Sermon Notes
The altar was never just a pile of rocks. It is a remembrance of a conversation, a response to a counter with God, a surrender to something in our life, or a declaration of faith. In Genesis 12: 1-7, Abram builds an altar not out of ritual, but obedience. God calls him to leave comfort, familiarity, and security, and Abram says yes—without knowing where he’s going.
This message explores how altars represent surrender, faith, and change. When God speaks, you cannot stay where you are and still follow Him. Altars mark obedience and it remind us of the moments that transformed us.
God still builds altars in our lives today. They are places where we meet Him, remember His voice, and allow Him to change us. The question is simple: when God calls, will you say yes?
Genesis 12:1-7 NIV
The Call of Abram
12 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”[b]
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring[c] I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.