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Now, shall we read from the Book of Kings once more, in First Kings chapter eighteen, beginning in verse thirty six. And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening oblation that Elijah the prophet came near and said, O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou, Lord, art God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces, and they said, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. Elijah said unto them, take the prophets of Baal, let not one of them escape. And they took them. And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishod and slew them there. And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of abundance of rain. So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, and he bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up and looked and said, there is nothing. And he said, go again seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time that he said, behold, there arises a cloud out of the sea as small as a man's hand. And he said, go up, say unto Ahab, make ready thy chariot and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass in a little while that the heaven grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. Alongside of that, let us take a reading from the New Testament, the first epistle by John and chapter five. One John chapter five, verse four: For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three agree in one. And may God, who spoke to Israel in Elijah's day, speak again to our hearts by his spirit now. This afternoon, when we broke off our study, we were taking time to consider the ancient old nonsense of a god, Baal. And found him to be the pagan deification of the forces of nature. Baal was the storm god to the ancient Canaanites. We found him also to be a deification of the processes of fertility and reproduction. His consort Astarte was the sex symbol of the ancient pantheon. In Baal and Astarte, the Canaanites thought they worshipped the processes of fertility and sex, and it led to the degradation of the Canaanites, not to not a little dehumanizing of their spirits and their ultimate cruelty to their children. We were studying those things because the record is that Israel, in the time of Ahab, and largely due to that monster of a woman, Jezebel, declined from the living God, and came into servitude to these idolatrous interpretations of the world around. You may wonder why we should bother to spend such a long time studying these ancient and to us grotesque ideas, fit only to a for a social anthropological museum. But not so, my good friend. We live in a world that today is progressively becoming more and more like the ancient pagan world that was in existence in the days before Christianity was founded. Take, for instance, our atheist and humanist friends, and I hope among your friends you do number some who are pro tem atheists and humanists. Of course, they would be horrified if you suggested to them that they were idolatrous. They are not to be found bowing down to crude totem poles or other such idolatrous objects. They profess, in fact, so many of, uh, them, uh, so many who are scientists not to believe in any God whatsoever. And yet, of course, their interpretation of the universe is just as idolatrous as the ancient pagans' interpretation. For ask your atheist friend, when you next get the opportunity, what it is, what are those powers that ultimately control human life upon this planet? Ask them, if you care, do they hold that man is in control of his own life upon this planet? Is man the cause of his appearance on the planet? Will man be the cause of his disappearance? And of course, the answer is obviously no. We neither made ourselves, nor we did- did we make the planet or the universe in which we live. What then are the ultimate powers that control humanity? What brought us forth? What ultimately controls our present existence? What shall determine our end and our destiny? And if you ask that of the modern humanist and atheist, he will reply to you that ultimately the things that control us are the great impersonal forces of the universe. Basic energy developing through whatever process, Big Bang or other, into the main forces, the weak atomic power, the strong atomic power, electromagnetism, gravity, anti-gravity, if there is such a force, and all the biological and phys- physiological processes. These, they say, are the things that control us. Pray, ponder the implication, if it be true. I confess I get a little bit impatient with humanists. They profess to be interested in human beings. They have no time for God. God is an incubus. God a dead weight. The whole notion of God leads you to slavery, they say. Strike a blow for freedom, man. Kick out the notion of some God breathing down your neck and controlling you and frightening you with his laws, scaring you with his doctrine of hell. Get rid of God and be free. Well, let's get rid of God for a minute. Now what about the freedom? Or if it be true, that the things that control us, that brought us into being, and will one day bring us to our end, are merely the impersonal forces of this universe. It doesn't matter whether you call them gods or you don't call them gods. They are in control, and you may say goodbye to your freedom. If it be true that what we are pleased to think is our reason is merely the end result of ten million bits of blind matter worked on by chance forces without purpose, without mind. And ultimately, our very reason has little more significance than a pot of jam