At the time of his interview with 60 minutes, many people considered him to be the greatest football player on the planet. Even though he was still young, he'd already won three Super Bowls in two of which he'd been named the MVP, the most valuable player. He had a contract with his team for $60 million. And that didn't even include several huge endorsement deals. GQ had named him one of the most attractive men alive and his girlfriend was a Supermodel. See, women wanted to be with him, men wanted to be him, fame, success, money, desirability. He had it all. So his interviewers at 60 minutes were stunned by the response of Tom Brady to this question. With all the success that you've had, what have you learned? He said, there's got to be more than this. I mean, this just can't be all it's cracked up to be. Well, what do you think that is? I wish I knew. I wish I knew. There's got to be more than this. What are we looking for? First Kings 19, where we're going. That's page 560 in your Pew Bible. We're picking up what we left off last week with Elijah on the mountain of God hearing from God. And let's do that right now. Let's hear from the Lord. Beginning at verse 15, the Lord said to Elijah, go back the way you came and go to the desert of Damascus. When you get there, annoyed, hazael, king of Iran. Also annoyed Jahu, son of Nimshi, king of Israel. And an out Elisha son of Shafat, from Abel Mahola, to succeed you as prophet. Jahu will put to death any who escaped the sort of hazael. And Elisha will put to death any who escaped the sort of Jahu. Yet I reserve 7,000 in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed down to Bale and all whose mouths have not kissed him. So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shafat. He was plowing with 12 yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah. Let me kiss my father and mother goodbye, he said, and then I'll come with you. Go back, Elijah replied, what have I done to you, as if to say, it's not my calling. So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burnt the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and become and became his attendant. This is God's word. Let's pray. Lord come this morning. You spoke and brought life out of nothingness. You brought meaning out of emptiness. We pray you to speak again this morning through your word and show us why it is you call. Give us a purpose, Lord, we pray in your name. Amen. When God calls, what happens? First of all, it reveals our longing. I found out this week that there is a bike race that is cross-country, literally cross-country, from Los Angeles to New York in just ten days. Now if you're doing the math, you'll realize there's not enough time for them to sleep. That's right, they don't sleep very much. And psychologists will tell you, if you go 72 hours without sleeping, you'll begin to hallucinate while you're awake. We need REM sleep so badly that you will begin to drop into sleep while you're still conscious. You'll see things. One of the cyclists described just such an event. He said he was riding along and then he saw men with guns on horses chasing him. His teammates saw the opportunity and they ran with it. Oh, yeah, oh, they're coming. Go, go, go, go. He peddled harder. Now why would somebody push themselves like that to push himself to the utter limits of the human body? The podcast that was describing this said, more and more people in society are describing that there's something missing that's close to them, something missing from their lives. Along those same lines, seven time tour to France winner Lance Armstrong has said, the best endurance athletes are running from something inside themselves. You get that theme, there's something missing, they're running from something within. Almost as if we know there's a greater purpose, but if we can't find what that purpose is, we're so desperate, we're going to make something up. We're going to fabricate it, we're going to come up with something. I mean, think about it. At least for those ten days, the cyclists have a reason for living. And before you begin to think, well, that's just those people out there on the periphery, the extremes of society. Let's turn the critical eye a little closer to home. Why is it that a woman feels the need to ask, do I look good in this dress? Even though she knows that there's an inherent bias in the room, and if the man has any wisdom at all, it's a given answer, but don't miss it. She still feels the need to ask the question, why does she need an external voice to speak into her world? Why does there have to be an external vote of affirmation as if it's just not enough for me to say I'm worth it. Somebody else has to say, you are worth it. You look good. It's not all that different with men. I mean, how many men are desperate to do their job, to have a job? I mean, what do we call it when somebody's in their job? He's got to earn his living as though to not have a job is not to have a reason to live. We no wonder in an economy like this, some people have taken their lives, meaning, purpose, we're hunting for it, we're looking for it. It's not indifferent in high school. It's a matter of which rules you play by. Got to get the grades, got to get the reputation, got to perform on the sports field. I've got to get it. I've got to be it. We're all clamoring to have enough accolades to have a high enough goal to accomplish something so that somebody will look in and say, now that's something. We all want to be the next Tom Brady, but Tom Brady already gets to be Tom Brady. So what are we missing? All right, if you're coming with me on this journey, now you're beginning to understand why Alisha does what he does. Let's get this scene. Here comes Alijah, this gaunt old, otherworldly figure that's known throughout the land. He looks weird, he dresses weird, he acts weird, he's weird. He comes striding across this field to Alijah, pulls out his nasty old cloak. I mean, think about what we've studied the last few weeks about where he's been. And he throws that thing on Alijah's back and evidently walks away because Alijah has to run after him. Now, the symbolism's pretty easy to read on the surface. He's saying, all right, Alijah, come be like me. Come dress like me, come wear my mantle, come be a prophet. We read that and we think, well, of course, I mean, he's Elijah. He's one of the major biblical figures. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't come along with him? It's simple. Of course, he says, yes, it's not that simple. Why would Alijah say yes? There's a subtlety here that we can miss that ancient Israelites wouldn't. Did you notice? Alijah has 12 teams of oxen, that's 24 oxen, which means he has a huge field, he has huge assets, and he's in charge. Now, even though his daddy's still alive, which means it's daddy's stuff, his daddy's not anywhere on the scene, so he's trusted. He's trusted with daddy's stuff, which means when his dad dies, he's going to get everything. Even though he's a young man, he's got status, he's got wealth, he's got a huge inheritance coming, his life looks good. It is set, and he is comfortable. So why in the world would he be interested in Elijah's offer? Elijah comes and he's offering him a life of running, of danger, of poverty and pain. Who actively chooses to give up security and wealth, to pursue a life of insecurity and suffering? The only kind of person who purposefully chooses that is somebody who is not happy with things being the way that they are right now. You see that? Underneath this, Elijah has to have a longing. If he doesn't have a longing, it doesn't make sense. No thanks old man, and take your stanky old coat with you when you go. Not interested. I mean, otherwise when God's call comes, if Elijah doesn't have a longing, he'd mistake it for lunacy. That crazy old codger, who'd serve a crazy guy like that. One of my friends was asked to speak at a camp one weekend, and when he got there he was greeted with some unexpected hospitality, Gus. He opened the car door, his family gets out, here comes Gus. They go over to the cabin and open the door and Gus runs in to make sure everything is in order first. And then having seen that, he just takes a plops down, takes a seat on the front porch and watches as they bring all their luggage in and settle. When the family finally gets ready to go down to dinner at the dining hall, they open the door and Gus comes trampling over them. No manners. Just runs right over him to lead him down to the dining hall. He leads him across the road down the hill. And as they're coming down the hill, they see Steve, the camp director. Steve looks up. He says, oh, I see you've met Gus. The Gus was an adolescent Canadian goose. Steve had found two abandoned eggs and decided to incubate them. And now birds, birds basically associate whatever life form is there, taking care of them when they hatch, as what they are. That's who takes care of me. That's what I am. Gus didn't have the fogiest idea he was a bird. He thought he was a human. The next day, my friends walking across camp. It's a middle school camp, so he sees these middle school boys running across the field chasing Gus. Wings waving frantically, trying to achieve maximum goose running velocity across the field as these boys are bearing down on him. And eventually, in the midst of honking and flailing and craziness, they corral him hysterical laughter ensues. And after a little while, the boys go away and leave Gus sitting there miserable, defeated and embarrassed. Which leads to my friend saying to Steve, why didn't he just fly away? And he was surprised to be informed that Gus didn't fly. What do you mean? Is he hurt? Did he have his wings clipped? No, he doesn't fly. He doesn't know that he can. Now, Steve loved Gus. And he didn't want him to settle for a life of mediocrity, of accepting his plight. And so, one of the breaks, he goes down by the lake. And as Gus would often do, he came running up under Steve's feet. Steve reaches down, gently picks him up. And then quickly, in one motion, moves out on the end of the dock and chunks him as high as he can open the air. And Steve, Gus flails out and comes careening down and splashes in the water like a lame duck, speaking of which I got too excited. So, he comes splashing down in the water. Gus is clearly disgusted with the situation. Obviously, he doesn't like water very much. And he paddles back over to the shore. And as he's shaking the water off, Steve comes over, grabs him again. Now, this time, Gus is a lot less polite. They're snapping, there's kicking, and he runs out and throws him up in the air again. This time, Gus manages a spiral, spreads his wings and splashes down the crash lands in the lake again. And the process continues on about the fifth try. Gus finally turns, gets his wings out and glides about 15 to 20 yards before he crashes lands in the lake. And so, ended his flying lesson for the day. Next afternoon, my friend said, he's sitting on the front porch of his cabin. He sees the boys making their daily chase of Gus. And he's using his usual techniques for avoiding them. But God didn't make geese to sprint. So, at the last moment is they're bearing down on him in desperation. Gus finally flaps his wings to fly. And he takes off and glides over