Keep sharing good news without ads.
Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/murray-mccandless/myrrh-a-fragrant-life/
Book of Exodus, please. Exodus chapter 30 and verse 23, verse 22, ready for the connection. Exodus 30 verse number 22, moreover the Lord spake unto Moses saying, take thou also unto the principal spices a pure myrrh 500 shekels and of sweet cinnamon half so much even 250 shekels and of sweet calamus 250 shekels and so on.
Over please to the 45th Psalm for a final verse. We'll read Mr. Eric McCullough's favorite verse. Psalm 45 please and verse number 8. Psalm 45 verse 8, all thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes, cassia, out of the three palaces whereby they have made thee glad.
I'd like to speak this afternoon on what I have appreciated just from our own personal reading that is my wife and I in our personal reading from the book of Exodus. This passage in chapter 30 has really intrigued me and kind of caught my interest of late and I want to speak on the fragrant life, the fragrant life.
I'm not sure what your Christian experience or your life is made up of but let me ask you if I was to ask your fellow believers, would they describe you as a fragrant believer living a fragrant life? Now it's very significant that when it comes to the anointing of the priest, when it comes to the anointing of the king and ultimately with the king of kings that we're going to come to, it was always in the sense and I'm not using that in a dual way but almost in the precincts if you like of fragrance, fragrant life.
It's not that I've, if you mind a pardon, pardon that personal story here, it isn't that I'm so much into it, you know, I don't think any other man does but at the present it's another fellow preacher that's younger than I am whether he feels I need it or not he buys me the fragrance.
I only went online to find out how expensive it is and I'm going to tell you this, good thing he buys it, not me. I was in a queue at a coffee shop, Tim Hortons in Canada, first time this ever happened and I was just standing there, my wife was in the car and a lady taps me on the shoulder, she says, pardon me, a personal question, what fragrance are you wearing?
Believe it or not she caught me off, she did catch me off, I said, I don't know and really I didn't. I said, I don't know what I'm wearing but I know what I'm carrying. I gave her a gospel track and carried on, but interesting.
On that same note it was likely maybe about six months before that I was at our local bank one day, not a big bank, and there's a queue again and I'm maybe third up from the one going to be served and there's a lady up the front, she's talking to everybody and all of a sudden I'm just standing there, I wasn't even in suit or anything, she says, boy, she says, somebody smells good here today and then she stepped out the line and she looked back, two fellows behind me, she says, it's not you George either.
I felt sorry for George, that's kind of rugged, isn't it? I don't know where he came from, whether he just came from the barn or whatever, but there was somebody that could pick up fragrance. Now listen, when it comes to the spiritual side of it, you and I have an obligation to a defiled stinking world, if you'll pardon it today, to carry a fragrance for the one that we're with.
We will carry fragrance, we'll pick up from those that we have been around. That really is the secret to the passage that I had before me. I want to think just of one ingredient, particularly when it come to this oil that was composed and put together for the anointing of the priest, remember the psalmist speaks of that, of the oil as it would flow down from the head of Aaron to his garments and so on, and one of the chief, the first ingredient mentioned in Exodus chapter 30 is the myrrh, and I want to speak about the myrrh today.
I want to assure you and send you home from this conference with a determination that whatever, every type of a fragrance, this world and all its defilement picks up, may they pick up something from me that savors Christ, Christ.
Now it's already been referred to in ministry at this conference in one of our brethren in the worship this morning, just referred to along the same line that I'm appreciating. You know, we go from a company like this and from a conference weekend and, you know, you will go to your desk tomorrow, your school, your farm, your place of employment, and honestly, if this conference has been what it is intended to be, people are going to say, where were you?
Now to the world, they can take a look at a fellow's face, they know where he's been. They know what has consisted in his weekend. We're not the child of God. I trust that we can go from this conference to how, brethren and sisters, with a lift.
There's never been a time, never a day, as far as I'm concerned, after 50 years in assembly fellowship, over 50 years in assembly fellowship, and nearly 40 years in this work, that the people of God do not need a lift.
The myrrh. It's interesting, but whenever you read of myrrh, it's linked with something coming from a far country, or people traveling to another country, and we are that. We are people traveling to another country, to a far country.
