 Let's open up our Bibles to Genesis chapter 13 and verse 18. Genesis chapter 13 and verse 18. Then Abram moved his tent. Some translation says, pitched his tent and went and dwelt by the terrible trees of membrane which are in Hebron and built an altar there to the Lord. And let's also go to chapter 15 of the same book Genesis and verses 7. And he said to him, God said to Abraham, I am the Lord who brought you out of ear of Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord, how shall I know I will inherit it? And he said to him, bring me a three-year-old heifer and three-year-old female goat and three-year-old ram and turtledove and a young pigeon. And he brought all of these to him and cut them into down the middle and placed them opposite each other. And he did not cut the birds into. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. Behold, a horror and great darkness fell upon him. And then God began to give him prophetic words about his future and about his descendants of what will take place after him. I want to title this message. It will be titled, Pitch a Tent, Build an Altar. Pitch a Tent, Build an Altar. Let's just say simple prayer before we digest the word of God. Say, Lord Jesus, open my heart to your word. Lord Jesus, open my heart to your spirit. Lord Jesus, open my heart to your faith. Amen. Abram is the father of faith. Abram is the man that God revealed himself to and began to communicate and give him promises. And Abram is the example in the Bible of what it is to walk by faith. Abram is the man that God declared righteous, not based on his works, but based on the fact that he just trusted God. He's just like us. We're declared righteous because of our faith in Jesus, not because of anything we've done to deserve and to earn the righteousness. Abram also was a very wealthy man. Abram was doing really good financially. And Abram couldn't have children. We know then God supernaturally gave him a child. And Abram had a very interesting yet deep relationship with God. There was no church when Abram was alive, no synagogue and no mosque, no Bible, no pastor, and no religion. There was just simply Abram worshiping some idols, being a pagan. God speaks to him. We don't know whether it was an audible voice, whether it was in a dream or just in the heart. But it was so strong to cause Abram to convince his family and his servants to leave his family and move into a direction that he doesn't know. I mean, we came from Ukraine to America because America was the heaven compared to Ukraine, at least in my mind. We were coming to something better. And we had somebody here who welcomed us and we got settled because there's somebody here helped us to settle and with everything. Abram knew nobody where he was going. He didn't even know where he was going. He packed his family. He said, God told me and he's going somewhere. And so this is a very unique man, a very unique relationship with God. Many people have church, have a Bible, have a pastor, have podcasts and books, but they do not have nothing close to what Abram had. They don't hear God. They don't know God. And they don't have a real relationship with God. And they never take any steps in their lives as a result of walking with the Lord. Sometimes an organized religion could become a greatest hindrance to a deep relationship with Holy Spirit. The reason why is because when you come to church, sit for two hours, you feel like checkmark, I've done it. That's good. That's enough. Now, this is good. This is wonderful. Puse are good. To have the schedule of the service, all of this is important. All of this is important. I mean, for goodness sake, I work at a church. So this has to be good. But I know that in myself, sometimes this can be the biggest hindrance to actually knowing God. Abraham knew God, knew God personally. He knew his voice. He knew his presence. He didn't have rules or laws, but he knew God. Abraham challenges me in a sense that though he was very wealthy, Abraham pitched a tent, but he would build an altar. Pitch, word pitched indicates something temporary. Word pitch indicates something not permanent. When you pitch a tent in your backyard, I remember when Alex was mentioning once how he spent few days, he had days off and he pitched a tent in his backyard and he lived there with his family. When you pitched a tent in your backyard, you're not going to live there for long. You're going to live there for a very short time. When you build a house, you're going to live there for long. Anything you build is permanent. Anything you pitch is temporary. Let me say that one more time. Anything you build is permanent. Anything you pitched is temporary. Here is a man who owns a lot of wealth and you would think it would say he built a house or he built a tent and pitched an altar. That's how most people live today. We live our life building our life and pitching a tent with God. It means we temporarily give something, offer something, give ourselves away to the Lord, but we permanently focus on making our personal lives better, richer, greater, get