“Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle. Wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.” Exodus 20:24-25
On Sunday we talked about how we should be Christ-empowered and Christ-focused, not self-empowered and self-promoting. It was for that reason that the ancient Israelites were prohibited from chiseling the stones used in God’s altar. Man is always using his chisels to whittle God down and to build himself up. He chips a god down into an image he can get his hands around and control. He flourishes the altar to exalt himself upon it. God knows that man autographs everything he touches with the lie “See how great I am!” These words are the blueprints to the Tower of Babel. Under the camouflage of spiritual ministry, man’s heart conspires to exclaim “Let us make a name for ourselves.”
We stop bowing down to God and start bowing down to the altar – our own creation. See how great my altar is. See how beautiful my altar is. See how big my altar is! So the ministry to God becomes a monument to man. When worship of the Almighty becomes confused by who we are and what we’ve done instead of who God is and what He has done, we begin to worship an idol forged into our own likeness. God wants altars of earth to remind us it is about Him and not the altars we build to Him.
Your business, your testimony, your ministry, your connections, your community service, your hard work, your family, your ingenuity and talent – Do you think they were given as a monument to yourself? They are the stones that are to build the altar of worship to God. Offer them with excellence to the Father and with no personal adornment of yourself. Our excellence should only ever be used to elevate Jesus, and never us.
We are a humble landing pad for His glory. “Wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you.” See, it is the One-Who-Comes-Down. See, it is all His handiwork. The altar is nothing. It is God who is autographing the altar with His greatness by coming down upon it.
Tags: ministry, pride, humility, leadership, contentment, god's glory, ambition, excellence, giftings, business
