September 1974.
Thank you for those words of welcome afresh.
I'm pleased to be back again today, a
bit more on time than yesterday, I'm glad
to say.
And I want to turn with you to
One King, chapter 18.
I'm reminded of the story of a man
who was a very garrulous speaker and realising
he'd gone on far too long, he turned
rather apologetically to the chairman and said, I
can't see a clock in the hall.
The chairman was very wide awake and with
a touch of humor, because that's right, we're
going by the calendar on the wall.
Well I've got two watches in front of
me now, so I shan't need the calendar
after all.
I want to talk in terms of, continuing
in our study of Elijah, Elijah's triumph.
You will recall that God trained this man,
he learned quite a bit I trust yesterday,
from Scripture, on his training.
Now we learn something of his triumph, how
God used this man of faith.
We have to remember of course that to
be genuinely used by God is not something
that's going to come lightly or easily, it
involves a path of sacrifice, a path of
constant obedience, a path of complete dedication, it's
not an easy path to walk.
I'm always encouraged when I read the story
of Bunyan's children, and I feel that we
have to recognise that if we really want
to use, it is a glorious thing, and
yet it is something of a sacrifice.
Let me take it off it's lofty notes
and remind you by way of illustration.
The story, it must have been apocryphal, was
told of a pig and a hen that
escaped from a local farm and went down
to a local village, and there outside the
restaurant there was a menu on the wall.
And the hen turned excitedly to the pig
and said, look, we're at the top of
the menu today, ham and eggs, what has
I seen?
And the pig turned to the hen and
said, Now in a
sense that's the Christian life isn't it?
It's not just giving God what we can
spare, it's giving ourselves, it's a sacrifice.
And in some ways I think that's got
such a tremendous truth.
Humours where it may lead.
So we look at 1 Kings 18.
We conclude on the note that Elijah had
been hidden away in the backside of a
desert as it were, he had been obscured,
and not in the limelight at all.
And in chapter 18 verse 1 he is
told to show himself, to reveal himself at
last.
We read in another place in scripture that
it was three years and six months after
he had been away from Ahab, that had
been the period of the drought.
And during this time Ahab had been searching
for him high and low, it had not
been easy.
Ahab had sent out messengers, he had taken
an oath of people in the country, in
case they had seen him or harboured him
or in any way sheltered him, and he
was obviously anxious to find Elijah without success
until God's time was right and Elijah was
commanded to go and show himself.
In verse 3 we're introduced to this God
-fearing man Obadiah.
Now if you're not familiar with Obadiah do
look at verse 3 and a few verses
further on.
And Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the
household.
Now Obadiah revered the Lord greatly.
And when Jezebel cut off the profits of
the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred profits and
hid them by fifties in a cave and
fed them with bread and water.
And Ahab said to Obadiah, Go through the
land to all the springs of water and
to all the valleys that perhaps we may
find grass and save the horses and mules
alive and not even some of the animals.
So they divided the land between them and
passed through it.
Ahab went in one direction by himself and
Obadiah in another direction by himself.
We're in 1 Kings 18.
Obviously Ahab trusted Obadiah.
He trusted him as though he had eyes
of his own.
He called him Ahab.
And he trusted him as a man of
integrity.
He wouldn't just quarter his particular horses there
but the king's horses and mules.
It's interesting actually that Ahab was much more
concerned for his animals to alleviate the problem
than for the cause of the problem, his
own misdoings.
The cause of the problem, the drought, was
Ahab and his people's sins.
And rather than find the remedy, he wanted
to simply alleviate the suffering for the animals
when he could have put the matter right.
But we're introduced to Obadiah because Obadiah had
something to teach us.
He feared the Lord greatly and if you
look on to verse 12, it was from
his youth upwards.
And yet here he was in the top
position, so it might seem, as Lord Chancellor
in Ahab's regime.
A cabinet minister perhaps, shorn of some power,
but almost a number two for Ahab.
Now this is interesting because he had such
a senior position in court and he was
a man who was God-fearing and Ahab
wasn't.
And yet Ahab recognised the value of the
man whose standards he opposed.
Ahab allowed the worship of Dael, he allowed
Jezebel for practices that people were given over
to, and yet Ahab admired the standards of
Obadiah, whom he disobeyed.