stirred around with a spoon. One day, if it be true, that the ultimate powers that have the say over our destiny are mindless forces, they see what it will mean to you, madam and you, sir. One day, a little virus without top and phapany worth of sense in its head. No mind worth calling a mind will enter your body and proceed to tear it to pieces. Your intellect, your fine sense of aesthetics and beauty, your ability to plan all your human relationships, all that means humanness to you. And a little bit of stuff, blind, mindless stuff, will enter your body and begin to destroy you. And the irony of it is that as you see it doing its work, you'll have the sense to see what it's doing, and not the ability to stop it. And when it is destroyed, you, the final irony is this, that it won't even know what it's done. You call that freedom? If it be true that there's no God, there's no life to come, then there's another thing you might as well give up on, and that is the idea of justice. I had a learned friend in my university. He was a humanist, a delightful man nonetheless, but a humanist. He came to lecture on up to us, how you can have morality without believing in God. Said, he, you see, it's simple like this, it works this way. If you put your finger in my eye, you'll find that I shall put my finger back in your eye, and you'll learn it's not worth your while putting your finger in my eye. And so we shall come to a gentleman's agreement not to use our fingers to poke each other's eyes out. And that's all you need for morality, he said. You don't need God. There came a question time, and I know philosopher, a naive man if ever there was. I said, can I ask a question? Yes. I said, my name is Adolf Hitler. Oh. I said, and I'm for, I'm about to gas, uh, six million Jews. You say I shouldn't do that if I were you. That is poking your finger in other people's eyes in a very big way. If you do that, we shall come along and poke our finger in your eyes. I said, no, you won't. Because I happen to have the army big enough to get on with the job, and I'm going to gas six million Jews. And when you come at me with your armies eventually, and you're going to put your finger in my eye, I shall take my revolver and shoot my brains out. And as you say, there's no God out there anyway, there's no afterlife, there's no judgment to fear. I've won, haven't I? And got away with murder, Six million murders indeed. So you naughty man, you oughtn't to do it because that's not a nice way of living. You won't enjoy yourself. I say, thank you very much. I'm enjoying myself very well, thank you. If you don't like Jew- gassing Jews, don't gas them. I like gassing Jews, so I'm going to gas them. Oh, I like to invite my humanists. Come on, I say, come, we'll come to Hitler's gas chambers. Come on. And here's a row, uh, and they're going to be gassed, uh, uh, next week. What will we say to them? They'll be crying out to you and saying, we want justice. What do we say? I know what the humanist will have to say. Listen to him, bright fellow he is. He's all for humanity, believes in humanity. Now listen to him. You want justice? Look, I have to tell you, sorry, you're not going to get justice. Not in this life, at any rate. The next week you're going to be gassed. And since there's no afterlife, you won't get justice there either. So there is no justice ultimately. Precisely. Oh friend, if there be no God, then leave off talking about ultimate justice, ultimate meaning, either for the individual or for the planet as a whole. Here comes the new age with all these interesting ideas, potpourri of Hinduism and goodness knows what else. How they say, we believe in God. Oh, you do? Yeah. God is everything, and everything is God. The sun is God, the moon is God, uh, the elephant is God, uh, the rocks are God, the tree is God, man is God. Oh, how nice. I suppose the petrol in the combustion engine we were talking about this afternoon, that's God as well, I suppose. They are pantheists. And if God is everything, well, then right is God and wrong is God. And ultimately, there's no difference between Adolf Hitler and the best saint that ever trod earth. For all are bits of God. You say, why trouble us in a Christian convention with such like things, oh, you impossible Englishmen. Because it's not for us to be forever sitting on comfortable seats, comforting ourselves with the songs of Zion, merely when millions of men and women on the face of the earth perish. They're all ancient idolatries and their modern equivalents. Without God. Without Christ, and therefore without hope in the world. I say, come on, my humanist, come and talk to my friend here. She's a mother of thirty five years old. She's got three children. She's just been diagnosed as having terminal cancer. What will you say, you humanist? I know what I'll say. I shall say, sorry, my dear, to hear the doctor's report, but there is hope for you. There's a God who loves you, my dear. Made you. Like the rest of us, you are a sinner, member of a fallen race. There's hope. The God who's loved us and sent his son to die for us, that we might have forgiveness through him. Trust him, and he gives you eternal life, forms a relationship with you that will never end. And even more, your very suffering is not meaningless, because for the believer, the word of God says that our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us an exceeding great and eternal weight of glory. Come on, humanist, come and talk to us. What will you say? What can he say? Sorry. There's no hope. Ultimately, no value or meaning in your