Choose Your Side
In our Old Testament lesson, the Prophet Elijah asks the people of Israel to choose their side. For many years they had been wavering between two opinions. They had been trying to serve both God and the false gods of the neighboring nations. God was angry with the people for worshiping these false gods, including the false god Baal. As a demonstration of his mighty power, God had Elijah prophesy that the land would receive no rain for 3 ½ years. This was a powerful demonstration that Baal had no power since he was worshiped as the god of storms. God sends Elijah to confront the prophets of Baal and call the people to repentance. Will they continue to follow the false god Baal, or will they return to the worship of the true God? The people need to choose their side. Elijah asks, “How long will you stagger around on two crutches? If the LORD is God, follow him. If Baal is God, follow him.”
God demands our complete and total obedience. His law is clear. God says, “Fear the LORD your God, serve him, and swear by his name. Do not go after other gods from among the gods of the peoples around you. If you do, the LORD your God will be a jealous God in your midst, and the anger of the LORD your God will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the earth.” The children of Israel had forgotten this command from the Lord. They forgot the disasters God had brought on their ancestors when they wandered away from the Lord and served other gods. The people wanted to have it both ways. They wanted to worship the God who had brought them out of Egypt, but they also wanted to worship the gods of the peoples around them. They wanted to fit in. And so instead of choosing a side they staggered around on two crutches and wavered between two opinions.
How often are we guilty of the same thing? Now, we don’t blatantly worship false gods, but we do break the First Commandment in other ways. Jesus tells us that the First Commandment means, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” We don’t do this very well. We come to church on Sunday, but on Monday we go to work and hide our faith so that others won’t think that we are weird or strange. We approve of things the world says are good, but we know go against God’s Word because we don’t want to face ridicule and persecution. We praise God one moment and the next we are uttering profanity and crude humor. We greet our brothers and sisters in Christ warmly as they are sitting in the pew next to us, but then gossip and ridicule them later. The list could go on and on as we stagger around on two crutches. We don’t choose a side. We want it both ways. We want to be good and faithful Christians, but we also want to hold on to our pet sins.
This is the constant spiritual battle that we fight each and every day of our lives. The Apostle Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Satan is waging a constant war for our souls. We see how he did this in the Old Testament by using wicked leaders like King Ahab and Queen Jezebel to lead the people to worship false gods instead of the one true God. Satan continues to use the forces of this world and our own sinful natures to lead us away from the truth and down the path of temptation. It can often seem like we are surrounded by enemies on all sides. The forces of evil look powerful and invincible and the faithful church seems like it is few in number.
Elijah shows us how to have courage in the face of these seemingly overwhelming odds. On Mt. Caramel it was Elijah versus the 450 prophets of Baal. Yet Elijah was not discouraged. He knew that he had God on his side and that “all things are possible for the one who believes.” This is why Elijah was not afraid to do things that seemed like he was giving the prophets of Baal an advantage. He wanted the people to see once and for all that only God was the true God. So, he proposed a demonstration. Each side would prepare an ox for a burnt offering and would call on their god to consume that offering with fire. Elijah let them choose which one of the bulls they wanted to use, and he let the prophets of Baal call out to their false god all day long. Elijah knew that Baal would not answer because he wasn’t real. He wanted to show the people just how foolish their worship of this non-existent god was, so he began mocking the prophets of Baal. “When noon came, Elijah mocked them: ‘Shout louder! He is a god, isn’t he? He may be deep in thought or busy or on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and will wake up!’”
Elijah let the prophets of Baal continue their raving and shouting until evening, but no fire came from Baal. Finally, Elijah had enough. He told the people to draw near. He then rebuilt the altar of the Lord that was on the mountain using twelve stones to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. He prepared the ox and then did something that must have seemed strange to everyone there. He ordered that a trench be dug around the altar and that jars of water be poured on the altar so that the trench was filled with water. He did this so that there could be no thought that he had used trickery or deception to start a fire. Only an act of God could burn that saturated wood.
Then Elijah prayed to the Lord. He didn’t ask God to send fire from heaven. He simply asked the Lord to answer his prayer and show the people that he alone is God. The Lord responded in a spectacular fashion, he sent fire from heaven that not only burned up the ox and the wood, but it also even burned up the stones and the water in the trench. There could be absolutely no doubt in the minds of the people. Baal had not answered, but God had. The people responded, “The LORD, he is God! The LORD, he is God!”
The spiritual battles that we face each day are not as vivid as the battle Elijah fought on Mt. Caramel, but they are just as real. As we face temptation in our lives, as we look at the chaos in the world we may be tempted to wonder where God is. Where is the fire from heaven that will destroy our enemies? Dear friends, we have a far greater wonder than God sending fire from heaven. God sent his one and only Son Jesus Christ to earth to destroy the work of the devil. Our enemies have all been defeated. On the cross, Christ crushed the head of the Serpent and freed us from the power of Satan. When just rose victorious from the grave he shattered the gates of death and hell and gave to us the certainty of eternal life with our Lord.
Satan can no longer accuse us of the times that we have wavered in our commitment to the Lord because we have been washed clean by the blood of Christ. Jesus lived a perfect life in our place. There was never a time he wavered in his commitment to God. When Satan tempted him in the wilderness Christ remained steadfast. When he was tempted in the Garden of Gethsemane our Savior stayed faithful to God’s purpose. On the cross, Christ endured the temptation of the mockers he tempted him to save himself. Jesus always put God first in his life. He kept the First Commandment and all the rest of God’s law perfectly in our place so that he could offer his perfect life as a sacrifice to make complete payment for our sins.
This is the certain victory that we have as followers of Christ. We do not need to fear the attacks of the world and Satan. We do not need to fear persecution or hatred from the world, because we know that the power of the world has been broken by the death of Christ. We can take our stand as witnesses of our Savior because we know the eternal victory that is ours. We fight our battle each day against the temptations of our sinful nature knowing that when we fall into temptation, we are still secure in our salvation. Satan’s flaming arrows of doubt and accusation have no power over us. We stand firm on the rock of our Savior knowing that nothing can snatch us from the protective hand of our God who is our refuge and our fortress. This is the encouragement that Paul gives us in Romans 8, “What then will we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also graciously give us all things along with him? Who will bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies! Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus, who died and, more than that, was raised to life, is the one who is at God’s right hand and who is also interceding for us! What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? Just as it is written: For your sake we are being put to death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present nor things to come, nor powerful forces, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”