Speaker 1: We knew that occasionally, just to kind of keep in front of all of us a reminder we all need that we are a missional church.
Speaker 1: That means we are Christ's followers, which means that we're not just sitting around, hopefully, in our faith.
Speaker 1: We're always trying to mature in our faith and also to do things in keeping with the gospel, as John the Baptist commanded us to do too, and that's one way.
Speaker 1: We now have two opportunities to do disaster relief, if that is something you'd like to check out or something that you know you're called to do.
Speaker 1: One is the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
Speaker 1: The state has an agency that endorses us, and we have leaders here in house that lead that trip for disaster relief, but also, as you just learned, stephen, who's here today.
Speaker 1: Stephen, raise your hand real quick.
Speaker 1: Stephen is our leader for Samaritan's Purse, who does disaster relief also.
Speaker 1: So there's two opportunities to do that In addition to that.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder, and again since we're praying with emphasis today, if you want to roll those slides, sabra, we have a relationship with some international places.
Speaker 1: One is Haiti, which this shows.
Speaker 1: We also are in the Dominican Republic and Bolivia and Cuba, and we just had a team back in the summer who went actually to Nazareth and Israel to train teachers over there.
Speaker 1: So we want to continue to pray for them, because they all have severe needs too, and severe shortages, and there's a lot of darkness there, just like there is, unfortunately, in our country also.
Speaker 1: So just wanted to take a second.
Speaker 1: By the way, that slide, there is a reminder that if you are sponsoring a Haitian child in our village called Maya Village up in the mountains, thank you for doing that.
Speaker 1: The report from last week was, although there's so much unrest and government shut down, the gang activity controlling most of the cities and everything that all of our kids 90 percent of our kids are in school.
Speaker 1: All the faculty is in place.
Speaker 1: They have not missed one day of school this year.
Speaker 1: A lot of that is because you are supporting those kids every month.
Speaker 1: Their uniforms, their resources, books, two meals a day and the salaries of the faculty, the teachers are all coming in large part out of your sponsorship, so we pray for them that they'll continue to be able to do that uninterrupted.
Speaker 1: But it's really important that we lift up our partners and other places as we go and do that, and today, as we wrap up a series, there's even a tie-in with that, with Elijah.
Speaker 1: So can I pray for us real quick, lord, just grateful.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for the freedoms and the peace that we have in this country.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for the ability to reach out and to help others, whether it's monetarily or by prayer or by going.
Speaker 1: God has commanded us to go into all the world and we seek to do that.
Speaker 1: God, would you protect the innocent, would you be a champion of the children in all of those countries?
Speaker 1: Would you heal the broken, would you save the lost and would you encourage the discouraged?
Speaker 1: So, god, do what only you can do.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful, too, for this room and everyone in it, lord.
Speaker 1: I'm thankful for those of great faith in this room.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for every first-time guest, god, we know how many good churches there are in this area, but they chose this church today.
Speaker 1: So keep us faithful as we undertake a serious responsibility and a serious calling to shine that light for all of us to be reminded by.
Speaker 1: So today, lord, would you let us walk out of here closer to you than we came in?
Speaker 1: Amen, amen, all right, good to see you all.
Speaker 1: How about?
Speaker 1: First?
Speaker 1: Kings is where we are today.
Speaker 1: In your Old Testament, we really make a big deal out of looking up Scripture because we think that's important.
Speaker 1: It's better to see things in print than to just listen to me talk, because it's goingyou're going to retain so much more and it makessometimes seeing it makes the Scripture come alive better for you.
Speaker 1: So we're in Old Testament, First Kings 18.
Speaker 1: We're wrapping up a teaching series called Mountain Men and we've taken a character from the Old Testament every week and chronicled how God led them up to a mountain, the peak of a mountain, for various reasons.
Speaker 1: Last week, david conquers what was to become the city of David, which was Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: They went up there to fight Others.
Speaker 1: We've seen with Moses.
Speaker 1: He goes up there to be reminded that God is holy and we're not and there's this big separation and he's going to have to give us some rules to live by.
Speaker 1: We've gone through various ones like that.
Speaker 1: Today is a contest, not a military battle, but it's one of the most dramatic fun to look at, I believe, contest in all of the Scripture, dealing with a prophet by the name of Elijah.
Speaker 1: So grab a few Bible or turn your phone on, if you got the app.
Speaker 1: If you don't have your Bible with me today, you know we're reminded there.
Speaker 1: Still, this is going to deal with a famine that happened in the land that Elijah was told by God to prophesy.
