OCT 19 2025 | Elijah: From Drought to Downpour S1E8 | Repair The Altar

Sea Change Church · Elijah: From Drought to Downpour · "Repair The Altar" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · October 19, 2025
1 Kings 18:30-35
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

and as a community we can change the world. We can do things that change the world. In the name of the Father, son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Bless you guys. The book of First Kings chapter 18 verses 30 through 35. Then Elijah said to all the people come near to me and all the people came near to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came saying, Israel shall be your name.

And with the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. And he made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two seas of seed. And he put the wood in order and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, fill four jars with water and pour it on the bird offering and on the wood. And he said, do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And he said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time.

And the water ran around the altar and filled the trench also with water. This is the word of the Lord. All right, if you have your bibles open up to one kings this week, we got it right. Not the book of Elijah one Kings 18. There is no book of Elijah. And uh, we're gonna be back in this story. I've got two more weeks in this story story of Elijah that is this prophet who God sends into a world that needs his message in a world that needs God.

And the thing that the, I guess the main thing we're trying to, to give in this passage is that God is calling each of us into the world to make a difference, to form something, to shape something, to give a word that changes the world, that desperately needs a message of hope and a message of Jesus. Uh, there's a key word today. I want you to write on the top of your notes. That word is proximity. Proximity. Proximity means what you're close to, what you're close to, the things you are closest to, the things you live in oftentimes will form the life you live out.

The people that you live with will in great measure form or direct the life you live out. You're gonna see this, I I came across this painting as preparing for this. Today is Rafael's work. It's um, the called the School of Athens. And I love it. The School of Athens is this painting by Raphael, somewhere between 15 0 2, 15, uh oh four, commissioned by the Pope back in the day to show the, the greatness of, uh, western civilization and where it came from, from the Greeks.

And there you have at the Acropolis, uh, I was actually arrested at the Acropolis one time. That's true story. Little non sidebar. It was closed down because of a strike. If you've ever been to Greece, there's constant strikes. So everything's closed right all the time. And my friend and I thought we should just jump over the fence at two in the morning. And so we did and we ran up to the steps of the Acropolis until the guard dog bit my friend.

And we were just slightly arrested and then they let us out after checking us for antiquities. True story at my friend was bit about where Socrates is right there. There's a picture there of of, of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Then you have Omi. One of the things, if you don't know it, um, Socrates was the teacher of Plato. Plato was the mentor and teacher of Aristotle. If you've decompartmentalize them, I want you to re compartmentalize them.

And Aristotle went to Macedonia and had a pupil. And that pupil's name was, anybody know Alexander the Great. That's right. Alexander The Great you should be on jeopardy. That's very, very good. Proximity will affect your course. Who you are near will affect where you go play. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the great Alexander, the great, probably the conquered more of the world than anyone ever. I'm not saying he was an awesome guy, but whom you are near will greatly affect you.

So in the collaborative relationships of your life, let me ask this. Who are you spending time with? And are they like John Maxwell, who was my former pastor growing up? Are they eagles or pigeons? I know, right? He said that, he said, you want to fly with eagles. There's wrong with the pigeon. God created a pigeon. But I think the metaphor means are you going to soar? Are you gonna hang out in the park eating breadcrumbs?

Let's go to this passage here because we see a proximity not only with the people you're spending time with, but a proximity to Elijah, who is a Christ figure in this passage. And he's calling the people to come unto him. If you can go to verse 30, then Elijah said to all the people, all the people come near to me, circle that come near to me. And all the people came near to him. Now this is important, remember, because there's a showdown going on if you've missed it, there's a showdown.

Elijah has challenged the prophets, the false prophets of Baal who are prophets of the king and queen. The king is, is Ahab, and the queen is Jezebel. And he has, he has challenged them to their face and challenged them to a showdown analogy a couple weeks ago was, if we're gonna make spiritual progress in our life, we also need to have showdowns with ourselves, oftentimes with the things that we're doing. And he calls him up to Mount Carmel.