suffering. You might as well shoot your brains out. Oh friend, can't you feel in your very heart the sadness of a world gone from God? Men and women of flesh and blood like we, but deceived, thinking they are fighting for liberty, landing themselves hopeless in the prison house of a materialistic universe. How will you help? How will you know whether there's a God or not? How can we be sure among the ten thousand and m one voices all claiming to be God? How can we know the true God? Ponder again the famous story of the demonstration that Elijah affected on Mount Carmel, by which means God brought his people back to himself. Says he, I propose a contest, gentlemen, you priests of Baal, there's a whole crowd of you and just one of me. Never mind. You make your altar, put your sacrifice on it, but don't put any fire under it. I'll make my altar and put my sacrifice on it, and I'll put no fire there. And you call upon your God. And I'll call upon my God, and the God who answers by fire upon the sacrifice, let him be God. Fair enough, they said, and proceeded to the contest. They prepared their altar, put their sacrifice on it, and then they cried to their God, oh Baal, hear us. There was neither voice, nor any that regarded. Said Elijah when it got twelve o'clock. He said, you know, the trouble is, God-sal he's pale, isn't he? Has he gone for a walk? Cry a bit louder. He might even have gone to the toilet, so give him a chance to get back again, said he. You say that's crude talk, isn't it, for a prophet of God? No, it isn't. There comes a time when, to do men a kindness, you want to get their noses and rub it in the mud of the implications of their godless humanism and atheism. Make them feel it. They cried again, oh, they'll hear us. Only consider the poignancy of it, crying into the wind. There was no voice, nor any that regarded. Oh, poor human being, in the moment of his distress. What use calling upon electromagnetism, or atomic power, or the wind, or the storm, or Baal, whatever you call him. They are but impersonal forces. They don't know how you feel. They don't even know you exist. You may cry to them all you will. There's no voice, nor any that regards. Oh you, if any of you are without God tonight, without Christ, in your little atheistic, humanistic universe. Alone! Utterly alone! Without savior or refuge or companion in the universe. And it's a lie. For there is a God, and we can know there is a God and know who he is. How shall we know? Then it came Elijah, Elijah's turn. He doused his altar and sacrifice with water, then drew near and called upon God. O God of Abraham, said he, show this day to your people that you are God and that you have turned their hearts back again. In that moment, the fire fell from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, and the very stones of the altar. But after that was over, the old drought was broken, and there came a welcome flood of blessed rain from heaven. What did it mean? Well, it meant that old Baal had been made to look silly. He was supposed to be the god of the storm, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning, the rain. Today, Israel witnessed that there is a true God who made these impersonal forces and controls them still. A God who is personal and can hear prayer and control the powers of the universe. When it so pleased him to demonstrate his existence to his people. Ah, but it's more, isn't it? No Christian can read the story of that sacrifice and fire from heaven coming without first thinking of what the Book of Chronicles says. When the temple, the house of the Lord, had been finished and Solomon built his altar and put upon his sac- sacrifice thereupon, the very fire of heaven came down upon the sacrifice. God's public demonstration that he accepted the sacrifice that Solomon had offered on the part of his people. So here, what a dramatic moment this was. You picture it in your mind's eye? Israel gone over to Baal worship, and now Baal exposed as the nonsense he was. And Elijah calling on God, and in that moment, that sudden streak across the sky, and the sky opened. And the fire fell, you say, on whom? Ah, could have been no surprise, could it, had it fallen upon guilty, godless, god-deserting Israel and consumed them as once the fire consumed Korah, Dathan, and Byram. See the mercies of the real God. Earring Israel though they were, he loved them, every single man, woman, boy, and child, worthy of his judgment though he, though they were. When he opened heaven, the fire fell on the sacrifice, and Israel was forgiven and brought back. Oh, wonderful God. That even Elijah's demonstration was but a prototype of greater things, wasn't it? How will you know the true God? There is one place on earth, my friend, one place above all others, where you may find God. And amidst all the Babel of voices, hear the voice of the true God and know it is God your. It's at Calvary's cross, where we come guilty with our sin. See the sacrifice that Jesus Christ offered, and the wrath of God's fire descending on him, that we might be forgiven. How do you know the true God? You will remember Solomon's story, won't you, when he was a young king. And in those days he was full of wisdom. In the city, there was a brothel with a couple of prostitutes in it. Each prostitute had a child. In the middle of the night, one woman rolled over on her babe and suffocated it. When she woke up and found what had happened, stealthily she crept out of bed, took her dead child, went across to the other side of the room where the other bed was, took the living child away from the