The blood of animals never covered any sinner’s sins. Instead, they pointed forward to the once for all sacrifice that Christ would make for us. Although they did not know His name, all the Israelites who sacrificed and believed by faith that Yahweh had forgiven their sins were truly placing their faith in Christ. In this way, the animal sacrifices of the old covenant were more similar to our present taking of the Lord’s Supper than we might think. Both have no efficacy in and of themselves; rather, both point beyond themselves to Christ. Indeed, both were/are reminders.

Presently, in our study of the book of Exodus, we are considering the instructions for the building of the tabernacle that Yahweh gave to Moses in the span of forty days upon Sinai. As we have noted, the instructions began with the ark of the testimony, the most holy item that would reside in the Most Holy Place. It then moved outward to the table for the bread of the Presence and the golden lampstand, which would furnish the Holy Place. In the previous chapter, we moved outward yet again by considering the instructions for the tabernacle itself. That outward movement continues in our present chapter as we study the design of the bronze altar and the courtyard around the tabernacle in which it stood. As has been our pattern, we will consider the design and function of altar and the courtyard, and then we will conclude with how they are point us toward Christ.
The Bronze Altar // Verses 1-8
You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad. The altar shall be square, and its height shall be three cubits. And you shall make horns for it on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze. You shall make pots for it to receive its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks and fire pans. You shall make all its utensils of bronze. You shall also make for it a grating, a network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings at its four corners. And you shall set it under the ledge of the altar so that the net extends halfway down the altar. And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze. And the poles shall be put through the rings, so that the poles are on the two sides of the altar when it is carried. You shall make it hollow, with boards. As it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made.
These verses give us the description for how the bronze altar was to be built. Stuart notes:
Its top surface was thus four and a half feet high (“three cubits high”) off the ground and was a square seven and a half feet on each side (“five cubits long and five cubits wide”), providing a total of fifty-six and one-quarter feet of grilling area (minus whatever was taken up by the corner “horns” and any rim that may have surrounded the top, if either of these imposed upon the total surface of the top). (595)
Like the rest of the tabernacle, the altar needed to be portable, so it had loops and poles for carrying. It was also a hollow box, which, besides being necessary for building a fire, would also have made it much more maneuverable than if it were a solid cube.
As with the other pieces of furniture, it was to be built out of acacia wood, but unlike the items that actually belonged to the tabernacle itself, the altar would not be overlaid with gold but with bronze. This was for both a practical and theological purpose. Practically, gold is melted earlier than bronze, and the since the purpose of the altar was to burn sacrifices, bronze was a better metal to use than gold. Theologically, bronze being a less valuable metal represented being further away from the ark within the Most Holy Place.
The horns upon the corners of the altar likely served the practical function being place where the sacrificial animal could be bound while other preparations were made, for we read in Psalm 118:27: “The LORD is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!” However, they apparently took on the meaning of being a place of refuge, since both Adonijah and Joab fled from Solomon’s wrath by laying ahold of the horns of the altar.
Of course, the most important aspect of the altar was its use for burning the sacrifices that the Israelites would bring. As we discussed a few weeks ago, some of those sacrifices would be burned entirely, and some would only be roasted, have the fat burnt away, and then eaten. Yet regardless of the particular kind of sacrifice, Stuart notes that through these slaughtered animals:
God taught his people the basic principle of salvation from sin: something that God considers a substitute must die in my place so that I may live. Altar sacrifice was the primary way for this substitution to happen… By killing an animal, then cooking it on that grill in God’s presence (i.e., in front of the entrance to the tabernacle), and then eating it in God’s presence (symbolically sharing the meal with him), the Israelite worshiper learned over and over again the concept of substitutionary atonement and of covenant renewal. (594-595)
At least, it was supposed to reinforce that principle over and over again. Indeed, here is how Vern Poythress describes how a sacrifice was to be made:
In a typical case the process begins with the worshiper who brings an animal without defect to the priest. The worshiper has raised the animal himself or paid for it with his earnings, so that the animal represents a “sacrifice” in the modern sense of the word. It costs something to the worshiper, and a portion of the worshiper’s own life is identified with it. The worshiper lays his hand on the head of the animal, signifying his identification with it. He then kills the animal at the entranceway into the courtyard, signifying that the animals dies as a substitute for the worshiper.
From that point onward the priest takes over in performing the sacrificial actions. The intervention of the priest indicates that a specially holy person must perform the actions necessary to present the worshiper before God, even after the death of the animal. The priest takes some of the blood and sprinkles it on the side of the altar or on the horns of the altar…depending on the particular type of sacrifice… All of these actions constitute the permanent marking of the altar as testimony to the fact that the animal has died. (Cited in Ryken, Exodus, 817-818)
Each animal that an Israelite took from their field to slice its throat open before the bronze altar, screamed that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). And as they placed their hand upon the animal’s head, they were to reflect that something innocent was taking their place. Because animals are not created in the image of God, they are not morally culpable as we are.
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Once allowances have been made for terminally ill children, the question will inevitably be asked, “What about physically suffering children who aren’t terminally ill?”…This is how the culture of death works its slow poison. This is how voices of death are elevated as kind and compassionate, while voices of life are drowned out as inhumane, fanatical. 

