Open your Bibles with me to the
Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, and we'll go back to Hebrews
chapter 13. You'll find my subject in the
first four words of Hebrews 13 and verse number 10. Hebrews 13 and verse number 10. Here's the message for this morning. We have an altar. We have an
altar. Some 6,000 years ago, God created
all things that exist. God made Adam and gave to Adam
a wife. They both worshiped God, they
honored God, reverenced God, had fellowship with God, and
then that fellowship was broken by Adam's willful transgression. It's necessary that we understand
Adam, when he rebelled against God, he did not do so as a private
individual, but as a representative man. He represented all of his
race, all who would come forth from his loins. And all of mankind,
we became guilty and sinful before God. And over the next 1,700 years,
give or take a few, things, the whole population just exploded. No doubt millions of people were
on the earth after 1,700 years from the making of Adam. But
in those many, many years, all those centuries,
man didn't get any better, but rather grew worse, alienated
from God. And if God leaves men to their
own vile imaginations, they come up with false religion of every
sort. And the scripture says that God
looked down upon men. He saw the wickedness of man
that he had made. God saw that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. God
said, I'm going to destroy him. I'm going to destroy man. Man
whom I have created, I'm going to destroy him from the face
of the earth. both man and beast and creeping things and fowls.
In fact, God said, it repents me that I even made man. But there was a man named Noah
who found grace in the eyes of God. God, before He ever made
this world, He set Noah apart for God's glory and for Noah's
everlasting good. God gave to Noah grace in Christ
Jesus before he made the world. And God saw Noah. God saw the work that he did
in Noah's heart. But more than that, he saw the
work that Christ would do for Noah. He saw the work of redemption. He saw the work of reconciliation. He saw the work of establishing
righteousness for Noah and all of his Noahs. So God purposed
that he would save Noah from a great catastrophe that God
Himself would bring upon this world. God instructed Noah to
build an ark. You need to understand it had
not rained for those 1,700 years. Never had rained. God had a canopy overhead. God arranged things in the creation
that All the plants would grow large. Some of the animals would grow
to enormous sizes. And man himself would live unusually
lengthy lives. But in the year that Methuselah
died, That man lived 969 years, and the year he died, that's
when God sent a full hut. Now for 120 years, Noah built
the ark, and he was a preacher of righteousness. I tell you,
the preaching of righteousness, it isn't a new message. This
is an old message. You've got to be righteous to
be accepted with God. And we can't produce that which
God demands. Therefore, we must be found in
the Lord, our righteousness, Christ Jesus. And he came and
by his substitutionary death, he established righteousness
for all of his people. That is, it's freely given to
us. It's freely put to our account.
Noah was a righteous man. And he preached righteousness.
He did so for 120 years. And in the year that that man
Methuselah died, what does Methuselah mean? In the year he dies, it
shall come. In the year he dies, it shall
come. In the year that that man died,
something came. Something awful. Something devastating. Something that carved out enormous
caverns and ravines throughout the world. God sent the blood. God had told Noah to come into
the ark. Noah and his wife, his sons,
and his daughters-in-law come into the ark. God told him to
take two of every kind of animal except for Those animals that
God said were not unclean, but animals, animals that were clean,
animals accepted for sacrifice. Take seven of those. It'd be
bullocks and sheep and goats and a couple of the fowls of
the air, turtle doves and pigeons. Take those, take seven of those,
but two of everything else, male and female. Take them into the
ark. And then after seven days, a
week went by, God shut the door. And God sent a flood. Rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Rain fell from heaven. The canopy
opened up. Don't have that canopy anymore.
It opened up and God opened up the fountains of the deep. He
flooded the whole world. And after about, what, 150 days,
the waters receded, and Noah, his wife, his sons and daughters-in-law,
they left the ark with all of the animals. Everybody got off
the ark. What's the first thing Noah did?
