Passing from the holy place into the court, the first thing that would meet the view would be the laver. As this is a vessel used in approaching God, it is not described until after the priesthood is established. The altar of burnt offerings is next brought before us in the Word (Ex. 27:1-8). This altar, although made of the same kind of wood as the ark and other furniture inside the golden walls, yet was unlike these pieces, for it was overlaid with brass, while they were overlaid with gold. Both of these metals are symbols of divine righteousness; the one is righteousness suited to God’s nature, which is love; the other, as already noticed, is righteousness which tests man in responsibility, and must therefore be told out in judgment, for sin is ever found with man, and “the wages of sin is death.” But judgment is God’s “strange work” (Isa. 28:21). We get then God’s righteousness told out in love, inside, where gold met the eye on every hand. Outside, where the sinner approached in his sins, righteousness is manifested in judgment, and therefore the altar is brazen. The various altars mentioned in Scripture were erected for the purpose of offering offerings, all of which pointed to the one perfect offering. At the cross of Christ we get the substance of which other offerings were but the shadow. The brazen altar is a symbol of that cross, and this must be the meeting place for the sinner and God. When one approached the brazen altar leading an animal that was to be slain at that altar, he owned in this act that he was a sinner, and that judgment was his due. When the victim is slain and his body burned, God’s righteousness in the punishment of sin is told out. Jesus, the Lamb of God, sustained the stroke of judgment for all who came unto God by Him. When atonement was made, God could not only righteously receive back and place at His right hand the One who had glorified Him as to the whole question of sin, but also in value of the “precious blood” that had been shed, He could justify the guilty sinner who would come to Jesus.
When man’s hatred and Satan’s venom were combined to do their deadly work, and nature’s throes added to the awful gloom, the grace of that Holy One shone out in strongest relief — “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” O wonder of wonders! “Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psa. 85:10). God’s righteousness in the punishment of sin has been told out; His deep, unfathomable love in receiving the sinner is made known, for with the yielding of that precious life, the veil is rent and peace is made. Yes, “Mercy and truth are met” (Psa. 85:10). Mercy is toward the sinner; truth is meted out in the judgment of sin. What grace! What love! Reader, can you say, All this for me?
“Stroke upon stroke, as God’s wrath awoke,
Fell upon Thee for me.”
Of the great ones who have trodden this earth, who could say, “Come unto Me”? Not one! Who could say, “I am the way”? Not one! Who among men was sinless? Not one! Who could save? Not one. The Christ of God is the only one “mighty to save,” the only “way” to the Father, the only sinless One. “What think ye of Christ?”
At the brazen altar, both sin and burnt offerings were offered, but an important difference was made in the manner of offerings. In both cases the hands of the offerer were laid upon the victim; in both cases the victim was slain at the altar, but, while the burnt offering was wholly burnt upon the altar of burnt offering, the body of the sin offering, after the fat was removed, was carried outside the camp and burnt in a clean place. The burnt offering was a sweet savor offering showing the acceptableness of Christ to God; and never was that blessed One more acceptable than when, amidst the awful agonies of the cross, He was glorifying God about the question of sin. The sin offering presents another phase of the death of Christ. It is not classed among the sweet savor offerings. Sin is abhorrent to God; its desert is death. With the laying on of hands, the sins of the people are confessed and transferred to the victim. Thus “made sin,” it is an unclean thing, and its body cannot be laid upon the altar. It must be carried outside the camp to be burned. “For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13:11-12).
The hill of Calvary was outside the gates of Jerusalem, which was called “the holy city,” and there the cross was set up, for Jesus, as a sin offering, might not suffer within the gate. The One “who knew no sin” was there “made sin for us” that we “might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Here the depths of human need were met, and the heart of God was told out. Christ, made sin for us, suffered without the gate; and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, He was forsaken of God. The unutterable love of God for the perishing sinner is seen at the cross as nowhere else — “He spared not His own Son.” Here, as nowhere else, His hatred of sin is seen in His smiting that sinless One, “made sin.” God must have His portion in the sin offering, for “nothing in the whole work of Jesus so marked His positive holiness, as His bearing sin. He who knew no sin alone could be made sin.... It was a total consecration of Himself, at all cost, to God’s glory.” God was glorified; God was honored. In order that a sweet savor should go up to Him from this offering, the fat, which is the “energy and force of the inward will,” which in Jesus was wholly devoted to God, was taken from the animal before it was carried out of the camp, and was burnt on the altar. It ascended in all the preciousness of Christ to God.
The position of the brazen altar was significant; it was just inside the gate; those from the outside world entered and approached God through the altar. Christ when on the cross, had, so to speak, left the outside world. He hung between heaven and earth; “I, if I be lifted up from the earth”; the only way of approach to God is through the lifted-up One. Since the tabernacle and its vessels of ministry are spoken of as “patterns of things in the heavens,” we may be warranted in comparing “the holiest” to the “third heaven,” and the court where the brazen altar stood, to the “first heaven,” or the “firmament above,” the altar being, so to speak, between the outside world (earth) and the court (heaven above).