Who Can Change This?

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You know, if parenting has taught me anything, it’s how little control I actually have over other people. And some of you all can relate to that. You know, my wife and I, we love our kids and we try to teach them and we try to train them and we threaten them when they need it.

But it doesn’t fail. At some point, they are going to walk out of our house and be around other people who are going to think that they were raised by wolves. It’s just the nature of parenting.

And, you know, Charla stresses out about how to make sure that doesn’t happen. And at least once or twice a week we have a conversation about there is no way to ensure that it doesn’t happen. You just have to do the best you can and trust God with that situation.

Because at some point, I mean, you can’t. At some point, you can’t control what they’re going to do at some age. And at some point, if they’re determined, you know, they’re going to do what they want.

And it’s important for me to realize that because sometimes in ministry, you’re supposed to have all the answers. And it can be easy to get to a point where you start to believe that, that you’ve got all the answers and get a little full of yourself. So it’s been a nice shot of humility to have these four little people teach me that I don’t have all the answers and don’t have all the control.

But we see the same thing in our culture as well, in the world outside of us, outside of our homes as well. We see how little control we actually have over people and over changing them and over fixing them. And we know that things need to be fixed.

We see things all the time and we know that things need to be fixed and we get frustrated when we can’t fix them. Has anybody else been in this same boat? I know some of you have because I’ve seen the posts on Facebook.

That’s not what any of this is about. We were headed into this study before 2021 turned out to be 2020’s bratty little sister. We see things all around us that need to be fixed, and we think, if I could just fix it, and then we get frustrated because we can’t.

People won’t listen. People won’t do what we tell them to. It’s like they have minds of their own, right?

We see this all around us. When I was thinking about this this week, the first example that came to mind was Janie Brown. Not that I need to fix her, but she and I have had several conversations about stuff that goes on at the Pregnancy Resource Center.

Now, she hasn’t told me anything confidential, but she’ll talk about the burden that she has for some of these young women who, or for all of them who come through, but these young women who come through and their minds, some of them are set on aborting their babies. And she will talk with them, and she will love them, and she will tell them the hard truth, and she will plead with them and plead with God for them to make the right choice and spare this innocent baby. And yet, for all the desire she has to change this situation, she’s told me on numerous occasions, they walk out and I don’t always know what they’re going to do.

She said, I just have to realize I’ve done all I can do and turn them over to God. And there was a time a few years ago where I sat down across from a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, and his girlfriend, and I pled with them to break off the relationship. I know that sounds crazy until you realize I was pleading with them to break off the relationship for him to go back to his wife, who was also my friend and who was also a friend of the girlfriend.

And there was nothing right about this situation. And I spent time just crying with him and pleading with him and trying to get him to do the right thing. And if I could have squeezed him hard enough to make him do the right thing, I would have.

But that’s not how things work. It was so frustrating that I just couldn’t fix this obviously wrong situation, this situation that was going to hurt him and hurt both of these women and hurt children and families. And it was just going to hurt everybody involved.

And that was one of the most frustrating moments of my ministry was that I could not fix, I could not change this situation. And even in evangelism, where we’re addressing the sin nature that’s at the root of things like this, at the root of these problems, I’ve shared with our Wednesday night group as we’ve been doing some evangelism training, that it took me years to realize that even in evangelism, I can’t twist somebody’s arm and make them trust Christ. I thought if I could come up with just the right argument, I could argue somebody into heaven. If I could come up with just the right words, I could make them understand.

It doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way. We can’t make people change.

And so we think, well, what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my arguments? What’s wrong with what I’m telling?

I know I’m telling them the truth. What’s wrong with me that I can’t get them to change direction, that I can’t fix this situation, that I can’t get them to see how much this is going to hurt them? We think, what’s wrong with me?

What’s wrong with my arguments? What should I have done differently? And we think there’s something defective about us, but this inability to change other people is not a defect.

The Bible gives us an example of a great prophet who had the same problem. We’ve been studying this prophet for the last couple of weeks as we talk about how to navigate some of the craziness of the world in which we find ourselves. The prophet Elijah.

