How to Alter Your Destiny

One of the things that commonly happens, as I have the opportunity to travel on occasion, is that people ask me, what's the name of the church that I'm a pastor, where I pastor? And I, of course, have the privilege of calling it Memorial Park. They say, well, that's sort of a strange name. Why isn't it First or Second or Covenant D.P. or something? And I say, well, it's named after a cemetery. They begin to wonder if there's any connection there. And we have the opportunity of telling them, of course, that the living God abides in our hearts, and we're seeking to serve Him and His church. But this being Memorial Day Sunday, and this being Memorial Park Church, I thought it would be appropriate today to speak to you about the place of memorials in our lives, and how we are to respond to the need that we have to build memorials to the living God that we might know and be assured of His working in our hearts. For some people, the only memorial they'll ever erect is their communion. Unspecific today, I'm going to speak to you about the need to establish and firm up specific encounters and experiences in your life with the Lord Jesus Christ, and how you can begin to establish those things in such a way that they become meaningful, they become helpful in your walk with the Lord. A number of you, let me see your hands. How many of you are graduating from high school or college in the next week, or have already graduated this year? Okay. Now, of these folks, and probably a number of others, this graduation is indeed a memorial. It's a memorial which, number one, says that you've achieved something, you've accomplished a certain level of attainment. And then secondly, this also certifies and attests to the world that you are qualified to go on and to do something else. Although you may not feel any different, they say that you are now especially qualified, and it gives you a certain sense of confidence that you can move ahead. Well, this principle of establishing memorials is very biblical. In Exodus 16.31, the Lord tells the people of Israel to take an omer of manna and set it aside as a memorial to his provision. In Joshua 4.7, the Bible says that the Israelites were told to raise a memorial of stones when they crossed the river Jordan with the ark of the covenant. In John chapter 15, Jesus says, Remember my words, keep them before you. In Luke chapter 22, and of course, in 1 Corinthians 11, the communion table, the breaking of the bread of Jesus' body, and the drinking of his blood as wine, is a memorial, a remembrance of the death of our Savior. Revelation 3.3, the Bible tells us to remember to receive the word and to hear it. And over and over again, the scripture says, Remember the workings of God. And the reason simply is this. It is so easy for us to turn cold. It's so easy for us to forget the things that the Lord has done. In 1 Samuel chapter 12, the Bible talks about the fact that the Israelites forgot the working of the Lord as they left Egypt. And it was because they forgot what the Lord was doing that they began to wander, and that they never really reached the promised land. That generation never experienced the fulfillment of that promise. And the reason was, they forgot the working of the Lord. And this message this morning is born out of a concern that we, God's people, fail to inherit the full promises of the Lord because we have not taken time to establish His workings in our lives. I'm going to talk today about remembrances, establishing certain points of experience, or perhaps there might be other things in your life. You draw the application. It might be a point of doctrine where you need to come to the Lord and determine what is God saying on this point. It might be any point of doctrine. Or it might be a word of direction that you need for your life. Some of you are facing decisions about your future. Come to the Lord with that specific need. You need to hear from the Lord. You might run to all kinds of counsel. I'm not saying that's wrong or bad. I'm just saying that is not enough at the turning point time for your life. You might be in a situation where you need assurance. You're not sure that you have a love of God in you. Though you've tried all kinds of things, you really haven't come to the Lord and said, God, what is this meaning? What is happening in my life? We need to see that there are times in our lives when only Jesus Christ can speak to our inner man with His words. And that becomes the point of memorial, of encounter. We're going to look today at the life of Abraham. And I may call him Abraham at times because that's what we've come to know. And of course, he's the same person. But we're going to see that part of Abraham's life when special things happened, when he encountered the Lord in a dynamic way, he established those times by the building of altars. And altars for Abraham became the memorial of his encounter with the living God. It encouraged me in Romans chapter 4 to read that Abraham is the father of our faith. So what we see Abraham doing we know can be a model to help us to grow in our likeness of Christ. He's a prototype of our faith in Jesus. Now let's look and see in Genesis chapter 12 what are some of the things that prompted Abraham to build altars for the Lord. Verse 7 we read, When God appeared to Abram, He said