Building an Altar
As Abram settles into this land he does what was common in all religions in those days, and he builds an altar. First in verse 7 God appears to him and says “To your offspring, I will give this land.” And so he builds an altar the to the Lord who had appeared to him. And then in the next verse the same thing, he “went on towards the hills of Bethel and pitched his tent there... and there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.”
Altars of Remembrance
Wherever he went he would build an altar. It was a way of almost claiming that area for God and saying, “This is God's land. God's presence is here. We built this as a symbol that this place belongs to God.”
I wonder in that sense if there's an altar in our homes! An altar where you say “this is a house of God”! It could be cross that you've put up or a Bible verse or something like that. And in a sense it acts as an altar claiming that place for God.
Altars of Sacrifice
But an altar was more than that in the Old Testament. You see, an altar was a place of sacrifice. Later on, people would bring their sacrifices to God, and because his presence was symbolized at the altar, they would lay the sacrifice on the altar and shed that blood to try and appease the gods. But of course, we know friends that Jesus died on the cross. In a sense, the cross is an altar. He gave himself up as a sacrifice, shed his blood so that we could be forgiven there at the altar of the cross. O praise God for the sacrifice of Jesus!
So, in that sense, perhaps there's no need for altars in our churches anymore. I know I've heard people say this: “There's no need for an altar table at the front of our church because the sacrifice has been made. So why even have one?”
Altars of Self-sacrifice
But I think there's something significant about an altar. You see, God calls us to self-sacrifice, to sacrifice our lives for him. Paul says in Romans 12 that we need to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. In other words, not a sacrifice to be killed, but a sacrifice to live unto God. And so maybe you need to go to an altar today symbolically, and say, “Lord, I sacrifice my life for you. Take my life. Let it be consecrated Lord to thee!” as the hymn goes.
Maybe we can learn this lesson from Abram, wherever he went he set up an altar to claim the place as God’s, to commemorate God's work in his life, and more than that, let's take our lives on the altar and say, “Lord, take them. We give them to you.” God will honour the commitment that we have to Him. He did it for Abram and he'll do it for us as well.
