Are you loyal to God?
A fair question.
Deuteronomy 6:5 KJV And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
You shall love the Lord your God with ALL.
Jesus even adds some definition for us of the well-recited Hebrew in the familiar Greek.
Mark 12:30 ESV And you shall love [agapaō] the Lord [kyrios {Note the meaning & implication of calling God, ‘Lord‘}] your God with all your heart and with all your soul [ psychē] and with all your mind [dianoia] and with all your strength.’
I don’t want to get into the subtlety of this (a whole other sermon), but note that ‘psychē‘ is the Greek word for ‘soul,‘ not ‘mind,’ as you might imagine from all the false teaching of the world and those opposed to God. Jesus and Moses both taught that GOD is to be worshiped personally with ALL of our grateful being.
Peter had stood on the Mount of Transfiguration and witnessed Jesus and Moses and Elijah together! So how could this man deny three times that he knew the Christ, Jesus, his friend being beaten for our sins?
As I cautioned earlier, let’s not to hold Peter to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. Elijah also had run.
1 Kings 17
Elijah Predicts a Drought
17 Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”
… 5 So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan.
[So far, so good; like Peter when he wanted to build shines for worship. (But then, of course, Jesus told Peter not to build shrines.)]
6 And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.7 And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.
It was Elijah’s familiar faith to which Jesus pointed when He taught us:
Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! – Luke 12:24
God feeds the ravens; the ravens fed Elijah; therefore have faith: God can even send ravens to feed us.
The drama and the drought progress.
1 Kings 18
After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year… Now the famine was severe in Samaria.
The King and God’s people are indicted through Elijah of turning their backs on God.
Are our national and world leaders – is the 21st c. church so different in our ineffectiveness?
17 When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?”
18 And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. 19 Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”
A contest! It would be like saying: Bring in all the Oprahs and Choprahs and Hawkings and Dalis; bring in all your priests who worship ancestors and cows and earth; bring in all your princes of oil and casinos and sports; bring in all your stars of Hollywood and Bollywood and worldwide web brothels!
Need I suggest more to add up to more than these 850 prophets of false worship in these last days? You know the sects of prophets of angels of destruction and men of reproduction. You know well the crowds opposed to the rule of the Living God!
A contest here: Almighty GOD and his one Prophet Elijah vs. 850 prophets of idols the people loved.
To be continued…
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