James Merritt - Stand Tall Stand Strong
As I prepared this message, it was two weeks after the worst school shooting in the history of our state. I’m sitting at my desk and kept replaying that event over and over in my mind. Those of you who are older, like I am, find it hard to relate to the thought of anybody bringing a gun to school; it never even crossed anyone’s mind. It’s just a different day. As I thought about this and ran it through my mind repeatedly, two thoughts hit me: number one, evil is real, and number two, evil is rampant. It’s everywhere; there is no evil-free zone anywhere in the world. So, I thought about something I read years ago that an author said, and I want to put it on the screen because it is the complete opposite of what the world thinks about the world we live in. It’s totally contrary to how the world views people in general, and for some of you, it might burst your bubble.
But I want you to listen to what this man said: «I will never understand those who can read the headlines every day and then assert that people are basically good. I will never understand those who believe that spiritual problems can be solved with social programs, that peace can be achieved by treaties, that prejudices can be eliminated by discussion, that rebellious youth can be corrected with heavy doses of esteem and understanding, that scores can be healed through therapy, that wrongs can be righted by litigation. Evil is woven into the fabric of humanity, and it’s obvious.
If you think people are basically good, have kids. I’ve told you this a million times: you do not have to teach kids to lie; you have to teach them to tell the truth. You do not have to teach brothers and sisters to fight; you have to teach them to get along. You don’t have to teach kids to be selfish; you have to teach kids to share. So, that ought to tell all of us in this room that people are not basically good; they’re basically evil. We’ve been studying one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament in a series we’ve been calling 'The God'—his name was Elijah. If Elijah were here today, he’d be amening what I just said; he would agree with that statement. When you study and read about Elijah, the only account we have of his life shows him facing evil. Sometimes he’s fleeing evil, but all the time he’s fighting evil. Now, that wasn’t true just because he was a prophet.
You may say, „Well, he was always getting himself in trouble.“ That wasn’t his problem. The reason he was always facing evil, fighting evil, and sometimes fleeing from evil is that he was living the God life. Now, don’t confuse the God life with the good life; the God life is more than the good life; it’s actually the best life you could possibly live. However, this is the point I want to make today: I don’t care how much you love Jesus; I don’t care how committed you are to God; I don’t care how hard you try to dot every i and cross every t. I don’t care how hard you try to do things right and do the right things. You’re going to face evil in your life; you’re going to get the short end of the stick. People are going to do you wrong; you’re going to get things you don’t deserve. That is just the world we live in. The presence of evil goes with the territory of the God life, and Elijah knew that.
Now we’re coming to the close of the life of this great prophet. We’re going to move from First Kings to Second Kings chapter 1, so if you brought a copy of God’s Word—I did your homework for you—go to Genesis, go 13 books left, and you’ll get to 2 Kings. I want you to go to Second Kings chapter 1. Now, the last time we saw Elijah, he had confronted King Ahab and Jezebel over murdering an innocent man named Naboth just so they could steal his land, just so they could take his property. And Elijah, if you remember, not only predicted they would die, he prophesied how horrible their deaths would be, and they both died just exactly as he said. Now, I’m sure that when they finally were dead, having dealt with them the whole time, Elijah was probably thinking to himself, „Now I can relax; now I can rest; now I can retire; I don’t have to deal with evil anymore. Maybe I can just live out the rest of my days quietly.“ But no, you can’t do that when you live the God life, and here’s why.