Speaker 1: He does.
Speaker 1: When we pick up with this Scripture, it's been seven years.
Speaker 1: It is not rain to speak of in seven years.
Speaker 1: In Israel, they are beyond desperate, in a starvation mode that's still going on today.
Speaker 1: As you know, somalia is in year five of a big drought, and they've got ten years of unrest too, and there's a bunch of people starving there.
Speaker 1: Haiti, just mentioning them.
Speaker 1: Haiti is in what's called the famine.
Speaker 1: Some of that's man-made.
Speaker 1: Some of it, though, is natural too.
Speaker 1: We think we have a lot of inflation today.
Speaker 1: Check out Haiti.
Speaker 1: Haiti has 49% inflation rate right now.
Speaker 1: That means that a lot of the citizens of Haiti cannot even afford to buy food, if it's available.
Speaker 1: What that means is 8 million out of 16 million Haitians are food deprived right now, at this minute, and that's not going to improve greatly in the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: How about you, though?
Speaker 1: In this land of plenty that we have, is your famine more of a spiritual famine?
Speaker 1: Have you gotten stale?
Speaker 1: Have you gotten separate?
Speaker 1: Have you gotten cold where you used to be hot, where you used to have a passion for God?
Speaker 1: Is there something missing?
Speaker 1: Is there a restlessness where you used to have contentment with God?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like a wall where you used to have, like man, open communication lines?
Speaker 1: We all go through those.
Speaker 1: The quicker we confess it, the quicker we deal with it, the quicker we do something, as alerted by the Spirit and by the Scripture to turn that around, the better we are and the better we are to other people too.
Speaker 1: That's why we're going to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Whether you're in a spiritual famine, I got good news for you and it's simply this God will lead you and me to a mountain, maybe symbolic mountain many times in the course of our life, just to choose the right master.
Speaker 1: He's always throwing down that line in the sand and saying just need you to choose.
Speaker 1: Which side are you on today?
Speaker 1: And that's what's instructive for us today.
Speaker 1: So, if you're there at First Kings, I'm not going to read the whole chapter we don't have time for that but we'll talk a little bit about it, because we all choose every day which master to serve, whether it's the materialistic, worldly master or ourselves or the right master.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about three or four points, about how to choose and how to apply the Scripture to do that.
Speaker 1: So the first thing comes from verses 20 through 22,.
Speaker 1: But first let me tell you, give you a little context.
Speaker 1: Elijah is a prophet.
Speaker 1: It's ancient Israel.
Speaker 1: It's 900 BC.
Speaker 1: The king is Ahab.
Speaker 1: Now Ahab, I said at the first hour, compared to the kings before him, he's okay morally.
Speaker 1: He's like what I heard a guy crack on another guy this week and I thought it's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: He said one guy said are you calling me average?
Speaker 1: And the other guy said no, I'm not calling you average, I'm calling you mediocre.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know what the difference there is.
Speaker 1: Ahab was a mediocre king, but here's the problem.
Speaker 1: He's married to a woman who is evil as the day is long.
Speaker 1: You might have heard of her.
Speaker 1: Her name is Jezebel.
Speaker 1: You don't see too many kids named Jezebel nowadays, right, because most people know enough to know oh, that's a bad word there.
Speaker 1: Now, jezebel is so evil.
Speaker 1: Her father was a priest of Baal.
Speaker 1: Baal has become the dominant religion of Israel because Jezebel is a dominant personality.
Speaker 1: Jezebel, in my opinion, is really running the country through her husband, ahab.
Speaker 1: So at this writing, ahab is highly motivated to please his wife.
Speaker 1: He's not hugely convinced of anything about Baal, he just knows I want to stay married and I want to stay alive, and so that's his goal, right?
Speaker 1: So that gives you a little context.
Speaker 1: Elijah is told by God, the true God Almighty, to prophesy about the famine.
Speaker 1: He's done that and at this time God says as soon as you give your little speech, you better get out of town, because there everybody's going to be mad at you.
Speaker 1: That happens, he gets out of town.
Speaker 1: Seven years almost later, god speaks to him again and he says it's time to go back to town and end this famine.
Speaker 1: But I got a bigger purpose Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys.
Speaker 1: If I'm Elijah and I know there's a whole nation who holds me responsible for a lack of rain and everything I might be, I might tend to say oh, I'll be glad to Lord, but first would you let it rain like cats and dogs for about three days before I go back.
