PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 315: Altar Building, Part 8
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 315
: Altar Building, Part 8
God is a God of order, and He wants us to order everything in our homes too. It also makes a big difference when we order our meal table. Our children will rise to the value we place upon the meal table, and it will affect their behavior accordingly.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! Here we are again. We’re still on our series of “Altar Building.” Oh, did you know that there is so much about altar building in God’s Word? Even though we are finding so much, we’re still digging into it.
We haven’t finished yet. Even when we finish, I know that we won’t know everything because there’s always more. Don’t you find that? This Book, this Bible, this Word from God is alive. It’s active. It’s not stagnant, so it doesn’t matter what subject we think we’ve got it all on. No, we’ve never got it because we’re always finding more revelation. There’s always more and more.
So, here we are. We’re still finding more and more about what God says about the family altar. We are up to point No.17. We’ve got to get up to point number 25 yet.
No. 17: WE BUILD AN ALTAR TO LIFT THE NAME OF THE LORD HIGH
Last time, we were talking about No. 16. This was about the altar which Moses called Jehovah Nissi, “The Lord is My Banner.” A banner, do we drag it on the ground? Do we leave it lying around? No! We lift a banner up high. When we are building an altar, ladies, we are lifting the Name of the Lord high in our homes.
Let’s go back, shall we, to Genesis 35:2. We have gone back to this passage so many times. There’s so much in it. Remember how God told Jacob to arise and go up to Bethel and build an altar. The first thing he said to his family was: “Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you.”
Now in Jacob’s household, it could have been some of his own family who had gathered strange gods because they lived in the midst of people who were worshipping strange gods. But they had just taken as subjects all the people of Shechem, and they would have all been worshippers of foreign gods and idols. They would have been among them.
God told Jacob, “Before you build an altar to Me, you’ve got to get rid of every strange god, every foreign god. And God gave that word to Jacob, even before He had ever given the Ten Commandments. Remember? “Thou shalt have no other god before Me.” God was already giving this word to Jacob.
So, this word comes to us again, dear ladies. It’s so easy in our busy lives, to let things come into our lives that can be higher even than God in our homes. Sometimes it’s just a great project we have, a vision we have, or the plans we have, or the overwhelmingness of life. Many times we’ll let these things become more important than meeting with God. Sometimes we find that, wow, we haven’t been doing our family devotions. We’ve let it go, because things have just come in and taken its place.
When that happens, it’s a strange god. It’s something we are putting before the Lord. If there are things in our homes that are causing us to not be able to meet together as a family, morning and evening, well, we’ve got strange gods, and we’d better put them away. Because to build an altar unto the Lord our God, we must not have any strange gods, nothing that is more important than Him, nothing that gets in the road of our having this family altar. Nothing.
If it is, it’s a strange god that we’ve got to get rid of. Because we are showing to the Lord Himself, and even to our children, when we meet with Him, when we make this time, that we are making the Lord high in our home. He is the highest. He comes before everything else and every other plan that we have. Amen?
No. 18: WHEN WE BUILD AN ALTAR TO THE LORD WE KEEP IT SIMPLE
We keep it authentic. Now, let’s go to a very interesting Scripture, Exodus 20:24. here God is speaking to us again about how we’re to go about altar building. “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record My name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.”
Oh, I love that promise. We’ve talked about that before. It is one of the most wonderful blessings of meeting together each day with the Lord, because He will come to us when we make an altar to Him. He will come, and He will bless us.
But then it carries on: “And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone:” that means cut stone, cut into shape. No, we’ve just got to leave the stones just as they are. “For if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.”
We’re seeing here that God is saying, “OK, when you . . .” (and this is back in the Old Testament, when they literally built literal altars), He said, “I do not want you to build this great big altar that looks so amazing, and get the stones and cut them all into shape, and make them all perfect. No, if you are building an altar, then just make it out of the earth. Just the raw materials.”
IT WON’T BE PERFFECT, BUT NEVER GIVE UP
He’s saying here to us, “I just want you to come as you are. You don’t have to go to all this big trouble and do something special. No, you just come. Come. Just come into My presence as you are, with all your children, with all the little things that they’re doing.” Maybe one’s crying, and one’s grumbling, and one’s doing this, and one’s doing that. Even in the midst of devotions, you’re having to try to train them and discipline them. It’s not always perfect.
Oh, ladies, I’ve been talking about building a family altar, but let me remind you, I know it won’t be perfect in your home. It wasn’t perfect when we were raising our children. I must tell you, of course, it gets easier and easier, and more wonderful and incredible as your children grow older, because by then you have trained them. But in the early days, you’re teaching children to sit still, and you’re dealing with all the little problems of children. It’s never perfect. It can be hair-raising sometimes, but don’t give up. You are training. You are establishing that habit, and you will reap your reward.