to your descendants, I will give this land. And there Abraham built the Lord an altar. The first time we see Abraham building an altar is when he received a promise from the Lord. Have you received a promise from the Lord? Is there something that you're believing God to do in your life, in your experience? I recall very well two years ago, almost to this time, when a number of us were meeting in a room to pray about the possibility of impacting the North Hills in a more powerful way with the gospel, with the evangelistic message of Jesus Christ. And the Lord, on that particular night, as we shared the word together and read passages, and as we talked and as we prayed, revealed to our hearts and gave us an understanding that He wanted us to have a big kind of gathering outdoors on the hill. And that was the birthing of Vision 77. And that promise, that night, was given by the Lord. And it was settled in our hearts that this is what the Lord wanted to do. As He affirmed it was Scripture. And when you build an altar, at the time of promise, you're saying, the Lord, I receive that. Though I don't have it, I receive it by faith. Okay, on in verse 8, the second time that Abram built an altar was when he moved and pitched his tent to Bethel on the west, Naah on the east, and there he built an altar, and he called upon the name of the Lord. The second time Abram built an altar was when he encountered the living God in a more intimate, personal way, in prayer. Prayer became the point of coming before the Lord more intimately. And how do we know He's more intimate? Because the Bible said He called Him in the name of the Lord. And the name of the Lord is a revelation of who He is. Remember Exodus 3, 14, I am who I am, says the Lord. That's who I am. And Abraham had this intimate encounter when he built the Lord an altar. That's in prayer. Then over in Genesis 13, which we didn't read, but I'll read a portion to you now. Follow with me in verse 16. Genesis 13, 16. By the way, just as you did that, I heard a number of you turning your pages, and that encourages me. The rest of you are turning the pages of your mind, I hope, and I'll follow along. It's so important. Let the Word penetrate into you. It's good to hear that the page is turning, all right? Genesis 13, 16. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if one of them can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, and I will give it to you. So Abraham moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the oak of Mamluk, which are in Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord. The third incident of building an altar came when Abraham received the promise and possessed it. He possessed the promise. The first altar came when he received it. The second altar came when he prayed in earnest. The third altar came when he possessed the promise of the Lord. Now, for some of you, you've been praying for someone for a long time, praying that their lives would be touched by the love of the Lord. And you haven't seen it yet, but you know that the Word promises that if you pray for a person and you believe God, that whatever you ask in His name He'll give to you, and you know that it's the Lord's will that he be saved. And so you can believe that that promise will one day be fulfilled. And the day that that promise comes to pass, and that person enters the kingdom of God, then you have the privilege of building an altar, a memorial, to the Lord for His faithfulness. It was brought in this sanctuary more than six years ago, as I was believing the Lord for a promise in my life about the empowering of His Spirit. And I was seeking before the Lord for over a year to understand One night in August of 1973, I was in the sanctuary by myself with the Lord, and I came to understand, I came before the Lord to see what He was revealing in the Scripture. And that became an experience of possessing the promise. And it's something He intends for all of us to do at certain points in our experience. The final altar that Abraham built was in Genesis 22. You should hear a lot of flipping. It's about seven or eight pages. Genesis 22, verse 9. There the Bible says, When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. Tremendous, powerful story of Abraham willingly laying down his son as a sacrifice to the Lord, because that's what the Lord wanted. And yet, God shows him that all he really wanted was Abraham to yield his trust to the Lord. And that's the fourth altar. It comes at a point of yielding. When you willingly lay aside your rites, your seasonings, or whatever they might be, and you yield to the will of God. A promise, a prayer, a possession, and a point of yielding. All of these are times when we can do an altar. There may be others. You may find some other point in your life that needs to come to a point of bringing it before the Lord, and making it an issue with him. So that you and God alone have an encounter together over that specific issue. Now, as I see it, these altars do two things. The first one is that they establish within us a certainty that God is worthy. It's interesting to me in Genesis 13 that when Abraham returned from some wandering in Egypt, he returned to the place where he built the first altar. The second altar, rather, where he called on the name of the Lord. And that altar stood as a memorial, you