Two Journeys

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Kings 18:17-40. The main subject of the sermon is Elijah's trial of the false prophets.

Please, if you would, take your Bibles. We're looking tonight at 1 Kings Chapter 18, at the contest at Mount Carmel. We began this last week, and this has got to be one of the most exciting passages of scripture you're going to find in the Old Testament. I can't imagine a more dramatic contest than the one we get at Mount Carmel between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal. I mean, think about it, if you could go back in time to events in the Old Testament, don't you think this would be on your top 10 list to just stand there and see it? To see the fire fall from heaven, and the look on people's faces as they fall down to the ground and say, “the Lord, he is God,” but you know you wouldn't be seeing their faces because you'd be falling on the ground too and saying, “the Lord, he is God.” And so it's a dramatic encounter, and it's one that brings great glory to God. And that was his whole point; his desire was to glorify himself. Now, we've already looked at half of this encounter, but I'm going to begin reading where I began last time at verse 17 or verse... Yeah, verse 17, "When Ahab saw Elijah, he said to him, ‘Is that you, you troubler of Israel?’ ‘I have not made trouble for Israel,’ Elijah replied. ‘But you and your father's family have. You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals.’” Now he gives him the contest. He says, 

"Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table.” So Ahab sent word through all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waiver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, then follow him, but if Baal is God, follow him.” But the people said nothing. Then Elijah said to them, “I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has 450 prophets. Get two bulls for us. Let them choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. Then you call in the name of your god, and I will call in the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire, he is God.” Then all the people said, “What you say is good.” Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire.” So they took the bull given them and prepared it. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. “O Baal, answer us,” they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made. At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder,” he said, “Surely he is a god. Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So they shouted louder, and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention. Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come here to me.” They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which was in ruins. Elijah took 12 stones. One for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come saying, “Your name shall be Israel.” With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood. Do it again,” he said, and they did it again. “Do it a third time,” he ordered, and they did it the third time. The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench. At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God.” Then Elijah commanded them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Don't let anyone get away.” They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered them there.  

Now when we looked at it last time, we talked about the fact that Elijah gave to the prophets of Baal the opportunity to go first. They were allowed to select the sacrifice. They were allowed to go first and to cut it apart, and to lay it out, and they were allowed to do all of their work first. Now I think it makes sense that he did it this way. Number one, he wanted to show that he was willing to give any advantage to the prophets of Baal. He was willing to allow them to go first and to do whatever they needed to do first. But we know also that God was going to answer with fire that day, wasn't he? And if Elijah had gone first, there would've been no need for the prophets of Baal to go. And God fully intended not only to establish himself as the true God, but to show Baal for the fraud that he really is. He wanted to strip Baal of any power. He wanted to show Baal to be the emptiness that he is. And so Elijah said, “go first.” And so these prophets began their prophesying. They prophesied energetically. They danced with strength and power around the altar. And as I think about that scene, I think about how easily duped are so many of our people. We think about religions around the world, and people, our neighbors, coworkers as we're witnessing, they'll say to us, “you're very zealous for your religion, but there are other people that are every bit of zealous for their religion as you are for yours. They believe every bit as much in their God as you do in yours. They're every bit as sincere about their God as you are about yours. And they're willing to make sacrifices too for their God.” All of that is true, is it not? And we see that exemplified in these prophets of Baal. They are very zealous for their faith. They're willing to lacerate themselves. They're willing to puncture their bodies until their blood flows. And so their level of commitment is much higher than that of most Christians I know, but that doesn't make it true, does it? God wants those who will worship him in spirit and in truth, for there is a true God and Baal is a false god. And so zeal in worship does not prove the truthfulness, the verity of that religious system. There are many Muslims, for example, that are willing to lay down their lives in suicide bombing attempts, aren't they? They're willing to die for what they believe. Does that make their belief true and accurate? No, it does not.

So zeal in religion is not enough. The Apostle Paul himself, when he was going around from place to place persecuting Christians, exemplified the zeal of a rejecting Judaism, a Judaism that had turned away from Christ. And he was willing to go from place to place, he was willing to drag people off and put them to death. His zeal was strong and powerful, but Paul later repudiated it, didn't he? He said it's a zeal without knowledge. It's a false zeal. And so let's not be duped. There are people that will throw themselves into their religion far more than we ever will to ours, to our shame I must say. The Jehovah's Witnesses will go from door to door tirelessly, knocking on doors, reaching out. The Mormons will take two years of their young people's lives and send them all over the world as missionaries. Their level of commitment in some cases is so much higher than ours. But it does not mean that their religion is true.

So as they're dancing around, as Baal is being called upon, there is no answer. The silence is eloquent. "No one answered," it says. "No one heard at all." You know why? Because there was no one there. Baal is a false deity. He's an emptiness. He's a nothing. Psalm 115 says, "Why do the nations say, where is their God?" It's very interesting, Psalm 115, the nations say, “the Jews have no God because they have no images, no idols. We can't see their God, so they must have no God.” And so they say, "Where is their God?" The psalmist answered, "Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him." Isn't that a wonderful answer? That's where our God is. He's in heaven. And that day, he was in heaven waiting for a simple prayer from Elijah, and he would pour down fire. But at this point, he was quiet and so was Baal because Baal doesn't exist. The psalmist continues in Psalm 115, "Our God is in heaven. He does whatever pleases him. But their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear. They have noses, but they cannot smell. They have hands, but cannot feel, they have feet, but they cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats." They are mute; they're silent. The idols and the gods behind them. "Those who make them will be like them and all who trust in them." Do you hear that? You become like what you worship. Isn't that amazing? As you focus on the God of the Bible, you focus on Christ. You look at him and worship him; you are transformed into his image little by little. But here, these Baal worshipers, little by little are being transformed into that of an idol with deaf ears, blind eyes and mouths that cannot speak. And so there is no answer because there is no god, there's no Baal. But there is a Satan, is there not? And there are demonic forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Now, wouldn't you love to have seen what was going on in the heavenly realms around Mount Carmel at that point? Wouldn't that have been dramatic to see what was happening with Satan and his demons? How much would they have loved to just put a little spark under that sacrifice, just a little bit of fire to persuade the people that Baal really was a god? Satan would love to have done it. And you know something, at the end of the world God will permit him to do miracles. Did you know that? Through the antichrist, he will enable the antichrist to do great signs and wonders and miracles, and many people will be deluded and deceived by this. 2 Thessalonians mentions this, "The coming of the lawless one [that's the antichrist] will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders." It's coming folks, Jesus said, “to deceive even the elect if that were possible.” Well, it's not possible because his sheep hear his voice and they will not follow another. They know it's counterfeit miracles. But the antichrist will do many miracles through the power of Satan really. Revelation 13 gives us a clear indication of this. Revelation 13:11-14, "Then I saw another beast coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf. And made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs [listen] even causing fire to come down from heaven in full view of men." Did you hear that? So at the end of the world, the antichrist will do this exact same thing, but not that day. Satan was not given freedom; he was not given power or ability to have fire come down from heaven that day.

Now, all false religions have, I believe, a demonic side. I think behind every world religion, every non-Christian world religion, there is a demonic influence. 1 Timothy 4:1 says, "The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons." Did you hear that? So the demons concoct these religious systems, and then they act as Baal impersonators, that's how it works. And so they stand there behind the worship and they do little things and persuade people that Baal is real. They're Baal impersonators. And so demons are worshiped. Book of Deuteronomy speaks of this in the Song of Moses. Speaking of Israel, it says, "Jeshurun grew fat and kicked;" this is speaking of Israel. "Filled with food, he became heavy and sleek. He,” this is speaking of Israel now, “abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior. They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered Him with their detestable idols." Listen, this is Deuteronomy 32:17, "They sacrificed to demons which are not God- gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth." So there he predicts- the Song of Moses predicts that Israel will sacrifice to demons. They will worship demonic powers. One of the names is Baal. Asherah would be another one. And so the whole Baal system of worship came from demons, and how much I'm sure the demons longed to show themselves that day. But the beauty of the whole thing is that Satan is on a leash, is he not? He's held back by the power of God. He can do nothing except at the permission of God. You know this from the book of Job, he's got to go and ask permission. He said, "Now God, you're frustrating me. I would love to get at Job, but you put a hedge around him and everything he has, and I just can't get at him." And so God opens up the hedge according to his own command, and fire does come down from heaven and kills and destroys Job's people and possessions. And so Satan is well capable of doing this if God will permit it, but God simply would not permit it that day.

All false religious systems are ultimately demonic. Listen to 1 Corinthians 10 speaking of this very same thing. "Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything or that an idol is anything? No, but listen, the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons." Do you hear that? So all the idolatrous sacrifices are really being offered to these spiritual beings, demonic forces of evil in the heavenly realms. But they were silent that day, praise God. Aren't you glad that God restrains the power of the devil and all of his angels? Aren't you glad that they have to come and ask permission to get at you? Aren't you glad that God filters out the temptations, so that nothing comes at you except what you're able to bear? And with that temptation makes a way of escape so that you can bear up under it? Aren't you glad that God will not just let the devil have free rein in your life or in the world, but he restrains everything that the devil does? Aren't you glad that he's simply a created being? And when God says so, it's all over for the devil. Aren't you glad about that? I am. And so A.W. Pink speaks of that altar. He says, "The Baal altar stood cold and smokeless, the bullock was unconsumed. The powerlessness of Baal and the folly of his worshipers was made fully apparent. The vanity and absurdity of idolatry stood completely exposed. No false religion is able to send down fire upon a vicarious sacrifice. No false religion can put away sin, bestow the Holy Spirit, or grant supernatural answers to prayer. Tested at these three points, they all fail, as did Baal worshipers that day. They cannot take away sin. They cannot answer supernaturally with fire. They cannot send down fire from heaven. They cannot send the Holy Spirit. All of these things they cannot do. And so they're ultimately weak and impotent."

Well, you have to give it to the prophets of Baal. They certainly were persistent. Hour after hour, they danced around until finally Elijah thinks it's about time to add some taunting, a little bit of sarcasm, a little bit of mockery. And so he begins to make fun of them. In verse 27, it says, "Shout louder. Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought; he's distracted, he's thinking about something. Keep at it, maybe you'll get his attention soon enough. Or maybe he's busy or maybe he's traveling, maybe he's sleeping and he must be awakened." Now, Elijah's sarcasm you may think is an ungodly thing, but not at all. Because the Bible makes it very plain that God mocks this kind of unbelief. If you look at Psalm 2, it says, "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one, ‘let us break their chains’ they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.’” Now listen, Psalm 2:4, "The One enthroned in heaven laughs at them; the Lord scoffs at them." So there's laughter and there's mocking from heaven as God looks at these idolatrous systems that shake their fist, their puny little fist at God, and he laughs down because they're just grasshoppers before him. But then Psalm 2:5 says, "Then he rebukes them in his anger, and terrifies them with his wrath." These prophets of Baal are acting out their last few hours on earth. They're going to die that day, and they're going to face their Creator. They're going to face him without an atoning sacrifice. They're going to go to hell. And so this mocking is just the final warning to repent and turn away from this idolatrous system.

Take a minute if you would, and look at Proverbs Chapter 1, had a similar thought. The whole book of Proverbs is given to explain what wisdom is that we would know a truly wise life. And we learn from the book of Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And God stands and reaches out with both hands all day long. He says, "I've held up my hands to a disobedient and rebellious people." He has warned them again and again. There's been ample time for them to repent. Three and a half years the drought's been going on. And so wisdom reaches out to the people and says, "Come and follow me, and I'll give you the richest of fare." But look at verse 24, Proverbs 1:24, "But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke; I in turn will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you, when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. Then they will call to me, but I will not answer; they will look for me, but they will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord. Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm." Do you see that? God stands with his wisdom and reaches out to sinners, and he invites them to turn away from their foolish and sinful ways. To turn away from my idolatry, to turn away from sin. But if they harden their hearts and will not listen, if they reject his advice, in turn he will turn from them and he will mock them, and in the end they will be destroyed.

So if you go back to 1 Kings 18, we see Elijah basically as a mouthpiece of God taunting and mocking these false prophets. Well, did they listen to his mockery? Did they say what are we doing? Did realization hit them that they were wasting their time, that Baal was a false God and nothing would come? No, they only try harder. They're going to try harder. They're not doing it enough. They're not making enough effort in religion, and so they're going to try harder. And so what they do is they begin to lacerate themselves. They begin to puncture themselves with swords and spears until their blood flows. Now, note the cruelty of pagan worship, the cruelty and viciousness of this idolatry system. It says it was their custom to do this. This is what they did frequently, so it wasn't anything new. And so the doctrine of demons is ultimately vicious and hate filled, isn't it? Ultimately, it's cruel and vicious. And why? Because Satan hates you. He hates the image of God, and he wants to attack. And if he can somehow persuade you to hurt yourself, to lacerate yourself so that your own blood will flow, then he's just carrying out his hatred of God in your own body. You think about some of the pagan worship systems all over the world. Think about in the middle America, the Aztec system, the human sacrifices they used to do, they're unspeakably cruel and disgusting, repulsive. The doctrine of demons leads to this kind of cruelty and viciousness. Psalm 16:4, David put it this way, "The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips." And so their flowing blood is supposed to appease Baal and supposed to make him more disposed to listen to them. And it's funny how Satan perverts true religion. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness, blood must flow. The blood of the sacrifice must flow, but the sacrifice is already on the altar, they're going add to it their own blood as though that somehow are going to atone for their sins. It cannot. The blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient. You see the perversion here, their own blood and not all of it, only some of it. Jesus poured out his blood unto death for an atoning sacrifice for our sins. And these priests, by the way, they are Jews after all, let's keep that in mind. They were doing what was expressly forbidden in the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 14 says, "You are the children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves. Do not shave the front of your heads for the dead. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession."

We also see, I think, intrinsic in false religious systems is a concept that harming your body will somehow advance you with God. We even see this in medieval Catholicism. And some of these monks would go out and do extended fastings and extended beatings and flagellations. They would wear things called hair-shirts with the hair turned inside so that they would constantly be tormenting their flesh. As though this somehow had any value in advancing them in religion, advancing them in their relationship with God. Colossians Chapter 2 talks about this, "Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." The punishment of the body doesn't advance you at all. But what does, the mortification of sin by the power of the Spirit. Now that's something different. By the power of the Spirit to put sin to death, now that advances you if you have already come to faith in Christ through justification.

Well, the prophets of Baal have done everything they can. They exhaust themselves, literally nothing more for them to do. They've done everything. They've danced around the altar, they've lacerated themselves, they've cried out to Baal for hours and hours. And the time has come for Elijah to move. In verse 30, it says, "Elijah said to all the people, ‘Come here to me,’” “come close to me.” It's the time of the evening sacrifice about 3:00 in the afternoon. And he, I think the prophet at this point, is representing God. What is the point of this whole contest on Mount Carmel? Is it not to bring the people back to God? Isn't that the whole point? To show Baal worship to be empty and nothing, so that the people will reject it. And to show that the worship of the true and living God is everything so that the people will be attracted again to God. And so he says, "Come near to me. Come stand near me." That is exactly what he is doing.

Now, Elijah has, in effect here on Mount Carmel, made a three-fold appeal to the people. First of all, he's appealed to their conscience. Remember, he said, "How long are you going to stumble or waiver between two convictions? If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal is God, follow him." So he is appealing to their conscience, but they remain silent. Secondly, he appeals to their reason. He says, “I have an idea. Let's set up a contest between God and Baal, and you will be able to see side by side which of the two religions has power and which does not.” So he's appealing there to your reason, “Judge for yourselves people who is the true God,” that's what he's doing. Now, he's going to appeal to their hearts, and he does it by pointing to this broken down old altar. An altar to the Lord. And he begins to rebuild it. He begins to put it back together again. He takes these stones and begins to put them together. How often in your Christian life does God do this to you? How often does he appeal to your memory to bring you back to where you should be, where you should have been? Perhaps you've backslidden, you've slid away from a worship of the true and living God, and he reminds you of how it used to be in your life. He appeals to your memory. Think about Revelation 2:4-5, the church at Ephesus. Christ speaking to the church through the Holy Spirit says, "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love." Isn't that painful to hear Christ say that to you? “You've forsaken your first love. It's not an accident. It was a willful choice you made. You exchanged me for something idolatry or something earthly. You turned away from your first love.” And what is the very next thing that he says to him? He says, "Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first." “Remember how it used to be for you. Remember how in your earlier days in your walk with Christ, how you used to pray for a long time, how you used to love reading the Bible, how you couldn't wait to go to church, how you enjoyed singing hymns and Psalms and spiritual songs. How you just loved to witness, how you had a freshness and excitement to your life with Christ. Remember that height from which you have fallen, repent and go back to where you were before.” And I think that's what he's doing. He's deliberately kind of slowly building this altar up, and it takes time too. God is patient. It's going to take time. I don't think he had any help. They're all standing and watching, “Well, what's going to happen next? I don't want to get anywhere near that sacrifice, something might happen.” And so Elijah alone is building this up, and he uses these 12 stones. And the 12 stones clearly represent the 12 tribes of Israel. They were God's people. They were called Israel. And how powerful is this? Elijah is doing his ministry in the nation called Israel, which was not truly Israel, but just the 10 northern tribes. There'd been a separation between northern Israel and southern Judah. God's people had been rent, had been ripped in two, right? So there were 10 tribes that King Ahab was king over. And then there were the two tribes in Judah. There'd been a separation and why? Because of Solomon's idolatry and wickedness, and Rehoboam's rebellion as well. And so there'd been a separation, but in God's mind it was one people still. You see, there's an essential unity here, isn't there? 12 stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel and so the altar was built up.

We also see Elijah continually regulated here by the Law of Moses. In Exodus 20, it says, "If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you'll defile it if you use a tool on it." So you can't take a chisel and a hammer and get them all smooth and perfect looking. “Take those stones as they are, just as you find them, and stack them up. Stones that I made, you haven't done anything to them, and just put them on it.” He doesn't want any idols at all. Nothing human, but just put that altar together. And so he's just doing everything according to the law of the Lord. And it says the altar is built in the name of the Lord. Look what he says, he's going to build the altar. Verse 31, "Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come saying, ‘Your name shall be Israel.’" And verse 32, "With the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord." Now what does that mean? Well, I think it means two things. Number one, he builds an altar in the name of the Lord, means at his command. God commanded. “By whose name are you doing this?” “In the name of the Lord I build this altar, he told me to do it,” number one. And number two, in the name of the Lord means, “I build this altar for his glory, for his reputation, that his name may shine and be proclaimed. I want you to see how great is God.” So that's what it means. To do something by God's word and his authority, number one. And number two, to do it for his glory and his reputation. Just stop for a minute and apply this to yourselves. Wouldn't it be fantastic if everything you did, you did in the name of the Lord? If at every moment you say, “Do I have a word from God on this issue? Has he spoken to this? Am I doing this under his command?” Secondly, “Am I doing this for his glory?” A good test of that is, can you pray God's blessing down upon whatever you're doing at any given moment? Could you stop a minute and just say, “Lord, please bless what I'm doing right now?” If you can, you're doing it in the name of the Lord. It says in Colossians 3:17, "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Ain't it sweet that the name Jesus has been added to the word Lord so we know who he is? In the name of the Lord Jesus, we'll do all things by his word and for his glory.

And so Elijah built that altar, and then he cuts up the sacrifice in pieces as per the word of the Lord in Leviticus 1:6-8. He lines it up. And the Baal worshipers didn't do any of this. They just threw it together, and who cares, right? Because they had no commands on this matter. God had given commands on this matter, and Elijah follows them to the letter. He cuts the sacrifice up, and arranges it in pieces on the wood just as God had commanded. "He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much. He who is dishonest in little will be dishonest in much." Elijah is about to pray to God. His own reputation and God's will be on the line when he prays. He better be faithful and do everything the way God said. And so he does it completely by the word of God. Now, I think it's important for ministers of the word of God to be meticulously careful in how they handle the word of God, isn't it? I think all of us need to be careful, we all need to be faithful. But here, Elijah is not just anyone. He is ministering to God. He's going to offer a sacrifice. And so it's very important for ministers of the Lord to do all things according to his command, right? And so it says in 2 Timothy 2:15, "Study to show yourselves approved unto God, a workman who do not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." I think about that. Just as Elijah rightly cut up that bullock just as God had said, so we must handle the word of God and be faithful. I think about this. Actually, somebody quoted this verse to me once. I won't say who it is, but Jeremiah 48:10 says, "Cursed be the one who does the Lord's work negligently." What a comforting message, isn't it? Cursed be the one who's negligent in God's work. Do it the way God said. And so I take that seriously, and Elijah did that day. And then he says, “Let's pour some water on this sacrifice.” And he pours four buckets or barrels of water, right? Now you might ask, “Where in the world after three and a half years of drought do they get four barrels of water?” And the answer is, I have no idea. Now there might be salt water because Mount Carmel's right near the ocean. So they may have been salt water that would do the job just fine. Or they may have been precious barrels of water that King Ahab was storing up for that Baal feast afterwards that he was... they were going to drink some water, right? Either way, four barrels of water poured on there. And then Elijah says, “Do it again.” Okay, eight barrels of water. And then he says, “Do it a third time.” Okay, how many barrels of water are we up to now? 12. Just an accident. These are the kind of things that just kind of happen in the word of God. 12 barrels of water poured on this. And why? Because God loves to set up obstacles and then overcome them. He loves to show his power by doing something that only he can do. And so it's like a little lake up there by the time they get done, there's water everywhere. It's like a pond, there's just water dripping all over everything. It's just the exact opposite of that which will burn, humanly speaking. And so God is setting up an obstacle. It reminds me of the time when he calls out Gideon with an army, and they're going to go take on the Midianites, right? And what does He say to Gideon? He says, "Gideon, you have too many men here." Has there ever been a general that thought that, “Gee, my army's just too big, I need to send most of them home.” And then he says that a second time to Gideon, "It's still too many men here. I don't want you boasting against me that you did it by your own strength." That's what he says. So he gets it down to 300 guys who can lap water like a dog, and they're going to hold pots, and they're going to crash them and stand there and watch God win the victory. “Yeah, but I was a pot holder that day.” Well, there's not really much in that is there? God honored and glorified his own name. God loves to set up obstacles that only he can overcome. And so that sacrifice is totally drenched with water.

You know something? We are in the business of removing obstacles and difficulties all the time, aren't we? You look at car manufacturers, how many difficulties are they seeking to overcome for you? Electric seats, that little air bladder. We've got this little thing that adjusts just to your lumbar region if you... Do you have one of those? They're always thinking of ways to remove difficulties from your life. God is actually thinking of ways to put difficulties in your life, and yet not discourage you. How much difficulty can he or she handle today? That's how much I'm going to measure out. Why, because that's when you grow in faith. When you see God do things that only he can do. Constantly trying to remove the difficulties, here, God tells Elijah, “Put some difficulty in there. It's too easy right now. Everything's crackling dry, and waiting to ignite. I want them to know what happened here that day.” And so it's soaked, soaked, soaked. And at the time of the evening sacrifice, Elijah draws near to the people. He comes near to them, and he prays.

Now it's interesting, it's the time of the evening sacrifice. Evening sacrifice is done where? Well, it's done at the temple in Jerusalem, right? And so there's a solidarity there. That sacrifice is going to go on the exact same time as the one going on in Israel or in Jerusalem. And it all points to Christ, doesn't it? All old covenant sacrifice points ahead to Christ. There's that dead bull on there, and the wrath and the fire is going to fall down from heaven on the bull and not on the people. Praise God for that. That is the essence of your salvation. It's on the substitute that the wrath falls. It's on the substitute that the judgment comes, not on you, not on the people.

And so Elijah steps forward and he prays. And this is what he prays, "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. Let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you're turning their hearts back again." 63 words in the English translation, that's it. It reminds me of Jesus's even shorter prayer in front of Lazarus's tomb. "Father, I thank you that you heard me. I know that you always hear me, but I'm praying for the benefit of the people standing around here that they will know that you sent me," end of prayer. That's it. What a contrast to the kind of praying that went on for hours by the prophets of Baal. Jesus said this, "When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them for your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask," right? The real issue is that Elijah had prepared himself all his life for this moment. He was holy, he was righteous. He was there at God's command. And in the prayer he says that, he says, "I want them to know that you are God, you alone are God, and that I am here as your servant and have done all this only at your word." So many people think faith is just leaping out and doing something big and spectacular, and God will have to bless it. Is that what faith is? Jesus was tempted that way. “Jump off the pinnacle of the temple.” Jesus said, "No, because I have no word from my father to do that. And when he tells me to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, he will send his angels to rescue me. But until then, I'm not jumping." Faith instead steps inside the will of God and doesn't go out. And so it was God that told him to do this whole contest. Yes, God wanted this done. God is a spectacular being. He wanted this thing done, this wasn't Elijah's idea. And so everything that he had done, he had done at the command of God's simple prayer.

And what was the goal? Verse 37, "Answer me, O Lord, answer me so that these people will know that you O Lord are God and that you're turning their hearts back again." Can you control your heart? Think about it. Can you turn your heart back to God? Who does the heart turning here according to Elijah? It's God who must turn your heart. Ask him. Ask him. If your heart is hard, say, “God soften my heart.” How many prayers are there in the Psalms about one's heart, the psalmist's heart? “God work in my heart. Move in my heart, change my heart. Transform my heart.” And here, Elijah prays, "Turn their heart back to you." And that's exactly God's point. It's his purpose. And then in verse 38, it says, "Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil." Do you see that? The dirt. He burned up the dirt? Yes, He burned up the dirt. He burned up the stones? Yes, He burned up the stones. Do you know that everything has a burning point? Did you realize that? Every single material has a combustion point. It's all burnable. And the word of God says it's all going to burn someday. All the soil, all the stones, all of it are going to be consumed, 2 Peter 3, in a huge fire that will melt the elements. That's what it says, stoicheio, the Greek word for element will melt in the heat. It's kind of a nuclear thing, Steve, I'll talk about that later. But it's a melting of the elements. God is capable of burning anything. And you know why? Because our God is a consuming fire. We love to say, “O God, he is love,” and he is love. He's also holy. He is a consuming fire, and he consumed that sacrifice that day. Would've done it to the people had it not been for Jesus. Do you understand that? If it weren't for Jesus, he would've consumed the people that day, and they would've deserved it. But thank God for Jesus. Thank God that He is our atoning sacrifice.

Now, one final footnote: 450 prophets of Baal. They perished that day, and they perished under the law of Moses because they were false teachers. There was no outreach to the prophets of Baal. There was no effort made by Elijah on their part. They were false prophets and false teachers. And false prophets and false teachers are the vicious enemies of the church. Always have been; always will be. The most damage ever done is done by false doctrine, by false teaching. And so under the law of Moses, they perished that day. It was a theocracy. God ruled, and his law said they must perish, and they did perish that day. Next, God willing, the rain comes. And you know something, it's no accident that first we deal with this, the fire falling from heaven, and then God's blessing is opened up. The hearts turn back to the people. They fall to the ground and say, “The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God.” And then God's ready to send the rain again. Think about your own life. Are there any idols that are creeping into your hearts? Is your heart hard toward God? Turn to him. Repent. Do the things you did before. The church at Ephesus in Revelation 2 said that. Allow God to move in you today.

Matthew's goal, in the first seven chapters of the book  is to portray Jesus Christ as the King of the kingdom of heaven. That's why he came and right from the very beginning, he gives us a genealogy, which establishes that Jesus Christ is the Son of David; he is the rightful heir to the throne over Israel. He's the Son of Abraham also, and that means that he is the inheritor of the promise made to Abraham that through him, and through his offspring, all peoples on earth would be blessed, and that blessing is Jesus Christ.  After that genealogy, we saw that Jesus was not only son of man, he had a human heritage— he had a human lineage— but he was also miraculously born of a virgin, of Mary. So his name was given to be Emmanuel, which means "God with us”; he is God incarnate. He's come to Earth for a reason. In the fullness of time, at the right time, he who is very God, a very God begotten, not made, took on a human body and came to earth for a purpose. And what was that purpose? —to save us from our sins.  In Matthew chapter 2 we saw that the Magi longed to come and worship him and Herod longed to seek him, to destroy him and to kill him, because he was the King. In John Chapter 3 we saw John the Baptist proclaiming the way, saying, ”Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it's here, it's now, it's coming."

