Sermon for 11-4-12

1 Kings 19:9b-18

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ He answered, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.’

Elijah Meets God at Horeb

 He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for theLord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ He answered, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.’

************************

Rachel and I went out to dinner on Wednesday evening. It was lovely. Well, except for the part where we can't have a normal conversation because we're busy trying to keep Caleb from fussing too much. We still haven't grown accustomed to that feature of parenthood quite yet. We thought about leaving him at home, but I read somewhere you should wait until they're 2 to do that.

But I'd like you to picture yourself sitting at the table next to us, observing us eat dinner. Now, imagine that we went through the entire dinner and I was the only one that said anything. Imagine that I talked and talked and talked, and every time Rachel started to interject, I talked over her.

What would you think about me?

What would you assume about our relationship?

What would you recommend that we do?

The first thing you might do is offer the suggestion that Rachel could do much better. When she insisted that she wasn't going to try and was devoted to me, you'd shake your head, wondering why, and turn to me, telling me to shape up and pay attention. You'd tell me that it was clear that she was wiser than I, and that I should listen more than I talk. You'd leave the restaurant wondering what she was doing with me, right?

Well, think about your prayer life and your relationship to God. Think about your life as a continual conversation between you and God. How would you describe the relationship? Is it balanced? Or has it become, over the years, a little one-sided? Do you dominate the conversation, or do you leave room in your life for God to speak?

Friends, I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly what the voice of God sounds like. I know that it's strong enough to split the cedars, and I know that there is real power in God's Word, but I've never heard the voice of God speaking clearly from the heavens. I'm also not going to tell you that if you're silent for five minutes, God's voice will suddenly start echoing around the room. But I am going to tell you that you need to cultivate rhythms and patterns in your life that leave room for God to speak. I'm going to say that we each need silence in our lives, we need places to just be, to be still, and give God the chance to speak. We often complain about how we don't hear God's voice—but do we spend as much time listening as we do talking? My mother always told me I have two ears and one mouth because I'm supposed to listen twice as much as I speak. But it seems like my prayer life is comprised of me telling God a lot of things and never bothering to give God the chance to tell me a few things. I dominate the conversation, and I'm finished when I need to be somewhere else, rarely leaving God the opportunity to respond to my supplications. It's childish, really.

So we're going to focus on patterns, on rhythms, on cultivating a two-part relationship with the living God of heaven and earth.

Notice what happens in our story today.

Elijah gets word that the Lord is going to pass by. This is the same mountain where Moses and the Israelites began their journey into the wilderness. Here on the mountain God hands down the 10 Commandments to Moses. Here on the mountain God descends and reveals his holy presence to Moses. God has a history of showing up on this mountain. What's the lesson here? Find the places in your life that cultivate a sense of the holy and go back to them. Don't always be searching out new places because you think the old ones are used up—places with a history tend to also have a future.

So Elijah hears word that God is going to appear, and Elijah was in a cave. Before God appeared, however, there was quite a commotion outside that cave. There was a wind, a wind so strong that mountains and rocks fell before it. This was a wind of apocalyptic strength, of intensity and violence, and yet Elijah waited in his cave, because the Lord wasn't in the wind.

Then there was an earthquake and a fire, and through it all, Elijah waited. He was patient before the Lord, trusting that he would know when it was that God would reveal himself.

It was only after all the storms and chaos passed that there was a silence. A silence made even starker by the turbulence that had preceded it. This silence was so striking that it was here that Elijah realized God would be, and so he went out of his cave and waited on the Lord.

Here, at the entrance to his cave, he heard God speak.

Only then does he respond.

Then, after responding, God sends him out with a mission.

There is a rhythm here. There is a pattern, one that we can cultivate. Listen again.

Elijah trusts that the Lord will fulfill his promise. He then waits through the chaos, then going out in the midst of silence and listening for the Lord. Once the Lord speaks, Elijah then responds, and after his response God sends him out.

I've talked a lot recently about the importance of trusting in the Lord. He will fulfill his promises. He will be faithful to us. That's a part of his unchanging nature—he is absolutely reliable and trustworthy. We gathered on Tuesday to celebrate this fact—that Marcia Young passed through the shadow of death and into life everlasting. God is faithful to his promises. In John, Jesus promises that none of those entrusted to him will be lost. So trust God—he is active and working in your life.

So we trust in the Lord, and then we have to discern when he is speaking. This is the tough part for us, especially for the North American church in the 21st century. It's a loud world. We have loud lives. We are constantly bombarded by noise. We have a strong desire to be entertained, and the interests competing for our attention believe the best way to obtain it is to shout louder than everything else. What this leads to is an increasingly noisy world in which it is harder and harder to discern what God is saying.

So what to do?

The first step is for us to recognize all of the noise in our lives. Many of us are so accustomed to it that we scarcely notice it anymore. Many of us leave the television or radio on for background noise—we're completely unaccustomed to silence. It's cultural.

Think about a football game. I'd imagine all of you have, at some point, either attended a football game or watched one on tv. The first thing you notice is how loud it is. At a game, you are surrounded by fans, cheering at the game or yelling at each other. There are ads all over the stadium and a thousand things to grab your attention. It's interesting to take Caleb out in such settings—he gets so visually overstimulated he can barely take it all in. Watching him be overstimulated makes me aware of how much there is to see. If you're not at the stadium and watching it on tv, it's still loud. There are still commercials to grab your attention. There are announcers to tell you what you're watching. There are the sounds of grown men running into each other. It's loud.

And America loves it. It's loud. It's entertaining. We have a need to be entertained. From football games to movies to television shows to websites, we love to be entertained. And there's nothing wrong with good entertainment.

Except when it's not feeding us, when we're not engaged and growing, and empty entertainment is just consuming our time and our energy and it's not art, just time-killers. When large chunks of our time go into being entertained, we're losing something. We're cultivating unhealthy patterns, passively watching life go by.

It's chaos, no different than the storms outside Elijah's cave. God is not in a lot of the junk entertainment that is out there. We need to be vigilant, be watchful, be alert.

We need some silence, too.

We need to create space for God to speak to us, to call us out of our caves and into the world, to send us out. We need this—we need to find places and ways in our lives to be passive before God, to let God speak, to listen for his voice. We need to make sure that our lives, all of them, are conversations between ourselves and God—so we need to listen as much as we speak. It may not be entertaining—but it's soul work, hard work, and it's so important, because it's how we grow. It's how we are led. It's how we receive our guidance from God—but we need to make sure that we can hear God speaking. If the volume in our lives is turned up to full blast and we don't ever bother to turn it down, how can we ever expect to hear the voice of God? It's like shouting at someone for an hour and then wondering why they don't respond. They may well have responded, but you didn't bother to listen for their answer.

Friends, God wants to speak into your lives, into your hearts, and guide you, call you out of whatever cave you are in and send you into the world on a mission, to join with the faithful ones and transform the world.

But in order for you to hear your marching orders, you need to be still and wait upon the Lord. You need to cultivate silence, quiet, so that you can hear God's voice speaking into the madness of our loud world. You need to create rhythms and patterns in your life so that you are continually in conversation with God, praying and listening, hearing and responding, letting God guide you in all you do.

Let us pray