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for the most holy place. And the doors of the house of the temple were of gold. And for the bride of the Holy Spirit, and the father of the Holy Spirit, and the son of the Holy Spirit, and the son of the Holy Spirit, and the son of the Lord, and the son of the heart of the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right. Amen. Look down at verse number one. It says, Moreover, he made an altar of brass, twenty cubits the length thereof, and twenty cubits the breadth thereof, and ten cubits the height thereof. Preaching about the subject of altar calls this evening here. The title of the sermon is The Falter of the Modern Day Altar. The Falter of the Modern Day Altar. You know what falter means. It means to lose strength or momentum. And as we study this subject out of modern day New Testament church altar calls, you're going to see that that idea begins to falter as we study through the Bible, and eventually crashes and burns. I've gotten some inquiries about this. I'm not really sure from who. Some people that come in here and visit, I don't know if, sometimes we have to get their names, sometimes we don't. I'm not sure if they're the ones emailing, Hey, how come we don't have an altar call? Or texting, Hey, what about the altar call? We've had a lot of people from other Baptist churches coming in here, and so I just want to have something on record where we stand on that issue, because it's important. You just read this whole entire chapter, and one thing that is not lacking are details. Right? There are details. Now, if you take the word altar, and you put it into your Bible software, it's probably going to come up to like 400 and, I forgot, 430 something times that it appears in the Bible. And so with one word appearing in the Bible that many times, if there was a mandate or an obligatory statement in the New Testament, or some kind of proof text that we should have altar calls, or even that it's a good idea, certainly it would be within one of those 430 something times in the Bible. Okay? And so just keep that in mind as we go through this. And if you're not familiar with what an altar call is, you know, in Baptist churches, it's real popular. You know, they'll say something at the end of the service, basically like, you know, every head bowed, eyes closed, nobody looking around, you know? And it's basically where they invite people to come up to the front. And one thing, this doctrine here of doing that or doing altar calls, it seems like it knows no bounds, right? There's all kinds of denominations. You know, you have the Catholic church, they take it to a whole different level. You know, Nazarenes do it from time to time. Charismatics do it a lot. I mean, like I said, Baptist. And there are some churches nowadays that are getting away from it. But basically the idea with altar calls is to get salvation or sanctification. Okay? That's basically what they will tell you the whole thing is for. But basically it puts you on blast. You know, the pastor will call for you to come down here and either get saved or you call down here and you make a change in your life. And one thing right off of the bat that I don't like about that is it allows the preacher to not have to prepare sermons as hard. You know, because if you think about it, if you have that system in your church, you could just default to trusting that. Well, you know, we'll get the music going, we'll get the emotions rolling, and we'll just prod the people up here and then it's on them. You know, we can really kind of pressure them into making a decision. One thing that I always noticed at these altar calls is that it was always like the same people running up there every single service. And it's like you're not making any of the changes that the pastor was talking about. So is it really profitable? Is it really productive? Does it have a place in modern Christianity? I think you're going to find the answer is an overwhelming no, it does not. Now you can leave your place there and go to Exodus chapter 27. So it's talking about Solomon, how he made an altar of brass. He makes this brazen altar. Now there's all kinds of different descriptions about the altars and the Bible. You've got the altar of incense, you've got the brazen altar, which Solomon has made right here. And this can actually, you can see the precursor to this altar that he makes all the way back in Exodus chapter number 27. And so we're going to read that here in a moment. But before we do, I'm just going to give you a quick little history rundown of altar calls. So I took this from a website that supports altar calls. They got the statement on here. It reads like this. It says, evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody and Billy Sunday also employed invitations to come to the front of the preaching hall. For Sunday, the journey to the front in response to a gospel invitation became known as hitting the sawdust trail. Billy Graham issued the most famous invitations of all, telling people, your friends await you down at the front. And it says, as they sang, just as I am. Now, I like that hymn. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I've been to churches where that is the only hymn that they play at the end of the service. And you're talking, you know, after the preaching's over, you're talking sometimes a half hour, 45 minutes of just just as I am until the last guy crying up at the so-called altar is done and leaves. When I was in Japan, that's how it was. There was no other hymn that they would play. It was just as I am. You know, and like I said, I like that hymn. But after a while, I was like, man, I remember one time, it was just, I think it was a Wednesday night, and they were getting ready to do the altar thing. And the deacon's wife, right? You know, he's like, all right, everybody grab your handbook. There's always new people, right? So the pastor would still have you grab your handbook, whether you're coming to the altar or not, and tell you to turn to just as I am. And I remember she picks up the book and then she realized what song it was and she slams the book real hard and she puts it under the chair and she looks at me, and I don't know why she looked at me, but she just started like shaking her head, like she's just sick of that song. I never brought it up afterwards, but I could just tell, you know. She was just distraught, hoping for, you know, one time in her life maybe that they would sing a different hymn. But, you know, and right off the bat, you know, another thing that's wrong with this is that, you know, there's a lot of people that don't like to get up in front of a crowd and make a decision, you know, whether that's salvation or sanctification. And, you know, and like I said, it takes away the emphasis of the preacher having to communicate for a change is what it does in a lot of cases, you know, because the preacher just gets used to, well, you know, I can just get them up here to the front, they can make a decision, and if they don't, that's on them. They're being disobedient, but in reality it's the preacher, it's the church that are being disobedient because that system is a fraud. And really it's just copying what I just read to you out of this history. Guys like Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, you know, you go study these people out, they're not people that you would really want to learn from in my opinion, especially Billy Graham, right? He made this thing really popular. So this isn't something like that's been, you know, handed down from the days of Acts all the way till today, right? It's something