Now that's interesting because it means that even
right at the top you will find people
who admire integrity and honesty, a sense of
God's presence within the person, a recognition of
their worth, and might even elevate from the
top of it without necessarily following it.
It might even be part of the story
of Potiphar and Joseph rising prominently in Potiphar's
house.
And it's interesting also in verse 4 to
notice that God raised up Obadiah earlier on
as a friend to his persecuted people, the
prophets.
Just when they apparently had nobody in the
senior position, God introduced the man he'd been
declaring and whose heart he'd been keeping, Obadiah.
And he managed to rescue a hundred of
them and hide them by 50 in caves
and fed them.
God provided his friend for his persecuted people.
If God ever wants to, you know God
has it many times in Scripture and still
today.
Then we're introduced to Elijah's challenge.
I think we can assume this was really
rather a magnificent confrontation.
Elijah said to Obadiah, go and tell the
king that I'm here.
And Obadiah said, but he's been looking everywhere
for you.
And when I go and tell him, why
you will disappear I'm sure because he's been
looking everywhere for you.
And then the king will, well he'll kill
me though, I'm the Lord Chancellor.
My life is not worth it.
He's so furious.
Please don't allow this to happen.
Look, I've revered the Lord from my youth
upwards.
And Elijah said, don't you worry, I will
today show myself to the king.
So off Obadiah went and when Ahab heard,
he came to meet him.
Now picture the scene in verse 17 onwards.
Ahab was hot, living in a drought.
He was obviously covered with dust, there was
a lot of dust in that part of
the world.
He was probably frustrated.
Hardly believing his own eyes.
He could hardly give credibility to what he
was confronted with.
So here was he looking for the man,
and then the man had appeared and said,
I want to see you.
He was rebellious, I noticed.
He was still accused of it.
He was unrepentant.
These years of difficulty had not happened to
him.
God's visitation, far from making his heart malleable,
he was still accused of it.
And he put the blame on Elijah.
He was unrepentant.
And this was a false accusation.
Are you the troubler of Israel, he said
to Elijah?
You're the man who's caused all this calamity
to us.
It's true that God's people do get blamed
when they're innocent, and sometimes blamed for when
they do the right thing.
Blame is a very easy thing to attach.
It usually means that the person for whom
it should be attached has God's feet in
the process.
And I think that Christians will always find
themselves being blamed by those who disagree with
them, by those who reject their standards, blamed
for all sorts of things which they may
not have done, and therefore not given credit.
But why should we imagine that credit is
due to us?
Recently I copied out of the illustrated Times
of India, I hope to get that right,
it's published by the Times of India, but
it's called the Hindustan Times, and it contains
the following quotations about the saga of Christian
achievement.
No credit.
Probably we should get blamed.
We're getting the door closed to our faces
for much of the interview, as we know.
But this is what an Indian paper wrote.
Christian Endeavour has given India over 150 colleges,
2,177 high schools, 240 technical schools, and
150 teachers' training schools, 620 hospitals, 670 dispensaries,
86 leprosy centres, 713 orphanages, 87 homes for
the aged, 44 agricultural settlements, 27 industrial centres,
and several institutes for the blind, the deaf,
and the handicapped.
The article concludes, what community has done as
much for our country?
The right of Indians.
We don't have to get credited.
Why should we?
But we strangely also get the blame, often,
for things that don't happen or go wrong.
Not necessarily on a national scene, but on
a local situation.
The Christians are blamed and we must accept
it.
But Elijah, far from allowing Ahab to get
away with his false accusation, makes it rebound
upon him.
And aflame with righteous indignation, he said, it's
not I who's troubled Israel, but you.
You're the troubler of Israel.
You, with your double standards, and your false
worship, and your insincerity, you, with your responsible
position, have led others astray.
You are the culpable one, because you were
the responsible one.
And as a leader, you carry that responsibility,
Ahab.
Now, this is dangerous talk, because our thoughts,
if Ahab had been prepared to kill his
Lord Chancellor, because Elijah had vanished as the
Will of the Wisps, surely Elijah said the
wrong thing.
He was quite prepared to kill Elijah.
But such courage met with a remarkable return.
Having thrown down the gauntlet and the peaceful
opposition, and the divine inspiration, he ordered Ahab
to produce the prophets of Baal, and the
other prophets, who'd eaten at Jezebel's table.
Now, note Elijah's authority.