the lake and crashes in again. His first solo flight. So, let me ask you, do you know there's got to be something more? Are you busy just running as fast as your feet can carry you, hoping to dodge the difficulties? Do you get so angry at this madman who just keeps picking you up and chunking you up in the air and letting you slam down into the lake? Or do you know that you were meant to fly? Your feet were never designed to carry the weight of your existence. It's not about how hard you can run. It's not about how much you can accomplish. You were designed to float on something else. Do you see that? Spread your wings. How are we going to do that? Secondly, Elisha burns his yoke when God calls. You understand what he's doing here? He's burning the implements necessary to do his old job. It's like he's burning the bridge behind him so he can't go back. I will never return that way. I can't ever do that again. I'm done with that. God lays a call on his life and he reacts with the revolution. Now, let me clarify a little bit. You need to understand that because there's this little episode with him asking to go kiss his parents goodbye. And those of you who know your scripture well, it's vaguely what's not vaguely. It's very strongly similar to what Jesus says at the end of Luke 9. When a man comes and asks Jesus, yeah, I'll follow you, but can I go kiss my mom and dad goodbye first? Can I say goodbye to them? Jesus says no one who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. Now, that sounds exactly like what Elisha is doing. How do we know it's different because of the burning of the yoke? See, that man was just using it as a stalling technique, but Elisha isn't postponing his obedience. He's beginning it. And you can see it in his enthusiasm. You understand what he does? He comes back and slaughters his oxen and cooks it over the yoke. He cooks two cows and throws a feast for everybody around him. Now, in the ancient world, they didn't have roast beef very often. A feast of this size was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. He's celebrating. He's excited about what's happening here. We'd understand that. He's self-propelled. Let's take a minute and think about that because sometimes we talk about gifts, and I would much rather put it in this category. Think about being self-propelled. If it's not so much about a score that you get on an assessment test, as much as taking a test like that helps you see things that you were blind to, things that you already did naturally. That you were good at something. You didn't even realize you were good at because it came so naturally to you. You do this gift that God's given you. You don't even see it. Some of you may be thinking, wait a minute, Russ, are you saying Elisha already was being a prophet before he got called? No, not necessarily. But Elisha is not the only one who's being called in this passage. Did you catch that? There are two other people being called. Now Elisha has a unique call in history. He's a special figure, but he's not the only one. Two other guys are called. Elisha is called out of this context, but they're called to stay where they are. And that's the truth for most of us. When Paul goes to the Corinthians and he preaches to them and then he leaves, they get so excited about Jesus in the gospel and what's going on? That these young believers begin to quit their jobs. They're so excited about what Jesus has done and him coming back. That they quit their jobs and leave their old life. And Paul writes them and says, no, stay where you are. And first Corinthians 7 and 17, he says, this is my rule in all the churches that you do what you were doing before. You stay there. Christ isn't necessarily calling you out of that. He's just changing why you ever did what you did in the first place. See when God calls somebody, frequently it's not to do something utterly different. It's to change how and why you do what you did in the first place. Let me give you a couple of examples from Scripture. If you look back, it first Kings 18, a passage we skipped over is about a figure named Obadiah. Obadiah worked in the palace for the evil king Ahab and Jezebel. They're going around killing the prophets of Yahweh and Obadiah is a believer. Now he could take a stand and quit his job and maybe get killed along with them or he could just leave and stop doing what he's doing. But he decides to stay and be faithful. And as a result, he starts hiding these prophets. He hides over a hundred of them in a cave and he's feeding them with food and water from the palace of the very people who are trying to kill them. And if they caught him doing that, they would kill him. It's like the original Schindler's list. Here's Obadiah risking his life to stay where he is and do what God's called him to do. Now let me be clear, I'm not giving you a license to lie to your employer unless your employer is threatening to kill your pastor, in which case let's talk. Now what we're saying is Obadiah recognized that he could be faithful right where he was and be a servant of God with his gifts that he stayed put and God used him right there. Let me give you another example though. In Luke 7 we're told that a sinful woman comes to Jesus and breaks open her perfumed jar and anoints him with it. Now what's happening there? Luke makes no small implication that this woman is a prostitute and think about what it means for her to break open that perfumed jar. In those days you didn't have deodorant so Obadiah was a significant issue. She needed that perfume in order to do her job. So she is coming insane no more. She's burning the bridge, I will never go back