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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/brandon-doll/an-empty-altar-being-taught-by-god/
What's been on my mind in the last couple of weeks anyway is the idea of being taught of God. Taught of God. It's one thing to be taught in school. It's another thing to be taught in college. It's another to be taught of even good Christians.
But to be taught of God. For those of you that are older, you know times in your experience where you've learned things that only God himself could teach you. And I guess that's what's really on my mind for maybe the first part of this meeting and maybe a little more later.
But I'd like to look at our youth. Because there are young people here, just from all ages, saved from different backgrounds and at different ages in life, young Christians. And what you're looking for in life is to be taught of God.
So we're going to look in Psalm number 71 and we'll read at verse 5. And David says, For thou art my hope, O Lord God, thou art my trust from my youth. Drop down to verse 17. O God, thou hast taught me from my youth.
And hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now we're going to go to an example of this in the book of Genesis in chapter 22. Genesis in chapter 22. And we're going to look at a young man named Isaac.
We know the story. We love the story in the Gospel. We'll break into the story here at verse number 7. Genesis 22 verse 7. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father and said, My father. And he said, Here am I, my son.
And he said, Behold the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together and they came to the place which God had told him of.
And 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. And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.
And he said, Here am I. And he said, And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him. For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
And Abraham called the name of that place, Jehovah-Jireh, as it is said to this day in the mount of the Lord, it shall be seen. Lord, abust to us the reading of his precious word. As you study the idea being taught of God, you'll come through the Godhead and you'll find that God himself teaches us.
You'll come to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ and you'll find that Christ himself teaches us. For as he sat and he taught the people in his earthly ministry, it was God himself, the Lord Jesus, who was teaching the people.
The Holy Spirit of God teaches us. And the Holy Spirit of God teaching us is very relevant to us in this day and age in which we live. If you're saved today and you have the Spirit of God in you, it is the Spirit of God that is revealing the things of Christ to you.
It is the Spirit of God that is revealing the truth of God to you. You're being taught of God. Tremendous privilege to be taught of God. Tremendous privilege to be taught of God as a believer. God is dealing in the lives of the unbeliever and God is dealing in the life of the believer.
But we're going to look at this man Isaac today in maybe a little different light. We often, there's so much in Isaac's thoughts that we don't have and so we have to be careful of putting words in his mouth and putting thoughts in his mind.
But I want you to put yourself in the place of Isaac. When we preach the gospel, Isaac is oftentimes a picture of the sinner and the wood was laid in order upon the lad and he took it up the mountain and he's asking these questions, where is the lamb, right?
And we look at the altar as a place of substitution and we preach the gospel in substitution. But I want you to take a young man here who's being taught of God on the mountain. This was a test for Abraham, the scriptures tell us that.
But there's something in this story for Isaac that Isaac is going to learn that he could learn in no other situation. He could learn it by no other means, he could learn it by no other way, for it was God's will that Isaac learn the lesson at this place at this time.
What was the lesson? It was the lesson of an empty altar. The lesson of an empty altar. You say, where are you going with this? Hang with me a minute. Isaac was looking for a lamb all the way up the mountain.
Never found the lamb. And as you ascend the elevations of earth, you'll notice that you can see further and you can see further, but there was no lamb to be found. And now he's going up to the air and his father's building the altar.
What is Isaac doing as his father's building the altar? Well, maybe he's watching him build the altar, or maybe he's still looking for the lamb. And the time comes and the altar is done. And the wood is laid in order upon the altar, but there's no lamb.
You see, Isaac is learning from God the reality of an empty altar. For the Christian here today, it's the altar of consecration. What does that mean for you younger ones? To be consecrated to God means that you're going to give it all over to God.
You're going to give your life over to God. You're going to live for God. You're going to make an absolute, definite statement that I'm going... You say, I've never made a statement. What happened in your baptism?
At your baptism, you declared that you died with Christ. And you declared that you're going to live a newness of life, but yet you have not laid yourself upon the altar. This was an empty altar that Isaac was going to be laid upon.
Put myself in his shoes. He's looking for the lamb. The altar's done. And he turns to his father. What does he see? His father's holding the cords. What are those cords for? Those cords are to bind the sacrifice to the altar.
Our brethren have taught us for years that Isaac didn't resist and Isaac didn't fight because he was a younger man, likely stronger than his father. And there's a man in his youth, and what is he doing?