As you’re going to see, Elijah had a problem. It wasn’t Ahab; he was dead. It wasn’t Jezebel; she was dead. The problem was they had a child, and the child didn’t learn; the child didn’t get it; the child didn’t know. You realize the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, and Elijah is about to learn what I’m going to teach you today: if you live the God life, you will never retire from dealing with evil. You’ll never retire from confronting evil because people who live the God life are always going to have to put up with evil. And what you’re going to see this morning is this: when we see evil, we must stand against evil because if you would say today, „Pastor, I want to live the God life.“
Well, maybe more than any sermon in this series, we’re going to find out whether you really mean that or you don’t because when it comes to evil—and there’s plenty of it to go around—if you live the God life, you’re going to do three things. One, you have to do: first of all, we will confront the presence of evil. You can just make that; you can absolutely write that down: we will confront the presence of evil. Let me go back to the last time we saw Ahab. It’s been ten years since Elijah confronted Ahab over murdering Naboth and stealing his property; you remember we told the story last week. Well, they killed him because they wanted his property, and so he and Jezebel made up this lie about him and killed him so they could get his property. But now Ahab’s son is on the throne, and you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, „Okay, surely you’ve learned your lesson; surely you’re going to be better than your parents; surely you’re going to be different.“
No! Go back to First Kings 22. Here’s what we read: „Ahaziah, son of Ahab, became king of Israel in Samaria in the 17th year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and he reigned over Israel two years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord because he followed the ways of his father and his mother and of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. He served and worshiped Baal and aroused the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, just as his father had done.“ I scratch my head; I close my eyes and go, „You’ve got to be kidding me!“ Just think about this child’s upbringing. Ahaziah had grown up and had witnessed and lived through the three-and-a-half-year drought that they had because Elijah had shut the spouts of heaven—there was no water, there was no rain, famines throughout the land. He lived and saw that; three and a half years, that boy was on Mount Carmel when the fire fell on the sacrifice because God answered the prayer of Elijah.
He saw 450 prophets of Baal die; they were executed because they followed the wrong God. Then he witnessed his mom and his dad die this horrific death; they died just exactly as Elijah said they would die. Now, you would think this child would learn his lesson; you would think the child could follow the crumbs—how did it work out for your mom and dad, son? Not too well, so why don’t you try something different? Nope, never learned! But then, to make matters worse, and to see just how bad this child is, we read this: after Ahab’s death, Moab rebelled against Israel. So now this son, this king, is a wartime king; he’s got a fight on his hands. Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself, so he sent messengers saying to them, „Go and consult Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury.“
Now this is the story: he falls through a lattice and is severely injured. I don’t know exactly what the extent of his injuries is, but he’s in bad shape. So what’s he going to do? Is he going to learn his lesson and call for Elijah? Not calling for Elijah? Is he going to call on the God of Elijah? Not going to call on the God of Elijah? What are you going to do? I’m going to do exactly what Mom and Dad would do; he turns to this pagan god called Baal. Now let me tell you about Baal; that word is only used four times in the Old Testament, always in this passage of Scripture. The name Baal means God or Lord, and the Hebrew word `zebub` means fly. So it literally means the Lord of the Flies. He’s going to go to the God of the Flies to try to get healed.
Now, why would they call him that? Because if you ever go to the Middle East—and some of you have been to Israel with me—flies are still a big problem in the Middle East. They believed that Baal was responsible for the flies, and whenever they saw flies, it was because he was angry. So they would make sacrifices, hoping that he would get rid of the flies. He turns to this false, wicked, pagan god. You say, „Well, why would he do that?“ That’s what evil people do. One of the marks of evil people—can I tell you one of the marks? —is when you or I or people turn to any god except the real God. When you turn to any god but the real God, it is a mark of evil.
