A Pep Talk in the Valley

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Transcript:

I’m kind of curious, show of hands, for a show of hands, how many of you grew up going to Falls Creek or some other kind of youth camp like that? Anybody? Or any other youth camp?

Okay, about half of you. And I don’t know what youth camp was like for you growing up, but for me, when I got to go, I remember the services in the evening going on for hours. At our little youth camp out there in Beignore, Oklahoma, which if you’re not familiar with, is the hottest place in Oklahoma.

It’s about two and a half miles from the sun. And when I first started going, we didn’t have air conditioning in the tabernacle. It was an open-air tabernacle.

And it was the summertime, obviously. And you’d be in there for two, two and a half hours in your church clothes every night, sweating, listening to powerful messages. singing songs, spending time in praise and worship, and there’d be prayer breaking out.

And, you know, teenagers are emotional anyway. People would flood the altar, and, you know, some girl would come down, and she’d be praying about some, maybe it was a real problem, maybe it was teenage drama, she’d be down at the front praying, and next thing you know, 15 girls come, and they all gather around her, and they’re all crying and praying. And it was just a very, it was always a very emotional time.

And sometimes there was emotion because of drama, and sometimes there was emotion because the Spirit of God would move. And I remember being in a number of camps as a teenager, and even as a college student going back to hell, where you could just feel the Spirit move, and you could feel God at work in people’s lives, and you could feel God at work in your own heart, calling you to do something. We’d always have kids that would surrender to the ministry.

We’d have kids that would say, I feel like God’s calling me to be a pastor. God’s calling me to be a youth pastor. God’s calling me to be a missionary.

God’s calling me to something and I don’t know what. And people would go forward for that and make a commitment to, I’m going to follow God. I’m going to do what he called me to do.

Sometimes it would be, I just feel like God’s calling me to have a stronger, closer walk with him. I had already, by the time I was a teenager, I’d already surrendered to be a pastor. I knew that’s what God had called me to do.

And yet sometimes I’d go to camp and feel like God was just calling me, you need to tighten it up. You need to have a closer walk with me. You need to do better.

And so we would all make these commitments in the moment in this spiritual high of youth camp. We’d make these commitments to God while we’re in this holy bubble. and we could feel God’s spirit all around us and there was constant encouragement from one another and from the sponsors and the leaders of the camp there was this encouragement and we would make these commitments of I’m going to follow God I’m going to do better I’m going to strive harder and be closer to Him and not just at camp I felt this a time or two in church services where it was just particularly evident that the spirit of God was moving and you knew that God was calling you to something better than what you were doing now.

God was calling you to a deeper commitment than what you had at the moment. And so there have been times that I’ve left, whether it was a youth camp or whether it was a church service or it was a revival or a conference, something where you felt like in this moment, in this holy bubble, that God is calling you to a deeper commitment, to a stronger commitment, and to follow him more and serve him more. this time it’s going to be different.

And this time I’m going to do better. And this time I don’t care what faces me. And what I found too often to be the case for myself and for others that I’ve watched over the years is that once you get out of that bubble, things get a lot harder.

You get out of youth camp and it seems like a few weeks later you’re in school and you’re facing problems with friends and teachers and school in general. the real world hits you and you run up against opposition and it’s not always easy to live for Jesus in a high school. And I would walk out of camp every year and think, this year I’m going to be on fire for Jesus. And don’t get me wrong, I was a committed Christian already.

But I’m going to be on fire for Jesus and then I’d get back a week or two into school and settle for my usual respectable kind of low small work instead of being on fire. Because you run up against difficulty. You run up against opposition.

And it just gets too hard. And you fall back into the old patterns. And you think, what’s the point?

And we can do that as adults too. We can be in a time, maybe it’s in a church service. Maybe it’s just our own time with God.

