We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
An altar us a place where the sacrifice is killed. In today's verse, Christ is called the altar of Christians, Christ being the atoning sacrifice for sin. The altar of Jesus Christ is an altar of exclusion. Not everyone gains admission to this Altar, only those who eat the bread Jesus described in John 6:
Jesus answered. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day... I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If a man eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world...whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him..."
The Jews were appalled at Jesus for saying this. They didn't understand He was teaching them a spiritual lesson about the power of an indestructible life (Hebrews 7:16). If you read all of John 6, you will see that Jesus is teaching that the events and procedures described in the context of the altar in the Old Testament are a picture of the true altar, Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven. In the old days, it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with animal sacrifices, but when Jesus Christ died on the cross, and was raised alive from the dead, He went into the true sanctuary in heaven itself as the sacrifice to take away the sins of the world. (see Hebrews 9).
It was an exclusionary sacrifice in that no other sacrifice had the power to cancel sin. There is no salvation in Buddha or Muhammad or Gaia or yourself. The only way to God is through Jesus Christ, because He alone cancelled humanity's sin debt by become sin for us and dying in our place. Only one Man knows the way to heaven, Jesus Christ, because He came from there and went back there when His job was done. Every other person who says he or she knows the way to immortality only knows a different way to hell. Don't follow them.
There is only one altar and His name is Jesus Christ. Every other altar perpetuates the death sentence humans are already under due to their own sin.
So don't be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them.
We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name.
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