Good Morning Beloved Family,
It's such a blessing to have you here today
God is GREAT!
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for that great privilege of worshiping You
We praise You for the wisdom that we receive from Your Word
that no matter what’s going on around us in our world, or in our lives
Your Word, commands Authority over struggles and challenges
So powerfully, Your Word speaks relevantly to the issues of today
Help us Lord, live it and make it believable, as we to speak it faithfully
to others, that they may also come to believe
Lord we need your Hold Spirit to confront powers and principalities,
those who are in positions of power, the tyrants and leaders of nations
and of governments and corporations
that perpetuate poverty and create division of Your people
Hate speech that divides our families and the nations
Use us, Lord, to communicate Your love to the world around us
In Jesus' name we ask and pray
Amen
Today's message: Broken Alters or Broken Vessels
"(Now this expression, "He ascended," what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.) And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain of the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love."
Ephesians 4:9-16
Beloved, we must rebuild the altar of God. We must rebuild it in our homes, in our schools, in our churches, our communities and in our Governments.
The church sat by and lets one woman, with Jezebel spirit, remove prayer from our schools. One Jezebel challenges the prophets of God. And she has many of her false prophets running around today.
The next big "church fad" is already on the horizon. It’s the “Emergent Church” movement, a seeker sensitive church, has been planting seed. Some of most influential people in the Emergent Church movement are people who have consciously and very deliberately, I might add, abandoned the authority of Scripture.
It’s time to rebuild the altars today in the presence of the people.
It is time to pray in the homes.
It is time to pray in the churches.
It is time to pray in the schools.
It is time to pray in the City Hall.
It is time to pray in the State Senate.
It is time to pray in the Congress.
And I'm not speaking about, "Now I lay me down to sleep." prayers!
I'm talking about "earth shaking, hell rattling, we're about to move some mountains" prayers!
"Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place."
II Chronicles 7:12-15
The leaders of the Emergent church and their followers hate clarity. They detest authority, and they despise certainty. They say they don’t want answers; they want uncertainty and mystery.
Essentially, in their heresy, they want to create their own spiritual reality.
They don’t want to hear someone stand up and expound the Word of God. They claim it’s abusive and unhealthy. The seeker sensitive movement epitomizes the direction all these fads are moving, away from the Authority of God. This fad-driven church cannot be a church governed by the Word of God, as they receive their direction by seeing which way the winds of change are blowing and following that prevailing trend.
Beloved, let me say this; We do not need broken altars in our churches today, but we need broken vessels. Our hearts need to be broken before the Lord, His grace, mercy and truth outpouring through us.
"Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures,
This became the chief corner stone;
This came about from the Lord,
And it is marvelous in our eyes’?
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them. When they sought to seize Him, they feared the people, because they considered Him to be a prophet.
Matthew 21:42-46
Beloved, the way the winds are blowing these days is catastrophic. The sound doctrine of justification by faith is under attack on many fronts. The adversary is attacking from all sides. In the secular world, much of the political world, and false teachers.
There’s a big controversy brewing. The problem is, in the contemporary, fad-driven evangelical culture, decided several years ago that the word propitiation is too
technical and not user-friendly enough for these "contemporary Christians", so
preachers stopped explaining the principle of propitiation. A few decades ago, not one of these people would have even been included in a list of “evangelicals.” They are not evangelicals in the historic biblical sense of the word.
The word evangelical used to describe a well-defined theological position
So beloved, what we now have, is an entire generation of church leaders who don’t remember what the real message of the Gospel is, what it means or why it’s important to defend it.
Those who humble their hearts before the Lord will find salvation,
those on whom the stone falls, will grind them to powder. Christ, the
Stone of Israel, will fall on the nations and grind them to dust.
I don’t want a broken altar in my life, but I want a broken vessel before the Lord.
It was the time of the evening sacrifice, as Elijah stepped forth to rebuild the altar of the Lord.
Evening time has come upon our generation. The sun is setting on our world of sin.
Something seriously needs to change in order to rescue the idea
of historic evangelicalism from the contemporary evangelical movement.
And here’s what needs to change: A generation of preachers needs to rise
up and be committed to preaching the Word, in season and out of season,
and be willing to ignore the waves of ridiculous, blasphemous fads that come and go and
leave the church’s head spinning. And we are going to need God's divine wisdom, perseverance and strength to accomplish it.
Here comes the prophets of God!
Look out Jezebel!
Look out paganism!
When Elijah repaired the altar, laid the sacrifice, poured the water, prayed a prayer, then the fire fell.
The altar speaks of repentance.
The sacrifice speaks of our heart before God.
The water speaks of baptism.
The prayer speaks of dependence upon God.
The fire speaks of the Holy Spirit.
The fire burnt the sacrifice and licked up the water around it.
The
people fell on their faces and cried, "The Lord He is God, the Lord He
is God."
Holy Scripture is far greater than any trending fad. Preaching the Word of God is more
effective than any new methodology of every contemporary church experts have ever
invented. And I really don’t care who thinks preaching is "irrelevant, out-dated and broken.” We must get back to the sound biblical teaching, proclamation and exposition of God’s Word.
God is pouring out His Spirit on Christ's church today if we would repair the broken altars in our lives. The devil will be defeated when prayer is brought back into our
society. Our nation will be blessed when men will repent and pray.
America is on a collision course with Hell. The bloodhounds of Hell have been loosed on our society.
That said, the messages I teach are as much for myself as they are for anyone else. We all need to hear a Word from God, I am certainly no exception. Your pastor certainly is no better than any one of you in the congregation, we're are just in a different locations in the church, because of my position. God's messages apply to ALL who hear. And that means both you and I..
As long as He is directing me to continue to speak on His Word, His Truth, through His Holy Spirit I will continue to tackle, without fear, whatever topics and social issues, controversial or not, to the best of my ability, as given. Thankfully, I do not need to rely upon my opinions, I have His Word and Holy Spirit.
Hebrews 4:12
says, “The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and
of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of
the heart.”
That’s a powerful text, full of meaning.
There are literally millions of book saturating our culture. Everything from self-help methodologies,
false theologies of new wave fad religions, or the proverbial, I died and saw heaven.
Allow me to speak boldly here, you can take all the great books and all the great literature in the
world combined, and they do not have the life-giving power found in the Bible!
No book
ever written changes lives like the Word of God.
"The Word of God is living." That is the correct sense. It speaks of
vitality, life, activity, energy to the receiver of it's message. The Word of God has a life-force that
is unlike any merely human book.
The life-giving and life-changing power of the Bible is something far deeper
than any other book can deliver and legitimately claim.
The Word of God renews the
heart by giving spiritual life to the spiritually dead. One literally becomes a new creation. It changes our
character at an essential, fundamental level. It transforms the desires of our hearts, our thoughts, our speech
and impacts live at a moral level, no human literature can touch. It is inherently powerful!
It teaches, it restrains our foot from evil. It convicts us in our sin. It gives us hope and warms
our hearts with assurance. It encourages us with its promises. It
stimulates our faith. It is alive, powerfully dynamic.
Rend your hearts and not your garments. Repair the altars, and be broken before God, or be ground to powder in His wrath.
The Lord, He is God!
The beliefs, thoughts and opinions of man, are constantly ever changing.
The laws that govern society are also changing.
But the inherent Word of God is sure and unchanging!
Every page of the Bible has a life-changing power that is just as fresh
as the day it was written.
Beloved, we do not need to make it come alive; on it's own, it is
both alive and active. It is always relevant, eternally applicable,
speaking to the hearts of men, with a life changing power that is unlike even the greatest of
human works
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
Brian Monzon Ministries