Chapter 6
Altar
The altar has been a symbol of religion for millennia. We know of ancient cultures that worshipped many gods and goddesses. The idea formed in the human mind when we saw a lot of forces that are outside of human power. We plant crop, and we water the crop, and we can even irrigate the field, but only God makes the plant to grow.
There are forces all around us that we don’t control. If the sun stays out for too long with little to no rain, the crops wither. If the wind blows too hard, it can knock over the crop and the trees and even our homes. We have no power over this. These forces were given names and personalities.
The god of the Philistines was Dagon. He was the god of fertility and crops. Of the ancient Babylon, there was Enlil. He was the god of the wind, formed by An (god of heaven) and Ki (goddess of earth) having sexual relations. Rome had the god of doors: Janus. Ancient Egypt had Seth, the god of chaos. Ra was the sun god; swallowed every night by the sky goddess Nut, and reborn every morning. Ra was the most important of all the gods, and with him came resurrection… Isis of Egypt was the protector goddess for when you went to war. She cast spells to protect your army, home, family, and/or animals. Utu was the Mesopotamian sun god. He was also the god of truth and justice. Enlil was considered to be so powerful that even other gods could not look upon him. Ba’al was the god of rain, and therefore prosperity. Artemis (Greek) was the goddess of hunting, and the protector of small animals (don’t you get one or the other?).
With the invention of these names and personalities and back-stories, there was an entire religious system that was established. People started rising up as priests and prophets for different gods. If your having trouble with your crop, and it isn’t growing, you consult such and such priest of such and such god or goddess and they will tell you how to get the god’s favor. In this, the altar was born.
Usually the altar was built on a mountaintop, or on the top of a hill, and in ancient Rome or Greece, we see massive temples built as well in their honor. Every god or goddess was different. Some required that you offer a portion of your crop. Others required blood of an animal. You carry your offering “up” to the gods on the mountain and offer your portion of crop or your animal. The priest will then direct you as to how to offer your sacrifice.
If you really think about it, you start to notice that the altar has a flaw. If you offer a sacrifice, and then you’re blessed, next year you need to offer more. You want to keep the gods favor, and you don’t want to offend them by offering the same amount as last year. What if things don’t go so well? It hasn’t rained in 8 months. You offer to the gods. It still doesn’t rain. You offer again to the gods. This time, you offer more. Obviously, your city or nation has upset the gods. It still doesn’t rain. Now it’s been 18 months, and no rain. Our fields are barely holding on. We have nothing left we can give without starving ourselves. What do you offer?
The main problem with the altar is that you never really knew where you stand with the gods. You never know if they’re happy with your offering or offended. You continue to need to offer more and more and more until there isn’t anything left to give.
We see in the Bible (1 Kings 18) a prophet of the Lord face against hundreds of prophets of Ba’al. On top of Mount Carmel (up toward the gods), Elijah challenges their entire religion to see if Ba’al can offer his own sacrifice. The prophets of Ba’al cut themselves, as was their custom (1 Kings 18:28). You read in the Old Testament that Israel is told to not offer to the detestable god Molech. Why was Molech detestable? He required that you offer your firstborn child. Asherah was a pole that was built in the shape of an erect penis (where we get our modern day stripper poles). The way that you worship her is that there were temple priests and temple prostitutes. Everyone has sexual relationship with the closest neighbor – male or female didn’t matter. Kybele was a goddess in Asia-Minor. When the men wanted to worship this female goddess, they would castrate themselves and then throw their former manliness upon the altar as an offering. Archeologists have dug up a temple of the Aztecs where they found 42 children that were offered up to the god Tenochtitlan.
We think to ourselves, “How primitive!” Lets be honest, we would never live like that, right? We would never cut ourselves for the gods. We would never offer up our children to the gods. That is so primitive… right?
The Bible continually speaks into this kind of a culture about a different kind of God. In a world that had so many gods, to have a religion that spoke of one God was revolutionary. Right from the get go, God starts to say, “I am not like the other gods, and I am certainly not who you think I am.” You read in Genesis 5, God walked with Enoch. Wait… God walked with someone? What did Enoch sacrifice, and what god did he sacrifice to? Did Enoch see God?
There are so many mindsets that are brought about just from the altar. We have these mindsets ingrained into us from our fathers. There was a man named Abram. The story goes that God spoke to Abram one day. Could you imagine that culture hearing that God Himself spoke to a man? The idols were carved of men’s hands, and they were crafted from wood and stone. No one actually believed that they speak.
