2819 Church - Make It Make Sense | 1Kings 18:25-40 | Lonnell Williams

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

In this timely standalone message, Lonnell Williams teaches from 1 Kings 18:25–40, calling us back to the altar and to undivided devotion to the one true and living God. This message confronts divided hearts, exposes false worship, and how He alone is the One who controls the fire.

Come on, put your hands together as you take your seat in the house. Technically, it's Sunday morning, so good morning, everybody. Man, listen, I am so excited upon this day. My name is Lonnell Dawson Williams. I'm the executive pastor here at 2819 Church, and we are just grateful through the arm of technology that we can actually come to you. You are watching this on Sunday morning, but technically it's Thursday, I believe. And so we're just grateful that through technology that we can reach each and every one of you.

I want to shout out very quickly all of our digital disciples. Man, we are just so grateful for you. Seems like today everybody is a digital disciple, technically. So we are just so grateful for you and your ability and willingness to lean in with us. You are a part of our digital family. That's why we call you digital disciples. We have no members here. We are all disciples of Christ.

our submission is to him and not to a building, not to a place, not to a name, but to Christ and Christ alone. And so I'm just grateful to be able to have this opportunity. I would be remiss if I did not do my due diligence and honor the lead pastor of this house. Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell on this morning. We also want to thank Ms. Lena Mitchell, his wife, and all that she does in supporting the spread of the gospel. Man, what an amazing. In a amazing time. My wife is here. Y'all don't want to just clap for my wife if y'all can. The Bidacious, Dr. Jessica Williams and all my children's. And as the church of old would say, all the saints, we are grateful for you today. Listen, I got a little bit of time and a lot of work to do.

So really quickly, if you can just open up your Bibles with me to First Kings, First Kings, the 18th chapter, We are going to take a small pause out of our series Cross the Commission and just do an independent message on tonight. So we're going to go to First Kings at the 18th chapter. The 18th chapter. I'm really excited about what we are going to talk about tonight. Now, technically, we are going to read and work through verse 25 through 40, 25 through 40. But for the purposes of this moment, I'm actually going to just read. verses 31 to 35. All right. I still hear pages turning, as I used to say. Here we go. Verse 31. It says,

And Elijah took 12 stones, according to the numbers of the tribes of the son of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came saying, Israel shall be your name. And with the stones, he built an altar, the name of the Lord. And he made a trance. And he made a trance. about the altar, as great as would contain two seas of seed. And he put the wood in order and cut the bowl in pieces and he laid it on the wood. And he said, fill four jars with water and poured on the burnt offering and on the wood. And he said, do it a second time. And then 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 with water. If I could pause there and pin a title to this message, I would call it Make It Makes Sense. Make it make sense. When I was growing up, it was very common for,

my grandmother to engage in very traditional acts that to me at the time didn't make sense. Now, you didn't grow up in my house and I didn't grow up in your house, but it's very possible that your grandmother or mother or grandfather or father engaged in the same activities as my grandmother and my grandfather. Let me give you an example. Whenever my grandmother would cook chicken, right, she would cook the chicken. She would fry the chicken, sometimes it'd be in Crisco, sometimes it would be in peanut oil, sometimes it would be in vegetable oil. But she would cook the chicken, she would fry it up, and then after she was done, she would drain the oil in a can. I have no idea why anybody would want to reuse oil after you

cooked in it. But somehow, some way, when I was in school, I would drain the oil into a container. Threw me off. Maybe that wasn't in your house. What about this? You would wash the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher. Am I going crazy? And the reason why I was taught was because, you know, the dishwasher don't always clean up

these dishes. That's the truth, right? All right? How about this one? Or you would wash the dishes first and then use the dishwasher as a drying rack. Now, why you buy a dishwasher in the first place? if it's just going to be a drying rack. But this one, this one is my absolute favorite.

