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Exodus 30:6  Put the altar in front of the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law – before the atonement cover that is over the tablets of the covenant law – where I will meet with you. 

The LORD’s instruction to Moses concerning the setting up of the Tabernacle is very complex, thorough and detailed, taking up the best part of 16 chapters of Exodus (25-40).  Every part of it has significance in the unfolding of God’s Plan of Salvation which will culminate in Jesus.

It is interesting that today’s one short, simple verse gets right to the heart of the Gospel of Salvation.

The ‘curtain’ represents the barrier that has existed between sinful Man and his holy Creator God since Adam’s rebellion at the very start of the human race.

The ‘ark of the Testimony’ was the box containing God’s written Law, a legal document that set out God’s blueprint for life but which therefore condemned us all because of Man’s total inability to meet all its requirements and thereby satisfy God’s just demands.

The lid of this box was the ‘atonement cover’ or ‘mercy seat’, signifying that God’s love and grace were able to deal with Man’s inability to keep the Law.

The ‘altar’ in front of the curtain was where the sacrificial blood of an animal without blemish was to be shed to appease God’s wrath against sin and so provide the only basis on which he could forgive us, and therefore ‘meet with’ sinful Man.

All of this was being laid out in God’s Word 1500 years before Jesus came.  When the Old Testament was translated into Greek in the second century before Christ, a word had to be found for the lid of the ‘ark’, the ‘mercy seat/atonement cover’.  The word chosen was ‘hilasterion’.  Paul used this word to describe the work of Christ in his letter to the Romans: “God presented [Christ Jesus] as a ‘hilasterion’, through faith in his blood.  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25).  This word is then variously translated into English as ‘propitiation’ (KJV, ASV, NASB, ESV, NKJV), ‘expiation’ (RSV), and ‘sacrifice of atonement’ (NIV).  The point is that Jesus’ death on the cross, his ‘sacrifice on the altar’ as the perfect ‘Lamb of God’, is the only basis on which a holy God can ‘meet with’ us.

In Christ, God’s law is satisfied (by Christ’s perfect life); God’s justice is satisfied (by Christ’s substitutionary death); while at the same time his love, grace and mercy are supremely demonstrated.  In case we were in any doubt about the significance of all this, as Jesus died on the cross the ‘curtain’ in the Temple in Jerusalem was split in two ‘from top to bottom’ (Matthew 27:51)!  The author of Hebrews might well ask us the same question he asked his first century readers: “How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3)

“Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain.  But Christ, the heav’nly Lamb, takes all our sins away; a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.  My faith would lay her hand on that dear head of thine, while, like a penitent, I stand, and there confess my sin.  My soul looks back to see the burdens thou didst bear when hanging on the cursèd tree, and hopes her guilt was there. Believing, we rejoice to see the curse remove; we bless the Lamb with cheerful voice, and sing his bleeding love” (Isaac Watts).

– Bruce Christian