One God or Many, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, we're recognizing false gods. Here's how you know the true God from a false one according to Elijah.

Number one, whereas false gods require strenuous efforts, the true God is known by grace through faith. You see, other gods say, slash for me, dance for me. There's only one God who was slashed for you. Every other God makes your blood run. Only this God bleeds for you. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. Okay, let's be real. Anything can turn into a false God. Even good things, right?

Like family, health, or even financial security. False gods aren't always little golden statues. They are things that we place our trust in above the one true God. Today Pastor J.D. explains how we turn good things into idols and how to spot false gods that are growing up in our hearts. It's part of our study of the prophet Elijah from the book of 1 Kings.

If you missed any of the previous messages, you can find them all at jdgreer.com. But now let's jump into the message titled, One God or Many. This is a story about you. This is a battle that takes place in your heart. And if you are not aware this battle is taking place in your heart, then you are more deluded than anybody because this is the ultimate battle of your life, which God is God. 1 Kings chapter 18 verse 17, When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, Is it you? Is it you, you troubler of Israel? And Elijah answered, I have not troubled Israel, but you have in your father's house because you've abandoned the commandments of the Lord and you followed the bales. So the first question this passage presents to us is, who is the real troubler?

Maybe the trouble in your life is there as a gift of God to point you to something that is deeply wrong inside of your heart. That's what Ahab should have recognized. Verse 19, Now therefore, Elijah says, Send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table.

Verse 20, So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near to all the people and he said, How long are you going to go on limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal is God, then follow him. If you won't decide about God being God, you're limping intellectually. If you won't decide which God is God, you're limping along through life.

Elijah says to these people, he's like, Look, if Baal is God, serve him. Go all the way with him. Here's what I would tell you, if money is your God, serve it with all your heart. You get a cheat to get it?

Cheat. Because money is the ultimate good. But if Christ, if Christ is the one true God, serve him. With all your heart. If God is God, then serve him. And if Baal is God, then serve him. So Elijah throws that big old question out there. And how does everybody respond? You see in verse 21, And the people did not answer him a word.

They're all looking down at the ground, kicking rocks, little crickets playing in the background. So Elijah says, All right, well, let's take two bulls. You take one, put it on an altar over there.

I'm gonna take one, put it on an altar over here. Verse 24, Then you call upon the name of your God, and I'll call upon the name of the Lord. And I'll tell you what, the God who answers by fire, he is God. And the people answered, It is well spoken.

In other words, good idea. Verse 25, Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose for yourselves one bull. You prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your God, but don't put any fire to it. And of course, all these prophets of Baal are thinking, You idiot.

First of all, there's 850 of us and one of you. Second of all, our God is the God of lightning. Verse 26, And they took the bull that was given to them, and they prepared it, and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, answer us. But there was no voice, no one answered. And they limped, there's that word again, by the way, they limped around the altar that they had made.

Now, this is my favorite part. Verse 27, And at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry loud, louder, because he's a god. Either he is musing, which means daydreaming, staring aimlessly into space, checking his Facebook page on his phone to see how many likes he got on his latest picture. Maybe he is musing, or maybe he's on a journey.

You should yell louder, or this is the best one. Maybe he is relieving himself. Some of your NIV translations of the Bible try to clean that up, and they just say busy, but the literal Hebrew there is a euphemism meaning on the john. Hey, maybe your god's taking the dump. Maybe he's got the fan on. He's got the fan on, and he can't hear you, so why don't you yell louder?

Or maybe he is asleep and must be awakened. This is what we call righteous smack talking. Righteous smack talking. Holy sarcasm, Batman. All right? And let me just point out, not all sarcasm is wrong.

Some things need to be mocked. Verse 28, And they cried aloud, and they cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation. But there was no voice. No one answered.

No one paid attention. Can I give you two characteristics of false gods? Jot these down. Number one, first of all, false gods require strenuous dancing to please them. False gods require endlessly strenuous dancing to please them. If you obey well enough, they'll accept you. So their message to you is, dance harder.

Better get on it. So like Allah, for example, of Islam, is like, you better keep the commandments better. You better keep these five pillars better. You better dance harder if you want me to accept you. The Buddhist version of God says, you better act right, because if not, you're going to come back with something you don't want to be. I will crush you if you don't dance well enough. Secular false gods like popularity or money or beauty, what they say is, if you succeed, if you dance hard enough, you'll get me and then you'll be happy. But if you don't dance hard enough, you're not going to get me and you're going to be miserable. So you dance like a slave to get into the right school.

