Rock Solid

What a joint was working with the kids this week.

It was great fun. They were all amazing. All right, kids,

we're going to have a little bit of a review

some of the things that we went some of the

Bible stories that we went over.

Now, I can't tell everything here.

Because Pastor Mike consists I keep this under two hours

and well that the clock stops sometimes back there. But

you know, just in case, I didn't want to tell everything.

But before we start, I'd like to keep a promise,

like you to help me keep a promise. Pastor Mike

was visiting a hospital, as he often does, visiting our

members in the hospital, and he met a lady who's

not part of our church. Her name was Joyce Cooper,

and she had a daughter who was gravely ill and

since then, unfortunately the daughters passed away. The family reached

out to Pastor Mike and asked them to lead in services,

to lead out and to minister to them during excuse me,

during this process, and he agreed to do that, which

is where he is today. That's why he wasn't able

to be with us this morning. He wanted you to

know that, but also he promised for us that we

would pray for Joyce and for her family in their

grief at.

Losing a child.

So let's do that together, Heavenly Father, as a church altogether.

Here we're lifting up Joyce.

We're asking for your special blessing for the work of

your spirit to bring comfort and hope to Joyce and

her family, that you will comfort their grief.

We know that.

Nothing can make it easy to lose someone in this earth,

but we just pray that your Holy Spirit will minister

hope and give them what they need to get through

this moment. In Jesus' name and Father, I also want

to ask for your blessing as we contemplate Bible stories

in Jesus' name. Amen, excuse me always a little froggy.

This morning I was talking at Saba School. Our Bible

story started out with a bang. Elijah marched up into

King Ahab's palace and told him straight up, there's not

going to be any do or rain in the whole

land for these next few years until I say so,

And then he marched back out again. That, of course,

is a very dangerous thing to do. And right away

the king was sending his soldiers and looking hunting for Elijah.

Ready to bring him to what the king would have

thought of as justice, would to end his life. God

provided for him, didn't he. Some of you have heard

the story before. Most of you heard the story before.

God sent him a place by a stream. There was

water in the stream, and God sent him ravens every

day to bring him food. So Elijah went through what

must have been almost an idyllic time in his life

when he had time. He had days to contemplate the

power of God, the glory of God. He didn't have

all of the scriptures that we had today, but we

know that he had the history of God's people. He

would have had access to the books of Moses, and

he would have known the stories of creation and the Fall.

He would have known about Adam and Eve, about Noah,

about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, about the exodus from Egypt,

where God took his people out with power and set

them free. He had time to pray and to contemplate

the history of God's work with his people, which was

what he had as a Bible at that time. He

had time with God, and that brings us to the

first of our power tips this morning, I'd like to

encourage all of us here to take time, just like

was mentioned in the Bible story take time. We have

to slow down. We need to take time with God.

I'm not talking about worldly entertainment here. I'm talking about

time alone with God. We need time, even separate from

our families, we need time with God. Well, that stream

was beautiful while it lasted. The ravens were bringing the food.

Everything was great. God had been providing for a life

Elijah in a specific way. And then God stopped providing

for Elijah in that specific way because the stream dried

up and it was no more water to drink. This

was a human way of thinking an emergency. But would

God forget his prophet. No, God did not. God's command

came to Elijah and he said, I want you to

go to Zarapath because I have prepared a widow there

who will provide for you. You see, when God stopped taking

care of Elijah in one way, he was getting ready

to take care of Elijah in a different way. Sometimes

God is bringing change into our lives by how he

does or doesn't take care of us.

He will always take care of us, but the way.

He does it will sometimes not always, but sometimes it

will indicate change. Maybe God is calling you to a

new level of service, or to a new place of service,

or maybe even to another country. Elijah went to another

country where people did not worship the True God, and

that was where God was calling him to minister next.

So our next power tip for this morning is to

be ready for change, to embrace change when God brings

it to us.

Sometimes God will stop calling us to.

Leadership in one capacity and he'll lead us to something different.

It might be a different city, it might be a

different occupation. There might be some young person here whom

God will call into ministry or into mission service, full

time mission service.

I don't know.

That's between you and God. No one else can tell

you what God is calling.

You to do.

But I would encourage you to open your heart to

what God is calling you to do, especially in your youth.

Well for those who are young, but those who is

who are not young anymore. We too need to be

ready because change will happen, and God always has ministry

for us, even if we find we can't get out,

even if we find we're immobile. I've known people who

were not able to walk on their own, who had

to be cared for, but they were ministering to the

church by prayer. And let me tell you that is

a ministry of power. That's a ministry that matters in

our church. People have transformed churches by dedicated intercessory prayer.

