Passage: Exodus 27:1-8

The Big Idea

The first thing a worshiper saw inside the tabernacle court was a great bronze altar, “the killing place.” There, the fire of God’s judgment fell on an innocent animal so the guilty person could go free and enjoy fellowship with God. The altar pictures the cross. Jesus is both the sacrifice and the altar. Like the bronze serpent lifted on a pole, He became sin and a curse for us. It wasn’t nails that held Him there; it was love. We come to this altar by faith, not by works, and there we’re healed.

What Does God Hate?

Paul says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).

God is love. Perfect love. The fire and intensity of His love can’t be measured or imagined.

But that also means God hates sin. To love perfectly, you must hate whatever harms or defiles what you love. Not a selfish, out-of-control anger, but a perfect, holy hatred of evil.

The intensity of God’s love for what’s pure and right is matched only by His hatred of what’s wrong.
It’s not popular to talk about God’s hatred of sin. But really, it’s what we want. Imagine a God who might accept evil, or do evil Himself. We’d never sleep at night for fear He might turn on us at any moment.
We have to talk about it and understand it, because we’ll never grasp His love if we don’t grasp His wrath against sin in equal measure!

Paul warns that hard, unrepentant hearts are storing up wrath for the day when God’s righteous judgment is revealed. God will give to each person according to what they have done (there are those wages): eternal life to those who persistently do good, and wrath and anguish for everyone who does evil, Jew and Gentile alike (Romans 2:5-9).

But we’ve all done evil. No one does good consistently. No one measures up to this standard (Romans 3:10-12).
If our performance were the only option, every one of us would be lost.

Our performance will be judged, and every single person has failed. Even our best works are like filthy rags next to God’s perfect standard (Isaiah 64:6).

God’s wrath against sin always ends in death. There’s no escape. He will find it, judge it and destroy it.

Yet God was designing a way for sinners to be accepted and forgiven. And He placed a big bronze altar as the very first thing you’d see when you entered the place of relationship with Him.

The Killing Place

The Hebrew word for altar comes from the word for slaughter. It’s “the killing place.”

It’s where judgment takes place: where the fire of God’s wrath was poured out on an innocent animal, so the guilty person could go free and even enjoy communion with God.

The Design (Exodus 27:1-8)

God told Moses to make an altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five wide, square, and three cubits high, with horns on its four corners of one piece with it, all overlaid with bronze. Its pots, shovels, basins, forks and firepans were all bronze. A bronze grate of network went inside, halfway up, with rings at the corners for bronze-covered poles to carry it. It was hollow, made of boards, built just as God had shown Moses on the mountain.

Who do you think the bronze altar represents? Jesus.

Bronze: Judgment

Throughout Scripture, bronze is linked with judgment and the penalty for sin.

So we see Jesus taking our judgment and death. He is both the sacrifice and the altar:

Sacrifice: Jesus is the innocent life killed so the guilty can go free and be forgiven.
Altar: just as God’s fire burned in this altar, Jesus endured the fire of God’s wrath against sin in His very soul.

Is that consistent with the rest of Scripture? Yes.

The Bronze Serpent (Numbers 21)

The people sinned. They complained against God and rebelled against His rule in their lives.
That’s the heart of all sin: “I don’t want God to be my boss. I don’t need Him.”
So God sent venomous snakes, and many died.
Not because He is mean, but to show them the consequence of rebellion against the God of life. You can’t escape it. Sin brings death.
The people cried out for forgiveness and healing.
God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it high on a pole. Anyone who was bitten and looked at it would live (Numbers 21:9).

This is Jesus! He said so Himself: as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life (John 3:14-15).

But snakes represent sin. How can that be?
Jesus took the judgment we deserved by being made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).
He took the place of the serpent we deserved. He was nailed to a tree as the object of God’s judgment on sin, the very thing God hates.

Wait. Are we sure Jesus bore all of God’s wrath against sin?

Paul says Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, since Scripture says everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed (Galatians 3:13).

The bronze serpent hung on a wooden pole.
Jesus hung on a wooden cross.
Jesus was judged for our sin. God’s perfect hatred of sin was poured out on His beautiful, obedient Son.

That’s what the altar teaches. Every Israelite under the old covenant who wanted to know God had to deal with the altar first. The sacrifice was required. The blood had to be shed.

Under the New Covenant, we have an altar too: the cross.

Anyone who wants to know God must come first to the cross.
What do we see when we approach this altar?
At the altar, God shows us how things really are.

Bound by Love

The psalmist says the LORD is God and He has given us light; bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar (Psalm 118:27).

Horns symbolize strength. Why did the altar need them? The sacrifice was tied to the horns as the innocent animal was offered.

It wasn’t nails or ropes that held Jesus to the cross. It was love.

His enemies dared Him to come down. But the cords of love bound Him to the altar!
The strength that held Jesus there was His love for His Father and His love for us.
God’s hatred of sin reveals His love for you!
Peter says Jesus Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24).
When we come to this altar by faith, we’re healed of the rebellious heart we were infected with.
His grace heals and changes us. His grace alone, through this gospel alone! If we could change ourselves, why would Jesus need to be sacrificed?

The Altar Every Day

What do we do at this altar every day?

We share in His sacrifice. That’s how sanctification works.

Paul says he has been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer he who lives, but Christ who lives in him, and the life he now lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him (Galatians 2:20).
He refuses to boast in anything except the cross of Jesus, through which the world has been crucified to him and he to the world (Galatians 6:14).
We join Jesus on the cross. Not physically, but spiritually.
Not by our works, climbing up on it ourselves, but by faith, believing in the work Jesus did for us.
That’s how we come to the altar: in faith!

Don’t Grow Calloused

Maybe you’ve heard all this before. Maybe you’ve grown calloused, used to hearing about Jesus all the time.

Let’s see the seriousness of it again. Sometimes we sterilize Jesus, the cross and the sacrifice. We don’t like bloody things. We recoil at how graphic the story is. But can we really know Jesus if we won’t look at the Lamb who was slain for our sins? If we won’t look at the bronze serpent, or the sacrifice on the bronze altar?

Have you ever seen the true nature of your own sin? Isaiah did (Isaiah 5-6).

He had just pronounced six woes on the people around him. But when he saw the holiness of God, his response changed: “Woe is me!”

Then a seraph took a live coal from the altar and touched Isaiah’s lips. It hurt. But it cleansed him (Isaiah 6:6-7).
The sacrifice had already been burned. All that remained was the coal from its fire. Isaiah simply needed to be touched by it.

Grace Takeaway

God’s hatred of sin is real, and every one of us has earned its wages. But at the entrance to His presence, God placed an altar, and on that altar He placed His own Son. Jesus became the bronze serpent, the curse, the sacrifice consumed by the fire of judgment, held there not by nails but by love. You don’t climb onto the altar by your own effort. You look to Him and live. Let the coal from His finished sacrifice touch you today, and be clean.

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The Bronze Altar: Where Judgment Meets Love