In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the concept of brokenness as a crucial aspect of one's relationship with God. He refers to various biblical examples, such as the story of Gideon and the revival in Galilee, to illustrate how God uses broken people for His purposes. The preacher also highlights the significance of the cross as the altar of the Lord and encourages individuals to surrender their egos, pride, and sinful desires to be transformed by God. Ultimately, the message emphasizes the need for individuals to be broken before God in order to experience His mercy, grace, and transformation in their lives.

I want to talk to you about restoring the altar of the Lord here on Mount Carmel where we live. We've literally restored an altar of the Lord up on the top of Mount Carmel where our worship center is and where I'm speaking to you from, Mount Carmel in northern Israel. And an altar is a place of sacrifice. The word in Hebrew, Mizbeach, comes from a word to cut or to sacrifice and usually referred to an animal that was being sacrificed as an atonement, as a substitutionary atonement for sin. And so Elijah restored the altar of the Lord on Mount Carmel. There were false altars all over Israel. There are today. There are false altars all over the western world, all over the world to false gods, whatever they may happen to be. Maybe they're even to television or idols on television or whatever people may be worshiping. But there is an altar of the Lord that he wants to restore in these last days. And the word in Hebrew for restore means to heal, to bring from ruin and devastation back into health and wholeness. So Elijah put these twelve stones around and they represent the twelve tribes of Israel. And for us, it's a prophetic picture that God is bringing the children of Israel back to the land, the twelve tribes, and there they will have an encounter with him on the mountains of Israel. The scriptures say, for instance, in Ezekiel 36, which is so dear to our hearts because we live on a mountain of Israel, I'll bring them back to the mountains of Israel, I'll pour clean water on them, I'll put my spirit in them, I'll cause them to walk in my ways, and then the nations round about shall know that I am the Lord. And we see this happening daily, on a daily occurrence, in the last few years here on Mount Carmel. Jews and Arabs turning to the Lord. But as he restored the altar of the Lord, the altar is a place of sacrifice, it's a place of people returning to God and repenting and receiving relief from their guilt and being revived and renewed and going on in newness of life. So as Elijah called the fire down on the altar, with the sacrifice there, the animal, the blood, the water, the wood, and the ditch that he dug around it, the fire came down and fell on it, that burned everything up, the people fell on their faces and said, the Lord, he is God, the Lord, he is God. Now as new covenant believers, what does restoring the altar of the Lord mean to us today? When you look at the picture of what happened on Mount Carmel, everything that he did points to the cross of the Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus. The animal was innocent, the blood, the water that came out of Yeshua's side when the Romans stuck a spear in it, the fire that came down, God's hatred of sin, his fire of holiness, his all-consuming fire of love came down and burned up everything. So the altar represents a place of prayer, a place of sacrifice, a place of connection, a place of encounter with the Lord, a place of praise, a place where the covenant relationship can be restored. Elijah was restoring the covenant that had been broken because the people had walked away from the covenant. And so he was restoring the covenant, and as we as new covenant believers look at this, it all points to Jesus. Everything that Elijah did, the time he spent at the brook, he was alone with the Lord. When he went to the widow, when he raised her son from the dead, he's a Jew, she's not a Jew. It's a picture of the one new man, of Jew and Gentile in one body. Everything was about the cross. Elijah didn't understand this, but we do. You know, centuries later, Elijah and Moses appeared with Jesus up on a mountain not far from here in Galilee. Peter, James, and John were there. And Jesus started talking about the departure that he would make, the exodus that he would make in Jerusalem. You can read about it in Luke's gospel, chapter 9. And he talked about the departure he was about to make in Jerusalem. He was talking about the cross. And I've often wondered if those two great prophets, Moses and Elijah, was it then that Elijah realized what happened on Mount Carmel was all about the Son of God coming in flesh and dying on a cross and fulfilling all the prophetic significance and picture of what happened that day on Mount Carmel centuries before. It's the cross. We need to come to the cross. Now Yeshua has done his part, but what about us? The sacrifices of God, David the king would say, are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. And these God does not despise. So the sacrifice, the fire that fell on Mount Carmel is about the cross, about redemption, about newness of life, about being transformed, and an altar is a place of transformation. And Elijah was a broken man. God uses broken vessels because David the king knew, as I just quoted from Psalm 51, 17, the sacrifices of God are people with a broken heart, with a broken spirit, with a contrite repentant heart. These God will not despise. Elijah had been through three years of persecution with the king and his army trying to find him in Jezebel, living alone. There must have been anguish and loneliness, living alone at a little brook and drinking from the brook and a bird feeding him every day and every morning. And then going to heathen people and living with this widow and raising her son from the dead with a little bit of, he was a broken, broken vessel. God uses broken people. You can see it all through the scriptures from Abraham, leave everything and go somewhere and I'll show you as you go along. And that broken man went and he hung on to the promises of God. The great revival under Gideon here in Galilee on northern Israel where we live. Gideon found 300 men, they had vessels, they put a torch inside it, they had a shofar to blow and when they surrounded the enemy and everyone stood in their place, they broke the vessels, they broke the clay pots and the torch, the fire of the presence of God shined out once they were broken and the enemy ran away as shofars were blown. God always uses broken people. We need to come to the altar of the Lord which is being restored, it's the cross. We need to say break me Lord, Lord change me, transform me. You can look through all the scriptures, Paul was a broken man, he got knocked down on the road to Damascus and he would say over and over again, when I am weak then he's strong, the more less of me, less of me, less of me. Each one of the great heroes of the Bible, you can look at them and they are broken. Even Jesus himself was broken, his body broken for us that we might be broken bread and poured out wine for another generation. You know God in his mercy and grace, he wants to break my inner life, my ego, my pride, your ego, your pride, your selfish ambition, your competition, your lust, my lust. He wants to break it and shatter it and bring it to nothing and grind it to powder so that he can use me and use you. We see this happen over and over here on Mount Carmel. In our rehabilitation center, drug addicts come in and they are filled with anger and self contempt and little by little they get broken and broken and young people then come to the Lord, Jews learn to love the Father, are reconciled to God, then they are reconciled to each other. It's not easy for a Jew to be reconciled to an Arab or an Arab to be reconciled to a Jew. They live together at House of Victory here on Mount Carmel. Not only that, the Lord has spoken to us about being a good Samaritan. Don't just leave people on the streets but bring them in. That takes brokenness. I know, I've stayed up all night praying with drug addicts, alcoholics and in recent years Rita Sukahira, the wife of Pastor Peter Sukahira, is leading our women's shelter and now we have refugees from all over Darfur and Eritrea, mothers, widows, single moms, children, some of them are Muslims, coming and living on Mount Carmel as we minister to them. It takes broken people to do that. The Lord is looking for a people who will be broken, who will go to the restored altar of the Lord. Do you have a prayer altar every morning? Do you go to Him and repent? Do you go to Him and cry out to Him? Do you go to Him and ask the Holy Spirit to speak through you and pray through you to reach the lost sheep of the house of Israel for us or for you, the lost sheep of the house of whatever nation you're in. So the Lord is looking for, He always uses broken things. That lady broke her alabaster box and out of it came that beautiful fragrance of Yeshua, that Yeshua was anointed by and was so ministered to. Be a broken person. Ask the Lord to help you be broken before Him so that He might use you to reach your generation even as He's doing this on Mount Carmel in Israel with Arabs and Jews in these last days.