We Have An Altar

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Altar Calls and the Meaning of Hebrews 13:10

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Real time, June 4th, 151 p .m. We�re talking today about altar calls. I talked a little bit last time about altar calls, and now we move forward to another altar call, NOCO Radio.

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Maybe I�d be the only one who attended. Here is the passage for today. Hebrews 13 .10, �We have an altar, from whose those who serve the tent have no right to eat. We have an altar. What is going on with �we have an altar.

Now, we have been taught, just like I taught you on the last show, that there�s not a biblical precedent for altar calls, calling people up to the front of the church at the end of a service. I�m going to go on.

Or the equivalent of raising hands, calling on people to raise hands at the end of the sermon. Every eye closed, every head bowed. Do you do it the other way around? Do you bow your head and then close your eyes?

Or what if you close your eyes and then bow your head? I think the way it�s supposed to be done is you, every head bowed, first you bow your head, then you close your eyes. I think the other way might actually be more beneficial to those that have vertigo.

Close your eyes, bow your head. Now, try it. I dare you to try it unless you�re driving. Every eye closed, every head bowed. That does not work so well. That�s bad. That is so bad. Here�s this passage in 13 .10 that talks about an altar.

And the fascinating thing is, if you remember to whom this letter is addressed, to whom it is being preached to, technically, that will help you. You can imagine that the people are saying, �Hey, you Jewish Christians, you�ve left Judaism and you don�t have an altar, do you?

Where�s your altar for sacrifice? There�s got to be sacrifice for remission of sins. Wages of sin is death. There has to be a sacrifice instead of. You don�t have an altar. You don�t have anything. You have no altar.

You got nothing. And so, the writer says to these beleaguered Christians and adherents and false believers, too, there were some of those around, but to the believers he says, �We have an altar, present tense.

We have an altar. Isn�t that fascinating So, today on No Compromise Radio, I want to talk a little bit about the altar that you, Christian, have. You have an altar. So, what we�re going to do is I�m going to tie in to the last passage because you�ll see how important it is for the flow and for the context.

So, he, the writer, has been telling us about the greatness of Jesus and you have a sin problem. There�s a sin answer through a priest, but this priest doesn�t come from the line of Levi. He comes from another line of Melchizedek, and he is both the offerer and the offered and the one who makes intercession.

Like all good priests, they mainly offer sacrifices and intercede, and this particular priest has one up on all of them. That�s why he�s the great high priest, the Lord Jesus. He is the offerer, the offered, and the prayer.

I don�t know why I�m yawning, but I guess I�m tired, tired of all this rioting and stuff. I want to do some social justice stuff, but I�m just not quite, and I�m just bugged about it for the moment. 1310, we have an altar, but how did he get to 1310?

Well, he�s been given these commands in chapter 13, brotherly love, hospitality, prisoners, marriage bed, be content, and then he says in verse 7, �Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.

So, there are leaders that maybe have been martyred, and you need to remember that they have been faithful to the end, and more in particular, it says imitate their faith. They trusted Jesus to the end.

It�s not even about their faithfulness, it�s about their faith. They kept believing in spite of. They kept trusting no matter what, no matter what the circumstances were they were trusting in this high priest.

And so, you should remember that so you can imitate that trust, that belief, that reliance. And then you say to yourself, well, there are some leaders who are less than perfect. As a matter of fact, there are some leaders that have died.

If you want me to remember leaders, which leaders shall I remember? I don�t really have any good ones around now. He says in verse 8, �Jesus Christ is the same yesterday. The Jesus that you read about in the Gospels, He�s the same, this God-man, Jesus, human, Christ, divine.

This God-man, truly God, truly man, perfectly God, perfectly man, the same yesterday. The Jesus you read about the Gospels, He has the same temperament, that is, He has not changed in terms of His love for sinners and His power and His immutability.

Same today, right now, He�s making prayers for us, Hebrews 7 .25, that�s today. And then forever this mediatorial work that He will for always embody goes on forever. Then it says, because you can imagine if Jesus doesn�t change and you stand before God based on Jesus�s law-keeping and how the penalty for your sin has been paid for, �Don�t be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods which have not benefitted those devoted to them.

That is to say, when you�re thinking about Jesus, make sure you think about all these food laws properly, because you�ve probably been influenced by some of these Jewish rules, probably some of them made up, like equivalent to our modern-day kosher stuff.

There was extra rules given by Pharisees, like kosher laws. But there are some Mosaic laws that were a good given by God. We now have those things are fulfilled in Christ Jesus, and we�re not under those food laws.

Jesus has fulfilled all that, and everything pointed to Him, and He�s here. Therefore, don�t go back to think, you know what, the way I stand before God on a spiritual level is based on what I eat or what I don�t eat.