Maybe sometimes it’s in a time of difficulty in life where God, through our difficult circumstances, kind of like what I talked about last week, God kind of grabs us by the shoulders and shakes us and gets our attention. and you say okay this time I’m going to do what you called me to do I’m going to follow you I’m going to do better this time now I’m going to serve you I don’t care what it costs I don’t care what you asked me to do I don’t care what it takes I’m going to do it and then we run up against some kind of opposition whether it’s from other people or whether it’s just it gets hard or whether we get we get lazy sometimes we run into something that makes that commitment to follow God, difficult to follow through with, and we start to think, okay, what’s the point?

Last Sunday night, I did the message that I intended to do last Sunday morning, where in 1 Kings chapter 18, we looked at how Elijah went as God led him to Mount Carmel, and Elijah told Ahab, Elijah told Ahab, you need to send the 400, 250 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah you need to send them to Mount Carmel with me and we’re going to have a showdown and they each prepared a bull and the idea was they were going to take an altar they were going to prepare an altar, sacrifice a bull but they weren’t going to light any fire on the bull for the burnt offering and the idea was they would each pray, they would each call out to their gods Elijah would call out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the prophets of Baal and Asherah would call out to their gods and whichever God answered by fire, whichever God supplied the fire for the burnt offering, then Israel would know who the true God was.

So if you remember the story, if you remember back to last week, from morning to night, the prophets of Baal called out to Baal. And meanwhile, Elijah’s standing there mocking them, laughing. Maybe he’s asleep and you need to yell louder. Maybe he needs to turn up his hearing aid.

Maybe he’s on the phone. He didn’t talk about hearing aids on the phone, But it was that kind of thing. Just yell louder.

Maybe he can’t hear you. And they’re out there flailing about like lunatics trying to get Baal’s attention. They’re cutting themselves.

Because Baal was bloodthirsty. So they’re doing all that they can to try to get Baal’s attention and nothing. And Elijah says, hey, let’s fill up 12 barrels of water and build a trench around my altar.

And let’s dump these 12 barrels of water all over the sacrifice. Let it soak everything. And let it run down into the trench.

And whereas they’ve spent hours and hours and hours crying out to this fake God who can never hear them because he’s not real, Elijah gives a very simple prayer that basically God let them know that you are who I claim you are. Let them know that you are still here, that you are still God in Israel. Let them know who the true God is.

Makes it all about who God is. He prays this and soon fire, almost immediately fire, falls out of heaven.

and he didn’t just fall out of heaven this fire hits the sacrifice and burns up the sacrifice vaporizes the water burns the sacrifice burns, melts down the stones that built up the altar this fire of God was so hot that it it just destroyed everything and the people just sort of stood there and fell on their faces the Lord is God the Lord is God he really is God and I liken it to people who are who have just come out of a traumatic experience like they’ve just been they’ve just walked out of a house that was flattened by a tornado and sometimes you’re in shock and you see people repeat the same thing over and over, I’m okay I’m okay, I’m okay you’ve got a two by four sticking out of your head I’m okay, I’m okay, the shock you just repeat the same that’s sort of the impression I get from them as they’re saying the Lord is God the Lord he is God they’re standing there they’re shocked by what they’ve just seen he really is God he really is God and can you imagine the terror when you realize that the one you’ve rejected all this time really is who you’ve been told he was he really is the God of Israel he really is alive he really is all powerful and he really is a jealous God who’s going to judge you for all the wickedness that has just gone on these people were scared and Elijah says take these prophets of Baal and Asherah, take them down, chase them down, and kill them.

And that’s certainly not a New Testament approach, but in the nation of Israel, they had laws that had to be followed for the protection of Israel at this time, for God’s purpose for Israel specifically. And one of the things was these people were going to continue to lead the nation of strength. And so he said, go get rid of it.

Well, we pick up in 1 Kings chapter 19, starting in verse 1 today, where Queen Jezebel finds out what just happened at Mount Carmel. And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as one of them, as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.

So Jezebel hears that Elijah has had all of her prophets killed. And by the way, these were not just prophets she knew, these 400 prophets of Asherah. It says they ate at Jezebel’s table.

