WEBVTT 00:00:01.050 --> 00:00:14.820 Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene a week by week. Venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle, and the voice of the Nazarene. 00:00:17.480 --> 00:01:09.680 Music was great, and it sounded like you worshiped, and we've come to worship God. That's one of the reasons we've come. I'm reading from Romans, chapter 15, verse four, For whatsoever things were written aforetime. Now I'm reading out of the New Testament. So whatever is aforetime is out of the Old Testament. Bible was written by 40 different men on three different continents, in three different languages over a period of 1500 years, and not one contradiction. God only wrote one book, and that one book is the only book that can change your life. That's the 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:25.579 For whatsoever things were written aforetime, back in the Old Testament, were written for our learning. Old Testament's not a waste. Somebody said nobody ought to be preaching out of the Old Testament. That's foolish. 00:01:26.629 --> 00:01:44.930 It's part of the Word of God, and it says we're written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scripture, might have hope. Sir Winston Churchill said, the further backwards that we look the further forward we can see. 00:01:45.379 --> 00:02:34.400 Jerry Falwell used to say something like this, we must live our lives by looking forward, but we understand life by looking back. We live our lives by focusing ahead, but we understand by looking back. And in looking back, we have a wonderful opportunity this morning to go back in time and back into the aforementioned Scriptures, the Old Testament, and look at the lives of some of those greats that lived and We can pick up and we can learn from them. We learn by experience, but I've found that it's a whole lot better to learn from the experience of others, and it's not nearly as painful. 00:02:35.360 --> 00:04:09.469 So I'd rather take the easier route. So I'm going to take some people over the next few weeks out of the Word of God from the Old Testament. And do what Romans, chapter 15, verse four, says we're going to look back so that our future can be much more productive. We can have guidance. We can have counsel by looking at their lives. Just maybe four weeks at least. And the very first that I want to call to your attention is the example of Elijah. I want to make just seven quick statements and maybe speak a little longer off of those seven. The first very encouraging to be Elijah was an ordinary person. I mean, you read about all these great, super social intellectuals, and it makes me feel rather inextricably bound by a multiplicity of complexities. I feel like, why try? And then I read about Elijah, and I find that he was just an ordinary person. Remember, the best of men are men at best. And what do you mean when you say Elijah was just an ordinary person? You see pastor, he's the one that prayed rain down from heaven, and he's the guy that raised a widow woman's son back to life. He was able to call fire down from heaven. He did great exploration. So what do you mean that he was just an ordinary person? Where do you get that? 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:09.469 Because the Bible said that he 00:04:09.469 --> 00:05:46.399 17; Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are. He was just as human as you and I are human, an ordinary human being. He wore shoe leather like you do. He put on skin like we do, and he lived a normal life. So as I studied, I found something here in First Kings, chapter 18, verse 46 it says the hand of the Lord was upon him. That's tremendous. But you go to the next chapter and it said that he was afraid and ran for his life. Boy, I can identify with that sometimes when you're just scared senseless and you wonder how in the world you're going to make it. And in First Kings 18, it says Elijah was a man full of faith. But by the next chapter, guess what? Everything changed, and he was full of fear. In First Kings 18, he confronted 850 false prophets, and yet you read the very next chapter, he fled from one woman. How are you all doing? You wished you had too, don't you? I mean, he handled 850 false prophets and had a problem handling that one woman. I mean, get real some of us need to figure out how to get along with that one woman. And if your wife tells you to say, Amen, right now you're allowed. 00:05:40.819 --> 00:06:53.870 So this is the guy that God used here in 18th Chapter, He prayed for God to be glorified. In the next chapter, he's under a juniper tree, sucking his thumb and wishing he was dead. The guy that God used chapter 18, he became a leader of people by the next chapter, he had abandoned his post. And according to Scripture, you talk about an ordinary guy, he wore a leather belt around himself. And the Bible said here in that Second Kings, chapter one, verse eight, he was a very hairy man. So here comes this guy wearing this leather belt, big full beard hair all over his arms, hair long and here he comes. Now, here's what I know. I believe God uses ordinary people. You don't have to be super talented, you don't have to be super good looking, you don't have to be seven foot tall. God uses ordinary people. I love what Abraham Lincoln said. He said that God must love common people, because he made so many of them. Now I went to K church. 