It Should Hurt when you hear God's Name Being Cursed.

The Lamp Oil, The Showbread, and On Blasphemy & Cursing the Name of God 

Leviticus 24:1-23

This is Easter Sunday morning. Very overcast outside. Not a good day for Sunrise services but even if it were, we wouldn’t be allowed to go as we are still being self-isolated in our homes. This is day 25 for us. We will be streaming a worship service and remembering the Lord’s resurrection in a very different way but with the same meaning, if not more, this year than ever before. In the meantime, I continue my study of Leviticus.

The Passage

This chapter is divided into three parts:

      i.         Verses 1-4 deal with the kind of oil that the Israelites were bring to Aaron to keep in the lamp for the sanctuary, and the fact that it was to be kept burning in perpetuity.

    ii.         Verses 5-9 discuss the showbread – how it was to be made, how it was to be placed on the table, and how it was to be used every Sabbath and then eaten by the priest and his family.

   iii.         Verses 10-23 can be labeled as the Law of the Sanctified Name of God. I reproduce here for it has some most interesting features with respect to how it came about and how Moses and God reacted to it.

 ¹⁰ Now the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the sons of Israel; and the Israelite woman’s son and a man of Israel struggled with each other in the camp. ¹¹ The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name and cursed. So, they brought him to Moses. (Now his mother’s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.) ¹² They put him in custody so that the command of the Lord might be made clear to them.

¹³ Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ¹⁴ “Bring the one who has cursed outside the camp, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then let all the congregation stone him. ¹⁵ You shall speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘If anyone curses his God, then he will bear his sin. ¹⁶ Moreover, the one who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him. The alien as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.

Thoughts on the Passage

We understand God’s directions for the oil in the lamp and for the showbread.

In the third section of the chapter, we have the account of a man whose mother was an Israelite and whose father was an Egyptian getting into a fight with another man that apparently was an Israelite by both parents. First, we note that those who fled Egypt included some who were married to an Israelite at the time. And as one would expect the distinction remained for their offspring.

It was the son of the Egyptian father that blasphemed “the” capital ‘N’, name.  So, by that we know he blasphemed God. We also notice that this was a very rare occurrence otherwise why would those that heard it bring the man to Moses, and why would Moses have him put in custody until they had heard what God wanted done with him. We congratulate them for that.

God told Moses to have him taken outside the camp, have those that heard him curse lay their hands on his head, and then the rest of the congregation was to stone him. Hopefully this was two separate steps, or it would be quite dangerous for those who had their hands on his head, I would think.

Chuck Smith says we should not disregard how important it was for the Israelites to get God’s direct instructions for this matter. We seem to have replaced all that because our pastors and clergy are professionals, they have been to theological colleges, they have been ordained by a denomination, and they always know what to do.  Some of us, who are not clergy, even think we know what to do and we bypass the clergy. But the success of the Israelites with Moses as their leader, and the success of the early Church, was that they waited upon God to get His instructions on how to deal with issues that arose, at least for the first time.

But the most important lesson here seems to be for the Israelites. God told Moses (after the stoning) to tell them that if one curses the name of the Lord, “he will bear his sin”. And that such cursers, both of the house of Israel, as well as aliens, would be stoned to death. God considered this very serious. David Guzik says the Egyptians may have cursed their gods, by practice, but that was not excuse. Don’t confuse Jehovah God with other gods. Many do just that today and treat God the same as they would other gods in their past.  That does not fly with God.

Guzik goes on to suggest that God chose stoning for two reasons. First, stones were plentiful in ancient Israel (and maybe even in the desert). Secondly, it allowed the community to participate because this sin was a sin against the community as well. I wish we would consider the swearing that we hear against our God as a sin against us and act more accordingly.

Smith also points out that the law was the same – one law for all. How different this is today when people who commit the same crime, the same sin if you like, are treated very differently depending on who they are, who they know, where the trial is, who the judge is, or in the case of Christians, what church they attend. No wonder we are all so mixed up as to what is right and what is wrong. We didn’t even need the onset of relativism to help us with that.

There was no way out; there was no leeway. For some reason, we have ignored this whole instruction and both curse and/or allow cursing of God’s name in our midst. I believe we do so at our own peril. God does not change.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

The Truth May Be Lost In Its Delivery

The Real Bible Truth: A Great Deception Has Been Wrought On The World

Author: Ernie Hasler

Published by: self-published, Charleston, S.C., 2016

Author Ernie Hasler has searched for biblical truths in many places and he believes the Bible has been corrupted in some very significant ways. Hasler shows us, to the best of his ability, that our main religions – Judaism and Christianity – have been wrong about the origin of the symbol of the cross, the name of the Creator, and more.

