Voice of the Nazarene 9-1-24

Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene, a week by week.

Venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our pastor, Reverend Ray Lasalle and the voice of the Nazarene.

And a lot less painful. Want to look this morning for a few minutes at the life of of Abraham. We looked at Elijah. We'd looked at Elijah. I want to look at Abraham and how we can learn from his life. The thing that really stands out to me this morning about Abraham is the fact the Bible said he was God's friend. God's friend, and the choir sang about it so eloquently just a bit ago, the beginning of the service, friend of God. Two guys were out hiking up the mountains and going around a lot of precipices and taking back trails, and suddenly they heard an awful sound lumbering through the underbrush. They begin to hear the breath, the breathing and the grunts, and turn and look and saw a massive grizzly bear coming for them. They begin to run. They were running for all they were worth. And finally, one stop dropped down on a rock and began to struggle to get his hiking boots off. And the other said to him, What in the world are you doing? He said, I'm trying to get my hiking book boots off. I'm going to put on my tennis shoes. He said, You think you can outrun that barrier? Said, I'm not trying to outrun that bear. I just need to outrun you and folk. We've got a lot of friends like this, but the Bible said that Abraham was God's friend, God's friend, and it was said of David that he was a man after God's own heart. It was said of Enoch that he he walked with God, but there's something said about Abraham that is not said of anyone else in all of divine writ, that he was God's friend. Wouldn't it be something to be in a place of business and and the door opens, and somebody walks in, and you hear people whispering, there comes God's friend. Would you like to have it said about you that you're God's dear friend?

What a compliment. I'd rather have God for my friend than anybody else that I know. And it and it said that he was God's friend, and y'all, we ought to process that for a moment. What is there so unique about Abraham? What sets him apart from everybody else in shoe leather? What separated him from others? And I know one thing. He knew how to pray. If you get acquainted with God through prayer, some of us need to be catching up. We need to knock on heaven's front door. Some of us need to get on the front porch and get God's attention and make a friend out of God. There is no intercessor in all of divine writ, in the Old Testament, that could pray and intercede like Abraham when he prayed for Sodom, just one of the great prayer intercessions that's ever listed publicly about his life.

Now we know this, if you've studied his life, literally everywhere he went, he did three things. First, he pitched a tent. And second he he dug a well, and thirdly, the Bible said that he build an altar. Why did he Why did he pitch a tent?

Because he wanted a home. He had a wife, and he was up in years before he ever had any children of his own, but his brother had died, and he took his brother's little boy, that little nephew, named lot, and raised him. And although it was a very transient home, as they traveled, it was a tent, but it was the best that he could do. He was concerned about having a home and you ought to be concerned about your own home life. You need to put some thought into it. You need to put effort into it. There needs to be time family time, time spent, at least together, if nothing more, around a family table. Don't make it just around the television. Don't everybody go separate ways to eat somewhere during the day. Get together as a family. It's important this thing of home life. He he pitched a tent. The Scripture said a well. All represented his thirst for water. I don't know what you're thirsting for. Maybe, maybe alcohol satisfies your thirst in the lives of some porn and seems to be that that takes care of what their needs are. There's some folk that are so after pleasure. Others are after money. Money. I mean, everything's about money.

Abraham had a thirst for God.

Maybe the reason you're here this morning, you would say, Well, Pastor, it's because I, I hunger for God too. He dug a well, I said he dug a well. And while he dug a well, he had a grandson later on that caught on that his old granddad dug wells and he dug wells. His name was Jacob. The well that he dug was so famous it was later in the New Testament, Jacob's well, where Jesus said and a woman came needing to satisfy her thirst. She tried marriages and tried men and tried different things, but she met Jesus at Jacob's well. Had her thirst was satisfied, so he dug a well for water, but he he built an altar for worship. Worship, of course, an altar is a place of surrender. An altar is a place of sacrifice up front here, and even on the other side of the curtains yonder, there's, there's some altars. We we're gathered here this morning from all kinds of different backgrounds, different sized churches, different styles of worship. We hear, we a lot of times invite folk to come forward and to deal at an altar.

But can I tell you that you can?