Speaker 1: Then, when I get back, they'll be okay with me, probably, but of course that's not how God does it.
Speaker 1: He says no, just go back.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what to do he does.
Speaker 1: He meets up with Ahab and before Ahab can have him killed, elijah says God has spoken again.
Speaker 1: And this might be, if you choose well, this will be a good day for you and you'll be a hero.
Speaker 1: But he said we are going to have a contest.
Speaker 1: You're going to decide who's the best God.
Speaker 1: So point number one in choosing is if you're going to do this, choose the right master business.
Speaker 1: You're going to be have to prepare to stand alone some days.
Speaker 1: So look at verse 20, 21 and 22.
Speaker 1: So Ahab sent word throughout all of Israel and assembled the prophets of Mount Carmel.
Speaker 1: He does actually what Elijah tells him to do.
Speaker 1: He says we're going to decide whether Baal's God or whether Jehovah is God.
Speaker 1: Elijah verse 21 went before the people this is the key verse, if you need to underline it in your Bible Before the people.
Speaker 1: And he said how long will you waver between two opinions?
Speaker 1: I love the phrasing here, because in Hebrew that word waver meant limp, literally limp around.
Speaker 1: How long are you going to limp around between two not facts, not truths, not proved empirical data, but two opinions.
Speaker 1: If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal is God, follow him.
Speaker 1: But the people said nothing.
Speaker 1: That's important.
Speaker 1: What we now realize that on top of this mountain is about 2,000 feet in elevation.
Speaker 1: You can visit there today.
Speaker 1: In Israel there's only really two groups, or a person in another group who have conviction.
Speaker 1: Elijah is a man of conviction.
Speaker 1: He believes that God is God.
Speaker 1: There's 450 prophets of Baal who believe, and they're pretty convinced that Baal is God.
Speaker 1: The rest of everybody on that mountain, including the king, do not have any conviction.
Speaker 1: That's why all these people are silent when they're challenged.
Speaker 1: Verse 22, elijah said to them I'm the only one the Lord's prophet has left, hence the prepare to be lonely, but Baal has 450 prophets.
Speaker 1: There's 450 prophets of Baal.
Speaker 1: There's one king who sides with Baal, so it's one against 451.
Speaker 1: I wonder if Elijah has gone through his mind at that point.
Speaker 1: You know that's pretty fair fight.
Speaker 1: That's about right, because I'm here representing God.
Speaker 1: They're here representing a God who does not even exist.
Speaker 1: That's pretty fair.
Speaker 1: And so with that we commence Y'all, if you're going to truly be a genuine Christ follower, you're going to have to spend some time alone.
Speaker 1: If you were a Christ follower and your college days are, in your days, coming up guys on the second row, I hate to break it to you.
Speaker 1: If you go off to college and you're going to be true to your faith, you're going to spend some Friday nights by yourself because everybody else is going to be out doing things that you know dishonor God.
Speaker 1: There's people all over the world right now that are standing alone.
Speaker 1: There are people in secret house churches in China who have just wrapped up a secret worship time and now they're left to their own thoughts in the little flat that they're using, under great risk of punishment.
Speaker 1: There's probably a German exchange student somewhere now back home after spending time over here long enough to find Christ and to know Jesus for the first time.
Speaker 1: Who's back over there in an atheistic or an agnostic family, in an agnostic, pretty much secular nation as a whole, and if he's going to practice his faith, he's going to stand alone.
Speaker 1: There's a kid as a few years ago I met personally 17-year-old junior in Cuba in high school and every morning when he walked from his little apartment into that school, none of his classmates were Christ followers.
Speaker 1: None of his teachers or faculty were Christ followers.
Speaker 1: None of his family at home were Christ followers.
Speaker 1: But here's the upside to being lonely Solitude can bring you closer to God.
Speaker 1: We actually should build in some time every day for that right.
Speaker 1: We talk about that all the time.
Speaker 1: We're only as good as our daily walk with the Lord.
Speaker 1: We're only as good as our ability to connect with Him by ourselves, one-on-one.
Speaker 1: That's why we all need a little system or a strategy.
Speaker 1: Where am I going to read the Scripture?
Speaker 1: What devotional book am I going to access?
Speaker 1: Some of you are in classes here that are helping with that, and I think that's a great thing to do.
Speaker 1: Jeremiah 29, 13, says You'll seek me and you'll find me when, when you seek me with all of your heart.
Speaker 1: We got to have the want to to go into more of a mature relationship with God.
Speaker 1: There are no shortcuts of that.