the latest, the newest, the brightest, the shiniest things because we usually build our tents and pitch. I mean, if we even pitch, pitch an altar. But for Abraham, though there was no church, though there was no pastor, though there's no Christian books, though there was no Christian conferences, and though there was no podcasts, no Bible, this man knows very little of what we know about God today, but he lives a lifestyle, very wealthy man, lives a lifestyle where he builds an altar to God and he pitches a tent. He knew something about life we can learn from this man. Everything in life is temporary except God. Everything in life is temporary except God. Abraham is sending a lesson to a person who lives in the 21st century who has an iPhone, Facebook, and Instagram, and he wants to remind you and myself included. He wants to tell you the only thing that is permanent in your life is your relationship with God. Everything else is temporary, is temporary. Build an altar, pitch a tent. Do not just live your life building a tent and give God the leftovers. Build an altar and pitch a tent. You know, sometimes we think that building an altar symbolic is symbolic of, you know, the reason why many people think, well, the reason why he built an altar was because this was a shadow of Jesus coming one day and dying on the cross for us, and so today we don't need to do that. It is true. We do not need to no longer build physical altars in our house or in our church through which we can somehow communicate with God, but this is also a principle that applies to us today. That as a believer, Abraham is like us because he believed in God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. We believe in God and because of that, God gives us the righteousness as a gift, and as with Abraham, so is with us. We also must learn to value our life in such a way where we build an altar and we offer our life on that altar, where we live a life of sacrifice and we give that sacrifice to God. It's surprising that though God gave Abraham righteousness as a gift, God right away tells Abraham, I want you to bring me these types of animals, cut some in two and put, bring some and just kill them and offer them before me. Now sometimes when you're a young person and you're reading this, you're like, definitely God is not a vegetarian. I'm sorry if any vegetarians here, that offends you, but you kind of get this picture, God likes meat and blood because you see Noah comes and then God, he offers a sacrifice and God says, soothing aroma. You're like, okay, I get the point. This is God's fragrance. Animal dies, gets burned, God likes it. And you're kind of reading that and you're beginning to understand, is this what really God is after? I mean, he's not going to eat the meat, he's not going to drink the blood. Why does God want the poor animal? Abraham could have made some shish kebab from it. Abraham could have made into a wonderful dish for his servants and for other people. He could have taken that animal, he probably wasn't a vegetarian and make it into a meal for homeless people. And here God says, take these things and bring them, kill them and just kill them just from me. God, you're going to like come down and eat? I mean, how's this going to work? No, just kill them from me. This is going to be your sacrifice from me. You don't need this, God. You don't eat. And if you do, that is not your food. Why do I need to do this? But God somehow does expect that from Abraham. And Abraham does exactly that. He takes that. And Abraham could have taken that, those animals and said, man, what a waste. He still goes ahead and takes that and brings it before God, offers it to God. This wasn't to earn salvation. This wasn't so he and God, you know, can get brownie points. But this was for a relationship with God. So the first point I wanted you to get out today is that the only thing that's permanent in your life is your relationship with God. The second thing I want you to get out is that God meets with you underground of your sacrifice. God meets with you underground of your sacrifice. From the beginning, God has made it very clear when he created the garden and he put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in a garden. And he told Adam and Eve, that tree is not yours. Don't touch it. Don't eat of it. Don't eat of it, he said. It's interesting that from the beginning, men, though there was no sin, no world, and no evil things, men had a sacrifice to make to be with God. By not eating of something that was there within his reach and within his domain. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was not planted in hell. It was planted within Adam's garden. It was his. Because God gave the garden to Adam. Imagine having something within your garden you cannot have access to. See, when you're single and ready to mingle, you feel like your body is yours. You can do whatever you want to do with it. And God says your body is not for sexual immorality. You're like, well, God, this body is mine. I do whatever I want to do with it. But your body is like that tree of knowledge of good and evil. It's not yours. It's God's. And when you do what Adam did and Eve did and says, well, this is within our garden, we can eat it. Why? This is our tree. This is ours. What happens with the relationship with God, it begins to suffer when we realize the sacrifice has been abandoned. In every way, in every sphere of your and my life, there would be sacrifices that would be, need to be made for our relationship with God the Flourish. Can somebody say amen? And same thing we see with Noah, same thing we see with Gideon, same thing we see with Moses, same thing we see with David, and same thing we see with Solomon, and so on and on and on. I know the idea that I had before is that because of Jesus' righteousness for me, I do not need to make any sacrifices. They are in vain. But it's not true. We see Abraham was declared righteous and Abraham makes a sacrifice to God right after that. And God asks for it. The greatest revival that was happening 2000 years ago when Jesus went to heaven and Holy Spirit started to move and people received the gift of righteousness and the gift of salvation from Jesus. And the Bible says when the revival hit the church, one of the first things the people were doing is they would start to sell everything they had. And bring and build and all to God. Were they trying to earn salvation? No. It was because God was strengthening his relationship with his people and something was happening to them. They were not just simply, you know, a person giving a car. The Bible says they were selling everything they had and bringing it to the kingdom of God. That was crazy. That was unbelievable. And Holy Spirit was moving. I remember meeting with one pastor and he said what they did then was not wise. That's why you see church never doing that again because church matured. I said they're completely matured out of the supernatural also. Not only out of that. They matured out of casting out of demons. They matured out of everything. It's amazing how when the Holy Spirit's move begins to happen, when God begins to move supernaturally, there's always sacrifice. And how the Holy Spirit's move is deeply connected without a life of sacrifice. For some people, it's sacrifice of their finances. For some people, it's sacrifice of their time. For some people, it's sacrifice of their words. For some people, it's sacrifice of resources and the things that we do to see our relationship with God flourish. The part here that is very significant is when Abraham brought the sacrifice to God, immediately vultures came and started to sit on it. And they wanted to steal the sacrifice. Vultures, they symbol, they're symbolic of evil thoughts. They're symbolic of negative emotions. Vultures are symbolic of, I'm wasting my time. Vultures are symbolic of what Judas said to the woman who was pouring the whole income on the feet of Jesus. What a waste. Little did Judas knew it was a vulture speaking through him trying to steal her sacrifice. Any time you will begin to make a decision to honor God with your life, you will have, you will attract vultures. They will try to discourage you. You will have evil thoughts coming to you and telling you what you are doing is a waste of time. It will never work and you should abandon it. Some of you know God has graced my life with this wonderful grace of every time I get pulled over, I get forgiven. I'm a good driver, but I'm not a perfect driver. Everybody here makes mistakes and I make mine. But it's been amazing. I just knew always I had the grace of God until the day before leaving to Ukraine. I was driving to our home group, to our wonderful couple, Edder and Tatiana with Lana and it was on 395 and we were actually running late because we had to buy some things and we were running late and like always I keep my eyes on the road, not on anything else. And as my eyes were on the road, my foot I guess was pressing harder than normal, though I was staying pretty current with the rest of the drivers and I got pulled over and I got a ticket right before going to Ukraine. The day before my wife takes a phone, it slips through her hands having a case on and shatters the phone. And so we go to Ukraine and while we are there in Ukraine, you know there's a college going on and during the college people were asked to pray to God to see if God wants them to also make a sacrifice, a financial donation, not for that ministry but for the work of the Lord, not in that church but somewhere else. And so I read the way said there's not going to be no sacrifices. I ain't got a lot of money. We're building a house and I'm living literally paycheck to paycheck while we're building the house because every penny is going to also build a house so I'm like I don't have much. Plus I'm like I've had plenty of bad incidents happening right before this college. And during one of those services as we were praying and I remember challenging Oksana also, I'm like you really need to step it out. And the Holy Spirit kind of started to place on my heart to give $500. And I was