Exodus 30:23

The oil of holy ointment is given first. God gave the directions for making it. It held myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, and cassia, each in its own amount, mixed with a hin of olive oil (vv. 23, 24). The Psalmist, speaking of the Messiah, says, "your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia." In the verse before, he says, "God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions." This helps us see what the holy anointing oil pictures. So the spices speak of the graces of Christ. His very garments smell of these sweet perfumes. But they were mixed with oil, and oil is a well-known figure of the Holy Spirit. Put the two together, and we learn this: the graces of Christ — the moral fragrance of His excellencies — came out in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Myrrh, the first ingredient, comes from a cut made in the tree. It seeps out in drops, like drops of blood or tears. It smells sweet, but tastes bitter. So it stands for the sufferings of Christ. He endured the bitterness of the cross, and we reap the sweetness of its results.

The cinnamon, calamus and cassia all come from the bark of a tree or from a plant. Each one was ground into a very fine powder. This painful process produces rich fragrances. They all speak of the sufferings of our Lord, and, to a lesser degree, of our own deep experiences with Him along life's path.

Personal, absolute righteousness, growing in the mire of the earth, He shed nothing but fragrance around — a fragrance which, blending with all His moral characteristics, made the Beloved One a "precious ointment" — His Father's complete delight.

God is a God of knowledge, and He weighs all actions (1 Samuel 2:3). He weighed the proud king of Babylon and found him wanting (Daniel 5:27). And "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The Old Testament word for "glory" is "weight," from a word meaning "to be heavy." So by God's standard, all fall short of the full weight that alone can glorify Him. There is therefore only One who, when tested, was found at full and true weight. He could say, "I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do" (John 17:4). And not only was the full weight of that which glorified God found in Him, but all was in true and proper proportion.

And so all was blended in Him in perfect harmony. The result was unique. Each trait was so filled with the others that the fragrance of each was found in all. Nor was it that He acted according to one character at one time and another at another. His love burned just as hot when He rebuked sin as His uprightness held firm when He comforted the broken-hearted. He did not put on or lay off these characters.

This precious ointment, the holy anointing oil, is described for us in Exodus 30... And we learn that it was to be for God's sanctuary alone. It had not to be imitated, nor had any of the Israelites to have it in their houses. God reserved it for Himself and His own pleasure. He surrounded Himself with its fragrance in His own dwelling. The reason was this: as a picture, it told out how precious Christ was to God while He lived His life of holy devotion to Him on earth.

Handle these holy themes apart from the Spirit, and it is only a mental exercise. It would be barren or worse, as dry as handling the spices without the oil. To become an ointment, the Spirit must form them into a holy compound, "after the art of the apothecary" — the perfume maker. And this means more than the Spirit guiding us into the truth. He also ministers that truth to the soul in communion.