The Red Heifer

Spurgeon opens by insisting that even fully justified believers are in daily danger of spiritual defilement from five sources — actual sins committed, the contaminating company of ungodly people, failure to keep the heart watchfully covered, the extreme sensitivity of holiness to even the smallest and most accidental contact with sin, and the hidden "graves" of sins buried beneath respectable customs and even outwardly beautiful worship services — and argues that this pervasive, constant defilement makes a daily provision for cleansing as necessary to the Christian life as daily bread. He then traces how Christ, typified by the red heifer, meets this daily need with perfect precision: the heifer's redness speaks of blood shed in atonement, its complete spotlessness pictures Christ's sinless nature freely submitted without compulsion to the yoke of suffering, its burning outside the camp points to Christ crucified in the place of the unclean, its gathered ashes stored in running water represent the vast inexhaustible reserve of Christ's merit constantly applied to the individual conscience by the Holy Spirit through the hyssop of faith — and the astonishing result is that believers stand every single day as fully accepted before God as they will be in the day of final glory, sin covered and righteousness imputed fresh every morning. He closes by pressing the practical double application: to the backslidden believer who feels too far gone and too often-fallen to return — the ashes are stored without limit, cleansing is available for every hour of every day, and the God who commands us to forgive seventy times seven will not refuse his own child — and to the unconverted soul, who first needs not the daily washing but the initial crimson bath of the blood itself, freely available to any who will simply trust Christ now.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 29, 1879.