Then Elijah said to all the people, “Now come to me.” So they gathered around him, and Elijah rebuilt the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down. – 1 Kings 18:30
The Old Testament is a tragic love story where God finds Himself a Bride…but the Bride keeps running off after other lovers.
Back in the Garden if Eden, she forsook her vows because a seductive door-to-door salesman called Lucifer sold her the lie that God was keeping something from her…that being married to God was keeping her from her full potential.
All the way from Genesis to Malachi, we see God’s Bride dallying with lovers of various shapes and sizes. We see her slinking out to have sex under the Asheroth poles or make love in the high places of Baal…and then coming back to her Husband when her lovers had ruined her…only to go back and do it again.
She’d do it again…the way we do it again.
We get born again by believing on the Word…by being joined in marriage to the Word…and then spend our time cheating on our Spouse emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
We seek out the opinions and approval of other men first…and then talk about what they said to the Lover of our soul – our Bridegroom – in the place of intimacy that should only be reserved for Him.
We have the seal that we are married, and belong to Another…but then we slip the ring off our finger as we go out into the day, and live as if our lives were still our own.
We adoringly call Him King, Lord and our Beloved…but then with the same mouth sing the praises and declare the greatness of other men, other women, other things that vie for our attention and affection.
We are saved through faith in the Word, but then we live trusting in the works and words of men more than the Word and finished Work of God.
We all do this.
And that’s why God keeps renewing His mercies towards us every day…because by them we are not consumed (Lamentations 3:22-24):
It is of the Lord‘s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
24 The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
The great news is that God’s love for us never changes despite our unfaithfulness to Him.
The scandalously great news is that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And the invitation right now…is to go back to our Husband and commit ourselves to Him with our whole heart.
Rebuild the altars that have been torn down. Adore Him. Sing His praise, kiss His feet, break open our alabaster jar of costly perfume over Him and lavish our love upon Him…the way He continually lavishes His love upon us.
If you saw two people paying such extravagantly devoted attention to each other like this in public, you’d be right to think that maybe they’ve got something going on between them.
You might think it was excessive, you might think it was inappropriate, you might think it was unnecessary…but you would have to agree that those two people were connected to each other in an extremely intimate way.
That’s the opportunity we have right now: to live as if we’re married to God.
Married.
Not acquainted with God. Not sympathetic to God. Not interested in God. Not knowledgeable about God.
But actually married to God. As in, we sleep with Him and share our most intimate places with Him and only Him.
It’s time to live as if we’re married to God.
It’s time to rebuild the sacred places that we’ve allowed to be torn down.
It’s time to renew our vows.
It’s time to live as if we are actually married to the Word.
More on this tomorrow.