You can have an altar right where you're setting this morning. You can settle things with God right in that seat that you're in. Or when we come to the conclusion of the service and you begin to move toward the door, you can have an altar in your heart. You can have an altar at your couch. You can have an altar at your bedside.

You can make an altar out of a desk where you work. You can travel the highway and make that steering wheel an altar. I still believe that an altar is a place where we get a hold of God, and God begins to get a hold of us.

I want you to understand that an altar in your life will alter your life. An altar in your home will alter the home. I them. Now I want to give you just a couple of practical things to I hope you can benefit from probably some of you leave and say, well, the pastor, nice guy, but he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but you always get something from what he says, and you can apply it to your life. I hope that's the way you feel. I want to give you just a few things. Want you to listen to what I'm saying. There are at least five altars that all of us need in our life, five altars now I'm not dealing with the tent and I'm not dealing with the well, I'm going to deal only with the altar this morning, just for the brevity of time, five altars that Abraham built that changed everything in his life. Let me explain. There's the first altar. Abraham lived in a place called the UR the Chaldees. It was a modern day Iraq. It's where Iraq is now.

His father's name was Terah, and living in the Ur of the Chaldees. They worshiped all kinds of false gods. They worshiped the sun. Their chief worship was the moon. Fact of the matter, its name was called sin Boy, that pretty good, isn't it? And it was what we call a polytheistic society, meaning that everybody had multiple gods. You say, that's pretty far fetched. Be careful. We might wake up one day and find that we've worshiped anyhow, that's all I'm going to say about it.

Multiple gods and the Bible said here in Genesis, 12 one, the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country. Get thee out of thy. Kindred and from thy father's house under the land that I will show you.

And so he packs his few things and gets his tents together, and his wife and his nephew, and they head off for what was called the Canaan land. It was more than 1500 miles away, and it was there in that Canaan land, he learned there was really only one true God. And the only way to that one true God, may I mention to you, in this New Testament setting, is through the Lord Jesus Christ, God's side. You say he's a good way. No, well, he's a better way. No, he's the best way. No, he's the only way to God. Now, in the Old Testament, when Abraham came to know God, He called him Yahweh. We're talking about from the original language. We don't spell it right you you check with the scholars and with the sages and with the rabbis and the way they spelled Yahweh actually was, Y H W H? Y H W H? And the scholars tell us out of the Old Testament that to say the name of God, you literally breathed out. You sucked in and you breathed out.

It was a breathing process, literally when a baby took his first breath of air, it was saying Yahweh. And when you come down to your very last breath of error in your dying moments, you be saying the name of God.

Atheists that do not believe in God are saying God every time they breathe. Abraham gets to Canaan land, and there, in verse seven, the first thing he does is to build an altar to God. It said, in there build it. He that altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. Now what I'm trying to say there has to be a first altar in your life and in your life and in your life and your life and in your life, in your life, in your life, in everyone's life, there needs to be a first altar. I'm not trying to make a Nazarene out of you, or a Methodist out of you, or a Baptist out of you, or an Episcopal all I want you to do is to have a first altar where you give your heart to God and your life is changed. And I challenge everyone of you to come to know the Lord, and you need to have a first altar experience. But I noticed that Abraham didn't stop with the first altar experience, but he moves to a second altar. And if you don't mind, I'm calling that the family altar. Look at what it said in Genesis 12, verse eight. And he removed from thence into the mountain on the east side of Bethel and pinched his tent. Listen, why did he pitch his tent? Because he had a wife. He had a nephew. He needed a little home. A home is your private place. It's your little castle. May I just say, and I don't want say any more than that, I've upset enough folk in my lifetime. You need to be careful what you bring into that little setting of your home. You need to be careful who you allow into your actual home. I'm not talking about a guest for a meal. I'm talking about letting somebody move in better be careful. It can become very divisive. You need your own home. The Bible said that he pitched his tent and then that he had builded that altar unto the Lord, and he called upon the name of the Lord. It was a family altar. A family altar will alter the family lady trying to do a good deed. She invited the senior pastor the church and his wife over to her home, and the youth pastor and his wife and the children's pastor and the music pastor got them all there, and she's frazzled and frustrated trying to get the meal on the table, make everything turn out at the right timing, and and, and finally got them around the table. And then she didn't know who to call on. They're all preachers of some sort or another. And so she turned to sissy, her six year old daughter, and said, Why don't you pray, ask the blessing, and she said, Mama, I don't know what to say. Well, just just say what Mama says, okay, Mama, my God. Why did I invite all these preachers to that? Well, really, we still need to know how to how to pray. And I. But I want to say one out of two families end in divorce. The Billy Graham Association say that one out of 1014 Christian families end in divorce. I hope they're right.

