PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 311: Altar Building, Part 4
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 311
: Altar Building, Part 4
How do you worship at your family altar? This time of meeting with God is also for the cleansing of our hearts. It's such an important part of every day.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! We are continuing our series of “Altar Building.” Do you remember that we have got 25 points to look at about altar building? There is so much in the Word of God.
We’re up to No. 9 today.
No. 9. WE BUILD A FAMILY ALTAR TO WORSHIP THE LORD
We have been discovering that we do three things when we come to meet the Lord as a family. We read the Word, and we pray and cry out to the Lord. Thirdly, we worship the Lord. That’s what they used to do when they were doing the sacrifices back in the Old Testament. The people, Levites usually, and others joining with them, would worship the Lord as they, the priests, were doing the sacrifices.
In 2 Chronicles 7, we see another beautiful example. This was when Solomon was dedicating the temple. It says in verse one: “Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD filled the house.”
That same thing happened back when they dedicated the tabernacle in the wilderness. And God came and lit that sacrifice with a supernatural fire. The same thing happened here. This was a fire that God lit. But He wanted, of course, His priests to continue to keep it going.
It goes on in verse 3, “And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the LORD upon the house, they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshipped, and praised the LORD, saying, For He is good; for His mercy endureth forever.”
Verse 4, and they continued to offer sacrifices. Verse 5 tells us how many sacrifices that Solomon made. I don’t know whether you can hardly believe it! It says “And king Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen.” How long did that take? Goodness me. And then, “an hundred and twenty thousand sheep: so the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. And the priests waited on their offices: the Levites also with instruments of music of the LORD, which David the king had made to praise the LORD, because his mercy endureth forever.” They even blew the trumpets.
I think it is a wonderful thing to worship the Lord as a family when we come together. Some of you may be more musical families than others. If your children play musical instruments, well, this may be a time when they would love to get them out. Get out their guitars and whatever, and play along.
Maybe you don’t have musical instruments. You can get one of these, what do you call them? Those amplifying things. You can find the song you want to sing on your iPhone. Then you can amplify it and sing along with it. You can do whatever is the easiest in your family.
We just do a Capello in our home, but that’s easy, because Colin leads us. My husband loves to sing and he sings in perfect pitch. He leads us, so it’s wonderful. But if Colin is not here, and I’m having to take it in his place, I will usually say, “OK folks, I think we’ll forget the singing.” Because if I lead everybody, I’ll lead them all in the wrong tune and out of tune. It will be impossible! But we can do great a Capello with Colin.
We usually sing the hymns at our family devotions. In our worship services, we sing the beautiful current worship songs. They’re really such a beautiful anointing of worship. But I’m one of those who is a great believer in that which is not only new but that which is old. I believe that we should have them both.
I love that Scripture in Matthew 13:52. It’s a parable Jesus gave. “Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” I love that principle of having the new and the old.
There are some people who only know the new. I notice many young people today don’t even know any hymns. They are familiar with all the current worship songs. They have the new but they don’t have the old. Then there are some folks who keep to the old. They never embrace the new. They sing the hymns. Or there are some who only sing the Psalms.
I remember one time Colin and I were ministering in Ireland. We were speaking at this meeting. There were a few families who came who only believed in singing the Psalms. At this gathering, they were singing hymns. These people would not even open their mouths because they wouldn’t sing the hymns. They were still back on the old Psalms.
Well, the Psalms are wonderful to sing, of course. So are the hymns. I love the grand hymns of the faith. They are filled with such doctrine. I think our children and our teens miss out when they don’t learn the hymns. So, I think it’s a great thing to embrace both the new and the old. Don’t you? Maybe you’d like to sing the hymns at your family devotions, or whatever you like, of course.
I have a little table beside our big dining room table. There I have all our prayers boxes, and also our hymn books, so that they are ready for us to choose a hymn when we sing. We do enjoy that with all our hearts.
There are so many wonderful hymns that sing about the blood of Jesus. I find that, although the worship songs, many of them are so anointed, there are not so many that sing about the blood which is a central theme of the Word of God. It’s great for our children to know some of these great hymns of the faith, and that they sing and honor the blood of Jesus. Anyone out there saying “Amen”? I hope so. Well, do sing something, however you like to do it, OK?
No. 10. WE MAKE AN ALTAR MORNING AND EVENING
This point is, we are to come before the Lord morning and evening. This is the principle that God gave, right back there in the tabernacle, which was an incredible . . . The whole way God planned the tabernacle is such a revelation of our salvation and our walk with God. It is so wonderful to understand it. Sadly, many don’t today. In fact, I have written here in the front of my Bible, my current Bible . . . No, I didn’t. I wrote it in my journal, and I haven’t got my journal with me, so I’ll have to tell you about that next time (I’ll write it at the end of this transcript).
