I'm generally not a fan of taking a teaching from a couple of verses, preferring line upon line and precept upon precept to establish a lesson. However, sometimes a picture is given in a very few verses and, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. The same is true about the picture that I would like to put forth in today's post. The post is the figure of the altar, which was given to Moses when he was at Sinai, and the picture is worth many words. Here is the passage that I am referring to:
"An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record My name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. And if thou wilt make Me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon int, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto Mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon."
~Exodus 20:24-26
This is how I read this passage.
There are two different configurations of altars that God instructs here. One - the first choice that God puts forth - is the earthen altar, the second is the stone altar. The altar is where the People would approach to give their offerings and sacrifices when worshipping God; therefore, I see the altar as representing our mindset, or our approach, to worship. The offering is what we give to God; it is our actions.
The first figure is that of the earth. The Hebrew word for earth here is "adamah", which is very close to "Adam", and is in fact the word for ground in Genesis 2:7, where it says, "the Lord God formed man [Hebrew: "Adam"] of the dust of the ground [Hebrew: "adamah"]." This is worshipping God from the very substance that He made you from. Earth is soft, it's pliable, it's merciful; there is a lot of room for different constructions of an altar of earth (our approach to worship) that will still form an altar and will still be acceptable to God. This is illustrated in the fact that God says "make an altar" but doesn't give detailed instructions on what the altar will look like, only that it must be able to hold an offering of worship - these are very loose parameters, as long as the offering is to Him and to Him alone. To me, this is synonymous with when Jesus wrapped up all of the commandments and the law into two statements when He was teaching at the Temple (which is where the altar was when He walked the earth) shortly before His crucifixion. One of the crowd, a lawyer - whose primary interest was in the tenants of the law - had asked Jesus what the greatest commandment (law) ever given was, and Jesus replied, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:37-40)." Now love comes in a lot of shapes and sizes, but the one thing that you can't take away from love is that it has to come from your being - it has to come from what you have been made of.
The second altar configuration is that of stone. It is much harder than the earthen altar, much more rigid. The altar of stone is worshipping God by the tenants of the law. In fact, the law was written on two stone tablets when it was given to Moses. The law is hard, rigid, not pliable; it must be carefully pieced together. There are two important things that I would like to point out about this configuration. First, God says "IF" you choose to make an altar of stone... which means that it is an optional configuration. I'm not saying that the law itself is optional, because the law was the way that God told His people what He hated, and that is still very important to know. However, there are a lot of ways to show love for God and one another that are outside of the rigid structure of the law. (An example could be giving someone a hug: nowhere in the law does it say that you have to hug someone, but it is an acceptable way to show people that you love them.) So God says if you want to make it harder than it needs to be, that is acceptable. But He then puts a caveat on worshipping by the law. If you are to build the altar of stone, you use the stones that He gave you, and you don't change them one bit. That means that you don't shave off any pieces of the stones to make them fit together better, nor do you engrave your words into them to add unto them. This represents two of the passages from my prior post warning against taking away from or adding unto God's Word. God says that doing that is polluting His Word, and it causes an unacceptable offering to Him.
So there is more leeway in giving an offering on the earthen altar than on the stone altar, and the choice of the altar configuration is up to you.
One final item to note is the last part where God instructs the People not to go up to the altar by steps. This, to me, represents placing ourselves above anyone else - thinking that we are better than anyone else because of how we worship God. God hates this attitude (see Isaiah 65:2-6). Jesus Himself instructed to His disciples, who were the most well honoured students of the Word because they were directly taught by Him, "Be ye not called 'Teacher': for One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren (Matthew 23:8)." When we put ourselves on pedestals, it only means that we have farther to fall to hit the ground because "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)." And that sin is the nakedness that the last part of passage above refers to; it is the shame that Adam felt when he knew that he had sinned and was required to stand before God to face it. Everyone sins. But when we place ourselves above others and continue to sin, we become hypocrites. We become useless in giving God a good name (as best we can). We tarnish the name of God through our own stupidity. But if we are humble, and admit that we too are not perfect, but that we are trying to follow our beliefs as best we can, then we are much more relatable to every other person on the face of the earth... because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It is important to be humble. In fact, God told one of His prophets, "what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God (Micah 6:8)?" That's what is required when we worship. That is encompassed above in Exodus 20:24-26. And that is an acceptable approach to worshipping God. God bless.