Well, we'd probably think, well, he's got to have a house to live
in. He didn't build a house first thing. He built an altar. That's the very first thing he
did. It wasn't about Noah and his family. That wasn't what
Noah was greatly concerned about. He's concerned about the glory
of God, the worship of God. You see, God had established
worship all the way back in the garden. Even after Adam and Eve
had left the garden, there was one particular place where God
met with them and they met with God at the flaming swords. And that's where they went to
worship God. There was an altar there. And
as you go through from Adam all the way to Noah, Those men who
worship God, they worship God by means of an altar and an animal
sacrifice on the altar. That's the only way they could
worship God. Because on that altar, an innocent victim died
and was offered by fire unto God. And as they killed the animal
and put the animal up on the altar, and then there was wood
up there, and as they lit the wood, and then it was all consumed,
and as it all ascended up to God, it's as though they were
saying, Oh God, this is for You! This is for You! Because we're
sinful people. And the only way you can bypass
our sinfulness is for you to get death in our stead. And we offer this sacrifice as
our substitute. And that's what they did. And
here comes Noah out of the ark. Tradition says he offered four
animal sacrifices, a bullock, a lamb, a goat, and a bird, a
pigeon or a turtle dove. He offered these to God by way
of thanksgiving and also by way of worship and acknowledging,
Lord, we ought to have died. If you punished every transgression,
Through the death of men and women, we ought to have died.
But the only reason we didn't die is because the seed of the
woman is coming. It's because the Son of God is
coming someday. And He'll offer Himself a sacrifice
for us. And as we think upon His coming,
we offer these animals to you, in our stead. We ought to die.
We deserve to die. Don't you see that's true with
us? We deserve to die. We have transgressed God's law. We have violated His commandments. In our Bible class this morning,
our Lord Jesus, He summed up the law. Love God with all your
heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love your neighbors yourself.
You hadn't done that. I haven't done that. Nobody's
ever done that. We're lawbreakers. We're criminals
against God. And God says the soul that sinned
shall die. God's going to get death. And we know that Noah, though
he was a man who found grace in the eyes of God, it didn't
take him long to show what he's made out of because he immediately
went out After he had worshipped God, he planted a vineyard, and
then he grew grapes, and then he made wine, and he got drunk. Which is, God forbids that! But not only did he disobey God
literally, he was not perfect in his mind, in his thoughts,
and in his heart, and in his motives, because nobody is. He's a sinful man. So the very
first thing he did when he got out of the ark, is build an altar
to God. Now from Adam to Moses, people
built altars on which they offered their sacrifices to God. That's what Noah did. He wanted
to worship God, he wanted to thank God, and he knew there's
no coming to God apart from an altar and a sacrifice on that
altar, and that sacrifice being burnt. There had to be a burnt
offering offered to God. Didn't matter what the reason
was for coming to God, whether you came to God in confession
of sin, whether you came to God to worship, whether you came
to God to thank Him, there had to be an altar. And there had
to be a sacrifice upon that altar. Because you see, even back in
those days, people knew God's justice had to be satisfied.
It can only be satisfied by blood. leading to death, which represented
the death of the Son of God, the Redeemer who would come into
the world. So from Adam to Moses, men, when they wanted to worship
God, thank God, confess their sins, they built an altar. Then, in the days of Moses, God
directed Moses up to a mountain, and God spoke to him face to
face. God said, I want you to build
me a tabernacle. And right at the very beginning
of that tabernacle, you make a brazen altar. An altar of sacrifice. Be right there at the front.
