First Presbyterian Church     Rev. Michael J. Imperiale

Salt Lake City, Utah  January 22, 2006

  SOVEREIGN HOPE: BEING THE CHURCH TODAY

     “If God’s Gonna Do What God’s Gonna Do… Why Pray?”

I Kings 18: 17-39

Introduction

Sometimes I’ve wondered if prayer is just an exercise in talking to myself. Or if indeed God is listening, why should the almighty God (who can do anything he wants) listen to my prayers? Some might reason it this way: Why should we talk to God anyway? God already knows what we need; it even says so in the Bible. And if God is the designer of the universe and controls all that happens in it, how could we expect our prayers to make any difference? Isn’t it a little presumptuous to think that my puny mind could remind God of something he hasn’t already thought of? So why should I ask anything of God? God will do whatever he chooses anyway. Right?

And yet the Bible says we should pray at all times. God’s word is filled with examples of answered his people praying. We also find prayers answered as the Lord acts on behalf of his people. You and I worship the Lord when we pray, when we adore, confess, praise, ask, and thank. The best thing in life is to know God in this personal way and to trust in his sovereign will and ways. Prayer emphasizes the character of God, the necessity of our being in a saving, covenant relationship with God in Christ, and the entering into the blessings and discipleship of following him.

In the Old Testament, prayer is calling on the name of the Lord as Elijah does again and again during his ministry. Prayer is associated here closely with sacrifice as human will is abandoned and submitted to the will of God. Jesus showed the urgency, persistence, simplicity and intensity of prayer in himself and in teaching his disciples. The book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament show how the church was born in the atmosphere of prayer and how the Christian life is a life of prayer.

Among the Reformation theologians, John Calvin had one of the strongest views of God’s providence. He believed that God designs all things at all times. Nothing escapes God’s care. With that Presbyterian concept of God we might expect that Calvin would ask the same questions we ask in our moments of doubt about prayer. Yet he wrote one of the most beautiful pictures of prayer in Christian literature. In Calvin’s Institutes he writes this: “It is by the benefit of prayer that we dig up the treasures that were pointed out by the Lord’s gospel. Words fail to explain how necessary prayer is, and in how many ways the exercise of prayer is profitable. It is by prayer that we call him to reveal himself as wholly present to us. Hence comes an extraordinary peace and repose to our consciences. The Lord instructed his people to pray, for he ordained it not so much for his own sake as for ours. First, that our hearts may be fired with a zealous and burning desire to seek, love, and serve him; secondly, that there may enter our hearts no desire and no wish at all of which we should be ashamed to make him a witness; thirdly, that we be prepared to receive his benefits with true gratitude of heart; finally that the use and experience of prayer may, according to the measure of our feebleness, confirm his providence, while we understand not only that he promises never to fail us, but also that he ever extends his hand to help his own.”

I. Elijah and His Confidence in the Lord (vs. 16-24)

We can see all these dynamics, results and benefits of prayer in the I Kings account of the prophet Elijah and the priests of Baal. As prophesied by Elijah, it had not rained in Israel for more than three years. King Ahab ascribed the problem to Elijah’s arbitrary stubbornness calling him “troubler of Israel.” Elijah countered claiming that Ahab and his father Omri had abandoned the Lord’s commands and followed the Baals, the many gods of the Canaanites, the various gods of the sun, of rain, of fertility, of harvest, etc. The particular Baal favored by Ahab was Melqart who was worshiped in Tyre, the home of Queen Jezebel. She was married to Ahab, a union promoted by Omri as a political alliance.

The religious rites of Baal included not only the lascivious practices of fertility cults, but even child sacrifice. The mixing of Yahweh (the Lord God) with Melqart and other Baals in religious practice was unacceptable to Elijah. And the conflict comes to a head due to this terrible drought and who was to blame.

So Elijah challenges his people. “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” It’s decision time. Ahab was mistaken. One cannot serve Yahweh and Baal together. And then Elijah, the one prophet of the Lord challenges the 450 prophets of Baal. “You call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire – he is God.”

There seems to be embedded in us human beings an almost irrepressible desire for rational, visible proofs on which we can base our beliefs. “Reason before faith” is the common demand of skepticism. Although God reverses the order (faith comes first, then reason follows to undergird and confirm), the Lord stands ready to hear and respond to Elijah’s prayer.

II. Elijah’s Prayer (vs. 36-37)

One of my favorite classical choral works is Mendelssohn’s Elijah. When the baritone sings Elijah’s prayer, my heart just melts into the awesome reality of God at work in the lives of his people. “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel; this day let it be known that Thou art God, and I am thy servant! Lord God of Abraham!” Notice the words you and your throughout this simple prayer. “Let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”

When you pray, what do you pray? When people tell me that they are praying for me, I often wonder what they are praying. Someone said that “when we come to God, we make requests; we don’t make demands. We state what we want, but we pray for what is right.” Like Elijah, we go to him, we bow before him, and we trust in him.

In all of our prayers, Elijah would suggest (no, he would command) to be God-directed, not self-centered. Let the requests and results of prayer draw people to know that the Lord is God; that people’s hearts would be turned back to the true God.

John Calvin, the father of our Presbyterian-brand church and approach to belief and practice, had great faith in God’s providence. Nothing happens (rain, drought, illness, faith, birth, death) without the attention and care of God. The Lord simply knows, always, what he will do – and does it. Yet, Calvin believed that it is precisely that this providence of God inspires us to pray. And when we pray, we become ever more appreciative of God’s will and work and our place in it. In fact, through prayer and its affect, you and I will see the proof that our hearts desire.

III. The Lord – He Is God (vs. 38-39)

Just then that day on Mount Carmel, “the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, ‘The Lord – he is God. The Lord – He is God!’ Those words in Hebrew were actually Elijah’s name! “Yah is El; Yahweh is Elohim.”

Among the many lessons in this tremendous passage and impressive event, one stand out for me: the impossibility of a neutral relationship with God. Jesus said it himself, “No one can serve two masters.”

What will convince you that the Lord is God? The awesome power of nature? Seeing how Christ can change a life for good? The truth of his Word? An amazing miracle?

When you are confronted with differing viewpoints about God, what do you do? Accept the most convincing? Change your mind back and forth? Pray? Read the Bible? Talk it over with Christian friends?

What do you wish God would bring into your life? A little lightning? His power? An answer to prayer? The conviction of faith? Proof of his existence? His presence?

And where are the places to begin casting out the “Baals” of your life? At work? At home? In your attitudes? In your mind? In your heart?

Conclusion

There’s a lot to pray about, isn’t there? Prayer does make a difference. God does his work in the world and in our lives through the gift of prayer. The Lord shapes us, our faith, our opinions, our experiences, our hopes, our lives through the gift of prayer.

Let us indeed pray together.