My dad didn’t know how to deal with my being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He never asked me any questions but just watched me. After he saw that I was not going to become an invalid anytime soon, he came to me and said, “Pick any place is the world you want to go, Sis, and we’ll go.”
I thought about it long and hard. Think about it…if you were given the opportunity, and all your expenses were going to be paid – even your food and souvenirs, where would you go? Finally, the answer I gave him was not what I had always thought it would be. Paris? Rome? Egypt and the pyramids? London? Daddy was silently hoping for Australia. I said, “Daddy, I want to go to the Holy Land.”
One of the stops during our twelve days was Mt. Carmel, the site where Elijah most likely confronted the Prophets of Baal. I stood there taking in the site, looking at the Kishon River below, listening to our guide tell the story, and somehow magically transporting myself there:
King Ahab and Queen Jezebel are purely evil. Under their rule, Israel has gone further down the path toward paganism than ever before. Some people resist the worship of Baal, but they are few, and they are keeping their thoughts to themselves. Most of the people, though, are just going through the motions of worshiping God and full-on partying for Ba’al without fully committing to either.
Elijah has been preaching that people must return to God, bit King Ahab keeps Elijah fleeing for his life, playing a biblical hide-and-seek. Finally, God tells Elijah to quit avoiding Ahab and meet with the king. Elijah sends for Ahab, and after mutually trading insults, Elijah tells Ahab to bring the people of Israel, the 450 prophets of Ba’al, and Jezebel’s 400 prophets of Asherah to Mt. Carmel.
Ahab brings the 450 prophets of Baal and the people of Israel to Mt. Carmel, but Queen Jezebel is not going to be caught dead doing anything Elijah tells her to do, so she does not send her 400 prophets of Asherah. The King, Elijah, the prophets, and the people of Israel are all around; Elijah looks at his people and says, “How long will you hobble back and forth between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow God. If Baal is God, follow Baal.” Sadly, no one steps forward to support Elijah.
Have you ever been in a similar situation where you knew someone was right, but you didn’t want to be that one person to step forward to fight the tide?
In the rest of the story, there is a contest between Elijah and the Prophets of Baal, but that is for tomorrow night. Tonight, I want us to look at this one question: “How long will you hobble back and forth between two opinions?”
In 1886, Southern Methodist Publishing House in Nashville, Tennessee released a book about Elijah – Elijah Vindicated: Or The Answer by Fire. That little book has 386 pages and devotes chapter sixteen – sixteen pages – to that one little question. I promise that this sermon isn’t sixteen pages long, but isn’t it interesting that 133 years later we are still trying to answer that same question?
The Hebrew word used in this passage can be translated several different ways. I love reading different translations, so I looked at seven different ones. Two say, “How long will you waver between two opinions.” Others ask, “How long will you hobble back and forth between two opinions – sit on the fence – hesitate between two opinions – be divided between two ways of thinking – how long will you go limping with two different opinions – or jump back and forth between two positions?”
Though I did not find the verse translated this way, some commentators liken this to birds hopping from one branch to another, not staying on one branch very long until they hop to another one that looks better.
The authors of Elijah Vindicated say this question “is as pertinent at this day as in the days of the Tishbite (Elijah). It is a question that must be answered, sooner or later, by all having a revelation from God and still halting between two opinions. Upon its decision depend the momentous issues of life and death, of heaven and hell.” This question is as relevant today as it was 133 years ago and the approximate 3000 years ago when Elijah first asked it!
How often do we jump about from limb to limb or hop from one foot to the other, never making a stand for our faith? Think back to World War II.
In 1935 Hitler was on the rise. He had a stranglehold on the church so strong that the church of Germany had accepted his Nazi ideology. Just like the Israelites of Elijah’s time, Protestants in Germany found a way to be both believers in Christianity and supporters of the Nazis. People who refused to compromise were dragged off to concentration camps. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant pastor professed sympathy for Jewish victims and proclaimed that Christianity and Socialism were incompatible. He was later executed for his beliefs, just one month before the war ended.
Martin Niemoller, a contemporary of Bonhoeffer, was a Lutheran pastor in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Being an anti-Semite, He welcomed the Third Reich. In 1934, after a meeting with Adolf Hitler, his sympathies began to change. He learned that his phone had been tapped by the Gestapo (German Secret State Police) and that the group he had helped start, the Pastors Emergency League (PEL), was being closely surveilled by the Gestapo. He came to see the Nazi state as a dictatorship and later opposed it. He is probably best remembered for this quote:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Niemoller was admitting that he and others had not stood up for what was right, and by then it was too late.
We are warned about hopping from one foot to the other in the book of James. In James 1:6,8: 6But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. Have any of you ever felt like the waves of your life were crashing in on you?
On September 11, 2001, this nation did. How many remember where you were when the towers were hit?
There is an interesting article, “The Effects of 9/11 on Faith and Religious Beliefs…” In his article, Dr. Matthew Tull said that most of those interviewed felt their faith was just as important after the attacks as it was before. About 10% said their religion had become more important after the terrorist attacks. He felt that these people may have relied upon their beliefs so they might make some kind of sense of the attacks or even to gain comfort in their response to great personal losses.
Another 10% said that their religion became less important to them after the attacks. This was most likely for those who had lost a child as a result. The attacks may have caused them to become disillusioned with their faith or to make them question it.
Those who said they had begun to question their faith or that it was less important after the event were more likely to have severe problems: complicated grief, major depression, and PTSD. Those who said their religious beliefs were more important after the attacks did not seem to have an increased or decreased risk for these problems. Having a strong faith can and will see you through some very difficult situations.
When we cannot make decisions relative to our faith, we become lukewarm. If we are lukewarm, our church becomes lukewarm. Revelation 3:15-16 tells us, “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
The church of Laodicea, today, is the most forsaken of all the seven churches of Revelation. The others have been revived by tourism, but to the people around Laodicea, the place is known as Eski His (Old Castle). The area of the ruins is covered with fields, and once in a while a peasant or shepherd wanders by. A few who have visited have seen the ruins of a large rock tower with an extraordinary plumbing system which was used to pipe water in from Hierapolis or Colosse. By the time the water got there it was not hot if it came from Hierapolis, and it was not cold if it came from Colosse. It was all lukewarm…yuck! The church at Laodicea was just like their water – lukewarm.
Today, so many of us are just like the Israelites on Mt. Carmel. We have not studied our Bibles enough to be able to say, “This is what the Bible says,” and we hop from foot to foot, limb to limb, not knowing where to stand. While the names of today’s “gods” are different from Elijah’s time, we have our own Ba’als. We waffle between what God calls us to do, but we end up committed neither to God nor or false “god.” We are just lukewarm.
We might not realize it, but we are “Hokey Pokey” Christians when it comes to our faith. (sing) We put our right foot in, we take our right foot out, we put our left foot in, and we shake it all about. We do the Hokey Pokey and we turn ourselves about…(speak)and that’s how we create doubt. We have to go all in with God. We have to put our “whole selves in” and never take them out.
I cannot speak for any of you here tonight; I can only speak for myself. If I am unsure of what I believe about God, if I am confused about who he is and what he requires of me, then it is easy for me to let the world become more important than God, and I become lukewarm.
Only you know where you are tonight. If you are lukewarm, I invite you to come to the altar during our closing hymn, pray at your seats, and again when you go home tonight. Ask God’s forgiveness and let him know you want to burn as hot as coals or be as refreshing for him as a cold drink of water.
As we sing this final hymn, the altar is open.
