Returning to Divine Purpose

I don't want you to be afraid if the stock market suddenly one day collapses. I don't know how God is going to get our attention, but I can't tell you God is going to get our attention. God will do what He has to do to get us back to divine purpose again.

God will do it in His mercy. We read of a miraculous scene on Mount Carmel in the land of Israel. The prophet Elijah told the king to summon all the people of Israel and all the prophets of Baal and Asherah to gather together on this holy spot. The people had to choose between Baal, the false god of provision and prosperity, and Jehovah God, who shows them mercy despite the people turning away and forsaking him. Let's join Carter with his message titled, Returning to Divine Purpose.

1 Kings chapter 18, I want to talk to you about returning to divine purpose. Now this is a true historical story. It happened exactly as the word of God says it happened. When people read this story, many people see it in different ways. But when I read it, I see the mercy of God. For I know in my heart that God is good and His mercy endures forever. The heart of the law even is mercy in the Old Testament. Everything was leading to the mercy of God. And if you don't know that by now, then you have never fully understood God. God is a God of mercy. He doesn't call us to come to the throne of His and pray when we're strong.

He calls us actually in our weakness. He calls us when we know that there's nothing of our own strength that could ever bring about a victory. Whether it's a personal victory, a corporate victory, a victory that you need in your neighborhood, your town, your city, whatever it is, God knows that He calls to His throne those of us who know that there is no plan of man that can ever win this victory.

This is a spiritual victory and only He can win it. The people at this time through whom God had chosen to testify of Himself in the earth, Israel, His people. This nation that He gathered by His mercy and He brought them from a distant place and He brought them together into a place of promise.

And He said, this is going to be a place where my glory is going to be so exhibited through a people called by my name that strangers will come from foreign nations, which they did in the early days of Solomon. And they will come into the place where you worship and they will have hard questions. But when they call out to me, those questions will be answered. But they will come because they see in you the glory of God. They see something in you and around you.

They see an order. They see a sense of divine purpose that can only come from God Himself. It can't be procured by any amount of human effort, for if it could be, then every other kingdom who put the effort into it would have it. But they became divided. I personally believe that Solomon became bored with the things of God. I believe in my heart as I read and study his life that after 20 plus years of faithfully attending the temple, faithfully seeing God do what God said He would do, and being a man with a creative mind that was given him by God, he simply got bored with the things of God and began to leave early as it is and do other things.

His boredom with the things of God caused him to begin to do things that he regretted, caused him to establish systems and places of worship that were never prescribed by God. It brought a weakness into the nation and a weakness into his own house. And he fathered his son Rehoboam, who was an arrogant young man, not given to godly counsel, given to impulsive moving in this wonderful nation that God had established, and subsequently divided the nation between north and south. The larger portion was known as Israel. The smaller portion was known as Judah. The larger portion was the north.

The smaller was the south. This division opened the floodgate in Israel, the larger part with 10 tribes in it, to a succession of godless leaders under whose guidance false worship began to prosper. You remember Jeroboam, the first leader in this northern kingdom, feared that the people would return to the temple and to that place where God said worship was supposed to be. So to stop the people from doing that at both ends of the northern kingdom, he established places of worship which really mirrored the gods of the societies around them. And the societies around them were completely different and focused than the people of God were supposed to be.

And he told the people this is as far as you have to go. You don't have to go all the way to Jerusalem. You can stop here in Bethel and in Dan and you can worship at the altars that I have made for you. Now remember that the purpose of worship and service to the true God was spoken to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and verse 3. And he said to Abraham, now Abraham being the father of faith, the man through whose lineage God chose, that the Savior Christ was eventually going to be born and out of Christ of course the church was going to be left in the earth as a testimony of who God is. Just as Israel was left in the earth in that day as a testimony of who God is or was to that generation.

And in Genesis chapter 12 verse 3 God said to Abraham, in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. I'm going to multiply you. I'm going to do it sovereignly. It's going to be done by the Spirit of God.