And if you listen to my sermon from last Sunday, May 31st, 2020, maybe you want to pull that up, you would realize that there are some people that buy into the Weigh Down Diet, or the Maker�s Diet, or Ezekiel 4 .9 bread, and they think that�s somehow spiritual.

If I don�t eat an animal, somehow it�s more spiritual. By the way, if you do want soy or tofu or something, other vegetables, you�re going to have to kill a lot of animals to keep them off the property while those green plants grow.

So, in other words, that is to say, you catch my drift. Jesus is the same. You stand before God based on His immutable life, His substituent death, His resurrection is telling us that�s all true. Therefore, you don�t have to say, you know what, I�m closer to God if I eat this food or don�t eat that food.

Side note, for those of you that basically think about food as a religion, notice the text here, �devoted to them. I know some people that are devoted to their food, and they treat it like a religion.

I know food takes time. There�s shopping, there�s planning, there�s lists, there�s cooking, there�s clean-up, there�s set-up. There�s a lot of time given to that. But it can become a devotion. It can become haves and have-nots since there are macros and micros and vegans and people that only eat fish or people that don�t eat this or that or the other and paleo and keto and zone and high-protein and everything else.

You do whatever you want. Of course, if it�s a health issue, then you eat food according to that. But it has nothing to do with the spiritual aspect. I�m not talking about if you overeat and it�s gluttony.

I�m not talking about that part. I�m talking about here. Just remember, eat fish on Friday, don�t eat fish on Friday. It doesn�t matter. It�s not more spiritual. God has not said any of that. And you just go back to the unchangeable, immutable, eternal nature of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And you will realize, while you can eat what you like and like what you eat, just because some people eat pork and others don�t, it�s not a spiritual issue. So don�t jam your alleged spiritual food issues down the throats of other people.

It is much easier to say you eat certain foods and that everything is copacetic with God because how about deny yourself and love your wife like Christ loved the church or submit to your husband. That�s a lot harder.

But it�s easier if you say, you know what, I just don�t eat meat, therefore somehow I�m more spiritual. If you can�t think about eating meat without thinking about the cow eyes and all this other stuff and their long eyelashes and everything else, it�s just not a spiritual issue.

God gave us food to eat. And if you don�t kill it and clean it, somebody else will, and therefore you just might as well enjoy food. Well, what�s the tie-in? What is the tie-in? The tie-in is simply this.

He�s talking about food. And the priests sometimes eat food from an altar and there�s a lot of sacrifice when it comes to food. And my guess is, he knows that when he talks about food, there are going to be priests, there are going to be believers in old covenant Judaism that�s persecuting Christians right now in the book of Hebrews.

And they�re going to say, �Nanny, nanny, you don�t have an altar. There�s no place for you to do sacrifices. Priests can�t eat from an altar all the time. You can see different things in the Day of Atonement and when can they eat some of the sacrifice, when can they not?

But sometimes when you�re thinking about this whole eating thing in this context, they would be thinking about an altar. And so the writer says, �You have an altar. We have an altar. And it says in verses 10 -14, �Don�t let people make you think just because you�re a Christian there�s not an altar.

Now, I know what you�re saying. What do you mean, �altar What kind of altar is there? I thought it was slain once, chapter 9, slain once, chapter 10, over and over and over, beating that drum of once for all delivered.

We have an altar. But it�s not real food on the altar. It�s not a real altar. It�s what? It�s spiritual. There�s real food, true food, but you feed on this true food by faith alone in Jesus. If you want grace, it doesn�t come from food.

It comes from the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, His sacrificial life and His sacrificial death. It comes from spiritual food. You can sit down and receive and eat, as it were, spiritual blessings. You have an altar.

Do you want true food, dear believer, in Jesus Christ? It�s not physical. It�s feeding upon Jesus Christ crucified for you by faith alone. This is spiritual language. This is figurative language. This is a metonymy.

A metonym. That�s what it is. A metonymy. This is a figure of speech. We use one word for another, something related to it. Does it not remind you of Jesus� words in John chapter 6? �Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him, as the Living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father.

So whoever feeds on Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread that the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. That is John chapter 6, verses 53 -58.

He�s not talking about literally eating, cannibalism. He�s not talking about even the Lord�s Supper there, because that�s not until later. This is John 6. The Lord�s Supper institution is much later in the Gospel of John.

Sacrifice was on an altar. This is a figure of speech, and this figure of speech means you have an altar, but it�s not a real visible altar. He�s talking about the sacrifice of Jesus. By faith, you have Him.

He has you. Now, some Old Testament sacrifices, you could give the meat afterward for the priest to eat, Leviticus 19. �When you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted.

It shall be eaten the same day you offer it, and on the day after, and anything left over until the third day shall be burned up with fire. You can just imagine, if you�re thinking about food and being strengthened with food, there was a word association with �altar� and �food.

