I. INTRODUCTION
I want to begin my thoughts this morning with a fella who was going to sky dive for the first time. After all lessons he went out and jumped out of plane, but this time he panicked. He couldn’t remember how to open parachute. Falling quickly to earth, when of all things, he passes another guy who’s coming up. And so he seizes the oppty and says, “Say, buddy. Do you know how to open a parachute?” The guy said, “No. Do you know how to light a gas grill?”
It is not wise to play with fire. Now maybe that is why God has chosen fire to be the symbol of his presence. Maybe you haven’t noticed that but it’s actually all through your Bibles. When Moses met the presence of God in the desert it was in the form of a burning bush. And when the people of Israel confronted the presence of God at Sinai, it says the “mountain was on fire.” And when Solomon dedicated the temple it says the “glory of the Lord fell and fire fell from heaven.” And when Daniel had a vision of the Ancient of Days, it says that “the throne was on fire and a river of fire came out from it.” And when Ezekiel had his vision in chapter 1 he “saw a throne in heaven and someone sitting on it “full of fire.”
I think it’s significant that God in the law of Moses said to the priests, “Don’t ever let the fire on the altar go out. It must burn continually.” And it is more significant that John the Baptist said, “I baptize in water, but there is one coming after me who is mightier than I, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” In fact, Jesus himself said in Luke 12:49, “I have come to bring fire on the earth and how I wish it were already kindled.”
II. THE REVIVAL FIRE OF ELIJAH
Maybe that’s why throughout history revival has always been associated with fire. Now, what do we mean when we talk about revival fire? When I talk about “lighting the fire again”, when I say someone “is on fire for God”, when I say “God has really lit a flame in that heart” that’s hard to explain. I feel a little bit like Louie Armstrong, the famous trumpeteer, who was asked one time to define rhythm. And Louie said, “Rhythm is what, if you’ve got it, you don’t need a definition. And if you don’t got it, no definition is any good.”
Now I think the same is true about revival fire. If you’ve got it, you can’t explain it, and if you don’t got it, all the sermons in the world can’t explain it. To pray for revival is to pray for fire from heaven to break out. And no one knew how to start a fire better than Elijah, so open your Bible with me to the book of 1 Kings.
We’re studying this fall on Sunday mornings great revivals in the Bible. Two weeks ago we saw the revival at Mt. Sinai with Moses. Last week we saw the revival at Mizpah under the judge Samuel. And now we’re going to study for the next several weeks revivals during the times of the kings. And this morning we’re going to study the only revival that ever took place in the northern kingdom.
The ten tribes had succeeded from the southern two tribes, had nineteen kings, and the Bible says every one of them were evil. But ironically, the greatest revival, perhaps in the Bible, took place during the rein of the most evil monarch.
In 1 Kings 16:29-33 it says…READ. Now, if we read more we would see that Ahab had no strong religious convictions but he married a woman who did. And Jezebel was determined to make Baalism the state religion of Israel. And she had two primary ways she was trying to make that happen. The first was through the state support of false prophets. She had 850 false prophets that used to eat at her table in the palace, supported by her. And the second way she tried to make Baalism the religion of Israel is by murdering the prophets of God. And many righteous men of God were put to death by Jezebel, in fact, there was servant of Ahab, Obadiah, a devout man, who took the last hundred prophets he could find still alive and hid them in two caves and fed them food and water and kept them from Jezebel to spare their lives.
The Bible says in1 Kings 21:25, “There was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife.” This was as dark a time as we ever read in the history of the people of Israel. But in the midst of this darkness, like a fire from heaven, a comet suddenly appears and blazes in the palace of the king. Now the Bible says in I Kings 17:1, “Now Elijah, the Tishbite, from Tishbe, in Gilead, said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except by my word.”
Now Elijah means “My God is Yahweh”. My God is Jehovah. He shows up in the palace of a king who is murdering prophets of God and says, “Let me give you a weather report for the next three years. It ain’t gonna rain.” Elijah could not stand the thought that the people of Israel thinking that God had meekly abdicated his throne to Baal. You’ve got to understand, Baal was the name of the chief fertility god of the Canaanites. What I mean by that is he was the god the people worshipped for sun and for rain and for the crops to grow. He was the god that was supposed to provide for their needs and take care of them. And so Elijah’s proclamation was a slap in the face of Ahab’s adopted religion. And it made him the most wanted man in the country. So much so that for the next three years God sent him into hiding.
The Bible says Ahab sent guards everywhere looking for Elijah. Even into neighboring kingdoms trying to find him. And the priest of Baal would tell all the people that Elijah was the cause for all the problems they were having during the famine. Then after 3 ½ years God told Elijah to go back to Ahab. So Elijah said to Obadiah, “Set up a meeting”, the Bible says in chapter 18:16-17 READ. That’s what they had been saying about Elijah everywhere. It’s hard to start revival fire. I want to show you that in the three revival challenges Elijah made.
First with Ahab. It took courage for this guy to show up, a guy who’s name is “My God is Yahweh”, and demand an audience with Ahab and say, “Let’s see how well Baal can grow crops without rain. You say he’s the one who makes things grow?
