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Altars

From the Series: Ritual
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: November 22, 2009

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Transcript

NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH

November 22, 2009

Rituals: Altars

Mark Batterson

Hello! How’s everybody doing? Welcome to everyone at all our locations. I’m so glad you would take time to worship with us this weekend. I had an interesting week, but my interesting week really started a month ago when our 1997 Honda Accord with 225,000 miles on it was stolen! Who steals a ’97 Honda with 225,000 miles on it? I will give it to you! It began an interesting month-long journey for us. Long story short, Prince George’s County recovered our stolen vehicle and we went to the police department to get a release form, at which time, they informed us that they weren’t going to release it because it was used in the commission of a crime. They were sweeping it for evidence and I found out that our car was a get-a-way for a bank robbery! I’m a proud member of the junkie car club, seriously, www.junkiecarclub.com. I think I drive about the coolest car now! I’m going to refer to it from here on out as the get-a-way car. So this week, we went to pick up the car. After we picked it up, my clothes were all black all over. I’m like, what is going on? Evidently, the stuff they use to dust for prints, they didn’t clean it all off and I got it all over my clothes. But that has nothing to do with my story. So, we went to the towing company and the ignition from our vehicle was gone. We couldn’t put a key into it because there was nothing to put a key into. So the guy said that the only way you are going to get this car off the lot is if I teach you how to hotwire your car! I said, “Bring it on!” So, on Monday of this week, your pastor learned how to hotwire a car! My whole self-perception has totally changed in the last week. I feel much more confident and capable of things I never imagined I would be able to do.

This week, we continue our ‘Ritual’ series. We’ve talked about Sabbath and communion and tithing and baptism and confession and worship. This week, we are going to talk about altars. I think that altar-making may be the least practiced ritual that we’ve talked about. In fact, for some of us, it is probably about as mysterious as hotwiring a car, but I can tell you how to do both! We are going to focus on altar-making. But here’s the thing, altar-making is a way to hotwire your spiritual life and jump-start it but I’m taking the metaphor a little bit too far, but I’m living in this zone right now.

Read the Old Testament and you will see so many different types of altars built by so many different people for so many different reasons. We certainly don’t have time to look at all of them. If you look at a concordance, there are hundreds of references to altars, and, granted, most of them refer to this one altar in the tabernacle or temple where sacrifices were made. But we are not really talking about that particular altar. What I’m referring to are the altars that people would build as a result of a spiritually significant moment in their lives. I felt like, let’s go way back and look at Abraham. Abraham built four different types of altars, so we are going to look at those this weekend.

Before we get there, this week we had about 50 church planters hanging out at Ebenezers and it was cool to talk church with them, and after the whole event was over, I offered to give everybody a little nickel tour, showed them the performance space and the coffee house and then up to our offices and my office. It was cool because I felt like it was a way to let them into the universe that I live in. So I thought before we jump into this, altars evoke lots of different images. Let me give you a picture of the altar that I built in my office. So let me give you the nickel tour via video.

Welcome to my office. I want to take a couple minutes this weekend and let you into my crib, the office. This is where I spend a lot of my week. I wanted to share with you one part of my office that is pretty significant to me, so come on in. This is my desk. This is where I hang out and get a few things done. I have a couple thousand of my best friends here. My book collection, but the thing I love about this office the most is this shelf right here because this is where I’ve got a lot of things of incredible significance to me. Let me break it down and give you the back-story behind a couple of these things. It was about a month ago that we got the news about Union Station, and I’m so grateful to God for the 13 years that we were there, and I felt like I wanted some memento as we were taking our stuff out, so I stole this. This is the sign from the bathroom, but my hunch is it’s worthless, but to me it’s priceless. This reminds us of our time there. A couple of other things, one day a customer came in and showed us a photo that they snapped of Ebenezers and this is not Photo Shopped, this is the real deal, this is a rainbow at came right down on Ebenezers, and the significance to me is this, the thing I pray for more than anything else is the favor of God. I pray for God’s favor on my life, on National Community Church, I pray for favor on my kids. The favor of God is God doing something for us that we can’t do for ourselves. I sense God’s favor on Ebenezers and that picture to me is one of my altars, it is one of the things that remind me that we are where we are because of the grace of God.

