02.34. THE PEACE OFFERING
THE PEACE OFFERING (Leviticus 3:1-17) THE law of the Peace Offering is to be found in Leviticus 7:28-36. Its distinctive feature is that the offerer and the priest each got a portion of it.
It was to be eaten before the Lord.
Eating before the Lord is communing with the Lord.
It is a picture of God and the sinner at peace with each other, all issues between them perfectly settled.
It is peace upon the basis of a mutually accepted sacrifice.
It is the picture of reconciliation. By the death of the cross our Lord Jesus Christ satisfied the law, the government and the being of God. In virtue of that satisfaction He has reconciled the world to Himself; as it is written:
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” (2 Corinthians 5:19.) By that act of reconciliation He brought the world up on mercy ground where He could deal with it in absolute grace. For two thousand years the cross has held back judgment from the world. For two thousand years the world has lived under a suspended sentence. On the basis of the righteousness displayed in the cross God is able to be just and yet the justifier of all who accept the sacrifice of the cross. The moment the individual owns the death of the cross as a sacrifice for sin and claims Him who died thereon as a personal substitute, .his sin both of nature and transgression is imputed to the crucified Christ, the obedience of Christ unto death is imputed to the believer, and he is at once individually reconciled to God; as it is written:
“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 unblameable and unreprovable in his sight.” (Colossians 1:21-22.) This peace is made between the individual sinner who believes and his God; as it is written:
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1.) This is the meaning of the oft repeated and much misunderstood announcement of the angels on that natal night in Bethlehem:
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men.” (Luke 2:14.)
It has been interpreted to mean that this was the particular announcement the Lord had come into the world to make peace between warring nations. He is coming to do that very thing, but this song of the angels was not that announcement and did not have any such meaning.
It was given in emphasis to the message of Gabriel.
Gabriel had given the message to Shepherds who watched their flocks by night, keeping guard over sheep and lamb.
Every morning and evening in the temple a lamb was sacrificed. The Gloria in Excelsis of the angel choir was a proclamation in the ears of these shepherds that lambs were no longer needed for temple service.
God had provided Himself a Lamb. The Lamb was His Son over whose wondrous human birth the choral song was sung.
He had come as the Lamb ordained before the foundation of the world.
He should offer a sacrifice by which peace should be made, not between warring nations, but between the individual sinner and his God. But this peace between God and the sinner was for a special class of sinners. The angels did not say:
“Peace, good will to men.”
No, not at all.
They said:
“Peace, to men of good will.”
What that good will is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself later on in His ministry declares.
He said:
“This is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life.” (John 6:40.) That is the good will of which the angels spoke. This is the class for whom He came to make peace. To such He becomes peace; as it is written:
“He is our peace.” (Ephesians 2:14.) “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.” (John 16:33.)
“And this man shall be the peace.” (Micah 5:5.) Peace made between the believing sinner and his God by the blood of the cross; as it is written:
“Having made peace through the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:20.) “Peace through the blood of his cross.” That is the peace the angels were singing and chanting, and over which they were giving glory to God that star-filled night.
There is not even the shadow of a suggestion of a hint in Scripture that the peace of the world, the beating of swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, is to be brought about by preaching the Gospel of the cross, the Gospel of the Crucified. For two thousand years this Gospel has been preached and has not brought the edge or outline of peace to a warring world. In the recent great world war the nations which fought in the most scientific and murderous fashion were those nations which pass current in history as “Christian Nations.” To talk about peace on earth while the cross casts its accusing shadow on it is to testify to spiritual blindness. To talk about peace on earth so long as human nature is at enmity with God is worse than childish, and wholly without excuse for those who have an open Bible. In clear, unqualified statement Holy Scripture affirms that while knowledge shall increase, men run to and fro, inventions be multiplied till man shall seem almost like God, the world as a system will go farther and farther away from Him and from the peace that abides.
