This sermon delves into the significance of altars, emphasizing the offerings we bring to God, the true value of sacrifices, and the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. It highlights the importance of surrendering our bodies, minds, and will to God, acknowledging the sanctification through Jesus' sacrifice, and the need to glorify God in all aspects of our being.

Now, dear friends, some of you might recall that we were dealing with the altars, altars that were broken, altars that were repaired, and you know, the altar itself, if we come to the altar of God, you know, a man can say, hey, my pockets are empty. I have very little to offer on the altar. But we don't realize that we have a body and a mind and perhaps a little energy to put upon that altar. Now, when the first temple was built, you know, and after at its dedication, in 1 Kings 8 chapter and the 64th verse, you will find this extraordinary scripture. What does it say? The same day did the king hallow the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord. For there he offered burnt offerings and meat offerings and the fat of the peace offerings because the brazen altar that was before the Lord was too little to receive the burnt offerings and meat offerings and the fat of the peace offerings. Too little. An altar that proved to be too small. You know, folks, sometimes we do see people come to the altars of God, even today, with that kind of offering, which seems to spill over. You know, someone said to me that in several churches, actually, people go around and check, how much are you giving? How much are you giving? I suppose that is something which only heaven must record because heaven knows the cheerful giver and the two mites, which are so precious. You see, how does the church secretary count those two mites as the greatest offering? No. He says, hey, is that all you give? Look at that millionaire and how much he gives. Unfortunately, God may not even look upon what the millionaire has given. So, when I see the poor give of their poverty, I say, my, what a precious gift. You know, in monetary terms, it amounts to hardly anything. Won't purchase much at all. But in heaven, God looks upon the heart. We forget that. So, when we come to the greatest altar of all, the cross of Jesus, in the 10th chapter of Hebrews, this is what we see. Hebrews 10 and verse 6 and 7, in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, lo, I come to do your will, O God. Lo, I come to do your will, O Lord. In the volume of the book, it is written of me to do your will, O God. So, there you are. Here is a willing savior coming to the cross with a willing heart. You know, suppose I gave you a very costly gift and I gave it most unwillingly. Would you want to take it, accept it? I'm giving you a diamond or a jewel so decked with diamonds, so precious, but I'm not giving it with a willing heart. I won't want to touch such a gift, you know, friends. So, here is Jesus saying all these sacrifices of the law could not bring true forgiveness or a true transformation, but here I am. I come to do your will, O God. That's that real spirit of offering. I want to do your will. So, we see in the eighth verse above when he said sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin that would not neither has pleasure therein which are offered by the law. Then said he, Lo, I come to do your will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second. So, all these sacrifices were there. The mosaic law required these sacrifices. People gave thank offerings, burnt offerings, sin offerings. They brought them to the Lord. But the fourth verse, it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. It's not possible, you know. So, the stain remains. The penalty may be set aside for a while. So, the penalty was gone, but the stain remained. That nature of sin remained. You see, folks, suppose you had a fountain somewhere which was bringing out foul smell and all the water that proceeded from that fountain brought out foul smell. Now you said to yourself, Oh, I have dirtied myself with this smell, sullied my clothes. I need to be free from it. But you're so close to that fountain and that fountain is within you. And how do you stop that fountain? You wash yourself, you get dirty again. You see, that is where the cross comes. It seals that fountain that brings forth evil motivations, evil thoughts, you know, a delight in rubbish. Now the word eternity, if everybody in America or the world suddenly woke up to the idea, I am eternal and eternity may hit me any moment while I'm sitting here at my desk in my office or factory or wherever. I am an eternal person. Now what a transformation there will be upon people's whole objectives in life. See, I don't know. We don't seem to feel accountable. We don't seem to think that we are eternal beings. But the Lord Jesus Christ looks at us as an eternal soul. And therefore, He just does not set aside for the time being your sin or your propensity to sin. But He deals with that perennial fountain. Now that is one of one of my great sorrows. What is it? I see people converted. I see people who say, hey, my sins are washed away. And I praise God because the heathen are ever wondering where, which pilgrimage, which river, which ablution, which formula, which yoga is going to free, forgive my past, forgive my dark past. You know, folks. And when I see people who don't even look at that need for forgiveness of sins, but talk about religion and religious ritual, which does not address sin. Now, you see, one of the basic things I have, you know, found that only one person appears to have. Well, there would be a few others, I suppose. Thou shalt not owe any man anything. A bank manager said to me, Loans are the lifeblood of the bank. You see, if you don't take loans, the bank can't exist because loans carry a high interest. Therefore, the bank gets your money. You want to buy a house? Fine. We'll lend you some money. But before we are through with it, we will have double or triple what we loaned you. You see, the fact that God says thou shalt not owe anything to any man. This has not been followed. On the other hand, it has been a system of borrowing, borrowing. You know how much pain borrowing seems to bring to people. With the result that banks, big companies that were so highly rated and reputed to be great in the world have gone bankrupt. And they appeal to a government which says, Okay, we will print the money or we will borrow the money from some other source and give it to you. So when it becomes a pyramid of loan taking, finally, what do you do? Somewhere the bubble must burst. So we have a system by which we keep ourselves under so much stress. So it's all about money. It's all about money. And I wish that when we come into the presence of God, we forget that. Let's forget money. Let us think of the abundance that God has got for us. The cross of Jesus. Now here we see 9 and 10. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. You see this idea that I have to be doing something for my own salvation. You know, I have to be giving so much money here or I have to do these good works or so on and so forth. We forget that the offering for sin is once for all. What does the scripture say? The offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. It's a finished offering. Now, there was a lot of controversy over this in the history of the church, and many people were killed and burned and beaten. And even till very recently, if a man did not bow when the host is held up, oh, he would be set upon and beaten and thrown into prison in countries like Spain and other countries. But what does the Bible say? Some of these children of God who sticked all their trust in the cross of Jesus, they said, once and for all, the sacrifice has been made for me once and for all. There is no repetition. No priest need to offer the body of Jesus Christ once again. So, my dear friends, that became such a controversy. You know, when you depart from the word of God, you get very mixed up and then you don't know what do you do. You know, the press and the media, oh, they keep on raking filth and rubbish. I wish they would go and try to do something for the heathen and for the Middle Eastern nations. There you're not allowed to talk, you see. If the sultan has a harem, well, that's his right. If the sultan demands, you know, as someone said to me, oh, my, that his friend left Saudi Arabia in a great hurry because as he was walking up the street with his wife, a limousine stopped. Someone came out and said, hey, I want this woman. And so, in order to save my wife, I said, come to the hotel and we'll talk about this. And before they could come, I vanished. I disappeared. All right. If some of our media have no courage to talk about these things, but then they must focus on the priests, priests in Ireland, priests in Germany, priests anywhere. But this is an old thing. You know, when AIDS, the disease, surfaced, I was amazed. In the South Bend Tribune, the remark of some of those men in the monastery was, oh, this is nothing new to us. This is a very old thing. It's been around with us for a long time. What? We all thought AIDS was a new disease that had sprung up all of a sudden, and here were priests who said, no, it's been an old thing with us. All right. Things like that, of course, are beaten into a great froth. But the fact that the heathen do not have any answer for sin. All right. If you make Christianity a dead system and a bunch of rules, then, of course, freedom from sin disappears. It's all a bunch of rules. It's a system. Well, my dear friends, the heathen do not know that there is a deliverer from sin, and this nation has become so pagan and heathen, so that people do not want to trust even their wives. Let's first make a prenuptial agreement. What is a prenuptial agreement? You get half the car and I get the other half. What rubbish. And so on. No trust. You know, I have acted on trust all my life. I've gone to the Muslim. I've gone to the heathen. I've gone to a... People said, hey, look, my word is more than a document. You take me at my word. Every penny of yours will be safely in your possession. And the heathen received those words. They trusted me. Till now, I have never come across anybody. Only somebody over here in South Lyon, when I was looking for a place, that poor agent, house agent, oh, he had never heard of such a thing as that. But apart from that, no one in the world ever doubted those words. When I told them about Jesus and how Jesus had transformed me. So friends, now a body has thou prepared. I want to come to that. Tenth verse, by which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. So the Bible tells us of a body which God has prepared. A body. A body that is sinless. A body that is the offering for sin for once and for all. You know, all of us have bodies. But what do we do with our bodies? You know, friends, the harm that we do with our bodies when we talk, when we walk, what are we doing with our bodies? Here is a body that Jesus has prepared willingly for the cross. What have we prepared with our bodies? Now, if you turn to the sixth chapter of 1 Corinthians, you will see 1 Corinthians and the sixth chapter. Thirteenth verse, meats for the belly and the belly for meats. That we all know. But God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sin, fornication, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. I can't understand how a whole nation can be so brainwashed as America is today. That this body is for sin. This body is to be thrown around in any bed. I can't understand how a whole nation has had its thinking reversed, put on a devastating trajectory. Here we are told that the body is for the Lord. Now Jesus kept his body for the Lord. He kept his body for the cross. He was tempted at all points, like as we are tempted yet without sin. He was tempted like you and me. It's something which blows our minds, but he kept his body. Now all of us have been given the gift of a body, a gift of a mind, but what do we use it for? The Lord Jesus