After all, he was only a wandering prophet.
He probably looked pretty disheveled.
I don't know how he managed to cut
his hair all these years in the desert,
and whether his clothes were a bit tatty.
And I don't know what he looked like,
but Ahab the king recognized authority when he
met him.
He recognized that Elijah had authority given to
him, vested in him, coming out of him.
And here was this king told to summon
all the prophets together.
Now, they were scattered in the various temples
and groves.
And also, he was told to send out
an edict throughout the land and summon all
the people.
Well, this was a difficult thing for Ahab
to do.
But he obeyed.
Now, to Henry's commentary, perhaps he hoped that
by gathering all the people, Elijah would demonstrate
a miracle by sending rain in front of
everybody, and so he was prepared to do
it.
Or perhaps he just recognized that Elijah had
the whip's hand.
But either way, it was authority.
And the man of God has got an
authority, a vested authority.
It's not a low-making authority, but something
that God has given to him.
And it should and might well be apparent
on the crucial occasions when it's needed.
So Ahab, under these instructions, sent, in verse
20 of 1 Kings 18, to all the
people of Israel and gathered the prophets together
at Mount Carmel.
And Elijah came to all the people and
then challenged them, how long will you go
limping with two different opinions?
If the Lord is God, follow him.
But if Baal, then follow him.
Picture the scene, if you can get your
imagination to play upon it.
This was going to be a very real
spectacle.
The French would say, you can go and
spect up.
This was the daddy of a show.
The whole concourse of people were to come
together on Mount Carmel.
But wait a minute.
It had the smell of death about it
somehow, for the side that lost would be
killed.
Yes, it was an arena of a spectacle
that one side had to lose.
Picture the scene that was following.
The surly priests, very shuffling columns of dust.
People moving forward.
Were they eager?
Were they dull?
We don't know.
A huge, unconvinced of this we know, sea
of unsympathetic humanity coming forward.
And when challenged, they wouldn't answer.
Nobody would take the lead.
They all waited for the next man to
speak.
They wouldn't answer in a word.
Haven't we met this so often?
People not willing to expose their position, rather
hiding behind the box.
Not willing to come into the audience.
There may well have been some sincere people
there who would have liked to have said
something.
But after many years of living in an
alien society, as it were, where Baal was
worshipped and the true God was hardly known,
they weren't prepared to stick their necks out.
And so Elijah's challenge got no response.
How long will you live?
If the Lord is God, follow him.
But if Baal, follow him.
Now you would have imagined that was logic.
But people don't respond to logic.
Isn't that the shame of it?
You present a wonderful case of the deity
of Jesus, the evidence for the resurrection, etc.
And the logic falls on deaf ears.
The will is not moved.
The heart is not softened.
The spirit of God is needed to break
down that resistance so that they wish to
respond by the will in an act of
commitment.
And these people were not ready for it.
The logic of Elijah did not provoke them
to respond.
Now learn something from that.
That we can be very logical, devastating, very
disappointing that people had taken notice.
And it's apparent what they ought to do.
You might say to people, there's only one
thing that's certain in this life, only one
thing, and that is that it'll end.
What are you going to do after?
Are you ready to have one certainty in
that?
You make all sorts of provisions for things
that you think might happen, or you hope
won't happen, and so you protect yourself against
them.
But the one thing that's bound to happen,
have you made any provisions for that?
And such devastating logic doesn't seem to bring
the response we want.
And so it is there.
People wouldn't answer.
And I note it also that all the
adversities to which they had gone through had
not stopped them then.
You know, people do face tragedy, don't they,
in their own domestic scenes.
You meet them.
You may have had it close to your
own life.
I speak sensitively.
And you would imagine that people would automatically
do that.
They might open and let it go.
And some are.
But not all.
And here are these people up against a
situation which is beyond them.
Droughts and so on.
But they haven't turned.
There has been a revival in Ethiopia down
in the south.
Tens of thousands of people have come forward
for baptism.
But I don't think it's connected with the
drought.
There has been tragedy in Bangladesh of a
great order.
Three million killed in the birth of this
country in bloodshed.
And those people are much more open because
it's now a secular state as opposed to
an Islamic state.
They're not turning in droves in particular.
Oh, yes, up in the north, in Ma
'an and Sinjar and Korah, not the Daraa.
There are people turning.
