The Ever-Burning Fire on the Altar

For most Christians, Leviticus is probably their least favorite book of the Bible. This is understandable, because until you read through Leviticus enough times to become familiar with the content, and until you read through the other 65 books of the Bible enough times to understand how Leviticus fits into the whole Bible story, Leviticus can seem like a strange book filled with instructions that seem irrelevant to 21st-century American Christians.

Leviticus chapters 6 through 8 consists of detailed instructions for how the Levitical priests were to offer various sacrifices, what they were to do with various organs, body parts, and blood of the animals, how the priests were to be dressed and consecrated for this work, etc. To readers unfamiliar with the Bible, these chapters sound more like instructions from a butcher’s manual than something relevant to Christians today.

Yet even without reading through the Bible several times, a Christian can still glean some lessons from these three chapters in Leviticus.

When studying a passage of Scripture, sometimes it helps to look for the obvious overwhelming theme in the passage. In this particular passage, two words that stand out are fire and burn/burnt/burning. The word fire appears 17 times and the word burn in its various forms appears 29 times. By considering what the Bible says about fire and burning in other passages of Scripture, we can look for lessons in this passage that are relevant for us today.

Fire often represents the presence of God. Deuteronomy 4:24 says “For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” Like fire, God consumes that which He condemns, whether sodomites in Sodom, or unrepentant sinners in the lake of fire, or impurities that need to be purged from His people.

Fire also represents zeal. John the Baptist said that Yeshua (Jesus) would baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. When that happened in Acts chapter 2, cloven tongues of fire came upon the disciples of the Lord. They were all filled with fiery zeal when they were baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Fire represents the presence of the Lord burning in our hearts. The disciples who met the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).

Leviticus 6:13 says “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.” Of course this is talking about the altar in the Tabernacle, but because we are now the temple of the Lord, this truth applies equally, if not moreso, to the fire on the altar of our heart. We must not let our fiery zeal and devotion to the Lord ever go out. We must keep it ever burning.

In Leviticus 6:12 the priests were told to add fuel to the fire every day. We likewise must add fuel to the fire in our hearts every day. The Lord provides us with the fuel we need through our daily prayer and daily Bible reading. If we neglect these things, our fire will die down and eventually go out. We might still attend church regularly, but our faith will be reduced to nothing more than a pile of lukewarm ashes.

God does not want lukewarm devotion. He does not want cold, formal prayers recited by rote without zeal. “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16). Cold air falls down; heat rises. God wants intense, fervent prayers from burning hearts, prayers that will rise up like heat, prayers that are birthed by a love for God, fiery prayers that no waters can quench.

“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it” (Song 8:7).

The Enemy may bring a flood of disappointment, trials, and persecution in an effort to quench our zeal for the Lord, but if our prayers are birthed by our love for the Lord, they will be unquenchable.

To demonstrate to Israel who the true God was, Elijah poured twelve barrels of water on the sacrifice, the wood, and the altar, and filled the trench around the altar with water. But all that water could not quench the fire of God. On the contrary, the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed the water, along with the sacrifice, the wood, and the stones of the altar.

Fiery love, zeal, and devotion like Elijah had does not come from mere academic, intellectual scholarly pursuits, nor from formal education in a seminary, nor from sentimental emotion. The fire of God will move and stir our emotions, but our emotions are not the source of the fiery zeal and devotion that is so desperately needed today. The source of fiery zeal and devotion is the One who baptizes with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

Scholarly academic pursuits have their place. Sloppy scholarship should not be tolerated. But only by daily seeking the One who baptizes with the Holy Ghost and with fire can we keep the fire ever burning on the altar of our heart.

| DB

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Image: Psalm 89 by Daniel Botkin from his Psurrealistic Psalms Pseries. Visit DanielBotkin.com to view all his art galleries.