00:06:53.870 --> 00:08:07.579 K church was a program that our denomination put on about 30 some years ago, and my last pastorate, they enrolled me in that program, and when I moved here, the church here allowed me to continue in until we graduated. It was a program to encourage pastors to build a congregation that would run more than 1000 people. This is back when the average Nazarene church was running about 50 people. A big church was 200 I mean, a monstrosity ran about 200, so very encouraging. And there was a number of us pastors that went through that program. One of their main statements, it said, You'll never be any bigger than your vision. So you got to have a bigger vision, Jesus told his disciples they weren't doing very well, they'd fished all night had caught nothing, he said, cast on the other side, and the only thing that determined their catch was the size of their net. If they'd had bigger nets, they'd have caught a whole lot more. Now we're to believe God for big things and attempt big things. And I'm sitting there among all those preachers, thinking, What in the world are they talking about? 00:08:07.910 --> 00:08:11.689 I'm pastoring a church that's got a cornfield on three sides. 00:08:11.930 --> 00:08:16.009 Some summers, it's a bean field. 00:08:11.930 --> 00:09:00.470 I'm out in the country in a way, and only got one way to point towards our little city. And I felt just about like Elijah. I'm an ordinary guy, no super giftedness about me. But it dawned on me, God wants to use people like Elijah, ordinary people, and God would get the glory. That's what I know. And all you've got to do is submit yourself, surrender yourself to God. So let me say, God wants to use your life to do great things. So quit putting yourself down. You need to quit saying, I don't amount to anything. The Bible says, Let the weak say, I am strong. Another Scripture says I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me. 00:09:00.919 --> 00:09:52.309 So God uses ordinary people like Elijah to do extraordinary things. And a second thing I notice, Elijah was a man of passion. When Elijah, the preacher, the Prophet, comes on the scene, he comes on in First Kings, 17, verse one. And here's what it says, Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, a little tribe, said unto Ahab, this is the king. The king, he said unto him, as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. Can you imagine stepping up to the President of the United States and said, it's not going to rain till I said it rains? Little old guy like Elijah, and he faces Ahab, the king, whose wife was Jezebel. 00:09:53.720 --> 00:10:01.039 Now, if you read the story about Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, you know who wore the pants in that family. 00:10:02.830 --> 00:10:22.330 When she said jump, he jumped, and when she said, pout, he would pout. And when she said, You need to get even, he would get even. She was kind of in charge. Fact, the matter the three most important decisions you'll ever make in life, three of them. If you want to jot it down, you're welcome to it. 00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:27.789 Number one is, who is my master? 00:10:22.600 --> 00:11:15.789 The Bible said No man can serve two masters, so you got to figure out who's going to be the master in your life. And the second great question or decision, who is going to be my mate? Not only my master, but who's going to be my mate? It'll make you or it'll break you. You say, Well, Pastor, when she walks into the room, I melt. So this has got to be the right one. She looks like Wonder Woman. Well, the way things are these days, about a year or two later, you'll wonder if she is a woman. These are crazy days, I'm telling you. You say, Well, Pastor, I wished you could see him, he lights my fire. I mean, he's a hunk. You feed him an enough potato chips, he'll look like junk in just a few years. 00:11:15.789 --> 00:11:30.850 Catch on. You need to find somebody that'll go through the hurts of life, through the pain of life, somebody that your heart connects to, somebody that you can spend three hours talking to and feels like it's only five to 10 minutes. 