02.27. THE EPHOD AND THE BREASTPLATE
THE EPHOD AND THE BREASTPLATE THE Ephod was an outer garment.
It was a sleeveless tunic, coming below the waist.
It was composed of two pieces, a front and back.
These pieces were fastened together on the shoulders with two buttons of onyx stone. The names of six of the tribes of Israel were engraved on one stone, the names of the remaining six tribes on the other stone.
It was belted in at the waist with a “curious” girdle of fine twined linen, blue, purple and scarlet color. The word “curious” signifies “skilfully made.” The Ephod was made by beating gold into thin plates, cutting them into wires and weaving them into the fine twined linen, blue, purple and scarlet color. The divine description of it is definite and worthwhile.
“And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet and fine twined linen, with cunning work.
It shall have the two shoulderpieces thereof joined at the two edges thereof; and so it shall be joined together. And the curious girdle of the ephod, which is upon it, shall be of the same, according to the work thereof; even of gold, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen. And thou shalt take two onyx stones, and grave on them the names of the children of Israel:
Six of their names on one stone, and the other six names of the rest on the other stone, according to their birth. With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engraving of a signet, shalt thou engrave the two stones with the names of the children of Israel: thou shalt make them to be set in ouches of gold. And thou shalt put the two stones upon the shoulders of the ephod for stones of memorial unto the children of Israel: and Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord upon his two shoulders for a memorial. And thou shalt make ouches of gold; And two chains of pure gold at the ends; of wreathen work shalt thou make them, and fasten the wreathen chains to the ouches.” (Exodus 28:6-14.).
“And they did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into wires, to work it in the blue, and .in the purple, and in the scarlet, and in the fine linen, with cunning work.” (Exodus 39:3.)
It was a magnificent garment of glory and beauty. Looked at in one way it was all gold, catching every ray of light and flashing forth in gleaming splendor.
Every movement of the priest revealed the genius and the glory of its construction.
Looked at from a different angle it was all linen, white and blue and purple and scarlet color. And yet, there were not two ephods—there was but one.
One ephod with two distinct materials. And the distinction of the materials was maintained throughout the entire garment. The gold did not become linen, the linen did not become gold. The Ephod is a perfect, a divine, symbol of our Lord Jesus Christ in the wonder of His person, the God-man, the one, changeless, infinite person, having two distinct, unmixable natures, human and divine.
Considered on one side of His life our Lord was genuinely human.
He was born of a woman.
He was born a babe.
He grew in stature, in wisdom and knowledge and favor with men.
He became a day laborer.
He earned His bread in the sweat of His face.
He grew weary, He hungered, He thirsted, He ate, He drank, He slept for needed refreshment of body.
He desired to know what men thought of Him. He was keenly sensitive and suffered when men thought ill of Him.
He knew what it was to be burdened, to have sorrow and heaviness of soul.
He could shed tears.
He shrank from the ignominy of death and at the grave of Lazarus protested against it as an enemy and scandal of the human race. At last He died, His body became cold, inert. It was wrapped round with a winding sheet and buried as uncounted millions, dead and silent, had been buried before Him. On the other side of His life He was more than human.
He was sinless. And God knows and man knows, to be that, is to be altogether more than human.
He was holy. But it was a holiness that revealed sin in others, made iniquity declare itself and stand naked and self-accusing in His presence; a holiness that had in it all the restrained thunder and fire and hatred of God’s wrath against sin. No human Father could have begotten such a Son, even of the most stainless and virginal woman.
God, and God alone, could have begotten such a humanity.
He manifested His super-human quality in His miracles.
He gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, He made the dumb man to speak, He cleansed the leper and made the lame man to leap like a hart. When He multiplied the loaves and the fishes He created atoms. When He hushed the storm He was superior to and the Master of mass, weight, specific gravity, density and motion. When He raised Lazarus from the dead He created new tissue; it was an act of creation as distinct as when He created Orion and the Seven stars. But the marvel of His miracles was not in the act of them, but in the manner of them.
