Hostage Crisis
Sermon
Joy Songs, Trumpet Blasts, And Hallelujah Shouts
Sermons In The African-American Preaching Tradition
Sweat swarmed and beaded the palms of his hands as his heart thumped and pulse escalated. Bulging eyes blinked rapidly as his face twitched. His brown, swollen hands rumbled nervously through the inside pocket of his urine-stained tweed overcoat. "I got to find a match," he said to himself. "I got to find a match." Again he jerked through every pocket of his pants, jacket, and shirt. Still no match.
Wildly flailing his arms more frantically now, he began overturning chairs and tables in the room. Yellow eyes widened in disbelief as he hunched his back Neanderthal-like in search of that fire; that flame to heat the cooker that would launch his mind, body, and soul beyond the confines of reality. "I got to find a match," he whispered, half screaming. "If I don't find that match, I'm gonna kill somebody!"
Finally, the match. Now the pipe and that little white ball of crack. Now he would take leave of his five senses. Now he would take refuge in that white ghost; the white witch that promised to be the answer to his deepest yearnings. Now he would do the solemn death dance and prepare himself to go as high and as far as the junk would take him.
The hostage crisis is not where terrorists, brandishing semi-automatic weapons, heap scorn and scourge upon the innocent by taking them captive. The hostage crisis is not where planes are skyjacked and trains derailed by perpetrators of the sabotage, making prisoners of the undeserving. It is not a crisis of oil, guns, bread or butter. It is not the public theater of disgrace, shame, and humiliation brought about by political insurrectionists and dissidents desiring to vault center stage to air their grievances. No, the hostage crisis I'm referring to today is none of these things.
The hostage crisis today is where the people of God are taken prisoner by evil and spiritual decadence, where souls have sold out to Satan; where the spiritually anointed are held captive by their own vices, devices, and perverse longings. It is a crisis of flesh and blood, of fear and trembling; a failure of nerve; where the things of God that are good are warring to prevent the things that are of Satan from taking over their minds and souls. The hostage crisis we face today is far greater than any political act of terrorism, for it is a crisis which compromises the will and plan of God for our lives. It is crisis which alienates, degrades, and destroys well-meaning, good-intentioned people.
Everywhere we look we see evidence of this crisis. People punished and persecuted for doing the right thing, for exemplifying all that is good and right and just. The crisis is one where good is held hostage to evil; where the innocent suffer at the hands of the deceitful and diabolical; where people desiring to live forthright and upstanding lives are made prisoners of fear, uncertainty, and loss of hope and faith in the power of God to transcend and deliver them. This is a crisis of great magnitude, for Satan is at war to make hostages of the people of God; to bind them so they can't do the Lord's work; to intimidate, discourage, alienate, and obliterate God's plan for the redemption of God's people.
We don't have to look to headlines to see a hostage crisis. We see it every day where people are given life sentences in four-by-four cells of shame, fear, self-hatred, and self-destruction, so that their lives are lived within the solitary confines of despair and grief. The hostage crisis is everywhere. In our homes, in the church, on our jobs, in the schools, in the hallowed halls of government. Wherever the people of God are not free to live wholesome, productive, and spirit-filled lives for fear of repression and repercussion is a hostage crisis. The weapons used to destroy and intimidate are not AK-47's, but weapons designed to dash the spirit and defuse the joy for Christ of the people of God.
Three basic things lead to hostage situations in the people of God. First is loss of faith in God's ability to deliver. Second is fear of reprisals and repercussion for doing the things of God, and third is outright ignorance to the best laid plans of God for us.
We see in our scripture lesson today a classic case of spiritual hostage taking. Elijah, called by God, is put on the run by Jezebel and Ahab. After challenging the prophets of Baal and destroying them, Jezebel issues a death threat which sends Elijah fleeing for his life. Before, when of God, he was a spiritually free man. We see him standing boldly on Mount Carmel denouncing the gods of Baal and their pagan blood rites. He is the man of the hour, claiming his mountain as a fortress for the God of Israel.