00:11:31.750 --> 00:12:11.500 Somebody that you want to spend the rest of your life with. It doesn't matter what color their hair turns or how the skin droops, somebody that you fall in love with their heart and with their mind and with their real person. I'm talking about a mate. So who's going to be my master? Who's going to be my mate? And the third is, what's my mission going to be? And those are the three most important decisions nearly that you can ever make. Who's going to be my master? I hope you choose Christ, who's going to be my mate. I hope you're happy with the one you've got, zoom. 00:12:04.149 --> 00:13:03.340 And what's going to be my mission? Three most. Now Elijah comes on the scene. At this point they're erecting statues of Baal. They're building great wonder temples to Baal. Have you ever seen a statue of Baal? He's got that real big, protruding stomach. Hello, y'all. Are you here? Boy, this is a quiet crowd. Well, if you've ever seen that image of Baal, he's got this great big stomach. Well, maybe you didn't know this, but it was actually an oven, and they would offer their children, even babies, as an offering to the God of Moloch and to the idol of Baal, burning up their own children. Who in the world? 00:12:59.289 --> 00:13:09.370 How crazy can you get? And then Elijah comes on the scene, and he said, I'm here to represent the Lord God of Israel. You're wrong in what you're doing. 00:13:09.490 --> 00:13:31.539 Baal's a dead god. My God is alive. He said, I challenge all 850 of you prophets. You're false prophets. They see you call fire down from heaven. And they couldn't, but he did. And you read here in First Kings 19:13 and 14, twice, he said, I've been jealous for the Lord of hosts. I've been jealous. 00:13:31.720 --> 00:14:26.110 What's he saying? I've got passion. You won't accomplish anything of importance in life without passion. Whatever you do, you need to be passionate about it. It's like the girl that went into Dillards. She walked over to the perfume counter, and she said to the old lady behind the counter, do you have any Elizabeth Taylor passion? And the old guy looked up and said, No, if I did, I wouldn't be working here. John Wesley said, If a man or woman could get on fire and begin to burn for God, people would come to watch him burn. If you're a leader, you're the one that has to start the passion. I worry about parents, moms and dads that aren't very passionate about their family, their children are never going to be passionate about family either. 00:14:21.700 --> 00:14:37.149 It bothers me if Sunday school teachers do not have a passion for their class, because I know the class will never be passionate about the things of God. He was a man of passion. 00:14:33.250 --> 00:14:54.909 But thirdly, Elijah was a man of purpose. From the very time he came on the scene, he was a prophet to Israel. You gotta understand that God created you on purpose, because God wanted you for a purpose. You say, Well, preacher, I don't have a clue what my purpose is in life. 00:14:54.970 --> 00:14:59.409 You better not live and die and not know what your purpose is. 00:15:00.039 --> 00:15:32.259 God's got a purpose for every one of us, a place of usefulness that we can be at our best while we're on Earth, in our life, in our skin. God has a place that he wants to fulfill his purpose through. You say, Well, how can I find I'll give you four quick little questions. Number one, what do you enjoy doing? What do you enjoy doing? I mean, if you hate what you're doing, probably that's not what God is wanting you to do. You need to enjoy it. 00:15:32.889 --> 00:15:41.620 I mean, if you're dreading going to work every morning during the week, you've got the wrong job. 00:15:36.519 --> 00:15:47.110 You say, Thank you, Pastor. I'm going home quit my job tomorrow. 00:15:41.620 --> 00:16:16.600 No, I don't recommend that. My thought has always been, if you want to fly an airplane, you better be sure you know where you can land it before you fly it. Better have a place to come down. And the next thing I would ask, What do others compliment me on? And I'm not talking about your mama. Your mama thinks you're good at everything. But what is it that others recognize in you and they want to make a positive comment about and here's the third thing, what do you do that seems effortless to you? Just it comes naturally. 00:16:17.559 --> 00:16:57.580 Find your slot, your best in life. And the fourth question, what would I do if money didn't matter? If money didn't matter, I'd rather do it anyway. Well, find your purpose. Then Elijah was also a man of prayer. James 5:17, he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the Earth by the space of three and a half years. Verse 18, and he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain And the Earth brought forth her fruit. He was a man of prayer. I hope that all of us can catch the need to spend time in prayer with God. 00:16:51.009 --> 00:17:51.339 Please, please be people of prayer. I like First Kings, 17:3, it says, Get thee hence, turn thee eastward, and hide thyself, hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. Listen, God said, Elijah, I'm going to use you, but first thing you need to hide yourself. Then, in First Kings 18:1, God said, Elijah, Go show thyself. You want God to show yourself, then you need to learn how to, first of all, hide yourself. Anybody remember King David? Before he was ever a king, he faced Goliath, and as he faced Goliath, he said, You know what? I remember how God delivered me out of the mouth of a lion, out of the paw of a bear, and I'm standing alone out here with everybody watching in public, and I'm facing Goliath. 