But these are largely the hill people who
are animists and not the Muslims.
Yes, there are groups of Muslims way down
in the south, in Chandragona, next to the
Christian hospital at the leprosy centre.
There are a lot of people who have
been genuinely regenerated and baptized.
But not thousands, tens of thousands, but nearly
all of those gone through.
What about the floods they just had?
Up to 45% of the country inundated,
those which make people realise yet again they're
inadequate in front of deity.
They are a religious people.
But no.
Adversity does prepare the ground but does not
provoke a response.
So, Elijah gives them a challenge.
His challenge is, let's have a visual aid.
And we'll prepare two sacrifices.
And the sacrifice that's consumed by fire, let
that be a demonstration of who the genuine
God is.
If Baal will send fire on the sacrifice
of the prophet of Baal, then we will
believe in Baal.
But if the Lord God Jehovah sends fire
upon the sacrifice of his prophet Elijah, the
prophet of God, then let us believe in
him.
And the people at long last responded and
said, it's well said.
We'll accept the challenge.
We don't mind the odds, even.
This seems sensible.
The visual aid will convince us.
So at last they had been brought to
a position where they were prepared to take
a risk.
And then we read from verse 23 onwards
about the prophet's useless performance.
The two bulls and the willingness of the
prophet to do everything possible to enable Baal
to respond.
The God who answers by fire.
Well said, the people said.
Oh, I do believe that the prophet's performance
is impressive.
They leapt around for hours.
They cut themselves.
They invoked Baal.
They cried unto him.
They got terribly wound up.
I imagine that they were desperately in earnest.
Don't let the cross fall on people who
are really in earnest and looking for God.
But some of them are genuine, very genuine
in their devotion.
They weren't all charlatans.
Know the agony of silence and moderity.
Haven't you sometimes, as you've been in other
parts of the world, seen the devotion of
devotees to temples or other forms of divine
worship?
And seen the rivers which they will go
through.
And been hurt by them.
But they can be so devout.
And yet that it can be so misguided.
Across one of those narrow rope bridges in
Nepal, bouncing along.
You know, you've got to get your step
right or the bridge comes up and hits
you on it.
So you're not quite ready for it.
You know what they say, you're not.
And I was thoroughly enjoying this early morning
walk across this bouncing bridge.
And I looked down and I saw, what
was to me not a familiar sight, but
a man standing in the shallow water and
offering up a bowl of water to the
sun, worshipping the sun in the early morning.
And I thought, I wonder if he comes
here every morning.
I wonder if this is his daily ritual
when he could be with his family or
his farm.
And he comes here for hours and they
sprinkle the water over him in different ways.
He went down and invoked the God again.
This is his worship.
Earlier this year I was in Kathmandu.
And I was with my wife and we
were outside the Temple of the Living Goddess.
And I was being good for it, encouraging.
And then I was horrified.
Standing there in the blazing sun was a
girl, I don't know how old she was,
probably about 13.
She didn't have a great deal on except
white powder or white ash.
And she was holding a begging bowl outside
the Temple of the Living Goddess.
Her lips were very red and painted up.
And yet her face was white.
And then I looked and I saw that
her tongue was protruding between her lips and
was skewered.
So she couldn't put it back in her
mouth.
It was kept out all day long by
her masters.
By somebody who hoped in some way that
this was going to please the Goddess.
I was appalled.
I didn't know how genuine it was or
how charlatan it was.
But it was somebody's presumed attempt to please
the God by suffering.
The agony of silence in the deity.
Grouping for God can be a torment to
people.
And we need to be sensitive.
But the God who answered by fire, they
said would be the real God.
Let me tell you the story of Arjun.
Arjun was a young man from central India
who had obtained his B.A. pass from
Nagpur University.
His B.A. failed at it and he
lost something.
But B.A. pass was even more important.
So feeling very pleased with himself, he hurried
back to his village, a long way away.
And as he drew near, he dusted off
the dust from his patent leather black shoes,
imagining the welcome he would get from his
family.
But as he crossed the last field, he
heard a strange wailing sound coming from his
village.
There was a mountain's tear in his heart.
He had a premonition that it lay at
his doorstep.
Pressing through the crowd around his house, he
went in to find that the sister of
whom he wished to kill had just died.
What good was his degree, B.A. pass,
when his sister had been taken in death?
