When God Showed Who He Was

Well, you may have heard of the expression, mountain top expression. Maybe you've even had an experience with the Lord that you would call a mountain top expression, something where some time, event when the Lord really spoke to your heart and did a great work in your life. Maybe you've had an experience like that. But maybe you've always wondered, where did that expression mountain top experience come from? Well, actually, that expression comes from several instances in the Bible where characters in the Word of God had amazing and unusual experiences with God on mountain tops. Think of Abraham and Mount Mariah, willing to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice and obedience to God. And there on that mountain top, he sees the provision of God of a lamb to take the place of his son. What a mountain top experience that was. Think of Moses and Mount Sinai and receiving the Ten Commandments and the Law of God directly from the voice and finger of God himself and then being allowed to see the after effects of God's glory as God passed by. And what a mountain top experience that was. Think of the Mount of Transfiguration, James and John and Elijah, the three inner circle of the disciples, allowed to be on the mount of Transfiguration with Jesus as they saw him transformed into the kind of glory that he will present when he comes at his second coming. What a mountain top experience that was. But possibly, the greatest mountain top experience recorded in the Bible is the one in our text for today, First Kings chapter 18, and that is Elijah on Mount Carmel. It is certainly the event that Elijah is best known for in his ministry in the word of God. Just to remind you, God has been challenged by the introduction of Bale worship. Remember that Bale is the principal male deity of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites. And Jezebel has brought the worship of Bale into the Israelite kingdom. And there's kind of been what we call a syncretism that is emerging of Bale worship along with the worship of Jehovah. And that's important to understand for the story. But God himself, Jehovah has been challenged by Bale worship in the day. Remember that Bale was considered the God of the weather, the God of the storms, the God of rain, and thus giving fertility to the land and producing crops. So he was worshipped as the God of heaven, the God of the sun, the God of fire that comes from the heavens as a part of those storms, and thus produces the fertility of the land. The worship of Bale included extravagant gifts to him, ceremonies that featured blatant immorality. There was also a female goddess called Asherah. And so you can imagine that the immorality as a part of the worship with the emphasis on the fertility of the land, but it also involved child sacrifice of all things. And there was also a fervent dancing frenzy dancing on the part of the prophets of Bale. And even prophets of this religion running through the streets of Canaanite cities clothed in women's garments. It was wild and woolly to worship Bale. Kind of sounds like today in our country doesn't, but anyway, that's for another time. This was a religious system that was absolutely immoral and pagan at its roots. God had been challenged by that system, and you know what? God accepts the challenge. God says, okay, you challenging who is the real God, who is the true God? I accept that challenge. This story today in 1 Kings 18 is the pinnacle of God showing who he was, that he was the true God. Now he'd been showing that for three and a half years in the drought upon the land, that Elijah had shown what happened and said what happened. But this is the pinnacle of God showing who he was. Five times in this story, something like this is mentioned that God will show that he is the true God. Five times in this story. So it's obviously the intent of this story to show that God, Jehovah God is the true God. But it's interesting to me that God chose a man through whom he would show himself to be powerful and alive and the true God. And you know what? God's still looking for those kind of people. God's still looking for the kind of people that will allow him to work through them and show that he is the true God. Because today, God is challenged by false gods. Oh, they may not carry the name of Bale, they may not be worshiped with literal idols in people's homes or places of gathering. But God is still challenged by false gods. There's the false god of religion that basically says you can do enough to please God and get to heaven on your own. There is the god of humanism that says everything you need is found within yourself. So you just have to self-actualize. You have to discover yourself because when you become your true self, then you are everything you were made to be. That's the god of humanism. Then there's the god of materialism that says all you really need for life is staff, a good bank account and all of your possessions. And that's all you really need for life. So work for that, get all you can of that. But another form of materialism says that everything that we see, every material thing in this world came about through natural processes without any