There's a mount that overlooks the valley of Armageddon. And he says, bring 450 profits. There's 450 profits a veil. You bring them and I will be the only prophet that is here. And we will build two altars and have two bulls. And you choose whatever bull you want. And will you guys call for fire? And then when you're done, I'll call for fire. And wherever the fire falls, that will be the God that we will serve. It'll be the God that is true. It'll be the true God.

So he says, you will fall on that, uh, sacrifice. Now he says this and it says, the people replied. That's good. Now why would they say that? 'cause they didn't have to make a choice. They were able to wait. You know, as we do in our society, hedge their bets. Where's the fire gonna fall? That's what we do a lot in consensus today. We've been in a consensus culture for like the last six to eight years. What, what does the, what does the internet think?

What are the, what do the Hollywood stars think? What do the popular, famous people think? Okay, I'm gonna think that. Right? We've just seen that over and over again. That's what the people of Israel were doing now in this incredible moment of grace after that happens. 'cause I, how would you feel if, hey I'm, I got the showdown come onto my side. It's like, hey, the, the God who's gonna bring fires their true God. You want those people to rush over to your side and be on your side away from the prophets of Baal.

How would you feel when no one shows up? That was last week's sermon. How do you live when no one else shows up? When no one else pulls up to your life to be there for you? When you feel alone? Go listen last week to find that the answer to that. But in a moment of grace, Elijah does something. Jesus does. He says to them, come near to me. Go to again to verse 30. He said, all to all the people come near to me. I love that.

I love that. It shows a grace where there could have been rejection. It shows a welcome where there could have been pushing away. And in the same way Jesus is saying, come near to me. So back to that keyword, proximity. How close are you to Jesus? And have you gotten further away? A lot of times I look around, I'm like, where is Jesus? Where'd he go? And I realize that he's in the same place and I'm the one that is wandered two points today.

There's power in proximity. There's power in proximity. And then the second thing we're gonna look at is repairing the altars because he repairs that altar that the fire's gonna fall down upon. We'll look at that in a moment. Power and proximity. Jesus does this. I'm gonna give two ways where ge two places in the, in the New Testament. 'cause we always want this Old Testament to be reaching across, over, you know, or through the cross to the New Testament where we see these connections.

And, and this first king 17 and 18 have all these connections. This one to Jesus. And Jesus says this in John 6 35 and 37, these are the English standard version, my current version of choice. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. I love it that Jesus is is, you know, sometimes Jesus just, he does draw an ear, but there's other times where he's just inviting you.

There's a lot of metaphors there. Knock and he'll open the door. But in this, he says, whoever wants to come unto me, here I am. Do you want to come unto me? And it gives this incredible offer. It says, I'm the bread of life. I'm the one you're going to consume. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Are you hungry? What are you hungry for? What are the needs that your soul cries out for your emotions? Cry out for? He says, for for whoever comes unto me shall not hunger.

And whoever believes in me shall never thirst. That's an incredible promise. My problem is I want to feast at the table that Jesus didn't set right. And I want it to fill my hunger. Although, and I don't know if it's true, remember in the seventies, eighties, they used to say, you know, if you eat Chinese food 30, 30 minutes later, you're gonna be, you're gonna be hungry again. I dunno if you remember that. That was a saying in the seventies and 80 i, I, I think since PF Chang's and other things, maybe they just put more stuff in it that keeps us more full.

But I don't know panda. I like me some panda. I never feel good when I'm done eating panda. But I like eating some panda, right? It hits everything. Salt, sugar, fat. You should pay me for that advertisement, honey shrimp. I go eat these things. I go after 'em and they never keep me full. One of the best things you can do to be full is to be near Jesus. To come unto him and just put yourself where he is today. You're doing a really good job at that.

If you're on the internet, you do a really good job at that, right? That's a place you're bringing yourself near to Jesus in the worship today, as you sing, as you draw in, you're bringing yourself close to Jesus. As you serve the poor, you're bringing yourself closer to Jesus. As you do these rhythms in life, as we'll see, with repairing the altars, we're getting closer and closer to Jesus. And he will fulfill your hunger.