A kingdom needs a king, and that King is Jesus Christ.  He submitted to John's baptism;  baptized in order that he might fulfill all righteousness. In Matthew 4 we see the beginnings of his ministry as he also preaches the exact same message that John had, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. We see here in Matthew 8, Jesus's miraculous power  noted in Matthew 4.

There are two things that set Christ apart in terms of his life, that make him different than any other religious leader that's ever lived, and that is his mighty words and his mighty deeds —the things he said that no one else could have said.  We get a tremendous sampling of that in the Sermon of the Mount: Matthew 5, 6, and 7. We've seen the teachings of Christ, but now we're going to see the mighty deeds of Christ.  We're going to see the actions of Christ, things that only he can do. The supernatural healing ministry of Jesus Christ. We're going to see in Matthew 8 and 9 unfolding  before us, Jesus' kingly power over our physical foes, disease and death. We're going to see Jesus' kingly power over natural foes, namely a storm when he stills the storm. We're going to see Jesus's kingly power over supernatural foes, in that he drives out the demon with the word. And we're going to see Jesus' kingly power over our greatest foe, our sin, when he says to a paralytic simply because he believes, "Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven you."

Our focus today is specifically on his power over disease, over sickness, over death. A number of pastors, including myself,  were invited to come to Washington DC, to meet with other pastors and members of the House of Representatives and some senators who were believers in Christ to pray together. The original date for that was September 11th, the year 2001.  That very morning I came with my luggage all packed up, ready to go, ready to drive right up to DC right by the Pentagon, and when I saw the Pentagon burning, I said, "I think my trip is cancelled today." Especially when the Congress was sequestered for their protection and safety. So the date for that pastoral meeting was rescheduled for October. You probably remember that day — that was the day of the anthrax scare,  and I was in the building at the time. The day that anthrax was found in the ventilation system of the Congressional Building, I was there.  I remember the panic that was coming over the nation over the next week, as we began to think about weapons of mass destruction, biological terror and anthrax and all this kind of thing.  Fear was coming over our nation that there would be an anthrax epidemic all over this country. We know now that nothing happened, but it tapped into that deep-seated fear that we have of disease, isn't it true? 

We're afraid of disease, we're afraid of an unseen foe, a virus, cancer, bacteria that can come into our bodies and we are helpless, and there's nothing we can do. Throughout the history of humanity, we have faced this fear. In the 14th century, bubonic plague swept across Europe and killed one out of every three people that lived there. Huge communities wiped out by disease, and there was terror. Recently, there has been concern over AIDS. We're always afraid of a disease for which there is no cure. We were wondering if perhaps AIDS could be transmitted by mosquitoes, like yellow fever and other diseases.  There's a terror and  fear of disease:   ebola in Africa,   E. Coli in certain fast food restaurants which  shut them down. 

How about the ones that kill more of us than any of those, heart disease, lung disease, cancer?  We stand and we face these things absolutely helpless, apart from Christ. We are scientific people, aren't we? We think that perhaps if we know more about each and every disease, if we could just do more research that we could abolish all disease and death from the earth, but it cannot be because it says in Revelation 21, "There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, in the new Heaven and the new Earth." And then it says, "For the old order of things has passed away." What does that tell you? That disease and death are part of this order now and will be until the end. And so, we face disease and if it were not for what we're going to read about in our Scripture today namely, Jesus's miraculous power over disease, we would have no hope.  We do not put our trust in the science of pharmaceuticals  but rather in Christ, Christ who alone has power over all things, Christ who is the supernatural healer of all diseases.

 As we look at Jesus as portrayed in Matthew's account, he's going to be listing ten miracles over the next few chapters. First, we’ll see  the cleansing of a leper, then Jesus healing a centurion's servant, and then the healing of Peter's mother-in-law. Then, Matthew gives us a kind of a summary statement. I think this is what happens with the miraculous accounts in the New Testament. He did so many miracles, there was so much healing going on that they chose to give in the Bible, just some vignette, some individual stories to give us representation of what he had done after which there are summary statements like John says, "Look, if I wrote down everything that Jesus did and all of the implications and all of the stories, I suppose that even earth itself could not hold the books that would be written."  There were just rivers of miracles flowing through Jesus, unlike ever has been seen before or has been seen since then. 

Matthew picks a representative sampling of Jesus's supernatural miraculous healing power. We see him healing a leper, healing a Gentile and healing a woman. And it's interesting, those three would have been seen to be outcast or in a lower level of society.  I think Matthew chooses these three on purpose, to show Jesus's love, his willingness to reach out to every man, every woman, every child, every nation with his supernatural healing power. As we look at the miracles of Jesus we see a recurring theme. And it's not just with the healings but with every miracle that Jesus did. What is that theme? -  Man can't, but Jesus can. You can sum up all the miracles that way. Man can't, but Jesus can. We come face-to-face with our own impotence, our weakness. We cannot defeat sin and death, we cannot defeat disease, but Jesus can do all things.  Therefore, I think these miracles also give us a picture of our spiritual situation. Do they not? You look at a leper who comes to Jesus covered with rags, with filthy rags, and he's covered with the effects of the disease, he looks terrible, he's unacceptable spiritually, he's an outcast. That's a picture of us, isn't it? Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the spiritual beggars, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” It's a picture of our spiritual state. More than anything, I think the miracles are given for a purpose, and that is to mark Jesus as God and to mark him as our savior, worthy of our trust. That as we make much of the name of Jesus, people from all over the world will call on that name for salvation and they will be saved. The miracles are given for that very reason, to demonstrate Jesus is God. 

But for other lesser reasons as well. One of the reasons is that it was through Christ that God created the human body. He wove us together, he knit us together, it says, in our mother's womb. And we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  You have a nervous system, you have a circulation system, you have a digestion system, and a reproductive system, and muscles, and bones, and all of this is fit together marvelously, isn't it? Who can understand the complexities of the human body?  It was through sin that disease entered, and the body lost its capabilities. We became subject to death really, every day. Our cells do not replicate the way they should, there's mutations and problems within us. We are not strong, and we are not healthy. We are not well the way he created us to be good at the beginning. The healing ministry of Jesus really is a redemption back, a buying back of what God originally intended for us. Now, in the end, it will only come with a resurrection body. What is a resurrection body going to be like? No weariness, no fatigue, no disease, no diminishment of capabilities as time goes on,  what God intended at the start. It was sin and disease that brought these things in. And so we see a picture of a reversing of the curse, but in the end we see also the depiction of God's power, and his grace, and his mercy, and his compassion, to heal us of our real burden which is sin.

Though we are not going to study it now, one of the miracles that Jesus does in Matthew 9, is of  a paralyzed man lying before Jesus. It says, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to that paralyzed man, take heart son, your sins are forgiven." The connection between his healing ministry, and his power to forgive sin should be before us at all times.  Let's look at the details that Matthew gives us. First, we have Jesus healing a leper and he's healed to draw near, by that I mean he's healed to draw near to God. He was a social outcast he was a religious outcast, this man. Jesus is coming down from the mountain, he's given the Sermon on the Mount and the crowds are astonished at his teaching. They're amazed at his authority because he taught them as one who had authority and not as the teachers of the law. As he's coming down from the mountain, a huge throng of people comes to him.  Many times you think, "If I could only have lived back then, I would go back and see Jesus face-to-face, and the two of us would sit down and we'd talk for hours." You wouldn't get near him, you wouldn't be able to get close, because the reputation had spread all over that land, and people were coming, they were bringing sick people everywhere, they were coming, throngs of them. You couldn't get even close to Jesus. It was one man that seemed to be able to get close and he was a leper. Perhaps once people saw who he was, they ran away from him screaming, perhaps pelting the dirt and rocks. The Law of Moses required they call out and say, "Unclean, unclean,” so that no one would catch his contagion, his disease. He had leprosy. 

We've come to understand  leprosy a little bit better. When I was in Pakistan actually, visiting a leprosy hospital, I shook their hands, and I was told it was alright.  You look at them and it is really a very, very sad thing.  One of the things they worked on the most in the leprosy hospital is getting shoes fitted just perfectly for them. Modern science has told us that leprosy is really a nerve disease. It attacks the nerves so that you can't feel anymore. We want to be free from pain but pain is a great gift from God, is it not? It tells you to stop doing what you're doing. But you see a leper can't feel that, he'll pick up a splintered hammer, and start to use it and he'll just keep on using it, not realizing that he's gouging himself with... Gouging his hand with splinters. And even when he's done, he doesn't feel the splinters so they get infected. Little by little, he loses the flesh on his hand because of the infections. Or perhaps that little nerve in your eye that tells your eyelid it's time to blink, your eyes are getting dry. Well, that nerve is destroyed by leprosy, and so he doesn't blink and little by little, he goes blind.  If the disease has had time to work on his face, perhaps he bites his lip while eating and his flesh is destroyed by disease. 

The leper in Matthew probably looked horrible, a religious outcast, unable to worship, unable to go to the temple. He had to cry out, "Unclean, unclean." People probably made way for this leper as he came near Jesus. Look at the humility as he falls on the ground before him, kneels down and  says, "Lord, if you are willing you can make me clean." You see the humble request that he makes, "Lord, if you are a willing." Listen  to what he said, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." That's tremendous, isn't it? There is no lack of power in Christ to heal. I don't care what disease you may have brought in with you today, or if you have a loved one that has a disease, there is no lack of power in Christ to heal. If he wants to, he can heal everybody. This man comes humbly and says, "If you are willing, you can. You have power to do it, you can make me clean.”  Incredible faith and incredible humility. But Jesus has already shown his willingness, hasn't he? He's been driving out demons, he's been cleansing the lepers, he's been healing. And so, the willingness is already there. That's why he's here, but he assures him and he says so gently, he says, "I am willing, be clean." And just as he speaks, he touches the man, he reaches out and touches him. This was forbidden by the law of Moses, because the moment that Jesus would touch this man, he himself would become ceremonially unclean, except that he's different than anyone that ever lived. If you have a light room filled with bright lights beside a dark room, and a door between them, when the door opens, light floods into that  dark room. So it was when Jesus touched that man. Healing and strength went from Jesus right to the hands of that leper, and he was cured immediately. His nerves were renewed, his flesh regenerated, he was new again, he was clean, completely, immediately.  This is incredible power, just like the night that Jesus was arrested, and Peter chopped off Malchus's ear. Jesus just reached out his hand and touched his ear and gave him a new ear. Only Christ can do that, and so he heals him. 

Having healed the leper, Jesus has revealed himself, he's revealed his power, he's revealed his compassion, he's revealed his tenderness, he's revealed his person, he is God. But now he wants to conceal himself. It's very interesting, he says, "See that no one knows about this, don't tell anyone, but instead go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded as a testimony to them."  What's he referring to? In Leviticus, an offering was to be given by somebody cured of leprosy. As soon as they noticed that they were cured, they had to bring an offering to the priest. And so, Jesus said, "Go be a missionary to the priest, and tell them. But don't tell the folks around here." Jesus meticulously obeyed the law of Moses, he said, "Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them, I tell you the truth, until Heaven and Earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is fulfilled."  He meticulously obeyed the law of Moses and said, "Go offer that gift that Moses commanded. But don't tell anyone about this healing." Jesus obeys, but the man does not obey Jesus. We don't see this in Matthew, but Mark tells us what happened. Mark 1:45, it says, "He went out and began to talk freely spreading the news and as a result Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places and people still came to him from everywhere." Perhaps we get a little bit of an inside there as to what Jesus’ reasons were.  It was hard enough to move around at that point and he didn't need yet another crush of people coming. We don't really know, but we do know that the man refused to obey Jesus.

In verses 5-13, we see the second specific healing — Jesus healing a Gentile to be invited to the feast. This means  he's healed to be invited to the feast of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to sit at the feast with them. This is a striking thing because Jews and Gentiles during Jesus' time hated each other, especially the Jews hated the Romans because the Romans were dominating them. The Romans were in charge and had used their power to lord it over them. They were taking taxes from them;  they would confiscate farms, whatever they needed. So the Jews hated the Romans. There was, it says in Ephesians 2, a barrier, dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile, so much so that a Jew would not enter into the home of a Gentile. It seems that this centurion knew about all of this. The centurion's a very humble man who fears God. He was a Gentile, a Roman. He came to Palestine and at some point he came to understand the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He came to believe in him and trust in him. We get from Luke's gospel that he loved the Jewish nation so much that he built a synagogue for them, but he would not have been permitted to go in the building. 

What do you think all of his Roman soldiers, other centurions and his commanding officers would have thought if he had gone on behalf of a servant no less, not even for himself, but on behalf of a servant, to a Jewish carpenter and asked for healing. But that's exactly what he did. And he goes with incredible humility, saying, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you under my roof.” He comes humbly, he calls him Lord. There's a humility here, just as there was with the Leper.  We also see the humility of Jesus.  In verse six, it says, "Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering." And Jesus said to him, "I will go and heal him." One of the most challenging aspects of Jesus to me as a minister of the Gospel is that he is constantly interruptible. No matter what you need, you come to Jesus and he goes with you to meet that need.  He does it with Jairus when Jairus comes to ask for healing for his daughter. He does it again and again. He gets up and goes completely interruptible. He didn't have an agenda for himself that day, only to serve God, only to love his fellow neighbor. There's a humility in Jesus as well.

The centurion says, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed. For, I, myself, am a man under authority with soldiers under me. I tell this one, go, and he goes, I tell that one, come, and he comes. I say to my servant, do this, and he does it." Now, what is going on here? The centurion is taking what he knows about the world from his Roman army perspective and applying it to the invisible spiritual realm. That is faith. He says,  “I’m in the Roman army. The Roman army has conquered the world, not because their swords are stronger than anybody else's, not because they had secret weapons that no one else had, but because of their discipline and structure. So much so that the Emperor could give the word, the tribunes would hear the word and give it to their regional commanders, regional commanders right on down the chain of command to a centurion who is in charge of 100 men." The centurion would get the word and turn right around and pass it on to the hundred men and they would do it and he knew that they would do it, he didn't have to go and see. Because the discipline of the Roman army was such that if you did not obey a command, you would be executed. So with absolute certainty that word that came from emperor right on down the hierarchies to the lowly foot soldier  would be obeyed. And he said, "You know something? That's what's going on in the physical realm. Jesus, you are the emperor. You are the king. You give the word. Just speak it and it will be done." Isn't that incredible? "Just say the word." Now, perhaps he didn't understand the theological significance of all of it, that it was Christ, it was God through Christ that spoke, "Let there be light" and there was light, let there be an Earth and there is Earth, let there be mountains and rivers and there are. He just speaks and it is. I don't know if he understood all that, but he understood enough.

You don't need to come to my house, just speak and it is done. Now, ordinarily, Jesus loved to go and do the healing in person. Why? So that the people would understand the connection between Jesus and the healing. It wasn't necessary this time. A man already knows, if I just speak, it's me that heals. And so it is. At this point Jesus just rejoices. Look at verse 10 through 12, "When Jesus heard this he was astonished and said to those following him, I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the Kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." It's an incredible statement that Jesus makes here.

In his humanity, Jesus hears this word from the Gentile centurion, and he is astonished. He's amazed at this man's faith.  Then he makes a pronouncement: "I haven't found anyone in Israel with faith like this." There's no one among the subjects of the Kingdom that he's going to mention that has a faith like this. Jesus understands better than anyone else what's going on in the invisible realm. He makes a prophecy.  He's saying there are going to be Gentiles in heaven. There's going to be many Gentiles in heaven. There's going to be people from as far as the east and the west, and they will come and sit at the same feast; there's only one God, there's only one feasting table, and there's only one Savior, Jesus Christ. He says, "You know, I tell you the truth, there's going to be people from every tribe and language and people and nation."  Jesus made a pronouncement that there would be people believing in Christ, from the ends of the earth. The very thing that God had already said through Abraham. He said, "Through your seed, through your offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed." There's going to be a feast. Do you have your place reserved? Are you sure there's a name tag  and a seat for you? Do you have a place at the banqueting table through faith in Christ? Because if you don't, there's only one other alternative, it's either feast or it's hell.

Look at the next verse when Jesus said, "The subjects of the Kingdom who do not believe in me, who do not accept my authority, who do not understand who I am, will be thrown outside into the darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth." This is nothing other than the doctrine of hell,  and it's coming right from the loving lips of our gentle Saviour, Jesus Christ. He did not shy away from warning us about hell. We must understand the suffering and torment of those who reject the gospel message. We must fear it, we must shun it, we must witness, including these words as Jesus did. There is an outer darkness and there will be some in it, those who reject. Then he releases the healing word. Look at Verse 13, "And then Jesus said to the centurion, go. It will be done just as you believed it would. And his servant was healed at that very hour." Isn't that incredible? I wonder what it would be like to be the paralyzed servant. You're laying there and you're in great suffering and all of a sudden something happens and you're moving. Your legs are moving, your arms are moving, you can walk again, you can sit up, you're totally healed, you feel better than you felt in years. He is healed to serve; we're healed to serve anyway, aren't we? 

Next we get Jesus healing a woman. In verses 14 and 15, it says, "When Jesus came into Peter's house he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever, he touched her hand and the fever left her and she got up and began to wait on him." The first thing I get out of this is simply this, Peter had a mother-in-law. He must have had a wife.  I'm a former Roman Catholic and they say that Peter was the first Pope,  and they also say that clergy cannot be married. Well, here's Peter with a mother-in-law and a wife. Apparently she was hospitable. She had the gift of hospitality and opened up her home to Jesus. We're going to learn later in Matthew 8 that Jesus has no place to lay his head. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but  the Son of man has no place to lay his head.” This woman invites Jesus in, "Stay with us."

However, the mother-in-law has a fever. Now what is a fever?   A disease has come and  the body's immune system responds by elevating the temperature. The idea is the body can handle it and the disease can't. Back in those days when there was not medication or advanced medical techniques, when there were no hospitals, a fever frequently meant death. Jesus comes in and just simply touches her. He speaks to her and rebukes the fever, "Get out of here, fever." The fever's rebuked and instantly her body temperature returns to normal. Whatever bug or virus, whatever was in her, is gone, defeated. Not by her immune system, but by the powerful word of Jesus.  He speaks the word and she's healed. She's strengthened now and what does she do? She gets up and begins to serve him. I  want to focus on that. There is healing available today for you through the same power of Christ, but it's temporary. If Jesus restores your health to you, it's just because he wants you to serve him more in this world.  I think we forget that. There are faith healing ministries who take this statement in Matthew 8:17, "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases and by his wounds were healed,”   and they say “You're healed from every disease and sickness." There are faith healing ministries like that and they say that if you're not healed it's because you lack faith.   If Jesus heals you, it's because he wants you to serve him longer on this Earth. The mother-in-law is healed, she's strengthened, she gets up and begins to serve.  If Jesus heals you, it's so that you can serve him longer on this Earth,  and also to show his compassion, his love,his mercy and his kindness.  

Then we get this beautiful summary statement, verse 16, "When evening came many who were demon possessed were brought to him."  " And he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick." It's a summary statement; a river of miraculous power flowing through Jesus. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet, Isaiah. “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.”  The ultimate fulfillment here is spiritual because if you go to Isaiah 53 where he's quoting, it says, "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity, the sin of us all."  The real healing is spiritual. The real healing is turning to Christ for Salvation. 

As we look at this passage, what application can we get from this?  First, please stand in awe of the person of Christ. There is no disease that he faces that he could not heal with a word. Do you understand that? It doesn't matter if you've been amputated? He could recreate your hand just as he did with the ear that day. It doesn't matter if you have AIDS, he can heal. It doesn't matter if you have anthrax, it doesn't matter what disease. There is no disease that has come to man that he cannot heal. He has all power in heaven and on earth. Stand in awe of him, he is God, he's in the flesh; stand in awe of the person of Christ and understand his power. It is not always his will to heal. Sometimes it is, but his power is under his sovereign control. Christ is ruler of all. Secondly,  trust him to heal. . You may have a disease, you may have walked in here today with cancer. Do you realize that your ultimate trust should not be in chemotherapy, your ultimate trust should not be in radiation treatments, it should not be in the skill of your surgeon or in a pharmaceutical technique. It is Jesus ultimately who heals, for he is the great physician.

I commend to you, therefore, his compassion and gentleness and his supernatural power as God and his perfect wisdom to know what to do. There’s only one way to get a resurrection body and that's to exchange the one you have. How much we focus on this world We're here for a short time. If, miraculously by faith, he heals you, he wants you to serve him more. That's all, you've got more time on Earth to serve Christ. Trust him to heal you physically or to heal a loved one, come humbly to him. It says in James 5, "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well, the Lord will raise him up." God can heal today as he healed back then. But finally allow Christ to take up your true burden.

He took up our infirmities, he carried our diseases, we, all, like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Jesus suffered on the cross to bear your burden, to take your sins away. Trust him for that, trust him for salvation. Jesus said, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest, take My yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Come to Christ for healing from sin.

We're looking this morning at Habakkuk 3:16-19 and with it we complete our study in the book of Habakkuk. It's an absolute delight to open this text to you today. This is one of the most incredible texts in the Scripture for daily instruction in righteousness, and I need to hear what I'm about to say and to live it out as much as any of you do. Back in 1983, we went to a Campus Crusade for Christ national gathering, Kansas City, KC'83 it was called, and professor Howard Hendricks from Dallas Theological Seminary was there, and he told a story that stuck with me ever since, and I thought much about it. He said he was walking across the seminary campus there, and saw a Christian young woman who seemed distressed, a little bit troubled, and he went up, he knew her from one of his classes, and he said, "How are you doing?" And she said, "Well, I'm doing okay under the circumstances." He said, "Under the circumstances? What are you doing under there? A Christian should never be under the circumstances." That's the message of our text today, isn't it? A Christian should never be under the circumstances, but rather over the circumstances by faith in the living God.

I liken it to being on an airplane. I remember we were waiting, I don't know the city, but I know that there was a driving rain, it was windy and there was some doubt as to whether we were going to take off. I think Americans have the sense that we have a God given right to travel no matter what the weather. But there we were on the airplane and we were thinking, "You know, we've got to take off and if we don't take off, you know what we're going to do, we're going to give this airline a piece of our mind," as though they somehow control the weather and the laws of physics. But finally, permission was granted and we started taking off and we went up through all that weather, the wind, and we were being buffeted, but then at a certain point, we just broke through the clouds, have you ever done that before? And it was just a brilliant sunshiny day above that cloud cover. And it seems to me that that's what the prophet Habakkuk is enabled to do by faith here. He breaks through the clouds and sees again the sovereignty of God that rules over all things, and sees again the salvation that God is giving him by faith, simply by grace as a gift, and everything gets put right again.

We're talking this morning about a secret that very few Christians have learned. I don't know many. It's a secret, the apostle Paul calls it in Philippians 4, "I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. Whether well-fed or hungry, living in plenty or in want, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength." Do you live your life that way? Have you learned that secret of being content whether the fig tree is filled with figs or whether there are no blossoms on the fig tree. Whether the olive vine is or olive tree is filled with olives, or there's no olives on the tree, whether the grapevine is succulent, filled with purple or green grapes or whether it's barren. Can you praise God no matter what? Can you be content in God your Savior? Paul said, "The secret is I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

Not that he didn't practice what he preached, he did. I think about a time when he and Silas were sitting in a jail in Philippi. It was middle of the night, pitch black, I imagine, because when the jailer came in, he had to bring in lights so that he could see in there. So they're sitting there in the dark, it's murky, it's probably damp, maybe some vermin running around, and there are Paul and Silas, they've been beaten for their faith in Jesus Christ, persecuted because they brought the message of salvation to that city. And they were beaten, and they were thrown in jail. And they were singing, they were singing praise songs to Jesus Christ. Do you live your life that way, or are you under the circumstances?

That's what we're talking about today. And if you live your life under the cloud cover, under the circumstances, then Habakkuk 3 has a message for you today. Habakkuk travels a journey in this book from fear to faith and from faith to joy in the sovereign Lord. Let's travel it with him. If you can't say that you live in constant dependence by faith on Jesus Christ, so that no matter what God brings your way, no matter what your circumstances, you are rejoicing in Him; if you don't live your life that way, then Habakkuk 3 has something to say to you today. It's a joyful message, is it not?

Now we live, I think in America, uniquely, I think, in this time, at least in our recent experience, in an age of fear. September 11th, I think, woke a lot of people up. I think many of you will always remember where you were when those towers melted down and fell. I know I was right here in the parlor, we were watching on television, it was shocking to me to see it. And I think the reason that September 11th was so shocking to Americans is that we're not used to war being fought on our soil the way that Europeans or Asians might be, we're not used to it. World War I left Europe looking like a lunar landscape, it didn't touch us. World War II came home only in Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, and the Aleutian Islands, for the most part we were unscathed. Other wars have been fought in distant lands but we're not used to it right here. And so it was shocking to see an act of war done on American soil, where American citizens perished. Even more shocking is the sense of the every day nature of the daily life that the people who died were living, they just went to work and suddenly they were gone and their building was melted, it disappeared.

And so I think we live perhaps in an age of fear, and therefore we need the message of Habakkuk to tell us how to make a journey from fear to faith and from faith to abiding joy in the Savior. During the Cold War, we lived in fear, but those fears were never realized. We thought about the A-bomb and the H-bomb that Russia and China possessed, the ICBMs, and then there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, but of course, it never came to our soil, we aren't used to it, but we lived in fear. But this is a new era, isn't it? Media brings fears right to our doorstep. Do you watch the local news? I don't watch the local news too much anymore. But some people can testify to that, and it's just one grief after another brought right to your living room. You can share somebody else's suffering. How much more the National News and CNN and C-SPAN and the Internet, just bringing grief from all over the world, right to your doorstep, and with it the attendant fears, will we survive? Will we live? Will anthrax rule the nation, run roughshod over us? Will we all perish? It's an age of fear. And I think as we look at that, we need to know how to conquer fear through faith in the eternal God.

Now, fear is a devastating psychological force, is it not? It's something that many people face. The Bible mentions fear over 250 times. Some fear is good, some fear is necessary. Proverbs 9:10 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." So the fear of the Lord is a good thing. Proverbs 16:6 says, "Through fear of the Lord, a man avoids evil." And so through fear we turn away from and shun evil. Even more, we become concerned about our eternal souls through fear. Luke 12:4 and 5, Jesus said this, "I tell you my friends, do not be afraid of those who can kill the body and after that can do nothing to it. I'll tell you the one to fear, be afraid of the one who, after the body is killed, has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him." Now, this is the advice of Jesus, the Son of God, "Fear God who has power to throw you into hell, and fear the torments of hell for they are eternal."

So like I said, there are some fears that are necessary and good. We'll talk more of that later on. But much fear is just simply from the devil. It's just a waste of time, it's a waste of energy and strength, and our strength to serve God is simply sapped through this fear.

And I think one of God's greatest gifts is freedom from fear, amen? The ability that we have through faith in God to say goodbye forever to foolish fears and anxiety. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me." Freedom from fear, it's a gift from God. Or Psalm 27, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear. Though war break out against me, even then will I be confident." David, king David, had learned the secret of deliverance from fear.

The Message of Habakkuk: A Journey from Fear to Faith

Now, the book of Habakkuk has a message of a journey from fear to faith. In Habakkuk Chapter 1, Habakkuk looks around at his own culture. It's about 500 years before Jesus was born, came into the world. The Jews had run to the end of their string, they had disobeyed God through idolatry, they'd broken the covenant. God had been patient, He had sent them prophets and warnings through the prophets again and again, but they would not listen. And the time had come for judgment. And so He announces the judgment through many prophets, He announces it through Ezekiel, He announces it through Jeremiah, and He announces it here through Habakkuk. But Habakkuk begins deeply interrelated with it. He's praying over his people, praying over his culture, he sees that they're wicked, he sees that they're evil. They're using their positions of power to dominate the poor. They are evil people, and he says, "How long O Lord, are you going to make me look at injustice and you do nothing? Your law is broken every day, and the courts are paralyzed, the law doesn't seem to be able to do anything. How long is this going to go on?" And so he prays in this way and there's a sense of fear, "What is happening? Our culture is falling apart. And God, you just seem to do nothing, you don't care, you don't move."

