Establishing An Altar On God's Promises by Pastor Poju Oyemade: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Spiritual Sacrifices in the New Testament

We are speaking on the subject of spiritual altars and the offering of spiritual sacrifices unto God from the altar within our lives. And the first thing to establish is that the offering up of spiritual sacrifices is consistent with New Testament theology.

There can be a wrong idea that because Jesus shed His blood once and for all — one sacrifice, and for all — no other sacrifices are therefore required in our walk with God. That is not consistent with what the New Testament says.

1 Peter 2:5: You as lively stones — built up into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood — to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Altars were made of stones in the Old Testament. So the way it is written here is deliberate: your purpose is to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Through that blood we have access into the holiest of all — where we now offer up spiritual sacrifices unto God. And this creates a certain response and brings about the blessing of God, causing it to materialize within our lives.

What Happens When You Maintain an Altar

Once a person understands this practice and does it daily and continuously, what it literally does is create the phenomenon called the opening up of the heavens — where what we see is heightened angelic activity in the life of that particular person.

By that, we start seeing:

• Relationships come into the life of that person — strangers begin to walk in, mysteriously, with a knitting together of hearts that looks like it has existed for decades.
• Recognition of new opportunities — it appears opportunities are just showing up in that person's life.
• An increased supply of resources coming into the life of that particular individual.

All this comes with heightened angelic activity, where the supernatural becomes a recurring thing in the life of that individual.

Where these spiritual sacrifices are not being offered intentionally and continuously — where prayer is just on the wing — that person's life will not take off spiritually. Just look at the countenance of a person who says, "I pray a lot" — and what you begin to see is sadness. It means the environment is determining the mood of that person. Such a person doesn't really understand the concept of spiritual sacrifices.

They are not even doing the first one: presenting your body as a living sacrifice unto God, holy and acceptable unto Him. Romans 12:1.

What Judaism Got Right About Prosperity

One of the things I have seen in all my Christian life — recently I began to understand it better. When a person focuses on only one section of the Bible, the message does not come out balanced. It is subject to error. Extremism comes into it and people go off tangent.

When people only teach the New Testament on prosperity — the concept that we give and it shall be given unto us, pressed down, shaken together, and running over — what gets created at subconscious levels is a person who gives and is passively expecting people to come and give to them. That is not how Judaism understands giving and prosperity.

In Judaism, it is understood that God blesses the giver — but He does it through the work of the hands of that person. What He says is: I will open up the heavens and I will bless the work of your hands. He always directs it to the work of the hands. Therefore, the concept of prospering without the work of that person's hands is not in Judaism.

Deuteronomy 28: Your barns will be filled with plenty. It talks about laboring, blessing the ground, eating of the bread of the increase. That is why when you find people who were prosperous in scripture — Joseph, Daniel, Jacob in Laban's house — you see the value they were bringing to the workplace. They were the only ones capable of adding such value, and they noticed.

A wise scribe brings forth from both the old and the new. When you have both sides — the work ethic of the Old Testament, and the grace and finished work of the New Testament — you get the full picture of how God's blessing operates. A person who labors with the grace of God on their hands, who offers spiritual sacrifices that open the heavens, whose work is blessed by God — that person becomes the head and not the tail, lends to nations and does not borrow.