Heart Message About Rebuilding The Altar

Heart Message
As a place of sacrifice or memorial, the altar represents the sacred encounter with the
living God. When we're in a difficult situation as Jacob was when fleeing from his
brother Esau in Genesis 28, he encountered God and received a promise of deliverance.
He poured oil on a stone and prayed for protection devoting himself to God. In Genesis
35, upon the fulfillment of God's promise, God called Jacob to return to Bethel, this time
now with flocks and herds and his wives and children and all that God had given him.
Jacob was called back to that very place to remember and ponder the deliverance of
God. Jacob received another encounter where God gave him a new name and a new set
of promises to walk in.
The altar as a memorial -

When God split the Jordan river and Israel miraculously crossed into the promised land
to fight for their inheritance, the Lord had them bring twelve stones from the middle of
the river and pile them up on the other side. This was a memorial to future generations
as the Lord said,
"Now the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and
they camped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones
which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal. Then he spoke to the
children of Israel, saying: When your children ask their fathers in time to come,
saying, What are these stones?? then you shall let your children know, saying,
Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land; for the LORD your God dried up the
waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, as the LORD your God
did to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed over, that all
the peoples of the earth may know the hand of the LORD, that it is mighty, that you
may fear the LORD your God forever. Joshua 4:19-24
We too can build memorials to God. In a tough time you can dedicate a place to seek
God and build an altar to mark that time that you rededicated yourself, asked for mercy,
sought out deliverance from an impossible situation. Or it might simply be an entry in
your journal where desperate cries were lifted to God. In the years to come you can
return to that place and thank God for what He has done and be refreshed with new
faith to move into the next season of challenges with a new name and new promises.
The altar as a place of sacrifice -

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as
living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do
not conform any longer 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. Romans 12:1,2
As born again believers we now have two natures, our reborn spirit and our old sinful
nature. Paul tells us that these two are at war within us.
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is
contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do
not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
Galatians 5:16-18
And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no
longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in
me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I
cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not
want to do?this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer
I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. Romans 7:16-20
Now that Christ has sacrificed Himself on the altar of the cross, he calls us to deny
ourselves and pick up our cross daily to follow Him. (Luke 9:23) The problem of
legalism arises when we are taught that a complete transformation has taken place on
the day we are born again. As that sinful nature manifests we are tempted to hide it and
join the costume party at church where we all pretend, rather than all confess. Scripture
tells us that sanctification is a process. We are being transformed into His image from
glory to glory. (2 Cor. 3:18) In other words from season to season, faith to faith and one
grace after the other, we are being changed as the flesh dies on the altar and we rise
into newness of life. The altar for us then, though an instrument of sacrifice, is actually
an instrument of freedom. It is where we offer the portion of our old nature that God is
calling to die, that we might be free to live in the new nature.
Perhaps it's an old offense that we place on the altar, where we ask for God's grace and
spirit to forgive. Perhaps it's a desire for a person we are determined to marry or control,
whom God has told us to let go. Perhaps it could even be a covetous desire for
grandiose ministry that people might look upon us with awe for all we have
accomplished! As we become a living sacrifice on the altar of God in that area, we
become free and are able to serve with a childlike spirit, enjoying our daily life with Him,
rather than striving to satisfy an insatiable remnant of the fallen nature, that will never
say, "I'm satisfied, it is enough." The altar allows us to go free from our sin and fallen
desires to mark a place of intimacy with God where he delivered us from the old to the
next season of life. As those memorials begin to pile up in various places of your
history, you'll look back at what seemed like a horrible sacrifice, realizing it was God
willing and working for His good pleasure.
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the
world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Galatians 6:14

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The altar as a memorial -

The altar as a place of sacrifice -

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