Where was the God who had taken her?
Where had this God taken her to?
Mechanically he went through the ritual funeral rites
of the Hindu religion, lit the butter lantern
at the family shrine, went through the incantations,
went through the days of mourning, following them.
But resolved to find out, he told his
parents to agree that he, the new breadwinner,
should suddenly go off.
But he said he must look for God,
and so he gone and sat on the
road to the holy man of Kadi.
And went on pilgrimage to look for God.
He travelled up from central India to the
north.
He visited all the temples and enquired of
the priests.
Can you tell me where God is?
And the almost invariable answer he received was,
you can't know.
It would be unknowable.
Not that quite.
He pressed on.
He went to Varanasi, the sacred city on
the Ganges, and stood in the waters of
the Ganges up to his neck and recited
a hundred names of deities.
But without effect.
He continued in his search, but finally disillusioned.
After two years he started off on his
return journey.
He hitched a lift in a bullock cart.
Two miles an hour to have a good
taste of life in India.
The farmer said to him, what have you
been doing?
And Arjun said, I've been looking for God.
So the farmer said, where did you find
him?
And Arjun, who by now knew the path,
said no.
And you can't know the unknowable.
And the farmer said, but I know God.
And proceeded to introduce him to the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The rest of that story on the God
who answers by fire will cost you thirty
-five cents.
Forgive me for telling the experts how to
sell books.
Or even presuming that I was telling you
something you didn't know.
Then we move on in Elijah having taunted
them with this.
To his own part, his bold triumph.
Verse thirty.
Their performance was useless and accused nothing apart
from exposing the genuineness of some people's agony
in not getting through to God.
Do not miss that, please.
And then comes Elijah's turn.
He enacted a tabla, a visual aid.
And all his confidence went into this.
Verse thirty.
Then Elijah said to the people, come near
to me.
And all the people came near to him.
And he repaired the altar of the Lord
that had been thrown down.
Elijah took twelve stones according to the number
of the tribes of the sons of Jacob.
To whom the word of the Lord came,
saying, Israel shall be your name.
And with the stones he built an altar
in the name of the Lord.
And he made a trench about the altar
as great as would contain two measures of
seed.
And he put the wood in order and
cut the bull in pieces and laid it
on the wood.
This was to be a visual aid that
was a teaching mission.
It was in front of a vast concourse
of people.
Sheer oratory would not win.
This had to have results.
Some of us have a very smooth tongue.
But on this occasion Elijah's oratory was of
no avail as in fact nothing happened.
His faith, his confidence, everything went into this.
The blood and guts of real religion.
It was fought with sinew and muscle and
sweat and death.
Notice, as we know from another part of
scripture, that Elijah was a man of like
passion as we are.
He was human.
He wasn't an angel or an alabaster carving.
Elijah was a real man.
And I bet his hands were clammy with
sweat.
And his heartbeat perhaps increased to two hundredths
of a minute.
His adrenaline was pumping round.
This was a very crucial thing.
A great crowd.
He repaired the altar.
It was no new religion.
It was no novelty.
This was a teaching occasion of what had
been true in the past to tell tribes
of Israel.
Was the crowd restless or fascinated?
We don't know.
But we come to a rather crucial point
in the story.
Would Elijah obey God all the way?
The crunch was, would he in fact dig
a trench and fill it with water?
Wasn't his asking a bit too much?
Supposing somehow it didn't come off?
God had told him to, but he wasn't
exactly making it easier for God.
He wasn't helping God.
Some of us think you've got to help
first.
Because God needed helping.
Why this was making it harder for God?
Because he was instructed to do what he
was doing.
And he was prepared to do it.
He might have settled for a little convincing
fire.
But no, he decided it was necessary to
dig a trench.
Till he wasn't committed.
He put the wood in order and cut
the bowl.
And then he said, Fill four jars or
barrels with water and pour it on the
burnt offering and on the wood.
So capture the scene, it's so human, so
real.
I dare to say that the angels, armies
of the sky were peering into this amphitheater
on Mount Carmel.
This great scene that was set.
Would he?
Or would he chicken out?
Would he settle for a little fire?
Or would he have the colossal nerve to
believe that God could lick up water with
fire?
What if he only produced a fiasco?
A nail biting fiasco.
Isn't that what faith is all about?
The thing may not come off.
