Committing to the True God

I don't care how much you pray every day. If there is a double-mindedness, let not that man think God is gonna do anything for him. Dr. Tony Evans talks about the difference it can make when we truly dedicate ourselves to the Lord. Oh, do we need some committed Christians today who are so committed and so confident in their God they don't mind being outnumbered? This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. Many people who say they trust in God also put their trust in a lot of other things. In today's lesson, Dr. Evans took listeners to the book of 1 Kings for a look at why anything short of total commitment to Christ simply falls short.

Let's join along. We have seen some of the supernatural activity of Elijah, and we've tried to say this transfers over to you today. The principle of God's supernatural work that we're discovering in his life relates to your life. We come in chapter 18, and we come to a place where now the prophet Elijah confronts King Ahab. Verse 17, And when Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, Is this you, you troubler of Israel?

In other words, you're getting on my nerves, Ahab says. Is this you, Elijah? You bringing all this trouble to Israel? Elijah responds in verse 18, I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have, because you have forsaken the commandment of the Lord, and you have followed the Baals.

You follow the idols. Elijah is not concerned about being politically correct. He's not concerned about making the king feel good.

He's not concerned about his cultural profile. That's why there's a piece of you that's got to be independent, even in politics. The only thing you get to be is Democrat light.

Or Republican light, because you're owned by nobody. Why? Because nobody is your source but the living and true God.

So he refuses to be politically correct. He says, Ahab, you have brought this about because of your pursuit of idolatry. You've caused the heavens to shut up.

It's no longer raining. The culture's in trouble because you have pursued another God. One of the reasons you're seeing all of this chaos around us, even in our culture and in our country, is because we have forsaken the Lord our God.

Elijah says, Now send and gather to me all of Israel at Mount Carmel, verse 19, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah—that's 850—who eat at Jezebel's table. He says, okay, let's have a fight at the OK Corral. You bring your people and your God, and I'll be there at high noon, okay? Let's settle this once and for all. Let's don't confuse people. Let's put this thing out on the table. So Ahab says, okay, you got a deal.

Let's go for it. So Ahab sent, verse 20, a message among all the sons of Israel and brought the prophets together at Mount Carmel, verse 21. Elijah came near to all the people and said, How long will you hesitate between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, follow him. But the people did not answer him a word. Elijah says, all right, folk, how long you gonna keep dancing?

How long will you hesitate between two opinions? It says the people were silent. Why were they silent?

Simple. They weren't ready to commit. If you're not ready to commit and to stop dancing, stop looking for a miracle and searching for a blessing. It says, how much longer are we gonna play religion and not be fully committed?

They said nothing because they weren't ready to make a full commitment, and yet he's calling on them just to do that. Jesus says to reject lukewarmness, to reject double-mindedness. Let not the double-minded man think he shall receive anything from the Lord.

James 1.5. So I don't care how much you pray every day. If there is a double-mindedness, a dancing between gods, a dancing between sources, let not that man think God is gonna do anything for him.

In other words, there is no miraculous coming your way. Only what you create, there will be nothing from heaven because heaven is not gonna support you while you date another god. And so he says, I need your full decision, your full commitment, and your full dedication. So now, Elijah says, I alone, verse 22, am left the prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. But since this is not a popularity contest, since this is not to see what the hotter numbers fare in my favor, I'm ready to take my stand. God is looking for some folk who, even though outnumbered, are willing to take their stand, who even though the other side has more than you, even though it looks like you're outnumbered among your friends, among your co-workers, or what have you, you are willing to be known as a follower of Jesus Christ. You are no longer gonna be a secret agent Christian, a spiritual CIA representative, a covert operative.

You're gonna come out and make it clear where you stand. He said, this is how the numbers shape up, but in spite of that, we're gonna put the true God to the test. He says, why don't you bring verse 23 to oxen and let the 450 choose one oxen, and I'll take whichever one they don't choose, put it on the wood, put it on the altar, but don't put a fire under it. And then you 450, you call on the name of your God and tell your God, light the fire, okay?

Tell your God be the Ohio players. Fire! Tell your God to light it up. And then I'm gonna call on my God, and let's see whose God is the God of fire. Now, unless you understand Baalism, you can't appreciate this, but Baal was the God of fire, the God of the Sun.

So you figure if Baal is in charge of the Sun, he can light something up. So he's challenging him at the very core of the greatness of their God. He says, let's see what your God can do.

So they agree. He is so confident in his commitment to God that he will challenge the majority. Oh, do we need some committed Christians today who are so committed and so confident in their God they don't mind being outnumbered? Because they understand that once God, the true God, is in the equation, the numbers shift. That's why when God is your source, you're not intimidated by bigger people, more powerful people, greater numbers.

None of that becomes a deciding factor because of who you have working with you. So he says, come on, let's don't talk. Let's do this thing.

Let's do this thing. And so here's what they do. The 450 agree, and so they chose the ox in verse 26. They took the ox and prepared it in the name of Baal, and from morning to noon, they were saying, O Baal, answer us. But there was no voice.

