April 11, 2023
Thus sayeth the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen. Jeremiah 10:2 (KJV)
This instruction bears, in essence, the same message given to Adam regarding eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). But by now, the enemy of Yahweh has had many centuries to develop all manner of evil among people in the world. Twisting His words and misrepresenting His altogether righteous, loving, giving character in the eyes of the world is the enemy’s way of causing people to be lost.
Throughout the Scriptures there are hundreds of reminders, admonitions, and stern warnings for everyone who desires to be saved not to fall into the ways of the world. Do not love the world, or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)
The first article of furniture encountered as one enters the sanctuary courtyard is the altar of burnt offerings, where animals were sacrificed. The altar itself pointed forward to the cross of Christ and the animals were symbolic of Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice. His voluntary payment of sin’s penalty would be so decisive that, in the end, sin itself would be nothing more than a wisp of smoke destined to vanish forever.
Therefore He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him. Hebrews 7:25a
By contrast, those who stubbornly cling to their sin will perish along with it. Into smoke they shall vanish away. (Psalm 37:20b) Those who war against you shall be as nothing. As a nonexistent thing. Isaiah (41:12b) And they shall be as though they had never been. (Obadiah 16b) And, as for Satan himself, his destiny was revealed to the prophet Ezekiel as though it had already happened. Christ’s victory on the cross is so complete that Satan’s doom is perceived as a ‘done deal’: The LORD says: “Therefore I brought fire from your midst; It devoured you, and I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you.” (Ezekiel 28:18b)
In his anger and animosity toward Yahweh, Satan has uncreatively coopted the altar of burnt offerings to symbolize a never-ending inferno of torture. Of course, in order for the fiery torture to continue endlessly, its victims must be immortalized. At the very beginning we are given a glimpse of Satan’s plan to misrepresent Yahweh as a cruel, threatening tyrant instead of a loving Savior. When the serpent spoke to Eve, he contradicted Yahweh’s simple warning to Adam about death; he told Eve, “you shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Thus, the first lie ever spoken in our world became the false doctrine so widely taught to this very day: that of “inherent immortality of the soul.”
The true message of the altar of sacrifice was of a substitutionary death for every repentant sinner, pointing to the saving power of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Properly understood, the altar of burnt offerings reveals the amazing love of Yahweh!