EXODUS 20
The intervening chapters, 20 to 23, are to assure conditions in the development of what is priestly for the priestly company to go up in chapter 24:1. How calculated is this scene on the mountain to impress the soul with the thought that “our God is a consuming fire”. Yet how these very conditions, if excluding to the flesh, are full of encouragement to us in the way of approach, as seen in the liberty of movement with our Moses and our Aaron, the Apostle and High Priest.
Then in chapter 20 there are the ten words, the first four treating of our relations with God and the last six with one another. The altar of earth in verse 24 stands connected with every christian, as of the faith of Jesus, but verse 25 does not speak of the altar of stone as imperative, while the altar of earth is so in verse 24. The altar of stone represents Christ as the Son of God apprehended in the soul in relation to the counsels of God. The sharp tool to be excluded in verse 25 suggests the exclusion of the [p. 237] human, cultured mind in that holy realm, as seen in the warnings in the Colossian epistle.