Stop Wobbling and Take a Stand

August 5, 2007                                                      

Welcome

Call to Worship

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.

He shall be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream” (Jeremiah 17:7–8 NIV).

*Praise                         # 28  “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”

*Invocation (Lord’s Prayer) O God, we thank you for leading us to this hour. We gather in your name. May the experience of today’s worship prepare us for the living of our days. Grant to us boldness to live faithfully, to recognize our own inadequacy and your sufficiency.  Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever.  Amen

*Gloria Patri (Sung together)                                          #575

Psalm for Today                                        Psalm 107:1-9 (NRSV)

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble

and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west,

from the north and from the south.

Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town;

hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them.

Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress;

He led them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited town.

Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind.

For he satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things.

Our Offering to God     “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7 NIV).

*Doxology                                                                                       #572

*Prayer of Dedication  Our Father, as we bring to you these gifts, receive them as expressions of our love to you and receive us, along with our human frailties, and develop us after your own heart. May we have sacrificial and loving hearts.

*Hymn of Prayer         # 354     “I Am Thine, O Lord”

Pastoral Prayer  Almighty God, on this fresh and beautiful morning, we come to your presence with thanksgiving for all the blessings received and for all the signs of your unfailing grace. We humbly confess our faults and sins before you, knowing that you are always merciful and ready to forgive and to accept us as we are. We thank you again for the life of Jesus Christ your Son, the Lamb of God, who came to manifest your salvation and your eternal plan to redeem us.

Once again, O God, we want to affirm our dependency on your power and the great need we have to stay connected with you as a condition for the blessings you have stored in heaven for us. Thanks for the ministry of prayer, for as your Word has taught us, if we abide in you and you in us, our prayers will be answered. It is in that spirit that we come to you this morning to pray for the sick, to intercede for those who are in need of love, care, and compassion. Enable us to be healers, agents of reconciliation. Transform our lives, and make us caregivers in the same spirit and manner of Jesus. Revive us by the power of your Holy Spirit, and place a new song in our mouths. Help us to be true witnesses of the gospel wherever we find ourselves.

As your church, we want to be missional with a clear sense of commitment and a new understanding of your call to your service. Baptize us anew and prepare us for a new day of new beginnings with you, through the power and ministry of your Holy Spirit. This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ.—Djalma Araujo

*Hymn of Praise                                                                    # 285

“Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It”

Scripture Text                                                        1 Kings 18:1-2, 17-40 TM

 A long time passed. Then God’s word came to Elijah. The drought was now in its third year. The message: “Go and present yourself to Ahab; I’m about to make it rain on the country.” Elijah set out to present himself to Ahab. The drought in Samaria at the time was most severe.

                 The moment Ahab saw Elijah he said, “So it’s you, old troublemaker!”

     ““It’s not I who has caused trouble in Israel,” said Elijah, “but you and your government—you’ve dumped God’s ways and commands and run off after the local gods, the Baals. Here’s what I want you to do: Assemble everyone in Israel at Mount Carmel. And make sure that the special pets of Jezebel, the four hundred and fifty prophets of the local gods, the Baals, and the four hundred prophets of the whore goddess Asherah, are there.”

                  So Ahab summoned everyone in Israel, particularly the prophets, to Mount Carmel.

                 Elijah challenged the people: “How long are you going to sit on the fence? If God is the real God, follow him; if it’s Baal, follow him. Make up your minds!”

                 Nobody said a word; nobody made a move.

                 Then Elijah said, “I’m the only prophet of God left in Israel; and there are 450 prophets of Baal. Let the Baal prophets bring up two oxen; let them pick one, butcher it, and lay it out on an altar on firewood—but don’t ignite it. I’ll take the other ox, cut it up, and lay it on the wood. But neither will I light the fire. Then you pray to your gods and I’ll pray to God. The god who answers with fire will prove to be, in fact, God.”

                  All the people agreed: “A good plan—do it!”

                  Elijah told the Baal prophets, “Choose your ox and prepare it. You go first, you’re the majority. Then pray to your god, but don’t light the fire.”