He is undaunted, undashed, and undenuded. He stands strongly as a man of God, confident in God's power to save, redeem, and deliver. But after destroying the prophets of Baal, we find in 1 Kings 19:2 and 3:
So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them." Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.
At first he was a spiritually free man, but now he was a hostage of fear. Jezebel and Ahab put him on the run and the scriptures say that Elijah was so afraid, he hid out in a cave in fear for his life.
Before — a bastion of courage. Now — a hostage of fear. So scared was he that he wished he would die. Fear prompted him to thoughts of suicide. Confident he was one moment, suicidal he was the next.
See him now hiding out in a cave. What cowardice! One moment, standing on Mount Carmel having a mountaintop experience. The next moment he is hiding in a cave. From a mountain of courage to a cave of fear goes Elijah.
How often do we find ourselves as the people of God in similar situations? At times we are so armed with the confidence of God that no one and no thing can move us from our mountain. Then someone issues the threat and we're hostages hiding in fear. In the first instance we take no prisoners. In the next instant we are the prisoner. Fear becomes our jailer and the fugitive way is our life sentence. Elijah ran. How often do we run? Hostages running from the truth. Hostages running in fear. Hostages running to be running, not knowing where we're running to and who we're running from.
The great writer Richard Wright in his celebrated classic Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas who runs from the law because he accidentally kills the daughter of his employer. Bigger is a hostage of fear, escaping the haunting truth of a past crime. But in a larger sense, Bigger is running from a central truth of his existence. He is a prisoner of self-doubt all along. He never comes to realize his potential and worth as a person because of the fear instilled within him at birth. He may have articulated the fear in those immortal words of Shakespeare's Hamlet, "To be or not to be. That is the question...." Or who can forget Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, who kills the old pawnbroker and thus too becomes a hostage of his own sin, as he constantly wars with his own flesh and spirit? Dostoyevsky's masterpiece is a commentary on the spiritual struggles of humankind, the war of the spiritual and material; man's longing to transcend the hostage situations which bind and seduce him and forever take his sanity, well-being and peace. His imprisonment stems from not doing the right thing, knowing all along it is the thing to do.
Elijah is hostage to fear. It is a fear induced by a crisis in faith. Somewhere between Mount Carmel and Mount Horeb, between Mount Horeb and the cave, he lost confidence in God. Before he was strong, and now he is weak.
Whatever holds us hostage, we can trace its origins to a crisis in confidence, where we no longer hold fast to our faith in God's ability to redeem and deliver. Every spiritual crisis culminating in our spiritual incarceration is due to lack of belief in God. It is only by retrieving our faith and trust that we are able to bust out of our spiritual jail cells and knock down the walls which close us in.
All along the way God is giving Elijah encouragement to rebuild his confidence. God gives him cakes of bread to feed his hunger and jars of water to quench his thirst. Even as a hostage, God provides Elijah with the necessities to survive and break free.
Isn't that just like God? Whenever we need God most, God is there to loosen the chains, setting us spiritually free. God can make you free again, only you must trust in God's Word and heed God's voice as God calls unto you.
Elijah is a hostage to fear, but God all along is giving him the keys to get out of jail. Elijah's fear is because he has lost faith.
Second, Elijah is held hostage by ignorance. After being placed on the run and hiding out, he discovers that God had provided seven thousand reserves in Israel whose knees have not bowed to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him. Elijah was ignorant of this fact, but had he kept his faith and confidence in God, he would have known that God had a backup, some prayer warriors praying prayers of deliverance. Had he not allowed his ignorance to lock him up and throw away the key, he could have broken free immediately. Ignorance of how, when, and why God works can bind like no terrorist ever can. If you're ignorant of the Word, ignorant of God's will, ignorant of how God's Holy Spirit works, you're nothing but a potential hostage for Satan and his legions.
Elijah's fear led to ignorance and ignorance led to his further spiritual incarceration and disintegration. But God's got an answer for Elijah.
God says to him in verses 9-11: "And the Word of the Lord came to him. Elijah, what are you doing here? Go stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord because the Lord is about to pass by."
