MEDITATION SCRIPTURE | WHAT IT SAYS
24 “Build for me an altar made of earth, and offer your sacrifices to me—your burnt offerings and peace offerings, your sheep and goats, and your cattle. Build my altar wherever I cause my name to be remembered, and I will come to you and bless you. 25 If you use stones to build my altar, use only natural, uncut stones. Do not shape the stones with a tool, for that would make the altar unfit for holy use.
- Exodus 20:24,25 NLT
MEDITATION ON WHAT IT MEANS
The altar represents the place where God’s wrath is appeased and His favor is secured. It’s the place of sacrifice and worship. It’s where we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, our spiritual act of worship. It’s where His manifest presence comes and inhabits the praises of His people. Our sacrifice must be living if our worship is to be spiritual. It cannot be a dead religious ritual where we go through the motions with empty words and distant hearts.
Not only does God require a specific type of sacrifice in worship, He requires a specific type of altar. According to this passage the altar must be made of earth, using natural, uncut stones, not stones shaped with a tool. Why must an altar fit for holy use be built in this way? The two contrasting altars represent two contrasting motives in what we offer to God and what we view as worship. The natural, uncut stone represents the work that God has done to provide us a way to exalt Him and experience His presence. Stones shaped by the tools of men represent our attempt to add on to what God has already provided apart from our own work.
Similar to Cain and Abel’s offering to God, the two altars represent God’s way and our own man-made way. God’s way is by grace through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus life to forgive sin. Our way is by the fruit of our own labor. Abel understood God’s way when he offering the sacrifice of a lamb on the altar. He knew that God’s wrath was appeased and His favor secured by atonement through the shedding of blood. Cain chose to ignore God’s way. Instead, he offered Him fruit from from his own labor. He tried to earn by his own work, what could not be merited. Both men viewed there offering as a sacrifice of worship. God rejected Cain’s offering but accepted Abel’s offering.
If we are truly going to offer God spiritual worship: the living sacrifice of our own lives, we cannot give ourselves out of our own initiative and strength, thinking that our sacrifice will merit the appeasement of His wrath and the lavishing of his favor. Our offering must be done out of a response to what God has already provided for us through Jesus Christ apart from anything we’ve done. Upon this altar of natural, uncut stone we are able to offer true sacrifice and worship. Upon this type of sacrifice and worship God visits with the fire of His Shekinah Glory.
MEDITATION ON WHAT IT MEANS FOR ME
What have been my motives in what I’ve offered to God? Why do I pray? What do I read my bible? Why do I go to church?
What can I do to constantly remind myself of what God has done for me?
SELAH RHEMA 