"The 7000 Club"

Dear Friends in Christ, 

   When I was a young lad growing up in Staunton, Illinois, my family and I lived in a neighborhood that had a number of other boys in it with whom my brother and I played and interacted on a daily basis.  Please understand that this was long before the days of computers and X-Boxes and Play Stations.  It was long before the days of cable or satellite TV with their endless array of programs to keep children glued to their living rooms rather than spending time outside creating fun for themselves.  So we spent a lot of time outside doing all kinds of things from playing games like Kick the Can and Capture the Flag to creating our own Olympics complete with hurdles, long jump, and even our own high jump and pole vault pit.  We’d spend our evenings playing endless innings of Wiffle Ball or King of the Mountain, especially when they dug a basement for a new home right next to ours and we had this huge mound of dirt to play on.  And we did what I’m sure many of you did when you were younger.  We formed a club complete with our very own clubhouse that we built out of scrap pieces of lumber we managed to scrounge up.  It was really a pretty pitiful sight to behold.  But it was ours and as I recall we had certain rules for our club.  I believe that at times we had to pay dues though I don’t remember what we did with that money.  But the one rule that stands out in my mind more than any other was this one: NO GIRLS ALLOWED!  We were guys and we weren’t about to let any prissy little girls invade our space or become a part of our exclusive club.

   Well, today I want to talk to you about a different kind of club that doesn’t seek to exclude people, but that rather embraces anyone and everyone who wishes to join it, regardless of race, color, or gender.  I’m calling it “The 7000 Club” and I’m pulling that name from our text for today where the prophet Elijah finds himself in the pit of despair and complains to God that he feels like he is the only godly man left in the land of Israel.  What’s so shocking about this is that it follows immediately on the heels of one of the greatest victories that any man of God ever achieved in the Bible, a victory that took place on Mt. Carmel where Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest where each side would build an altar, place a slaughtered bull on it, and then pray to their god.  And whichever god answered by fire from heaven that consumed the burnt offering, that god would be recognized as the only true god.  Well, most of you know this story from your Sunday School days.  You know that the 450 prophets of Baal were unsuccessful in their prayers because obviously their god didn’t even exist, but when Elijah prayed to the Lord the fire of God fell from heaven with such force and such intensity that it consumed not only the burnt offering but also the wood and the stones upon which the offering was laid.  And the people who witnessed this incredible display of power fell on their faces and proclaimed, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.”

    So you would think that after an experience like that Elijah would be flying high.  And he was until he got word that the evil queen of Israel whose name was Jezebel had sworn that she was going to kill him within the next 24 hours.  So he fled for his life and after reaching Mt. Horeb, the mountain of God, he registered his complaint with the Almighty that he was the only believer left in the land and that his days were numbered because he was on Jezebel’s hit list and he just knew that sooner or later she would catch up with him and snuff out his life like a burning torch thrown into a lake.

   Have you ever felt like that, my friends?  Have you ever felt as though you’re one of the last remaining Christians in our country, or at the very least in your school or workplace?  Last week in my sermon we talked about some of the great challenges that we Christians are facing in our culture today as it becomes increasingly godless and shows more and more signs of rejecting the Christian foundation upon which it was built.  We noted last week that these are dark times for our nation as well as scary times as we begin to experience the well-deserved judgment of God for our rejection of him.  But we also said that these are times of great opportunity for us Christians because we’re the ones who hold in our possession the greatest good news of all, the good news of the Gospel, the good news of God’s love and forgiveness that he offers to all who will receive Jesus as Savior and Lord.

   Well, when Elijah felt like he was the only God-fearing man left in Israel, God came alongside of him and assured him that he was not.  In v. 18 of our text God says: “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel--all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him.”  I’m sure it must have been very comforting to Elijah to know that he was not completely alone.  And it’s comforting to us to know the same, my friends.  Though at times we may feel like evil has the upper hand in our land, there is a remnant of faithful, godly, God-fearing men, women, and children who have not bowed their knees to the Baals, the false gods that permeate our culture today: the gods of materialism and prosperity; the gods of postmodernism and moral relativism; the gods that many would have us believe are on the same par, the same level as the God of the Bible.  So today I am calling this remnant of God fearing, Bible believing, Christ trusting Christians “The 7000 Club” and I am inviting all of you to be a part of it.  But what will it look like?  What characteristics will mark the members of this club?  I would like to share with you 4 qualities that I believe will set the members of “The 7000 Club” apart from the rest of our culture.