You dance to get into the right job so that you can have the right kind of money. If beauty is your God, then use Zumba so hard, right? Because you got to be beautiful.

Because if you're not beautiful and you're not in shape, they don't like you. If popularity is your God, then you are continually dancing for your circle of friends, however you want to do it. You're like, like me. Hey, like me. Every day I put on the clothes, you want me.

They're real tight, like you want me to wear them. You like me now? You like me now? Hey, hey, I'm using these words. I'm saying these things.

Do you like me now? It's just endlessly, it's like your life is one long audition for American Idol where you're always trying to please some Simon Cowell who's going to say, you don't stink, you're good. Endlessly dancing. That always characterizes worship of false gods. Here's the second thing. False gods push you toward destruction. False gods push you toward destruction. They're like, more, work harder, do better.

Hey, you're not getting my attention. Slash yourself. For some, this literally becomes slashing. They don't get the attention of the friends they crave, so they cut themselves. For others, the slashing is more metaphorical. They slash their bodies through crash diets or become anorexics so they can get that perfect figure that they feel like they need in order to feel like they have worth.

They slash their families by overworking to make that extra money so that all their financial dreams can come true. They slash their souls by compromising their integrity to get everyone's attention or so that they can succeed. You want to know how you can know if there's false idols in your life? Look for the weary dancing and then look for the slashing.

Wherever there is weary dancing and wherever there is slashing, that's where you can know that there are idols. Verse 30. Then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me.

And all the people came near to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. Now, you got to get this picture here, okay? Here's Elijah who's been sitting back on his lawn chair for about five hours watching all this go down. He's got his robe on. He's got his shades on.

He's got a margarita in his hands. He's a Hebrew prophet, so he's got this long dynasty beard, right? And he is smack talking.

This is like the perfect picture of Uncle Cy on dynasty, correct? He's just lounging around making fun of these prophets of Baal. So he kind of clambers up.

He slowly gets up. He walks over verse 33. He says, fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood, which is not what you do when you're trying to start a fire in case you don't know that.

All right, verse 34. And then he said, do it a second time. So they did it. He said, do it a third time.

And they did it a third time. And the water was so much that it ran around the altar and filled the little trench around the altar with water. And then at the time of the offering of the oblation, which by the way means the normal time for the offering, nothing special about this, Elijah the prophet came near and said, O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you're the God in Israel. Answer me, O Lord, answer me that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have turned their hearts back. Verse 38.

Then the fire of the Lord fell and it consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. God's just showing off, wouldn't he? If you like that, he's just showing off.

He's like, I'll give you a little extra something here. Verse 39. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, the Lord, he is God, the Lord, he is God. By the way, by the way, what's that in Hebrew?

You're paying attention? Eliejah, Eliejah. They're chanting his name, but it's not his name, they're chanting the word.

How cool of a name is that for a Hebrew prophet? That when people chant your name, they're actually worshiping God. So then Elijah goes over and he gets into a kneeling position. You can see this in the last part of the chapter. And he begins to pray. Now, if he prays for a few minutes, he tells a servant, a friend, he says, go over and check off the side of the mountain and look toward the ocean and tell me if you see anything. The guy goes, checks, says, I don't see anything. He says, do it again. They do it seven times. On the seventh time, the guy comes back and says, I see a cloud rising out of the ocean about the size of a man's fist. And as they watch it, it says it gets deeper and it gets darker and it gets heavier. So that by the time it gets to the shoreline of where Israel is, it is a huge black cloud that begins to pour down torrential rains upon the land for the first time in three and a half years. Here's what you take away from that story. If you're not taking notes, start taking them right now.

Here they are. How to know the true God from a false one, according to Elijah. Here's how you know the true God from a false one, according to Elijah. Number one, whereas false gods require strenuous efforts, the true God is known by grace through faith. Whereas false gods require endless dancing, the true God is known simply by grace through faith.

They danced all day to get Baal's attention, to no avail. And Elijah simply got down on his knees and prayed in faith. You see, every other religion in the world, hear this, every other religion in the world concocted in the mind of man operates by one principle, and that is if you obey well enough, you will be accepted. And the gospel flips that on its head. The gospel says, no, you don't obey and then become accepted. You are accepted by an act of God's grace, therefore you obey.

Do not say all religions teach the same thing because this is fundamentally different. Every religion in the world says, if you obey, you will be accepted. And the gospel says, no, you are accepted, therefore you will obey. Because your obedience becomes a loving response to the God who accepted you as a gift of his grace, not because you danced well enough. Jesus paid the penalty, and you accept it as a gift, and then you dance in response, out of joy. Number two, whereas false gods mutilate you, the true God mutilated himself for you.

