Introduction
These are the days of Elijah. It’s a popular modern hymn. Sorry, but I refuse to call a song a chorus when it has two verses and a chorus just because it was written later than the 18th century. But anyway its quite a popular modern hymn. However, as with so many of our hymns and choruses it is often not the words which make it popular but the nice catchy tune. But before we point the finger is is not only the more modern songs that fall prey to this, while the words to Charles Wesley’s great hymn “And Can It Be” are great it is not mostly those great words which are responsible for its popularity, there are many many Charles Wesley hymns with words every bit as good, rather it is the catchy tune we now sing it to. But any way, These are the days of Elijah. It always amuses me that this song is has been so popular among young people and sung at young people’s events all over the place. Why? Because it is completely incomprehensible to someone who has not been brought up in the church and studied the Bible for years. It makes use of a great deal of Biblical imagery but if you’re not familiar with the imagery then the song is completely meaningless. Who was Elijah? What so special about the way he proclaimed the word of the Lord that it is like now? While we might be experiencing a great heat wave, it’s hardly a time of famine for us. And while our military are involved in Iraq is this really a time of the sword? What is the year of jubilee? Wasn’t that the other year, when we had all those royal occasions? What about Ezekiel and dry bones becoming as flesh? Now some of you will know some of these things but maybe you won’t recognise others. Not only that but the author of this song actually gets bit wrong. As far as I was aware Moses gave the people the law of God, so how could he be restoring anything, if it originated with him? Or David rebuilding the temple of praise. As I remember it God told David he was not to build the temple and that it was his son, Solomon who build the temple never mind rebuilding it. Picky? Perhaps but when I point this stuff out even to other pastors, most of them have never thought of it before. It makes me wonder whether we do really pay attention to the words we are singing or whether we just get carried away with music we enjoy.
So we are going to look at some of the imagery involved with this song over the next few weeks. We are going to start with of course “These are the days of Elijah, declaring the word of the Lord”.
But before we do that lets look at the overall context of the song. Is there a theme running through the song or is it just a hodgepodge of Biblical imagery that really has nothing to do with each other stuck together. Well there is a theme that is supposed to be running through the whole of the song. However, it appears that the writer got a bit mixed up between the verse and the chorus or was trying to do different things, to be generous. The verses talk about restoration and the working of God in our life and in our world even in the face of opposition. The chorus wants to talk about the return of Christ and the final setting up of God’s kingdom only he doesn’t get all of that imagery right either. When we finish this series you’ll have an idea about what is going on, what the imagery means and hopefully we’ll pick up some ideas about how to get restoration, revival and the kingdom of God established here and now.
But as I said, let’s start at the beginning and see what we can learn about Elijah and declaring the word of the Lord.
Who was Elijah?
Let’s start by asking who was Elijah? Well to be honest we don’t really know. Oh, there are a few stories about him in 1st and 2nd Kings but we know nothing of his background, where he came from, who he was other than a prophet of God. Was he rich or poor? A farmer of a priest? Was he related to the royal family that he criticised so often? We just don’t know. He makes his first appearance by stalking into the presence of the notoriously wicked King Ahad and announcing that God’s judgement is about to fall in the form of a drought. Then he confronts the prophets of Baal in a showdown to see which god can produce fire from heaven to light a sacrifice. Elijah wins and has the prophets of Baal killed. Then he has a crisis of faith and flees from Jezebel, the wife of Ahab. Then God comforts him and Elijah is sent to find his successor Elisha, it would have made things much easier for us if he had found a successor with a more different name, like Bob, but hey God told Elijah to choose Elisha. Next we find Elijah confronting the Ahab over the murder of Naboth, which Ahab orchestrated to get his hands on Naboth’s vineyard. Ahab repents and Elijah announces God’s forgiveness. Then Elijah is given a message of judgement against King Ahaziah, where he again calls down fire from heaven this time to destroy armies sent against him. Finally he is taken bodily into heaven in a whirlwind.
Through out his ministry Elijah was known for his willingness to publicly declare the Lord’s will and judgement fearlessly in the face of great adversity. We know he was not always as fearless as he sometimes appears, when he ran from Jezebel, but this was more an aberration. His ministry was marked by his declaration of the word of the Lord to people who did not really want to hear it. Of risking his own life to pass on the message that God had given him.
What can we learn for today
So what lessons can we learn for today about declaring the word of the Lord. In what sense are these the days of Elijah. In what sense are the days of Elijah parallel to ours and in what sense do we need to take on the role of Elijah?
The first thing we can look at is the parallels between Elijah’s time and our time. In Elijah’s time the King was a maniacal despot, who ruled wickedly purely for his own benefit and ignoring the needs of his people. In our time we are ruled by ... . No I’m sorry, I actually quite like Tony Blair, so I need to stop these asides, but I just couldn’t resist, sorry. Anyway, Israel was of course God’s chosen people and nation. The nation had started out godly, but ever since they had broken away from the southern two tribes of Judah, things had gone downhill. The people had turned from God and the Kings had gradually got wickeder and wickeder. Ahab, was really wicked or very easily led by his very wicked wife, Jezebel. The people in general had turned from the worship of God to the worship of the pagan Baal, who if you watch Stargate SG1, you will know was a Canaanite god. But it was not only the object of people’s worship that had changed but their behaviour as well. Instead of the justice of the law that God had laid down, they were sinning left right and centre. In our nation there used to be many who worshipped God and followed him. But now, people seek after other religions, Islam, Budhism, Seekism, and follow the false gods of pleasure and commercialism.
But the decay within our society is not limited to the nation. Within the church we see the American Episcopal church appointing its first openly gay bishop and the Church of England almost doing so. In sectors of the Church liberalism, where the Bible is rejected is rampant. While in other areas of the Church other things are substituted for a relationship with God, speaking in tongues, the worship experience, tradition. As we gaze round the church in our country we see its not in a very good state.
And so we need someone like Elijah to stand up and preach the truth, no matter what the consequence. We need people who are willing to be like Elijah who are willing to stand up and point out where we are going wrong and state the standards of God. We need somebody like Elijah who is willing to stand alone if necessary for the truth. We need somebody like Elijah who is willing to face down the worshippers and priests of the false gods and win. We need people of dynamic faith so that when they pray, things happen, the rain stops, the rain starts and the fire falls. We need people like Elijah who are willing to offer God’s offer of repentance when people turn from their sins and seek God. These truly are the days when we need people like Elijah but are these really the days of Elijah, can such people be found? And if so what message should they be preaching.
Yesterday, I was at the marriage of Eifon and Esther, down in Watford. I stayed with brother for the night, since he lives in London and its cheaper than a hotel. My brother, being rather more cultured than I am reads the Times. One of their leading stories on Saturday was about the appointment of the first openly day bishop in the American Episcopal church. Inside the paper was a very interesting editorial on the issue. It was written by a self confessed gay agnostic but what he had to say was a great challenge to the church. He said that while he had expected to be on the side of those supporting gay rights he found he couldn’t be in this case. He said that the message of the church was based on the revelation of God’s will in the Bible and he could find no support for the appointment of gay bishops in the Bible. He said that while Jesus preached forgiveness and love, nowhere did he radically revise the morals of the old Testament. His love was not a love that accepted any kind of sin and just said there, there never mind. But rather his love and forgiveness meant that it was never to late to repent and find forgiveness. He argued that if the church doesn’t stand by the Bible then what is it really all about, nothing. If the church is to remain what it is supposed to be, then it has to put what the Bible says first. It can’t compromise or try to change its message to fit in with a new morality in the world. It is different and its meant to be different because it founded on the idea of revelation, that God has told us how to live. The church is nothing if it does not stick to the teaching of scripture. Of course he then went on to suggest that the church would die if it did stick to this and he hoped for this, but that is irrelevant. His challenge to the church was to be the church, not a social club.
His challenge was very valid. It is often true that our enemies sometimes grasp the meaning of Scripture and God’s will quicker than we who are in the church. During the earthly ministry of Jesus, the Pharisees and priests often figured out what Jesus was saying before his disciples. This is often because it is easy to academically look at a message that you don’t have to apply, while it is very hard to accept a message that you have to live. When we get to hard bits we often don’t understand because we don’t want to understand because we don’t want to do. Now I’m not saying that non Christians get everything right about Christianity, this writer in the Times got somethings wrong and they often don’t have the training to fully understand the message, but not having to live by the results often makes it far easier to see the truth.
So what does this have to do with us. We’re not about to appoint a openly gay District Superintendent, or a non openly gay one for that matter, although the church’s stand on homosexuality is not just an academic exercise for many churches who have to deal with homosexual individuals and how they fit or don’t fit into the church. But this is not a sermon to address that issue. It is a sermon about the need for Elijahs. About the need for people to speak the truth even when it is uncomfortable. But it does shed some light on what is the message we should be speaking.
Firstly, it is a reminder that it is the Bible that is our standard of what is truth. This should be fairly obvious but it has some implications that sometimes bear pointing out. It means that its not the pastor that is the standard of truth. I’ve heard some of friends who have the attitude that if it was preached from the pulpit it must be right. Well as much as I’d like that to be the case it is not true. I do my best and don’t ever knowingly preach error, but I make mistakes, I get things wrong. Hopefully, not too often when I’m preaching, but I’m not the standard of truth, the Bible is. That’s why in Bible studies I try not only to teach what I think the Bible is saying but where I get it from as well, so that you can learn to study the Bible for yourselves to get the truth and test what I say.
But it also means that tradition is not the standard either. Tradition can be a good guide to a correct interpretation of Scripture, its good to know we stand in agreement with a long line of Biblical preachers all preaching the same message, but tradition is not infallible either. Martin Luther shook the church to its core when we found that church tradition had got the interpretation of Scripture substantially wrong and the protestant movement was born. But also it is not the forms of tradition that we should preach. There is certain preacher who preachers here every now and then who seems to think that the way to reform the church, is going back to singing only hymns written prior to the 19th century and doing things the way we did 50-60 or more years ago. But it doesn’t work. Times change. Tradition is not infallible.
The message is the truth of scripture. If we need to find new ways of expressing that truth, that’s ok. If we find our selves in a new culture and we need to work out anew how that truth expresses itself in that new culture then that’s ok too, missionaries do that all the time. But we need to remember that this is a different culture to what existed even 50 years ago. But what we must never ever do, is compromise the truth. Twist scripture to make it fit new fashions and new morals. The truths of scripture stand uncompromised and must be expressed or the church is not the church. We need Elijahs, people who preach the truth no matter the cost.
But there is also a second point about the truth Elijah preached that we can learn from this Time’s writer. It’s not just about preaching a message that is uncomfortable to hear its about preaching a message that’s uncomfortable to preach. Its one thing to preach a message that’s uncomfortable to hear. Some people have difficulty with this because they don’t like to upset people, but others don’t mind upsetting people as long as the truth is preached and to be quite honest they argue, some people need upsetting. It is one thing to preach a message that is uncomfortable to hear. But it is much harder to preach a message that is uncomfortable to preach. A message that perhaps would force a change in the preacher as well. Or a message that would set us against others in the world or in the church. A message that leaves us like Elijah, alone and facing attack from all sides. A message that is unpopular. A message that is uncomfortable to preach. But that is what it means to declare the word of the Lord. To not compromise on truth even when it is uncomfortable for us. There are many times when God has given me a message to preach that I wish he had not, when it would be much easier to just let things be than to preach the truth and try and effect change. But we are called to declare the word of the Lord even when it hurts us.
Conclusions
These are the days of Elijah, declaring the word of the Lord. God needs modern Elijahs. People who will declare the truth of the Bible. Who will not compromise so as not to upset people. Who will not compromise to make it easier on themselves. Who will not seek to preach tradition or the latest fad and what everyone wants to hear. People who will faithfully declare the word of the Lord.