He will give you a drink like he says in John five, to the woman where you will never thirst again. You just have to be close to Jesus. Matthew 1128 and 30 also in the note says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle, I'm lowly in heart. And you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light. How's your yoke right now?

How's your, how's your, your, where you burned out? You striving you, grinding you side hustling. You never need a side hustle with Jesus, right? Because he thank you, Eden. You always chuckle at just the right times. You, you, you don't need to have to be, you know, work an Uber on the side with Jesus. He is going to fulfill you if you let him, if you go to the table that he sets. But once again, there's so many tables that are on offer.

The enemy has so many tables for your marriage. Just another vacation. That bigger house. Or maybe you're, you're not married, that that relationship or whatever, these things are gonna fulfill you. God can use those things through him to fulfill you. Finding him in your marriage will fulfill you through your marriage. If you're finding him through your children, you can put in whatever there He says, come to me. How's your workload? Are you burned out?

You need to come onto Jesus. Are you burned out tired? Can't go another step, one thing after another. How's your proximity to him on a regular basis? I put on the next in, in your notes, finding Jesus in a modern world. I think it's getting harder. The, the noise level. You guys have been telling me you like my, my analogy, the shiny gateway to hell, um, that I call my phone. There's some good stuff you can find some good stuff.

But I do call it a shiny gateway to hell because it'll just suck my life from me. There is no quit in my phone unless the battery runs out. There is no quit. It's calling me. My mind is programmed. Click, click. I gotta look. You ever find yourself just looking at your phone for no reason? You're just looking at it. It's one of the reasons we're going on this Scotland trip. To get back in the rhythm. Finding Jesus in the modern world.

One of the ways you do, I wanna give you a couple practical things. 'cause we really want to be, I wanna be a, a Wednesday. I want this to be a Wednesday sermon. I want this to be a Thursday sermon. As you're coming near to Jesus once again, focusing on verse 30, coming near to Jesus. One of the ways you come near to Jesus is you have to detach from noise and distraction. You ever been to the pier? If you're a surfer and there's a barnacle, you know how hard a barnacle can attach to the pier?

You ever seen those? You get a, we, we, we get attached to noise. We get attached to distraction where we can no longer live in silence because the emotional dragons of our lives start showing up. And you have to start thinking through things. You have to start working through things. You're never gonna get through it by distracting from it and inviting Jesus into it. Inviting the word of God into it is how we begin to come near to him in those difficult situations.

So I put in a digital age, one of the most counter-cultural ways to come to Jesus is to be still, if you're not going to Scotland this year, I hope we can do it again next year. Those that are going, we are gonna have four days on an island that has had a monastery on it for like 1500 years, right? We're gonna have one full day of silence. There's no cell phone coverage. I went and looked at the pictures of the island.

All you do is you just walk around and sit with Jesus. It's so important. If you're Catholic, you get this. If you're Protestant, you're like, whatcha, are you guys going to Scotland for, you're gonna shop and go to Christmas markets? No, we're gonna try to reset because it's important and we can do, we're gonna do some local stuff to give opportunities as well. But I I, I think Jesus is calling you to detach from noise and distraction.

And for some of us, myself included, it's gonna be like getting a barnacle off the bottom of a barge. What is that gonna take? It's gonna take a chisel. It's gonna take a hammer. And the question, are you willing? Do you, can you live in the silence? Depeche mode said What? Enjoy the silence detaching from the noise and distraction. When you do that, Jesus will be closer. When you do that, Jesus, when you get back into the word, he's saying, come unto me.

So the way to come onto him is to detach verse 30 once again. Then Elijah said to all the people, all the people come near to me. It's hard to come near to him when you're hugging the pylon of the pier, like a barnacle that is distraction and noise. The next time I'm gonna encourage you to live in spiritual rhythms. What are your rhythms look like? What's your rhythm of the word in your life? Is it just every so often?

