Genesis 13:18

TENT AND ALTAR

‘Abram removed his tent.… and built there an altar.’

Genesis 13:18

Here is Abraham’s life given us in these two words—his tent and his altar. Everything in that wondrous life of his, from the day that he left his fatherland, is connected with these two things. He was a stranger, and a worshipper. As a stranger, without a certain dwelling-place, he needed the tent; as a worshipper, he needed the altar.

I. These two still make up the life of a believing man.—With less than these we cannot rightly pass through our three-score years and ten; more than these we do not need. Of these two the altar is the more needful. We may perhaps do without the former; we may be homeless men, like Him who had not where to lay His head. But we cannot do without the latter.

II. Daily intercourse with Jehovah we must have; and we cannot have that without the altar.—Only there can God meet with us. Only there can we meet with God. At the altar is reconciliation, and forgiveness, and peace; for the blood is there—the blood of the everlasting covenant. On that sacrificial blood we stand; round that altar we gather for worship and for fellowship. Standing there, we see the fire of heaven coming down, and the fire of the altar going up. But they touch not us. We are safe. The fire consumes the Substitute, and reaches not the sinner. All is well with those who have accepted the altar as their place of worship. Theirs is ‘peace with God.’

Help us, O Thou whom we own as Lord, to walk here in the footsteps of Thy saints of old! Help us to live the believing life of peace, and communion, and service, pitching our tents beside Thy altar, and living our pilgrim life beneath the shadow of Thy cross! Lead us safely on, and give us pilgrim hearts for our pilgrim life!

Illustration

‘Mamre was a refuge for faith. Abram and the patriarchs were emigrants; they left for the honour of God. The East is full of traditions concerning Abram and his hatred to idolatry, and how he forsook the worship of the fire and the sun. He had come from the neighbourhood where the Babel society was founded,—faith, not in God, but in the vanity of bricks it had all ended in confusion; but the sacred memories of Mamre, where Abram reared an altar to the Lord, these linger and send out their influence still. A high faithfulness ruled the life of Mamre, the life of domestic piety,—the first story given us of the life of faith, where Abram raised an altar and called upon the name of the Lord.’