that these people made popular. It's a secular idea. It's satanic. That's right, it's satanic. You're going to see that this evening as well. It's not biblical and we need to fight against stuff that's not biblical, right? We want to be a church that does things accordingly, right? We're supposed to run the church service in decency and in order. And if you can't find that order described in the Bible, then we have a problem. And you know a lot of people say, well, you know, it's not that it's unbiblical or that it's biblical, it's just a tradition, it's just something we do. It's not hurting anybody. In fact, it's helping some people. And I beg to differ, and I'm going to show you that here momentarily. But just going back to this bronze altar idea here, look at Exodus chapter 27 and verse number 1. So God tells Moses this, Now obviously this is for the tabernacle and when they made the temple. Obviously you can see Solomon's altar was much larger. Verse 2, So again, when God is giving instructions for the children of Israel to make this brazen altar, this altar which they will do sacrifices on, he's giving very detailed descriptions on how it should be made. Verse 4, And it just goes on and gives description after description. You know, lots of details. That's what you're going to find when you read these passages here in Exodus. Now you can leave your place there and go to 2 Kings chapter number 16. 2 Kings chapter number 16. And so God's setting up the nation of Israel here. We'll visit the chapter later, but in chapter 20 he gives them some descriptions on how to make an altar if they're going to do a sacrifice. And he talks about not lifting a tool up on it or making stairs. We'll get into that momentarily. But in this passage here, he's telling them exactly the dimensions and how to build it and the purpose of it. And I mean, you think about that, right? They had less scripture, less revelation than we have, obviously. But yet somehow today we're supposed to believe that there's this abundance of evidence and that it's okay to have people leave their seats and come up to the front and start crying and make a decision on salvation or make a decision on sanctification. I mean, don't you think after just reading these Old Testament passages there should be something clear, something detailed in the New Testament if God wants us to have something called altar calls. And you can change the name if you want. You just come down to the front. We just won't call it an altar. It's still an unbiblical concept. It still singles people out. It's not okay. Now, we're going to study this here in 2 Kings 16. We're going to take a look at King Ahaz. King Ahaz was a wicked king of Judah, believe it or not. The Bible says he followed the ways of the kings of Israel. He took power when he was about 20 years old. And the Bible says that Israel and Syria actually came and fought against him, but they couldn't overcome him. And because he was wicked, what he decided to do was he's like, okay, well, I'm going to go get the Assyrians to help me in battle instead of going to the Lord. That's what a lot of these wicked kings would do. They realize they're out of the will of God. They don't even want to go seek his help. And they come up with stupid ideas like this. But he's actually going to go meet with the king of Assyria and then he's going to get this idea. And it's actually, I'm going to show you how this affects the altar that we read about in 2 Chronicles chapter 4. Okay, look it down. Let's see. Let's start here in verse number 9. So it says, And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him, for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and took it and carried the people of it captive to cure and slew resin. Verse 10. And King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tildath-Pill-Leaser. I just want to call him Pillsbury Doughboy. King of Assyria and saw an altar that was at Damascus. Okay, now get this here in your mind. He's asked this wicked king for help instead of God. The king of Assyria says, all right, I got you. He goes, takes Damascus. And now all of a sudden Ahaz wants to go meet him. And then while he's there in Damascus, he sees an altar. Now who thinks that this altar is made according to Exodus chapter 27 or according to the law of God? No, it's made after the hearts of men. See the altar and the things that were made in the sanctuary, the tabernacle and in those things, the Bible says that those were made after a similitude of things that are in heaven. They were made with those details in mind because God wanted them to see, hey, this is what it is like in heaven. This is a description, right? This is to teach you something on an ongoing basis. Okay, and so you can already with that in mind see how this is a big problem here. So he sees this altar in Damascus and it says in King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest the fashion of the altar and the pattern of it according to all the workmanship thereof. So he sees this thing and he probably draws a sketch, right? He's like, this is great. You know what I'll do? I'll just have my priest, right, my godly, God-fearing priest actually make this up for me. Now what do you think the priest should have done here? Say no, tear that thing up and chuck it, right? That's what he should have done, but you know what? Wicked kings, wicked people like that, politicians, CEOs, all of them, they don't like to surround themselves with people that are about the truth, do they? So that's exactly what you're going to see happen. He's like, sure, no problem, boss. Look at verse 11. And Uriah the priest built an altar according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus. So Uriah the priest made it against the King Ahaz, I'm sorry, Uriah the priest made it against King Ahaz came from Damascus. Verse 12, and when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar and the king approached to the altar and offered thereon. So a gross violation of scripture here. Verse 13, it says, and he burnt his burnt offering and his meat offering and poured his drink offering and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings upon the altar and he brought also the brazen altar, now don't miss this, which was before the Lord from the forefront of the house from between the altar and the house of the Lord and put it on the north side of the altar. So what is Ahaz doing here? He's literally dismantling the temple at this point. He's saying, I like this worldly concept that I saw in Damascus, which obviously is a picture of the world, it's outside of Israel, it's outside of God's will, it's not a concept that God endorsed at all. He sees that worldly concept and decides to bring it into God's house, into where God's people are supposed to go and do their offerings and so on and so forth and he thinks there's no big deal with this and he says, you know what, we're going to take that old thing, we're going to take that old tradition in that old brazen altar and we're going to actually move that out of the way here and we'll figure out what we're going to do with it here in a moment. So verse 14, and he brought also the brazen altar, which was before the Lord from the forefront of the house, right, from between the altar and the house of the Lord and put it on the north side of the altar. Verse 15, and King Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, saying, upon the great altar burned the morning burnt offering and the evening meat offering and the king's burnt sacrifice and his meat offering with the burnt offering of all the people of the land and their meat offering and