I shared this with you before, so I won’t go into it too deeply, but I want to just give you again the references so that you’ll know I’m not making up something. No, every point I’m giving you lovely ladies is written in the Word. It’s here for our learning.
As the Scripture says in Romans 15:4: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” When we come into the tabernacle, the first thing we see is the brass altar where they did the sacrifices. We read in Leviticus 6 that God specified very clearly that He wanted them to keep this fire upon the altar going. The only way they could do it was to keep it going every morning and every evening.
Leviticus 6:9: “Command Aaron and his sons, saying, This is the law of the burnt offering: It is the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it.”
Verse 12: “It shall not be put out.”
Verse 13: “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar. It shall never go out.”
God wanted this to be a continual burning, never ever to go out, so He tells them the way to do it. He says, “I want you to go in every morning and take out the ashes. Then I want you to put on the wood to keep that fire burning. You’ve got to fuel it, to keep it burning. But it’s not enough, once a day. You’ve got to come back in the evening to you keep it going.”
So, God knows that we also, we also need morning and evening. You know, we can start the day, and we feel so great. We’re starting the day with God. We’re fresh. We’re coming into His presence and hearing the Word, praying, worshipping.
Oh goodness me. But then the day starts rolling and sadly we don’t have perfect children, do we? Darling mothers, sometimes they’re driving us crazy. They’re bouncing off the walls and they’re getting upset with one another. They’re fighting, and this is happening. Oh goodness me! And you are just starting to shout and yell and everything is going awry. You no longer feel very holy.
Oh, isn’t it amazing? It’s so easy to feel so holy and have such a beautiful time with the Lord, especially in your own personal altar, in your time with the Lord. It’s all so wonderful! But then, when you come to face the day, and you’ve got to face people, and you’ve got to face your husband, and all your children, and work out all these relationships, oh my, sometimes you don’t feel so holy afterwards.
We all experience this, don’t we? But God knows that we need short accounts with Him. He knows we need to come into His presence every morning, but by the time the evening comes, we’re desperate to come into His presence again, because He want to keep this fire, the fire of God burning in our hearts. It’s so easy for it to go out. We’ve got to keep that fire going.
But God continues the principle. That’s Leviticus 6.
In Exodus 29:38-39, He says: “I want you to sacrifice twice a day on this altar.” The Word says: “Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually. The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even.” So, that’s very plain, isn’t it? They had to sacrifice every morning and every evening. This was the principle.
Then we go to Exodus 27:20-21. This is talking about the golden lampstand, speaking of Jesus who is the Light of the World. And also how He says: “I am the Light of the World, but you also are the light of the world.” He wants us to be the light. Here He also says: “And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn,” (sometimes? No!) “to burn always. In the tabernacle of the congregation without the vail, which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morning before the LORD: it shall be a statute forever unto their generations.”
So, God also wanted this light to be a perpetual light that would never ever go out. The only way they could keep it going was to come and attend to it. Every morning they had to take out all the burnt stuff from the wicks and clean the wicks. Then they had to pour in the oil, speaking of the anointing of the Holy Spirit to keep the light burning in our lives. They had to do it morning and evening. Are you getting the picture?
We’re not finished yet, because then we go over to Exodus 30. Now we come to the last piece of furniture in the Holy Place, which is the altar of incense. The priests were to light that incense. Once again, how often? Well, you’ve got it by now, haven’t you? Every morning and every evening.
It was the sweet incense. In fact, the Bible gives the recipe of the incense. Exodus 30:34-35 talks of all the sweet spices. It was to be made of these sweet spices so it filled that Holy Place with sweetness, a beautiful sweet aroma. Of course, we know that the altar of incense speaks of prayer, the prayers of the saints.
This is not only Old Testament. We go over to Revelation—Revelation 5, Revelation 8, on two occasions, no, there’s a third occasion too, when John saw into the heavenly realm. He actually saw the altar of incense right there in the heavenly realm. Because, ladies, this tabernacle was made according to the pattern of the heavenly, which is now in the heavenly realm.
John saw the prayers of the saints going up as incense before the Throne of the Lord. The only difference in the heavenly tabernacle is that in the old tabernacle, there was a big, thick curtain that separated the altar of incense from the Holy of Holies, the throne room of the Lord where God dwells. Of course, now, after Jesus died, that curtain was torn apart! There is nothing that curtains it now. It is open, and prayers are going right into His throne room.
He wants us to come in twice a day, morning and evening. Let’s see it here. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got the Scripture. I did give it to you. So yes, it was Exodus 30:7-8: “And Aaron shall burn thereon sweet incense every morning: when he dresseth the lamps, he shall burn incense upon it. And when Aaron lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn incense upon [the altar of incense], a perpetual incense before the LORD throughout your generations.”
