Faith That Brings the Fire

I'm going to ask if we'll just have a brief prayer to start here now, okay? Just asking, Lord God, that the spirit that inspired Elijah and was manifested throughout his ministry reappeared again in the ministry of John the Baptist and finally, marvelously broke forth and gave witness to thine only begotten Son may move in our midst today. I ask, Lord God, that our hearts will be, by your grace, made into the altar that is able to receive the flame of your life afresh today. In Jesus' name, amen.

I'm going to read a fairly lengthy passage from 1 Kings 18, starting at verse 25. When Elijah said... Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose for yourselves one bull, and prepare it first, for you are many, and call on the name of your God, but put no fire to it. And they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us.

But there was no voice, no one answered, and they limped about the altar which they had made. At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud, for he is a god, Either he is musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened. And they cried aloud and 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 evening oblation. But there was no voice, no one answered, no one heeded. 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. And Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the twelve tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be your name.

And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put wood in order, and cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. And he said, Fill four jars with water, and pour it out on the burnt offering, and on the wood.

And he said, Do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And he said, Do it a third time.

And they did it a third time. And the water ran around the altar, and filled the trench until it was full. And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and 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.

Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that thou, O Lord, art God, and that thou hast turned their hearts back. Then fire from 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. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, The Lord, He is God.

The Lord, He is God. So the prophets of Baal built their altar and laid the sacrifice. In other words, they had religion, but it had no life.

Elijah built an altar, laid the sacrifice, doused it with water three times so that it would be evident that he wasn't playing any tricks on them, prayed, and fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust, and even drank up the water. All too often, we Christians have a faith which is much more like the altar of Baal than the altar of God. In that, we have the sacrifice on the altar and it's all laid out, but no fire comes.

Nothing happens. Nobody comes to repentance. No lives are changed.

There is no power. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do because I go to the Father.

Jesus teaches clearly that if we believe in Him, not just mouth religious words and talk, Lord, Lord, and not just run around and do our own works and call it faith, but really believe in Him that our nature will be absorbed by His nature and we will begin to think His thoughts and we will do His works and the lives and situations around us, no matter how messed up, troubled, evil, will be touched by the power of His crucifixion. He promises this. When we say, as we so often do, how come nothing is happening from my life? How come nobody's being changed? His answer to us is when you believe, all those things will start to happen.

And we say, wait a minute, Lord, I believe. Look at the changes I brought about in my life. Look at the hardships I've endured.

Look at the discipline. Look at the sacrifices I've made. And yet, even while we try to defend ourselves, there is an awareness in our heart of hearts that something is missing and that, in fact, it's true.

The sacrifice is there, but there is no fire. And not only is the power missing in our ministry to other people, but also our own inner life, the life that we live down where we really live it, away from the eyes of men, is earthbound. Isn't it ridiculous that we want to open the eyes of the blind and we want to set the captives free when we ourselves are still very much in captivity? The most helpful thing we can do is frankly admit how far we are from the faith Jesus calls us to have.

That when Jesus says, whoever believes in me, the works that I do will he do also, he's not exaggerating, but he's describing a faith which is beyond where we now are. But we also have to understand that if we want that faith, it can be ours. We can have a faith that is visited by fire from heaven that licks up the wood and the sacrifice and the stones and the dust and the water.

A faith where we begin to do the works that Jesus does, and even greater works than these as he pours out his spirit from the right hand of the Father. This is the work of God, Jesus says, that you believe on him whom he has sent. Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.

He who believes in me, she who believes in me, the works that I do, will he do also. But this belief is not a matter of the mind or of the imagination. It's a thing of the will.

Don't sit around, as we so often have, wondering when is it going to come, hoping that it will come and envelop us like a cloud. It never will. This faith, because it is a matter of the will, is a thing that has to burn in our hearts, and this will only happen when we begin to assert our will and exercise that will.

For instance, the faith that brings down that fire from heaven begins with a deliberate commitment of our lives into the hands of Jesus. Okay, we all know that. We've heard it a thousand times.

We know the theory well, but have we honestly done it? Whoever comes to me and doesn't hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, in his own life, cannot be my disciple. In other words, there is a commitment that belongs only to Jesus. And what happens in all of our lives is that commitment is directed and attached very often to father, or mother, or wife, or husband, or child, or brother, or sister, or ourself, or our particular religious community, or our favorite evangelism, or our particular choice in doctrine.