And we’re going to be this morning in 1 Kings 18. 1 Kings 18. You see, this is not a defect.

This is just the way the world works. And God designed people outside just like he designed us with free will to choose him, to follow him or not. And so as we look around at all the stuff that we see that needs to be fixed and we can’t make people fix it, we’ve got to learn what our role actually is.

Otherwise, we’re going to end up beating our heads against a wall and end up frustrated all the time. But what is it that we’re supposed to do? The story of Elijah gives us an example.

If you’ve turned there with me, if you would, if you’d stand with me, if you can do so without too much difficulty. We’re going to be in 1 Kings chapter 18, starting in verse 20 this morning. We’re going to start off just reading the first four verses, and then we’ll look at some more later.

It says, So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel. And Elijah came to all the people and said, How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him.

But if Baal, follow him. But the people answered him not a word. Then Elijah said to the people, I alone am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men.

Therefore, let them give us two bulls, and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, and put no fire under it. And I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it. Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord.

And the God who answers by fire, he is God. So all the people answered and said, it is well spoken. And you may be seated.

So he’s proposed a challenge. If you remember back to last week, he challenged King Ahab yet again about the wickedness that was going on in his country, the idol worship, the child sacrifice, the bowing down to trees, all the things that were going on. He challenged them.

And God sent him after three years of drought to say enough is enough to challenge him again and say, we’re going to settle this once and for all. And so Elijah told Ahab, bring all the prophets of your false gods, bring them up to Mount Carmel, and we’re going to deal with this. So when we pick up here in verse 20, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

And the people of Israel, many of them are gathered there as well to see what’s about to happen. I mean, this is the biggest show in town at this point. And so they want to see what’s going to happen.

And Elijah proposes a challenge. He says, the prophets of Baal, you take a bull and you prepare a sacrifice. You do all the preparation, the wood, everything.

Just don’t light it on fire like you would for a burnt offering. And I’ll do the same thing over here. I’ll prepare a sacrifice to the Lord.

We just won’t set it on fire for a burnt offering. We’ll ask our God. I’ll ask my God, you ask your God to provide the fire.

And whoever answers is the true God. And the people of Israel said, this sounds pretty good. Let’s do this.

You’ve spoken well. And so looking at the wickedness and the idolatry that Elijah saw in his country, he realized he had to challenge it. As we’re looking to this example to see what our role is here as believers in a world that seems out of control, how do we navigate this?

What do we do? God’s people have always been called to stand up and challenge the wickedness of the world around us. Now, that doesn’t mean we do it from a standpoint of realizing, of believing that we’re perfect.

We should be careful not to make the world think that we think we’re perfect. We are broken people who have been glued back together by a God who loves us and pleading with others to come to know him in the same way. Elijah recognized the wickedness and he knew he had to challenge it.

And so he challenged the prophets of Baal on Baal’s home turf. In verse 24, when he proposes this challenge, he said, the God who answers by fire is the true God. Now, the reason why this was a challenge on Baal’s home turf is because he was the Canaanite God of storms. And already the God of Israel had shown himself mightier than Baal because what has not happened for three years?

There’s been no rain. And they’re crying out to Baal and saying, we need rain. Ahab, no doubt, and Jezebel, no doubt, are praying to Baal asking for rain, but rain has not come for three years because Yahweh, the God of Israel, has said, there will be no rain until I say so.

And now when he proposes a challenge, if any deity that they could worship, If any idol was going to be able to send fire out of the sky, it would be the god of storms, right? That’s kind of what lightning is in a very simplistic way. I know it’s electricity.

But if any deity was going to be able to send fire out of the sky, it should be Baal, the god of storms. This should be easy for him. It should be second nature if there’s any truth to him at all. So Elijah challenged Baal on Baal’s home turf, and the so-called storm god couldn’t make it rain and wasn’t going to be able to send fire out of the sky.

Now we look at verse 25, and it tells us a little bit more of what he did to challenge them, challenge this wickedness in his country. Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose one bull for yourselves and prepare it first for your many, and call on the name of your God, but put no fire under it. So they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us.