to this. That perfumes worth a year's wages. It's not just that it costs a lot. It's that she can't go back once she does that. See that's what Alisha is doing. Now in her case she's repenting of sin associated with her job unlike Alisha. But maybe for some of you when Christ calls and you see that sin is required to do your job, you may be called out of that job. It may be that you have to leave it in order to be a faithful Christian. See this is complex. I don't want to oversimplify it. There's two levels of calling going on. We are called to be gods. We are his which means we stop and say not mine but yours. And then we're called to action but there are different kinds of actions among a different people in the body of Christ. Some people will stay, some people will go which means some of you will be called the China. Some of you may be called to stand in a pulpit one day. But in all likelihood most of you will be called to be Christians right where you are. And it's not so much about you doing something completely new. It's about why you did what you did in the first place. For you to burn your yolk is to recognize I've been using these things to prove I'm worth something. I've been using my job, what I do, how I care about my family, the fact that I go to church to prove that I am worth something and it's killing me. Listen, when I got installed in Chattanooga, one of my friends came and he preached that sermon and he said, Russ, your temptation is going to be to live off your talents. And if you do, it will kill you, it will kill your family, it will kill your ministry. Because you can't bear the weight of your existence. You were not meant to run along and carry that weight. You were meant to float on what the cross has accomplished for you. See, the whole point of this is it's not about our activity, it's about gods. We aren't proving our worth to get God to love us because God loves us. Now we do what we do. It changes why we do anything in the first place. But once you get that, I mean, once you get this implication, it means that when you leave the sanctuary today, what I'm telling you is that Andrew Pat and I aren't any better than you. We don't have a special call. But we have the same basic calling that everybody in this room has to be Jesus, to be Jesus people, to surrender to him, to do what he calls us to do, not because we earn it, but because we're his because he bought us, to go where he calls us to go, to give what he calls us to give, to be whoever he wants us to be. And that basically means that you've got to be his and front of your co-workers and front of your neighbors and front of your own family. And you are going to fail at that. You are going to fail at that. And it's not about how well you do it, it's about what happens when you fail. It will make you shrink. And what do you point at then? Because thirdly, when God calls us, it shrinks our self-importance. Let me draw this out for you. Because you'd think with this huge celebration that Elijah throws, he recognizes he's got a special call from God. He's a special person. Look at how great he is. But instead, what is it that he's called to do? He has this huge dramatic celebration. He throws a feast and he becomes, did you see the last word in our passage? He becomes Elijah's attendant, his servant, his butler, his gofer. You think I'm stretching it? Well, if you look over in Second Kings 3, after Elijah has been called up to the Lord, there's this episode where three kings are sitting around lamenting the fact that they don't have a prophet anymore like Elijah. They wish they had a real big time player like that they could consult. And one of them says, well, you know, we do have that Elisha guy. Didn't he use to, you know what he says about him? How he describes him? Didn't he use to pour water on the hands of Elijah? He's a hand washer. That's what he does. He washes Elijah's hands. That's what he's known as. That's his reputation. Imagine how proud his parents are. Other parents are coming there saying, my son's now captain of the guard. My son has finally made it to be priest in the temple in Jerusalem. Hey, she fought. What's your boy doing now? Oh, yeah, he's the fetching carry guy. I forgot about that. He washes Elijah's hands. Right? He's his butler. What a waste of potential. Didn't he used to run your farm? And see, it's not just that Elijah does it for a little while. Through other biblical passages, we find out he did this for 18 years. 18 years. If you read the Bible much, you'll pick up. These Bible characters are not easy to live with. He's with Elijah for 18 years. Imagine that. Hey, Elijah. Draw my bath. Hey, Elijah. Put on a pot of coffee. Hey, Elijah, don't get my laundry done. You think after 18 years that he'd be like, I am sick of hearing, hey, Elijah. Get rid of this guy. But that's not what he says. In second Kings 2, when God takes Elijah up, he doesn't say, good riddance. Glad that guy's gone. Finally, I'm going to get what's mine. He says, my father, my father. He didn't want him to go. He didn't want to lose Elijah. Why in the world were the guy who used to be the boss? Now, I want to keep being a servant. What has he learned in his years of service that Tom Brady couldn't learn in his years of success? See, Elijah is picking up. The life is not so much about making yourself large. It's not about making something of yourself. It's about becoming small. It's about smallness. Let me unpack this a little bit. On Friday evening, one of the only people that everybody would clearly say is head and shoulders in sports above Tom Brady died. John Wooden was 99 years old. He'd won 10 national