Ascent to Faith: Trust in Transition, Building Altar and the Seasons of Growth

It's a little hard to believe that this is a year of the Pinewood campus.

On some days it feels like we've been here about five years and on other days it feels like we've been here about five minutes.

But throughout this year we've seen the goodness of God and we've celebrated together what God has done, what God is doing and what God continues to do.

And I just want to say from the beginning today, I believe with all my heart that we are just beginning this journey together.

There's a lot left in store.

I believe God's got a lot more in front of us as we continue to believe Him and follow Him and pursue His call on our lives in Somerville and beyond.

So thank you for being part of the journey.

Thank you for being here today.

I'm honored to get to share this time with you.

I don't take it for granted that you're willing to give up a little time on your Sunday to gather with us, so I hope and pray that you're encouraged as we gather around the story of Jesus together.

We're going to be in Genesis, chapter 8, in just a moment.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

Genesis, chapter 8, we'll get there in just a second.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

So about a decade ago, in December of 2013, I got a call from the pastor of the church I grew up in and he invited me to come and eat lunch with him over my Christmas break.

I was a senior at Wofford College at that point in time and so over Christmas break I went and sat down with my pastor over lunch.

You know I'm eating fried chicken, mac and cheese, green beans, and I don't know why that's important to the story.

I just felt like you needed to know.

That was my lunch that day and I'm eating and he's talking and he shares with me in the course of that conversation.

Hey, the youth pastor at our church is leaving to go be a pastor in another place, and you know what?

He's leaving in like two weeks, and what that means is that there is a youth trip planned for January 2014.

So about a month away, three to four weeks away, and there's not a youth pastor to teach at that trip.

And you know your name came to mind.

I thought you might be interested in leading that retreat to Gatlinburg, tennessee, what one of my friends used to call the Tennessee Holy Land, and I was like I like Gatlinburg.

The idea of teaching three times in three weeks, that's a little bit panic inducing.

So, like you know, let's get creative.

We're taking a youth group to the mountains.

What should we talk about?

And you know, the obvious, easy answer is you should talk about the Bible.

It's a youth retreat about Jesus.

But the first thing that came to my mind was mountains.

We should talk about mountains, and I was like, oh wait, there are mountains in the Bible, amazing.

So let's look up some mountain stories from the Bible and we'll go to the mountains and talk about mountains from the Bible.

And that trip in January of 2014 was actually the first of what we now call the mountain experience, which is a youth retreat conference.

We've been doing now for a decade with students and it's been a phenomenal journey.

But it began with this idea that God wants to meet with his people on the mountain, and that's what you see all through the scripture.

The mountain becomes this significant place where God meets with humanity.

And isn't that what we all need in our lives?

We need God to meet with us, we need God to speak into our lives, we need God to show himself to us, and what you see in the mountain experience, moments of scripture is that the mountain becomes a place where God teaches his people.

It's a place of information, if you will, but it's not just information, it's revelation.

It's where God reveals himself to his people.

So how many of you know there's a difference between knowing facts about God and having God reveal himself to you.

It's one thing to know who God is and to know some you know some, a basic info sheet about God but it's another thing when God shows up in power and you know that God's in the room and you know that God is in your life and you know that God is real and you know that God is who he says he is.

So the mountain, it's information and it's revelation.

But there's a reason that God informs and reveals on the mountain, and it's so that there can be transformation in the hearts of God's people.

So God informs and God reveals, but not just for knowledge sake.

Like God doesn't just want us to know facts about him or to even have an understanding of his glory and who he is, god wants to transform our hearts.

God wants us to be different.

God wants us to be marked by our moments in his presence, and so the mountain becomes this place of information and revelation that leads humanity to transformation.

If you read through the story of the Bible and as we journey through these stories together for the next few weeks, what we're going to see is that no one comes down the mountain.

The same People's lives are transformed when they meet with God on the mountain and then they come down with a proclamation of the goodness of God.

And that's, I think, what God wants to do in our hearts and in our lives today.

Isaiah, chapter two, verse three.

It became the theme verse for the mountain experience.

It says this come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, that we may walk in his paths.

And I can just say this morning that's what God wants for you.

There's an invitation to journey up the mountain to meet with Almighty God, to let God speak into your life, to teach you His ways, so that you can walk the path and the purpose, the plan that God has for you.

So for the next four to five weeks we're gonna be in this mountain men series.

We're gonna take the journey up the mountain and we're going to meet with God.