see. And he could come back and kneel at that altar and say, Lord, here is where you told me, or here is where you revealed yourself to me in a minimum way. And I remember the promises. And that's one of the functions of an altar. It helps us, of a memorial, it helps us to remember what God has done and establish that in our lives. One of the things that gives me some very mixed feelings is when we give an invitation at this church and there are those here who time after time respond to an invitation to receive Christ as their Savior for the first time. And I'm not talking about rededication. But it reveals to me a soft and loving and a heart that desires God. But it also reveals that these people have not come to the point of assurance, of knowing that they just need to ask Jesus one time to come into their life. It reveals that they need to get along with God and establish that point of assurance. The second thing that an altar does, one is that it establishes certainty, and the second thing is that it becomes a checkpoint for future experience. You know, as we watch the scene in the world today, all kinds of things come along. College young people that come back frequently tell me of different strange fellowships that are arising in their campuses that seem to be right, but there's just something they don't understand that isn't exactly right. I want you to know that if you've established memorials, altars to the Lord, that you can check any input that comes along in your life against those altars, against the firming of that experience, and see if it's something that the Lord is working in your life or if it's a fraud. And that's a real benefit of an altar. Okay, how do we build an altar? How do we do it? I like what Jerry did today because it revealed what most people think of altar building is you take stones and pile them up. And yet, I want to suggest some things to you that are alternatives to that. You may have your own way of building an altar, but here's just a couple of possibilities. Well, most altars as Jerry pointed out are made of rocks. But what is the process by which we get rocks? It's primarily the bringing forth of the molten material from the center of the earth through volcanic eruption or whatever. There's that explosion from within. And secondly, it's the extremity of temperature. It's the hot and the cold that cause the rock to form and to break and so on. There's other things, but those two are principal. And as I thought about this, rocks are formed the same way in our own life. It's through explosions of things in our experience that seem to be settled and suddenly blow apart. It's a marriage relationship that after 20 years suddenly explodes as the husband walks out. A rock is failing a final exam in a course and having to redirect your whole future because of it. A rock is a child who says after 17 years that he no longer cares that he's associated with you. A rock is cancer. It enters a life suddenly. It's painful. These difficult things that explode from within or are created because of extremity and circumstance can become the rocks whereon we build our altar if we bring them to the Lord. These difficult things become the foundation, the altar that we come before the Lord and raise up our heart before Him. Now, what can you do with these rocks? Well, you've got three alternatives. Some people, when they have these extremities of circumstance or explosion in their lives, just carry them around. Every time you see them, they've got a bag of rocks. And they begin to weigh the people down. The rocks begin to be heavier than they can bear. Pretty soon you notice a depression. Simply it's because they're carrying those rocks. The second thing you can do with your rocks is throw them at other people. A lot of us see people that do that or perhaps we're one of those people. Every time something comes along in our life that is difficult, we go to someone else and we say, here, what do you say about that? And we dump our rocks on people. I'm not saying that people don't want to care, that we're not to be supportive. But I'm saying that we can begin to throw these things and begin to be destructive in our relationship with others if all we're ever doing is throwing our hard things before other people. Because the third thing is the best thing that you can do and that's to bring those rocks before the Lord and form them into an altar. Order them before God. And you know why you should do that? Because the Lord cares so much. He cares about the fact that you lack assurance in your life. He cares about the cancer that you're bearing. 