Look to Holland. That’s what conservatives tracing the progress of international euthanasia law over the years have learned to do. For that matter, look to either Holland or Belgium. These two countries are to Europe as Oregon or California are to the United States: first and worst. As they have raced each other to the bottom, they offer a glimpse of what the future might look like, unless someone cares enough to change it.
Holland first made euthanasia legal for adults in 2002, and Belgium followed only months later. In 2014, Belgium became the first country to legalize “voluntary” euthanasia for terminally ill children of any age. This week, Holland has finally followed suit, after years of limiting the “service” to minor teens and terminally ill newborns (who could be killed with parental consent if a doctor judged that the baby’s suffering was “unbearable” and incurable). Now, the gap between ages 1 and 12 has been filled. No child left behind, as it were.
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God as light gives us truth. And he gives us the warmth of his self-conforming love. But he is also the most beautiful and the source of all the beauty we see around us. That God is the most beautiful might not strike us as clearly biblical in terms of the language, but “for the beauty of God Scripture has a special word: glory.”[11] In fact, Scripture harps on God’s glory so much that we must say God is “the pinnacle of beauty, the beauty toward which all creatures point.”[12] Every instance of beauty around us is an index finger pointing to God. 

“The Father of lights”—that is your name,
A blinding brilliance among heavenly hosts,
For even angels with wings of flame
Can’t stare at Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Who is God? No question could run deeper, span wider, or coast longer on the words of men. There’s a rich deposit in Scripture of proper names and images. But let’s focus and just consider God as light, or as James called him, “the Father of lights” (James 1:17).
Light is closely associated with that old word “glory.” The Westminster Confession of Faith (2.2) says, “God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.”

That may sound stiff to today’s ears—with all those “haths” and “untos.” But think of it this way: God is the great, steadfast, immoveable light that shines behind and through this world. He is radiant. And that radiance touches everything, including you and me.
The Nicene Creed calls Jesus Christ “God of God, Light of Light” because his brilliance as the eternal Son matches the blinding radiance of the Father and Spirit.
This radiant God has filled the whole world with his light. In John Calvin’s words, “Whichever way we turn our eyes, there is no part of the world, however small, in which at least some spark of God’s glory does not shine. In particular, we cannot gaze at this beautiful masterpiece of the world, in all its length and breadth, without being completely dazed, as it were, by an endless flood of light.”[1] An endless flood of light—that’s the God who stands behind the world we wake to. And yet you and I don’t wake up blinded. Why?
God is a Spirit (John 4:24). We can’t see spirits. So, while the God of radiance is blindingly bright, we walk through the world by faith in that light, believing that the Father of lights illumines all the things around us. Bavinck wrote, “The spirituality of God refers to that perfection of God that describes him, negatively, as being immaterial and invisible, analogously to the spirit of angels and the souls of humans; and, positively, as the hidden, simple (uncompounded), absolute ground of all creatural, somatic, and pneumatic being.”[2] Now that’s a mouthful! Even my favorite theologians struggle to keep things “on the bottom shelf,” as my mother used to say. Bavinck is just trying to say that God as a Spirit is invisible and yet upholds everything we see. We might think of God as the light behind all earthly lights.[3]
And because of that behindness, because the Father of lights is hidden, we can be tempted to think he isn’t really here. That, I argue in another book, is Satan’s great lie, the lie that tells us to live as if God weren’t really present.[4] The great truth is that God is always present; he’s always the Light behind all lesser lights. Our awareness of him is a matter of Spirit-gifted faith, a certainty in what we cannot see (Heb. 11:1).
What it Means
But what, more specifically, does it mean to say that God is light? Though there are many things to discuss, let’s break our answer down into three qualities: truth, warmth (love), and beauty.
Truth. The radiance of God lets us see what is, what’s real. Just as a light in a darkened room shows us what’s there, God shows us the furniture of life: who we are, what matters most, what we should strive for. Bavinck writes, “Light in Scripture is the image of truth, holiness, and blessedness (Ps. 43:3; Isa. 10:17; Ps. 97:11).”[5] God shines to show us what is true, sacred, and good. Elsewhere he says, “What light is in the natural world—the source of knowledge, purity, and joy—God is in the world of the spirit.”[6] God is the light of truth, the one who shows us all, because he is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). He helps us see what’s around us, as well as our true spiritual condition. I’ve always loved how Charles Wesley expressed this in the great hymn “And Can It Be,”

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee.

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