It can't be done any other way. And I'm going to do something in you and what I'm going to do in you is going to cause you to be a blessing to many, many others all throughout the world. Now in the northern part of Israel, Baalism became the predominant form of religion. And Baalism was an inversion of this blessing.

In other words, it turned it around. The blessing was to be for others. Baalism turned it inward and the theological focus became bless me. The blessing is for me. It's for my purpose.

It's for my agenda. And it was a self-focused worship that had to be maintained at all costs. Even the cost of sacrificing their infant children.

What a tragedy. When you think that God's people could descend so low that they could end up sacrificing their own sons and daughters, their own babies as it was, somehow thinking this is pleasing to God. But when our focus of worship as a people, as a nation turns to self, every form of self, there's no limit to where we will go to maintain that sense of self-worth. Even the sacrificing of our children. Haley's Bible dictionary says the prophets of Baal and Asherah, who was his fictitious goddess wife, were the official murderers of little children.

Hard to imagine that this could happen to a nation, isn't it? It could have a succession of leaders who took the nation into deeper forms of godlessness. What was supposed to be the house of God would turn to self. Baal was the sun god. He was the lord of the elements, the forces of nature, the god of basket and store. In other words, the god of provision and prosperity. And the people began to worship prosperity. They began to worship everything that could be given to them.

They forgot Jehovah God and they began almost unthinkable this could happen and that they started bringing their children in for human sacrifice, thinking this is somehow part of legitimate worship. No history repeats itself, folks. We have sacrificed 50 million children in this nation on the altar of self and convenience. Oh, history does repeat itself. We're now dysfunctional as a society. We're dysfunctional as a government.

We're dysfunctional as on every level. But this is a moment of mercy. And the mercy of God for this particular tragic situation begins with a famine. God takes away the basket and the store. He takes away that which has captivated his own people. Don't forget that in every generation it's all about his people, always has been, always will be.

And he takes away whatever captivates the hearts of his people. And I want you to remember it's mercy that does this. Mercy. Judgment would be letting the people just go on in this delusion and end up in hell. That's judgment.

Thinking they're happy, thinking they're prosperous, thinking everything is fine, thinking their worship is accepted only to find out they've been outside the kingdom of God the whole time. No mercy. Mercy takes away the sense of well-being when it doesn't have its origin in God. And God sends a famine. And you'll see that throughout scriptural history.

Famine, or may I call it the cutting off of the fuel source of error, has often been God's method of bringing his people back to true spiritual worship and practice. In the Gospel of Luke chapter 15, Jesus himself told the story of a young man who took the inheritance of his father. Maybe he found his father's house too restrictive.

I really don't know why. But he asked for his inheritance. Jesus said he took a journey far away from the heart of his father into a land where he began to spend that which his father had given him on self-consumption and on riotous living. Now how do you think the father would get that son to come home? The scripture says, but when he had spent all, there arose a famine, a severe famine actually, in that land and he began to be in want.

A severe famine. God will do what he has to do to get us back to divine purpose again. God will do it in his mercy. So I don't want you to be afraid if you have to go through flood and fire and trial. I don't want you to be afraid if the stock market suddenly one day collapses.

I don't want you to be afraid. I don't know how God is going to get our attention, but I can't tell you God is going to get our attention. And I can tell you scripturally he will literally shut the rain as he did in Elijah's day. He could have rightly just judged that northern kingdom for what they were doing. They had really forsaken him.

But in his mercy, he stops the rain for three and a half years. Don't forget Baal was the sun god. Baal was the lord of the forces of nature and of the elements.

He was the one who provided basket and store. So if God wants to get his people away from a worship that is not true, how does he do it? He simply proves this God to be false. Proves this God to be powerless. Proves that this God does not satisfy, does not have the provision that the people need, is not the source of happiness.

There is no joy and everlasting peace to be found there. He simply turns off the rain. And I want to remind you it's an act of mercy. Judgment would have been to let it keep raining. That would have been judgment.

