In the spirit of our summer labs, I have an opening story for all our children. Pardon me for the adults if you're not familiar with this. It's uh it's from the Lego Lego Ninjago series, Masters of Spinjitsu. Uh you know, in this uh in this very exciting series that gets our kids hooked on and many of you are Ninjago fans, there is a recurring enemy in the series. You know what the name of the enemy is? Well, yeah, the overlord. The overlord, he just doesn't attack with brute force like we hear in most Hollywood movies or Avengers series. He uses deception. And in one of the arcs, the ninja face a threat not outside of them from within. the digital overlord who traps people inside a digital world called the Digiiverse. I love how they come up with these names. When the ninja faced the overlord in his final form, not as a monster, but as a virus in the digital world, everyone thought they were free, they were in control, and they were having fun, except that it was all fake. The overlord uses illusions to trap people's minds. He didn't need chains to do that, did he? He just needed lies. One by one, even the heroes get tempted. Their senses say one thing, but the truth is far darker and they are living in a beautiful delusion. Even the strongest ninja, who's the strongest ninja? Lloyd. Lloyd. The strongest ninja gets pulled in. He forgot who he really was. He almost gave up, right? Until he remembered the truth. He was the green ninja. He was the ninja who was chosen to defeat evil and not live under it. Well, this is a story that perhaps our children understand more than the rest of us, but it's not very different from what we read today. a story that was true and it happened 3,000 years ago. And you may be wondering, how can something that happened 3,000 years ago, almost 800 to 900 years before Jesus even came into this world, be relevant for you and me? And I hope to unpack and show us that though times have changed, people have changed, but the fundamental things that affect your heart and my heart, they never change. So I've titled my talk or sermon today as from delusion to devotion. And we're going to look at those three things. We are going to look at cultural chaos. We're going to look at who God is as a covenantal God, how he reveals himself, and we're going to see what happens at the end as a compelling revival in the hearts of people. So, from delusion to devotion. So, let's talk about the first factor that's happening. We're doing for those of you who are new to our church, we are actually trying to walk through the whole Bible to try and understand what is the overall message of the Bible. How is God revealing himself throughout the Bible? And and uh and here we are at this place where God gave them kings in the Old Testament, you know, 3,000 years ago um to rule them because people thought if they have a good king, their life is going to be great. And they they found that all the kings whom they got, especially they had one of the greatest king, Solomon, who's called the wisest king. Everyone who came after him led the people down and led the people away from God. And we have here a king whose name is called Ahab. He's he's the worst king the nation of Israel had who not only let his people down, he married someone and he brought a lot of different pluralistic views and ideas and he thought he was doing something good for the people. But it ended up in letting the people be in a delusion. But what is very encouraging in this passage is to see that though the king let his people down, God never let his people down. And God never lets you and me down. So we are in this part of history. You know the Bible is a historic book. It's not madeup stories. It's not mythology. And in this part of history, God is trying to show the world that even your best and your greatest kings can't really help you. They have a problem with themselves. And and so here we are in in a historical uh realm where the kings are declining and God's raising up whom he calls as prophets. And we're introduced to a prophet whose name is Elijah who has this dramatic encounter with one of the powerful king and the people are all gathered to him and we read what happened over there. So first thing that happens when you are living under a king who has let you down, who doesn't have a really solid understanding of truth or God or faith is that it affects people. And we read in verse 17, Ahab, this king meets Elijah, this new prophet, and he says to him, "Is it you, you troubler of Israel?" and Ahab. 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 bales or balls. Now therefore, send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Bal and the 400 prophets of Asher who eat at Jezebel's table." That's his wife. You know, not only are they living in a time where there are two very prominent faiths that people are called to believe in on two very old Canaanite gods. They're called Ball and Ashura. Now, the god Ball was called a god of thunder and lightning because those days people were mostly the culture was agriculture, right? Agrarian culture. So, if you wanted to live and thrive in life, you need rain. and clouds. And so they believed that this God Bal was going to give them prosperity by giving rains so they can have a great harvest. And not only was prosperity the key, they also wanted to have fun and pleasure. And there was that was the goddess Asher. And so not just these two gods there were 400 prophets of one and 450 almost a thousand voices a cacophony of thousand voices giving them a different view of who is God how should we live what can be done what cannot be done so that's what happens when there is no god in any society so many other voices come to take their place and Silicon Valley is a very godless place, isn't it? Because when you live in a place like that, what you tend to believe is that prosperity is God and pleasure is your life purpose and performance is your way to achieve both prosperity and pleasure. This is what people were made to believe. All these thousand people were telling them this is it. Your God is a God of prosperity. Your main purpose is pleasure. For that they have another