02.09. THE GOATS’ HAIR CURTAINS
THE GOATS’ HAIR CURTAINS THERE were eleven of these curtains.
They were placed under the rams’ skins. They extended over the top of the Tabernacle, down the sides and back to the ground.
Five of them were coupled together into one breadth over the Most Holy Place.
Five were coupled together over the Holy Place. They were coupled by clasps of brass fitted into loops on each edge. The curtains over the Most Holy Place were long enough to fall down and cover the back. The eleventh curtain was doubled up and hung over the five pillars at the entrance-at the east end.
“And thou shalt make curtains of goats’ hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make. The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and the eleven curtains shall be all of one measure. And thou shalt couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and shalt double the sixth curtain in the forefront of the tabernacle. And thou shalt make fifty loops on the edge of the one curtain that is outmost in the coupling, and fifty loops in the edge of the curtain which coupleth the second. And thou shalt make fifty taches of brass, and put the taches into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one. And the remnant that remaineth of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remaineth, shall hang over the backside of the tabernacle. And a cubit on the one side, and a cubit on the other side of that which remaineth in the length of the curtains of the tent, it shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and that side, to cover it.” (Exodus 26:7-13.) The goat was set apart for the sin-offering.
“And he brought the people’s offering, and took the goat, which was the sin-offering for the people, and slew it, and offered it for sin.” (Leviticus 9:15.) “One goat for a sin-offering, to make atonement for you.” (Numbers 28:22.) The goats’ skins are a clear symbol of our Lord Jesus Christ as the antitypical Sin-offering; as it is written:
“It pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.” (Isaiah 53:10.) Christ through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot.” (Hebrews 9:14.)
“In the end of the age hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 9:26.) “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.” (Hebrews 9:28.) “Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering.” (Ephesians 5:2.) “We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10.) “By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:14.) (Sanctified by the offering of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ.) “He hath made him to be sin for us.” (2 Corinthians 5:21.) God the Father treated Him as sin, the very essence of sin.
All that sin means of the violation of God’s intrinsic law, repudiation of His will; all it means of high treason against Jehovah and readiness to overthrow His throne; all it means of that impulse which has filled the world with corruption, iniquity, shame and moral shipwreck; all that has made earth an arena for every force antagonistic to God, to holiness and truth, the seed and source of all crime, the matrix of lust and death and hell. On the cross He became all that in God’s sight.
He became the initial and consequent of sin, its essence and substance.
God looked upon Him and dealt with Him on the cross as-the criminal of the universe.
All the evil and wrong and shame and misery brought in by Satan as the Author of sin; all the tragedy wrought in man and by man; all that made man an offence to God-all this-the eternal God in the fulness of Godhead put on Him, charged to Him as His and held Him responsible as though He had actually thought every thought of evil, and committed every deed of sin. ‘
It was this indescribable objective, this thing that awaited Him, this condition He foresaw when in the garden that overwhelmed Him.
It was not physical death that appalled Him. He knew, as He said, He could and would rise again from the dead.
No! it was not physical death, it was what He saw would take place in that awful moment on the cross when treated as sin He should be repudiated of a Holy God.
He knew He would be repudiated and forsaken of God.
He was forsaken.
He said He was.
It is His own testimony.
Hear how He said it:
“My God, my God,” that was His cry, “why hast thou forsaken me? “
He did not say:
“My Father, my Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”
No! He said: “My God.”
How and wherein did He say that? It ought to be clear enough. In Him was the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
He was forsaken of the fulness of Godhead. He was forsaken of deity. Not that, even for the fraction of a suspicion or the imagination of a second of time He ceased in His personality, being and essence to be very God of very God—
Nay! But the moral sense of His own deity revolted against His own humanity as the representative of sin. The nature and law of the divine being that hates sin (and is automatically, because essentially, against sin), this nature and law in Him repudiated the humanity that He had taken into union with Himself when that humanity in the name of and as the representative of sin thrust itself against His unchangeable personality and divine nature. It was as when a man stumbles and falls below his own ideal, the higher moral concept in him makes him turn upon himself with all the antagonistic and accusing bitterness of that concept until he feels himself smitten, stricken, separated from and forsaken of all that is worthwhile in him.
Thus our Lord felt Himself forsaken morally and actually of all there was of God in Him. In that unspeakable moment He had only one consciousness in His humanity, it was the consciousness of the sin He represented; all there was of God in Him repudiated it and thus intensified that consciousness. And so completely did He have the consciousness of sin on Him, so fully did He anticipate and identify Himself with it that even in His pre-existent state He cries out through the mouth of the Psalmist:
“MINE INIQUITIES have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me.” (Psalms 40:12.)