God answers the prophet, He speaks to him. Our God speaks. He speaks to the prophet and He says, "I'm not going to do nothing forever, because I'm bringing the Babylonians. They're a ruthless and impetuous people. They are powerful militarily, and they're going to sweep across the whole earth, they're going to seize one country after another, snatch them up like eggs from a nest, they're going to collect them all. And they're coming here, and they're going to destroy this country, they're going to tear down the walls, they're going to burn the king's palace, and they're going to burn the temple. The house of the Lord will be destroyed because of the sins of the Jewish people. They're coming."

Well, this is what I call out of frying pan into the fire. Habakkuk originally complaining about the wickedness of his own people, but at least they were Jews, at least they understood the Word of God, at least they were somewhat worshipping the true God even if they added idolatry along with it. But now these people are just simply pagan, they're just idolaters, they're wicked Gentiles, and you're going to use them to destroy your own people? It doesn't make any sense. God, your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong. Why are you tolerating these idolatrous people? They're sweeping across the world and you're doing nothing about it. You've made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler. And the wicked, powerful foe, he can do anything he wants with them, where are you God? And why are you doing this? He says, "I'm going to stand and wait for an answer."

Habakkuk 2 is the answer in four parts. He speaks, God does, and He says, "Write this down for it speaks of the end. This is the way I will behave to the end of the earth, the end of the world. So write it down so that generation after generation can come and read it and understand what I am doing in history." Answer number one, the Babylonians, they're going to get it in the end. The Babylonians are going to be destroyed. And so, look at Verse 16 that we just read. He gets the message, doesn't he? Concerning the Babylonians, he says, "I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled," there's the terror, the fear. "Yet, I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us." That's the Babylonians. So they're going to get it, they're going to get destroyed. Answer number one.

Answer number two; they're going to get destroyed by another people who are themselves going to build an empire, they're going to raise up towers and mighty structures, and they're going to build, and they'll rise for a while, the Medes and the Persians, they'll have their day in the sun. But in the end, all human empires, all the rising and falling of the world, it will all amount to dust in the wind. The Lord Almighty has declared that the labors of the nations are only fuel for the fire, that they exhaust themselves for nothing. Why?

Because number three, "I'm building my own kingdom," says God. "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." Everywhere, people will see my glory, and they will worship me, and they will love me, and they will glorify me, and all of my competitors will be gone. Just one kingdom left, the kingdom of God. "Well, what about the individual sinner? What about somebody like me?" Says Habakkuk. "What about this woman or that child or that man over there, what about them?" "Well, I've got that covered too," said God. Habakkuk 2:4, "The righteous will live by faith." "Individual people can enter my kingdom through faith in the eternal God. Simply by faith, they can enter. But if they do not enter they will be destroyed with all of my enemies." That's what He says. So that's the answer, Habakkuk 2.

Habakkuk 3 is Habakkuk's prayer of faith in response. And it's delightful, you see his journey from fear to faith. Now, as we look at this journey we begin to realize that fear is a common experience even for the most powerful people of God.

Even the mighty heroes of the faith have demonstrated fear. You shouldn't wonder that fear comes into your heart, that you're afraid perhaps of the future, anxious about financial difficulties, relational problems, even Islamic militants coming and destroying new buildings on July 4th, or who knows what you're afraid of? Shouldn't surprise you that you have fears as part of our earthly situation. Psalms 103:13 and 14, God says, "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him, for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we're just dust."

We're just dust, we're given to fear. Abraham was, you remember the story of him in Gerar? And he looks around, he says, "It's a godless place that I'm at here, and I've got a beautiful wife, and I'm in trouble. So I think I'll lie about her and tell everybody that she's my sister." It's a good idea, right? And so he tells the king that "This beautiful woman here is my sister." While the king prepares to take Sarah from Abraham as his wife. Abraham is in major wimp mode here, saying nothing, doing nothing, and why? Because he's afraid. He says it very directly in Genesis 20:11, he said, "I said to myself, there's surely no fear of God in this place and they will kill me because of my wife." He's afraid.

And then there's Isaac, who goes to Gerar in his time, and does the exact same thing. Chip off the old block, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And so he does the exact same thing with the king of Gerar who was alive at his day. He said, "I'm married to a beautiful woman Rebecca, and they're going to kill me, I'm afraid of them. So I think I'll say she's my wife. My dad taught me that one." Fear. What about Job? Job was overwhelmed with waves of fear and terror. Job 13, "Only grant me these two things O God, and then I will not hide from you, withdraw your hand far from me and stop frightening me with your terrors." That's Job. Moses was afraid of being discovered after he murdered the Egyptian. He hid the Egyptian in the ground. He looked left and right before he killed him, he was afraid. And then he fled for his life. Many times he was afraid of the Jewish people that he had led out of Egypt. He was afraid again and again. Fear was part of Moses' life.

David was terrified frequently and the Psalms are filled with evidence that David wrestled with fear all the time. 1 Samuel 21, he said this, "That day David fled from Saul and went to Achish, king of Gath, but the servants of Achish said to him, 'Isn't this David, the king of their land? Isn't he the one they sing about their dances,  "Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands"?'" Verse 12, "David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish, king of Gath." So he's terrified. So he pretended to be a mad man, he pretended to be insane, and he let his drool come down his beard, and they let him go, "I don't need any mad men in my kingdom." All of that motivated by fear.

Even the mighty prophet Elijah, after he took on the prophets of Baal, we've been studying it on Sunday evenings, 450 of them, courageous, bold, powerful, stands there, after all that's done, Jezebel sends word, said, "You killed my prophets, I'm going to kill you by tomorrow." And he was terrified and fled for his life, ran all the way to a cave somewhere. Even mighty Elijah, given to fear.

It's been true also in church history. Some of my greatest heroes of the faith have given in from time to time to their fear. Even Athanasius who stood against the world, Athanasius against the world, even he gave into fear at certain key points of his life. Martin Luther, standing courageously against the powers of the Catholic Church, testifying to justification by faith alone. "Here I stand, I can do no other." He needed a day to think about it. It's true. When they asked him, "What is your answer? Will you recant?" He said, "Let me think about it for a minute, I need a day to pray." Granted, day to pray, came back strong, but he needed some time to pray it through. Question he was worried is, "Am I the only one that's right, can it really be?" It was almost humility that led him to fear, but he had to pray.

And then there's a story of Charles Spurgeon, the first time that he stood up in front of a huge outdoor crowd, like Whitefield and Wesley used to do. Big huge assembly of people, his wife is sitting right in the front. He's about to preach, and he calls for one of the... One of the helpers comes and says something, and they go down and he talks to his wife, and the two of them leave. Goes on and preaches the message, she never came back. Someone came and said, "What did you say to that man?" And he said, "Well, she was sitting in the front, was looking so nervous that I started to become afraid, so I needed her to move because I wouldn't be able to preach if I kept looking at her face." And so Susannah Spurgeon went off because of Charles Spurgeon's fears. Even the most mighty give into fear.

Well, the world has all kinds of strategies for overcoming fear, doesn't it? What are some of the strategies that the world looks to? Well, determinism is one of them, it's a philosophy that says basically, there's nothing we can do about it, everything's set by fate. And so why fight it? I might as well just be resigned to it, I'm just going to give in to it. The problem with that is it leaves you bitter and hard and cold, you hate life. That's not the Biblical answer. What about detachment? James Montgomery Boice put it this way, "I don't want to think about such things. Every time I think about them I get depressed, when I think about my own personal future, when I think about the future of the country, the stock market depresses me, international news depresses me. The best solution is not to think about these things at all." Detachment, staying away from it all.

Or how about distraction? I think this is America's number one choice. This is our number one selection in this. The idea is that we're going to seek escape from the problems through distracting ourselves. We're going to reach out for entertainment, we're going to flock to the movies, we're going to rent videos, we're going to distract ourselves from the problems. Or we're going to go shopping. We're going to distract ourselves with shopping, and not because we need to buy something, but because we want to spend the day at the mall. It's a beautiful place, it's cool, air conditioning, we get out and we just distract ourselves from our life's problem. And when you go, are you alone? No, the place is filled with other people who are just shopping, distracting themselves. Or sports. Sports is primarily distraction from life. People are able to get away from their things and focus on something that they really know in their heart of hearts doesn't matter, although people do lose perspective, soccer fans will overturn cars and burn them and all that, but they lose perspective. At any rate, it's a distraction, sports are a distraction, "I'm not going to think about my problems."

Computer games, video games, vacation. Get away from it all. Well, what's the "it all" you're trying to get away from? It's your circumstances. You don't like your job, you don't like where you live, you don't like your neighbors, you're in financial problems, so you overspend and go on vacation. All of it for distraction, "Get me away, I don't want to think about it." And then, sadly, alcohol or drugs is a form of distraction, getting away from it, an addiction to something because they can't face their circumstances.

And then finally, determination. This is the kind of rah-rah motivational thing where you're going to go hear a speaker who's going to tell you, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you got to be tough, you got to be strong. Only the strong survive, you got to get going." Almost like you're a football team. Have you had any of these motivational speakers? The British call it "having a stiff upper lip." The Greeks called it stoicism. "We're going to face our problems like men and like women, we're not going to wilt, we're going to be strong."

None of these things lead to ultimate success in facing fear, none of them, only faith does.

So Habakkuk gives us the example from fear to faith, and from faith to lasting joy. Now, what is Habakkuk's strategy for that? Well, what does he do in Chapter 3? Look at the subtitle at the beginning of chapter 3, what is it called? It's a prayer, is it not? And so Habakkuk resorts to prayer. He was a man of prayer. Prayer is the beginning shot in the battle against fear. You get on your knees and you begin to pray to God, and you ask Him for help. And so he prays, he's a man prayer. Now, this isn't anything new. Chapter 1 is filled with his prayer as he's saying, "How long must I call you for help but you do not listen?" So he's constantly a man of prayer, but here he's resorting to prayer, he's turning to God in prayer.

He's also turning to God in worship. Look at Verse 1. I bet you just skipped right over Verse 1, didn't you? Frank, did you skip over Verse 1? That's a musical term, isn't it? I don't know. Chapter 3 Verse 1, "A prayer for Habakkuk the prophet. On shigionoth." I don't know what that means, okay? But at the footnote it tells us that it's probably a literary or musical term. Look at Verse 19, very last phrase, "For the director of music on my stringed instruments." You see what he's doing there? He's set up a piece of corporate praise. He's set up some praise. He's written a praise song, he's written a hymn, he's written a song. And why? Because he's going to worship God, he's going to turn toward his heart. Now, there's no sense in going and leading a whole group of people to worship if you don't worship on your own yourself, that you don't worship God, you can't export what you don't produce in your own nation. And so he's got to start by trusting in God, he's got to start by worshipping. So it all starts in his private prayer closet, he's going to worship God, he's going to honor Him.

And how does he do it? Well, he meditates on God's past actions. Throughout all of Chapter 3, as we saw last time, he's meditating on God's mighty actions in the past, what God has done for his people. With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, He led them out of Egypt, and He led them through the Red Sea. All of those great miracles that God had done. He's meditating on Scripture, he's thinking about doctrine, folks. Let me tell you right now, you want a solid basis for your battle against fear, a solid basis for joy, it is doctrine, it is Biblical teaching. Didn't Jesus say so? "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rains came, and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rains came, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

Doctrine is the solid rock. "Heaven and earth," Jesus said, "Will pass away, but my words will never pass away." And yet Christians are weak in doctrine these days. They're weak in the Scriptures, they don't know the God that they should know well. They don't know Biblical doctrine, Biblical theology, they shy away from it, sometimes even make fun of it. But then when the wind comes and the streams rise, the house falls because it's built on sand. You build on the word of God, and that's what Habakkuk did, he thought back to what God had done in the past, His great and mighty actions in the past. And then he patiently submitted to what God was doing. Look again at Verse 16, he says, "I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us." He accepts what God is doing, he's not going to fight against it. He says, "Our country is going to be destroyed, I accept it."

And then he chooses joy by faith, and he relies on God for constantly renewed strength. Look at this incredible hymn of joy. "Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pens and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength, He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to go on the heights." Look what he does, he starts with a joy that originates in God Himself. It's not a joy under the circumstances, folks. Your circumstances are going to be good and bad, they're like the stock market, and maybe they're better than the stock market, I don't know, but they wax and they wane. God has actually not promised you that every day would be sweeter and brighter than before materially, that you would have nothing but sweetness and success, and that if you're not having success in your life it's because of a lack of faith or sin in you. He's not promised that at all, that is not the Christian life. Rather, He's seeking to put your joy on a solid rock that doesn't move, and that is God and God alone.

"I will rejoice in the Lord," he says, Verse 18, "I will be joyful in God my Savior." He never changes. And by the way, was God deserving of praise when you got the thing you hoped for? The job, the child, the raise, the house, the success, whatever it is, did He deserve to be praised for that, yes or no? Yes He did, for every good and perfect gift comes from God. Let me ask you a question, does God ever change? Is He a changeable God or is He the same today as He was at that day that He deserved to be praised? He never changes. Your circumstances may be down, you may be suffering, you may be struggling, but God hasn't changed a bit from the last time you felt like praising Him. And so he moves to a joy that originates in God Himself.

Secondly, a joy that transcends even extreme circumstances. "Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, there are no sheep in the pen, no cattle in the stalls." You know what this is, this is drought and famine. This is starvation, folks. Are you facing anything like this? Are you facing the invasion of another country into your country, so that everyone will die by the sword, famine or plague, is that what you're facing? That's what Habakkuk was facing, and he said, "Even so, I will rejoice in the Lord. I'll be joyful in God my Savior." It is a joy that transcends even extreme circumstances, it's a joy that focuses on salvation. "I'll be joyful in God my Savior." Well, salvation from what? For Habakkuk, the easy answer is salvation from the sword of the Babylonians. And that was part of it, but not ultimately. The salvation he's thinking about is salvation from the wrath of God. Salvation from hell, salvation from judgment.

Look again what it says in Verse 13, "You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one." Another word for anointed one is Messiah. "You came out to save your anointed one, your Messiah, you came out to save Him." Well, how did He save the Messiah? Well, He saved his ancestors. From the descendants of king David, there needed to be a lineage down to Jesus, and so there had to be a continuing Jewish history. We talked about this last time. Ultimately, it all points ahead to Jesus, doesn't it? God my Savior is Jesus. He is the Savior, that's what His name means, salvation comes from Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so I'm going to be joyful in the salvation that comes from God free of charge, a salvation given to me simply by faith. The righteous will live by faith, simply by faith in Jesus Christ who died on the cross, I have eternal life. And so that's a joy that nobody can take from me. It's a permanent joy and it transcends circumstances.

It's a joy, ultimately, that scales the heights. Look at Verse 19, "The sovereign Lord is my strength, He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights." One of the challenges of the Christian life is you can be feeling good on Tuesday afternoon and feeling terrible on Wednesday. You know what I'm talking about? Suppose you have a trial so severe that it just doesn't go away once you come to the new insight you think God wanted you to learn through it all, right? It's so big that it's going to be there the next day. Do you need strength to rejoice in the Lord again tomorrow? And how about later that day, do you need strength again from God to rejoice in Him? "The sovereign Lord is my strength." For abiding joy… Every time those anxious and fear thoughts come in, the Lord responds, the Lord stands at your side, He is actually with you, giving you strength for an abiding joy that transcends the circumstances. You got to be a battler, a fighter, a warrior for joy, because it's not going to come easily. Your circumstances will still be there a day later, a week later, a month later if they're serious. And the Sovereign Lord is my strength, and He gives me a joy that scales the heights.

It's almost like a mountain goat, do you see that? "He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go up in the heights." I think about like the Alps, the Matterhorn or one of those ridges, and there's this mountain goat running with confidence, and there's a chasm on the left and the right sufficient to dash into pieces, but it's confident, because it knows where to go, running a straight line, and the view is spectacular, isn't it? To be up there, up in the heights, thinking about the Sovereign God, thinking about His joy, His power, His prophecies, the future you have in Christ, heaven, face-to-face with God, nothing can turn me. God gives me strength to scale the heights. And I don't know what I'm going to eat when that comes, when there's no figs, and no grapes, and no olives, and no sheep, and no cattle, I don't know what I'm going to eat, God does. He feeds the birds, He takes care of me, but I know my Savior. I know what God has given me in Christ.

Do you have that kind of a joy? Have you made the journey from fear to faith and from faith to abiding joy that God sustains day-by-day? It's right here in the text.

What application can we take from this? First of all, let's talk about some things we should not fear. You should not fear circumstances if you're a Christian. Do not fear financial trouble, do not fear disease, do not fear accidents, do not fear any earthly circumstances because your life is not here anyway. You're not to fear those things. You're not to fear frowning people who don't like you or turn away from you if you're a faithful witness for Christ, don't fear them. There's nothing to fear. Pity them but don't fear them. You're not to fear future evil of any sort.

There are some things we should fear. If you're not a Christian, if you've never trusted in Christ, you should fear Judgment Day. Because our God is a law giver and He keeps careful records of all the things that we've done to transgress His commands. If you're a non-Christian, you should fear Judgment Day, fear wrath, fear hell, yes, fear Him who can cast you to hell, fear Him. We start at complacency, don't we? We start at confidence, comfort, we feel easy. And then grace moves us to fear. "Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved," said John Newton in amazing grace. Grace teaches you first to fear Him who can throw you to hell and then relieves those fears through faith in Christ. So then we move from fear, from complacency to fear and then from fear to faith, trusting in Him, and then from faith to abiding joy, through prayer, through meditating on Scripture, through staying close to Him moment by moment.

There's one last thing I want to say, who did Habakkuk write chapter 3 for? Did he write it for himself? No, he'd already worked all this out, he wrote it for us, he wrote it for his own people. "For the director of music on my stringed instrument," he said. Every word of Scripture is important, don't skip even those weird things at the end. He wrote it for us so that we would sing and trust Him. He wrote it for his people. Why? So that they would have faith. Why was faith important for his generation? The righteous will live by faith, they need to trust in God or else they'll be swept away in judgment. And so he was evangelizing his people by writing that, and he's writing to us too, that we would have an abiding joy in God and not be under the circumstances. Do you trust Him today? If you're here today and you've never given yourself to Christ, can I ask you, don't leave this place without trusting him. Don't leave this place with an accounting of sin still on your record. Trust in Christ. Come and talk to me after the service, come and talk to me about your soul. If you're already a Christian and you know that your life is not characterized by an abiding faith-filled joy, repent, turn again to God and realize that He's given you everything you need for permanent joy both in heaven and on earth.

I'd like to ask if you would open in your Bibles to Habakkuk chapter 3. We're continuing in our series, in Habakkuk 3 looking this morning at the verses that Warren read verses 3-15. When I was in sixth grade, I had to walk home every day up a certain hill and at the top of that hill was a group of neighborhood thugs that used to wait for me there. Now I was not a powerful fighter or a boxer. I know that may be surprising to some of you looking at me now, but at that time I was rather small for my age. And I feared and dreaded that walk up the hill every week. At that time, my parents contracted with a builder to have an addition put on to our house, and this man, one of the biggest men I've ever seen in my life, came and started working on our house with his two sons. Sons were in their mid 20s and they were powerful and strong.

And one day this builder took me to his house, he was going out and I wanted to ride in his truck. And he said, "Well sure, I'm going home to pick some things up come with me. And so I rode in his truck and I just happened to notice that his house was at the base of that hill that I walked home every day and I said wow what a coincidence. The next week as I was starting to walk home and I looked up the hill and there were those kids waiting for me, I said, "I think I might ring the door bell on that house and see if I might obtain some help." Well, I rang the doorbell and one of his sons, maybe 22, 23 year old young man came out, he wasn't young man to me he was big and strong, and powerful. Said, "What can I do for you? I explained the situation, he said, "Come with me. So the two of us walked up that hill together.

And the faces on those bullies was just completely different than anything I'd seen up to that point. There had been arrogance, there had been control, there had been dominance there had been all these kinds of things, but now they were puzzled. They didn't quite understand the connection between me and this 6 foot 2 builder next to me. And as we came to the top, all of a sudden I realized that eighth grade bullies aren't as big as they really seem to be. Well, this guy soon sized out who the leader was and he went to him and he took him by the shirt and just did this arm curl thing, and just pulled him right up and they were face-to-face, so they could have a conversation. His feet dangling a little bit off the ground and he explained to him that he and I were friends and that he wouldn't take it kindly, if this behavior continued. And so they had that conversation. I don't remember the words that were said but I remember the picture I remember it, and so then he lowered him back down and they were gone and I never saw them again.

But while he was doing that, I felt safe, I felt protected, I felt that somebody had interceded and stepped up in front of the danger and had taken care of me. And I want you to come to Habakkuk 3:3-15 and read the text that way. But my experience on that hill is nothing compared to the power and protection and sovereignty that moves out for us and stands between us and our enemies. It just moves right in in between and says, "You will not get to them because in order to get to them, you have to go through me." I get the picture of Jesus our Good Shepherd, going out from the garden of Gethsemane and standing between us and wrath between us and death between us and condemnation and judgment. Just standing there and saying it's going to come to me and not to them.

And that's the picture I want you to have, as you read and look at Habakkuk 3 verse 3-15 because they're the prophet, Habakkuk is looking back in history at a time that God did that for Israel. The Exodus is a famous time, but God moved his people out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and they came and they were right up against the Red Sea, and Pharaoh and his mighty army. The most powerful in the world at that time, was coming out and going to destroy Israel, and God just moved and placed himself between his people and that hoard that was coming to destroy them. Now, the situation in Habakkuk say it was different. At this point the real danger to the people of God was the wrath of God. But God was using an invading nation of Gentiles, the Babylonians to come and destroy his people and Habakkuk was praying to God in the light of some past historical events. He was looking back in history, he was thinking about what God had done in the past in history, and he was bringing that knowledge of ancient historical events to his present day, in effect saying God what you did in the past, do it again. Move out, protect deliver your people. Now, ours is a historical faith. Is it not? We spend much of our time looking back at ancient historical events.

You might wonder what do they have to do with us? What could the Babylonian invasion of Judah in 600 BC have to do with my life, today. Well, it has everything to do with your life because God doesn't change, and you still have enemies and God still moves out to deliver and to protect you from your enemies. One of my heroes from the 20th century Josef Tson a Romanian pastor had an experience concerning this whole issue of our historical faith, Josef Tson growing up in communist Romania, came to personal faith in Jesus Christ, as a young boy, he was nurtured in that faith in a Godly home, went to college, and continued to grow as a Christian and then he got to seminary.

Now, seminary can be a very enriching and an empowering experience you can grow in your faith if your teachers are good, but if not, you can actually have your faith destroyed you can have the tenants and the pillars of your faith shaken, cracks in the pillars can appear. At that time, Josef Tson got hold of a book written by a liberal Methodist named Leslie Weatherhead, and in the book by Weatherhead (it's called The Plain Man Looks At the Cross), basically said that all of the historical events of the Bible are really myths. Really they're just metaphors for our present relationship with God. It really doesn't make a difference whether any of those things actually happened or not. There are metaphors for our present relationship the atoning sacrifice of Christ it's just a myth, it's a metaphor for love, gives us courage for our present life this metaphor.

Well, Josef Tson, was very deeply troubled by this, and he went to his professor and he explained the book and the man looked at the dust coffer, looked a little bit and said, "This man Leslie Weatherhead is a renowned scholar academic if he says it, it must be true." That's what Josef Tson's professor said. That's what Josef Tson said at that moment, "I saw my faith like scaffolding in my insides going down in pieces, everything in me was demolished. I went to my room and said it is risky to preach the gospel here in Romania. I was ready," listen now, "I was ready to risk my life for the truth, but for metaphors I will risk nothing." And he left the seminary, and started working as a teacher.

Now, praise God, later, somebody came and was able to give him the biblical truth and some answers to Weatherhead's attacks on Christianity, and came to a strong, vibrant courageous faith in Christ. And led that Romanian Church. He was persecuted for his faith, and his faith was strong and able to stand firm. But listen, again, what he said, I was ready to risk my life for the truth, but for metaphors I will risk nothing. James Montgomery Boice put it this way, "Christianity is fact. The first issue any inquirer needs to settle is whether it is truly fact or only fiction." Is the Biblical faith only a collection of beautiful, and inspiring stories or, did God actually deliver the Jewish people from Egypt by miracles, at the time of the Exodus. Did he actually bring plagues upon Egypt. Did he actually divide the waters at the Red Sea, and later the waters of the Jordan River.

Did he stop the sun, and the moon in the days of Joshua, at Gibeon above all did he really send his only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die for the sins of his people, his death for their death, and then rise again triumphantly from the dead. If these things are true, we have a great God in whom we can indeed rejoice we can rejoice even in the worst of times as Habakkuk did. The whole issue is, "Is it true? I want to know, is it true." Christianity is unique in this way. Unlike Buddhism, unlike Hinduism, unlike even Islam, Christianity stands or falls on whether certain historical events occurred or not.

1 Corinthians 15, Paul puts it this way: "If Christ has not been raised, from the dead, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith." In other words, if Christ Resurrection is a myth, if it's just a story then preaching about it is a waste of time, your faith is worthless and you're still in your sins. Christianity relies on historical fact, God's truth is based upon God's acts James Boice put it this way, "The religion of the Bible is not essentially a religion of ideas, although it contains many great ideas, it is essentially a religion of acts." God's mighty acts in history. He sent his son, his son died on the cross, but did not stay dead. But actually in the third day was raised again to life historical fact. And if not then there is no Christianity. And so, what Habakkuk does at this particular crisis in his life at this crisis in Israel's history, he looks back, himself to historical facts that had occurred a long time before that. God's mighty moving in history on behalf of his people. And he derives strength and courage from that and so we see in Habakkuk 3 a movement in Habakkuk as he's praying in the prophet himself a movement from fear to faith.

And he does it all based on a meditation of God's actions in the past, that's what we're seeing in Habakkuk 3. Now, the whole thing, the key to it all is God's immutability, the fact that God never changes. And therefore, God's actions in the past teach us something about his character, it teaches us something about what kind of God he is. Now, he never seems to do the same thing twice. If you notice, have you ever seen any Red Seas parted recently? Have you actually sat on a hill and had Jesus feed you like the 5,000? He doesn't do the same thing again and again, he's infinitely creative, he's always doing new things. But all of those mighty acts in the past, they all teach us something about the character of God. And if there's something you can learn about the character of God, and it was true 2,000 or 4,000 years ago, guess what? It's still true today. God's immutability. His actions show us his character and he never changes. And so, therefore, history, ancient history, even, 600 BC, is actually prophecy. It tells us what God will do again in the future, it tells us how he will act because his character doesn't change.

Now, we're looking at a prayer. Basically Habakkuk 3 is a prayer. It's a poetical prayer, but it's a prayer. Isn't the Bible amazing? We have a prayer here from a prophet long ago and it makes it into the Bible. Therefore, not only is this prayer Habakkuk's word to God, but because it's written down here, it's God's word to us. Isn't that incredible? And so we're reading the prayer of a man who lived a long time ago, and we're seeing something of Habakkuk's personal journey of faith. He's struggling, he's going through hard things. He begins by looking around, in chapter one, at his own people. He sees that the Jews are corrupt, they're evil, they're using their positions of power, as judges or counselors, or authority figures in the land, for their own personal gain, they're wicked and they're sinful. And so he cries out against his own people.

He says, "God, how long are you going to let them go on like this? They're evil, they're doing bad things. How can you let them continue?" God says, "I'm not going to let them continue. I'm going to bring the Babylonian army, and they're going to come in here and they're going to destroy this place, they're going to destroy Jerusalem. They're going to sweep in here like a desert wind, and when they're gone nothing will be left. At that point, Habakkuk felt like he was out of the frying pan into the fire, he's much worse. He said, "God we're bad, but we're not as bad as the Babylonians, they are idolatrous people, they're wicked. How can you use evil Babylonians to destroy your own people? Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong. Why are you tolerating injustice? Why are you tolerating the wicked?"

And so he's deeply concerned. And he says... At the beginning of chapter two, he says, "I'm going to stand here and I'm going to wait for you to give me an answer. I don't understand evil in the world. How can you, a good and righteous powerful God, allow evil in history?" Habakkuk 2 is God's timeless answer, four-fold answer, and we've seen it already.

Answer number one, the Babylonian Empire will get theirs in turn. Yes, they'll have their day in the sun, they'll be in charge for a while, 70 years to be precise, but then they are going to fall, and the people that they have conquered will then turn and conquer them. The law of the boomerang, we've already talked about that. What goes around comes around. You live by the sword, you will die by the sword. And so the Babylonian empire is temporary, but guess what?

