Text: 1 Kings 18:20-40, Gospel Driven Words Let Your Voice Be Heard
In our passage this morning, the nation of Israel is spiraling further and further toward destruction and captivity as a divided people. The kingdom at the point of this passage is now a divided kingdom between the southern people of Judah and the Northern Territory of Israel and while there were a few kings of Judah who remained faithful to God, none of the kings of the northern kingdom pursued the Lord and are marked by a common phrase as each new king of Israel is introduced and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
None, perhaps was worse than Ahab king of Israel. A few chapters prior to this morning’s passage we are introduced to Ahab and his sinister wife Jezebel and, well, we’ll let the text speak for itself to describe him and the state of the nation of Israel, 1 Kings 16:30-33 tells us this:
1 Kings 16:30-33 (ESV) 30 And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him. 31 And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. 32 He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. 33 And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.
This was where the northern people of Israel found themselves as a people; under a wicked and godless government rule with the masses listening to the dominant voice of falsehood in the world and in the midst of this wickedness, in the midst of an evil people under an evil government, God raises up one voice, one man in the midst of many voices leading the people away from the Lord, in our passage this morning, as we continue our series on Everyday Leadership, biblical leadership principles for every Christian, we see Elijah, The Outnumbered Leader who sees people being deceived and in need of transformation and what he does, the means he uses to transform a culture is at its heart, the gospel. His Gospel Driven Words Let His Voice Be Heard.
As Elijah sets the stage for this celestial standoff between The God of All Creation, the God who has made his name known Yahweh, and the false god Baal, something else happening here. The nation of Israel at this point in the text is a monarchy and the monarchy, the governmental structure has led people away from Yahweh and into all sorts of evil. This goes beyond being a religious crisis to a national crisis. Spiritual warfare has crossed into the realm of national crisis. In as much as this is a story of Yahweh verses a false god and false beliefs about God it is also a story of a cosmic sovereign Yahweh verses an earthly sovereign, Ahab.
The worship of Baal according to what we read earlier in 1 Kings 16 was a government sanctioned activity, the king led, directed and celebrated the worship of a god that turned the peoples eyes away from Yahweh, and in all of this Elijah stands as the lone voice. He references this in verse 22 “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD”.
Friends this is a very contemporary narrative for us as a people in a country that is divided, that sees godlessness running rampant with people being led deeper and deeper into sin and evil, justifying and in some cases even celebrating human atrocities. Everything we read in our catechism reading this morning has been violated by humanity and as such we see the repercussions in our country. Our nation is in despair and needs the voice of truth and friends as the church, as the people who are called by God’s name we stand as Elijah, we stand as the outnumbered voice, we stand as the collective lone voice that must speak on behalf of God into the lives of people, into culture, but as we go to the polls in just over a week we are either going to put ourselves in a position to transform culture or silence our voice and friends it has less to do with your vote and has everything to do with our words and our actions as God’s mouthpiece in the world.
If we want to effect change in the world we have to look far beyond our vote to something deeper, we have to focus our attention away from political parties and governmental structures and toward something greater, that will have a lasting impact and Elijah gives us wonderful guiding principles for how to do this when outnumbered.
Move 1: People Must Matter Over Politics
As the people gather at Mount Carmel the order of how things transpire here matters. If we take at face value who is involved here you have Elijah and Ahab who already have a contentious relationship as based on previous readings of 1 Kings, you have the prophets of Baal and you have the people who have been brought near who have been lead into worship of false gods by their king, but where does Elijah start the conversation here? He starts with the people, he starts with sensitivity, yet boldness to where the people are in this matter, he allows for a dialogue to start. In verse 21 he says to the people, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”.
