Sermon - Sacrifice of Praise: Altar'd Series

Sermon Outline

Focus: God calls us to surrender our thanks so we can receive His
peace. Praise restores peace with God and with one another.

I. Gratitude Restores Peace with God
        Before building their future in the Promised Land, Joshua built an altar.
        Burnt offerings showed dedication to God; peace offerings celebrated fellowship
        w/Him.
        Gratitude does not wait for perfect circumstances; it recognizes God’s faithfulness
        during the journey.
II. Gratitude Restores Peace with One Another
        All Israel gathered – men, women, children, and foreigners – to hear the Law  of God.
        Remembering God’s grace creates unity among God’s people.
        Gratitude softens hearts and helps us extend grace to others.
III. The Greatest Reason for Gratitude Is the Cross
        Hebrews 10:4 reminds us that animal sacrifices could never remove sin.
        Animal sacrifices were shadows pointing to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus.
        The Gospel in 4 words (JD Greear)
        Bad: Sin broke our peace with God.
        Worse: We cannot fix it ourselves.
        Good: Jesus lived the perfect life.
        Best: Jesus became the sacrifice so we could have peace with God.
IV.   The Cross Paid Our Debt in Full
        The peace offerings in Joshua pointed forward to Calvary.
        Jesus paid the full price for our sin once and for all.
        Because of the cross, we live with a debt canceled and a relationship restored.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

I think what God is calling us to surrender today is our thanksgiving. It's our gratitude so He can bring into our own souls his peace, a peace that surpasses all understanding.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to the Church of the Lakes Weekly Sermon Podcast. We're honored that you're here listening and allowing us to be part of your spiritual journey. Our mission is to connect all to Christ, to become healthy in God and courageous in love. We are now in the Lenten season, and in today's episode, Pastor Jared is preaching sermon number four of a seven-week sermon series entitled Altered. The title of today's sermon is Sacrifice of Praise. God calls us to surrender our worry and place Him first. We may want everything, but God must be our only thing. All throughout the scriptures, the altar was where people met God. The altar is where we lay something down. And in that surrender, a doorway is opened for our transformation. And now, here's Pastor Jared. Be blessed.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Lent is those 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday when we will gather again in this space to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so through these Latin weeks, what we're doing is we're engaging in a series of messages we're calling altared, surrendering to the King. And so if you look through the biblical narrative, altars was not just a piece of furniture in a worshiping space or a sanctuary. What the altar really was was the place where people went to meet God and never were the same afterwards. It was a place where people went and laid something down so something new could rise up. It was the altar was really the place where surrender became the doorway to transformation. And so throughout this series, we're really encouraging one another to go to the altar in order to be altered by the transformative power and presence of the Holy Spirit. One of the questions we keep asking ourselves throughout this series is a self-reflection question, self-reflective question. What do I, what do you, what do I need to surrender so God can work resurrection life in me? And so we've been walking through a variety of the altars that we see primarily in the Old Testament. The first altar we see in week one was in the biblical narrative, the altar that Moa, uh Noah, Moa, Noah erected uh after he got off the floating zoo for roughly a year. And really what we saw in that altar was uh the need to surrender in order to create space for God to do something new in us. So the first thing Noah does when he gets off the ark was not construction, it was consecration. He built an altar in order to surrender, to make space, to surrender to the living God, to give him this new life, this new world in which he created. Uh, week two, we looked at Mount Moriah, the altar that Abraham took uh his son Isaac to. And in that particular altar, we talked about how surrender, the need to surrender our control over ourselves, those we love, and even our future into the hands of the living God. And that question was asked: what is your Isaac that you're called to lay down on the altar and relinquish control to the living God to do as he may? Uh last week we looked at the altar on Mount Carmel with Elijah. And what we saw with Elijah's story is that we are called to surrender. Uh that surrender means putting God first in our lives. So often, I think, in the American Christian landscape, we've been hoodwinked by this gross theology of this Jesus plus. It's Jesus plus something else, and that something else becomes that functional savior in your life. And Elijah's saying, No, you cannot live with the divided loyalty. It is Jesus not only for everything, but