What did God say? He told Abram to leave his father’s house. We read later that Jacob relates back to Abraham and the god of his father Nahor. Now, for God to call Abram out of his father’s house, God is calling him out from the gods of his father. The father was the priest of the family. He would teach the children how to navigate the gods so that if there are problems in life you can offer the correct sacrifices to the correct gods. But we read later that Abram’s father believed in Jehovah.
Sometimes it is just necessary that you leave your father’s house, even if they have the correct ideologies and theology. Sometimes God calls us out for something bigger that what we’ve known. It isn’t that our parents are wrong. God shows Abram something completely different than anyone else in history has ever known.
The culture at this time would have considered that life is a cycle. You are repeating the same cycle of life your father was repeating from his father, and you can trace it back and back and back. You live life in this way, day after day, month after month, year after year, and generation after generation. Abram was called out of this into something different.
In the story of Abram, his nephew joins him in leaving. His nephew’s name is Lot. There came a point in their journey that the land was not big enough for both of them. God had blessed them and increased their flocks. So Abram lets Lot decide which direction he wants to walk, and Abram walks the other way. Lot chooses to go down to the area of Gomorrah.
Now, as a side note, I want to throw in that there is this idea of going east in the book of Genesis. For some reason, when people travel east, it is a bad thing. When Adam was kicked out of the Garden, he was sent eastward. Cain, after killing his brother, traveled east toward the land of Nod. Lot travels east toward Sodom and Gomorrah. When Abraham has his son Isaac, he sends away all his other children by concubines. He sends them eastward.
While Lot is eastward, God visits Abram again. God speaks to Abram and says, “As far as your eyes can see, I will give you this land. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall your offspring also be numbered.” Now, this wasn’t unheard of. Most of the cities people lived in were named after a certain patriarch. One man had claimed this area for himself, and his offspring continue to live there, and after a few generations, there are enough people to be called a city or nation.
So, God is talking to Abram about something that he can understand. God’s promise to him isn’t anything new. What is new is that God is the one to promise it. Abram hasn’t done anything to find favor with the gods. He hasn’t done his rituals and sacrifices. God’s favor is upon Abram for the simple fact that God chose Abram.
In Genesis chapter 14, there is this strange occurrence. Abram comes to a priest Melchizedek. Normally, Abram would be the one to offer, but the story ends with Melchizedek wanting to offer to Abram. What is going on?
The Lord then meets with Abram again. God once again repeats the promise that Abram will be given a son, and he will be the father of “many nations.” Now, there is something interesting that happens here. Abram asks for a sign. God tells Abram to offer these sacrifices, and then wait for Him. Abram offers the sacrifices, and waits. Birds try to eat the sacrifices, but Abram drives them away. Abram ends up falling asleep, and having a vision of Israel being afflicted by Egypt and then being delivered out of Egypt with great substance. Abram awakes from the dream, and sees a “smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.”
What happened? In the culture, the way that you would strike a deal with someone is that you would offer sacrifices to the gods, and then you would both walk through the sacrifices toward each other and meet in the middle. The symbolism is that I do my end of the bargain, you do your end of the bargain, if one of us skimps, may the gods hold us accountable. What does Abram see? God walked through the whole thing. It isn’t because of Abram doing something, but because God said He would.
Do you see the implications in the culture? The altar and the sacrifices have been symbols of oppression and anxiety. We don’t really know if the gods are angry or not. We don’t really know whether we’ve satisfied them. And here God just continues to display that He isn’t angry, He does care, and He is satisfied simply because He loves.
A few chapters later, God gives Abram a son. Abram names him Isaac. God tells Abram, “Sacrifice your son, your only begotten son whom you love.” This is the first instance in the Bible where the word love appears. So Abram saddles his donkey, takes his son and his servant, and heads off to Mount Moriah. Now, before I get into this story, let me hit you with some awesomeness.
Later, David takes a census of the army of Israel (2 Samuel 24). Joab questions David. I’ll admit that this baffles me because Joab always seems to be this bloodthirsty general of David’s army who doesn’t really serve the Lord. Yet, he has this profound insight that David taking a census is the wrong move to make. David doesn’t take Joab’s advice. God then gets angry with David.
A prophet named Gad comes to David and says, “You have three options: famine, your enemies will over take you, or three days of plague.” David says, “Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for maybe He will have mercy upon us.” The Lord sent a plague. An angel of the Lord stretched out his hand against Israel. When he stretched his hand toward Jerusalem, God told David to make a sacrifice.