their drink offerings and sprinkle it upon the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice and the brazen altar shall be for me to inquire by. So what does he do? He causes the entire nation to go corrupt now. Think of that. He's bringing the world, so to speak, into church. Now obviously we're talking about the temple here, but it's a picture of God's house. It's a picture of where God's statutes and his commandments are supposed to be ruling and reigning. But Ahaz has another idea. He has a different plan. And you know what? There's nothing new under the sun today. That is exactly what's going on in modern day Christianity. That's going on in a lot of Baptist churches today. And look, these people will fight tooth and nail to defend their altars. We used to go to a Baptist church and the pastor would just really start to go ham on people for not coming up to the altar. You know, you guys haven't been up here in months. There's people who have never been up here. You know, we need people making decisions every single service. He would say stuff like this. I remember he said this one quote and I've never forgotten it. He says, you know what guys? I wouldn't walk across the street to give a dime to a church that did not do an altar call. So what does that mean? Does that mean he would go give a dime to the Catholic church? Does that mean he'd go give a dime to the Pentecostal church? Does that mean he'd go give a dime to just any old church because they have an altar? I never decided to ask him because I didn't want to start a fight and I knew where he was going with that. He was attacking the new IFB at that time. That's why he was saying that. Because probably what, 50% of his church at that point in time were people like us. You know, and we wouldn't go to the altar because it's unbiblical. But you know what? He's kind of like Ahaz in that, you know? Where did he get that? He got that as a tradition passed down to him from his pastor and from his Bible college. Who taught him that? But I'm telling you right now and you're going to see the faltering of this idea. It is not mentioned in the Bible. We are told very clearly on how to get salvation and how to get sanctification from God's people. And I'll tell you what, it has nothing to do with you getting up out of your seat while they've got the music going and coming down to the front and crying or whatever the case may be. But going back to the story here, I mean if you look again at verse 15, it says he commands the priests. So now he's corrupted the religious leadership, right? And then what else does he do? He perverts the Lord's offerings and it says that the burnt offering of all the people of the land. So now this has affected everybody. And he should have had a major uproar during this time, don't you think? Don't you think people should have been like, hey, what are you doing? Especially the priest who should have had access to the law. And in fact, I would submit to you that he knew better. But people get complacent and they allow their covetousness, they allow their disdain for contentment to basically overshadow what they know that they should be doing. And so this priest, he's got no problem with it. He's like, sure, I'll make it and we'll just roll right along with it. Something new? Maybe he's thinking, hey, maybe this will revive the people. Maybe this will do it. You know, if you ever get into a situation like that, you ought to run. Because we always should go to the Word of God to prove whether things are true or whether or not they are false. And you know what? There's a lot of things that we do that aren't in the Bible, like our chili cook-off. Different things like that, but that's not sin. You know what I mean? The word altar, like I said, appears in the Bible over 430 times. So if there should be a thing as an altar call where you come up to the front and you put on this grand display of repentance or whatever they're trying to get out of you, certainly we should be able to find a verse regarding that. But we don't find that in the Bible. In fact, in the New Testament when you read the word altar, most of the time it's talking about the Old Testament altars and their purpose. It's shedding light on those things and it's making application for today. Okay, and we'll get into that here more in a minute. But I want you to know what he winds up doing with the old brazen altar that we started off reading about in Chronicles. Look at the last part of verse 15 there. It says, And the brazen altar shall be for me to inquire by. Now what in the world does that mean? It means he turned it into a thing of divination. Right? Think about it. It went from its original purpose of sacrificing. Now what he's doing is he's using it in like this superstitious way where he's going to inquire by it, like it's some sort of a prophet. Now that is extremely, extremely wicked. And the Bible backs that up, what I just said there. It's a wicked thing. Ahaz was a wicked king. He piled around, you know, with obviously devils and did all sorts of wickedness. Now you can leave your place there and go to Isaiah chapter number 65. But I think that's just a perfect picture of what we have today in the world. Right? You have a bunch of people that have the manner of Ahaz that go out and look into the world and try to find new concepts, things that they like, things that are flashy or essential, and they want to bring those into God's house. And then they take the things that are supposed to be in place like soul winning, like just hard preaching, and they put that in the back of the room. They put that in the north of the room and they're like, Well, I'll just go over there and I'll inquire by that. Right? I'll go there and I'll pervert that and then I'll just do whatever I will. And you know what that is? That's satanic. That is satanic. When you take God's truth and you take it out of place and you put it in the back of the room, you put it on top of its head, you reverse it, that's what the devil does. The devil works in opposites. That is how he operates. And that is exactly what you're seeing here with Ahaz. And it's no wonder that's the attitude that we have today in the world. Right? As you see the day approaching, you're going to see more what? Reprobates, more wickedness, more polluting of the things of God. The truth today is just vastly, vastly not popular and out of season. Right? People are not into it. But you know what? We're into the truth here at this church. You know, and that's why I'm preaching this sermon so that when people call or whatever, Hey, I've got a sermon about that. Why don't you go and watch that? Why don't you check this out? But we all need to be up to speed on this because people will say, you know, my favorite part of going to church is the altar. Who's ever heard that before? If you haven't, you will. There are people out here that just love, I mean, they live for that altar call. And you know what? Here's the real scary thing. And I've seen this. And our family has seen this. We've seen people come into the church and it's like, they're low hanging fruit. And you can tell right before the service, they'll listen to the gospel and they want to get saved. Right? But the altar call is going and the pastor is begging them to come down. And guess what? The altar workers are busy, you know, talking or showing off themselves. And they don't get to that person and they leave. And we don't get to preach the gospel to them now. And the pastor's attitude oftentimes in these churches is, oh well, he should have come forth. Or she should have come forth. Well, how wicked is that? And that