Isn't that what faith is all about?
But man, you see, he's never seen this
miracle done by anybody else.
You and I have heard and read of
most miracles that were called upon to perform.
Being performed by God in the lives of
others.
We may never have experienced them ourselves.
But we've heard that this happened.
That Elijah had never ever heard of this
happening before.
So ridiculous.
He'd never seen it done before.
The angel armies held their breath.
Would he?
Or would he not?
And then the instructions.
Fill four barrels with water.
Hallelujah, how they must have cheered.
He'd done it.
He'd put his all on the altar with
God.
And then he said, do it again.
Oh, they hugged their sides with glee, I
expect.
And then he said, do it again.
What rejoicing.
The battle was won.
Before the first shot had been fired, the
battle was won.
Winston Churchill, it was, who said, after Pearl
Harbor, at the moment of apparent tragedy and
defeat, they won, after all.
Many a victory can be won before the
visible battle is joined.
The victory of Calvary was won in Gethsemane.
It was one easy to beat.
Many of us can win a victory in
a day that's full before we ever know
what that victory's all about, before the day
begins.
It's true in every level.
Then notice in verse 36, for some reason,
there's a respite.
Perhaps the people were allowed to, as it
were, just think over this, ponder on it.
Because we read, at the time of the
offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came
near.
He'd obviously been away for a little while,
leaving it to God.
He couldn't make it work.
Please note that.
He couldn't make it work.
It was God's miracle.
The climax had been reached in his obedience
to God in filling the water pot and
pouring along the sacrifice.
Nothing he could do now could make it
work.
It was up to God.
And he had chosen to just withdraw and
let the whole lesson sink in.
Why, all the people talked about it, probably.
It was way down the line, way into
the distance.
People could hardly see.
What would he do?
The tension was mounting.
Oh, all right.
It was God's performance.
So we come to the fourth point.
God's spectacular vindication.
Verses 36 to 41.
Notice the place of prayer in this.
Notice how Elijah turned to God in very
real intercession.
At the time of the offering, Elijah came
near and said, O Lord God of Abraham,
Isaac and Israel, let it be known this
day that thou art God in Israel and
that I am thy servant and that I
have done all these things at thy will.
He invoked the Most High and sought his
involvement in accordance with his own obedience.
The place of prayer in this.
We can never underestimate the role which God
requires of us in intercession.
I'm always challenged when I read of Abraham
in Genesis 18 when Abraham is in a
soliloquy almost with God, but then we find
it's a dialogue.
It's not a monologue.
God is talking back to him.
Will you save the city of Sodom if
there are 50 people?
Oh God, I'm not worthy that I should
talk like this.
Who am I but dust and ashes?
And God said, yes I will.
So then he said, if there are 45,
will you do it?
And he waited earnestly and very hesitantly.
God said, yes I will do it if
there are 45.
And so Abraham said, well I'm not worthy,
O Lord, far be it from me to
even talk to you like this.
But if there are only 40 of us,
will you do it for 40?
And God said he would.
God hastily encouraged this man to go on
praying by responding to him.
And then you can almost hear Abraham's breath
coming in gulps because he increases the interval
from 5 to 10.
If there are only 30 there, would you
do it?
And God said he would.
He said, O Lord, the man just asked
again, if there are only 20 there, would
you do it?
And then the final summoning of his faith,
he said, supposing there are only 10, would
you do it for 10?
And God said he would.
And you might notice in this that it
was an enormous exercise of faith on Abraham's
part.
He wasn't repeating himself.
It wasn't a prayer of repetition, but a
prayer of progression.
He was asking for more, a bigger miracle.
He came with the utmost reverence and gift
of the presence of the Most High.
He didn't crash in.
He was aware of his own unworthiness.
The unworthiness of the asker himself and the
unworthiness of the people for whom he was
asking.
Sometimes we think God almost owes it to
us to listen and owes it to these
people to respond.
But Abraham was acutely aware of the unworthiness
of all concern.
And God led him on in this progression
of faith.
And I find here that Elijah is really
in the hot spot at the very end.
He's pleading with God to reveal himself.
Let it be known that I have done
this, O Lord, simply in accordance with your
instructions.
And then he asks for another thing.
Answer me, O Lord.
Answer me.
That good people may know that thou, O
Lord, art God and that thou hast turned
their hearts back.
In other words, he was anxious that the
people might respond in answer to what they
saw.
He didn't just want a victory.
He wanted a turning of the people.
He didn't want a cheap victory at their
expense.
He wanted their repentance and turning again to
God.
I suppose it would be possible sometimes to
be very hard without knowing who we are.
So long that we should come out right,
even if other people were rather exposed to
being stupid in the process.
We want to show that we are with
God and that we are saying what God
is saying and that we are standing with
God in his promises.
And sometimes forget that it's all really so
that other people too may enter into the
mercy of God with us.
Not so Elijah.
He wanted them to return as a result.
He wanted God to demonstrate his immanence, his
power, his uniqueness, his singular distinctiveness, his ability
to intervene instantly, his personal involvement with people.
He wanted a God whom he knew to
demonstrate who he was, that God might be
known.
And then in verse 38 it happened.
This awesome sight, this frightening phenomenon, this fearsome
spectacle of fire falling from heaven.
We've grown so accustomed to this biblical truth
that we've almost forgotten what terror it must
have struck.
Fire fell from heaven and consumed the sacrifice.
Just like that.
Burnt up the wood.
Burnt up the water around it.
And then to make the matter complete, actually
burnt up the stones of the altar.
Consumed the light.
What a frightening phenomenon.
What an awesome sight.
What a fearsome spectacle to behold.
What did the people do?
They responded on their faces.
The only thing they could do, they just
went straight on.
They said, the Lord, he is God.
They were awestruck.
They were convinced, but according to Matthew, Henry,
not necessarily converted.
They acknowledged God as God, but were not
prepared necessarily to commit themselves to Him as
their King.
Even in the face of this remarkable demonstration
of God's power, they were not necessarily prepared
to walk with God in future.
They simply acknowledged that He was God.
What else could they do?
They were afraid.
Now, that's understated.
They were terrified of what God had done.
Convinced very early that God was God, but
not yet ready, perhaps, to follow Him.
We do notice in all of this how
much God used this man of faith.
And what a lot of faith it did
require on Elijah's part.
The question confronting us all is, as Christians,
would we be willing to risk our all
on God?
That's quite an answer, really.
Here is Elijah, stepping out, further than he'd
ever been before.
Would we be willing to risk our all
on God?
Secondly, would we be willing to capitulate, really,
to God's voice of command, as it came
to Elijah, and surrender our security?
That was Elijah's problem.
He was all right hidden away.
Now God said, all right, for the days
of security are over.
Come into the open and confront this man,
and I'll tell you what to do.
You've got to perform this miracle, which I
will do.
You've got to set the scene.
He had to surrender his security.
And thirdly, are we willing to trust God
with the unknown, and into the unknown?
Because that's what Elijah had to do.
It was all an uncharted sea that he
was about to enter.
And he was afraid to trust God in
it.
We have to trust God with the unknown,
and into the unknown.
It's an expression of our obedience, of our
experience of his love.
And we have to ask ourselves, are we
really willing to risk our all on God?
Are we committed in this way?
Is Operation Mobilization committed in the same way?
What is it committed to, and you who
work within it?
In the BM&F, we believe that we
have been committed and called afresh to make
disciples of Jesus Christ.
We believe that some of us have been
too involved in other things, and at our
recent United Conference in Delhi, which was carried
in two parts in Lahore for political reasons,
which you'll understand, we felt the pressure of
God upon us to return to our mandate
to make disciples of Jesus Christ.
And this we believe we are now committed
to.
We want to try and run training courses
in this country to help people to understand
what it's all about, making disciples of Jesus.
We presume that evangelical Christians know, but do
they?
We presume that Bible colleges teach it, but
it's a biblical curriculum.
Do people know how to make disciples of
Jesus?
We presume because we are disciples that we
know how to make other people disciples, but
do we?
We believe we are committed to this, and
you're going to give this a lot of
prominence.
We believe that we're committed to teach theology
to students and leaders, to recruit personnel for
Bible schools in Asia.
We believe we're committed to engage in medical
work, to undertake student evangelism in Pakistan, which
we've never done before.
