It is a tragedy that worship is one of the most divisive and conflict-filled areas within the church. Of course, it is also understandable. We tend to fight most fiercely over the things that are most important to us. If the chief end of man truly is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, worship ought to be highest priority of all of God’s people, so it is not to be taken lightly.

I begin with the topic of worship because that is the overall theme of the second half of Exodus. In chapters 1-14, Yahweh rescued Israel from their slavery in Egypt and slew their oppressor, Pharaoh. Then in chapters 15-19, God led Israel through the wilderness to Sinai protecting and providing for them along the way like a shepherd over his flock. The remainder of Exodus takes place at Sinai, where God is outlining His covenant with Israel, detailing how they are to live as His treasured possess, a holy nation, and a kingdom of priests. We properly call that life of response to God’s salvation, worship.

However, let us make two important notes on worship that will serve us going forward. First, while the entire life of God’s people is to be lived in worship to God, there is a distinction to be made between daily, personal worship and the corporate, gathered worship of God’s people. Yes, we are called to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices and to do all things to the glory of God, and yes, that is the all-encompassing daily and personal worship that God requires. Amen! However, we should note that Paul told the Corinthians that some of their personal habits of worship would not transfer to the gathered worship of God’s people. We can think of this example. A professional dancer ought to dance with excellence to the glory of God, which then becomes an act of worship; however, the Lord’s Day gathering would not be the time or place to do so.

We should also note that worship is not Burger King, that is, the ultimate goal of worship is not to have it your way. Because we are worshiping the Almighty Creator, who has spoken to us from heaven, we ought to be supremely concerned with how He desires and commands to be worshiped, not with how we would best like to worship Him. It is this principle that we see most clearly in the laws before us, which particularly dictate what kind of altars God would permit the Israelites to build for Him.

THE GOD OF HEAVEN // VERSES 22-23

Having taken two weeks to properly introduce us to the laws that God gave in the Old Testament, we now begin to move through the portion of Exodus that is called the Book of the Covenant. As I noted last week, this section of Exodus both begins and ends with a discussion of Israel’s proper worship of Yahweh, their God and Redeemer, while the other laws in the middle focus upon laws of justice in dealing with one another. Our text begins with these words:

And the LORD said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven.

Here the LORD is referring back to His speaking of the Ten Commandments. Remember that God had the people consecrate themselves for three days in chapter 19 before He descended upon Sinai in thick clouds of darkness, with fire, thunder, lightning, and the blast of trumpets. He then spoke the Ten Commandments audibly for the entire nation of Israel to hear. But even though God did descend to speak directly to His people, notice that He still says that He spoke to them from heaven. They could not endure His complete presence but could only bear Him speaking from afar. Of course, truly they could not even endure that. Indeed, no one could, which is why God ultimately had to become flesh and dwell among us.

Recall that after God finished speaking, the people begged for Moses to be their mediator, speaking to God on their behalf and delivering to them the words of God. Moses embraced that role. While the rest of Israel shrank back in fear, Moses drew near to God. And now we have Yahweh speaking, not to all of Israel, but to Moses, telling the prophet His words for the people of Israel. Philip Ryken notes:

From this point on, Moses would do the talking. He was the mediator—the man who spoke for God. So whenever God had something to say to Israel, he would do it through his prophet Moses. In the chapters that follow, Moses applies God’s law to various life situations. But the first thing God wanted his prophet to do was to remind the people about who spoke to them on the mountain: It was the great God of the covenant. From this point on, everything Moses said was based upon this great fact, that God had spoken to his people. The Law did not come from earth; it came from Heaven, and for this reason the Israelites were obligated to obey.

Exodus, 648.

You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, not shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. This ought to sound quite similar to the first two of the Ten Commandments. The First Commandment forbid the worship of any gods other than Yahweh Himself, while the Second Commandment forbid the making of images for worship. This commandment appears to be mixture between the two, and that should not surprise us. Recall that the Ten Commandments are summary of the God’s law, so that every other law is essentially a more detailed explanation of the principle of one of the Ten.

Of course, the Second Commandment described the likeness of the images being made, but here the emphasis is upon the material with which they are made. Idols were often made simply of wood, which Isaiah ruthlessly mocks, saying of a cut down tree: “Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it” (44:15). Yet precious metals like gold and silver were certainly preferable whenever they could be obtained. Douglas Stuart writes about this command:

Mentioning “gods of silver or gods of gold” represents a synecdoche and does not imply that these metals were the only materials from which idols were made. But since they the most common, they stood for all materials and helped the Israelites remember that no idol—no matter how lovely in appearance or expensive in composition—could be worshiped as representing a god. Beautiful, expensive things cannot be excluded from the command against idolatry by the argument that they are “appropriate to God” or that they “call him to mind because their excellence suggests his excellence.” That such a prohibition would need to be repeated virtually immediately after the Ten Commandments has been given is evidenced by Aaron’s construction of the golden calf days or weeks later (chap. 32).

