Ezekiel 43:13 And these are the measures of the altar after the cubits: The cubit is a cubit and an hand breadth; even the bottom shall be a cubit… We see the cross no more after its cubit measures. The cross was measurable, the Roman foot rule was laid upon it — so much vertical, so much horizontal, so much in weight — was that the cross? No! That was the Roman gallows, that was not the cross. Oh! why do we not preach the cross, the eternal cross, whose shadow lies even over the light of summer? Men need the cross so interpreted. But have we not made a gallows of the cross, the model of the Atonement? Who can measure the word "atone"? There are those who are the victims of definition idolatry. They want to know what you mean by this term and that. There are indefinable terms, there are terms that have no equivalent in other symbols. "Atonement" may be one of those terms. I have seen it once. A man may only see the cross in its truest sense once, but that once spreads itself through all the days. A man may only take, mayhap, the ordinance of the Lord's Supper once. Have you taken it so? For convenience, for expedience, for merely ecclesiastical purposes, end for occasional spiritual helps, it may be necessary to have it every Lord's day, or every month, or every year, at certain periodic intervals. No doubt, but the soul cannot drink that Blood more than once! Do you suppose that the cross can be measured in cubits? Where was the atonement rendered? In eternity! Do you suppose that Christ was born in Bethlehem in any other than a merely visible and temporal and earthly sense? He was never born in Bethlehem! When did He die? He is the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Before the sin was done the atonement was made! You cannot anticipate God. You cannot surprise the Eternal. He does not conceive of the cross as an after device; He does not attempt to make a Roman model into a living atonement. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And these are the measures of the altar after the cubits: The cubit is a cubit and an hand breadth; even the bottom shall be a cubit, and the breadth a cubit, and the border thereof by the edge thereof round about shall be a span: and this shall be the higher place of the altar. |
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