The Sacrifice of Praise
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood...
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name.
Hebrews 13:12-15
Praising God is easy when everything is good and working out well. It’s a lot tougher when the world is crashing around you. It’s hard to praise God when you get a pink slip, the union goes on strike, gas is $3.75 a gallon, your marriage is hurting, or your kids are rebelling.
Matthew Henry, the British scholar famous for his commentary on the Bible, was once held up by thieves who stole his wallet. After the incident he wrote in his diary: "Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed." (7700 Illustrations, #6578)
You can always find something to be joyful about can’t you!
Yet, there are times it’s tough isn’t it!
The author of Hebrews calls upon to praise God for the hope we have – even in the middle of everything going wrong. He speaks of the “Sacrifice of Praise”.
In the Hebrew the word altar means “a place of slaughter or sacrifice” (Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ©1986, Thomas Nelson Publishers). The altar was a place where the Israelites carried out their spiritual rituals and religious practices of offering up some type of sacrifice to God as a form of worship. It could be fruit, grain, a small bird, a goat, lamb, an ox, or a bullock. It was done as to honor God at great personal cost.
All through Hebrews there has been but one message. The new way of Jesus is better than the old way of Moses. The new way of the covenant of grace is better than the old way of covenant of law. Now we read that we are to worship at a new altar – not with sacrifices of dead animals but with the sacrifice of praise – the fruit of our lips.
But what is this altar of Praise? Is it music? Is it communion? Is it prayer – on your knees before God? It is this but much, much more. The sacrifice of praise is about a place where we can come and be with God as we fellowship with him. I think of what a joyful intimacy that Adam and Eve must have enjoyed as they walked in the Garden of Eden and explored the sights and sounds of their home with the Almighty Creator.
We have come to place of worship and praise where we offer the sacrifice of praise. What is this place? It is a spiritual place that you can only experience. It is a place of complete safety and security.
Our Altar of Worship is A place of Safety
Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
Hebrews 13:1-3
Then Solomon was told, "Adonijah is afraid of King Solomon and is clinging to the horns of the altar. He says, ‘Let King Solomon swear to me today that he will not put his servant to death with the sword.’" (NIV)
1 Kings 1:51
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah (NIV)
Ps 46:1-3
The cleft of the rock where you can hide.
Hymn: It is well with my soul…
In Vienna, Austria the authorities have discovered a woman being held for 24 years in the basement of her home by her father. She had seven children by her father. Two, age 17 and 19 have never seen daylight, never been schooled, and have never been out of their basement prison. Contrast this with our spiritual father who has covered us with his hand and protected us with his love.
God has called upon us to make his church a place of refuge and safety. This is a place where you are accepted and acceptable – no matter what you have done, where you have gone, and what you are like. We specialize in broken people. Transformed by the love of God – but broken people who were transformed.
How we live with and love others providing them a place of safety and security is part of the sacrifice of praise… The fruit of your lips.
Our Altar of Worship is A Place of Sacrifice
Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
Hebrews 13:4
We are called to a life of sacrifice. Marriage is the ultimate test of living in unconditional and submissive love with one another. In marriage you learn to sacrifice and to give of yourself to another.
THE LOVE OF MY LIFE Rick Warren’s wife Kay has cancer. [He wrote "The Purpose Driven Life] Rick sends out a letter every week through his web site, and this is what a recent one said: “So many of you have asked about Kay’s progress in her treatment for cancer, so we wanted to give you an update. We are a little over halfway through her 12- week chemo-regimen. Yesterday she had a great day at the hospital until the chemo effects kicked in, and she quickly deteriorated into misery and major nausea. The rest of the day was very rough as nurses tried to ease her pain. Today, Kay feels wiped out from all the meds they’ve given her, along with the expected fatigue and nausea from the chemo. I’ve kept all visitors away, so the room is quiet for hours. The less going on, the better it is for her.
Between caring for Kay’s basic needs, I sit quietly and think a lot and thank God for my wife, and God’s amazing invention of marriage. With all its ups and downs and “in sickness and health,” I’m certain that marriage is God’s primary tool to teach us unselfishness, sensitivity, sacrifice, and mature love. I want to thank you for your prayers for Kay. My wife is the love of my life, and this is what God intended families to do- to care for each other in need, even if it means cutting back your ministry for a season. I’d want every other husband in ministry to do the same if the situation arose in his family. God blesses us when we keep our commitments to each other."
Marriage is God’s gift to us and how we live in our relationships is part of the sacrifice of praise… The fruit of your lips
Our Altar of Worship is A Place of Promise
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." So we say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?" (NIV)
Heb 13:5-6
In Genesis 8:20-22 we read of an altar that Noah built to worship God after the flood had destroyed the earth. Here at this altar God spoke to Noah and gave His entire creation a promise. “Then Noah build an altar to the Lord . . . never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” His altar became a place of promise.
Who do you trust – The Almighty God or the Almighty Dollar? You know that every dollar has on it the words “In God We Trust”. Every coin has on it the same words and it’s a good thing because wealth can be destroyed as quickly as it is created – maybe quicker.
At one time Howard Hughes was the richest man in the world. All he ever really wanted in life was more. He wanted more money, so he parlayed inherited wealth into a billion-dollar pile of assets. He wanted more fame, so he broke into the Hollywood scene and soon became a filmmaker and star. He wanted more sensual pleasures, so he paid handsome sums to indulge his every sexual urge. He wanted more thrills, so he designed, built, and piloted the fastest aircraft in the world. He wanted more power, so he secretly dealt political favors so skillfully that two US presidents became his pawns. All he ever wanted was more. He was absolutely convinced that more would bring him true satisfaction. Unfortunately, history shows otherwise. He concluded his life emaciated; colorless; sunken chest; fingernails in grotesque, inches-long corkscrews; rotting, black teeth; tumors; innumerable needle marks from his drug addiction. Howard Hughes died believing the myth of more. He died a billionaire junkie, insane by all reasonable standards.
(Bill Hybels in Leadership, Vol. X #3 Summer, 1989, p38).
God’s promise to us is simple - You will never be alone!
The altar of our worship is a place of trust where we rest on his promise to always be there for us… this faithfulness is our sacrifice of praise… the fruit of our lips
Our Altar of Worship is A Place of Testimony
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13:7-8
"That is why we said, ’Let us get ready and build an altar-- but not for burnt offerings or sacrifices.’ On the contrary, it is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow, that we will worship the LORD at his sanctuary with our burnt offerings, sacrifices and fellowship offerings.
Josh 22:26-27
When you all of Joshua 22 you can see the background of story and it’s underlying principles. The twelve tribes of Israel had divided up all the land that God had promised them at Abram’s altar (Genesis 12). Joshua blessed them and then sent them on their way.
A few of the tribes (the Reubenites, Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh) were given land on the other side of the Jordan river. These tribes felt that the Jordan was a barrier between them and the others and feared that in time they would cease fearing the Lord their God (v25). So they devised a plan to create a “replica” of the altar that was in the temple. This altar was not to actually burn sacrifices, but rather to be used as a symbol – a witness between them.
Hebrews 11 gives us a roll call of witnesses who have lived lives of great faithfulness. They stand alongside of you to encourage your sacrifice of praise. Some of them are older men and women of great fortitude. Some of them are young and filled with the faithfulness of a child. They all have one thing in common. They never quit. They never stopped. They never left their faith behind. I’m sure they doubted. I’m sure they grew weary. We all do. But they didn’t stop following Jesus.
In April 1998, a series of tornadoes ripped through the southern part of the United States. A day after one of the Storms had hit the NPR program All Things Considered aired a story about a congregation called the Church of the Open Door. Their church had been destroyed the day previous. Terrified children had been in a choir rehearsal at the time of the storm. When the pastor saw the storm coming, he quickly gathered all the children in the churches main hallway. There they huddled together as the winds ripped the church apart. In an effort to calm the children’s fears, the pastor had led them in singing, “Jesus loves the little children.” Although some of the children were hurt, miraculously no one was killed. The most penetrating part of the broadcast was the report of a little girl who said, “While we were singing, I saw angels holding up the hallway. But the winds were so strong that the angels shouted, “We need help!” and some more angels came to help.” That little girl will never forget what she saw, and she knows that angels are watching over the little children, and that they are precious in Jesus sight.
Their last breath was and ours is to be a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of their and our lips.
Our Altar of Worship is A Place for You!
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
Hebrews 13:9-10
The church is for people – like you and I.
When Jesus walked on this earth he had several critics among the religious folks. These religious people had rules about how “good” people were to live. Rules about the Sabbath and what you could and could not do.
The Pharisees and teachers of the law competed with one another in strictness. They had atomized God’s law into 613 rules and bolstered these with 1,521 emendations (Yancey 132). We can see the length to which this went from the following facts. For many generations the Scribal Law was never written down; it was the oral law, and it was handed down in the memory of generations of Scribes. In the middle of the third century A.D. a summary of it was made and codified. That summary is known as the Mishnah; it contains sixty-three tractates on various subjects of the Law, and in English makes a book of almost eight hundred pages. (Barclay 129) The Law as originally given by God was based on the Ten Commandments. The 1521 emendations from the teachers of the law had reduced the commandments to a legalistic code that completely disregarded the principles intended by God. A good example of this can be seen in the treatment of the Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath and Keep It Holy. First, one of the things considered to be unholy on the Sabbath was work. Work had to be defined, and one of the things considered to be work was writing; but how much writing constituted work? Here is what the teachers of the law said: He who writes two letters of the alphabet with his right or with his left hand, whether of one kind or of two kinds, if they are written with different inks or in different languages, is guilty. Even if he should write two letters from forgetfulness, he is guilty, whether he has written them with ink or with paint, red chalk, vitriol, or anything which makes a permanent mark. Also he that writes on two walls that form an angle, or on two tablets of his account book so that they can be read together is guilty…But, if anyone writes with dark fluid, with fruit juice, or in the dust of the road, or in sand, or in anything which does not make a permanent mark, he is not guilty…. If he writes one letter on the ground, and one on the wall of the house, or on two pages of a book, so that they cannot be read together, he is not guilty. (Barclay 129)
Jesus broke many of their rules because he was about helping people and he taught a simple principle “the Sabbath was made for man; not man for the Sabbath.” In saying this he taught something that is very profound. We are called to be servants of God and called to be his children. The church is not a private club that only let’s certain pious people through the doors and excludes the others – that’s religion – it’s not faith.
We are here by the grace of God – every one of us. It is God’s unmerited, unearned, and unconditional love that makes us acceptable in his sight.
We have an ALTAR like they never had.
We have an altar of Safety
A place where we can go for rest, strength and protection
We have an altar of Sacrifice
Where
We have an altar of Promise
Of everlasting love, a hopeful future
We have an altar of Testimony
Where Jesus Himself stands before God as your witness
We have an altar that is for You
The cross of Jesus
We have an ALTAR – It’s the CROSS of Jesus Christ where He was slaughtered and sacrificed for you and for me. This is an ALTAR that we must come to! This is an ALTAR where we must worship the Lord our God. This is the ALTAR were lives will be restored, renewed and refreshed.
Come to this ALTAR and offer to God the FRUIT of lips that confess His name. Come to this ALTAR and offer to God your life. Come to this ALTAR and offer to God a sacrifice of praise. Commit to Him your LIFE today. Commit to Him your WORSHIP everyday.