1 Peter 5, 7, the Bible says, the pastor cares upon the Lord for he cares for you. David says, that I poured out my complaint to the Lord and He heard me. Psalm 56, verse 8 says, that the Lord holds all of our tears in His arms. And it's that kind of deep, caring love that causes the Lord to want us to bring those things before Him, to raise up our hearts before Him personally. Now, you can take your rocks and form them into an altar or you can carry them around or throw them at other people. But what you do with them establishes how you and God are going to relate as you go on in your walk with Him. And I want you to see today, too, that you, at some point in your experience, the Lord may come and He may provide for you. He may give you something before you even ask. The best illustration of that is just what happened to Abram. On occasion, the Lord revealed Abram before He even brought it to Him. But what was Abram's response? He made an altar. He responded by coming to the Lord personally and saying, Thank you, Father, for this. God, I worship you. As Jerry pointed out, it's a time of worship for what God has done. So whether or not it's your hard rock that you bring to the Lord because you need to hear from Him or it's your altar of thanksgiving that you bring because the Lord's already spoken. Make an altar. Make a memorial. Finally, what do we do when we build an altar? What happens on an altar? Well, in the Old Testament we see two things. First of all, we see that blood is spilled and fire consumes the flesh. These are the two things that the Lord did with the sacrifices of His people. And this just speaks to me in a picture of something that we don't want to see happen. And that is that there's a cost involved. When you get serious with the Lord concerning anything and you make an altar of it and bring it before Him, it may cost you something. Many of us are like a rich young ruler. When we're determined to come to Jesus and He speaks a word to us, we find it very difficult. And we don't want to hear it. And we may choose to leave even as a rich young ruler would rather than obey. But I want you to see that the fire that God sends isn't sent to consume you. It's sent to burn out the dross and the carnality of our life. To refresh us and to cause us to be pure as gold. And I think it's a principle of all of the Bible that what the Lord wants to burn out of us is something that would pollute us and prevent us from being fully what God wants us to be. You know, if you ever go I'm sure most of you have to a hospital and you see the therapy that people go through for treatment in cancer, the radiation therapy, and this huge machine that looks like it could you know, take a person's life just like that. And yet this machine is carefully focused in right in the point where the meat is the greatest, where the cancer is the most severe. And those x-rays shoot in there and they destroy the cancer cells with very little effect on the cells around them. And that's what God does. When He consumes our flesh He burns away our carnality. But He leaves the soft, pure love of our spirit. The New Testament picture of altars is a little different. And it's exciting to me as I study this. I discovered that that the root word for altars is the word for sacrifice in the New Testament. What sacrifice do we make on our altar? Well, I see three in particular, though there's others in the New Testament. Three that stood out to me were the sacrifice of faith in Philippians 2.17, the sacrifice of our bodies, a living sacrifice in Romans 12, 1 and 2, and the sacrifice of praise in Hebrews 13. And we could spend a whole message on each one of these except that I want to say that if you'll bring the things in your heart to the Lord and that you'll raise them up with faith, with a willingness to follow them with your whole body, with your whole person and with praise, it's the clear teaching of the New Testament that the Lord will not walk away from such an altar. The Lord will not leave you standing at the altar. And the proof that He'll do that is the fact that He sent Jesus and Jesus was those things for us. Even when you don't have faith to believe, when you don't have the willingness and you don't even have the ability to praise God simply, Jesus can be all those things for you that will turn to Him. What are the rocks in your life today? What are the things that you need to bring to the Lord and establish in your experience is life. To get a memorial so that you can move on and be fully what God wants you to be. I encourage you to establish these things with the Lord, with your own person and encounter with Him. Don't live someone else's experience. Live your own. And if you establish an altar before the Lord and settle these things, you'll forgive the fine. The Lord will alter you. Father, we know that there are many here today who have been burying the rocks of their life. Lord, I pray now that you would release the grace to them to be willing to bring these things before you, to set them as an altar, Lord, whereby they can watch you work in your life and whereby, Lord, they can receive and establish in their own experience the fact that you love them and care for them and give them hope. Thank you, Father, that we can be an altar to you to pray these things in Jesus' name. I encourage you as we come now to burn this in Him. If you have a need to build an altar, you can begin right now. Well, on a day like this, I suppose the Lord has spoken His answer to the gas shortage. I'll get our cars after this and probably go and sit in the garage with a full tank of gas that you waited in line for. If the Lord had a better idea for most of us today, maybe we'd just stay home and be with our families. One of the things that I experience quite a bit when I have an opportunity to travel around is that people ask me the name of the church that I'm a pastor of. And I always tell them, of course, Memorial Park. And I'm a church pastor. And they say, Memorial Park. It's sort of a strange name for a church. And then the really strange thing comes when I