They cut themselves to get Baal's attention. Jesus was cut for us. You know, there's a very illuminating reference to this in Luke chapter 9.

You don't need to turn there. But the disciples and Jesus have just gone through Samaria, where Jesus was rejected because Samaria had their own God, and so they reject Jesus. And so the disciples, remembering this story, say, hey, Jesus, you want us to call down fire from heaven like Elijah did and toast these people to show them who the real God is? They're thinking back about this story. Jesus's response essentially is this.

He's like, no, you don't really get it, do you? In this story of Elijah calling down the fire from heaven, Jesus says, I'm not Elijah calling down fire on my enemies. In that story, I'm the sacrifice who's going to take the fire of God's justice into himself.

I'll take the fire of God's justice so that the fire of my love can be ignited in the hearts of my people. You see, other gods say slash for me, dance for me. There's only one God who was slashed for you. Every other God makes your blood run. Only this God bleeds for you.

Number three, whereas false gods are ultimately powerless, the true God answers by a miracle. Now, I know what you might be thinking. Oh, this would be awesome if we could do this today. I'm in an argument with a guy at work, and I'm like, let's come outside, and let's build two little piles of sticks, and we'll see which one burst into flames.

That'd be awesome. If God would just come up and do something impossible, maybe dry up a lake or split an ocean, make NC State win a national basketball championship, something that's just utterly impossible, then we'd know there's a God. Listen, the greatest miracle was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, something that no other God and no other religion has ever been able to touch.

Think about it. Remember the excessive conditions that Elijah created that made the fire improbable? Three times, he had water cover the altar. Then he made a little trench around the altar and filled it with water so that it was just completely un... I mean, it was not just like you needed spontaneous combustion. You needed spontaneous combustion in a big way. And then how did God answer?

He answered just as excessively. He burned it all up, not just the offering, but the wood and the stones. He turned those into lava and the dust. And Jesus was not just killed. His body was mutilated. He didn't just get poisoned and die. His body was mutilated. And then after he died on the cross, they stuck a spear into his heart after he was dead and pierced his heart so that water and blood flowed out.

And then they put him in a tomb and put a big old several-ton rock in front of that tomb and put a Roman garrison of 12 soldiers out in front of that rock. Now, I know there are not degrees of deadness, but that's really dead. Your body gets mutilated. Then you die. Then they mutilate it again. And then they put you in a tomb where you got a several-ton rock in front of it.

And then 12 of the best trained soldiers in the world standing guard in front of it. That's really dead. And then God responds just as excessively. He didn't just restart Jesus' heartbeat. They didn't hear some strange knocking coming from inside the tomb, like, hey, I'm alive, let me out. No, Romans says he was raised in power, which means he rolled away the stone by himself. He scared the Roman guards so badly that they passed out.

12 soldiers passed out from fear. Then Jesus ascends on his own to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, then comes back down and walks through walls. That's God just showing off, saying, I not nearly conquered death. I destroyed it.

I destroyed it. And then in the book of Acts, chapter 2, when the disciples finally get the spirit of the resurrection inside of them, do you remember what it says happened? What appears above their heads? Fire. The fire of Elijah. The fire that is able to do in their souls, the fire of love, what nothing else could do. It turns them into champions.

It turns them into men and women of God. I was sitting with an atheist a couple years ago, and he was interviewing me. He said, you realize that what you believe might very well be just a myth, just a religious myth that makes you feel good at night, just a way for you to explain the world. I was sitting on my desk as he was interviewing me. I had a letter. I just happened to have a letter from a lady here in our church.

You might be here right now. She wrote me this letter, and she said, I wanted to say thank you. She said, because for 10 years, my husband was on drugs. And she said he'd abandoned me, and he'd abandoned our children. And I'd given up hope for him. She said, but through the ministries of your church, he heard the gospel. He believed. God has not only saved him, but God has delivered him off of drugs. He has moved back into our house.

He is a completely different man. He is the husband I always yearned for, and the father I always wanted my kids to know. And I just wanted to say thank you because I know it wasn't you, but you were a vessel through whom God's power came in the gospel that transformed my family. And I slid that letter to that atheist.

I said, why don't you tell those kids it's a myth? That's not my only proof for Christianity, but it certainly gets my attention when you see the almighty God begin to work resurrection power in somebody's heart. Number four, whereas false gods lead to soul drought, the true God delusions us with living water.

That land had been in a famine and a drought for three and a half years. And in a moment, God opened the heavens and flooded it so that there was righteous rivers running through it. Now, this one's hard to describe.

