The most prominent feature inside the outer court of the tabernacle was the great altar, sometimes called the brazen altar or altar of burnt offering. Set four square, it was made of shittim or acacia wood, was overlaid with bronze and had at each corner a horn. On this great brazen altar the daily burnt offering was burnt; upon it at the Day of Atonement the one great typical sacrifice for sin was consumed; upon it portions of the peace offerings and trespass offerings were burnt; upon it was sprinkled the blood of the victim; with fire taken from it incense was offered on that golden altar.
Without the great brazen altar it was impossible for the Jew to approach even to the separated presence of his God; without it he had in no hope of peace with the Majesty of Heaven.
Surely the teaching of this great altar is that death is the consequence of sin, and that “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” It is written in the Book of God, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Death is the consequence of sin. It is written in characters that all may read, “Death passed upon all men for that all have sinned.” The scientist would admit the fact of universal death though he might reject the reason. All death is the consequence of broken law, as we know: “sin is the transgression of the law.”
Death is the consequence of sin. Men will admit the damage that sin does in some directions; but what is true in some directions is true of sin in all directions. If you sin, your physical force is weakened; your moral nature becomes depraved, your mental powers are enfeebled, and you die, not perhaps in the ordinary sense, but you die to something that is holy and happy and good; you are separated from something that is of value. Death, after all, is but another name for separation.
There in the tabernacle and temple court was the great type of this momentous truth. What was the consequence of sin? That when the Jew approached the presence of his God, he must approach it with death. He could not come and seek the forgiveness of his sin unless before the forgiveness there had been death. Sin was the cause of his coming to the altar; death was the thing for which the altar had been provided.
But while nature and science and ethics and morality all consent to this as a fact–whether or not they consent to it as a theological truth–that death is the consequence of sin, they know nothing of the remission. of sin. Go out and ask Nature about remission and she answers that she knows nothing of it. Sin, and you must suffer the consequence; sin, and she will send in her account. You must pay it to the uttermost farthing.
Science knows nothing of it, for science is but the handmaid of Nature. Ethics and morality know nothing of remission. In fact, they tell us that it is an impossibility; that he who sets out on a course of sin and forms a sinful habit, is bound by the very nature of moral law to go on in ever-increasing force along the path of destruction. Nature and science and ethics and philosophy stand in dumb despair before the fact of sin. They have no hope, no remedy for the sinner. It is only when you receive the revelation of the Most High that you are told that there is a possibility of forgiveness.
Shall we not then in all humility accept as truth what Revelation teaches; shall we not listen to the terms upon which this remission is to be granted? We must accept the imperative, unalterable dictum of our God, “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” It was typified at that great altar in those far-off Jewish days; not only was the sacrifice slain but the blood must be sprinkled, for “without shedding of blood there is no remission.”
Of course we do not understand. We do not understand ourselves; our whole being, and all its laws, are full of profoundest mysteries which we have not been able to fathom. We do not understand the nature and the consequence of sin; far less do we understand the nature and the requirements of God. How then shall we hope to understand, how dare we question, what God has revealed as the only way of forgiveness: “without shedding of blood there is no remission”?
It may be objected: “But that was under the Old Dispensation. We live in brighter and happier days; the Mosaic law with all its ordinances and ritual has passed away.” True! but God has not passed away. “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the Son of Man, that He should repent.” In Him there is “no variableness, neither shadow caused by turning.” Truth has not passed away; the eternal law of the consequence of sin has not passed away. It is as true today, as ever, that “the mourners go about the streets,” since “death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” It is as true today as ever that we cannot break the law of God without the penalty of our sin falling in some shape upon us, without some part of our moral and spiritual nature perishing as the result of our misdoing; and why then should it not be as true today as ever, that “without shedding of blood there is no remission”?
We must not forget that the tabernacle in the wilderness was God’s great picture book, in which all men might learn the lessons of sin and salvation. Do not let us forget for a moment that all those ordinances, rituals, and symbols in themselves were nothing. They served no real spiritual purpose save this, that they were “a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” But can one imagine for a single moment that God provided a picture book to teach men lessons that were false to truth or that would pass away without fulfillment? Can we, for a single moment, imagine that God provided the ritual which typified salvation through blood, if–as men tell us today in their bold denial of the Word of God–there is no remission through blood? No, let us be sure of this, that these two facts are eternal truths: death is the consequence of sin, and, “without shedding of blood there is no remission.”
Hence “we have an altar.” Remember that the writer to the Hebrews is not talking of sacrament, but of sacrifice. He is not thinking of an altar set up in a church building nor of any sacrament celebrated in a church service. The writer of the Epistle has in mind that great world-Altar set up on Calvary, where the prototype found its antitype; where Christ, who was typified by the victims on the brazen altar, offered that precious blood that “cleanseth us from all sin.”
“We have an altar.” The brazen altar is no more; the ritual of the Mosaic dispensation is over; the sacrifices are abolished, because they have found their consummation in the sacrifice of Christ. For note two important differences between those sacrifices of old and the sacrifice at Calvary. They needed perpetual repetition–day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, those sacrifices had to be repeated because they never made those who brought them, perfect. But Christ who “through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God,” offered for us that full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, which needs no repetition. To pretend to repeat it is either wilful presumption or blasphemy through ignorance. We we dare not pretend to repeat that one sufficient sacrifice, once offered by Christ on the great Altar.
Christ made that perfect sacrifice once for all, and by that sacrifice the believer is once for all perfectly redeemed. Once for all Christ paid the debt of humanity; once for all He “bare our sins in His own body on the tree” and because He bare them, we who believe are free from the curse of the broken law.
We are taught in the Epistle to the Hebrews that those sacrifices failed to make those who offered them perfect. Let us learn this further lesson, that no sacrifice, no ceremony on the part of the sinner ever makes him perfect in the sight of God. “The blood of bulls and of goats” failed to make those perfect who sought their aid. Let men lay the truth to heart and abandon forever all hope of perfection and forgiveness through the ritual and ordinances which he may perform. Let them not imagine that any sacrificial attendance, any proffered gift, any personal effort, will ever make them acceptable in the sight of God. Let them put their whole trust in the sacrifice of Christ, and in that sacrifice alone.
We who believe on Him shall never hear again of the sins that have been removed by the precious blood of Christ. They have been blotted out, cast behind the back of God. The broken law knows nothing of our sin because the penalty has been paid. God, the Judge of the universe, knows nothing of our sin because those forgiven sins have been cast forever into the depths of the sea.
“We have an altar,” and on it long centuries ago was offered the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Have you become a partaker of that Altar?