like well I can't give $500 because that's the only savings that I have this month and I really wanted to send them toward the house so that I can save money by not taking a bigger loan. I'm like this is not a right time. I'm like God in January. Plus I already give each month a lot more than you know so next time but but you always know one thing about your life is that there will never be a good time to do a good thing. There's always going to be a vulture saying this is not right, this is not good. What do people think? And I remember when we made the decision to do that. And I was like that's it. We're going to give it. We're just going to go all the way. I go to withdraw the money and they block my card. I cannot withdraw money. And so I go back to the apartment and I was like this must be God telling me I saw your heart. You tried. You have no idea how I was trying to convince myself that it was God trying to tell me that I brought it. That's all that matters. And at that moment I knew that I had to discern a vulture and I remember calling my dad and I was like dad you need to find money and send it to me some other way and I'll give you money back. You know and that was really really hard because you know you always experience when you want to do something for God you will always experience a vulture. You're not the only one who experiences that. Adam did when he was in the garden and he listened to the vultures lost the garden. Judas when some people came and said Judas you want to make some money? Yeah of course. Can you give us a secret location of where Jesus will be on this night? Yeah why not? And what are you guys going to do with that? Send him secret gifts? Yeah send an army and arrest him. Well Jesus does real cool tricks. I'm sure he's going to find a way to get out of this but I'm going to make a good money. The only thing Judas did is shared a location of where Jesus is going to be to wrong people. To make some money. Those vultures. Same thing with Aiken when God says Jericho belongs to me meaning kill everything don't take anything. We're waited for 40 years to finally go to the promised land and we are in it and God says don't touch anything. Really? And the vulture came to one man and said come on nobody's going to care if you take a little bit of gold plus he's going to be melting away anyway. God wants you to be blessed and he listened to the vulture. The amazing part of Abraham is that we read here Abraham draw them away. This is what I want to encourage you with this morning. When you make a decision to witness when you make a decision to sacrifice. When you make a decision to pay your tithes. When you make a decision to love your wife, to love your husband, to love your children when they do wrong. When you make a decision to do something for God that may seem challenging at that moment I want to encourage you. You will have vultures also at your table poking you, making fun of you saying you shouldn't do this, you should stop, you should quit and you have to do what Abraham did, drive them away and the Bible says and then God came. God will always come but when we allow vultures to eat our sacrifice we might miss divine appointment with God. Sometimes vultures come in a form of emotional exhaustion. Where you are tired of doing good. Where you are fed up of doing this and getting nothing back. You know it's what God wants you to do but these vultures, the Bible says Abraham was falling asleep but he drove them away. He drove them away and God spoke to Abraham and God revealed himself to him and God blessed Abraham. It's amazing that today his descendants are known for the very thing he deprived himself of. The descendants of Abraham are known to have abundance of the things he deprived himself of. If you meet a Jewish person you know one thing about them they're rich. You know why? They're great, great, great, great father. Alfred sacrifices to God. He let it go and God started to bless him. His descendants after him. Not only in finances but in spiritual things and other areas. I want us to be people. We live in the United States. Guys, we are Christians. I remember reading about a president of one country who gives 90% of his income. He makes only $12,000 a year and gives 90% of that income away. Drives some 70 year old Volkswagen, really, really old car. Refuses to live in the palace but put 40 of his staff to live there. He lives in the farm in the one bedroom house and he waits in the public hospital like the rest of the citizens to go get medical help. Atheist. Why he lives like that? When he doesn't even believe in God. I don't know but I know that it's a challenge for me as a Christian to imitate my Heavenly Father who gave his son for me and who sacrificed to reach me. The least I can do is also to model, to live that lifestyle of sacrifice to model him as well in this earth and to see him meet us at the point of our need in Jesus name because somebody say amen. Let's live our life pitching a tent. Everything we work for one day will end and let's live our life building an altar.