We Are Builders- Altars of Worship

Introduction

When you open your Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, you can’t escape the altar. It’s everywhere. Abraham builds one in the wilderness. Elijah repairs one on Mount Carmel. The prophets call people back to it. Even the cross of Christ is spoken of as an altar—where the Lamb of God was laid down for us.

Why? Because the altar is foundational to the Christian faith. An altar is where heaven meets earth. An altar is where the fire of God consumes what is laid down, and the glory of God fills what is surrendered.

Now, when I say that, I want you to hear me carefully—because I’m not talking about a physical pile of stones or some ancient ritual. I’m talking about the altar as the meeting place between your life and God’s presence.

The Puritans understood this. In the 1600s, they spoke often of the “family altar.” It meant that prayer, Scripture reading, and worship were practiced daily in the home. Fathers led their families in devotion. Psalms were sang with their children. The “family altar” was the center of covenant life.

“You are not likely to see any general reformation, till you procure family reformation.” - Richard Baxter 17th century puritan

“A family without prayer is like a house without a roof, open and exposed to all the storms of heaven.” - Thomas Brooks - 17th century puritan

And for us today, the same is true. The altar is not just a Sunday experience. It is not just an event at the end of a sermon. The altar is your everyday surrender, your daily worship, your family’s devotion, your habits of remembering God’s faithfulness.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been in this series called We Are Builders.

We talked first about Altars of Sacrifice—where we lay down our idols.

Then about Altars of Covenant—where we bind ourselves and our families to God’s promises.

And today, we turn to Altars of Worship.

Story: Miriam’s Song

We are going to begin this though today by looking at an epic worship moment in the Bible, it happened right after Israel crossed the Red Sea - it’s found in Exodus 15.

I’ll never forget my own water crossing moment. I was about 7 years old when I visited my friend at his house. His parents owned a fair amount of land and they had a creek - which he called a “crick”. We were playing cowboys and indians. At one point I followed him across the creek, or rather, I started too. It was kind of wide for my 7 year old legs and so I left one foot on dry ground and put the other on the log in the middle of the water (I guess God didn’t feel like parting the water for me). I didn’t realize that the log was floating the water, and down into the water I went. Screaming “I’m going to drown, I’m going to drown”. My friend very calmly, walked into the middle of the creek, grabbed my hand and said, it’s just a creek. I remember to this day just how silly I felt.

In Exodus 15 Israel had just been driven out of Egypt after the ten plagues left the nation in ruins. But as before, Pharaoh’s heart hardened. He gathered his army, the strongest fighting force in the world at that time, and pursued the Israelites. Imagine the scene: the Red Sea in front of them, the Egyptian chariots behind them. No weapons. No escape. Certain death or return to slavery. This is Israel. And yet God performes a miracle in the water. And in the darkest, coldest hours before dawn Israel began walking across the Red Sea on dry ground

Now, commentators differ on the exact size of the corridor God carved through the sea, but even conservative estimates suggest it may have been two miles long and nearly three miles wide. For us, that would be like stretching from Highland Ave to Joy Lane, and from Townsend to Powerline Road—a corridor big enough for over a million people to pass through.

By morning, God was ready not only to deliver Israel, but to utterly destroy their oppressors. Exodus 14 tells us that as the Egyptian army pursued, the waters collapsed, swallowing Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen. Not one survived.

It was this breathtaking victory that gave birth to Israels song. Moses and Aaron lead, Miriam picked up a tambourine, and the women of Israel joined her, dancing and declaring:

Exodus 15:13 NASB95

13 “In Your lovingkindness You have led the people whom You have redeemed; In Your strength You have guided them to Your holy habitation.

And again:

Exodus 15:20–21 NASB95

20 Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dancing. 21 Miriam answered them, “Sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted; The horse and his rider He has hurled into the sea.”

Notice what Miriam and the people did not do. They didn’t sing about Moses. They didn’t cheer their own courage. They didn’t glorify the moment. They lifted their voices to the Lord alone.

Worship is never about us. It is never about our preferences, our desires, or our tastes. Worship is service rendered to the great God of the universe—the One True God.

Defining Worship

The word “worship” in Scripture carries three core meanings:

To bow down—a posture of surrender.

To serve, to labor, even to toil—an act of costly devotion.

To pay homage—to give worth and honor to the King.

Worship Is Our Cure For Human Pride

We cannot expect to maintain our reputation, our ego, our cool while giving God worship. Yet, the greatest threat to my personal worship is pride.

If there is a single person in this room that struggles to express worship physically, raising hands, bowing down, dancing, please, never feel alone. I struggle every week with feeling just a little bit funny. Just two weeks ago God impressed me to kneel down - I thought, everyone is looking at me God - In my daily time with God- I was taking a walk and singing - no one was around me so I was singing out loud. All of a sudden my neighbor walked out of her house and so I quieted down. God said, what’s that for? I told God- I felt kind of funny singing out loud in the street when people are listening. He said - I liked it!

See, pride and worship are juxtaposed to one another. Pride, ego, and maintaining pretense is to draw attention to oneself, or to maintain a certain measure of recognition. To give God my worship is to say in my heart, I care nothing for the recognition that comes from the world. My life is not built upon the foundation of human recognition, but upon the altar of God.

David expressed this fully in 2 Samuel 6 - when David worshipped the Lord as the ark of the covenant was brought to Jerusalem. Verse 16 tells us that his wife Michal despised David and his expression of worship. But look at Davids response.

2 Samuel 6:22 NASB95

22 “I will be more lightly esteemed than this and will be humble in my own eyes, but with the maids of whom you have spoken, with them I will be distinguished.”