His ignorance of the Word coupled with his own crisis of faith had made him a hostage of fear and ignorance. Now that the Word had come to him he was back on his way to spiritual freedom, no longer held hostage.
So he went and stood on the mountain. God made him do the very thing which is symbolic of spiritual freedom, standing on the mountain, trusting in the Lord, being guided by God's Spirit and delivered through God's Word. So Elijah stands there, a free man once again, because the Word of God has come to give confidence; to unbind the fear and loose the ignorance that had held him hostage.
He's a free man now. Why free? Because he was open to God's word of deliverance and obediently responded to God's commands. You still a hostage? Read the word of God. You still a prisoner? Heed God's holy Word! You still shut up, bound up and tied up? Put your hand in his hand and trust in God to deliver you.
Before, he was hostage to fear and ignorance because of a crisis of faith, now he was free again because the Word of God came to him and he obediently responded to God's word.
Why is the hostage crisis still going on? Because we've had a crisis of faith, because fear and ignorance have taken us over. The Word is a liberating word. Had Elijah kept it in the hollow of his heart, Ahab and Jezebel couldn't have put him on the run. Had he known the prayer warriors were praying and the saints of God were staying on his side, he could have stayed on that mountain and put the king and queen on the run by the wrath of God. If he could stand up to the prophets of Baal, why not Ahab and Jezebel?
Like Elijah, God can set you free! God set Jacob free. No longer a prisoner on the run. God set him free by God's Spirit. God set the Hebrews free from Egyptian bondage. God set Daniel free through the power of God's Spirit. Daniel was a prisoner of Babylon but was more free because he kept his faith and trust in the God of his fathers and mothers. God set Paul free on the Damascus Road. God set Jesus free to be the embodiment of the Word.
God can set you free by receiving God's Word through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Jesus says in Luke 4:18: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for those who are bound up and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
The junkie with the cooker at this sermon's opening is now a free man because he turned away from his sinful addiction and allowed the word of God to come into his life. And he discovered that the prayer saints never stopped praying. If Christ can free him from crack; if God freed Elijah from fear of Jezebel's traps, freed Jesus from the bonds of Satan's wraps, God can free you and me from the chains of hopelessness and despair. If you're gonna be a prisoner, be a prisoner for Christ. If you're gonna be a slave, be a slave for Christ. If you're gonna be a terrorist, be a terrorist for Christ, but don't be held hostage out of fear and ignorance of the power of the Lord!
Break free from the chains of fear and annihilation! Break free from the chains of ignorance and despair! Break free from the four walls of addiction and self-destruction! Break free from those things which hold you hostage and prevent you from being all God wants you to be!
Break free from those solitary confinements, those mini-imprisonments which dash your desire to live freely and wholly in Christ!!
Wildly flailing his arms more frantically now, he began overturning chairs and tables in the room. Yellow eyes widened in disbelief as he hunched his back Neanderthal-like in search of that fire; that flame to heat the cooker that would launch his mind, body, and soul beyond the confines of reality. "I got to find a match," he whispered, half screaming. "If I don't find that match, I'm gonna kill somebody!"
Finally, the match. Now the pipe and that little white ball of crack. Now he would take leave of his five senses. Now he would take refuge in that white ghost; the white witch that promised to be the answer to his deepest yearnings. Now he would do the solemn death dance and prepare himself to go as high and as far as the junk would take him.
The hostage crisis is not where terrorists, brandishing semi-automatic weapons, heap scorn and scourge upon the innocent by taking them captive. The hostage crisis is not where planes are skyjacked and trains derailed by perpetrators of the sabotage, making prisoners of the undeserving. It is not a crisis of oil, guns, bread or butter. It is not the public theater of disgrace, shame, and humiliation brought about by political insurrectionists and dissidents desiring to vault center stage to air their grievances. No, the hostage crisis I'm referring to today is none of these things.