He presents his readers with some interesting statements and positions. A lot of them make sense. He seldom, however, backs up his claims with appropriate sources or research which frustrates any reader that may have different views. For example, how does he know the early versions of The Tanakh (original Hebrew writings of the O.T.) were written in Paleo-Hebrew beginning from the 5^th BCE onward? Or that the council of Laodicia passed a law requiring Christians to not become “Judaized by resting on Saturday”? Or that the introduction of the word ‘Lord’ was really a substitute for ‘Ba’al’? He does the same with the dating of the ‘Tetragrammaton’, the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH and articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah. Perhaps all believable claims but certainly not substantiated with any hard evidence.

Where he does give a source of information, it often is one that is questionable as in the Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend from which he states that the name of Yeshua has been replaced by the names of G-zeus (Jesus), and (Ea-zeus), which are absolutely pagan in origin, according to Hasler. He quotes the Catholic Encyclopedia, volume and page, when he introduces the idea of a great deception we have all been exposed to concerning the existence of Christianity in the time of Constantine as well as his ‘conversion’ and ‘baptism’.

His material is well worth being aware of, but it could benefit from some serious editing and more verification. What may be intuitive to Hasler isn’t necessarily intuitive for others. Perhaps the greatest contribution that Ernie Hasler has made though in this mini-volume (the entire book is only 81 pages from cover to cover) is the last 31 pages in which he lists and numbers all 613 commandments found in the Old Testament books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, complete with description and Scripture chapter and verse.

Hasler has written another book and in its title is the word “Conspiracy” which is missing from this one. There’s no doubt though that he sees much of the corruption he claims is present in Scripture to be just that – a conspiracy. What this book will do for an avid Bible student is allow him/her to take Hasler’s claims (for they are intriguing) and do his/her own more academic study and research in order to ascertain the “truth” in a more convincing manner, be it what Hasler claims or otherwise.

* Ken B. Godevenos, President, Accord Resolutions Services Inc., Toronto, Ontario, September 24, 2016. www.accordconsulting.com

* Get the book here: http://astore.amazon.com/accorconsu-20

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

God is Not Subject to Pay Equity

Rest – On God’s Terms and His Bottom Line

Exodus 33:17-23: And the Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight, and I have known you by name.” Then Moses said, “I pray Thee, show me Thy glory!” And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” Then the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”

God tells Moses He will grant his request to go with the people because Moses had found favor in His sight and because God knows him by name. This latter condition may be a reference to God speaking with Moses face to face, and knowing him as a friend. We are also tempted to think that God has bought Moses’ arguments.  Perhaps so, but Moses wants to make sure and asks God to be shown His glory. But let us be sure of one thing – whatever God does (and what He does, He does abundantly), He does on His own will and desire because as the text implies, Moses had found favor in His sight.

Chuck Smith marvels at how wonderful it would be if we each sought the heavenly glory of God rather than being so ‘earthbound’ in our thinking about Him. He writes, “We get so bound up in the things of man, the things of man’s creation, the work of our own hands; oh, that we might see the glory of God.” Moses in the Old Testament and then Paul and John in the New got a glimpse of the glory of God and their lives were changed forever. Smith goes on to say that seeing God’s glory (or getting a real glimpse of it) will create in us a dissatisfaction with earthly things. It will make us feel as if we can never settle into the old routine again. He writes, “I can never be happy again with just the old mundane material world around me, but there'll be that longing to enter into that glory, and the presence of God.” That’s the extra assurance that Moses was looking for as he had a real hunger for a closer relationship with, and a greater knowledge of, God. And you will remember that Moses had many years earlier already seen something of the Glory of God when God’s glory had appeared in the cloud (Exodus 16:10) and when it had rested on Mount Sinai like a consuming fire (Exodus 24:16-17).  Still, or maybe because of that, Moses wanted more of seeing and knowing God’s Glory. And God responds.

And God says, “I’ll let My ‘goodness’ pass before you.” And, “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.”