So, He says, “Just make an altar of earth, or if you want to use stones, don’t you start cutting them and making them more perfect. That’s over to Me. You bring the stones just as they are.” I love that. Isn’t God so amazing? This is how He wants us to come, dear mothers. Just come.
Gather your children each morning. Gather your children each evening around the table. Just bring them. They’re children. They’re not perfect. They’re going to do stupid things, and they’re going to cry, and they’re going to grizzle, and they’re going to complain. But you’re going to train them, little by little, and it will become the habit of their lives. But don’t despair when everything is not perfect.
It makes me think of that beautiful example of the table of showbread in the tabernacle. God told Moses the pattern, and then Moses had to get this guy who God provided to make all these wonderful things. But he had to make the table of showbread out of acacia wood. The acacia wood was very common around that time where they were living, so it spoke of their humanity.
But then, God said, “I want you to overlay it with pure gold.” Not just any kind of gold, but pure gold. Pure gold. He wants this pure gold. That speaks of God’s divinity. So, ladies, we come with all our humanity, all our earthliness, all our imperfections. But as we come, God overlays it. He covers it with His divinity, with His anointing, with His presence. Isn’t that wonderful? Yes. So, keep it simple, dear mothers. You don’t have to make it some incredible organized thing. Just keep it simple.
Let me read another Scripture too, Deuteronomy 27:5-6: “And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them. Thou shalt build the altar of the LORD thy God of whole stones.” So, there again in Deuteronomy, He tells them the same thing.
This also reminds me of another passage in Genesis 11. This is where they were building this tower of Babel. We see something here. Genesis 11:1: “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.”
So, they built this big tower. You all know about the Tower of Babel, but do you notice how it was built, ladies? It wasn’t built with whole stones. No, they built it with bricks. Bricks. Now, to make bricks, you’ve got to make them all in uniformity. They’ve all got to be the same size so they can all fit in exactly the same. There’s no uniqueness or differentiation between them. They’re all the same.
But God does not want that. You see, God makes each one of us unique, special, distinct. That’s how He wants us to come to Him. God does not make us into bricks so that we are all the same. It’s the world that wants to do this. These people who are wanting to make this Tower of Babel, that’s what they had to do. They made it with bricks.
This is what is happening today. What man wants is the opposite to what God wants. Now in this hour in which we are living, we are facing this New World Order that they’re trying to bring in and the World Economic Forum. What they are trying to do is to make everybody the same so that we all think the same thing, and we all speak the same thing.
They try to bring in, they’re changing the language, and bringing in these new words which do not belong to us. They’re foreign words. They’re words of the devil’s kingdom, but they’re trying to make them part of our society, and conform us all to their thinking so that they can control us. They want to have control over us.
THOROUGHLY BURNED
Notice where it says here: “Let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” Well, I think what they’re doing today, especially in our high schools and our universities and colleges, they are getting these young people and they’re making them into bricks. They’re all coming out thinking the same thing and speaking the same language.
Remember, they were of one language, and of one speech. They said, “We will burn them thoroughly.” What they are doing is, they’re brainwashing them thoroughly. It’s unbelievable! These young people, who are coming out of these colleges, on the whole (praise the Lord, we find a few that are standing for truth) but on the whole, they’re coming out like bricks, all thinking the same thing, all speaking the same thing. They’ve been brainwashed thoroughly in humanism and socialism and transgenderism and every other ism.
No longer do they even believe in God. The saddest thing today, beautiful homeschool families who will homeschool their children right throughout their education; and then they think they’ve got to send them to college. They send them into one of these brainwashing universities, and these beautiful children who have grown up in the Word are totally brainwashed out of it. They come out totally atheists. It is unbelievable. It’s happened to so many.
I think today that to send one of our children to one of these brainwashing universities is the worst thing you could ever do in your whole life. If they do need to get a degree, find another way. Do it online. You can do it online through CollegePlus. There are one or two very good conservative colleges, but there are not many. You have to search them out.
Of course, you don’t actually have to send them to college unless it is for a specific purpose. It seems to have been what you do in America. You finish high school and go to college. Many don’t even know why they’re going. They just go, go and get brainwashed.
There are so many other ways to be successful in life and teach our children how to become entrepreneurs and get going in their own businesses. They end up more successful than coming out of these universities totally brainwashed, like bricks!
Yes, we dare not become a brick, ladies! Don’t you become a brick, and don’t you let any of your children become bricks.