                  So they took the ox he had given them, prepared it for the altar, then prayed to Baal. They prayed all morning long, “O Baal, answer us!” But nothing happened—not so much as a whisper of breeze. Desperate, they jumped and stomped on the altar they had made.

                  By noon, Elijah had started making fun of them, taunting, “Call a little louder—he is a god, after all. Maybe he’s off meditating somewhere or other, or maybe he’s gotten involved in a project, or maybe he’s on vacation. You don’t suppose he’s overslept, do you, and needs to be waked up?” They prayed louder and louder, cutting themselves with swords and knives—a ritual common to them—until they were covered with blood.

                 This went on until well past noon. They used every religious trick and strategy they knew to make something happen on the altar, but nothing happened—not so much as a whisper, not a flicker of response.

                  Then Elijah told the people, “Enough of that—it’s my turn. Gather around.” And they gathered. He then put the altar back together for by now it was in ruins. Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes of Jacob, the same Jacob to whom God had said, “From now on your name is Israel.” He built the stones into the altar in honor of God. Then Elijah dug a fairly wide trench around the altar. He laid firewood on the altar, cut up the ox, put it on the wood, and said, “Fill four buckets with water and drench both the ox and the firewood.” Then he said, “Do it again,” and they did it. Then he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. The altar was drenched and the trench was filled with water.

                 When it was time for the sacrifice to be offered, Elijah the prophet came up and prayed, “O God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, make it known right now that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I’m doing what I’m doing under your orders. Answer me, God; O answer me and reveal to this people that you are God, the true God, and that you are giving these people another chance at repentance.”

                  Immediately the fire of God fell and burned up the offering, the wood, the stones, the dirt, and even the water in the trench.

                    All the people saw it happen and fell on their faces in awed worship, exclaiming, “God is the true God! God is the true God!”

                  Elijah told them, “Grab the Baal prophets! Don’t let one get away!”

                 They grabbed them. Elijah had them taken down to the Brook Kishon and they massacred the lot.

Message                       Stop Wobbling and Take a Stand

On that unforgettable day Elijah cried out a chal­lenge to God’s confused people. “How long will you waver between two opinions?” he asked. “If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). The literal Hebrew reading of this verse is, “How long will you wobble?” Or, “How long will you walk with a limp?” The people of Israel were wobbling between two opinions. They would not take a stand for either Baal or Yahweh, and Elijah’s task was to challenge God’s people and confront the false prophets.

Before I recount this dramatic biblical event, I want to share with you why it is important and how it relates to us today. To many the Bible sto­ries are no more than boring tidbits of ancient history or tiresome narratives about incomprehensible cus­toms. The Bible is no mere history book or cultural commentary. All of the stories in Scripture are there for a purpose. Readers in every generation can find a prac­tical application.

The New Testament confirms that the Old Testament authors recorded these stories for our bene­fit. “These things happened to” our biblical forefathers, Paul wrote, “as examples and were written down as warnings for us” (1 Cor. 10:11). That statement gets my attention. Evidently God wanted to warn us about evil things we would face in this world, in order to spare us from physical or spiritual destruction. So God inspired certain men to keep a written record of His dealings with mankind, and this written record serves as a Guidebook for us. Don’t you want to be warned ahead of time when danger is lying in wait for you? I certainly do.

When we come to Old Testament stories that seem so strange to us—stories about people worshiping fer­tility gods in “high places” or slashing their bodies to get the attention of their pagan gods—we must look for the warning God intended for His people. At first glance the warning for our generation may be difficult to discern.

Although we call it something else, the modern fertility ritual has become just as widespread—and just as dangerous spiritually—as it was in Bible times.                                                                                    The Gods of Materialism  In the agricultural society of Old Testament times, fertility rituals were associated with the desire for wealth. The Canaanites, and the Israelites who aban­doned Yahweh, sacrificed to Baal and Asherah to ensure an abundant harvest, which would mean financial prosperity.

Some of the fertility rituals included gross immorality and sexual perversion. But under Jezebel’s leadership, morality was out and prosperity was in. Ahab was so busy worrying about the nation’s econ­omy, not to mention his own personal wealth, that he could not be bothered with old-fashioned notions of morality and character. In Baal they thought they had found a shortcut to prosperity. They imagined they could get a financial blessing without having to be obedient to God’s commandments.