She was close friends with these guys. And she finds out that Elijah has had this little standoff. She totally misses the point of what happened, by the way.

She’s just mad he killed her prophets, her false prophets. And she says, may the gods do some more. What gods?

The rest of Israel just got this issue settled that there’s only one. And she’s swearing by her fake gods here. She sends a message to Elijah and said, May my gods do the same thing to me that’s been done.

If I don’t kill you by tomorrow the same way you killed my prophets. In other words, it is an oath here. I will kill you by the sword by tomorrow.

or may I be struck dead. You know how you used to hear people say, you know, God strike me dead, so help me God. Bad idea.

Because we’ve seen here in chapter 18 that he can do it. But she says basically that. My life be taken from me if I don’t take yours for what you’ve done.

And when he saw that, he arose and went for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. So Elijah ran. and this is where the part about talking about church camp comes in and the commitments and the opposition that Elijah had just come off a moment where he saw the incredible work of God.

He saw God in all his glory send fire down that not only lit the sacrifice but obliterated the sacrifice. He had just seen God do something incredible after he had prayed God show yourself to the people and turn their hearts back to you. He’d seen God do this in such a way that the people were shocked and the people were convinced and the people took their old leaders, their old religious leaders, down to the brook and slaughtered them.

He had just seen God move in an incredible way toward pulling Israel back to him. And so you’ve got to think he’s on top of the mountain. He’s walking tall.

Maybe not in a prideful sense. And on top of that, he just told Ahab, as all this is unfolding in front of them and they’re slaughtering the false prophets, he looks at Ahab and says, get up, it’s about to rain. Hadn’t rained for three years.

He says, get up, it’s going to rain. Without a cloud in the sky, he says, it’s about to rain. And then they go check the clouds.

And there’s a cloud the size of a fist. And Elijah tells his servant, you go tell Ahab, he better get himself down the mountain or his chariot’s going to get stuck in the storm. and then the doors of heaven opened and rain poured out over the land. You’ve got to think after seeing God in all his glory and God in all his power work, Elijah’s got to be got to be on top of the world.

He’s at a moment of spiritual high in his service to God in his mission of standing against the darkness in the nation of Israel. He’s on top of the mountain. And in the next moment, in the next chapter, Jezebel says, I’m going to kill you.

And he runs for his life. He runs into opposition. And there’s probably nothing to fault him for, for running for his life.

I think if somebody as wicked as Jezebel said, I’m going to kill you, I’d probably take her seriously. But it’s what comes next that shows that he’s really sort of lost heart with God. And all throughout this series, I’ve been comparing what Elijah was called to do with what we’re called to do.

The nation of Israel is not the United States of America. And we can’t take every promise and everything that applied to the nation of Israel and say that it applies to us today. However, there are principles throughout God’s word, even in the Old Testament, that apply to us and are good for us if we’ll follow them.

And just as God was a God of righteousness in Elijah’s day, so God is a God of righteousness in our day. And the things that God says are true are true today, just like the things that God says are true, were true then. I don’t want to get into the debate about, well, you eat shellfish.

Okay, God gave specific laws to the nation of Israel for a specific time. But the fact was, when God said, do this, it’s right, it was right. And now when God tells us what to do because it’s right, it’s right now.

And so I’ve been drawing comparisons and parallels between the United States, well really the whole world in 2016, and Israel in the time of Ahab and Elijah back in the 860s BC. There are a lot of parallels. Dark, dark country.

Country founded on godly principles that have gone very, very wrong. And when you start to look at some of the specific things that were going on in Ahab’s court, like I talked about the first Sunday in July, the parallels are shocking, some of the things that were going on. We have a responsibility as believers today to stand against the darkness that we see around us in America in 2016.

Now I say that in our minds immediately. If you’re anything like me, what we hear is, oh, he’s wanting us to vote the right way. Because we’ve heard that proclaimed from pulpits for so long is the answer.

