And there confess my sin.’
The blood of that Holy Substitute was shed ‘to make reconciliation upon the altar.’ Without that reconciliation we cannot offer and present ourselves to God; but this being made, Christ Himself presents us. And you, that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight.
Then Moses ‘brought the ram for the burnt-offering; and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram, and Moses burnt the whole ram upon the altar; it was a burnt-offering for a sweet savour, and an offering made by fire unto the Lord.’ Thus Christ’s offering was indeed a whole one, body, soul, and spirit, each and all suffering even unto death. These atoning sufferings, accepted by God for us, are, by our own free act, accepted by us as the ground of our acceptance.
Then, reconciled and accepted, we are ready for consecration; for then ‘he brought the other ram; the ram of consecration; and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram.’ Here we see Christ, ‘who is consecrated for evermore.’ We enter by faith into union with Him who said, ‘For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.’
After all this, their hands were filled with ‘consecrations for a sweet savour,’ so, after laying the hand of our faith upon Christ, suffering and dying for us, we are to lay that very same hand of faith, and in the very same way, upon Him as consecrated for us, to be the source and life and power of our consecration. And then our hands shall be filled with ‘consecrations,’ filled with Christ, and filled with all that is a sweet savour to God in Him.
‘And who then is willing to fill his hand this day unto the Lord?’ Do you want an added motive? Listen again: ‘Fill your hands to-day to the Lord, that He may bestow upon you a blessing this day.’ Not a long time hence, not even to-morrow, but ‘this day.’ Do you not want a blessing? Is not your answer to your Father’s ‘What wilt thou?’ the same as Achsah’s, ‘Give me a blessing!’ Here is His promise of just what you so want; will you not gladly fulfil His condition? A blessing shall immediately follow. He does not specify what it shall be; He waits to reveal it. You will find it such a blessing as you had not supposed could be for you—a blessing that shall verily make you rich, with no sorrow added—a blessing this day.
All that has been said about consecration applies to our literal members. Stay a minute, and look at your hand, the hand that holds this little book as you read it. See how wonderfully it is made; how perfectly fitted for what it has to do; how ingeniously connected with the brain, so as to yield that instantaneous and instinctive obedience without which its beautiful mechanism would be very little good to us! Your hand, do you say? Whether it is soft and fair with an easy life, or rough and strong with a working one, or white and weak with illness, it is the Lord Jesus Christ’s. It is not your own at all; it belongs to Him. He made it, for without Him was not anything made that was made, not even your hand. And He has the added right of purchase—He has bought it that it might be one of His own instruments. We know this very well, but have we realized it? Have we really let Him have the use of these hands of ours? and have we ever simply and sincerely asked Him to keep them for His own use?
Does this mean that we are always to be doing some definitely ‘religious’ work, as it is called? No, but that all that we do is to be always definitely done for Him. There is a great difference. If the hands are indeed moving ‘at the impulse of His love,’ the simplest little duties and acts are transfigured into holy service to the Lord.
‘A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;