Ancient Prayers, Present Power | Elijah's Prayer - "Let It Be Known That You Are God" (Kirk Giles)

Well, good morning everyone. It's great to be back with you

today. Take your Bibles, turn to the

Book of First Kings chapter 18. First Kings chapter 18.

1 Kings 18 · chapter mention 1 Kings 18 · chapter mention

That's page 310. If you're using one of the

Bibles in the seat around you. A couple of quick things before

we get into the message today. First of all, we will be

celebrating Communion a little bit later on in the service.

If you did not receive your Communion cups when you came in

today, would you just raise your hand and we're going to make

sure that some of our team gets a Communion cup into your hand

right now. We got some down here at the

front, if we can just make sure and some back here in the back

corner, that would be great. Thank you very much.

And then second, want to welcome some new members to our church

family, people who've been part of our church for a little bit,

but they are now members of the church family.

So would you join me in welcoming Greg and Margaret,

Ronald and Micah so Farley for joining membership here at

Forward? I just want to say I just

appreciate all three of them and the gifts that they bring, how

God is using them in our church family.

And if you call Forward your church home and you are not yet

a member, I want to encourage you to consider taking that step

and make that covenant to each other as a church family as we

serve the Lord together. All right, I want to ask you a

Captain Obvious question when we start the message today.

Have you ever looked at the world around you and thought to

yourself, something just isn't right here, right?

It's just literally the most obvious thing.

You look all around you and you see things that are just wrong,

that are broken. You see things that need to be

fixed. You see injustices that are

happening. You just know something isn't

right. And one of the things that you

will learn as you follow Jesus is this, that the more you learn

to see life through God's eyes, the more you are going to see

just how broken the world is and how far away from God we can

get. For example, have you ever

looked at the political world and felt like man?

There is a big disconnect between what is honoring to God

and what is happening or or maybe in the culture that you

find ourselves, that we find ourselves living in.

I I think we could spend hours and hours and hours talking

about things in our culture where we go that just somehow

doesn't line up with what God says is right and good.

At worst or at best, there's a disconnect, and at worst there's

outright rebellion against God. Even on a more personal level,

like when you move it down into your own life, so many of us

have friends or family who don't follow Jesus.

Many of you in this room, you've got children, you've got

grandchildren, you've got people who are important to you in your

life and they are not following Jesus and your heart aches.

So when you think about all those situations, what's your

normal reaction like? When you think about broader

culture and all the things that are wrong in the broader

culture, what's your normal reactor?

Do you just get angry all the time at everything that's going

on? Are you frustrated?

Are you feeling it like you just want to shake somebody?

Maybe you just want to fight a culture war and set everything

right. Or maybe you're way over on the

opposite end and you just don't care anymore because you've just

gotten so used to it being this way.

You think this is just normal in the way things should be.

Maybe in your own personal life, if it's someone you know and

love who wants nothing to do with God, maybe you've got fears

or worries. Maybe you're stressed out about

it. Or maybe you're on the opposite

end and you just go, there's nothing I can do about it.

Let them make their own personal decisions.

Well, today I want to present this idea to you.

When other people don't live like God is God, your best

response is to pray. Today we're going to look at

what is a familiar story to many of us if we've been around

church for any length of time. But for some of you, it might be

brand new. So I want to give us a bit of

context that's going to help us better understand the prayer

that we're going to look at this morning.

Ahab has just become king of Israel.

Now history tells us that Ahab was actually an amazing king.

Israel is living in incredible economic prosperity.

They are a regional superpower there.

There are all kinds of reasons to look at Ahab and go man, he

is doing an amazing job as leader.

But what looks good on the surface is not always good in

the eyes of God. God's view of Ahab was very

different than what everybody else would have been

experiencing. On the surface.

The Bible says that Ahab did what was evil in the Lord's

sight. Listen to this more than all who

were before him. Like, you have to work really

hard to be worse than everybody else who's ever lived.

But that's what Ahab is described as in this passage.

Ahab continues the practice of a previous king named Jeroboam who

created idols that were worshipped other than God.