But there was no voice, no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar, which they had made. And so it was at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, Cry aloud, for he is a god.

Either he is meditating or he is busy or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened. So they cried aloud and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was passed, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice.

But there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. So Elijah goes a step further and he challenges the wickedness around him by pointing out the foolishness of worshiping idols that can’t see you, can’t hear you, and can’t answer because they’re calling out to Baal for hours. It was about three hours, it sounds like, that they were calling out, they were crying out loud to Baal and there was no answer.

So finally, at noon, when they’re in the thralls of calling out to him, and they’re losing their ever-loving minds, Elijah starts to have some fun with it. I think this is one of the reasons why I love Elijah as a character from the Bible. You could almost look at him as the patron saint of sarcasm.

All right, I love that. He’s calling out to them. He’s saying, yell a little louder.

He is a God, after all, he should be able to hear you. Oh, I know. Maybe he’s busy.

Maybe he’s meditating. Maybe he’s thinking God thoughts. That phrase, he’s busy, in Hebrew seems to indicate maybe he’s in the restroom.

Maybe he’s off shopping. Maybe he’s on the telephone. He’s throwing out ideas.

Maybe he’s just otherwise occupied. Yell a little louder, guys. He can’t hear you in the back.

He’s having some fun with it. I don’t know if they had just worked themselves up into a frenzy, Or if Elijah’s mocking kind of, and by the way, while the world’s burning around you, you should still be able to have a spirit of joy about you. Elijah was having a good time because he knew God was in control of this.

I don’t know if it was just them working themselves up into a frenzy or if it was Elijah’s mocking that got them upset, but they start jumping up and down on the altar. They’re hooting and hollering. They’re trying to get Baal’s attention.

They start slashing themselves, thinking the blood will get his attention. And all this time, Elijah is mocking, not to put them down, but mocking to show the foolishness of worshiping gods that are made out of wood or stone. He challenged the wickedness by pointing out how foolish it was to worship something other than God.

And look with me at verse 30. It says, Then Elijah said to all the people, Come near to me. So all the people came near to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.

And Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, Israel shall be your name. Then with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two sayes of seed. And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, Fill four water pots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.

Then he said, Do it a second time. And they did it a second time. He said, do it a third time.

And they did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar, and he also filled the trench with water. So one of the things we typically focus on in this story is all the water.

He’s dug a trench around the altar that, if my calculations are right, they may not be, but it sounds like it would be a trench that would hold about five gallons of something dry. It’s hard to measure with water because it’ll soak into the ground. That’s why he says measures of seed.

about five gallons. And then he tells them, take four water pots and fill them up three times and dump that out all over the altar. He’s showing them that if God sends fire and burns up this sacrifice, God can beat Baal with one arm tied behind his back.

So he’s just doused this thing to where it’s soaked the offering, soaked the wood, soaked the altar, it’s filled up the trench, it’s overflowing. There’s no trick here. Elijah’s not standing back with a lighter, secretly lighting because it’s wet.

But I think what’s important for us to notice here too is that he rebuilt the old altar for worshiping the Lord. And I think that’s important for us to understand because we look at the, we look sometimes at the craziness at the world around us and we think, well, if we just came up with better ideas, if I just had some new argument, if I just had some new thing to say, listen, he didn’t come in and try to convince them with some new way of thinking. What he did was he rebuilt the old altar and he pointed them to the things that had always been true.

He didn’t come in with some new way of worship. He didn’t come in with some new philosophy. He took the stones that Ahab had had torn down and he reminded them of the God who had made them, of the God who had taken care of Israel, of the God who had made promises, the God that their forefathers used to worship.

He simply reminded them of the things that had always been true. you and I don’t have, as we face insanity around us, we don’t have to come up with new solutions. We don’t have to come up with creative ideas that depend on our brilliance.

We simply need to stand with and speak that which has always been true. And all of this is a reminder, his faith in God going forward, his confidence to be able to stand alone here. We talked last week about being willing to stand alone.

