The Still Small Voice: European Pastor s Council 2012 Laurence Turner I m not a mountaineer. But I ve made it to the top of a number of mountains. On holiday recently in Northern Ireland, I scrambled to the top of Eagle Mountain. All 638 metres of it. But, as I kept gasping to my wife who accompanied me, it still counts as a mountain. Then there was Mount Kosciuszko, the highest peak in Australia at 2,228 metres. We made it to the top of that. And then the magnificent Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, standing at 5,895 metres. Mount Kilimanjaro. Well, I ve driven past it! There is a biblical character that keeps turning up on the tops of mountains. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain, and there they meet Moses and Elijah. They meet two mountaineers, both of whom, the Bible tells us, scaled three peaks. Moses, who d been to the top of Sinai, Pisgah, and now this mount of Transfiguration. And Elijah. Elijah is used to mountain tops. He s also been to the top of Mount Carmel and Mount Horeb. And I d like to take a look at Elijah s mountaineering, and what it tells us about making God known. Elijah s situation was desperate. Canaanite religion had seduced the Israelites. The traditional Israelite Sabbath services seemed so dull and boring in comparison with the fertility rites of Baal. Those fertility rites showed how you really could love your neighbour. And here was the wonderful thing. Baal was not an exclusivist. You didn t have to give up your worship of Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts. Of course not, that would be most intolerant. No, you could simply add the worship of Baal to the worship of God; Baal wouldn t mind in the slightest. If that works for you, fine. Because, as all enlightened people of the ninth century BC knew, there were no religious absolutes that worked for everybody. Now obviously, you needed Baal there, in the religious mix, but you could add and subtract gods 1
until you found a solution which suited you. Now, who could possibly object to that? Well, Elijah objected to that. So Elijah stood before King Ahab and announced that the matter would be sorted out once and for all. 1 KGS 18.19-20. On the top of Mount Carmel. A public demonstration; a spectacle no less. In full view; no hiding place; maximum impact. So the contest began. On the one hand, Elijah the prophet of the Lord, the exclusivist. 1 KGS 18.21. For Elijah, the people must choose between the Lord and Baal. It s either one or the other. On the other hand, the prophets of Baal were inclusivists. As far as they were concerned, Israel could serve the Lord as well as Baal. In the contest on Carmel perhaps both Baal and the Lord would pass the test. Well, there you have it. You don t need to choose; you can worship both. But, if Baal answered and the Lord did not, it would simply show that in this particular area of influence Baal called the tune. The Lord had his place, but not here. So, they assembled on the top of Carmel, the exclusivist Elijah, prophet of the Lord and the inclusivist prophets of Baal. However, both sides do share something in common. Both Elijah and the prophets of Baal believe that their god makes himself known through spectacular demonstrations of power. If they didn t agree on that, then Elijah would never have persuaded those pagan prophets to climb to the top of Carmel. On the question of how Baal or the Lord makes himself known, there wasn t an atom of difference between them. Spectacular, miraculous power. So, like a modern impresario Elijah sets about organising the contest. And what a contest it was. Up on the top of a mountain, maximum exposure, great publicity, Pentecostal singing and dancing from the prophets of Baal, volume turned to maximum, gushing blood, an all-day affair. You have to give it to them. The prophets of Baal put on a good show. 2
Then Elijah takes over with buckets and buckets of water in the middle of a drought, water cascading over the sacrifice, filling a huge trench around the altar, and then fire from heaven! Fire, which like a nuclear explosion erupts with terrifying power, obliterating the sacrifice, the stones of the altar, the dust, and every last drop of water. Nothing remains. The top of Carmel is a wasteland. This story would run and run. God makes himself known on Carmel. And how did he make himself known? He made himself known through spectacle, power, shock and awe. And how did Elijah help God to make himself known? By organising every last detail. There was an awful lot of busyness on Carmel that day, making God known. Hyperactivity all day long. I rather think we would have fitted in quite well. For our aim too is to make God known. And to achieve that, we might not prance around an altar like the prophets of Baal, or baptise it several times as Elijah did. But we are doing something; saying something; achieving something; reporting something; organising something; forming a committee on something; answering something, emailing something. So that God might be known. And what did the fire on Carmel achieve? Well, for one thing it showed that God can make himself known in spectacular ways. And he makes himself known through fire. Just as he did in the fire of the burning bush before Moses or the fire on top of Mount Sinai. What else did the fire achieve? Well, the nuclear explosion convinced the people. Wouldn t it convince you? 1 KGS 18.39. What else did it achieve? Well, apparently, that s about it. We re not told whether it convinced the prophets of Baal and they weren t around much longer to ask. But the fire didn t convince Ahab to change his national policy. And the fire certainly didn t convince Jezebel, whose devotion to Baal continues with evangelistic fervour. More importantly, did the fire convince Elijah? To answer that, we need to follow 3