happens every single week in this country at some type of a church. I'm talking about churches that have the King James Bible, the right gospel. That is eight up. That is not okay. And that is a big problem that I have with these altar calls. And so real quickly here, Isaiah chapter 65. Just look at another example here of people abusing this altar based system here. Look at verse number two. It says, I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good after their own thoughts. And that's what we're dealing with here. Notice what God is saying here. He's saying, hey, I'm going to describe to you a rebellious people who walk after their own thoughts, not after the thoughts of the Bible, not after the thoughts that God has had penned down, but rather what is in their own wicked hearts. Now look at verse three. A people that provoceth me to anger continually to my face. So God says that when we take his statutes and we take his commandments and we say, you know what? We're going to put those in the back of the room. We're going to go put those out in the front of the room. And we'll inquire by them later. We'll go ahead and do what we want later. But now we've got this new Damascus idea, right? We've got this worldly idea. This is this new thing. This is what's going to get it done. God says that's like you getting in my face and telling me that I am wrong. Now, who here thinks that that's a good idea to get in God's face? That's not a good idea. And you know that. But that is how God is describing this attitude and this behavior. A people that provoceth me to anger, verse three, continually to my face, that sacrifice in gardens and burneth incense upon altars of brick. All of those things are wrong. Right? We don't have time to go back and forth and show you. But just read Exodus, read Leviticus. I mean, it's very clear in the law that they were not supposed to do these things. They were supposed to cast down the high places. They weren't supposed to be burning these things under the trees. And you know what? That's what Ahaz did. Ahaz did all of that. Right? And this isn't talking about Ahaz, but you will notice if you've read through the Bible that Isaiah, Jeremiah, I think Micaiah, a lot of prophets in the Bible actually spoke of Ahaz. I mean, he basically became like a byword. You know, because think about it. He lived a wicked life as a king of Judah. Now, Judah typically had the better kings. Right? It was Israel that had all the wicked kings. But the ones in Judah that were wicked like Ahaz, they stood out and they left a name for themselves. And it was not good. It was not pretty. Verse number four, look what he says, And it's just no marvel, it's no wonder that in a lot of these churches that really want to pour on the altar call, there's a lot of other abominable things in the vessel as well. I'm not saying like hands down in every single one, but just about. I mean, you know, we're looking back and I was talking to Jessica about this. You know, we think about like, you know, the best church that we could go to in Tacoma was Liberty Baptist Church, you know, and they had soul winning. They had, you know, King James only hymns, all the stuff that you could ask for. And we were happy to find that church. And to this day, we're still happy. The pastor preached very good sermons. He had a lot of experience, but I mean, he was just bent on these altar calls. I mean, he loved them with a passion. And here's the thing, though. Thinking back inside the church, you know, he would allow pedophiles to come in. He would allow sodomites to come in. He would allow all these other wicked things to enter into the service. I remember this one time, this pedophile guy, he just kept coming to church. And the pastor's like, well, you know, we just got to watch him. You know, it's the men's job to keep an eye on him, you know. And the girls remember this very well because he would stalk them and watch them. And I'd have to go up to him and be like, dude, what's going on? You know, the pastor would be like, hey, man, you know, just calm down, you know. And I'm like, this guy is trouble. And they would, I think this happened like three times, where after the service, like, hey, we got a baptism, right? They'd get this guy in the robe. They'd get him over to the baptistry. He'd be sitting down in there. And then the deacon, I think, or the song leader, whatever he was, who preached repent of your sins, by the way, would be like, so do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? And he'd be like, I hope so. And they're like, you just gave the answer out here. He's like, well, I just repeated back to you what you just said, but I'm still just not sure. And he'd shut the curtains, right? He's not ready yet. You know, one more hymn will be dismissed. It's like he's never going to be ready. And you ask yourself, how could these things be inside of a King James only, soul-winning Baptist church? And it's because it starts with the eyeballs going to Damascus and looking at the things of the world, bringing them into the service. God blinds you. The next thing that you know, I mean, you're really going after things of your own heart. Thoughts of their own heart is what he's saying here. And what is the result? Abominable things start to come up in the vessels. It's an abominable thing to have a sodomite inside of the assembly. It's an abominable thing to have a pedophile in your assembly. It's an abominable thing to have a person in leadership in a church that isn't saved, that teaches that you have to turn from your sins to be saved. This guy was a song leader. This guy, I don't know, was he a deacon? Who knows? He's got so many titles. This guy I'm talking about, he's got so many titles. I don't even know. Right? But like, you know, he was just, him and the pastor would argue about repenting of your sins all the time. I'm not kidding. There was one Thursday night soul-winning, they would have a little sermon before the soul-winning starts. And this guy's like, you know why you guys aren't bringing converts to church? Because you're not preaching repentance. You're not telling people that they've actually got to turn from their sins to be saved. You know, and I'm looking at this guy like, I'm like, I'm looking at the pastor, his face is beet red. Right? He's upset. You know, and he's just like, I'm like, shaking my head. I mean, Kaden's about ready to walk out. He's pissed. You know? He's super upset. And there's a new guy at soul-winning, and at the time I didn't know that he was like us. You know, his face is beet red. I had to go calm him down outside. And then the next Sunday, the pastor preaches against repenting your sins, and they just would go back and forth. You know, I'm thinking, what kind of a church really is this? What other things are going on that we don't even know about? I'm not making accusations, but that is how it typically goes. Whether it's smoke, you know what? Soft and fire. And that's really what you see here. I mean, a people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face. You know, I believe if we were to bring that altar call system into this church, that God would look down here and say, you know what, Shield of Faith Baptist Church? You are provoking me to my face, and I don't like it. Because it's not biblical. I mean, think about how many verses we've read so far. Descriptions, right? Descriptions, details on how the brazen altar should be made. Well, guess what? Go to Exodus chapter 20, and we're going to take a look at some more verses about altars. So we'll take a look at some more verses here about these altars. And this is where