So never underestimate that, whoever you are, if you have

enough mind left in you to be able to understand

what I'm saying, I promise you God has ministry for you.

So ask him what he's calling you to do next. Well,

in Zeropath, outside the city, there was a boy.

He was with his mother. They were picking up sticks

from the ground. Excuse my voice.

They were picking up sticks. They had heard about the prophet.

They had heard that it was the prophet's fault that

everyone was in danger of starvation because nothing would grow

because the rain hadn't come. They had heard that it

was the prophet who had done that. They had heard

that the prophet was mean. They had heard that all

the kings in the area were looking for the prophet

because they have had extracted promises from all the kings,

that they couldn't find him. Everyone wanted the profet. While

they were picking up sticks, I can imagine the boy

looking up and seeing the prophet had been described to them.

And there's another passage scripture that tells us that the

prophet could be recognized at least partly by his appearance,

by what he was wearing. Look is it, mom? I

think that's a prophet. And that was kind of a

scary moment. The prophet got closer. He looked like the

prophet was supposed to look, except he didn't look me

and he didn't really look scary at all. The prophet

came up to mother, and the prophet said, lady, would

you mind bringing me a drink of water. Now this

mother was used to being kind to strangers, so of

course she said, yes, I'll go to the well and

I'll bring you a drink of water. And as his

mother was leaving, he heard the prophet call out after

and say, would you mind when you come back, could

you bring me a piece of bread. Oh, now that

was a different matter. He saw his mother put put

her hands on her hips. He said, mister prophet, you

don't know what you have just asked. Do you see

these sticks that my son and I have been gathering.

We're gonna make a little fire, and I have a

little bit of flour and a little bit of oil

and We're gonna make a little bit of bread, and

my boy and I are gonna eat that little bit

of bread, and after that we have to die. Sir,

you don't know what you're asking, the prophet said, but

it's okay.

Just make me a little bit first.

Because God has promised that your flower won't run out

and your oil won't run out until the day His

ends rain on the earth.

God has promised to take care of you. Just make

me a little cake first. His mother thought about that

one for a while. Israel's God was making a promise

to her. Could Israel's God be trusted? How could you know?

But then what did she have to lose?

She decided to put Israel's God first, to test him

and see whether Israel's God would provide. So she simply said, okay,

come and they walked together. They walked together to lady's house,

and the lady got.

The flower and put some water and some oil with it.

She needed it, and got it all ready in nice

and flatst right.

The fire was.

They got the fire going, and the pan was hot,

and that dough that that raw bread was plopped.

On the pan.

There was a PLoP and a little and the house

started smelling like baking bread. Have you ever baked bread

in your home? There's nothing like this smell of fresh

baking bread. Now imagine that not only is it the

smell of fresh baking bread, but you have not had enough.

To eat for months and months.

You've been your skinny, your chest barely making bi That

boy watched that bread. He smelled that bread. Mother turned

it over and baked it on the other side. That

looked so amazing, But the boy knew.

That bread wasn't for him. Whether it took the bread

out and she gave it to the prophet.

The boy watched her mother reach back for that jar

of flower. He noticed that her hands were shaking. This

was the test, would God, Israel's God come through after

she'd put him first. She picked up and there was

flour in the jar. And she looked in the bottle

of oil, and there was oil in the bottle. And

the three of them were able to eat all that

they needed for many days, and their lives were saved

because that woman put Israel's God first. Our next power

point is to remind us that we have to put

Israel's God first if we want to have a faith relationship.

With God.

We have to put him first. And I don't know

what that means to you. You can pray an individual

and ask God what that means in your life. What

is there something in your life that you need to change?

There may not be, what there may be.

Ask God? Are you faithful to him in finances? In

the times?

Are you keeping the Sabbath even on tays when you're

under pressure at work to work an extra half hour,

just an extra half hour because customers are here and

they need you, They're depending on you. Are you what

are you doing under pressure of temptation? Are you willing

to put God first in your life? Our next glimpse

of the prophet Elijah that we're going to bring out

this morning comes on Mount Karma. There are two altars,

an altar to the false gods in an altar to

the true God. Elijah had announced. We're going to prepare

offerings for our gods and the God who answers by fire.