So today, you might say, „Well, we don’t turn to Baal.“ No, we don’t do that. Here’s what we do: we turn to psychics, fortune tellers, Ouija boards, astrology, New Age thinking—anything and anyone except God. When I was working on this sermon, I came across a story, and I almost said, „I won’t tell them because they’re not going to believe it.“ But it’s a true story; you won’t believe this. There was a jury in London trying a guy in a murder case. They gathered all the evidence, and the judge sent them out to a hotel to sequester them and said, „Okay, you’ve got to decide: is this man guilty or not guilty?“ Four of the jurors got a Ouija board and made contact with the murder victim. With their fingers on the glass, they said, „Move them toward a succession of letters.“ According to these four members, this is what the dead murder victim said: „Vote guilty tomorrow.“
So those four convinced the other eight jurors to vote this man guilty of murder, resulting in a unanimous verdict, all because they consulted a Ouija board. He was later retried on appeal and convicted again, but I’m sitting there, reading that story, and I’m thinking, „This is the 21st century! Are you kidding me?“ People can’t just take the evidence and rationally think it through? Discuss whether there’s any reasonable doubt? If there is, we won’t convict him; if there’s not a reasonable doubt, we will. But instead, they have to go to a Ouija board! I’m reminded of what the prophet Isaiah said: he said, „When someone tells you to consult mediums and spirits who whisper and mutter, 'Should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? '“
Now y’all know what some of you are saying right now: you say, „Well, now wait a minute, pastor. I don’t turn to Ouija boards; I don’t know what my astrological sign is. I don’t go to fortune tellers.“ No, but do you know what I see more and more Christians doing and more and more church people doing? They go to these secular, godless, worldly, unbiblical therapists and get their advice. What blows my mind is God wrote 66 books, and you can’t find wisdom here? You can’t find the wisdom of God there? You’ve got to go to some godless, unbiblical therapist who wouldn’t know God if God slapped him in the face, and that’s where you’re going to get advice. See, here’s the point I want you to understand: I don’t care how much you love the Lord; you’re always going to be confronted with evil. You’re always going to be confronted with trials and tribulations, temptation, and evil. Evil is going to be around us; it’s going to be above us; it’s going to be with us until the end of time. We will confront the presence of evil.
Now, I didn’t tell you anything you don’t already know, and you can live the God life and confront the presence of evil. You can live the good life; you can live a bad life. You’re going to confront the presence of evil, but if you say, „Well, I want to live the God life,“ then there’s a second thing you need to understand. Not only will we confront the presence of evil, but we must condemn the practice of evil. We have to condemn it because, keep in mind, from the very moment Elijah comes on the scene, there has been a bullseye on his back. He’s the most wanted man in Israel; he’s the most famous man in Israel. Everybody knows his name. The king and queen are looking for him; they want him to die. His name is a household word, but he’s not just the most unpopular man in Israel; he is the most courageous.
Once again, God tells Elijah to do what nobody else had the courage to do. He said, „I want you to go to this wicked son and call him out and condemn him for what he’s doing.“ Now, keep in mind he’s all alone—no sidekick, no Lone Ranger and Tonto, none of that stuff. He’s all by himself, and the reason I tell you that is this: yes, there will be times when, if you decide to live the God life, you’re going to be all by yourself. It’ll just be you and God; there won’t be anybody else. I was reading the other day how many of you are old enough to remember a television show? I still watch it; I love it. Teresa loves it too; it’s really funny. It was in the late 90s and early 2000s; it was called Everybody Loves Raymond. How many of you remember that show? Everybody remember that? My son claims Ray Romano, by the way, said, „Dad, he’s just like the character. He’s so funny; he’s so nice; he’s just awesome.“
Well, you may remember that Patricia Heaton played his wife. Patricia Heaton is a Christian, a very strong believer, so she heads up a pro-life organization in Hollywood called Feminists for Life. Now, if you want to be unpopular in Hollywood, do two things: stand for the life of the unborn or stand for traditional marriage, and you’re not going to be very popular. So, she takes this real unpopular stand, unashamed, unabashed, and totally courageous. She is absolutely pro-life. Now, you take your career in your hands when you do that. She was being interviewed one time by a reporter, and she said, „I want to ask you a question: Why are you doing what you’re doing? Why would you stand up for the unborn child? The unborn child can’t give you an Academy Award, the unborn child can’t help you get a role, and the unborn child can never sign a paycheck. Why would you stand up for the unborn?“
I want you to listen to what she said: „As a Christian, it will not be Barbara Streisand I’m standing in front of when I have to make an accounting of my life. It will not be in front of her when I make an accounting of my life.“ See, if you’re going to live the God life, you have to call wrong wrong; you have to call sin sin. You have to say, with no malice and no bitterness in your heart, as much as I love all of them, what is going on in Atlanta with this gay pride stuff is a disgrace. We are celebrating the things that God hates; it’s wrong—just flat-out evil wrong. And if you’re going to live the God life, you have to call it what it is. So, we read: But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, „Go up, meet the messenger of the king of Samaria, and ask them, 'Is it because there’s no God in Israel that you’re going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore, this is what the Lord says: You will not leave the bed you’re lying on; you will certainly die.'“
So Elijah went. Now, once again, bless Elijah’s heart, here we go again. God says, „Elijah, I want you to do what nobody else is going to do. I want you to walk into the palace. I want you to go to that king. I want you to tell that king you are going to die.“ Now, I want you to think about this: Go back 3,000 years. If you even had the audacity to walk into a palace and tell a pagan king that because of the way you’re living, because you’re doing what’s wrong, because you’re rebelling against God, you are going to die, well, I’ll tell you one thing—you probably wouldn’t make it out of that palace alive. Just like today, when you speak truth to power, it’s going to cost you your job, it can cost you your freedom, and it can cost you your life. That’s why a lot of people will sit down and shut up when they ought to stand up and speak up. And while I’m in this territory, let me just tell you—we have a problem in our church right now.
