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The battle for the soul — 3

I Kings 18: 1&2, 18 – 39

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 25 Jun, 2006

WHEN YOU hit, hit hard! I’m not talking about violence, or killing, or terror, but I am talking about a power encounter between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, and its ruler.

We all sort–of know that that is what we are about. Our job is to take the action and create the conditions where God can do his work among those who have faith.

But we Christians sometimes bring God into disrepute by trying to force God to do something dramatic when it is not his time to do it.

Our God is a God of miracles, but, unless it is his time for a miracle, all our prayers and shouts will achieve nothing.

A Baptist couple went to the pet shop.

“We want a dog,” the man said, “— one that would suit a Christian household.”

The shopkeeper said, “I have exactly the one you need.”

He brought in a big dog from the back.

“Watch this!” he said. “His name is Carey.”

The Baptist man thought that was a good start – Carey is a time-honoured Baptist name.

“Alright, Carey,” said the shopkeeper. “Find Psalm 23!”

The dog pulled down a Bible from a shelf, put it on the floor, and carefully turned the pages until he had it open at Psalm 23. He barked to show he was ready.

“That’s incredible!” said the Baptist.

The shopkeeper showed off the dog. He could find John 3:16, he could find Colossians 1, he could find Ephesians 2: 8 and 9. Every Evangelical would know those verses well

The dog could even put his paws together and close his eyes when everyone else prayed.

The Baptist was delighted. He took his dog home, and, that night, when the prayer group came around, the Baptist showed off everything Carey could do.

The people were very impressed.

But one sceptic had a question.

“He’s very good at all those things, but can he do what ordinary dogs do?”

“I don’t know,” said the owner. “I‘ll find out.” He turned to the dog: “Carey, heel!”

At once, Carey stood on his back feet, placed one paw on the owner’s head and began howling.

“Oh no!” cried the Baptist, ”He’s Charismatic!”

How different is our idea of doing God’s work? The right actions, the right howl, and you’ll get the right result. That was pretty much the attitude of the prophets of Ba'al.

You know the rough outline of Elijah’s story.

Jezebel was a Phoenician princess. She promoted the religion of Ba‘al — a storm god — and of Asherah — a fertility goddess.

Ahab, the king, was a politician above all. He worshipped his wife’s gods, yet he named his children after Yahweh, the God of the Bible. The fact was, his eye was always on the main chance. He did evil in the sight of the Lord.

So the prophet Elijah said there would be no rain in Israel until he said so. “God is judging the nation and its rulers for their wickedness.” — that was Elijah’s message.

After Elijah told Ahab that drought was coming, he hid at God’s word. It was not safe to be around when Ahab and Jezebel were angry.

But the time came to confront not just the King, nor just his Queen, but to confront the spiritual evil at the nation’s heart.

If you read the things I write, you know that this is the tack I try to take. I am appalled by the actions of individual ministers in our present Government, but I don’t put my trust in chariots, even if Kim Beazley is driving them. Human power does not achieve divine goals.

So I write critically of the spiritual issues underlying the directions our nation is taking.

Elijah also had to confront the underlying spiritual causes.

So today we will see that Elijah acted when God told him to; that he acted in faith; that he acted decisively.

Last week I said we hide when God says “Hide,” and confront when God says, “Confront.” We need to learn to hear from God and not to lean on our own understanding.

Clearly, that is what God wants us to know. Wasn’t that the thrust of Jaye’s message last Sunday evening, as well? Listen to God and obey him.

As a church, how strongly committed to hearing from God are we? What do our prayer meetings say? When we make the decisions as a church, how much do we rely on hearing from God?

Elijah shows us what to do. Look at how Elijah acted when God told him to.

Israel suffered drought for three years. It is a dry country, and three years of drought really battered the people around.

Think of outback NSW. That is close to the picture. Our State is about 90% drought–affected, and has been for years. In Sydney we feel the pressure, but inland they live with it daily. There is no escape. That was how it was in Israel.

And there was nothing to do about it, there were no coastal showers, there was nowhere to escape to.

And Elijah came into the midst of this situation. We read,

^{1KI 18:1} After a long time, in the third year, the word of the LORD came to Elijah: “Go and present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the land.” ² So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab.

The thing we really need to see here, above all, is that Elijah acted when God told him to act.

I said last week: we are called to be in the battle, but we are not called to start fights.

You have probably seen the classic Western movie where the hero says that he doesn’t start fights,but he finishes them.

That attitude is close to a Christian one. We are not to be people of violence, not even of emotional violence. But we are certainly called to struggle for the Kingdom of God, and Elijah shows us how.

The key thing is to act when God says we must, and to wait when he says to wait.

There was a man with a plan — I can’t remember details. He began pressuring another Christian to join him in that plan.

The other Christian avoided the pressure at first, but the man with the plan kept at him.

Finally, the second man said, “I have no leading from the Lord on this matter and, until I do, I will not act.” Good for him!

The more we know when to move and when to stand still, the less liable we are to give way to pressure from other people.

Jesus showed us the precise model for how we are to act:

^{JN 5:19} Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. ²⁰ For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these. ²¹ For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. ²² Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, ²³ that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father, who sent him.

He said that he could not do what he did not see his heavenly Father doing. In the same way, what he did do was what his Father in heaven was doing.

Elijah listened to God. When God said, “Hide,” he hid; when God said, “Come to the king,” that was what he did,

We also need to see Elijah as a man of faith.