He is the God who will be worshiped. He is

the true, the real God who has the power to

care for us and to provide rain and so bail

the storm. God who was the god who was supposed

to bring the rain. According to the pagan mythology, his priests,

it's put wood and altar on and they started praying,

and their prayers were loud, and they were dancing around,

and the sun came up, and they just kept dancing

and carrying on. Oh, bel hear us, obail hear us,

send us, send us what we need, Send us the

fire to.

Prove that you're real.

Nothing happened. Nothing happened. The sun got higher and it

got to be afternoon. Elijah was watching them, and he

was watching them, and at one point he started calling out,

maybe your God is asleep and you need to call

out a little louder to wake him up. Maybe he's

gone on vacation, he's in another country right now and

he's just not available. I'm not sure what the problem is,

but I'm you know, we'll see. And the priests started.

They got even louder and wilder in their chance and

their incantations. They got knives and they cut themselves because

they believed that their God would be pleased if they

were bleeding, and that that would somehow show their devotion

and get their God's attention. Finally, late in the day,

they gave up. It collapsed in the ground. They were

out of energy. They had to give up. That was

when Elijah had his prayer. You know, you've probably heard

the story. There was the altar, there was the wood,

the offering, There was the water over the altar and

into the ditch. And Elijah prayed a simple prayer, Oh Lord, Jehovah, God, let.

The people know.

That you or the God, and that I've done all

this at your command, and that you were calling their

hearts back to you again. And God showed us fire

with a mighty flash of fire. That God showed his

power with a mighty flash of fire that not only

burned up the offering, but the entire altar and evaporated

the water in the ditch. And all the people were shouting, Jehovah,

he is God, the Lord, he is God. And that

was a great victory for God. But for God could

show his power. Our next power tip reminds.

Us that we have to give up.

We have to give up sometimes in order for God

to be able to show his power. Now, I don't

know what foreign gods, what false gods are in the

lives of any individual here. Most of us don't bend

knees before literal images of wood or stone carvings. What

are the false gods of our modern era? What about

chemical dependencies? What about pornography? What about other worldly entertainments?

What about ourselves?

Ourselves as our maker, as our savior, as the one

who's going to get us right? And that one even

sneaks into Christian churches. Maybe someone here has been taught

that we have to work really, really hard, that we

have to focus on our sins, and that we have

to make ourselves better and better and better and better,

and so finally we're going to get ourselves so good

that God will accept us, and then Jesus can come,

and then he can accept us as his own and

take us to heaven.

No, if that's your God, please give up.

No, don't give up on following God, but give up

on purifying yourself. Instead, fall on your knees like Elijah

did before the true God, and call on him to

fill your heart, call on him to make a change

in you that you can.

Never do for yourself.

There's nothing that we can do to bring purity to

our own lives and hearts. But Israel's God is the

same as he was then, and he can and will

change you from the inside out. You don't have to worry,

you don't have to try to put good deeds on

the outside. God wants to transform your heart. He wants

to make you into a new person. That day, Elijah

could be seen as one of the bravest people, one

of the most courageous people in all of Scripture. But

the next day the next day found him running away

from Jezebel.

Jezebel had sent him a.

Note saying, may the gods do so to me and

more al so, if I do not make your lives

like one of them by tomorrow about this time. In

other words, by tomorrow night, Elijah, you are dead. That

was a terrifying message to get. Elijah was exhausted after

a long day on Mount Carmel. Then he had run

more than twenty miles back to Jezreel before ahabs Chariot,

almost a marathon. He was exhausted, his mind was numb.

He got the message. He woke up in terror and

immediately started running. He had a faithful servant who came

with him, and they ran together. They ran and ran

and ran. They ran all the way to Beersheba, which

was about ninety five or more miles.

And then.

With his servant exhausted, Elijah ran another day on to

the south collapsed under a tree. He was all that

time thinking discouraging thoughts, thinking about how God he couldn't.

God was losing after all, he was the only one left,

he thought.

God corrected him when he.

Said that, but he thought he was the only one

left who was worshiping God and that they were about

to kill him, and God was losing out entirely. Everything

was bad, Everything was losing God, everything good was gone,

and his mind was totally lost in discouragement. But God

didn't give up on him. Under that broom tree, God

sent him food and water in a word of encouragement,

and the eventually, after forty more days of travel, he

got to Horror of the Mountain of God, the mountain

where God had given the Ten Commandments many years before,

and he had an encounter with God. God forgave him

and God sent him on a new mission. Our next

power point is never give up. I know I just

told you to give up, give up on idols, give

up on the false gods, but never give up on

Israel's God, because he won't give up on you.

Sometimes we'll fail him.