Secondly, the empire that replaces them is temporary as well, and the empire that replaces them is temporary. As a matter of fact, all human effort apart from God is dust in the wind. All human empires will rise and they will fall, and they will amount to nothing. Is it not from the Lord has not the Lord Almighty, determined that the people's labors only fuel for the fire. The nations exhaust themselves for nothing. Why?

Because lesson number three. Habakkuk 2:14, "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." God is building an empire for Himself, for his own name's sake, for his glory, and all nations will see the glory of that empire. Now, those three answers are all a big picture aren't they? It's what God's doing with the big tapestry of human history.

What about the individual though? What about the lowly man, woman, and child? What about the individual? Are they going to just get ignored, swept away. No, God's plan is big enough to look down to the single individual and give them a word. Habakkuk 2:4, "The righteous will live by faith." And to that single individual, he speaks and he says, "If you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now if you believe in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through faith, in Christ's name, you will live for ever. You'll enter my Kingdom and you'll see my glory." Habakkuk 2, that's his answer.

Habakkuk 3 is Habakkuk's response. He prays and we see him moving from fear to faith. And specifically in verses 3-15, we see that, I think at that point, he's hoping for an encore of God's past actions. He said, "You know God, that time that you moved out in power back then, remember how you did that to Pharaoh's army? Or remember how you did that in Hezekiah's day, when in one night an angel came out, and 185,000 Assyrian troops around the walls of Jerusalem fell down dead in one night. God, would you do it again? Would you move out again and do it again?" And so we saw in verse 2 the last time I preached. Verse 2, it says, "Lord, I've heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, oh, Lord. Renew them in our day. In our time, make them known. In wrath, remember mercy." he's praying for God to deliver his people. And then from verse 3-15, he's talking about past deliverances. He's looking back in history.

Now, people at Habakkuk's time came to Jeremiah, who was one of Habakkuk's contemporaries and said the exact same thing. Jeremiah 21:1, people said to... Of Jerusalem said to Jeremiah, "Inquire now of the Lord for us because Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, is attacking us. Perhaps, the Lord will perform wonders for us, as in times past, so that he will withdraw from us." They were counting on that, right? They're saying, "Please pray that God would do that thing again that he did with the Assyrians a little while ago." They're hoping that God will move out, but God's not going to do that this time because his people have sinned. They're idolaters, they're wicked and then time has come for judgment. And so Habakkuk is praying, but ultimately he is allowing God to be God. Can we even speak that way? God's going to be God, whether you allow him to be or not.

He's powerful, he's mighty, he's strong, but we're going to allow God to be God. In the end, he says, "No matter what God does, I will rejoice in him." Verses 17 and 18. "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produced no food, though there are no sheep in the pens and no cattle in the stalls, yet, I will rejoice in God, my Savior." I will be joyful in him. No matter what happens, no matter what the circumstance of my life, I will rejoice in God."

And so we see the full movement from fear through contemplation of God's past actions up to a confident faith and reliance in him. That's Chapter three.

Now, as we look back at God's mighty deliverances we have a timeless principle in verse six. Look at it. The very end of verse six, it says this, "His ways [namely God's ways] are eternal." Do you see that? God's ways are eternal. He speaks and it stands forever. Heaven and earth pass away, but his words never pass away. And therefore, his actions stand eternally. What he has done in the past, stands for eternity. And so as he moves through, he begins to recount God's powerful acts for Israel. Look at verse three. "God came from Teman the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah his glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the Earth." Now, Teman in Mount Paran is where Mount Sinai was and I think this refers to God coming out from the region of Sinai coming across at the time of the Exodus to protect his people from Pharaoh and his army. He's coming out to protect his people and deliver them.

Deuteronomy 33:2. It says, "The Lord came from Sinai and dawned over them from Seir; he shone forth from Mount Paran. He came with myriads of holy ones from the south, from his mountain slopes." And so he comes with angels, like God bring them all, bring the whole army and come and protect us, come and deliver us and that's what he does. This is what we call a "theophany." It is God moving down and saying, "Here I am." he did that at the time of the Exodus. That's in Exodus 14. This is one of the most powerful stories in the Bible. "Then the Angel of the Lord who had been traveling in front of Israel's army withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them coming in between the armies of Egypt and Israel." So here's the picture. There's the Red Sea and there is the Jews, their back is up against the sea and they're in trouble. Pharaoh's army, the most powerful in the history of the world at that point, was coming to wipe them out.

And the angel of the Lord comes and stands between the army, between the army and the people of God with a pillar of fire. That's what it says. And so it said, "Throughout the night, the cloud brought darkness to one side and light to the other side." He makes a distinction between his people and his enemies, between his people and his enemies. If you are his people, he protects you. If you are one of his enemies, his wrath is upon you. And so there it is, there's a division and he stands between in the breach. So that neither went near each other all night long. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and all that night the Lord drove the sea back, the Red Sea, with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were thus divided and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued them. That was foolish. They chase them into the Red Sea. I would have run the other way, after 10 plagues. But they followed them.

The Lord had hardened their hearts. They followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night, the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into a confusion. He made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptian said, "Wait a minute, let's get away from the Israelites because God is fighting for them." That's exactly right. God was fighting for his people, but it was too late for the Egyptians because of the Word of God, the sea came down on top of them and they were destroyed. That is what I think is in Habakkuk's mind as he recites this. Look at verse four. It says, "His splendor was like the sunrise, rays flash from his hand where his power was hidden." This is like lightning and thunder coming from the hand of God.

And then he turns to God's use of plagues and pestilence, the very thing he had destroyed Egypt with before. Verse five, "Plague went before him," it says, "pestilence followed his steps." This is the judgment of God. And then in verse six, "He stood," it says "And shook the earth. He looked or he scanned out, he scoped out the nations, surveyed them and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled, the age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal." So God surveyed the nations and made them tremble. Even though they were like mountains, strong and permanent, powerful. No, they tremble when God just looks at them. He touches the mountains and they smoke. That's the power of God for his people.

Verse seven, "I saw the tents of Cushan in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish." These are Gentile people, they represent the whole world. God's wrath and his power is there for his people, and that whole army was destroyed at the Red Sea.

For the Sake of His Name

Now you might ask, "Why does God do this?" Well, for many reasons, first of all, just because of his holiness and his righteousness. But also that his name might be proclaimed in all nations. He makes his name great. God's reputation spreads all over the world, people hear of these mighty acts of God, they hear and they tremble. So that when Joshua sends two spies into Jericho, it's the first city that they're going to destroy, there's a prostitute there named Rahab. A single individual but she heard the reputation of God. I heard what you did at the Red Sea, I heard what God did and I know that he is the God, he's the true God, the only God, and she was justified by faith, she trusted in this God and she believed. So why does God make much of his name, why does he make much of his reputation, why does he want his name spread all over the world so that people might call on that name and be saved, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And so God does these great and mighty acts for the salvation of people but also so that his wrath might be known.

If you are his enemy, his wrath is a terrifying thing. If you're on the wrong side of that divide if you're not among his people, but rather you're among his enemies, his wrath is terrifying. Our God is a great savior, but he's a terrifying enemy, and so that we would flee from the wrath to come, and find salvation through faith in Christ, so that's why he makes much of his great acts and his mighty name. Look at verse eight, "Were you angry with the rivers, O Lord? Was Your wrath against the streams? Did you rage against the sea when you rode with your horses and your victorious chariots?" Were you angry at the Red Sea? Not at all. But rather he came out to deliver his people. Look at verse nine, "You uncovered your bow and you called for many arrows." Bow and arrow, instrument of war this is God at war, and he uncovers his bow and he calls for not just one or two arrows, but handfuls of them, groups of seven, it says, in the Hebrew, it's a tough verse to translate, but I think the NIV does a good job. He uncovers his bow and he calls for lots of arrows, and then suddenly in verse 11, "sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear."

So in verse nine, he calls for the arrows and not just one or two, but lots of them. And then in verse 11, they're flying, they're moving through the air, and when God shoots an arrow it finds its center with deadly accuracy. Oh, flee the wrath to come. Why should God be your enemy because when he centers on you to destroy you, you will not be able to escape, but there is a place of refuge, there is a place of refuge and that place is Jesus Christ. I love this. Look at verse 13. The point of it all is deliverance for his people. "You came out to deliver your people to save your anointed one. You crush the leader of the land of wickedness, You stripped him from head to foot with his own spear, you pierced his head when his warriors stormed out to scatter us gloating as though about to devour the wretched who are in hiding. You trampled the sea with your horses churning the great waters." The point is deliverance for the people of God, God comes out to save them, he comes out to deliver them.

But who are his people? That's the question, isn't it? Is it the Jewish nation as a whole? Well, most of them were being destroyed that day, most of them were being destroyed when the Babylonians invaded. He's already told us who his people are, it's those who believe in him. The righteous will live, they will survive by what? Faith. If they have no faith they are his enemies and his arrows will find them. But if they believe, simple faith in the eternal God, then he will protect them far greater than the protection I received that day on that hill. He will come out with all of his power and nothing will harm you. He will bring you to eternity forever and ever.

His people was not ultimately Israel. All Jewish history leads to one individual, doesn't it? To Jesus Christ? So what does it say in verse 13, "You came out to deliver your people to save your anointed one." What's another word for anointed one? The Greek word is Christ, Hebrew word is Messiah. You came out to deliver your Messiah. Why? Why does that matter? Because Jesus hadn't been born yet, he had a Jewish lineage. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, salvation is from the Jews. If Jewish history ended the day the Babylonians invaded then there would be no salvation for anybody. Why? Because God promised through Abraham's seed all peoples on earth would be blessed and so God had to protect some Jews, he had to keep alive a remnant so that there would be a history. And so, ultimately, the Babylonian Empire would be crushed by another empire, the Persians, and the King of Persia would allow some Jews to go back to the promised land, right, and they would establish or re-establish a Jewish history in that Promised Land, and generations later, Jesus would be born in the fullness of time, Christ would come and why, so that we could call on him and be saved, so that we could have eternal life. And not have to face the wrath of God, not have to face the flying arrows of God because he never misses. He never misses.

And I wondered about Jesus, you know. I've thought about him and I've wondered about Satan concerning Jesus. If you were Satan, what a terrible way to begin a sentence, would you have killed Jesus or not? That's a tough question, isn't it? Prophecies all speak of him dying. Isaiah 53 talks about him as a lamb led to the slaughter. Would you have killed him? I think Satan didn't know what to do with Jesus. Caesarea Philippi one day, Jesus says to his disciples, he says, "Who do the people say I am?" "You are the Christ, the Son of living God," says Peter. A minute later though, Jesus tells him, "I'm going to die on the cross." Peter takes him aside and begins to rebuke him and says, "Never, Lord. This shall never happen to you," and Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan. You're a stumbling block to me." Satan was tempting Jesus not to die.

But the night before Jesus was crucified, Satan entered into Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus to death. In the end, Satan wanted to kill Jesus. And so he took a spear, spiritually now, took a spear and point it right at the heart of the Son of God. It's called death. Death on the cross. "Do I throw it or not? Do I throw it or not?" In the end he threw it. Why? Because he hated Jesus, he's a killer, a murderer. Satan, I mean. And so he takes that spear and hurls it at the heart of Jesus and it penetrated his heart. Jesus died on the cross. He did.

But look again at our text. Verse 13 and 14. "You came out to deliver your people to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness." Who's the leader of the land of wickedness? The land of wickedness is Babylon, but then it's the Persians, then it's the Greeks, then it's the Romans, then it's the Barbarians, then it's the Nazis and one empire after another. Who's the real leader of the land of wickedness? It's the devil himself. It's the god of this world. Okay, then Satan must be crushed. Okay. Well, I came out to deliver you from him? To crush you. Well, how am I going to do it?

Look what the text says. Verse 14. "With his own spear, you pierced his head." Okay, so there's a death on a cross coming right at the heart of Jesus and it goes through his heart. But through the powerful and mighty resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead on the third day, that spear turned around and came right back at Satan and destroyed his kingdom. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross has destroyed the devil. It's destroyed his kingdom. Somebody's saying then, "Hallelujah, with his own spear you pierced his head." The very thing that God had predicted in the first predictive prophecy back in Genesis 3. "You [Satan] will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head." With his own spear, you pierced his head and you stripped him of all of his plunder." That's us, folks. He rescued us. He delivered his people by the death of Jesus Christ. I bet you never thought this was in Habakkuk 3, but there it is. It's all right there.

What is the application for us? Well, as you look at it, I'm speaking to you, this means you. First and foremost, I'm saying to you that God, if you're a child of God, God is for us. Therefore, be not discouraged or dismayed. I don't care what you're facing. It doesn't matter what could discourage or gets you down. Nothing compares to the invasion of the Babylonians to destroy your hometown. But no matter what you're facing, be not discouraged because God is for us. And so therefore, I urge you to do what Habakkuk does. Think back at God's mighty actions in the past. The beauty of it is, we have even more to think about now, don't we? He didn't have the New Testament. We've got all of Jesus' miracles, including his death on the cross and his mighty resurrection from the dead. Think about it much. If you're depressed this morning, if you're discouraged, if you're going through a hard time, think back to what Jesus did at the cross. Think to what he did when God raised him from the dead. Think of that mighty victory and be not discouraged. If God is for us, who can be against us? Be not discouraged.

Secondly, God is holy, be not presumptuous. God never changes. His eyes are still too pure to look on evil, too pure to look on evil. God is holy, be not presumptuous. Don't presume that all is well with you if you're not a child of God. Do you know what God was doing in Habakkuk's time? He was destroying his own city, his own temple and "Will you escape?" he said in Jeremiah 25:29. That's what I'm doing. Will you escape? God has never changed. He's still holy, be not presumptuous.

Thirdly, God is Savior through Christ. Believe in him. Flee from your sins. Flee from the wrath to come. There is a division between God's people and God's enemies. There is no third category. And if you are not among his people through faith in Christ, then you are among his enemies and his arrows will find you. Flee from the wrath to come and find salvation in Christ. And if you are a child of God nothing shall harm you eternally. God will protect you. He will stand between your foes and you and nothing shall harm you.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Kings 18:16-25. The main subject of the sermon is Elijah's meeting with Ahab and the prophets of Baal.

We're beginning tonight at 1 Kings 18:16, Elijah on Mount Carmel: "So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah, and when he saw Elijah, he said to him, “Is that you? You troubler of Israel?” “I have not made trouble for Israel," Elijah replied, "But you and your father's family have. You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals. Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat a Jezebel’s table. So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waiver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal is god, follow him." But the people said nothing. Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has 450 prophets. Get two bulls for us. Let them choose one for themselves and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bowl and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord, the God who answers by fire, he is God." Then all the people said, "What you say is good." Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first since there are so many of you. Call in the name of your god but do not light the fire." So they took the bull, given them and prepared it. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. "Oh, Baal, answer us," they shouted, but there was no response. No one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made. At noon, Elijah began to taunt them. "Shout louder," he said, "Surely he is a god. Perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom until their blood flowed. Midday passed and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention. Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come here to me." They came to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which was in ruins. Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob to whom the word of the Lord had come saying, "Your name shall be Israel." With the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood and cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. And then he said to them, "Fill four large jar jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood. Do it again," he said and they did it again. "Do it a third time," he ordered and they did it the third time. The water ran down the altar and even filled the trench. At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed, "Oh, Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, oh Lord, answer me so that these people will know that you, oh Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again." Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostate and cried, "The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God." Then Elijah commanded them, "Seize the prophets of Baal. Don't let anyone get away." They seized them and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there."

Now this is the story of a climactic encounter, perhaps one of the most dramatic in all the Bible, but it begins rather quietly when you stop to think about it. God had been working carefully and preparing this day for three and a half years. There had already been a contest between God, the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Baal. Why do I say that? Because Baal was a fertility god, Baal was a rain god and God had been beating him day after day for three and a half years in that there was no rain. And so the contest had already taken place, but now God wanted it seen very efficiently, very dramatically that he alone was the true God, the only God there is. And so he moved Elijah to orchestrate this entire contest. Now, I think it's important to realize, I think we should aspire to be like Elijah, to look at his courage, to look at his boldness, but realize that none of this was Elijah's idea. You see, even in his prayer, he said, "I want all these people to know that I've done this only at your command.” We can't make something like this up. We're not going to throw ourselves off the pinnacle of the temple and hope that God will hold us up. But rather, he only, as a servant of the Lord, does what he's commanded to do just as the Son of the Father, Jesus Christ, only did and said what his Father had commanded him to do. And so Elijah moved out at the command of God.

But not only had God been setting the stage for this with the drought for three and a half years, he'd also been preparing Elijah for it as well. I was thinking about that this week. I've been thinking about Elijah's life with the widow at Zarephath. And for all that time, he was waiting on God. He couldn't get around in Zarephath. He couldn't show himself because you know that Ahab and Jezebel were searching everywhere for him and this was Jezebel's home area. And so he had to stay at home day after day, hour after hour. What did he do? Well, we're told to make the most of every opportunity. The only thing he really could do was spend the time in prayer. And so he was praying for his people. He was praying for the widow and for the widow's son. He was praying for the king and he was praying for the hearts of the people. And little by little, God communicated his will and revealed it to him so that when he came, when the time came for him to take this burden on, he was ready, day after day spent in prayer. And I think about the rhythm of the Christian life. This is a climactic encounter, isn't it? But before it is, three and a half years of waiting, praying, quiet, and preparation. I think it shows the same thing about us. We can't be climactically, moment after moment, doing great things for God, but day by day, God is preparing us for the next battle that we're going to face. We don't know what it is. We have no idea when God revealed to Elijah what his will was, but Elijah made the most of the time and we saw last time the encounter with Obadiah, the servant of the Lord. Obadiah, somewhat ambivalent character, serving Ahab, a wicked king, but at the same time, courageously caring for the Lord's, prophets in caves. And so he said to Obadiah, "I'm here. I want to see your master, King Ahab." And so Obadiah went and got him.

And so we have this encounter beginning at verse 16, “Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah.” Now verse 17 shows us so much of the human heart. Look at it: “When King Ahab saw Elijah, he said to him, ‘Is that you, you troubler of Israel?’” Doesn't that show you a lot? Ahab had had three and a half years of the Lord's chastening, three and a half years of discipline from the Lord. And when we are disciplined from the Lord, it's good for us to repent. It's good for us to come humbly before God and seek forgiveness. It's good for us to be broken. For the Scripture says, "Humble yourselves under God's mighty hand and in due time, he will lift you up." but Ahab hadn't done that at all. His heart was hard and he blamed Elijah for the trouble that had come on Israel, "Is that you," he said, "you troubler of Israel?" Well, isn't that striking? I think the fact of the matter is that unless God grants repentance, all of us would've been that way too. For all of us, we're naturally dead in our transgressions and sins. We should not boast too much over wicked king Ahab because we realize our own hearts are hard, aren't they? And it doesn't matter the chastening and the discipline that God brings in our lives. We will not repent unless God works it in us. God grants the repentance, and Ahab had not repented. He had wasted his time.

Another commentator that I read said that it's possible that King Ahab didn't know Elijah's name. That's possible. I don't know. It's speculative. But this guy shows up out of nowhere in 1 King 17:1 and says that, “it's not going to rain, except my word,” and then disappears. What did he say? Who was that? No one knows. So it's possible he didn't know who he was. I don't really know, but either way, what was in his heart floated out through his lips. Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks, “It's your fault, Elijah!” What blame shifters we are, and so it was that King Ahab blamed Elijah for the trouble that had come on Israel, what was that trouble? Three and a half years of drought. Do you wonder if we're in drought here in North Carolina? I'm getting serious about this. The other day, there was a big rainstorm coming right for us and it divided and went north and south right around our area. I want to ask a question, are any of you praying for rain here in Raleigh Durham? I think we ought to. All things come from God. It is God that sends rain. Not that we're overly concerned about our lawns, but realize that all good things come from God. But how much more severe the trial in Israel than no rain for three and a half years and no dew either, no water, no life. Certainly by that time, people had died of starvation and of dehydration. And so that was the nature of the trouble of Israel.

But you know, the true trouble of Israel was deeper than a failure to rain. It was deeper than starvation, deeper than dehydration. It was apostasy from the living God. And Elijah told the truth, didn't he? Look what he says, "‘I have not made trouble for Israel,’ Elijah replied, ‘But it is you and your father's family who have troubled Israel. You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals.’" Now this is so beautiful, isn't it? You see here the courage, the courage of the man of God. You know, a servant to the Lord is always going to stand up and be reviled at some point. If you're going to speak the truth, people are going to misunderstand you. You look and see what they said about Paul and Silas. It says in Thessalonica, "These who have turned the world upside down have come here." Right? They were the troubles of the Greek speaking world. Jesus in Luke 23 was he who disturbed and caused trouble for the people. And so it was also that Elijah was blamed with troubling Israel. But Elijah is a true man of God. Tells the truth. He goes right to the heart of the matter. And first of all, he says, "My conscience is clear. I've not brought any trouble on Israel." Now I think you could read right over that without seeing the significance that he said, "I have not forsaken the Lord. No matter what it cost me, I'm following God." And at that time, with Jezebel in charge, it cost plenty to be a prophet of the Lord. He said, "I have not brought trouble on my people through sin. My conscience is clear." You know, I think that's one thing we have to understand is that to walk with God costs something, doesn't it? To be willing to stand up and to be counted among God's people, to be courageously willing to speak the truth as Elijah does here, it's going to cost you.

I think one of the scariest things that Jesus ever said was something he said to his own brothers in John 7:7. His brothers, who didn't believe in him at that point, came to him and were giving him advice about his ministry. And Jesus said, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil." Now what does Jesus mean when he says to his brothers, "The world cannot hate you?" Well, because they belong to the world. They were part of the world's system and therefore the world was going to embrace them. The world was going to love them. But if you're going to follow the Lord, you have to be willing to put up with the persecution, the rejection of the world. "If the world hates you," Jesus said, "keep in mind it hated me first." And so here's Elijah courageously standing up and saying, "My conscience is clear. I have not made trouble for Israel, but you and your father's family,” Omri, the father of Ahab, “you are the ones that have troubled Israel."

And how is it that they have troubled Israel? They had forsaken the Lord's commands and they had followed the Baals. They had worshiped false gods. And so Elijah, in the spirit of Nathan, the prophet, points the finger right at the king, courageously and says, "You are the man. It's your fault." Now, I don't think he's being overly simplistic here. We know that each individual Israelite was responsible for his or her walk with the Lord. Each one that had capitulated had bowed the knee to Baal. Each one that had yielded was responsible and would answer for it on judgment day. But a king has a special responsibility. Leaders have special responsibilities. And when Ahab brought in his despicable wife, Jezebel, and when she led the whole nation into sin, he didn't stop or he didn't stand up against her. And so ultimately, his modeling of Baal worship destroyed the country. And so I don't think it's simplistic for him, Elijah I mean, to zero in on this evil king and say, "You are the one. It's you who have troubled Israel by your sin. You have turned away from the true and living God. You've turned away from the commands of God."

And what commands is he referring to? Well, how about the first commandment? "I am the Lord your God who led you out of Egypt, out of the land of bondage. You shall have no other gods beside me." But Ahab had other gods; he had the Baals. In verse 18, it says, "You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals." Now I think verse 19 is fascinating. As I was writing my outline for this, I wanted to write the words, "Who's in charge here?" You look at verse 19 and notice the tone. Now this is the prophet. This is Elijah, the Tishbite. And who's he talking to? The king of the nation. And he says, "Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring the 450 prophets of Baal and those 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table." Who's in charge here? You see, Elijah's giving orders, isn't he? He's telling him what's going to happen. This is what I want you to do. He's got in mind already the contest and God had laid it on his heart what would happen. He's going to summon the people. Now realize the difficulties of this command. He wanted the people from all over Israel. He wanted the leaders, he wanted witnesses and they were going to travel a long way because Mount Carmel was not centrally located, but it was out by the coast. It was off to the side and they were going to be traveling from all over Israel and they were going to go and watch this contest. Well, he doesn't tell him what he's going to do. He just says, "Summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring those 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table." He's giving him orders. And those orders are not easy to follow. And yet, Ahab did it. And not only did Ahab obey Elijah, but so also the people of Israel obeyed the word of the king. They all came. Verse 20, "Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel." Now this is a fascinating thing. Why did Ahab obey the word of the prophet? Well, there's different reasons. Some commentators said it's because he wanted rain and he was willing to do anything that Elijah said just so that rain would come on the land again. He realized that his own kingdom was hanging in the balance. People were dying. Even worse, his donkeys couldn't find grass. And so no matter what, he needed rain. And so he figured, "I have to do what this crazy man says." But that's simplistic, isn't it? And how unbelieving is it to not see the true reason? The true reason is given in Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is like a water course in the hands of the Lord. He directs it whichever way he chooses." That's the real reason. You ought look up some time the number of times that God puts a spirit in somebody to do something. Just look that up, the number of times that God put a spirit in a pagan king to invade a country or put another spirit in another king to do this or to do that. God is sovereign over the hearts and minds of kings. Isn't that good? Aren't you glad? Don't you rejoice in that? So we don't have to be afraid of this or that person takes control of this or that nation. God rules over it all. So even wicked king Ahab, his heart is like putty in the hands of the Lord and he shapes it the way he wants. Or like Proverbs says, "A water course and he directs it whatever way he chooses." And so Ahab meekly, humbly, quietly, without a word, just simply does what Elijah told him to do, "You assemble those people," and they were assembled.

Verse 20, “Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel.” Elijah in verse 21 went before the people and said... Excuse me. I'm sorry. "‘How long will you waiver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him.’ But the people said nothing." Now I think this verse is absolutely vital for America today. What we're dealing with here is what you could call syncretism. The idea that we've got worship of Jehovah God and we're going to keep that, we're going to keep doing that, but then we're going to bring in other gods and worship them as well. This was always Israel's problem. For the most part, they didn't abandon Yahweh. They didn't stop worshiping the God that had brought them out of Egypt. But what they did do is add the worship of other gods. It's called syncretism. When I was a missionary in Japan, I noticed that this was a unique problem in ministering to the Japanese people. They were ready, willing and able to accept what you said about Jesus and they would add Jesus to their pantheon of Buddhist gods, deities or Shinto deities, no problem. But if you began to press the exclusivity of the true God, that he is the only God there is and that all other gods are false gods, they're idols, they don't exist, then you ran into problems. That's the very thing they would not accept. Have you noticed that attitude creeping into America? Have you noticed even our leaders saying that Islam is a great world religion? Islam is not a great world religion because great world religions do not lead their adherents to hell. It is not a great world religion. The Arab nations may be great nations, great in power, great in accomplishments, but their religion is a false demonic religion. And we've got to be so careful as thinkers in America today. We've got to avoid syncretism, taking our Judeo-Christian faith, our Christian heritage, our Christian doctrines, and mingling them in the spirit of tolerance so that we are acceptable to the populace around us. The stumbling stone of the gospel is that it is exclusive. There is no other way to God; that Jesus Christ died on the cross to provide the only way of salvation there is. And that's a stumbling stone for people, isn't it? It's unacceptable. It's arrogant. Even this past week, some members of our church went out going door to door and knocked on the door and somebody opened and they began to try to share the gospel. It was Herbert Rivera. You can ask him about his experience. And it wasn't long before the people were very angry, very upset and saying, "You're so narrow-minded that you think you have the only true way." Slammed the door in Herbert's face. Well, I think this is going to be more and more our experience, isn't it, if we're preaching the true gospel. It's one thing to say, "Well, we accept Jesus and we're going to accept any other gods, the world religions, accept them all as true." But it cannot be. And Elijah underscores that here, doesn't he? He said, "It's not possible for you to accept that the Lord is God and that Baal also is God." It really is an either/or proposition. Isn't that the heart of the contest here? Either the Lord is God or Baal is God. They cannot both be gods. And intrinsic to the contest is that only one of them is going to answer by fire from heaven. Not both. God's not going to leave us in a state of confusion. Only one of them will answer because only one is the true God. We have to be so clear about this, so strong. Think of it this way: do you think that Jesus took on a human body, incarnated himself, walked for 30 plus years in suffering and rejection, died under the wrath of God on the cross to provide one of many ways to salvation? Think about that. One of 16 bridges across the chasm is Jesus. Doesn't make any sense. He's the only way and that's why he had to do what he did. If salvation could come by the law, then Christ died for nothing. If there were other ways to get to heaven, then there's no need for Jesus to die. But Jesus had to die because there was no other way. Please be clear about this. And if you end up offending some people, it's all right. They need to be offended because they're clinging to false gods. This is the stumbling stone, but it's also the word of salvation and Elijah's forcing them. He says in verse 21, "How long will you..." And the word is waiver. It literally means to be halt or totter as though you're stumbling. You're at a fork in the road and you don't know where to go. So you start down one line and then you start down the other. You're going one way; you're going the other. Is Baal god? Is Jehovah God? Which is it going to be? And so they're living in consistently. They're like, in the book of James, "A double minded man unstable in all they do. They're tottering. They're wavering." And he says, "How long is this going to go on?" He's forcing them to a choice. "You must choose today," as Joshua said, "whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. But you must choose. You must decide today who God is. Now I think the response is fascinating.