god. And to get both, you got to work hard. You have to earn that. That's actually though it was a 3,000y old paradigm is very true even today, right now in Silicon Valley, isn't it? There is no one major god that anyone everyone believes in Silicon Valley today. The real gods of Silicon Valley today, if you think about it, no matter who you are or what your own personal private religion or philosophy is, the real god, the real people who actually have such tremendous influence in your lives are these big tech companies for whom almost everybody works. They rule over the lives of every individual, isn't it? And they promise all these three things. They promise prosperity. You can make six-digit salaries. They promise you can have pleasure with the money that you make. But to get both prosperity and pleasure, you got to work hard. Your performance matters. There used to be annual performance reviews. And now I hear in some of the tech companies, you have performance reviews every three months. You're under the gun. If you don't perform, you're fired. Which means what? You'll lose prosperity and pleasure. Things haven't changed since 3,000 years, isn't it? It's also tied into the larger ethos of the American dream that brings people from all over the world to a place like Silicon Valley where we are made to believe our chief end is to prosper and enjoy. and we seek to make life choices like that we don't realize they leave up ending us empty. That's the cultural chaos we find ourselves in. And that's what happened to the people. So when Ahab calls all the people, he says in verse 21, "And Elijah came near to all the people and said, how long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if ball, then follow him." And we read, "And the people did not answer him a word." So here people were caught in this cultural chaos and living in this delusion. They can't make up their mind. They can't make up their mind if they should believe in this god or they should believe in all these other voices, this thousand voices around them. So when you're living a delusional life like that, you're unable to decide. So when they are called, they just show up. When asked about this test that Elijah wants to do, they actually don't have any answer. In verse 21 says the people did not answer him a word and when he says shall we do this test they say like yeah yeah yeah let's do it verse 24 it says um and the people all answered it is well spoken delusional absolutely delusional and that's what happens when we let other voices on top of God's voices we search for pleasure and prosperity and never end up finding it but what is the net effect of All of this you know the net effect of this is that the delusion takes place at two different levels. Intellectually there is a delusion you end up believing and spiritually there is a delusion. And you see that very much true today. The intellectual delusion is when you hear so many different people you know Silicon Valley has people from 90 countries. uh within just a 5mi radius of this place you can find churches, temples, mosques, Buddhist temples, seek gurudaras, all the six major world religions, you know, some of the top schools um of the country are right here around us. So if you ask an average Silicon Valley person, they will tell you, hey, all religions to me are the same. All views about life and God are the same. And it sounds very benign. It sounds very gracious. But let me unpack that for you. It's it reflects that when you says to somebody all religions are the same or all paths lead to the same God or it doesn't matter what everyone believes. There is no absolute truth. Everyone has to live by what they believe is true for themselves. You're actually you're being a very proud person because you're trying to tell everybody that you know what the absolute truth is. You know better than what all the each religions say. You can talk to people from any of those u worldviews. They will say that they are not the same. They are very very different. If you're trying to go and climb up to Mission Peak, you know, some of us are very fond of hiking, those hikers here. Now, Mission Peak has several different paths that you can go to, at least two major ones. There's a Stanford trail and there is a Aloney trail. Now, it may be benign to say to someone, hey, whether you track Stanford Trail or Aloney Trail, you will end up at the top of Mission Peak. But if you're someone who has never been to the top of Mission Peak, you don't know that. Only those who are at the top and who can see from the top all the paths can say, "Oh, all paths are the same." So, so when you say that all paths are the same, you're putting yourself as a very proud person over everybody else and saying that you know better than them. And that's intellectual delusion. It's not true. And psychologically you are you end up being deluded too. You know the word ball that we hear here uh it's an ancient generic name for actually any god. It changes in different contexts and it literally means spiritual lord. You know in this context it was referring to the rain god ball of lightning and thunder. But there was a beauty ball. There was a military ball, there was a party ball, there was an educational god and there was a wisdom god and there was even a god you can think for scholarship or achievements or merits. You know, every created thing can be a god. And there was a god. Basically, they worshiped everything. Everybody, every single one of us worship something which means we are under the power. We give power to something over us which is can be a ball. Especially in the time of explosive social media as you're scrolling through those reels or um any content and and you're pushed you you see those images of someone that is especially if you're looking at a woman and the pictures are barged with images of beautiful thin women. You're hit with it over and over and over again. These are not just pictures to give you information. They have a spiritual authority to them. There is a spiritual power about them that can actually penetrate into your mind and mess up with you in a very big way that can actually