Be the biggest thing. It'll stand out from everything
else. You couldn't walk by the tabernacle
without noticing this great big, brazen altar, made of wood that
was imperishable. It was a shitton wood or a cashew
wood, we would call it, covered over with brass. The wood pictured
the nature of our Lord Jesus, real man, that couldn't be corrupted. Brass represented his deity. It can't be destroyed. No matter
how hot the fire got on top of that altar, it was never, it
couldn't melt, the heat would never melt the brass, couldn't
get to the wood. There's the wood overlaid with
brass. By the way, years later, We know
Solomon built his temple, and in that temple, there was also
a brazen altar, and it was much bigger, much bigger. This was a little smaller to
begin with, for the tabernacle in the days of the temple is
much bigger, but still, same principle, the same principle. One altar. One altar where they
went to worship God. As in the typical legal dispensation,
so it is now. So it is now. There's one altar
of sacrifice. One place where God meets man
and man meets God. Here in Hebrews chapter 13, we
read here in verse number 10, Now the writer of the book of
Hebrews has already cautioned the Hebrew people as well as
ourselves not to be carried about by all kinds of different doctrines
that he calls strange doctrines. Doctrines that are contrary to
the Word of God. He mentions, notice verse 9 again,
here in Hebrews 13. Be not carried away with divers
and strange doctrines, doctrines that are alien to the Word of
God, for it's a good thing that your heart be established with
grace. Don't be occupied with meats, which haven't profited
them that have been occupied therein." And when he talks about
meats, the Jews, they had their dietary laws. And here's what
he's saying, don't get sidetracked thinking that by observing dietary
restrictions that that's going to make you acceptable to God
or that's going to in any way profit you. It can't profit you
at all. And that kind of stands for anything
that you would endeavor to do to satisfy God or to make God
pleased with you. Or to think that God will give
you life. You know, you remember reading
the Scriptures, there's a repentance of dead works. Do you know what
dead works are? What is a dead work? It is any
work that you think will give you life. That's what a dead
work is. It's any work that you perform
thinking in some way, this will contribute to my everlasting
life. So it may be eating or not eating,
going by dietary laws, or any number of things where you restrict
yourself or you follow rules and regulations that men have
established and you think, this is going to contribute to my
everlasting life. And there are lots of people
who are occupied with those things. But notice what he says there
at the end of verse 9, that doesn't profit anybody. That doesn't
help you. We operate on a profit and loss. It's not going to be a profit
to you, it will be your loss. There are two things in the Scriptures
that we're warned about that they can't profit you spiritually
or eternally. First of all, the things of the
world. And so we read, what shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
If you got everything your heart desired, all the possessions,
material possessions that you think that you would love to
have, if you got them all, it won't profit you anything. Not
in the day of judgment. It might give you some temporary
happiness and joy, but it's not a joy that'll last forever. It's like I was talking to a
man one time, and he was saying, you know, when I get a million
dollars saved up in the bank, that's when I'm going to retire.
I'll be so happy. And I was talking with him some
time later. I said, have you reached your goal yet? He said,
yeah. I said, well, how come you're
still working? He said, I decided I wanted to
make it to two million. That doesn't profit you anything.
And yet people are occupied with them. They devote themselves
to material things. They can't help you. But there's
also something else that can't profit you. No matter how devoted
you are to it. That's a works-based religion.
And there are lots of people occupied with that. They're devoted
to their religion that is based upon them doing something in
addition to what God has done through Christ Jesus. And the
writer is very specific here. It has not profited them. It
won't profit you. It will be your loss. You must
not put anything in competition with the bloody sacrifice of
the Lord Jesus. And yet multitudes are occupied
with the labors of their own hands. And they think that this
will contribute to my well-being with God, that God sees my sincerity,
God sees my devotion, God sees my commitment, and therefore
God says, I'll take him to heaven when he dies. He's trying to
be a good person, and so I'll take him on to heaven. I'm not
going to profit you anything. Listen, there's only one with
whom God is well pleased, and that's His Son. That's Christ
Jesus. This is My beloved, beloved Son,
is what He said, in whom I'm well pleased. Now you hear Him.
But these other things, they can't profit you. They can't
profit you. That's what he says. Even though
you may be occupied with them, you may be devoted to them, you
may be committed to them. And you know people who are wrapped
up in false religion, sometimes it even seems like they're more
committed than we are. They're more dedicated. They're
doing something every night. They're going about the community.
They're occupied with this and occupied with that. And they're
always busy in their religion. And here's what he says, it won't
profit you anything. It won't do you any good. Actually,
it works against you. You see, salvation is by grace
through the Lord Jesus only. Only. Salvation by works. That's one
of those doctrines to be despised because it's in competition with
the Lord Jesus. These restrictions that men would
lay upon us, these laws that people would have us to live
by, they're deadly. They're deadly. Salvation is by grace only. Now we need to understand that
in the Old Testament, the entire system of worship that Jehovah
appointed for Israel was of a typical character. The reality and the
substance is Christ Jesus. It's like it says back in Hebrews
chapter 10, they were all shadows. And the one who cast the shadows
is the Son of God, Christ Himself. He's the fulfillment of all the
types and pictures of the Old Testament. The tabernacle, it
stands out in the Old Testament especially. Especially because
He's the one who tabernacled in the flesh. A tabernacle had
seven pieces of furniture. The tabernacle itself spoke of
our Savior. Every piece of furniture spoke
of our Savior and of the work that He would accomplish. All
the things that happened in the tabernacle, they all pointed
to Christ. He is the true brazen altar. He is the laver. He is the candlestick. He is the table of showbread.
