Audio Transcript

In 1 Kings 18, we read the amazing account of God’s defeat of Baal’s prophets. The story is unforgettable. At the time, Israel was torn. Should it follow Baal or follow the living God? As it stood, the people of Israel were “limping between two different opinions,” as Elijah said (1 Kings 18:21). So there came an ultimatum. God’s people would climb Mount Carmel to witness two sacrifices laid out: One sacrifice with a bull would be set on logs by Elijah. Another bull on logs would be assembled by the prophets of Baal. Equal offerings. Then the prophets would call down divine fire to light the sacrifices. Baal’s 450 prophets went first and called out and called out. Crickets. Nothing from their god.

Then Elijah, God’s lone prophet on the scene, set up his sacrifice, had it doused with water three times, and then called for God to act, as we read in 1 Kings 18:36–39. In the words of Elijah:

“O 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, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.”

Powerful. So what’s the takeaway? We heard it in verse 37. Here it is again: “that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Verse 37 needs to be thought about, and that’s what we will do today. A few moments later, after this dramatic event, Elijah goes up to Mount Caramel. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel. And he bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” And he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” And he said, “Go again,” seven times. And at the seventh time he said, “Behold, a little cloud like a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” And he said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you.’” And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel. And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. (1 Kings 18:42–46)

Elijah didn’t limp. You don’t limp when you follow Jesus. I don’t care if you’re in a wheelchair: you don’t limp when you follow Jesus; you run. He ran before the rain. He didn’t limp; he didn’t hobble — he ran. Now that’s the story.

Ruler of Every Heart

Let’s step back and ask, So what’s the main point — the one that everything else is supporting and leading toward? And I mentioned as we were going that I think it’s in verse 37, because Elijah himself says, “This is what I want the people to know.” Not all stories are this clear, but the prophet himself opens his mouth and gathers the whole thing together and says, “God, make them know this. Make them know this about all this.” So what is that? Verse 37: “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know.” Know what? Two things:

“That you, O Lord, are God.” You are God. You’re not an idea, you’re not a memory, you’re not a tradition, you’re not a religion, you’re not a projection of our imagination, you’re not a force, you’re not an archetype, and you’re not a symbol. You are God — the living, active, fire-sending, sin-hating, idolatry-destroying, prayer-hearing, personal God. That’s number one: make them know, let them know, you are God. That’s really the basic need of all of us.
“That this people may know . . . that you have turned their hearts back.” The NIV says, “that you are turning their hearts.” Cause your people to know this. This is where I’m landing here. Cause these men to know this. I think that’s God’s will for you from this text. It should be my prayer for you: I pray that these men, from this story, would discern that you, the sovereign God, are the one who turns human hearts to God.

“You are God. You’re not an idea, you’re not a memory, you’re not a tradition, you’re not a religion.”

So their hearts had betrayed God, spurned God, belittled God, devalued God, loved other things more than God, and this entire event on Mount Carmel is aiming to make God’s people know that if anybody turns to God, God turned them to God. That’s the point of the story. So when the people cry from the heart, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God,” God did that (verse 39). God did that. It’s true, the Lord rules fire. It’s true, the Lord rules the flesh of the bull, the wood on the altar, the rocks. He rules the rain — he makes it rain when he wants it to rain.

But this text is mainly about how God rules the heart. He turns hearts. The Lord rules the human heart: “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back” (verse 37). “Know this, Israel.” He doesn’t want to just say it’s a fact. He wants them to know it. He’s praying that God would cause them to know it.

God Must Do It

There must be a value for you this afternoon, tomorrow, ten years from now. There must be a value for you to know this: that if anybody’s heart turns to God, God has turned the heart. There must be a value, a thrilling value, for you to know this, that Elijah would pray it as the capstone of the event: “Let them know this.”

“If anybody turns to God, God turned them to God.”

I mean, there are people all over the world who would say, “Wow! Fire falling from heaven, consuming bulls and water and wood and stones — that’s impressive!” Elijah didn’t pray that they would know that; he prayed that they would know, if your heart, at this moment, is getting really serious about God, God is doing that.

As an American who grew up in the South, where a kind of decisionism was so dominant and rampant, I never heard this emphasis in my childhood — never heard it. When it came to a heart moving from unbelief to belief, you do that. You do that. Nobody stressed, “God, do it. Do it in this room. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done.” That’s what Elijah is pleading for.

Audio Transcript

Happy Friday. Today we are taking up the topic of physical appearance, because the Bible speaks often about physical appearance. Scripture contains dozens of references to physical looks — both to attractiveness and unattractiveness. Those categories emerge all over the Bible, so there’s no need to shy away from this topic. We looked at many of these texts when we addressed this topic in APJ 1699. And since listening to that episode, which became pretty popular, we’ve gotten several follow-up questions, including this from a listener named Sean.