have to tell them that our church is named after a cemetery. Some people begin to wonder if there's any connection. But this being Memorial Day Sunday, and this being Memorial Park Church, I thought that I would take the opportunity to speak to you this morning in the Word of God regarding the place of memorials in our life and the link between memorials and our own personal experience of the living God. For some people, the only memorial that their life will ever have is the tombstone under their grave. Unspecific today, I want us to take a look at the relationship of memorials and the firming up of specific points of experience and understanding in our lives as we walk with the Lord Jesus. In a few days, a number of you will be graduating from high school or college or perhaps even graduating. And you're going to go to the graduation ceremony and receive a diploma, and that will become for you a memorial. And it will signify two things. One, that you have accomplished something, that you've achieved a goal. And two, it will say that you are now credentialed, you are now officially able to go on to the next step of education or perhaps to be equipped for a particular job or responsibility. Now, memorials have a number of significant advantages, a number of important influences on our lives. And Scripture speaks to these things. In Joshua 4, 7, we see where the Lord commanded the Israelites to build a memorial of stone as they crossed the river Jordan. In Exodus chapter 16, verse 31, the Lord says, Set aside an omer of manna as a remembrance, as a memorial for my providing to you when you were in the wilderness. The Lord Jesus reminds us in John 15 to remember His Word. And of course, the Lord's Supper, the great memorial, the great remembrance of the death of Jesus for our sin. In Revelation chapter 3, we are told to remember the Word and to remember to receive it. And over and over again, there are numbers large numbers of references to memorials and remembrances in Scripture. And the point seems to be that if you forget the working of the Lord, that your heart will begin to grow cold. In 1 Samuel chapter 12, verse 9, the Bible says that the people of God forgot the working of the Lord and their hearts turned cold to Him. And you know what the result was? They wandered in the desert for 40 years. They never received the full purpose in the plan of God. This message today comes to you from a concern in my heart for all of us for because we had not seen and remembered the working of the Lord, that we have opened ourselves up to the possibility that we will not receive the full potential of life that the Lord intends for us. I want to relate memorials today to certain particular aspects of your encounter with God. I want to talk about the possibility of your knowing God in a personal way as He relates to you in certain areas of decision and certain major turning points in your life. You may need to have an encounter with the Lord concerning direction in your life. You may need to know what the Lord Jesus is saying to you regarding the choosing of a location in North Carolina. You may find yourself at a point of needing specific encouragement in a certain undertaking. You may find yourself wondering about a doctrinal point. It's the kind of thing that though you can go to counselors, though you can sit down with one of the pastors, though you could avail yourself of numerous aids that are available to the body of Christ, what you really need is to be alone with Jesus Christ. And hear what He has to say to you. Push out the voices of the world. Focus in on His words in your life. Now this morning I propose that we look at Abram's life. And I'll probably say Abraham because that's what we're used to thinking about because you know that he's the same God. Abram and Abraham are one and the same. And I want us to look at his life and see that at the special times, at the points of encounter in his life, Abraham built an altar to the Lord. Altars represented to him that time of encounter, that time of hearing from the Lord, that time of discerning what the Lord God was saying to him regarding specific points and decisions. In Romans, the fourth chapter, we're told in the New Testament that Abraham is the father of our faith, that he is the model after which we can pattern our life with faith. He's, as it were, the prototype of New Testament believers. So I suggest that we can look to Abraham and see some of the things that God would have us to incorporate in our life of faith. Look with me first of all as we answer the question what prompted the building of altars for Abraham? What prompted the building of altars? Genesis 12, 7. Look with me. It says, Then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, To your descendants I will give this land. So there he built an altar. It was at this point of the Lord giving to him a specific promise that Abraham built an altar. Now, many times in our own experience we come and we discover the fact that God has something that he is trying to communicate to us. I recall very well a little over two years ago as a number of us were gathered in a room to pray and we'd been praying for a number of hours about the fact that nothing was seeming to break through in the area of evangelism here in the North Hills. And the Lord, as we were reading the word of God