They were wrought apart from visible instrumentalities.
They were wrought by a fiat word. He said, “I will,” and it was done. He commanded and it came to pass. In this He demonstrates one thing, one immense, indisputable thing, and that is His will was superior to all forces in nature. A will superior to all forces in nature defines and demonstrates—God. The law and logic of His history is that He was God, very God of very God.
You could not separate the gold from the linen without rending and ruining the linen.
You could not separate the linen from the gold without bending and twisting and ruining the gold.
You could not separate the two materials without destroying the ephod.
You cannot separate the two natures in Christ.
You cannot take the deity out of Christ without ruining His humanity. Not only would you make His humanity a weak and inefficient humanity, you would make it a cowardly and despicable humanity.
He sweat blood at the thought of His approaching death on the cross.
He is not as courageous as the thieves by His side. He lacks the courage, the endurance and the heroism of the martyrs who have since gone to’ death in His name. At the last He utters that fearful cry which has echoed and reechoed down the centuries to this hour, the bitter and awful reproach that God had forsaken Him.
If He were only human then these martyrs who died in His name and for His sake, fair women who suffered every outrage and every agony of torture the flesh could feel for the love of Him and made no sign of their suffering, even wreathing their torture marked faces in smiles that they might’ glorify Him, these are quivering, shame smiting rebukes and judgments against His repudiation of the faith He proclaimed in life and denied in death.
Take the deity out of Him, make Him only a man, He becomes a false and deceiving teacher of men. He becomes worse than that; so bad, indeed) that words cannot describe His wickedness.
He claimed preexistence.
He said before the world was founded, before the universe, therefore, was created, He sat on the throne with God as His Father.
He said all the Father could do He could do.
He made Himself coeval and coequal with God (the very thing the Devil claimed and for which he became. the Devil and was cast out of God).
He said He was self-existent.
He said no man could come to God and find Him a Father, but by Him.
He said Whosoever saw Him saw the Father.
He made eternal damnation and eternal salvation dependent not on any principles or precepts He taught, but upon faith in Himself for all He claimed Himself to be.
He said the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi had been written to testify of Him, and on one occasion openly claimed to be the-” I am,” the Holy One of Israel.
Whatever difficulty self-announced scholars may have today concerning His words and claims, those who saw and heard Him had none.
They took up stones to stone Him and when with apparent innocence He asked why they would do that, they answered Him in such a fashion that it puts the record of His own claims on Him in such a manner that there can be but one of two reasons why any man who reads the record can have any trouble about it, and that alternative is, either he is unqualifiedly unintellectual and unreasoning in spite of all pretentious learning, or he is perversely and determinedly an unbeliever and a wilful infidel. This is what the people flung in His face, the accusation that either makes Him God or Devil:
Because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
There is not the slightest doubt about it.
He did. The record is there.
He did claim to be God.
You cannot go through the New Testament and separate those portions which bear witness to His deity from those which describe His humanity.
Try it.
Take that scene at the well of Sychar. Repudiate His deity, make Him only a man. The moment you do that you are under bonds of inexorable logic to set aside the offer of eternal life which He makes to the sinful woman. Do that and you have a man who is either an unbalanced weakling or a gross and cruel deceiver.
Take away His deity from the record of the storm scene on Galilee and the whole thing becomes a piece of paramount acting, the quick seizure of coincidence and nothing better than the cheap comedy that exploits it.
Take away His deity at the grave of Lazarus, and as no mere man can raise the dead, then the whole scene is nothing better than a blundering, melodramatic scenario stupidly arranged beforehand, but easily revealing all its self-evident parts; either that, or the story is blankly false, made out of whole cloth from the beginning to the end.
Take His deity out of the New Testament and you may as well throw the New Testament into the wastebasket, even that is too much honor for it.
There is no possible point of compromise.
If you accept the New Testament as the Word of God you will find it binds His humanity and His deity together as the gold and the linen were bound together in the Ephod, a wondrous garment of glory and beauty, bound together in the unit of His One eternal and unchangeable personality—The God-man. THE BREASTPLATE Inseparably connected with the Ephod and a constituent part of it was the Breastplate.