And remember, it was those that would journey that would come at the birth of the Christ. What does it say that they were bringing with them? Myrrh. Myrrh. People are traveling. In other words, they are not people that have planted here in life, but they are people that are on the move.
But it is also significant that in Exodus chapter 30, notice, the myrrh gets its value from its weight. Not just its currency, from its weight. So when I put those two things together, it tells me something.
That a person that really is living a fragrant life, has a life that has weight to it. Do you really have weight? Do you carry weight in the assembly? I'm not speaking of just overseers, and those that seek to guide, although they have to carry weight.
But see, there's lots of things in the world that you can buy that are very, very light. They're very, very costly. Other things that are very, very heavy, and yet nobody wants to buy it. It has no value.
This is something that has both. It not only has a value to it, but it has a weight to it. And if my life is going to be a fragrant life, that when I come into the company of God's people, I am going to carry with it some weight.
Some weight. I was to ask the overseers of your assembly, of which you form a part, and say, you know, would that brother there, that sister, would they carry much weight? Well, you know, they do it sometimes.
The head goes from one side to the other. And other times, it's just so delightful, they say, oh absolutely. Absolutely. They are a going concern. They're part of this company. We would be the poor. We would be the weaker without them.
There's a weight to them. And there's a fragrance. There's something sweet about them. Get a little older, you know, you get a little cranky. Especially preachers. Oh, they're the worst crankiest can be.
Yeah, whatever got into them. Wrong side of the bed, whatever it might be. You got to guard against it. But you know, some of the sweetest saints I know are some of the oldest saints I know. Some of the happiest saints I know are the oldest saints I know.
And I would like to pattern somehow my life out of that. Now, that does not just come from human resolve. It comes from what is really a part of my life. Now, remember, it is in the Song of Songs that she says, a bundle of myrrh is my beloved unto me.
So it speaks of affection and attraction. I mean, a person is obviously, I think that's, I don't really, I'm not one of these cosmetic counters of that. Please understand. But it is something that really bespeaks the person themselves.
I'm reminded of the man that thought it'd be nice to buy his wife a little gift. And so he knew she liked fragrance. So he went to the store and he said, he's a little sheepish around the counter, you know, a little felt a little out of place, you know, how it would be, men, brethren.
And he said, here to get her for some fragrance. Oh, good for you, she says. He says, what do you got? Well, she says, what do you want? Well, he said, like something pretty nice. Sure. So he bought a little wee bottle, put it on the counter.
How much is that? She says, that's $230. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What else do you got? Well, okay, brought something else out. Now we're down in 150 and we're going down 130 and finally, you know, he says, listen, I want fragrance.
But really, I wanted to look at something that is cheap. She says, that's not a problem. And she took the myrrh that was on the counter and she flipped it around. You know, if your life is going to be a fragrant life, it's going to cost.
There's going to be a cost associated with it. It's going to have weight and it's going to have value. It's significant that the first and last mention of myrrh goes to two men in our Bibles that both have the same name.
Again, the first and last mention of myrrh in your Bibles goes to men with both the same name. Both of them linked with a Savior. Both in the scene of a Savior. Joseph is the first. Another Joseph being the last.
It was the Savior himself where he and Nicodemus would bring that myrrh and so on. Both scenes are linked with a Savior. Joseph was the Savior. What a beautiful picture of anointed life that we see in a man like Joseph.
How much more the Lord Jesus Christ himself, but we'll come more to that in a minute. It was a used to anoint the living. The myrrh was used in very extreme situations and scenes. It was used to anoint the living, but it's also used to embalm those that had died.
So it represented a change in life. You know, that's where a fragrant life begins. It's not something we just add on, but it's something that represents, bespeaks this person's life is changed. I'm not speaking to the person that this individual once was.
They are a new individual, a new man in Christ Jesus. The first mention, as I've already said to you, was when Joseph was sold. My, what a great treasure they had in a man like Joseph. Remember when those Ishmaelites came along and they bought him?
Myrrh is there as seen in the scene when he was sold. The second time that we have it mentioned, Joseph is on the throne, okay? We fast forward a few years. What is it the old man tells the boys to take down to Joseph?
Well, you know he wants Benjamin. He's very reluctant to release Benjamin and to let Benjamin go, but that's who Joseph wanted. Finally the father Israel said unto them, almost in exasperation, he says, if it must be so now, he says, then go to the man, take the man a bundle of myrrh.