He's submitting himself to his father. You see the connection, don't you? You see, this is what makes a real Christian. People profess by the thousands nowadays. Not among the Gospel Hall. We wish it'd be the case.
But you go down to the Bible Belt and you go there and everybody's saved. But there's no life. There's no reality. And we come into our little sphere and we see people saved but they never go on for God.
There's nothing meaningful in their life for the glory of Christ. What makes the difference? They haven't got the message of the empty altar. You see young believer, older one here. Maybe I'm speaking to someone here and you're older, you've been saved a long time.
And if you're like me, you look back in your life and you wished you'd have given more for God. And maybe you look back at your life and all you've done now for the last 50 years is you've been spinning your wheels.
We feel that way sometimes, don't we? Maybe it's time for us to revisit the altar where we lay it all down for God. The altar of consecration. The altar of sacrifice. You say, you need to back that up from the Bible, let me give you a verse.
Romans 12 and 1. I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. That's the altar. You see, an altar is a place of the will, isn't it?
It's a place of the will. You see, Isaac had to, he had to submit his will to the will of the Father. And as we go through these things, I know the Spirit of God will take your mind to the person of Christ.
For Christ had an altar. It was the cross. And what does he say? If any man follow me, let him take up his cross and follow me. So here's a place of the will. I think Isaac might be worried, too. You mean I'm going to die today, Dad?
You mean I'm going to give up my life right here on this mountain today for the glory of God? You mean, Dad, I've got to put all my dreams aside and all the things that I thought I wanted to do in life, I've got to just give them up?
It's a place of the will, isn't it? It's a place of the will. God wants your heart, believer. He wants mine. And I'll be the first to confess that this has been a word for me, but if the shoe fits here this morning, wear it.
God wants our will. Our will. It's a place of worship. The greatest worship that a Christian can ever give isn't on Sunday morning. It isn't when we stand around the emblems of the Lord and the Lord's presence in our midst and we wax eloquent among the brethren, even with real and fresh thoughts.
The greatest act of worship that was ever offered to God in this world was the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, where he laid down his life to the glory of God, where he laid down his life, a sacrifice for sin, to the pleasure, to the divine satisfaction of God.
And I learned this from God there, that the greatest worship, dear believer, you can ever give to God is your life. Now, I'm not saying that you have to die that day physically, but what does Paul teach us?
We've been crucified with Christ, nevertheless we live. And so when God has our will, when God has our heart, he has everything. And so the altar is the place of the will? It is a place for worship? Absolutely.
You see, what God was doing through Abraham, Isaac had a good example in life. Very good example. He wasn't around, obviously, when his dad was called out of Ur of the Chaldees, and Abraham followed, he obeyed God.
Abraham didn't know where he was going, he didn't know what was going to happen, God just said, come out, he obeyed God, he came out. You don't know all the details, I don't know all the details in life, but when God calls, can we call?
Can we go? Can we trust him? And that's Abraham, that's how Abraham's life for God started, and it's going on to the point now where God is going to give Abraham the ultimate test, and Isaac is going along.
And it isn't until he gets to the place of the empty altar that he figures out why. You see, this was God dealing personally with Abraham, yes, and at the same time, dealing personally with Isaac. Again, put yourself in Isaac's shoes, where's the lamb, where's the lamb, where's the lamb?
Turns to his father, sees the look on his father maybe he'd never seen before, the countenance, and he allows himself to be tied to that altar. But what does Isaac learn about God? He learns for himself, number one, that God is worthy.
God is worthy. Was God worthy of Isaac's life? Let me change it a little bit. Is God worthy of your life? You know the answer. Maybe there's a young Christian here, a young couple here, and you're struggling with these very things even this weekend.
God is worthy. Is God willing? Oh, God is willing. See, Isaac is learning here something about the person and the character of God. We don't read anything here of Isaac saying, but Dad, I'm the promised seed.
Dad, you can't bind me, you can't put me on that altar, I'm the one God promised you. Dad, if you... There's none of that. It was his simple obedience. And for the first time in Isaac's life that's recorded for us, he learns that God is trustworthy.
Trustworthy with it all. And I can picture there as he's cut loose with those ropes. You see, believer today, you've been loosed from ropes that bind when you were a slave to sin. Do you remember those days?
That he that commits sin is the servant of sin. And all of the sin and all of the wretchedness and all of the troubles that sin brought with it. And you remember the moment of your salvation when you were set free and the relief that it brought.