A couple other interesting ones, I am not going to put this on, this is the swim cap and number from the triathlon that Parker and I ran together. That was an incredibly significant experience for the two of us together and a life goal that we accomplished. This table, I’ve got some things that are really special to me, my grandfather’s Bible, I’ve shared a little bit about that in the past. This book, the Biography of Einstein, is a book I was reading when I was a senior in college, and I fell in love with reading. I read about 200 books that year. I had read about a dozen books before that, I wasn’t a reader, but I fell in love with reading as I read that book, so it symbolizes my library to me and the importance of reading. I think it is good stewardship. This liquor bottle, I get a few double takes when people come in to meet with me. It is really cool, that is a bottle that we found in the dilapidated nuisance property, former crack house, that is now Ebenezers that to me symbolizes what this was and what it has become. I think it symbolizes how God can take anything and use it for his purposes.

Hanging right here is the hat that I wore as Parker and I hiked through the Grand Canyon, and when I’m here in my office, every once in a while I look at that and it brings back lots of painful memories of 130 degree heat and dehydration and a lot of wonderful memories of accomplishing a goal together with my son. Finally, maybe I saved the best for last. Right behind my desk, I’ve got a picture of the cow pasture in Alexandria, Minnesota where I felt called to ministry, and the significance of this picture to me, this was my burning bush, the was my Bethel, this was the place where I was going one direction and one day during a prayer walk in that cow pasture, I head that inaudible yet unmistakable voice of the Holy Spirit and I knew that I was called to ministry. So a few years ago, I went back there, hired a photographer and snapped that picture, and every once in a while, during a tough week, I turn around and look at that picture and remind myself of why I’m doing what I’m doing.

That is one of the big reasons that we have altars. Altars help us remember what we shouldn’t forget. I just wanted to take a couple minutes to let you into my life and into my office and into some of the altars that surround me on a daily basis that, honestly, probably more than anything, remind me of the faithfulness of God. Thanks for hanging out with me here.

This has been a very incriminating sermon. Hotwiring cars, stealing signs, what’s going on? Welcome first-time guests! You can trust me! Ha ha! Let me give you a definition up front. I think an altar is a physical reminder of a spiritual moment. It could be a decision or a revelation or it could be an experience, but something that God has done in your life. I think of them as spiritual mementos, if you will. What I want to say up front is that it is so important for us to surround ourselves with these things as reminders of the faithfulness of God, because if we don’t have them, we are wandering through life, going along our own way and we aren’t reminded of God’s goodness and his faithfulness. So I wanted to give you a picture, and now we are going to dive into Scripture and look at some of the biblical foundations for this idea of making altars.

Let’s start in Genesis 12. I’m going to talk about 4 different types of altars. There are more than that, but this is what I would call an epiphany altar. Genesis 12:7

The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there and dedicated it to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Listen, when the Lord appears to you, somehow, someway, when He speaks to you, what are you going to do? That would be a good time and good place to build an altar and dedicate that thing to the Lord.

After that, Abram traveled south and set up camp in the hill country, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord, and he worshiped the Lord. Then Abram continued traveling south by stages toward the Negev.

Abram had an epiphany. The Lord appeared to him and gives him a promise that would literally define his life. It was this moment that Abram responded to by building an altar.

A few years ago, I read Undaunted Courage but Stephen Ambrose. It is the story of Meriwether Lewis, as in Lewis and Clark, and Lewis was appointed by Thomas Jefferson to find a waterway to the Pacific. Our Hill staffers are going to love this, we was given a $2,500 appropriation from Congress. $2,500 whole dollars for the expedition, the largest part of the budget was $696 for Indian presents. He also used the appropriation to buy things like a boat and medicine and navigational instruments. But Ambrose makes a special point to note how much money was spent on a tremendous amount of ink. Now, when you think about a journey like this, you’re thinking the rifles and the dry goods and the navigational equipment would be a little bit more important than ink, but here is what Ambrose said, “Lewis had plenty of ink left when he got home, enough for another voyage. That ink wasn’t critical for making the trip, but it was critical to make the expedition a success by recording its findings.” In a sense, Ambrose said that there is a different between making a trip and marking your trail. Does that make sense? I feel like that story helps make a distinction for me because I wonder if, spiritually speaking, some of us are making a trip and not marking our trail. That may not seem like a big deal but it is a big deal. Listen, altars are the way that we mark our spiritual journey. They are the way that we mark the trail that we have traveled.