Moses wanted to see God’s glory and God offers to show him His goodness. To commentator David Guzik that makes a lot of sense because God’s glory, he says, lies in His goodness. The most important thing for us to understand as we seek to know God and His glory is that God is good. If we fail to grasp that, we will fail to learn much about God.

Matthew Henry suggests that God denied that which was not fit to be granted, and which Moses could not bear. And God does so out of compassion for man, for “A full discovery of the glory of God would quite overpower the faculties of any mortal man in this present state, and overwhelm him, even Moses himself.” When we ask things of God, we must be thankful that sometimes He denies our request. Henry goes on to say that seeing the face of God “is an honor reserved for the future state, to be the eternal bliss of holy souls...In the meantime let us adore the height of what we do know of God, and the depth of what we do not.” It is also of note to Henry that “Sinful man dreads the sight of God his Judge; but holy souls, being by the Spirit of the Lord changed into the same image, behold with open face the glory of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18)”

On the aspect of proclaiming the name of the Lord, David Guzik reminds us that “in the thinking of the ancient Hebrews (and also in other ancient cultures), the name represented a person’s character and nature. God promised to reveal His character to Moses, not merely a title.” Moses was asking to see more of God’s glory, but God was offering him infinitely more than just the mere visual grandeur of His glory. God was offering Moses what he needed to know, not what he wanted to know.

Smith says this is

“a name that was highly revered by the Jews, so highly revered but that they would not even attempt to pronounce it. So the name of God became non-pronounceable. When the scribes would come to the name of God in their text, . . .  they would not put in the vowels, only the consonants, Y-H-V-H. Now try and pronounce Y-H-V-H, unpronounceable, can't pronounce just the consonants, you need the vowels for pronunciation. We don't know what the vowels are. That is why we don't know if the name of God is Yahweh, or Jehovah, pronounced with a "Y" not sure how to spell it. We don't know what it is. We guess at what the vowels might be, but we don't know because the name of God was not pronounced by them.”

If he is correct, then for centuries now we seem to have taken a risk or perhaps compromised and deemed that God’s name is both Yahweh and Jehovah.  And if that’s not enough, here’s what else Smith suggests took place each time a scribe was about to write the name of God:

But the scribes when they would come to these consonants, before they would write them in the text, they would go in and take a bath, put on fresh clothes, wash their pen completely, dip it in fresh ink, and then write the consonants. Now can you imagine how many baths you'd have to take in some of these passages where the Lord's name is mentioned several times? Yet that is the kind of reverence in which they held the name of God, feeling that it was such a holy name that it should never pass the lips of man. Thus it was never to be pronounced by man.

Readers, he says, when they would come to the name, “rather than attempting to pronounce the name, they would bow their head in reverence and they would just whisper the name.” Nothing was held in higher respect than the name of God. My, haven’t we come a long way – when we often hear the name of God being used so abhorrently today, not only by adults, but also by very young children. What’s your practice? What do you let your children or grandchildren get away with in your presence? I remember once being in the midst of negotiations and someone took the name of Jesus in vain. I very politely asked him, “Jesus Christ is not whom we are discussing right now, so I would appreciate it if you would keep Him out of it.” The man got the message; didn’t apologize, but changed his vocabulary going forward.

When God said, “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you”, was He really saying He would pronounce His name before Moses? Smith says that as far as the Israelites were concerned only the High Priest knew how to pronounce the name of God and he would do so once a year on the Day of Atonement.

God knew that Moses had to be protected when He showed him His goodness, and Moses tells us in verses 21-23 of this passage how God intended to do that. First God gave Moses a very specific instruction as to where to stand in order to see what he was being allowed to see. Then as He passed before and by Moses, God would hide Moses in the cleft of the rock he was told to stand on and use His own hand to shield him from seeing God Himself.  It is this passage that prompted Agustus Toplady to write the famous words many of us have sung, Rock of Ages, cleft for me; Let me hide myself in Thee.

David Guzik gives us a list of people who have experienced a glimpse of the glory of God while being protected by Him.  They included Isaiah, the apostle John, and Paul, from our Bible. And post-Bible times, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd (the great apostle to the American Indians), and D. L. Moody. We may not be given that honor, but that should not stop us from having an earnest desire to experience God deeply, in whatever way He chooses to allow us to do so. We can all see something of the glory of God, even though we will not see it fully, or clearly, or even comprehend it.

