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Part 9 of 11
B.U.I.L.D. Series
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We are here in the B.U.I.L.D. series, focusing on the subtitle: The Altar. For many of you who were not raised in faith, you may not particularly understand the importance of the altar. My hope is to help you understand that we're being challenged to build an altar to God in your own personal life, in your own personal relationship, and in your own personal experience.
An altar is a place for worship and sacrifice. In biblical times, altars were where God's people were able to meet Him and experience the reality of His presence. This is why the front of the stage in church is called the altar—it's the place where we're saying we're getting ready to meet God here.
In 2 Samuel 24:18, we read: "That day God came to David and said to him, 'Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Arana, the Jebusite.'"
David was in a place of distress. He had done something foolish—he counted the people to see how many soldiers he had, wanting to brag to surrounding nations. But God told him, "Don't count the soldiers because it's my victory, not your number." David forgot that it was the anointing of God that gave him victory, not the number of people. Because what makes you powerful is not the amount of people, but the spirit of God leading the people.
As a result of David's pride, a plague came into his land. Thousands of people were dying. Eventually, God told the death angel to stop. David realized he needed to get peace back in his land, and he knew the way: build an altar.
Why was this important? The place of worship typically was the tabernacle that Moses built—the temple. But David was too far from Moses's temple at this time. So he had to find a place of immediate worship. He had to build an altar because the temple was too far away.
This is why you have to learn to build an altar wherever you are. Sometimes Sunday is too far away. You're going through on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and you can't be sitting in your house in pain waiting for Sunday to sense the presence of God. You have to learn to build an altar wherever you are.
For some of you, you get in your car and you worship. You cry out to God. You begin to speak in your heavenly language and you can sense God there. For some of you, it's your shower—the moment the water cuts on, you can spend time talking to God. For some of you, it's your living room. But you got to find where you can build an altar, because you can't wait for church to sense His presence. You got to know how to activate the anointing of God regardless of where you are.
David went to Arana's threshing floor because that is the last place he saw the angel. He saw an angel of God there. So he built an altar where he saw the angel.
Your altar should always be built where you see or sense the presence of God most. I tell people all the time: all of our worship spaces may be different. Yours doesn't have to be where mine is, but I need you to go wherever you sense the presence of God most.
At one point in time, it was my basement. I know it sounds crazy. For some of you, it might sound cringy, but for me, my basement—I would literally be running in circles because every time I went to my basement to pray, it was like God would meet me there. For some of you, it may be your bedroom. For some, it may be your kitchen. For some, it may be your bathroom. But what I need you to do is find where you have an intimate connection with God and say, "I'm going to erect an altar here every single morning and every single night to pull from the presence of God."
In verse 19, it says: "So David went up to do what the Lord had commanded him to do."
Gad was a prophet, and he said, "Go do this." David responded as if God Himself told him to do it. He went immediately. Why? Because he trusted Gad. Gad had been the prophet in his life for years and Gad had never missed it. So he said, "If Gad is coming to me with the word from the Lord, why would I question Gad now if he hasn't ever missed it?"
Most of us miss God's instructions because we don't really want to receive it from the pastor or the prophet that God sends to us. When you start to hear God for yourself, you can become so prideful that nobody can tell you anything. But you don't know that there are some people who have answers that you don't have yet. By rejecting the people that God sends, you're rejecting the answer that God is giving.
I had a dream years ago where my pastor and I were taking a test. He quickly filled it out and offered to help me, but I refused, saying, "No, man, I'm good. God talked to me." He completed his test in 30 seconds and handed it in perfect. When I looked down at my sheet, I realized I didn't have the answers. When I looked to ask for his help, he was already walking out the door.
When I woke up, God told me: "I sent him to help you, but your pride is not allowing you to receive the help. And if you don't receive the help, I'm going to send it to somebody who actually wants it."
Some of us become so prideful that nobody can tell us anything. And we wonder why our life isn't moving forward, our assignment isn't moving forward, and our gift isn't growing. It's because you rejected the people that God sent to help you.
Maybe you've been waiting on a second and third confirmation. Just do what God told you to do the first time. If He said it one time, that's already as much as a thousand times. Every promise He made is yes and amen.
In verse 20, David said: "I have come to buy your threshing floor and to build an altar to the Lord there so that he will stop the plague."
David knew that his sacrifice on the altar would stop the plague in his land. He knew that if we repent and if we sacrifice on the altar, God is going to move and intervene on behalf of not just me but of all people of the land.
When I was studying this, God put it on my heart to consider our city and our nation. And I realized that maybe America doesn't need better policies and better government. Maybe what America needs is repentance.