Jeremiah 31:21, think about this in expedition terms. Mark well the path by which you came. Altars are the way we mark that path. In the little video tour of my office, you saw that picture of a cow pasture that is behind my desk. The significance of that is this, when I look at my life and the things the Lord has called me to, whether it is pastoring National Community Church or the call to write or some opportunity to travel and speak, the thing that the Lord has called me to in a ministry context, if I were to trace everything all the way back to its origin, I was 19 years old, I had just finished freshman year at the University of Chicago, pre-law major, and I asked God this dangerous question, “What do you want me to do with my life?” I really asked Him. The only thing more dangerous than that is not asking that question. I asked God that question and for me it began a summer of seeking the Lord, like, ‘Lord what do you want me to do?’ And at the very end, that was the last week of summer vacation before my sophomore year at UC, I got up early and went on this prayer walk and I’m walking down these dirt roads and took a short cut through this cow pasture and in the middle of that cow pasture, I can’t explain it. I don’t know why then, why there, but I just knew that God was calling me into the ministry. I didn’t know when and where and how all of that. I would have never guessed that I would be where I am, but when I look all the way back, I’m so grateful for that moment where I heard that still, small voice of the Spirit and I knew that God was calling me to ministry. That picture for me is in altars the way that I’ve marked my path. It was so important to me that I did it. I hired a photographer and captured that moment, because spiritually speaking, we need to mark our trail, and one of the ways we do it is by building altars.

Let me talk about a second kind of altar. Appropriately this week, I would call it a Thanksgiving altar. Genesis 13:3

From the Negev, they continued traveling by stages toward Bethel, and they pitched their tents between Bethel and Ai, where they had camped before. This was the same place where Abram had built the altar, and there he worshiped the Lord…

But that’s not the end of the verse, is it? I would suggest that the most important word in this verse is the last verse, there he worshipped the Lord again.

What altars do are they help us remember what God doesn’t want us to forget. So, in a sense, they are a physical reminder of how thankful we are for the Lord’s intervention in our lives, his goodness and the things He has done for us and in us. Bottom line is this, we need a place to go back to. I think we read the Bible in a very non-emotional, non-engaged way and walk away from it not really experiencing what the people who experienced these things must have really felt. So, an example, a couple years ago, I had this thought. I don’t know where this thought came from, but I wondered if Joseph ever went back to that dungeon where he was in prison. I ever wonder if he went back there. Did David ever go back to that battlefield where he defeated Goliath and said, ‘This is the place where God intervened on my behalf?’ Did Elijah ever go back to Mount Carmel and climb up to that spot where he took on 450 prophets of Baal? Or did Zacheus ever go back to that sycamore tree, maybe as an old man, maybe with his grandkids? Did Peter ever go out on the Sea of Galilee where he walked on water? Did Paul ever ride back out to that place on the road to Damascus where God knocked him off of his high horse and changed his life? Did they ever go back to those places? I don’t know the answer to that question but when I see how many times God tells his people to build an altar, it is because He wants us to have someplace to go back to.

In a grand scale, we’ve already talked about communion, and one of the things I said was that it is a pilgrimage back to the foot of the cross. When we celebrate communion, we are going back to that place where we found the grace of God for the first time. That’s such a powerful experience, and it is a universal experience for us. But what I’m talking about are those individual experiences in our lives that our unique and distinct from everyone else. Is there some place that we need to go back to?

I have a few of those places. One of them is, every once in a while I get to go back to, I transferred from the University of Chicago to a little Bible college called Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, and every once in a while, I have the opportunity to go back and speak in chapel or in class. It was in that chapel balcony, during the lunch hour, the lights were out and no one was in there and I would spend hours in that balcony just pacing back and forth, and I knew from that cow pasture experience, ‘God I know I’m called to ministry but what and where and how, what is your vision for my life?’ I would go into that balcony and I would pace back and forth sometimes for hours, seeking the Lord, asking Him to reveal Himself to me. So whenever I go back, the first place I go is that balcony, because it is a place I can go back to. Are there some places like that in your life that you can go back to? Spiritually, that’s what an altar is, a place where we go back to. We go back and specifically give thanks.

I have a simple parenting philosophy. Parenting is incredibly complex with lots of moving parts, and no one ever figures it out, but I have a pretty simple philosophy. If all else fails, I feel like my responsibility as a parent is to make sure that my kids simply learn three things: please, sorry and thank you. If my kids can be really good at please, sorry and thank you, then relationally, they are going to be ok. They are going to make it, because if you do those three things, I think you are going to make it, your marriage is going to make it. Occupationally, sure you’ve got to have education and skill set, but it’s those things, the soft skills, the attitude, the character that differentiates you and allows you to continue to evolve into places where God can use you in a greater way. Spiritually, please is prayer, sorry is repentance, and thank you. Let me put it in parental terms.

