02.22. THE BRAZEN ALTAR
THE BRAZEN ALTAR
“AND thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height thereof shall be three cubits. And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof: his horns shall be of the same: and thou shalt overlay it with brass. And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels, and his basons, and his flesh hooks, and his fire pans: all the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass. And thou shalt make for it a grate of network of brass; and upon the net shalt thou make four brazen rings in the four corners thereof. And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath, that the net may be even to the midst of the altar. And thou shalt make staves for the altar, staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with brass. And the staves shall be put into the rings, and the staves shall be upon the two sides of the altar, to bear it.
Hollow with boards shalt thou make it: as it was shewed thee in the mount, so shall they make it.” (Exodus 27:1-8.) The Altar was the place of sacrifice for the sins of the people. It is called the altar of burnt offering. (Exodus 30:28.) It was placed in the Court between the Gate of the Court and the Tabernacle.
“And he put the altar of burnt offering by the door of the Tabernacle of the tent of the congregation, and offered upon it the burnt offering and the meat offering; as the LORD commanded Moses.” (Exodus 40:29.) The Burnt offering was a sweet savour offering unto the Lord. (Leviticus 1:9.) Our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and His death thereon is declared to be a “sweet savour offering”; as it is written:
“Christ hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour.” (Ephesians 5:2.)
Since our Lord is the announced antitype of the burnt offering and that was offered OD the Brazen Altar, then the Brazen Altar is the symbol of the cross on which He died and demonstrates it to be, not merely the instrument of a Roman judicial death, but the divinely ordained and definite, chosen Altar of Sacrifice. The Brazen Altar was made by the hands of men, but according to the pattern and purpose of God shown beforehand to Moses in the Mount. By the hands of men our Lord was led outside the gate of Jerusalem and nailed to the Roman cross; but He died there according to the plan and purpose of God, determined and ordained in the counsels of Godhead; as it is written:
“Him being delivered by the determinate counsel (covenant purpose) and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” (Acts 2:23) The prophet said He should be led as a lamb to the slaughter.
They came to arrest Him. The moment He looked upon them and announced Himself they fell backward. The sense of His power though withheld smote them with fear, paralyzed them. Had He used His power and counted on their fear, they would have fled and multiplied the story of His mightiness.
He did not use His power.
He did not appeal to their fear.
He let them take His hands and tie them. They put a rope around His neck.
They took Him away like a veritable sheep to slaughter led.
Before His accusers He was silent.
He submitted to the testimony of false witnesses.
He gave Himself up as a victim to the hands of men. He did so that He might wondrously act at the last. He would act as never He had acted before.
It would be an act greater than when with a single word He had heaved creation into place.
He submitted to men that He might with omnipotent power and coordinately surrendered human will offer Himself a Burnt Offering and sacrifice unto God and a Sin Offering for men.
Let Scripture proclaim it:
“Once in the end of the world (the age) hath he appeared to put away sin by— The sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.” (Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 9:28.) On the cross He is the obedience of the Second Man set over against the disobedience of the First Man. The Brazen Altar stood practically at the entrance of the Court. No Israelite could get absolution (ceremonial absolution) for his sins, nor a blessing from the priest till he came to this Altar with a victim.
He must lay his hand upon its head and claim its sacrificial death in his behalf.
Apart from that Brazen Altar he could not approach God at all.
Unless he claimed the victim laid on the altar as his substitute he could not be accepted, he could not be accepted and pronounced ceremonially clean. In no possible way can men approach God and be accepted of Him save by way of the cross of Christ.
Only when He is offered by faith as a sacrifice for sin and claimed as a substitute can the best and the worst of men be accepted and saved by Him.
“As many as received him, (our Lord Jesus Christ) to them gave He power (liberty) to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13.) In John 1:29, we are told the saving name which is offered to faith at this hour:
“The next day John (John the Baptist) seeth Jesus Coming unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away (beareth away) the sin of the world.”
It is in this chapter the Apostle John pictures Him as the Incarnate God.
John the Baptist declares Him to be the foreordained victim provided of God.
You can be begotten of God through faith in Him as the Lamb of sacrifice.
There is no other way. To talk about Him as a good man and speak in admiration of His character and ignore Him as the Lamb of God ordained to sacrifice as revealed in the light of Holy Scripture is to be guilty either of intellectual treason or moral perversity.
He was the Lamb of God.
He has not ceased to be the Lamb of God.
Holy Scripture gives us the picture of Him as He is seen in Heaven today.
“And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, (living creatures) and in the midst of the elders, (the Church) stood a Lamb as it had been slain.” (Revelation 5:6.) A lamb that had been slain but is now seen alive is a risen lamb. The preceding verse testifies in one of those paradoxical ways and in divinely mixing its metaphors, that this lamb was also a lion the lion of the tribe of Judah and the Root of David.