He's the twelve loaves upon the table. He's the golden altar
of incense. He's the ark of the covenant.
And He's the mercy seat. And that brazen altar, as I've
already said, it was the very first thing an Israelite saw
when he came to the tabernacle. Of course, the eyes of an Israelite
could never view what was in the holy place, the holy place
and the holy of holies, but he would come to the tabernacle
door to offer his sacrifice morning and evening. Whenever he wanted
to worship God, whenever he wanted to confess his sins, Whenever
he wanted to approach God for thanksgiving or whatever the
reason, he'd come there to the door of the tabernacle to the
priest. And say, I want you to kill this animal for me and my
family. Because I understand we're a
sinful people. I'm such an awful wretch. And
ought to die. But I believe that God is satisfied
when an innocent victim dies in the stead of the guilty. Because
God is viewing, God is looking to His Son, the Lamb of God,
who's going to come. Who's going to come. And He's
going to put away the sins of His people. And therefore I bring
this Lamb, I bring this goat, I bring this bullock, I bring
these two turtle doves or pigeons, whatever it was, because that'd
be a clean animal. He brought it to the priest and
he said, kill this. And me and my wife and my children,
we're going to stand here and we want to watch as you put that
carcass after you kill it and catch its blood, we're going
to watch as you put that carcass up on top of that fire. And as
that goes up toward God, we'll bow our heads in worship and
we'll thank God for a substitute. We'll thank God for an innocent
victim that died in our stead. See, that's how they worship
God. That's how they approach God. Now listen, folks, there
wasn't anywhere else in all the world. Think about that. In all of the
world, there was nowhere else man could worship God except
at that brazen altar. That's the only place. In fact,
God said, that's where I'll meet with you, and that's where you
can meet with me. Well, but I think God's everywhere,
so I'll go approach Him somewhere else, and you'll die in your
sins too. See, that's just what it's all
about. It's drawing our attention down to a narrow way. to one
way of drawing near to God. We have an altar. That's what
he says. We have an altar. See, the Hebrew,
those who profess to believe Christ Jesus, they got to listening
to other voices, and other voices said, you know, we used to have
an altar. We'd go offer an animal to God. Well, these Christian people
out here, they don't even have an altar. You don't have an altar. And here comes the writer of
the Hebrews and he says, we do have an altar. And at that altar, those who
are occupied, now listen, those who are occupied with the salvation
by works, they have no right to eat from this altar. You see
the animals that were offered. on the brazen altar. Oftentimes,
the priest had a portion of it for food, a portion of it was
burnt for God, and then the offeror got a portion of it and they
could eat of it. It was only one time they couldn't
do that, it was on the Day of Atonement, when the bullock was
offered and a goat was offered. Remember the two goats and one
of them was for the Lord, one of them was a scapegoat. That
one that died, that goat that died and the bullock that died
for the iniquities of Aaron, They didn't eat that. They had to be carried outside
the city and burned. They burned the whole thing.
Burned the animal, burned the skin, burned the dung, burned
all of it. And whoever burned it all, he
couldn't even come back in until they took a bath. Because that
was considered offensive to God. But there was no approach in
God except at the brazen altar. Nowhere else. And I'm telling
you, you can't approach God anywhere else except in, through, and
by Christ Jesus. You're a fool if you try to come
out of the way. Actually, the brazen altar was
the very basis of their worship. You read in Leviticus the very
first chapter. It talks about the offerings.