We're gonna start the journey today with the man in the Old Testament by the name of Noah.

Anybody know anything about Noah?

Noah who built the ark?

Noah?

No, yeah, you all remember that song.

Some of you are like I've never heard that song before in my life.

You know it's a good one.

It's a good one, sam.

We should sing that one day.

You don't know it, sam.

Oh man, he's Gen Z or something.

They don't know the good stuff, y'all they don't know the good stuff.

So Genesis, chapter six, we're introduced to this man by the name of Noah and really in the first eight verses of Genesis six we get the synopsis of Noah's day and time and the reason God chooses to work through Noah, and I'm gonna summarize a lot of this story to get to where we're gonna read today.

But it says in Genesis six that humanity is multiplying across the face of the earth.

But there's a problem because people are not getting better, humanity's not getting better.

Things are not trending in the right direction.

In fact, because of Genesis three, because of sin entering the world, humanity is not improving, they are devolving.

They are not getting better, they are getting worse.

Things are not looking more like heaven.

It's looking less like heaven on the planet, and so there's corruption that's increasing.

Everybody's doing what is right in their own eyes.

Nobody's honoring God.

The wickedness of man was great in the earth.

Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

That is not good, just if you're wondering.

But isn't that real?

Apart from God, we don't get better.

Apart from God, humanity doesn't get better.

There is hope for the world.

His name is Jesus.

But apart from Jesus, this is the direction that we trend.

And so it comes to the point.

Scripture says that God regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.

Our brokenness grieves the heart of God.

So the Lord says I'll blot out man, whom I've created, from the face of the land, man and animals, creeping things, birds of the heavens from sorry that I've made them.

But then Genesis, chapter six, verse eight, says this but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord, and so Noah gets this call from Almighty God Noah, I want you to build a boat, and I could just imagine Noah being like what's a boat?

And God's like it's a boat.

It's going to float on the water after the rain comes.

And then Noah's like what's the rain?

Because at this point in time it's highly likely, y'all, that they had never seen rain.

So God is asking Noah, by faith, to trust him for a future that is yet unseen.

God's saying Noah, I'm choosing you, calling you out and I want you to trust me.

Do something that seems insane and walk by faith.

And the refrain of Genesis six and Genesis seven is that Noah does all that the Lord commands him.

Four times in Genesis six and seven it points out Noah did everything that God commanded him to do.

May the same be said of our lives.

Right that we hear what God says, we see where God's leading and we're like okay, if God's going that direction and that's what God says.

Even if I don't see it and I'm not sure what rain is or why the boat needs to be that big, I'm going to trust God and do what he commands.

So Noah does.

And God tells Noah that, hey, there's going to be rain that falls and it's going to flood the earth and it's going to wipe out every living thing.

Except for what you bring on to the ark bring your family seven pairs of all clean animals, a pair of the animals that are not clean.

Can you all imagine this?

Like Noah and his family, they're out there rounding up animals, his wife's, like all this, has to go on the boat with us and these kids that we got.

Can you imagine, and and did I tell you Noah's 600 years old, like this is?

I mean, this is wild.

And then they get on the ark, 600 year of Noah's life, second month, 17th day of the month.

On that day all of the fountains of the great deep burst forth, the windows of heaven opened and rain fell 40 days and 40 nights.

I don't know about you, I get.

I don't even know what the word is to describe how I feel after 12 hours of rain.

Can you imagine being stuck in a storm in a boat with all of your family and who knows how many animals, as well?

As the rain falls for 40 days and 40 nights, water's increased.

They pick up the ark prevails, it increases greatly on the earth, like there's water everywhere.

And the end of Genesis seven says this God blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground man, animals, creeping things, birds of the heavens.

They were blotted out from the earth.

Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark, and the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.

So then there comes a moment where it says in Genesis eight that God remembers Noah.

And aren't you grateful that even in the midst of the rain and the storm and the flood, god remembers his people.

God knows your name, he knows your story, he doesn't forget about you.

God remembers Noah.

The ark comes to rest on the top of a mountain called Ararat, and then the whole progression of Noah sending out a raven and then a few doves begins and the first dove comes back with nothing.

It had no place to land.

Second dove comes back with an olive branch in its beak.

The third dove doesn't comes back because it found a dry spot upon which to land and eventually the waters recede, the earth begins to dry out and after more than a year floating around on a boat with animals and all of his family, noah is able to get off the ark.

Woo right, I mean that's a big deal.

Noah gets off the ark.