Speaker 1: So the application number one about loneliness well, how do you fight loneliness?
Speaker 1: You accept it and you use it to your advantage in getting closer to God, I think.
Speaker 1: So there's got to be a focused time every single day.
Speaker 1: So if you're getting your car this week and you got to go for some reason toward Columbia and you're going up I-26, it's what?
Speaker 1: 50 minutes or so, I forget 50 minutes.
Speaker 1: Now, bert to Orangeburg, what if you just got in your and, rather than plug in your Bluetooth to a podcast or to music, or get on your phone and talking to people or listening to the radio?
Speaker 1: What if, instead of all that you just said, I'm going to spend 50 minutes talking to the Lord and listening to God.
Speaker 1: I'll make a deal with you If you start to connect and you focus and you do that 50 minutes, he will more than reward that.
Speaker 1: So if you get to Orangeburg, you might be tempted to leave the stuff off another 50 minutes, because he always rewards the time spent with him.
Speaker 1: So what's the second thing we can learn here through the Scripture?
Speaker 1: Let's go back to verse 20, 21,.
Speaker 1: Indecision can be the same as idolatry.
Speaker 1: Now, some of you are going to disagree with me, and that's fine on this.
Speaker 1: But let's just look back at the Scripture.
Speaker 1: It's read Elijah goes forth with people and he says how long are you going to waver between two opinions?
Speaker 1: The Lord is God, follow him.
Speaker 1: If Baal is God, follow him.
Speaker 1: The people did nothing.
Speaker 1: So here we're back to the indecision, the.
Speaker 1: I don't really want to choose either thing.
Speaker 1: I think I'd rather straddle the line, if you will.
Speaker 1: That never you can do that, but that never creates unity.
Speaker 1: You listen to me and some of you are smiling because you've had, or may have presently, a boss or some superior who will not make a decision right and it just fragments everybody.
Speaker 1: You're not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: It's not.
Speaker 1: It's not unifying people.
Speaker 1: People get unified behind a big purpose and the passion of the leader to take them somewhere.
Speaker 1: Who will make a decision and occasionally make a mistake, but at least we're going somewhere.
Speaker 1: The indecision never, never benefits us.
Speaker 1: Now, what's the deal about?
Speaker 1: How is it equal to idolatry?
Speaker 1: Here's why because when you choose to not decide to follow Christ, you choose to do it on your own.
Speaker 1: That means you make all the decisions on your own intellect and power.
Speaker 1: That means that the results are up to you and that means, when it fails, you will bear shame, you will bear guilt.
Speaker 1: That's a dead end streak.
Speaker 1: When we choose to put ourselves in the place of following God, that's self idolatry.
Speaker 1: That's where we've elevated ourselves to God.
Speaker 1: That's the oldest trick in the book.
Speaker 1: Go back to the Garden of Eden.
Speaker 1: That's what Satan comes at them about when he says did he really tell you you died if you'd treat him?
Speaker 1: He said oh yeah, he told us that.
Speaker 1: And he said don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Here's why he told you that he didn't want you to be so smart.
Speaker 1: You would be as smart as he is.
Speaker 1: God doesn't like that.
Speaker 1: He wants to be in charge.
Speaker 1: But if you eat that fruit, you're going to be really, really, really set for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: You're going to be like super smart and you're going to know everything he knows.
Speaker 1: Hence my translation is you're going to be God because you don't need God anymore, because you know everything he knows.
Speaker 1: That's alive and well on planet earth and in the United States today, and we're all susceptible to it if we don't stay on our guard with God.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you this too.
Speaker 1: It reminds you what you may already know there is no neutral ground To say I'm going to straddle the fence or straddle the line.
Speaker 1: On Monday and Tuesday I'm going to be out in the world, I'm going to have a good time with my buddies and do all this, but on Saturday and Sunday I'm going to prepare to meet with the Lord.
Speaker 1: That never works.
Speaker 1: God rejects it.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you know about that?
Speaker 1: Read Revelation 3 sometime.
Speaker 1: Revelation 3 is the famous speech where John says under God's inspiration.
Speaker 1: God says choose today.
Speaker 1: I'd rather you be hot or cold, I just don't want you straddling that's my paraphrase straddling the fence.
Speaker 1: He says frankly Luke, warm makes me want to throw up.
Speaker 1: I'd rather you be far away from me or white hot for me.
Speaker 1: Just pick, just choose.
Speaker 1: God can't stand the neutrality and the indecision of what we end up doing.