Maybe we have been so evil over all these years that what's happening in our country is a plague based on disobedience. Did you know that two huge evils in the Bible are fornication (harlotry and prostitution) and witchcraft? The Greek word for fornication is porna, and the Greek word for witchcraft is pharmakaia. This is where we get our words: porn and pharmacy.
America is number one in production and consumption of both pharmaceutical drugs and pornography. We make over 50% of the world's pharmaceutical drugs, and we strongly dominate over 50% of the production of the world's porn. And maybe the government can't fix this. Maybe better policies can't fix this. Maybe the only thing that's going to change a country so far gone from the word of God is true repentance.
2 Chronicles 7:13-14 says: "When I shut up the heavens, so there is no rain or command the locust to devour the land or send a plague among my people. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land."
The land does not get healed unless we turn. The land does not get healed unless we turn. We want God to heal a land that won't turn from wickedness. We want God to bless a land that won't turn from its evil ways. You cannot be the world's producer of two of the greatest evils and say, "God bless America."
How do we not know that pharmacy is literally witchcraft? How do we not recognize that the enemy has direct access to your soul without your permission through sex and drugs? The only thing that can tap into your mind without your permission is sex and drugs. I can literally give you a drug that makes you go to sleep, and when you wake up, you don't remember what happened. Sexual encounters will open your spirit to whatever demon the person you lay with is having or battling with. That is some of the wickedness and the evils that God does not want us to have.
David needed Arana's threshing floor. The threshing floor was extremely critical in biblical times. For most of its history, the threshing floor was an outside place. The grain was spread out over stone or hard-packed dirt. Then an animal—an ox, a donkey, or a horse—would walk across the grain and break the kernels so the outside shell could be separated from the good part of the grain.
This is powerful because the threshing floor is where the grain, which is the good stuff, had to be broken. Like the grain, you don't know which parts of your life need to be broken off until you're stepped on. You don't know what parts of your life need to be broken off until you're stepped on.
It's not until you go through some stuff that you start to realize who's really standing with you and who really believes in you and who's really for you. Don't be mad at it. Sometimes you got to get stepped on to realize what's stable in your life and what's shaky. Anything shaky won't be exposed until life gets hard.
When everything gets good, even fake friends look real. It's not until life gets hard that you start to see who's really with me and who's really for me. I need difficult seasons in life. God, thank you for difficult seasons because difficult seasons expose who actually has my back and who was waiting for an opportunity to get away.
You need to be stepped on. You need to be crushed. It shows what's solid in your life and what's false.
The farmer would use the natural wind to separate the grain from what was called the chaff—literally rubbish, the part of the grain that wasn't supposed to be used. The farmer would use the winnowing fork to throw the chaff and grain together. The wind would blow away the chaff, and the heavy grains would fall back onto the threshing floor. This process would be repeated over and over until only the grain was left.
The farmer would come, scoop the grain off the ground, and throw it in the air. When you throw it in the air, the wind is going to push away everything that's not solid. Everything that's solid lands exactly where it came from.
I know it seems like life is unfortunate and difficult, but sometimes you got to get thrown around a little bit because you don't know how solid you are until you have to go through some storms in life that toss you and throw you. Can you still land in the same place that God had you in the first place? You need that chaff to be removed. And the chaff is always blown away by the wind. The rubbish will always be rubbed away.
In verse 22, Arana said: "Take it, my lord, the king, and use it as you wish. And here are the oxen for the burnt offering. And here you can use the threshing boards too, and the ox yolks for wood to build a fire on the altar."
The altar was not just a place for worship. It was also a place for sacrifice. I think it would be paramount for me to tell you this: every time we tell you to come to the altar to worship, I'm also telling you to come sacrifice something. The two actually go hand in hand. You cannot worship without sacrifice.
When you sacrifice, you're proving to God your worship of His worth to you. Every time we come into worship at the altar, you must have forgotten what Romans 12:1 says: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercies to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship."
Watch this. He's trying to teach you that worship and sacrifice go hand in hand. And what you don't know is that when you're building an altar to God, you're the one getting ready to lay on it.
I know it's heavy when you build an altar to God, you're building an altar to say, "God, I'm getting ready to lay down anything that's not like you. I'm allowing you to take it away, to burn it away, to remove it. I'm going to lay myself on the altar this time." Not Abraham putting his son—this time it's me. It's me. It's me, oh Lord. I'm putting myself on the altar, and I'm saying, God, anything that doesn't represent you, anything that's not like you, anything that doesn't smell like worship, you can burn it out of me.
In verse 23, David replied to Arana: "No, no, no. I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing."