It was a four-square bag.
It was made of the same materials as the Ephod; that is, of gold, blue, purple, scarlet color and fine twined linen. On the front of it there were placed in settings, twelve precious jewels in four rows of three each. On each stone was cut the name of a tribe of the Children of Israel. In the bag were placed two objects, not described, but called Urim and Thummim, which mean lights and perfections. By consulting these the priest obtained his answers from the Lord. The bag or plate was fastened to the front of the Ephod by twisted golden chains that looked like golden ropes. These were secured to two onyx stones on the shoulders.
There were two rings on the back of the bag at the bottom and two rings in the ephod just above the “curious” girdle. The breastplate was secured to these lower rings by a lace of blue.
“And thou shalt make the breastplate of judgment with cunning work; after the work of the ephod thou shalt make it; of gold, of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine twined linen, shalt thou make it.
Foursquare it shall be being doubled; a span shall be the length thereof, and a span shall be the breadth thereof, And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of stones: the first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row. And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst. And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper: they shall be set in gold in their inclosings. And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet; everyone with his name shall they be according to the twelve tribes. And thou shalt make upon the breastplate chains at the ends of wreathen work of pure gold. And thou shalt make upon the breastplate two rings of gold, and shalt put the two rings on the two ends of the breastplate. And thou shalt put the two wreathen chains of gold in the two rings which are on the ends of the breastplate. And the other two ends of the two wreathen chains thou shalt fasten in the two ouches, and put them on the shoulderpieces of the ephod before it. And thou shalt make two rings of gold, and thou shalt put them upon the two ends of the breastplate in the border thereof, which is in the side of the ephod inward. And two other rings of gold thou shalt make, and shalt put them on the two sides of the ephod underneath, toward the forepart thereof, over against the other coupling thereof, above the curious girdle of the ephod. And they shall bind the breastplate by the rings thereof unto the rings of the ephod with a lace of blue, that it may be above the curious girdle of the ephod, and that the breastplate be not loosed from the ephod. And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the LORD continually. And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the LORD: And Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the LORD continually.” (Exodus 28:15-30.) The Ephod, the shoulderpieces, the breastplate and the curious girdle were all bound together and formed one garment. In wearing it the high priest carried the names of the Children of Israel both on his shoulder and on his heart.
He carried them on his shoulders. The shoulder is the symbol of strength.
You have the shoulder as the symbol of strength set forth in the story of the shepherd who seeks his lost sheep and when he has found it puts it on his shoulder and carries it all the way back to the fold from which it had strayed; so the Lord came from Heaven, sought His lost sheep (all who believe in and own Him), finds them and bears them up on His mighty shoulder, His infinite strength, and will continue so to carry them till they reach the cloudless day, Heaven’s fold and the abiding home.
“Trust ye in the LORD forever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.” (Isaiah 26:4.) He carried them on his heart. The heart is the symbol of love.
Just as Aaron was commanded to bear the names of the Children of Israel continually on his heart before the Lord, even so the Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest, bears us up on His heart of love, and will keep us there till we greet Him face to face in His day and our day of glory. The work of our great high priest in Heaven is not a perfunctory work.
He represents us, intercedes for us and maintains our standing and character there with a heart full of love, with exceeding great delight and abounding joy.
“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, (there you have His shoulder) and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” (there you have His heart). (Jude 1:24.) But there was a striking difference in the setting of the names on the stones of the shoulder and those of the Breastplate.
Those graven on the stones of the shoulder were placed there according to their birth; as it is written: “Six of their names on one stone, and the other six names of the rest on the other stone, according to their birth.” (Exodus 28:10.) The names on the Breastplate were according to the position they held in the camp or on the march.
There was a difference in the jewels.
Those of the shoulder were of one kind.
Those on the breastplate were not only different from those on the shoulder, but they were different from each other.
Those on the shoulder were alike.
They each had the same value.