00:17:47.559 --> 00:18:34.960 If he helped me in private, he can help me out here in the public eye. And may I just say to you for a moment, you'll never be any more in public than what you are in private, what you are in private. And if we want God to show ourselves, then we have to hide ourselves. So I want you to know that Elijah was a man of prayer, and God spoke to him. You remember how? In a still, small voice. Do you ever have God just in a small way, just make his will kind of plain to you? A better translation in a gentle whisper, a gentle whisper. Let me read it to you. 00:18:31.539 --> 00:18:49.809 First Kings, 19:12, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. A gentle whisper. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. 00:18:50.829 --> 00:19:25.599 Now, if you're sitting in the back and without a microphone on, if I were to whisper, you'd not hear what I am whispering to you. And if you wanted to respond in a whisper, I wouldn't hear what you are whispering, because we're not near enough to one another. And what I'm trying to say is, if you're really wanting to hear from God, you need to get close enough that you could hear that gentle whisper. Elijah was also a man of preparation. Some people really want to go places in life, but they never prepare to go. 00:19:27.400 --> 00:20:11.349 When your opportunity comes, if you're not ready, you're going to miss it. And God hid Elijah for three years by the brook Cherith, and it was there alone that he got prepared for the big moments in life. A sixth thing, Elijah was a man who trusted God's provision. A famine on in the land. There's a drought on in the land. And God told Elijah, I want you to go to the brook, I'll give you something to drink there, and I'll send ravens to feed you, an unclean bird by the way. And sometimes God uses things that we wouldn't think God uses, but he does. And when the brook dried up, God said, Alright, I want you to go 100 miles down to Zarephath. 00:20:07.180 --> 00:21:01.150 What I'm trying to say God, at every season in life, was a provision for Elijah. God doesn't want anything else to be our source, and Elijah source, was God. I want to tell you something, when everything falls out from under us and everything falls apart, you better know God, because I'm telling you everything could change, and it can change in a moment of time when you drive through a little drive through and get a cup of iced tea for $1.00 and seven or eight months later, it's $2 everything's changing. And when you can just money's flowing everywhere, I guess you can if you got a printing press, you just print money and hand it out to everybody. One day, this thing's going to dry up. And I'm telling you, you better have a source, and it needs to be God. 00:21:01.180 --> 00:21:05.380 Here's my last major thought. 00:21:01.180 --> 00:21:15.039 Elijah was a man that developed a protege. Somebody said he's a leader. They're not a leader unless they're developing others. And I like what God said 00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:42.910 19, he said, now you're getting older, I want you to go down there's a there's a farmer boy by the name of Elisha, and he's plowing the field. And when he arrives and he looks across the fence, he sees 12 yoke. There's 11 yoke of oxen, and then the last yoke, the 12th, there's an ox, and a man so big that he's pulling the load with that ox. 00:21:43.450 --> 00:22:00.339 And God said, I want you to put your mantle on him. In other words, I want you to spend time with him and pour into him and teach him and make an difference in the next generation. And we ought to be doing all that we can to help the next generation. 00:22:01.509 --> 00:23:47.980 Some of us have been around the church long enough we don't need to look in the mirror any longer. We need to look for some younger folk and begin to share with them what God has done in our life so they can learn from our experience. Why church is important, and why serving God is important, and why we furnish finances for ministry, and we give a 10th to God because it already belongs to God. And if we want God to bless our 90% then we need to give to God what belongs to him, and trust him with the church and with ministry. And all I'm trying to say is we need to be pouring ourselves into a new generation show them the presence, the power of God. Now, biblical scholars tell us that Elijah and Elisha traveled together, ministered together from 6 to 10 years. And if you've read the story when Elijah is about to go away to heaven, Elisha, the young man, didn't want him to leave. He wanted to hang on to him. And there's only two men in all of the Bible that never died of physical death. One was Enoch the other was Elijah. Enoch walked and talked with God, and he just disappeared. Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. And Elijah looks at Elisha before he goes to heaven and he says, I'm leaving, Is there anything that I've got that you would like to have? Elisha could have said, I'd like to have your sermon outlines, or I'd like to have your itinerary and your schedule so I've got places to go speak. 00:23:48.009 --> 00:24:18.430 He didn't. He said, What would you like to have? He said, I'd like to have a double portion of your spirit. If you were to ask me, Pastor, what is it that you want for this church? I would just simply say, a spirit filled church. It's sad when you have a full church and people are only half filled with the Spirit. So he said, Give me a double portion. Elijah said, when I go away, if you see me, when I'm caught up, it shall be so unto 00:24:18.430 --> 00:24:53.829 10, and he saw it, and he got it. A double portion. And I thought about that. Now, there's different calculations. Some would say that in the life of Elijah, that he had 16 different miracles, and to get a double portion, Elisha would have had to had 32, I don't know. When I really read down through it and really adjusted as trying to not make mountains out of everything. I believe there were definitely eight major miracles that happened in the life of Elijah. 00:24:54.670 --> 00:26:22.180 So when I looked at Elisha life, there were only 15 and it left me kind of confused. I wonder he didn't have the double amount and he dies. And after he dies, I keep right on reading the Scripture. And an amazing thing happened. They put his bones in a little grave, kind of a cave, and there was a battle fought nearby some years later, and a young man is killed, the enemy is coming, and they didn't want their brother his body to be stolen, so they looked around for a place to hide it, and they saw the grave there of Elisha, and they threw that body into that grave, and when his body touched those bones, a miracle happened, that dead man came alive. I looked at that. I thought, good gracious, there's the double portion. Eight miracles. The other had 16 miracles. Just give me, he said, a double portion. And it happened just like God said, a ordinary man doing extraordinary things, a man that simply lived in human skin, but he knew how to pray, an ordinary person. You say, Well, I'd like to be an ordinary person that God could use in a extraordinary way. You can. All you've got to do is just yield yourself to God. 00:26:15.730 --> 00:28:12.369 Surrender your total self to God. The preacher was at a college, and he was preaching, and when he gave his invitation, he said, all God wants is a whole man that will surrender all of himself to God. And if you're here, I want you to step out and come down the aisle. And about that time, a man started down the aisle. Preacher looked at him and realized that he had artificial legs, and he stumbled up the aisle and stood from that preacher weeping. And he looked up and he said, Sir, would God take a half man and use him? The preacher's eyes filled up with tears, and he said, You know, I believe God would like to have a half man who's given himself wholly to God, than to have a whole man that only gives himself half to God. And I'm saying to all of us here, God's looking for some men and women and young people, and some of us who are up in years that will simply say, God, you can have all there is of me. I give it to you. Use me for Your glory and for the advancement of your kingdom, and the ministry will keep going. Somebody leaned up to me this morning and said, I did what you said. I brought some others with me. Could we do that this coming week? Let's bring some folk with us. Let's share the church. Let's share the ministry. Just paying off the building's not the end of everything. Fact of the matter, we're getting ready to go into another building program, maybe not quite as large as this, but we'll share that on that special Sunday morning when we come and we're all together as one great crowd and we'll burn the mortgage. We'll give you a little insight about what we believe God wants to do with this ministry, and to think that you and I can be a part of it. 00:28:13.029 --> 00:28:33.849 Thanks for coming stand together with me, if you would, don't forget to give. There's buckets in the back. And I want to encourage all of us as we look back on the life of Elijah, let's say, God help me to be like that man, an ordinary person that you want to use and anoint and make a difference with 00:28:34.680 --> 00:28:36.930 Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. 00:28:37.200 --> 00:28:41.250 Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNC's Pastor Ray LaSalle. 00:28:41.579 --> 00:28:45.569 For more information regarding BNC, visit bucyrusnazarene.org. 00:28:45.900 --> 00:28:45.960 You.