divine intervention at all. That's materialism dressed up as science. And then there's the god of pluralism in our culture today, which basically says every view demands an equal hearing so that you can believe what you want to believe, I can believe what I want to believe and every view is on an equal standing. That's pluralism. And then there's the god of relativism in our culture today that challenges the god of the Bible. Relativism says there are no absolute truths. There is no absolute right, there's no absolute wrong. Everybody gets to decide for himself or herself what his truth or her truth is. Everybody gets to decide what's right and what's wrong on their own. And it may not be right for you and it may not be wrong for you. I get to choose my own right and wrong. That's relativism. That is a false god. And it has challenged the god of the Bible. And so god is still looking today for people who will let him shine through them and will thus shine their lives brightly to show who the true god is. Let's look quickly at these verses in the New Testament that show this. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 16 says, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works. And notice what happens as a result of them seeing your light glorify your father in heaven. God wants to show who he is through your light shining. Ephesians chapter 5 says much the same thing. Verse 8, For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. And then he goes on to say, But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light. For whatever makes manifest is light. God wants the light of your life to shine on the darkness of the idols of this day and prove that God, the god of the Bible, is the true and living God. And then one final verse, Philippians chapter 2, verses 14 and 15, Paul says to that church, Do all things without complaining and disputing that you may become blameless and harmless. Children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Here it is, among whom you shine as lights in the world. We live in a crooked, that means it perverse, twisted generation. And God wants us to shine our light brightly. So God is looking for people through whom he will show himself to be alive and powerful. God's looking for those kind of people here today. God's looking for us to be the kind of people through whom he will show himself to be alive and powerful. Elijah was that kind of man. Elijah is the man God has chosen and prepared to stand on Mount Carmel to challenge the false gods of his day and to show through his light that God was alive and powerful. What kind of man was Elijah? So what kind of people do we need to be to be the kind of light? Well first of all God is looking for people of conviction. People of conviction. We see that in Elijah's life in verses 17 through 19. We're going to read all those verses at once. We'll break them up a little bit. But I want to first of all explain what I mean by conviction. A conviction is something you believe so strongly that you're willing to base your life on it. And you would, if need be, be willing to give your life for it. It changes your life and it is your life. That's a conviction. That's not just a personal preference. A conviction is a truth you hold deeply in the very most inner resources of your heart and life. Elijah was that kind of man. Elijah was that kind of person. He had that kind of conviction and there are three kinds of conviction that he had in this story that we need to have. First of all he had a conviction about sin. A conviction about sin. Look at verses 17 through 19. Then it happened when Ahab saw Elijah that Ahab said to him, is that you, oh, troubleer of Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel. But you and your father's house have in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the bails. Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the 450 prophets of Bale and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. Elijah had a conviction about sin and this conviction is seen in the confrontation with Ahab. Elijah had been told to present himself to Ahab, the King in verse 1. That meeting had been arranged in verses 15 and 16 and the first thing Ahab says when he sees Elijah is, is that you, oh, trouble of Israel? Interestingly enough the Hebrew word for trouble or sometimes is translated snake in the old testament. So literally he was saying, is that you, you old snake? And Elijah gave it right back to him. Elijah is not intimidated by him being king. Elijah does not apologize for what he has said or done or believes. Elijah does not back down. He basically says to Ahab, I'm not the snake here. Listen, you're the snake. You're the one that has troubled Israel. It is you and your idolatry that has troubled Israel. I'm not the problem here, Ahab. You are the problem. Let's get that straight. And it didn't matter that Ahab was the king because Elijah had a conviction about sin. No matter the position of Ahab, Elijah was going to speak truth to power. Elijah was going to speak God's truth to this king regardless of what it might mean to him. We need that kind of conviction about sin. Conviction about sin exposes sin and allows God to