God’s people are no different today.  God has promised to bless His people. But, as we will see next week, these are conditional promises. We cannot command God to prosper us; we can, how­ever, meet His conditions for receiving a blessing.

Jesus taught succinctly against the worship of materialism. He said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money [or mammon in the King James]” (Matt. 6:24).

Mammon is a variant of a common Aramaic word referring to riches or wealth of any kind. Jesus used it to show that His followers should not put their trust in wealth or riches or anything of temporal value.

Rock stars and movie stars and overpaid athletes are our gods and goddesses of materialism, our very own all-American fertility cult.

I do not mean to imply that holiness is equated with poverty or that wealth is always ungodly, but the accumulation of posses­sions is not to be our goal. Prosperity is not to be our preoccupation. Wealth is not our security.                          Conformity Instead of Confrontation

Much of the moral and ethical breakdown in our great nation is due to the fact that some time ago we chose conformity instead of confrontation. We chose consen­sus instead of conviction. We have followed public opin­ion polls instead of obedience to God and His laws.

Americans seem to be addicted to public opinion polls. Morality has been shoved aside in favor of pocketbook politics. “As long as the economy is good, don’t bother me with moral issues,” the average voter says.

Rather than confronting sin and immorality, the Christian community is conforming more and more to the society at large.

The church is becoming a mere reflection of society, with fewer and fewer people loving God, serving Him, or making Him known. The Sunday morning worship service has turned into a spectator sport. People show up to be entertained by the musicians and the pastor. Most of the congregation do not want to participate or to make any kind of commitment. They are content to sit in the pews, much the way they sit in front of the television set.

A prominent coach once described a football game as an event where fifty tired people who are in desperate need of rest are playing on the field while being watched in the stands by fifty thousand resting specta­tors who are desperately in need of exercise. A football game cannot be won by the spectators, and neither can the race the Christian is called to run.////////

As we turn now to the centerpiece of the life of Elijah—the confrontation with a multitude of pagan prophets—we find him in hand-to-hand combat, while the masses of the people of Israel, standing there on the top of Mount Carmel, were indifferent and skeptical specta­tors. Baal had been winning over Yahweh in the public opinion polls. The people were wobbling and refusing to take a stand for the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

We read at the beginning of 1 Kings 18 that God told Elijah to go and present himself to King Ahab.  Remember, there had been a severe drought for three years, as Elijah had prophesied. At the end of that time, God announced to His prophet that He was now ready to end the drought, and once again He sent Elijah to confront the politically correct, weak-willed king.

This wimp of a king had compromised his faith and allowed his wicked, godless queen to desecrate the nation by entertaining 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah—at the taxpayers’ expense. Yet when trouble came, the king blamed Elijah for the nation’s disasters. After a three-year drought, everything had turned to dust. No crops. No vegetation. No food. The country was fac­ing a catastrophe.

Notice the irony here. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel had been worshiping Baal while paying lip service to the one true God, Yahweh. Why were they worship­ing Baal? Because Baal was the god of fertility, the god who was supposed to ensure an abundance of crops and a bountiful harvest. Yet when the drought came, Ahab did not count it as a failure of Baal. He blamed the man of God, calling him “the troubler of Israel.

When a nation’s leadership leads into compro­mise, the public becomes confused. That is what was happening at this point in Israel’s history, when all these confused people gathered at the top of Mount Carmel to witness Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal and Asherah. We know they were confused, because the Bible says they were wavering between two opinions. They did not worship Baal alone; they did not worship Yahweh alone; they tried to compromise and the result was utter confusion.

I don’t like debating people when it comes to the faith. I don’t believe the gospel is to be rammed down people’s throats or argued about. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  So “If you want to be on God’s side, accept Jesus Christ. If you don’t want to be on God’s side, reject Him.”  It’s that simple.  I don’t have to argue the point.

That’s what Elijah said on Mount Carmel that fate­ful day. He was calling the people to make a decision between two extremes. “If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).

Let me tell you, on the authority of Scripture, that God wants people to be at one extreme or the other. Jesus told the church at Laodicea, “You make me sick. You make me so nauseous, in fact, that I want to vomit.”