There’s a problem not in this pulpit but in other pulpits with other pastors and preachers, because more and more, they don’t want to talk about certain topics; they don’t want to say certain things; they don’t want to touch certain things because they’re afraid of negative reactions. I read something the other day that broke my heart. I want you to listen to this: In a study among U.S. ministers, 40% of Protestant pastors like me and more than half of Catholic priests said they frequently or occasionally feel limited in their ability to speak about moral and social issues because they’re afraid somebody in the church will get offended. Then what blew my mind was this: Okay, you’re afraid about people inside the church getting offended? What about people outside the church? This was mind-boggling to me—two-thirds of those same priests and pastors said, „We’re more concerned about people sitting in the church condemning them than people outside the church condemning them.“
Now make no mistake: I’m not going to sugarcoat this. You stand for what is right; you stand against what is wrong. You might be facing a firing squad. I’ll give you one real-life example: there’s a PhD professor named Val Rust. He was at UCLA and was an award-winning education professor, a pioneer in the field of comparative education. He traveled around the world mentoring students; everybody loved him. His peers said he was a man of compassion and integrity. He was teaching a graduate-level class on dissertation preparation; I had to take one of those myself when I did my PhD on how to do it, because you have to do it just right. So he’s teaching this class, and I want you to listen to this: he simply insisted that his students follow the gold standard of writing, the Chicago Manual of Style. He said, „This is how I want you to format your paper; this is how you footnote your paper; this is your spelling; this is your grammar; this is how you do it.“
That’s all he did. Students began to protest his class; students began to accuse him of racial microaggressions. They began to say he was intolerant; he was bigoted. How many of his colleagues stood by his side? Zero. How many of the administration stood by his side? Zero. Students, faculty—everybody said, „This is wrong; you shouldn’t be telling students how to write papers, how to do this, how to do that.“ When the dean announced that he would not be allowed to teach for a year, the school pressured him to resign. All this guy did was correct a student’s grammar and spelling. All this guy did was insist that if you’re going to write a dissertation, you’ve got to follow protocol; you’ve got to write it the right way. He was called a bigot, and he lost his job. That’s exactly what Elijah was facing. So these messengers go back and tell the king exactly what Elijah told them.
Now I want you to watch this; this is such a great testimony about Elijah. Watch this: when the messengers returned to the king, he asked them, „Why have you come back?“ Because they didn’t go to Beelzebub; they went to Elijah. „Why have you come back?“ Well, a man came to meet us, they replied, and he said to us, „Go back to the king who sent you and tell him this is what the Lord says: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you’re sending messengers to consult Beelzebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore, you will not leave the bed you are lying on; you will certainly die.“ Just keep that up there for a minute.