Did you notice that all these things, it has the word either “forever” or “perpetual”? In fact, the word “statute” in the Word of God is the Hebrew word for “ordinance, law, statute, custom.” But the main meaning is that it’s a perpetual thing. It’s often connected with the word “perpetual,” or “forever,” because that’s the meaning. It’s meant to be something that we keep forever. It wasn’t just for back then. It’s forever. It’s for us now.
Of course, we are not doing the literal things of sacrificing. We are not literally burning lamps on a seven-branched candlestick. We are not burning incense on the altar of incense. No, those were the types—but the type of what we are to be today. The Word of God brings us the type. He makes them so clear! He says “This altar of incense is the prayers of the saints.”
Now He’s wanting us to come in morning and evening, into His throne room. It’s an invitation into His throne room, lovely ladies, which we have personally, but which we also bring our families into. What a privilege for parents, husbands and wives, to bring their children into the throne room of the Lord! Because that’s what we’re doing each morning and evening when we light the incense. We’re bringing our prayers into the throne room of the Lord. Oh, what a privilege!
It is too sad that parents do not do this. They’re denying their children this daily, two-times daily experience of coming into the throne room of the Lord. God didn’t only give us one example. He gave us one, two, three, four, five examples of morning and evening, so we get it into our heads. Are you getting it, lovely ladies?
Now we go to number 11.
No. 11. WE BUILD A FAMILY ALTAR FOR CLEANSING AND SANCTIFICATION
We see this in the examples I’ve just been talking to you about. In Leviticus 6, where God says: “You must keep the fire on the altar burning continually. It must never go out.”
The way they had to do it; the first thing was to take out the ashes. That speaks of getting rid of all the old junk in our lives, the ashes, the stuff that is not pleasing to the Lord. All the dead stuff. When we come into His presence, and we’re open to the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts, He will speak to us about things that displease Him. We can get rid of them. They had to take the ashes out. We cast them out of our lives as we repent of them and embrace the forgiveness of the blood of Jesus.
Then also, the other example of the lighting of the lampstand. When you see a lantern, and the wick gets all burnt and black, it blackens the whole glass. Have you noticed that? People don’t light lamps very much today. I have some old lamps that I love to light at Christmas and times like that. But if you don’t keep the wick clean, it blackens the whole glass. You’ve got to get rid of all that horrible burnt stuff and junk stuff. That also is speaking of cleansing and sanctification which happens when we come into the presence of the Lord, and we meet with Him, and we have His Word.
But let’s go now, shall we, to Genesis 35. I have brought this passage to you already, quite a number of times. I think we will even go to it again, because in this one passage, there are so many principles for us to learn. Let’s see again here what God said to Jacob.
Genesis 35:1: “And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there.”
Verse 2: “Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments.” This is what they all did. All his family, not one exception, They all had to get rid of everything that had accumulated by living amongst the heathen around them.
Of course, there were many servants in his household, and some of them could be those who worshipped false gods. But Jacob said, “Before we move one step, everyone must get rid of every strange god. You must all wash yourselves. You must wash your clothes. And you must change your garments.” That’s what they had to do as they went up to Bethel to sacrifice at the altar.
Now, I noticed a couple of other passages in the Word of God about changing our garments. To me, they are quite challenging. Let’s go to Exodus 28:40-43. This whole chapter, chapter 28 of Exodus, is all about the clothing of the high priest and the clothing of the priests. God told them specifically what they were to wear.
As we read these things, I want you to know, of course, that we are not going to have to dress like the priests back there. But what I do want to bring out, precious ladies, is that everything that is written is for a type. The things that they did back there in the Old Testament we don’t do today. God doesn’t expect us to do them today.
But the principle comes along with it, right up into the New Testament, right up into this 21st century. It is still there. There is not one word wasted in this Old Testament. In everything that is written, there is a principle that we carry through into the spiritual realm, or even the practical realm as well, although we’re not doing quite like they did it.
Can I just remind you again that I’ve already shared in this podcast? But we need to hear it again. Roman 15:4: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”
We go to 1 Corinthians 10:6 and 11. I’ll just read verse 11: “Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” Does it say here, “Now some of these things happened to them for examples”? No, it says, “And all these things happened unto them for examples.”
They were examples and they were written for our admonition. This is now New Testament, “Upon whom the ends of the world are come.” Right up to the end of the world, these examples are still current. Are we getting this? OK. So let’s read.