Therefore, when you read the Old Testament and you read things like Leviticus 22, verses 29 and 30, �When you sacrifice a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord, you shall sacrifice it so that you may be accepted.

It shall be eaten on the same day you shall leave none of it until morning. I am the Lord. When you see this in 1310, don�t think literal �altar. Think figurative �altar. The cross is the altar.

That�s how you could think about it. Instead of the altar called, the altar cross. Jesus offers himself in love, obedience to the Father, in love of the Father, and for love of sinners. He offers himself as a sacrifice once and for all.

We have an altar, and that altar for the Christian is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is spiritual language. This is figurative language. You have a great high priest, chapter 4, chapter 8. You have hope as an anchor for the soul, chapter 6.

You have confidence to enter the most holy place, chapter 10. And you have an altar. Maybe you could think of it as theological shorthand where sacrifice was made. Where was the sacrifice for sinners ultimately made?

There you have the answer. You have the answer. Where was the sacrifice for sinners ultimately made? It was at the cross, of course. If you want to think about the altar, as you read about the altar in the Old Testament, you should be thinking about types and shadows and what that was ultimately pointing to.

You want to talk about Christ-centered preaching when you�re in the Old Testament and you�re dealing with altars? Guess what you ought to be talking about, right? That�s exactly right. And on the Day of Atonement, the priest didn�t have a right to eat any of the sacrifices offered on that day.

But guess what? It�s not Day of Atonement anymore, because the Day of Atonement was ultimately when Jesus died on the cross, and so now you get to eat. It says we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.

There were certain things that they couldn�t eat on the Day of Atonement from that altar. But do you get to eat, slash believe, any day of the week, all the time? The answer is, of course, yes. You compare the Day of Atonement to Jesus, and the Day of Atonement is much better or worse, more important, less important than the cross of Christ.

See where this is going? What a great shadow, a foreshadow, a picture. The Day of Atonement has been eclipsed by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. Christian, you have an altar. It was the sacrifice of Jesus.

It has nothing to do with reslaying the sacrifice of Jesus in the Mass on Sunday at the Catholic Church or any other day, for that matter. You have an altar. That means, if you aren�t a Christian, there�s no altar.

There�s no sacrifice for sins. No matter what you think, it�s not going to work out. In this particular context, if you�re going to hang in there with Judaism while Jesus had already come, and yet you�re going to insist that you remain underneath the Old Covenant, no sacrifice.

Everything that you do isn�t going to help you on your real altar. You have no right to eat from the altar that the sacrifice of Jesus obtained because you�re not trusting in Him. You�re not eating in Him by faith spiritually with this figurative language.

Verse 11 of Hebrews 13, �For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. So now the writer of Hebrews is going to lead us someplace.

What he�s going to do is he�s going to lead us from the sacrifice of Jesus to go outside the camp because that�s where the sacrifice was. Here�s what he�s going to end up doing. He�s going to say, �You know what?

It�s worth the suffering because Jesus was outside the camp. He bore the reproach. Therefore, let us go outside the camp and bear the reproach He endured. We don�t have a city that here lasts forever.

It�s an eternal city, so let�s not be afraid of suffering along with the people of God because this is where Jesus suffered for the people of God. They executed Him outside of the city. He despised the shame, Hebrews chapter 12.

And if He despised the shame, you ought to despise the shame as well. It says in verse 12, �He suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify or to set apart the people through His own blood, that is, His vicious death.

Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp and bear the reproach He endured. He, Jesus, paid for all our sins outside the camp. That�s where the altar really was. It wasn�t even in the temple, right?

There might have been altars in the temple, but there�s the real altar here. And so Jesus makes you holy, that is positionally, and now practically by the Holy Spirit. Sin is dealt with, and you ought to be thinking to yourself, �When you go outside the camp, it means you�re accursed.

And Jesus was accursed outside the camp, cursed anybody who hangs on a tree, Deuteronomy and Galatians 3. And therefore, should I be associated with that? Yes, I can be associated with that. And I can go outside where the sin offering ultimately was accomplished.

And therefore, don�t run from this persecution back to Judaism. Run to the sacrifice, to the altar during this persecution. Remember Moses in chapter 11, verse 26, �regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.

Jesus, humiliated, dies outside the precincts, and therefore remain within the camp of Jesus. Don�t stick around with Judaism or any other works righteousness system. It�s not going to work. Jesus is crucified at Golgotha, therefore, Christian, you ought to suffer as well.

And you can read 1 Peter 4, verses 12 -19. Make sure that you rejoice insofar as you share Christ�s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rest upon you.

But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. So that�s our calling, Christian.

You have an altar. Isn�t that fun? What a fun lesson. My name is Mike Gabendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. You can write to me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Maybe you want to give us a good rating, that would be helpful.

Tell your millionaire friends to listen to this show and I think that�s all I�ve got. Israel next year, 2021, 11 spots open. Don�t forget, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.