Picture Elijah bringing this word, this message, and then you could hear the wind kind of whistling up over Mount Carmel and people say nothing. Their hearts are hard. They should have acclaimed that of course, Jehovah's the only God. It was he who had led them out of Egypt. It was he who had brought them into the Promised Land, but they said nothing. Why? Well, because their minds were corrupted by their Baal worship. Their hearts were afraid of Jezebel and the punishments that might come if they declared that Jehovah was God. But they should not have feared Jezebel. They should have feared the Lord. They remained silent. They weren't silent at the end of the contest of course. They were in full-bore revival at that point. But at this point, nobody will say anything. And herein lies the courage of Elijah. Do you see this? He's standing pretty much alone. And I think this is so admirable. I think if you have God on your side, who else do you need? He's standing there filled with the Spirit of the Lord, courageous. And it doesn't really matter that in front of him are 450 false prophets and a whole nation that won't even open their mouth and say anything for Jehovah. But he stands alone and courageous and he's willing to go. The people said nothing. In verse 22, then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left." He's feeling it, isn't he? It's acute. “I'm standing alone. You people won't say a word for Jehovah, but I am and I will testify to the truth. I'm the only one left.” Now also, why does he mention this? Why is he the only prophet left? Has something been going on in Israel? You better believe something has, Jezebel's been murdering prophets. She's been killing them one after the other. And he is with this statement setting the stage for the wrath of God to fall in the false prophets themselves. What goes around comes around. And so the false prophets of Baal were invariably, I'm sure, involved in collecting the true prophets of Jehovah and putting them to death. Judgment was going to fall on them that day. But he's setting the stage by saying, "I'm the only one left. All the others have been murdered." And then he says, "Baal has 450 prophets." It doesn't really matter, folks, how popular a view is. Do you realize that? It doesn't make a difference how many people think what you say is true. "If God thinks it's true, it's true. Let God be true." It says in Romans three "And the whole world a liar." And so he's willing to stand alone and testify against 450 false prophets. "I'm alone. And they are 450 in number."

And then he says, "Get two bulls for us. Let them choose one for themselves and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. Then you, call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord and the god who answers by fire- he is God.” Now this is a fair test really because Baal, not only was he a god of rain, but he was also a thunder and lightning god, a god of fire. This was well within Baal's repertoire, if he really existed. If he was a true god, he should have been able to do this. And the measure of it is the confidence of the false prophets when they begin. Now it's a new twist to not actually light the fire. They hadn't done that before, but they felt confident that Baal would be able to answer. And so fair enough, we're on Baal's turf. There'd been an altar to Baal erected over the altar of the Lord. There was an altar of the Lord there, verse 30, you can see repairs it. It's sitting there, but it's in disrepair. This was territory that Baal had seized for his own. And the answering by fire was something he should have been able to do. Not only that, but Elijah says, "You go first." Verse 25, "Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, 'Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first since there are so many of you.'" By the way, that's the second time he's mentioned how many of them there are. He's really underscoring, it's like, "Me against all of them. 450 of you and one of me. And one of me is all that's needed for this job. That's all that we need, is one person to stand up and tell the truth, praise God, since there's so many of you.” So he is giving all of the advantages, all of the advantages to Baal, but also realize how significant this was. Baal had to go first. Do you understand why? Because God was going to answer with fire. And if he answers first, they'll never get to Baal doing it. And Baal must be exposed as the fraud he is. And so he must go first and it must go on all day long and it will. There must be many prayers offered and Baal must be revealed to be a fraud. And so he says, "You go first."

Now it's interesting, in verse 24, the people answered this time, "What you say is good." They're saying, "Wow, that sounds exciting." They didn't know up until this point what was even going on. Elijah knew what God wanted. But the idea of a contest and a miracle, “we're going to see a miracle today. We're going to see someone, we don't know who it is, but one of these two gods is going to answer by fire. So we have come to see quite a spectacle.” So they're excited and they're moved out of their lethargy. They're moved out of their fearful silence. “What you say is good. Sounds good. Let's do it.” And so he says to the prophets of Baal, "Go ahead and choose one of the bulls and prepare it." And he says, "Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire." Now, these false practitioners of religion, we have records of it, sometimes would feed fire in from the bottom, you see. There's ways that you can deceive simple-minded people. And he said, "Let's not have any of that chicanery. No tricks, no fire. Do you really believe in your god or not? Keep away from the altar and bring no fire to it. Let's see if he exists. Let's see if he can do it. You just pray." Now realize, there are three central elements to the challenge, aren't there? There is a sacrifice, there is effectual prayer and there is fire from heaven. Now, I thought much about those three things and I think they must be the center of my ministry as well. Think about it. At the center of the ministry must be a sacrifice. Now, why does the sacrifice have to be at the center? Well, let me tell you something. The reason the sacrifice is there is so the fire doesn't fall on the people. They certainly deserved it. They were like wood, hay and straw ready to be consumed. But God is merciful, isn't he? He's gracious. Is God capable of sending fire down on people? Oh, yes. Later in our study in Elijah, you'll see it happen. When a captain and 50 men come and fire comes down from heaven on people, God can do it, but he wasn't going to do it that day because God is patient and merciful. And in Elijah's prayer, he said, "God's purpose is to turn the hearts of the people back to him that day." And so there must be a sacrifice because God's wrath must be poured out. Our God is a consuming fire. And so at the center of true faith is a sacrifice, a substitute, if you will, someone to stand in our place and to take the wrath and the punishment of God so the fire doesn't fall on us. And so we know that that is Jesus Christ, represents Christ. Christ is the final sacrifice. Without the shedding of blood, there'll be no forgiveness of sins. And there must be forgiveness of sins. The people have sinned greatly. And so the first aspect of this challenge is this sacrifice, a bull cut into pieces.

Aren't you grateful for the sacrifice? Aren't you glad the fire falls on the animal and not on you? And if you think, “I don't deserve that,” then I don't think you understand Christianity. You haven't been broken by the law because you have transgressed the law and I have too. We all have, haven't we? We've broken the 10 commandments and others besides. And we deserve to have the fire of God fall on us, but rather, it falls on his own Son, Jesus Christ. He is the substitutionary atonement. He stands in our place and accepts the wrath of God. Just as that bull was the focal point of the fire from heaven that day, it didn't fall on the people.

Secondly, there was effectual prayer. Now first, we're going to see, and I'm not going to finish tonight, but next time that we see, we're going to see an example of ineffectual prayer, right? All day long the people, prophets of Baal crying out to a god that doesn't exist. And they cried out and cried out and there was no answer because Baal doesn't exist. That's ineffectual prayer. But then there's the quiet, simple, brief, effective prayer of a righteous man. That's all. Just a simple prayer. It's one of the shortest prayers you're going to find. I find a shorter one when Jesus stood in front of Lazarus's tomb, he said, "Father, I thank you that you heard me. I know that you always hear me, but I prayed it for these people standing here so that they will know that you sent me. Lazarus, come forth." That's all. No great, long prayer, just like the prophets of Baal go on and on for hours, keeping up empty phrases like the pagans do. There's nothing like that. Just a simple effective prayer, and God heard.

Third aspect is fire from heaven, fire from heaven. Now, what does this represent? Well, at that point, it represented fire. It wasn't a representation. It was fire. It was literal fire that came from heaven. But we know that there was another fire that came from heaven. It says of Jesus, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” And so when the Holy Spirit came, there were tongues of fire that came down and separated and came to rest on each of the apostles, the fire from heaven. And it represents the power of God in that ministry. It represents the supernatural, something only God can do. You can lay out the bull and you can pray the prayer but if there's no fire from heaven, then God is not active there. Don't you want to see the fire from heaven in this church, in your life? I don't know what it is, but just something only God can do, something where we can stand and we can see where our church is at now and remember. And then 10 years from now, look back and say, "Only God could have done that. Only God could have accomplished that, leading those people to Christ, the baptisms, the missions, the giving." 50% of our offering year round going to missions. Wouldn't that be something? Only God can do that. To look back and say, "Only God could have moved me from where I was at, at that point 10 years ago, to being a faithful, regular, everyday witness for Christ. So that every day I get up thinking I might lead somebody to Christ today." Only God can do that. To see the movement of God.

I want to see those three things central in my ministry and in this church. Number one, the sacrificial atonement of Jesus Christ right at the center, realizing that all of us deserve the wrath of God, but Jesus came to take it away. Number two, effective, fervent prayer, simple, spirit-led, not something that Elijah made up, but something that he knew that God would answer. And number three, fire from heaven. Now next time we study, we're going to find out what happens. Of course, I read it, you already know. But we're going to talk more about that contest and how God glorified himself that day.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Kings 18:1-19. The main subject of the sermon is Elijah's confrontation of Ahab.

 Take your Bibles if you would, and look at 1 Kings 18. We're continuing our study in the life of Elijah and we're looking today at an interaction between Elijah and a servant named Obadiah. Now, as Keith was singing that, I wondered if any of you would consider God's work in sending rain on the earth to be a miracle. It's getting kinda dry around here. I think we're waiting for the miracle of some rain. Now, certainly it is a miraculous thing when for three and a half years at the word of a servant of God, there's no rain or dew on earth. Now that's a miracle. And how much more, also, after the contest at Mount Carmel, there is at the prayer of Elijah, a small little cloud that comes and then it grows larger and larger and suddenly there's a downpour. So God listened to the voice of a man and withheld rain for three and a half years and then listened again to the voice of a man and gave it.

But I was reading a meditation from John Piper on rain and he was meditating on Job 5:8-10, now our study is in 1 Kings 18, but you can look at Job if you'd like or just listen. This is what the verse says, Job 5:8-10, “But as for me, I would seek God and I would place my cause before God who does great and unsearchable things wonders without number. He gives rain on the earth and sends water on the fields.” Now here Job calls the giving of rain to be a wonder, something unsearchable, something that you couldn't describe or trace out. Now it's not a miracle because it fits into the physical laws that God made, but as he began to describe just what was involved in rain, I began to understand what a wonder it is. Let me read this to you. I think this is remarkable:

Is rain a great and searchable wonder rock by God? Picture yourself as a farmer in the near east, far from any lake or stream. A few wells keep the family and animals supplied with water but if the crops are to grow and the family is to be fed from month to month, water has to come from another source on the fields. From where will it come? Well, from the sky. The sky? Water will come out of the clear blue sky? Well, not exactly water will have to be carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea over several 100 miles and then poured out onto the fields from the sky. Carried? How much does it weigh? Well, if one inch of rain falls on one square mile of farmland during the night, that would be 27,878,400 cubic feet of water. One inch of rain on one square mile of farmland, 27 million cubic feet of water, which is 206,300,000 160 gallons, which weighs 1,000,650,501,280 pounds of water. 1.6 billion pounds of water for one inch of rain on a square mile of farmland. That's heavy. So how does it get up in the sky and stay up there if it's so heavy? Well, it gets up there by evaporation. Really? That's a nice word. What does it mean? Well, it means that the water stops being water for a while so it can go up and not down. I see. Then how does it get down? Well, condensation happens. What's that? Well, the water starts becoming water again by gathering around little dust particles between 0.0001 and 0.00001 centimeters wide. I didn't work that out. One 10000000th or one 10000th of a centimeter wide. Now that's small, tiny little specs of dust up in the air and the water vapor coagulates and becomes water again. Well, what about the salt? Salt? Well, yes, the Mediterranean Sea is salt water, that would kill the crops. What about the salt? Well, the salt has to be taken out. Oh, so the sky picks up about a billion pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt, carries the water or whatever it is when it's not water for 300 miles and then dumps it now turned into water again on the farm, right? Well, it doesn't exactly dump it. If it dumped a billion pounds of water on the farm, the wheat would be crushed. So the sky dribbles the billion pounds of water down in little drops, and they have to be big enough to fall for one mile or so without evaporating and small enough to keep from crushing the wheat stalks. How do all these microscopic specs of water that weigh a billion pounds get heavy enough to fall, if that's the way to ask the question? Well, it's called coalescence. What's that? It means that specs of water start bumping into each other and join up and get bigger and bigger. And when they're big enough, they fall. Just like that? Well, not exactly because they would just bounce off each other instead of joining up if there were no electric field present. What's that? Nevermind. Take my word for it. 

That's what happens every time it rains. And that's just one of the many wonders of the physical universe that God has made around us. And that's the very thing that God said he wouldn't do until Elijah came back and spoke to Ahab. “I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to stop doing it.” And so it rains at the word of God and it stops raining at the word of God. It rains when he says so and it stops raining when he says to stop. And now here in 1 King's 18, look there with me. God speaks again to Elijah and says, "It's time for it to rain again." 1 Kings 18:1:

After a long time in the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah. “Go and present yourself to Ahab and I will send rain on the land.” So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab. Now, the famine was severe in Samaria and Ahab had summoned Obadiah who was in charge of his palace. Obadiah was a devout believer in the Lord. While Jezebel was killing off the Lord's prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, 50 in each, and had supplied them with food and water. Ahab had said to Obadiah, “Go through the land to all the springs and valleys. Maybe we can find some grass to keep the horses and mules alive so that we will not have to kill any of our animals.” So they divided the land that they were to cover, Ahab going in one direction and Obadiah in another. As Obadiah was walking along Elijah met him. Obadiah recognized him, bowed down to the ground and said, “Is it really you my Lord, Elijah?” “Yes.” He replied, “Go tell your master, Elijah is here.” “What have I done wrong,” asked Obadiah, “That you are handing your servant over to Ahab to be put to death? As surely as the Lord your God lives, there is not a nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to look for you. And whenever a nation or kingdom claimed you were not there, he made them swear that they could not find you. But now you tell me to go to my master and say, ‘Elijah is here.’ I don't know where the Spirit of the Lord may carry you when I leave you. If I go and tell Ahab and he doesn't find you, he will kill me. Yet I your servant have worshiped the Lord since my youth. Haven't you heard my Lord what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord? I hid 100 of the Lord's prophets in two caves, 50 in each and supplied them with food and water. And now you tell me to go to my master and say, ‘Elijah is here?’ He will kill me.” Elijah said, “As the Lord Almighty lives whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today.” 

So this is an interesting interaction between Obadiah and Elijah, but I think we note right from the beginning how much Elijah is moving only at the command of the Lord. Now, we can tend to think of Elijah as a man of prayer, and he has established that way in James 5, “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain for three and a half years. Again, he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.” You see how it's linked to Elijah prayer and that's reasonable because there was a cause and effect between Elijah’s prayer. But Elijah is merely a servant. He's merely going at the word of the Lord. Now, Elijah suddenly appears in 1 King 17 and says, "As surely as the Lord lives before whom I stand, there will be neither rain nor dew except it, my word." And then he disappears. But we have to assume that Elijah being the servant of the Lord had only gone there to begin with at the word of God. It was only that God had told him to go say that to Ahab. We have to assume it now. He just pops up out of nowhere and gives this message but we know that before that God had spoken to him and told him to go say that. Why? Because he is merely a man. Can a man control the rain like this? Can he tell the Mediterranean Sea to do all the things we just described and then tell the Mediterranean Sea to stop doing that? That's beyond a man. But God listens to prayers of men and women who pray in faith, but ultimately we are servants and we're not making up a plan. Elijah was going to stay in Zarephath as long as God told him to stay there. And when the time came, he moved out only at the word of God. And he said, "Go and present yourself to Ahab because I'm going to send rain to the earth." It's not ultimately Elijah's prayer that brought rain. It was God's power and his word that brought rain. But Elijah was a prophet and a messenger moving only at the command of God.

So also, should we. How much do we do at our own initiative? How much do we just up and decide we're going to do this and that? “Well, I think I'll do this. I think I'll do that.” Maybe we've been trained from the book of James say, "If the Lord wills, I will do this and that." But do we really seek him in prayer? Are we really moving only at his initiative? Only as the Spirit of the Lord moves, do we move? Obadiah knew that's the way that Elijah went. He said, "Look, the spirit of the Lord's going to carry you like a wind blown leaf somewhere. I don't know where you're going to go and he's going to kill me." But he knew that Elijah only moved, he only stepped out when God said so. We'd do so much better if we acted in the same way.

So God speaks to Elijah and it says in the Greek... NIV makes it a little slicker. But basically it says after many days, after a long time is what the NIV says. But really it's literally after many days and the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah. So there had been many days. Many days of what? Well, many days of waiting on the Lord, many days of living with the widow at Zarephath. Many days of eating the same food and drinking that little water that was in her containers day after day. Many days of waiting at the word of God. And then finally the word came and said; "Now it's time to move out." And he says in verse one, "Go and present yourself to Ahab." Now imagine the courage it would take to do this. Now, I believe that God removed Elijah from Israel- removed Elijah from interaction with Ahab all this time, not so much to protect Elijah, but rather to create what I said at the time, a famine of hearing the word of the Lord. That famine, of course, was exacerbated by Jezebel who killed off the prophets of the Lord. So there was an all of Samaria at that point, no one preaching the word of the Lord because Elijah was gone and the prophets had been killed and Jezebel ruled.

But it wasn't, I think ultimately to protect Elijah because here now he commands him to go and stand right in front of Ahab and confront him and set up what we know is coming, God willing, the next time that I preach on Elijah the great contest at Mount Carmel, that's exactly what God wants to do. He wants to set up a contest between himself and Baal. And what a great contest because Baal was a nature God among other things, and he controlled so they thought the rain. "Oh no, he doesn't. I control the rain," says God, and "I'll prove it to you. I can do anything. I can bring the rain. I can shut it down. I can bring fire from heaven. I can do it all. I am God." So he wants to set up that contest, but first we have to have this interaction with Ahab. So he says, "Go present yourself to Ahab." Intrinsic in that command though is, “I will protect you. I will keep you safe. Don't be afraid.” And that's really big, isn't it? Because I think we have a contrast here between Elijah and Obadiah. Obadiah seems to be a man ruled by fear. Do you sense that? He's afraid all the time, afraid of what Ahab will do. Afraid of what Jezebel might do. He's afraid. What'll happen if the Spirit of the Lord carries you? He's just ruled by fear. Elijah is free from that. He's ruled only by the word of God. God commands and he acts. Isn't that simple? What have we to fear except disobeying God? I got that from a Montagnard 15-year-old girl. They're not afraid of the government. We're afraid of disobeying God. That's what we're afraid of. That's all and so he goes.

It says in Proverbs 28:1, it says, “The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” And we see that throughout church history, don't we? We see it throughout the Bible, the righteous are bold, they're courageous, they're not afraid of anyone. “Go and stand in front of Ahab and I'm going to send rain on the land.” So Elijah goes and presents himself to Ahab. Now, it says in verse two, the famine was severe in Samaria. It's hard to imagine what three and a half years of no rain could do to a land. Have you looked at your lawn recently? Come and look at my lawn. Okay. I mean, there are parts that look parched. Some of them look better than others, but the fact of the matter is we've had some good rains, haven't we? But it hasn't been quite enough. Can you imagine three years of no rain? No do nothing. What do you think that journey from Zarephath down to Samaria looked like? What did it look like as he started entering the Lord's promised land and started walking by ground caked and just cracked like a desert and just wells that were dried up and maybe carcasses of dead beasts and withered plants everywhere, maybe even dead people, who can say, just carnage everywhere by this prayer that he had prayed. What went through his mind as he traveled down and thought, "I prayed for this. This is what I asked the Lord to do. The very thing that he said he would do in Deuteronomy, I asked him to do it and God did it, but it didn't come without costs." You see, sin is dangerous, isn't it? And it's deadly, and God is willing to discipline his people. So what a journey that was and what a terrifying thing to see the effect of the word of God as he walks through that famine stricken area. The famine was severe in some area. And I think there's a contrast here. I think perhaps it wasn't as bad in Zarephath. It was there, but it was even worse in the land of the Lord.

Now it's interesting if you read the description of what it was like during the days of Solomon, those were the days of wealth. The days of gold shields. When silver and copper was plentiful as stones in the streets, even gold that way. It was a day of rich abundance. You see, God blesses those who obey his word. He blessed Solomon richly and poured out on him lavish blessings. But this is a time of dearth, a time of emptiness, a time of famine. There's nothing in the land. That's what happens when you turn away from God. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He'll be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit and season, whose leaf never withers. Whatever he does, prospers. Not so the wicked, they're like chaff that the wind blows away.” And that's what it was like in Samaria, dry chaff, blown by the wind. So he journeys down to confront Ahab.  

Now, Ahab summons Obadiah. Now Obadiah was a steward. He was in charge of his palace and he summons him. And you get to see some of the character at this point of Ahab, some of what he's concerned about. Now, Obadiah, it says, feared the Lord greatly. NIV says he was a devout believer, but it says he feared the Lord greatly. He loved the Lord I think, and he feared him. Now, while Jezebel was killing offers for the Lord's prophets, Obadiah had taken 100 prophets and hidden them in two caves, 50 in each, and it supplied them with food and water. So he is acting courageously. Now, Jezebel, of course, was from Zarephath. She was the daughter of Ethbaal; that was the name of her father. He was the king of the Sidonians and a wicked woman. And she was probably enraged. You have to read between the lines, but enraged at the Lord and enraged at Elijah. Couldn't get at Elijah because he had disappeared from the scene. So she begins to take out her rage on the Lord's prophets. She begins to kill them. And while this is going on, Jezebel, obviously running the show there, Obadiah courageously, I think, takes 100 prophets and hides them in two caves. Now the Mount Carmel mountainous region is honeycombed with thousands and thousands of little and big caves. You know, the caves fit into David's fleeing from Saul when Saul was trying to kill him. So it wouldn't have been too difficult to hide some men in those caves, but the trouble is feeding them, you see. There's a famine in the land. There's no water. So this steward, I think courageously it manages to pull off enough food and water to keep these 100 men alive.

Now, Obadiah is a little bit of a controversial figure among the commentators. It's basically one to two, whether this guy was a good man or not. The reason that some would say that he was a righteous man and a good man was because of this action, this courageous action in hiding these prophets in a time of persecution. He was really taking his life into his hands in doing this. Also, it says openly in Scripture that he was a devout believer in the Lord. He feared the Lord greatly. That kind of praise Scripture doesn't give lightly. So AW Pink for one, believes he's a godly man making the best of a very difficult situation. Those that speak against Obadiah say, "How in the world could a servant of the Lord work with Jezebel and Ahab day after day? She's killing off all the prophets of the Lord, how in the world could he have kept his faith in the Lord's secret all that time?”

When I was in Japan, we went to a place where there had been a severe persecution on Christians. And the way that they affected the persecution was they had a little medallion, a picture of Jesus, and they made the entire population come and stomp on the face of Jesus. They believed that true believers would never do this, whereas false believers, anyone who would stomp on the face of Jesus, could not be a believer in the Lord. So they separated one from another. But there's always in church history been a category of people like Nicodemus, for example, that's afraid of society's opinion of what it means to be a believer. Take a minute and look at John 12, and John describes these people. John 12:42-43, there it says, "Yet at the same time, many even among the leaders believed in him,” believed in Jesus, “but because of the Pharisees, they would not confess their faith for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue;” look at verse 43, “for they love praise from men more than praise from God." Well, that's a very stern word from John, isn't it? Now, in their hearts, they were believers in Jesus, that's what verse 42 says, but they don't want to go public with it. They don't want to openly say anything about it. They don't want to display or let their light shine. Why? Because they're going to lose societal advantages. They're going to be put out of the synagogue. In John 9, when Jesus said, "Heal the blind man," his parents exhibited the same fear. They're afraid of what the Pharisees are going to say. They're afraid of what people will think. So they don't say anything in the trial of their son. This man, the son who's born blind and was healed, just simply testifies to what the Lord did in his life. And he is in fact evicted from the synagogue, put out of the synagogue. What did that mean for a first century Jew? It meant difficulty in getting a job, difficulty perhaps in finding a spouse if he was unmarried, difficulty in just being part of Jewish society. I believe that that was some of the poverty that Paul was constantly raising money for among Palestine. He's saying to the Gentile believers, "You owe it to the Jews to help them and support them." Why? Because they couldn't support themselves. They'd been de-synagogued. But what was the motive? According to John 12:43, they loved praise from men more than praise from God.

Now of course, in the time of persecution which Obadiah was facing to come out and openly testify that he was a believer in the Lord would mean his life. It would mean his life, probably he'd be executed by Jezebel. So he holds onto his position of power and he tries to make the best he can. Now, those that support Obadiah say look at Daniel for example. Daniel served a pagan King. Look at Joseph, he served Pharaoh. The problem is that Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar were not making open attacks on a revealed faith the way Ahab was. Ahab was a Jew, and he was an apostate. He was turned away from the faith. So it's very difficult to know about Obadiah, but Obadiah clearly made it daily as a believer in Jesus Christ or a believer in the Lord. Day after day, serving the Lord right in Jezebel's household. Now, how can you do that without making some compromise? So it's a little bit difficult to tell what's going on with Obadiah. The challenge to you is how public are you in your faith in Jesus Christ? Are you letting your light shine? That's not going to cost you much. You might not be de-synagogued, but you might be rejected by people, people might turn away from you. You might lose some friendships. You might lose advancement opportunities at work. You might lose comfortable relationships with relatives. You might have to pay a price to testify to your faith in Jesus Christ. Obadiah I think, was willing to pay some price, and that's why he hid these 100 prophets and fed them.

Now, in verse 5, it says, “Ahab had said to Obadiah, ‘Go through the land to all the springs and valleys, maybe we can find some grass to keep the horses and mules alive so that we will not have to kill any of our animals.’” This is absolutely stunning. Think about it. What is on Ahab's mind here? What is he thinking about? He's thinking about animals. He's thinking about donkeys and mules. He's thinking about finding some shrub brush somewhere that they can eat, so that they can keep living. Perhaps he's already lost too many animals. What is not on his mind? Well, first of all, God. He doesn't mention anything about God. He doesn't mention anything about his sin. He's not thinking about God. He's not thinking about what his wife Jezebel has done to the prophets. You're not concerned about them at all. He's not concerned about his soul. He's not concerned about repenting. He's not turned to God at all. What does he want? He wants one thing, he wants relief from God's judgment. And this is the irony here. When God’s judgment… His hand of judgment comes down hard on an unregenerate, unrepentant people; they do not turn to God. They're only hardened like the ground was in Samaria at that time. Take a minute; look at Revelation 16. Revelation 16, this is in the midst of the seven bowls of God's wrath poured out on the earth at the end of the world. In verse 10-11, it describes the fifth angel pouring out his bowl, “The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. Men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.” Now, if you read that in context, you realize that all of the plagues of the book of Revelation are cumulative, one after the other stacked up. And at this point, you think it's just some enlightened self-interest. You'd be thinking about repenting before God, but their hearts are only hardened by God's judgments. So it is also with Ahab. He's not thinking about God. He's not thinking about his sin.

What else is he not thinking about? Well, he's not thinking about his people; not concerned about his people. How unlike David is he? You remember when David counted the fighting man in Israel, the sinful census, and God gave David a choice of what punishments would come on Israel as a result of his sin. And God- or David chose plague, a disease going through Israel because he thought God is merciful and he won't keep it up for long. He knew the Lord. So after the third day of plagues, David was on his face before God interceding on their behalf, saying, "Let it come on me and on my household, they are only sheep. They haven't done anything wrong." He's standing as a leader somewhat like the good shepherd going out in front of the flock and saying, "Let it come on me. They're only sheep. They haven't done anything." That is the heart of a godly King. Ahab, what is he concerned about? Well, he's concerned about his donkeys. He wants to get enough grazing pasture for them. So he sends Obadiah out.