But what hit me this week was that the world Noah stepped off the ark and saw looked nothing like the world that Noah left behind.

And I never really thought about it like that before.

I'd always thought oh yeah, ark on dry ground, mount Ararat.

Dove doesn't come back, the waters begin to dry, the earth begins to dry.

Noah steps off the ark Like.

What a celebratory moment, right Like.

God brought you through, god delivered you.

God was faithful to his promise.

But what about the world that Noah stepped into?

This was a world unlike anything that Noah had ever seen before.

When Noah got on the ark, there were other people on the planet.

Now Noah and his family are alone.

When Noah got on the ark, noah left behind a life.

He had a house and he had a place to live, and he had neighbors and he had I don't know.

He had a life, and now he gets off the ark and all of it is new, but all of what Noah knew was gone.

Can you imagine that moment?

Some of you have been in that moment where maybe you wake up one morning and you get a phone call and everything in your world changes, or maybe it's slower, more gradual, but one season ends and another begins and you realize you are looking out at a world that looks vastly different than anything you've ever seen before.

What do we do in those moments where God brings us to the end of one season and calls us to step into something new that we have never experienced before.

This is where Noah is in this moment.

Only Noah was left, and maybe that's how you feel sometimes, too.

I am out here all alone.

I don't recognize the life that is behind me any longer.

I don't know what's in front of me.

I'm not sure what God is doing.

I know he's good, I know he's with me, I know his promises are true, but this is unlike anything that I have ever seen.

What do we do when God calls us to begin again Again?

It was June 26th of 2022 and Randy, our lead pastor downtown, made a passing comment in one of his sermons that I knew instantly was for me and, consequently, was also for all of us gathered here.

Randy said this and I actually wrote this in the back of my Bible.

Randy made this comment there, talking about the days ahead in the future.

They're going to be the hardest days, but they're going to be the greatest days.

They're going to be the hardest days.

They're going to be the greatest days, and can I just say this morning that, when you accept the invitation of God to join him on the mountain, to step into the unseen, to believe in faith for the future that doesn't yet seem clear in front of you.

They're going to be the hardest days.

Walking by faith is not easy, but when you step out in faith and you begin to follow God into the new, into the unseen, into a world that looks vastly different, maybe, than what you imagined or thought, they're going to be the greatest days.

And so today I want to talk just for a moment.

What does it look like to trust God as we enter a new season?

And there's some personal application in this.

There's also going to be some application for us as a church, because I believe with all my heart God is calling us to continue to press forward into the future.

What he's done has been amazing, but with all of my heart, I believe that God is not done.

He's got more things, more good works ahead of us.

I love what happens.

Noah steps out of the ark.

Genesis, chapter 8, verse 20.

Genesis 8:20

This is the first moment that Noah gets off the boat.

Noah went out, his sons, his wife, his sons' wives with him.

Every animal unloads the ark.

And then, in verse 20, what does Noah do first?

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord.

In the moments where God calls us to step out of the old and into the new.

Our first response has to be to build an altar.

What does Noah do when he builds an altar?

Well, he takes some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and he offers burnt offerings on the altar.

Build an altar Wait, somebody's on the roof sounds like it doesn't Squirrels or something, I don't know.

They get nervous because they're talking about an altar.

They're like hang on a minute, I don't like this.

Build an altar.

Build an altar, wait a minute.

I thought that was Old Testament stuff.

Build an altar Like sacrifice birds.

No, don't, do not Listen, do not leave here today and go home and be like listen.

James said at church build an altar, your HOA will not like that, your neighbors won't like that.

Your neighbor's going to like that.

That's not what I'm saying.

What does it mean for us to build an altar?

Well, noah steps off the boat, he builds an altar and the first thing he does is he offers a sacrifice to Almighty God, who saw him through the storm.

In other words, what Noah does is he chooses in that moment, entering a whole new world, leaving the old behind.

Noah's first response, first priority, is to give glory to Almighty God.

The Hebrew word for glory is kabad.

Can you say that this morning?

Kabad, it's like kabab, but with a D kabad.

Kabad, and it literally means to worship, to honor, to praise, to lift on high, but it can also mean to weigh with a heaviness.

It's the idea of carrying weight.

And so, when we build an altar, what Noah is saying to God is God, I wanna give weight, I wanna give honor, I wanna acknowledge your call, your mantle on my life in this moment.

You know, when we think about our lives today, we give weight to so many different things, do we not?

We give weight to the opinions of others, we give weight to the pundits that we hear on the news.

