Altared - Pt. 1 - Unaltered!
I. Introduction
Prominent not only in the architectural design of the past but also in most of our memories. For some it was padded. For others it folded down. For some a simple rail. For others it was built in and for others it was a separate piece of furniture that often became a display location for offering plates, plastic flowers, and croquette covered tissue boxes. It is the altar. Regardless of your memory or lack of memory of an altar the concept of the altar is rooted in the heart of God.
God never deviates from His original revelation to man. He may enlarge it, expand it, but never deviates from it. And very early on in the account of man altars are referenced and mentioned. Although, in Genesis 4 an altar is not specifically mentioned we do know that Able made an acceptable sacrifice of the first fruits of his flocks. God clearly meets man at the altar. The altar surfaces again in the life of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob although very minimal information is given about the altar. God eventually expands on the revelation of an altar when dealing with Moses. In Exodus 20 exact instructions are given on how an altar should be constructed and it is placed at the forefront of the corporate worship experience. The original revelation continues throughout Scripture, altars are mentioned 370 different times! The message is abundantly clear . . . God meets man at the altar.
None of this is new to us. However, I am concerned that it is foreign to us. So over the course of the coming weeks we are going to talk about the altar. We are going to find out why the altar is so important and what God wants to accomplish in an "altared" life. Let me lay some groundwork today!
II. Text
Romans 12:1-2
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
A. We are called to live an altared life!
Paul beseeches, urges, pleads, and begs us to live an altared life. It would have been much easier if he had simply called us to visit an altar, in a building, occasionally. However, he was not talking about just a physical altar in a building that you only have access to on Sundays (although we should use it at church). He was talking about an altared lifestyle. A way of living in which while we are in the car, in the house, at work we constantly lay our life at His feet. A daily, minute by minute, second by second dying to our will, our way, our self. Perhaps The Message interpretation of this passage better helps us grasp the concept Paul was trying to drive into us.
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
And yet, in spite of Paul's desperate plea for us to make the covenant to live an altared lifestyle I see that we avoid the altar. I would submit to you this morning that the fact that it is so hard to get people to come to a physical altar on Sundays (and I have asked other pastors and they see this too) is a reflection/indication that we are also avoiding the daily altar!
Why do we avoid the altar? We even know that in our efforts to avoid death we avoid life!
Does anyone here remember medicine before they made it taste good? I can remember literally avoiding taking medicine even though I knew it was beneficial and would bring relief and yet I would hold health at arms length because I didn't like the taste. (Sounds like an altar to me!) So we have learned to hide the taste in bubble gum or grape flavor and so then we are willing to take what we used to avoid.
The problem is there is no way to sugarcoat or make the altar attractive.
We avoid altars because they are ugly. Even as ornate and architecturally pleasing as we have tried to craft them the truth is they are still a place of pain and death. In fact, the Hebrew the word altar means “to slay or to slaughter”. In the New Testament, the word means “a place to or place of sacrifice”. It is a bloody and painful scene. The priest was instructed to slit the throat of the animal and catch its blood. Then they had to sprinkle the sides of the altar with the blood and then pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. The priests, by duty, sacrificed almost 1300 animals each year. This was not a job for the squeamish. This was not a job for the weak stomached person. It was a gory daily task.
However, we must remember . . .
"Cain brings a bloodless offering to God and is rejected (4:5). Not only was the sacrifice bloodless, but it had already been cursed by God; therefore, Cain added insult to injury. (See 3:17). Cain may have thought it to be far more refined and cultured to bring fresh fruit and vegetables rather than a bloody animal offering, but not so!"
I wished I could flavor the altar or sugarcoat the altar for you but the truth is there is nothing pretty or pleasant about the altar experience. God meets man at the altar. He knew that in order for us to have life we must taste death! The results, effects, and outcome can be enjoyable but we avoid the death that takes place there. And the honest truth is that it would do us good to die more frequently than we do!
We avoid the altar because it requires time. Altars require preparation. Altars require adjustment to schedules. Altars require pausing. Altars require inward examination.
Jesus' altar experience is the perfect example of our attempt to not only avoid but sanitize altars! Jesus' experience at the altar was one of pain (he prayed till He bled - isolation), He took significant time (could you not tarry one hour). There was inward examination . . . not my will or in other words He discovered that He had a will and it was in direct opposition to what the Father desired. We avoid the altar so much that when we paint that scene we want it clean. We want no blood. No sweat. No agony. No work. So we paint Jesus looking upward with a halo around His head as if He is attending some holy picnic. However, make no mistakes about it, hand the painter a pink slip, because it was a bloody scene. It was a battle field. It was strenuous time! We want clean, short stop, convenient altars which were foreign to Jesus.
Our avoidance to the altar has caused us to become a Saul generation! We love worship more than the Word. We love worship because worship/music soothes our demons. However, we have forgotten that it is only God's Word that drives out the demons. The altar plays into that because it is at the altar that we submit to His Word and His Will revealed in His Word. We want to feel good without becoming good.
B. An unaltared life leads to a cultured life!
Paul calls us to this altared lifestyle because he knew that without the altar as a prominent feature and experience in our life we would become cultured. We begin to think like and eventually we act like the culture around us. Isn’t that where we are now? Divorce rate the same as culture. Entertainment choices the same. Fashion sense the same. Attitude the same. Goals the same. Stress the same.
Paul is clear that we need a place of death to kill the collapse morals! He is clear that it is only at an altar that we fight off the tendency to become more like culture than our King. It is only at the altar that we die to the disease of deception. It is only at the altar that we are inoculated against the invasion of culture. Do we more closely resemble Christ or our culture? The altar brings us back to Him.
I am calling you back to an altared lifestyle. I long to see you flood the altars in our church. I sincerely believe that will be an indication that my real prayer has been answered. My real prayer and desperate plea is that each of us will establish a daily killing place in your own life. A lifestyle that lays every decision, every action, every response, every relationship, every word, every thought, every viewing choice, every habit, every addiction, every weakness, every strength at the feet of the One who was slain at an altar for us!
How hypocritical would it be for me to preach about altars and then not give you time to visit an altar? One of the things we are going to do during this series is I am purposing to shorten my preaching to give you ample time in each service to visit an altar here in hopes that you will become altared to the point you begin to take the altar home with you.