Why did the Laodicean church make Him sick? Because they were middle-of-the-roaders on every issue. They straddled the fence and sought to please every­body. They wanted to play footsie with sin during the week and go to church on Sunday. They wanted to iden­tify with society’s immorality and still call themselves Christian.

Jesus told them to quit wobbling and take a stand. “I’d rather you be hot or cold than to stay lukewarm,” He said.

You don’t need a Ph.D. to know that people pleasers end up pleasing no one. Compromise produces confusion.  Indecision creates turmoil. James wrote that a double-minded person is unstable. Quit wobbling between two positions. Quit worrying about what people think. Be concerned most with what God thinks. Take a stand!

Elijah Took a Stand

Elijah took a stand for God at the very moment when it was most difficult. Elijah remarked to the people on Mount Carmel that he was outnumbered. But he wasn’t just outnumbered, he was the only one standing on Yahweh’s side.

To have 850 people telling you that you are wrong is inconceivable. But that is where Elijah was, standing alone in front of the lead­ership of the country.

What did it mean for Elijah to be outnumbered to that extent? It meant that all the odds favored Baal. But the outcome was not dependent on who had the most people on their side. The central term of the con­test was that the god who acts is God.

Can you imagine these confused Israelites coming to the top of the mountain, then standing there and watching the spectacle? I imagine them to be like the people of our day—those who believe that there is a God but that He is a million miles away. They believe that Jesus died on the cross, but His death and resurrection are totally irrelevant and divorced from their daily lives. They go to church once a month to get a fix of religion, but they also read their daily horoscopes, just to be sure. Imagine these people standing there, wide-eyed, watching for nine hours while hun­dreds of prophets called upon Baal with no response.

I think the prophets of Baal sincerely believed their god would hear them. How disappointed they must have been. When the 850 prophets could not get Baal to hear them, they started dancing around the altar they had made. They were gyrating and gesturing frantically to get Baal’s attention, but to no avail. Finally, when they got really desperate, they began to cut themselves with knives, hoping to provoke Baal’s response. But that was futile too.////

Elijah had told the crowds, “You call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by fire—he is God” (1 Kings 18:24). They called on Baal all day long. But Baal could not answer.

Our circumstances are so different today, yet we respond in exactly the same way. We are forever studying public opinion polls and then formulating our position. We look at what others are doing and then decide we will do the same thing. It does not please the Lord when we follow public opinion rather than obeying the Word of God.

Let me ask you something. Do you follow the crowd, or do you seek to hear from God and follow only Him? Does God honor your trust in Him and answer your prayers when you pray in accordance with His will?///

We all put our trust in something or someone. If you put your trust in material things and your children are empty, can your materialism fill them?/// Your material possessions will stand in mockery against you, because they cannot answer.

Do you worship a god of rationalism that says “I think, therefore I am”? When you confront a tragedy in life, can your god answer with the peace that passes understanding? No. Your rationalism will only mock you; it cannot answer you.

Is your god sensuality? When you come to the end of your life and feel your own mortality, you can cry out to sensuality. But when passion’s flames have become dust and ashes, sensuality will not answer you.

But there is a God who will answer, and you can know Him. Elijah showed us how God answers.

Late in the day, when the Baal worshipers finally grew weary and hoarse, Elijah said, “Come near. Let me show you how my God works.” There was no hocus-pocus, no smoke and mirrors, no sleight of hand on Mount Carmel that day. There was simply one man who knew how God works.

As the sun was sinking like a blazing lead ball into the Mediterranean, Elijah took twelve stones, repre­senting each of the twelve tribes of Israel, and he repaired the altar of God. Repairing the altar was nec­essary because it had crumbled out of neglect and dis­interest. The people had been so busy running after other gods, they had not cared that God’s altar had been torn down.

Even we must repair the altar before God can answer.///  Once he had repaired the altar, Elijah did something very curious to the wood he had placed there. In con­trast to the dry wood the prophets of Baal used, Elijah saturated his wood with water. Because of the drought, the water had to come from the Mediterranean. So the people Elijah called on to assist him had to carry all those barrels of water from the sea up to the altar, a place about 1,500 feet up the mountain.