you really need to pay attention, okay? Now, people are going to say, if you show them some of these verses, they're going to say, well, they lifted up their tools and they built stairs to the brazen altar. And it's like, okay, well, God told them how to make that altar because it was supposed to be after the similitude of the one in heaven. It's supposed to be similar, right? Now, how are you going to take the brazen altar and move that into a New Testament church? How are you going to compare that? You're not going to be able to, right? But people will just loosely take you there and say, well, you know, these verses here in Exodus 20, they were just for like a few months while the tabernacle was being built. Look, I've heard that. It is not true at all. But let's go through these here real quick. Exodus chapter 20, look at verse number 22. It says, And the Lord said to Moses, Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. So this is important. This is not to be overlooked. What he's about to say here is very extremely important and he does not want us to alter these words. Verse 23, Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall you make unto you gods of gold. Verse 24, he says this, An altar, an altar of earth, an altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shall sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen. In all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee and I will bless thee. Now, here is a statement that is true regarding altars in the Bible, right? When you see altars in the Bible, God is actively involved. You know, when they're doing things God's way and they're sacrificing on these altars, God gives a response. No doubt about that. People take that application and they misapply it to today. That is a big problem here. So again, verse 24, notice this. He says, An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me. Do you see what's going on here? Who is supposed to make this altar, the individual child of Israel? Let me put it to you like this. A lot of people, to try to stump you guys, they'll say this. They'll say, you know, the Bible says that, you know, you can't murder in the Ten Commandments and then goes and tells the children of Israel to go kill all the Canaanites. That's a contradiction in the Bible. And it does say that in the Ten Commandments. It says thou shalt not kill. What does that mean? How do you answer that? This is why you have to have a King James Bible. Thou, you of your own accord, under your own influence, under your own will, are not supposed to get up, rise up and go kill somebody, right? That is wrong. Now, if the leader of the nation, if we're at war, if God commissions it, that is a different story. That is no longer murder, okay? That is not murder. That is battle. That is the price of doing business. So what he's saying here is if you guys are off, you know, doing whatever and you need to make a sacrifice, here is what you're going to do. You're going to make an altar, but he says it has to be made of earth. What does that mean? Means of rocks, right? Of things that have not had a tool lifted up upon them. And so he says this in verse number 25, And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone. So he's saying you're not going to get rocks and chisel them or make them into bricks and stack them up all neat, you know, all real neat and nice. He's like, no, I want earth. I want natural products here. He says for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Here's the problem. In a New Testament church, right, most church buildings or whatever, the pulpit or whatever is usually on a platform, right? We don't have one here because we're not large enough to where I really need to be up and elevated so that people can hear me. You know, eventually someday it'll be like that. But what happens to those platforms? Have they had tools lifted upon them? Exactly. So now what do we have? You have a New Testament, so to speak, Bible believing church, if you will, saying come down to the altar that has had a tool lifted up on it, that has not been made of earth, that is not natural. So now you're violating two scriptures. Look at verse 26. He says, Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar. That thy nakedness be not discovered down. I've heard people say this, well, we wear pants and we wear different clothing, so it's a different story, man. This doesn't apply. You've got to learn your hermeneutics, dog. No, dog. I don't need to learn that. I need to learn a couple things out of this verse. God says, Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto whose altar? Unto his. So if you're going to say you've got an altar here, you're making an altar, God's obviously responsive to altar activity in the Old Testament, you better do it his way, because he says it's his altar. So now you've got another issue. You're attacking what is his. You're deliberately violating God's word. And I will submit to you, I'm going to say this right now, and this pisses a lot of people off, but it's true. Every single church in the world today that has an altar call is in violation of God's word. 100%, right across the board. Say, why doesn't your church do altar calls? How come you don't do them? Because it's a violation of scripture. And by the way, if this becomes the altar, what does the rest of the building become? The sanctuary, and we might as well go get the snuffers and the bases, get all the tools, go grab the Levites and bring them in here, and get the Morites and the Kohathites, get them rolling on their duties, and just go back to the old system, which is a huge slap in the face to Christ, isn't it? So verse 26 again, So really quickly, three things from these passages here. If you're going to make an altar, it has to be what? It has to be earth. And can you lift a tool upon it? No. Can it have stairs? No, it can't. And whose does it belong to? It's the Lord's. If you violate any of those things, what have you done? You violated God's word. It is a bad deal here. Now go to Hebrews chapter number 13. Hebrews chapter number 13. And to mitigate this whole being embarrassed thing, you know, in a lot of Baptist churches, they'll be like, you know, all right, every head bowed, eyes closed, nobody looking around. Everybody's looking around, just so you know, right? I was always looking around like, all right, I have like five or six people in mind. I'd be like, all right, I bet so-and-so is going to go up there. I bet this person is going to go up there. I'd be peeking around. I'm not supposed to be doing that, but you know, everybody does that, right? You know, and then the preachers, you know, you bring guests to church. A lot of people think that's weird. You've never been to church. I think something instinctively tells them, you know what, this isn't right. There's something just not right about this, you know? And look, I've been to some liberal, liberal, liberal churches in my day. I'm not going to lie. And even in those liberal churches, you know, even if they didn't have a raised platform, they would still sometimes be like, you know what, we haven't done this in a long time. We're going to bring people up to the altar. And it's not like a real altar, but we just call it an altar. Well, if you call it an altar, you need to abide by God's laws, right? And that is not what you're doing. I mean, think about this. Think about this. This idea has already started to falter, hasn't it? I mean, you've got over 400 verses in the Bible describing altars, and not a single one of them describes the modern-day altar system in the New Testament church. Did Paul do it? Did