Good morning. I hope you all had a great Easter. I know we did. Today, we are going to continue the series that we call The Story. As you know, the story we are talking about is God’s story that is found in the complete story of the Bible in the people, places, and events of the Bible. Where we are at in the story is we are talking about what is called the Divided Kingdom. You may recall that the nation of Israel, at one time, was a united kingdom under King David and then ultimately under King Solomon, but eventually what happened because of Solomon’s wicked ways, God split that kingdom in two. You had a northern kingdom called Israel and a kingdom in the south called Judah. When you have two kingdoms, you are going to have a number of kings. I think I mentioned there were about 38 kings during the time of the divided monarchy. Most of those kings were bad. A few weeks ago we introduced you to King Ahab, who was really considered the baddest of the bad. He was a bad king. He was an evil king. Even his wife was considered evil. We also introduced you a few weeks ago to this phenomenal prophet named Elijah. He was a very popular prophet. In fact, he was so popular he got a lot of press in both the New and the Old Testament. Sometimes he was actually confused with John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. He looked like John the Baptist, but he did things like Jesus would do. He performed a lot of miracles and that sort of thing. It is believed even in the New Testament that Elijah was considered someone who was going to rise from the dead and come back some day. In fact, the very last verse in the Old Testament actually talks about this. In the book of Malachi he says “I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord.” In other words, before the end times the prophet Elijah is going to come back. In this particular case, where we picked it up a couple weeks ago, Elijah was sent to King Ahab to basically call him out for his wicked and terrible behavior. You may recall the thing that he did, where some of the other kings followed other gods but they still had the God of Abraham and Isaac as their main God, King Ahab basically replaced God completely and brought in the storm god called Baal. What God had Elijah do was basically call a three-and-a-half year period of time of drought on the northern kingdom of Israel because of what they did. We know it is three-and-a-half years because in the book of James we read about Elijah. The context is where James is talking about the importance of faith in prayer and the how the power of a righteous man praying avails much. Towards the end of the fifth chapter, he writes “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain on the land for three-and-a-half years.” A mention in the New Testament about Elijah. He was a man of faith. He was a righteous man. He could pray and things would happen.
As the story goes, we have Elijah calling down this drought on the northern kingdom of Israel. As you suspect, King Ahab was not a happy camper about this. So much so that he was going after Elijah. So God basically told Elijah to go out to the wilderness east of the Jordan and told him to camp out by a stream. While he is at a stream, he would be fed by these ravens, which happened. After about a year or so, he said I want you to go into town and meet this widow lady from Sidonia and I want you to ask her for some food. He didn’t know it at the time, but she was pretty much broke. She was so broke that she was basically ready to die. She had enough bread and oil left to create one more piece of bread. Here is Elijah asking her for this. In obedience, she gave it to him. Through Elijah, God multiplied that flour and that oil so much so that for the remainder of the period of the drought, they had plenty of flour and plenty of oil. As I mentioned before, that was a picture of God’s provision in the midst of this drought but a provision that is really tied to obedience. That is what we talked about a couple weeks ago.
Today, what we are going to do before we step into a different section of kings next week, is finish out another story about the prophet Elijah which is probably one of the most popular stories about Elijah. It is the story of Elijah and the contest up at Mount Carmel with the 450 prophets of Baal. The setting is a place where the drought has been severe. King Ahab is getting nervous about the situation. So nervous that basically he sends out somebody named Obadiah to find some grass or something to feed the animals so the palace animals don’t die. While Obadiah is out there, he finds Elijah and Elijah lets Ahab know that he is in the vicinity. He goes out to meet him and says “Is that you, you troublemaker of Israel?” Elijah gives a great response. He says “I have not made trouble for Israel, but you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals.” Here is where I will stop and give a little side note. I have been talking about this god Baal, but here it is the plural Baals. That is because we don’t really have a lot of information about this god Baal. Basically, we know that it means master, but we also know that there were these local gods that were kind of offshoots of Baal. If you read the Old Testament you see things like Baal-zebub or Baal-peor or you see Baal-berith. These are basically local manifestations of the god Baal. That is why you see Baals because they were following the local gods as well the main god up there. They were following all these gods. Whatever the case, Ahab could not point a finger at Elijah and blame Elijah for the situation. It was Ahab that was responsible for the fact that they were experiencing not only a physical drought but really a spiritual drought. An economic drought and a spiritual drought. So what does Elijah do? He approaches Ahab and says what I want you to do is take all the people of Israel, take all the prophets of Baal, and all the prophets of Asherah and I want you to go up to this place called Mount Carmel. I want you to assemble up there on the mountain. Ahab brings them up there and Elijah gets in the people’s face and makes a pretty strong comment to them. He says “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is god follow him. But the people said nothing.”
