SPEAKER_00: Our first lesson today is taken from the first book of Kings, chapter 18, the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites had turned away from the Lord and were worshiping Baal.
SPEAKER_00: And so Elijah creates a contest for them to see who really is God, Baal or Jehoah.
SPEAKER_00: So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.
SPEAKER_00: And Elijah came to the people and said, How long will you limp between two opinions?
SPEAKER_00: If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, follow him.
SPEAKER_00: But the people answered not a word.
SPEAKER_00: Then Elijah said to the people, I alone am left as a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore let them give us two bulls, and let that let them choose one bowl for themselves, cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it, and I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood.
SPEAKER_00: Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.
SPEAKER_00: So all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.
SPEAKER_00: Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose one bowl for yourselves and prepare it first, for you are many, and call on the name of your God, but put no fire under it.
SPEAKER_00: So they took the bowl which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying, O Baal, hear us.
SPEAKER_00: But there was no voice.
SPEAKER_00: No one answered.
SPEAKER_00: Then they leaped about the altar which they had made.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, Cry aloud, for he is a god.
SPEAKER_00: Either he is meditating or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and needs to be awakened.
SPEAKER_00: So they cried aloud and cut themselves as was their custom with knives and lances until the blood gushed out on them.
SPEAKER_00: And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: But there was no voice.
SPEAKER_00: No one answered.
SPEAKER_00: No one paid attention.
SPEAKER_00: Then Elijah said to all the people, Come near to me.
SPEAKER_00: So all the people came near to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.
SPEAKER_00: And Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, Israel shall be your name.
SPEAKER_00: Then with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two sayaz of seed.
SPEAKER_00: And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, Fill four water pots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said, Do it a second time.
SPEAKER_00: And they did it a second time.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Do it a third time, and they did it a third time.
SPEAKER_00: So the water ran all around the altar, and he also and it also filled the trench with water.
SPEAKER_00: And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things in your name.
SPEAKER_00: Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that you are the Lord God, and that you have turned their hearts back to you again.
SPEAKER_00: Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench.
SPEAKER_00: Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, The Lord He is God, the Lord He is God.
SPEAKER_00: And Elijah said to them, Seize the prophets of Baal.
SPEAKER_00: Do not let one of them escape.
SPEAKER_00: So they seized them, and Elijah brought them down from the brook Kishon and executed them there.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Our second lesson is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
SPEAKER_00: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
SPEAKER_00: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_00: And it was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
SPEAKER_00: That this signifies the lusts of falsifying truths arising from the evil of the love of self and the love of the world is evident from the signification of scorching, as denoting the lust of falsity and from the signification of fire as denoting love, but in the opposite sense, the love of self and love of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And consequently, the lusts of evil of every kind, that the loves of self and the love of the world are the origins of all evil.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Here end our lessons blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: How long will you limp between two opinions?
SPEAKER_00: Do we do that?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, we do have the opinion, or we wouldn't be here, that the Lord can help us, that the Lord is all-loving, that the Lord is God, and that we should follow his teachings.
SPEAKER_00: But on the other opinion, oftentimes we find ourselves wandering off from that belief and have the opinion that perhaps this time when I do that thing that's wrong, I'm going to get something out of it, happiness or joy.
SPEAKER_00: Baal is a symbol of the love of self and the love of the world.
SPEAKER_00: To worship Baal is to turn to the lusts of the love of self and the love of the world to find happiness, to find some kind of joy, to find some kind of sense of being alive.
SPEAKER_00: And so there are so many ways that we can turn to that lust.
SPEAKER_00: That lust can be in fantasy, it can be in wanting things that don't belong to us, it can be in wanting a greater reputation for ourselves or having control over others.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that we can think of that could give us some kind of, or we believe, some kind of delight in our lives that will last, that is contrary to what the Lord has taught us.
SPEAKER_00: That is the Baal that we turn to.
SPEAKER_00: Now, oftentimes it says the Baals.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that if there was one?
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, the Baals, they called them the Baals because every different part of the country would have their own altars and worship their own type or brand of Baal.
SPEAKER_00: And with Baal came Asherah, which was Baal's wife.
SPEAKER_00: She has a longer story in Mesopotamian history, but also called the Asheras.
SPEAKER_00: And what the Asheras were, were poles, poles, wooden poles, that man-made poles.
SPEAKER_00: And what they would do is they would put these poles around the altar, and it would help Baal, the fertility god, to bring rain and to create vegetation and growth and food for the people.
SPEAKER_00: They would look at these poles as being trees, man-made trees, so they could make their own grove to worship wherever they wanted.
SPEAKER_00: Now think about that.
SPEAKER_00: What is a tree when it comes to our own life?
SPEAKER_00: What does it signify in the spiritual sense?