And I am so guilty of this right now in my house next to my dishwasher. I promise you, if I brought you to my house and you'd look, you'd be like, what in the world? When I was growing up, my grandmama would always keep the grocery bags from the grocery store. And you know that little drawer right next to it? Just be stuffed with all them bags? Oh, y'all, y'all, okay, y'all had that. Am I the only one? Right?

And I always just like, now why you got full jars full of grocery bags from every grocery store in the world? And she would always say, because you never know when you go need one. And you go to my house and right now you open up that cat. Why you got all these bags in here, bro? Because you never know when you're going to need it. It has to make sense. All of those little things, we didn't just come up with them.

No, we were, we watched our family. We watched our grandparents. We watched our mother and father do it. They did it. So we did it. And we never even knew why. We just learned to live with a just-in-case mentality. And here is what I've learned.

Just-in-case isn't really about grocery bags or dishwashing and oil. It's about fear. It is what you do. do when you've been caught without before? I feel it already. Have you ever lived through a season where the one thing that you needed the most just stopped coming? Not because you sinned, not because you forgot how to pray, not because you forgot the

shah, my, my, not because you stopped believing. It just stopped. No matter what you tried, you couldn't make it start again. You couldn't hustle your way out of it. You couldn't positive think your way into it. You couldn't manifest your way into it. You couldn't bring it back into its existence. You did everything right.

And the sky stayed silent. And that, my brothers and sisters, is called a drought. A drought doesn't only empty your wells. It doesn't just keep the earth dry. A drought rewires your theology. because after a while you stop expecting, you stop looking up, and you stop rationalizing your hope. And if we tell the truth, you start making deals with God you didn't even believe in. Why?

Just in case. Make it make sense. You start keeping little spiritual grocery bags in the cabinet just in case. and this is the case for Israel in 1 Kings chapter 18. If you look at 1st King 17 verse 1, 1,000, you will see that the prophet Elijah professes over the land that there will be a drought over Israel. Three years.

Three years that the sky was shut closed. Three years of dust. Three years of silence. Three years of heaven holding its, breath. And here is what a drought does that is so dangerous. It changes everything about the way you view God. It changes your question instead of you asking, is Yahweh still God? You start asking, is Yahweh still working? And that's more dangerous question because it makes God's activity the measure of God's existence. When you have been in a drought for so long,

you start thinking silence means absence. Help us Holy Ghost. But silence and absence are not the same thing. A surgeon is silent during a surgery. But silence doesn't mean the surgeon left the room. Okay, y'all not with me, but that's okay. God's silence in your drought might not be abandonment. It might be precision. And right in the middle of the the drought, a prophet named Elijah does something that makes no sense. He pours water on the altar he's asking God to burn. In fact, he makes it worse on purpose. Make it make sense. God doesn't share credit with coincidence. Can I help somebody? If the season keeps getting worse, you might be closer to a miracle than you even think.

Because God isn't avoiding your impossibility. He is divinely arranging it. Let me help you out. Number one, the setup. This is the setup. No fire from below. If you look at verse 25, it simply states, and I'm just going to paraphrase here. Elijah goes to the prophets of bail, and he tells them to grab a bull, right?

Prepared first. Slice it up. I want you to put it on the altar. And he says, I want you to call on the name of your God. But listen, I want him to bring fire from. heaven down to the altar, but you prophets, you cannot light the fire yourselves. This is important. Elijah doesn't let them light the fire. No matches, no sparks, no backup plan. The only fire that counts is the fire that fell from heaven. And this, my brothers and sisters, is not a fair fight.

This is a divine moment of exposure because Elijah is intentionally removing the possibility of human explanation. See, Elijah understood something about fire. Whoever lights it has to maintain it. The source of the fire determines the sustainability of the fire. And if heaven starts it, heaven has to sustain it. but if you start it, you have to keep it going, which makes you God of the fire. Let me help you. Elijah knew, the one who lights it is the one who has to keep it lit. And if a man can start it, hell can fake it.