Elijah. For, he s off on a journey. A journey which will demonstrate even more clearly how God makes himself known. But where is Elijah going on this journey? He goes from Carmel in the far north of Israel, to Beer-sheba in the far south, and then on beyond the boundaries of the land into the deep recesses of the Sinai desert. This is no ordinary journey. He s not simply trying to escape from Jezebel. He s on his way to somewhere in particular. And finally he arrives. At the next mountain. Mount Horeb, otherwise known as Mount Sinai. And when he arrives the Lord has a question for him. What are you doing here, Elijah? (19.9). The Hebrew puts the emphasis on the last word, What are you doing here? Not simply here, Mount Horeb, that is, Mount Sinai. But even more precisely than that, What are you doing here? For the text tells us that Elijah arrived at Horeb and came to the cave (not a cave ) and spent the night there. (19.9). God meets him in the cave on Sinai, and asks, What are you doing here? Why would Elijah travel the full length of Israel, and then trek 200 kilometres of desert in order to arrive at this cave? Because it was in this cave, in this cleft of the rock on Sinai, that none other than Moses, Elijah s fellow mountaineer, experienced the glory of God. The fire of Carmel has faded and Elijah needs another fix of spectacle. That s why he s here. He needs to relive the experience of Moses, who on this very mountain, in this very cave, came as close as any human being ever has to seeing the face of God. Elijah has journeyed forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God and there enters the cave (1 KGS 19.8), just as Moses was on Mount Horeb with God for forty days and forty nights (EXOD 24.18; 34.28), and entered a cleft in the rock. And now, connections with Moses come thick and fast. When Moses was in this rock, God s glory passed by (Exod 33.21-22). And now, God tells Elijah in the same cave, the LORD is about to pass by (v. 11). And it continues, 1 KGS 19.11-12a. Just what Elijah had been waiting for. He was reliving the spectacle Moses had when the Lord descended in 4
fire and the whole mountain shook violently (Exod 19.18). Like Moses, Elijah too experiences fire and earthquake on Sinai. Just one more experience of Moses for Elijah to relive, and that was for the Lord to speak in thunder. Exod 19.18-19. But not this time. There will be no speaking in thunder. 1 KGS 19.11-12a. And what is more, this time the Lord doesn t make himself known in any of the spectacle. The Lord wasn t in the wind; the Lord wasn t in the earthquake; the Lord wasn t in the fire. Which is odd really. Because God had been in the fire on the top of Carmel a few days before. The nuclear fire on Carmel that vaporised the altar, sacrifice, dust and water had shown who was boss. The people had shouted, The Lord, he is God. The Lord certainly was in that fire. But not in the fire Elijah experiences on Mount Horeb. And, what s more, on Horeb the Lord did not speak to Elijah, as he had to Moses, in thunder. There was no thunder. Just a still small voice. Or perhaps a tiny whispering sound or a sound of sheer silence. That is how God makes himself known on Mount Horeb. I used to find a quiet space in libraries or museums. Not anymore. They re chock full of audio-visual displays these days. I ve also given up finding an oasis of peace in church. Every spare second, every chink available is stuffed with speaking, announcements, background music, expressions of thanks, mobile phones vibrating. But quiet space, which allows time for listening to the still small voice I ve been looking in vain for that. And that still small voice not only contrasts with the thunder Moses heard on Sinai, it also contrasts with Mount Carmel. There the prophets of Baal vainly cried out in a loud voice ; here God communicates in a still small voice God certainly made himself known in the signs and wonders on Carmel. There s no denying that. But the problem with relying on signs and wonders is that they need to happen every day of the week. A long-term, mature walk with God is sustained not by signs and wonders but by the still small voice. That is more helpful 5
