NUMBERS 18-19; PSALM 86

 READ: NUMBERS 18-19; PSALM 8

Scripture for Meditation: NUMBERS 19: 2-7

Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and on which a yoke has never come. And you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him. And 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. And the heifer shall be burned in his sight. Its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned. And the priest shall take cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn, and throw them into the fire burning the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. But the priest shall be unclean until evening.

REFLECT

God had instructed Moses to obtain a red heifer without blemish that had never been worked before and to take it out of the camp and slaughter it and to burn all of it including the meat, the skin, the offal, and even the dung. And then to mix it in water and to use the ash-water mixture to cleanse anyone who had dealt with death or handled a dead body. A dead body is by far the most unclean of all unclean things. And the sin offering to ritually cleanse one who had been exposed to a dead person had to be special and different.

This was how special the offering had to be. A heifer is a female cow between 2-3 years old that has not borne a calf yet. Sexual maturity is between 15 to 20 months. Hence the required offering would be sexually mature, yet never been mated before. Besides this, the heifer had to be without blemish. This means that it had to be perfect. The hair and hide would have to be of the same colour with no patches or spots of different colours. In addition, the offering would have to be a heifer that has never been worked at all. This would certainly be a  rare offering. In a society that depended on cows either to work, to produce milk, or to breed, where would there be found a heifer that had neither worked nor been mated before? In addition, this perfect cow also had to be spotless in appearance. But to add to this requirement for such a rare sacrifice, the heifer had to be red in colour. Red heifers are a rarity. This sacrifice would have been priceless, or at the least, would have cost a fortune. It would have been someone's prized possession.

Valuable as the sacrifice was, it was treated with great indignity. It was to be slaughtered outside the camp. Objects or even people taken outside the camp were considered despicable and unclean. And the heifer would be slaughtered and all of it would then be burnt along with its dung. What a way to treat a sacrifice of such great price. I can imagine the owner of the prized cow feeling dismayed that his precious sacrifice would be treated with such disdain. Was it even worth offering such a sacrifice when it would be treated as something so unclean?

RELATE

God found it near impossible to express to his people the price for forgiveness of sin and cleansing of the person; that sin is not a trivial thing to be easily overlooked. He needed His people to feel the pain and loss of something so precious as a rare prized possession, that would be treated with great disdain. One day they would understand the heartbreak of the Father. That His sacrifice was not even a prized cow. It would be His own Son. And this precious Son of God would be taken out of the city and treated as an outcast, and killed like a common criminal, mocked and humiliated. The pain of losing a red heifer would be nothing compared to the pain of having His Son treated thus and killed.

We often give God sparingly, conscious of how much loss we incur when we give to God. And when we do give a little more generously, we feel so indignant when our gift is not honoured or properly used. And that is as we should feel. But whenever this happens, let us pause a while and contemplate this: that God gave all of Himself to see His Son devalued and humiliated and killed in the most demeaning way. Such a waste of His precious Son. But that was the only worthy sacrifice that could secure our pardon and cleanse us from our defilement.

REST

Father, help me realise how much you love me. Each time I calculate the value of my gift to you, help me remember once again the value of your gift to me. Amen.

Chiu Ming Li