We just need to vote the right people in. I’m not talking about political issues necessarily. Although politics are just a symptom of a heart problem in our country.

There are issues that we’d look at and say they’re political when really they’re moral and biblical issues. And really the party that fixes them or doesn’t fix them is irrelevant to me as long as we stand for what God says is right. And they won’t be fixed by politics.

they won’t be fixed by passing laws they’ll only be fixed by God getting hold of the hearts of the people in this country and so our message when I say we need to stand against the darkness of this world our message is not one of vote the right way we need to get people to act right because I’ve told you before if we pressure people into acting right if we pass laws to make people act right to make them act like Christians what we’ll do is take a lot of people who are acting right and send them to hell the message of the church is not act right the message of the church is you’ve not been able to act right you’ve sinned against a holy God and you need to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ the answer is not more laws, the answer is the righteousness of God which we have access to through Jesus Christ and so whatever the darkness is in our country there is a spiritual root to it that we have to stand against and it gets hard sometimes It’s easy when we come together in a church fellowship to talk about right and wrong, but you get outside those doors and you start proclaiming the righteousness of God, you’re going to run up against opposition.

You’re going to run up against people who don’t like to hear it. And you’re going to get it from every side. You know, just in my own personal life in the last couple months, If I dare to suggest that because God says we’re all created in his image, that maybe we ought to give second thought to how we treat homosexuals or how we treat blacks or other minorities, how we treat Hispanics, how we treat, you name it, you fill in the group, that maybe because we are all created in God’s image and because the Son of God died for every person, that maybe we ought to give second thought to how we treat people.

Now, I don’t even have to agree with them, but how we talk about them, how we treat them. For me, even bothering to suggest that, I’ve been, you know, people will call you a bleeding heart liberal. A guy told me I was practically communist for suggesting that. First time in my life I’ve been called liberal, but there you go.

We’re suggesting that we might want to treat others with kindness. On the other hand, you dare to suggest that because we’re created in the image of God, and he says so, that all human life deserves to be protected. That I have no more right to take the life of an unborn baby than I do to shoot you on your way out of the parking lot.

Or to say that because God is the creator of marriage, and he created it for a purpose to reflect his relationship to the church, then maybe his principles on marriage ought to be respected. You’re called a bigot. So you can’t win from either direction when you try to, and I’m not saying I’m perfect, but when you try to say this is what God says, this is right and this is wrong, regardless of a political agenda, people don’t want to hear it.

You’re going to run into opposition. And there have been times even this week than just turning on the news, watching the news, watching talking heads on TV, reading what friends of mine say on Facebook that I end up sitting there thinking, what is the point? What is the point?

What is the point of continuing to tell people this is what God says? When sometimes I feel like nobody’s listening. And I feel like the harder I try to say, but what about what God says?

I feel like I’m banging my head against a brick wall because people seem to care less and less. And so I identify a little bit with Elijah saying, I give up. It’s too hard.

Nobody’s listening anyway, which is where he goes in this passage. You try to stand against the darkness in society, it’s not it. I’m warning you as people who are called to do the same thing, it’s not just the preacher’s job.

We are called to stand for the righteousness of God in our society. I’m warning you ahead of time, so you can’t say later on, well, you didn’t tell me. It’s not a great way to win a popularity contest. It’s something God’s called us to do anyway.

He called us to stand for the fact that He has a standard of righteousness and we’ve all fallen short, and we need to be reconciled to Him. Folks, the only way we can be is through Jesus Christ. We go into verse 4. But He Himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness.

This is what he does when he gave up in that moment. He went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a juniper tree and requested for himself that he might die. Things were bad, but Elijah does, I will say this for him, he has a flair for the dramatic.

Jezebel wants to kill me, so I might as well just die. Seems a little counterproductive. Why didn’t you just stay there and let her kill you if you were just going to run off and whine to God about it?

