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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jeffrey Harper

Repair Broken Altars

Father in heaven, you have brought us here at this moment, at this point in time, to study the word of God.

And Father, we recognize that our righteousness is like filthy rags.

We realize that only through the Holy Spirit can we understand your written word.

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned and we pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit would guide us, instruct us, exhort us, encourage us today in ways that I simply cannot.

And Father, we commit this time to you as we study your word, and we ask these things in the name of Jesus and all of God's people said, amen and amen.

So I want us to imagine just for a moment that we are standing on Mount Carmel.

Mount Carmel where the prophet Elijah stood.

Now, Mount Carmel used to be, it used to be at this point in the story, a very lush, fertile place.

Carmel means vineyard and orchard or even garden.

And Mount Carmel was not this large pointed mountain slope that I used to think of when I was a kid.

Seeing Elijah up there on the mountain, and I saw in my mind's eye this large pointed peak, but it wasn't that at all.

Rather, if you look at Mount Carmel, it was a gentle wooded ridge there in the northwest part of Israel.

But unfortunately at this point in time, this once beautiful fertile mountain ridge was now barren and dry.

A rough 3 and a half year drought had completely demolished anything.

In fact, Ellen White talks a little bit about what the earth was like, what Israel was like.

The earth is parched as if with fire, she says.

The scorching heat of the sun destroyed what little vegetation had survived.

You had animals that were wandering back and forth.

You had once flourishing fields that were like burning desert sands.

You had cities and villages that became places of mourning.

And you had hunger and thirst that were coming upon people.

And here, I want you to imagine, in this barren place, used to be fertile, up on this gentle sloping ridge "'called Mount Carmel, stood the prophet Elijah.'" Elijah was there with his camel hair.

He was there with his rugged belt around his waist and the mantle around his shoulders, and Elijah was there to call back Israel to systematic regular worship that they had forgotten.

The physical drought and famine was caused by spiritual drought.

We could say that the drought without was caused by the drought within.

It was a reflection of where Israel was spiritually.

They had rejected God's altars and turned toward pagan altars instead.

And so now Elijah calls to the people, I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Kings, 1 Kings chapter 18 and verse 30.

And the Bible says, then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me.

Now, before we move on in the story, I want us to just imagine for a moment what is taking place here.

Elijah has turned his attention from the altars of Baal, the impressive, well-built, well-maintained, beautiful pagan altars.

All of Israel now was watching their attention from a different altar.

And despite Baal's outward impressiveness, Baal's altars had no inner power.

And as they looked at the failed attempt of Baal's prophets, they now turned their attention across the way to a different altar.

And sadly, the physical looks of this altar was very different.

Here Elijah is now looking at the broken down altar of God.

This altar had been on Mount Carmel for some time.

This was not the first time that this altar had been built.

You could see the fragments of what remained of worship.

At 1 point in time, this altar of God had been a place of worship.

At 1 point in time, people had come there to turn their hearts and their heads toward heaven.

At 1 point in time, families, mothers, fathers, children had come to this altar on Mount Carmel to worship their God in a regular, systematic way, but sadly, and we know the story, as we look at Israel's history, going back generations, that Israel had turned from their regular worship of God, and the altar of God had been neglected.

I want us to, before we continue in the story, we'll come back to this story throughout this presentation, but I want us to turn our Bibles to the book of Jeremiah now.

I'm gonna be looking at a couple of different passages, Jeremiah chapter 2, And Jeremiah talks about Israel's neglect of the altar.

Jeremiah speaks of what happened when Israel neglected the worship of God.

You know, no 1 told me at Advent Hope that the, you know, you need to train your neck to like look up all the time, you know.

You have like a training for speakers to, I'll look down here more.

Jeremiah chapter 2, And let's go ahead and start there in verse 13.

The Bible says, for my people have committed how many evils, friends?

They've forsaken me, and then God describes himself as the fountain of living waters.

Number 2, they've hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Friends, when you neglect the altar, you neglect the source of water.

When you neglect the living God, you neglect the only source of life.

Jesus wants to fill us with living water, but when you're a broken vessel, the water simply leaks out, and when there's no water, We all understand this in California, don't we?

My wife and I have 0 green thumbs in our household whatsoever.

You go to our house and all of our indoor plants somehow are dying.

Either we water them too much or water them too little, but there's 1 plant in particular I can think of right now that probably it's been a while since it's been water.

Even on my way out I could see it's 1 of these plants as like 3 different stalks and 1 of them is is slowly drying up.

And that plant is drying up because it doesn't have any water.

We know what happens when there's no water.

And that's exactly what happens spiritually when we neglect the source of living water.

The young lions roared at him, talking about Israel, and they growled.

His cities are burned without inhabitants.

When you forsake the living God, that's what happens spiritually to your heart.

And that you have forsaken the Lord your God when he led you in the way.

When you neglect the regular practice of approaching God's altar on a daily basis.

When you neglect having personal devotions and spending time with Jesus each and every day.

When you neglect fervent prayer and pouring your heart out to God, I think we all can testify what happens to us spiritually, that our hearts become barren and dry.

Notice what Spirit of Prophecy says, messages to young people, neglect the exercise of prayer, or engage in prayer, what's that word?

If you engage in prayer from time to time, now and then, she says, as seems convenient.

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the food, help us nourish and strengthen our bodies, amen.

Father, please be with us as we drive, amen.

Father, please bless us as we do your work.

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Repair Broken Altars

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