SPEAKER_00: It signifies perception.
SPEAKER_00: So, in a good sense, imagine this tree bringing the light into it and changing that into something that can give growth or the water.
SPEAKER_00: Perception.
SPEAKER_00: We perceive what the Lord wants for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's something in our heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's not deduced.
SPEAKER_00: So what does it mean that these are, these poles are fake trees?
SPEAKER_00: Fake perceptions.
SPEAKER_00: Man-made excuses for the evils that we want to do, for the lusts that we want to follow and worship.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have what we our own, I'll say pet problems that we make for ourselves, and then we have our own excuses for those problems that we make for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: So that is the Baals and the Asheras.
SPEAKER_00: And so Elijah sets them up to both of them to have this contest who will be able to bring fire upon their altar.
SPEAKER_00: So they are each going to have an altar, and they are going to call on their God to bring down that fire.
SPEAKER_00: Now the altar has a lot of significations, but the bull on the altar and the whole thing together is a symbol of our natural life, meaning our life in this world, and what is going to bring happiness or goodness into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We can see that a bull represents this if we look at what a bull does.
SPEAKER_00: A bull plows the ground for us so that we can have food.
SPEAKER_00: A bull will pull a cart, either again, pulling something that we need or pulling us into some journey.
SPEAKER_00: Or a bull can be something that holds a heavy weight.
SPEAKER_00: All of these things represent our lives, the journey that we're on, the way we have to plow through life, what we carry on our shoulders, what will bring life into our natural lives.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what the fire represents.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it, one of the most famous or well-known passages in the writings is very simple.
SPEAKER_00: It comes from Divine Love and Wisdom, number one.
SPEAKER_00: Love is the life of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Love is life.
SPEAKER_00: Love is not only the life of everything, but in a special way we are able to receive that love into ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And it does make us not only alive, but feel alive.
SPEAKER_00: What the writing is called vivification, feeling joy, happiness, self-worth, useful, all of those things when the Lord is able to flow into us with that fire of his love.
SPEAKER_00: And so also the writings say love in essence is spiritual fire.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what we are calling down here.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the bales begin, and obviously the bales are not calling down that kind of fire.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in our lesson, we learn that there is also the fire of lust, there is the fire of uh of hatred, there's all kinds of different ways of that the hells can use to we even have the expression of burning in hell to use that fire to hurt us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, they believed they were going to get something good.
SPEAKER_00: So they called upon their God.
SPEAKER_00: O Baal, hear us, O Baal, hear us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, specifically, it doesn't mean just hear, because Baal could have heard them but not do anything.
SPEAKER_00: It means answer us, answer us, let something happen here.
SPEAKER_00: Open up, you know, bring that fire into our lives, that excitement into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And again, that can be us looking for that.
SPEAKER_00: We all know what are those things that we wander off, we limp off away from the Lord, and we do the same old thing one more time, thinking it's going to be different, one more time, believing that some kind of happiness is going to come out of this path.
SPEAKER_00: And we see it doesn't, we limp on back to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here the prophets of Baal, this is a picture of turning to that love of self and the love of the world, and believing somehow this is actually going to bring life into us.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to make us feel alive, it's going to change us.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what happens?
SPEAKER_00: They cry out, oh Baal, hear us, and they hop around all day.
SPEAKER_00: All the way till the evening time.
SPEAKER_00: And in the midst of that, it says, there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we look at those words, they every word has some correspondence, right?
SPEAKER_00: Deeper.
SPEAKER_00: But look at this: a voice.
SPEAKER_00: There was no voice.
SPEAKER_00: There's no truth.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing we're going to learn in following those lusts of the natural man that come from the love of self and the world.
SPEAKER_00: No one answered.
SPEAKER_00: We can ask for something, want something in our life, but it doesn't come back to us.
SPEAKER_00: There is no response.
SPEAKER_00: There may be a fleeting sense of pleasure in some of what we do, but we know very quickly it turns empty because it's not real.
SPEAKER_00: There's no good in it.
SPEAKER_00: There's no truth, there's no good in it.
SPEAKER_00: And then it says, no one paid attention.
SPEAKER_00: Now paying attention, we can even see that in if we look at that word.
SPEAKER_00: No one attended to them.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I think here there is a correlation with use.
SPEAKER_00: There's no good, there's no truth, and there is no use in following the bales in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing learned, nothing gained, nothing changes.
SPEAKER_00: There is no voice.
SPEAKER_00: No one answered.
SPEAKER_00: No one paid attention.
SPEAKER_00: Now Elijah points this out in a very, very sarcastic way.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps your God is on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's turned aside, he's busy, he can't answer you.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps he's meditating or he's sleeping and he needs to be waking up.