So Elijah goes to the king; he doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t equivocate, doesn’t stammer, doesn’t stutter. Because of what you are doing, because you’ve rebelled against the God of heaven, because you’ve done the same thing your mom and dad did, you are going to die. So what does the king do? Repent? Get in sackcloth and ashes? Ask God to forgive him? Say, „Elijah, would you help me make things right with the Lord?“ No, but he pays Elijah a great compliment. Watch this: the king asked them, „What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?“ They replied, „He had a garment of hair and a leather belt around his waist.“ The king said, „Oh, that was Elijah the Tishbite.“
So here’s my question to all of us: If word got around in your office that someone said, „I’m not going to do the Pride Parade thing; I’m not going to go down there; I’m not going to put a rainbow on my wall,“ would everybody in your company automatically say, „Oh, that was Lance who did that; oh, that was Jack who did that; oh, I know who that was, that was Sarah who did that.“ Would they know? Oh yeah, I know what a complaint; oh, I know who that was, that was Elijah the Tishbite, because it’s pretty obvious what the king intended, right? He’s going to kill Elijah; he’s going to make sure this time, I’m going to take you out because if you don’t like the message today, what do you do? You kill the messenger. It’s called cancel culture.
Some of you may remember the name J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling is the famous author of the Harry Potter series; she got in big trouble, she got boycotted, she got blasted, she got roasted, and she got absolutely crucified in the press. You know why? Because she called the whole transgender issue out for exactly what the transgender issue is, and because of that, because she went against the grain of political thinking, she got burned because truth is no longer tolerated today; truth is eliminated. So, if you’re going to live the God life, okay, then you’ve got to be willing to call out anybody who’s doing wrong and anything that is wrong; we must condemn the practice of evil.
Now some of you have already checked out; be honest, I’m not doing that, I’m in my comfort zone, I don’t want any trouble, I just want to live a peaceful life, I want to be left alone and I want to leave others alone. That’s fine; then you’re out. But let’s say you say, „No, pastor, I do want to live the God life.“ Well then, there’s one last thing you will do: Yes, we will confront the presence of evil and yes, we must condemn the practice of evil, but if you’re going to live the God life, we should confirm the punishment of evil. Now watch this; here’s this thorn in the flesh again; here’s Elijah, he’s back. Good gosh almighty, I can’t get rid of this guy; he just won’t go away.
So this king makes a decision: you know what? I’ve had enough of you; my mom and dad had enough of you, I’m going to do to you what they wanted to do; they just never really got the chance. He said, I’m going to take you out. So here’s what happens: then he sent to Elijah a captain with his company of 50 men. The captain went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of the hill, and said to him, „Man of God, the king says come down.“ Elijah answered the captain, „If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50 men.“ Then the fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men. At this, the king said to Elijah, „Another captain with his 50 men.“
The captain said to him, „Man of God, this is what the king says: come down at once.“ „If I am a man of God,“ Elijah replied, „may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50 men.“ Then the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed him and his 50 men. Now I have to tell you, to me, I just find that so funny in a way; you’re going to see why. I don’t laugh at people who died; I don’t mean it that way, but the king decides to call out the National Guard; he gets the Navy SEALs; he gets the crack soldiers; he said, „I’m going to take this guy out.“ So he sends his captain with a regiment of 50 men who said, „Oh man of God.“
Now that didn’t really impress Elijah; he wasn’t taking the bait. „Hey, come on down!“ Now Elijah knows you’re not inviting me to a party or a powwow; you’re going to kill me. So he says, „Oh, you think I’m a man of God?“ He replies, „Okay, if I’m a man of God, tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to fire up the Big Green Egg, and I want to fry you like a hot dog.“ And I mean, what happens? I love this: poof, they go up in smoke! The king says, „Fifty more men, same message, same result—they go the way of the grill; poof, they’re gone.“ This reminds me of a story I read about an elementary school out in the country. Many, many years ago, the teacher had every member of the class stand up and say, „I want you to tell a story,“ and then tell us the moral of the story.