First of all, I must read you verse two, because this was God’s overall plan for the clothing of the priests. Now, remember ladies, you say, “Oh, that’s just for the priests of the Old Testament.” No, we are now kings and priests unto God. Yes, Revelation tells us in two passages there. We are kings and we are priests unto God. We are now a kingdom of priests (1 Peter 2:5, 9; Revelation 1:6; 5:19; and 20:6).
The clothing the high priest was to wear was to be holy.
“Thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, for glory and for beauty.” Oh, don’t you love that, ladies? I love that. We see God’s heart there. He loves glory. He is glory. All glory comes from God. He wants us to be glorious too. He loves beauty. There are some translations that say “For honor and for dignity.”
We go over in this passage in this chapter. Now it’s talking more particularly. I haven’t talked about the high priest’s clothing. Oh, there are some wonderful points about that but we won’t go into them today. This is now just the priests. Exodus 28:40: “And for Aaron's sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make for them girdles, and bonnets shalt thou make for them, for glory and for beauty.”
Once again, God reiterates it again. “I want them to be clothed for glory and for beauty.” In this passage here, which are types, we see there are many, many other points, if we were speaking about clothing. But we’ll just speak about these three today. We see the three foundational things for our clothing.
Number one: holy. Yes, you notice we’ll see, or we’ll see that in a minute how they were all dressed in linen. Of course, the main materials they had back in the Old Testament were linen and wool. They didn’t have all the synthetic materials that we have today. In fact, they were very blessed because both linen and wool are the most healthy materials.
I’m sure you are aware of that, and that linen and also wool, give off 5,000 megahertz of energy. When you are wearing linen, or you are wearing wool, you are getting this energy. Whereas, if you are wearing synthetics, well, it’s like you’re being a little bit sick even.
You can wear cotton. That’s healthy, but it doesn’t have much. It only has, I think organic cotton has a very small amount of the megahertz of energy, whereas normal cotton has nothing. It’s just nothing. But synthetic is below zero. But they always wore linen.
In the Bible, linen always speaks of the righteousness of the saints (Revelation 19:8). You don’t have to go round wearing linen. Of course, if you did, you’d be healthier, but you don’t have to. It’s not going to change your salvation at all. But it does represent spiritually the righteousness of the saints.
When we go to Revelation, we read a lot about clothing in Revelation. And they are all clothed (every time John saw into the heavenly realm) they were clothed in linen, which is the righteousness of the saints. So, here we see them.
He makes coats and girdles and bonnets. They are just types, too. Coats represented a garment, which completely covered the body, which is very interesting. Bonnets, well, we’re not going to go around wearing bonnets. We wear hats sometimes for certain things. We wear them when we’re cold.
I love to wear hats to weddings. I think when you get this podcast, we will already have been to Vision and Eden’s wedding. This is another one of our grandsons getting married. I’m actually, while I’m doing this podcast, I hope my hat arrives today, so I’ll have one for the wedding. But really, their bonnets, they also speak to us spiritually. It’s speaking of having purity of mind, and holiness of mind. God wanted their minds clothed with holiness too.
It goes on to say: “And thou shalt put them upon Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him; and shalt anoint them, and consecrate them, and sanctify them, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office. And thou shalt make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness; from the loins even unto the thighs they shall reach: And they shall be upon Aaron, and upon his sons, when they come in unto the tabernacle of the congregation, or,” listen, ladies, “when they come near unto the altar to minister in the holy place; that they bear not iniquity, and die: it shall be a statute forever unto him and his seed after him.”
Do you notice something here? That they, yes, they were to wear these clothes when they came near to the altar of the Lord. They had to be, of course, in their linen, which speaks of the righteousness of the saints. And they had to be covered.
It says: “covered their nakedness,” but here, because they were speaking of the men, it specifically referred to their covering their loins, that part of their body from the waist to (they believe) from the waist to just above the knee. They were covered. But it was all a type of realizing that they were coming into the presence of the Lord, near to God’s altar. And they had to make sure that this was how they were clothed, lest they die, the Scripture says.
I’ve got more Scriptures about it, but we’re already running out of time. Can I carry on next week? OK? We’ll just look at one or two more Scriptures next week. We’ll have to leave it for today.
“Dear Father, I thank You for Your precious Word, which is so filled with revelation for us and understanding for us. I pray that You will give these wonderful mothers and wives and young people revelation, Lord, as they’re listening. Not just revelation from me, but revelation from Your Holy Spirit. Revelation that comes, Lord, as we open our ears and our hearts and our eyes to the whole wondrous things that are in Your law. We ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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Quotes I wrote in my journal about the tabernacle:
“The tabernacle is God’s heavenly pattern for our spiritual walk on earth.”
“Because the pattern of the tabernacle points the way to Christ no error was allowed in the construction of the tabernacle.”