do His work. We must do that in our preaching. Preaching must expose sin. Preaching that only talks about the love of God as great as that is is only telling half of the story. God's love is set in stark contrast against the backdrop of our sin. So preaching must expose sin. But personal examination must also expose sin. It's not enough for the preacher to expose sin from the pulpit. Both preacher and people in the pew need to be exposing sin in our own lives. You know what Proverbs chapter 28, verse 13 says, it will be on the screen for you. He who covers His sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forstakes them will have mercy. In order for God's light to be seen brightly, in order for him to show that he is alive and powerful through us, we need to be exposing sin in our own lives. Now we're all guilty. We've all failed. The key is not whether or not you're sin. That's a given. The key is how you deal with that sin. What you do with it, do you confess it and forsake it? That's what God is looking for. We need to have that kind of conviction of sin, about sin. The second kind of conviction we need to have if we're people of conviction, is we need to have a conviction about God. And that's seen in the challenge to the people. Look at verses 20 and 21. After Elijah had told Ahab in verse 19, gather all the prophets here on Mount Carmel, verse 20. 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 Bale follow him, but the people answered him, not a word, which is dead silence. But in this challenge that God presented through Elijah to the people, there is very clearly on Elijah's part a conviction about God. Now when Elijah says, if the Lord is God, there's no doubt in his mind. He knows, Jehovah is the true God, the only true God. That's, there's not a question in Elijah's mind about that. What Elijah is saying is if that's true and it is, since that's true, then follow him wholeheartedly. Don't try this mixture of stuff. This amalgamation, this syncretism of little Bale here, little God here, you know, we'll try to please everybody. He's saying, no, no, you need a conviction about God. There's only one God, one true God. When he says to the people in verse 21, how long will you falter between two opinions? The Hebrew word for falters, an interesting word. It literally means to hop or dance on one foot and then to hop and dance on the other foot. Don't worry, I'm not going to try to show it to you. But it literally means to dance or hop on one foot, then try the other foot. And when he says opinions, the Hebrew word is literally a fork, like a fork and a tree limb or a fork and a road. In other words, you got to decide which way to go. So it's very clear that what he's saying is, you're trying to hop and dance over here for Bale, you're trying to hop and dance over here for God. You haven't made up your mind. If God is truly God, you've got to serve Him wholeheartedly. You say, well, wait a second, none of us do that, do we? Really? Of course we do. There are a lot of us, all of us at some point in our lives, falter, halt between two opinions. Just try to straddle the fence, one foot on the side of commitment to Christ, one foot on the side of pleasing ourselves. One foot on the side of following the will of God, one side on the one foot on the side of what I want to do, regardless of what God's Word says. One side on fervent worship of God, the other side on worship of our own selves, our own ideas, our own will. One side on commitment to Christ, one side on commitment to the world, and what the world says, what the world says is the measure of success. We all, to some degree, or at some point, are guilty of the same thing that Elijah condemned the Israelites for. Of dancing on one foot over here, dancing on the other foot over here, trying to please both sides. And what God is saying to us today, just like he said to Israel through Elijah, is this, if I am really God, then serve me with all of your heart. Remember the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your mind, all your heart, all your strength, not halfway, not choosing. I'm going to live for the world during the week, but I'm going to really be for God on Sunday. No, it's all for him or all for nothing. That's the choice that we have. Romans 12, verse 1, lays it out very clearly for us when Paul says to the Roman church, I besiege you therefore, brethren, don't read the rest of the verse, because whenever you see the word therefore in your Bible, you all just have to go back and see what it's there for. That's a basic principle of Bible interpretation. What Paul is doing is he summarizing the first 11 chapters in that expression. He says, I've just got done in the first 11 chapters explaining to you the gospel that we are all sinners, but that God loved us so much that he sent his son to be the propitiation, the satisfactory sacrifice for our sins. He died in our place. And salvation comes through faith in Christ. And then once you come to know Christ, it revolutionizes your life. You begin to grow in Christ. That's chapter 6 through 8. And God has a plan for all of human history that this all fits into. That's chapters 9 through 11. So after all these mercies of