Well, what constitutes a Christian family and a Christian marriage it's where a husband and a wife daily pray together.

And let me say something and I'm I'm not always in sackcloth and ashes, okay, but may I say this to Christian parents, before your kids go off to school, pray over them. Pray with them when they're gone, pray for them.

Pull them up close enough they can hear your heartbeat and pray God to put a canopy over them and a hedge around them. And pray that Hebrew blessing of laying the hands on your children praying for him.

There's a first altar. There's a family altar, and and all of us do that about praying for your family. This verse is amazing to me that when he built this altar, he he had gone. It said he built an altar at Bethel. Do you know what Bethel means? It means house of God. Abraham wanted his family in the house of God, Dad, you better get your family in God's house. And if you can go to Dillards, and if you can go to Walmart, and if you can go to Menards, you can probably make it out to God's house. Zoom, there it went.

Zoom, there it went again. Are you listening now? We preach the Omni presence of God. That means God's everywhere. I believe in the inner presence of God, where the Holy Spirit is inside of you. But I also believe in the manifest presence of God, where we go to God's house and God shows up because we have shown up, and God manifests Himself to us in a collective group, the manifested presence of God. God said, if you'll come to my house. I'll I'll meet with you.

Say, where in the world do you get that Exodus? 25 Verse eight, and you ought to mark this in your Bible, because I believe we'll answer for this. He said, and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. God says, you come to church. You get to that place. And he said, I'll meet with you. And I don't know if anything we need any more than the presence of God. I don't know of anything we need anymore for our children than the presence of God. Hollywood's after him. Everything, everything's after him. The drug crowds after him. Let's get him in God's house. But wait, there's that first altar, and there's a family altar, and then Abraham had a forgiveness altar.

He's on his way down to Egypt.

Should have never gone there.

There's a famine on in the land, and he's letting circumstances dictate what he's doing and and he looks over at Sarah, and he says, Sarah, now listen, she's 65 years of age, but she's pretty good looking. Did you all hear me? I mean, she was a knockout. That's all I'm going to say. Let your mind do the walking. And he's worried about the king down there getting after his wife. Now I don't know what our beauty was at 65 years of age. I wonder if it might have been like First Peter, chapter three, verse four, where it was a not an outer beauty, but an inner beauty. And when you're looking for a mate, don't look just on the outside, because let me tell you something all of that's going to pass away. You didn't have to shout me down, and you didn't look for something that's lasting. Look for the real beauty, that inner peace, that inner joy. I mean, when you get ready to fall in love, don't fall in lust for looks. He said, Sarah, we're going down to Egypt, and the king has a law there that states that any woman that he wants, he can have her.

You tell him that you're my sister, because he's going to fall for you, and he probably going to take you, and if he thinks you're my wife, he's going to kill me. And the Bible said there in. Genesis 12, verse 17, that a plague fell on on the king and his household. He sent for Sarah. He got Sarah, and he no more than got her. And his plague falls. And then he begins to find out that she was actually a man's wife, and he tells Abraham, get her and get out of the country. If you'd been honest with me, I'd never went for in the first place, Abraham messed up greatly. Can I just stop here for a minute and say people do mess up? Get off your high horse. We're in human skin, and people mess up. Good people sometimes mess up. Oh, preacher, I got saved and I'm perfect. God help us. You already messed up. Now what?

Genesis 12:17

What I want you to see is what Abraham did. He goes back to Bethel. What do you do when you mess up? You go back to the altar. I don't care whether it's upfront in church or sitting there in your car. God forgive me. Look. Let me read it to you.

I'm not making all this up.

Genesis 13 three, and he went on his journeys from the south even to Bethel, out of the place where his tent had been at the beginning, out of the place the altar which he had made at the first back to his first love, back to repentance, and there Abraham called on the name of the Lord. It was there at Bethel that he built an altar the name that's good news. Sometimes we need to go back when we've messed up first John one nine said, If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, My little children, these things right.

