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At the Mouth of the Cave
A sermon
by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, May 21, 2006
I am not the only who
has been enchanted by the story of Elijah. Mendelssohn composed a whole musical
in behalf of Elijah and today, I turn back to look at him.
I have done that from
this pulpit before. Been several years, but he has become a significant factor
in my life in recent days as I’ve studied the pattern.
It was Elijah, you know,
at the Mount of Transfiguration, that stood shoulder to shoulder with Moses as
the Lord met with them on the mount. Three biggies: Moses, Elijah, and our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. Back in the Old Testament days, Elijah was thought of
as kind of the all-universe prophet. He was the biggie, the top of the list. One
reason that I am so attracted to his story is because, here is one who is all
everything insofar as spirituality is concerned, who wound up like the rest of
us. On that day when in 1st Kings 18, the story is told, he went to
the opposing religion of his day, which was far and away the most popular and if
they’d taken surveys in those days, probably been 70 or 80% of the population,
called the religion of Baal.
Baal was a god who
allowed anything and everything. There were no boundaries ~ everything was
negotiable. Sound familiar? Elijah decided he’d have a contest with these
people. So they went up to the mountain and he said, here’s what we’re going to
do. I make me an altar and a sacrifice. You make an altar and a sacrifice and
we’ll find out who’s the real deal. We’ll find out whose god is the real god,
who will send fire from heaven, consume the altar. Four hundred of them showed
up. Elijah was by himself. Four hundred, early morning, up dancing around the
altar, looking up at the sky, appealing to their god to send fire from heaven. I
can just picture at 9 or 10 or 11 in the morning, Elijah getting a little bit,
oh, shall we say, raucous. Where’s your god? Maybe he went to Bermuda for the
weekend. Or maybe he just slept late. Do you suppose he’s deaf and can’t hear? I
imagine he pulled out all kinds of barbs. In the middle of the afternoon, they
were finished. They had gone so far as to gash themselves as a symbol of their
devotion to their god. Elijah had his turn.
First thing he did is he
had the people dig a trench around the fire and had it filled with water. A
moat. And then he had them douse the altar with water. Looked at it and said,
“Do it again.” That’s in 34th verse of the 18th chapter.
“Do it again.” It was really a Baptist experience. They immersed it totally. As
if that wasn’t enough, he said, “Do it a third time.” By now, after they had
totally baptized that alter, there wasn’t anything close to the altar that
wasn’t wet. Elijah must have looked like he had just swum across the Chesapeake
Bay. Then he started to pray and he prayed that the Lord God, the God of gods,
would send the fire from heaven. And by the time he had finished praying, he had
to jump back because here came the fire. It made that water look like water when
it’s been put on a hot skillet. Consumed not only the sacrifice, but the whole
alter. Amazing!
Now because of this, all
of the Baalites turned to the Lord God. Right? Wrong! None of them. We have not
one mention of a convert. You see, you may never have thought of this. Miracles
can answer prayer and miracles, and this is what this was, miracles can impress
and miracles can give evidence but miracles don’t save. Only God saves. And only
God’s presence can nurture and empower. Difference between what you do and who
you are. And it’s so easy in a church service like this, to miss that
distinction, to miss the difference between what God has done and who God is.
And the power and the presence and the inner peace come from God, not from what
he has done.
Well, Elijah was so
proud, he went, well, there was a queen by the name of Jezebel. Now, she was
more than one who wore a crown. She was a real hussy. She just was something.
She was one of the meanest women who’s ever been lived. And she was converted
and became a follower, here again, wrong, wrong, wrong. She said when she heard
all about it, “I’ll get that guy before the day’s over.” Sent all the troops
after him. And Elijah, bless him, in behalf of all of us, all of us who are
weak, all of us who don’t bat a thousand, all of us who needs God’s grace, all
of us who needed a teachable moment, he ran. Cowardly, the man who prayed fire
from heaven, ran. Ran past Beersheba, that’s in the desert, ran past that, deep
in the desert, and the only tree he could find was a broom tree. Now, what’s a
broom tree? You probably haven’t ever seen one. Well, I hadn’t ‘til I was in
east Africa. A broom tree is looked, well, to oversimplify, it looks like an
upside down broom. Here you got the trunk and then you got all of the things
that you make brooms out of, coming out of the top. Not much shade there, but
that’s all he could find. Elijah under the broom tree. King James says, juniper
tree, but the, the right translation is probably broom tree.
Now what does God do?
Does God come set up his pulpit and preach him a sermon about courage? No. Does
he shame him into going back? No. Does he condemn him because of his cowardice?
No. Long time before the Lord Jesus Christ came, God is a god of grace. And you
know, he knows what Elijah needs. Listen to me, he knows what you need too. And
if you listen, he’ll help you to meet that need. The Lord God knows you. Well,
he fed him and he rested him. He fed him and he rested him. Scripture says until
he was strong enough to go and he sent him southward, Mount Horeb. That’s
another name for Sinai. You recall Moses got the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai.
And in the 19th chapter, the 8th verse, he got up and ate
and drank, and strengthened by that food, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights
until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. And then he went into a cave and
spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him, “What are you doing here,
Elijah?” Pause. That’s the same basic question God asked Adam after Adam had
sinned and fled and hid. Did God need to know where Adam was? No. Did God need
to know where Elijah was? No. What God needed Elijah to do was to ask the
question, “How’d you get here? What do you need? Look at yourself. Don’t blame
Jezebel. And don’t blame King Ahab. And don’t blame your fellow Israelites. Look
at yourself. How’d you get here, Elijah?”