We believe we're called to work, committed to
work, amongst Asian students in this country, committed
to work amongst Asian immigrants in this country,
and have brought over our first Indian pastor
to work in Bolton in conjunction with the
churches in Bolton, committed to provide funds for
literature, committed to step up recruitment of short
-term and long-term workers, committed to form
a consortium of missionary societies with others engaged
in the same work, the Regions Beyond Missionary
Union, the International Christian Fellowship, the United Fellowship
of Christian Service.
We believe ourselves to be committed because God
has called us to this point.
Now, I'm sure you are committed in different
ways.
I've simply enumerated ours, because I believe that
this level of commitment is what Elijah's story
is all about.
He was committed.
He was on the spot.
He was in the hospital.
He was prepared to go through with it.
He was committed to what he was doing,
and if he didn't, he was a failure,
and the end was death.
So we are confronted with the question, are
we willing to use our own breath?
Our aim in our society, and I'm sure
in yours, is to meet human needs with
the love of God and the gospel of
Jesus Christ, and that involves total commitment.
Back we go to the chicken and the
pig.
The pig and the hen.
Total commitment.
Shall we conclude with a moment of prayer,
really asking God to show us individually where
our commitment is either insincere or inoperative, in
other words, merely words.
We thank you, Father, for this story of
Elijah.
We thank you that he was such a
man of faith.
We realize that he was also human, a
man of like passions as we, with blood
in his veins, and we thank you that
he was prepared to stick his neck out
and trust you in an area he'd never
been in before, and with such dire consequences
if it didn't work.
We thank you for this very humoring yet
very profound and thrilling story.
Lord, we want to trust you more.
We want to know something of the thrill
of victory.
We want to know something of the power
of God flowing through us and through our
situations.
And I, and we, O Lord, want to
be so committed as to be used.
We want to demonstrate your power for the
blessing and mercy of other people entering into
your forgiveness.
We want to, O Lord, not shine as
victorious for our sakes or for any misdirected
credit for us, but that you may be
glorified.
O Lord, we don't know individually what it
is you might be saying, but we pray
that we may know, that we may be
prepared, because of today even, to take a
step of faith further than we've ever been
before, to recognize that this life you've called
us to is a life of commitment, and
that there must be fresh commitment, new areas
of victory yet to be won.
We thank you that the victory of each
day can be won before it begins, the
victory of a crucial fight which can be
assured before it's ever begun.
Help us to enter into these victories, but
help us, Lord, to make progress day by
day within our commitment, within our obedience, within
our acceptance of your will.
Make us active participants, we pray.
And Lord, rather than multiply words, we simply
want to say, today may there be some
fresh area in which we shall experience you
not only, but that we're prepared to go
along with you more than we've done before.
May this be real for us, we pray.
And may it result in Christ being formed
in us more perfectly.
May it result, O Lord, in us being
so filled that we are a living example
of the sort of things that you want
to make known and win an interest in.
May today be a day of victory, Lord,
and a day of pleasure to you.
Guard our thoughts.
Guard our words.
Guard our attitudes.
Guard our prayers.
Guard us, O Lord, we pray, in such
a way that you are glorified thereby.
We can ask for nothing else, and we
ask for nothing less.
So hear us and accept our thanks for
giving us.
Let me sing number two.
I am resting, resting in the joy of
what thou art.
I am finding of the greatness of thy
loving heart.
Tonight may we gaze upon it for
thy life-transforming power thou hast made me
whole.
Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy
of what thou art.
I am finding of the greatness of thy
loving heart.
Let's stand and sing this.
Great thy loving kindness God's are broader than
the sea.
Oh, how marvelous thy goodness lavish o'er
me.
Let my rest in thee, beloved, know the
wealth of gracious thine.
Know thy certainty of promise and hath made
it thine.
Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy
of what thou art.
I am finding of the greatness of thy
loving heart.
Jesus, I behold thee as thou art.
And thy love, so pure, so chaste, satisfies
my heart.
Satisfies its deepest longing, resupplies its every need.
From the depth we rise in blessing, thine
is love indeed.
Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy
of what thou art.
I am finding of the greatness of thy
loving heart.
Ever with thy face upon me as I
work and wait for thee, fervently meet thy
smile, Lord Jesus, earth's dark shadows flee.
Brightness of my Father's glory, sunshine of my
Father's face.
Keep me ever, trust me, resting, fill me
with thy grace.
Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy
of what thou art.
I am finding of the greatness of thy
loving heart.
We have a greater chance to pray for
the great work that they are involved in.