The Red Heifer
Although the abundant life is available to us in Christ, my sins daily remind me of my need to depend totally on God for help in this earthly journey. Jesus knew it would be necessary for the child of God to know how to deal with sin. Scripture clearly teaches we need to keep our feet clean in our walk with the Lord. Failure to do so, will cost us many lost opportunities to bring glory to God. This is a vital message Jesus taught in His earthily ministry and The Holy Spirit teaches us today. The Lord knows our frame is but dust and made provision for us. He knew that once we become Christians, we would still struggle with sin. This provision we need is illustrated beautifully for us in Numbers 19:1-22:
1. Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 2. "This is the statute of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying, ’Speak to the sons of Israel that they bring you an unblemished red heifer in which is no defect and on which a yoke has never been placed. 3. ’You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be brought outside the camp and be slaughtered in his presence. 4. ’Next Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. 5. ’Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its hide and its flesh and its blood, with its refuse, shall be burned. 6. ’The priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet material and cast it into the midst of the burning heifer. 7. ’The priest shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward come into the camp, but the priest shall be unclean until evening. 8. ’The one who burns it shall also wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water, and shall be unclean until evening. 9. ’Now a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the congregation of the sons of Israel shall keep it as water to remove impurity; it is purification from sin. 10. ’The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening; and it shall be a perpetual statute to the sons of Israel and to the alien who sojourns among them. 11. ’The one who touches the corpse of any person shall be unclean for seven days. 12. ’That one shall purify himself from uncleanness with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and then he will be clean; but if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean. 13. ’Anyone who touches a corpse, the body of a man who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord; and that person shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is still on him. 14. ’This is the law when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent and everyone who is in the tent shall be unclean for seven days. 15. ’Every open vessel, which has no covering tied down on it, shall be unclean. 16. ’Also, anyone who in the open field touches one who has been slain with a sword or who has died naturally, or a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean for seven days. 17. ’Then for the unclean person they shall take some of the ashes of the burnt purification from sin and flowing water shall be added to them in a vessel. 18. ’A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent and on all the furnishings and on the persons who were there, and on the one who touched the bone or the one slain or the one dying naturally or the grave. 19. ’Then the clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purify him from uncleanness, and he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and shall be clean by evening. 20. ’But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself from uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from the midst of the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the Lord; the water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him, he is unclean. 21. ’So it shall be a perpetual statute for them. And he who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening. 22. ’Furthermore, anything that the unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches it shall be unclean until evening.’"
The sacrifice of the red heifer beautifully foreshadows and illustrates the sacrifice of Christ and the adequacy of His sacrifice to cleanse the believer from defilement in his pilgrim walk through this world. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin but our feet get dirty and must be cleansed. Jesus illustrated this truth when addressing Peter in John 13:10: Jesus said to him, "He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you." In the wilderness march, when an Israelite became defiled a new sacrifice for sin was not required. The ashes of the burnt purification from sin and flowing water was added in a vessel and a clean person dipped hyssop in the water, and sprinkled it on the tent and on all the furnishings and on the person who was unclean. This foreshadows for us several things in the sacrifice of Christ that makes it possible for us today to deal completely with sin so we can enjoy freedom from guilt and the abundant life Jesus promised.
First, THE CHARACTER OF THE SACRIFICE gives us victory over sin. Numbers 19:2 says, “This is the statute of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying, ’Speak to the sons of Israel that they bring you an unblemished red heifer in which is no defect and on which a yoke has never been placed.” The heifer was red. The color “red” represents human splendor, worldly grandeur or things associated with the flesh. The red heifer shows the identification of the sacrifice to the sin of mankind or the flesh.
Did not the Son of Man identify with the sins of man in His baptism? Did not He come to seek and save the lost and give His life as a ransom for many? Does not Scripture tell us: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).” Christ bore our sins in His body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. Isaiah said: “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.” God demonstrated His love toward us in while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. The Bible says without the shedding of blood there cannot be forgiveness of sin. Therefore, Christ shed His precious “red” blood so to those to whom His blood is applied might be cleansed of fleshly and worldly sin.
Verse 2 says the sacrifice was “spotless.” The spotless, unblemished character of the red heifer speaks of the sinlessness of Christ. Hebrews 9:13-14 says, “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” The apostle Peter says, “knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” (1 Peter 1:18-19)
No yoke was to have been placed on the red heifer. Likewise, Christ was completely yielded to the Father’s will. Psalm 40:8 expresses the words of Christ: “I delight to do Thy will, O my God; Thy Law is within my heart.” Likewise, Hebrews 10:9 expresses our Savior’s heart: “then He said, “Behold, I have come to do thy will.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second.” Christ was not a martyr. He voluntarily went to the cross. He bore the yolk of sin but He who knew no sin willingly become sin for us. He was the Lamb of God that John the Baptist proclaimed takes away the sin of the world. He chose to lay His life down in order to pick us up when we fall.
Second, THE COMPLETENESS OF THE SACRIFICE completely eradicates the believer’s sin. It is separated from you as far as the east is from the west. Verse 4 says, “Next Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times.” The sevenfold sprinkling of the blood represents before the eyes of all the complete never to be repeated putting away of all the believers sin as before God. New Testament Scripture says, “By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10) The completeness of this sacrifice reminds us we are free to live and move and have our being in Christ.
Notice Numbers 19:3 says, “You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be brought outside the camp and be slaughtered in his presence.” The red heifer was killed outside the camp. Jesus is our sin offering and in Scripture the sin offering was taken away from the temple and burned outside the camp. Hebrews 13:12 says of the Lord, “Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.” Christ was in the world but not part of the world. He came into the world to seek and save the lost. As followers of Christ, we are to be in the world but the world is not to be in us. We are foreigners, aliens, and sojourners with our citizenship in heaven. We are to seek things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father and not the things of the earth. The reduction of the sacrifice to ashes represents our total death to the things of this world and the acknowledgment that Christ has made ample provision for our earthly journey.
Finally, THE CLEANSING POWER OF THE SACRIFICE gives us sustained victory over sin. Numbers 19:6 says, “The priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet material and cast it into the midst of the burning heifer.” The cedar wood represents the cross of Christ, hyssop speaks of saving faith and the scarlet cloth the shedding of the Savior’s precious blood that made salvation possible. The cleansing from defilement came by sprinkling with the ashes mixed with water. The water represents a type of both The Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Examples of this can be seen in Scripture. J Vernon McGee points out that Jesus washed the disciples feet with water, not blood in John 13. And Ephesians 5:26 illustrates the water representing the Word of God: “that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,”
The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to convict us of some evil allowed in our life that hinders joy, growth, and service. Usually this is a besetting sin that we struggle with over and over. Thus, convicted, we remember that the guilt of our sin has been met by the sacrifice of Christ. Instead of despairing as convicted believers we should judge and confess the defiling thing as unworthy of a Christian and rest in the character, the completeness and the cleansing power of Christ’s sacrifice for us. Because of what Christ did at Calvary, we have the promise of 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us form all unrighteousness.”
Walk my brothers and sisters so close to God that nothing can come between. Jesus paid it ALL, all to Him we owe,