The hostage crisis today is where the people of God are taken prisoner by evil and spiritual decadence, where souls have sold out to Satan; where the spiritually anointed are held captive by their own vices, devices, and perverse longings. It is a crisis of flesh and blood, of fear and trembling; a failure of nerve; where the things of God that are good are warring to prevent the things that are of Satan from taking over their minds and souls. The hostage crisis we face today is far greater than any political act of terrorism, for it is a crisis which compromises the will and plan of God for our lives. It is crisis which alienates, degrades, and destroys well-meaning, good-intentioned people.
Everywhere we look we see evidence of this crisis. People punished and persecuted for doing the right thing, for exemplifying all that is good and right and just. The crisis is one where good is held hostage to evil; where the innocent suffer at the hands of the deceitful and diabolical; where people desiring to live forthright and upstanding lives are made prisoners of fear, uncertainty, and loss of hope and faith in the power of God to transcend and deliver them. This is a crisis of great magnitude, for Satan is at war to make hostages of the people of God; to bind them so they can't do the Lord's work; to intimidate, discourage, alienate, and obliterate God's plan for the redemption of God's people.
We don't have to look to headlines to see a hostage crisis. We see it every day where people are given life sentences in four-by-four cells of shame, fear, self-hatred, and self-destruction, so that their lives are lived within the solitary confines of despair and grief. The hostage crisis is everywhere. In our homes, in the church, on our jobs, in the schools, in the hallowed halls of government. Wherever the people of God are not free to live wholesome, productive, and spirit-filled lives for fear of repression and repercussion is a hostage crisis. The weapons used to destroy and intimidate are not AK-47's, but weapons designed to dash the spirit and defuse the joy for Christ of the people of God.
Three basic things lead to hostage situations in the people of God. First is loss of faith in God's ability to deliver. Second is fear of reprisals and repercussion for doing the things of God, and third is outright ignorance to the best laid plans of God for us.
We see in our scripture lesson today a classic case of spiritual hostage taking. Elijah, called by God, is put on the run by Jezebel and Ahab. After challenging the prophets of Baal and destroying them, Jezebel issues a death threat which sends Elijah fleeing for his life. Before, when of God, he was a spiritually free man. We see him standing boldly on Mount Carmel denouncing the gods of Baal and their pagan blood rites. He is the man of the hour, claiming his mountain as a fortress for the God of Israel.
He is undaunted, undashed, and undenuded. He stands strongly as a man of God, confident in God's power to save, redeem, and deliver. But after destroying the prophets of Baal, we find in 1 Kings 19:2 and 3:
So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them." Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.
At first he was a spiritually free man, but now he was a hostage of fear. Jezebel and Ahab put him on the run and the scriptures say that Elijah was so afraid, he hid out in a cave in fear for his life.
Before — a bastion of courage. Now — a hostage of fear. So scared was he that he wished he would die. Fear prompted him to thoughts of suicide. Confident he was one moment, suicidal he was the next.
See him now hiding out in a cave. What cowardice! One moment, standing on Mount Carmel having a mountaintop experience. The next moment he is hiding in a cave. From a mountain of courage to a cave of fear goes Elijah.
How often do we find ourselves as the people of God in similar situations? At times we are so armed with the confidence of God that no one and no thing can move us from our mountain. Then someone issues the threat and we're hostages hiding in fear. In the first instance we take no prisoners. In the next instant we are the prisoner. Fear becomes our jailer and the fugitive way is our life sentence. Elijah ran. How often do we run? Hostages running from the truth. Hostages running in fear. Hostages running to be running, not knowing where we're running to and who we're running from.
The great writer Richard Wright in his celebrated classic Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas who runs from the law because he accidentally kills the daughter of his employer. Bigger is a hostage of fear, escaping the haunting truth of a past crime. But in a larger sense, Bigger is running from a central truth of his existence. He is a prisoner of self-doubt all along. He never comes to realize his potential and worth as a person because of the fear instilled within him at birth. He may have articulated the fear in those immortal words of Shakespeare's Hamlet, "To be or not to be. That is the question...." Or who can forget Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, who kills the old pawnbroker and thus too becomes a hostage of his own sin, as he constantly wars with his own flesh and spirit? Dostoyevsky's masterpiece is a commentary on the spiritual struggles of humankind, the war of the spiritual and material; man's longing to transcend the hostage situations which bind and seduce him and forever take his sanity, well-being and peace. His imprisonment stems from not doing the right thing, knowing all along it is the thing to do.