affect you. When you tend to believe that that is the normal and I am not looking like that person, then you start having food disorders. You think you have to starve yourself. There is a condition like that called anorexia that can eventually lead some of the children to even end up being so malnourished they can't function and may even die all because you believe that lie or or for for a guy who's looking to find a perfect person keep searching for someone who fits that you never find that and you end up getting addicted to online activities that can leave you feeling empty. You see, we all have a spiritual ball. Or if you believe in educational god, then you're going to go after that and work hard hard hard and think that once you hit that, you will get all of these. But they never do, isn't it? That is what these things do. The spiritual delusion is that all these false gods have certain characteristics and we see that playing out. So here is Elijah. He calls all these 450 prophets. He sets up this test, this experiment, and he tells them, "Okay, you guys can convince these people that what you say is true." And they keep calling to these false gods. And what do you see here? And what was heard? There is no voice. There's no answer in crisis. There is no life. He he starts mocking them. Perhaps they are sleeping. They're not listening to you. And in fact they literally start performing to please these gods to give them what they want to the point that they end up cutting themselves and bleeding. The joy in life there is still no voice. You know what this communicates the spiritual delusion is? It makes you believe if you want anything good in life you have to perform. You have to work hard. You have to earn even when it comes to God. And that's what these people were trying to do. They were trying to perform before their gods. It starts by by singing. It starts by performing by dancing. It keeps escalating. Singing doesn't help. And dancing and then finally even hurting themsel because they think that is how that performance will somehow merit the attention of their gods and their gods will give them what they want. And that is what is the spiritual delusion we tend to buy into that what we may actually say whether you say you're a Christian or a Hindu or a Buddhist or or or an atheist or an agnostic you actually do have a god in your life that you know that you are trying with your own effort efforts and performance to get and the harder you try the more empty it feels. You try to think if I only can put in a 90 to 100 hour work week that's going to get me to the place that I want to be in my dream job or dream career. And then boom, all of a sudden a layoff hits and you're the first one who is let go. That God let you down. How muchever hard you worked and those hours you put in have all gone down the drain. That's the emptiness of all the gods other than the one true God that we tend to believe. And that's where first Elijah wants them to taste and personally vividly experience the emptiness of the false gods they have believed so far in their lives before he introduces or he speaks to the true God, the covenantal God. And that's the second point we are going to look at. You know, Elijah is trying to remind the people and the Bible is trying to remind you and me a relationship with God is not like a contract. We cannot treat God and our relationship with God in a transactional way. It's not like when you play with your friends, you barter toys. You see a toy that one of your friend has and you want that toy and maybe you are taught to say, "Hey, trade one of yours so that your friend will give you his or hers." That's not how it works with God. It's not a barter system. It's not transactional. It's not contractual. In fact, with God, the relationship God defines it as through a covenant that he always initiates. So that's what we read in this daring experiment where he asks them after these people have tried and the altars are messed up, he resets the altar, puts the wood back, puts the sacrifice on top and tells them, "All right, pour some water over it. Not once, not twice, three times. fill it up with water to emphasize to them that God is not going to answer based on the quality of their sacrifice or their Christ or their best efforts. In fact, make it so hard that it will be humanly impossible to light fire. You know, we recently went camping with some of our friends and uh got super cold in the night and uh we had to light up a fire and thankfully uh they have what is called as a lighter wood, a fire lighting wood, a wood that's actually soaked, I think, in kerosene or some kind of a fuel. So, it just lights up. And one of my friend was telling me it can stay lit for 2 hours. So then you put other wood on top of it so the fire can keep going. Now that's how you light a fire. Now if I had tried to tell my friend, pour water over this wood, and some of our kids actually tried that experiment too when we were not there and smoke came out of it. Pour water three times over this wood. Now try to light a fire. They would have called me a fool. Isn't it? That's exactly what Elijah does because he wants to show I want to show you that's this relationship with God is not going to happen through your self effort. In fact, it's the exact opposite of that. And he prays this beautiful prayer. And in this prayer of Elijah, you get a glimpse of how awesome this God of the Bible is. How he's such a loving, gracious, kind, relational God. He is not wanting you to bring anything to him to get anything from him. Read with me in first kings chapter 18. You can have that on the screen. Verse 36 says, "And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, Oh Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant, that I have done all these things at your word." Answer me, oh Lord. Answer me that this people may know that you, oh Lord, are God and have turned their hearts back. Now, this prayer that he prays before all those people reminds them and us today who God really is. He starts his prayer by naming three people. He says he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. And if