than fire from heaven. As Elijah demonstrates as he flees for his life and prays that he might die, within days of Carmel -- fire is soon forgotten. On Horeb there is indeed spectacle. There is wind, earthquake and fire. They are all there. All the traditional means of making God known, they re all there. But at Horeb, God does not make himself known through any one of them. Not one. Why not? Because on Horeb with Elijah we arrive at a turning point in the way God makes himself known. Mount Carmel, the public manifestation of God s power and glory before all Israel (18.19-21), is the last public miracle in the Old Testament. This is the last time God makes himself known in power before all the people of Israel. And on Mount Horeb, God refuses to make himself known to Elijah through the traditional means of wind, earthquake and fire. The era of spectacular public manifestations is almost at an end. Elijah, and then Elisha certainly do perform miracles after this. But these aren t public affairs; they re limited to personal miracles for individuals and small groups. And then hardly any personal miracles occur after Hezekiah, whose life is extended. The obvious exceptions to these are found in the Book of Daniel, but even here the fiery furnace and the lion s den aren t witnessed by the people of Judah. God is certainly present in the life of his people after Carmel, there are occasional miracles, but he prefers, increasingly, to be in the background. By the time we get to the Book of Esther God isn t even mentioned. Not a straight line of development, certainly, but nonetheless a definite trend from the loud and spectacular to the subtle and understated. It s as if before Carmel God is an American and after Carmel he is an Englishman. That s how he makes himself known. In the ministry of Jesus we certainly have a revival of God s power, but here we see individual acts of compassion to the poor, needy and oppressed. Not breathtaking demonstrations of power before the whole people of Israel. Christ resists Satan s temptation 6
to throw himself down from the temple in a stunning messianic miracle. He refuses to come down from the cross to silence the mockers. Even the resurrection is an understated event. There s no blast of lightning awakening the city of Jerusalem from its sleep. No manifestation of Christ in glory on the top of the Mount of Olives. Rather, he s sharing a meal with believers in their home at Emmaus; talking to Mary in the Garden; cooking fish for his disciples on the beach. That s how Christ chose to make himself known; not by nuclear fission but by a still small voice. How might God make himself known to pastors today? Let me give just one illustration. For a number of years I taught homiletics. After all, the Church wants its pastors to learn how to speak. But God also wants us to learn how to listen. For example, when we prepare a sermon we all know how easy it is to superimpose our biases onto the text. Eugene Lowry suggests the following when preparing a sermon. Underline all of the important points in the text. As we underline the important parts we prayerfully mutter to ourselves, I can see why the Lord led me here. Three of my personal prejudices confirmed in a single passage. Can t wait to preach this! But then, look at the words you did not underline. It s right there that God could be speaking to us. In a still small voice. Elijah was underlining, wind ; earthquake and fire. Those were the bits he underlined. But God wasn t in any of them. Elijah hadn t underlined the still small voice. But that is where God actually is. That s where he makes himself known. And how might we as pastors make God known to others? I think of the church I preached in recently in New Zealand. A woman came up to me afterwards and said, You won t remember me. I was a reluctant student of yours some years ago at Avondale College. I just wanted to tell you that it was in one of your lectures that I decided to be baptised. Really, what lecture was that? It was the one on the Book of Lamentations. As I left the 7
lecture room that day and went about my business in the college, I had no clue that God had used my words to bring a young woman to faith in the gospel. After all, it was a lecture on the Book of Lamentations. None of the students came forward at the end, gripped my hand, and said, Brother Turner, that was awesome! Not one. But in the quiet interplay of an Old Testament lecture on Lamentations, God was working on someone s heart. I could multiply examples of that. As I m sure very many of you could also. As I said at the outset, I ve been up a few mountains. And I ve been up a few mountains in my ministry too. I recognise now that sometimes I ve been climbing the wrong mountain. Climbing the wrong mountain with Elijah. When Elijah set out for Horeb, he made the mistake of trying to resurrect the past. Likewise, we say, If only we could grasp the commitment and experience of our pioneers, embrace their way of doing things, then God would be known in our time too. No. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Elijah on Sinai cannot reproduce Moses on Sinai because God has moved on. Likewise, we must be open to new ways, new thinking. Not simply tinkering with the familiar. But a radically different ministry. A radically different ministry to make God known. As radically different from nuclear fire and thunder as a still small voice. 8