Okay, I'm going to say that again. If a man can start the fire, that means that hell can fake it. heaven will not honor what hell can reproduce. And here is the truth that really stings. Some of us have been so busy trying to manufacture a moment that we missed a miracle God was setting up. We have been lighting matches under altars. God never called you to build. Okay.

Here we go. Let me help you. Let me help you. Here's the thing. You are exhausted because you've been. been trying to sustain what God never started. If you're exhausted, maintaining it, God didn't ignite it. Well, why is it so? I can prove it. Because God isn't trying to impress Israel. He is trying to recover Israel. And you can't recover people who still give credit to their hustle, to their

ingenuity, to their creativity, to their wisdom, to their wit, to their passion. God is not interested in outcomes you can explain without him. All right, here we go. Now, watch this. Bale was not dumb to them. He was dependable, so they thought. Bail was the God, watch this, of rain, storms, and crops. The predictable exchange would take place.

You give to bail, and bail gives back to you. That's why bail's worship felt safer. It was controllable. I give, you get. Bell offers control, but watch this. Yahweh, which is our covenant father, he required surrender. And that's always the difference. Every idol you've ever floated with,

promise you the same thing. Control. But watch the irony. Three years of a drought under the nose of what they would view as the rain God. And here is what lies the tension. If you look at verse number 26, it says something along the lines of. So the bull was given to them and they prepared it. They called on the name of Bell from morning until noon. And Bell, Bell, answer us. They shout. But there was no response. No one answered and they limped around the altar that they made six hours loud yelling and screaming sincere but sincerely wrong and that's the refrain no voice no answer no attention it is the funeral for every single idol. The Bible says here that they limp. See, the same word is actually used in 1st Kings 1821. If you look at it, the word means unstable, wavering, divided. And that is what happened when you worship and you worship a thing that cannot stabilize you. Your worship becomes limp. activity without progress, movement without meaning.

You can be active and still be stuck. Let me help somebody. Some of us have been praying to a version of God we invented. He moves when we move. He answers when we perform. He shows up when we're good enough. And the silence we have been experiencing isn't God being. distance is us discovering that the God we have been serving does not exist. We can be sincere

and still be serving the wrong God. Let me ask you this question as I love to do. What if the silence you hear isn't God testing you? It is your idol ignoring you. How long are you going to limp around an altar you built with your own hands? Let's keep going. Let's keep going. Verse number 27. It says, at noon, help us. Elijah began to talk them. Shout louder.

Surely he is a good God. Perhaps he's in a deep sleep. Maybe he's in thought. He's busy. He's traveling. Maybe he's sleeping. Maybe he needs to be awakened. Elijah's sarcasm is not petty.

It's prophetic. He is exposing the absurdity of worship with something that cannot respond. Your God is always unavailable. And that's why your worship is always filled with anxious. You cannot have peace in worship. And the thing you're worshipping cannot answer. If you worship a man, you only get manly responses. But when you worship the king, who has the power to crack the sky,

You can call on his name and he can give you exactly what you need. Look at the text. Look at the text. Verse 28, it says, so they shouted louder and they slashed themselves with swords and with spears as was their custom until blood flowed. Now, this threw me all the way off. This is where the title of the message came. Make it make sense. Here is the psychological mismanagement of a self-serving worship. When your God won't answer, you assume you are the problem.

I didn't give enough. I didn't try enough. I didn't bleed enough. So you cut deeper. Yeah. And some of us aren't worshipping. We are negotiating. We think if we hurt ourselves enough, God owes us something.

Hello lights. That's not devotion. That is manipulation in religious language. Let me help you. Transactional faith keeps a ledger. If I do this, God does this. Covenantal faith says God has already done something for me. Therefore, I must respond. So how do you know which one you're operating in? Let me help you all real quick. Transactional faith gets angry when God doesn't respond as expected. Covenital faith trusts God's character even when you can't trace his methods.

Make it make sense. I don't interpret his word through my situation. I interpret my situation through his word. What I see doesn't change what he says. But what he says can change what I see. I see debt, he sees opportunity. I see defeat, he sees hope. I see shame, he sees opportunity to bring you back into his heresy.

