The Sacrifice Bound To The Altar

“Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” —Psalm 118:27

You will readily recognize the reference to the altar of burnt offering which of old stood just inside the gate of the tabernacle. It was made of acacia wood overlaid with brass or copper, and had a grate in the center of it where the victim was burned, typifying the atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ. As these various sacrificial beasts were brought to be offered to Jehovah, they were bound to the horns of the altar, which were upon its four corners.

In this Scripture, which is a Messianic Psalm, picturing our Lord Jesus Christ as the rejected One giving Himself for us, we see the meaning of the horns. He was bound to them. It is in this same Psalm that we read, “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.” It speaks of our Lord Jesus, the One who “came to His own but His own received Him not.” He was rejected by those He loved so tenderly and was taken out to die. He was the victim bound as it were to the horns of the altar. That altar for Him was the cross on which He yielded up His life for our redemption. The horn signified power—the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe. Four speaks of universality—He gave Himself a ransom for all.

What were the cords that bound Him there? It is a rather significant thing that the only other instance in all the Bible, as far as I can recall, where we actually read of a sacrifice being bound to the altar is in the case of Isaac. God said to Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” And we are told how the father and son went together to Mt. Moriah and how Isaac looked up to his father and said, “Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for the burnt-offering?” And Abraham replied, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering.” What prophetic words were those! Jesus said, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” He looked on in faith to the coming into this scene of “the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” But again typically, we read, “Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” Then God intervened. As someone has well said, “He spared that father’s heart the pang which He would not spare His own.” This is the fullest picture of the sacrifice of Christ which we have in the Old Testament. Elsewhere we read of bulls and goats and rams offered to God, but here we have a man; here we have a beloved son bound with cords to the altar.

What were the cords? It seems to me we might think of one of them as “the Golden Cord of Love to God the Father.” You remember how our Lord Jesus Christ declared in John’s Gospel, “No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10:18). And again you recall His words as He left the upper room to go out to the Garden, “That the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence” (John 14:31). He was not a helpless victim in the hands of wicked men. He had demonstrated over and over again that they had no real power over Him. Three years before, when He preached that wonderful sermon in the synagogue of Nazareth, they led Him out of the city and were determined to hurl Him over the cliff and dash Him to pieces on the rocks below; but, “He passing through the midst of them went his way” (Luke 4:30). Not one hand was raised to detain Him. When they came to him in the Garden on the night of His sorrows, as he prayed, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39); and when at last He saw the multitude coming, He went forth to meet them and asked, “Whom seek ye?” And they said, “We seek Jesus of Nazareth.” And He answered, “I am He.” In so speaking, He used the incommunicable name of God. Moses said to Jehovah, “Whom shall I say sent me to Pharaoh?” God’s answer was, “I am; say unto him I am hath sent thee.” When they came with swords and staves to arrest Jesus, He said, “I am,” and they went backward and fell to the ground. They could not stand before His face when He asserted His deity. They had no power against Him. He had insisted upon that when He stood in Pilate’s hall. Pilate asked Him, “Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee and have power to release thee?” Jesus replied, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above. This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” And so He put Himself in their hands and went out to die voluntarily, and the Sacrifice was bound to the horns of the altar. What was the cord that bound Him there? “But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.” It was love to the Father; it was the desire to vindicate the righteousness of God; it was that He might glorify the Father that led Him thus to go to that cross.

But that is only one of the cords that bound Him. The text intimates that there were more than one. “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” We may speak of the other as, “The Silver Cord of Love to Man,” for in Ephesians 5:25–26, it is written, “Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” He could have gone free. The law had no claim upon Him. Jehovah had decreed, “The soul that sinneth it shall die,” but He had never been guilty of sin. He was free from all inward tendency to sin and yet He stooped in grace to take our place and went out to die in our room and stead. Never was love like His. You remember He said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” It was in grace he called them friends for by nature all men are enemies and alienated from God by wicked works. If He had been looking for friends for whom to die, He could not have found one in all this wide world, for every man’s heart it is written, “The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7). It is His love that makes us His friends. He looked on to what His grace would accomplish and He saw us as we would be when responsive to His mercy and loving kindness, and so treated us as friends and went to the cross to die for His friends. “Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar”—the Golden Cord of Love for God, because He was there to fulfill God’s righteousness, and gold is the symbol of divine righteousness in Scripture; the Silver Cord of Love to Man, for He was there to procure our redemption and salvation, and silver is the symbol of redemption in the Book of God.

“’Twas love that sought Gethsemane,
Or Judas ne’er had found Him;
’Twas love that held Him to the tree,
Or iron ne’er had bound Him.”

What is our responsibility to love like this? Is it enough that putting our trust in Him as Saviour we shall know that He has put our sins away and fitted us for the presence of God? Shall we stop there? Is it enough that we come together from time to time and look back by faith to that cross and contemplate that love, meditate upon that mighty sacrifice with our hearts going out in worship and praise and adoration? Shall we stop there? Or shall we remember that love like this has claims on us and that as He was bound to the horns of the altar, so now the Word comes home to every redeemed soul, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). Shall we not turn to Him and say, “Blessed Lord, Thou wert bound with cords to the horns of the altar in order to redeem our souls from everlasting judgment. O, bind us to the place of sacrifice that we may be yielded wholly to Thyself, that we may live unto Thee.” Now bind us there that we may not shrink back but ever offer to Thee the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and the sacrifice of well-doing to glorify Thy name.

The early Christians used to speak of the Lord’s Supper as “The Sacrament.” Sometimes we lose track of the origin of these ecclesiastical terms and we wonder at them. How would anybody ever think of calling the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the observance of a sacrament? You remember, the Sacrament was the name given to the oath that the Roman soldier took when he enlisted in the legion. He took the oath of fealty to the emperor, of devotion to those in authority above him; and from time to time as they gathered for review, as they saluted the emperor, they renewed the sacrament, they took the oath afresh and said, “We are ready to live and to die for the glory of the empire.” Perhaps some early Christian was struck with that and said to the believers, “Come, let us renew the oath of our allegiance to our Saviour; as we take this bread and this wine, let us do it recognizing afresh and confessing again that we owe everything to the work that He accomplished on Calvary’s tree and that therefore we are not our own, we are bought with a price even the precious blood of Jesus,” and so they came to speak of it as a sacrament. Perhaps the term has been misused, I am afraid it has, and people have attached a wrong meaning to it, but may we not use it reverently? As we draw near to the table of the Lord, as we look back and think of Him, that blessed Sacrifice, bound with cords to the horns of the altar, shall we not renew our allegiance to Him? As we take the bread and the wine, shall we not lift our hearts afresh and say, “Blessed Lord, Thou hast died so great a death for me, Thou hast done so wondrously in order to accomplish my redemption, now I desire once more to own Thy claims upon me.”

“Lord, I am Thine, entirely Thine;
Purchased and sealed by blood divine.”

And so we shall glorify Him as we carry out His request, “This do in remembrance of me.”