Speaker 1: Timothy 1, 12,.
Speaker 1: Paul reminds Timothy that he's been appointed to the ministry.
Speaker 1: Therefore, timothy has been appointed.
Speaker 1: If God gave you the ministry and I love you, if you're a Christ follower, I love you have the ministry.
Speaker 1: If he gave you that ministry, he'll take care of the details and he'll take care of the results.
Speaker 1: We just got to be obedient, right.
Speaker 1: We can't be obedient and faithful if we are straddling the fence.
Speaker 1: So we got to choose our masters.
Speaker 1: So what you been putting off, what you been procrastinating Are y'all good at procrastinating?
Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm like first team All-American sometimes if it's something I really don't want to do.
Speaker 1: But it just doesn't serve the kingdom of God very well and it doesn't help me personally very well too.
Speaker 1: So let me tell you I'm not going to read it all for a second time but in the verses that follow, the contest goes something like this Elijah says we're going to get these two sides together.
Speaker 1: We're going to have two altars.
Speaker 1: We're going to sacrifice two bowls.
Speaker 1: You got yours, I got mine.
Speaker 1: Y'all go first.
Speaker 1: There's so many of you, 450 prophets, I'll let you go first.
Speaker 1: You put yours, but rather than light a burnt offering, a sacrifice to your God, we're going to see which God will see who can call down fire from heaven to our God and light this sacrifice without any means of us doing it.
Speaker 1: That sounds like pretty good.
Speaker 1: And what he's not saying is we now know, hey y'all.
Speaker 1: He's actually given them the advantage because he said, when he says that Baal was the fertility God, but also he was the God over thunder and lightning.
Speaker 1: So it says, if he said this ought to be a piece of cake for you guys, you're worse than the God that produces lightning.
Speaker 1: Come on, and he lets them go.
Speaker 1: It says they started the morning sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Nothing's happening.
Speaker 1: They start praying harder, they start singing more, they start dancing, they start lunchtime comes and goes, nothing's happened.
Speaker 1: Yet they start cutting themselves symbolically of their great contrition and their sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Now you owe us Baal, because you know we're such serious convicts.
Speaker 1: And that goes on all day.
Speaker 1: We think it went on for 10 hours.
Speaker 1: Now what is Elijah doing?
Speaker 1: Waiting for 10 hours to do his part of the contest?
Speaker 1: We don't have that the way my mind works.
Speaker 1: I just have him pictured laying over in the grass, propped up on an elbow, got a toothpick hanging out of his mouth, and every now and then this is recorded.
Speaker 1: Every now and then he'll just taunt him a little bit.
Speaker 1: He'll say maybe you're not yelling loud enough, maybe he can't hear you, maybe he's just busy right now, maybe he's on a trip and he's just not back yet he keeps taunting them.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you do work a little harder, boys?
Speaker 1: And they're just going at it.
Speaker 1: So finally, at the end of the day, they're about to bleed to death and they're laying around.
Speaker 1: They are completely exhausted.
Speaker 1: And at this point he gets up from filing his nails and everything and Elijah says I'm so sorry, it looks like you're not able to do it.
Speaker 1: And then he goes to work.
Speaker 1: And that leads us to the third point.
Speaker 1: Confidence in God gives you confidence with other people.
Speaker 1: The two are always going to be related Confidence with God and confidence with other people.
Speaker 1: So now let's pick up at verse 30.
Speaker 1: Y'all still with me, you still with me up in the balcony there.
Speaker 1: Good group up in the balcony.
Speaker 1: Then Elijah said to all the people come here to me.
Speaker 1: They came to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which was in ruins.
Speaker 1: So Mount Carmel used to be the high place to worship God, the true God.
Speaker 1: It had fallen into disrepair.
Speaker 1: It hadn't been used in so long.
Speaker 1: Plus, all the gyraton and the moving around by these bail prophets might have knocked some of it down.
Speaker 1: So his first thing is going to repair it.
Speaker 1: Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes, to send it from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying your name shall be Israel.
Speaker 1: Why is this in our Scripture?
Speaker 1: Why is that a big deal Putting 12 special rocks in there?
Speaker 1: Because these symbolize the heritage of people going back to Jacob.
Speaker 1: Because God announces earlier on I am a covenant, god, I'm going to make a covenant with you.
Speaker 1: I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you.
Speaker 1: It's Elijah's way suddenly of saying hey, god, I'm just reminding you.
Speaker 1: You made a promise to us and now today would be a good time to show your power and your presence.