Sometimes we mess up and do things that we wish

we hadn't done.

Oh I wish I hadn't said.

That that person, that child, Maybe got hurt by.

What I said.

I wounded someone's spirit by an impatient word. Maybe it's

something else. I don't know. But whatever it is in

your life, whatever sneaks in there, you can always come

back to God. Never never give up on Israel's God,

because he will never never give up on you.

Oh. Yes, you have the freedom.

You can choose to ask him to stay out of

your life and he will honor that.

And if you insist, yeah, he will stay out.

But if you want God in your life, God has

promised that. Jesus promised he that comes to me, I

will in no wise cast out. If you want God

in your life, you can have God in your life.

Call on him, ask him. His forgiveness is for you.

Another glimpse we see of Elijah. He's with Elisha. He

had called Elisha to join him after the Mount Carmel experience,

and they established the schools of Prophets. They taught the

people about the true God.

They were starting.

Gods spirit will start beginning a revival in Israel because

of their through their ministry, and God was using them.

The day came when Elijah.

Said to Elisha, God's calling me to the next town.

You can stay here. And Elisha said, no way, I'm

staying with you forever, just like I always have been doing.

So he went to the next town and the next town.

And I won't bore you with all the details, but

eventually they got to the Jordan River and there was

a group of men from the schools of the Prophets

who was there. Elijah took off his coat and rolled

it up, and he held it back and smacked the

water Jordan the water in the river, and the water divided.

It was like there was a dam there, and they

walked over on dry ground, and then the water started

flowing again. So the two men were on the other

side of the Jordan and Elijah asked, Elisha, what would

you like me to do for you before I'm taken

from you? I think if you'd been with a prophet

and the prophet asked you that question, what would you

ask for?

Probably he could have asked for just about anything.

A better house, enough money to serve God readily, all

the resources he would need, long life, good health.

A lot of things he could have asked for.

What he asked for was he said, I want a

double portion of the spirit that is on you to

rest on me. Now, Elijah said, that's a hard thing.

But if if you see me when I'm taking from you,

then it'll be yours. Otherwise it won't. Now, why do

you say that's a hard thing. Elisha was asking to

be Elijah's successor, and that's not solely Elijah's to give right.

That's God's choice.

But Elijah said, okay, if you're with me, if God

lets you stay with me and say you see me

when I'm taking from you, then.

That will be yours. And they walked on little farther.

And chariots and horses of fire came flashing down from

the sky forced the two men to separate. And as

Elisha was standing back from where Elijah was, he watched

a whirlwin. A tornado came and sucked Elijah up into

the sky, and God took Elijah home with him forever,

and Elijah is there today now. Before Elijah left, he

dropped something back to Elisha, a final gift for his

prophet friend.

He dropped that coat. Elishah picked it up. He walked

to the Jordan.

He rolled it up, and he smacked those waters again,

calling out.

Where's Yahweh?

The God of Elijah and God separated the waters walked across.

Our final power point is to Our final power tip

is to remember where you're going, remember your destiny. Hard

things happen on this earth. People are born with devastating disabilities.

They'll cripple their whole lives. People develop disabilities and sicknesses

while they're living. People die, sometimes children die. Bad things happen,

crime happens, people get killed, people get rape. All kinds

of evil things happen in this world, and some of

those are going to touch each one of us.

I don't know which.

One's going to be hit your life, I don't know,

but those, in some form or another, evil touches all

of our lives, and it tempts us to discouragement. Where

was God when my loved one died? Why was someone

in my life born.

With a disability that will just cripple? Why did this happen? God?

We don't really answer those questions. Those questions are not

ours to ask. But the story is not over.

When we lay our loved ones in the dust, The

story is not over, my friends, when someone we love

develops a disability, gets Alzheimer's and can't talk to us

hardly anymore.

The story is not over.

When our children suffer from crime or some other terrible

thing happens.

To them that discourages us. We can't figure out how

we can cope with this. The story is not over until.

Jesus comes and your destiny and mine, chose by God.

It's ours to reject, but it's our destiny chosen by God.

Is to live with him forever and to help him

govern the universe.

Remember the apostle Paul said, don't you know that we're

supposed to judge angels? You need to learn to settle

your differences and figure things out.

We are to participate with the monarch of the galaxies

and the governance of the universe. Can you imagine?

The state is the glory that God has for us

who deserve the death that Jesus died on the cross.

Never forget the cross that Jesus went to for us,

and never forget the glory that Jesus gave us on

that cross that belonged to him.