Even Moses was only allowed to see God’s back. But let us not forget that indeed what God allowed for Moses was more than what He had allowed for any other man. There’s also suggestion here, I believe, that while we can never see God, we can see “behind God”, that is, we can see where God has been and has left His mark. Have you seen God in nature, in the life of a newborn, in miracles that we take for granted? God’s been there. Watch to see His back as He moves on and move with Him and you will experience the after-effects of God’s glory and presence.

The message is that if we were to be allowed to see any more of God or all of God, we could not bear it, no matter how much we desire it. We have to understand the whole scene as another of God’s infinitely brilliant designs for our experiences – He reveals a certain amount of Himself while still concealing all of Himself; He blesses us with the revelation but at the same time protects us from any more. And that’s how God rewarded Moses and his desire to see His glory. And as Guzik points out, God does all He can to satisfy us as we seek Him. But the bottom line is that He would have us know Him more by His goodness and mercy, than, as Matthew Henry says, by His glorious majesty.

And it did not stop there for the believer.  There was more of God’s glory to be revealed when God gave us His Son, Jesus Christ (John 1:14 and 2 Corinthians 3:18).

God tells Moses He will be “gracious to whom He will be gracious.” God as absolute owner of all and everything, grants His gifts to whomever He chooses and in any amounts that He chooses.  He owes no one anything; nor is He accountable for His actions to anyone. That’s why the world had, and has, a problem with Him. The motivation for any of His decisions in this regard stem solely from within Him and not because of anyone meriting anything He gives to them. His gifts are strictly on the basis of His doing what seems right to Him and Him alone.  Now for those of us that have been taught that there must be “fairness and equality” in all aspects of our lives today, that is hard to swallow.  Yet, it is the very thing we need to grasp in our relationship with God. Telling God He’s wrong in doing so gets us nowhere fast.

 
You and I need to come to the place where we seek God without ceasing, accept the blessings He gives us, keep asking for more, and recognize His right to withhold our requests when He chooses to, which ultimately is for our own protection. We cannot invite or expect the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us, until we get to that place.

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A Process by which to Determine if a Specific Promise of God's is Meant for You

Who is the Angel God Sends To Guard the Israelites On Their Way?

Exodus 23:20-21: “Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him.”

I do not know about you, but whenever I read a promise of God’s like this one, the Enemy starts working on me: “This is not for you; it’s only meant for the people of Israel at that time. So don’t count on it.” There are several courses of action one could take with that kind of taunting.

1.     You can disregard the taunting, claim the promise, while merrily singing the old chorus you learned as a child, “Every promise in the book is mine!”

2.     You can believe the taunting, never thinking any more about the promise, and go on doing life as you normally do – wondering whether or not you are forced to fend for yourself.

3.     You can agree with some Bible scholars that believe certain promises were made to certain individuals or groups and are not to be taken as being for us, but this will require an investigation as to whether or not this is one of them.

You can weigh the likelihood of any of the three choices being correct or incorrect against your:

a.     Understanding of God based on the rest of Scripture,

b.     Ability to reason it out,

c.     Knowledge of what believers have traditionally believed, and

d.     Personal experience.

Using these four criteria, you can then examine each of the three options:

1.     Disregarding the taunting and claiming the promise may satisfy criteria a., c., and possibly d. above, but b. may present some problems especially as you may tend to agree with the rationale that certainly God makes promises to specific people at specific times and since He was talking to the Israelites in this passage, that may not include me.

2.     Believing the taunting and not claiming the promise, for the Christian, will likely not satisfy criteria a., c., and perhaps d.

3.     Investigating the promise has the potential of satisfying all four criteria – a., b., c., and d.

To take that course of action, i.e. investigating the promise before we can claim it for ourselves, we need to first examine the context of the promise. Was it made to someone or a group as a particular promise for a specific one-time response to an explicit circumstance?  Or is there enough generality in it that could apply to many of us in most aspects of, and during our entire, life? Secondly, we would ask ourselves as to whether or not this promise is in keeping with other parts of Scripture that repeat similar concepts to other believers? Thirdly, does it make sense that God, assuming Him to be what we believe He is, would make this kind of promise to all His children? Fourth, what do other true believers, for the most part, believe? And finally, what is my personal experience with regard to the content of this assurance?