But Ahab added to it he he marries a woman by the name of

Jezebel. Jezebel worships a God named

Bale. Now Bale was a God who was said

to control the rain and the wind and the clouds and all those

things are essential elements for an Agricultural Society.

They would have felt there is important value in worshipping

Bale, and Jezebel wants to use her influence to make Baal

worship the primary religion of Israel.

So she works to squash anyone who's loyal to God.

She orders the killing of prophets of God.

Anything she can do to diminish people who want to worship God

and raise up the worship of Baal, she's all for it.

But that's not where it ended. Ahab also brings in Asherapols,

not sure is the goddess of fertility.

She was also associated with sexuality.

So in short, what Ahab has done, he has brought polytheism to

Israel. Now if you don't know what

polytheism is, it just means the worship of many gods.

The idea that there was one true God alone was being replaced by

the idea that all of these gods are worth being worshipped and

followed to varying degrees, that we should find the gods who

are going to suit the needs of the people.

And, and this idea and this reality kind of seeped into the

culture all the way to the point where in chapter 18, verse 21,

we discover that the people are wavering between two opinions.

Should I worship Baal or should I worship God?

There are some people who are kind of even in between both

opinions. They're they're landing in the

space of maybe do I worship both of them?

Do I worship Baal and I worship God?

Any of us sound familiar to you? It, it, it is not a whole lot

different than the world we actually live in today.

We, we've just accepted it as normal.

But we, we live in a time where whatever path you take to God,

it doesn't really matter what path you take as long as you're

just spiritual. We, we've got all kinds of idols

that we turn to today. Some of us even in this room or

watching online, we can become functional polytheists.

You, you could have just had an incredible time of worshipping

God, celebrating who he is and, and just enjoying the singing

together. But then this afternoon you're

going to go home and you're going to start to count on your

bank account or your job or your family or whoever else to give

you meaning and direction and purpose in life.

That's functional polytheism. You are worshipping multiple

gods to give you meaning and direction for your life.

We put our faith in things like our sex life, our identity,

whatever it is, whatever is in our heart, to guide us through

life. To some degree.

We've turned ourselves into idols as well, hundreds of

millions of people. We all have our own little

platform where we just want people to pay attention to us,

or we just do life however we want to do life.

We live how we want to live. We have a motto in our culture

that says you do you. We've turned ourselves into

idols, and at its core, our culture, our moment in time is

not any different than other cultures through human history.

And then along comes a guy named Elijah.

Elijah is a prophet of God who announces that there's a famine

coming to the land because of the decisions that Ahab has

made. After three years of famine in

the land, Elijah calls for a showdown between himself and the

prophets of Bail and Asherah. 450 prophets of Bail, 400

prophets of Asherah are in the land, 850 to one.

Those are not good odds. And he says, OK, we're going to

make 2 sacrifices, but no fire. Nobody gets to start a fire.

Instead, each would call on the name of their God to start the

fire. And the God who answers is the

one true God. But Elijah takes it to another

level. He puts 12 Stones around the

sacrifice. He builds A trench around it

that's big enough to hold 15 liters of water.

He pours water all over the sacrifice, all over the wood,

all over the stones, three times.

Everything is completely drenched.

The prophets of Baal get up and they start praying.

They pray all afternoon. They're shouting loudly and

they're cutting themselves and they're doing everything they

can to get his attention that he would respond and start the fire

of their sacrifice a lot to even let them go 1st.

And they get no response. Elijah prays.

And this is the best part of the whole story.

Fire comes down from heaven and consumes the entire sacrifice

that is drenched in water. Now, how cool would it be to

pray a prayer and fire comes down from heaven?

Like, who doesn't want that to happen sometime?

I was trying to get our tech team to rig something that I

could pray and like, something would come down on the stage

today. Like sometimes, isn't that just

what you want to do? Be be honest.

Don't you sometimes just feel like you would like to call down

fire from heaven on certain people?

When you experience those moments when there is something

uneasy inside of you about people or culture around you, I

want you to pay attention. That is the Holy Spirit calling

you to action. And while there's a whole lot

that's gone on in this story, the most important action you

can take is pray, because nothing changes in this story

until Elijah prays. And that's where we pick up in

verse 36 of chapter 18. At the time for offering the

evening sacrifice, the prophet Elijah approached the altar and

said, Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.