But for you older ones, as you're looking back in your life at the times when you found out that through experience that God is trustworthy, you remember the relief? That I really can lay down my life for God.
Have you been to the altar of consecration? It's not just a one-off thing, you know. I do believe in every Christian's experience that there's a specific marked time when they're faced with an empty altar.
And it comes through their mind that I need to do something for God and I need to give this over to God. And I want God to use me. And God has bought me with a price and I'm not my own and the reality of that weighs in.
And God is calling and the person is like, I gotta go. But it doesn't end there. It's a daily thing, isn't it? And the choices of every day come in and am I going to lay it down for God today? And every day is a new day and every day there's a new thing and it comes up over and over and over again.
But has there ever been a moment in your life similar to the moment of salvation? When it comes into your thought like this, I'm going to live for God no matter what it costs me. Or has it come into your thought, I'm going to live for God, but that's too much to pay.
You see, when God is teaching us, he's revealing to us his will. He's bringing the word of God to bear upon our situation. And that produces worship. And after that produces worship, it produces work.
Isaac went off that mountain understanding this, when God says he'll provide, he'll provide. That's Jehovah Jireh, isn't it? And Abraham said God will provide himself a lamb and Isaac now having been bound to the altar, he's been given his freedom.
And in that freedom that he has just learned, what is he going to do? He's going to work for God. You see, there's nothing really greater than to be a servant of the Lord. You're a servant of the Lord if you're saved, because you're the Lord's free man.
You're the Lord's free woman. And when you find yourself there at the empty altar, and God shows to you that that altar is for you, it's for you, it's for you, what are you going to do? I'll live for God when I'm 50.
No, you won't. You'll make the same excuse as 50 as you did when you were 20. When I get a little more time, you'll never get any more time. You'll never get any more than 24 hours in a day. Can Isaac say that he taught me from my youth up?
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. What happens chapter 23, Sarah dies? Chapter 24, God brings a bride for Isaac. What's God doing? He's still proving to Isaac that he provides. And there upon that mountain, and there at the empty altar, he learns this lesson that only God could teach him, that Jehovah Jireh does provide.
God does provide. So you've got the will, and the word, and the worship, and the work. When God teaches, it's always personal. It's personal. You can learn by watching others, and you should learn by watching others.
And if you don't learn from watching the mistakes of others, you'll commit the same mistakes as others. But when God speaks and God teaches us, it is personal, and it is productive. Is it painful? Sometimes, yes.
But it's for our own good, and it's for the glory of God. Abraham, the father of faith, who's the next in line? Isaac. Isaac. And he gets the promise, doesn't he? You see how God is working, and how God is working in this young man's life?
Just like he's working in your life and in my life today, that we might be found men of like faith as Abraham. Women of like faith as Isaac. Christians that have been to the altar, the empty altar. You're there today.
Maybe you didn't think about it before you came today, but you're at that altar today. And as God is trying our hearts, and as God is seeking to get us to be honest with ourself, I hope no one sitting here already this morning has thought if someone else at this ministry would be good for.
If that's the case, you're at the altar right now. Because this is a personal message from a personal God, that he wants your all. I'm going to confess that I give God the scraps of most wasted days, so this is for me.
But as we look to God to teach us at this conference, maybe it's appropriate to start an empty altar. Because from that point, what happened to Isaac? He saw great things. He saw, he felt the cold blade of the knife to his neck.
He felt the tightness of the cords. Maybe he even heard the voice of the angel of God speaking to his father. He saw a ram that was slain. He saw it consumed by the fire on the altar. You see, if we want to learn about the empty altar, we have to look at Christ.
And we look at the Lord Jesus and we see there, Calvary, we can even look at the empty cross that was Barabbas's, but it was going to be Christ's. And there's that cross that was made just for that, was just going to be used for that man Barabbas, but Christ was the one who bore that cross.
And if we want to really understand the magnitude and the beauty of an empty altar filled by the life dedicated to God, we're going to find it at the cross. If we really want to try to understand a little sense of the glory and the pleasure it brings to God when a person occupies the empty altar, we look at the beauties of Christ and we look at the satisfaction that Christ brought to God.
And it does not give you strength today that the servant is not greater than his master. And if the Lord was there upon the cross, he expects me to follow. And by following him, we fulfill our purpose for which God saved us, to be like him for the honor and glory of God, being taught of God of an empty altar.