titles at UCLA as a coach. And what I didn't know until this week, he was a three-time all-american and won the national title as a player at Purdue. But despite all that success, everybody who knew him knew that he lived for something much larger than that. See, he walked away from the game in 1975, having won 10 out of the last 12 national titles. You think late on his deathbed, he thought, man, I could have stayed there a while longer. I could have won a few more national titles. Let me tell you why I know different than that. See, 1985, his wife died 10 years after he quit the game. She died from cancer, and after that, every month on the 21st, the day she died, he would write a love letter to her. And the morning of his last day, Friday morning, you know what he asked? He said, I want to shave. Why? Because I get to go see Nelly. And I want to be clean shave when I see her. He understood there are much larger things at play here. But don't just take my word for it. Listen to what he wrote earlier in his life. I've always tried to make it clear that basketball is not the ultimate. And let me just pause right there, because everybody and their brother on ESPN right now is saying, this guy is the gold standard. He is the greatest coach that ever lived. Do you hear that? Basketball is not the ultimate. It's of small importance to the total life we live. There's only one kind of life that truly wins. And that is one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. See, John Wooden knew that no amount of success, no amount of wins, could carry the weight of his existence. While everybody else was saying the measure of a man is how big you can become, how large your legacy is, how many accolades you can gather. And he knew he had encountered something that said, no, there's something much bigger out there. Life is about me being small, knowing that I'm really small, that the measure of a man is not how large we can become. It's about how small. See, that's what Alisha has realized. He doesn't know everything that we know yet. But he's encountered God's love, and he doesn't get it, but he knows the economy of God is this. Instead of trying to make myself large, I feel my purpose in being made small. Now, let me be clear, I'm not telling you, instead of really having large efforts to make yourself large, you should now have large efforts to make yourself small. No, that's still about you and your efforts. That's not the revolution. To burn your yoke means to realize it's not about what I do. Alisha was realizing, I'm being woven into God's story. Little as I am, I'm being drawn into something much bigger than me because of what God is doing, because of God's actions. My smallness is made huge because of how he's using me. See, how else would Alisha have joy as he washed Alisha's clothes, as he washed Alisha's hands, as he washed Alisha's feet? He didn't know it yet, but there would be another greater Alisha, who would give up ultimate riches, ultimate security, ultimate status. To take on poverty, suffering, and smallness. That Jesus would come, and he would take my nasty cloak of all the things that I've tried to do, and he put it on his back, and he would give me his beautiful clothes. That he would die in my place to give me his life, so that his scripture says, taking the very nature of a servant. He would make himself nothing, why, so that a nothing like me could be made something. Did you hear that? That's what our souls are crying out for. That the only eye in the universe would look and say, you are something, not because of what you've got to do in front of you, but because of what I've done for you, you were mine. Because of what the new Alisha did. It would make John the Baptist look at Jesus and say, now catch that, that's the New Testament Elijah looking at the New Testament Alisha and saying, I must become less. He must become more. There it is brothers and sisters, shrink. That is your calling, to shrink, to be smaller. So that when people look at you, they'll say, there is no way in the world that somebody that tiny belongs that high in the air. You didn't get here by yourself, and you can say that is correct. I have a God who died to bring me up from the grave and hurls me up in the air, and no amount of my own running can sustain this. It is time for me to spread my wings on what he has done. Fly, Gus. It's what you were meant to do. Fly.
Lord God, I have no doubt that in this room right now, there are people like me who are clinging to their ego, who are clinging to what they might accomplish who are clinging to their best efforts. Lord, we run so hard from thing to thing to thing, and we get so mad when you pick us up and chunk us up in the air. Those who you are, Lord, show us what we are meant for, that we understand how you express your love. But for people in this room who have said the right words, but who are still running so hard to prove something to themselves, to somebody else, for people with overinflated egos like Russ high tower, that you would gently but firmly pierce it, let the air outboard, let us shrink, that we could see the hugeness of who you are and how you love us. The faith, Presbyterian church would shrink so that nobody in this town would talk about what a great church it is, but they would talk about what a great God to change overinflated people like that into tiny little servants. Lord, throw us up out of this sanctuary and let us fly through this town. People would know we couldn't do that on our own, but our joy is to wash feet like you washed ours. Thank you that you died to give us life, Lord. Draw us to you and your name we pray. Amen.