A little background. The Hebrew word we transfer here “waver” actually has several different possible meanings. Some think that it could actually be translated limp. Some actually translate it hobble. The idea is somebody who is hobbling back and forth between two positions. What he is saying to the people is it is time that you get off the fence. It is time you choose which god you are going to follow. He asks the question in a very rhetorical way. He says “How long will you waver between two opinions?” He is asking a question that is really not asking for an answer. He is not expecting them to raise their hand and say give me two more weeks. He is not expecting that sort of thing. What he wants them to do is basically reflect on the status of their heart. They might understand that they are guilty. They have a divided heart that is split between the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and this god named Baal. One thing to keep in mind, because it will come up again later, these people were not pagans in the traditional sense. The people he was talking to were the Jewish people. The people that were Jews by birth. The people that had ancestors who came out of Egypt that were led by Moses through the Red Sea and into the Promised Land. These were people who, by birth, were Jewish people. People that, by birth, were tied up to the God of creation. Tied up to the Jewish God. That was their God. This situation here was really a blot on their national identity. You may recall a few months when my friend Jose came up here and talked about the passage back in Genesis when God said to Abraham “You will be blessed to be a blessing.” These people were to be the blessed people, the chosen people of God that would be a blessing to all the world. That is who these people are. That is the situation here. So Elijah is coming in and he knows he has to jolt them out of spiritual lethargy. He has to shake them up so they will get off the fence. What he decides is to propose this contest. From the very beginning, we know that the odds are against him. It is 450 prophets of Baal against one prophet of God. This is what the prophets of Baal do. That doesn’t sway him or make him nervous. He gives them the first choice. He says I want you to go out and find two bulls and pick the one you want, chop that bull up, go to the altar, put wood down, set the bull on top of that, and that is all I want you to do. This is how we are going to proceed. Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire is God. These prophets of Baal are probably saying this is a sweet deal. Baal is the storm god which means he is also the god that would be the lightning god. The lightning god can also produce fire. They think they have the upper hand. In fact, early pictures of Baal have him holding lightning bolts in his hand. They think this is a good deal. It doesn’t intimidate Elijah at all. He says to the prophets okay you are up. Go for it. Apparently, they begin to shout out to their god Baal from early in the morning to about midday. They shout out bring down fire or whatever they would say at that particular time. By noon there is still nothing happening. There is no response whatsoever. So they start dancing like crazy. In fact, some suspect that they were actually dancing naked. It was such an incredible scene. They were trying to do whatever they can to get this god Baal to respond to them. But he didn’t. He was quiet. So Elijah taunts them a little bit. He says “Well shout louder. Surely, he is god. Perhaps he is in deep thought or busy or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” It is funny for us to read that, but actually back then, that is a purely acceptable statement. People believed that their gods would engage in similar activities as humans. They would sleep and eat and travel and do all these things that humans would do. Whatever the case, this really seemed to put the prophets of Baal over the edge. Their chants and everything became more intense and severe. So much so that they began to cut their bodies with a sword. Blood is flowing all over. I was doing a little bit of reading on that and apparently what this signified is intense mourning or grief. These people were basically saying our god Baal is dying or possibly dead. Why else would he not respond? So they take out these swords and begin to cut themselves. Blood is flowing everywhere.
