Elijah Was a Calvinist — Charles Alexander

Elijah's Challenge at Mount Carmel

And there is a word which says in the Bible, and a little child shall lead them. Shall we turn to our text this evening, which you will find in the 18th chapter of the first book of Kings, and verse 21.

And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. And don't forget too that Elijah was a good Calvinist, but he imposed this great challenge upon his hearers.

And there was a great crowd there too. I don't know how many there were, there might have been thousands there. We do know there were 850 sinners there who could badly do with a work of salvation. It was greatly to be feared that they were past caring or being interested in anything at all that had to do with divine things and truth and righteousness.

They were the 400 prophets of Baal and the 450 prophets of the grove. Or in reverse, 450 belonged to Baal, that was a masculine God. And 400 belonged to the prophets of the grove, that was a feminine God.

The one represented the sun and the other represented the moon, we believe. But both together represented the vilest, most abominable, cruel, filthy, polluted, contaminated form of religion that the world ever knew.

And to have to call upon a cloud of people to choose between that and the eternal living God is an appalling thought, isn't it brethren and sisters? A terrible thing that you should even have to ask people to make a choice between extremes like that.

How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him. And if Baal, then follow Him. And the people answered in another word. It's surprising, you know, what people substitute for the name and the glory of the great God and Saviour and Redeemer whom we worship here.

Sin, Darkness, and Human Responsibility

People are ready to worship anything but the true God. Now I'll tell you for why. Because they have an appetite for sin. And they love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. It's a good thing that our good Calvinistic prophets, Elijah, put it this way.

Because it proved all the onus of responsibility for their sins upon themselves and that's where it belongs and nowhere else. The Lord doesn't manufacture sin and put it as a burden upon the souls and consciences of men.

They're sinners because they want to be sinners. Oh, what about Father Adam? Aren't we sinners because he was a sinner? No! You began that way but there's no reason why you should continue. You're sinners now because of your own sin.

Not because of Adam's sin. There's a way out. There's a way through. There's a way up. There's a way beyond. He's been proclaimed in this country for 15 centuries and more. He still is being proclaimed.

His terms are always the same. How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him. If Baal, then follow him. Well, Baal may usually have it as far as numbers are concerned. But God never was with the big battalions, you know.

Elijah Against the Majority

He had to go along with a crowd. There was Elijah. He says, here am I. I'm only one witness for God in this place. And look at the crowd on the other side. You see them, don't you? 850 of them. The prophets of Baal and the prophets of Ashtoreth.

The abomination of the Sidonians. Look at them all there. Would you imagine that God was on their side merely because there was a crowd of them? Some people still judge that way. They say, oh, look how weak the churches are today.

Look how few people go to church. There's nothing in it, you see. People are rather sensible in these days. We're better educated, more intelligent. Come with us. Many fine ships. There are probably more ships wrecked in the Straits of Dover in a year than anywhere else.

On the face of the earth. Straight is the gate. Difficult. Narrow is the way that leadeth unto life. And few there be that find it. No, God was never on the side of the big battalions. Nor were the big battalions ever on the side of God.

On the one hand, many, because it's easy to go downhill. On the other hand, few. They say, well, it's only by the grace of God that there are even a few. Aye, how much we know it. You wouldn't be in this pulpit tonight if it hadn't been for a remarkable act of sovereign grace and mercy.

I was only thinking last night, why me, why me? No different, no better than anybody else, but Grace of God somehow or other found me. Grace of God. Yes, indeed. But the grace of God in its working brought me just to this place.

As it may have brought some young fellow or some older person to the same place this evening. How long halt ye between two opinions? How long is this going to go on? When is there going to be an end to it?

Time is marching on rapidly, it's racing on. Running away with your life and with your precious time. Some of us may not have very much time left. How long, how long is it going on? As you halt between two opinions.

Isn't it time you gave serious thought to the end? Not just with a way that leads to the end. Some say, no, I don't feel, I'm not one of these people who are morbid. No, neither am I, I never was. I can say many things to my own discredit, but I don't plead guilty to that.

I always was an optimist. I always was full of expectation regarding the future and eagerly stretched forward to the day after tomorrow and its achievements and what awaited. No, no. The term morbid, you know, often used and very few people can give you the dictionary meaning.

Really means disease, disease. The doctors use it when they say a patient's condition is morbid. If you ever say that about you, then you'd better get alarmed and send for the police. And quick. Oh yes, it means things are getting rather serious.

Morbid, disease, disease. Death's cold fingers closing round your vital organs perhaps. No, when it's applied to the mind, it means a diseased mind. It means always looking on the black side. Always thinking that the worst is going to happen to people.