Exodus, 471.

Indeed, that is a point worth repeating. Just because items like gold and silver are precious and valuable to us, that did not inherently make them fit for worship. After the king disobeyed God’s command, Samuel gave this famous rebuke to King Saul:

Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected you from being king.

1 Samuel 15:22-23

If that is true about the sacrifices and burnt offerings, which God Himself did command, how much more does the principle apply to things like gold and silver? I make this point because it seems to be rather common in evangelicalism today to apply the “it’s the thought that counts” principle to worship. We think that as long as we are sincere and doing or giving something excellent for God, then He is obligated to accept our worship. Yet that is not the case. The most fundamental aspect of worship is obedience to what God says. Indeed, to presume that we know best what God would like is idolatry because we are crafting our own image of God in our minds rather than submitting to what He has spoken about Himself. As the Maker of heaven and earth, our finest riches and talents are insignificant in His sight, but He delights in those who do His will.

ON MAKING ALTARS // VERSES 24-26

In the final verses of chapter 20, God provides the Israelites with laws regarding altars:

An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.

Before we can dive into the particulars of these commands, we should begin by defining what an altar is. Tremper Longman III gives us a great answer:

An altar is a simple structure built of earth or stone marking the place where God meets people. Typically, God made his presence known at a location and then commanded his people to build an altar there… The Hebrew word translated “altar” is mizbeah, formed from the verbal root zabah, which means “sacrifice” or “slaughter.” Though it is dangerous to rely exclusively on the etymology of a word for its meaning, the idea of sacrifice is supported by the use of the word in the biblical contexts. It appears that the altar was a place where sacrifice could and did take place. The altar was where the worshiper came into the presence of God, and God, as we have seen, hates sin. Therefore, sin had to be accounted for before the person entered the holy place. We will later look at this in more detail, but the most obvious function of sacrifice was to atone for sin. Thus, it is not at all surprising that at the heart of the altar was the idea of sacrifice.

Immanuel in Our Place, 16.

Indeed, we will return to the matter of sacrifice in a moment. For now, it is worth dwelling upon the altar as “the place where God means people.” That is precisely what we see throughout Genesis. As early as Genesis 4, Cain and Abel were presenting their offerings, which were likely done upon an altar. Upon exiting the ark, we are told that “Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered offerings on the altar” (Genesis 8:20). Then reading through the lives of the patriarchs, we find Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob building altars to the LORD whenever He reveals Himself to them in a particularly special way. Later in Exodus the primary altar would be located within the tabernacle (and later the temple), but even then, other altars would still be used for particular occasions. Indeed, Elijah may have had the words of verse 24 (In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.) in mind whenever he prayed for the LORD to consume the altar that he had built in confrontation with the prophets of Baal, saying:

O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.

1 Kings 18:36-37

Before moving into the larger point of sacrifices, let us note two principles from these three verses: principles of simplicity and of purity. First, by commanding their altars to be made of earth or of uncut stones, Yahweh was forbidding extravagant and ornate altars to be made in His name. John Sailhamer raises an issue that might already be in our minds:

The detailed and ornate description of the tabernacle seems a far cry from the simple worship envisioned here. These verses, however, play an important role in the lesson of the immediate narrative and ultimately that of the Pentateuch as a whole. They serve to focus our attention on the essential nature of the worship described here and that of the patriarchs earlier in the Genesis narratives plays an important role in the narrative. Israel’s worship in the Sinai covenant was to be the same as that of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In fact, this sort of worship is comparable to the fathers’ worship of God since the time of Adam (Ge 4:26). God will certainly be honored with all the gold and silver of the tabernacle that is to be built, but his honor is not to be at the expense of the simple call to obedience exemplified in the lives of the patriarchs.

The Pentateuch as Narrative, 289.

I would also note that for all the beauty of the tabernacle and later the temple, they were still relatively simple compared to the elaborate complexities of how the Canaanites worshiped. Indeed, the very fact that only one tabernacle was needed because there is only one true God to worship is already radically more simplistic than that multitude of gods worship by the other peoples. Being a pagan must have been draining, trying to figure out which sacrifice to make to which god to have your problem resolved! Although God would command the Israelites to make a number of different kinds of sacrifices, as we will see in a moment, they essentially boiled down to two types of sacrifices, and they were all made to the one living God. The same is still true today. The world has no shortage of prescriptions for how to find our purpose and satisfy our guilt, but the Bible answers simply: believe in the Lord Jesus, and love God and your neighbor. That is the essence of true religion. Matthew Henry says it well: “The beauty of holiness needs no paint, nor do those do any service to the spouse of Christ that dress her in the attire of a harlot, as the church of Rome does: an altar of earth does best” (364).