It really is. All I can say is you know it after you've experienced it. There's a sense, listen, in which when you come home to God, you know you have finally come home to the place you have been yearning for all your life, even though you didn't know exactly what to call it.

When you finally find God, when you know that he's the one you've always been searching for, when you finally are at home in God's house and you realize that all your life you've been homesick for a home and you didn't know this was it, and your soul begins to run and overflow with righteous waters of joy and peace and new life, and it floods your part soul. Tim Keller says it this way, Jesus is the only God that if you find him will satisfy you, and if you fail him will forgive you. Other gods don't satisfy, they just leave you thirstier. And other gods, listen, if you fail them, they crush you. So Allah and Buddha say if you fail me, I'll crush you. Secular gods like money, beauty, if you fail me, if you don't get me, you're going to be miserable, you're going to be single, you're going to be poor, and that's miserable. Jesus says you have failed me, and I stretched out my arms, and I died for you, and I forgive you, and I receive you on the basis not on how well you've danced, but on the basis of what I've done, the price I paid to save you.

He is the only God that if you find him will satisfy you, and if you fail him will forgive you. Now watch the ending. I really ought to cut the sermon here, but I got to show you the last because these are awesome. Verse 41, it's totally random, but it's not random, it looks random. Verse 41, and Elijah said to Ahab, verse 42, go up and say to Ahab, prepare your cherry and go down, lest the rain stop you.

He's making fun of him again. All right, hey, rain's coming, man, you better get home. So in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain, and Ahab rode like a man trying to escape a storm, got to get home, and he went to Jezreel. Now watch this, verse 46, and the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran ahead of Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. He outran a chariot, and what does that look like? You know, here's Ahab trying to get home before the rain, here's Elijah just like, hey man, he just streaks right by him. Now, why is that detail in there?

It's giving you a contrast to limping, that's why. The people in Ahab are in indecision, and they lip along through life. Here is Elijah resolute in God being God, and he runs. As he waits upon the Lord, God renews his strength, and he mounts up with wings like an eagle.

He runs and he's not weary, he walks and he's not faint, and it's giving you a picture of what your life begins to look like when you actually come to a point where you decide that God is God. That's what I want for you. I want you to run. I don't need you to supply our budget.

I don't need you to volunteer for our sake. I need you to go all in with God because you'll begin to run, and you won't limp along through life. That means you always are happy and have a chipper smile on your face. You always feel strong, and it means you begin to soar in faith. You begin to soar in extravagant generosity. You begin to soar through trials. That's what I want for you.

That's what I want for you. What do you need to do to show that you are no longer limping? It's time to get off the sidelines and do something. That decision today may be to receive Christ as your Savior. Maybe it's baptism or church membership. Maybe it's serving on a volunteer team or joining a small group Bible study. Whatever it is, take that step today.

You're listening to Summit Life, and if you happen to join us a little late today, you can hear this entire message again free of charge when you visit jdgrier.com. So J.D., in this series, we've been seeing how God revealed Himself to Elijah, and how as Elijah's view of God expanded, he actually learned to trust God more. And that's the focus of our complimentary study as well, right?

Absolutely. Knowing God for who He really is, that's the key. Just because I can't make up truth about you and say, well, this is the Molly that I prefer to know, so let me make up some characteristics and qualities about you.

I would have to just know you as you are. Well, in the same way, God has to be known for who He is. Many people have kind of a deity they assemble. I call it a build-a-bear deity, where it's like you assemble the God that makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

But that's not the true God. The true God has revealed Himself, and that's the battleground that Elijah stepped into. This eight-part study that we've produced, it just goes along with the stories about Elijah and Elijah that you're hearing about on Summit Life or that you're reading in the Bible. It's a resource I think will really help you. I think you'll find yourself wanting to give it to somebody and say, hey, let's go through this together.

Maybe it's one of your kids or a neighbor. If you'll reach out to us today at jdgrier.com, you'll see some information there on the front page. It'll allow you to get connected to our ministry, allow you to be a part of what we do and give you a resource.

It's just a way of saying thank you. We'd love to get you a copy of this resource today and help you learn more about the one and only God. We'll send it with our thanks when you donate to support this ministry and help keep these messages on the air and the web. Ask for Something Better, Something Greater, a study of Elijah and Elisha from Pastor JD when you donate at the suggested level of $25 or more. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or it might be easier to give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Bidevich inviting you to join us again tomorrow when we're diving into a relevant topic, a topic that too often gets overlooked in the church, depression. Be sure to listen Wednesday to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.