Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Baal Out - November 11, 2007

Baal Out

1 Kings 18, Revelation 3

November 11, 2007

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

Again I would like you to look at the bottom of the bulletin on the back side where I often have a box with some quotation.  This morning it is an Arabian proverb which says,m "Choose the neighbor before choosing the house."  Too many of us have learned the hard way the truth of that wisdom.  Part of the reason we chuckle at that idea is because it is so impractical:  if that were only possible!  That wisdom may have been easier to accomplish in ancient Arabia where it might have been a little easier to simply strike your tent and move it somewhere else.

What drives ME nuts is when a couple calls me and says they need to get married on, say, May 31, 2008 in East Overshoe Illinois,  You see, I might be on vacation that week, or I may have another wedding booked, or I may need to be leading church the next morning.  But, no, it has GOT to be that specific day in that specific location.  First they choose the area, then they book a dance hall, and THEN they call me.  The beer hall always outranks the church:  "But Pastor, it's the only weekend that's still open at the Frankie and Johnny Sports Bar and Chapel of Love."

First choose what is most important and THEN choose the location - THAT is the point of the proverb which says, "Choose the neighbor before choosing the house."  But unless you're an Arab nomad, you generally already find yourself in your location - your house, your job, your culture - long before you really know your neighbors.

THAT is when you get a problem like the one we heard about in the Bible Focus that was read at the beginning of the service.  up in the northern regions of Israel, kind of the Iron Range, the people were kind of in the same boat we are in.  Like us, these folks considered themselves people of God but they found themselves born into a culture that, religious-wise, had been going downhill for a good hundred years or so.  By this time worship of Yahweh had become just one of many alternatives in their culture.

I think cultural diversity is a good thing, I think that people who have other religious persuasions are to be respected and protected, I am totally opposed to forcing my faith onto anyone or being aggressive or offensive in any way toward non-believers and I insist that our witness among them must always be meek and sacrificial in the ways of Jesus.

MY problem is when, in the process, the disciples of Jesus allow themselves to give up their own faith and their faithfulness to Jesus, refuse to worship Him as the Messiah, ignore the gift of His body and blood, defiantly and proudly replace His will with their own, and trade their devotion of Him on His Holy Day with their devotion to almost everything else.

Every two years my family has a reunion of all the descendants of my great grandmother Ida and my great grandfather Noah who had been a preacher for sixty years.  Now we cannot worship Jesus on Sundays because our clan includes Black Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, earth worshipers, Unitarians and a very, very few orthodox Christians.  Traditional Christianity is a thing of mocking derision.

God sent the prophet Elijah on the scene when His own people were replacing worship of Him with their devotion to an idol that was named Baal.  You might want to go to your Bibles and look up the rest of the story.  This was a show-down between the prophet Elijah and four hundred prophets of Baal.  This took place on a mountaintop called Carmel on which I have stood.  It overlooks the Valley of Armageddon.

THAT is when Elijah said to God's confused children, "How long will you waver between two opinions?  If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal is God, follow him."  Remember what the people said to that?  The people said nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

And that is precisely what so many Christians do today. We, like the Hebrews of Elijah's day, find ourselves living in a culture that worships everything else on paar with God or in place of God and when the call goes out to worship Jesus as our Lord and ONLY Lord, we say absolutely nothing.

I am convinced that THIS is why our social fellowship activities are so much stronger than our faith activities like consistency of worship, like participation in choir, like participation in Adult Bible Study, , like the disappearance acts of most youth the very Sunday after they have presumably affirmed their Baptism and the parents who disappear with them or refuse to parent them any longer in their faith development.

THAT is why the risen Jesus sent a messenger to our kind of churches and said, "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either one or the other!  So, because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of My mouth.  You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing."

Choose the neighbor before choosing the house?  that's cute, but like Elijah's people, we already find ourselves living where we do, already surrounded by a culture of Baals,false gods and idols that are worshipped by so many of our neighbors.  Like the apostle Paul I ask you to live IN this world without becoming PART of this world.  The bulletin cover this morning says that God is God of the living.  And that is because GOD is living, and He notices our choices and He does care about how we worship Him.  He is standing at the door, OUR door, and He IS knocking.  And He WILL come into our live, but only if we open the door...from the inside.

"Choose the neighbor before choosing the house."  Remember, that is exactly how most of you came to be in this house in the first place.  Especially in a culture like ours, let this be the house that several times each week is where you choose the neighbors, in order to stay faithful to God in a world of Baals that otherwise surrounds you all the rest of your waking hours.