About that time, Elijah probably sees some of the people beginning to question whether Baal really is the right god to be following. He calls a group of them over. He says grab some stones. We are going to make a little altar. So they find an old altar that apparently had been set up one time for the Lord God. They stack 12 stones around it which some would say signify the united 12 tribes of Israel. Then take some wood, take the bull, chop it up and put it on top. Then he had the people build a big trench around the altar. Then he had them do something really strange. He said he wants them to get four big jugs of water and pour these onto the altar. Pour it onto the sacrifice. Pour it onto the bull. Pour it onto the wood. Do it not just one time. I want you to take those four jugs and do it three times. Again, 12 times to signify the united kingdom of Israel so that is what they did. They poured the water on the sacrifice and the wood. What you ended up with was this mess. You had a wet animal and wet wood. I was trying to find a picture or image of what that might look like. This is what I found. I think this is a pretty good depiction of what it would look like at that particular time. It is a very intense situation. Elijah is basically upping the ante. He is saying my God is greater. My God is bigger. My God can bring down fire even on this wet wood and wet sacrifice. He is going to burn it up to a crisp. Sure enough that is what is about to happen. First, what he does, being a man of prayer, he gets on his knees and shouts out a prayer to God. It says “At the time of the sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed ‘O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.’” Then he goes on to say “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Then we know what happens. It says “Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.” It completely dried the whole thing up and burned everything to a crisp and took all that water away. The people were so impressed that when they saw this they fell prostrate and cried “The Lord he is God. The Lord he is God.” They fell on their faces. It was like this revival of sorts. These people were excited again. They finally got knocked out of their spiritual lethargy. At that point what happens is all these people gathered these prophets of Baal and took them down to the Kishon valley and slaughtered them. That is pretty much the end of that story about the contest between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal.
I began to think about if there is an application that would work for today. We have a big historical distance to cover. This is something that happened 3,000 years ago or so, so it is very hard to bridge the gap and come up with some sort of an application. When I thought about it, I was thinking even though the time is different, the people are different, the place is different, really things are not that much different. Especially when you consider the state of Israel and we consider the state of America today. We consider the state of Israel back then as a divided kingdom and we consider America today. America today is going through a number of droughts. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that obviously California is going through a major drought, but there is also an economic drought. There are people that are really still struggling with finances. People that have not found a job in several years. You have an economic drought. But you really have a moral drought. You have a spiritual drought. People have lost any sense of morality and are beginning to lose any sense of spirituality. Some would suggest that this spiritual drought and even economic drought would be tied back to the fact that we have lost grounding. We have lost our Christian roots. I think most of you are aware that this country was founded on Christian values by Christian men and women who were there writing the Constitution and making sure God was mentioned. If you visit Washington, D.C. and visit the monuments, you are going to see the name of God all over the place. Whether we like it or not, this nation was founded on at least Christian principles. The last I looked, it still says “In God We Trust” on the dollar bill. We are at least generally speaking or at least started as a Christian nation. But as we have seen over time, Christianity has been diluted here by all sorts of things.
So much so that, as this short video clip shows, even President Obama is saying we are no longer a Christian nation. (Video clip shown here.) Very short, but I am sure you didn’t miss that he said “We are not a Christian nation.” I found this on YouTube and I know there are Christians out there that when they hear this it just makes them irate. They want to accuse Mr. Obama for being the antichrist or something for making such a statement. When I watched this, I began to think how are people going to take that. I imagine to some of you this would be upsetting. As I thought about it, as much as I don’t agree with Mr. Obama in a lot of ways, on this point I agree with him. We would like to think it is a Christian nation now, but it is really not anymore. We pride ourselves as the United States of America as a country that always has been a melting pot. The melting pot means you have people coming in from different cultures into the same pot. They are coming from different ethnicities, different countries, different religions, and different beliefs and coming into the United States of America and being melted together. You melt enough people together like that and it is not going to come popping out a Christian. That is just what the reality is. You add to that the fact that there are people out there that are trying to take God out of everything from the government to the schools to prayer to even the pledge of allegiance. That pretty much dilutes the Christian influence. We can sit back and fight it and yell about it all we want on Facebook or wherever else you want to yell about it, but the reality is we are not technically a Christian nation. We are not. I know that might upset some people, but I think that is what is happening. It is a time for a wakeup call.
I began to think maybe if Elijah came back what would he say. It said in Malachi that Elijah was going to come back, but he didn’t show up in that first century. What if he showed up today? What if he showed up in Pittsburgh? What would he do? Some would say he would probably take the atheists, the liberals, the heathens, the Hindus, the Muslims, and take them up to Mt. Washington and say how long are you going to waver between two opinions. He would call down fire on Mt. Washington that would rival the likes of the Zambelli fireworks at PNC Park right? No he wouldn’t. Elijah didn’t have the issue with the Hindus and the Muslims and the atheists because they didn’t waver in their opinions. They made a choice. What do you mean I am wavering in my opinion? I am an atheist and I am proud of it. I am a Hindu and I am proud of it. I am a Muslim and I am proud of it. He wasn’t going after the non-Jews back in the Old Testament. He was going after the Jews who said they followed God but yet were following another god too. If Elijah was going to be here, he would probably come in and go call out the church. He would call out the collective church in all of America and say to them collectively “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is god, follow him. But the people said nothing.” I imagine if he said that, there would be people that wouldn’t say anything. There would be people that get their Bible and say what do you mean. They would get their Bible and say I am a follower of Jesus Christ and I have been a follower of Jesus Christ my entire life. How can you say ‘how can I waver on two opinions’? Elijah would just say let me see your checkbook. He opens it up and says look where you spend your money. Let me see your calendar. I don’t see too much quiet time. I don’t see too much time dedicated with serving the kingdom of God out there. When was the last time you shared Jesus with a friend or a neighbor? Can you recall that? I think that is what Elijah would be saying. You have people saying they are committed to God, but their actions do not demonstrate it whatsoever.
I know if Elijah was going to call down fire, I don’t think he would call down the fire that he called down on Mount Carmel. I think he would call down the fire that he called down in the first century to the Upper Room. Remember the Upper Room? The day of Pentecost. It was Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross. Sunday led to the resurrection. After the resurrection, for 40 days he hung around with people just to prove that he is alive. So 2,000 years ago today he would be walking around talking to people, hanging out with people, and being a convincing proof that he is very alive and well. He is doing this and talks to a select group of followers. He basically says I know you are all excited about the fact that I have raised from the dead, but I want you to wait in Jerusalem because my Father has a gift for you. He goes on to say John the Baptizer baptized with water but I am about to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Wait upstairs. They waited in the Upper Room. Before they knew it the sound of a mighty rushing wind filled the whole space. Then what happens is “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” That was a powerful day. So powerful those people couldn’t restrain themselves. They spilled out into the street. People thought they were going nuts. They thought they were all drunk they were so crazy and joyous. In the midst of that, Peter stands up and gives the sermon of his life and 3,000 people are converted and baptized that very day. We have trouble finding robes for three people when we baptize them let alone 3,000 but that was what was happening. People couldn’t wait to accept Christ and follow him. That was the kick start of the church. That is the day we call Pentecost. If there is a fire to be called down on the church it is that kind of fire that we need.