Speaker 1: Because here's something else that I think he knew before he ever went up that mountain the loser of this contest will not come back down the mountain.
Speaker 1: The loser is going to be killed on the spot.
Speaker 1: So he knows what the high stakes are and he knows the risk involved.
Speaker 1: So he's calling on God to just do what God said he was going to do.
Speaker 1: Look at verse 32.
Speaker 1: With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord oh, that's big, because that's the authority of God, who created everything.
Speaker 1: And he dug a trench around it enough to hold two saiyans of seed, which is about three gallons.
Speaker 1: Look at verse 33.
Speaker 1: He arranged the wood and cut the bull into pieces and he laid it on the wood there.
Speaker 1: He said to them fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.
Speaker 1: See what he's saying.
Speaker 1: Let's make it even a little bit harder on the good guys here.
Speaker 1: Let's soak this whole thing with water.
Speaker 1: Then verse 34, do it again, he said, and they did it again.
Speaker 1: Do it a third time.
Speaker 1: He ordered and they did it the third time.
Speaker 1: And then 35, the water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.
Speaker 1: You know, hey, god's just showing off now, isn't he?
Speaker 1: Let's soak this thing.
Speaker 1: It's probably 12, 13 gallons of water that are pouring down all over this animal, all over the altar, soaking into that moat, going around it bone dry, otherwise, and somehow that's supposed to combust into flames, as wet and as soaked as it can possibly be.
Speaker 1: Why is he doing this?
Speaker 1: Because he is super confident in God, not Himself.
Speaker 1: Y'all.
Speaker 1: Self-confidence will not get you near, as far as our culture is telling us.
Speaker 1: It will, because self-confidence again puts you in charge.
Speaker 1: It puts it all up to your intellect and your experience and your choices, which are all very fallible.
Speaker 1: If you're a guest here today, you need to know this.
Speaker 1: You're surrounded by a bunch of some of my favorite people, but we're all pretty messed up in some ways.
Speaker 1: We're all broken, we're all fallible, we're all flawed.
Speaker 1: That's why the grace of God is very, very important here.
Speaker 1: Here's how it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1: There is a beginning when you start a relationship with Jesus, whether you're seven years old or whether you're older, in the beginning of that, coming to surrender your life to Christ, and you choose your side.
Speaker 1: Your purpose in life, and my purpose in life as long as we're around, is to know God.
Speaker 1: That's why we have the Scripture, that's why we have the Spirit, that's why we have the body of Christ, which is a church.
Speaker 1: That's going to be our pursuits to know God.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because everything else stacks up on that.
Speaker 1: When I'm in this, I've got to know God.
Speaker 1: Today, down the road I'm going to have more self-awareness.
Speaker 1: I'll know me a lot better.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing, because none of us are fully self-aware.
Speaker 1: Then eventually I'm going to know other people a lot better.
Speaker 1: And if you're married, this is a great place to be because you start to understand your spouse better, because you know God who made your spouse, and you know yourself a lot better and you bring that to the marriage and then you know that better.
Speaker 1: And only then the results of your career, your other relationships, things that youwhere we normally start, then that gets better because God's in charge of those results too, and not us.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I know one thing there's one man on this mountain who is super sure that he's on the winning side and he has staked his life on it.
Speaker 1: He will not survive till sundown if he is not right Years ago.
Speaker 1: If you're a baseball fan, you know the name Jackie Robinson.
Speaker 1: Now Jackie Robinson is a baseball hero, hall of Famer, but he's also a hero of civil rights and courage, because he was in an era when he was just hated, although people didn't know him, because he was the first black to be in the major leagues and he handled all that with dignity and grace.
Speaker 1: He never retaliated, he never was lured into a fight because the owner of his team said I've got to have someone with the guts to not fight back, otherwise it's going to be another 20 years before anybody will break this barrier.
Speaker 1: So Jackie Robinson.
Speaker 1: Later, after he retired, in a memoir that was done about him, one question was how did youhow did you have that much moral fiber and that much courage and all like that?
Speaker 1: And he said well, I didn't always have it.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, when I grew up in a bad neighborhood where I lived, I joined a gang.
Speaker 1: It's teenagerized.
Speaker 1: In a gang there were two men that stepped into my life that influenced me greatly.
Speaker 1: One of them was a mechanic in my neighborhood who one day sat me down and he said does your mama know that you're in this gang?
Speaker 1: And he said no, sir.