This was mercy. And you and I have to understand this because if we don't understand it, we're not going to fully comprehend the season that we're going to have to walk through. As a matter of fact, this whole world may have to go through it together. I really don't know the scope of it, but I do know what God's speaking to my heart. And throughout scriptural history, you'll see this famine over and over again. And it's the famine that caused this prodigal son to consider his ways, caused him to come to himself and head home and come back to his father. And so, too, it caused the people in Elijah's day to think about whether or not that what they were worshipping was real. Was it really reflective of God's purpose for them? Or was there power in that purpose, in that worship, to achieve the purpose of God for them in the earth? It caused them to think, otherwise they never would have come to the top of Mount Carmel.

There would have been no contest. Elijah, at least to his understanding, was the only public voice left. We know there were others who had not bent their knee to this god of prosperity. There were 7,000 others, according to the word of God.

But Elijah was not aware of another public voice at this time in his life and ministry. And yet there were 450 false prophets willing to lead the people into this false worship, willing to literally buddy up to this false political system that was promoting deeper and darker godlessness in the nation constantly. There were no voices left hardly that are willing to stand up against it and say, this is wrong. What you're doing is wrong. Where you're going is wrong. You may think it's going to prosper you, but it's going to end in disaster.

It always has and it always will end in disaster. You cannot take evil and make it good. You cannot take good and say it's evil. You can't. You can't transgress the law of God without consequence, folks. You can't.

It's not possible to do it. God will not be mocked. Whatever a nation sows, that nation will reap.

God will not be mocked. There's no way we can transgress the boundaries that God has set in proper order for this world to exist without paying a terrible price. For God himself said, don't you enter into the fields of the fatherless. Don't you remove their right.

Don't take away their boundaries. For if you do, I will arise and defend them. And in this nation, we have entered into the fields of the fatherless. Every child that we've not killed in the womb, we're telling now in our schools that there is no God.

Try to tell me we haven't entered into the fields of the fatherless in this society. And folks, I know I do say this a lot. And sometimes, sometimes I wish I could have another message, but I can't apologize for what God's called me to do and sent me to do.

I don't know any other way. But I want you to see the mercy in this. So I let this, God lets this religion run its course with its sincerity. It was sincere.

Sincerity doesn't mean it's true. It was active. They danced and ran around and the King James says they even leapt on their altars. And when that didn't do it, they started cutting themselves to prove how sincere they were before God, that they were willing to die for what they believed in. And when that didn't work, then they began prophesying as if they're prophesying somehow is going to force God to move his hand and do what they say. Yet no one heard, no one regarded, no one was answered.

And then I see something in the scriptures that has caused me to see this passage like I've never seen it before. It's now the time of the evening. They've had their go for the whole of the morning, the whole of the heat of the day.

They've had their time. It's now coming to the evening sacrifice. It's getting close to the end of the day.

It's going to be dark soon. And Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. I don't know how you feel about those four words, but he's standing there on behalf of God. And you and I, knowing the circumstances, people have been sacrificing their children. They have been worshiping calves. They've been listening to evil and somehow thinking it was good.

They've strayed so far from God that it's tragic, even looking at it from only a historical perspective. But yet God, through that man that he had at that time says, come close to me, come close to me. In other words, I'm not going to reject you. Oh Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem, how many times I've longed to gather you. I've longed to draw you close to my heart. I've longed to show you who I really am.

I've longed to make you partakers of the victory that could be yours. Come near to me. And all the people came near to him. And so he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down and he took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob to whom the word of the Lord had come saying Israel shall be your name. He took 12 stones and he started to show them your weakness came when you allowed yourself to become divided, firstly separated from a true fervency for the things of God.

You were divided from the heart of God and what your purpose really was in the earth and then you became divided from each other on top of that. And so this was a broken down altar no matter how fancy it was or how much gold that they were putting on it or how intricate the design might have been. The Bible declares it to be an altar that was broken down because there was no unity.