We give weight to how we perceive our circumstances, we give weight to what we feel, to what we think.

I think some of the challenge for us, as followers of Christ, is to let the weight of what Almighty God says outweigh any other weight in our life.

To acknowledge, first and foremost, the voice of God over, the internal voice that wants to speak to us.

To acknowledge the presence of Almighty God even in the face of the presence of fear.

To give more weight to what God says than what people say.

To give more weight to what God thinks than what people think.

When we build an altar, what we're saying to God is God, in this moment, in this place, before I see how it all unfolds, I wanna fix my attention and my affection.

I wanna direct my heart towards you.

I wanna give you the right and the authority to speak into my life, because I know that you have every right, because you're the ultimate authority.

We wanna give God the glory.

We wanna give God the weight.

It says in the Psalms.

We wanna ascribe to the Lord the glory that is due his name.

I just tell you this morning only God can carry the weight of your life.

Only God can hold the weight of your pain.

Only God can hold the weight of your uncertainty.

Only God can carry the weight.

So we build an altar, we acknowledge the goodness of God, we praise the glory of God, we're grateful for the grace of God.

Let us build an altar.

You know, as a church, we can build an altar, metaphorically speaking, this morning, can we not?

We can acknowledge God's goodness, we can celebrate God's grace.

Let me give you a couple of numbers that will help us build this altar this morning.

Our first four months as a campus in 2022, we saw an average of 170 people on campus every week kids and adults In August of 2023,.

Last month, coming out of the summer, heading into the school year, we saw an average of 299 adults and kids on campus every single week.

Kids ministry has doubled since we launched.

Worship attendance for adults has increased 80%.

We added a service in March.

We changed spaces to give us more room towards the end of the summer.

God is bringing people together to lift up the name of Jesus and that's a beautiful thing, but it doesn't stop there.

In September of 22, when we launched, we launched with six life groups meeting throughout the week Places where people could gather and be in the word, be in community, pray for one another, walk through life together.

Six up from the start Amazing.

Right as of today, we have 10 life groups meeting throughout the community throughout the week.

These are ongoing groups meeting every week to open the scriptures, to pray, to encourage, to be together on this journey called life.

10 life groups there's a place for you to join community and be part of what God's doing.

That's beautiful.

I love that From a generosity perspective.

We don't talk a lot about giving here and that's kind of intentional.

Our first 10 months as a campus.

On average we gave $12,700 roughly per month.

Amazing, the last two months on average we've given over $20,000 a month to go to the ministry of the church to fund the events and the programs, the outreach efforts of Somerville Baptist, so we can continue to reach out beyond the walls of this room.

So we've seen worship attendance increase.

We've seen life group attendance increase.

We've seen generosity increase.

One of my favorite things that I discovered this past week is I begin to look at the number of people we've got serving in different capacities, whether that's worship team or load-in and load-out teams, tech teams, safety ushers and greeting parking lot, kids men like all of those teams combined At best.

Yes, I probably forgot somebody, probably counted somebody twice, but we have 143 different people serving in some capacity every single weekend on campus here.

143 people.

I told somebody pretty early on in this process.

This is one of those things that if this is all on the shoulders of a handful of people, this doesn't happen.

It takes 143 for us to see what we're seeing come together every single Sunday.

Can I just challenge you if you're not yet serving somewhere, we need some people in the elementary school department and kids men.

We need some people in the preschool department.

We need some people helping to load in and load out.

Tech team needs to expand their places for you to plug in and serve James.

Why are you talking about all this?

What's the big deal with all this?

Well, we exist as a church to build vital relationships with Jesus that bring other people to His love.

It's not just about talking about what attendance looks like on a Sunday or how many people serve or how much money is given.

Those things are important, but that's not the ultimate.

Can I tell you something pretty amazing I came into today.

57 people had joined the church since we launched in September.

We had three more joined at the nine o'clock service today.

Of those 60 people who have come to say, hey, I want to be part of what God is doing here, 18 of those came with a profession of faith for the very first time and we're baptized.

And we've got three more people waiting now to be baptized in the coming weeks and months.

Y'all that's what it's about.

We're here to lift up the name of Jesus, to worship the name of Jesus, to preach about the name of Jesus, so that people can move from death to life in the name of Jesus, so the people who are far from God can come to faith in the God who has come close to us.

We're here so that we can see people begin again, get a fresh start, a forgiveness for their sin, a removal of the shame and guilt that weighs them down, a new beginning in Christ.

