Hebrews Chapter Thirteen, Pilfering From The Altar

 

Hebrews 13:10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

 

The writer reverts to the first person plural pronoun beginning this verse, addressing the Christian’s access to the altar of sacrifice. He says that those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat at it. Why? In the OT the altar was the place where the penitent took their sacrifice to the priest, who would then offer it on the altar to the Lord.

But Hebrews chapter 7 mad it abundantly clear that Jesus is the only High Priest fit to make an offering to God, and that He did, not on earth, because He was not from the tribe of Levi, but in Heaven. He offered His own blood once for all to settle the issue of sin, so that mankind could be freed from its power, and the power of Satan, who wielded death like a terrorist’s tool to hold mankind in a state of dreadful fear, Hebrews 2:14, 15.

 

True, the saints of the church era are priests to God and will serve before Him, Revelation 1:6, 5:10, 20:6. Furthermore, we know from the final chapters of the prophet Ezekiel that the temple will be rebuilt and utilized during the thousand years of Christ’s reign. Lambs will once again be offered on the Jewish altar. But why? As the Lord’s Supper is a memorial of His triumphant death on the cross for our sins, so too will the offering of the lamb serve as a reminder of what Jesus has done for His people as the Jewish Messiah, finally recognized nationally for who He has always been. So the offerings will have nothing to do with atoning for one’s sins, but to remind the Jewish people of what their God has done for them night and day for one thousand years. We know this offering is not meant to atone, neither is it meritorious but celebrated as a memorial because the prophet Isaiah, foreseeing the thousand year reign, writes of it, “He who kills a bull is as if he slays a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, as if he breaks a dog’s neck; he who offers a grain offering, as if he offers swine’s blood; he who burns incense, as if he blesses an idol,” Isaiah 66:3.

 

Once again Levi will officiate at the altar, and through Levi the Jews may offer sacrifice of praise to the Lord when the final earthly temple is erected, Ezekiel 40:45, 46. There will be an earthly priesthood reinstated after the Great Tribulation, when Jesus our Lord descends in glory to deliver Israel from the army of the Antichrist. But this ministry is not ours. The Christian has no right to eat from the altar we serve. Christ ate, so to speak, by becoming sin for us and dying in our place. He took our sin, indeed was crowned with it and died to save us. The work of the altar was done by our High Priest so we do not possess the right to pilfer from the offerings; they were not offered by us, but for us. The penitent doesn’t eat his own offering.

 

Looking back to Exodus, the Lord explains to Moses that eating the flesh of the atonement was for the officiating priesthood. “Then Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram…they shall eat those things with which the atonement was made, to consecrate and to sanctify them,” Exodus 29:32, 33. Verse 33 concludes with, “but an outsider shall not eat them, because they are holy.” Hebrews goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus is our officiating priest; therefore only our Lord may eat of the altar, which is the fruit of His own labor, after all, Isaiah 53:11.

 

The Greek term for, “right,” in this verse is, “exousia.” It means, “ability, privilege or freedom.” It is variously translated in Scripture as, “power 69x, authority 29x, right 2x, liberty, jurisdiction, strength 1x.” The work was all of God. Hebrews 9:14 clarified that this transaction took place entirely within the Godhead, as Jesus offered His blood as a meritorious sacrifice through the Holy Spirit to the Father. He was both sacrifice and High Priest. Like Isaac, Jesus surrendered His life to the Father’s will, entrusting that He would be raised from the dead, which He was to the glory of God and the salvation of man.

 

This verse leads on from verse 9, where we learn about the foods some men obsess over, known more clearly as various and strange doctrines, clearly contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The author wants the believer’s heart to be established by faith in the gospel message, which focuses solely on Jesus. The various doctrines mentioned clearly do not focus solely on Jesus or they would not diverge and become what the writer described as strange. They are undoubtedly strange to him because they sprung from within confessing Christianity, but they oppose the singular message of Christ crucified that the unified church was meant to preach. This was the exclusivity of the message: there was one Savior by whom we must be saved, or the unrepentant sinner is destined to eternal separation from the God whose love compelled Him to die for them. God has already sacrificed the Lamb on our behalf, but He will not sully His own holiness by pardoning sin without punishing the crime, as it were.

 

The divergent messages led erring Christians away from what Paul referred to as the simplicity that was in Christ, 2 Corinthians 11:3. The verse relates, “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” The corruption that Satan’s deception heralded was that man could achieve godhood apart from God’s superintendence. God alone could (and does) make men righteous. Satan presented religion as a valid alternative, and it would seem that Eve succumbed to this deception. The writer worried that the Hebrew Christians were being tempted by orthodox Judaism and aberrant sects (cults) within Christianity that already corrupted the gospel with works. He warned that we have no right, no authority or power, to eat from the altar of our salvation. Anyone who says otherwise is a deceiver and by the Holy Spirit’s own warning, accursed of God, Galatians 1:8.