Worship frees you from the prison of people’s opinions

The Language of Worship and Humility

Let’s review again these Hebrew words for worship and how they speak to our pride:

Shachah – to bow down, to prostrate. To worship meant to fall face-down in total surrender.

Barak – to bless, to kneel. Worship literally meant lowering yourself before God.

Yadah – to lift hands. But not in pride—hands raised were hands surrendered, a child reaching for their Father.

So biblically, worship was never about standing tall in our dignity—it was about bowing low in humility.

Worship that costs you nothing is worth nothing.

Pride keeps us standing tall; worship brings us to our knees

Worship is Our Responsibility In Comfort

Just a moment ago we said that worship is the cure for pride. But now let’s take another step deeper: worship is also our response when comfort and ease set in.

Let’s be honest—worship is easily forgotten when life is going the way we want it to. It took me years to learn this lesson - let me share with you an important truth from the Bible. Israel didn’t wake up one day and just decide to flee Egypt. There were 10 plagues and 12 months that proceeded the exodus. So when things are going well in your life, it’s always a result of something you have been doing. Remember that, because when life starts to go well, we often stop doing the very practice that brought the breakthrough. But when your life is the altar, worship is not just a tool for breakthrough, it’s also our response to breakthrough.

Exodus 15:1 NASB95

1 Then Moses and the sons of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and said, “I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted; The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.

Not, “serves them right, let’s get out of here”.

Not “Let’s hurry up before something else happens”.

Their response was - stop and give God praise. In comfort and ease, worship is so easy to forget. And Israel would do exactly that no many months later.

Worship lays down three “rights” that we often cling to:

The right to complain. I don’t fill the air with bitterness—I fill it with praise.

The right to control. I don’t demand my way—I surrender to His way.

The right to comfort. I don’t worship only when I need breakthrough or answered prayers—I worship when life is going good, I worship when life isn’t.

Worship doesn’t move God by manipulation; it moves me into submission.

Worship isn’t how I get my way—it’s how I give Him His.

I don’t worship to get from God; I worship because He is God.

3. Worship is A Reordering of Priorities

In Joshua 4, Israel is standing at the edge of the Promised Land. Just as the Red Sea once stood between them and their freedom, now the Jordan River stands between them and their inheritance. Once again, God shows His faithfulness and His power by making a way where there seemed to be no way. He parts the waters of the Jordan, and the people cross over on dry ground.

Now here’s what’s interesting: after the crossing, Joshua doesn’t immediately say, “Let’s go take Jericho!” He doesn’t say, “Let’s set up camp!” He doesn’t say, “Let’s get to work on our own priorities!”

Instead, Joshua tells the priests to gather twelve stones from the midst of the Jordan and set them up as a memorial altar. Why? Because worship was the first priority. Before they could fight battles, before they could build houses, before they could enjoy the land—they had to stop and worship.

That’s what worship does. Worship rearranges our priorities. Worship says:

Prayer and Scripture first—everything else second.

God’s house first—my schedule, my convenience second.

Reconciling offenses first—my pride and comfort second.

Giving God glory first—taking credit for myself second.

How to Build Altars of Worship This Week

Practically, for us today, this means building “memorial stones” in our own lives and families.

Call your family to worship:

Once this week, turn on worship music at home, read Scripture together, and pray as a family. Make your living room a sanctuary. If there is anything that Satan fights the hardest against it is families that pray. He will make you feel too busy, too awkward, too cheesy, too distracted, too tired. But what you need to be is too determined to avoid it. Do it anyway! For your God, for your family.

Worship as much in comfort as in hardship

When stress, fear, or disappointment hits—pause, breathe, and worship. Let pain be your trigger, not your excuse. When life is on it’s high, and has never been better - remember to give God praise for the breakthrough. Remember, all the prayer that went into that breakthrough is what will sustain your breakthrough.

Build memorials of remembrance

Share an answered prayer or a testimony of God’s faithfulness with your kids, friends, or coworkers. Mark it so it’s remembered. As parents, Stella and I would at times review with our kids what God had done in our years past. We wanted our kids to have stories to fall back on when they faced their own challenges later. It was 400 years later that Elijah built his own altar of memorial stones on Mt. Carmel when he confronted the prophets of Baal. The memory of Gods power lived on and fueled his faith in that moment.

Reorder priorities:

Before checking your phone or emails tomorrow morning, lift a song, a prayer, or a Scripture. Start the day with worship. Hello Father God, Hello Jesus, Hello Holy Spirit. Give God your first breath, He gave you His!

Salvation Response

I am always arrested when I consider how Jesus laid down his rights, his comfort. In Luke 9:23 Jesus leads us to understand the the cross was an act of rearranged priorities, an exercise of worship.

Luke 9:23 NASB95

23 And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.

I believe there is at least one person in this room today - you need to deny yourself, your pride, your power, hunger for control, and pick up the cross of Christ. Let Jesus in, surrender your heart. Your sins have separated you from God, so confess your sins to God and ask Him to forgive you. Repent and turn to Him today.

I want to pray with you right now to receive His free gift of saving faith. If you would say, I want God’s forgiveness, I want to accept this gift of life, I want Jesus to live in my heart, raise your hand so I know who I am praying for.

KEEP YOUR HANDS RAISED HIGH - I HAVE A PRAYER PARTNER COMING TO PRAY WITH YOU

“Heavenly Father, I trust You to save me through Your Son, Jesus. Forgive me for all of my sins. Make me brand new. Because You died for me, I want to live for You. Fill me with Your Spirit, so I could follow You. Jesus, You’re now my Lord and the Savior of my life. Take my life. It is Yours. In Jesus’ name, I pray.”