Numbers 19

"Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come. You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him;" vv.2-3

Read chapter 19
A red heifer, a red female cow.  This was a sacrifice offered by the whole assembly in which everyone had a part as it was at the expense of the congregation not just one person.  It was a sacrifice for the purification of water and sin.  It was a different kind of sacrifice; it didn't take place at the alter (we would have read about it in Leviticus) but outside the camp.  The red heifer was killed before uncleanness was committed.  Every part of the heifer was burned to ashes, nothing left of it for anything else.  The ashes were then kept in a certain place for the people to use when they became unclean by whatever means to purify themselves.  There was no other method for a man to purify himself.  
So is this description reminding you of something or someone?  Christ that is and His sacrifice on the cross.  He was taken outside the city to be crucified, He was without blemish of sin yet took all our sin as we see red signify sin in scripture, He forgave our sins before we even committed them.  The red heifer was a type of Christ, but the substitution does not fully compare with the reality.  The ashes couldn't purify ones conscious as Christ's forgiveness does.  "It is a bad child who can be happy while his father is displeased; a true child can do nothing until he is forgiven" (Spurgeon).