Eye unto you that you sin not, but if you do mess up, go back to Bethel, back to the house of God, back to the altar and say, God, I I've blown it. Now I want you to know there's always a forgiveness altar, God's compassions are new every morning. Don't get on a guilt trip and don't let somebody say, Well, you can't get right you can you say, Well, Pastor, my friend won't forgive me. My wife won't forgive my husband won't my kids won't forgive me. I don't know anything about that, but I know that God will forgive you. You're not beyond the forgiveness. There's a forgiveness altar, and God's willing to wipe the slate clean.

There's a first altar, there's that family altar, there's that forgiveness altar, but you'll find there was a fellowship altar, Genesis 13, verse 18, Abraham had gotten right with God and said. Then Abraham removed his tent and came and dwelled in the plain of memory, which is in Hebrew, and built there that altar of the Lord.

Genesis 13:18

Now, before this, he had said, the lot we need to separate things aren't going well between your herdsman and mine, and we're having family issues, and I want to wish you the best. I'm going to let you make a choice.

And the Bible said that lot pitched his tent towards Sodom.

It looked fertile. The grass was greener over there, but he didn't realize that Sodom was built over a septic tank. You can look over the fence and the grass will look Greener for some of you, but it's a septic tank over there. You can blow a happy home apart because you see somebody that looks just a little cuter. Well, that's all I'm going to say. Life went down to Sodom, lost his family down there. It looked good to the eyes, but all of us remember sin that fascinates always assassinates. If it thrills, it'll kill it feels so good, yeah, but it's so wrong. Don't let your emotions lead you.

Abraham, he said to Lot we need to part. Sometimes we, if we want our lives to count for God, we we have to let some people go. Sometimes you don't need to always let that outer circle become your inner circle. You need to find people in your life that love God. There needs to be an inner circle. I'm not saying that we're not friends to others, but there needs to be a inner Christian circle. Now do you know what the word Hebrew means? It means fellowship. And what I've learned we need, we all need, a fellowship altar where we get to know God better and more in an intimate way. Can I ask you something? Have you prayed today? Did you have. A prayer sometime during Saturday, sometime either in the morning, in the afternoon, sometime at night, is God your friend? Like Abraham had a friend? Well, I can tell you this much, I doubt that I'm God's best friend, but God's my best friend. I'm sure he has some better friends than me, but I've never had a better friend than God. And I want to give you the last one that I'm done. Don't you wish I'd started on this one? Some of you already done a faith giving altar. It's there in Genesis, 22 verse nine, the toughest one to preach for me, but I'm going to bring it up. God said to Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son. God took his son, his only begotten Son, what you offer him on an altar. And I've said this, God wanted to know if Abraham loved him more than anything.

But I believe God knows everything, so God wanted Abraham to know who was number one in his life, and Abraham places Isaac on the altar. God, I'm willing to sacrifice anything and everything. Pulls out a knife, and God sent an angel and stayed his hand and said, You don't need to do this.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw a ram caught in the thicket. Now, back in verse seven of Genesis 22 Isaac had asked Dad, I see the wood and we've got fire, but where's the lamb? Where's the lamb? I'm glad that when nobody else could find him, John the Baptist found him.

Behold the Lamb. One day, the front door of heaven's going to open. It's going to say, Worthy is the Lamb slaying from the foundation of the earth. Where's the lambda? And then those words in verse eight, the old man, hair turning white, begin to weep. Yet he said, God will provide Himself. God will provide himself an offering, and God did on that same mountain, Mount Moriah, in the Old Testament, was the same mountain called Mount Calvary, where God's own Son, on the same place was laid out on a wooden altar, spikes driven through him, and there he died, but he saw a ram caught in the thicket. Did you ever stop to think about this?

The Bible said that he was caught by his horns, and he was caught in the Briars and the thorns. There was another that would die on that same mountain, and a cruel crown of thorns was jammed down on his brow. He wasn't caught by his body. The body had to be without spot or blemish or any such thing to be the offering.

Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene.

Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNCs pastor, Ray LaSalle.

For more information regarding BNC visit bucyrusnazarene.org, you.