   First of all, they will be in worship.  When Elijah was told that there were 7000 in Israel who had not yet bowed their knee to Baal, that implies that they had bowed their knee to God.  They worshiped only at his altar with his people.  And we need to do the same, my friends.  The time has come for the people of God to make the Lord’s Day of worship a priority in their week rather than something that they do only if they can fit it into their busy schedule.  You know, I’ve often wondered how parents would react if we in the church were to ask them and their children to be here for worship as often as they find themselves at their children’s sports practices and games.  What if Christian families gave to the church the same kind of commitment that they give to those types of extracurricular activities?  What if Christian families spent as much time in worship and family devotions as they do sitting in front of the television each week?  Do you think our culture would be in the mess that it’s in today?  I sure don’t.  So if you’re going to be a part of the 7000 Club, if you’re wanting to make a difference for Christ in this godless culture, then you need to be in worship.

   But not only that, you also need to be in the Word.  You need to be reading your Bible.  You need to be studying your Bible through the classes and opportunities that we offer here.  It’s sad to say, but polls conducted by George Gallup and George Barna in recent years show a shocking amount of ignorance among God’s people when it comes to the great stories and personalities of the Bible as well as the primary teachings and doctrines of the Christian faith.  For example, one Barna poll that was recently conducted revealed that 4 out of 10 Americans who call themselves Christians strongly agree with the statement that “Satan is not a living being, but a symbol of evil.”  58% of Americans who call themselves Christians said they either strongly agree or agree somewhat that the Holy Spirit is “a symbol of God’s power and presence, but not a living entity.”  In other words, he’s not the 3^rd Person of the Holy Trinity.  22% of born again Christians believe that Jesus sinned while he was on this earth.  And it just goes on and on. 

   Because many Christians today are spiritually ignorant, we’re living in a time of what I call “do-it-yourself-religion.”  Create your own faith.  Build your own god.  And be sure to make it in your image rather than vice versa.  In fact, I recently ran into that way of thinking as I was visiting with a fellow who told me that many of my views about things like living together outside of marriage were outdated and we need to bring God up to speed.  We need to modernize him and get him to fit with our times rather than going along with what he says in that outdated and outmoded book called the Bible.

   Some denominations are even displaying this do-it-yourself kind of religion.  Recently I read of one such denomination where a pastor was nominated for a position of high leadership even though he once received a Buddhist lay ordination.  According to this article, he was “walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together.”  Forgive me for saying this, but when I read something like that I want to scream and say, “How can you do that??!!  Those 2 belief systems are completely contradictory of one another.”

   So we need to be in the Word to keep ourselves firmly planted on the solid ground of God’s truths and his principles and his teachings.  Then thirdly, members of the 7000 club will also be in prayer.  A few weeks ago was the National Day of Prayer and Christians from all over our country gathered in churches and on courthouse lawns as was done here in Salem to pray for our nation, our President, our legislators and lawmakers, our Supreme Court justices, and all our other leaders who are a part of our state and local governments.  And while I am all in favor of a National Day of Prayer, we need to be in prayer everyday for our nation.  There’s a great passage in the book of Ezekiel where God says: “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD.”  Did you catch that, my friends?  God was looking for just one man to intercede on behalf of his wayward people and he would have withheld his judgment from them, but he couldn’t find even one.  Just imagine what the collective prayers of millions of God’s people could do for our beloved land. 

   So we need to be in worship; we need to be in the Word; we need to be in prayer.  And then lastly, we need to be in God’s will.  You’ve heard me say this before that when George Barna and George Gallup take their polls these days, they find no appreciable difference anymore between the way the average Christian and the average non-Christian live their lives.  And you know as well as I do that it’s not that the non-Christians are living like us; rather it’s the other way around. So in the power of the Holy Spirit, we need to be living our lives not as we want to live them but as God wants us to live them.  We need to take seriously the commandments of God.  We need to be in the world but not of the world.  We need to pay heed to Paul’s words in Rom. 12:2 where he says: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  We need to understand John’s words in his 1^st epistle where he says: “If we claim to have fellowship with him (God) yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.”  And where we have failed in our Christian walk, and we all have, we need to take comfort in the words of our Lord in 2 Chron. 7:14 where he says: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Amen.