It is the fire that we begin to see in the 1700s or 1800s. The revival fires when revival spread throughout the country. That was basically a time of great spiritual awakening where people began to be drawn back into the church. There were these mass conversions. The interesting thing about it was it was interdenominational. In fact, our movement that we call the Christian Church, sprung from one of the biggest revivals called the Cane Ridge Revival in Cane Ridge, Kentucky. There were 25,000 people there for several weeks. Presbyterians, Methodists, all these people coming together. They were praising God together. They were having communion together. They were sharing the pulpit together. They were doing all these exciting things. There were these mass conversions going on. There was a major manifestation of the Holy Spirit. They didn’t know how to explain it but the Spirit of God was moving. It was an amazing thing. The interesting thing is that all these revivals were preceded by an intense period of spiritual drought, of dryness. Leonard Bacon who wrote a book about the American revivals writes “The closing years of the 18th century show the lowest low-water mark of the lowest ebb tide of spiritual life in the history of the American church.” That is pretty dry. Then he goes on to write “If there is any lesson from this it is that even when the church appears spiritual dead, we can anticipate that God is about to show his power.” We need that sort of revival. Not a revival that is just going to stir up some sort of emotional frenzy but really a revival that is going to stir up the human heart. That is going to cause people to reflect inside on what is going on inside here. Where is our heart divided? Between the God of creation and the gods of the world.
The good news is, as I begin to close, I think it is happening. It is starting to happen. It is a slow thing happening. It is happening in the younger generation. It is starting from high school all the way up. It is starting to happen. We had a men’s retreat a few weeks ago and I was very impressed with the boys from Impulse from our high school group. They were the ones initiating a prayer session. They were the ones that were excited about their faith. They drew in the men. They were excited about it. We are beginning to see it in The Vue and other twenty-something type groups in the church. We are seeing it in the community. You know what is frustrating about it is these kids don’t want to do church the way we want to do church. It drives me nuts. I can’t figure them out. They have no interest in what I would call the four Bs. Buildings and budgets and bulletins and how many butts you can get on the pew. Debbie said I can say butts. They are interested in saving lives. Converting people. Imagine that. Getting people saved and then trying to disciple them until they look like Jesus and then say go out into the world and do the same. Whether we like it or not, us old people, they are coming. So I would say for the 40 or 50 and above crowd, I have three suggestions. Either lead them, follow them, or get out of the way and let them have the church. They have their own way of running church and it doesn’t look like the way we used to run church because the way we used to run church does not work for most churches. When we begin to see that happening on a regular, consistent basis and we see this new generation rising up and we don’t alienate them from the church, but embrace them from an intergenerational-type approach and feed into them and mentor them, they might actually stick around. They might make sure that we are around 50 years from now. As this continues across America, if this new generation continues to rise up and do church in the way that it is supposed to be done, what happens over time is you are going to see the rain come back. You are going to see the rain begin to pour.
That is the last part of this passage about Elijah. After the prophets were killed, what did Elijah do? He still wasn’t done because there still wasn’t rain. He went up to the mountain. Sat down, stuck his head between his legs, and prayed. Prayed intensely. He turned to his servant and said go look over at the Mediterranean and see what you see. He looked and came back and he said I see nothing. Look again. He goes back and looks and says I don’t see anything. Do it again. Do it seven times. On the seventh time, his servant reported a cloud as small as a man’s hand is seen rising from the sea. Then we know that that began to grow. The clouds became dark. The wind began to swirl. There was this heavy, heavy downpour on the whole land and the land was refreshed again.
People, we are in a drought. If you don’t see it, you are blind. You know we are in an economic drought. You know we are in a physical drought. You should know we are in a spiritual drought. I am not picking on this church. I am saying the church collectively in America. Churches are dying out there. There is an opportunity here. We need to be like Elijah. We need to have more Elijahs rise up. People that are willing to pray not just corporately in a church setting but making sure that their own quiet time includes a good healthy dose of prayer. And that they would be praying for the fire to come down and ignite the church in a new way that has never been ignited before that hasn’t been seen since the second chapter of Acts. After that, they need to continue to pray that there would be this refreshing rain that would come. That after this extensive period of drought, which could go on for years, slowly we would begin to see this new rain coming down in an amazing way and that the country could find refreshment and find a new sense of peace and find a new sense of understanding. But I think, again, it is going to happen in the midst of a lot of turmoil. A lot of stuff is going to be happening before we experience that rain. I know some of you people are thinking that was back then. I am not an Elijah. I can never pray like Elijah. I will just remind you of the first passage that we looked at today out of James. It says “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain on the land for three-and-a-half years.” Then what happened? “Again he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.” Let us pray.
