Altar Calls

Romans chapter 12 verses 1 through 8. Let us hear these words. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Well, good morning church.

I was a little worried at seven or at eight twenty-five there was like ten people in the sanctuary. I was worried between the fair and the heat it got everybody, but everybody came trickling in. I'm glad you're here. I'm thankful to be here with you today. I'm also real thankful for our church being a cooling shelter today. Today's going to be over a hundred degrees.

The hottest heat index they say it could be, we've had in years, dangerous, and so many folks don't have an opportunity to get out of it, and so I'm real proud that we're open. It's inconvenient. It's conflicting with our Sunday morning schedules, and that's okay, so if you see folks you don't know, let's make sure we're from the Wilson Emergency Management who's kind of running the shelter.

Thank them because they're spread thin with the fair going on as well this week, and so I'm just real proud. This is how we love and serve Lebanon, so that's good stuff. Also want to ask you to pray for me this week. This evening I'm driving to Eastern Kentucky. Eastern Kentucky has three of the poorest ten counties in the U.S. The United Methodist Church has a permanent mission outpost set up there to kind of help meet the needs of the people there. It's almost like a third world country in some areas there.

I'm going with our bishop and some of the cabinet there to help them. Our mission outpost is having some issues and difficulties, and we're going to try to do some work. Physical labor, that's you know not my thing, but also to kind of use some brain power to kind of help them try to figure out a strategy to move forward, so keep me in your prayers this week and be a change of pace and something different, and I'm excited about going, but I could use your prayers there.

It's going to be hot there too. This month in August, as you've already heard, we're spending the month talking about camp meetings, and if you're not aware and you haven't been here, the short of it is camp meetings. There's a time set aside where people take off work and take their families and they go to a set location.

It used to be where they'd set up a camp. Now there's oftentimes buildings, auditoriums, cafeterias, and small cabins where people stay for the week, and they have fellowship and relaxation, and there's activities, but the cornerstone of it, as we talked about last week, is worship. Passionate singing and fiery preaching.

They bring in the preacher for the week, and it's just an important time of growing in faith that stems out of our Wesleyan holiness movement, and those still take place around the country today. Today, I want to talk about something that began in one of those camp meetings. In fact, Phil Hodges, our state archaeologist, a member of this church, he's given me some research and stuff that he found that show and prove that it started at a camp meeting in Wilson County just outside of Lebanon, and what I'm referring to is the altar call.

The altar call began at a camp meeting just outside of Lebanon in Wilson County. Now, when you hear the word altar call, I bet a lot of our minds go to a Billy Graham crusade where Billy Graham is preaching and the piano player keyboarder slides up and begins playing just as I am and is just as I am is going. Billy Graham makes an invitation to people if they don't know the Lord and would like to accept Jesus to come forward, and we just see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people pour to the rail, to kneel, and to pray and accept Christ.

Others may think about a revival that they've been to at some point in their life where the preacher was up there preaching a fiery message, and then goes to prayer, and in that prayer calls people to come down to give their life to Christ. Or for some of us, we may think back to a youth event or youth retreat where the youth director or somebody that they brought in to be a speaker says, with every head bowed and every eye closed, if you want to accept Jesus, raise your hand. I see you.

I see you. I see you here. You know what I'm talking about.

Some of you do. And these are all things that that we associate with altar calls. I want you to I want to read some of the research that Phil gave me about the first altar call.

It happened at Ebenezer campground. It said Lebanon in Lebanon, Tennessee, Methodists established a camp meeting here on Cole's Ferry pocket, a place called Ebenezer that came to be known as the Ebenezer campground established five miles from Lebanon. Also an Ebenezer cemetery and a Methodist preacher by the name of TL Douglas wrote about camp meetings in Middle Tennessee, including a camp that took place at Ebenezer between August 18th through 22nd of 1820.

An extra camp meeting was held in Lebanon circuit at Ebenezer in Wilson County on the August 18th and ended the Tuesday following. This is the place where camp meetings have been held for many years, but this meeting exceeded all the rest. The people came praying and believing and God was with them. 182 professed to be converted to Christianity and 125 joined the society. The Reverend Valentine Cook attended this meeting and preached on the subject of baptism with uncommon power and usefulness. The sermon was much blessed to the people.

The writings go on to talk about this, about how the preacher in the midst of his sermon called people to come forward, but it wasn't called an altar call at first. This is how it was described in this first writing about this first altar call. It said it was calling mourners to the mourning bench. M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. Calling mourners to the mourning bench. I can't tell you how much I love this language. To think about it calling mourners, those who are struggling to come to the place where it's okay, to come to the place where it's accepted. Because you see we have this idea of what an altar call is and I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's a very narrow understanding of what an altar call can be and this totally expands it. You remember our text from last week where David, after what he had done and who he had become and around his sinfulness and his brokenness, especially around his sins with Bathsheba, he said in the psalm, oh Lord you do not delight in sacrifices or I would offer them what you want oh God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart you God will not despise.

David is describing his desire to offer God more of who he is. David is a mourner looking for a mourners bench to come and give his life to God in a new way. Now he would have already called himself a follower of God, but he knew he needed to respond to what God was stirring inside of him.

Now sometimes an altar call is that time when somebody comes to profess faith in Jesus, to turn their life over to God. They once were lost, but now are found, but it's so much more than that and David was looking for a mourning bench to come to in that moment. In our text for today, Paul pulls from that same language that David was offering.