But I would probably do the same thing. Oh God, woe is me, pity me, pity party. And he requested for himself that he might die and said, It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life.

God, it’s enough. And you’re telling God it’s enough? That’s pretty bold.

It’s enough now, Lord, take my life, for I am not any better than my fathers. Here’s what those who come before him. I don’t know that he’s necessarily talking about his direct ancestry, but I think he’s talking about those who’ve come before him and his prophetic calling.

They have been trying for hundreds of years to get the nation of Israel to return back to God. And Elijah’s saying here, I thought things were going to be different. I thought this was the year we were going to really see something happen.

Thought after that Mount Carmel thing that really something was going to change, but now when Jezebel’s out to kill me, I’m no better off than my fathers were. That’s what I understand this to me. God, I’ve tried.

God, I’ve tried, but things just aren’t getting any better. And here’s where I see a danger for us, that Elijah was willing to stand against the darkness as long as he saw any hope of turning things around. As long as he thought, okay, this is going to work, as long as he thought, I’m going to be on the winning team, he was willing to stand.

And please don’t think I’m attacking Elijah, because I have a tremendous respect for this man, And yet I see myself in him sometimes in his frailties. And I think this is what I’d be doing too. We have a tendency of saying, yeah, if we’re going to accomplish something great, if we’re going to be on the winning team, then I’m ready to get on the bandwagon here and fight for God’s cause and stand for the righteousness of God.

As long as I see a glimmer of hope that things will turn around. But here he’s lost his little glimmer of hope that he held on to. And he says, I’m no better than my fathers.

I’ve accomplished no more than they have. I’m no further along than they are. And he gets to the point where he says, he’s got to be thinking, I thought things were going to change, and now they still haven’t.

There’s no hope. I’m done. God just killed me now.

And sometimes we get to the point where, okay, I don’t see any more hope. Let me restate that emphasis so you get what I’m saying. I don’t see any more hope.

I don’t see any way forward. I don’t see how we can fix these things, so I’m done. I find myself doing that too.

What is the point? Nobody is listening anyway. He went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and he said, I am no better than my fathers.

Now, we read on a few verses down. We’re going to continue reading down to verse 10. It says, starting in verse 5, As he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him and said unto him, Arise and eat.

And he looked, and behold, there was a cake, bacon on the coals, and a cruise of water at his head. And he did eat and drink and laid him down again. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time and touched him and said, Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee.

And so even in his moment of whining, God had compassion on him and sent an angel to wake him up, and there was food just prepared for him. That’s got to be a great encouragement, doesn’t it? You’re out there in the wilderness, you’re tired, you’re hungry, and there’s just food there.

You didn’t even have to get up and fix it. And God does that for him twice. And verse 8 says, And he arose and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights, and to whore the man of God.

That’s some good food. That gave him the energy for forty days and forty nights to serve God. So God could have looked at him and said, stop your whining.

And eventually he kind of does. But God’s first action here is to take compassion on his servant. Because God does realize our frailty.

And so he got up and he went on. And it says in verse 9, he came thither into a cave and lodged there. Behold, the word of the Lord came unto him and said unto him, what doest thou here, Elijah?

So he travels and he goes to this cave and he sits down and God says, what are you doing here? Now, that’s not a question for Elijah to answer. But God, God knows what he’s doing there.

He’s asking Elijah, you know, answer this for yourself. What are you doing here? Think about what you’re supposed to be doing.

Why are you here? So it’s a question to make Elijah think rather than for God to find out some more information. And Elijah says this in verse 10 and he says the exact same thing again in verse 14.

And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts. For the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword. And I, even I only, am left.

And they seek my life to take it away. So God says, what are you doing here? And again, he goes back into the whole matter of, you know, I was willing to serve you and do the hard thing when I saw that there was some hope.

He says, the very first thing he says there is, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts. I have longed for the people to turn back to you. I have fought for that.