David then climbs this mountain (which is a hill), and a Jebusite man offers to give everything necessary for the Lord’s sacrifice. David says the famous line, “I will never offer to the Lord that which costs me nothing.” So David buys this Jebusite man’s land, the offerings necessary, and proceeds to go and offer the sacrifice. The hill this man lived on was named Moriah.
Jump forward to 2 Chronicles 3. King Solomon builds the Temple to the Lord. The first verse says that it was built on “Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David.” But it wasn’t just where the Lord appeared to his father David. It was where the Lord had Abram offer his son Isaac. Moriah means, “ordained of the Lord.” Chew on that for a little while.
The story of Abram offering his son shows a profound statement of God. Many times we read the story and we think, “Oh good for Abraham!” He gets onto the top of the mountain, and builds the altar, and Isaac asks, “Where is the sacrifice?” Abram then says that God will offer the sacrifice. God told Abram to offer his son. Isaac is placed upon the altar. Isaac willingly goes down on the altar. Just when Abram is about to run the knife through, an angel cries out, “STOP!” and a ram caught in a bush is provided.
Now, the story doesn’t end with Abram choosing to not offer his son. The story ends by God providing. Once again, the altar is taken from this idea of us offering more and more and more to God saying, “I will provide the offering myself.” This is profound and revolutionary at the time.
The first 5 chapters of Leviticus are God speaking and telling the people how to offer sacrifices to Him. God is speaking to a people that at this time would have been accustomed to giving sacrifices. We read it now with our culture and background and start saying things like, “This is the problem with religion.” What we miss is that Leviticus chapter 1 starts with, “If you desire to draw near to God.”
Wait a second… we can draw near to God? He isn’t distant? We can have relation with Him? We don’t have to continue to give these offerings and sacrifices without hearing whether or not He accepts them?
In fact, there is a peace offering called the shelamim. This is once again within the first few chapters of Leviticus. When you offer the shelamim, you offer some and you save some. You offer this portion to the Lord, and then this portion you save back for yourself to throw a big party where you invite your friends and family and the poor and the widow and the orphan and the Levite who has no inheritance and you all celebrate that you have now found peace with God.
What other religion can you think of that describes a God who would require that when you offer your sacrifice that you celebrate because you now know that you have peace with this God? It says in Deuteronomy that the Israelites were to only offer their sacrifices in the city that God shall choose. We know that this city was Jerusalem.
The altar is placed in Jerusalem, and the way that you have relationship with God is by the altar. During certain feasts that would require offerings and sacrifices, the whole land of Israel would gather toward Jerusalem. The altar was said to have drains on it for these times. There was so much blood spilt upon the altar that it would drain into the Kidron valley. A river of blood would flow.
Eschatological Scriptures call the Kidron valley the Valley of Jehoshaphat. It is translated the valley where God will judge. It is located between the Temple and the Mount of Olives. We know that Jesus rode the colt across this valley when entering into Jerusalem at the end of His life. This same valley where the blood runs…
Now, if you can’t get to Jerusalem for the sacrifices and offerings, then the Pharisees and Sadducees oppressed you. They used religion and guilt to pay themselves and make themselves fat. But of course, we don’t know what that is like in modern times.
It says in Deuteronomy 14 that if you have too much to offer for a tithe that you can’t carry it all the way to Jerusalem, whether because of the distance or the amount you have, that the Lord has blessed you indeed. God teaches that if you can’t make it to the feast to offer your sacrifices, then sell that which you would have offered and take the money you made to Jerusalem. God doesn’t stop there. We would expect that God says to then offer the money. He doesn’t. God says to spend the money partying with your family and friends, invite the Levite who has no inheritance, provide for the poor and oppressed, and party with the widow and orphan. God’s remedy for you not being able to sacrifice isn’t guilt, but blessing (Deuteronomy 14:22-29).
Now, there is this story in the New Testament about a man who comes into Jerusalem named Jesus. In John chapter 2, he enters the Temple courts and makes a whip out of cords. He then takes that whip and starts flipping tables, screaming at people, releasing the animals that are there for sacrificial reasons, and driving out all of the moneychangers. A moneychanger is like a merchant of sorts.
Now, there is more that meets the eye here. This system that bases itself off of violence and greed is being opposed by a man from Nazareth. Jesus opposes both the Temple and the religion built upon it. He insists that what is happening in Him and through Him is greater, better, and more progressive than what they had. Not only is it better, but also it is the new way of God, and the old system is condemned.
The Pharisees ask for a sign. Jesus tells them to tear down the Temple, and in three days He will rebuild it. Captain Obvious of the Religious Troop then speaks up with, “This Temple took 46 years to build… You are going to build it in three days?”