I, somebody, somebody came to me in the church. I was talking to this and I said, you know, how's your Bible reading? Well, I, I'm pretty good. I I read through the entire Bible four times a year. I was like, four times a year. What you beast? That's amazing. I I try to get through it once a year. I was like, oh my goodness. I'm like, okay, well don't worry about that one. You're, you're good on that one. Coming onto Jesus's rhythm, right?

We're taking Jesus where we go. But metaphorically, you're going into work and then you're, you're, you're, you're, you're coming back to him at work. What does that look? Is there a rhythm? You're prayer. What's your prayer? Life? The rhythm. We're gonna, as we get to the final point here, just moving to the second point in just a second, about rebuilding these rhythms in your life. Or is your rhythm like an algorithm?

Lemme tell you what an algorithm is. An algorithm will find out a bunch of things you like and throw them at you systematically in different order. And it'll keep you off balance. Even though there are things you like, your algorithm. If you wanna know somebody, you know what they're into at the moment. Just, Hey, can I look at your Instagram algorithm, right? It's gonna be puppies. Then you're gonna see a comedian and then highlights from the baseball division World series right now.

And then, and then it's gonna gimme the next one and the next one and the next one. And it's gonna be this free running of like stuff. And it's all, you know, good, it's all stuff you like, but there's no rhythm to it. It's an algorithm that is just sending all this different stuff. I want to encourage you to take back the rhythm of your life so that you're not directed by the algorithm of others. Oh, they know what you like. It's partially you, you like cooking, you like, you just, what, what, what do they call it?

What do they call it now? There's Gen Z thing. It's called bed rotting, right? No, I I've talked to some of them eight hours, man in their, in their bed. Eight hours. I have a kid, multiple. I've talked to six, eight hours just in an algorithm. Someone else is setting up, trying to sell you something, trying to direct you. I wanna encourage you, even as adults, take back the rhythm of your life. What does it look like to find Jesus first thing in the morning?

What does it look like to find him at noon studying the monastics right now? There's this rhythm. They live in a rhythm. Come back to Jesus. The next thing, um, oh actually I wanna, I wanna, um, give this quote by Dallas Willard and we'll come in for the second one. The most important thing in your life is not what you do, it's who you become. That's what will, you will take into eternity. And you become that person by living close to Jesus.

I know what keeps me from Jesus. I just know. And I want to drive those things out so that every part of my day, I'm living closer to him. How do we do that? Well, you do it by rebuilding sometimes. Go to verse 30, be about halfway through. And all the people came near to him, which I thought was awesome. That was awesome. Something in the, the, the gentility of his voice or the command of his voice. They came near to him before the fire fell and he repaired, circle, repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down.

And Elijah took 12 stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had came saying, Israel shall be your name. And with the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord before calling fire from heaven. Elijah did something first. He rebuilt the altar. Do you wanna know? I just realized the Lord was really faithful with me. 'cause I was asking him some questions. You know, why, why, why is this?

Why am I striving for this to happen when I know you called me to do it? I'm waiting for the fire to fall. Why am I striving? He goes, 'cause you're not willing to rebuild the altar. You're not willing to do the hard work, the boring work of all the steps that need to go into place. You just want the fire. How many of us, we know what it's supposed to look like. We know it's a good thing. We know what the fire will look like when God falls him on it.

But all the InBetween work of brick and mortar to build an altar, which is not fun. All the stuff that goes into making a, you know, a relationship with your children, actually work. All the hard emotional work that goes into that, or whatever that thing is, your business or whatever, we wanna skip all that. The prayer, the fasting. We wanna skip all that because we want the fire because we're people of fire, right? And he's called us and we want the fire.

So we to skip on over, I'm gonna say the fire doesn't come until the altar is built or rebuilt. And some of us, myself included with some things, some things here at the church, been waiting. God's given us visions, dreams. I'm like grinding. I'm just grinding to make this thing happen. It's not happening. But I know he's giving me words. And I, and he keeps telling me, but it hasn't happened. He says, you gotta go do some altar work.