it is Jesus the only thing. And this week we're gonna be kind of backpedaling a little bit in the biblical narrative and looking at the altar that Joshua erects in his story, right before he fully brings the people of God into the um to the promised land that God promised to their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And what we're gonna see in this altar is that it actually is very different than all the altars we've looked at so far. Has nothing to do with fear, has nothing to do with sin. It has everything to do with peace. With peace. And here's what I want us to kind of wrestle with today. I think what God is calling us to surrender today is our thanksgiving. It's our gratitude, so he can bring into our own souls his peace, a peace that surpasses all understanding. Why do I say that? I say that because praise and gratitude, church, doesn't just change our attitude. Praise and gratitude restores our peace with God and also with one another. Let me set it up with a quick story. A few years ago, I heard a story about a man who was driving home one night from a from just a gathering with friends and kind of just enjoying the music on the radio, driving alone on this country road and um heading toward an intersection where his light was green. And as he was going through that intersection, unbeknownst to him, the person coming in the other direction didn't know his light was red, and he T-boned this man. It was a horrible accident. Paramedics, firefighters get on scene, and they literally have to take the jaws of life to pry open the metal to pull this man out of the wreckage of his car, and he survived but barely. Well, months and months of rehab and therity, he finally is back on his feet again, and he wants to thank these paramedics and these firefighters for literally saving his life. And so he set an appointment with them at the fire station in his in his community, and he shows up and he had already rehearsed what he wanted to say to them to express his gratitude. But he shows up at the firefighter face to face with the men who saved his life, and words left him. They escaped him. All he could do was cry. I mean, bawling uncontrollably, as he was so grateful for what they did in saving his life. You know, when you come face to face with people who have saved your life, don't words feel kind of small? Well, like gratitude rises up from somewhere deeper than just your throat. You don't thank them because it's simply the polite thing to do. You thank them because your life literally exists because of them. Now imagine somebody saving you something from something bigger than a car accident. Imagine someone saving you from eternal separation with the God who created you. They rescued your soul, they gave you peace with God. Friends, that's literally every single Christian. That's the gratitude we're called to live with. And that's the gratitude that Joshua is trying to extend to us at the altar he erects on the cusp of fully entering into the promised land. The scripture we're going to look at today is uh Joshua chapter 8, verses 30 to 35. And just to set up the scene, um, Joshua has just led the Israelites to victory around Jericho, the people of Jericho. Remember, they walked the walls one time for seven days, but on the seventh day they did it seven times, and they shouted their trumpet, uh, shouted and uh blew their trumpets, and the walls came a tumbling down, and they they conquered Jericho, and then uh unfortunately something happened where Achan, one of the Israelites, stole something that should have been destroyed, um, and God withheld his favor, they lost the next battle. Once that was all sorted out, they went on to a place called Ai, and they were able to defeat that nation as they're entering into the promised land. Now they're not yet fully there. But Joseph or um Joshua pauses and he builds an altar. And this is where we pick up the story. Joshua built an altar on Mount Ebel, an altar to the Lord the God of Israel, just as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded the Israelites to do, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar must be erected of unhown stones on which no iron tool had been used. And they offered on it a burnt offering to the Lord, and sacrificed also an offering of well-being, or you could say a peace offering. And there in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. All Israel, alien as well as citizen, with their elders and officers and judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark in front of the priest who carried the ark, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim, the other half in front of Mount Ebel, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded, that they should bless the people of Israel. And afterward Joshua read all the words of the law, blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the aliens or immigrants who resided among them. Friends, this is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Gracious and loving God, I ask in the midst of these next few moments, as I offer reflection on your life-giving word, that you'd simply bless the words of my lips, the meditation of all our hearts, that they be of profit to us and acceptable to you, for you indeed are our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Well, to really understand what's going on here, we have to rewind the story just a little bit. Let's go back 400 years. Actually, 440 years. For 400 years, Israel was were slaves in the land of Egypt. 