I've always believed that unity is the folly of peacetime. And then with the stones in verse 32, 1 Kings chapter 18, he built an altar in the name of the Lord and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two sales of seed and he put the wood in order and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood and said fill four water pots with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. And then he said do it a second time and then he said do it a third time and to me it represents the fact that Christ was going to die. He was going to go into the grave for three days at the evening sacrifice. It came to pass in verse 36 at the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and I am your servant.

And I've done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me that this people may know that you are the Lord God and that you've turned their hearts back to you again. The fire of the Lord fell. The scripture says consumed the sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. It licked up, in other words, it consumed everything that had the power to put out my light and your light.

Everything that had the power to cause us not to live for him. God said I will consume it. I will do it. I will do it sovereignly. I will do it supernaturally.

An impossibility was swallowed up by victory. Bottom line, we need to be the church again. Every one of us. And I guess the question we have to ask our own heart is do the people really matter enough that we're willing to do that? Are we going to pursue a self-focus which of course has no real concern for its neighbor or its children? Or are we going to follow the one who went to a cross that we might be here today? Suffered that we might have wholeness. Are we willing to be embracers of his compassion and his passion? And are people really worth it?

Are they really worth it? The cry of my heart is just oh God use my life to turn others back to you again. And let your Holy Spirit look up the water in my trench. The things that are around me that would make it impossible if they're allowed to exist. The impossibility of my own character.

The impossibility of the lack even of ability to do the things you've called me to do. I want you to join with me in this church to pray for the mightiest baptism of God's Holy Spirit we have ever known in our generation. We need to be filled with the Spirit of God.

There's no way humanly this can be done. But when we are ready. When we've made that decision. When we're willing to come to an altar and lift our hands and say God I don't care how long it takes but I'm staying in your presence. I'm going to keep pressing in. I'm going to keep praying until you touch my life with the fire of your Holy Spirit. Until you burn out of me oh God. In your mercy everything Lord that would drive me into weakness and falling short of where worship really is supposed to be. I'm not content just to be religious. I'm not content just to come to a house once a week. Maybe even twice.

I'm not content while a generation around me perishes. God you have to take me farther. You've got to do more in my life. You've got to lead me. You've got to guide me.

You've got to do what only you can do. There is a holy discontent that God will stir in your heart and in my heart. So that we will want his presence.

Because the day is coming my friend when the rain is going to stop. And people will be coming to where you are. I guess the question is will you be able to say come near to me.

Come near to me. And let me explain to you who God is. Let me tell you about how kind he is. How powerful he is.

How wonderful he is. That will be the message. And so the altar call the Lord has put on my heart is just this. Oh God use my life to turn others back to you again. Let your Holy Spirit lift me, carry me, take me, empower me. And take away the impossibility that stands before me. And every one of you here today, all of us, we all know what those impossibilities are. It's that area of your life you say God if you don't touch this I'm never going to amount to anything. If you don't touch this this will always impair my ability to represent you. You've got to come and touch this area of my life. And you know what that is.

You know exactly what it is. But the cry of my heart, you know realistically we are about 8,000 or so people in this church. If we had, can you imagine the first 121 3,000 in a day. If we had the fullness of what they had, how many people in New York City do you think would come to Christ? How many people would be compelled to stand up on the subway and just say I just got to tell you what God has done for me?

How many people in the marketplace just couldn't stay quiet any longer? How many people in the college campuses would stand up with such an anointing it couldn't be denied? Words of wisdom that can only come from God. Wisdom that cannot be countered because it's born of God.

Powered by God. Let that be the cry of your heart. Use my life, Lord, to turn others back to you. Deliver me, God. Deliver me from the impossible places. Deliver me, God, from that which would prevent this temple from being a place that people can come to and find you.

In Jesus' name. The message today has been brought to you by Carter Conlon from Times Square Church. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. Plan to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.