And so they say, oh religion is the thing for morbid minds. People who are concerned about their future. But to be concerned about the future is not the sign of morbidity. There are some young fellows in this congregation this evening, they're not concerned.

Or shall I put it the other way, they are concerned about the future, but they're not morbid. They're eagerly looking forward to the future. To a life of usefulness. I think to a cleanliness and godliness.

I'd like to say there are some young women too, but we haven't got many young women, have we? Ladies, you have to do something about it. You can't have a crowd of handsome young fellows sitting round in these comfortable chairs with no young ladies to keep them company.

If you don't find them here, they'll find them outside and they might be sorry afterward. No, we've got young men here. I'd like to say we've got young ladies here too. Who are looking ahead. And they're concerned about the future.

They're thinking very seriously about it. They're not morbid. No, no. They want to be useful. They want to achieve something. They want to get somewhere. Why not? Why not? The people who are really morbid, you know, are those people who sit still and say, Oh, I don't really bother about religion or anything else.

And the real reason is because they're not capable of a serious thought. You know, it takes some movement amongst the grey matter to get really serious and earnest about anything. Especially if it's about your soul.

The Call to Repentance and Decision

State about your soul. Some of us have got some hard thinking to do, you know. Some of us may have something behind. Something to be ashamed of. How long halt ye between two opinions? The Lord be God, follow him.

If Baal, then follow him. So says our Calvinistic prophet. Because you see, with all this Calvinism, he wasn't a hyper-Calvinist. He was a true Calvinist. That is, if you don't know what a Calvinist is, it's a term which has been employed during this last four centuries or more to describe those kind of Christian believers who believe in a sovereign God who rules and reigns.

You say, don't all Christians believe that? No, not by a long way. If it's put to them like that, they would say, oh yes, of course, I believe that God is sovereign, whatever that means. I believe he reigns in the heavens.

Ah, but it's a bit more than that, isn't it? It's a God who has his way. I wouldn't like to live in a creation, would you, where either there was no God or we had a weak God who didn't know where things were going and didn't have his way.

He sat back and just watched events and opened a big day-to-day diary to enter in what happened today in the universe, what happens tomorrow, and looks it up from time to time to see how things are going.

Oh no, God is in every day, in every breath we draw, in every petal of yonder rose there. Couldn't get like that unless there was a star. That fruit down yonder, yes, he knows what he's doing. All times are in his hands, your times are in his hands too.

And I don't know how God works his sovereign will. I don't know how he gets his way. I'm one of those who believe that he does. I'm also one of those who feels rather modest about it and says, well, that's what I believe.

But I don't know how. I don't know how he retains in his vast wisdom that element of responsibility which belongs to you and to me with all our decisions, whether for time or for eternity. I don't know how that works in.

Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

But I do know that he sent his servant on this day and he cried to all and sundry, to the 850 false prophets who were there with their false religion and to all the vast crowd of people and to the king Ahab sitting there in all his robes and all his glory and said to them all, one and all, they were all the same size and shape in the sight of God.

How long halts ye between two opinions? Make up your minds what you're going to do. And make up your minds now, make it up today. If the Lord be God, follow him. If Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him, not a word.

My very belief that in some form or another that day, like that day at Mount Carmel that never to be forgotten day in the history of the world that day comes to you and to me and it might be your day now.

Who knows? Does God alone knows tomorrow? Tomorrow doesn't belong to you. You've got today. You've got now. You haven't got anything else. You've lost the past. The future doesn't belong. It's now that's your present possession.

You may never see tomorrow. You may never survive tomorrow. A thousand people have died. No, what is it? A hundred thousand people have died or will die since you came to this meeting tonight and before you pass out when the service is ending.

It happens like that in the world. A hundred thousand an hour are passing into eternity. And there are old people neither. Some of them are very old. Some of them are very, very young and tender. Others of them have been fixed in between.

You haven't got tomorrow. Only today belongs to you and all its decisions. And time is precious. It's golden. It's more precious than money. Money changes its value but time is always precious. Money is slipping away because of the follies of governments.

Political Economy and the Follies of Human Wisdom

Clever fellows who call themselves economists who've had it their own way for years and years and years and they've encouraged governments and they didn't need much encouragement either to spend more money than they had and that the easiest way of spending money that you haven't got is to forge money.

Nobody forges money in this country hardly except the government. Not just this government, the past government and the one before that and going right back into the dim shadows of the early part of this century.

The government is the greatest forger of money that this country knows because when it's short of cash it sends a note down to the printer and he says print more pound notes. Print five pound notes. Print twenty pound notes.