David refused to offer something to God that didn't cost him anything. David paid him 50 pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen. David actually overpaid him to prove a point.
Let's just be real. Let's be honest this morning. How many of us are trying our best to live for God with no sacrifice? We want this thing as easy as it could possibly get. "It's time to fast." Well, how much fried food can I eat while I fast? "Oh, it's time to pray." How long is 5 minutes enough? No matter what it is, we're trying our best to live for God without sacrifice.
You forgot the very premise of this relationship was for you to be a living sacrifice. For you to be a living sacrifice.
I'm not trying to get away or get out of what God has called me to do because I understand that there is always a cost to purpose. There is always a cost to purpose. Someone wrote a song: "You don't know the cost of the oil in my alabaster box." There is always a cost of purpose.
So often people will be jealous of what it is that you carry, and they don't know the cost. The cost of what it is that you carry. They won't understand that there's a cost even in the simplest of things.
Anybody in the room understands this: if you just want to lose weight, you understand the cost is giving up foods you like. I can't eat the foods that I want to. I got to sacrifice. If I want to get my degree, then I got to sacrifice going out and having fun. And I got to watch you all kick it, knowing I got three papers to write this weekend. And so I got to sacrifice my time. When God is getting ready to elevate you, you got to sacrifice time with your favorite family and your favorite friends. And sometimes some friendships won't make it because they were the cost.
And anytime you're going to follow God's agenda, there is always going to be a sacrifice. Matthew 16:24 says: "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way. You must take up your cross and you must follow me.'"
And to live a life with no sacrifice is to live a life with no true purpose. But if you're trying to find a way to make this life as easy as possible, you've already exempted yourself from walking in the purpose of God.
Paul said: "I've been through it all. I've been whipped with 39 lashes. I've been left shipwrecked on the boat floating on one piece of wood. Two times they tried to kill me. One time it almost worked." He went through so many things, but he understood this is the cost.
I want to give you this prophetic word for many of you in this room. Many of you want God. "I want a real prayer life. I want when I pray for miracles and signs and wonders to happen. I want that when I speak a prophetic word for lives to be changed." But go look at the life of any prophet in the Bible and see what they had to go through. They had to be persecuted. They had to be lied on. They had to be falsely imprisoned. They had to have the entire world seem as if they were turning against them and still had to stand on their anointing, knowing "Greater is He that is within me than he that is in the world."
Whenever you're asking God for a greater anointing, you're asking God to burn you as a sacrifice. There's always going to be a better level of sacrifice.
In verse 25: "And David built an altar to the Lord there, and he sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings. Underline those two: burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the Lord answered his prayer for the land. And the plague on Israel was stopped."
He offered two types of things. He said, "Okay, God, two things you need. You need burnt offerings and you need peace offerings."
What is the burnt offering that needs to be given to God? What needs to be burned in your life? What are the things that need to be burned away before the Lord? Is it pride? Is it sin? Is it ego? Is it unforgiveness? Is it anger? What's one of the things that needs to be a burnt offering in your life?
Number two: peace offering. What areas do you need God to bring peace into in your life? What areas have been turbulent, and you need God to bring His supernatural peace? Is it in your family, your marriage, your relationship, your job, your career, your mind, your heart? God, I'm putting these on you. This is my burnt offering and my peace offering.
What are we getting ready to put in sacrifice at the altar? These are going to be things that we're going to be praying over. Going to be praying over this week. Really, for the whole month.
What needs to be burned away? Write it down. When you write it down, you can just put it on the altar. Just come leave it right on the front of the stage. "God, I want you to burn this away."
Is it the pain and the trauma of your childhood? Is it stuff you've carried for a long time? And you're asking God, "Could you burn this away? Could I not leave carrying the same thing I've been carrying for so many years? Could I not leave carrying the same thing I've been carrying for so many years? I need you to burn this away."
What is going to be your peace offering, God? I need peace in this. I need peace, God. Grant me the serenity, God, to accept the things I cannot change.
Burnt offering: what do you want God to burn away? Peace offering: what is it? What is it that you're saying, God, I'm asking you to stop the plague in the land?
For some of you, your peace offering is some stuff going on in your family that you know is a result of your own mistake, and you're saying, "God, I'm asking for peace in this, and I'm laying it before you in the name of Jesus."
God, even as they're bringing the burnt offerings and peace offerings, I pray that you will see, hear, and respond in the name of Jesus.
The Bible says that when David did this, God heard him and God responded to his request. God heard him and God responded. I'm speaking this over you: God hears you and God is responding to your request. God hears you and God is responding to your request. God hears you and God is responding to your request.