Instead of beating their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, they shall beat their ploughshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears; as it is written:
“Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up:
Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.” (Joel 3:9-10.) In the closing hours of this age the genius of man will find its mightiest exercise in producing engines of destruction. . The whole world will become an armed camp. Nations will be angry and filled with envy, jealousy and hatred of one another. Everywhere shall be heard the tramp of armed men and the challenge of battle. The Son of God, He who cannot lie, who cannot be mistaken and who cannot deceive, has said the closing hours of this age shall be as it was in the days of Noah:
Materialism, lust, wealth, lust for the lusts of the flesh, lust for the lusts of pleasure, lawlessness, anarchy, rampant violence, order at an end, confusion supreme. Not only this—but— The Church, the professing Church, will fall into the hands and be under the leadership of’ false teachers until it shall become a wholly apostate thing, repudiating every foundation on which it has professed to build, and so far from being a barrier to tilt lust of the world and its reek of materialism, by its infidelity, by its denial of the Deity of the Son of God, the Virgin Birth, its repudiation of the blood of the cross as the blood of atonement, its cheap laughter and brutal mockery of the ’thought of a returning Lord, it shall help to break down all barriers of righteousness till it is scorned by a godless world as more godless than itself, and at the last like salt that has lost its savour and is only fit to be cast out and trodden under foot, so will the world despise and trample it in the mire of a common shame. So far from peace while He is away, our Lord has said lawlessness will be multiplied, and everywhere the evidence that human government has reached its limit, is disintegrating, and will come to a sudden and final overthrow; that a time of tribulation is coming on the earth, a time of suffering and woe so awful that in the ages of war and woe and human anguish, in all that has been most terrible in human history, there never has been anything like this tribulation will be, and so completely the horror of horrors that nothing ever can come again to match it. And thus while men are boasting and laughing and singing and crying, “on with the dance,” “tomorrow shall be as today and much more abundant;” while men are mocking as they did in the days of Noah before the flood, the age is moving each day with increased momentum to the cumulative and cataclysmic crash.
Nevertheless, He who died on Calvary’s cross is the Prince of Peace, and peace He will establish, and so establish it that never again shall war’s alarms be heard, nor lawlessness lift up its hydra head and hiss with its forked and Satanic tongue.
He Himself is coming as the Prince of Peace to inaugurate and establish peace. But how is He coming? Is He coming with the olive branch, with words of gentleness and steps as light and soft as though He trod on eiderdown?
Hear what He Himself says about it:
“I will tread them (the people) in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garment, and I will stain all my raiment.
I will tread down the people in mine anger and make them drunk in my fury, and I will tread down their strength to the earth.” (Isaiah 63:1-6.) (Revelation 19:11-16.) And what kind of a day will it be? That day when He comes to bring peace? Is it to be a day of beauty, a cloudless sky, a wealth of sunshine on hill and dale, on land and sea?
Nay! listen:
“A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains.” (Joel 2:2.)
“A day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness.” (Zephaniah 1:15.)
“And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.” (Isaiah 34:4.) And now behold the picture of the Lord’s Coming as presented by John, the Beloved disciple, under the stress and inspiration of the Holy Spirit:
“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of kings, and Lord of lords.” (Revelation 19:11-16.) And speaking to him anticipatively the Father says:
“Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psalms 2:9.) Not through the Golden Rule nor the preaching of the Gospel will the world become a world of peace. Not till He comes who is the Prince of Peace, not till He comes to overthrow the combination of man and Devil, not till He comes to execute righteousness upon an ungodly world and bind Satan, will peace dwell within it and abide. But amid all the storm and trial and unrest even now the most tempest tossed soul may find personal peace with God. The offerer ate of the Peace Offering before the Lord. On the basis of the sacrifice he ate before the Lord. This may you do. This is the privilege of the weakest believer, make the sacrifice all your own by faith, rest in the complete assurance of the perfect satisfaction the Father has found in the shed blood of His Son, appropriate to yourself more and more each day the worth of Him who died for you, rest in Him as your once crucified but now risen Lord and find delight in Him for all He has done, is doing and surely will do for you; and as you delight in Him you will find yourself in conscious touch with Him, in rich communion and in fellowship with God the Father who finds His delight in Him.
Two that are agreed can walk together. The mutual delight of yourself and the Father in His risen and glorified Son will bring you the peace of God because of your fellowship and communion with the God of peace.