This is the opportunity that God has given so that you can see him through your own eyes. Some of us are so committed to the wrong altar. We would rather bleed that admit we were wrong. Some of us are in relationships. Well, let's not call them relationships. They're called hostage situations. Yeah. You keep giving, they keep taking.

You keep giving, they keep taking. And you call it love. That's not love. That is simply idolatry with a heartbeat. You've turned self-harm into a spiritual discipline. God does not need your blood. He already has his sons. Can I just, can I just free you real quick?

You ain't got to perform for nothing. Jesus paid it all. All to him. All right, all right. Who grew up in the Baptist Church? All right, all right. We're going to mess around and do something up in here. Here we go, here we go, here we go.

My grandfather, Reverend Dr. Lonnie Dawson at New Mount Calvary Baptist Church 402, East El Second Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 9-0661. He used to say it like this, what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Is anybody grateful for the blood? Am I talking to anybody that says, thank you for the blood?

It was the blood that saved you. It was the blood that redeemed you. It was a blood that brought you back. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. The blood. The blood. The blood, the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood. The blood that was draped over the doorpost so the death angel would pass over.

The blood that was shed on Calvary, the blood. The blood that watched me white as snow. Oh, the blood that kept me closer. to him. Thank you, God, for the blood. Let's listen. Wait a second. Help us. Holy Ghost. Okay, wait, wait, wait. We got to keep going. We got to keep going. All right, right, right. Here we go. Look at verse number 30. Look at verse number 30. This is what it says. It says, Elijah said to the people, come here that came to him.

And he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down. Watch this. I want to jump back up to 29. I saw something that I missed. I want to make sure I say this. This is very important. As we think about it, the Bible says that midday pass and they continue prophesying frantically and they kept going for sacrifices, but there was no answer and no response. Watch this desperation without direction is just noise. What if you haven't heard God because you've been shouting at the wrong altar? Okay, we'll keep going. All right. Let's go back to verse 730. Let's say, here we go, here we go. This is the thing I learn. Elijah doesn't

say, come watch me. Look at the text. It says, Alisha said, come here to me. Proximity before experiencing power. You cannot be healed from a distance. You can't be restored while you're hiding. You can't be rebuilt while you're running. this is the thing. He repaired the altar that had already been destroyed, which implies that the altar had history. It was used at one point in time or another. Now, God, in this season of Israel's journey, he was experienced or had experienced from them neglect, disappointment, compromise, complacency, avoidance, bitterness, deception, all of these emotions Israel had placed onto God,

had expressed towards God because of all of that. And now the altar that was once used to sacrifice to God was in pieces. Elijah doesn't build something new. He restores what belonged to God. You don't destroy an altar all at once. You just stop showing up to it. And it decays over time. Destroying the altar looks like rush prayers, which become rare prayers, which become no prayers.

It looks like I'll get to it before the day is over. Prayers. It looks like I forgot prayers. It looks like I don't need to do that. Prayer. It looks like letting everything in and giving nothing back. But we're repairing the altar. That is not complacency.

That is just you showing up over and over and over again. Repairing the altar looks like honest prayer. Even when it's awkward, even when you don't have the words, it looks like I'm going to go into my prayer closet. and even if I have nothing to say, I will just sit in his presence so that he knows that I'm willing and able to rebuild what is broken. The altar that needs repair is not a mystery. You already know what to do. You just hate to admit that the altar has been destroyed. The altar that needs repair isn't complicated.

You just don't want to admit it. that there's work to do. Let me say this and then I'll go ahead and brush up. Sometimes the altar isn't broken because demons attacked it. It's broken because you walked away. It's broken because you got busy. It's broken because you got bitter. It's broken because, let's be honest, you got bored. And now you're mad at God and you're angry because you feel like he won't show up at an altar that you failed to maintain. You do not have a breakthrough problem. You have an altar problem. You have to stop asking God for fire. The question is not is the altar even his. God understands that the altar is his, but he will not light a altar that you fail to rebuild for him.