Print a hundred pound notes. Then there are thousands upon thousands more in order we may balance our budgets. At the end of the day there's a day of reckoning because as I've told you again and again the more money you print the less it is worth.

We used to laugh at the people out in Papua who were still in the Stone Age culture. The only currency they know are stones. What the Scots called chucky stones you know. We used to call them in Liverpool duck stones.

You know what they are. Cobbles. And they pass these from hand to hand. That's their currency. That's their cash. I don't know how they do it. I don't know how they make that a denomination or a sign of what but we laugh at them.

Using duck stones. Cobble stones for money. Can't tell you something that's more ludicrous than that. And not using pieces of paper for money. That's what we do. And we're supposed to be wise aren't we?

Supposed to be wise. We need to become fools that we might be wise. We might learn sense. Or what fools men are. Or these grand economists. London School of Economics and all the rest of it. All learning the same alphabet.

All learning the same tomfoolery. About how to manage the finances of a country. It's catching up on us isn't it? The follies of mankind. I have no faith in them. I don't know whether you have but I don't.

Not the slightest. Not any of them. No, not of any party. I'm one of those men who is getting a wee bit cynical about political parties and all that kind of thing. I've seen too much of it in my lifetime.

All they're posting, all they're going to do and this is what it is. This is it. With any money in your pocket turning into dust. Getting more and more worthless. Well, I don't know how God manages his affairs.

The Necessity of Choosing God

I don't know how he holds men responsible for their decisions. But I know that he is sovereign. And I know that if it wasn't that he was sovereign there would be no way out. And there would be no way through at all.

But he has made a way. Made a way. But you've got to make up your mind. You've got to decide. Yes, you have. Elijah says so, in Good Calvary. He says, make up your mind. Don't part any longer between two opinions.

You've got this choice, you've got that choice. You've either got Baal or you've got God. You can't have both. And you can't have neither. You've got to choose between one or the other. It's just as essential as the breath you draw.

Because that's the kind of world we live in. And you cannot excuse yourself for making a choice. You cannot say, well, I don't feel obliged to make any choice. I'm just going on as I am. You can't, you see.

You can't go on as you're doing. You'll be arrested by events over which you've no control. It may be very, very disastrous, too. You cannot escape, by any manner of means or argument at all, you cannot escape this all-essential choice between two opinions.

You've got to make up your mind. You've got to give an answer to God or to God's prophet. Some people try to get out of it by saying, oh, well, it didn't really happen, you know, this is only a story.

Fire from Heaven and the Reality of God's Power

But who believes that fire comes down from heaven, burns up the sacrifices, and just when a man starts praying, fire from heaven. Who ever heard of it? Well, I've not only heard of it, but I've seen it, dear friend.

I was on the shores of a Scottish lock, all by myself, all by my little self, in a very uncomfortable back seat of a car, my own car, wrapping myself round with blankets and cushions and trying to keep warm and comfortable, because I was there for the night.

And the heavens opened and the fire came down, and the water came down, too. Never mind the fire. I never saw water come down like it. And it came down for about the best part of an hour. I never saw such a, or heard, or experienced such a thunderstorm as that was.

Why, the car in which I was was rocking through and through, and there was a tremendous wind got up and it was sweeping over the lock. You couldn't see 20 yards ahead for the solid downpour of rain, illuminated by tremendous flashes of lightning.

Oh, yes, I've seen the fire fall from heaven. It often happens. Oh, it was just a wee bit afraid it might hit me, you know, on its way down. Well, I knew I was perfectly safe inside a car. There's no safer place than a car, and some of our scientific friends will tell me why.

I know somebody did. Some time ago they described how the electricity, the spark, the fire which comes down from heaven, when it strikes the roof of your car, it spreads and goes down harmlessly into the ground.

Never gets inside somewhere other. I don't know how it is a scientist who told me that. I felt rather comforted ever since. Safest place you can be, that and your own home. Well, of course, then we feel a bit nervous, and I assure you that I don't like being outside in a thunderstorm.

I like to be under cover, because you never know when it's going to strike. But if my faith was a little bit stronger, I would say, well, what matters is I will take such precautions as I can, but the Lord who controls the fire knows where it's going to fall.

It fell right at the very spot where it was most needed, you see, in the days of Elijah. It didn't fall on the unburnt sacrifice that the prophets of Baal had been trying to offer up, and had been crying to their God all day long, Oh, Baal, hear us!

Oh, Baal, hear us! And Elijah gave them a theological lesson, you know, about how to get on with false gods, because, you see, people have just precisely this idea of God that the prophets of Baal had.