Now, what does the land look like at this point? Take a minute and look at Jeremiah 14, it's described very plainly there. Jeremiah 14:1-6, “This is the word of the Lord to Jeremiah concerning the drought. Judah mourns her city's languish. They wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem. The nobles send their servants for water. They go to the cisterns but find no water. They return with their jars, unfilled, dismayed, and despairing, they cover their heads. The ground is cracked because there's no rain in the land. The farmers are dismayed and cover their heads. Even the doe in the field deserts her newborn fawn because there is no grass. While donkeys stand on the barren heights and pant like jackals, their eyesight fails for lack of pasture.” Look at verse seven, “Although our sins testify against us, oh Lord, do something for the sake of your name, for our backsliding is great, and we have sinned against you.” Now, this is much later in Israel's history, but it describes the effects of a similar drought on God's people. And the reason still the same, the backsliding, the sin of Israel, but Jeremiah is godly at this point. He says, "Our backsliding is great. We deserve this. We repent of what we've done, for the sake of the glory of your name, send rain." But Ahab has nothing of this attitude. He just wants to keep some of his mules alive. So in verse six, they divided the land that they were to cover. Ahab going on one direction, Obadiah goes in another. Now, as Obadiah is walking along, suddenly Elijah meets him. Now, what is it with Elijah? He just appears out of nowhere. He just suddenly appears and there he is. It is for this very reason and the fact that he didn't die but went up to heaven in a whirlwind, and there's a prophecy in Malachi that he would come back before the coming of the Lord. That the people were always waiting, the Jewish people waiting for Elijah to pop back at any time. Some Jews keep a chair open waiting for Elijah to come at Passover time. When will Elijah come? Because he just seems to pop up out of nowhere. So it is, Obadiah is just walking along with probably some mules or donkeys in tow trying to find something green to chew on. And suddenly Elijah appears and he recognizes him right away. Now, I'm not sure that Ahab would've recognized him, but maybe he would've. Elijah the Tishbite dressed in a coat of hair with his leather belt around his waist. Very distinguished figure. But Elijah just suddenly appears and speaks to Ahab. Just says one thing and goes. Obadiah knew who he was right away and he prostrates himself. He falls down and does him honor. Bows down to the ground and says, "Is it really you, my Lord, Elijah?" He respects him. He speaks to him.

Now, it's interesting. Matthew Henry, the Puritan commentator said that, "Just as Obadiah had acted like a father to the prophets, that they were his sons caring for them, feeding them and nurturing them. So now he acts like a son to the father of the prophets. He humbles himself before him." So I think we see some of his spirit in his heart. “‘Is it really you, my Lord, Elijah?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied.” And then he says, "Go tell your master," interesting word, "Elijah is here." Now, this is interesting. He establishes Ahab as a rightful master over Obadiah. And this is the principle that God establishes government. He establishes people in positions of authority, and they are to be respected and honored even if they are wicked evil people. It's got to do with the way that God has structured his universe. And how rebellious are we when we're constantly looking to authority figures desiring to chafe against them, murmur against them, overthrow them, question them. He says, "Go tell your master,” your Lord, literally, “Ahab, Elijah is here." At this point, Obadiah says, "Now, wait a minute. What did I do wrong? What is my sin that you're sending me off to my execution?" Now here, I think he shows a lack of faith. Elijah was a man after God's own heart like David was. He's only operating at God's word. And if he has come to say, "Elijah here," he's going to present himself to Ahab that very day. But Obadiah is a fearful man. So I think he was a godly man, and I think he took chances for his faith. But he also was used to compromising. And when you get into being used to compromising, you're given to fear. You start to drink in fear and start to question and to challenge, and you're not sure. And he thinks, "you're going to kill me, or I'm going to be sent off to be killed by Ahab. He's going to execute me." And he describes the condition spiritually. “For the last period of time while you've been gone, Ahab has looked everywhere for you. He's searched high and low. He's been in basements; he's been in attics. He's searching everywhere. He didn't look in Jezebel's hometown but he looked everywhere else. And wherever he went, he made the King there swear and promise that Elijah wasn't in his territory.” He didn't ask Ethbaal, King of the Sidonians if he might happen to be in Zarephath. He didn't go up there and ask his father-in-law if he had checked there but he looked everywhere else. He said, "I'm looking." He's looked everywhere. “Now, what's going to happen if I go and present this news to Ahab, if I say, Elijah is here? And then meanwhile, you just move along. God just leads you to some other place and we don't see you for another three and a half years, then what? He's going to execute me, what have I done wrong?”

At that particular moment, he brings out his spiritual resume. He says, "Haven't you heard what I did? Didn't the news reach you up there in the widow's house in Zarephath how I kept 100 prophets and fed them food and water. Jezebel was executing and killing the prophets of the Lord." Now, I think it's fascinating what Jezebel did. Your soul depends on how you respond to the word of God. Do you realize that? It is a heavy thing to hear God's word. It's a serious thing. Jesus said, "Be very careful how you listen." And then told the parable, the seed and the soils. Why should you be careful how you listen? Because your soul depends on a humble reception of the word of God. But if you turn it around, the extreme reaction is to kill the messenger, isn't it? You hear the word of God, you hate it, you repudiate it, and you seek to kill the messenger. And that's what Jezebel sought to do and she did. Killing the messengers, the prophets of the Lord. But Obadiah, servant of the Lord, took his life into his hands and cared for them, 50 in each cave and supplied them with food and water. So he gives him his resume. Elijah just simply answers this, "As surely as the Lord Almighty lives whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today."

I think that Elijah could have mentored Obadiah, couldn't he? He'd be a good disciple for him. Just lose your fear. Step out in faith, to declare yourself boldly to be a follower, and if you die, you die. But as surely as the Lord lives whom I serve, I will stand today before Ahab unafraid, and I'll speak the word of the Lord to him. In a way, it's a bit of a rebuke for this trembling servant of God, this hidden servant. Don't be afraid. The righteous are bold as a lion but the wicked flee, though no one pursues. God is calling on us to step forward and to confront our generation with the word of God. And it's going to cost you something to do it, do you realize that? You've got to be willing to pay the price. You've got to be willing to lose some things in this world, but realize that God's word sends you where his power can protect you.

Exactly 200 years ago this month, a revival swept across this area, North Carolina. You may not know that, but it was part of a great movement of awakening and revival that was burning like a wildfire. It started in Kentucky, the Cane Ridge Revival, and all that whole region, Indiana, Kentucky, that whole area was on fire for the Gospel, people were coming to faith in Christ, there were camp meetings, people were coming and spending four or five days in a row hearing the preaching of the Word of God, but nothing was going on in North Carolina. It seemed as though the spirit would just simply bypass this state, much as very little had gone on during the time of the Great Awakening in this area. George Whitfield had preached but there was not the same response here as there had been in other places.

And so there was a concern among some that the revival, the Great Awakening of 1800 to 1802, would bypass North Carolina as well. And so with great expectancy in Orange County a group of people got together at communion service and they were hoping and yearning that God would pour out his spirit on the people there. The preaching was powerful and strong, and to the point, the Word of God was opened, but nothing really happened, there was nothing unusual, and so the service came to an end, and nobody really wanted to move. People wanted something to happen, but nothing was going on.

And finally, a young man who had seen what God was doing in Kentucky, and had brought some reports early in the meeting, stood up and looked at the people, much at a meeting like this and said, "Stand still and see the salvation of our God." And at that moment, people just started to weep. There was a breaking of hearts, people started falling down on the ground crying out to God, yearning for him to move in their midst. They were crying out saying things like, "What shall I do to be saved?" And so, the revival came in Orange County. In March or April, somewhere around that time of 1802, it came to Mecklenburg County. People came from miles around, about 12 miles south of Charlotte, and brought 160 wagons full of people, they had to chop down some trees and just make enough area and room, people pitching tents. And they were there all Friday, into Friday night, they were, they're all Saturday on, through Saturday night, they were praying and fasting and seeking the Lord and on into Sunday and Monday too. Day after day, hour after hour, seeking the face of the Lord.

Has anything like that ever happened to you? Have you ever seen the hand of God that way, moving? Don't you want it? Aren't you hungry for it? Don't you need it? Is your walk with Christ what it needs to be? Did you come in here today with a yearning and a hunger for the glory of God and for him alone or have idols crept into your heart? Aren't you hungry for God to move in your life? Have you turned away from your first love? Abandoned him? It says in Jeremiah, chapter 2, "I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you followed me in the desert." Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his affection, but they turned away to idols.

What about you? Our God is a living God, "Woe to him who says to wood, 'Come to life!' Or to lifeless stone 'wake up!'" Woe to him who turns to idols for our God is the living God, he's in the holy temple and all the earth is silent before him.

It's in that spirit that Habakkuk looked at his own day, he'd heard history, not of 1802 revivals, but of earlier and even more powerful acts of God and what he had done to establish his people in the promised land. And now they were threatened by their own sin and by an external force, Babylonians invading. They were threatened and he said, "Oh God, I've heard of what you've done in the past. Do it today, do it now, do it by your power, renew your mighty acts in our day, revive them so that we can see them."

You know the context of Habakkuk, he lived toward the end of the time when Judah and Jerusalem had control over their own land. God had brought them into the Promised Land, and they had sinned and warning after warning came from prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, that if they did not change their ways, if they did not repent and turn from their idols that God would bring judgement and the time had come. Habakkuk began by looking around in his own people, in his own society, he looked around and saw that they were wicked and that they were sinful, that they were oppressing the poor and needy, that they were perverting justice and the law was paralyzed and did nothing, and so he cried out to God and said, "God, why are you doing this? Why are you permitting the evil to succeed and to dominate over the righteous?"

God said, "I'm not going to continue to allow it. I'm going to bring the Babylonians and they're going to sweep in and they're going to destroy Jerusalem. They're going to burn the temple, they're going to burn the palace of the king and people will go to the sword, famine and plague and to exile immediately." Habakkuk responded saying, "Oh God, how can you use idolaters, wicked people, the Babylonians to judge your own people, how can you do this?" "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong." How can you accept and work through wicked and sinful people like this? I'm going to stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts, and I will wait to see what answer you will give to this complaint." And so we've seen in Habakkuk 2 God's answer.

The Babylonians who are invading into the Promised Land will in turn be judged for their idolatry, and so will all nations, all idolatrous nations who live for their own glory, for God has determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire, the nations exhaust themselves for nothing because instead, God is going to establish the kingdom for his glory, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and individual sinners who see the need of a savior, broken-hearted, humble people, will be saved by faith. As they simply turn to God, they will be saved by faith.

Chapter 3 is Habakkuk's response, it is the prayer of a prophet, as God moves him from fear to faith. In verse 1 and 2, Habakkuk prays for God to move in wrath and mercy. In verses 3-15 he describes God's terrifying judgements on the nations and in verses 16-19, he declares his absolute trust in God. Verses 16-19, you see very plainly the movement from fear to faith. Verse 16, "I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound, decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled, yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pens and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength, he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights."

He moves from trembling legs to a solid faith in the eternal God. How do you do that? Well, here we see the prayer of a prophet, and he begins by approaching God properly, in humility.

Look again at chapter 2, verse 20. It says there, "The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the Earth be silent before him." This is a silence of awe, a silence that you're in the presence of the eternal God, a silence brought on by humility and brokenness, a silence that comes from recognition of sinfulness, a silence also a total submission to the will of God.

"The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the Earth be silent before him," says the prophet. We see therefore I think a change in Habakkuk. Habakkuk began in chapter 1 by questioning God, didn't he? He's saying in chapter 1, verse 3, "Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?" Then he says in verse 13, "Why do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?" Verse 17, "Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations without mercy?" That's five times he questions God. Five times. Now, he's not being disrespectful, he has a deep burden to bring before God, but he is questioning the eternal God, he's troubled and he brings these questions and complaints to God.

What does God give him in response? Well, it reminds me very much of Job, who brought chapter after chapter of complaint to God, and in the end God doesn't answer any of Job's complaints. He just says, "Here I am, the eternal, living God who created heaven and earth. I stand before you, Job, and I am sufficient for you. I'm enough." And so Job said, "My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you, and therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

The problem is not the evil out there, is it? That's not the problem, the problem's the evil in here. This is the way it always is. We're always looking at other people's sin, other people's evil. Habakkuk was doing it too. Look at the evil of those wicked people out there in Jerusalem, look at what that evil man and that evil woman is doing. And then God says, "I'm bringing the Babylonians." He said, "Look at the evil of the Babylonians, they're even worse. They're idolaters, they're wicked people, look at them. How can you use the wicked to swallow up," What does he say? "Those more righteous than themselves?" So there's a hierarchy, like a ladder of righteousness, that he's talking about.

God, we're much higher on the ladder of righteousness than the Babylonians, how can you use them? I'm much higher on the ladder of righteousness than the other sinful Jews. He's thinking that way, but such a world view puts us in problems, doesn't it? When we come before the holy God, we forget who we really are, we forget how sinful we are. Jesus said, "No one is good but God alone." Paul said, "There is no one righteous. No, not one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless. There is no one who does good. No, not one. Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, the poison of vipers is on their lips, their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery marks their ways, and the way of peace, they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes." Who is Paul talking about there? Those people out there, those evil Jews doing that bad thing in Jerusalem, those idolatrous Babylonians? Is that who he's talking about? He's talking about us.

He's talking about us. And true prayer begins with an understanding of that. You don't come swaggering into the presence of God and say, "Here I am with my righteousness, answer my prayer." It's so easy for us to kind of have God as our buddy, and we come up to God and we say, "God, whip up on all those evil people out there." It's not that way, God is holy, he's high and lifted up. And there's a danger in that idea of self-righteousness, the ladder of righteousness, I'm here and there's people above me and people below me.

One time I was ministering in the inner city, in Boston, we used to go out there and minister to homeless people, try to share the Gospel with them, feed them, meet their needs if we could, always sought to bring them to Christ. I was talking to one man who had a drug problem, and he had abandoned his family, a wife and three children, three daughters, as I remember. His drug problem had stripped him of everything valuable in his life. They lived in Pittsburgh, he thought they were still there, he was in Boston.

It was winter, it was cold, and I started to talk to him about his need for Christ. I started to say to him that he was a sinner, in need of repentance. I said that I also am a sinner and I've found repentance in Christ, but as I began to share with him his need for a savior, he said, "Well, I'm not that bad." I looked at him aghast. I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, just the other day, I was talking to a guy down the street who actually committed murder. I've never done that." Do you see what that man's doing? He's like, "I'm here on the stairway of righteousness and there are people below me, so I'm okay."

Are the other people the standard of righteousness or is God himself the standard? And as we come into the presence of a holy God before whom the angels can't even look, they've got to cover their faces, that's how holy God is. What righteousness is sufficient to stand in his presence? Habakkuk's changed, hasn't he? He's stopped looking at the sin out there, and so he starts to see himself needing mercy. What does he say? "I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, Oh Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known, in wrath remember mercy." "We deserve it, God, but be merciful to us." There's a change that's happened in him.

You know the story that Jesus told, of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee, praying, goes in there and prays about himself. "I thank you, God, that I'm righteous. I thank you that I fast twice a week and give a tenth of everything that I own. I'm not like other men who commit adultery and murder and all those things, and I'm sure not like that tax collector over there." Do you think God accepts that kind of a prayer? But rather the tax collector who stands off at a distance will not even look up to heaven, beats his breast and says, "Be merciful to me, a sinner." And so true prayer begins with humility, a brokenness before God, a sense of humiliation before God. The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the Earth be silent before him.

Second of all, comes worship. Look at what he says again in verse 2, look at it. "Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Oh Lord." This is a sense of holy fear. I'm in awe. I'm amazed, oh God, at what you have done and who you are. It says in Hebrews 12:28, "Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us worship God acceptably with fear and reverence, for our God is a consuming fire." That's the God we worship, and so we're receiving a kingdom that can never be shaken, and so let us worship God with reverence and fear.

Psalm 2:11 says, "Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling." A sense of the majesty of God, a sense of his holiness. "I saw the Lord high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple." What does it mean that God is high and exalted? Well, God isn't anywhere, he's everywhere, he's not physical, but there's always a sense of God being up, he's being lifted up, he's high. Why, because we must be humbled. We must come before him and worship him in awe and reverence. And he says "I've heard of your fame. I've heard reports about you, God. I've heard about you."

Do you know that God makes much of his own name and his own reputation? Do you know that God is concerned about his reputation around the world, he wants people to think well of him. Have you ever met anyone like that? Somebody who's concerned about their own reputation. Concerned about what people think about them? We don't necessarily consider them to be good people, we think perhaps they're selfish or they're thinking all the time, what is somebody thinking about me? Why then does God make much of himself, why does he make much of his own reputation? You know why? Because he loves you, because he loves you.

And salvation comes when God makes much of his own reputation. When reports about God's mighty deeds go around the world, you know what happens? People get saved. You remember the story of Rahab the prostitute? She invites the two spies into her home. Why? Well, Jericho shut up tightly, like a drum. Everybody's terrified. But when these two spies come and knock on the door, she knows immediately this is her chance for salvation, this is her chance. She takes them in, she cares for them, she protects them by faith. And what was it that motivated her faith? Reports of Jehovah, the eternal God of Israel, and how he had destroyed Egypt with one plague after another, and then the final plague. God had brought Israel through the Red Sea on dry land. He had caused a wind to blow all night and the water walled up on each side left and right, and so the Jews passed through on dry ground. But when Pharaoh and his mighty army, the most powerful on the earth at the time, tried to pass through, they were destroyed.

Rahab heard that story and she said, "I've heard of your God. And I'm going to take you in and protect you, and please remember me when you come and take over this Promised Land." God's reputation had preceded those spies, and she believed and trusted in God, as a result. She trusted in him.

Well, where do we get reports of God's reputation? Well, it's in the Word. "I've heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day." Well, where do we get it? We read it in the Bible. It says, "The righteous will live by faith." Where is faith? Faith comes from hearing the Word. As we read stories about this, we understand. I'm kind of in a debate in the newspaper right now with a writer. Have you ever heard of Tom Eric? He writes in the Herald Sun, and he's saying, "Why is it that religion is always looking backward? Looking backward at dusty old acts of history. We should be looking forward like science." Tom Eric writes, he says, "I was at MIT and I looked at all the good things and the exciting things they're doing, technological advances, always looking forward to the future."

I just had to shake my head. I went to MIT, I was there, I've seen the technology. Has technology improved your life? Well, in a manner of speaking, it has. Has it changed who you are? No. Religion does look forward. We have a hope, don't we? We're looking ahead to a coming savior. He's coming back some day. But on the basis of our past knowledge of God, all that he did in history, is our faith strengthened. We read the reports about what God did. God spoke into nothing and the universe was created in six days. He said, "Let there be light, and there was light." He created the planets, the sun, the moon and the stars. He created all of them and he calls them by name, that's what God can do.

He formed a man, he just gathered the dust of the Earth together and breathed life into the breath of his nostrils. God created life, and then when they judged, he condemned them and expelled them from the Garden of Eden and put them under a curse. It was God that judged the whole world in the days of Noah, by bringing a flood, but he rescued one family and brought them out, and it was God who called Abraham to be a person for his own glory, and his descendants, all of them, and he gave this man, 100 years old, a little baby, Isaac. And he worked out of that Jewish nation, they were imprisoned like slaves in Egypt and God brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. It was God that took, as we're talking about on Sunday evenings, Elijah up to heaven in a chariot of fire. And it was God who sent one angel to kill 185,000 Assyrian troops in one night during the time of godly King Hezekiah.

Do you think that's what Habakkuk had in mind when he said, "I've heard of your fame. I've seen, I've heard about your deeds. Can you do it again now? Do it in our day. Send that angel back, God, if you wouldn't mind, you know, the one that you sent when the army surrounded? Send him back. This time they'll be Babylonians, but you can do it, send them back, renew them in our time, renew your deeds." And so, up out of dusty old ancient history comes a living faith in a God who never changes.

What God did 4000 years ago he can do, again today, if it's his will. He can do anything, because "I, the Lord, do not change." Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. And so, we've seen the first two aspects of proper prayer: Humiliation before God and word-based worship based on what he can do.

And then he prays, intercession. Look again at verse 2, he says, "Renew them in our day, in our time make them known, in wrath remember mercy." Habakkuk 2:20, he said, "Let all the earth be silent before him." The whole world is silent before him. But yet here's Habakkuk, bold to make an intercession, isn't he? He's bold to pray. Humiliation, adoration, intercession: Three basic aspects of prayer. God has commanded us to come boldly into his presence, through the blood of Jesus Christ.

It says in Ephesians 2:18, "For through him [Christ] we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." We are invited to come right into his very presence. Romans 5:1-2 says, "Therefore since we have justified, we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." You know what that means? Introduction, we're welcome to come into the presence of the emperor of the universe. "Come right in," he says, "And welcome."

I want to hear what you have to say. Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." So we have all of this command and this invitation to come right into the very presence of God. God wants us to make intercession. Notice, however, what Habakkuk doesn't pray for. He doesn't pray for Babylonian destruction. He doesn't pray that they would be destroyed. He doesn't pray that his people will not be judged. He doesn't even pray for his own deliverance. What does he pray for? He says, "I want your glory to be known. I want to see what you can do. Renew your actions in this day." why? So that the Earth can be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.One passion is God's purposes. Lloyd-Jones put it this way, "The prophet's one burden now was a concern for God's cause, God's work and God's purpose in his own nation and in the entire world, his one desire was that things should be right. He had come to the position, which in effect he said, 'Whatever my countrymen have to suffer is of no concern as long as your work is renewed and kept pure, a prayer for the glory of God.'"

And it's a prayer for a revival, isn't it? Renew them in our time, make them live again. I think about that. There's a story in the time of Elisha, in which a dead man was thrown onto the bones of the prophet, and he came to life again. Been dead, as though nothing was there and came to life again. It seems that way with you, Lord, your miraculous power, your great deeds, there's been a long stretch of time we haven't seen anything of it. Do it now. Move. He's praying for revival. I've heard of your fame. I stand in awe. Do your deeds again. There's a sense of urgency. I want it now, renew them in our time, do it in our day. I don't want to read old stories of revivals and things you did a long time ago. I want to see it now. I want it done in my life. I want it done in my church, I want it done in my day.

There's a sense of urgency, a prayer for the revival of God. And then he says, a prayer for mercy from God's wrath. He says, "In wrath, remember mercy." He does not pray that God's wrath will not come. The people deserve it, but he says, "In the middle of wrath, remember mercy." Habakkuk acknowledges that sin deserves wrath. He's not praying that the wrath will be removed, but rather that God will be merciful in the midst of it.

I think about that, that statement, "In wrath, remember mercy." Do you know where they meet perfectly? The wrath of God and the mercy of God both meet at the cross of Jesus Christ, don't they? Why did Jesus die? Why did he suffer and die on the cross? Do you know why? He died to demonstrate God's justice, because he cannot allow sinners like us and like Habakkuk into his holy presence without an atoning sacrifice. So Jesus died as a display of God's justice, under the wrath of God. Is that all? No. He also died as a display of God's love and mercy, because the wrath did not fall on the sinners who deserved it, but rather the wrath falls on his substitute, his own son, the only begotten, Jesus Christ.

And so consider therefore, Romans 11, the kindness and severity of God, both of them meeting in the cross of Jesus Christ. I'm speaking directly to the hearts of the people who've come in through the door. I don't know how it is with you. I don't know how much longer any of you are going to be alive. I'm not speaking dramatically or melodramatically. You always assume, or we assume we're going to be here for years to come. God isn't looking at actuarial charts, did you know that? I know statistically, we live to a certain age, but the fact of the matter is, we should say, in the Book of James, if the Lord wills, we will live.

Do you know for sure that you have trusted in Christ as your Savior? Have you come to the point where you realize that were it not for Jesus, you would suffer and die under the wrath of God? Have you found mercy in Christ? This is, I think, the perfect sinner's prayer. "Oh God, in wrath, remember mercy. I come to you in Christ's name, forgive me." Have you prayed that prayer, have you trusted in Christ? Today is a day of salvation. If you have never trusted in Christ, will you come and talk to me after the service is over? Come forward and speak to me. Come and pray here, yield yourself to God.

Finally, I want to ask that you who have been saved, that you who have trusted in Christ, that you would pray for revival. There's somebody in our church who week after week, month after month, has taken one of those little prayer cards and has just written a simple word on it, "revival," with two exclamation marks, sometimes three, sometimes one. We haven't seen that card in a while. I don't know who you are, man or woman, boy or girl. Would you write it again, and keep writing it until it comes?

And would more of you write it too? And don't just write it, but pray for it. Don't you yearn to see the power of God descend on high? This sermon, this time, this is just like kindling and the sacrifice and the water in the time of Elijah on Mount Carmel, we need the fire to fall from heaven. The train is all there and the engine's there, but nothing's moving. Why? Because the engine hasn't been lit by fire from heaven. Will you pray with me that God would revive us, that we would have him as our first and greatest love, that we would yearn only for one thing, the glory of God to be known around the world. It doesn't characterize our church yet, not yet. Will you pray with me that he would pour out his spirit on us?

Pastor Andy Davis preached on Matthew 25:31–46, and reminds us that Christians ought to care for those in need, including refugees.

I have not forgotten that Habakkuk has three chapters. God willing, we're going to get back to it next time. But I felt specifically led by the Lord this morning to step out of Habakkuk, out of the series of Habakkuk and look at Matthew 25; and the reason for that, as you probably have figured out, is my conviction, a sense that I have from God, that he's leading First Baptist Church to take responsibility for some of the refugees that are coming to us from Vietnam. I mentioned them last time, and it's appropriate that now at Memorial Day weekend, we can think about them, because I believe that there's a connection between the sacrifices and the commitment of the Montagnard hill tribes and the persecution and suffering that went on concerning them after the American forces left in 1975. The Montagnards are tribal people that live in the central hill in mountainous country of Vietnam, and, during the Vietnam War, they gave aid and care to Special Service Forces of the American Army, they cared for them. And I think it's interesting that they extended the hospitality that's mentioned here in Matthew 25, I was a stranger and you invited me in. But after the government - after we - left and the war ended, the government, the communist government, turned against them and began persecuting them viciously.

Now, when I first got news several weeks ago about the Montagnards, my initial thought was, “How can we care for people that are gonna have ongoing needs for the next six months?” It's beyond where we're at as a congregation. I began feeling inside my heart the way the disciples probably felt when Jesus said right before feeding the 5000, they said, "There's nothing out here for them to eat," they said to Jesus. And Jesus said, "They don't need to go away. You, you give them something to eat. And you begin to empty your pockets and you begin to look through and say, I don't have enough. And so, I immediately did what you're supposed to do in a situation like that, when you look inward and don't find the resources available, you fall to your knees and ask God to work. And it's in exactly those situations that God begins to show his power, isn't it? When we're beyond what we can do, when we're stepping out in a new area, when we're looking to a new kind of ministry that we haven't really done before, not a one-time gift, not a one-time thing, but a commitment that's going to take resources, it's gonna take sacrifice and love from people that are sitting and listening to me right now and from me.

When we're going off into a new area, that's where God can show his power, amen. And I think that God is calling us to trust him by faith. And so, I began to think of scriptures that were relevant; the letter that I read said that these were Christian people in the tribal areas, perhaps they were even Christian leaders, they are men that the Vietnamese Government wants out of their country, so they're probably leaders. And if they're Christians, they may even be pastors or house church leaders, who knows, I don't really know. But again, I began to do some research, and I found that Protestant churches and house churches had been doing very well in the tribal areas, the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and they'd been receiving persecution. And I looked back in one of my sermons that I preached in Daniel Chapter 6, on Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and I mentioned these very people at that time, a 15-year-old girl who said, "We've been persecuted and beaten up so much, we don't care anymore. The only thing we fear is disobeying God." And now, just a short time later, we have, I believe, the opportunity to minister to them directly.

I also thought about my experiences in 1987 when I was on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and there were Afghan refugees streaming out of that war-torn country, the Russians were attacking them and gunning them down with helicopter gunships, and they had a look of terror on their faces, and we ministered to them, we brought them food and clothing. They had nothing except the terrifying memories of the previous several weeks, and deep anxiety in their hearts for loved ones that were lost. And I thought, to be a refugee like this has got to be one of the most terrifying and dismal circumstances that one could face in this world. And I thought, “What are the chances that people like us would have to minister directly to refugees?” Ordinarily none. But I felt mobilized, and I felt that our church needed to give and that we needed to step forward at this time. And this passage came to my mind, the sheep and the goats, and another as well. But I'm gonna focus on Matthew 25. Now, it has its problems, because to be honest with you, I don't really know for sure whether the eight people that we might commit ourselves to care for are believers in Jesus Christ or not. And the way that I interpret this passage, Jesus is intensely concerned for his sheep; that's the way I read it. And I'm gonna explain more about that, but as I worked it through, I began to understand how even still this passage applies even if they're not Christians.