Well, the first student to stand up was a little girl named Susie, and everybody in the class had dads who were all farmers. So she said, „Well, you know, my father owns a farm.“ She continued, „Every week, we put the eggs in a basket to take them to market.“ Well, one day, as we were going to the market with all of our eggs, we hit a bump; the eggs flew out of the basket and smashed on the road. The moral of the story is, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The teacher said, „That’s good.“ Then another little girl stood up; her name was Lucy. She said, „Well, my dad owns a farm, and one day we put twelve eggs into an incubator. My dad was counting on twelve new chickens from those eggs, but only eight of them hatched. The moral of the story is, don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,“ and the teacher said, „That’s good.“
But then Billy stood up. He said, „Well, let me tell you my story. My grandpa, he was Papa John, and he was shot down in World War II. He parachuted onto this remote island and didn’t have anything on him but a bottle of whiskey. Suddenly, he was surrounded by a dozen enemies; he drank that bottle of whiskey and killed every one of those twelve people with his bare hands.“ The teacher said, „Well, Billy, that’s a great story, but what is the moral of the story?“ He replied, „The moral of the story is, don’t mess with Papa John when he’s been drinking.“
Now let me tell you something; don’t you mess with a holy God when evil is in the world. Don’t you mess with a holy God when there is evil in the world! God has had enough of this evil. In this story, eventually, you do reap what you sow because there is the fire of God’s judgment. This is where I wanted to stop. This is the part where I get advice today from a lot of preachers. They say, „James, don’t go there! Don’t talk about that! People don’t want to hear that; they don’t want to know that. Be upbeat; be positive!“
You know all of that? Can I just be honest with you? Go read your Bible: 32 times the Bible talks about the mercy of God; 150 times it discusses the judgment of God. We have to confirm the punishment of evil. God is good, yes; God is merciful, yes; God is wonderful, yes; God is love, yes. But God is just, and God is gracious to those who delight in Him, but He is serious about punishing those who disobey and deny Him. Now this is where the story, I think, really gets good. Okay, watch what happens now! So the king sent a third captain with his fifty men. This third captain went up and fell on his knees before Elijah, man of God. He begged, „Please have respect for my life and the lives of these fifty men, your servants. See, fire has fallen from heaven and consumed the first two captains and all their men, but now have respect for my life.“ The angel of the Lord said to Elijah, „Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.“
So Elijah got up and went down with him to the king. I love that the first two captives, they go up strutting; I mean, they’re really full of themselves. They’re standing and demanding. Poof! They go up in smoke. The third guy comes in kneeling and pleading. He gets there, and before he says a word, he says, „Oh man of God, would you do me a favor? Would you turn that grill off? Would you just shut the lid? We don’t mean any harm. I still smell the smoke of the flesh. We don’t want to go up in smoke; you just tell us what you want us to do, and we’ll do it.“ And then the Lord said to Elijah, „Hey Elijah, you can trust them. They’ve learned their lesson; they know whose side they’re going to be on. As a matter of fact, Elijah, you know how good I am. They’re going to be your new bodyguards. You don’t fear going to the king.“
So Elijah goes—now watch this—so Elijah goes to the king with these 50 men in tow. Can you just see the king’s face? „What are you guys? What’s the deal?“ I mean, they were all guarding. I guarantee you when they were going to the king, you know what that camp said to those men: „Don’t you let anything happen to that guy.“ So he walks into the palace, and this is the third time these words are said. He told the king, „This is what the Lord says: Is it because there’s no God in Israel for you to consult that you’ve sent messengers to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Because you’ve done this, you will never leave the bed you’re lying on; you will certainly die.“
I want you to think about this: why are we told three times about this same message? Three times it’s repeated. The angel says it to Elijah in verse three, the angel said it to the king in verse six, and Elijah tells him himself in verse sixteen. Why? Because what God is saying to us is this: I gave this guy one chance, I gave this guy two chances, I gave this guy three chances to repent, to get right. He had three chances to repent, three chances to break away from his evil mother, three chances to get away from his evil father, three chances to show he’d learned his lesson. But he doesn’t do it. You know why? Because evil makes two things out of you: it makes you stupid, and it makes you stubborn. And that’s what evil had done to him. So we read verse seventeen. Read those words right there, those three words.