How do we stop from being bricks? We will not listen to their lies and the deceptions of the humanists and the socialists. We will keep diligently in the Word. This is why having our family devotions morning and evening, pouring the Word into our children, getting the truth into them is so important.
The only deterrent against deception is the Word of God. It’s the Word that exposes the deception. If we don’t have the Word to expose what we are hearing in the world, we don’t even know we’re deceived.
Remember, God is making living stones, “that you all, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). God is into building His house with living stones. But humanists want it built with bricks. They want to make you all the same. The first mandate on the World Economic Forum, what is it? “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”
That’s what they want, nobody owning anything, everybody the same. Take away all the wealth of the wealthy, give it to the poor, make everybody the same. The only people who will be rich are those of the people who are ruling over everybody else.
But that is the opposite way from God’s way. He doesn’t make bricks. He’s building with living stones. We see God’s plan in Micah 4:4: “That they shall sit, every man under his vine, and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it.”
When God’s blessing is on the land, every person will be under their own home, and have their own land. That’s what God wants. That’s how He had planned it. We read that in Solomon’s reign, when there was such blessing.
1 Chronicles 4:25: “Judah and Israel dwell safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.” Every family had their own home and land. That is the blessing of God. Amen.
So, even in our family devotions, dear ladies, just remember, we go back to that again. Keep it simple, and don’t despair when everything’s not perfect. It won’t be perfect when you’ve got little ones and you’re still training them. But there will come a day, when as they grow up, it will be so much part of their lives. You will have such wonderful and glorious times together.
All right . . .
No. 19: WE BUILD A FAMILY ALTAR ACCORDING TO GOD’S ORDER
Yes, dear ladies, God is a God of order. We see this even in regard to altars. Let me give you this quote that I read because the Word looks at some of the altars at the tabernacle. It says:
“Because the pattern of the tabernacle points the way to Christ, no error was allowed in the construction of the tabernacle.”
Everything had to be according to God’s order and the pattern that God gave Moses on the mount. He had to do everything according to the pattern, not only in building each piece of furniture, but in the orchestration of it.”
So, we read about the brazen altar where they did the sacrifices. We read in Leviticus 6:12: “The priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering in order upon it.” There are other references too, how that even when they put the offering on the altar, they had to do it all in order, according to the way God had commanded. They had to put the wood on a certain way, and the offering of the beast. It all had to be put on a certain way, according to the order of it. Every little detail. God is a God of order.
I was talking about the last point, yes. Things aren’t always perfect when you’ve got little ones, and you’re having family devotions. But you do have to establish certain order. You have to establish perimeters and what you are deciding is going to be order for your home. When we have our devotions, we always have it at the end of our meal, after breakfast, and when we’re sitting around the table at the evening meal. We have it then. But we do have order.
When it comes to eating, we do fellowshipping, but when it comes to the reading of the Word, and praying at our meeting with God together, then we put aside all eating. We don’t allow, in our home, people to continue eating while we are having family devotions. We’re finished, we’ve eaten, we’ve enjoyed fellowshipping together. Now, OK, now we’re going to open our hearts, open our ears to hear from God. Then to pour out our hearts to Him.
We must have order with that, so we don’t allow eating. We don’t allow knitting and crocheting, and things like that. I have had people coming to our home, and they’ve come to our family altar. They come with their knitting needles, and their sewing, and their embroidery! We’ve had to say, “Do you mind? When we’re having our devotions, we don’t do that.”
So, we establish that order, because imagine! Everybody decides to do their own thing. One’s knitting, one’s crocheting, one’s playing with blocks, and one’s doing this. That’s not order! That’s not giving God His place. There are no longer lifted-up hearts. No! It’s just some very. . . We’re not showing any awe or honor to God at all.
Those are just some of the things that we don’t have at our family devotions. We want to make sure that we give God His due, and His honor. The word “order,” arak in the Hebrew, means “to arrange, to set an order, to lay in order.”
It’s also used when they’re gathering together for battle, and they’re setting all the soldiers in array, ready to go out to battle. Because when soldiers go out to battle, they don’t just all go wandering wherever they like. No! They go in formation. That’s part or the power of soldiers going into battle.
That same word is also used for “setting a table.” Did you know that? Let’s go to Proverbs 9:1. It’s talking about wisdom. “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars: she hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table.” That is the same Hebrew word, arak, “to set in order.” That’s interesting, isn’t it?
Do you like to set your table in order? I believe that’s an important thing, just as God wanted everything in order. On His table, on the table of showbread, the Bible tells us how that He wanted every single thing to be in order.