you know a little bit of history, all these three people were not perfect people. They messed up big time. You know, Abraham didn't have the faith he needed to have at the right time. He lied about his wife to save his own skin. And it continued to his son Isaac. And his son Jacob, whose name God had to change, Israel, was a master of deception. Very much like the villain in the Ninjago series. There was nothing in them that they could go and tell God, I'm this good guy. I've not hurt anybody. I've only done good things to people. So, please God, love me and give me what I have. No, he says, you guys remember how God loved all these forefathers, not because he saw anything in them, but because he's a covenantal God. And he is a not just a covenantal God, he's also a personal God. He says, Elijah says, "God, please, I am your servant." And and God tells Elijah because he's a personal God. He tells you, he leads you that he has a purpose for your life. He has a plan for your life. It's wonderful that we have a theme for our summer labs as let's uh uh uh build something, right? As builders, what is it called? Faith builders. Yeah, I forgot. I should maybe attend one of your sessions. We're all building something, isn't it? In life, but what are we building? And how are we building? God says he's going to help each one of you to build something beautiful. He's going to he's building your life into something beautiful. And he wants you to build something that will have an impact not just for now, but for eternity. So for Elijah, he asked Elijah to build these people up who were so messed up, so broken, who kept drifting away from him. His job was to build this nation back together. And that's wonderful because he's a personal God. And he reveals himself to people when we ask him. And you can ask God, I'm confused. I don't know. I'm hearing so many different things. If you are true, if you're real, speak to me. and he will speak to you. And not just that, he is the one who restores and turns our heart back because he has promised he will do that and reaches to us even when we are in a delusional state. And what that happens, the result of that is this beautiful revival that we see. a revival that is going to take us from what is happening on this mountain which is called Mount Carmel to something that happens thousand years later on another mountain called Mount Calvary. And for that to happen, God had to intervene and do something big to really help change their hearts. God had to send fire from heaven. You know what is ironic? A little bit of background to that story is just before this chapter, God stops sending rain to this entire nation. He says, "You are believing in this God of prosperity because you believe that if you work hard and you you put in the hours, the rain will come. you'll harvest and make it big but and still forget about me. Let me tell you that that God is not true. I'm the real God who created the world. I'm going to stop rain. So there was a drought for three years over this entire nation. And now just because he's a covenantal and a kind God, if he were to say, "All right, let me give you guys rain again," you know what will happen? And that's how we tend to barter with God, isn't it? God. We go to him when we have a trial. We go to him when we have an exam. We go to him when we have an interview. We go to him when we have a health crisis. And we want God to just solve that problem for us. God is not just interested in solving your life issues. God is interested in turning and drawing your heart back to him. So before God can give them that, he sends fire from heaven. Imagine that you are standing right there. You know, just a small campfire is able to heat up a place around it for a few feet that you can draw warmth. Imagine you have this huge altar that's built and you're not lighting a fire from dawn. A fire comes from heaven. If you've seen those images where lightning strikes and entire trees just blow up the power that is in just one lightning they say can light up a entire city like New York for several years. You're witnessing that it's going to send shivers down your spine. If God were to just give them what they wanted, it would enable them to continue worshiping those balls. But to get our attention, God sometimes has to send a fire in our life, a lightning moment in our life that will get our attention to turn to him. For some of us till that time, nothing happens. We just move on. We just live in this delusional state and not worry about anything. You need to have this going through this fire moment. It can come in any form. can come in the form of sickness, can come in the form of loneliness, it can come in the form of depression, can come in the form of loss of a loved one in so many ways. In fact, some of the greatest Christian um saints are those who actually literally experience lightning. Martin Luther, the father of the reformation movement, who was so religious and so pious, literally had a lightning strike next to him on a tree that terrorized him and made him fall to the ground to see maybe there is a god I need to search and that led him on the pathway to find who the real god is. And if you read in the Bible, there is a story of Apostle Paul who is going to kill people who believe they are Christians and are worshiping Jesus and literally has a lightning experience that strikes him blind and turns his life around. But what is beautiful here is that when this fire comes from heaven, there's something absolutely selective about it. This is a fire. It can if God thinks he should and he has every right, he could send that fire to just eat up all the people. It could have just destroyed everybody in that place. It didn't touch even the hair of one single person. It went on the sacrifice that was there on the altar. And that is the grace of God. Why didn't the fire come down on the people? Why did it come down on an animal sacrifice? Well, why would any animal sacrifice be okay? Well, it's not. You know in the New Testament in Luke chapter 9, the disciples and Jesus actually talk about this very event. In Luke 9:51, Jesus and the disciples are trying