This week, I dropped off the shirts that were in my stolen car. I had six shirts, my six favorite shirts in the backseat of the car when it was stolen, and I was far more concerned about those shirts than the car itself. So when we got the car, I was like, ‘Yes! The shirts are there!’ So I took the shirts to the cleaners, and Josiah, my little guy, was with me, and he said, “Dad, can I go in with you?” He knows that they have suckers and he is a sucker for suckers, so he went in with me and he was so cute, he didn’t really want to ask but he was hoping the person there would ask him, and finally she said, “Would you like a sucker?” And beamed from ear to ear and he took the sucker. I was waiting for him to say thank you, but he is not quite there yet, so I gave him the infamous parental prompt, which everybody knows, ‘what do you say?’ See, everybody knows it! You say thank you, but he hasn’t quite gotten that yet. So we juxtaposed that Friday night. Our family went out to dinner and we hit Matchbox and the kids loved it and afterwards one of my children said, ‘Thank you.’ It was unprompted, and I was like, ‘What would you like for dessert?’ Isn’t it amazing how we respond to a simple thank you! We respond to that. Spiritually, what I’m saying is that I think all God wants is a thank you. And what I’m saying is that an altar is a way of saying thank you to God. But more than that, it is saying thanks again.

It’s kinda funny, I mean a men’s restroom sign that symbolizes 13 years at Union Station, that doesn’t quite seem to be a parody or it doesn’t seem to do justice, but it’s the craziest thing, since I stole it, every time I look at it, I’m like, ‘Lord, thank you, thank you.’ Ok, never preach a sermon if you might do more harm than good! Ha ha.

Epiphany altars where God just shows up and reveals himself, thanksgiving altars, and dream altars. Genesis 13:12

So Abram settled in the land of Canaan, and Lot moved his tents to a place near Sodom and settled among the cities of the plain. But the people of this area were extremely wicked and constantly sinned against the Lord. After Lot had gone, the Lord said to Abram, “Look as far as you can see in every direction—north and south, east and west. I am giving all this land, as far as you can see, to you and your descendants as a permanent possession. And I will give you so many descendants that, like the dust of the earth, they cannot be counted! Go and walk through the land in every direction, for I am giving it to you.” So Abram moved his camp to Hebron and settled near the oak grove belonging to Mamre. There he built another altar to the Lord.

I like to call this a dream altar, because God gives Abram a promise, He gives him a dream of what He is going to give to him. He tells him to look at it and walk through it. What does Abram do? He builds an altar to the Lord.

I know you have a dream, I know you do. I think for many of us, our dreams tend to gather dust and we repress them if we aren’t accomplishing them. Or sometimes even worse, we have this dream and it is an incredible moment, like God speaks to us on a retreat or a mission trip and something is conceived in our spirit, but we forget about this dream that God has given us. It has happened to me that years after God has conceived something in our hearts, He resurrects it, and those are interesting moments, like how could I have forgotten that? But then I also thank God for a second chance and for bringing back that dream that He gave to me in the first place. And if you don’t have a dream, than God wants to give you a dream. I’m not just talking about to accomplish something occupationally or to be a missionary to an unreached people group. Those are awesome but I mean dreams about things like for your kids. What is your dream for your children? And as a parent, how can you grow into that. I’m talking across the board, dreams of any size, anything that God has conceived in your spirit that He wants you to do. We can forget those things, so I’m saying we need an altar, we need to build something, we need physical reminds of those dreams that many of us have never had the courage to even verbalize to another person.

One of the mementos you didn’t see was a three-ring binder about three inches thick. We named Ebenezers Ebenezers because in I Samuel 7:12, the prophet Samuel builds his altar to the Lord after the Israelites defeat the Philistines, the word Ebenezer in Hebrew means ‘hitherto the Lord has helped us.’ I like, ‘so far, so God.’ Not ‘so far, so good,’ that takes God out of the equation. ‘So far, so God.’ We named it Ebenezers because this place is an altar to the Lord. It is an altar to God. But let me tell you the back story.

We prayed for years that God would give us a piece of property, but we didn’t have any people or any money, so it was just like a no way. But we kept believing and kept praying and kept dreaming and then one day, I felt like I needed to take a physical step toward the dream. This is going to sound silly and crazy but I’ll never forget it. Laura and I were at an auction at our kids school where they would auction stuff off. They had really cool stuff like tickets to athletic events and lunch with famous people and trips to exotic places. Would you like to know what I bid on? That three-ring, three-inch binder that had all of the zoning codes for Capitol Hill. I kid you not, it had to be the least interesting thing up for auction. It was the best that the historical society could do. But it was so exciting to me. I bought it and went through the whole thing as a step of faith. I was thinking, if we buy this property, there are serious complications, it would have to be re-zoned, and we have to know what we can do and what we couldn’t do. But this was a step of faith. It was a $75 step of faith and I considered it dream research. Now, that binder, well, you saw that I don’t have any room on my shelf, but I’m not going to take it off of my shelf because it is too significant to me. It is an altar, it’s a dream altar. If you take some of those initial steps, you never know how God is going to honor it and bless it and use it. We need those dream altars.