SPEAKER_00: It says as soon as they heard that, they tried harder and harder and harder.
SPEAKER_00: And we wonder, this sarcasm coming from a prophet, oh yes.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever read the Old Testament, especially in the and especially say in Isaiah?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the most beautiful words in Isaiah, but then Isaiah turns around and just levels us with the idea, if you do evil, it's over for you.
SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes the word needs to talk to us like that, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: We know that the Lord is all love.
SPEAKER_00: But why do we read those things in the Word?
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a part of us still attached to worshiping those Baals.
SPEAKER_00: And we need to hear the harsh truth in our lives sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Even if we know, and we do, that God is love.
SPEAKER_00: There is a reason for that to shake us up, to make us realize, as what Elijah was saying, there's no one there.
SPEAKER_00: There is no good in what you are trying to do.
SPEAKER_00: And you're going to try it again and again and again.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing there.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing gained.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing learned.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing changes.
SPEAKER_00: So finally they give up.
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, before they give up, what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: They start cutting themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They start cutting themselves with knives and lances.
SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't some psychological thing.
SPEAKER_00: It actually says this was the custom of their nation, of that worship.
SPEAKER_00: And what it's showing is when they cut themselves, what it says in history is what it meant to them was, I'm willing to do anything to serve you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm willing to do anything, show you how much I care.
SPEAKER_00: Now think about that and turn it around when we are absolutely fully in that addiction, so to speak, of evil.
SPEAKER_00: We can hear somebody who's just in a natural type of addiction, which is a sickness, but it can represent a spiritual addiction.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who's hooked on terrible drugs.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen this in the movies, we've read about it, we've maybe seen it in person.
SPEAKER_00: And when they don't have that drug anymore, they have no money, what often happens?
SPEAKER_00: They turn to the worst things, saying, I'll do anything, I'll do anything to be able to get that in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, can we relate to that?
SPEAKER_00: I think on a different level.
SPEAKER_00: I'll do anything to prove I'm right.
SPEAKER_00: I'll do anything to get that thing I really want.
SPEAKER_00: Now maybe we don't really mean that, but we say it.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we can follow that, right, when we worship the Baals.
SPEAKER_00: I'll do anything.
SPEAKER_00: But they give up.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing happens, as we say.
SPEAKER_00: So now it's Elijah's turn.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah represents the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah is the Lord in our lives, speaking to us.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing he says, or the first thing he does, he says to the people, the Israelites, who are watching, Come to me.
SPEAKER_00: Come to me.
SPEAKER_00: And so they move forward apparently a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And if you think about that, the first thing the Lord says, turn away from that Baal worship, the Lord says, Come, come to me, step forward, take a step.
SPEAKER_00: Come unto me, all you who are labor and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: Hear these words.
SPEAKER_00: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
SPEAKER_00: My yoke is easy and my burden light.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of the bull, bringing that right in so we can see in this passage, these passages come together.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is calling our natural lives to come to him and be at rest.
SPEAKER_00: And so after they move forward to him, then he starts to reorder the altar.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it says it literally he healed the altar.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's interesting we learn there is an altar there, a broken down altar of the Lord, that he uses to fix up.
SPEAKER_00: And that's because the prophets of Baal had destroyed all the altars of the Lord, but in our own lives it is a symbolic of our broken lives, our broken lives when we follow evil.
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing he does is he gathers stones from the twelve tribes of Israel, large stones, and puts them together, meaning all things of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Get back to what's really important to us, to what we've learned from our religion, from the word.
SPEAKER_00: Make that the foundation of your life.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it reminds us of someone who builds their house upon the rock, the Lord's word.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: And then he puts the wood on it, and it says he ordered the wood, ordering our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is there, ready to bring us back.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do when we want to turn away from some of those terrible bad habits that we have?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we just go, okay, I'll try again.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord is saying, come to me.
SPEAKER_00: Can we take a step or two toward the Lord that we hadn't taken before?
SPEAKER_00: Not a limp, but take a step and stand firm.
SPEAKER_00: I am going to beat this this time, and I'm going to do it through the Lord's power and move toward him.
SPEAKER_00: And then to order our lives or allow the Lord to order our lives through those, through the Ten Commandments, through those teachings that we know can help us.
SPEAKER_00: And after ordering our lives, you would think that would be enough, but here comes the real key where the Lord is showing us this makes the difference, and it doesn't look like it's going to.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many correspondences here, but let's just say he poured a lot of water onto that altar.
SPEAKER_00: So much water it was spilling into a trench that he had made as well.
SPEAKER_00: There was no way that that altar was going to light on fire, according to everybody sitting there watching.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine, imagine the prophets of Baal watching him do this.
