NO MORE ALTARS!

Friday 6 November

Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. Genesis 12:7 (NKJV)

You take no delight in sacrifices or offerings. Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand— you don’t require burnt offerings or sin offerings. Psalm 40:6 (NLT)

Have you ever heard of an altar call before? It’s an activity when people go up the front in church usually after the preaching for some form of prayer or to receive salvation or healing. What if I told you that altars are a place for animals to be sacrificed?

The Hebrew word for altar is ‘mizbeah’ and which the verbal root of the word means ‘to slaughter’. So an altar by definition is ‘a place of slaughter or sacrifice’. Sounds less inviting now doesn’t it.

The first recorded event of an altar being built in the Bible is by Abraham. Something noteworthy in this verse is that God never asked Abram to offer any sacrifice. Two questions arise from this. Why didn’t God ask for it? AND Why did Abram do it?

Firstly, Psalm 40:6 holds the key. David who was a prophet (Acts 2:30) had a revelation that what God wanted something beyond the sacrifice of bulls and goats.

He carries this thought on in Psalm 69:30-31 ‘Then I will praise God’s name with singing, and I will honour him with thanksgiving. For this will please the LORD more than sacrificing cattle, more than presenting a bull with its horns and hooves.’

This was all the offering God ever wanted from man and we see this confirmed in Hebrews 13:15. ‘Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.’

The sacrifice that God desired was never an animal sacrifice although in the law animals were sacrificed under the direction of Moses not God. It was called the law of Moses for a reason and was an unwelcome interruption into God’s covenant of grace through faith. Let’s leave that particular thought for another time.

Secondly, God had already planned for Jesus to be the sin offering goat, to pay the price for man before anyone sinned and ‘before foundation of the world’ as Revelation 13:8 shows us. He was the one who spared Isaac Abraham’s son of promise but ‘spared not His own son but delivered Him up for us all’ (Romans 8:32a)

The truth is, Isaac was never meant to be the sacrifice. Because of the sin consciousness of Abraham, God saw ahead and provided both a ram for the altar on Mt. Moriah and a lamb of His own in the same location renamed Golgotha. Jesus was the ‘animal sacrifice’ lifted up on the altar of the cross for your sin and mine. The perfect and unblemished eternal sacrifice.

Just like the church is not the building it’s the people that gather, the platform or podium is not the altar as there are no more animal sacrifices needed. Jesus, the Son of Man has done it all!

‘But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.’ Hebrews 10:13’

APPLICATION

Thank Jesus our Great High Priest for His eternal sacrifice and that He shed His blood in our hearts to make us a holy habitation for Him to live in and abide with us forever.