You gotta go work on the altar and do things and raise the people up and cast the vision and do the training and do all the hard stuff when I just want fire. I've seen it before and I just want fire. And so if you want fire, but you haven't been willing to do the work, then work, then maybe there's a road right now that you see where you can go back and start rebuilding those. That altar, it says he came and he, he numbered those up.

I, I put understanding altars in the, in the notes altars are the sacred spaces. Our priorities in our lives where we intentionally meet with God, we honor him, offer parts of ourselves, our time, trust, relationship, obedience, and acts of worship. Man, I really want to see fire fall on gen, on Gen Z, on the whole church on every generation. My mom's generation as well. I think she's silent generation. Um, might be right after that.

Uh, boomers, gen X alpha really intrigued. I'm watching Alpha right now. What you all bout watching ZI wanna see the fire fall on Z. And I'm like, God, what are we gonna do? Should we, you know, I just, I I just want the fire. And the Lord's like, you gotta start slow, man. You gotta just meet across the table with a few kids and raise them up in Christ. No, but I want a thousand at a conference singing circuit writer songs.

But on your backpack, you don't know that song, but you'll see it soon. I just want the fire, right? I want to see all those things that I see on Instagram. But God's like, you gotta do the work. Yo you gotta do the hard stuff now, put that into your life right now. What altar needs to be rebuilt? What are the hard things that happen? He had, I'm gonna give you just 12. He had 12 stones that he used to rebuild. And these are things you can rebuild in your life.

One prayer that's stone. What's your prayer life look like? Is it random? Well, I'm always praying. I'm always praying too, right? But always praying and always be praying. I don't think takes away the necessity for sitting 15, 20 minutes, half hour, an hour with God, whatever it is. The word of God. What's the word of God look like in your life? What's your marriage look like? You want the fire, but you're not doing the work.

How's your health? You want healing. You haven't changed your lifestyle. You want rest, but you keep grinding. You want community, but you isolate yourself. You want purpose, but you go after the wrong things. You have gratitude, but you're always complaining. You want repentance. But we live in a way that runs from God giving service, worship. These are things, these are stones. And you can add the stones that you want there.

You can find the stones that need to be repaired, that you need to pull that out and say, I need to re, I need to change that. So let me just say this, as we come in for a landing, what destroys alt altars? Because remember, the altar had been torn down. And I have found that the altars that get broken down in my life so often don't happen. Like I didn't go like what happened in Israel and just tear the altar down, down.

You know, that's what happened to these altars. The prophets of Baal tore down God's altar. So he rebuilds it. They happen a little bit more like this one is neglect. Good things become fragile when they're ignored. Neglect, you just slowly start caring for something. When I was, um, in Al-Anon, which is a, um, a sister program to aa and I had a sponsor, sponsor said to me, Hey, because I was moving really fast. He goes, I want you to do, he was a rosa, which if you don't know a Rosa, you take care of roses, right?

And he says, I want you to go buy eight rose bushes and I want you to plant them. And he goes, I want you to care for them and tenderly each day, and I want you to, to grow roses. And he gimme a little plan. He goes, if you can care for eight rose bushes, your life's rhythm is on track. His whole point was, if you, if you have enough margin in your life to not, it's not easy to make it work. Clip, clip, clip, clip, clip, clip.

You know, I felt like a, you know, bon side tree from the karate kid, you know, but I couldn't neglect it. He said, if you have the time to do that was just a thing. It was actually true when I was on that rhythm, it was just part of it. And I actually made each one of those. I would pray over 'em. One was my friend's marriage. I would just pray as I, as I clipped it, intended it. And I ended up, it ended up being a really important part of my spiritual life.

Neglect, what have you. Neglected. Has something been neglected? Idolatry. Like Israel, we let other things, success, entertainment of the, uh, ourself take God's place. They become these idols. Here's a big one. I think for so many of us, wounds and disappointment. Pain makes us pull away from the very places God wants to heal. Pain will make us pull away where God's like, I want you to show up. Come, come close to me.