God in chapters 1 through 11, what is our response? Our response is that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, the only logical thing to do. After what God has done for us is to give ourselves wholeheartedly to him. And when you place in the Old Testament, in the Jewish worship system, when you placed an animal on the altar, it stayed there. Its life was taken. It was not allowed to crawl back off the altar. And what Paul is saying, use that symbolism in your mind. Put yourself on the altar. Don't crawl off. You're not going to be killed. You're going to be a living sacrifice, but you're going to be a sacrifice. You're going to be wholly devoted to God and His will and His purpose for your life. So there has to be a conviction about God. If He is truly who He is and He is, then we ought to be given wholly over to Him, in our commitment to Him. So Elijah was a person of conviction about sin, a conviction about God. We need to be also, but thirdly, he was a man who had a conviction about truth, a conviction about truth. And this is described in verses 22 to 29 in the contest with the prophets. It's very interesting how this contest works out. And I think a lot of times we've misunderstood what Elijah was trying to do. So let's just look at it, verse 22. Then Elijah said to the people, I alone am left a prophet of the Lord, but Bale's prophets are 450 men. Now I want you to see what he's doing here. He's speaking to the people and everything he's going to say to them is designed to draw a stark contrast between Him and the prophets of Bale. In other words, we're not on the same side, guys. We're not doing the same thing here. We're not even worshiping the same God. There is a distinct difference. So he says, I alone am a prophet of Jehovah. Over here, notice, they're separate from me. We're not the same group. Okay, they're 450 prophets of Bale. In the verse 23, he says, therefore let them give us two bulls. In other words, we're not going to share a bull. We're not going to split a bull in half. You know, this is one bull belongs to both of us. We're kind of in the same thing, you know. You're not, no, no, two bulls, two separate bulls. Again, he's drawing a stark contrast between the prophets of Bale and Him is the prophet of God. So let them give us two bulls and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, lay it on the wood, put no fire under it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, put no fire under it. Again, even in the preparation, it's clear, these are two separate things going on. They're not the same thing. This is not the same kind of worship. These are two separate things. Elijah says, two different bulls, two different preparations, two different ways of doing this. We're not on the same team here. I'm not with these guys over here. His whole point is to show that there is a distinction, a stark difference between Bale worship and the worship of the true God. Now, when he says twice and he'll say it again, a third time, put no fire under it. The reason he said that was because in ancient times, in many pagan temples, there was some trickery that was used to try to convince the masses. And the trickery would be sometimes a secret passageway or maybe a trench that would lead up to the bottom of the sacrifice and you would put some coals underneath the wood of the sacrifice and then you would blow air through that trench or that secret passageway and it would cause those coals to just flame up into the kindling and the fire so that it looked like something miraculous had happened. All of a sudden, this sacrifice is just consumed and Elijah is basically saying to him, no tricky business here. No trench that you're going to put, you know, fire air through to spark a fire, put no fire under it, no tricky business here. He wants to make clear. There's a difference. And then verse 24, 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. Notice again, the great difference. You call on your gods, little G, the Bales. I'm calling on the true God. We're not calling on the same God. He wants everybody to know. We're not calling on the same God. There's only one true God. Now, the way there's so much confusion today about who really God is. God is the God of the Bible, Jehovah, the true, one, and only God. And those who say, well, we're worshiping the same God as these other religions. No, no, not at all. There's a stark difference. And if we're going to be people who have a conviction about truth, we need to understand the difference between other gods and the true God of the Bible. So everything Elijah has done, for this point is to show the stark difference between him and the prophets of Bale. But then he goes on. The way the sacrifices are done. Look at verse 25. Now Elijah said to the prophets of Bale, choose one bowl for yourselves. Prepare it first for you or many. I'm going to give you first dibs here because you'll butcher you over there. And he says, call on the name of your God, but put no fire under it. Again, no tricky business fellas. Verse 26. So they took the bowl, which was given them, and they prepared it and called on the name of Bale. From morning, even till noon, saying, oh, Bale, hear us, but