Exodus 40:4: “And thou shalt bring in the table,” this was the table of showbread, “and set in order the things that are to be set in order upon it.” Now, on the table of showbread, they had twelve loaves of bread. Then they also had other certain things that were placed on the table. Everything had to be placed in a certain way on the table because God loves order.
If we are seeking, seeking to do things God’s way, well, we’ll want to set our table in order too. I think it’s a very important thing to have a set table. You don’t always have to do everything yourself. I know lots of you have many children. That can be one of their tasks, to set the table. Even little ones can learn how to set a table.
We have a family who are living next door to us while they are building up on the top of the Hilltop. We call ourselves the Hilltop here, but we’ve got hills that are higher than us, and we’ve got people building up on them. So they are going to be really the Hilltop People!
This family has a little girl. How old is Ruthie now? She’s eight! Well, goodness, when they came here, she was only five. Yes, only five. It’s amazing. But anyway, Ruthie loves to come over. Of course, I’m always setting the table for the evening meal. She will ask if she could help and I say, “Oh, yes!”
Well, now Ruthie can set my table beautifully, as good as any adult could ever set it. She knows how to set my Shabbat table on Friday night. I can just say (well, sometimes she’ll come over and say, “Who’s coming for Shabbat tonight, Nana?” I’ll tell who’s coming).
“Can I set the table for you?” I can just leave her to it, and she can set the whole beautiful Shabbat table. Young children can learn how to set the table.
But I believe this with all my heart; that the importance that you put on your table will determine how your children behave at the table. If you just throw your food on the table, “Come and get it,” and there’s nothing special, well, the children treat it as something that is quite insignificant.
But if you put on a tablecloth, and you set the table beautifully and properly, and learn how to set a table properly, and teach your children how to do it, so they can do it (make sure you have your napkins, and make sure you have anything special that you want to put on the table. Make it look special). When your children come to the table, they see, “Oh, this is special!” They see that there’s something important about this table and they will act accordingly.
I want you to try it. Well, I’m sure you all set your tables beautifully anyway. But if you’re not, just give it a try.
I know there are some who never use tablecloths. In fact, so many of the girls who come to live with us, our beautiful Above Rubies girls, many of them have never put a tablecloth on a table. When they come to help me set the table, they’ll get out the plates and go to put them on the table. I’ll have to say, “Hey, just a minute! We’ve got to have a tablecloth first!” And they’re not even used to that.
You’ll be amazed. You put on a tablecloth, and it will be something more special. In fact, you can be a gatherer of tablecloths, so that you’re not putting the same boring one on every time! Because a tablecloth adds something special, and, of course, if you’ve got lots of little ones who are messing up things, you may not want to have cloth tablecloths.
But you can go to different places where you can buy these plastic ones today. Just cut it off as long or short as you need it. They look so real and beautiful, and even like lace. You can put them on, and all you have to do is wipe them. It just has that specialness about it. But notice in Proverbs 9, it’s the woman of wisdom who sets her table. She sets it in order.
Is our time up? Not quite. I have these wonderful girls here who are recording and keeping me on time.
Now, the golden candlestick, that’s another piece of furniture in the tabernacle. Exodus 27:20: “And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always. In the tabernacle of the congregation without the vail, which is before the testimony.” That means it’s before you go into the Holy of Holies. “Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morning before the LORD (in the presence of the Lord). “It shall be a statute forever unto their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel.” Once again, they had to order it, every evening and every morning. They were to do it in the presence of the Lord.
That’s another beautiful thing, when you’re setting your own table, dear ladies. Know that you’re doing it in the presence of the Lord. Just think how God loves to have everything in order. You’re not just doing this, “Oh, better get this job done. Just get this meal on the table,” and not thinking of how it’s presented. Just think instead, you’re doing this in the presence of the Lord. Amen?
All right. Also, the altar of incense. We read about that in Luke 1:8, 9, where Zacharias, it was his time, his order, to be the priest on duty.
We see other places where God wanted order. Oh, this is an amazing situation. No, I don’t think I’ll have time to tell you about it. I’d better tell you next time, OK? Just a few more things about order next time. Let’s pray.
“Dear Father, we thank You for all Your things that You teach us in Your Word. There are so many little details. The little things of life, Lord, they’re all written and detailed in Your Word. We thank You, Lord God, thank You for showing us that You love order, and You love a set table. You love order at the altar.
”Teach us, Lord. I pray that You’ll teach each of these lovely families listening the order You want, Lord, at their family altar, and You’ll teach them how to train their children in order. And yet, to keep it simple, Lord God, knowing that You are building us up as living stones, and You’re not making bricks. Save us, Lord, from ever becoming bricks. We pray this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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