They were equally held up by Aaron.
Those on the shoulders were there by birth. As believers we are all alike on the shoulder of our Lord; we are all there by spiritual birth. By birth, by regeneration, as believers, we are all alike before God, the weakest or the strongest of us—we are all the children of God, we are all such by faith; as it is written:
“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26.) As children, the Lord presents us to the Father, holds each of us up with the same divine strength, the same grace and gives to each one of us the same reputation before- the Court of Heaven.
We are all on His heart as well as on His shoulder. He loves us all; there is not one of us for whom He paid the price of redemption whom He does not love. But while we are all on His heart and He loves us all, we are not all alike on His heart. That is startling, but—it is true.
Just as the jewels were all on Aaron’s heart but distinct from each other, so we are different from each other on the heart of the Lord.
We are all jewels, let there be no mistake there; for it is written:
“They shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels.
Yes, we are jewels, and costly jewels; behold it is written:
“Ye are bought with a price.” (1 Corinthians 6:20.) The jewels occupied different places on Aaron’s heart, some were closer and more directly centered over his heartbeat.
They were in their different positions on his heart according to the position they occupied in the camp or on the march, according to the place and kind of service they fulfilled.
While we are on the shoulders of our Lord according to our birth, because we are all the children of God, we occupy our distinctive places on His heart according to the place we occupy in our daily life down here, according to our rank and service before Him. At the first He had seventy disciples.
Then He chose a special twelve.
Out of these twelve there were three who were more intimate and in closer touch with Him than the others. Of these three there was only one who leaned upon His breast in the intimacy of the supper celebration.
While the Lord loved them all there was only this one disciple of whom it is said:
“That disciple whom Jesus loved.” That disciple was John; and of him it is written:
“The beloved disciple.”
Every Christian may say with Paul:
“He loved me and gave himself for me.” But the intensity and degree of His love for us will be in proportion as to whether we are following Him, “afar off “or “leaning” on His breast.
Paul wants to lean on His breast, just above His heartbeat, Paul wants to hear every throb of it. This is what he means when he says:
“That I may win Christ.” (Php 3:3.)
He had Christ already as his Saviour and Lord. He knew his redemption and security in Him; but he wanted more than that, he wanted a closer intimacy with the Lord, a deeper consciousness of Him in his inmost soul.
Therefore he says:
“That I may know him.”
He desired to so walk before the Lord, so serve Him, that he might win a fuller, richer inflow of Him into every essence of his being. To this end he consecrated himself, gave himself up wholly to the Lord and said: “For me to live is Christ.” Therefore he says:
“Wherefore we labor, that whether present or absent, (whether in the flesh or out of the flesh) we may be accepted of him.” (2 Corinthians 5:9.) The word “accepted” should be rendered “acceptable;” that is, pleasing.
He wanted to so please the Lord in his daily life that the Lord would take him right upon the center of His heart.
It is our privilege to so live down here as Christians that we may continually win the special favor of the Lord and be classified-anyone of us-as “that disciple whom Jesus loves.” The different position of the names, the difference in the jewels, the difference in their beauty and splendor, testify that disciples will differ from one another in the relation they will sustain to the coming kingdom, “even, as one star differeth from another star in glory;” and this difference will be according to life, to love and service here.
Saved for nothing but by the sovereign and elective grace of a holy and righteous God, redeemed by the perfect sacrifice of His eternal Son, made partakers of the divine nature, sealed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and our life hid with Christ in God where death cannot touch us, saved, securely and eternally saved, owned before God and by Him as His children, made the very righteousness of God in Christ and looked at only in the perfections of Christ, and so presented by Him with exceeding joy and ‘efficiency on His part that our standing as the spotless sons of God may not fail—we who believe do not have to live like sons of God to become such; but, because we are sons of God we are to live like sons of God, each day win deeper consciousness of our Lord’s measureless love, each day seek to serve Him more fully until we shall feel the outstretching of His heart to us and know .we are closer to its inmost beating every present day than any yesterday.