Let's begin at the beginning of Verse 31. It says there, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him... " This is speaking of the second coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus uses the term Son of Man to refer to himself. It's the same title he used for himself throughout his ministry in Matthew's Gospel, and it harkens back to the vision that Daniel had in Daniel Chapter 7 of the Son of Man. I don't know if you remember that vision, but in that vision, The Ancient of Days, God Almighty, is set up court and he's going to judge the world, and at that moment, one like a Son of Man comes into the presence of the Ancient of Days and receives from the Ancient of Days, glory and majesty, honor, and all nations come before the Son of Man and they worship and serve him. It is one of the great questions of modern Judaism, who is the Son of Man of Daniel 7? We know who he is. his name is Jesus Christ.

Now, in his ministry, Jesus alluded to the suffering of the Son of Man, that he would be beaten and scourged and put to death. And so, the suffering of the Son of Man is frequently in Jesus' mind, but here, we do not have the suffering in view, do we? We have the glory of the Son of Man, we have the glory of the eternal God, the very glory that Jesus prayed for in John 17, when he said, "Father, the time has come now, give me that glory I had with you before the world began." Now, there's a glory to the Kingdom of heaven now, isn't there? But you have to see it by faith, it's advancing secretly, and by faith, we can perceive the advance of the Gospel and the advance of the kingdom of God, but you don't need any faith to see this, do you? Because, "As lightning flashes from one side of the sky to the other, so will be the coming of the Son of Man," and all nations will see his glory, and you won't need any faith at that point, you will just see the glory of the Son of Man. And he's gonna come in his glory, and he's going to have with him an army of angels.

I think this is so powerful and so rich, isn't it? Because this is the very thing that Jesus would not call for when Peter drew his sword to protect him, you remember. Peter drew his sword and sought to protect Jesus from going to the cross, he sought to protect him from dying. "And Jesus said, 'Put your sword away, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.'" Habakkuk 2, The law of the boomerang, right? The way you treat others is going to come back to you. My kingdom doesn't advance that way, Peter, put your sword away. If I were trying to avoid the cross, don't you think I could call on My Father and he would at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels, but how then would the Scripture be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way? Jesus would rather die than break the prophecies that said that he would die for our sins. And so, he refused, he refrained from calling on his father, and the angels did not come at that point, but they're coming now.

When the Son of Man comes with all the myriad of myriad of angels, and they're coming to put an end to the cycle of human history, to put an end to the rise and fall of nations, to put an end I believe, to the anti-Christ's reign at that moment, the distilled form of human arrogance and evil as this man has set himself up to be worshipped in God's temple, and so Jesus returns and "with the breath of his mouth," 2nd Thessalonians 2, he slays him, and with him all of these angels and he establishes his glorious throne. The throne of his glory. He is a king, and, in our passage, it says twice "the king will reply," then "the king will say"; this is the King of the Kingdom of heaven - it is Jesus Christ. And so, he comes to set up his throne and all the angels are with him. And then the angels are sent out to gather all nations. And so, everyone that's ever lived from all history, from every tribe and language, and people and nation, all of them are gathered, and they're assembled before his throne, standing before him for judgment, for it is Judgment Day. And all authority and judgment has been committed to Jesus "…because he is the Son of Man," John Chapter 5. And so, they all assemble before him, and then he separates them, one from another, as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats.

Now, some people call this the parable of the sheep and the goats, but it is no parable - it is a prophecy. He just uses a simile or a metaphor for how the separation is going to go on, it's not a parable about sheep and goats. He said this is what's going to happen. This is a prophecy, is a prediction of what I will do. But he uses a metaphor that that agrarian society would have understood, the sheep and the goats have been all mingled together up to this point, but now he's going to separate them. And he's gonna put the sheep, his sheep, on his right hand, and he's gonna put the goats on the left, he's separating them out.

Now, this is a recurring theme in Matthew's Gospel. It begins really with the preaching of John the Baptist. They asked him, John, if he was the Christ, and he said no, but, "there's one coming after me, more powerful than I, whose sandals, I'm not fit to untie. he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." And then he says this, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering up the wheat into his barn, but burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire." So preached John the Baptist, a separation between wheat and chaff.

Then Jesus himself told the parable, parable of the wheat and the weeds, or the wheat and the tares. He said, they both grow together, and both are to grow together until harvest time. Well, here in this text, it's harvest time. And we can't tell the difference sometimes between the wheat and the weeds, they look identical to us. And so, if we were to try to root out the weeds, which the evil one has planted, we might make a mistake and root up wheat also. And so, we're told to leave both together until the end. And then he will send out his angels and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all those who do evil, and there'll be a separation. And the wheat will be gathered in bundles and brought into the barn, but the weeds will be burned with unquenchable fire. He also said, "The Kingdom of heaven is like a net let down into a lake which caught all kinds of fish." And then they collected those good fish in baskets, but they threw the bad away; a separation therefore, between the wheat and the chaff, between the wheat and the weeds, between the good fish and the bad fish, there's a separation. And so, he puts his sheep on the right.

I think also of Jesus' statement in John Chapter 10, "I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep, and my sheep know me… and I give them eternal life, and no one can snatch them out of my hand." And those are the sheep that he puts on his right, but the goats are put in his left. "Then the King will say to those on his right" - I love this word – "'Come…'" You hear that word? Come. That's an invitation. Now, earlier in their life, they heard an invitation from Jesus, didn't they? Remember when Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, and he saw Peter, John, James, and Andrew fishing by the net, and what did he say? "Come, come follow me and I will make you fishers of men." And then in Matthew 11:28, he says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." And so, at some point in their lives, these sheep heard him say this to them, they heard him say, "Come", and they came. They responded by faith because they were his sheep, and they recognized his voice, and they followed him, they would not follow the voice of another, but they followed him. And so, they came, they came to faith in Christ.

Now, he's inviting them into their eternal inheritance, "Come," he says, "You who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world." He gives them then the final invitation to come, to enter the kingdom, to sit at the banquet and eat with him, come. And what does he say? "Come, you who are blessed by my father", what a rich word is that? They did not earn their salvation. Don't misunderstand this passage. Because in a moment, he's gonna say, "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat." Don't think that they're saved by works. They are not. They're saved by faith in his blood. They're saved because Jesus in the next chapter said, "Drink from it, all of you. This is the cup of my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Only by the blood of Jesus Christ will these sheep be entering into their eternal inheritance. They're not saved by works. They are blessed by the father. For it says, "Blessed are the spiritual beggars, the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." They were blessed by the father. Also, Jesus in Caesarea Philippi speaks to his disciples, "'Who do people say the Son of Man is?' … 'Some say John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.' 'What about you? Who do you say that I am?'" And Peter speaks up and says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Do you remember what Jesus said next to Peter? "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man but by my Father in heaven." So, at some point in life, these sheep had been blessed by that blessing. They had been blessed by the Father to recognize that Jesus was not merely a prophet or a good man or a dusty figure from history, but rather that he was the eternal God in the flesh. And it was revealed by the father directly to their hearts, and they had faith, and his blood cleansed them from all their sins.

But the earthly blessings of the kingdom are insufficient, are they not? Paul said that. He said, "If for this life only, we have trusted in Christ, we are above all men to be pitied." It's a life of suffering, distress and toil, a life in which God sustains you from within, it's not a life of ease and comfort, it's not a life of luxury, it's a life of sustaining grace until the final inheritance comes. The blessings of the earthly experience of the kingdom of God are insufficient. There is instead an eternal blessing, because the Apostle Paul said, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing." All of them are ours in Christ, we just don't have them yet, instead, we have a down payment, the Holy Spirit, a deposit guaranteeing what? Our inheritance, the time has come at last for the inheritance of the sheep.

So, he says, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world." What an incredible thing that God has been crafting and working on the kingdom since the creation of the world? And it's prepared for them, for the sheep, they been in his mind all along, and he's prepared his kingdom for them. And it's ready, it's prepared. It reminds me of what Jesus said in John 14. He said, "I go away to prepare a place for you. And if I prepare a place for you, I will do what? I will come back and take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am." And then he prayed in his prayer in John 17, "Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me, where I am, and to see my glory." And so, this is the fulfillment now, he's come back to give them the kingdom and to invite them in.

And don't misunderstand the next word, "For I was hungry," he says. Their good works are not the reason that they are invited, rather they are the evidence of the saving faith that God had worked in their hearts, it's the evidence. It's not like we have salvation by works here, and then salvation by grace through faith in Christ everywhere in the Bible, not at all, but rather Judgment Day, this Judge is so adept at inspecting fruit that he can tell just by looking at how you lived, what happened in your heart. He can tell. "For I was hungry," he says, and "you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick, and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me," he says. Now, if you look at that list of works, it's work done to the physical body, aren't they? Simple works done to people in a variety of distressing circumstances, or do I say people? Well, we know what Jesus meant. I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I was sick and I was in prison. The righteous look at him and say, when did we do that? We didn't live in your days and the days of the Son of Man, and we sure didn't see you in your glory. When did we minister therefore directly to you?

Note what it says by the way, "Then the righteous will answer…" Who is righteous but God alone and those who get the gift of righteousness through faith in Christ? If you're listening to me today and you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, you have no righteousness of your own, I don't care how many good deeds you do. Jesus said in the same Gospel, "No one is good but God alone." And so only by the righteousness that comes to us as a gift through faith can we stand up under this judgment. But it does say, "the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needed clothes and clothe you?When did we see you sick or in prison and help you?" And then the King replies, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me."

Now, there's a limitation in the Bible, isn't there? We don't get to hear a tone of voice, we don't get to see facial expressions, and we don't get to see gestures, for example. Now, is the king gesturing to the whole group or is he just gesturing to his sheep, which is a key interpretation principle, isn't it? The Social Gospelers of 100 years ago, said his arms were stretched out wide, everybody is his brother. Three basic points of the Social Gospelers: number one, the universal fatherhood of God; number two, the universal brotherhood of man; and number three, the advancing Kingdom of heaven as defined by improving moral conditions on Earth, where poverty and other physical sufferings are alleviated gradually. That was the Social Gospel. Was Jesus a social gospeler? I think not. Scripture interprets Scripture, right? In Matthew's gospel, at one point, Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him, Jesus was surrounded by a huge throng, and they couldn't get in, so they sent a messenger, your mother and brothers are here to see you. He said, "Who are my mother, and who are my brothers? Pointing to his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For everyone who hears and obeys the will of my heavenly father is my brother, and sister, and mother."

So, who did Jesus gesture to when he said, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me"? He's gesturing to a sheep. And it makes sense because there's an intimate connection between the head and the body. The body is on Earth, and it suffers, and it struggles, and it's persecuted, like in the hill country of Vietnam right now, suffering persecution at the hands of the government, suffering, fleeing their country. So much so that when Jesus confronts Saul, so much is there a connection between the head and the body, he said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" You're hurting me. There's a connection between me and my people, and when you minister to them, you're ministering to me, and when you persecute them, you're persecuting me. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me. Now, what that means, whatever to whoever, it means there's no insignificant actions, and there's no insignificant people. Do you see how that works? Even the smallest acts of righteousness done for his people, because they are his sheep, God rewards; "…even a cup of cold water…" he says in Matthew 10:42, he rewards it.

But now we have a problem. Are we been limited here to only minister to his sheep, are we only gonna minister to Christians? I've gone through back and forth on the Montagnards, there's a lot of Montagnards, many as a matter of fact. There are some house churches that are advancing powerful. There is no guarantee that the eight Montagnards that are gonna get off that plane are believers in Jesus Christ. Oh, well, then we don't need to care for them. Right. This passage is no longer applicable. Really? This is how I figure it. This is the end of the world. Everything's been made clear, right? It's the end of the story. What am I saying? I'm saying that believers in Jesus Christ are always seeking to minister to his sheep. Why do I say that? Because what would it profit a Montagnard refugee to gain a good room, good clothing, plenty to eat, English language skills, a good job and lose his eternal soul? What would it profit him? Aren't we hoping to minister to Christ sheep, that on that final day, they'll be among those that are gonna hear, "Come you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world," and they're gonna be invited in, rather than hearing the dreadful words, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty, you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger, and you did not invite me, I needed cloths, and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison, and you did not look after me"? And then they will answer, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and thirsty and a stranger and needing clothes and sick and in prison, and not help you?" And "Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these you did not do for me."

Look down with your eyes at the final verse of the section, Verse 46, "Then they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." Now, there is, I believe, a heresy crawling through even evangelicalism these days, that there is no eternal hell. Do you realize that if there's no eternal hell, by the logic of this verse 46, there's no eternal heaven either. There's a direct connection. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. There's a marvelous balance here. There is, in fact, therefore a hell, Jesus warned of it many times. My hope is that all eight of those Montagnards, all 176 that are coming to the triangle region will be believers in Jesus Christ on this final day. But suppose they get off the plane and they're not believers yet, do we give up? No, we feed them, clothe them, care for them, and give them the Gospel. We preach the Gospel to them, why? Because we realize that ultimately what would it profit them to gain all these things and lose their soul? And so it was that after Jesus fed the 5000, they crossed to the other side, and they went and found him and said, "Lord, when did you get here?" And he said, "I tell you the truth, you didn't come because you saw a miraculous sign, you didn't come to believe in me, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not labor for the food that spoils, but for the food that lasts to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." Put your faith in Christ, and I'll give you food to eat for eternity. And so, what am I saying? This applies no matter what, because we're always hoping to minister to Christ's sheep, and we're not going to just feed them and clothe them as the Social Gospelers did. We're going to give them the eternal gospel. Now, if they get off that plane, and it turns out that they were persecuted House Church pastors, we will fellowship with them and learn from them, we'll find out what it's really like to suffer for Christ. We'll learn from them, and we'll minister to them as ministering directly to Jesus Christ.

Now, what is the application to the sermon? Well, you have it in your bulletin insert there, pull it out if you would. “Will you help First Baptist Church welcome the oppressed Montagnard refugees of Vietnam next month?” And then it says, “How can you be involved?” Do you see that?  This is wonderful. I didn't have to write an application on my sermon, it's already in your bulletin. How can you be involved?

Well, number one, we need volunteers, we need 10 individuals to step forward and take certain positions of responsibility, not for six days or six weeks, but for six months, to step forward and say, I will, for example, be the head coordinator, I will oversee this whole thing, I will change the way I live for the next six months, I will give of my time and my energy and my gifts. I'm an administrator, I have that gift, and I feel called to do this, and I want to help. I'm gonna make calls to FBC people. Of course, all of you will be ready to help in some way after this sermon, you'll all be ready to say, “Yeah, I'm ready. I wanna help in any way I can. That was a key moment that morning, and I don't wanna live it again wrongly, I wanna be able to look up at him and say, I did help. I did something for you, Lord, I glorified You. I made a sacrifice. Love means nothing without sacrifice. I will.”

But we need people. So far, four of these 10 positions have been filled, we need all of them filled, all of them. We also need about $6000 to pay for all this. There's no money available, there's no line items in the budget for this, it's all going to come from my pocket and yours. But remember that everything we do for the Lord, even a cup of cold water, he will never forget. And we store up treasure in heaven. We need the money, we need the efforts, we need prayer. We pray that God will raise up the resources needed to care for the Montagnards and for the salvation of those who do know Christ. And we need all of these things in the next three or four weeks. And so, I'm asking that any of you who feel led, and feel called to get involved in this, to come and meet me in the Betsy Cheek Chapel - since the parlor's not finished yet. But in the Betsy Cheek Chapel after the service and just - I'm gonna listen to you, I'll read over these things and say, “Is there anybody here who can do this, anybody here who can do that? Step forward.” And if you're not able to help immediately, be ready to help when these others ask you and give you calls.

The Montagnards are just eight people, I would like this to be somewhat of a new era, a new moment in the history of First Baptist Church. Up to this point, frequently when opportunities to minister come, people tend to sit back passively and wait to be asked and challenged rather than say, What are my gifts, and stepping forward and saying, I want to serve in this way or that way. It's not true of everybody, but it tends to be true. And I'd like each person therefore sitting in the pews today to think What is my ministry here at First Baptist Church? Driving in the car and coming to worship on Sunday morning and listening and singing and going home is not a ministry. You are being fed, you are receiving, alright. But using your spiritual gifts in a creative outreaching and in-reaching ministry that helps the body of Christ grow to its full maturity now, that is a ministry. What is your ministry? Jesus is coming back. I don't know if he's coming back today, but he's coming back, and what we read today is not a parable, it's going to happen. Let's be ready for it.

Won't you close with me in prayer? As you bow your heads, I want you to think, how, Lord are you calling me to act, given this information? God, what is my ministry, what are my gifts? How can I give? How can I give financially, but also how can I give of what's even more precious, myself my time? How can I give to this? I want you to act based on how God is leading you today.

Heavenly Father, as we bow before you, we acknowledge the glory and greatness of your son Jesus Christ. And we thank You for his coming kingdom in all of its glory. And I thank you for the Word that you've given us here, whereby you explained what the life looks like of those that are justified by faith, and we see that the works pour out into ministry, physical ministry, that can be seen and felt, in which we open our hearts and take of our resources and bless those that need it. Father, I pray for us that we would hear and heed. Father, I pray if there are any here today who have never trusted Christ, that they would realize they don't need to go off and do good works right now, they need to trust and believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. For the rest of us, Lord, I pray that that Betsy Cheek Chapel will be filled with people ready to serve, as the scripture says, your troops will be willing in the day of your battle. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on 1 Kings 17:17-24. The main subject of the sermon is the resurrection of the son of the widow of Zarephath.

 Tonight we're going to resume our study in Kings, 1 Kings 17, but we're going to start in a few other places, so that we can support what happens in 1 Kings 17. So you can just put your finger in 1 Kings 17, we'll probably begin around verse 17 there, but I'd like to start instead in Hebrews chapter 11, so turn there. That's the faith chapter and you're familiar with that. But the story that we're going to read tonight in 1 Kings is referred to, obliquely, in Hebrews 11, but in a marvelous way. I think we can see some of the problems that Elijah and the widow at Zarephath faced, and how troubling is sometimes the providence of God.

Now, Hebrews 11, as I said, is a chapter given to exhort and encourage a suffering people. The Hebrews, the people to whom the book is written, were suffering persecution. They were being tempted to slide away from their faith, and so Hebrews 11 is written to give examples and demonstrations of faith in action, of faith that is powerful and strong. And so he brings one example after another of an act of powerful saving faith. And the whole chapter comes to a crescendo in verse 32 and following. Hebrews 11:32 and following, it says there, "And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned into strength, and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies." And then in verse 35, it says, "Women received back their dead, raised to life again." I think that's the reference to 1 Kings 17 and the widow at Zarephath. But if you keep reading, it says, "Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection." So right in verse 35, we have a pivot, don't we? From 32-35, it's nothing but success. It's conquering and victories, and weakness turned into strength, and one victory after another, culminating in this incredible miracle, "Women received back their dead, raised to life again." And then suddenly, there's this pivot and it says, "Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some face jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground." How can all of that be part of a life of faith? How can incredible triumphs, and victories, and soaring conquests like we're going to see in the next chapter, in 1 Kings 18, the conflict between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. What an incredible victory that was, and yet at the same time, tragedies and sorrows beyond description. How can they all be part of the life of faith? And yet here they are in Hebrews 11, just listed one right after the other. All of them part of God's providence for his people. "Women received back their dead, raised to life again. But others were sawn in two, and stoned, and put to death with the sword." All of it part of the life of faith.

Turn also, if you would, to John chapter 11 In John chapter 11, we had the familiar story of the man named Lazarus that was sick. And this is one of the most incredible chapters in the New Testament, showing the power of Jesus. It says there in 11:1, "Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sister sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’" And verse four, "When he heard this, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it.’ Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." Verse six, "Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days." Now, verse six begins with the word "yet" doesn't it? He loved them and yet he stayed. And I understand why that word is in there, because it runs contrary to the way we would arrange things. You would think love would seek to protect from all harm, to protect from sickness and death, and from suffering, wouldn't it? And so we understand why the word "yet" is in there, but as we read on, we could almost put the word "and" in there. "Jesus loved Martha, Lazarus and Mary and as a result, chose to stay where he was two more days." And both of them make sense, don't they? "When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea.’ ‘But Rabbi,’ they said, ‘a short while ago, the Jews tried to stone you, and you're going back there?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not 12 hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble for he sees by this world's light, it is when he walks by night that he stumbles for he has no light.’ And after he said this, he went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.’ His disciples replied, ‘Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.’ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep." Now listen, verse 14, "Then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead, and for your sake, I am glad.’” Now you just stop there and ponder that for a moment. "Lazarus is dead and I'm glad." Is that the Jesus you know? "I'm glad that Lazarus is dead." In what sense was he glad that Lazarus was dead? Well, only in this sense: that he might display his mighty power and glorify himself through it, not because he relished in the sadness of Martha and Mary. We'll see later that Jesus wept at the tomb. We're not covering that tonight, I'd love to just go right on into John 11. I love this chapter, I love them all, but we're studying 1 Kings 17 tonight. “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake, I am glad." Now looking at a group this size, I have no idea where God's providence is going to carry you this week. No idea what's going to come to you. It may be some of the first half of Hebrews 11:32-35, one victory after another, one triumph after another, one success after another, all of it done by faith. Or it may be the second half from verse 35 up through the end of the chapter, in which it's finally testified about you, that the world wasn't worthy of you, but all of it part of the life of faith, and all of it part of the providence of God, and God's ways are beyond tracing out. Ponder this, "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake, I am glad." Why? "Because I want to display my power and your weakness. I want to come into the middle of your tragedy and do something that you would never imagine, even if you were told. I'm going to raise Lazarus from the dead."

Well, you can see now the background of 1 Kings 17. Turn there if you would, and here we have the story of the first, the first resurrection from the dead recorded in Scripture. The first one. Now, we don't know if there were others, they're just not recorded in Scripture. This is the first time that God raises somebody from the dead in the Bible. And it being the first, it's rather remarkable, isn't it? How could anyone have enough faith to trust God for this kind of thing, when there was, as far as we know, no record of it before in human history? Let's begin at verse 17, 1 Kings 17. "Sometime later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, ‘What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?’ ‘Give me your son,’ Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, and carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, ‘Oh Lord, my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with by causing her son to die?’ Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the Lord, ‘Oh Lord, my God, let this boy's life return to him!’ The Lord heard Elijah's cry and the boy's life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look, your son is alive.’ Then the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.’" What an incredible story, isn't it? A picture of God's power in the middle of tragedy? Now it says in verse 17, "Sometime later," what that does is connect to what had just happened. You remember the story that God had commanded Elijah to go to Ahab the King at the beginning of this chapter, and say, "As surely as the Lord lives, there'll be neither rain nor dew except at my word." And then he's commanded to disappear. Goes down to the Brook of Cherith, God provides for him by means of this little brook, and he also provides food through the ravens. The ravens bring him a little bit at a time and he eats from the beak of ravens, until finally the brook dries up and God commands Elijah to go to Zarephath to a certain widow there, and God had promised Elijah that he would provide for him through that widow.

And so Elijah gets up and travels through the desert. You have to trace it out on an atlas to find out what difficult journey that was, especially in a time of drought. And as he arrived there, there was a widow just outside the gates, as providence would have it, collecting sticks. Isn't it funny how God only tells Elijah just what he needs to know at any given moment? Never more than enough, just enough information to know what to do next. Why does God do that? Well, to keep us dependent on him, to keep us humble so that we continue to return again and again in prayer, and say, "God, what are my marching orders? What am I to do next? How shall I act? What shall I do?" He just says, "Go to Zarephath and there's a widow." Which widow? "Don't worry about it, you'll know." And so as he arrives there, there's a widow and she's collecting sticks. Elijah sees here and probably knows in his spirit, this must be the woman, and he goes up and says, "Please give me some water." the very thing that was like gold at that point. And she goes off immediately to begin to get him some water, and that was probably the sign. He said, "I know what I'll do, I'll go ask somebody for water. If they stone me, then I know that's not the widow... But if they're open to the water, they might be open to a little bit more." And so it was. He said, "Oh, by the way, if you would also prepare me a little cake and I'll eat it." And she said, "Now that's too much. I'll get you the water, but all I have is a little handful of flour and a little bit of oil, and I was planning to make my son and I one last meal, our final meal, and then we're going to die. We have nothing else. Nobody else in our village has anything else. It's all gone after that one little handful." And then he says, "Make me a cake anyway, because I have it from the Lord that your flower and your oil will not run out until God sends rain on the land again." She believes him by faith, takes him at his word, makes the cake, gives it to him, and God blesses. Day by day, day by day, just enough to eat, just enough meal in their hand, just enough oil to make those cakes. And then the next day, low and behold, there's another small amount at the bottom of the container again. That's no way to live here in America, we like abundance, we like enough and plenty to spare, but that's not God's way. Day after day, after day, he provides just enough for that day for Elijah and the widow.

And so we come verse 17, "Sometime later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing." Now, we don't have any idea what this illness was, perhaps some kind of a pneumonia or something that came on the child, but realize that back then there were no hospitals, no antibiotics. Basically when someone was ill, like Lazarus, they usually went on and died, unless God did a miracle, or unless God brought healing. The body's resilient, the immune system can handle almost anything, but some things are too much. There were no hospitals, there was no procedure for healing, and so this child had nothing they could do for him. "He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing." Now at this moment, she turns; the widow turns to Elijah, and basically in effect, at least verbally, beats on his chest and blames him for the death of her son. "What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come here to remind me of my sin and kill my son?" Now this is an amazing answer and it shows, I think, the work of God in her heart. She had been almost certainly a Baal worshiper, an idol worshiper, before Elijah came. And she had come, perhaps, to a faith in the living God by her time with Elijah. And she knew, even though Romans hadn't been written yet, the wages of sin is death. There's a connection between sin and death. And so a godly response to this is to say, "It must be because of my own sinfulness that this has come." And that's what she does. She sees a connection between sin and the death of her son. She's humble and she recognizes that, but she's also very frustrated, and I think very unfairly upbraids the prophet, blames him like, "You have come to kill my son." And isn't this remarkable? Because in a few moments later on, we're going to read how Ahab blames Elijah for the drought. "Here you are, you troubler of Israel," he'll say to him, as though it was somehow Elijah that had stopped up the rain. Not at all, he's just a messenger, but we tend to shoot the messengers, don't we? He's just a man of God living in her house. He has no power of life and death, and she's very unfairly upbraided him for the death of her son. Well, I love his humility at this point. His humility and his patience, he's gentle.

And I think it's remarkable how humble this man is. I mean, what has he eaten for the last several years? Think about it. We love variety, don't we? I'm not quite sure what the ravens brought, what kind of three meals a day it was, it was just enough to sustain him. Meanwhile, at the widow of Zarephath's house, "Well, what's for dinner tonight?" "Well, the same as last night." It's the bread and the cakes day after day, after day, the very thing that Israel had complained about. You remember the story in Numbers 11 says, "The rabble went with them and began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost. Also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.’” Oh, the days of garlic in Egypt. Yearning, again, for variety of food. "But now we've lost our appetite, and we never see anything but this manna. Day after day, nothing but manna.” This is the example of a heart of discontent, isn't it? And God was angry at Israel for their discontent. You don't see anything like this in Elijah. He eats at God's command and he eats what God provides. The providence of God for Elijah was the same food day after day, miraculously provided for he, and the widow, and the son, and so he's content. Contentment's a good thing, isn't it? Are you content with the providence of God? Are you content with what God gives you day after day? There's a secret to that, isn't there? The Apostle Paul talks about this. He talks about a gift in Philippians 4 that was given says, "Good, now we've got all that we need. You've provided for me. But realize I'm not saying this because I'm in want, for I've learned to be content whatever God provides for me. I've learned to be content; I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength." Paul also writes in 1 Timothy 6:6, "Godliness with contentment is great gain for we brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we'll be content with that." Wouldn't you rather have contentment, a heart of contentment, happy with what God provides than have all the things you want? Isn't it better that way? And so it was with Elijah. And so we see his humility, a contentedness in accepting what God provides, and that prepared him to respond, I think, with humility to this woman. Now, she's very angry and very unfairly blames him and he says, "Give me your son." And just humbly, quietly takes this boy. "He takes the boy from her arms," in verse 19, "and carries him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed." Now, I have no idea what was going through Elijah's mind at this particular moment, I told you there's no record of a resurrection at this point. What was he going to do? But I know that he was intending to go up and pray. Now, 1 Kings 18 is one of the great chapters in the entire Bible, for there we have the climactic battle between good and evil, Elijah and the prophets of Baal. But before the work of the glory of God, God must prepare the man for the work of glory. He's got to get him ready, and these kind of incidents get him ready. He takes this boy who's dead, she's blaming him, and he goes upstairs to his perhaps some room, an apartment or something, that she had provided for him, much like Elisha had provided in his day. And he brings this boy up, and this is what he says, "He cries out to the Lord, ‘Oh Lord my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with by causing her son to die?’" Now, it's very interesting what he says here. He does not ask the question we would ask, what is the question that immediately comes to your mind when you have a dark providence? When something comes to you that's contrary to what you would like? It's always the same, why? He does not say "why" here. Instead, he just brings it back to God, the sovereign God.