It begins to talk about the offerings that the Israelites would bring
to worship God. If you had quite a bit of money,
bring a bullock. If you didn't have so much money,
just kind of middle class, bring a lamb or a goat. If you were
poor, bring a couple of pigeons or turtle doves. But it was always
at the same location. The altar. The altar. And the writer of the Hebrews
says, we do have an altar, but our altar is not dead. Our altar
is living. Now listen. I hear people today talk about
an altar. This is not an altar. It used
to be, and a lot of churches still do it, they speak of this
as an altar call. That's what the invitation system,
as Mr. Finney years ago came up with,
and others as well, it's an altar call. And so we get people to
come to the altar and pray through. Come down to the altar and make
your decision for Jesus. We don't have an altar in here.
A lot of people, they say this, you know at our house we have
family altar. You better not. You better not have family altar.
You better not have any place in your house where you say,
that's the altar to which we come. We have an altar. Now listen, He's in heaven. He's
Christ Jesus. He's the sacrifice offered to
God for our sins. Now watch this. He's the altar,
He's the priest, and He's the sacrifice. He's all three. We say, oh, I guess the cross
of Calvary, that was the altar. That wasn't the altar. That wasn't
the altar. He was offered upon the altar
of His own deity. And He is Himself the priest
who offered the sacrifice. And He is Himself the sacrifice. He's all three. He's the altar,
He's the priest, and He's the sacrifice. He offered Himself without spot
unto God, is what the Scripture says, to put away our sins. And all you've got to do is go
through the Old Testament and watch how prominent a position
the altar has. It just maintains a prominent
position. And everywhere the altar is mentioned
in the Old Testament, we think of Christ Jesus, the Lord. This is the acceptable sacrifice
to God. Notice what he says here in verse
11. For the bodies of those beasts
whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest
for sin, they're burned without the camp. Without the camp. Now verse 12. Wherefore Jesus
also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, you
know where he suffered? You know where he was crucified?
Without the camp, that is, outside of Jerusalem. And I'll go back and revisit
that day of atonement when I said the bullock and the goat, once
they were sacrificed to God, whatever was left from the fire
taken outside the camp and burned, Because that was a reproach to
God. It signified the sin, the iniquities
of God's people. And those were taken outside
the camp. They are offensive to God. Take
them outside the camp. Our Lord Jesus, here's a gospel
lesson now. Our Lord Jesus, bearing our sins
in His own body on the tree, He died outside the camp because
the sins that He bore by imputation, by God directly laying them upon
His head. That was a reproach against God. It deserved the wrath of God,
so our Lord Jesus, He had to suffer without the camp. Without
the camp. See, that's why He cried, My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? It's because the reproach
of our sins was upon Him. And the wrath of God had to fall
on Him, consuming Him. But wait! He wasn't consumed. You see, all of the other sacrifices,
they were always consumed. But the sacrifice to God of Christ
Jesus, He wasn't consumed by the fire. Rather, he consumed
the fire. He drank the cup of God's wrath
down to its last bitter dregs. And then when there was nothing
left, he said, it's finished. You see, there's our hope. There's
our peace. There's our salvation right there.
Christ has finished the work. He suffered without the gates.
Well that's where He is, so He says in verse 13, let us go forth
therefore unto Him without the camp bearing His reproach. I'm
not ashamed to bear His reproach, are you? I go outside the camp. What was Jerusalem? That was
the religious headquarters of the world. And they didn't want
Him. They despised Him. He was sacrificed
outside the camp. Let us go outside the camp. I'm
going to leave organized religion behind. Aren't you? I'm going
outside the camp because I want to be with Him. And it doesn't
matter if people, if the churches and religions and denominations
turn thumbs down on us. That's okay. They turn thumbs
down on Him. I'm going outside the camp to
Him. Because verse 14, we don't have
any continuing city here. No, we seek one to come. We know
that nothing down here is going to last forever. And we're not
seeking to be at peace with the world or at peace with the religions
of the world. But we understand this, look
at verse 15. By Him, therefore, Let us offer
the sacrifice of praise to God continually. You mean we offer
sacrifices? Oh yeah. And we offer them upon
an altar. But it's not an animal sacrifice
that we offer. It's our thanksgiving. It's our
worship. We offer the sacrifice of praise
to God continually. Continually. That is, the very
fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. Oh yes, we have
an altar. We have an altar. His name is
King Jesus. And we come unto God by Him.