How Do Our Altars Look Tonight

He Deserves My Altar

Sis. Misti went to bed on a Sunday night and dreamed she was preaching a message called repairing the altar. She woke up Monday morning with it still burning in her, so she wrote some things down before work and talked the rest into the recorder app on her phone while she drove. She wasn't even scheduled to preach. Then Wednesday came and our pastor told her Sunday night was her turn, and that Sunday morning he preached and walked right into 1 Kings 18.

None of that is happenstance. The Spirit is not just speaking to the church in general, He's speaking to our church, and if you missed it once already, hear it now.

He deserves an altar. An altar of praise, an altar of surrender, an altar of sacrifice, an altar of repentance. He deserves it all, and we have to be honest that we've let the enemy come in and take ours apart a stone at a time while we walked right past it like it was nothing.

It Was Precious to Them Once

Noah was the first man to build an altar to God. He came off the ark, he built it, the Bible says it was a sweet smell to God, and God made a covenant right there that He would never flood the earth again and gave the rainbow as the sign of it. Altars and covenants went together.

Later, in Joshua 18:1, Israel finally came into the land and Joshua gathered the congregation and set up the tabernacle at Shiloh. That tabernacle had two altars in it, the altar of burnt sacrifice for sin and the altar of incense for worship, and it meant they were done running. Shiloh stood for about three hundred years. Hannah poured out her heart there and God gave her a son.

But Eli got old and turned a blind eye to his sons and the sin in the camp, so God raised up a Samuel. Then Ahab came, and Jezebel came with him, and Baal worship came with her, and the altars of God came down. Nothing about that happened in a day. Whatever is torn down in your life didn't get torn down overnight either.

Why Halt Ye Between Two Opinions

Nobody had ever heard of Elijah until 1 Kings 17, when God sent him to Ahab to say it would not rain until he said so. Israel went into famine and still kept crying to a dead god, because that's how confused they were. So Elijah gathered them on Carmel and asked, why halt ye between two opinions? If God be God, let him be God.

Then 1 Kings 18:30 says, "And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down." He took twelve stones, one for every tribe, and he reminded them what God had said: Israel shall be thy name. He dug a trench around it, separating that altar from everything going on in the world. He laid the wood in order, cut the bullock in pieces, and had them pour water over it three times until the trench filled.

Then the fire of God fell and licked up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust and the water, and the people fell on their faces and said, the Lord, he is God. After that came the sound of the abundance of rain. When an altar gets repaired, hearts turn back.

God Will Understand

Here's where it gets close to home. We've sold our consecration and our time for less than thirty pieces of silver, and then we say the Lord understands, I need this money, my kids need this activity, it's not like we miss church all the time. I've been guilty of saying that myself.

But that is laying our children on the altar of Molech, sacrificing them to the things of the world while we teach them it's fine to miss God for something more important. It's wrong. I'm not saying that to offend you, I'm saying it because what one generation does in moderation the next generation does in excess. What happens when everything becomes more important than God?

Sis. Misti's daughter missed almost every All-Star softball practice that summer because they practiced on Wednesday night. She told the coach plainly that they wouldn't be there, and the coach let her play anyway. You have to draw a line somewhere. Elijah dug his line in the dirt.

Could He Build It Off of Me

Israel was millions of people, and God found one man with an altar. One man who hadn't bowed, who had been alone with God on the backside of the desert, and God turned a nation with him.

So ask it about yourself. If God were looking for somebody to build a move of God off of, could He build it off of me? Is my sacrifice there? Is my love for holiness where it ought to be? Not everybody is going to enter into what God is doing in this hour, and you can't wait until it starts and then come running with a torn-down altar.

One Stone at a Time

Sis. Misti's husband built her a little fire pit out back with rocks cemented around it, and their son knocked part of it in with the lawnmower and didn't tell anybody. Accidents happen and it can be fixed. But she said they walked past it for two weeks saying, I meant to take care of that.

That's most of us. We mean to. Elijah didn't mean to, he built it back one stone at a time, and that's how yours gets built back too. The first stone is the decision you make tonight. After that it's obedience, consecration, prayer and fasting, dedicating your home.

Sis. Misti repented before God over a few things before she ever preached this. So the question is honest, and neither of us can answer it for the other one.

How do our altars look tonight? How does yours look?