We Evangelicals often talk about acting in faith, and that is a good thing. But the truth is that we often act in presumption instead.

It’s like the Christian who drove a van without insurance. He said he was trusting the Lord to look after him. That’s not faith, that’s presumption. God expects us to take reasonable precautions.

Just think about what it really means to act in faith.

God might say to you or me, “Go to the Plaza and speak my word.”

We say, “That’s too dangerous. Someone might insult me, or hit me, or call the police.” So we don’t go.

God said to Elijah, “Go to where King Ahab is, tell him to gather the 450 priests of Ba‘al and the 400 priests of Asherah, and we will see who is really God — is it Yahweh of Israel, or is it Ba‘al of Pheonicia?”

So that’s what Elijah did. He went into one of the most hostile environments we could think of, not because he liked it, or felt safe there, but because God had told him to go, and he trusted God.

You remember how the priests of Ba‘al all shouted and cut themselves, and carried on for hours, trying to whip themselves up into a state where Ba‘al would answer their call by sending down fire from heaven to consume their offerings?

There’s such a fine line between true religion and false religion. True religion and false religion both have their gods, they both have their practices, they both look like the same thing. Our religiously illiterate society thinks that, as long as they belong to the same category, they are the same; as though a frog is the same as a monkey, because they are both animals.

But this confrontation on Mount Carmel clearly splits the false from the true.

The false is always dependent on what we do. And that is why false religion is making so much headway in our day. It’s because we like to think that our efforts move God.

All false religion ultimately seeks to manipulate God, just like those false priests tried to manipulate their god.

They cut themselves — maybe Ba‘al would listen if they spiced their requests with a sprinkling of pain. They shouted and danced — maybe Ba‘al would listen if they made enough noise. They built themselves into a frenzy — maybe Ba‘al would listen if they could just feel the right way. They spilled their blood, jabbing lances into themselves — maybe Ba‘al would rescue them from self–injury and do what they demanded.

But out God is God. He is sovereign, and he does what is right.

That is the core issue here. Elijah does not seek to manipulate God. He doesn’t try to bully the Lord into submission.

When he rebuilds the altar, he is submitting to the rule of God; he is saying, “I am going to do God’s will in God’s way, and I can leave the consequences in his hands.”

Above all, Elijah trusts God. He has faith.

Don’t ever think that faith is going to be a good feeling. Faith is never a feeling. Faith may be accompanied by feelings. It might cause feelings, it might be a response to feelings, but it is never in itself a feeling. It is a choice to obey, based on trust that the Christ who gave himself for us, and who rose again from the dead, will never let us down.

I went through a period when I received so much bad news by mail — threats, abuse, complaints — that I became afraid to collect my letters. I would do whatever I could to avoid having to empty the post office box. One letter, from someone who was very angry with me, stretched to 86 A4 pages.

I had to exercise faith every day, just to go to the post office. I had to acknowledge my fear and choose to trust the Lord Jesus to see me through anything like that which might come today.

Faith is at its most real when your heart pounds and your head aches, and your palms are so sweaty that you keep losing your hold on things in your hands.

But those feelings are not faith, either. It is faith which says, “I have heard from Jesus my Lord, and he calls me into action, and I will act, despite all those bad feelings.”

We never hear how Elijah felt, only that he did what he had to, and God himself fought the battle.

Throughout the history of the Christian Church, it has been the Elijahs who have achieved the real changes, the men and women who heard from God, who believed, and who acted in that belief.

God himself has confronted the powers of darkness — anti–God religion and anti–God philosophies. God himself has defeated all who stood against him. Yet is has not been by human might, nor has it been through displays of overwhelming power, but it has been by the Holy Spirit.

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.

• as you read in Zechariah.

Peter and John stood against the Sanhedrin and left with their lives and with the knowledge that the Jewish Sanhedrin had backed down and they could preach Jesus.

Telemachus leaped between the gladiators in the Roman Circus, and lost his life, but ended the gladiatorial destruction.

Martin Luther stood against the political and religious power of the Roman Church and the political power of the Holy Roman Empire. He had no armies, he had no wealth or power. He had faith, and God transformed Europe through his obedient deeds.

Mother Theresa took the care of Christ into the slums of Calcutta, obeying God when her own church thought she was crazy to do such a thing, and when fanatical Hindus might well have murdered her, and sometimes tried to.

It was always by faith.

But it was an unwavering faith, and it is important that we cultivate that kind of decisiveness in our faith, just like Elijah did.

There were many prophets in Israel, but God kept all but one hidden until the battle between truth and falsehood was fought. Elijah was the one prophet who could be depended on to be decisive.

I worked for a time with a woman who had a reputation for being a bully. I can be indecisive, but I believe that God gave me insight into the relationship right from the beginning, and, whenever she tried to bully me, I treated it as a joke, and, at the same time, was always decisive about what I expected of her.

After about a year, she had changed from being one of the difficulties I had to deal with to being one of my greatest allies.

If you are decisive, if you act and stick to it, if you know where you are going in the Lord, people will respect you and may well accept your message as well.

When Elijah called on God, he answered with fire, and the people shouted out,

Yahweh — he is God! Yahweh — he is God!

When we listen to God, when we act in faith, and when we do it decisively, God will have the opportunity to reveal himself, and the forces of darkness arrayed against the Messiah will be overturned.

May we discover this to be so!

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)