400, that's a long time to be held in bondage in servitude to another people group. For 400 years, they were under the dictation and the bondage of Egypt's Pharaoh. However, after 400 years, their cries reached the ears of the living God, who sent a deliverer to them to take them out of bondage. That deliverer's name was Moses. Moses rode up, he went in front of Pharaoh ten different times to say to Pharaoh, Let my people go. And nine of those ten times Pharaoh said, Absolutely not, and so they had to deal with plagues. However, the tenth time, the tenth plague was the killing of the firstborn son and all the Egyptian households. And at that point, Pharaoh said, Go, you and everybody else that is related to this living God, get out of Egypt. And so Moses takes them to the Red Sea, and they get to the Red Sea not knowing how they're going to cross. And as the story goes, God miraculously divided the Red Sea, and they walked across on dry ground into the Sinite Desert. And for the next 40 years they spent wandering around the Sinite Desert. Now, what was so miraculous about their wandering, the scriptures tell us, is their clothing or their shoes did not wear out in 40 years. I change running shoes every two months. It's incredible. 40 years, their sandals did not wear out. In addition to that, for 40 years God fed them miraculously with the bread from heaven, with manna, and also with quail, this bird that came in every day from the east wind, and they had their fill. And now here we are 40 years later, Moses has since died on Mount Nebo to go to be with the Lord, and Joshua takes over as the new leader. Can you imagine being Joshua trying to fill the shoes of the great deliverer Moses? God knew that Joshua was having a tough time filling that role because twice in Joshua 1, he says to his new leader, Joshua, I need you to be strong and courageous. Why? For I, the Lord your God, am with you wherever you go. So Joshua takes them to the number of battles, and they defeat their foreign nations. They get to the Jordan River, and sure enough, God again miraculously divides the waters. They walk through the Jordan River and they experience victory. They experience failure. And now they stand on the cusp of fully entering into the promised land. And the very first thing Joshua does is so surprising. Doesn't build a city, doesn't build a fortress. He does what Noah did when he got off the ark. He built an altar. Why? It's because before Israel could build their future, the future that lies ahead of them, they had to stop and give thanks to God. What I want to talk about today, church, is how cultivating an attitude of gratitude is an ingredient for a peace-filled life. And what I mean by that is gratitude, when we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, the first thing it does is it restores our peace with God. So Joshua builds this altar in the middle of battle, the way Moses had commanded. However, there were two different sacrifices on this altar. There was the burnt offering, which we've talked about in the past. The burnt offering, like the grain offering, was indicative of their dedication to God as God's people. However, a new offering was introduced by Joshua, and it was the peace offering. And what the peace offering was, was it celebrated Israel's fellowship, their communion with the living God. Now the peace offering was unique in two different regards. The first, what it was, it was the only one of the five offerings offered on the altar that wasn't fully consumed by fire. It was only partially consumed by fire, and what was left over was given to families in the community to share amongst one another. The other unique thing about this particular offering was it was the only one of the five offerings that was actually not required by God. It was a just cause offering. Gratitude and thanksgiving was a just cause type of offering for the people of God. The other four, however, the grain, the burnt, the sin, and the guilt were offerings that were required by God. Again, this offering, church, it symbolized fellowship, it symbolized reconciliation with God. It was Israel's way of saying to God, just because, God, we are at peace with you finally. But do you notice again when Joshua does this? He doesn't do this after he's fully conquered the land. He didn't offer this offering after everyone and everything was established in the promised land. He did it right in the middle of the uncertainty. That's when he built the offer, uh, the altar and offered the offering. And the reason I think that's important to us today, friends, is because gratitude doesn't have to wait for perfect circumstances. So often you and I think we have to have our lives set up the way we want them set up before we'll give uh and have an attitude of gratitude or impart thanksgiving to the God who created us. But here's the thing, gratitude recognizes God's faithful even in the midst of the journey of life. Regardless of the ebbs and the flows, the good times or the bad times, we are called to offer God just cause offerings, peace offerings, and show him our