and just talking together and praying together, the idea came that we were to have a large outdoor kind of gathering where people would not be frightened off by the church and what have you. And out of that seed came the idea of Provision 77 which, as you know, cuts somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 or 7,000 miles in the course of those three days in North Park. And that night as we were praying we sensed that this is exactly what God wanted. And as we turned to the word of God and we were reading the word, over a period of hours we discerned a number of promises that the Lord seemed to be quickening to our hearts. And that was the receiving of the promise. And as time went on, when things began to get difficult, we would return to that promise for strengthening and encouragement. Abraham built an altar and building an altar, building an altar of the Lord was saying, I received the promise, Lord. I received it. By faith, I received it. Then in verse 8, the same chapter 12, the second incident, says, Then she removed him out on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and called him the name of the Lord. The second incident where Abraham built an altar was the incident where he had a had a profoundly intimate encounter with the Lord in prayer. A promise, then prayer. You see, the Bible tells us that the name of the Lord is a revelation of his person. And here, Abraham goes beyond just the the whole idea of talking to the Lord in general and breaks into intimacy. This is the first reference to the Abraham calling on the name of the Lord. He builds an altar to mark that incident. Then over in chapter 13, which we didn't read, why don't you look with me as we pick up verse 16. The Lord says to Abraham, I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you. And so Abraham moved his hand and came and dwelt by the Oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron. And there he built an altar to the Lord. And this is the incident where Abraham took possession of the earlier promise. The Lord promised the land, then Abraham wandered off into Egypt, and then he came back and received the fulfillment of that promise, possession of the promise. Later on he received the possession of the descendants of his son Isaac. A number of you pray for people for a long time and you find that after a number of years something happens in their life. And they come to Christ and make a commitment to Him and begin their walk with Him. And that is an illustration. They receive the promise of salvation that He had claimed years perhaps before them. Six years ago I knelt in this sanctuary up here in the parlor after a meeting. And I had been praying to the Lord regarding a certain area of my life that had been really literally on my heart for over a year. And I was an intern here at Memorial Park just prior to finishing my last year of school. And I remember very well that incident. It was after a meeting. It was about 10 o'clock and there was no one here. And the Lord at that special time in my life confirmed that I had received the promise. And I took possession of it in my life. And it became to me a turning point for the rest of my life in my ministry. This particular sanctuary this particular place holds a dear part of my heart. The fourth illustration of when Abram built an altar Genesis 22 verse 9 This is a story which could easily be a number of sermons. The story of Abram offering up Abraham offering up his son Isaac to the Lord. Verse 9 When they came to the place which God had told him Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order and found his son Isaac and laid him on the altar upon the wood. The essence of this story is that Abraham yielded his will to the trustworthiness of God. The point of yieldedness became the point where Abraham built an altar of encounter to the Lord. So those are four places where we see that Abraham built altars. Receiving the promise encountering him in prayer possessing the promise and a point of yieldedness. Now these aren't exhaustive these are just an illustration from Abraham. Your life may have some different points of encountering the Lord but the important thing is that you see that altars are a point where you personally come to the Lord and do serious business with him. They come at times of major decisions major turning points and major need in our lives. I see these altars doing two things for Abraham. Number one they establish the certainty of what God had done. As Abraham sojourned back through the land in chapter 13 we see that he returned to that same altar that he built earlier. That altar stood forever as a memorial to what God had done in his life a few years before that. So altars establish that God has been working. One of the things that is so difficult for me because I see people's their openness and their soft heartedness but a number of times when we have invitations here at the church it's always to me an interesting thing that some people though they have at previous times made that same initial commitment feel a need to do it again. And I so appreciate the fact that their hearts are soft to God and I believe that God understands what they're saying. But the reason that they have to do that over and over and over again is the fact that they've never really established with the Lord what had t