Peter do it? Did the Lord Jesus Christ do it? No, but I'm going to read to you somebody who thinks that they did here momentarily. And so we need to go back to these verses here because this is really the slam dunk in the New Testament here. Hebrews 13, look at verse number 9. It says, Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines, for it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein. Verse number 10, we have an altar. People will say, see, we got an altar, and they'll stop right there. We have an altar. And the writer of Hebrews is correct. We do have an altar. Look at the rest of the verse. Whereof they have no right to eat, which serve the tabernacle. What he's saying there is these Jew-baggers that want to hang on to the old system, and they want to just zio out and just fumble at the mouth and just Jew, yes, Jew, and all that whole thing, like Treasure Valley Baptist Church, and just be all tripped up on these Jews over there. Those types of people, the people that reject Christ, they have no part in the New Testament altar. That is what he's saying here. Verse number 11, for the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp, meaning outside of the camp. Verse number 12, wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. So who is our altar? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the altar that we have in the New Testament. He did the one-time, once-and-for-all, done-deal sacrifice. We don't need to do it every single Sunday, every Sunday night, every Wednesday. Come up to the altar. Come on, some of you haven't been up here for months. Get up to the altar! It's disgusting. It's a gross, gross, disgusting violation of God's Word. It's a slap in the face to these verses right here. This is the most applicable New Testament verse about altars that you're going to have. And you know what? I say this all the time, and I'm sorry, but it's so true. Most churches today, they don't have this altar inside of their church. They have a Jesus Christ who's okay with changing his word, with putting his words out the window without the camp, right? And then bringing in that Damascus, that Syrian altar, into their service of rock and roll and just all sorts of centralization and debauchery and crap and filth. That is what they have. They have literally exchanged. They've done the Ahaz. The Ahaz exchange, the Ahaz altar. And they've taken the world's religious ideas and brought them into the church in an exchange to do divination. That's what they have done. They don't have the altar of Christ in their church. Because think about it. They have a false gospel, like most of them do, right? I mean, an overwhelming majority. Return or burn, repent of your sins. Well, you're saved by grace, by faith. You don't have to do any works. But if you don't have the works, you're going to hell, right? Both sides of the mouth, right? They've got the gospel over here, and they've got their false gospel over here, just so they've got all bases covered. I even had a Baptist pastor say this one time. He said, we shouldn't give people who teach repent of your sins such a hard time because they still believe in Christ. They just believe they're helping them out by turning from their sins. What's wrong with that? Everything's wrong with that. Go read Romans chapter 4, specifically verse 14, and that will teach you very quickly what is wrong with that idea. It's not what this sermon is about. Now, you can leave your place there, and I'm going to read to you a couple of interesting things. Let me see here. Go to Matthew 28. Matthew number 28. And so, like I said at the beginning of the sermon, people today teach, you know, altar calls are not biblical, but they're not unbiblical. It's just a new concept to help people grow and change in the Lord. It's for salvation, but it's also for sanctification, right? This is obviously not true at all. I'm going to read to you. I just went to a website about altar calls. Some Calvary Chapel guy, not the guy here, but a guy down in California. I forgot what his name is. Got a rather large following like most false prophets do. But he says this about altar calls. Just listen to this. He says, I believe the altar call is both biblical and important. And I believe that the majority of pastors and preachers should give their listeners a clear invitation for faith more than they are doing currently. You see what's going on here? I guarantee you this church has zero soul-winning program. They do not have their feet, right? The church, they do not have their feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Because they're just trusting in the pastor's Billy Graham invitation. Just come down here where your friends wait you. And by the way, at Billy Balaam's, that Billy Graham stupid little invitation, do you know who was waiting for you? The Catholic priest, right? The Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, the Methodist. You know, whatever heresy you came from, you had one of their leaders there waiting for you. Who are you? You come up here to the invitation. Oh, you're a Pentecostal? Oh, here's a Pentecostal guy right over here. Oh, you're a Catholic? Here's a Catholic priest. You know, and they would just send you to whatever so-called faith that you came from. Wicked and disgusting, but he goes on to say this, I hope to make several brief posts here on CalvaryChapel.com looking at the theme from several angles. A good place to begin is to be clear with what I mean by the term altar call. I don't know that there's a universal definition. Here's a universal definition, not biblical. I got that solved for you, buddy. He says, so here's mine. An altar call is a deliberate invitation to profess faith in Jesus Christ as one Savior and Lord. It is a call to decide for Jesus given by a preacher or a teacher. Now, you see what the problem of that is? To profess faith in Jesus Christ. Now, some people, when they say that, I get what they mean, right? They mean, you know, you need to profess him as your Savior. You need to get saved. But what these people mean is that they need to profess, and so they make a profession of faith, and then we'll watch and observe them for the coming months to see if they turn from enough of their sins to see whether or not they're really true. You know, I used to go to one of these Calvary churches, and they would always be talking about a profession of faith. So-and-so made a profession of faith, right? And then he would say, you know, now it's time for these guys to come to our baptism class. And when we baptize once a year, which is kind of like how we're doing it this year because of the whole virus thing, but whatever. You know, then, you know, if they've basically proven themselves, then they can get baptized, right? So now you go from a profession to probation, right? Remember, they don't preach salvation in a lot of these churches. They preach probation, and so that's why he's using this word here, an invitation to profess faith in Jesus Christ, one Savior and Lord. It is a call to decide for Jesus given by the preacher or teacher. We commonly call this an altar call because of the practice. The practice involves asking those who make such a decision to come forward to what is sometimes called the altar of a church meeting room or an area between the front seats and the speaker's platform, right? So now the altar-and he's not lying here. This is what they would all say is the area between the front row seats or pews, whatever the church has, to the speaker's platform. And this gives them the out to where when you're meeting in a hotel or you're meeting at a stadium, you