gratitude regardless of our current moment and circumstance. Let me give you a few illustrations. Can you uh agree with me that we as human beings have this tendency, this fickleness to move from gratitude to grumbling pretty quickly? I think we do. Let me give you a few examples. Uh say you're you're you're dead set on getting this particular job. You're like, if I just get this job, Lord, I know my life will be content and happy. And you pray about it, and guess what? God responds to your prayer and he gives you that job. You think this is the happiest, most content you'll ever be. What happens six months later? You're complaining about being overworked, right? At this job, that was your perfect job. Let me give you another example. Uh, you want to buy a house, secure a home to be able to raise a family in. And so you pray about the opportunity, Lord, provide the means necessary to be able to buy a house so I can raise my family in this house. If I can just get this house, I will be so happy and content, and I'll have a place where I, you know, it can be a humble abode that I can raise my children in. And so the Lord answers your prayer. You secures a house. What happens a year later? You start grumbling about all the maintenance and upkeep that is necessary to keep the house moving forward. Man, we quickly move from gratitude to grumbling. Israel could have easily done the same thing in this moment. If you know the biblical narrative, you know, as they spent 40 years wandering in the desert, they did a lot of grumbling. They could have done that again right now as they were entering into the promised land, but Joshua stops them. Before they can focus, have even a moment to try to focus on what they still lack. Joshua's gonna remind them of everything God has done for them and everything God has given them. And again, this matters to us today because, friends, peace with God is cultivated when the soil of our heart is a place of gratitude. When we are regularly thanking God, at least in my experience, my anxiety begins to shrink. When we regularly thank God, entitlement begins to fade, perspective begins to shift. One of the most practical spiritual disciplines you can do to help cultivate an attitude of gratitude is every time you pray, just start with thanksgiving. Start with giving God thanks for all that God has done for you. And if you can't think of anything, at the very least, God has given breath in your lungs. God has woken you up this morning, and God has sent his son Jesus Christ to hang on a cross and die for you. So your future is eternally secure. Something I've done when I have fallen into the tendency of grumbling is I've kept a gratitude journal. Maybe some of you have done this. I would commend this to you if you've never heard of it. If you're a grumbler, if you have a tendency to grumble, just every morning you wake up, write down in a journal five, six, seven things you're thankful for. They can't be the same things every day. Think about different things and write them down, things you're thankful for. Friends, gratitude realigns our hearts, and when our hearts are aligned to God, man, peace flows and follows that gratitude. Gratitude restores our peace with God. Gratitude also restores our peace with one another within the family of God. I love how Joshua didn't just build an altar, he called everyone to gather around the altar with him. That's different than Noah. We don't know if Noah called his family to gather with him at the altar. We just knew he'd build an altar to provide space to surrender. Joshua, however, he builds the altar, then he calls the entire community to come with him. Men, women, children, even the foreigners, the immigrants living among them. Half of them went on Mount Gerizim, the other half went on Mount Ebel, and Joshua then reads the entire law of God. Can you imagine tens of thousands of people in the valley between these two mountains with the Word of God reverberating, echoing off these mountains? Why do this? I think they do it, friends, because gratitude toward God creates unity among God's people. When people remember the grace they have received, I think it's so much easier to extend that grace to other people. Think about family dynamics for a moment. I I heard uh one said that families are like a box of fudge, mostly sweet with a few nuts. Right? Think about the family dynamics just for a moment. Conflict within family units grows where gratitude disappears. Am I right? When family members start feeling entitled, arguments multiply and they begin to snowball into something bad. But when people stop and remember the blessings they share in common, man, something changes. Right? Gratitude, it softens the heart, it humbles us, and it reminds us, man, that we are all recipients of grace. This unmerited, undeserved favor of God. Like if you have disruption in your relationships with family members or friends, if if that's you, if you want peace in those relationships, start with gratitude toward God. Because when we remember how much we've been forgiven, it causes us, it compels us to be more quick to forgive others. When we remember how much our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer has given us, it causes us, compels us to be more quickly to give to others. Gratitude toward