Speaker 1: And he said if your mama knew, it absolutely break her heart and it goes against everything that she's raised you to be.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you.
Speaker 1: And he left it at that.
Speaker 1: It got him thinking.
Speaker 1: But then a pastor comes to town church down on the corner.
Speaker 1: None of the kids.
Speaker 1: None of the young people went to that church.
Speaker 1: Too boring, nothing for them.
Speaker 1: It's like why would we go in there?
Speaker 1: So the pastor realizing that he decides, I got to try another strategy.
Speaker 1: He started having food, he started doing like fellowship times for the kids, he started having dances in the church believe it or not, this is in the 40s or 50s and even took them out and put a bad mitten cord up and they played bad and today that would be pickleball, right?
Speaker 1: Well, hey, guess who got in on that?
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson did.
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson realized he liked all that and he also realized he was liking what he was hearing about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson, before he moved out of that area, got drafted by the pros, started teaching Sunday school.
Speaker 1: That is why he had the guts to not fight and that is why we still honor him in such a big way.
Speaker 1: And that is who you will be if you choose the right master.
Speaker 1: Everything real quick is verses 36 to 39, faith will always beat frantic activity.
Speaker 1: Hey y'all, if you're trying to earn your way to God's glory, if you're trying to earn the relationship or work hard enough to get a relationship with God, are you listening?
Speaker 1: It'll never work.
Speaker 1: I tried for 30 years.
Speaker 1: Never has worked.
Speaker 1: It never will work.
Speaker 1: We do that out of obedience, in response of gratitude.
Speaker 1: We don't earn anything because we're all busted, we're all broken.
Speaker 1: That's why it's called grace.
Speaker 1: That's why he had to come down here and go to the cross.
Speaker 1: Look at 36 to 39 real quick.
Speaker 1: At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and he prayed out loud oh Lord, god of Abraham, isaac and Israel.
Speaker 1: Let it be known today that you are God and Israel and that I am your servant, and declare all these things at your command.
Speaker 1: He's talking out loud in front of all these prophets of Baal and the king, who likes Baal too.
Speaker 1: Whose benefit is this far?
Speaker 1: For his?
Speaker 1: Oh no, he already knows he's talking to God for their benefit.
Speaker 1: What he's basically saying is it's just me and you.
Speaker 1: I'm the only one on this mountain that believes that you're the right God.
Speaker 1: Therefore, in a few minutes, I'm going to be the only one left living on this mountain.
Speaker 1: They're excluded, not because you're a cruel God, but because you're a just God.
Speaker 1: They have declared the wrong master and it knew so.
Speaker 1: Therefore, they're going to live with their choice.
Speaker 1: I've chosen the right master, who is you.
Speaker 1: I will live beyond this.
Speaker 1: It might have been a little bit of a way of reminding God.
Speaker 1: By the way, god, it sure would be nice if you show up and you create a fire here, because I'm going to go down if it doesn't happen right.
Speaker 1: And so he reminds God of a promise he had already received, and that's the instructive thing.
Speaker 1: So let's read on 37.
Speaker 1: Answer me, oh Lord.
Speaker 1: Here's our big purpose Answer me so that these people will know that you, oh Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again.
Speaker 1: The bigger purpose of God is always to restore.
Speaker 1: He's not just out to kill people, it's to restore people and even nations.
Speaker 1: Look at verse 38.
Speaker 1: Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice in the wood and the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
Speaker 1: Then all the people saw this.
Speaker 1: They fell prostrate and they cried the Lord, he is God, the Lord, he is God.
Speaker 1: Wow, how dramatic was that.
Speaker 1: I mean, just boom, in an instant.
Speaker 1: It just incinerates the whole top of that mountain.
Speaker 1: Everything is gone, and so the contest is over.
Speaker 1: The funny thing to me is immediately then Elijah assumes the role of the king.
Speaker 1: He starts ordering people around.
Speaker 1: He says, king, take those 450 prophets over there and kill them all.
Speaker 1: Guess what Ahab does?
Speaker 1: He does it.
Speaker 1: You would too, if you'd just seen that happen, right, because you don't want to be the next one to get barbecued.
Speaker 1: And he just does it.
Speaker 1: And then he says when you're through with that, jump in your chariot, start riding toward town, because it's going to start raining like you have never seen before and you're going to get bogged down and not be able to make it if you don't leave right now.
Speaker 1: Guess what Ahab, the king of the whole country, does?
Speaker 1: He gets on his chariot and he starts riding.