No one answered. And they leaped about the altar, which they made. So they're in there with their God, O Baal, O Baal, let's have some fire. Light them, light the altar. O Baal, O great Baal, they jumping around the altar.

They're getting their praise on around the idol, and it says, and nothing happened, and there was no voice. Now this is where we get to a little humorous part in the Bible. It gets a little humorous here in verse 27, because it says, at about noon, that Elijah mocked them.

Okay, now it's 450 of them, and it's one of you—this ain't the time to be making fun of folks. But Elijah's just standing there, and he mocks them, and look at how he mocks them. He says, why don't you call out louder? Call out verse 27 with a loud voice.

Y'all ain't screaming loud enough. He can't hear you. Maybe he's occupied.

He's got another meeting going on, and he can't get to y'all right now, so maybe that's why nothing happened. Or maybe he's gone aside. Now, gone aside means maybe in the bathroom. He can't get to you right now, because he's gone aside. Or maybe he hasn't gone aside. Maybe he's on a journey. He's on a trip. You know, he's taking a vacation. Or perhaps he's snoring.

He says, maybe he's asleep, and you need to wake him up. So why don't you sing a little louder, praise a little louder, pray a little louder, and wake up your God? Well, all he did was tick them off, because in verse 28 it says, they crowd out with a loud voice, and they cut themselves according to the custom, with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out of them. In other words, they didn't gone crazy.

They have lost their minds trying to make their God do something. 450 of them, while the audience of the Israelites stayed silent. They had nothing to say, nothing to contribute. It was one man taking a stand. When midday was past, verse 29, they raved until the evening sacrifice.

There was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. Then Elijah said to all the people, Come close. Come close. So all the people came near to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down. Okay, let me stop there.

Let me stop there. It says he repaired the altar which had been torn down. That means they had religion without commitment, because the altar hadn't been used. Now what would they do on the altar?

Sacrifices. Why would they make sacrifices to deal with sin? So what they were doing was having religion without dealing with sin. They were having religion without addressing what was the priority of God. You see, one of the reasons you want two gods is you want a God you can worship on Sunday, but then you want a God who will let you do whatever you want to do on Monday. So you need two gods. You need a God because you believe the Bible, but then you need a God who will let you do—who issues no orders, who makes no demands, who lets you do what you want to do, but then you run to this God on Sunday to try to get His straight, but you know that God is not going to help you on Monday, so you need a new God on Monday to free you up to be in rebellion.

Because people don't want the God of the Bible or the standards of the God of the Bible, they leave the altar of God unaddressed. Dr. Evans will talk about why we need to give up on religion and look for something different in the second part of today's teaching. We'll return to that in just a moment. First though, I want to remind you that today's on-air lesson is one of Dr. Evans' timeless sermons from the powerful series called Elijah. This six-part collection focuses on the lessons we can learn from one of the Bible's greatest prophets about waiting for God's perfect timing, living a life that matters, overcoming fear and discouragement, strengthening our faith and commitment, and more. For a limited time, we're offering the Elijah series on CD or digital download as our thank you gift when you support our work here on the air with a donation.

Just give us a call at 1-800-800-3222 to make the arrangements, and one of our team members will be happy to help you. Our Resource Center never closes, so call us anytime at 1-800-800-3222, or visit us at tonyevans.org. Right now, let's get back to more of today's lesson. You ought to be tired of religion by now. Religion can't change you. Religion can't help you, and religion certainly won't bring heaven down to earth. What you need and I need and we need is a relationship, but you can only have a relationship on God's terms, and you can't have a relationship on God's terms if you got another God waiting for you tomorrow.

That is, another source of your identity and your reality. And so, Elijah took twelve stones. According to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. He got the spiritual priority back in order, and unless we do that as a church, unless that's the main thing, every other thing is a waste of time. He got the altar back, the spiritual part back, the confession of sin and the pursuit of righteousness back. The altar represented all that, and then he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two measures of seed. So he digs this hole around the altar. Now watch what he does here. He arranges the wood, verse 33, cuts the ox in the pieces, lays it on the wood, and he said, fill four pitches with water and pour it on the burnt offering.

Now wait a minute. If you're trying to light up something, you don't pour water on it. You're not trying to pour water on it. You want to keep it dry so that it lights quickly. But he pours water on it.

Oh, but that's not all it does. Because according to verse 24, it says, he says, do it a second time. So they pour water on it.

They wet the wood, wet the ox, wet everything. He says, pour four more pitches on it. So, okay, he does it again. Oh, but is he finished?

No. Do it a third time. And they did it a third time. You remember the number three? The number three is restoration and resurrection. It's when God is gonna reach down, grab something that was dead, and give it life again. It's where God reaches down. In other words, He's showing off. He said, look, I'm gonna tell you, my God is so bad, we're gonna wet this thing down, wet it down again, wet it down a third time, and the third time it says, there was so much water that the water flowed around the altar and also the trench with the water.