SPEAKER_00: Can you see this?
SPEAKER_00: This is not going to work.
SPEAKER_00: This is not going to go well for him.
SPEAKER_00: And think about in our own lives, isn't that true if we think, okay, obviously the water is a symbol of truth.
SPEAKER_00: And to immerse ourselves in the Lord's truth.
SPEAKER_00: I think that water is more of the waters of baptism, you know, repentance, actually changing, actually turning away from evil.
SPEAKER_00: And it can appear to us that if I do that, I'm not going to get any more sense of life in my life, you know, in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to, it's going to be boring.
SPEAKER_00: It will be boring for me to follow the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I won't have that control anymore.
SPEAKER_00: That's scary.
SPEAKER_00: I won't feel that delight anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're talking, the the people that are looking at this are the prophets of Baal.
SPEAKER_00: And what we need, what we could think to ourselves is there is no delight in doing what is good.
SPEAKER_00: We're so used to being addicted to evil.
SPEAKER_00: Now think about this in terms of addiction again.
SPEAKER_00: It makes a great example.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who, an alcoholic who is getting sober, realizes very quickly he can't go to the bar and hang out with his friends.
SPEAKER_00: And so right away it's like, what am I going to do?
SPEAKER_00: And he needs to learn when he steps away, he can make it, he can find it.
SPEAKER_00: New friends, his life will go on.
SPEAKER_00: The fire will come down.
SPEAKER_00: But think about it again.
SPEAKER_00: Let's take some young person who is trying to get away from a bad crowd.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe these are uh his or her really good friends, and they can they're being brave enough to say, I need to change my life, I need to walk away from this.
SPEAKER_00: And yet at the same time, they can look over and say, I don't want, I don't want to stay with mom every day for 24 hours a day.
SPEAKER_00: That could get a little boring.
SPEAKER_00: And yet they have to make that leap, maybe not stay with mom, but make that leap and leave that crowd behind.
SPEAKER_00: And another one that might be similar, that I was thinking of, is in today's world, especially, is a young man or woman that is saving themselves for marriage.
SPEAKER_00: You know, how often can they, number one, you know, feel I'm doing something that no one else is doing, and is this going to work as I try to believe in conjugal love?
SPEAKER_00: But often the case is when it comes to a point where someone in some circumstance or another asks them, Why are you doing this?
SPEAKER_00: They might tell them, but the person says, Well, what's that about?
SPEAKER_00: What's the joy in that?
SPEAKER_00: And yet that is the kind of thing that the hells say to us when we see Elijah pour that water on to the altar.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, in this story, because of the spiritual sense, it's not going to turn out like the prophets of Baal believe it will.
SPEAKER_00: What's the first thing after this that Elijah does, or maybe I should say the last thing he does?
SPEAKER_00: He prays.
SPEAKER_00: He prays, imagine this, he believed he was all alone, and in that setting he really was all alone, the only one that believed.
SPEAKER_00: And he turns to the Lord in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And his prayer is so deep and so moving.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, hear me.
SPEAKER_00: Hear me, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's begging, Lord, please, Lord, I'm here in front of all these people.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the only one left.
SPEAKER_00: Let them know that you are God.
SPEAKER_00: Let them know, please, that you're turning their hearts back.
SPEAKER_00: That's in this story to escape what we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord wants us, the Lord wants us to beg him.
SPEAKER_00: Now we might say, oh, well, we're good new church people.
SPEAKER_00: We know that the Lord loves us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need to do that.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not that the Lord doesn't love us, but when we really plead with the Lord, please, Lord, please, please, we're opening ourselves up to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're opening ourselves up so that the Lord's love can flow down into us.
SPEAKER_00: I love that picture of them, him praying.
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as he's done praying, he doesn't even get a chance to say amen.
SPEAKER_00: Whoosh! The fire comes down.
SPEAKER_00: And that is symbolic of the Lord's love, the Lord's life.
SPEAKER_00: What the Lord wants to give every one of us when we turn away from not only what is hurtful, but turn away from something that can never give us happiness, life, or, of course, the way to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord's love is able to come down and flow down and fill us until we can feel, we feel alive, we feel useful, we feel as if we've got a purpose here in this world.
SPEAKER_00: We feel that we can not only go on, but we enjoy going on.
SPEAKER_00: And we feel the Lord inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, what is the bale in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Has it ever really worked out?
SPEAKER_00: All we get is the empty promise of evil, and we end up with unhappiness and hurt.
SPEAKER_00: Come near to the Lord, rebuild your altar, pray for him to come into your life.
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: And if you do, that divine love, that life itself will descend upon you like spiritual fire.
SPEAKER_00: And John said, John the Baptist answered, I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I is coming whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.
SPEAKER_00: He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.