God, it creates peace within community. The last thing I want to say about gratitude, the greatest reason for our gratitude, it's the cross. The greatest reason, friend, for our gratitude is the blood Jesus Christ shed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, for the cleansing of our unrighteousness. You know, we've said this each week, but this altar that Joshua erected here on Mount Ebel is an altar that ultimately points forward to a greater one. Because the sacrifices that Israel offered on this altar, even the peace offering, Hear me was never meant to be the final solution for their sin. Go to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, this unknown author in Hebrews writes the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 4. We read these words. For it is impossible, hear that impossible, for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. Think about that statement for a moment. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of years, animals were sacrificed on a variety of different altars all across Israel. Bulls, goats, lambs, burnt offering, sin offering, guilt offering, grain offering, peace offering. And yet Scripture tells us that none of those sacrifices could could actually remove sin. The sin that has stained humanity since almost day one. They can symbolize forgiveness. They can remind us of the cost of our sin. They could temporarily restore our fellowship with God and with one another, but they could never cleanse the human heart. Why? Because the blood of an animal is not sufficient, church, for the blood-stained soul of humanity. Now circle back to the beginning of Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews goes on to tell us that the entire sacrificial system was but a shadow, a shadow of the good things to come. In other words, again, every altar in the Old Testament is pointing forward to a greater altar. Every sacrifice, a preview, every offering, but a reminder. Then you get in verse 3. Those sacrifices, the author says, were given year after year as a reminder of sin. Did you catch it? They didn't remove sin, they just simply expose sin. So every time a person or a family presented a priest with a bull or a goat or a lamb or whatever offering they had, and the priest would then lay it on the altar, it was like that family acknowledging to the priest, we're broken, we're a mess, we're sinful, we're unrighteous, and there's nothing we can do to fix ourselves. So we just have to bring this bowl to you so you know and that we know that we're broken. And we also know that there's a cost to our brokenness, and we're hoping that the blood of this animal can suffice in this moment. Right? Do you ever have a friend or a family member who will never let you forget that mistake you made? Or that that nasty thing you said of them in the heat of a moment? Like they keep bringing it up over and over and over, reminding you of how broken you are, how full of mistakes you are. That was the sacrificial system in the Old Testament. It basically reminded the Israelites that they were broken, that they were unholy, that they were unrighteous, that they were full of sin. Now that's the pessimistic side of the sacrificial system. Let me give you the optimistic side as well. The sacrificial system also pointed forward to the day when one sacrifice would finally do what a bull or a goat could not do. That sacrifice would not just cover sin, that sacrifice would remove sin from us completely. And that sacrifice was Jesus Christ. And that brings us to the greatest reason for our gratitude. It brings us to the gospel. Church, if I could um articulate the gospel in just one statement from a famous hymn. What will wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What will make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Pastor J.D. Greer out of the Summit Church has a way of describing and articulating the gospel with four words. Bad worse, good best. He says, here's the bad news. The bad news is you were created to live at peace with God, but through your disobedience, you broke that peace. You broke that relationship. All of us, whether we want to believe it or not, have done something or have said something or have thought something that has broken our relationship with the God who created us. Okay, here's the worst news. There's nothing we can do to change that reality. There's not enough morality, ethical living, or religiosity that we can prop up to reconcile and heal the rift that we have with the God who created us. Okay, here's the good news. But God found a way. He sent his son Jesus to bring a sacrifice. A sacrifice that would appease his justice, that he would accept. And that's Jesus came as that perfect person of perfect obedience and perfect righteousness. But that's not just the good news. Let me give you the best news. Jesus didn't just come to bring a sacrifice, he became the sacrifice. He he went to a cross. Friends, the blood of Jesus Christ was shed so you and I could have peace with the God who created us. The peace offering in Joshua's story was only a shadow. The cross. The reality. Every altar in the Old Testament hear this whispers what the cross in Jesus Christ one day shouted. What will wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What will