The Altar of Unpolluted Stones

In the Old Testament, they built altars to burn sacrifices on to worship God. Today, Christians do not offer literal sacrifices, but we offer the sacrifice of our hearts and lives in a spiritual sense to God. There are parallels from the Old Testament, which we can apply to our hearts today. Many of the literal means of worship required in the Old Testament, are the spiritual equivalent of what God expects of our hearts today.  

There were times during the reign of the kings when the children of Israel slipped into sin and idolatry. They had numerous kings which worshipped idols instead of the True God. In 1 Kings 16:30 it says that king Ahab was more wicked than any of his predecessors. Reading further, in 1 Kings 18, we have the story of King Ahab and the prophets of Baal. God was not happy with the children of Israel, so He caused it to not rain for three years. Afterwards God sent Elijah the prophet to bring them back to Him. He proposed a contest between God and the prophets of Baal. They each were to build and altar and the god which answered by fire was to be the true god. Elijah let the prophets of Baal go first, after which they called on Baal to hear them from morning until evening without success. Then we come to this verse: And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down.  (1Kings 18:30) The account goes on to tell how that after the altar was prepared, fire fell and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and even the water which they had poured over the altar. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.  (1 Kings 18:39) It is noteworthy, the first thing Elijah did was to call the people together, he wanted them near, not scattered about. Isn’t that so much like God, drawing us close to Him so He can work His will in our lives? It also says that he repaired God’s altar. Perhaps there was an old altar there or maybe he was meaning the children of Israel’s spiritual altar. However, they did not make a new one according to Elijah, but repaired the old. It signifies the return to God’s way and accepting His standard for our life.

There are times in our Christian lives in which we drift away from God. Earthly spirits of the world may attach themselves to us, causing us to become stagnated in our Christian walk. Perhaps our altar of prayer and reading God’s Word becomes second place or even non-existent. It may be that God has called us, but we have never made a commitment to Him. God is faithful and not willing to just let us drift away without giving us a chance. He wants us to correct our course and return to Him. He may allow some difficulties or roadblocks in our lives, or we may find ourselves lacking power to overcome temptations, while slipping and falling into sin. Or he allows what we call, “A wake up call.” For the children of Israel, it was the drought. For us, He uses whatever means he can, even our brethren to show us our needs. Like in Elijah’s time, God wants us to return and rebuild our altar of prayer and connection with Him.

There are also several Old Testament scriptures which give instructions on how they were to build those altars and what was to be offered on them. They were to use natural stone, not hewn stone. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.  (Exodus 20:25) There are a couple more scriptures listed below which indicate the same thing*. Neither were they to offer a blemished or imperfect sacrifice, whatever they offered was to be perfect and whole. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats (Exodus 12:5)

God did not accept an altar for sacrificing which man had tried to beautify, nor any sacrificial offering which was less than the best. To do so, would have been a man-made altar polluted by the instruments of man or less than an acceptable sacrifice. Possibly they would have been tempted to then worship the altar and not God, like what happened with the brazen serpent. 2 Kings 18:4 God did not want man to think that the altar had significance but rather it was a place to offer sacrifices to God. Neither can we in our restoration of our altar of prayer and repentance come to God offering at an altar of conditions. In our hearts we must offer a pure offering of ourselves without excuse and without exceptions. We may be tempted to make our altar of sacrifice the way we choose. Maybe it does not fit into our lifestyle or plan so we attempt to chip off a little of the stone here or there to better fit it into our lives. However, no part of our own works will do in the sacrifice. God will not accept an altar of sacrifice according to my making, polluted with self. Our flesh would like to dress it up, make our lives look better than they really have been. We would rather not have people see how sinful we have been, so we try to dress up the stones of the altar of repentance, attempting to hide our imperfections. But only whole stones are acceptable. Nothing but the bare truth. God sees it all anyway.

Here is another noteworthy aspect of the building of the altar of God. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.  (Exodus 20:26) Not to be trod upon, this altar was to be kept pure, sacred, and undefiled by the flesh. Without steps leading up to the altar, would have made it low to the ground. It was not to be a high place, of vain glory. In our personal lives, our altar of prayer is not a lofty place, but hearts bowing low before God in humble contrition. See Luke 18:10-14 of the conditions of prayer and Matthew 6:6 of the Lord’s Prayer.

It is true, like Elijah, we must make the effort to begin to restore that altar of worship, the first step recognizing that we have a need. Once we have done our part, then God can work the final work of accepting that sacrifice of redemption. This seems a little paradoxical because when God calls, we must start the work, but we cannot finish it. When God sees the honesty of our heart, then He does that complete work of righteousness, accepts the sacrifice of ourselves, and gives us His unspeakable peace. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.  (Psalms 51:17) Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.  (Psalms 51:12)

 

*And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them.  (Deuteronomy 27:5)

*As Moses the servant of the LORD commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which no man hath lift up any iron: and they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the LORD, and sacrificed peace offerings.  (Joshua 8:31)