Today let it be known that you are God in Israel and I am your

servant, and that at your word I have done all of these things.

Answer me Lord, answer me so that this people will know that

you, the Lord are God and that you have turned their hearts

back. Elijah's prayer begins by

teaching us this that when you pray you should be confident

that you are talking to the one faithful, all powerful and

living God. There are times if we are

honest, when we are really agitated, frustrated, concerned

about something in culture or in other people's lives that we

think prayer is the weak thing to do.

We do everything possible to go and fix the solution or be a

part of the solution and fix the problem.

But we don't pray. We we think we just need to take

a stand and fix the wrong ourselves.

But when you start to act to fix something that is wrong without

praying, then you are making yourself the all powerful person

in the equation. Sometimes we pray just to check

a box and say, Oh yeah, I prayed about that.

I said my prayers before bed. I said my prayers before eating.

But I want you to understand every single time you pray, it

is not just a spiritual exercise to go through for the sake of

checking a box. You are coming into the presence

of the one true, faithful, all powerful and living God.

That's what Elijah is declaring at the beginning of his prayer

here when he says, Lord the God of Abraham and Isaac and Israel,

he's going back to generations worth of covenants and promises

that God has made to the Jewish people.

He's highlighting the faithfulness that God has shown

over and over again. And by doing this, he's saying,

God, you are the God who has kept your promises in the past

and shown yourself powerful and faithful and loving in the past.

And I have every confidence you are going to continue to do that

going into the future. You know, I, I forget where I

read this, but one of the most transformational things that I

ever learned about prayer early in my adult life came in a book.

And again, forgive me, I forget where the what the book was, but

the author of this book said when you pray, you need to pause

long enough to get your heart and mind centered on the reality

of who exactly it is you're talking to.

That that you don't just come in flippantly into prayer and you

don't just come in like I'm just doing this because I have to do

this. But you center your heart and

mind you, you take a breath even if you have to and remind

yourself, I'm not just talking for the sake of talking.

I am talking to the one true living God.

Is there anybody better to talk to?

Like God is not in your imagination.

He's real. God is here right now, whether

you feel him or you don't feel him.

We live in a culture that talks all the time.

I don't feel God. Your feeling of God does not

influence whether or not God is here.

The Bible tells us God is omnipresent.

You cannot run from the presence of God.

He is everywhere. He is all powerful.

You are talking to someone who has no limitations on their

resources and he's faithful. He's a God who has kept his

promises in the past and he's going to continue to keep those

promises in the future, which means you can completely depend

on him. And there is no other God.

He is the only true God. He is not like anyone else you

might trust in or talk to. You know Webster's Dictionary

even recognizes this. Webster's Dictionary defines God

this way. The supreme or ultimate reality,

the very definition of God, does not allow anything else to be

God. There is no room.

There can only ultimately be one God.

I say this with the utmost of respect.

Allah is not God. There is only one God.

The God of the Bible claims himself to be the one true God,

and that's who you're talking to when you pray.

Now, when you think of it that way, it's really easy to get

inside your own head. Like if you've ever had a

conversation with someone who is smarter than you, more powerful

than you, more influential than you, who knows everything, you

can get nervous and wonder, what is it I need to do to impress

this person that I'm coming to talk to.

We, we live in a culture where we constantly feel the need to

impress other people. Like when you are in a dating

relationship, you are trying to impress other people.

You're trying to impress that person.

I tried to impress my wife on our very first date.

I picked up a dozen long stand roses.

I'm like, I'm going to make a good first impression.

Why? Because you never get a second

chance to make a good first impression.

It was all great until I was 45 minutes late for the date

because I got lost in the thriving metropolis of Paris ON

This is way back before Google Maps.

Everybody OK, so like it. It is wild the things that we

will do to try to impress other people.

We try to impress our boss at work, we try to impress our

friends. We we post on social media.

Every time you post on social media, whether you say it or

not, you're trying to impress other people.

Why? Because you love it when someone

likes your post and you get depressed when they don't like

your post. You're trying to impress all the

time. And we can get the same way with

God. If I'm going to pray, what do I

need to say and do that's going to impress Him?

