Homebuilding 101: White Elephant Worship

What do we do when we know we have made a mistake? David’s pride led to a cataclysmic fall. Plague decimated his people. He prayed for them. God sent Gad the prophet to give him instructions. David built an altar at the threshing floor of Arauna. Then he paid for and made a sacrifice to the Lord that day. Someone will pay for our sins. We can either use the installment plan, or accept the perfect sacrifice of God’s only Son. There is no worship without sacrifice. Message based on 2 Samuel 24:18-25.Quotes:John Woodhouse:  Divine sovereignty does not diminish human responsibility; neither does human responsibility diminish divine sovereignty.Mark Batterson:  Pride is a by-product of insecurity. And the more insecure a person is, the more monuments they need to build. There is a fine line between ‘Thy kingdom come’ and ‘my kingdom come.’ If you cross the line, your relationship with God is self-serving. You aren’t serving God. You are using God. You aren’t building altars to God. You are building monuments to yourself.C. S. Lewis: The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.Tim Keller: Pride makes you a predator, not a person. Alistair Begg:  Neither age nor experience safeguard us against pride.Duane Brooks: Our sin will cost somebody something, but it cost God everything.Duane Brooks: David can’t pay for his sin, but he can pay his own way in worship. Duane Brooks: In our white elephant worship, we bring God the last, the least, the leftovers as the people in Malachi’s day. What is the least I can give to God? Can somebody else’s gift cover me? William Barclay: Love never calculates; love never thinks how little it can decently give; love’s one desire is to give to the uttermost limits; and, when it has given all it has to give, it still thinks the gift is too little. We have not even begun to be Christian true believer if we think of giving to Christ, and to His church in terms of as little as we respectably can.Patricia Batten: The truth is we’re all sinners. We’ve all broken God’s law. We’re all in need of mercy and forgiveness. David built a wooden altar and sprinkled it with the blood of a bull. In his mercy, God accepted that sacrifice for sin. But we don’t need to build altars and sacrifice animals any more for the forgiveness of sin. Why? Because God’s mercy hung on a wooden cross. That mercy rests in the tomb sealed by a rock. That mercy is a miracle that rises in the dawn on Easter morning. That mercy is the peace treaty signed in the blood of Jesus Christ that says “Forgiven.” None of us deserve God’s mercy. But he gives it to us just the same.  Knowing that God oversees judgment in mercy allows us to live in hope. He builds temples out of sin. P. T. Forsyth: Christianity is not the sacrifice we make, but the sacrifice we trust.D. L. Moody: The problem with living sacrifices is they keep crawling off the altar. Tim Keller: A living sacrifice means every day, every hour, every moment, right now you have to deliberately, consciously, continually, and perpetually offer yourself to him. It’s constant. It’s never over. It’s intense… You’re not living the Christian life unless you put to death the idea that you have a right to live as you choose.  You put to death the idea that you belong to yourself. You put to death the idea that you know best what should happen in your life. You put that to death, and you give it to God. It feels like a death, but on the other side it’s life. That’s why it’s a living sacrifice – it’s a sacrifice that leads to life.Eugene Peterson: A sacrifice is an offering placed before the Lord so that he can make something of it. To discover more messages of hope, go to tallowood.org/sermons/.Follow us on X and YouTube @tallowoodbcFollow us on Instagram @tallowood.baptistFollow us on FaceBook @tallowoodbaptist