“Dear Pastor John, thank you for APJ 1699 — ‘Why Did God Make Me Unattractive?’ That episode was excellent. I wonder, though, if you could expand on your last paragraph, about the beauty of Christ satisfying us despite the pain of rejection. In my younger days, I often lamented that I was not better looking. But now, I realize that I would have ruined my life several times over chasing relationships with ungodly women. I now see my average attractiveness is a massive spiritual blessing that protected me from idols, and that drove me deeper into Christ instead of into shallow patterns of life. I would not trade that joy for attractiveness in a million years.”

Just hearing you articulate the question again reminds me of how many pimples I had when I was 14 and 15, and how nervous I was around people, and how I so badly wanted it to be otherwise. Now I share that same amazement. I think God spared me a lot of junk by not letting me get on the fast track to trouble.

Another Kind of Beauty

Well, anyway, that was a beautiful testimony. I love his testimony. And I use the word beautiful when I say, “Isn’t that a beautiful testimony?” intentionally. That’s what we’re talking about here: beauty. I would rather hear a person say that from the heart than gaze on the most beautiful woman in the world, or on the most beautiful mountain or lake.

Natural beauties — yes, they’re good. They’re not evil. They’re a gift. We should receive them and see something of God in them. Everything good is a partial revelation of the all-satisfying God. But the beauty of soul — the mind and the heart, a beautiful mind — that in much affliction or disappointment finds Jesus to be satisfying, that is a beauty of another kind and a higher level. I love to see it. Just hearing this question was a great joy to me. It was beautiful.

Sean wants me to expand on the beauty of Christ satisfying us despite the pain of rejection. I think what might be helpful is to ponder four changes that need to happen in our minds and hearts in order to find lasting satisfaction in the beauty of Christ. I’ll name them and then just say a word about each one.

We need to shift our focus from the beauty of the body to the beauty of character.
We need to shift our focus from the beauty that satisfies the body to the beauty that satisfies the soul.
We need to shift our focus from beauty as the world sees it to beauty as God sees it.
We need to shift our focus from beauty in time to beauty in eternity.

1. Beauty of Character

First, we need to shift our focus from the beauty of body to the beauty of character. The most graphic illustration of the need for this shift is the appearance of Jesus in the hour of his most beautiful act. Isaiah 52:14 and Isaiah 53:2 say, “His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind. . . . He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” In other words, he not only became sin for us; he became ugly for us. The ugliness of sin was accompanied by the ugliness of body, so ugly in his torments that it was hard to look at him. And yet, at this good-news-creating moment, he was, in another sense, more beautiful than at any other time.

God, give us eyes. I think that’s what Paul would say: “Give us eyes to see.” But Paul will put it like this: “the light of the gospel of the glory [that is, the beauty] of Christ, who is the image of God.” That’s what we’ll see, according to 2 Corinthians 4:4. The good news is the beauty of Christ at the moment of his greatest ugliness. That’s the shift of focus we need, from the beauty of body to the beauty of Christ — Christ’s character, Christ’s love.

“All of us, men and women, need a deep shift of focus from beauty of body to beauty of character.”

It’s not surprising when the Bible speaks to the beauty of Christian women, for example, with just this emphasis. It says in 1 Peter 3:3–4, “Do not let your adorning be external — the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing that you wear — but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.” Now, he’s not saying, “Women shouldn’t wear clothes.” That’s ridiculous. I mean, he’s not saying, “Oh, don’t wear clothes.” He’s not even saying they shouldn’t be attractive. He’s saying, “All of us, men and women, need a deep shift of focus from beauty of body to beauty of character.” Without that, all our talk about the beauty of Christ will be shallow.

2. Soul-Satisfying Beauty

Second, we need to shift our focus from the beauty that satisfies the body to the beauty that satisfies the soul. Now, the point here is not about the beauty we seek to have in ourselves, but the beauty we seek to enjoy in others. This requires a profound change of heart by the Holy Spirit. It comes naturally to us to enjoy good looks in the opposite sex, or beautiful scenery. There is enough of the image of God left in us that most fallen people can even admire and enjoy a beautiful act of sacrificial love and call it beautiful. They see something beautiful in sacrifice and love; they say, “That’s beautiful.” But it requires a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit to see God in Christ as supremely beautiful and therefore satisfying.

This is a new kind of satisfaction. It’s not bodily. It’s not the satisfaction merely of the eyes. It is spiritual. The psalmist doesn’t have it by nature; that’s why he prays for it. He says, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love” (Psalm 90:14). This is what God has to do. God has to satisfy us with God. Or Psalm 17:15: “When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” Or Psalm 63:5–6: “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food . . . when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night.”