This morning, just in
case you’re playing the blame game, take a look at yourself. God comes to you
and says, “How’d you get here?” Elijah gives him quite an answer. I’m going to
talk about that in just a second, but after he’s answered, God puts him on the
side of a mountain. And on the side of that mountain, he says, “Go and stand on
the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for I’m going to pass right by you.”
And then comes a great and powerful wind. It was so powerful the rocks rolled.
And then came an earthquake, shook the whole mountain. And then came fire and
the Bible says, “And the Lord was not in them.” What’s that mean to you? Put a
name on your wind. Put a name on your earthquake. Put a name on your fire. I’ll
tell you what mine are. The wind, the swirling winds of responsibility. And you
are responsible people. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be who you are. You’re
responsible people, but I need to remind you that responsibility, as good as it
is, and we almost worship it in America, as good as it is, it’s a taker, not a
giver. Look at a sponge. Fill it with water and then squeeze it until it’s dry.
That’s what responsibility does. That’s what a sponge is for. That’s good. But
here’s the question, who’s going to fill it up? Where you going to get your
strength for all of, where, where is all of the joy going to come for, from, in
the midst of responsibility? You can be responsibility bound. And you can’t get
spiritual strength by simply adding to your responsibilities. Then there is that
earthquake, the unexpected, the thing that before, always used to happen to
everybody else, now has happened to you. Could be a death in the family. Could
be a divorce. Could be the loss of a job. Could be, being transferred. The
earthquake. That earthquake just shakes you. Could be doubt. One of the
strongest earthquakes is to doubt. And then there is the fire, the fire from
heaven. And the fire from heaven, I would think, would be the answer. After all,
that fire has chased Baalites into embarrassment, and the fire has come from
God. Ah! It’s from God, but it’s not God. And what Elijah needs is not what God
sends, what Elijah needs is God.
Friend, your personal
relationship with the Lord is the most important thing that can possibly happen
during the good times and the tough times of your life, because it is there that
you’re going to get your strength. It is from that you’re going to get your
joy. It is from that you’re going to get your affirmation. If you’re here just
because it’s another thing on your agenda, God bless you. I’m so glad you’re
here, but I hope I can take you to the next level. We’re here to worship God
because we need him, because he is so very, very important to us. God comes to
Elijah in a still, small voice. God gets our attention not by the spectacular,
and not by a power point, and not by a multi-media presentation. Like he did on
the mountainside, God comes to us in the quietest way possible. It can be
translated any way you want it, but it will be inadequate because it implies the
silent presence of God. King James says, “still, small voice,” NIV, “silent
whisper.” One from east Africa calls it a “thin silence.” What is a thin
silence? I don’t know but it communicates to me. It means that God comes to us,
you know he’s there. The presence is real. It has captured you. You know it has
entered into the very heart of your heart and yet, if you were going to describe
what you’re feeling and what you’re hearing, you don’t have words for it. I’d
like to be able to say to you that it’s only two or three times a year that I
need this. Friends, you’re holier that I am, perhaps, but I’ve got to have it
every morning. Because the responsibility sometimes I wake up with. And the
earthquake, sometimes I wake up with. And the spectacular demands I sometimes
wake up with. And just like lot of you, I carry inside of me a fearful child who
is fearful of the world in which I live. And there’s no soft word in any of
that. And so I have to get up and I have to go to the scripture and I have to
pray and after I’ve done my scripture and my prayer, I have learned the power of
that biblical word, “wait.” Isaiah 40:31, “But those who wait upon the Lord will
renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run
and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.” I can’t tell you how many
times that verse has been lived out in an early morning in my life. “But they
that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” And when it happens, how do
you describe it? I wish I could. But it is that still, thin voice, but most of
all, it’s the presence. The presence of the living God, right there, in my room,
in my place. The great bonus of being open before God is that he is open before
you.
Michael once was upon a
retreat. The last thing after this spiritual retreat, they were supposed to
write a letter as if God was writing a letter to them. And, ah, after they had
done that, the leader said, Okay, share that with us. And nobody would. Huh. I
probably wouldn’t have either. Finally a 21 year old girl by the name of Janie
said, “Well, I’ll share mine but you need to know I made a mistake at the very
beginning. You said that we were supposed to write an imaginary letter as if God
was writing it to us. And instead, I wrote a dialogue between me and God. Would
you like to hear it?” And everybody nodded their heads, of course, they didn’t
want to share their own. And so she said, “All right, this is a dialogue and I
start talking first.”
Janie said, “I feel
awkward. I feel awkward, God, because it’s been so long since I’ve been near
you.”
And God answers, “I’ve
missed you too. I think about you every day.”
Janie says, “I, I’ve
messed up. I’ve done a lot of things that I regret and that I’m sorry for, but I
did them. I’m sorry.”
God says, “It’s okay,
child. I know about them and I love you anyway, and I forgive you.”
Janie, “I don’t
understand. I don’t understand myself. I turn away. I ignore you as if you’re
not even there.”
And God says, “I’m still
here. I’m still right beside you.”
“Lord, I try to live
without you even though deep inside of me, I know you’re part of me. I don’t
understand why I do that.”
And God says, “You don’t
have to make yourself lovable to me, for me to love you. I love you just like
you are.”
“You mean even after
everything I’ve done and everything that has happened. Would I offend you if I
called you bizarre?”
And God answers, “I am
bizarre, more so than you’ll ever know.”
“Well, this may sound
strange to you, Lord, but could I please ask you to hold me for just a little
while.”
God answers, “My child,
I’ve been waiting for you with outstretched arms. Let’s get together.”
The still, thin presence
of God.
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