I have sought every day to try to turn the people back to you. That’s what jealous means. I wanted it because you deserved it.

I was willing to do that, God. I’ve worked hard for you. I was willing to do that, but now I just don’t see any way forward.

We do the same thing. God, I will serve you. I’m committed.

I’m going to do what it takes this time. Then we run up against that opposition. And I just don’t see any way forward.

Well, God didn’t call me to serve him as long as I saw the benefit in it, did he? He called me to do what he told me to do until he told me the next thing to do. So we do the same thing.

We’re willing to stand up and we’re willing to stand for the righteousness of God. we’re willing to push forward as long as we see a benefit into it. That’s the wrong way to look at it.

Then he goes on and he says, For the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword. And he turns immediately and says, And have you seen what they did anyway? I have fought for you.

I have tried to do the right thing. And you see how they’re acting anyway. You see what they’re up to?

They’ve ignored the promises that they as a nation made to you. They’ve torn down your altars. and then killed your prophets with the sword.

Now God knew all this. He was willing to give up when the people didn’t respond the way he thought they should or the way he thought they would. The problem with that is he made his obedience to God about the people instead of about what God had called him to do.

God’s called me to preach the gospel. God’s called me to preach his word. And very few times, very few times at the end, as a matter of fact, I can count on one hand, the number of times the altar’s been packed afterwards.

People repenting, people getting right with God, people trusting Christ for the first time. And that can get kind of discouraging. Because I think sometimes we’re way too focused on outward responses and outward things.

It can get discouraging. And I could say, well, God, nobody’s responding. Nobody’s coming to the altar.

So I’m not going to do this anymore. They’re just sitting there. And by the way, I’m not saying that to try to get you to pack the altar.

Because I’m the one who tells you every week, you can trust Christ. You can deal with God right where you sit. There’s nothing extra spiritual about this little patch of real estate right here. No, no, they’re not responding the way I think they should to what you told me to do.

So does that give me the right to disobey God? To say, I’m not going to preach your word anymore because they’re not responding. No, no, he made his mission out to be about them instead of about God.

And we can look at it and say, nobody’s listening. God, we’re standing up as a church, as individuals. We stand for your principles.

We stand for your word. And still nobody’s listening. They’re getting worse and worse all around us.

God, are you looking at this? so we’re just going to sit here and ignore everything that’s going on around us. Someone else’s disobedience does not give me the right to be disobedient.

I feel like I need to write that down for my children. Just because someone else disobeyed doesn’t mean I get to also. Two wrongs really do not make a right.

When he was having a little pity party, as I do, as we probably all do from time to time, God, they’re not doing anything. the people aren’t changing so why do I still stand for you? Because I told you to that’s why.

God’s called us whatever it is God’s called us to be obedient and he’s called us to be faithful and to leave the results to him. Whether we see massive numbers of people coming into church and coming to the altar we still serve him. If God’s called you to teach Sunday school whether your class has three people or 300 people.

Wouldn’t that be nice? God’s called you to be faithful and leave the results to Him. Go out and talk to people about Jesus Christ. And I’ve heard stories from preachers where they come back and they’ve seen a dozen people get saved every time they go out and do visitation and that has never ever been my experience.

You know what? We’re faithful to proclaim the gospel and we leave the results to God. He’s called us to be obedient.

He’s called us to be faithful and leave the results to him. And then we see in verse 10 that he lost hope. These are the reasons that he quit and the reasons sometimes that we quit.

Because we don’t see hope because people aren’t responding the way we think. Also, he lost hope because he believed himself to be outnumbered and alone. He said in verse 10 and again in verse 14, I, even I, only am left and they seek my life to take it away.

God, I’m the only one left standing. And now they want to kill me. So I might as well just be done.

Do we not, in the things that God’s called us to do, do we not go through these moments where we have these thoughts and we rationalize these thoughts to ourselves? God, I just don’t see it’s going to do any good. We do that.

But God, they’re not doing what they’re supposed t

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