Look at verse number 31. Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes, descendants of Judah, to whom the Lord had come saying, your name shall be Israel, and with the stones, he rebuilt an altar, the name of the Lord, and he dug trenches around large enough to hold two sands of seed. Elijah uses 12 stones, 12 tribes of Judah. It's the covenant language and the covenant number. covenant first conditions second the 12 stones really replicated the covenant that god kept with his people then Elijah tells the people to dig a trench he creates capacity for what has not even arrived yet make it make sense some of us stop preparing because we stopped expecting Faith doesn't wait for proof to prepare.

Faith digs trenches in a drought. Can I be honest with you? Some of you are in a season called at your word season. Y'all need some help. All right, here we go. Simon Peter said to Jesus, Master, we have toiled all night and have taken nothing. nevertheless at thy word I will let down my net.

At the end of the day, in this season, your faith has to believe that God's word shall not lie. And in this season, we have to ask ourselves, what trench do you need to dig for what you have not seen yet? Let's go real quick. We got just a little bit of time. The Bible says in verse number 33, he arranged the wood. He cut the bull into pieces. He laid the wood on it. And then he sat there.

He said, fill four jars with water and pour it on the offering of the wood. And then he says, do it again. Then he says, do it again. He says, do it a third time. He ordered them and they did it a third time. And the water ran down. altar and even filled the trench. This is what messed me up. Aren't they in a drought? I mean, that's what the Bible says. They're in a drought. So where did they get this water from? And not just like a

little bit of water. Literally four, excuse me, it was 12. So you got four big, big, big, big, big buckets for seeds. They took it to the altar and they poured it onto the altar. Now this is the thing. Mount Carmar. which is where they're located, is actually a Mediterranean mountain right off of the Mediterranean sea. So actually the water, watch this, the water that they got was actually not regular water. It was seawater. You can't drink seawater. You cannot grow anything with seawater.

For three years, Israel had to stare at water that they needed but couldn't use. And now Elijah turns their frustration into a testimony. it. The very thing that they couldn't sustain them becomes the thing that proves God can. Am I talking to anybody up in here today? Three years of a drought. Water is survival. And Elijah says, pour the water out. Not once, not twice, three times, 12 jars. The trench of water is full. If you want fire, you do not. add water. Make it make sense. And just like that, the prophets of bail, and just like some of us in here, we are not on our first poor. Some of you are on your second poor. Some of you are on your 12th

poor. But what if the poor was not meant to drown you? What if it was meant to delete your explanations? What is the poor? Your first? What is the poor? Your first? First poor is unexpected bill. Car repair. Deductible. Second, poor. Job change. Hours cut.

Clients dropped. Third poor. Safety nets get touched. Your savings is drained. Assistance needed. First poor. Misunderstanding. In a cold season of a marriage,

communication breakdown. Second poor. You try counseling. Didn't work. You try to apologize and forgive. Didn't work. Third poor. you get humbled. Apologies without an asterisk. Accountability, boundaries, you're struggling to make things work.

What's another type of poor? You get hurt. You hate to forgive, but you do forgive. You ask to forgive, but they don't want to apologize back to you. You ask to bless them, but they won't bless you back. We are all in seasons of a poor. We want a testimony that we can manage. And God wants a testimony that can't be managed, but only witnessed. we are praying for fire while we're refusing to let go of the water and that's not faith that's insurance faith pours what it cannot afford to lose fear hordes because it doesn't want to trust god with it we are saying to ourselves lord make it make sense and it won't because you are still trying to explain it away. The water won't stop until your need to control the story dies. And God keeps adding water because you keep reaching for matches.

God does not share credit with coincidence. The water is God closing your escape route so that when he moves, No one can say it was you. What if you're holding on to because you're afraid God won't come through if you pour it out? If God is engineering impossibility, why are you still protecting a backup plan? Listen, listen, I want to run really quickly to this part. This is what the Bible says. In verse number 36 and verse number 37, it's very unique.