Lets add in a little bit of culture. The moneychangers had their booths set up on what is called the Court of the Gentiles. The first Temple had been destroyed. This wasn’t part of the plan, but happened. They rebuilt the Temple of the Lord. This second Temple had an outer court for the Gentiles who desired to seek God. This court area was the very spot where the moneychangers were selling.
The statement being made was that God is for the Jews, and the Gentiles have no part in it. God had never intended that. Jesus’ own genealogy has both Rehab and Ruth, who are both Gentiles – non-Jews. In the statement that is being made by setting up shop on the Court of the Gentiles, they are essentially also rejecting Jesus Himself.
What John is communicating is that the religious system that would be elitist is over. The games are ended; the party is finished. Jesus goes to that place where the moneychangers are collecting money and banning Gentiles and says, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves!” This same mentality runs deep within all of mankind. It isn’t the Jewish bigots that did this. It isn’t the Pharisees that did this. It is everyone. The Baptists are exclusive. The Catholics are exclusive. Indeed, the whole Church is exclusive. We have said that we are the new Israel and that they have no part in this unless they want to become like us. However, this isn’t how God intended it. We are actually committing the same sin that Jesus condemned by running out the moneychangers when we call ourselves the elite people of God and condemn Israel.
Jesus claims that this entire system that is based off of violence, greed, isolation, and we’re-in-and-you’re-out-mentality is over. He condemns it. But He then identifies Himself with it: “But He spoke of the temple of his body,” John 2:21.
If you are one of the religious leaders who have made a ton of money off of religious fear and guilt, do you like this message? Do you like to hear and to see that a man is claiming your reign to be over? The Bible has the best wording for their reaction: “And they crucified Him,” Mark 15:24.
From the time of being taken to the time of being crucified, Jesus is very keen to not act violently. His non-violence and His being silent like a sheep before the shearers beg the question, “What is your god like?”
Our Demons
My wife and I are friends with another couple who we’ve recently been seeing less and less of. We used to meet together and talk about life and Scripture and ask the questions that we have and wrestle with them together. One day, they stopped asking questions. They got tired of searching and working it out. They live life according to how society tells you that you’re supposed to. They have a nice house, nice car, matching furniture, nice kitchen, but are ultimately feeling that something is lacking in their life.
I have another friend who I’ve known since high school. She cuts herself. When I asked her why she does it, she said, “I just need to know that I’m still able to feel something.” She was always involved in extracurricular activities, had great parents, and had friends who loved her. But when it came down to it, her life is full of numbness and void of anything real and tangible.
I have another friend. He is an atheist. I’ve talked to him time after time about religion. I don’t think anything I say persuades him, and certainly nothing he says persuades me either. When asked about going to church, his response is almost always right away, “If I stepped into a church building, I’d probably be zapped by lightning.” What is that about? What kind of god does he believe in that would treat people like that? That is the point, right? Some one somewhere has told him that god is like that, and it might be the idea that we’ve picked up from the altar mentality.
I have another friend. She killed herself. She told me that she was playing with an ouija board, and since then had been seeing visions of demons and ghosts. I told her that it was useless to have someone cast out a demon if she was only going to let him come back with seven of his friends. The next thing I heard was that 6 months later she killed herself. The reason that she played with the ouija board in the first place was because she couldn’t express to her friends and family the guilt and shame she felt from her personal lifestyle. She looked for hope in the beyond and found more than she bargained for. Then she couldn’t let go of her lifestyle, nor did she feel confident in telling those who loved her about it. She blocked it all in until she couldn’t take it anymore. She was 16.
When we see people around us who suffer from these sorts of ailments, I have to ask the question: are we just serving the same old ancient gods? Are we still just as primitive as they were? Have we not come to the point where we realize that we don’t have to live like that? We don’t have to give in to what society tells us, and in the end peer pressure is nothing less than bullying and hatred?
We would like to think that we’re not like the ancients who sacrificed animals on an altar. Actually, we’re worse. At least they realized that there was something missing. At least they tried to fill the void. We just continue the cycle of giving in to societal pressure, continue offering ourselves, working ourselves to death, cutting our legs or our armpits so no one else can see, destroying our lives because we can’t bear the guilt of opening up and letting others help. We have this deep sense that the gods are indeed upset with us, and we can’t cope with it. We are still stressing about whether or not we have impressed outside forces that we can’t control.
The book of Hebrews talks a lot about this. Whoever wrote Hebrews claims, “It is impossible for the blood of goats and bulls to take away sins.” It is impossible… Think about it. Year after year, you still have people coming to sacrifice more and more. It isn’t like people stop sinning.