there was no voice. No one answered. And they leaped about the altar that they had made. That goes on for at least three hours. From morning until noon, at least three hours, maybe longer. Why does Elijah let it go that long? Why doesn't he interrupt after two hours and say, it's obvious nothing's going to happen because he wants a stark difference to be seen in the way that this false God is approached and the way the true God has approached later. He wants it to be known. There's a big difference here. There's a big distinction here. So he just lets it go on and on and on. Find after three hours, the gods are not getting anywhere. So they start leaping. You know, they're dancing that they would do in the verse 27. And so it was at noon that Elijah, I get this, Elijah mocked them and said, cry aloud for he is a God. In other words, I mean, that's what you're saying, right? If he really is a God, just cry a little louder. Either he is meditating, oh, the sarcasm there. Maybe your God's meditating, you just hadn't heard you yet. Cry a little louder. Or he is busy. That's an interesting word. The Hebrew word translated busy is a word which literally means to relieve yourself. Literally. So basically what I say, maybe he's in the celestial mandrum. I mean, that's sarcasm. That's mockery. So just call out a little louder. He'll be out soon. Or he's on a journey. Maybe he's missing and he'll be back soon. Or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened. Now why the mockery? Why the sarcasm? Is Elijah just trying to play bad guy? No. What he's doing is he's trying to go them on even more fervent appeals to their God. So that again, the difference can be seen in what he does and what these prophets do. And it has that exact effect. Notice verse 28. So they cried aloud and cut themselves as was their custom with knives and lances until the blood gushed out on them. In bail worship, the priests would cut themselves so that they could mix their blood with the blood of the sacrifice and thinking that would please God even more. And so they're doing that now. Verse 29. When midday was passed, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. That was three o'clock in the afternoon. When the evening sacrifice would be offered in the temple. So they've been at it now for at least six hours. But notice how verse 29 is. But there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention. Well, that's almost like the death and nail of the hammer of bail worship. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. My friend, all of this that Elijah does in preparing the sacrifices, showing that there's a distinction between him and the prophets of bail, all that he does in allowing them to go on for hours, even goading them to go further and to be more fervent is to show a sharp distinction. It's all orchestrated to show a sharp distinction between true worship and false worship, true prophet and false prophets, the true God and the imposter God, bail, the false God. That's the reason for all of this. And God is still looking for people today who have a conviction about truth, who understand what the truth is because we believe the Bible. Our culture has completely thrown God to the side and His Word to the side. And God is looking for people who will say, this book is God's truth. There is a God who has revealed Himself in His Word and this book is perfect it is true and all it says, it is verbally given by God, inspired by Him. It is inherent, there is no error. This is the truth. And whatever God says is the truth. We need people who are willing to stand on this book today. That's what God's looking for. And that is going to become more and more critical in our culture as the culture continues to throw the Bible and God to the side and say, that's just outdated old stuff, archaic stuff. That's not the way we live today. God's looking for people who will say, that's the only way to live today. We are going to live that way and we're going to speak truth to our culture. One of my favorite historical characters is Abraham Lincoln. I love reading biographies of Lincoln. We spent two days on our honeymoon trip in Gettysburg because we did on our honeymoon. We love history. We love now that we don't have children anymore. We love reading all the signs in the museums. We just had a wonderful time. I love Abraham Lincoln. And we went into the house where Lincoln spent the night and finished the final touches of the Gettysburg address. We saw the preserved room, the actual bed where he spent the night. It was just an amazing thing to see. Lincoln, the story goes, Lincoln had a group come to him at the White House one day and they were presenting some kind of policy or law that they wanted to be considered and it had a really shaky argumentation for it. And so Lincoln with his home spun wisdom, which was amazing. Lincoln looked at them and said, how many legs would a sheep have if you called it's tail a leg and quickly they said five? And Lincoln said no. It would have four legs. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg. Now, you know what he's saying there? He's saying what we need to understand today. There is a created order instituted by God and calling something else the truth doesn't make it the truth. This is what makes it the truth. Could I be a little more specific? A man calling himself a woman does not make him a woman. A woman calling herself a man does not make her a man. God created the genders. Clearly, regentuses won. God created the male and female. That was his creation. I understand there's a lot of confusion today because we're being swamped by false teaching. God's looking for people who will say, I know the truth. I'm going to love people who are confused but I'm not going to back away from the truth. You know, calling a union between two of the same gender a marriage does not make it a marriage because God has built marriage in Genesis 2 on the basis of one man, one woman for life. It's between a man and a woman. That's what God instituted. That's the truth. Calling the taking of an unborn human life, reproductive health does not make it health in any way. It's murder. I mean, it's just like saying, well, I'm going to take the life of this two-year-old and call it family health. Really? But our culture has become so twisted and perverse. We are bail worshippers in our culture. We have substituted God in His Word with something else. Our own ideas, our own wants and desires. And God's looking for people who have a conviction about truth, who know the truth and are willing to stand for it. And when somebody says, oh, that's a fifth leg. No, no, that's a tale. That's not a leg. We need those kind of people today. People of conviction. You know what, I'm glad you don't have a clock up here today. I don't even know what time it is. But let's move on fairly quickly. God's looking for people of conviction. Secondly, He's looking for people of commitment, commitment. And I'm talking about commitment to detail. Look at verses 30 to 36. 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. I'm just going to read through this and depend on you to kind of pick out all the details as to how Elijah prepared his sacrifice. Verse 31, Elijah took 12 stones. Interesting. Why? According to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come saying, Israel should be your name. You know what he's doing there? He's re-emphasizing that we're in a divided kingdom now. But God intended this. God's truth in the beginning was one nation, 12 tribes. And I'm going to symbolize that here in the offering. All this detail is important. Verse 32, then the stones. With the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. You made a trench around the altar, altar large enough to hold two seas of seed. That's several bushes full of seeds, large enough to do that. Remember the trench or tunnel system I told you about that could often be used to trick people to thinking something miraculous happened? Well Elijah builds a trench. But look at what he does with the trench. Verse 34, Verse 33, put the wooden order, cut the boulding pieces, laid it on the wood, said fill four water pots with water, poured on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. Then he said do it a second time. They did it a second time. Then he said do it a third time. They did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar and he also filled the trench with water. He's going the extra step to show that he's not going to do any tricky business himself. I'm going to build a trench. You think that's for air that's going to burst those coals into flame? No, I'm going to pour water in it. There's no way that that can do what you think it might do. Verse 35, water ran all around the altar. He also filled the trench with water. 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, you are God and Israel. And I am your servant that I have done all these things at your word. The last part of that verse often gets neglected. Notice Elijah said, I've done all these things at your word. All of these little details of how to provide the sacrifice, build the altar, 12 stones, fill the trench with water. All of that was done in direct response to the command of God. I've done that at your word. And so Elijah's attention to detail shows this. It shows faithfulness in the little things. Does it really have to be 12 stones? Does it really have to be a certain kind of trench? Do I really need to waterport three times? Yeah, because God said do it that way. God is looking for faithfulness in the little things. In matters of integrity, God expects faithfulness in the little things. When I talk about people of commitment, I'm talking about people who are faithful in the little things. Jesus said in Luke chapter 16, he who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much. He who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore, if you've not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, and that's basically handling this world's money, if you haven't been faithful in that, who will commit to your trust? The true riches. You see, he's saying, if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own? So he's saying, we prove our commitment to him in the little things, in faithfulness, in the little things, in matters of integrity. I remember hearing a story about a man who was a young junior executive in a