And all that kind of commitment has to be broken, and it has to be attached to Jesus, the person of Jesus only. And if we haven't made that commitment, and if we aren't maintaining that commitment every day, we don't know what Jesus is talking about when he calls us to have faith. Unless you forsake, renounce, he says, all that you have, you can't be my disciple.

Another way of putting it is to say, unless we renounce all that has us, it's the same thing. We can't have that kind of faith. But when we begin to renounce the things that have us, these attachments, whatever they are, then we begin to understand what he's calling for.

Why call you me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I command you? But when we have renounced these things that have us, now we are able to do the things that he commands us, and we also know how to apply. We begin to understand how to apply his commands in the situations where we are. The faith that brings forth fire involves the moving out with Jesus onto the ocean or sea of the uncertain, following him into a realm, a world of risk.

Launch out into the deep. Deny yourself. Take up your cross.

Now, this may not mean the risk that is popular at any given moment. It may not mean that we're supposed to go to Angola or break through the Iron Curtain or do some dramatic thing that causes us to get fired from our job, although it could mean any of those things. But somehow, as we follow him, we will find ourselves traveling a road where things become very, very uncertain.

For instance, most of us have been very clever about not doing or saying things that we know are going to upset us, our friends, or alienate them from us. Certain people, we don't care what the rest of the world thinks, but these people, we want to have their admiration. We want their friendship.

Then one day, we find that we're just overwhelmed. With an absolute compulsion from within to speak of God's mercy, and as we do, our friends shake their heads and turn away from us as if we had leprosy. Now, the adventure that God has in store for each of us is going to be different, and nobody can predict what that is.

That's up to the Lord. But we can be sure of this. As we follow him, we're going to find ourselves walking down a road where the things that comforted us before and gave us security before are gone.

The only certainty that we have left is Jesus. The next one is going to be perhaps offensive to some people and hard to understand, but here it is. The faith that brings the fire involves a deliberate turning away of our heart love from those past pleasures and fixing our heart love on the pleasure of remaining faithful to Jesus in the midst of privation, anguish, or even death.

I'm taking you to a banquet, says Jesus to us, but the road to the banquet is not a picnic. And if you're going to survive the hardships on that road, you're going to have to deliberately, with an act of your will, continuously learn to give up your former pastimes and find your pleasure exclusively in me. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Blessed is the man, the woman, that trusteth in him. You taste the goodness of the Lord by deliberately subjecting yourself to being disenchanted from your former pleasures, whatever they are, the things that made life pleasant, livable, good, in the past, and learning to find a new kind of pleasure. You know, this is not morbidity.

We're not talking about you have to be unhappy to be a Christian, but you have to find a new kind of joy and a new kind of pleasure. You give up the pleasures of Baal, and you take hold of the pleasures of God. Finally, the faith that brings that fire involves a daring trust that the way of Jesus' cross is the right way, the best way, the most satisfying way, no matter how absurd it looks in the eyes of the world.

When I came to you, says Paul, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And when Paul was saying that, he was not talking about his doctrinal position. He was talking about his life.

Jesus Christ and Him crucified was the door to God for Paul, the source of his joy, his life, his everything, day by day and hour by hour. But Jesus Christ and Him crucified was also for Paul his example, his pattern. This is what he was learning to do day by day and hour by hour.

Paul was walking in the footsteps of his master, the bleeding footsteps of his master, learning to deny himself. And as Paul did this, learned to deny himself that others might taste God, the fire from heaven fell upon him and his ministry. And as we learn to do this, joyfully again and again deny ourselves that others might taste God, the fire from heaven falls upon us.

And it will continue to fall as we find ourselves doing the very works of Jesus and even greater works as the Spirit comes upon us. This is the work of God that you believe on Him whom He has sent. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.

He who believes in me will do the works that I do. And greater works than these will he do because I go to the Father. There are people on this earth right now who are in possession of that kind of faith.

We can join their ranks if we will. It all depends upon how badly, how earnestly we desire to have a faith that brings the fire. Let's pray.

Lord, you know our hearts and you know the longing in them to be able to do something effective. Father God, you know how frustrated we get when it just doesn't seem to happen. And we're asking Lord that you would help us to be the men and women you're calling us to be.

And to come into the life of faith beyond anything we've ever tasted. Disillusion us in whatever way necessary if we think that we have it when we don't, Lord. And help us to press on until we begin to enter into that territory where the life of Jesus becomes everything to us.

And the delight of knowing him far surpasses every other delight. We ask it, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen.