RAVEN DEB: BEWARE!! THE HEWN STONE ALTARS...by Pastor Troy Bohn

“ And if thou wilt make Me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of

hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.” Exodus 20:25

Recently as I was on a flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Buffalo, New York I pulled my Bible from my briefcase and turned to Exodus Chapter (20). Most people quickly recognize this chapter as the one listing the “Ten Commandments”, yet I found myself skipping past those familiar verses and to the very end of the chapter.
.

“If you make ME an altar of stone, thou shalt not make it of hewn stone; for if thou lift up THY tool upon it, THOU hast polluted it”

.
Moses had just received the ten commandments at Mount Sinai and the people had been first hand witnesses to the “thundering, lightening, noise of the trumpets, and rising smoke” upon the mountain (v.18) and it says that “when the people saw it, they distance themselves from it because of fear.”
.
God desired to reveal Himself to His people in a real and personal way, yet the people decided amongst themselves to keep their distance and instead allow Moses to hear from God on their behalf. They were all too willing to sacrifice a personal and intimate relationship with God if it would allow them the ability to avoid actually having to go into His
presence.
.
Folks, I think it is fairly obvious that what we attempt to call “God’s Plan” on our terms suddenly ceases to be the plan of God at all. This is true in our personal lives and it is very apparent in what we have come to call “Church.”
.
I want to pose a question to pastors, ministers, and laymen alike: How much of YOU have you allowed to shape that which God, through the Holy Spirit, has called you to do?
.
Have you attempted to make God an altar, yet designed it around your desires, your understanding, your traditions
and fears? If so, then you have polluted or profaned the altar of God!
.
The example that was chronicled in Israel’s experience can serve as a very powerful and useful tool in keeping us from making the same mistakes or in correcting those already made.
.
Verse 19 They said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die."
.
Somewhere along the line, God’s people decided that they would rather reject the open invitation into His throne of grace (Hebrews 14:16) and allow someone else to hear from Him instead.
.
We see this everyday in our Christian Culture. Instead of “seek(ing) the Lord while He may be found and calling upon him while He is near”, we have yielded the honor of hearing from God to self-styled prophets, christian-ized psychology-based self-help books, and prancing pulpiteers.
.
Sitting in a church service when I was about 21 years old, a well-known evangelist was the featured speaker. About 1,500 people packed the building that night. As the man “ministered”, he would stop and call someone out from the audience.
.
“God is calling you to greatness! He has placed His blessing upon your life. You will do great exploits and he will take you before great people.”
.
One by one, friends of mine were being singled out by this man whom the pastor said, “Operated in the gifts of the Spirit like few in his generation.” As happy as I was for my friends and how they were going to change the world, I wanted my word too!
.
Instead of getting some you’re the greatest and you’re going to be blessed word - I got rebuked and it wasn't by the guest evangelist! It was by the Holy Spirit Himself!
.
“Why would you want someone else to tell you something when I have already heard your cry and have spoken to you Myself?”
.
That was the last time that I needed (or expected) someone to “go to the mountain” on my behalf. The invitation had been given to open the door for Jesus to come in where His sheep know His voice. Don’t allow someone to profane God’s Word for you with their own flattering words. By the way, those friends are still waiting for the evangelists word to come to pass.
.
Verse 20 “ Moses said to the people, Do not fear; for God has come

to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not

sin."

.
At first glance this verse may sound rather confusing, “Don’t fear...so that you can fear?” The confusion is easily remedied when we look to see what those words actually mean within the context of this verse:
.
Do not “fear” or tiyraa’um (Hebrew) which means “to be terrified by something.”
That His “fear” or yir’aatow (Hebrew) which means “the moral dread of being displeasing to God.”
.
The first one is motivated by sin and the second one is motivated by love! So it could be put this way:
.
“Don’t think that God is wanting to do something terrible to you. He has come to see if you will respond rightly to Him. There should be such a desire to please Him in your heart that you would never want to do anything contrary to His will for your life.”
.
God’s desire for us is to live a life above sin - that is, to be so near “the mountain” that transgressing against His love and holiness is the furthest thing from our minds! Yet because we refuse to walk in that place of intimacy with Jesus, we find it easier to yield to temptation than to the Holy Spirit!
.
Verse 21 “The people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.”
.
Have you ever felt that you had just missed a tremendous opportunity and were now just “left in the dark” with no true sense of direction? Imagine how those that refused to hear from God themselves must have felt that day.
.
Ephesians 4:18 says, “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them…”.
.
When we abdicate the place and the way that God has intended for us, it is not like He merely says, “Okay then, we’ll just do it your way instead.” As the old saying goes - Its God’s way or it’s the highway! Or in this case, a place of darkness and lack of understanding.
.
Even though 1 John 1:5 tells us, “...God is light and in Him is no darkness at all”, when one attempts to have a relationship with him on their own terms - the only thing that can be expected is darkness and disappointment. That is precisely what happened to them in Exodus 20.
.
Paul reveals the way out of this dilemma in Romans 13:12 when he declares, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light!”
.
Simply put: You have got to strip yourself bare of anything that would represent rebellion, fear, or disobedience and dress yourself anew in the character of Jesus Christ. If you’ll seek Him with all your heart, you will find Him!
.
Verse 22-23 “Then the Lord said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: You have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make anything to be with Me — gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.
.
Why would God see it as necessary to warn them against making false gods for themselves out of things that are considered most valuable - to men?
.
The answer: Because that is what we always try to do! We are all too soon to forget that “to obey is always better than to sacrifice.” (1 Sam. 15:22)
.
We are notorious for thinking that what seems important and valuable to us is what God also holds in high regard. Most of the things that we do today in the name of Christ have little to do with the desire of Christ!
.
We think our hour-long worship services impress Him?
We think He is taken in by our multi-media presentations?
Does He consider our 15 minute devotions as intimacy?
How about our LED signs and coffee bars!
Does He care about missing the NFL kickoff?
.
Jesus told the religious crowd of Luke 16:15, “You know how to justify the things that you do when it come to men, but don’t forget - God knows your heart. What is held in high regard and seen as important to men is an abomination to God!
.
Consider where you invest: your time, your talents, your money, your emotions, your passion. Jesus makes it pretty plain in Matthew 16:21 “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” *We will always put the most effort into doing the things that are the most valuable and important to us!
.
I have personally seen these three scenarios played out on numerous occasions over many years of ministry:

A pastor has no problem committing to 3-4 hours of NFL Football Sunday
afternoon following his services, but is too busy to join you in witnessing to
lost people for 2 hours on Friday night!
A friend will spend all day Saturday shopping with you at the local mall,
but is way too tired to help feed the hungry each week at a housing
project.
A person can sit in silence for 2 hours at a movie theatre while having
filth and violence pumped into their hearts, but get antsy and disinterested
after 15 minutes of praying!

.
This is the reality! We always have the time, motivation and willingness to do and invest in the things that are most important and most rewarding to us personally. The problem arises when we start doing these things and attempt to
convince ourselves and others that these are things that are pleasing to God!
.
Verse 24 “An altar of earth you shall make 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 record My name I will come to you, and I will bless you.”
.
If this verse is not an eye-opener to you then you need to take another look! While this was obviously spoken to Moses and the children of Israel during the Old Covenant, it is a beautiful picture and foreshadowing of the New Covenant that we have in His blood!
.
We saw two things revealed in verses 22-23 (1) If the basis of our worship is man-pleasing then it will never be God-pleasing (2) What God values and what men value are seldom the same thing.
.
Look again at those first few words of verse 24 “An altar of earth you shall make for Me…”. This is what God’s desire is! He is not looking for our multi-million dollar state-of-the-art buildings as a place for His habitation, 2 Corinthians 4:7 says, “...We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
.
God is saying: “Don’t try and please me by thinking that the things that you have acquired or accomplished (represented by the gold & the silver) are a suitable altar or platform on which to worship and serve me! Those are things that YOU have thought that I desired - yet they are designed for YOUR pleasures and YOUR comforts and not for Me. My altar will consist of that which I have made for myself (represented by the earth) and that which I have redeemed for Myself!”
.
The altar of earth Exodus 20 was a foreshadowing of the earthen vessels of 2 Corinthians 4 - they both speak of His desire and plan to not just dwell with us but to also dwell in us! Adam was created from the dust of the earth to
walk and commune with God. .
When our treasure is the deposit of His righteousness into our lives through faith in the finished work of the Cross, then we see that it is never about our efforts or intentions but rather about His goodness, grace and mercy.
.
Anything truly excellent and anything truly powerful and anything truly valuable and sustainable is going to be the result of God’s hand being upon it and our hands, opinions and efforts being nowhere to be seen!
.
Verse (24) concludes with “In every place that I record MY name I will come to you, and I will bless you.”
.
Where is His name written? Another way of saying that would be, “Where and what is it that truly represents His will for us?”
.
Isaiah 49:16 says, “See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.” That is HIS hands and not OUR hands. This speaks of a place where He would be pierced and where we would be protected.
.
We are to present ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice and that is the only sacrifice that is holy and acceptable unto Him.
.
Verse 25 “And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it.”
.
Did you know that there are nearly 1600 “ifs” in the KJV of the Bible? An “if” is usually a precursor to a word of wisdom that serves to provide a clear directive to anything that may deviate even slightly from God’s prescribed order of things. This is what we see here as well.
.
God said, “Make for me an altar of earth” (a type of His people) As was stated before, this was done so as to not having anything distract from His desire to be reconciled with man.
.
But then he says, “If you make Me an altar of stone…”. God in His infinite wisdom already knows what man is thinking! Man continually tries to “one up” God instead of just simply hearing and obey what He is saying.
.
So as a result of already knowing this He says, “IF” you are determined to do this—then this is how you shall do it.
.
If you must make Me an altar from stone, then you will not make it from hewn stone… What is hewn stone? Most of you probably understand what this means, but for those of you that do not, let me explain.
.
Hewn Stone is that which is sharpened or chiseled so that it takes on an appearance differing from its naturally occurring shape or appearance. In the time of Moses, there were many highly skilled stone cutters that had been
trained while building the architectural marvels of Egypt..
The temptation would have been for them to choose a stone and then to have a skilled artisan design it in a man-pleasing decorative design. They may have even unwittingly incorporated Egyptian (worldly) designs and patterns into it.
.
God did not (and does not) desire man’s best effort. His only desire is for us to be OBEDIENT to His desire and plan. When even the most gifted craftsman (or well intentioned Christian or pastor) puts his hands upon God’s plan - it leaves everything they touched polluted and profaned and not fit for the Glory of God!
.
Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Notice that it doesn't say, “There is a way that seems wrong to a man.”
.
Proverbs 16:2 adds, “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes.” Whose eyes are we seeing things through?
.
Are we skillfully crafting things in our own lives, ministries and churches and hoping that God approves of them? Have we abandoned the counsel of God in exchange for the good intentions of our flesh?
.
As great and as glorious as our efforts are; as popular or successful as our ministries may appear; as peaceful and encouraged as we may feel emotionally— if what we are doing and saying is being built upon hewn stone altars then the very best that we have to offer God is a polluted sacrifice!
.
Let’s take some time to reexamine the things in our lives that we claim to be doing for His glory to see if they truly represent God’s heart—or if they are really just things that make us more comfortable in our “Christianized-Rebellion”.