Paul says, offer yourself as a living sacrifice, pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship. Offering ourselves as a living sacrifice is our worship to God. Paul goes on to give some examples of what it means to offer a living sacrifice, to offer that spiritual worship.

And the first thing, you're not going to like it. He says don't think more highly of yourselves than you ought to. I don't like it.

But right there at the beginning when he says offer yourselves as a holy and living sacrifice, that is your spiritual worship. He says, don't think more highly of yourselves than you ought. That's how you offer yourselves as a holy and living sacrifice.

Then he goes on in verses four and five to say to be a part of the body, the one body of Christ. Don't think that you're greater than any other part of the body. Don't think that your part is more important than other parts. We all are a part of the body. We all are joined together, and that is what unity is about. Do not create division amongst the body. That's how we offer a holy and living sacrifice. And then he says how we use our gifts that we've been given, our ways that we offer God our holy and living sacrifice. Things like prophecy for those who have the gift of prophecy, serving for those who have the gift of serving, teaching for those who have the gift of teaching, encouraging for those who can encourage contributing to the needs of others, giving generously, leading, showing mercy and loving sincerely.

These are all ways in which we offer ourselves as holy and living sacrifices to God. An altar call can help people come to faith. It can, but it can also help people grow in their faith to respond to God and where God is leading them today, to help them to turn more of themselves over to God, to give more of themselves over to God, to do more for the work of God and his church today.

Do you realize that we give an altar call every single week here at Lebanon first? That may not sound like Billy Graham and heaven knows I'm no Billy Graham, but every week your pastors offer opportunities for us to give ourselves as a holy and living sacrifice to God. One response is in saying send your tithes and offerings into the Lord to give generously for those who can. That's what Paul talks about in the text.

We also give opportunities every week to be able to serve, to be able to teach, to be able to encourage others, to be able to contribute to the needs of others, to be able to show mercy to others, to be able to love others. Paul is saying these are opportunities to respond to the altar call. Now you may say preacher, you don't ever call us down to do those things.

You just give the opportunity. Well, you know, before there was a temple, before there was a formal building where the church would gather, people took the altar with them. We can go back to Abraham and his travels that he took the altar with him.

He built an altar where he was and he worshiped at it. An altar call can happen anywhere because we can take the altar with us as we offer ourselves more to God. I will say though that we do invite people to come to the altar to the chancel rail at the foot of the altar every single week.

Now we don't give a formal call like Billy Graham, but we're either inviting you to come and participate in our Lord's Supper as we will today. To come and receive the body and blood of our Lord, to pause at the rail, to kneel at the rail, to spend time in prayer, that's an altar call. For next week we have our prayer time and as we lift up the prayer request, we're given an opportunity to respond to God and pray.

And during the time of silent prayer, we don't always say it, but you're welcome to come down and pray at the chancel rail, to kneel and to posture before God and that's physical posturing that shows our dependence upon God as we lift up the needs of our congregation. But even if you sit in your pew, even if you don't come down, there's nothing that says that it can't be an altar call wherever you are. For those who are worshiping at home, it doesn't mean you can't respond to the altar call wherever you find yourselves.

You can come just the same with your heart and your mind to be more in the presence of God, to build your own spiritual altar of God wherever you're willing to give more of yourself to God. As we finish, I want to share one more thing that Jesus beckons us to do. It's in the Sermon on the Mount in which he's calling us to give more and more of himself, more and more of ourselves to him, excuse me.

Starts off with says, you're the salt of the earth. You're the light of the world. How can, you know, we can't lose our saltiness.

We're called to make a difference, to make, to flavor the world, to show shine light into the dark places of the world. And then he goes on to powerfully describe how following God is more than just an outward act. It comes from within our hearts.

You know the place. It's very uncomfortable if we take it seriously. He says things like you've heard it said, you shall not kill.

That's an outward thing. Don't do that. But I say to you, if you hate in your heart, it's as if you've already killed them.

So it takes it from the outside and moves it to the inside. And that goes on to do the same with adultery and with divorce and with swearing oaths and the like, making it an inward intention, inwardly a heart issue instead of just outward actions. And then he brings it to a crescendo calling us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

If you only love those who love you, what good is that? Everybody does that. And he finishes that moment by giving an altar call. He says, be perfect.

Jesus says to you and me, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. He's inviting us to go deeper. Now that may seem impossible. How can I be perfect? No one is perfect but Jesus. Well, if Jesus is perfect, then he knows what he's talking about. If you think he's wrong, then he's not perfect. But he's calling us to be more in the image of God, to be more in the likeness of Christ, to follow Jesus better. That's the altar call that we should be responding to every single day. To go beyond what the world does. He said, if you only love those who love you, what good is that? The whole world does that. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Do good to those who hate you. He's giving us an altar call so that we can live our life as a holy and living sacrifice to God. He's calling us to be more like him, who did live out that call to love your enemy.

He loved those who hated him, even praying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, as he hung on a cross. So I invite you to respond to the altar call today or any day or every day to seek to live more in the image and likeness of Christ, to resist having a narrow understanding of what it means to have an altar call, to allow ourselves to be a mourner called to the morning bench. It's kind of a Wilson County thing, I guess.

It's something that we started and something that maybe we should be working to perfect because we should be responding to the call of Jesus every single day. To seek to be more like Christ every day and how we live and how we act and how we think and how we treat others and how we make a difference in this world to draw us closer to God. Thanks be to God.

Amen.