to go into a town and the town people won't even let them in. They reject Jesus. The disciples are furious and they say, "Shall we call down fire to burn them up like Elijah?" People think God is this evil um uh angry God who just wants to drop pour fire and destroy the people. They're actually thinking of First Kings chapter 18, this very book, the fire of judgment, fire of God's justice, fire on sin. And guess what Jesus says? It's beautiful. He rebukes them. They don't even understand the Elijah's story. A few verses later in Luke 12 in connection with this, Jesus says, "I have come to bring fire and oh that it were kindled, for I have a baptism to undergo, and how constrained is my soul until it's completed." He's referring to this very event and he's saying I have come I have come to be baptized with fire not the people. I have come to receive the fire. Here's what he's saying to his disciples saying you don't understand the story very well. You're reading it all wrong. I'm not Elijah calling fire from heaven to consume people in judgment. I am the sacrifice that received the fire of judgment on all of your behalfs. I'm not expecting you to cut yourselves and bleed yourselves and bring me good things and be a good person. I want you to be real and honest and come to me just as you are. And I am willing to absorb the fire of God for your sake and mine. Only Jesus has done that. nobody else. He says, "That's where I am in that story. If you're looking for me, where am I?" And the only reason those people were not consumed by the fire of judgment was because of the sacrifice. But that's just a symbol because Jesus Christ went up another mountain, Mount Carmel on Mount Calvary and he took his heart into the sacrifice so you and I could have life. The fire of God's power and love can flow into us. Every other God you believe wants you to perform. It says, "Slash yourself for me. Bleed for me. Give me your last ounce of blood. Then maybe maybe you may get something. If the main thing in your life is education or beauty or success or finding this perfect person in marriage or finding this perfect career, it will tell you dance for me. Slash yourself for me into the ground. Success into the ground. I'll take you all the way to the ground. But there's only one God and only one God who doesn't say slash yourself for me but was slashed for you. His blood ran. Every other god will make your blood run. There's only one God whose blood ran. There is no other religion or philosophy that even suggests there is a God whose blood ran. Here's the only way you're going to overcome the power of idols in your life, the balls in your life. You have to see Jesus give you freely. What every other God says will only give you through performance and through your blood. Jesus gives you through his blood what every other god demands through yours. Jesus says to you, "You're already beautiful to me. That's why I did this for you. You're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful." And you have to see the fire come down on him to see what he has done for you. And that's why we did the Lord's table where we confessed our sins to say Lord help me get rid of all the balls or the ballistic parts of my life and bring the fire of your love and inflame my heart for you. You know the power of God unleashed on the cross reveals the extravagant grace of God. And for all the Ninjago fans, Jesus is the true and better green ninja, the chosen one. Except he didn't fight evil with swords or spinjitsus, but with grace and sacrifice. And he rose again. He's alive. He set his people free from the greatest overlord of all sin and death. and initiates a revival. God wants us to not just be on Mount Carmel. He wants us to come to Mount Calvary on the cross. We're going to do something this afternoon about that. And that brought a clear revival. So, let me close with three short applications especially for children. Yeah. Don't follow fake gods. Follow the one who answers. Just like the people in Ninjago followed the overlord because he seemed cool and powerful. Sometimes you might be tempted to follow what's popular. Whether it's wanting to be the coolest kid or having the most toys or trying to impress others. Are you guys listening? They're going to ask you a quiz on this and you will miss a gift. I'm not going to repeat it. Too bad. But those things can't help you. Especially when you're scared or you're sad or in trouble. Only Jesus will answer when you call. He gave his life for you because he loves you. He's the one true God who doesn't ask you to earn his love. He already gave it through the cross. So when you feel afraid or you're unsure about something, pray to Jesus like Elijah prayed. He will always hear you. even when no one else does in whatever situation you are. And if there's anyone here who's very skeptical about Jesus and Christianity and faith and you think maybe all beliefs are basically the same or that all gods and religions are just personal cultural choices. That's not true, isn't it? Either God is real and worthy of your life or he isn't. And Elijah's challenge still stands. How long will you limp between two opinions? And the fire at Mount Carmel points to the fire at Calvary where Jesus proved just not just God's power but his love. So I want to invite you to not settle for vague spirituality that's so common in our Silicon Valley. Ask which God bled for me. And I would encourage you to begin reading the Bible. You know the Gospel of John is a great place to start. And for those of us who believe in God, but sometimes he's po only a part of your life and not the center of your life. You may show up to church, but you actually chase success or beauty or comfort like Ball and Ashurer. The s the scary thing about this chapter first kings 18 is not how loved the prophets of ball were but it's how silent God's people were and the Elijah's question for is for you how long will you limp straddling two worlds so ask God to expose the modern balls in your heart anything you look for security more than Jesus Then look to the fire of Calvary where God turned your heart back through the sacrifice of his son.