“To shift our focus from beauty that satisfies the body to beauty that satisfies the soul, we must know God.”

To shift our focus from beauty that satisfies the body to beauty that satisfies the soul, we must know God — really know him, know him until he becomes the source of all beauty and the sum of all beauty for us. Then we will be able to taste and see the beauty of Christ.

3. Beauty in God’s Eyes

Third, we need to shift our focus from beauty as the world sees it to beauty as God sees it. We live in a time when TV and streaming services and Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and texting and FaceTime and a camera in every pocket continually throw into our faces the issue of looks, looks, looks. The appeal is constantly to the immediate response of our eyes. It is almost all outward. Visual appearance and its immediate impact is held up as desirable. But the deeper issues of character are not. Why? Well, because it’s artistically harder to depict character.

The appeal of character is not instantaneous. Most people don’t even have a clear sense of what character is. So the default is to feed the eyes, feed the eyes, feed the eyes. Feed the visual instincts, especially of the men. (Maybe not especially of the men. I don’t know what’s going on in the minds of women; I’m not a woman. I’m a man, and I know what they’re doing to me.)

First Samuel 16:7 says, “The Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” We need to shift our focus from beauty as the world sees it and shows it to beauty as God sees it and creates it. This will probably require a significant shift in the viewing habits of many Christians.

4. Eternal Beauty

Finally, we need to shift our focus from beauty in time to beauty in eternity. If God created us with a homely exterior — we’re just not handsome or pretty — and in a world like ours, life has been harder because of it, then we need to shift our focus and realize that this light momentary homeliness, which we call a lifetime, is nothing compared to the eternity of beauty we will enjoy (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Here’s 1 John 3:2: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Which means at least, Jesus says, that we “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of [our] Father” (Matthew 13:43). Finally, the beauty of Christ will be not only what we see but what we are, and we will be supremely satisfied in him.

Audio Transcript

Pop the confetti — we have arrived at episode number 2000 on the Ask Pastor John podcast. Wow! What better way to celebrate than with a question about how to make our lives count? That’s a major theme of your ministry, Pastor John — not wasting our lives. Today’s question comes from a teenager named Payton. Parents and grandparents of teens, here’s a heads-up: this is one of those episodes you may want to pass along to the teens in your life.

Here’s the question: “Pastor John, hello. My name is Payton, and I’m fifteen years old. I have listened to your sermons and to this podcast over the past year, and it has been truly very helpful in my Christian walk. As a fifteen-year-old, how can I make a difference in the world as a Christian? How can I make my life count?”

Okay, here are my twelve rules for fifteen-year-olds. Actually, twelve rules for teenagers. Most of them are applicable to girls as well, if they just make a slight twist. But Payton is a boy, so I’m thinking this way for him.

1. Honor your parents.

“Honor your father and mother” (Ephesians 6:1–2). These are ways to make your life count. “Honor your father and mother.” Never treat them with contempt or belittle them behind their back or around your friends. That is a mark of honoring them. It is a mark of maturity, and it is pleasing to the Lord.

2. Savor the Bible.

“Ransack your Bible every day, and pray for its greatest impact in your life. Don’t just read it — devour it.”

Ransack your Bible every day, and pray for its greatest impact in your life. Don’t just read it — devour it. Dig into it the way a miser searches for gold and silver. Ask God every time you open your Bible, “Show me wonderful things here, great things, life-changing things” (see Psalm 119:18). Savor it the way you savor your favorite food. When you stop reading, meditate on it day and night (Psalm 1:2). Take it with you. You’ll be “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:3). You won’t be like a leaf blown around by the wind.

3. Focus on character.

Don’t focus on making good grades in school. Focus on really learning all you can and using all of that learning to turn you into a man of character. The Bible clearly calls us to grow in grace, in knowledge (2 Peter 3:18). It never calls us to make good grades. Grades will take care of themselves if you really squeeze the most learning out of every course in high school that you can.

4. Choose schools wisely.

If you get to choose your school, say high school or college, don’t choose a school because of its popularity or its library or its sports teams or its size or its parties. Choose it because of the wisdom of its faculty. Choose teachers, not courses; choose teachers, not schools. Proverbs 13:20 says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise.”

5. Date for marriage.

Save dating girls for the time when marriage is a real option. Put it off till then. The concept of dating as a kind of mere recreation in our Western culture is not wise. Our attraction to the opposite sex, built in by God — it’s a good thing. It’s designed by God to lead to the great and wonderful satisfaction of marriage. That’s what it’s for.

Do things with other boys and other girls in groups, and save the one-on-one dating till you’re ready to consider marriage seriously. I dated for the first time (with a pounding heart) when I was 20 years old, and I married her. We’re still married and happy 55 years later. It was a good choice.

