“An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings” (Ex. 20:2424An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. (Exodus 20:24)). Whatever expresses acceptance on the part of God, as the burnt offering, or communion between the worshipper, God and the priest who offers it, as in the peace offering, is connected with the altar of earth, for it was on earth that “Christ gave Himself an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.” And on earth He made peace through the blood of the cross and came and preached peace to those that were afar off and to them that were nigh.
It is in the excellency of the Lord Jesus Christ in His person and accomplished work, as accepted of God, that we find the elements and grounds of worship. It is for the soul to be occupied with these in the presence of God, in the expression of wonder, gratitude, joy, thanksgiving, delight, anticipation, hope and desire, in order to present true and acceptable worship. The altar of earth is surely found in the cross, the symbol of which Christ has ordained and that it should constantly be brought before us when we gather together in His name. And so exactly answering to the declaration here, ‘’In all places where I record My name,” is the promise of the Lord, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.”
No Hewn Stones
But in connection with this worship of the altar of earth two things, expression of man’s work and man’s order, are forbidden. “If thou wilt make Me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto Mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.”
Nothing can be more important than for our souls to bear in mind that in worship we have nothing to bring to God — nothing to work out by way of effort — and nothing by way of external form or by an effort of internal feeling to raise ourselves up to God. He meets us at the altar of earth. God comes to us where we are. It is to have our souls filled with the sense of what His grace has done and how He has come down to meet us where we are and to be occupied with the sweet savor of Christ, “who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God,” for worship is the reflex of this, the heart expressing its delight and satisfaction, its adoration and praise for what Christ is for us as this blessed provision of God.
No Ascending by Steps
Now it may very well be that where human works are rejected and human order in worship is avoided, there is still the presence of the two things, in a more subtle form, that are here forbidden. The ritual acts of bowing, crossing yourself, sprinkling holy water, and the attitudes and order of ordained ritual may be refused, while, at the same time, there may be an attempt to raise the feelings in order to come to God by some mental process, which are altogether different from the occupation of the heart in God’s presence with what Christ is and what He has accomplished. Or, it may be thought that most of the saints are so occupied in the world during the week that it is necessary to act on their feelings when they come together, in order to produce in them a better tone of worship on the Lord’s Day. But this is a wrong assumption. A life of the well educated is not necessarily a life of greater spirituality than those not having it. Where the Lord is owned as ordering our circumstances and is acknowledged in the daily walk of life, the heart, when brought into His presence, will naturally respond to the exhibitions which He gives of His grace when we meet to worship in His name. Moreover, worship, if true, is that of the assembly, and not the effort of an individual to act on the minds and feelings of the saints, in order to bring them up to his sense of the appropriate tone of worship.
In the first place the very constitution of the assembly, as composed of the children of God, is that they are able to worship, for “the Father seeketh such to worship Him.” Another thing is that, being possessed of a nature in common that can delight in God, it is the proper and spontaneous action of that nature to worship, when brought into His presence. Besides this, believers being partakers of the Holy Spirit, each member, in his measure, is made responsible for the worship of the assembly. Worship is for spiritual persons who are led by the Spirit. To lower the character of communion in order to meet the assumed unspiritual condition of some who may be supposed to be present is emphatically to make steps up to the altar. Rather let spiritual worship proceed, and if there be souls that cannot join in it, let them judge their condition in the Lord’s presence on account of it.
Girdle of Truth, 8:373