He gives a 48 word prayer. when you get home, I want you to read it. It's 48 words. No manipulation. No, no, no loud screaming, no yelling, no shaman, all he says, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. I did this at your word. Let it be known to you are God and turn their hearts back. Prayer is not a lever for outcomes. It is alignment for obedience. Make it make sense. It is. It is a love for obedience. It makes sense. If your prayer is longer than your obedience, you are not praying, you are just performing. And God is not moved by volume. He is honored by hearts of submission. Notice this, Elijah does not ask God to remove the water. He assumes that the water is actually a part of the plan. He prays for fire on wet wood.

And I don't know about you, but that to me does not make sense. What does that teach us? Stop praying for God to change the conditions and start asking him to consume what seems like it cannot be changed. Fire is the sign, but turned hearts was the goal. Are you praying for relief or are you praying for revelation? If God doesn't change the conditions, will you still trust his character? I'm going to hurry up and go to my seat. I want you to look at verse number 38.

It says, then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice. The wood, the stones, the soil also licked up the waters in the trench. Now look at this. It says, then. Not eventually. Not after six months or six years. Not after 12 steps. It says then.

When heaven says now, God doesn't warm up. He acts. The fire did not avoid the water. It consumed it. It consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust, everything that would have prevented the burn. In other words, your obstacle just became your evidence. You are mad at God because of the obstacles, not realizing that this is proof that God is still working something. Your proof is impossible just became an ingredient for God's

miracle somehow, some way. God does not work around impossibility. He consumes it. The Bible says this. He says that when all the people saw this, they fell on their face and they cried out. And some of us are in a season in life. We have run out of pores. It feels like the more that you go through The more water is poured on your altar. Marriage and trouble. Kids acting up. A poor. Faith being tested. A poor. Shame and guilt. Fear and anxiety. A poor. Cancer diagnosis. Diabetes. A poor. Fornication. You feel like the more you pour out, more grief and shame you feel. feel. You feel like that my sacrifice on the altar is going to be drenched with all my mistakes. But can I help you really quickly? Jesus is the greatest sacrifice. The poor that Jesus experienced on the altar was the poor of our sins. His sins, excuse me, our sins were poured out. on his shoulders.

And with every nail that was placed in his hand, every nail in his feet was proof. The fire would still fall from heaven. It would consume, a consuming fire. Sweet. You see, sometimes it's easy to take credit for something that seems divine. Oh yeah, that was me.

I wrote that. I did that. I got that job. I bought that house. I created that opportunity. And then the world shakes. It feels like everything is destroyed. And here you are rebuilding the altar. God is saying, I don't want you to light a match. I want you to trust me that I'm going to send fire down on it. So what is your sacrifice? what is the thing that you are going to give God in this season say it doesn't make sense I'm going to give you the very thing that I need that I love I'm going to sacrifice it that when that thing that need that desire that passion that purpose when that thing comes to pass the only person that can get the credit This is the season. It's the glory.

There's nothing that we can do to gain his love. But what we can do is lay before him. Thank him for all that he's done. It doesn't make sense that you would die on the cross for our sins. It doesn't make sense that you would go into a borrow-to-me. It doesn't make sense that you would resurrect after three days. It doesn't make sense that you sit on the cross for our sins. sense that you sit on the right hand of the Father. It doesn't make sense that you would use someone

as flawed and fickle as me. It doesn't make sense that my sins are what they are. And that because of that, I deserve to go to hell. But it doesn't make sense that you love me in spite of everything that you've done and everything that I've done. And you still open up the keys of the kingdom. you still have a spot for me in heaven because of your love for me not because of my activity I want you to just take a moment as you think about the altars in your life that have to be restored

the waters that you've had to pour out and the sacrifice that has to be made so that God can get the glory we're going to sing a song and kind of bathe his word in worship, trusting him in this season of our lives. Come on, if you were blessed by that word, put your hands together and give Jesus a hand clap of praise.