know, wherever the first little bit of the front row seats end, all the way to where the speaker is, that is the altar, right? That is the place where God is going to come meet you if you meet him, and the rest is history, and you'll just be the best Christian ever. Let's see here. What did I leave off here? This area is just called an altar because in a spiritual sense, it is a place of surrender and sacrifice, just as a literal altar was from the Old Testament sacrifice. Got a big problem here because all of these situations violate Exodus chapter 20. You say, yeah, but what about the brazen altar? You know, Solomon made his brazen altar bigger than the one in Exodus chapter 27 and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but it was still after the similitude of things in heaven, which you don't find in a church building. You know what? If you're going to make an altar, you better just either make a brazen altar in the front of the church or make one out of earth and just do it the way that God said, which is still umbilical in the New Testament because we're not supposed to be doing animal sacrifices. Here's his proof text. Jesus called men to decide. In the longest example of Jesus' own preaching, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5 through 7, Jesus ended with a dramatic call to decide, will you build your house on the sand or on the rock? And then he cites Matthew 7, 21 through 27. Is that true? Did Jesus actually give an altar call in Matthew chapter 7? No. You know why I'm not going to have you turn there? Because it just ain't there. Why am I going to have you turn there to look something up that isn't there? When Jesus said, he who is not with me is against me, in Matthew 12 30, he spoke to the need of men and women to decide regarding who he is and what he did for fallen humanity. So he is sidestepping the issue. The issue is, are altar calls biblical? Not are decisions to sanctify yourself biblical? Obviously that is. And of course, Jesus preached for change. That is what he wanted, change. But the idea here, which he is ignoring, is do you have to come up to the front? Is there something special about it? Is there something anointed about that? Is there a special anointing that you get by coming up to the front? No. It's unbiblical is what it is. But he's not going to address that. He's just going to keep loosely quoting these people. Oh, well he preached for change, so that means we can bring people up to the front and you can decide to follow Christ or not. He goes on to say, Peter called men to decide in his famous sermon on Pentecost. We read, and with many other words he testified and exhorted them saying, be saved from this perverse generation. He's quoting some false Bible version there from Acts chapter 2. And then he's just going to keep quoting these false Bible versions all the way through Acts saying that Peter, you know, did the same thing. Did Peter have 3,000 people in Acts chapter 2 come up to the front where he was at and do a sacrifice? No. Are we going to turn there to try to find it? No. Why? Because it ain't there. That's why. Just like it's not there in Matthew. And then he goes on to Paul. Paul called men to decide. Again, this is what people do. Remember, I tell you guys this all the time. People love to distract. You ask somebody, okay, give me a verse about altar calls. And then they'll take you to where there are verses about people making decisions to follow Christ. Well, every sermon should have the goal of getting people to change their minds. The goal of this sermon is to equip you with some verses and some thought to defend our position in church. That's the idea. Am I going to have you come up to the altar? That's ridiculous. But there's verses to support communicating for a change. I mean, that's the whole point of preaching is to get us to change. It's so that we can use God's word and learn from them and apply them to our lives so that we can grow in the Lord. That's the whole point. Everybody knows that. And he knows he can cite those verses. He knows he can get the conversation going in that direction. And then if you're not careful and you were talking with somebody like this, they would pull the good old sorcery trick on you. And you see how this is why I tell people, you know, public debate is very dangerous because that is exactly the tactic that this guy is using. He's sidestepping the issue and he's harping on communicating for a change, which obviously Jesus did. Obviously, Peter did. Obviously, Paul did. Everybody who preaches, everybody who goes sowing, you're communicating for a change. That's not the issue. The issue is coming up to the front and saying that that is an altar, that that is a place of spiritual sacrifice. That is the issue here. But he's not addressing that. He says Paul called men to decide. There are many examples from Paul's preachings in his works, but one that stands out is his preaching to King Agrippa in Acts chapter 26, when Paul said to him, King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you do believe. And he starts quoting. That's not what he says. But, you know, did Paul in bonds, right? I mean, Paul's a prisoner at this time. Was he like, I know I'm shackled up right now, Agrippa. You know, I know I'm like, I've got guards all over me. Would you just come up to this altar here? I'm just going to make an altar where your seat ends, Agrippa, where your little pompous throne ends, and to where I'm speaking, and you just make a decision. No, that's ridiculous. Are we going to turn to Acts chapter 26 to see that? No. Why? Because it's not there. It's not there. And that's what these people, I'm not going to read any more of that, okay? But that is what these people do. They'll sidestep the issue and try to bring the conversation, bring the issue to something that they can point you to. And to the untrained person out there that's listening to this, if you are not careful and you don't catch stuff like that, it could make you look stupid. And this is why I harp so much on details, details, details. Learn the details. At least know where you can go in the Bible to defend your positions, because there are people out there like this that can make you look pretty silly if you're not careful, okay? Now, again, to get change. We are not told anywhere in the Bible whatsoever to bring people up to an altar. In fact, we are told to go in the spirit and the power of the Lord, which is His Gospel, His words, the things that we have written down. You don't have to turn there, but 1 Corinthians 2, 5 says that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So our faith should stand upon this book here in the power of God, right? Not in the wisdom of man's words, not by going to Damascus and saying, wow, look at that concept. Look at that altar. Let me bring that idea into the church. And maybe that'll revive things. Maybe that'll get people interested. No, you're just going to bring a bunch of worldly, heathen people that don't care about God into your service. That is all you're going to do. So how do we get salvation responses from people? How do we get sanctification choices from people? You're there in Matthew 28. Look at verse number 18. Matthew chapter 28. Look at verse 18. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. This is very important because the settled record of God's word is where? It's in heaven. Is all power given unto Jesus Christ in heaven? Yes. Is it given to him in earth? Yes, because that's what he says. So that means that his words have to be powerful and they have to be preserved somewhere down here on this planet today. And this is the power that we are supposed to go in to get real salvation from people and to get real sanctification from people. Look at verse 19. Go ye therefore, he says, So for that reason, so because I have all power in heaven and in earth, he says, Because of that reason, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. How do we get salvation to people? It's by the word of God. By going out and preaching in the power of God's word, not by trusting that somebody is going to have the guts to actually walk down the hall of shame to the front of the building and get it right. OK, that is not. Now, do people get saved that way? Yes. In some Baptist churches, there are people that have the right gospel and they do get people saved. I've seen it. It does happen, but does that make it the best way? Does that make it right? No, you're still violating God's word by calling it an altar. The system is not what God designed. You don't see that in the Bible. OK, now go to Acts Chapter one. I'm gonna have you flip through quite a few verses here and we'll be done. We're getting close to being done. And so they say the altar is for salvation, for sanctification. But Jesus says, hey, no, my word, which is power, that is what is for salvation. You use that to get sanctification from people. Acts Chapter one, verse eight says this, But ye shall receive power. Now, why is it that he says ye shall receive power? Because it's him that gives it to you who is saved, who wants to do his well, do his mission. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Now, obviously, he's talking to the apostles here and he's saying, hey, you specifically, I'm giving you this power. But what was their job supposed to be? To go out and teach all nations, right? Which means we get that same power, we get that same teaching and we pass that down to our kids and they pass that down to their kids. And that power keeps rolling through the generations until he comes back. No altar calls. Go to First Corinthians Chapter number one. First Corinthians Chapter number one. Look at verse number 18. First Corinthians Chapter one, verse 18 says, For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. So when you get up here and you preach a sermon or you go out and you preach the gospel to somebody, you already have the power. If they reject the salvation message or you're talking with somebody out there that you're trying to disciple and they reject that edification, that is not on you. You don't need to go look for a new fancy way to get them to change their mind. You don't need to turn to divination or turn to, you know, something that God gave you to inquire by. You just need to go to the next door. You just need to go to the next person. That's what it is because God's Word has the power to bring change. It's not the altar in the front of the building, right? So it's the gospel that we preach that's the power of God. Go to Second Timothy Chapter number one. Second Timothy Chapter number one and we're just about done. And isn't it kind of strange that a lot of these churches think that going out and preaching the gospel door to door is a foolish idea? A lot of them do that. When we left our Calvary Church to go to the Baptist Church, this is what some of them had said. You don't need to go around door to door and preach the gospel to people. It's like how else are they going to get saved? They don't have an answer for that. Oh wait, it's the altar, right? Or they're just come rolling into church. Because God just puts a desire on everybody's heart to go to church at some point in their life and they just go in there and if they're going to get it, they get it, right? No, that is incorrect. That is wrong. That is not how we do business. Second Timothy Chapter one, look at verse seven. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power. So if he hasn't given us the spirit of fear, then that means he's given us the spirit of what? Of power, right? All power is given unto who? Jesus Christ. What does the rest of the verse say? But of power and of love and of a sound mind, right? The altar call system does not edify, it does not produce Christians with a sound mind. The spirit of power is what produces a sound mind. So a sound mind driven by the spirit of power leads to sound words, which in turn leads to what? Sound doctrine, which leads to what? No altar calls. Think about it. We need to trust this book in the preaching out of this book to change people's lives. See, we can't just default in this church and be like, you know what? You know, I don't have time to write this sermon and sometimes I don't. I mean, I do. But sometimes, you know, time just gets away, man. It's just it is what it is right now. But that's on me. I can't be like, well, I'll just get a change out of them at the altar call. Because I've been to some of these churches, right? And they'll just preach a sermon and it's like one verse in like 30 minutes of stories. And there's nothing wrong with stories. I use them all the time, right? There's a time and a place to tell stories. But they would just tell these stories and then they would have this altar call and then they would just think of something to have the people come change. You know what? A lot of people haven't been here for communion. You know, a lot of people haven't been showing up to the soul any time. You know, the bus ministry is looking kind of thin. We're going to have an altar call today and it has nothing to do with the sermon. And it's like, you need to get up here. You know who I'm talking to. The Holy Ghost is pregnant. Every head bowed, eyes closed. No one looking around, you know. And that's their out. It gives them an out so they don't have to prepare. We don't have that option. We don't have that luxury. And I thank God for that because it forces us to have to look into the things of God and be ready to give an answer to everybody that asks. Right? That's the idea. That's the goal. We need to know these things. This is an important doctrine because people love to play church around here, don't they? And look, you know, a lot of places you go, people are like, Oh, I go to church. And you're like, Yeah, right. No, you don't. They just think of the first church that they can remember driving down the street. Here people actually do go to church. And altars are a big part of all the churches around here, practically. Not all of them, but you know, there are some, you know, that are getting away from it. And we've been to a Baptist church before that wasn't New IFB. And you know, they were smart enough to get rid of the altar call. And we learned a lot there and so on and so forth. But the point is, we need to know these things. Right? It's a violation of scripture. If somebody wants to come out, hey, the reason why I don't want to go to your church is because you don't do the altar call. Well, here's why. Because it's a violation of scripture. Do you do an altar call at your church? I'll bet you have to go up to it by stairs. I'll bet it's had a tool lifted up on it. I'll bet it's not made out of earth. You know, the Bible says that the altar belongs to God. And you have polluted it. And get them to think. You know, don't be afraid to tell people the truth. You know, it's definitely not in season, but it's definitely needed. So let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Thank you so much, Lord, for the truth and just the clear teachings in your Bible, Lord. And that it's able to just week after week, Lord, without fail, give us clarity to all the issues that we deal with. We thank you for that, Lord, and we just pray you bless the fellowship after this.