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MOUNTAINTOP LOYALTY: THE ELIJAH
EXPERIENCE #7
WHO STOPPED THE RAIN?
I’m going to throw some technical Tuesday terms at
you — and let me be the first to admit that I really don’t know what I’m
talking about. You’ve heard of the WTO, I imagine — the World Trade Organization.
Which, according to the official WTO web site, is “GATT plus a lot more.”
GATT being an international trade agreement dating back to 1948. Then
there was a series of talks, happening in the mid-80s, called the Uruguay
Round, and finally 1995 saw the birth of the WTO. From what I understand,
GATT strictly covered trade in goods, while the World Trade Organization
also legislates in matters relating to service, and also intellectual
property . . . which means it tries to have authority over all the bootleg
software, CDs, and DVDs you can buy on the streets of Bangkok.
The interesting phrase we recall is this: “poison carrot.” Have you ever
heard of a “poison carrot”? We all know about the idea of “dangling a
carrot” in front of someone as an incentive. But the WTO, as you can imagine,
is only open to nations as long as they agree to play by certain rules.
Just as a country is only granted MFN status — that’s “Most Favored Nation”
if you’re jotting down all this alphabet soup — if it commits itself to
lower tariffs and open up its own markets and follow certain labor laws
and make progress in human rights, the same is true if a country wants
to be in the WTO. In fact, the Uruguay Round had something like 22,500
pages of rules and regulations.
Okay, so what’s a “poison carrot”? When China wanted to join the WTO,
it had to weigh the benefits of membership against the fact that it would
now have to follow all these principles. It would have to play by the
rules. And some political observers commented that if China took the carrot,
abided by the regulations and joined the WTO, it could very well mean
the demise of part of its cherished Communist heritage. The rest of the
world might welcome such changes, such progress . . . but did China realize
that it was possibly biting down on a “poison carrot,” not a regular one?
Well, friend, like I said, you’ve just exhausted the entire store of knowledge
we have on the subject . . . and then some! But here in the thick of this
Bible story, where Elijah and King Ahab are about to go mano a mano on
the top of Mount Carmel, we come to recognize the existence of some “carrot”
in the relationship that God had with this unique nation, the Children
of Israel. Ever since the days of slavery in Egypt, God had offered them
a special covenant. “I will be Your God, and You will be My people.” And
here at the base of Mount Carmel, the plain reality is that Israel had
forfeited the blessings of God because she hadn’t lived up to her end
of the bargain. The nation had not obeyed; they were in flat-out rebellion
in their flagrant worship of Baal. Was the nation about to relinquish
its own “most favored nation” status?
If you read the second half of Genesis chapter three, there’s a tragic
list of ways that even Adam and Eve, there in Eden, lost some membership
privileges when they rebelled and sinned against God. God tells them:
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful
toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns
and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the
sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground.”
I guess we could scan through the WTO’s web site for
all the laws and bylaws, or you can just read a chapter like Leviticus
26. Ironically, in one of our study Bibles here, in the New International
Version, chapter 26 almost reads like a modern-day contract. In fact,
there are just two simple headings: Reward for Obedience and Punishment
For Disobedience. And God gives His people a promise:
“If you follow My decrees and are careful to obey My
commands, I will send you rain in its season and the ground will yield
its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will
continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until
planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in
your land.”
Well, that sounds marvelous. Listen, friend, we don’t
want to follow the Lord just because of the Christmas gifts and the promise
of rain, but God is generous to those who follow Him. Why? I’m sure, like
any good parent, He wants to encourage His children to live — for their
own good, for their own happiness — in relationship with Him. “I want
you to LIVE, not die!” He says over and over in His Word.
Keep in mind also that God wanted the Children of Israel to be a light
to the nations all around. He wanted to demonstrate to everyone watching
that to live in God’s kingdom, to order your life after divine principles,
would bring happiness and fulfillment. Idolatry destroys, but loyalty
to God results in satisfaction and lasting peace. God wanted to broadcast
this reality, to make Israel a showcase. He fully intended to send them
the rain, send them good crops, send them blessings multiplied a hundredfold.
But now God also knew the human heart, and so there’s a part two to this
Leviticus contract. There’s rain if you’re obedient, and there’s no rain
if you’re rebellious.
Notice this in verses 18-20:
“If after all this you will NOT listen to Me, I will punish you for your
sins seven times over.” Not a dad’s favorite thing to do, but God is a
responsible parent. He continues: “I will break down your stubborn pride
and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze.
Your strength will be spent in vain because your soil will not yield its
crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit.”
You find this same “sky as bronze” metaphor in Deuteronomy
chapter 28. And you certainly find it here in our story of Elijah, I Kings
chapters 17, 18, and 19. We mentioned earlier how we had the odd situation
where God’s representative — the preacher, so to speak — was pleading
with God for NO rain. “Lord, don’t send rain,” Elijah was saying. “So
that these people will come to realize that they have effectively pulled
out of the WTO. They don’t have ‘most favored nation’ status anymore .
. . and they don’t deserve it!” And for three hot, dusty years the sky
overhead was like a harsh blanket of iron. God had effectively turned
off the spigot, wanting even in His heartache to make a point.
In a commentary edited by a team of scholars headed up by the legendary
Francis D. Nichol, they look ahead to where Ahab and Elijah finally meet
face to face. We’ll get to that tomorrow, but Elijah spells it out for
the rebellious king: “This isn’t just an accidental dry spell. There’s
been no rain because you blew it.” Notice:
“The king and all within the realm need to know that
it is their disobedience to the commandments of God that has brought the
sore judgments upon them and their unhappy land. Serving Baal has been
following the pathway of a fool’s paradise. Seeking life, they found death;
seeking joy, they found sorrow and woe; seeking peace and prosperity,
they found trouble and ruin.”
And you know, friend, we see the same reality today,
both among nations and in our spiritual existence. Why do the United Nations
and NATO forces impose economic sanctions on a rogue nation, withholding
all but the most necessary medicines for the children? To try to make
a point — to let the Saddam Husseins of the world realize that to leave
in peace with others is going to bring prosperity, and that to threaten
aggression and the covert buildup of chemical weapons is going to bring
embargos and empty supermarket shelves.
And how about in our own lives? We mentioned last week how so many people,
even Christian pastors, are getting sucked into the web of pornography
. . . ON the Web. And the devastation to that person’s family is beyond
comprehension. It hurts; it really does. A marriage breaks up; an innocent
person ends up with a sexually transmitted disease once a porn addict
goes out and acts upon his or her fantasies. Which reminds us that when
the rain doesn’t fall, it sometimes doesn’t fall on the unrighteous and
the righteous alike.
It’s true that a lot of naughty people have the generous showers of blessings
continue right while they keep sinning. It happened that way sometimes
in the Bible — King David complained about it too! — and it goes that
way today. Sometimes God is good to the rebel, hoping to win him by kindness
instead of dryness. But it certainly is a principle of the heavenly kingdom
that what God wants to do is to bless. He wants to give rewards, not punishments.
And it’s with the greatest reluctance — and of course, His all-knowing
mind, His wisdom, is far above ours — that He sends a servant like Elijah
to tell the enemy armies: “No more rain until you learn to mend your ways.”
The question for us is this: can we learn the joy of being in God’s WTO
. . . without ever having to go through the hard lesson of sanctions?
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