Morning By Morning #8

It will be on Aaron’s forehead, and he will bear the guilt involved in the sacred gifts.

Exodus 28:38

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

What great meaning is unveiled and disclosed by these words! It would be profitable, yet humbling, to pause for a moment to consider this sad sight. The “guilt involved” in our public worship—its hypocrisy, formality, lukewarmness, irreverence, our wandering hearts, and our forgetfulness of God—is overwhelming! Our work for the Lord—its striving, selfishness, carelessness, laziness, and unbelief—is a rotting mass! Our private times of devotion—their laxness, coldness, neglectfulness, sleepiness, and vanity—are a mountain of dead earth! And if we looked even more carefully, we would find this guilt to be far greater than it appears at first blush.

Dr. Edward Payson (1783 – 1827), in a letter to his brother, wrote, “My parish, and my own heart, is much the same as the garden of a sluggard. What is worse, I find many of my desires to remedy either situation stem from my own pride, vanity, or laziness. I see weeds overtaking my garden and simply breathe out a wish that they were eradicated. But why? What prompts my wish? Perhaps it’s so I may say to myself what an orderly garden I have. This is pride! Or maybe it’s because I want my neighbors to look over the wall and say how wonderfully well my garden is flourishing. This is vanity! Perhaps I wish for the destruction of the weeds simply because I’m so tired of pulling them up. This is laziness!”

The truth here is that even our desires for holiness can be polluted by wrong motives. Even under the greenest grass, worms are hiding, and we don’t need to look very long to discover them.

Yet how uplifting is the thought that when our High Priest bore “the guilt involved in the sacred gifts” He wore upon His forehead the words—“HOLINESS TO THE LORD” (v. 36 KJV). Even while Jesus was bearing our sin He did not present our unholiness before His Father’s face—He presented His own holiness.

Oh, for the grace to view our great High Priest through the eye of faith!

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Praise be to God that believers receive the holiness of Christ and are clothed in His righteousness—not ours—for “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6).

“I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness” (Isa. 61:10).

Remember, believers, “You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb. 12:23-24).

Heavenly Father, give us heavenly eyes to view our perfect Savior—the only One who “is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens” (Heb. 7:25-26). Thank You for Him!