A New Altar

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

 The altar in the Old Testament sacrifice held the body and blood of an animal.  After the sacrifice, the priests were permitted to eat what was left.  They consumed the sacrifice and it was a holy thing.

The cross was another altar and upon it was the body and blood of Jesus.  Walking away from the old sacrificial system, a new dispensation was born.  A new kingdom of priests is permitted to partake of Christ and it is also a holy thing.

We are now the priests. 

You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I Peters 2:5

Jesus is the Lamb to be consumed. 

For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.  John 6:55-56

It is so peculiar to anyone not in God’s family.  But to any of us who are trembling at the implications of this, and to any of us who have consumed Living Bread, we know the effect on our very being. You and I can do something today that no one in the Old Testament could have imagined in their wildest dreams.  We can, as priests, go into the holy of holies and partake of Living Bread.

If I could time travel and live in the time of Aaron, and then experience what it was like to live under ceremonial law, how burdensome it would seem.  I would be the only one alive who would know Jesus intimately.  I would be the only one who would have experienced eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood.  I would know the real Lamb of God.  I would want to tell them what was coming and what it would be like to no longer have to travel to the temple to be near the holy of holies.  The possibility of the holy of holies dwelling inside each believer would have shocked and stunned them.   And for this privilege ~ they would only have to look to Jesus as their Lamb ~ and live.

Thank you for the new and better way.  I am alive to be Your temple.  You are my continual spiritual sustenance.  Amen