Now, I know that there's a theology that goes around today that says that God would never do something like this; that God would never bring to life and cause death. He would never bring prosperity and create disaster, God would never do that. God only ever intends what we consider to be good things, but that's not the God of the Bible. It's a God of our own making. And listen instead to what Job says to his wife, Job 2:10, "You are talking like a foolish woman," when she says, "Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die." She beats on his chest. "Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die," and he says, "You're talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?" “Ra'a,” usually translated evil, difficulty, strife, adversity, conflict, trouble, “In all this Job did not sin in what he said.” Do you understand? He did not sin in ascribing to God the things that had come to him, because ultimately they came from God. Now we know the devil tempted him, but it was ultimately from God. Or how about this in Amos 3:6, "When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?" And I've already alluded to this one Isaiah 45:7, "I formed the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I, the Lord do all these things." Now, you might think, "That's not the God that I know." That may be, but it is the God who is, and it is the God of the Bible. And stop and ponder for a moment if it were not this way, that would mean that God is doing all the good things, and the devil's doing all the evil things, and they're kind of struggling it out, and God doesn't seem to have much control over it all, does he? And so the evil god does all these evil things, and so God has to parry with him over your life. The Bible doesn't portray God that way, God is sovereign over all things and Elijah knows it.

And he brings this child and spreads the child out before God and says, "‘Have you brought trouble also upon this widow I am staying with by causing her son to die?’ Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times, and cried to the Lord, ‘Oh Lord my God, let this boy's life return to him.’” What an audacious prayer, what an incredible thing that faith is claiming at this particular moment. No record in history of a resurrection and he says, "Oh God, let this boy's life return to him." Now, the Bible teaches very clearly that God scraped together the earth and formed the first man, remember? In the garden. And from the dust of the earth, he formed a man, and then breathed breath of life into his nostrils, and so Adam became a living being. And so this house of clay that you're living in is temporary dwelling, getting a little more ramshackle as time goes on perhaps. It's just a jar of clay in which we live. And this boy's life had been separated from his temporary dwelling place, and Elijah is praying that the boy's spirit would return to him. So it is also in Luke chapter eight, the resurrection story there of Jairus. It says there in Luke 8:52, you don't have to turn there, but it says, "Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for the little girl. ‘Stop wailing,’ Jesus said, ‘She's not dead but asleep.’ They laughed at him knowing that she was dead, but he took her by the hand and said, ‘My child, get up.’" Listen, Luke 8:55, "Her spirit returned into that former dwelling place." It's a mystery, isn't it? The relationship between our physical being and our spiritual being. But this boy's spirit had been separated from his body, and according to the prayer of Elijah, by faith, spirit returns and the child comes alive again. An audacious prayer, "Oh Lord my God, let this boy's life return to him."

Can I ask you a question, what are you trusting God for? Is there anything in your life that only God can do? Are you stretching your faith and trusting him for things that you've never trusted him for before? I'm not even saying a resurrection like this, just something more than you were trusting him for a year ago, something that only God can do. Are you trusting him for something like that? Faith is audacious here, isn't it? Bold. "Oh God, let this child's life return." Verse 22, "The Lord heard Elijah cry, and the boy's life returned to him and he lived." Now, this is an amazing thing, isn't it? What is the relationship between Elijah's cry and God's action? I don't know. Do you think Elijah had an idea that God didn't? Is Elijah ahead of God? And God says, "Elijah, that's a great idea, a resurrection." It can't be. God is always ahead of us, we can never ask for something outside God's will. So I don't understand verse 22 and the relationship, all I know is there's a relationship. "The Lord heard Elijah’s cry," and as a result of that prayer offered in faith, this dead person was raised to life. "Elijah picked up the child, and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look, your son is alive.’ And the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.’" Now, God did something great that day. It was a dark providence, wasn't it? It was a dark day. And how can it be that the same God who provides enough flour and oil for day after day survival, the very next day, the child dies. The same God gives life and death, but then he gives life again through the prayer of Elijah. This is the sovereignty of God. For myself, just telling you openly, I don't pray like this, but I need to. Let's learn to trust God for things that only he can do. Let's begin asking him for great and mighty things. Read through Hebrews 11 and see all the things that people trusted God for, and begin trusting him for things that only he can do.

I'd like to ask, if you would, to turn in your Bibles to Habakkuk chapter 2. We're going to be looking at verses 18-20. That's sounds and silence. Last week we saw one of the greatest verses in all the Bible, Habakkuk 2:14, "The Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." What a great verse that is. And we saw that behind it is the truth that God has already filled the world with his glory. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, the whole Earth is filled with your glory. It's already out there. Well, when we think of glory, we tend to think mostly of the eye, don't we? We tend to think of a glory that we can see, maybe the beauty of a sunrise, or of a deep valley, the beauty of a river or a sea.

As a matter of fact, the verse itself causes us to think of the depths of the sea, and the beauty and the power thereof. But these verses cause us to think about God's glory which we can hear. A glory of the ear. The world is actually filled with the sounds of God's glory, isn't it? Don't you love the sound of the wind in all of its power? A wind that can twist a mighty oak and knock it to the ground or one that can barely lift a leaf with a gentle breeze. The funny thing is God in scripture likens himself to both. The voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks, it says in one of the Psalms. And also, when Elijah went into that cave and needed a gentle word from God, it was in the still small voice that God spoke to him. And when Elijah heard it he covered his face and knew he was in the presence of God. The incredible scale, the scope of the voice of God.

Now I'm thinking, as I come to this text, however, of another sound I heard a long time ago. It was a sound I heard when we were missionaries in Japan. I was on my way to the little church where we were working, and I saw a little school girl dressed up in her school outfit, and she was standing in front of a stone shrine. You find them all over the city, we lived in Tokushima. And there was a Shinto shrine there, a little stone thing on the corner. And she put an orange or a candy bar or some kind of offering in this little place where you put those things. And then she stepped back and she clapped twice and then began to pray. Well, I didn't understand what was going on, I didn't know the Shinto rituals and what was happening, so I asked the missionary and he said, well, she was beginning her prayer by clapping. I said, "Why does she clap?" "Well, to get the god's attention." And then I started to see this theme in all the Shinto shrines of big bells and other things that they use to get god's attention, but there's no answer when she prays. I said, "What was she praying for?" Probably she had a test that day or something, and she was asking the god of that neighborhood block and where her school was to bless her efforts as she took the test. She was praying to an idol. But all she got back was silence. Because he didn't exist. He's not true, he's not real. But our God speaks and is not silent.

Isaiah 1:2 says, "Hear O heavens, listen O Earth, for the Lord has spoken." And so we're assembled, we're all called as nations all over the world to come and stand before God and listen to his voice. There was a day when the Jewish nation did that, the foot of Mount Sinai, and God descended in fire and the mountain was burning, and there was a sound of a trumpet call, and this voice that could shatter boulders coming down from heaven, speaking and saying, "I am the Lord your God, who led you out of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me." The voice of God. And the people trembled and were terrified. And after God had given them his ten commandments, the people went up to Moses and begged him and said, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." And God told Moses that what the people said was good, and so began the office of a prophet which was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

"In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son." And so we have a mediator, someone to hear the voice of God and speak. And so was Habakkuk a prophet, and God gave Habakkuk an oracle. Habakkuk 1:1 says, "The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet received." And what was that burden? Well, a special vision, an ability to see the problems of his people. And he looked out and he saw unrighteousness and wickedness. He saw people using their positions of authority for personal gain. Judges were corrupt, they were receiving bribes. Councilors were on the take, they were using their positions of power to crush and dominate the poor.

And Habakkuk prayed and he called out to the living God, but he got no answer. God seemed to be silent.

Have you ever experienced that before? You cry out to God from the depths of your experience and you seem to get no answer? And so, the troubling part of Habakkuk was God's silence initially. Look again at verses 2-4 of chapter 1, "How long O Lord must I call for help but you do not listen, or cry out to you violence, but you do not save?" You see what's troubling him. How long means I've been praying all this time, and you're not listening to me, you're not answering me. You're silent God, why? Because I know you're holy and these excesses of your people must trouble you greatly. Why will you do nothing? And so initially, the Prophet Habakkuk was distressed by God's silence.

But then God spoke, didn't he? And that got even more difficult, because he told his prophet, he told Habakkuk, he said, "Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed, for I'm going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told. I'm raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, and they're going to sweep across the whole Earth…" "and they're going to come to Jerusalem and they're going to destroy this place. They're going to burn the temple to the ground, they're going to raze this place, there'll be nothing left. They're going to sweep across the whole Earth and nothing you do will stop them. That's what I'm going to do." And so immediately Habakkuk was distressed and in torment. And he stood before God a second time, and he said in chapter 2 verse 1, "I will station myself on the ramparts…" "And I will wait for you to speak again. Please tell me what you're doing because I don't understand it." "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?" "I don't understand what you're doing. And why are you going to hand us into the hands of the wicked pagan idolatrous Babylonians?" That's chapter 1.

But in chapter 2, God speaks again and gives him his answer, and it's an answer for all time. We see that it just stands above all of human history and explains it, doesn't it? The first concern that Habakkuk had was for these wicked Babylonians. God says, "I will judge the Babylonians. They will get theirs in turn." And so, in chapter 3:16, he says, "All right, I'll wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us," that's the Babylonians. Answer number one, the Babylonians will get theirs in turn, they will be judged. Answer number two, the people who judge them, who are going to rise up in their place, they will build their own empire, and in the end they will be judged as well. The nations are going to continue to rise, they're going to continue to build empires for their own glory, but all their labor is as fuel for the fire. Because, answer three, the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. God is building his own empire for his own glory, and what God builds will never pass away.

And so answer number four. "What about the individual, the lowly person, the righteous man or woman within the walls of Jerusalem, will you sweep them away?" No. "The righteous will live by faith." And so individual people will enter that Kingdom by simple faith in the eternal God.

But now we come to a deeper issue, don't we? The issue of idolatry. If you look at verses 18-20, we see how important it is. Because if you're going to live by faith in the living God, what if you have a faith in a dead God? What if you're an idolater? Furthermore, idolatry fits within the context of Habakkuk. Why was God judging his own people? Because they were idolaters. They'd exchanged the glory of the living God for idols, for images, which they had picked up from the surrounding Canaanite nations. They'd exchanged their glory. They didn't worship the true God anymore. What about the Babylonians? They also were idolaters. And so God is going to judge both his own people and the nations for the same thing, idolatry.

And so Habakkuk stops and deals with this issue of idolatry. Look what he says again, verse 18, "Of what value is an idol since a man has carved it, or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation, he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, 'Come to life,' or to lifeless stone, 'Wake up.' Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver there's no breath in it, but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the Earth be silent before him." So he's taking up this issue of idolatry. Now, what is idolatry? Look at the descriptions in what I just read. First of all, idols are worthless things. He starts right away and says, "Of what value is an idol?" So he's really speaking to something that's worthless. It has no value. It cannot speak, it cannot give guidance, it ultimately cannot save because it doesn't truly exist.

Second of all, it is something manufactured, something made by man. It says in our verses a man has carved it. It calls it his own creation. He uses the materials of wood and stone and gold and silver, something physical, constructed. It is an image, it's shaped or carved according to the skill of the idolater, and it is lifeless.

What a contrast to the living God. It says, "Lifeless stone," there's no breath in it, but God speaks. God is not worthless. He's of infinite value. God is not a construct of our own imagination, he exists whether we believe in him or not. He is what he is, whether we accept it or not. He is the living God. And it is faith in him, the living God, that saves our souls. And so therefore, we must not be idolaters. That is the issue.

Now his own people he had spoken to directly about this issue. He had commanded them that they not do this thing, that they not make idols. The ten commandments, Exodus 20:2 and following, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the Earth beneath, or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." So there's a clear command that God has given against idolatry.

Well, what is idolatry? Well, it's either worshipping a false god or it's worshipping the true God in a self-styled and physical way by making representations of him with things that you experience here on Earth. That's what idolatry is. Now, the Israelite nation had a long and tragic history of idolatry. God spoke the ten commandments to the people with his own voice first. After that, they asked Moses if he would please go up onto the mountain and hear God's words. And so God then wrote down the ten commandments on the tablets of stone while Moses was up there in the presence of God. But while he was up there receiving those tablets, the Israelites made an idol.

Why is the order significant? They already have the 10 commandments, which they'd heard with their own ear. They heard the voice of God and they didn't listen. And so they made a bull, some kind of a calf or a bull. And it says in Psalm 106, "They exchanged," it says, "their glory for an image of a bull which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt," And so they made a golden bull of some sort to represent God and said, "This is the God that brought you out of Egypt." That's what they did. So they were idolaters right from the start. And they struggled with idolatry all along. They took the glory of God, the Earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, they took God's glory and they melted it down and formed it and reshaped it into an idol of a golden bull.

Paul speaks of this very thing in Romans chapter 1 verse 20, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, his divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." That's the Earth being filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. We look at the world and we can see the God who made the world. But they went beyond that, didn't they? They took that glory and exchanged it. It says in Romans 1-21 "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But in their thinking, they became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened… they…exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men, and birds, and animals, and reptiles." So they did the wrong thing, instead of looking at the physical creation and saying, "Oh, there's a glorious God who made this," instead they looked at the physical creation and said, "I can use this to represent God." They became idolaters.

Well, they weren't very good at idolatry, they had to learn expert practices of idolatry from the Canaanites, and they did. They didn't fully drive the Canaanites out and the Canaanites taught them about Baal and about Asherah and Molech and all these other filthy gods, and they became idolaters. And it plagued Israel all through their history. Many prophetic warnings were given until finally in Habakkuk, he said, "It's over, because of your idolatry I'm going to judge you, I'm going to drive you from the promised land."

Well, who does God use to drive out these idolaters? Well idolaters. Other idolaters, the Babylonians. Were they idolaters? Look at chapter 1 verse 7. It says of the Babylonians, "They are a feared and dreaded people, they are a law to themselves, and they promote their own honor." What does that mean? They live for their own glory. Well, wait a minute, I thought the Earth was going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Not if the Babylonians have their way. The Babylonians are seeking to fill the world with their glory and you will worship their King Nebuchadnezzar, and you'll bow down to him, you see. So they were idolaters.

Look again at verse 11. It says, "They sweep past like the wind and go on, guilty men whose own strength is their god." Do you see that? They worship their own military prowess. If you look at their idols and their carvings and all that, there was always a militaristic sense from that era. A sense of, "Look how powerful we are. We are conquerors. We are taking over the world." Look again at verses 14-17. Habakkuk speaking, he says, "You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler. The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks. He catches them in his net." There's the word net, interesting. "He gathers them in his dragnet. And so he rejoices and is glad." So he's saying the Babylonians are like fishermen with this big net, and they go through all the nations and they gather up the nations in their net. Well, what is the net? It's their military prowess. Their ability to conquer. They're strong, powerful, and they can conquer. And so they have this net and they go collecting fish all over, they're conquering. Well look at verse 16, "Therefore he sacrifices to his net. And he burns incense to his dragnet, for by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food." Because he's so strong militarily, look at the kind of life he's leading. And so he worships his military prowess. Really what is he worshipping? He's worshipping himself. I think all idolatry ultimately goes to self-worth worship.

Do you see now why this is such an enemy to God's purposes? Habakkuk 2:14, "The Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." So we've got some competing drives, don't we? Human drive for glory, and God's drive to fill the world with his glory. Idolatry versus the true worship of the living God. Well, that's ancient of course, or it's in another nation.

Is there such a thing as modern idolatry? Absolutely. And not just in the stone age tribes of Irian Jaya, and not just in the leftover of the Shinto culture and the Buddhism of Japan. It's not just out there. It's in here. It's right in here, isn't it? There's idolatry around us and even in us. J. I. Packer in Knowing God said this, "What does the word idolatry suggest to your mind? Savages groveling before a totem pole? Cruel face statues in Hindu temples? The Dervish dance of the priest of Baal around Elijah's altar? These things are clearly certainly idolatrous in a very obvious way, but we need to realize that there is a more subtle form of idolatry as well."

Colossians 3:5 speaks of this. It says there, "Put to death therefore whatever belongs to your Earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry." Isn't that interesting? Greed is idolatry. What does it mean? It means you have set your heart on something, you want something but don't get it. And you're yearning for it, you're greedy for it and it becomes your god, it's idolatry. I actually was beginning to think about that list. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. They're all idolatry aren't they? You're setting your heart on something that isn't God and it becomes your god. You focus on it, you want it, you're hungry for it, it's why you live, and it becomes your god. It's interesting that the ten commandments therefore begin and end with the same command. I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other Gods. And the tenth commandment says that you shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. It's the same command. Don't put anything in front of me. Don't worship anything other than me.

And so greed and sin that entangles your heart is idolatry. But so also is false doctrine. Idolatry comes basically from making up a god of your own imagination, right? So if you begin to think of God a certain way and reject what the Bible says about God, you have become an idolater, you're not simply receiving the word of God, accepting what he says about himself. Rather, you're saying, "I like to think of God as a loving God," or, "I like to think of a God as a compassionate, generous God," or, "I like to think of God... " Does it really matter how you like to think of God? We are called to receive from him by his word what he is like. And ultimately, I think this idolatry leads to self-worship.

Now, what is the danger of idolatry? Well, number one, it obscures God's glory. God's glory is above all things. God's kingdom advances when people see and know his glory, not worship some substitute. Therefore, idolatry greatly abases God in our minds. Secondly, idolatry teaches lies. Look at verse 18 again, "Of what value is an idol since a man has carved it, or an image that teaches him lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation." Look at what value is it? It's an image that teaches lies well. How does idolatry teach lies? Well, it teaches lies about God. It's a way of limiting truths about God. This is how it works. Let's say you're one of the idolaters at the foot of Mount Sinai, you're waiting for Moses to come back down. He's been awfully long. Been up there for three weeks, three weeks is a long time. And so you begin to trouble yourself. It's getting to four weeks and it moves on, and you're starting to wonder, and you're saying, "We need something to worship."

By the way, human beings are constantly worshiping something. We're built to worship. So if you're not worshipping the true God, you're going to worship something. And so they said, "Well, why don't we make something to represent God who led us out of Egypt? Well, God, who led us out of Egypt, did so with power and might. So let's make something that represents God's strength, his power, his might." You see how it works? "We'll make it out of gold. It's the best we've got. It's pure, it's holy, it's clean, and it's valuable, and so we're going to focus on God's power and the gold represents perfection and power right? So the golden bull is a perfect powerful being, and there it is."

Well, how does that image teach lies? Well, it restricts God in two ways. First of all, God is powerful, is he not? But he's more than just power. He's also mercy, he's compassion, he's grace, he's love, he's justice, he's wrath, he's many things. Are they represented in that golden bull? Not at all. And so God has been limited. He's been shrunk now by that idol.

Second of all, even the very thing that they were seeking to elevate, God's power, they're comparing the power of God to a bull?  God is holding the bull's atoms together by his might and his power. God's power dwindles or dwarfs any other estimation of human power we could ever have. Can you make a representation of something physical here on Earth that rightly represents the power of God? No. So God has taken his truth and he's put it in words and we are to hear the words and listen and believe. That's why idolatry, teaches lies about God.

Also teaches us lies about ourselves, namely that we have the right to do that, that we have the right to come to God and say, "I like this about you, but I don't like that. This part's really good and we're going to take in some of that, but this we don't like as much, so we're going to have a minimum amount of that. We're going to put God together, then. We're going to assemble God." Now whether you actually go on and make a physical representation or not, if that's the way you approach the Bible, you become an idolater. It teaches lies about the right we have to build God in our own image.

Thirdly, it destroys saving faith. Chapter 2 verse 4 says, "The righteous will live by faith," but in verse 18 it says that this image is something we trust. "He who makes it trusts in his own creation." In other words he puts his focus on that, that's what he trusts to save him.

Therefore, number four, it establishes false hope. In the Book of Judges, as God was dealing with idolatry, it says, "You have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you're in trouble." Will they answer you when you call? They're a false hope. And why? Because they don't exist, they don't exist. False hope. When God judged Jonah for his disobedience and Jonah was thrown into the water, as soon as the water splashed around him and he started to sink, at that moment, reality set in rebellion went out the window and he wanted to preserve his life. So what do you think he did? "Help, God!" At that moment, right? "Please help," he cries out to the living God. He knows who God is, he's a true prophet. And he writes about that in Jonah 2. He says, "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs." Do you see what he's saying? If you believe in a false God, you will not be saved, you have a false hope. And so you will sink like a stone. You will not be rescued.

Finally, fifthly, it displays pride. It displays pride, the right we have to put God together in his own image. Do you ever catch yourself saying, "I like to think of Jesus this way," or, "I like to think of God that way." Can you simply accept the God of the Bible? Does it trouble you to think of a God who would do the things in the Bible? Are you shying away from those things? Displays pride to make your own God. Well, what is the result of idolatry? Well, the first is transformation of character. Basic principle in scripture is you're going to become like what you worship, you will become like what you worship. Psalm 115 says this, "Those who make these idols will be like them and so will all who trust in them." So, as you put the God of the Bible in front of you, you are going to worship him, and he will transform you into his image. You will become like what you worship. But if you worship a false god, you'll become like that false god. It will transform you.

Temporal Judgments

Second of all, come temporal judgment, Psalm 16:4, "The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods," said David. They will have a sorrowful life. How is that? Well, the greedy and covetous, do they ever have enough material? "There, I have enough now." No, they're always looking for more, hungry for more. How about the ambitious who make their career their god, are they ever high enough on the ladder of success? No, never. They're always going to be pressing for more. How about the lustful who makes sensuous pleasures their god? Are they ever fully satisfied or does it just kindle a yearning for more? How about those who worship sports teams? Is it possible to do that? I don't know, Is one championship ever enough? Immediately the questions come. What about next year? Will you win it next year? It's never enough. Or those who make a person an idol. Are they ever fully secure? That person might stop loving them or that person might die. There's no security in idolatry.

But greater than all of this is eternal judgment, because God judges the idolater with eternal judgment, with condemnation. Revelation 21 says this, "He said to me, 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.'" That's the promise of the Gospel, but then comes the warning, "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts," listen, "the idolaters and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur, this is the second death." So the ultimate danger of idolatry is hell, condemnation.

Well, what should we then do? Well, Habakkuk 2:20 tells us what to do. Look again at it, it says, "The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the Earth be silent before him." This is a picture of God's awesome power. He is in his heavenly temple. He is ruling over the nations and the nations before them are like a drop in the bucket. He is powerful and mighty, and as a result of that we stand in awe before him at his awesome power. Idolatry lowers God out of his heavenly place to something Earthly, like a worm or a snake. But the true worship of God puts him back in his proper place, ruling over heaven and Earth. And it says God is in his holy temple. That is significant, isn't it? Because what was about to happen to Solomon's temple? It's going to be destroyed. That was the very thing they were trusting in, remember? God will never let this temple be destroyed. "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord," they were saying, "God will never let it be destroyed. He spoke through Jeremiah, said, "I'm going to destroy it, I'm going to flatten it. But it's just an Earthly representation of the reality. I'm still in my heavenly holy temple."

And so Isaiah 66 says this, "This is what the Lord says, 'Heaven is my throne and the Earth is my foot stool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all of these things, and so they came into being?' declares the Lord. 'This is the one I esteem, he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at my word.'" That's not an idolater, is it? It's somebody who comes and says, "God, I worship you as you really are, tell me who you are and I will worship you. And so we're in silence before him. The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the Earth be silent before him. It's a silence produced by awe. In Revelation 8:1, when the seventh seal was opened, it said there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour. The archangels were silent, the angels were silent, the living creatures were silent, the white robed martyrs were silent, the saints were silent. All of them silent. Why? In awe of the wrath and the judgment of God that was about to come on the Earth. A silence produced by awe. Silence because of God's power. A silence also produced by guilt over sin. Job said it this way, "I know it's true, but how can a mortal be righteous before God? Though one wished to dispute with him, he couldn't answer him once in a thousand times, he couldn't speak back to God." And at the end of that experience, Job said, "I put my hand over my mouth." "I can't say anything before you God."

Ultimately, it's a silence produced by a submission to divine will. We stop talking back to God. We stop arguing with him. Romans 9:20 says, "Who are you O man, to talk back to God?" What right do we have to answer him back? Isaiah 45:9 says, "Woe to him who quarrels with his maker, to him who he is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'He has no hands?' And Nebuchadnezzar put it this way, Daniel 4:35, "All the peoples of the Earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the Earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'" We have no right to talk that way to God, and so we stand before him silent.

And this is acceptable worship, isn't it? The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the Earth stand silently before him, listening to his word, humbling ourselves before his mighty hand that he may raise us up. We need this, don't we? We're a loud, boisterous, noisy generation. The MTV generation has come along and there's just sound bites and just stuff coming at us all the time. All this sound all the time, and we just need to stand before God in silence and listen to him. "Guard your steps," Ecclesiastes 5, "before you go into the house of God. Go to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you're on Earth. So let your words be few. Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God." That's acceptable worship, isn't it? How should we worship God? Not as idolaters but as acceptable worshippers, "for our God is a consuming fire," Hebrews 12, we stand before him in silence and worship him.

Well, what application can we take from this?

Turn From Idols

Number one, can I urge you, turn away from idols. And don't answer too quickly saying, "We have none." An idol is something you worship or place ultimate value on or trust in instead of God. Do you have a god of your own imagination or is it a God of the Bible? Test yourself. Are there passages in the Bible that you simply cannot accept? Can you accept a God, for example, who would destroy a whole world because of sin through a flood, and rescue just one family with eight people? Can you accept a God like that? Or could wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone? Can you accept a God who would do that? Can you accept a God who would take delight in destroying and crushing his only begotten Son on the cross, rather than accept sinners into his presence without an atonement? Can you accept a God like that? If not, I'm urging you to turn away from idols because that's the real God, that's the God of the Bible.

Are you living for something other than the glory of God? Test yourself in this. When you're weak, when you're weary, when you're tired, when you're fatigued, to what do you turn? What do you turn to. What brings you refreshment? What brings you renewal? Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.? He says, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink." What do you go to when you need? Have you been sucked into the entertainment culture of America and say, "I find my refreshment there"? Or is God your refresher?

Trust Totally in Christ

And ultimately, what are you trusting in? The Evangelism Explosion question, if you were standing before God tonight, you died and you're standing before God, giving account for your life, and he said, "Why should I let you into heaven? What would you say? What are you trusting in, ultimately? "Well, I'm a good person. Regular attender at church. Part of this or that committee. I did this, I did that, I did the other." Are you trusting in yourself? Then you're trusting in an idol. I believe that self-work, self-righteousness is the number one idol in the world. Turn away from self-works and turn to the mercy and grace of the living God who gave his son to die for us. Through simple faith in Jesus we have eternal life. Trust totally therefore in Christ. Jesus is our Savior. Habakkuk said, "The righteous will live by faith." We understand now what that means, faith in Christ and in him alone.

Stand Silent Before God

And then finally, stand silent before God. I mean very practically, just take time to be quiet before him and listen. Read the word, mull over it and think, "Who is God?" and be silent before him. The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the Earth be silent before him.