Understand, as we look at Elijah’s story further on, Elijah’s not all that confident an individual. He runs and hides sometimes. He gets depressed and says, God, why don’t you just take me? Nobody’s listening to me.

I’m just ready to be gone from this. Elijah’s not a super confident individual. And yet at this moment, he had the confidence to stand against 450 prophets of Baal, King Ahab, who could have just slaughtered him right there, and the people who had turned their backs on God when it was convenient, and he had the confidence to do that because he had confidence in God. He recognized that you can kill the prophets, you can tear down the altars, you can lead the majority astray, but God will always be God.

And if you find yourself in a situation today where you don’t understand the world around you, and it doesn’t make sense, and it makes you even a little fearful, You need to understand that as well. You can have the same confidence that Elijah had to stand for what’s right because you can tear down the altars. You can kill the prophets.

You can lead the majority astray, but God will not stop being God. You can’t knock him off his throne. So he had to challenge the direction of his culture, and he did.

He knew God’s called me. God sent him at the beginning of chapter 18, sent him to Ahab for this purpose. Go and challenge what’s going on.

Go and stand against him. Go and tell him this is wrong. So he went and challenged the culture and the direction of it, but only God could change it.

This is where I think Elijah got it right. He recognized that only God could change it. Look at verse 36.

And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord. Hear me that this people may know that you are the Lord God and that you have turned their hearts back to you again.

Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God.

So ultimately, Elijah had to trust God to be God. He had to trust God to be the one to move. He had to trust God to be the one to change the hearts of the people because he knew he couldn’t do it.

He knew that changing the hearts of the nation of Israel was beyond his ability to do, just like it’s beyond my ability to change the hearts of the people of America. All I can do and all you can do is challenge the darkness where we stand in our own little patch of darkness, but trust God to be the one to change it. And that’s why he prayed, God, I want you to intervene.

I want you to step in. I want you to do what only you can do so that people will know that you are the one who turned their hearts back to you. He prayed for God in all of this to glorify himself.

He wanted them to know that God is still God. He wanted God to glorify himself and he wanted God to change their hearts. What you and I need to learn from Elijah, as we are living in a time that has a lot of similarities, if you remember back to the first message I preached on Elijah a few weeks ago, it’s scary.

I read you something I wrote about Israel in Elijah’s day, and I think a lot of you thought until I said otherwise that I was talking about America in 2021. There are a lot of similarities here. And what you and I can learn from the example of Elijah as we try to figure out this reality we find ourselves in is that we are called as believers, we are called as God’s people to challenge the wickedness of the culture around us, but we are to trust God to change it because only he can.

So if you think, why aren’t they listening to me? Why am I not making a dent in this? Because that’s not your job.

You’re supposed to stand there with the sacrifice. You’re supposed to put the altar back up. You’re supposed to stand there and say, this is wrong.

And you’re supposed to pray, but you’re supposed to count on God to be the one to step up and show up and make the change. We have to challenge the direction of our world, but only God can change it. Think about what we can reasonably accomplish with our behavior, with our actions.

We can change some behavior. About 20 years ago, I thought, well, we just need to vote the right people in. We need to pass the right laws.

We need to do this and that. Listen, I’ve gotten much more libertarian in my old age because I’ve realized we can pass all the right laws. We can elect all the right people.

And all we’re going to do is end up making people act good all the way to an eternal separation from God. It does nothing. Just making people act Christian by force of law does nothing to get them any closer to God.

Do we want people’s lives to be transformed by a relationship with God, or do we just want them to behave? I think if we’re honest, sometimes we have to admit we just want them to behave. But that’s not really the end goal, is it?

The end goal is for people to know this God who made them and loved them. The end goal is for them to have a relationship with God through the Savior, Jesus Christ, who loved them enough to die for their sins. The end goal is for them to have a relationship and fellowship with Him where He calls them into something better.

But we do have to ask ourselves, do we want their lives transformed or do we just want them to behave? And if our goal, if our job is to challenge the direction of the culture but trust God to change it, then let me tell you, and this is for me, not necessarily for you. I’m not calling anybody out but myself.

