The Gate
The Tabernacle instructions in Moses time were precise and detailed. The blueprints were breathed according to God’s design. He directed His Jewish people to approach and worship Him in HIS way. It’s so easy for us to find fault in the complaining Jewish nomads because certainly we never complain. A guiding cloud appeared at random in human eyes; the tabernacle was dismantled and re assembled time after time after time. The effort and craftsmanship blows my mind. I complain over far less.
Have we watered down the gate to the altar? As the gate is opened and the bronze alter of our hearts is presented to the Holy God Almighty, we enter stained and saturated with sin. We have a savior who deserves divine, loud, outrageous sounds of worship to His ears.
Centuries after Moses, as prophesized, a Rabbi named Jesus, the sacrificial lamb, the only gateway to the very heart of God cried out “It is finished”. He became the final sacrifice finalizing killing at the altar and purifying all our dirty sin with His perfect refined blood.
The alter at the significance of the cross is where we throw it all down. The once bronze altar now transformed into that final sacrifice is where we meet the only one who knows us in the depths of our deep dark secrets, trials, suffering and repentance. Redemption is at the altar.
Humans are peculiar. Believers within the modernized church that is transformed by culture and social media are even more odd to me. Counterfeit philosophies step in, Holy altars pushed out.
When did we dilute the gate to the altar and minimized mercy and grace and make it sound cozy and deserved? Like Bob Dylan wrote “Do you ever wonder just what God requires? You think He’s just an errand boy to satisfy our wandering desires.”
God takes pleasure in (not to mention is worthy of) our Christ filled hearts approaching the spiritual and physical altar with divine appointment each time we congregate. The concept of altar should never get old or washed out by a watered-down church culture and entertainment. When we publicly approach the physical altar with our spiritual altar intact and drop to our knees, we are not only looking strange, (I will take strange over norm) but we are demonstrating to a dark world what it looks like to submit to The God whose image we are created in. We then stand tall and sharpened like David’s spears, we face the light and submit to the Holy Father and His guiding cloud and we move on to His Holy ground.