Isn’t it interesting how Elijah approaches this? Ahab, the political figure get’s left out of the picture completely, he doesn’t go after the politician, in fact other than in the introduction, Ahab never gets mentioned again. Elijah doesn’t focus on government change at all, he focuses on people change, but look even further at how he approaches change. Elijah knows that he is right, he knows that in the grand scheme of a not so epic battle between Yahweh and Baal there will be no contest, but yet in his conversation with them, at least for the purposes of leading them to truth, he leaves room for what they currently believe, which is clearly false. It should be pointed out that there was no doubt that they believed the lie, the text in a not so direct way tells us that. The writer makes a play on words that we will see later in the text; the fact that he says, “How long will you go limping between two opinions” matters. It matters based on what we see in verse 26. In verse 26 the prophets of Baal are calling upon their god that is not answering and what are they doing around the altar? They are limping…they are limping.
Do you see what is happening here? There was no deciding between the two opinions, they had already decided their opinion, they just didn’t want to say it. By Elijah saying “How long will you go limping between two opinions” what he is actually saying is, “I know you’ve already decided your opinion, I know where you are so let’s start there and let me introduce you to an alternative.”
Notice what he doesn’t do: “You’re wrong Israel! You are all wrong and God’s judgment is upon you until you change, its on this godless regime led by Ahab and Jezebel, it is on you if you continue to fester in the evil ways led by the prophets of Baal, if you don’t change today you will burn in the wrath that God has prepared for you.”
He doesn’t do that or anything remotely close to that does he? What Elijah does here is a masterful piece of rhetoric and filled with compassion. Why would Elijah even make the statement “If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”? Is he a heretic for doing so, for even allowing for the possible answer that the people would say no it’s Baal, Baal is right, knowing there is only one possible answer?
No he isn’t a heretic, he isn’t actually leaving the door open for that at all; Elijah is so confident in the truth that he knows is truth that he uses this statement as a means to continue the conversation with people. To start with the premise of I’m right, you’re wrong would have potentially closed the door for Elijah to have an audience with the Israelites, but look at what happens;
because of this approach how do the people respond? The people did not answer him a word or to say it another way…they were willing to listen.
Why didn’t they say a word? Because Elijah earned the right to be heard. He acknowledged where they were and entered in a challenge in which he knew God would reign supreme and reveal himself and he knew that him being right was not important. Elijah knew that in order to get them to the place he wanted for them, to the place of truth, the people he wanted to rescue from falsehood had to matter more than him being right.
Friends, as we see the evils that happen in our world and in our country, how many times do we lose the right to be heard because our starting point is this is why I’m right and you’re wrong or we start with berating the politician people are following. How many times have we lost our ability to witness to truth in times such as this because our bark is so loud that the bite of God’s truth can never be felt.
Friends if you want to point people to truth, if you want to transform culture, bring lasting change to a nation, you’ve got to meet people where they are, we’ve got to be a people willing to open the conversation and guide the conversation to ultimately what people need the most.
Move 2: Allowing God’s Truth to Expose Falsehood
As the people look on at this not so epic battle between the 450 prophets of Baal and the one prophet of God Elijah, something should glare from the pages of scripture right at you. Why in the world would anyone believe in Baal at all? Consider this for a moment, Baal is exposed as a false god that has no power, cannot serve them as a god because he is no god at all, as the people do vile things to themselves to gain his attention he remains silent, but take note of something? Was Baal ever able to do anything other than this prior to this exchange? NO! No, Baal was just as powerless before this narrative, just as silent, just as worthless before this exchange between his prophets and Elijah, but here is how Israel got to this point…they didn’t have an alternative. They didn’t have truth, they didn’t have someone to point them too something better, to God’s truth. They believed a government sanctioned, nationwide lie because there was not truth for them to believe, or at least not someone willing to point them there.
I think this is the other reason they remained silent, because the majority voice of lies was still the majority voice, this had moved beyond a religious discussion to a cultural matter, but there had to be something better than the lies they were believing.
And now that the lie of what Baal is not able to do stands side by side to the truth of who God is, there is no comparison. Elijah doesn’t combat falsehood by trying to expose it as false, he let’s the prophets of Baal do that, he pores out truth, he slathers the conversation with truth in a way that there is so much truth that by virtue of seeing the truth of God, the falsehood that was being believed is naturally exposed.