In this particular case, my personal investigation of this promise, leads me to believe that it is one that I can claim.  Keep in mind that the Israelites were going to spend forty years in the desert and God knew that.  This is clearly not a promise in return for a one-time action required on their part – it is to become a way of life for them. There is enough generality in it so as to be applicable to many. For example, it speaks of “guarding us along our way” until He brings us to a place He has “prepared for us” and it speaks to “obedience”, our “rebellion”, and our “pardon from sin”. All of which are spoken of elsewhere in Scripture.

In addition, the promise is in keeping with our understanding of God as we know and believe Him to be. It is a promise that has been widely accepted by many believers.  And finally, for me at least, it is a promise I have seen fulfilled time and time again in my own life, my own experience.

Having hopefully established that, we can look more closely at the promise God is making here.  To begin with, He is “sending” an “angel”. God is the mastermind here. He has delegated this most important task to someone else in which He has great confidence. But this is no ordinary angel but rather one that has God’s name in Him.  It is an angel that must be obeyed.  It is an angle capable of freeing us from our bondage (Egypt for the Israelites) and delivering us to the Promised Land (Canaan for the Israelites and Heaven for us). And this angel has the power to pardon our sins and those of the Israelites. It is no wonder that the majority of biblical commentators agree that this is the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Jesus was given this task by God His Father and as the Son, God’s name was in Him. This was a real task, not just a make-work project but at the same time, it was a proto-type of what Jesus would do for all mankind.

Our job is to be on our guard before Him and to obey His voice throughout our journey in the wilderness of life.  The entire New Testament tells us how. But the bottom line is this: we are not to rebel against Him, for He will not pardon our transgression.

I hope you can claim this promise with me.  But I also pray you understand its consequences should we fail to claim it and choose to obey.

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God’s Blueprints For Worship -- Exodus 20:24-26

--> “‘You shall make an altar of earth for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause My name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. And if you make an altar of stone for Me, you shall not build it of cut stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you will profane it.  And you shall not go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.’” 
 

They are building new houses all around ours.  At various times, I see the foreperson pouring over a set of blueprints that need to be followed.  The construction team takes its directions via the person in charge from the blueprints drawn up by the architect.  Any variation requires architect agreement and then city council approval or the whole project could be shut down.

From this passage, we clearly see that God wants to be worshipped.  But that worship is to be undertaken in a prescribed way.  He gives us the parameters under which we are to worship.  To the Children of Israel in the Old Testament, God gave specific instructions of how to build an altar and what to do with it.

Most of us would agree that today we no longer have to make sacrifices on altars to worship God because His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, was the ultimate sacrifice, and it was made on our behalf.  Fair enough.  However, sometimes in our rush to throw out sacrifices, altars, burnt offerings, and peace offerings, we discard some of the principles God attached to Old Testament worship – principles that were, I believe, intended to transcend the ages.  Let’s look at some of those.

First, there is the principle of parameters themselves.  All behavior may be called worship by the worshipper, but God does not view all behavior as worship.  We need look no further than Genesis 4 where God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain’s, to support this thinking.  Here in Exodus 20, God tells the Israelites what kind of an altar He prefers and what they are to offer on it.  Today, under the guise of what we call ‘freedom in Christ’ we tend to worship Him in whatever way we feel like.  I am not speaking of modern music as compared to century old hymns.  That is not the point.  The point is that we need to consider how we worship God for while God is a God for all of time, He does not change.  There are things that He will not accept as He did not accept Cain’s worship.  And the Holy Spirit can and does speak to us as to what those things are, if we care to listen and obey.  Having said that, it is then also possible to accept the fact that what we all may not have arrived at the same point of hearing God on this matter, or some of us may well have misunderstood what He has told us when we hear Him with the filters of our own experiences and upbringings.  All that is possible and thus we should be careful not to criticize what others call ‘worship’ for them.  And I think that’s the secret – worship has to be ‘for us’ and it has to be truly perceived as, and believed to be acceptable to God, by the worshipper – no one else.

Second, we need to realize that God causes His “name to be remembered” in some very physical spots.  It may be a chapel pew for you.  It may be a gravesite of a loved one for me.  It may be someone else’s closet for them.  We would do well to keep an eye out for such places.  We would do well to listen to the rhythm of our heartbeats when we approach these special places in our lives.  Try visiting Israel and walk where Jesus walked or suffered, or performed miracles, and take your pulse.  I guarantee you it will be higher than normal.  We need to remember that one of God’s principles in our act of worship is that He causes His name to be remembered.  We may often call on the name of God and remember it, but we need to understand that it is He who brings it to our mind.  Even that we do not do ourselves.

Third, whenever we come across a place where God (not man) causes His name to be remembered, God says about that place, that He will come to us there and bless us.  That’s our God; we can count on that.  Want God to meet with you and bless you?  Make sure you are aware of where He causes you to remember His name; and visit there often.  When I think of what God is saying, promising, and doing here, I am reminded of the classic fast-food commercial that came out in 1978 that goes something like this – “at _________, we do it all for you!”  I’m sure you know the fast-food chain I’m talking about.  You may know them as the ones that build these large golden arches near their stores.  And if you’re still wondering who I’m talking about, check the commercial out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOMJ5nAaS08 .   Yes, God does it all for us – He reminds us of His name at various junctions in our lives; He visits us there; and He blesses us from there.  What more can we really ask for in response to our worship?

Fourth, while God has the right to be a “my way or the highway” God, there are aspects of our relationship with Him in which we are given choices.  Before I personally studied this passage, I would have been the first one to say, “Oh yeah, show me!”.  Well, Exodus 20:24-26 is one such example.  Here God clearly states His preference for an altar made of earth.  But then He goes on to say, “but if you make an altar of stone for Me, here are the specific directions for that.”  Our God is not the no-choice autocrat many of us have made Him out to be.  And of course, the fact that we do have acceptable choices in our positive relationship with Him (and not just with the negative choice to reject Him altogether) is complementary to the notion that we have been created with free will.

But no matter what our choice may be in some things, we still have to implement that choice within God’s parameters for that aspect of the relationship.  In the case of the Children of Israel, God did not want the Israelites to use cut stones that their implements had been applied to, if they were to build altars out of stone.  He wanted them, in that case, to use uncut natural stones.

Bible commentator Chuck Smith has much to say on this verse.  For starters he believes God did not want carved stones because He wanted nothing to distract the worshippers from worshipping Him.  He did not want anyone including those that built the altar to say or think, “my, isn’t that a great masonry job!”   Think for a moment of all the famous cathedrals or synagogues or temples you have visited.  What comes to mind first?  How awesomely you can worship God there or what a marvelous job the architect did?  Be honest.

Smith goes on to say we can glorify man’s handiwork any time we want, since he is using the abilities God Himself gave him, but we are never to regard it at all when we are in the process of worshipping God.  Many unbelievers hear a great preacher and marvel at his or her ability as an orator but they totally miss the point of what God has sent that individual to say to the world and to them.  Eloquent oratory can sometimes be a hindrance to the spreading of the Gospel.  Smith says “God help that man who seeks to bring glory and attention to himself while doing the service of God.”

Robert Jamieson suggests that they were not to carve the stones because that may lead to carving images on them and those images may in turn lead to superstitious thinking and behavior.  Perhaps.

But what we do know for sure is that God said if they do use carved stone, they would “profane” the altar.  That is, the altar would become irreverent, disrespectful, wicked, and even sacrilegious.   Our failure to worship God in His way ruins the entire exercise of worship for us.

Finally principle number five from this passage is this: God is concerned about our own showiness or flashiness.  One could argue that He is concerned about that at the best of times, but He certainly does not want any of it during our worship of Him.  Matthew Henry suggests that the Israelites were to make their altars low to the ground so that they would not think that the higher up the altar was built and the closer to the heavens they were, the more acceptable any sacrifice made on it would be to God.  Chuck Smith, however, I believe has a much more relevant explanation for this verse.  He writes:

In other words, don't go up steps and high where people can look up and see your bare legs or something. God just doesn't want attention drawn to anything but Him when we are worshiping God. He wants your heart and your mind to be centered upon Him, not to be distracted.

Then Smith goes on to explain why at his church they try to keep distractions to a minimum and even when dealing with musicians, they discourage “little antics that draw attention to themselves, even a special movement as you're playing the bass, you know. It draws attention to you, and takes the attention of the people off of what you're saying, what you're singing.”  Need we say more about how we dress or how we stand or how we move?  Smith goes on, “But the minute I draw attention to me, then the person's attention is taken off of God, and I am robbing God of that which is His. God will hold me accountable for it.”

So there we have it.  Keep the five simple principles for worship in mind, especially when you are leading it.  If you and I do that, then God readily accepts our worship.  And if He does, He will also bless it.  That’s all the success we need. 

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