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CHRIST IN ALL T H E SCRIPTURE S
power may reform and civilise, the power of Jesus alone can change men's hearts and impart new life (chap, xvii.). 1 The Priests and Levites were to have no inheritance in the land because the Lord Himself was their inheritance (chap, xviii.). They were no losers. All the best of the oil and all the best of the wine and of the wheat was theirs " b y reason of the anointing." As we are the Lord's priests He Himself is likewise the portion of our inheritance, and we have all in Him and can say, "Yea, I have a goodly heritage." The time came when Aaron must die (chap. xx.). Moses was commanded to take him up into Mount Hor and strip him of his priestly robes and put them upon Eleazar his son, and Aaron died there in the top of the Mount. Here the type falls short of the glorious Anti-type. " There ariseth another Priest who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life" (Heb. vii. 15, 16). It was on account of the disobedience of Moses and Aaron in striking the rock that they were not allowed to enter the Promised Land. On the first occasion, in Exodus, the Rock was a type of our smitten Saviour. But only once was He smitten for us. On the second occasion they were commanded to speak to the Rock. The Hebrew word for rock in Exod. xvii. 6 signifies a low-lying bed-rock. The word in Numbers xx. 8 is a high and exalted rock. T H E W A T E R OF SEPARATION.
In the nineteenth chapter of
Numbers we have the account of the Water of Separation— God's beautiful provision for cleansing from the defilement contracted in daily life. The cleansing efficacy of the water consisted in the ashes of a red heifer, offered as a Sin offering, with which it was mingled. Thus it was a cleansing based upon atonement, a foreshadowing of the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanseth (i.e. goes on cleansing) from all sin those who are walking in the light (1 John i. 7). It was perhaps to this water that our Lord referred in His conversation with Nicodemus when He said, " Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Nicodemus's failure to understand the type called forth our Lord's reproof, " A r t thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?" (John iii. 10, R.V.). How much of the teaching of the New Testament we Christians miss through our neglect of the study of the types. 2 2
1 See Urquhart's Xew Biblical Guide, vol. v. p. 217. For Us Hen, p. 134. Sir Robert Anderson, K.C.B., LL.D.