the feelings and actions belonging to humanity, it might be said, What has he to do with man? He stands on a different footing, and is altogether unconcerned in man’s destiny; there is no connection or relationship between them, and why should the merit of his sufferings and his righteousness extend to man?
(3.) He who was to die for man must be innocent. In the typical sacrifices, to offer any victim that was lame or injured was an abomination to the Lord. Such victims were rejected with most unbending scrupulousness. By this it was declared that, if an atonement was to be offered for guilty man, it must be a victim without any blemish of sin – pure and unstained, wholly innocent of transgression. As the two previous requirements exclude all hopes of a man saving his own soul by any exertions of his own, or of help coming from any other race of creatures, so does this prevent any man redeeming his brother, or giving to God a ransom for him. If one soul is to be given in exchange for another, the soul to be accepted must be innocent. If it is guilty, and has sins of its own to answer for, then it must die for its own iniquity.
When David was grieved for the loss of his favourite son, and horror-struck that he should have been cut off in his guilt, he exclaimed, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” He knew that he could not redeem his son from destruction, or give to God a ransom for him. David had sinned himself, and though, in his frantic grief, he exclaimed thus wildly, yet he was very conscious that his soul could be no offering for sin. He was a sinner himself, and he had nothing to give for another. Paul fervently wishes that Israel should be saved and says that he could wish himself accursed from Christ for them; yet he plainly recognises that the salvation of a soul is a work too great for man to accomplish. His words obviously declare that the offering of an atonement on the altar for another is impossible with man.
The victim to be offered must be an innocent soul in which the Searcher of hearts can see no blemish, but where was such a soul to be found? From the rising of the sun to its going down, where is a heart that has never harboured a sinful thought, the son who never looked unkindly on his parent, the daughter whose lip was never stained by falsehood, the man who has never lived as if there was no God ruling the world? For 4000 years the Lord
looked down from heaven; His eyes beheld the children of men. There was none righteous; there was none to redeem his brother from destruction – much less to be a propitiation for the sins of the world.
(4.) The victim to be offered must be willing. To punish an unwilling, resisting victim for the sins of the guilty would be cruel tyranny. Say that an innocent man had been found a fit substitute for a guilty brother, would the innocent man willingly quit the position he occupied, with all its advantages of freedom from sin and enjoyment of God’s favour – to be dealt with as guilty? Would he quit his position to have all divine influences excluded from his soul, with no ray of heavenly light cheering the eye – to be plunged into the blackness of darkness, to lie there under the heavy weight of God’s anger? Or say that a pure and happy spirit was shown the terrors of God’s wrath in all their fearful power, rending and crushing the soul, do you think he would consent if he was asked, Are you ready to meet the doom deserved by that guilty man and to die for him, having the curse enveloping you, reaching to your inmost soul? Are you ready to undergo his sentence? Yet consent was given by the blessed Son of God – not to bear the sins of one, but of many.