Christ brought a sinless body and a mind which was pure and clean, a mind which could forgive on the cross. Well you see, if you and I go about saying, oh I'm not negative, I'm not, I'm not doing anything evil, that's not enough. We need a mind which will be entirely positive. I can do all things through Christ to strengthen me. I have a mind which I must give to Jesus. See, a body has thou prepared. Lo, I come to do your will, O Lord. Now suppose you go to God and say, Lord, I have got a wonderful offering, what a million dollars, here you are, here it is, but don't you ask for my body, don't you ask for my mind. You think God is going to accept your billion dollars? No. What is that compared to your bodies and soul and mind? Nothing. See friends, we have turned everything topsy-turvy. So we think, oh we are doing very well because we've got a lot of money in our pockets. My dear friends, as a matter of fact, those men who have a lot of money in their pockets are not doing very well at all. It's the man who says, Lord, here's my little, you take it, you bless it like the five loaves and the two fishes, you multiply it. You know friends, the cross of Jesus Christ brings to us completely different values. A body has thou prepared. Now have we prepared for God a body from our youth? A body that we have not sullied and dirtied with all manner of evil? Have we kept ourselves for Jesus? Now when the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross, here was an offering once and for all to cover your sins and my sins and the sins of all that turn to him in faith. So we are told that with this body we must serve the Lord. The last verse, verse 20, 1 Corinthians 6 20, For you are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. So, you know friends, glorifying God in your body means that your feet are at his disposal, your mind is at his disposal, your plans are at his disposal. You know, when you turn yourself at the cross and say you have purchased me, that's my whole being, my body, soul, and spirit. Here I am. Take me. Use me. So to come back to the 10th chapter of Hebrews, at the altar we see not just a phantom, we see the body, the sinless body of Jesus sacrificed. 12th verse says, For this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are set apart, sanctified by one sacrifice and one offering. What a perfect offering. My dear friends, when we come to the cross of Jesus, and when we think of the cross during this time, let us pray that our hearts may be opened up, you know, that we may understand what is this great love that can love a wretch like me, and what is my response to this love? Is it only a bargaining chip? You know, Lord, I'm going to give you this, so you give me that. No, you don't bargain at the cross. At the cross you give yourself. You know, it's no barter place. It's no place of merchandise. The cross, we have made the church a place of merchandise. We have made our offerings a kind of deals that we make with God. No, we are the recipients. Once for all, God has set us apart by the cross to be a sanctified people, a people whose bodies are used for God, whose mind is quickened by God. You know, friends, what a marvelous thing is the mind that you have. It can fly off to the east and fly off to the west and fly off into this fantasy or that kind of reverie and so on and so forth. But think of that mind being subject to Jesus. What productivity will come out of that mind? You know, wasn't it George Washington Carver, that great scientist who said God speaks to him in his lab? Out of the peanut, he made so many wonderful products. Yes, God has got a great purpose for us. Once and for all, an offering has been made by which you and I are delivered from that old law. And God says a covenant, a new covenant. 16th verse, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, said the Lord. You see, it's not a question of some laws up there and you're trying to clamber and trying to just reach out to these laws and you're not able to do so. No, it's not that. I will put my laws into your hearts and in their minds will I write them. You know, my dear friends, our Christianity must become like breathing, just breathing. The word of God must just become like, you know, your utterance, your thinking, the whole pattern of your mind should be anchored on the word of God because this is the new covenant. I'll put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them and their sins and their iniquities, I will remember no more, no more. What a savior. What an altar. What a body that overflows the altar. Let us pray. Let us tell God, God, write your laws upon my heart and let me breathe your spirit day in and day out. Let not my own nature be found overwhelming me. Let's tell God, Lord, I want to put upon this body, this mind which you have given, this soul. Lord, I come to do your will, this volitional powers. I want to put it at the cross. Holy Father, here we are. Lord, thou does not look at our pocketbook, thou does look at our willingness. Behold, I come to do your will, O Lord. We are here to worship you this Lord's Day morning and we want this worship continued through the week. We want an overflowing altar, just like the altar that we see at the cross, overflowing with a perfect sacrifice. Once and for all, for me a wretch. O my Father, I thank you. Teach us to anchor our trust upon the word of God. When we see advertisers for gold saying gold will never lose its value. Look at the dollar, it has lost so much value. Thank you, Lord Jesus. We have found the real gold at the cross, never lose its value. The blood, thy blood, thy love, the power of our Savior will never lose its force and currency. We thank you, Lord. Have mercy and grant that in the midst of the political doom and gloom that many people are fearing. Enable that there will be thy people who have anchored their faith in the cross, who will never be shaken. Though the world be removed and the mountains be cast into the sea, we ask this and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.