major corporation in America and the board of leaders of that ministry, the corporate board. They were looking for a new CEO of this company, and they were so impressed with this junior executive, who's only in his late 30s, that they were ready to promote him to be the CEO of this corporation. And so they met in a conference room in New York City, and they were ready to have the vote. They were wildbinded. His resume was great. The presentation was tremendous. They were ready to say, hey, he's our guy. And so they said, we're going to break for lunch. And they did. They broke for lunch, and the young executive walked over to a cafeteria-style restaurant across the street from the corporate headquarters. And it was going through the line. He did not know that several of the board members were behind him. So when he got up to a K&W kind of deal where you go up at the end, and you get a couple of pads of butter, he got three pads of butter and slid them under his napkin, so that the lady at the register would not see them. The board members noticed that. And when they got back to the boardroom, not only did they not promote him to be CEO, they fired him from his executive position. And he said, what happened? What did I do? They explained what they saw, and he was livid. You would fire me over six cents worth of butter? You know what the response was? If we can't trust you with six cents worth of butter, we can't trust you with six billion dollars of this company's funds either. And they were right. Because that's what Jesus said. People of commitment to the Lord are faithful in the little things of their lives. And when we are not faithful, when we fail, we are honest about what we've done, people of commitment. And then finally, people of confidence. I'm just going to mention this one. People of confidence. Elijah's prayer. I stood before a clock this morning, before we left home that had a second hand on it, and I prayed this prayer, as fervently and as deliberately as I could, and it took 20 seconds. 20 seconds to pray his prayer in verses 36 and 37. His confidence is seen in his prayer. It is simple. It is calm. It is short. In stark contrast, again, to the prophets of Bale. There's no screaming. There's no frenzied pressure dancing around. There's no repetition for hours on end to try to arm wrestle God. Into doing something, it is simple, calm, and short. But it is also from the heart. Just read it, and you can feel the passion of Elijah's heart as he prays this prayer, and it was with the proper motive. Elijah was not praying so that he would be recognized. Look at me. Look at me. I've got the truth. No. The whole point was that they will recognize your God. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm just your servant. And I've done all this at your word. It's your word that's important. And the point of this is that the people may know that you are the Lord God, that you've turned their hearts back to you, his praying with the proper motives, with the proper spirit, and God powerfully answers his prayer. We need that kind of confidence in God. Back in the 70s, when I love football, when Dan Fouts was beginning his Hall of Fame march as quarterback of the San Diego Chargers, he was a rookie that year, and he was having a bad game. And so the coach, two minutes left, and San Diego's behind the 14 points, he decided just to pull Fouts. And he put in the old grizzled veteran, Bobby Douglas. And Douglas straps on his helmet and starts out onto the field. And then he turns back to the coach and he says, Coach, you want me to win the game or just tie it? Wow, two minutes to go, that's confidence. You know what, we need that kind of confidence in God. Not in ourselves, not in our abilities, but in God. Elijah believed that without any frenzy dancing around, without any kind of shouting and yelling and trying to arm twist God, with vain repetitions, he could pray a simple heart felt prayer for the glory of God, and God would answer. And God did. People of confidence, confidence is seen in his prayer, but that kind of confidence is built in secret. God had been preparing him for this day for three and a half years. And in everything that he had done in Elijah's life, he was preparing him for this day. We need people today who have, or who are people of conviction, people of commitment, and people of confidence. And God's never underestimate the power of your life if you are totally dedicated to the Lord. Never underestimate what God could do with your life if you are totally dedicated to the Lord. Elijah was that kind of person. God's still looking for those kind of people today. Would you join me in prayer? Father, we want to see in our lives in our churches and how we would long to see it in our nation the kind of moving of God's power that shows you are truly alive and powerful. But Lord, we also know you're looking for people through whom you can shine your light to show that you're alive and powerful. Help us to be those kind of people. People who have conviction, people who have commitment, people who are faithful in prayer, and have the kind of confidence that believes you can answer prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.