Second, there is a principle of purity. Pagans built their altars upon high place, thinking that being nearer to heaven would make their sacrifices more effective. Since Yahweh, as the Maker of heaven and earth, is omnipresent, the Israelites did not need to rely upon such superstition. In fact, in verse 26, God prohibited steps from being built so that the person’s nakedness would not be exposed while ascending to make the sacrifice. We should remember that in the ancient world did not have pants and that undergarments were not commonly wore either. Thus, walking up steps could very easily expose a person’s nakedness. Indeed, in Exodus 28:42, God will command linen undergarments to be made for the priests for exactly this reason.

Yet as we said earlier, the purpose of altars was to meet with God through making a sacrifice for sins. Two sacrifices are referred to verse 24: burnt offerings and peace offerings. These two types of sacrifices are explained in Leviticus 1 and 3. The burnt offering, as the name suggests, was a sacrifice that was completely burnt to ashes upon the altar. As the fire consumed the whole slaughtered animal, God’s people were meant to remember that Yahweh Himself is a consuming fire of holiness against sin, and though the sacrificed animal was innocent of sin, God graciously allowed it to be given in place of consuming the sinner.

The peace (or fellowship) offering was offered differently and had a different meaning:

In recognition of God’s reconciliation with his people, the fellowship offering was not consumed by fire. This was the main difference between the burnt offering and the fellowship offering. The burnt offering was burned to a crisp, as its name implies, but with the fellowship offering, only the fat was burned. In other words, the choicest part of the animal was offered to God. The rest was cooked until tender and then eaten by the worshipers as a way of celebrating God and his grace. The fellowship offering was a feast to the glory of God.

Exodus, 654.

As the Israelites built these simple altars of earth or uncut stones and made offerings to atone for their sins and in thankful fellowship to Yahweh, His name would be remembered by the people, and He would come to them and bless them. Remember that the explicit purpose behind God doing everything that He has done for Israel in the book of Exodus was so that they may know that He is Yahweh. Through the plagues, the parting of the sea, the provision and protection in the wilderness, and now through His covenant with them at Sinai, God was revealing His holy name to them and, therefore, also revealing His holy nature and character.

Of course, none of it was enough. The exodus led Israel out of Egypt, but it didn’t take Egypt out of the Israelites. For all of God’s provision and protection in the wilderness, Israel kept grumbling and complaining. And here too the burnt offerings were never sufficient to truly satisfy God’s holy wrath against sin. As Hebrews notes, their need to be continuously offered was a constant testimony of their insufficiency. Likewise, the peace offerings did not offer deep and lasting communion with God.

Thankfully, a better covenant has now been made with a better Mediator and a better sacrifice. The author of Hebrews labored diligently throughout the central portion of his sermon-letter to emphasize the importance of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice for our sins. Indeed, Jesus’ death is both the true burnt offering and the true peace offering. Upon the cross, our Lord endured the full fire of God’s wrath in our place. Unlike the blood of animals, which are under our dominion, His innocent blood is eternally sufficient to pay the debt of our sins. His sacrifice is also the perfect peace offering, for by it we now have true peace and fellowship with God. Indeed, we have an even greater communion with God than Adam first did because, through the Second Adam, we have received the Spirit of adoption, making us sons and daughters of God.

As we come to the Table of our King, which we rightly also call Communion, let us be clear of its importance and limitation. Hebrews 13:10 says, “We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat,” which means that the lowliest of Christians has a greater fellowship with God than even the high priest under the old covenant. But what is the altar that we now have? It is not the Table before us, for it is only a sign and visual remembrance of what Christ did upon the cross. Being a sign does not diminish its importance but only helps us to remember that it is not the thing itself. But if the Lord’s Supper is not our altar of worship, what is? Christ Himself is our altar. Remember that the most basic function of an altar is to be a place where God meets His people, and that place for us is not an object but a Person. Although the table of the Lord’s Supper is meant to bring to mind the bronze altar upon which sacrifices were offered, the great significance is that there is no sacrifice being made. The bread and cup before us are only in remembrance of Christ, who is Himself the Bread of heaven and the Living Water. Therefore, as we eat this bread and drink of this cup, let us taste and see the goodness of our Savior, who is Himself the true altar by which we can always come boldly to the throne of Yahweh and find our blessedness in Him.