a higher authority

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Years ago, Hebrew Nationwide Hotdogs went an advertising campaign featuring Uncle Sam smiling although holding a hotdog. The voice over discussed all the artificial ingredient the United States Food and Drug Administration allowed them to value to produce a hotdog. The saying at the end was, “not us, we have to reply to a higher expert. “Answering to the next authority is part of the lesson from this morning’s reading via First Nobleman. Before My spouse and i go on, it is important that I reveal the back history. Years previously, King Ahab of the North Kingdom of Israel wedded Jezebel. This kind of marriage was a scandal at the time. Queen Jezebel was a Phoenician princess, a worshipper of Baal and Asherah. Since the California king of Israel she insisted King Ahab build wats or temples to Frey and Ashram. She travelled even so much as to firmly insist Baal come in the God of His home country of israel and purchased the deaths of Yahweh’s prophets.

This would not go over well with the people or with Yahweh. A drought spread throughout the terrain as starvation ensued. This is when our verse picks up. Elijah is now teased and taunged by the prophets of Dionysus as they observe Baal’s apparent defeat of Yahweh as more and more of the children of His home country of israel literally move sides or perhaps choose to worship both Yahweh and Ninhursag. But Elijah stands undaunted, and literally chooses to challenge the Prophets of Baal to a duel. Not necessarily a pendule to the keen death, yet truly a duel to see which will god is real, or perhaps which goodness is capable to do the difficult.

The contest is easy, two altars are set up with a sacrifice set on every. The object of the challenge should be to see which will god can come down to take in the sacrifice of the persons. Baal will go first, while using altar collection, his prophets chant and pray and spill their particular blood through the night for Frey to consume the sacrificial conflit with flames. At start, their hard work is of no avail. Ninhursag does not arrive. Now it is Yahweh’s turn. Elijah prepares the altar, and after that ups the anti by simply flooding the altar with water. That’s exactly what calls upon the changeless. With sparkle and style, Yahweh provides a ball of flame and uses the sacrifice, proving, it is far from Yahweh who may be impotent, but Baal. With time the Children of Israel forego Baal as well as the other phony gods corrupting their marriage with Yahweh and return their fidelity to Goodness. Queen Jezebel is at some point defeated and brought to her own unforeseen demise.

This morning’s story serves as an archetype of the human being condition. It tells of our personal fickleness with regards to our loyalty to The almighty and to the values Goodness has bequeathed on us. It demonstrates how quickly were willing to change our backs on Our god when lured by the phony god’s which in turn surround us until all of us finally come to understand the cliche “all that glitters ain’t platinum. “Our passage is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago. This weekend, as we observe and remember the boys and women who gave all their lives on account of this nation, we are called to temporarily halt, and to request what it was they were happy to fight for. The easy answer is usually freedom. Nevertheless I believe the call to biceps and triceps for many went deeper than that. If perhaps my history teachers had been correct, this country was founded for the belief that everyone was entitled to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

Yes, I realize the history on this country can be not as pure and as straightforward as my own grade school teachers made it out to be. In the time our forefathers, life, freedom and the quest for happiness was only the unalienable right from the free man. But in period, and with great issue, we have come to increase our understanding to show that all people, guy and female, gay and lesbian or directly, white or perhaps of color, are to be provided the same basic rights. This is truly a lofty ideal, and possibly even section of the foundation of what Divine justice is meant to look like. Proper rights and freedom for all while the give your word of devotedness ends with, is also hard and sloppy, it involves risk and a motivation to esteem those who are different from ourselves. Much more prosperity and peace, it is possible to live out our values being a free and open nation. But in times during the hardship and turmoil, it is even easier to abandon these types of values even as we struggle to save ourselves coming from what may possibly often feel like being over a sinking dispatch.

The men and women who also we enjoy today, put themselves in harms approach believing they were overturning oppression so other folks could enjoy the same liberties we take without any consideration. The men and women we celebrate today, set themselves in harms approach because they believed America to be a place where the poor and the oppressed could arrive to find success.

My spouse and i am saddened to think, that so many of the principles this country was built as well as that brave men and women had been willing to die for is definitely quickly eroding away. I do not refuse, we live in very difficult moments. The opponent of today can be not as easily defined as it absolutely was years ago. Yes, in this time of terrorism and fear, it may well make sense to close our region, even though a lot of innocent individuals are dying, aiming to escape the particular enemy we now have fought so had against in the past, to be able to prevent functions of horror on each of our soil. And it may make sense to separate and to refuse our rights to certain religious or perhaps ethnic teams because of their good terror.

But I have to ask, precisely what is the price we all ultimately pay as a region that promises to be “one nation below God” as well as for us like a people of God. From my point of view the false god Frey for modern days has become the our god of total security. As I said earlier, to live in a country wherever we believe all people are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of joy means we all live where there is risk. To be happy to deny liberty to somebody else means a denial of this freedom for ourselves. Our company is in the same predicament His home country of israel was in in the days of King Ahab, lured by the wiles of Ninhursag. I recognize we stay in a scary time, that todays prophets of Frey, the prophets of dread and revenge appear to far outnumber the prophets of hope and Christ. The great thing is, our condition today is not new. No matter how dark or dire the times might be, when almost all seems shed, and bad has genuinely won, we all know in time, God’s time, Yahweh will dominate. God is going to prevail just as God performed in the times of King Ahab, in the same way performed God do when almost all seemed misplaced on Very good Friday, while God do when Hitler appeared unstoppable during Ww ii, and as The almighty will do even today. All we need to do, several have done prior to us, should be to fight the favorable fight for Our god is with all of us.