April - the Free Presbyterian church of Scotland

Some Steps in Offering Sacrifice 113Ireland, where the work of reformation seemed “not only to be retarded, butalmost plucked up by the roots, and the foundation thereof razed”. 22 Inapplying such a description to Scotland also in our own day we may beencouraged by their firm faith: “Yet the seed which the Lord hath sownthere shall again ‘take root downward and bear fruit upward’. ‘The zeal ofthe Lord of Hosts shall perform this.’” Habbakuk was told: “The vision isyet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: thoughit tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. . . . Forthe earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as thewaters cover the sea” (Hab 2:3,14). We are to believe that the covenantedwork of reformation has a future in Scotland, as James Guthrie, one of thefirst Covenanting martyrs, exclaimed seconds before his execution in 1661:“The Covenants, the Covenants, shall yet be Scotland’s reviving”.Some Steps in Offering Sacrifice 1George Smeatone shall better apprehend the meaning of the sacrifices, and their unitedWsymbolical and typical significance, if we follow step by step the orderof the ritual. It must be carefully noted that, in the private sin offerings of thepeople, the priest was present at the first three acts, but began his properfunction only when the blood was to be received for the act of sprinkling. Onthe great annual day of atonement, however, the high priest, the representativeof the nation, performed all the acts of the sacrifice. The ritual advancedaccording to the following successive steps.1. The worshipper who had contracted guilt by any violation of the lawfor which a sin offering was provided was to bring a clean animal, withoutblemish, to the tabernacle of the congregation. The animal must be alive, asthe arrangements involved the taking of its life. The act of presentation, as performedby a willing offerer, implied the voluntary character of the sacrifice.The presentation was to be on the altar, to which, erected on an elevation,the victim was to be brought up, just as the great antitype was lifted up onthe cross (1 Pet 2:24). To the perfection of the sacrifice, however, it wasindispensable that the victim should be without defect or blemish. This isconstantly alluded to by the sacred writers (1 Pet 1:19, Heb 9:14).22 A True Copy of the Whole Printed Acts of the General Assemblies of the Church ofScotland 1638-1649, 1682, p 466.1 Taken, with editing, from Smeaton’s excellent volume, The Doctrine of the Atonementas Taught by the Apostles.