THE MEETING PLACE FOR GOD AND MAN.
THE altar in Israel was the meeting place for God and man; and, indeed, we may say, as a broad and general principle, that at the altar God meets sinful man and sinful man may meet God. But more-no other meeting place on earth exists for man; and if we do not meet God as to our sins at the place designed by His appointment for our eternal blessing, we must meet Him at His solemn judgment throne to our eternal doom.
These are Jehovah's words in reference to the altar of His sanctuary in Israel: "There I will meet with the children of Israel"; and of the altar which the pious Israelite might erect, Jehovah said "In all places where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee." As we consider the goodness of God in providing a meeting place for man and Himself, and as the fact fills the mind, that there, was only one such place allowed by Him, both the grace and the solemnity of, the position of the altar are present to us in all their importance.
It was not left for the teachers of Israel to determine the locality of the altar—God Himself arranged its position—for we now have Jehovah's sanctuary in view. The position designed for it by Jehovah was such that everyone in the camp—or in later years in the court of the temple—could perceive it at once; and, as it was situated in immediate connection with the gateway, or entrance to the sanctuary, everyone coming: to Jehovah could approach it at once. There was no manner of hindrance to debar the Israelite in approaching the altar. Indeed, how could such a thing be? The meeting place was by Jehovah's appointment open to all—to rich and poor—who would receive the blessing of God.
It is remarkable that, as the Church lost her early or apostolic simplicity, and changed the table of communion into an altar for sacrifice, she located it in exact opposition to the divine order in Israel. Instead of placing it in front of the worshipper who would approach God, she set it as far from him as the extent of the building would allow. It might be more correct to say, she did this by degrees—for, at the first, the altar had a row of seats, or a long bench behind it, whereon sat the elders and the bishop in his chair; but, as time proceeded, this bench was removed. And, that there should be no doubt as to her intention, she also erected a railing or a fence between the altar and the people—thus doing all that in her lay to write upon men's minds that the meeting place between God and sinful man was difficult of approach.
Again, in process of time, the priest officiating, instead of facing the people, stood with his back to them in his ministrations. The Church, in her departure from apostolic truth, taught that no approach could be obtained unless the services of the priest were brought into requisition. The contrast between the position of the altar as developed by the Church and that as commanded by Jehovah in Israel is so absolute, that everyone who trembles at Jehovah's word should earnestly consider it.
The teaching of Jehovah by sign and symbol was, the accessibility for man to reach the place where God would meet him. The altar stood in the open air, in broad daylight, and had no mystery about it. It proclaimed its lessons to all. The teaching of the Church by sign and symbol developed difficulty upon difficulty for the man who would reach God. Even the place to which the ordinary man was denied access, as the Church evolved her false ideas, became shrouded with drapery and lighted artificially!
The Reformation destroyed a great deal of this false symbolism. It laid a heavy and righteous hand upon a vast amount of priestly sacrilege, and ecclesiastical acts of despite to the cross of Christ, and ways of despising the grace of God. But, alas! a rage of fashion subverting the teaching of God and perverting His symbols, has again set in in the land. Yet, be human fashion what it may, God never changes, and, blessed be His Name! He never changes in His grace which the position of the altar proclaims to every sinner who would approach Him. Nay, since the cross of His Son, which the altar prefigured, God has adorned the place where He meets man in his sins with glories and beauties such as Israel never knew and the heart of man never conceived.
Not only was the altar hard by the gate of the sanctuary, and a witness to all of accessibility, it was set to the four quarters of the earth, looking outward, as it were, to all the world. It was the moral center where every creature might meet God. In this characteristic it was an on looking to the fulfillment of Christ's own words: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. This He said signifying what death He should die." "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.''
We will now observe briefly the witness of the sacrificial blood upon the altar. The blood was either cast upon the altar, or some of it was placed upon the altar's horns. This latter action related to the sacrifices for sin. Now, whatever was the manner of the disposal of the blood, the object lesson was enacted thousands of times a year in the sight of Israel, and was familiar to all. The manner of the disposal of the blood was ordained by Jehovah Himself in His instructions to Moses, and for centuries the priests of Israel obeyed those instructions. As for the objection that those instructions were the invention of the priests of Ezra's time, it is very well known that heathen priests did not deal with the blood of their sacrifices after the manner of Israel. The teaching contained in the disposal of the blood is divine: man's mind did not conceive it; no, it shadowed forth the glory of God in reference to the cross of His Son.
Our space confines our thoughts to the placing of the blood of the sin offering upon the four horns of the altar. Horns are emblematic of power. With them the bull and the ram offered in sacrifice used their strength. The horns upon the altar were formed of brass, and they made a terminal at each corner rising upwards, and thus completed its symbolism. The crowning power of the altar arose towards heaven, and bent towards the four ends of the earth. Upon these horns the sacrificial blood was placed. The blood proclaimed pardon. Thus was the power of the altar before heaven and towards man witnessed in the pardon of sins. Before eternal justice it proclaimed the death of the victim on behalf of the guilty; unto the guilty it proclaimed forgiveness through satisfied righteousness.
The teaching of the New Testament in reference to the sin offering expresses itself in plain words such as these: "He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him"; " Christ... His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree " —words which teach the power of the sacrifice of Christ in its effects upon His people. Now, how did the Church act in reference to this teaching? She erected an altar having no symbol of power attached to it. The Church lowered in the eyes of her children, the divine conception of the altar and deformed it. Neither had she shedding of blood in her sacrifice upon her altars, and without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. God declared through Christ "the forgiveness of sins" and justification "from all things" to all who believed, and remission of sins and iniquities by virtue of Christ's one offering for sin. God by His Holy Spirit, by apostolic teaching, magnified the power of Christ's cross; but the Church, by her altars, did her best to eclipse from man's eye the glory of Christ's sacrifice and the majesty of His work, and to substitute in their place a faint and faulty idea. And such as emulate the altar of the Church, and make light of the altar of God, have to confess to their weakness by the fact that their altar has not even the symbol of power connected with it. From such an altar the testimony in heaven of Christ's fulfilled sacrifice is lacking, and by it the conscience of the worshipper is unpurged from dead works. The fashion of the day perverts the communion table into an altar for sacrifice, and does so with all the pomp and pride of incense, garments, and candles; but the fashion is but the garb of a mean and feeble religion, having no true resemblance to the majesty and the glory, the wealth and the grace of the Gospel of God.