We need to spend more time in prayer than political activism. I’m not against political activism. I hope you know me well enough to know that by now.

I believe in being involved. But political activism is not going to fix America, and it’s not going to save anybody’s soul. We should be praying for our neighbors, praying for our friends and our family members, praying for our community, praying that God will stoke the fires of revival and call people back to Him.

We have to be willing to stand up and speak out, to speak the truth in love when something is wrong, but remember that only God can change people’s hearts. You may be dealing with a family member, a friend, a neighbor, somebody that you see the danger ahead in the direction they’re going. And I could list some things this morning, but we’re all dealing with different situations.

But you see the danger ahead as somebody’s heading in an ungodly direction. And you, kind of like where I was with that man and his girlfriend, if I could just squeeze him enough to make him make the right decision, I would do it. Listen, sometimes we think it’s up to us to fix it, to argue it.

Other times we think, I just need to keep my mouth shut and not say anything about what God says because I don’t want to jeopardize anything. Listen, we can challenge the direction things are going in love. And that’s the key.

And not just to say that we love people, but to show it to them. I am able to say sometimes some very hard truths to my son, things that he does not want to hear and things that might occasionally hurt his feelings. But I’m able to do that because he knows I love him.

And because we have that relationship where he knows I’m doing it out of love. While I was able to tell this friend of mine, you know, if you walk out on your wife and run off with this lady right here, you know, it is going to destroy a ton of lives around you. You know this.

And he didn’t punch me in the face because he knew I loved him. When I say challenge the darkness around, I’m not, I’m not talking about standing out on the street corner with a, I used to hate it at OU, when people would come with their signs and their gigantic family Bibles and they’d stand there in the South Oval and they’d preach, you know, scream, whatever, at people with the bullhorn, you’re all going to hell. It might have been true.

It might have been true. But that approach with no love behind it at all didn’t move anybody further away from that. And I just thought it made the job so much harder for those of us who are here trying to love people and point them to Jesus Christ. Thanks.

Good job, guys. I’m not telling you stand out on the street corner and scream at people to repent or turn or burn. But I’m saying we genuinely love people and show them that we love them.

And with love and with pleading, not you need to change your life and be like me, but as somebody who has found the grace of God, we plead with them to come along with us. And we lovingly speak the truth. And remember that only God can change their hearts.

Some of you may have kids or grandkids that are prodigal. And you know what I’m talking about here because you’ve talked to them about it. You’ve pled with them for years. You’ve prayed for them for years.

And you may think, what’s wrong with me? Where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong that I can’t seem to snap them out of this?

They know better. Listen, you’re frustrated because you’re trying to do God’s job. God can change their heart.

Your job is to speak the truth in love. And I want to leave you with this thought this morning because we tend to get a little heated sometimes when we deal with these kinds of situations. understand it was not Elijah’s fire it was not Elijah’s fire that turned the hearts of the nation of Israel back toward God it was God’s fire only God can transform hearts only God can transform people and aren’t you glad that he does I’m glad that he’s changed me I’m glad that he’s still changing me I am so thankful that I don’t have to stand before God with what few good works I can muster and hand them to Him like a pile of filthy rags before Him and say, isn’t this enough?

Won’t you love me now? Won’t you accept me now? I’m thankful that I don’t have to do that because I can’t ever be good enough for Him.

I’m thankful that He sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross to save sinners like me. I’m glad that God, I’m thankful that God loves us enough that He’s willing to change us. And if you recognize this morning that you need to be transformed by the power of God, if you realize that you are separated from God, that you’ve sinned, you’ve not walked with God, you’ve not pleased Him, and you know that He feels distant and far away, that’s because our sin, in anything that we say or do or think that displeases Him, the Bible calls sin and it separates us from God.

And you and I can never do enough good to undo the wrong that we’ve done. That’s why Jesus came and took responsibility for our sins. And he was nailed to the cross, taking our punishment.

He died in our place there on the cross. He shed his blood and he died to pay for every bit of my sin and yours so that we could experience forgiveness, so that we could turn to God and be forgiven because of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made.

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