Intro/Chapter 1
Rebuilding the Altar • Sermon • Submitted
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Does God frustrate you?
Does God frustrate you?
Sorrow is better than laughter,
For by a sad countenance the heart is made better.
Eccl
Sorrow can be translated frustration
“Frustration is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart.”
o God will frustrate you to get you to move past where you have camped out. You were not called to sit and do nothing.
o Frustration and agitation are the mother of intersession. Understand Satan doesn’t create he manipulates and changes.
o Often we frustration as a negative emotion because we have misused this God-given emotion.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
· -21For Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God
o God loved us so much that he refused to allow us to be comfortable with the life we were living.
o The driving force behind our discomfort is growth.
o Snake shedding skin-head was uncomfortable
o We have learned that many times in order to go from glory to glory, one must cross bridges of adversity between each glory. On the journey across the bridge your comfort zone can become a very uncomfortable place.
· What drives our passion for outreach?
o Your response to God will always determine the future of your family and those in your sphere of influence.
o It is said that CEO’s and people who climb the ladder read, on average, 60 books a year.
o How we view God, our discomfort in the world, will drive us to things we have never done so that we may see things we never saw.
o Salvation is not of works, but work will be the catalyst of a deeper relationship with God. If you want out of where you are you must work harder than your harder than you did when you arrived.
§ I wanted full time ministry. I felt it was God’s call in my life. In order to obtain this I worked 1-2 day time jobs and did ministry on the side.
o THE DECLARATION OF THE ALTARED We are “the altared”! We are those who will no longer squander the daylight with things that do not matter. We live to climb upon the altar, encounter the power and presence of God, and allow His light to shine brightly through us to a lost and dying world!
Chapter 1 Meet me at the Altar
What does the altar mean to you?
· The alter is a special place that holds some of life’s greatest break through
o You couch, your church, your car, or your bathroom
o Pastor Pugh got saved coming of a high worshiping the porcelain thrown
· The altar is where who you have been gets interrupted by who you can become.
· Oswald Chambers once said, “Leave the broken, irreversible past in God’s hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.”
What does it mean to draw near to God?
· Draw near to me and I will draw near to you
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
o This verse has been used many times by many preachers
What precedes this () is James telling believers the reason for the great chasm between them and god is
1) ungodly behavior
2) Worldliness ()
What’s the difference between ungodly behavior and worldliness?
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
Ungodly behaviors=squandering of God’s gifts and a misuse of his people
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Worldliness=friendship with=to seek approval of.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
The altar caused God to draw near, softening His heart. Think of it—the altar changed man’s relationship with our mighty God. Death brought redemption through an altar!
This alter began man’s return home-the redemption story.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Without redemption you and I would be doomed to an eternity absent from the love of God. The altar is used from this point on in Scripture as the place of sacrifice and freedom.
The altar became the place where people could finally get free from their burdens.
NT-Who are God’s priests?
-us
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
This concept brings new meaning to
Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;
wail, ministers of the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
ministers of my God,
because the grain offering and the drink offering
are withheld from the house of your God.
Again we see tears and frustration moving to change. A drawing back to God.
Altars where always seen as private, done behind a curtain or alone in a field.
It is in the hibernation of holiness that real fruit is produced, not on the stage.
What are the stages of the altar? What does the altar do?
There is confession and forgiveness
There is prayer and change
There is an encounter with God
There is safety in numbers (as we gather)
The commissioning of our ministry (Isaiah, Ananias, Saul/Paul, etc.)
I look across the American church and altars are being replaced with stages, worship exchanged for concerts, and change exchanged for come as you are.