Leslie’s father was in the newspaper business when she was young, and consequently, she moved a lot. She went to several schools and often would move in the middle of the school year. She lived in more than 10 different homes while growing up, not counting the temporary apartments between corporate moves.
Leslie and I have not moved around that often. We’ve lived in four homes during our marriage.
Could you imagine if we made a point to build an altar in the backyard of every home we lived in? I imagine that would be looked on as strange by people considering purchasing our home from us.
Although, we once had a real estate agent tell us to remove the Scripture vinyls from our wall because she thought it would impact re-sell. We did not hire that real estate agent.
Abraham did build altars as he moved around, though, approximately four of them. He didn’t build them everywhere he went, but he built several in Canaan. The significance there is that the Lord gave Canaan to Abraham, but He didn’t give him Egypt or Haran.
Part of the reason for the altars was claiming the land for God, but there was more to it than that.
An altar is a place of communion, confession, and worship.
Canaan was a land of evil and idolatry. Much like the world we live in today. The worship in the land was violent in nature and was completely incompatible with the worship of Jehovah. Abraham wasn’t going to go into the local altar or temple to commune with his God. Not only does this seem logistically impossible, but the Lord wouldn’t have been pleased with this.
Therefore, Abraham building these altars stood out. It was unique. But it was important to him that he have this communion with God.
In a way and not to seem irreverent, these altars were like a welcome mat to God and a means of directing Abraham’s focus. These are some of the reasons that Leslie and I put Scripture on our walls in many rooms. We want our home to be a clear place dedicated to God in which communion, confession, and worship take place.
Our altar today is not actually a specific place. Our altar is the person of Christ. (Heb. 13:10-13)
Sometimes it’s beneficial to us mentally to have a physical place to focus on God. This happens in churches around the world, but it should also happen in homes.
Part of the reason Abraham built these altars was for the statement it made about his heart for God to the local Canaanites and to the Lord himself.
As I mentioned before, an altar in the Old Testament was a place for communion, confession, and worship. When I say confession, I don’t mean just admitting to mistakes and sins. This view is a narrow understanding of confession.
Early in the Old Testament, especially around the Law, we see a description of confession around admitting faults and sin. However, confession shows up throughout the Bible in much broader contexts than just admitting your faults.
One place would be thanksgiving. The Hebrew word for thanksgiving means to praise, confess, and to see God in his proper place. So, when David writes after fleeing Jerusalem during the rebellion of Absalom:
“I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.” (Ps. 7:17)
Not only is he communicating thanksgiving and praise to God, but he is also confessing back to God who God is and who he is. This puts a different frame on the idea of confession.
In the Bible, the simplest way to think of confession is to think of it as rehearsing back to God who he is and who you are. The idea is to speak and think and sing back to God who he is. There is an honesty here and a clear display of knowing God.
So, when Abraham built these altars outside his tent, he was exhibiting an intense desire to commune and know God. Like David, it gave Abraham great confidence amid a hostile and violent population in which he was a stranger to confess to God what he knew about him.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27: 1)
Do you do this in your home?
Is your home a place of confession and communion with God? Does everyone know it as soon as they walk in? Do your children know it?
Do you teach your children confession?
In learning, there are three main stages:
1) Knowledge acquisition
2) Synthesis of that knowledge, or making the knowledge your own
3) And communicating or teaching others that knowledge.
Confession is that last stage!
What would your child say today if you asked them to tell you about God, and who they are to God?
What about you? What would you say today if I asked you to tell me about your God? I don’t mean share the Gospel. I mean, tell me who your God is. How do you think you would do?
Do you know your God?
It is really hard to teach your children who God is when you don’t know who he is yourself.
In the narrative of Abraham, he is described as blameless. He is not described as sinless, but blameless. Have you ever thought of what that means?
In the word blameless, there is an intense sense of honesty. Abraham was honest with God like someone who wanted a deep relationship. Through communion, confession, and praise, Abraham came to know God deeply. He built altars right outside his tent because he wanted God. He wanted to know who God is.
Last night Leslie gave me a funny look as she went through the contacts on my phone. I have a contact for Jesus. I put that in there as a reminder, but in a way, that was what Abraham did.
He wanted to keep an open line of communication with God. No hindrances. He wanted God to know that he was welcome in Abraham’s tent.
Abraham wanted to be a man devoted to communion, confession, and worship of God, and he wanted everyone to know it.