As the church we need to be the voice of truth in a world believing lies. We need to be voice that protects the life of unborn children, but it is a lie to believe that by casting a ballot on November 3rd or berating people or political parties or candidates on social media we’ve done our job while we live in fear of telling the world that Jesus is Lord and that people needed to pointed to the truth that they are created in the image of God and if we are going to proclaim that truth with our words, we better be willing to go all the way with our actions. The church can’t say protect unborn children which is truth and live a lie by letting children go unfostered and unadopted and watching whiling underfunded pregnancy centers struggle and close their doors and while families with children with special needs go underserved in the church. We can’t say protect life and not teach the value of life as image bearers to our children or support mothers and fathers who have erred by pointing them to the fact that even in their error that they have emulated the creator by creating life and that matters and are we going to support them and love them even more if they have erred even further in taking that life and to help them see God’s redeeming love in spite of that. Is all of this going to matter so much to us that we are going to teach our children to protect the marriage bed not as a political reality but as a reflection of Christ and the church, friends that has nothing to do with what happens on November 3rd it has everything to do with the church being the outnumbered yet still powerful voice in the world when we speak on behalf of the God that will transform culture every other day of the year with his truth that comes from his word out of our mouths, not because of our political opinion.
Friends that is what the world needs from us, God’s people, an outnumbered people, a minority voice of God’s truth in a world that is believing majority falsehood. It needs to see God’s work and power God’s truth proclaimed in word and deed.
The world doesn’t need us to try and yell louder, to take on the posture of the world. What would have happened in this story if Elijah had taken on the posture of the prophets of Baal with their rituals and senseless behavior that was all for show; trying to gain favor from their false god?
Yet we do it all the time don’t we? If someone is yelling false things, yell louder. If they are name calling, name call but in the name of Jesus of course, one of the besetting problems of the church is that we often make the mistake of trying to speak truth yet do so looking just like the world in how we do it.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard people say I don’t want to shove Christianity down peoples throats while they are force feeding their political opinions to the world they should be attempting to rescue. Friends your American political opinions are not gospel truth, the gospel is gospel truth and if the world doesn’t here that from you as the dominating narrative of your life.
The world doesn’t need our repeated American political truths, our exposing of the candidate we don’t like while the other side exposes the candidate we like, they don’t need a repeated barrage of why our opinion on policy is better than their opinion on policy the voting public and the non-voting public alike need the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is how you affect change. Stop telling people your political truth and start telling people gospel truth.
King David puts it well with a guiding principle for this in Psalms 19:14 (ESV) 14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
And with the right words, words of truth there is one other necessary element that Elijah as an outnumbered voice points us to.
Move 3: We Must Win People with Right Motives
What Elijah does here is he sets up a circumstance in which he will fail without God, if this offering is to be consumed by the fire it has to be God and he let’s truth be truth; but look at why he does it: 1 Kings 18:37 “37 Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.”
Elijah had the right motives. It wasn’t about having the right answer, or simply destroying falsehood. As truth was proclaimed it had an aiming point, the aiming point of turning hearts back to the Lord.
Friends during this political season, and really in life in general that should be our aiming point shouldn’t it; to point peoples hearts back to the Lord. If you want to affect change in our country you have to get to the heart of people with the truth of the gospel through Jesus Christ, you don’t need them to simply vote the way you want them to vote. We don’t need a political change in our country we need a heart change, and that is what the gospel does.
Bottom Line: Gospel Driven Words Let Your Voice Be Heard
Friends I have no interest in telling you how to vote on November 3rd or to tell the world how to vote, I have an interest in telling you God’s truth and proclaiming God’s truth to the world. I have a desire to engage culture in a way that allows my voice to be heard and to open the door for conversations with the world that allow me to proclaim truth in peoples lives, but without a basis for truth, with out a deep sense of who God truly is as revealed by God himself all I have is the worlds tools, limping around like they do with half truths about God and friends I don’t want our voice to be silenced; you don’t want your voice to be silenced. You are outnumbered, I am outnumbered, we are outnumbered, but what we have is a God who we have seen reveal himself and his power over and over again, and what people need in our country is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That is how you transform a culture, Gospel Driven Words Let Your Voice Be Heard
0 Comments