make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. On Mount Calvary Church, the final sacrifice was given. No more repeated offering. No more temporary covering. Jesus paid the full price once and for all, which means the greatest reason for gratitude in your life, in my life, guess what? It's not your family, it's not your home, it's not your job. It's not this house of worship. It's not even your boat or your camper. The greatest reason for your gratitude, church, was Jesus Christ shedding his blood for you on the cross. Your greatest reason for your gratitude is that you now have peace with God through the blood of Jesus Christ. And if Israel could build an altar to God in their moment to thank him as they were entering into the promised land, land before they received it, how much more should we? Look, we don't just seek to secure land. The Lord gave us salvation. Imagine you received a letter from your bank. We're winding down. You got a letter from your bank. You open up the letter and you read these amazing words. First of all, you think it's a bill. It's not a bill. But you read these words. Your debt has been paid in full. Not reduced, not restructured, not delayed. Paid in full. And as you read further down, you find the more shocking news that somebody else actually paid the debt for you. But what makes that news even more shocking is you don't even know the person who paid it. It was a stranger. Somebody that you did not know paid your debt for you. Now you read that and you think to yourself, would you say to yourself, well, that was really nice. Set aside and go about your day? No. You would be overwhelmed with appreciation. You would have deep gratitude welling up in your soul. You'd want to meet that person who paid the debt for you. You'd want to thank him in person, eye to eye, for doing what you never thought somebody would do for you. Friends, that's exactly what happened on the cross. The debt of our sin, it wasn't reduced, it wasn't postponed, it was paid in full. And it wasn't paid by us. It was paid by Jesus Christ, which means every single Christian lives in the reality of a debt canceled, a relationship restored. And that's why gratitude needs to be the natural response of the Christian life. Because, friends, when you truly understand what Jesus did for you at the cross, you can't help but build an altar of thanks. So today I want to end where Joshua begins. At the altar. Today I want our response to be that of gratitude. Maybe for you, you've been grumbling more than you've been grateful, and this is a moment where you can re-pivot, you can shift your perspective. And instead of focusing on what you lack or the opportunities you missed, you can instead remember what God in Christ Jesus has done for you. Maybe you have forgotten that great gift of salvation. And you've slid into gratitude to grumbling. Friends, today is that moment to return to the altar. To thank God, to worship God, to remember the cross. Just a moment, we're gonna sing our closing hymn, and as we've been doing each week during Line, is we're gonna open up the altar rail to you. And can I be honest, just transparent? I want this altar rail to become something that's normalized in our church. We have a God who invites us into relationship with Him. I mean, can you believe that? And so the altar rail invitation is an invitation to you from your God to come and kneel, maybe as an act of salvation, maybe it's an act of rededication, maybe it's just simply because you don't know what to say and you want to just kneel in thanksgiving for what he's given and done for you. Friends, sometimes the most powerful, eloquent prayers we can pray are not with words, they're with movement. That they're stepping out, even if it feels nerve-wracking, and coming forward and kneeling before your God who created you, who redeemed you by the precious blood of his son, and who daily sustains you by the power of your Holy Spirit. So we're gonna stand and sing in a moment. And this altar rail is gonna be open. Invitation for you to come and kneel if you so choose. If you want someone to pray over you, one of our prayer partners will pray for you up front. If you just want to take a moment of private uh thanksgiving, by all means do that as well. But let me offer up a quick prayer. Gracious and loving God, there is so much in life uh that we need to be grateful for.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Thank you for listening to the Church of the Lakes podcast with Pastor Jared Preset. If today's message encouraged you and helped you grow as a devoted follower of Christ, we invite you to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can also help others discover this podcast by leaving a five-star rating or review and sharing it with your friends, family, co-workers, and others in your circle of influence. We're also very grateful for your generosity, which helps make messages like this available to more people. If you feel led to give, please check the link in the description. And if you're in the Cant, Ohio area, we'd love to invite you to join us in person on Sunday and worship together. To learn more about Church of the Lakes, visit churchofthelakes.org or click the website link in the description. Until next time, stay encouraged and keep walking in faith.