And the truth is, nothing, nothing.

You don't need to try and impress God with your prayers.

I've heard people who use incredibly eloquent words in

their prayers. One of the very first services

we ever attended here at Forward many years, even before we

started attending regularly, there was a man that many of you

will know. His name is Gordon Phillips.

Gordon Phillips was praying during the service that Sunday.

And I listened to Gordon pray and I thought, Oh my goodness, I

have just touched heaven. And then I thought, Oh my

goodness, I can never pray again because he's the only one who

can pray like that. I've never met anybody that

could pray like him. It was incredible.

Now on the opposite end, my posture before I, we started

attending forward, my posture. Early on in his Christian life,

he had a huge stuttering problem.

Like he could not talk without stuttering.

It was just automatic. He was a brand new Christian.

He's sitting at church one Sunday and his pastor says

during communion, Hey, Ray, I want you to pray for communion

today. Now imagine being poor Ray, who

is just stuttering and mumbling and bumbling his way through a

prayer. And I want you to know

something. God is equally honored by both

prayers. It's not about the eloquence of

words. It's not about the abundance of

words in your prayer that makes your prayer powerful.

Both types of prayers can be equally honoring to God.

The prophets of Baal, they spent half a day trying to get Bale's

attention to respond to their prayers.

Elijah prays in about two sentences, and God sends down

fire from heaven. Church, Jesus died on a cross to

reconcile you to God and give you access at any moment to come

boldly into the presence of your heavenly Father who loves you.

And he wants to hear from you, not because you've got all the

right words to say, but because you're his child.

Don't overthink your prayers. Just pray.

Now, that doesn't mean you can't grow in learning different ways

to pray and helping you to connect with Him, but it doesn't

mean we don't need to overthink it.

One of the ways we can all grow in prayers to understand that

prayer is a place to check your attitudes and actions.

In the very first part of Elijah's prayer in verse 36,

before we ever get to the part of fire coming down from heaven,

Elijah asks God for something else.

He says let it be known that you are God and that I am your

servant and that at your word I have done all these things.

Here's what Elijah's praying. Hey, God, would you just please

have my back and show these people that I'm not a crazy man?

That's what he's praying, basically.

I've called for this, this day, this moment of this challenge,

and it looks ridiculous. What I've called for here, The

odds are against me. I've drenched this this thing in

water. It doesn't make any sense.

Would you come and just have my back and show me, Show everybody

else I'm not crazy? And the reason he prays that is

because Elijah says I've just simply done what you've told me

to do. God, I've done all these things

that don't make any sense to anybody else, but I'm doing them

because you've told me to call for this challenge.

You've told me to put water on the sacrifice like this.

You cannot expect God to show up in a powerful way if you're not

living in obedience to God yourself.

Like Elijah makes this incredibly bold prayer, but it's

a prayer that's based on an assumption that he's living in

obedience to God. You know what obedience is?

Obedience just means faith in action means I trust God so much

I'm going to do what God says. I have faith in God and I'm

living it out in the everyday of my life, whatever He says to do.

Now I want to be clear because some of us may not totally

understand the difference between these two meanings of

the word faith. So there's a difference between

saving faith and living faith. Saving faith is the idea of

this. The Bible says that every single

human is a Sinner, and every single one of us is in danger of

the judgement of God for our sins.

And the Bible says that none of us can be rescued or saved from

that judgement by our obedience, by our own good works.

Doing good things will not make you right with God.

We are saved. We are made right with God,

first by his grace, his unmerited favor towards us, and

second, by our faith in Jesus and the reality that Jesus took

our place on a cross to pay the penalty for our sins.

That's saving faith. And saving faith leads us to

living faith. Living faith is where we

continue to choose to have faith that there is only one God and

that one God rules over everything.

Living faith manifests itself by living in obedience to God.

Here's how the preacher chapter Spurgeon described it.

Because we have faith in God as Lord of all, we gladly pay him

our homage and desire in all things.

To say Thy will be done in earth as it is done in heaven.

You must have a priority faith in God or else the will of God

will not be a priority rule to you.

Obedience means just doing what God says to do, even when it

doesn't make sense. And before you ever start to

pray for God to change the way that other people are living or

to change the environment around you, ask God to search you and

show show you if you're honoring God yourself.

Like let me give you a couple of quick examples from the Bible.

Men, let's say you're in a marriage relationship.

You're frustrated with your wife for whatever reason.

So you're asking God, God, would you please just change her?

Would you just work in her life? And maybe sometimes you get so

frustrated with her, you're getting angry, you're talking

down to her, you're ignoring her.

Here's what the Bible says in first Peter chapter 3.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

Husbands, show your wife honor as Co heirs of the grace of life

so that your prayers will not be hindered.

Your obedience to God men in honoring your wife is directly

connected to God hearing your prayers.

Let me give you another example. I I know this never happens in

our culture, but let's just say you're frustrated, maybe even

angry with leaders. You just want them to be better

and do better. The Bible has a lot to say about

honouring, respecting, and praying for those who are in

authority. What would make you think God's

going to respond favorably to you if you aren't saying yes to

what He wants from you? Sometimes we pray and nothing

happens. And part of the reason nothing

happens is because we're praying with the wrong motives.

That's what James chapter 4, verse 3 tells us.

James 4:3

And so here's what I want to do. I want to take a minute.

We're going to have a silent prayer.

And I want to ask you just to think about this, everybody

close your eyes. I want you to come before God,

Say God in the places of life that concern me or frustrate me.

Please show me if I'm honoring you with my actions and

attitudes. It's important to keep coming

back to that over and over again, asking God to show you

your own heart and the way you're living in obedience to

God yourself. That's just the first part of

Elijah's prayer. The second part goes further.

Let me ask you this. What's your greatest desire?

When you pray for other people, especially people who want

nothing to do with God, when you look at the culture around us,

when you look at all the things that frustrate you, what's your

greatest desire? Here's what Elijah's prayer

teaches us. Prayers that honor God are

primarily concerned with the state of people's souls.

Look at verse 37 for a minute. I want you to notice something

that never once shows up in Elijah's prayer.

Elijah never actually prays for fire from heaven, never shows

up. Elijah doesn't say, God, would

you send down fire from heaven? The fire that comes down is

simply God doing what God was always going to do in response

to Elijah's obedience. Elijah's prayer, his greatest

desire is for people to see God for who he is.

That people would know God and all of his glory and all of his

power, and that their hearts would be turned back to him.

That people would want to love God and honor him with their

life. You know, so many times we go

looking for the fire to fall from heaven, when what matters

most is that all of humanity has a clear vision of who God really

is. In this culture where people

denied God, where there were servants of God who were being

killed, where Ahab himself could, where Elijah himself

could possibly be killed, his primary concern are the souls of

people who are angry with God or who are confused about which God

they should trust. Let's be honest, that's not

always what we're most concerned about.

There's just something inside of us that always gets caught up in

the morality of the situation. We want everything that we're

seeing on the surface to be fixed and changed.

That's the kind of stuff we usually pray for.

Like when someone else's actions make your life more difficult.

What do you pray for? Hey God, just get me through

this. Help me not to kill this person,

right? Those are OK prayers but not

ultimate When when the culture around you seems like it's just

going crazy sometimes celebrating things that just are

so obviously against what God says.

If you even pray about it, what do you pray for?

Like God, would you just stop this madness when when someone

you love is getting in some kind of trouble?

What? What do you pray for?

Hey God, would you just help them to stop gambling or

drinking or taking drugs? Again, not bad things to pray

for, but but not ultimate things for for those of you who have

children or grandchildren or friends who are caught up in a

world where they ignore God or where maybe God is just one of

many other gods that they're kind of serving and worshiping

in their life. The single greatest prayer that

you can give is that those people you love will see God for

who He is and we'll have their hearts turn back to Him.

You see, the truth is nothing changes unless hearts change.

Nothing changes in the culture once the hearts of our culture

change. Nothing changes in our marriages

and in our families unless hearts change.

Nothing changes in the priorities of people until

something changes in our hearts. That that is exactly what Jesus

teaches us, that what we most often pay attention to are the

things that are at the surface, the things that we can touch and

see. But everything that is broken in

this world and in this culture, everything that is broken in our

lives, everything that is wrong and living in rebellion against

God, everything that tries to make God one of many gods that

we serve, it's all because of what is in our hearts.

And what we need to see is the majesty and the glory of God and

to have our hearts turn to Him. So I want to give you a minute

to pray. close your eyes again. I want you to think about all

those people that frustrate you, those people that you're

concerned with, the culture around you.

I want you to pray for them to see God and to have their hearts

turned to Him. You know, the the reason I know

that this prayer is so important is because this is what God's

heart is for you. If you're here today and this

whole idea of Christianity is foreign to you, or you're just

checking it out, here's what I want you to know.

There is only one God. There can only be one God by

very nature of the definition of God.

And that God is greater than your mind can possibly fathom.

And for whatever reason, amongst all the billions of people on

this planet who have ever lived, that God loves you, no matter

how much brokenness you have in your life, no matter how many

times you have failed or done something wrong, That God says

the sin in your life is not primarily a behavior problem,

it's a heart problem. Ezekiel chapter 36 says this.

Ezekiel 36 · chapter mention

I will cleanse you from all of your impurities.

That God stands ready to forgive you of your sin if you just call

out to Him. But there's more.

He also says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit

in you. That that God is alive and ready

to radically alter the course of your life by giving you a heart

transplant so that you could know Him and know His love for

you and that you could love Him in return.

And he's just inviting you to pray and call out to Jesus and

say, forgive me of my sin and come and give me a new heart.

God, I surrender my life to you. For those of us who do follow

Jesus, you know, it's so easy for us to get worried or

frustrated or even stop caring about the actions and decisions

of people who don't follow God. And what we need to remember is

we were just once like them. We needed to see God in all of

his glory. We needed to experience the

grace and the forgiveness of God in our own lives.

That's what God has done for us at the cross.

The sacrifice of Elijah in First Kings 18, the sacrifice that he

makes is just a temporary sacrifice.

But at the cross, Jesus dies and he is the sacrifice once and for

all time that says your sins can be totally forgiven.

You can be made new. You can see God in all of his

glory, the sacrifice of Jesus and the life and the death and

the resurrection of Jesus. We see the glory and the majesty

and the love that God has for you.

But sometimes in the chaos of the world we live in, we lose

sight of that. We lose sight of what God's done

for us. And so that's one of the reasons

why we need to take Communion together on a regular basis.

So I want to invite you to pull your Communion Cup out right

now. See, what Communion does is

Communion brings us back. It pulls us out of all the

things in the world that are distracting us and annoying us

and frustrating us and pulls us back into what ultimately

matters most, that there is one God who is great and he who

loves me so much that he would send his Son to die on a cross

for my sins. When we take communion, we're

reminding each other, reminding ourselves of how Jesus points us

to the glory of God. So I want to invite you to pull

the wafer out of the top of your communion cup.

This represents the reality that God became flesh, He came to

dwell amongst us. His name is Jesus, the Son of

God. That instead of us as humans

having to pay the price, the judgement of God, the Son of

God, God in the flesh. What a merciful, gracious God.

He would go and die on a cross so that we would not have to.

And we take this, this wafer and remembrance of the body of Jesus

that took our place on the cross.

Eat all of it. If you

open up the juice, the juice represents the blood of Jesus

that was shed on the cross for us.

And that blood that was shed, the Bible tells us, was shed so

that you and I could be forgiven, fully reconciled to

God. Able to enjoy fellowship,

relationship with him, the ability to be called a child of

God because you are forgiven. So we take this juice and we

drink it in remembrance of the blood of Jesus that was shed,

not only for you, but for every person in this world who needs

to still see that God loves them.

Let's take this in remembrance of him.

And the story with Elijah verse 39, after he had prayed and the

fire came down, it says when all the people saw it, they fell

face down and said the Lord he is God, the Lord he is God.

I want to invite you just take a moment, close your eyes.

For those of us who are God's children, I want you just to

take a moment and center your heart and reflect on just how

awesome God is. Church, let's stand together.

Let's celebrate our awesome God.