Finally, decision altars, and I’m going to have to keep this one pretty tight. I don’t think I have time to read the whole thing. Genesis 22

Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called. “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.” “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”

This seems so bazaar to us but you’ve got to understand that this is a culture where human sacrifice took place. Then it says, “I’m going to test you.” God’s intention was to never have Abraham sacrifice his son, but He wanted to see if what was most important to Abraham, if he was willing to put that on the altar.

When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!” “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.” Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

It’s cool to know, the names for God, so many of those names come out of experiences like this. It was a life-changing experience. I call this a decision altar because Abraham was willing to let go of his son and it was the hardest decision he ever made to get to that moment. Here’s what I’m trying to convey, all of us are going to have some tough decisions to make. The truth is, we only make a few major decisions, then we spend the rest of our lives managing those major decisions. But on those big decisions, is there a way for us to remember the decisions we’ve made? We need to celebrate those decisions and hold ourselves accountable.

Let me give you one example. I have a rock on my shelf with the number 7 written on it. 7 promises that I believe the Lord gave me several years ago. Every once in a while, I go read those promises as a reminder of what I believe the Lord has promised, because I need to be held accountable to those promises that the Lord has given me. It is interesting, if I hadn’t written them down, I would not remember them. So I think we’ve got to find a way to have decision altars. Maybe there is a tough decision you’ve made or a tough decision you have to make. I would encourage you to find a way to build an altar. Are you willing to put everything on the altar and give it back to God?

Let me close with a couple of practical tips. We’ve talked about why and I’ve given you four different altars as they are described in the life of Abraham. Let me talk quickly about what, where and how.

What is an altar? Most of the Old Testament altars were build of stone, but part of that I believe is because they didn’t have this thing called photography. I’ve found that many of the altars I’ve built are pictorial in nature. Several years ago, I decided I was tired of being surrounded by meaningless pictures and artwork that have no personal significance to me. I’m going to surround myself with pictures. I framed one this week that is so meaningful to me, a montage from the trip to the Galapagos, a missions trip, I framed it. It is now the newest part of that collection. I think pictures have a way helping us remember what we shouldn’t forget.

I have several books that are part of the altars that I’ve built. A liquor bottle, a watch I didn’t talk about that belonged to my grandfather, you name it, they are so varied. What I’m saying is that you can turn anything into an altar. You must simply need to deem it and let it symbolize what is of spiritual significance to you.

Where? Well, I made it my office because I wanted to be surrounded by things that were significant. And finally, how? It starts with the first thing. Maybe Thanksgiving week is a week for you to think back about God’s faithfulness in your life. Maybe instead of just eating turkey and watching the game and tossing the football, maybe you could take a couple of hours and survey your life and think back on the way that God has intervened in your life. Wouldn’t it be amazing if this was a week of altar-making? If we deemed this Thanksgiving holiday and said we are going to build some altars to the faithfulness of God. I want to challenge you and encourage you to do that.

Let me close with this. I believe that the most important decision you can make is the decision to follow Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of your life. That is where this whole thing begins. By the way, I wonder if the disciples held on to those nets that they initially dropped, those nets so significant to their occupation, to think their life was about fishing and they dropped those nets to follow Jesus. Part of me wonders if they went back and got them as a symbol of the significance of that decision.

As we come to the close of this series, and as we talk about altars, I believe that the eternal decision, the most important decision you can make is are you going to accept the invitation that Jesus Christ extended 2,000 years ago, Follow Me.

I want to encourage you to make that decision this weekend. Some of you have been coming for a long time, you’ve been here for the ‘Ritual’ series, you need to make that decision. Then I want to encourage you to build an altar, build an altar around that decision that you make. I want to pray for you.

Lord, we come to You right now and we thank You for your faithfulness, and God we humbly say God You are so faithful and so good and I pray that You would help each one of us put this into practice, to build altars, to surround ourselves with reminders of who You are and what You’ve done. Lord for those this weekend who need to make a decision to follow You, opportunity of a lifetime, God I pray that today would be their day, that they would take that step of faith. Lord right now we all renew that decision that so many of us have made in the past and some are making today. Lord, thank You for the privilege of following You. Right now, we again confess our sin, we acknowledge how short we have fallen but we thank You that your grace is sufficient. Lord we put our faith in what You have done on the cross. Thank You for your resurrection, thank You that You are seated at the right hand of the Father. We confess and profess our faith in You and we receive your love and grace and forgiveness, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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