And so, Elijah came right down to their level. He says, your God, you know, that you believe in, is just, you've made him out of yourself. You've made your own God, and he looks awfully like you are. Like you're looking.

And so he says, cry aloud! And he's talking with somebody, or he's pursuing. So maybe he's watching a football match, or he's sailing a yacht, or he's playing crickets. He's talking, he's pursuing, he's on a journey, an adventure even.

He's fallen asleep. If you shout loud enough, you'll waken up your God. Elijah, you know, was not just being sarcastic. There was every room for sarcasm, and every excuse for sarcasm in the situation.

But he was not being merely sarcastic. No, no. He was saying, I'm just taking your God on the level on which you put him. And there are a good many people in Christian England today, and their God is just like that.

Oh yes, they say they believe in God all right. He's just a God of convenience. He doesn't seem to be at his post very long. No, I pray and I don't get any answers. No, of course not. There are some prayers that would be beneath the dignity of deity to listen to and to answer.

Prayer, Forgiveness, and the Will of God

No, no. But if your need is real, if your desire is for the will of God to be done, you will not cry in vain. That's how the Lord who was God taught us. He said, this is one of our first petitions. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Don't just give me this. Don't just give me that. The first thing that comes into my mind, I'd like this, I'd like that. Whether it's good for me or not. But give me this day. My daily breath. That's good.

You hear that? Because that's necessity. Forgive my sins. Yes, says the Lord. Go on, go on. Don't just stop there. Oh, I thought I had to stop there. Oh no, no, no. Forgive me my sins. Now there's something else, says the Lord.

Oh yes, I remember. As I forgive those who sin against me. Who do me wrong. Oh, that's hard, Lord. Yes, says the Lord. It was hard for me too. To forgive your sins. Very hard. It cost me my life and my glory.

On the cross of shame. It's hard to forgive sins, you know. Hard to forgive sins. The Lord went that way. There was no other way. Because it's a hard road. Some people have to revise their views of who God is and what he's like.

The Cross as the Place of Divine Judgment

And Elijah wanted them to know. If the Lord is God, follow him. If Baal, then follow him. But I'm telling you what kind of a God he is. It's best that you should know. Fire coming down from heaven. Did you know that God was always sending fire down from heaven?

Oh, I was going to tell you, wasn't I? It hit the right place. It always does, God's fire. Never misses. Always on the target. Singles out out of a multitude. Just one man. If need be. This time it was his own altar.

With a bullock slain upon it. But no fire under it. Everything ready for the kindling. And soaked with water, twelve barrels of them. One barrel for every five of the children of Israel. And the altar was constructed of twelve stones.

One for each tribe of the children of Israel. Elijah knew what he was doing, you know. He knew indeed. And there was the bullock. The type of Christ upon the cross. The slain man. Oh Lord, send fire from heaven and down it came.

And one mighty blast from the spring. Right upon the target it struck the altar and the bullock. Everything was ablaze of appalling fire. People cried out and shouted, the Lord, He is the God. The Lord, He is the God.

And the lightnings from the throne of heaven. The divine wrath against sin. Came on that day when outside the city wall. One hundred suffered upon the tree. And the fiery darts of the divine indignation against sin.

Found their target upon one man. Hanging upon the cross. And all heaven shuddered at the sight. Of the very throne of God's ship. For there was no other way. By which God could save my soul. And by enduring that blast from heaven.

From His own throne. Directed by His own hand. Towards His own Son. Who was God. Manifesting the flesh. And He made up your mind, yes. The old man. The old person. Some of you who were trembling at the brink of the grave.

And the shadows of autumn were getting very, very long. Your pathway. How long is it going to be? Before you make up your mind. Before you make your choice. Before you make your decision. Whether it is the Lord.

Or whether it is Baal. Look at the Lord. Make a comparison between the God of this world. And the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. I don't know.

Where the wound was so poignant. When it was like the one who hung and suffered there. In the heart of the Eternal Father. Who thus had to turn His hand. Against the victim. With His own Son. That there might be forgiveness of sin.

A hard thing is forgiveness. But you may have it now. It's yours. It's yours. Belongs to you. If now in your heart. You will say the Lord. He is the God. And I am His. From this moment. And He is mine.

Forever and forever. Amen. We close by singing 949. That's right. 949. We give Thee but Thine own. Whatever the gift may be. All that we have is Thine alone. Our trust, O Lord, from Thee. And what a wonderful tune we have to this.

Again. We're in debt to the late Sir Arthur Sullivan. And again we notice. He starts the last chord in the same way. And so many of his tunes. In four equal notes. In the first bar. So here. We give Thee but Thine own.

Thank you.