mother, put her dead child in its place, and crept back into bed. And when the second woman woke up in the morning and had a look at her child, it was dead. And then she looked again, oh, that ain't my child. Out of bitchy got and went across the room. See, you've got my baby. No, I haven't. Yes, you have. No, I haven't. You know what happened next as they pulled each other's hair nearly out. Eventually, they were brought before Solomon. And he said, my woman, is that your child? Yes, she said, it's my child. That living child is your child? Yes, and the dead one is her. What do you say, he said to the other. No, she said, the living child is mine and the dead child is hers. There appeared to be no settling of the argument. At last Solomon said, I tell you what, I'll decide this question in utter fairness. And calling one of his guards, he said, take this living baby. He said, mothers, this is what I propose to do. Each of you says the living child is yours. I'm going to be fair. I'm going to give half each. And he commanded his officer to cut the child in two and give one half to the one woman and the other half to the other. What do you say to that? And one woman said, yes, you do that. And the other woman said, no, you don't. Oh, king, she said, no, not that. Anything than that. Give it to the other woman then. Ah, said Solomon, that's another. Did he know? Ah, there was a woman that would do anything rather than that baby perish. Oh, how would you know who the true God is? How would you know who your maker is? It's the God that though you be sinner indeed, would do anything within almighty love and power to save you from perishing. Come with me to Calvary and see it. Hear the God that answers, the God who speaks in the silence and the gloom of Calvary, that the wrath of God against sin descended upon his Son, that you and I, sinners though we were, might be forgiven and restored. After the sacrifice and the fire, there came the rain, blessed rain that ended the three years drought, a sound of abundance of rain. Think me fanciful if you care to. The second big evidence of who is God is first Calvary and the resurrection, then the coming of the blessed rain of Pentecost, the pouring out of God's spirit, filling the heart of everyone who trusts the Savior and bringing the assurance of God, that not only God is, but that God has saved them, regenerated them, and made them his forever. This is the message, then, we must take to a world outside. It's a message we must be sure of ourselves, isn't it? We shall not convince the world if we are not sure that Jesus is the Son of God. Moreover, we shall find it very difficult to resist the pressures of the world. Haven't you found it so? Who is he that overcometh the world, save he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Oh, my young man, my young woman, if you haven't found them yet, you will. There are colossal pressures in this world. They will overcome you. They will overcome you as a believer if you're not careful. What is the bulwark against being overcome by the world? It is this, not simply a belief that Jesus has forgiven your sins, but a belief that Jesus is the Son of God. You see, if he isn't the Son of God, you can believe on him all you like, but the thing is a nonsense. If he is the Son of God, then here lies the power to overcome the world. How do I know he's the Son of God? Why do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Who you say, my mum told me. Oh, that's very nice. That's a very good reason for believing, that is. Good old mum. God give us a thousand more. And my Sunday school teacher told me, how marvelous people, Sunday school teachers. How you have an enormous opportunity to guide young people in their early days. Ultimately, we shall need to come to personal faith and evidence, don't we? Could you give me one big solid reason that you, why you believe Jesus is the Son of God. You're on risky ground if you can't. This is he, says John, if you want some evidence, that came by water and by blood. For he came publicly into our world with John the Baptist standing, pointing his finger to him and saying, behold the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world. The only man that ever came into our world, claiming he had come to die for the sins of the world. Why am I not a Buddhist or a Hindu? I've been asked it by people in Japan. Why must I say that Jesus is unique? Well, I said, uh, my good friend, I'm biased. I have a problem, you see. I'm a sinner. And the first thing I need is forgiveness. And this I found that there is no such thing as forgiveness in Buddhism, nor in Hinduism either. And I said, you know, my problem is how can I find forgiveness and yet maintain my standards, let alone God's standards? I said, there's only been ever one that has come along to my side and given me an answer to it, and that is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He says he's my creator. He told me that the purpose of his coming into the world was that he would die for my. This is my God. This is the true God and eternal life. To this bears witness the water and the blood and the spirit agree. These three agree in one. God help us again to stand by the cross of Christ. God help us again to drink in the rain of the Spirit of Pentecost. God help us to hear the voice of the living God in the sacrifice of Christ. And I say it as I, as I, as Elijah said it, I say it in your ears tonight, that God that answers by fire. Will you not let him be God and absolute Lord of all you do, say, and think for For his his namesake? namesake.