Speaker 1: Elijah starts praying seven times on seventh time, boom, it starts to rain like all get out.
Speaker 1: He does something that an Olympic champ can't do.
Speaker 1: He starts running.
Speaker 1: He runs down the chariot and passes it and, in total, runs 17 miles from the top of Carmel down to the king's palace.
Speaker 1: He had quite a day, didn't he?
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on in Elijah's day.
Speaker 1: The highlight of his whole career has just happened, because God decreed it to be.
Speaker 1: I love 1 Thessalonians 524, close it out.
Speaker 1: 1 Thessalonians 524 says God is faithful and he will do it.
Speaker 1: If he's given you a promise, he will not back up on that promise.
Speaker 1: He will not be indecisive, he will not procrastinate, he won't even be close to mediocre in His response.
Speaker 1: He will be everything and he will do everything he said he will do and he will end your famine.
Speaker 1: But you have to allow Him to end your famine.
Speaker 1: It's called confession, repentance, surrender.
Speaker 1: It's those things that we can control rather than Him.
Speaker 1: Can you put that picture of the statue up there, saber?
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I mentioned the team that was going.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 1: We're on hold to be able to go to Israel.
Speaker 1: If you ever do or have gone to Israel, you'll recognize this.
Speaker 1: This is actually on top of present-day Mount Carmel in Israel.
Speaker 1: That's the statue of Elijah with a sword.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see in that, but there's a prophet of Baal under his foot and he's about to do you know what to you know who there, and it's believed that that's the spot where the sacrifice and the contest actually happened.
Speaker 1: The more dramatic thing to me the time I was there was, if you go over to the right of this picture a little, you see this beautiful for miles and miles and miles landscape of this beautiful fertile valley and you can see forever.
Speaker 1: That valley is called the Valley of Jezreel In the book of Revelation.
Speaker 1: It has another word it's called Armageddon.
Speaker 1: That will literally be the spot that the battle to end all battles will happen.
Speaker 1: And once again the message will be you better choose today which side you're on.
Speaker 1: If God Almighty be God, then follow Him.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people will not choose Him, but a lot will too.
Speaker 1: A few hundred years after Elijah is gone, another mountain three solitary guys climbed to this mountain.
Speaker 1: It's probably only like 25 miles east of there.
Speaker 1: At the end of that valley, one is the leader, the other two are followers, and this leader starts to pray and he was so connected to God Almighty he had never not chosen the right God as he prayed.
Speaker 1: Moses and Elijah come down to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 1: It's called the Transfiguration.
Speaker 1: The man was a carpenter from Nazareth.
Speaker 1: His name was Jesus.
Speaker 1: We don't know what was said, we don't know how long that went on, but all we know is those three met and when it was over they descended the mountain.
Speaker 1: Jesus leads his people back to Jerusalem and he gives his life from me and you.
Speaker 1: I for one will spend the rest of my life being grateful that Jesus made the right choice then, because he had options.
Speaker 1: If he had accepted the other side, we would not be here today.
Speaker 1: But because he did, because he atoned for my sins and yours, we have an opportunity to live for Him but also spend eternity with Him.
Speaker 1: So my bag of you today is please choose the right side.
Speaker 1: Please choose the Lord, god Almighty, because Christ has given us a smooth highway to go right to that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: It won't get smooth at times in your life living it, but the choice is yours.
Speaker 1: So Braden and our guys are going to come up and lead us.
Speaker 1: We get to worship one more time here and so, as you know, if you've been around for a while, this is a good time.
Speaker 1: If you want to just come while we're singing for prayer, we'd love to pray for you and I'd ask you just hang in here for five more minutes, because then we'll be over.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to disrupt the concentration of somebody who's going to make a spiritual decision Maybe to ask Jesus to become their Lord for the first time or to come back to Him.
Speaker 1: Choose your side today again, or whether it's like hey, I need a church family, I know God's led me here.
Speaker 1: I'd like to make that official day.
Speaker 1: We celebrate all those things here, so you're among friends.
Speaker 1: Why don't you stand and let me pray for you, jesus, thankful for your love for us, your guidance, even for the point that you give us a free will.
Speaker 1: You give us the ability to choose the path of our life, but you also give us the wisdom to know how to choose.
Speaker 1: So, god, may we today choose the right one, that we will serve the Lord, our God.
Speaker 1: Today it will matter, it will mean all the world to our families and to our friends.
Speaker 1: So, god, just convict us into action, not into a put off decision, but an action today.
Speaker 1: Amen.