After they poured twelve barrels of water out, sat­urating the wood, Elijah sent them back for four more barrels. Why did he soak the wood and make a trench of water around the altar? He wanted to give all the odds to Baal and all of the handicap to Yahweh. Therefore, when God answered there would be no mis­taking that it was His response.

The wood was thoroughly wet, and it was sundown. There was not enough sunlight left to spark a fire, even if the wood had been dry.

When Elijah was satisfied that the wood was soaked, he offered a short prayer. Immediately fire fell from heaven and consumed the sacrifice./////      “The god who answers by fire—he is God.”

Note the sharp contrast. Elijah did not have to cut himself or shout to God for hours. Everything he did—repairing the altar, wetting the wood, filling the trench around the altar—had been in perfect obedience to the Lord.

So when he prayed publicly, he only prayed a few words. But consider this: Elijah had been praying privately for three years. All that time, hiding in the Kerith Ravine and in Zarephath, God had been prepar­ing him for this moment.

We often underestimate the importance of God’s preparation in our prayer lives. We think that if we can just come up with the right words, God will answer our prayer. But it is not the eloquence of your speech God considers; He is looking at the condition of your heart. And it is not the length of your prayer, but the strength of your prayer that matters. It is not the econ­omy of your words in public prayer, but the intensity of your private prayer that will cause God to answer by fire.

A Moment in Salvation History

By now you may be asking, “Why doesn’t God work that way today? Why doesn’t He send fire from heaven anymore?” Perhaps you imagine confronting the leaders of your city. “bring your bull to the altar and I’ll call down fire from heaven” That would get everyone’s attention, all right.

But you have to understand that Mount Carmel was a moment of time in salvation history, a moment where everything was at stake, everything hung in the balance.

Our God responds in the manner He deems appropriate for the situation, and we cannot command Him to per­form as we see fit.

When fire came down from heaven and burned everything in sight, the spectators on Mount Carmel fell on their faces and cried, “The LORD he is God! The LORD he is God!” (1 Kings 18:39). No longer could they wobble between two opinions. It was a decisive moment in the history of the nation of Israel, and by extension, in the life of the church.

But as great as this event was in biblical history, we do not look back to Mount Carmel for salvation. Why? Because we have a better example in Jesus.   We remember Calvary and his empty tomb. We look to the Upper Room in Jerusalem, where the Holy Spirit descended on the first believers.

When fire fell from heaven on the day of Pentecost men and women were changed forever, filled with the power of the resurrected Christ. We do not look back to the fire that consumed stone and wood and even water, but to the fire that cleanses us and purifies us. We do not look to the fire that consumed the sacrifice, but to the fire that consumes us to live so that the world will know that Jesus is Lord.

How does God convince America that He is the Lord of all? He wants to do it by your deeper and purer inner fire, the flame that enters in and burns the compromise in your life, the flame that burns indecision and indifference out of your life, so that you are able to confront the world.

Perhaps you are to confront just one person with the claims of Christ.  God wants to do it through a per­ceptible change in your life. He wants people to look at you and say, “Why are you different? Why do you

have hope?” He wants us to display His power in our daily living, so that we do not live by sight like the rest of the world, but we live by faith. God confronts the world when His church exhibits such unity of spirit that people are compelled to say, “Behold, how they love one another.”

If we know that God confronts the world by our love for the lost, then how should we respond?  That God called Elijah to confront 850 false prophets at once does not mean He necessarily wants you to do the same. God calls some as evangelists to reach the masses. He calls every believer to confront the enemy, Satan, by confronting one person at a time. Simply ask God what one person He wants to win through your witness. Say to Him, “Lord, lay some person on my heart, so I can pray for that person’s salvation.”

Then the moment comes that God provides, not by your engineering but by His grace, for you to confront that one person.

I hope my words have challenged you to quit wob­bling and take a stand for Christ. One of the important lessons you will need to learn in order to take a stand is how to cling to the promises of God.

We’ll look at that next week.

Communion Hymn       “There’s a Quiet Understanding”

Communion

*Hymn of Response             “Hallelujah!  We Sing Your Praises”

*Sending forth  

*Postlude