6. Stay busy ‘doing.’

Number six comes from my father. He said, “Be so busy ‘doing’ that you don’t have time to ‘don’t.’” Now, that was his response to the fact that the Bible does indeed say there are a lot of “don’ts.” There are a lot of things we should not do as teenagers or adults, some because they’re outright wrong, but many just because they’re not helpful. They’re weights, not sins. It’s like wearing an overcoat when you run a marathon. That’s not against the rules; it’s just stupid.

These things, we know, don’t build our faith. They don’t keep our minds pure. So my dad’s solution was not to harp on all the things that wise Christians don’t do, but instead to fill your life with so many good and helpful things that you don’t have time for the questionable things: “Be so busy ‘doing’ that you don’t have time to ‘don’t.’” (See Galatians 6:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:13; 1 Corinthians 15:58.)

7. Be passionate, not lazy.

What your hand finds to do, do it with all your might (see Ecclesiastes 9:10). If you want your life to count, you can’t be half-hearted. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing passionately. Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”

Or consider Romans 12:11: “Do not be slothful in zeal [our contemporary word for zeal is passion], be fervent in spirit [the literal translation is boiling — ‘be boiling in spirit’], serve the Lord.” So, don’t be lazy, but be zealous or passionate; not lukewarm, but fervent or boiling in the spirit. Be done with half-heartedness.

8. Offer up your gifts.

Don’t fret over gifts you don’t have, but take the few you do have and put them in the hands of Christ, like the boy with the five loaves and two fish in his hands. He put them in the hands of Jesus. Your hand shouldn’t say to your eye, “Because I’m not an eye, I’m of no use to the body.” That’s 1 Corinthians 12:21, adapted (see also 1 Corinthians 12:15–16). I regard this as one of the most important lessons I ever learned.

As I went through school, I saw more and more clearly what I was not good at. If I had focused on that, on what I’m not good at — oh my goodness. There’s a long list of things I’m not good at. I’ve never made any sports teams, for example, and I read so slowly, and my memory is so poor. On and on my weaknesses go.

If I had focused on them, I think I would have accomplished nothing. Instead, I saw two or three things I could do, and I could do them as well as others, maybe even better. And I said, “Lord, help me not to waste energy on bemoaning what I can’t do, and help me to do what I can do with all my might. Take it. Use it. Make it count.”

9. Don’t be a people-pleaser.

Don’t be a people-pleaser. Paul says in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Now, that’s not as simple as you might think because there are other texts that say we should try to please others, like Romans 15:2: “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” To please others, to help them be stronger in faith, is good. It’s not about you. It’s about trusting Christ, seeing Christ, knowing Christ.

But pleasing others to pump up our ego or to avoid criticism of us or to escape suffering or hardship — that’s not good. Be mature enough to know how not to offend others, and then be utterly indifferent to other people’s praise when your own ego or your own safety is at stake. Do what’s right, and let the chips fall where they will.

10. Fail well.

Don’t be defeated by failures. If you never fail at anything, you are not trying enough things. You haven’t taken enough risks if you never fail. We all begin as failures — all of us. That’s what sin is — it’s a failure. To honor God as we ought, we all begin as “F,” and the punishment is hell. Paul says in Romans 7:15–19 that, even after he is converted, he stumbles in many ways, doing what he does not want to do.

But here is the glory of the gospel of Christ (and our lives are built on the gospel): He covered our sins. He imputed righteousness to us that we don’t have natively. Our acceptance with God is not earned. So we say with Paul in Philippians 3:13, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind . . .” He had lots of things he needed to forget.

We all have failures. I mean, every day we don’t measure up to the way we would like to talk to people or treat people. If we are crushed by those things, we’ll never count. So don’t look back like that. “Forgetting what lies behind,” Paul says, “and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14). Don’t be defeated by past failures.

11. Fight sin and temptation.

“You will not be used by God for anything great if you live in compromise with sin.”

“Make no provision for the flesh.” That’s Romans 13:14. Know the things and the times and the places that lure you to sin, and avoid them. You will not be used by God for anything great if you live in compromise with sin, and one crucial way to fight sin is to head it off at the pass. Don’t put yourself in any position where sin typically gets the upper hand. That may be sexual sin or the temptation to greed, pride, anger, or whatever your typical temptation is.

12. Live to magnify Christ.

Finally, don’t live to stay alive. Live to make much of Christ. I love Acts 20:24, where Paul says, “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.” The point of life is not to stay alive. It’s to magnify the greatness of Jesus. As Paul puts it in Philippians 1:20, “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”

Seek to do these twelve things, and I promise you: your life will count.