These names are the exclusive titles of our Lord Jesus Christ, This Lamb then is a picture of Himself in resurrection. The Divine Sacrifice risen and accepted of God. The divinely sent King rejected of the Jews, His covenant people, seated by God at His right hand to wait the hour when He should send Him back in power. The Brazen Altar stood before the door of the Tabernacle. The Cross of Christ stands before the door of Heaven.
Only with the blood of the Brazen Altar could entrance be had into the Tabernacle.
Only by way of the cross as an altar of sacrifice can anyone enter into the upper and Holy Tabernacle, into Heaven itself.
Consider what a travesty it would have been for an Israelite to have brought to the Brazen Altar a bullock or a lamb, any sacrificial victim, extolled it as a firstling of the herd or flock, spoken in glowing terms of its perfections, affirming there was neither spot nor blemish in it, and then sought to pass within the Court and draw nigh to the Tabernacle without offering the victim as his sacrifice for sin upon that altar. The priest would have turned upon that Israelite and driven him back with indignation and the anathema of God; he would have told him the Brazen Altar was the place, not for a living, but a slain victim and that his endeavor to pass it with the living, was a mockery of the Altar. As much as the attempt to pass the Brazen Altar without owning a sacrificial victim thereon would have been a mockery of that Altar, so any attempt to set aside the Cross as the Altar of a penal sacrifice, and every effort to approach God with merely good speech for the beautiful life of Christ, would be a bitter mockery of His cross and might well bring down the indignation and the anathema of God. The truth is, the Brazen Altar was a barrier to any man who sought to draw nigh to the Tabernacle as the dwelling place of God who did not own and confess an atoning sacrifice for himself on the altar.
He could not pass by. The blood and the consuming flame of the Altar spoke of the judgment of God against him, banished him, bade him begone as a ceremonially unclean sinner and shut him out of the congregation of God. The Cross of Christ is a barrier to all who will not see it and own it as the place of a penal sacrifice. The blood of that cross, the consuming fire of God’s wrath burning there, the agonizing cry of the forsaken one, proclaim the judgment of God against all who do not accept it as an atoning, personal sacrifice. The Brazen Altar had two staves. By these staves it was carried from place to place and set up. The staves represent the Gospel by which the cross of Christ is carried from place to place. As there were two staves to the Altar, there are two parts to the Gospel. The one part of the Gospel is the proclamation of the death of Christ. The wonderful statement that He died for sinful men. That He died as a sin bearer for all who own and confess Him as such. The other part of the Gospel is the proclamation that He rose from the dead. The glorious news, not only that He has triumphed over death and the grave, but that this triumph makes good the purpose of His death as an atoning sacrifice for sin.
Each of the staves was necessary to the Brazen Altar.
One stave would not have carried it. To have attempted to carry it by one stave would have overturned and wrecked it. The two staves balanced it. By the two staves it could be carried and set up in one place precisely as it had been set up in another. To announce the death of Christ only is not sufficient.
Say all you can say, say all the Scriptures say, about His death; but if He did not rise from the dead, His death was of no more importance than the death of any other man who failed and felt himself forsaken of God. To set aside the death of Christ and speak only of His resurrection, makes His resurrection life of no avail; for if He did not die for our sins, then we are still under the judgment of God and His resurrection is the proof of an infinite and eternal separation between us.
Both sides of the Gospel must be preached. The good news that Christ offered Himself a sacrifice for sins. The good news that He rose from the dead and has demonstrated that His sacrifice has been made of avail for all who shall claim it. A death and resurrection Gospel that is the Gospel. The Gospel is officially set forth by the Apostle:
“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, By which also ye are saved, For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.”
Mark that well!
“According to the scriptures.” That has a two-fold meaning.
According to the doctrine of the Scriptures. The doctrine of the Old Testament Scriptures. The doctrine of the Old Testament Scripture is, that approach to a Holy God can be had only on the ground of sacrificial blood, the blood of a vicarious victim, the ground set forth and illustrated in the Brazen Altar.
“And that he was buried.”
“According to the Scriptures” is here grammatically understood. The Old Testament Scripture spoke of His burial as well as His death.
“And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.” The actual rendering should be:
“His grave was appointed with the wicked, but with the rich man he found his tomb.” (Isaiah 53:9.) The body of the Lord considered as that of a convict would have been dragged away with ropes and cast into a trench with the thieves; but Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, foreseen of God before our Lord was born, came with a rescript from Pilate giving him the possession of the body, had it taken down and caused it to be laid in his own new made tomb. This indeed was fulfillment of Scripture and with startling exactness.
“And that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4.) This is the Gospel of the two staves, the Gospel of death and resurrection.
You see these two staves in Paul’s declaration to the Church at Corinth.
He says:
“I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2.) He means the Christ who was crucified but is now alive.
Let it be remembered the Gospel is a two stave Gospel the Gospel of death and resurrection. The Brazen Altar must have both the Staves. The cross of Christ must be proclaimed as the sacrificial death of Christ. The cross of Christ must be exalted in the announcement of His resurrection from the dead.