He was the object of the whelming scorn of His own supreme divine nature. He endured the woe and anguish of His hatred of sin, it was the wholeness of the being of God in Him that repudiated the sin laid on His humanity, it was His humanity that agonized under this sense of the attitude of the whole being of God in Him and made Him lift that cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” As a man through the deity in Him He loathed Himself as a man. Is there anything more terrible than that-for a man to loathe himself. Is there any punishment more horrifying than that? To loathe yourself and justify the judgment of justice against yourself. But now mark the combination of woe in that hour. He knew He was, as a man, innocent, sinless, holy, holy as a man, full of devotion to the Father; and as God, as the Son of God and God the Son the very expression and outgoing of the love of the Fatherhood of God, the very essence of His love.
He knew He was all that, and then He knew the brutal, mad, screaming, murderous crowd rioting there at the foot of His cross looked upon Him as a deceiver, sincerely believed Him to be a wicked blasphemer against God. To know that He could come down from the place of shame and torture and reveal Himself in all His integrity; that He was held fast to that accursed tree not by the nails, nor His own insufficiency, but by His covenant faithfulness to that brute, senseless mass clamoring for His agony and its prolongation as well as for His death. Not only does He utter His agony through the Psalmist, but by and through the prophet Jeremiah.
Hear, I pray you, these terrible words:
“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto ‘me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand.” (Lamentations 1:12-14.) In that awful hour God was punishing sinful humanity in the person of its representative, punishing it by banishing it from His presence with the brand of His infinite and eternal hatred against sin. In this hour of the Great Sin Offering on a Roman cross you may get some faint measure of God’s thought about sin.
You may see that in God’s mind sin is something more than genital weakness. He considers it as high treason against Himself.
Wherefore the Psalmist recalling his own unforgetable sin, under the quickening of the Holy Spirit, sees it is supremely and pre-eminently against God Himself, and therefore he cries out:
“Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.”
He recognizes that this is the basis on which the judgment of God is against the sinner; that is, because sin is against God, because if carried to its ultimate it would overthrow the throne of God and turn the universe into a swirling, endless sweep of mad lawlessness and confusion where all holiness and truth would be strangled in the insane joy of Devil and fiend, God is justified in executing judgment against sin without mercy and without default. In fullest recognition of this the Psalmist cries out: “That thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.” (Psalms 81:4.) This sin offering of our Lord Jesus Christ has two distinct operations.
It is an offering for sin and an act of substitution. As a sin offering He meets in His death the demand of God’s law and government and being. By virtue of that He reconciles ‘the world to God, gets a stay in proceedings and puts the world under a suspended sentence. In virtue of that offering not only has there been an estoppment of judgment, but grace has been brought in to reign through righteousness; that is, righteousness has been so exhibited on the cross, sin has been so thoroughly punished, the law, government and being of God so upheld and justified by the punishment that fell upon the sinless victim that grace can be proclaimed without detriment to righteousness. The death of Christ was also the death of a substitute.
He not only offered Himself for sin that He might hold back the judgment that for ages had been accumulating against the world, but that He might become the Saviour of individual men. On the basis of the sin offering the world has been rendered immune of judgment in this particular age.
It may go on in sin and treason and riotous blasphemy, no judgment will fall, no one will be singled out and punished. But as a sin offering alone the death of Christ is of no avail to save any man from the judgment of God that must finally fall.
He who would escape from that judgment that is as sure to fall as that God is God; he who would be justified and accepted before God and receive eternal lifer must put in an individual claim, personally claiming the Lord on the cross in the hour of His agonizing death, in the climax of His death as a penal death, as His substitute dying there for him and instead of him, He who would be saved must say in effect:
“I offer Jesus Christ on that cross as my sacrifice for sin: I claim Him as my substitute, His death as my death, His punishment as the punishment due to me and as exhausting all punishment against me now and forever.” With the Apostle in simple and claiming faith you must say:
“Who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20.) But listen, I pray you, and get the meaning of that cry of agony on the cross to those who do not claim our Lord Jesus Christ there as a personal substitute.
If you do not claim Him as your substitute it is all plain enough.
Then that cry will be your cry.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It is a terrible, agonizing question, but we who have accepted Him as our substitute understand that cry. We know it was His cry as our substitute and with profound adoration we can answer and say:
“O Lord, our great God and Saviour, thou wast forsaken and knew the hiding of the face of God that we might never know it, that we might never be forsaken; thou wast forsaken that we might not be forsaken.”
