Dare
to be an Elijah
Is any one of you sick? He should call
the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name
of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well;
the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.
Therefore confess your sins to each other
and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous man is powerful
and effective. James 5:14-16
When I was a boy in Sunday School we sang a song that I have not heard
in a long time: Dare to be a Daniel.
Daniel was one of the young Hebrew men in Babylon who refused to bow down
to King Darius's golden image.
For refusing, Daniel was thrown into the lions den and his three friends
were thrown into a fiery furnace.
The song goes like this:
Standing by a purpose true,
Heeding God’s command,
Honor them, the faithful few!
All hail to Daniel’s band!
Refrain
Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known.
Its a good song with a good message.
Have the courage to stand by your beliefs and convictions.
And James challenges us in the same way.
He says, "dare to be an Elijah!"
In case you did not know, Elijah was a prophet in Israel, the northern kingdom
whose capital was Samaria.
They had a succession of bad kings, from a spiritual point of view. Historians
rate some of Israel's kings highly on the political score.
Omri and Ahab get resoundingly bad marks from the Biblical historians, but
get rather high marks from secular historians.
There is a point here, I suppose.
Omri was especially successful at making military alliances that gave Israel
short term peace and prosperity.
God's thumbs down, however, ended Israel as a political entity when first
the Assyrians then the Babylonians over ran them.
You be smart and effective in life, but if you turn your back on God's priorities,
the final outcome will not be to your liking.
The very best of worldly success only lasts for about eighty years.
God's on the other hand, encompasses this life time and eternity afterward.
I think that is no contest.
Dare to be an Elijah and refuse to bargain on short term gains. Go for the
big picture.
Follow God's plan.
James says Elijah was a man just like us. He had the same emotional, physical
and intellectual make up as you and me.
But he was able to pray and in response to his prayers, God stopped the
rain for three years bringing the nation to its knees.
Then he prayed and God brought rain.
James is saying that the spiritual power of Elijah is not out of reach for
any of us.
God may not call us to perform what Elijah did, but in our own way, we can
have God's ear just as Elijah did.
But this only happened because God first had Elijah's ear.
James says confess your sins to one another and clear the decks so God can
do in your life what He wills to do.
I think this is something we are not much used to doing.
12 Step programs have a great advantage over church at times. That is because
it is acknowledged simply as a plain fact that we all have baggage we need
to get rid of. AA calls it doing a fifth step in which you acknowledge to
another person the exact nature of your faults.
The idea is to find someone you trust and unburden yourself.
It is one of the genius of the program.
James says the same thing, but we can take it one immense step farther.
We know that we can pronounce forgiveness in the name of Jesus.
But lets go back to the time of Elijah.
In Elijah's time people were not anti-God.
They believed in God alright. Its just that they also decided to hedge their
bets by going along with the prevailing philosophy of the times.
We do the same thing.
We believe in God, but we adopt the worlds attitudes about life and behavior.
God will not listen to our requests if we harbor sinful attitudes or actions
or lifestyles alongside our professions of faith.
Our culture says, "Go ahead. Believe in God, but don't let that stop you
from participating in everything that your unbelieving neighbors enjoy."
As a result all kinds of sinful compromises creep into our beliefs and then
our actions.
To protect ourselves we compartmentalize our lives.
Church is about our spiritual life.
But it does not impact on how we live or act in certain ways which we may
hold onto tightly.
This is pure and simple lack of faith in God.
If we believe God is the way for life and the future, then we have to take
what He says and live by it. No playing semantics or rationalizing.
James calls that being double minded and reminds us that no one who lives
a dual life will get anything from God, no matter how pious we act.
Confess your sins to one another, and of course be prepared to abandon the
things that you know you need to abandon.
Who you share your confession with is up to you.
But there is amazing power in naming things for what they are and asking
for forgiveness and prayer.
Try it, you might be surprised.
Dare to be an Elijah.
Preached Sept. 27, 2009
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
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