In other words, it was a gift from a father to a son. Now stay with me or you're gonna miss it. A gift from a father to a son. I want to mention three times when the ultimate father saw to it that his son received myrrh.
It was a gift. Already pointed out it was at his incarnation. I think that you would likely agree with me that that likely is the first time is when the Lord Jesus Christ would arrive. There was the gold, there was the frankincense, and the myrrh.
So it is coming into the world. We have myrrh. At his crucifixion, what is it does it say that the soldier offered him a cup of wine mingled with myrrh. That tells me there was something fragrant about his death.
Something fragrant about his life. And ultimately something fragrant as we've been already hearing about in his resurrection. Because the third time the father saw to it that he would receive again the myrrh was in view of his resurrection.
Joseph and Nicodemus arrived with spices and myrrh. Fragrance. If you were to come down to the eastern part of Canada, down where I live, and go to Nova Scotia to our Easter conference. It's a good-sized conference, likely 550 people there at least.
And you went to the Bridgewater High School. Going into the school there's a picture of an individual and then there's the, I think it's a kind of a world-recognized symbol with a line through it. You know what it says?
No sense. Somebody put it in in there and said nonsense. Now what they're telling you is this. Wait a minute. There's people here that are very allergic, very allergic to fragrances. So don't wear it in here.
Listen, just let me flip that to the other side. There are believers, believe it or not, that are allergic to a fragrant life. I'm quite satisfied just to live the way they are. Quite satisfied to go where they like.
I don't want the brethren to say, well where were you Saturday night? Or where were you here? Where were you there? I want to say dear child of God, dear young believer, dear older believer, I tell you what shocks me today is not the young believers, it's believers my age.
I can't believe it. Brethren that would go to places they'd never go to 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. You'll pick up a fragrance from there. You'll bring it home to your family. It'll be sensed by other believers.
You cannot hide it. You can try your best, but there are people allergic to a fragrant life. You go in, dear child of God, dear brother, sister, leave this conference. Say not just because of who you're hearing it from.
I want to live a fragrant life. Not everybody will appreciate your fragrance. Not everybody will appreciate what you will deny to have nothing disturb that fragrance. Remember it is the wise man who would know better than Solomon himself when he said, dead flies.
Dead flies he said cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor thereof. So doth a little folly to him that is in reputation of wisdom and honor. Here's a person looked up to. Wise man and honor.
Suddenly he does some stupid thing in his life. The wise man says it's like dead flies in the apothecary. It sends forth a stinking savor thereof. It just takes it and just reverses it. Dear boys, how about it?
What are you going to go in for? When are you going to make up your mind what you're going to do? You're going to bounce from pillar to post? This life to the next life? Kind of get through like everybody else does and just not get too serious about this?
And so here's a young brother who decides to go to worship on a Sunday morning. You say, oh what? No, no. Get in there yourself because I'll tell you something. You will pick up. You will pick up as I hope you did this morning from this company.
A fragrance of this person. It'll be obvious who you have been with. I think most of us as believers anyhow especially if we're on our way to meeting and our wife sends us in for a quart of milk or whatever's in the store and they used to smoke and you'd come home and she'd, oh dear, where have you been?
Well thank God they don't allow them to do it so much in the public places anymore so we don't pick up that but we can pick up other fragrances as well. People that are allergic to fragrance. However, I want to think of two Davids relative to fragrance.
I've often thought of 1st Samuel chapter 16. That was not an easy day no matter what we think. That was not an easy day in Samuel's experience. But somehow he knew it was coming. He knew that Saul wasn't gonna make it.
But what's wrong with his two boys? He made them judges and they couldn't judge themselves. So their chance of going to the throne of Israel is very remiss. Not gonna happen, Samuel. Good man though you are.
Your boys are not gonna sit. You're gonna go to that little farm down there in Bethlehem and I don't know about nothing against Jesse. I don't think Jesse is too good a farmer. You say, how do you get that?
Few sheep. Few sheep. A good shepherd doesn't speak of few sheep because they're his. That's why the importance, the significance of one that's lost. I think Jesse might have had a farm like some of the farms I've been to.
You can smell them before you can see them. That's why that Joseph will say to his brother, listen, no telling Pharaoh, no telling the Pharaoh that you're a shepherd. The Egyptians didn't like sheep because they smelled.
And they didn't like a shepherd because he smelled. No, just a minute. You got to remember that an old-time shepherd stayed with those sheep. He never left them. And he bathed wherever he could. By whatever brook was available, that's where he bathed.
And they were not always, and I'm speaking disrespectful of David or any other shepherds in our Bible. Very significant person in our Bible is the shepherd. There's only one shepherd. We'll get to him.
We're coming to him. That always had a fragrance about him. But generally speaking, those Egyptians, as they sat in all their finery and in their linen, didn't want to see a shepherd. But those boys were done with lying.
They said, no, we're shepherds. We're shepherds. So here's Samuel. He's making his way up. He's going up that, trembling. And of course, they're trembling because he's coming and he's going up to anoint the king.
And he thought, well, this will be a kind of a quick job. And the big boys start coming first. No, Samuel. None of this. None of this. None of this. Finally, he gets done. There's none left. They said, well, the least.
He's down in the field. He's with the sheep. So Samuel, bring him forth. God, I thought those boys must have stood there and thought, what, this guy? Going to fight our battles? They're likely going out and buying a body bag and saying, here, you put a tag on this.
Mom's little boy coming home. That's what you get for fighting the giants. They didn't realize what God had in David. God knew what he had in David. It's interesting that he'll say he was rooty, but he will never say he was white.
David wasn't white. There was only one that was white. And David is the one that is chosen. My point is this, that David did not come from an inherent fragrant past, but he picked up that fragrance. Where did he pick it up?
Oh, he picked up many a night. Read his Psalms. As he laid on the back and looked at the stars of heaven, and he enjoyed fellowship with God himself. I know David failed. I know there are things about David that break our heart and broke his heart.
That's why you've got the Psalms. But David had a fragrant life. David writes about fragrance. I want to think of David's greater son for a minute. The one that we read about in the 45th Psalm. His garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia.
How do the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad? Brethren and sisters, never forget, the heavenly David that we are linked with was forever a fragrant person. Forever will be. And when I want to spend my time with him, that fragrance will transfer.
I'm reminded of the writing. I have not read her book. I've read pieces of it. That's what I do with most books. I don't even know if I got through school that way, but usually it's the front and the back I read.
But I read some of Lisa Beamer's book. Lisa Beamer is the widow of Todd Beamer, that man that was on the flight 93. They tried to overpower the terrorist and take control of that jet as it was making its way back to the White House.
Really, that's where it was going. And you remember that it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. I've driven by that field on different occasions. In her book, she says, I have two closets. Two. She says the closet on the lower level has things in it I wish I didn't know.
She says it's got things in it I wish I never had. They're letters, but they're reminding me of an event, of a day that was so sad. It was so tragic. There's memorabilia in there. Men that had given her things that they received in declaration from Vietnam and so on.
She says that's in the lower closet. She said, I get nothing for that lower closet. But she says, you know, I've got another closet. It's on a higher level. And when I open the door of that closet, I immediately am captured by the fragrance of my Todd Beamer.
I've never touched it. I've never disturbed it. She said, that is the fragrance that I love. Now, brothers and sisters, listen. We likely work between two closets, too. The Lord Jesus spoke about closets in a very unique way.
Sometimes I think we miss the teaching, or at least I've missed the teaching, of what he meant about the closet. There's only two things that he ever told you to enter into. He tells us to enter in at the straight gate.
That's where we got our start. Secondly, he says, enter into that closet. And he says, and when you have entered it, he says, shut the door. In other words, hang on to that fragrance. And your father, of course, he goes on to say, which seeth thee in secret shall reward thee openly.
But also he carries with it a bit of a warning. And he says this, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, he says. For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hidden that shall not be made known.
That which is spoken in the ear in the closet shall be proclaimed upon the housetops. Let's face it, brothers and sisters. We have said things in a closet we should never have said. Untold damage has been done amongst the people of God because of things that have been said in the closet.
Do you know what I'm talking about by that? Well, it kind of goes like this. Listen, I'm going to tell you this, but don't tell anybody else. And it's viral in 20 minutes. And maybe it's taking somebody else down.
Just speaking despairingly of them when you have no grounds to. That's not a closet you want. That's not a closet you need. That's not a closet you're going to enjoy. That's not a closet that's going to give you the right kind of a fragrance.
You know what that'll do? That'll put a sourness. That'll put an unhappiness into your Christian experience simply because you're in the wrong closet. You're in a closet on the lower level. That closet has got things in it that you should never own.
Things in it that you should never keep. Things that you should let go. Drudges, feelings, hurts against different individuals. There it is in the closet. You're storing it. Maybe waiting for a day when you can retaliate.
Maybe a day when you can get back, whatever it is. But there it is. That will do you no good, dear brother, dear sister. Let me take you to the higher closet. That closet that he links with prayer is linked with communion.
And rightly so, you enjoy communion when you're praying, but you enjoy communion when you're equally reading his Word. You cannot be enjoying this Word and fighting with your brethren. Scott McLeod made a statement here not too long ago, and I thought it was very good.
Look, he says, if I'm having a fight with Wilma, I can't even enjoy reading my Bible. That's true. Pretty hard to read your Bible and go out and argue with your wife. Pretty hard to read your Bible and go out and argue with your brethren.
Now, there may be some things that you've got to say and some things that you've got to make straight. Fine. That's different. But I'm talking about what is the tenor of our lives. You know what I'm talking about.
You wouldn't have something like this to enjoy in a conference, let alone a local assembly, whether it is La Crosse or Ontario or Blue River or Garneville or wherever it is. You would not have something to enjoy in that assembly if there wasn't believers there that bring a fragrance to it.
Now, that fragrance is just not picked up like a hymn book at the door. It's picked up where we have spent time, okay? And there's a truth that it comes with a birth, the desire for it comes with a birth.
It also comes when there is a crucifixion in our life, when the old man is put in the place that he is reckoned by God to be in, a place of death. More than that, it is also linked with the truth of a resurrection, a day.
I mean, I can go through the world and tell them that I believe in the resurrection of Christ and they can argue, dispute it, and maybe even go into the days as we've been hearing. But what evidence do I have of a resurrected Christ?
What's the first evidence I have? My own life. My own life. My life has got to prove conclusively that this individual has been brought out from amongst dead ones. What does he say? What do they say? Those sisters concerning Lazarus, their own brother, must have been hard to say.
By this time he stinketh. There wasn't a house that he enjoyed better than the house of those sisters in Lazarus. And what did away with that stinking? What did away with that unwanted odor of resurrection and living a resurrected life?
I'd win for living a resurrected life. I'm going to know what something, what it is to have myrrh in my life. I will be marked like these people are marked in a journey. That there's something that marks me, that it's like the errand of old, that flowed down.
Remember that first of all it would touch his beard, speaks of maturity, would go down right to his garment, speaking of his character, and everybody would know there's where our priest has been. Now we've been reminded this conference of the importance of a priest in our lives, and the functioning of a priest, and the ability of a priest, what a priest does.
Now I want to say something. Let me speak to younger believers here, maybe to everybody. Back our way a couple years ago, a young brother that you'd hear him, and boy he was, he was excellent, you just waited to hear him.
Then we didn't hear him. A younger sister was speaking to another one, she says, you know he can't, he can't. I thought, why can't he? It's because he's where he's been going during the week. I'm not going to details of where he was going during the week, that's none of my business, but he made it his business to confess it to God, that there's no way that I can be there on Saturday night, or any other night, and rise to my feet, and function as a priest on Lord's Day morning.
Brothers and sisters, God in his wisdom has given us divine instruction, divine enablement. There's no excuse, no excuse for me not to have a fragrant life, a life that'll carry some weight to it. I'm sure that's what you want, that's what will anchor testimony in Wisconsin, or any other state.
People living fragrant lives in the defiled scene, a defiled world. Where do you turn today? You can go to, you people don't work with computers like I do, you can go to a biblical search, and the results of that search will too often turn up along the side, pictures that will defile you in a second, on no less than a church writer's page.
What a defiling scene that we live in. I don't have to labor that. You don't have to become obsessed with that. You know what you can become obsessed with? That I want to live a life that carries the fragrance of our heavenly David that was never without it.
More than that, it was given by his God to him on three occasions. Just as Joseph would receive that fragrance, he doesn't get Benjamin except he gets the fragrance, see? And I don't get the fragrance unless I get the truth of a loved son, and it becomes evident that I've spent time in his presence.