March 18 – Exodus 27
The bronze-altar was the basis of the Levitical system. To it the sinner came with his divinely-appointed victim. There was a fire continually burning on it (Lev. 6:13), and the daily sacrifice was renewed each morning. There it stood: ever smoking, ever blood-stained, ever open to any guilty Hebrew that might wish to approach it. The sinner, having forfeited his life by sin, another life—an innocent one—must be given in his place. When the Israelite brought his offering, before killing it he laid his hand on the animal’s head, thus becoming identified with it, and thereby the acceptableness of the flawless victim passed to him, while his sin is transferred to it.
The symbolic importance of "bronze" (like brass) in Scripture is as definitely defined as is that of gold and silver. As gold speaks of glory and silver of redemption, so bronze signifies judgment. This may be gathered from the connections in which it is found. The serpent (reminder of the one who was responsible for the bringing in of the "curse") which Moses was ordered to make and affix to the pole, was made of bronze (Num. 21:9). When God made known the sore judgments which would come upon Israel for their disobedience (see Deuteronomy 28), among other things He threatened, "The heaven whichis over your head shall be bronze (v. 23). When describing the millennial blessedness of Israel, following their long alienation from God, the promise given is "instead of bronze I will bring gold" (Isa. 60:17),
Being the place where sacrifice was offered to God, it spoke, unmistakably, of the Cross of Christ. It pointed to the most solemn aspect of Calvary. The Lord Jesus was the fulfillment of both the altar and its sacrifice, as also of the priests who officiated there. What is distinct in our present “type” is what is pictured by the bronze. This is the hardest of all metals, possessing a greater resistance to fire than gold or silver. In Deuteronomy 33:25 and in Jeremiah 1:18 "bronze" is used as the symbol of ability to endure. Our Savior was the true bronze-altar, possessed of that power of enduring, in its awful intensity, the fires of God’s holiness. He only could endure the Cross. He only could, stand, unconsumed, under the storm of divine judgment. As the bronze plates on the altar protected it from the fervent heat and prevented it from being burnt up, so, Christ passed through the fires of God’s wrath without being consumed. He is mighty to save, because He was mighty to endure.
The bronze-altar, inside the Court, faced the door into the tabernacle, and it was at this place God met with His people: "Where I will meet with you." (Ex. 29:42, 43). So the Cross is now the meeting-place between God and the sinner. "It is on the foundation of what was accomplished there that He can be just and the Justifier of everyone that believes in Jesus. There is no other ground on which He can bring the sinner into His presence. If the Israelite rejected the bronze altar, he shut himself out for ever from the mercy of God, and, in like manner, whoever rejects the cross of Christ, shuts himself out for ever from the hope of salvation" (E. Dennett). Inexpressibly blessed are the words of Exodus 29:37, "everything that touches the altar shall be holy": so every sinner who, by faith, lays hold of Christ is cleansed (Mark 5:27-29).