Let’s put him to the test.” Then he went away into hiding. How did Elijah spend those next 3 ½ years? The Bible tells us: he prayed. He spent those years praying that it would not rain in Israel. And what made him think that such a prayer would be answered? I’ll tell you, it was his faith in the word of God. He was claiming the word of God. Because Deut. 11:16-17, says, “Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you and he will shut the heavens so it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you.”
Now Elijah knew that was the word of God. And he knew he could claim that promise in prayer and prayer would be effectual. But I got to tell you, it had to pain him to pray it. Just to think what he is doing. He is praying for drought and famine and devastation to come to the people he loves more than anyone on earth. He is praying for hardship and destitution to visit God’s people. But he was willing to ask for physical famine if it would put an end to the spiritual famine in Israel.
A. Revival Fire Calls for Hard “Prayers”
The first thing you need to know about revival fire. It calls for hard prayers. Elijah’s prayer was both terrible and necessary if the plague of sin was to be wiped out. Revival fire breaks out because somebody is so vexed and upset in their spirit at rebellion against God they begin to pray hard prayers that people be driven back to the Lord. You see God delighted in Elijah’s prayer even though it was hard. And God answered it and God will answer our prayers, I know he will, because the Bible says in James 5:17, Elijah was a man just like us. And he prayed earnestly that it would not rain and did not rain on the land for 3 ½ years. And so the issue is not if we can pray like Elijah, the issue is if we will. Now you got to understand we had five months of drought and we’re miserable. So three years of drought did not make Elijah popular. But the nation’s lack of eagerness to listen to the man did not dim his eagerness to speak. So look at I Kings 18:18-24 He said right back to Ahab…READ
B. Revival Fire Calls for Hard “Preaching”
Now I want to talk to you a second thing to notice the difference between Elijah and Obadiah. Obadiah was a devout man. He saved some prophets lives. But you know something? Obadiah’s diplomacy never starts revival. Revival doesn’t start until somebody demands a decision. Now these people were vacillating in their devotion and Elijah was determined to expose their double-mindedness. He called them altogether and said, “How long are you going to waiver between two opinions?”
Now that word “waiver” is interesting. It’s the exact same Hebrew word used down in verse 26 about the prophets of Baal dancing before their altar. It means to dance. What he’s saying is, “How long are you going to do this dance?” One day you wake up and dance with God a littler bit. One day you wake up and you dance with Baal a little bit. You’ll just dance with whomever you think is the prettiest at the moment. How long are you going to do that dance?”
Now notice “the people said nothing.” You know why they said nothing? They said nothing because that’s what people do when the preacher says something that’s right and they don’t want to hear it. You see revival fire calls for hard preaching. The kind of preaching that people know is right but they don’t want to hear. It makes them uncomfortable.
Famous preacher named Peter Cartright. An ol’ pioneer preacher who was famous for telling it like it was. He was preaching one time near Washington D.C. and the people at the church heard that Andrew Jackson was coming, so they pulled him aside and said, “Listen, Peter, the President is going to be hear Sunday and we know that sometimes you can get kind of offensive, so would you tone it down, we don’t want to upset the President.” So he got up in the pulpit and his first three sentences were: “I understand that the President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, is with us this morning. I have been asked to be guarded in my remarks. Andrew Jackson will go to hell if he doesn’t repent.” And all the people in the church were upset, but after it was over, Andrew Jackson grabbed his hand and shook it and said, “Sir, if I had a regiment of men like you I could whip the world.”
Look what Paul said to Timothy said in 2 Tim. 4:2 “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season;” Now notice the three kinds of preaching he wants the minister to do: “correct, rebuke and encourage..” Now which one of those do you think is the most popular? “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
But Elijah wasn’t interested in speaking to itching ears so he said, “You pick a bull, I’ll pick a bull. You say Baal is the god of fertility. He’s the god that sends rain? Well, starting a fire shouldn’t be hard for him.” So in I Kings 18:25-27 READ. Evidently, Elijah did not know about political correctness. READ 27-29. You notice Elijah is not just wanting to win a duel, he is wanting to expose Baalism for it’s idiocy. And he didn’t care if his taunts were politically incorrect. The impotence of false religions needs to be exposed. All dogs don’t go to heaven. There is truth and there is untruth.
They tell story, in 1500’s there was a Japanese war lord named Hodi Ish. And he wanted to build a great temple to his god Buddah. He put 50,000 men to work for five years to build a collosal statue of Buddah. They had just opened the temple when the earthquake of 1596 came and collapsed and destroyed the whole thing. They say he got so angry he took an arrow and shot it at the broken statue and said, “I put you here at great expense and you can’t even take care of your own temple.” Elijah wanted the people to look at these guys out there dancing, cutting themselves, bleeding, screaming and say, “This is who you’ve been worshipping? You’ve given your money, you’ve given your crops, you’ve given your babies to these lunatics? I want you to take a good look at how low men sink when they leave God.