Take me with you into that difficult place. And then when I already hit distraction and busyness, we crowd out time with God. And the altars crumble under life clutter. I'm just gonna give a, uh, an analogy of how this happened to me recently. In the last, uh, we have, we're in empty nesters now and the whole thing, and that will just change your whole rhythm. And I realized I was doing this sermon. There's a couple things that have actually just, it wasn't on purpose.

I just stopped doing 'em after 30 years of doing them. One was I realized I was making decisions. I was making decisions quicker than normal. And I wasn't getting the same results wisdom wise outta my decisions. And people have often come to me and said, Hey, I, I just wanna get some wisdom from you and I appreciate the wisdom that you seem to share, whatever. And I've told you for a long time, I read a, a proverb every single day.

There's one for every single day of the, of the month. There's 31 and there's one for every day. And so for literally 25 years, I've read the proverbs every day, the full chapter. I changed to listening to the Bible this year to listen through it just audio wise. And it has a small proverb in it, but it's not the whole chapter. And I don't even remember when I did it, but I just realized I didn't even remember when it happened.

Around February, I stopped reading the proverb every day and I'm like, I didn't even, I don't know how to explain it. I just realized I'd stopped doing it. But I didn't know that I had stopped doing it after 30 years or 25 years of doing it. And my, my, my, the wisdom in my life suffered because I have to say nothing calibrates my day like the proverbs, I get all excited about something. The Proverbs all, Hey, better one hand with peace than two fistfuls with striving.

I'll be like, you know what a second thought. I'm not gonna do that today. That was one thing since our kids moved out. We haven't done a date night. We have done date night since we, since we, before we were engaged, we did that for, we've been married 28, we've been doing it for 30 years. All of a sudden, I look back since June may, we didn't plan on it. It didn't change. We don't have to do date night 'cause there's no kids.

Like you don't need a date. I, we have kids, no kids around. You know, just where you have to go out and plan it. I thought, whoa, I didn't even know we did it. I just realized it wasn't there anymore. Maybe that's you. Maybe there's something you've done that's just gone and it's time to rebuild the altar. It's time to look at those things in your life, whether it's your health. Maybe you used to really care about your diet, maybe your prayer life, your relationship with your kid.

You called 'em. I don't know what you're thinking. There's a million things here. A million. You know, all of you are here, but there's things that need to be rebuilt. I want to just say this last thing as a word of grace and then give you an opportunity. A broken altar doesn't mean God left you, it just means it's time to rebuild. It doesn't mean God left you, it's just time to rebuild. I'm gonna bring the prayer team up right now and I, and we're gonna do a final song and the worship team is gonna come back on and we have, I don't know where they went.

Joshua, where'd they go? You got 'em. We got these stones. I went to Home Depot last night, picked up a bunch of cool river rock and during this last song, if you have an altar that needs to be rebuilt, prayer team's gonna be up here. They got these little rocks fresh from Home Depot. I washed them by hand for you. That's where they went. You come forward, you know what it is. And I would go home. You're gonna take one, two, or three of these, whatever you need.

You go home and you write that and you put 'em out in your house. You put my marriage, you put my prayer life, you write whatever on their knees and you begin to rebuild because we want to see the fire come and fire doesn't come on. Broken altars. Let's sing and we'll open it up for you guys to come forward. Jesus. Your Name. You Name, It's the name. It's the greatest above Jesus name. It's the highest Name it, the greatest name Above.

We cocreation Holy To the Holy Jesus. Your name, Jesus. In Your name. It's the highest Your name. It's The your name. Singing confidence, all prongs. Jesus. Your name is the highest. Your Name, it's the Greatest. Your Name stands above And all. All it stands. And hear your people king. And you'll always be holy. You'll always be, you'll Close the service. Somebody know that the band's gonna continue on and the team will be up here for prayer.

If you were stuck in the middle and couldn't get out to get a stone, take one.