What does it say? Real loud: „So he died.“ I told you, I told you, I told you. I warned you, I warned you, I warned you. You wouldn’t listen, so he died according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had spoken. Because Ahaziah had no son, Joram succeeded him as king in the second year of Joram, son of Joshua, king of Judah. Now what’s the moral to this story? Why is this story in the Bible? Because whether you like it or not, there is a fire of God’s judgment, and that fire falls on sin and it falls on evil. Yes, there’s God’s grace to those who repent of their sin and receive Him, but there’s God’s judgment on those who repeat their sin and reject Him. Because the king died, think about this: the king died with these words ringing in his ears: „You will certainly die.“
And how does that relate to us in the 21st century? I don’t care how much you do, I don’t care how well you do it, I don’t care how hard you try, and I don’t even care what your reputation is with other people: if you do not receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will surely die. You will die physically, you will die spiritually, and you will die eternally. I’m not. And the reason I’m not is because when I realized that the fire of God’s judgment fell on the cross for my sin, I took the one it fell upon so I don’t have to fear the fire of God’s judgment because that fire has already fallen. But if you’re going to live the God life, if you’re going to live the Elijah life, you’ve got to confront the presence of evil, you’ve got to condemn the practice of evil, you’ve got to confirm the punishment of evil. And why do we do that? Why is it so important? We do that so we give people an opportunity to turn away from their evil and to turn to the God of mercy who forgives. So I’ll remind you of this one last part of this tour and we’ll be done.
Remember 1 Kings 19:18: „Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.“ So when you think about the story of Elijah, don’t forget this part of the story: he wasn’t the only one who loved God. There were seven thousand other people who loved God. He wasn’t the only person who believed the Bible; there were seven thousand other people who believed the Old Testament. He wasn’t the only one who followed God; there were seven thousand other people who followed God. But he was the only one who would stand tall, stand strong, and speak up when everybody else sat down and shut up and said nothing.
Now I’m going to tell you why I say that, and then we’ll be done. We gripe, we moan, we complain about the way things are in this world. How could we have this going on in Atlanta with the pride parade? How could we be where we are today with gay marriage? How could we be facing all the sexual sin? How could we with all the criminality? How in the world did we get here? I think the church is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. It is because the church sat down when it should have stood up, and it shut down and shut up when it should have spoken up, because Edmund Burke rightly said, and it will always be true, „The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.“
So, Pastor, I want to live the God life. Really? You want to live the God life? Okay, just understand that while the majority of our country, the majority of your neighborhood, the majority of our cities, and the majority of this world are turning their backs on evil, turning their backs on wickedness, and turning their backs on sin, sticking their heads in the sand hoping it will go away but not doing anything about it, if you’re going to live the God life, you have to face it head-on. You have to stand strong; you have to stand tall; you have to face the front, and you must say, „If I’m the only one left standing, I will stand for God, I will speak for God, and I’ll be the person God wants me to be.“
That’s the God life, and it’s not for everybody; I understand that. I’ll just leave you with this: it’s what Jesus did when he went to the cross. And if he did that for us, we ought to be willing to do it for him. So, heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, I just pray for me. I want to stand tall and stand strong. I want to do it in love; I want to do it in grace; I want to do it in kindness, but I want to be an Elijah. I want to live the God life, and I pray there are people here who would say the same thing.
With heads bowed and eyes closed, I want to say again to all of you who are watching online and those of you in this room right now: if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will surely die—not just physically; you’ll die spiritually; you’ll die eternally. If you do not know Jesus Christ, if you do not commit your life to Christ, you know, I read the other day that the best definition of hell is truth seen five seconds too late. So if you’re watching right now or you’re in this room and you’ve never given your life to Jesus, I just want to give you the opportunity to do that. I just want to give you the opportunity in your heart to pray something like this:
Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner, I’m lost, and I need a Savior. I believe you are that Savior. I believe you died for my sins. I believe God raised you from the dead. So, Lord Jesus, right now, would you come into my heart? Would you save me? Would you forgive me?