And then I Kings 18:25:27 READ. In otherwords he wanted the people to get as close to revival flame as they could get. Now I like how he rebuilt the altar. It says he took 12 stones. Now that was a slap to Ahab because he only ruled ten tribes. 4
But he took 12 stones and then did something kind of interesting, you got to remember they didn’t have rain in 3 ½ years. He said, “Find me four big jugs of water.” And he just poured it on the altar. He said, Do it again!” They did it again. He said, “Do it again!” They did it again. Water is just dripping everywhere, a big trench around the altar. The in verse 36-37. (Now here’s what revival is).
Now notice he didn’t even get to the part about praying for fire to come down. God was so eager to turn their hearts back. God was so eager to send revival, he didn’t even wait for Elijah to stop praying. VOOM! Fire just came down. And the Bible said the people just fell down prostrate and started shouting, “The Lord is God! The Lord is God! Yahweh is God. Jehovah, He is God!” And there was flame kindled in their hearts. But Elijah knew they still had to do one more thing if that flame was going to burst into a blaze.
C. Revival Fire Calls for Hard “Prescriptions”
I Kings 18:40 READ If you want revival you gotta be ready for God to tell you some things that are hard to do. Was Elijah cruel? Did he have to go that far? Did he have to have those guys slaughtered? Did he have to be so radical. Listen church. Obeying the Word of God is always radical. And the Word of God said in Exodus 22:20, “Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed.” It’s radical to obey God’s Word. But revival fire depends on it. It depends on getting rid of that which displeases God. Even if it’s hard medicine to swallow. Would you thank a surgeon that only wanted to remove some of your disease for not being cruel? There was disease in Israel. And there is nothing that extinguishes revival like a cold, unwillingness to put to death what displeases God.
It says that when Caesar brought the Roman troops across the channel into England, he lead them up to the cliffs of Dover, and every boat they had crossed Caesar had set on fire to. They could not go back, they had to go forward and conquer and they did.
Could it be that revival waits for your decision to burn some things; to put some things to death? Sometimes you have to set a fire before a fire will fall. Let me show you in Acts 19:18-19 in city of Ephesus it says..READ. Now look in verse 20, “IN THIS WAY THE WORD OF THE LORD SPREAD WIDELY AND GREW IN POWER.” And revival broke out in Ephesus because people were ready to burn that which was dishonoring God.
The issue is not whether or not revival fire can still fall from heaven. The issue is whether we yearn to burn. So Elijah is challenging you and me this morning:
1. Stop the Dance
He’s challenging you, number, to stop doing the dance. Stop the vaselation. I know it’s easy when you’re in a culture where you’re outnumbered just like the Israelites, to do the dance. But ask God to deliver you from that kind of double-mindedness. I want to give you a prayer this week that I want you to pray from
Psalm 86:11, “Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.” Would you pray that prayer this week?
Roy Coop, well known minister talks about when he was a young teenager back in the 50’s and the Korean conflict was breaking out, he felt the call of God to enter the ministry so he enrolled in Minnesota Bible College. Well, he knew some of his classmates would say he was just doing that to avoid going to war, so he drove down to the gas station where they hung out to explain his decision, but they had already heard about it before he got there. And so he got out of his car. One of the biggest guys started saying, “There’s chicken Roy. Chicken Roy. To afraid to go fight for his country.” Now Roy was 6’2” himself, and he got out of the car, walked up to the man and put his finger in his face and said, “Listen. I just signed up for an army you don’t have the guts to join.”
2. Voice your Choice.
The second thing he challenges you to do is Voice Your Choice. To make your allegiance clear. And that’s what God is calling you to. In your school, in your office, to be the person who starts the fire. Your not afraid to make your allegiance clear.
I came across a great story Senator McCain tells. Prisoner of war of North Vietnamese. Tells that most of their time kept in tiny cells one person to a room, but towards the end, because of pressure from America, the Vietnamese took POW’s and put them in cells of 30-40 and started letting them get care packages from home. He said it was a great encouragement for us to be with other prisoners and have that fellowship. He said he was in a cell with about 30 POW’s and one named Lt Commander Mike Christian, a navy officer. They all were given blue shirts to sleep in. Mike had fashioned needle out of bamboo and took strips of red and white cloth, and in back of his shirt he sewed a little American flag. And every night he said, he would take his shirt off and put it on the wall and all 30 soldiers would stand and put their hands on hearts and say Pledge of Allegiance. Senator McCain said most people don’t think Pledge means much but in those days that was best part of day. But he said one night North Vietnamese came in and saw what they were doing. They grabbed shirt and ripped it down and grabbed Mike and gone several hours. They said later they brought him back and threw him in cell. Beaten badly didn’t know if he was alive. Face was beaten so bad they couldn’t recognize him. Blood was pouring out of his nose. He didn’t move. So they turned over on their cots to go to sleep. Later that night Senator McCain heard a noise. Saw Mike in the dim light, on the ground, looking for pieces of red and white cloth. He was sewing a new flag.
I think God would like to find a heart in this room he could start a fire with. He wants to set you on fire and he wants to use you to start a fire. And the question is not, “Where is the God of Elijah?”
The question is where are the Elijahs of God?
INVITATION
(Fashioned for my audience from a series by Rich Atchley)