So not only was the wood wet and the ox wet, the trench around the whole altar was filled up with water. In other words, He's saying, I'm not only gonna tell you I believe in God, I'm gonna show you how bad God is, that we're gonna make it hard for God to do a miracle. But when you got that kind of relationship, where you can make it hard for God to do a miracle and still not sweat it—because see, I think a lot of us don't know who we're dealing with.

See, we don't know what we're dealing with. That's why we need other gods, not knowing that to take the other God is to lose the true God. The Bible says in the New Testament that Elijah was an ordinary man. In other words, he didn't have any unique powers. He was an ordinary man, but he connected with God, and he saw a miracle. So he tells New Testament Christians, if you really want to see the miraculous God at work, it can come through ordinary people, because he's just an ordinary man full of God. So I don't mind that you're ordinary when your God is extraordinary, and if your ordinary self is connected with an extraordinary God, the miraculous is accessible to you. So he prays at the evening sacrifice, O Lord, verse 36, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the covenant-keeping God. Today let it be known that you are God in Israel. I am your servant, and notice this, I have done all the things at your word.

Let it be known what you will do when people are committed to you and your word. In other words, I'm not like y'all. I ain't dancing.

I'm not like y'all. I'm not going back and forth. I am totally committed to His Word. That's how you know if you're dancing or not. You know if you're dancing between gods by whether His Word has the final say-so in your decisions.

Let me say that again. The way you know you're a committed Christian is not because you shout. The prophets of Baal shouted. It's not because you dance around. The prophets of Baal dance around. It's not because you say, Amen. The prophets of Baal were screaming out and making all that noise.

Oh no. He said, let it be known that I'm for real because I obey Your Word. In other words, God, Your Word has the final say-so over my decisions. Until you get to that place, you're not fully committed. If you're not fully committed, you have limited or lost access to the miraculous.

So He says, I have kept Your Word. Answer me, O Lord, verse 37, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God, and that You have turned their hearts back again. And the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, and licked up the water in the trench. Now, this is one of the scenes I want to see on instant replay when I get to heaven, because it not only said the fire fell, it consumed—watch this—it consumed the wet ox. Okay, I can understand that, but it says it consumed the stones, the wood, and the stone.

But here's the part I like. It said it licked up the water around the trench. So after it sucked up the oxen, sucked up the stone, sucked up the wood, it went around the trench.

It just licked up the water. In other words, God showed off. That's what God—God would just show it up. Oh, Elijah, let me do my thing. Let me show you what I can do. Let me stick my tongue out and lick it up.

Let me just—let me just lick it up. He showed off. Oh, and when you see God show off and show out for you, when you see Him do exceedingly abundantly above, all you can ask or think, when you see because you've rebuilt the altar of full commitment, they fell on their faces and said, the Lord, He is God. The Lord is God. I want the few who are fully committed to be able to call down the miraculous that the many who are not committed decide it's better for them to be committed. I want the small group leaders to be so on fire for God that the people in your group see the miraculous happening through you and in you that they say, okay, I want to be like you. I want to see the leaders so committed to God that people want to follow them because they say God is definitely in that place. That's what makes a great church and not just a place for religious activity. And we'll have a closing thought from Dr. Tony Evans to wrap up today's teaching in just a moment. First, though, he talked earlier about the importance of giving up on religion in favor of a real relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

If you're not a hundred percent sure of what that means or how it happens, take a few minutes to visit tonyevans.org and click on the link at the top of the home page that says Jesus. There you'll find a short video that explains it all, along with some free resources you can download to learn even more. Check it out today. And while you're there, don't forget that our current teaching series, Elijah, is available as a digital download or in a CD album as our thank-you gift for your contribution to help keep our ministry going strong as we touch people with God's message of hope and truth. If it's easier for you, resource team members are available by phone to help you make the arrangements right now at 1-800-800-3222. That's 1-800-800-3222. Or again, visit us online at tonyevans.org.

You know, when you order goods online, you often get to choose how fast you want them delivered. On Monday, we'll learn why that isn't the case when we pray, as Dr. Evans talks about how to wait for God's perfect timing. Right now, let's listen to this final thought for the day. Does anybody here know what a hillbilly road bump is? A hillbilly road bump is an armadillo dead in the middle of a road. That's what's called a hillbilly—I mean, country people call it a hillbilly road bump.

Okay? Now let me explain. One half a million armadillos every year are killed in the middle of the road. Every time I've seen an armadillo, it's on its back and its legs are sticking up in the air. Every time I see an armadillo, they start crossing the road. They stop in the middle of the road. They stop in the middle of the road with cars coming, and they get run over.

They get run over because they get comfortable in the middle of the road. Does God have any hillbilly road bump Christians in this place? Does God have any hillbilly road bump Christians? You come to church and you stay in the middle. You want to be able to step over here to the God of the Bible, but you want to stay over here to the world. You stay in the middle only to be run over by His glory when He moves down the center. But if He can ever get you to go all the way, heaven will open up. You will see heaven open, Jesus said. You will see the angel of God going up and down, the Son of Man, and you will see what God can do because you've given Him all you have.