And so we're going to build an altar today and we're going to celebrate the goodness of God.

Hasn't God been good to us?

Hasn't he been good?

And at the same time, at the same time, we know that God is not done.

I love what happens next in this story.

Noah gets off the arch, he builds an altar to God, and chapter nine begins with this sentence God bless Noah and his sons.

And he said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

If you know the story of Genesis, that's a phrase that should spark something in your mind.

You ought to be like wait a minute.

I've heard that.

Well, yeah, that's the same thing God told Adam and Eve in Genesis one and Genesis two I want you to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

What God says to Noah is Noah, the work is not done, let's begin again.

And God gives Noah, this amazing promise, this amazing covenant.

God says I'm gonna put a rainbow in the sky.

And, noah, every time you see that that's my covenant between you and all of humanity, that never again will I flood the world and do this again, because God's got a purpose and a plan to redeem and restore.

God begins again in Genesis nine and in this beginning comes a promise from Almighty God.

God's gonna be God to his people, god's gonna be good to his people.

God's gonna be gracious even when we don't deserve it.

God's going to redeem and restore.

A few thousand years after this moment, jesus comes on to the scene and he says to a group of people one day he says you know, like as it is, or as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be again.

People doing what's right in their own eyes, chasing every evil intention of their hearts, pursuing their pleasure and what they want above all else.

Jesus says that's human tendency.

This is what we do as people.

But Jesus, the Son of God, the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant that God makes with humanity, he sheds his blood, he gives his life, he makes a way for people like me and you, who are broken by sin, to begin again with God and he tells his followers that day, as it was in the days of Noah.

It's gonna be like that again.

There's coming a day when the Son of man, the resurrected King, will return.

In the meantime, while we're in this in between, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise of God, having the promise of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead we know Jesus is alive In the in between, we get to hold out to the world this invitation to begin again with God, to find forgiveness for sin, to start fresh in the mercy and the grace of Almighty God.

By the year 2030, they're gonna be roughly 100,000 people that move to this area that do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The work's not done.

We've made it a year as a campus.

This is our moment to begin again, and I wanna ask you today what would it look like for us as a campus, for Somerville Baptist, as a church, to believe God for immeasurably more than all that we could ask for our matches To believe that the redemptive work that God is doing in the earth has our story interwoven in God's story, like we get a part to play?

What would it look like for us to begin to pray for God to allow us to reach 1% of the 100,000 people with the good news of Jesus.

You just catch a glimpse of that for a moment today.

What would it look like to see a thousand people over the next seven years meet Jesus as Lord and Savior You're like?

Well, it would take a move of Almighty, god, and isn't that the point as we build an altar and say, god, this is all about you.

And as we wake up tomorrow and say, god, I wanna begin again in the story of your grace.

I wanna begin again in the journey of your love.

I wanna begin again in this walk called following Jesus and walking by faith.

What if God chooses to use you?

God chooses to use us.

As we put our yes on the table to God and say God, whatever you have in store, sight unseen, we believe by faith that you've got great days ahead.

We wanna step into all that you are calling us towards.

If you're a follower of Jesus and a member of this church, or you think God's leading you to be part of this church, let's get on board with what God is doing.

Let's believe God for immeasurably more.

Let's believe God to see people saved, hearts transformed people, set free by the good news that there's a resurrected King and his name is Jesus and his grace is sufficient for our weakness.

And if you're here today and you don't know, jesus is savior, that's where your story has a chance to begin again.

By grace, through faith, you can trust Jesus as Lord and savior.

You can move from death to life, you can be reborn.

Today there can be a new beginning moment in your life.

So, father, in this moment, we pray, we seek your face.

Father, we confess our need for you.

We confess our sin, our tendency to do what's right in our eyes, to seek our good above the good of others.

We all have a tendency, like sheep, to wonder astray, to do our own thing.

Father, we're grateful for the moments in life where you invite us to begin again with you.

Father.

If today, that's salvation for the first time, people saying yes to Jesus, father, we pray that in this moment that would happen by your grace.

Father.

If it's for us as a church, saying yes to the future you have in store, believing by faith that you want to reach people, not so that people know our name, but so people can hear your name, father, if that's what you're calling us to.

We say yes to you.

We simply want to walk by faith, to trust in you, father, to see you do the immeasurably more in our lives.

So, father, help us to take the journey up the mountain, to learn your ways, to hear from you so that we can walk your paths in Jesus' name, amen.