Yet I think this speaks of something else. It isn’t just the blood of bulls and goats. How many communities preach that if you don’t tithe, then you aren’t good enough? I have sat and heard a pastor who I confronted with this say, “20% of the congregation gives 80% of the tithes.” How shameful! I told him 73% of all statistics are made up. What happened to Jesus saying that the woman who put in her two mites gave the most out of everyone there?
I’ve heard messages about if you this, then God will that. If you just repent, and accept Jesus into your heart, then you will be saved. The problem is that when we create the if-then statement about God and the altar, then we are once again going against the very statement God has been making all along. He isn’t like that. We mistake what repentance is by our if-then statements.
Abram asked for a sign, and God walked through the sacrifices. It isn’t about Abram doing something; it is about God doing it all because that is the kind of God He is. It isn’t about us repenting, because Jesus has already given Himself as the ultimate sacrifice. We don’t need to sacrifice. That has already been done. The altar is gone.
So many pastors and so many speakers and so many churches are built and founded upon an altar. Why do you go to church? Is it to get God off of your back for another 6 days, and then you come back and do it again? Any tradition, ritual, or gathering that piles on guilt and shame is not Christian.
Living Sacrifices
It says in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you preset your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Just think about the wording: living sacrifice. If you sacrifice something, it is dead. You kill it, chop it, and burn it. What is Paul saying about this living sacrifice stuff?
The point that most people miss is that Jesus has done everything. It is finished. We don’t need to offer anything else. What is so often taught is that we need to do this or this in order to be saved. Sorry. There isn’t a formula.
We want a written out manual. We want a Leviticus that can tell us how to offer everything and what words to pray and how to live so that we can ensure we make it to heaven when we die. We want this. It doesn’t exist. As far as I can understand my Bible, God caters to men time and again for the sake of having a relation with them.
You must be born again. But what does that mean? Every denomination, and every believer, seems to answer that question differently. In a surplus of ideas of what it means to be born again, where do you stick your finger and say, “That is correct?”
Let us look at the book of John, when Jesus uses the phrase of a new birth. “Jesus answered him and said, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus then said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Verily, verily, I say to you that unless a man be born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.’”
Lets look at verses 3 and 5 together:
Verse3: Jesus answered him
Verse5: Jesus answered him
Verse3: Truly, truly, I say to you
Verse5: Truly, truly, I say to you
Verse3: unless one is born again
Verse5: unless one is born of water and spirit
Verse 3: he cannot see the Kingdom of God
Verse5: he cannot enter the Kingdom of God
Jesus is not speaking of two different births, but of one birth. Being born again is being born of water and spirit. Just like when someone brings home the check, they make the bread and butter. If it is down pouring, we say it is raining cats and dogs. You don’t say that it is raining cats at one point, and dogs at another point. Nor do you split the bread and the butter phrase. Yet we want to split the phrase of water and spirit.
Both times Jesus is referring to the same new birth. We can see in the Old Testament a time when God talks to the prophet Ezekiel and speaks of both water and spirit in the new covenant: Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; from all you filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my ordinances, and do them.
In Ezekiel 36, the use of water is to cleanse from filthiness and idolatry, where the spirit is used to transform the heart to full obedience. The new birth wraps this into one. God cleanses us, it is finished, and we are clean. He gives us a new heart, transforms our lives so that we desire to live in obedience, and we walk according to the Spirit. This is an oversimplified way of saying it, but you get the point.
So lets go back to that living sacrifice idea. What does it mean that we are living sacrifices? Paul supercharges the idea of the altar. We, who have been born again, have died to old mindsets, old addictions, old habits, and old views of God to be raised again by the glory of the Father into newness of life. He has washed us, as you would wash a sacrifice, and He has placed us upon that same altar that we should live according to a different mentality.
My friends can’t understand why it is that my wife and I do some of the things that we do, but it’s because of this new birth. We come in like the wind, and before you know it we’re gone. We don’t seem to be tied down by anything. Our spirits have come alive, and we live according to it. We try, in every aspect that we can, to live according to the law of the Spirit, and when we find ourselves out of sync we repent and turn to a lifestyle that better suits spirituality.
This is what it means. This is the whole point. This is where God has taken us. We have come from a place where the gods are always asking for more and more to a place where we are free. We don’t need to worry about whether we’ve upset or offended God because there is no condemnation in Christ. It is finished. The way that we should view the altar is not like the people of old. We shouldn’t see it as a way of going up to God. It is a way that God has radically come down to us.