But, alas! if you have not claimed Him as your substitute, even though you stood under His cross and knew He died as a sin offering, then you will have to answer your own question why you are forsaken.
You will have to say:
“We are forsaken of God because we did not accept Jesus Christ on the cross in the hour of His agony as our substitute; we did not by faith claim Him to be forsaken for us; we did not say to Him, ‘Lord thou wast forsaken for us.’ And we are forsaken not merely for our sin and sins, but because we rejected the substitute provided by the grace of God.” The goats’ hair curtains completely covered the Tabernacle.
Since the Tabernacle is not only a symbol of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the Church (as we have already ‘Been), this complete covering is a symbol of the complete way in which the sacrificial death of our Lord Jesus Christ covers those who are His and hides their sin from the face of justice.
God could not dwell in that Tabernacle nor in the midst of the Children of Israel until sin was ceremonially satisfied for and thus judicially shut out of His sight. When these goats’ skin curtains were spread out and covered the Tabernacle—He no longer saw iniquity in Israel. This was the testimony of Baalim, even against his own will.
Although he would have cursed Israel If he could, he was forced to say under divine pressure and speaking in the name of God:
“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him.” (Numbers 23:21.) This is our character and standing before God as believers, our sins and transgressions are under the blood of the great sin offering, under the perfectness of His perfect sacrifice.
All we are as having sin on u§ is out of sight.
There is sin in us because we have in us the old nature, “sin in the flesh.” There is no sin on us, that is, against us, because our sins were laid on Him as our sin offering. When we confessed the Lord as our personal sin offering we were dated back to the hour of the cross. Our nature of sin and all its acts were imputed to the sinless sufferer. His act of obedience unto death was imputed, charged over to our credit, we were justified, accepted as righteous. The risen and glorified Christ in Heaven became our righteousness. He became our environment. We became united to and actually in Him as our life. We are in Him and God the Father sees us only in Him, covered by His perfect work and by Him.
Anticipating this supreme act and fact of grace the Psalmist says:
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity.” (Psalms 32:1-2.) Because of the perfect work of the Lord the believer can say:
“Our transgressions have been blotted out and our sins as a thick cloud.” (Isaiah 44:22)
“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalms 103:12.) The East and the West—can never meet. Our sins will never meet nor accuse us again. The believer may say in all confidence:
“Thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.” (Isaiah 38:17) And How? By turning His back on His beloved Son, hanging there on the cross, bearing our sins. And why? The preceding clause gives the answer: “In love to my soul.”
Amazing proof of love—
Turning His back upon and forsaking His Son that He might forget our sins and see them or know them no more forever; for it is true, is it not, that when a thing is behind your back you cannot see it-it is out of sight? That is what the prophet means. Your sins as a believer are out of God’s sight. He cannot see them.
“Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:19.) When a stone is cast into the sea and the ripples have died away you can no longer find a trace of it.
It is as though it had not been. Our sins as believers have been cast into the depths of God’s Almighty love and the wave that rolled over them and hides the trace of them forever was the crimson, measureless wave of the cross. The blood that hides them is still visible to our faith, but our sins are as though they had never been.
It is great that God has forgiven them. But He has done more than forgive.
We forgive one another, but we do not always forget the wrong done us.
How infinitely God rises above man.
He not only forgives, but forgets; as it is written: “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
(Hebrews 10:17.) Not to remember is to forget. To forget is to have the thing blotted from the mind so that it is, indeed, as though it never had been.
He can never recall it. Put these two words side by side.
“Forgiven! Forgotten!!”
Let it be spoken with all reverence, but it is true, our sins are off God’s mind just as though they never had been upon His mind because of the blood of Christ between Him and them-off His mind forever.
All this we learn in the goats’ hair curtains. No matter what we may have been; no matter how deep and dark the root of sin in us, nor how unforgetable our sins and transgressions may be to us, once we turn in full” heart sincerity unto the Lord, by faith offer up the crucified one and claim that He died, that He atoned, that He expiated, that He freely and fully satisfied the demands of justice against us, fulfilled the sentence and utterly destroyed the guilt and demerit of our sin we are at once owned of God as in the Risen Christ and as righteous, holy and spotless as Himself.
Whenever the memory of any past may come upon you, and your sense of sin trouble you, get the vision of the goats’ hair covering of the Tabernacle and repeat to yourself the undeniable fact that the sin offering of the cross covers and hides you as completely as they did the Tabernacle, and that all your wrong and sin and evil are.
Under the blood.