Elijah is hostage to fear. It is a fear induced by a crisis in faith. Somewhere between Mount Carmel and Mount Horeb, between Mount Horeb and the cave, he lost confidence in God. Before he was strong, and now he is weak.
Whatever holds us hostage, we can trace its origins to a crisis in confidence, where we no longer hold fast to our faith in God's ability to redeem and deliver. Every spiritual crisis culminating in our spiritual incarceration is due to lack of belief in God. It is only by retrieving our faith and trust that we are able to bust out of our spiritual jail cells and knock down the walls which close us in.
All along the way God is giving Elijah encouragement to rebuild his confidence. God gives him cakes of bread to feed his hunger and jars of water to quench his thirst. Even as a hostage, God provides Elijah with the necessities to survive and break free.
Isn't that just like God? Whenever we need God most, God is there to loosen the chains, setting us spiritually free. God can make you free again, only you must trust in God's Word and heed God's voice as God calls unto you.
Elijah is a hostage to fear, but God all along is giving him the keys to get out of jail. Elijah's fear is because he has lost faith.
Second, Elijah is held hostage by ignorance. After being placed on the run and hiding out, he discovers that God had provided seven thousand reserves in Israel whose knees have not bowed to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him. Elijah was ignorant of this fact, but had he kept his faith and confidence in God, he would have known that God had a backup, some prayer warriors praying prayers of deliverance. Had he not allowed his ignorance to lock him up and throw away the key, he could have broken free immediately. Ignorance of how, when, and why God works can bind like no terrorist ever can. If you're ignorant of the Word, ignorant of God's will, ignorant of how God's Holy Spirit works, you're nothing but a potential hostage for Satan and his legions.
Elijah's fear led to ignorance and ignorance led to his further spiritual incarceration and disintegration. But God's got an answer for Elijah.
God says to him in verses 9-11: "And the Word of the Lord came to him. Elijah, what are you doing here? Go stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord because the Lord is about to pass by."
His ignorance of the Word coupled with his own crisis of faith had made him a hostage of fear and ignorance. Now that the Word had come to him he was back on his way to spiritual freedom, no longer held hostage.
So he went and stood on the mountain. God made him do the very thing which is symbolic of spiritual freedom, standing on the mountain, trusting in the Lord, being guided by God's Spirit and delivered through God's Word. So Elijah stands there, a free man once again, because the Word of God has come to give confidence; to unbind the fear and loose the ignorance that had held him hostage.
He's a free man now. Why free? Because he was open to God's word of deliverance and obediently responded to God's commands. You still a hostage? Read the word of God. You still a prisoner? Heed God's holy Word! You still shut up, bound up and tied up? Put your hand in his hand and trust in God to deliver you.
Before, he was hostage to fear and ignorance because of a crisis of faith, now he was free again because the Word of God came to him and he obediently responded to God's word.
Why is the hostage crisis still going on? Because we've had a crisis of faith, because fear and ignorance have taken us over. The Word is a liberating word. Had Elijah kept it in the hollow of his heart, Ahab and Jezebel couldn't have put him on the run. Had he known the prayer warriors were praying and the saints of God were staying on his side, he could have stayed on that mountain and put the king and queen on the run by the wrath of God. If he could stand up to the prophets of Baal, why not Ahab and Jezebel?
Like Elijah, God can set you free! God set Jacob free. No longer a prisoner on the run. God set him free by God's Spirit. God set the Hebrews free from Egyptian bondage. God set Daniel free through the power of God's Spirit. Daniel was a prisoner of Babylon but was more free because he kept his faith and trust in the God of his fathers and mothers. God set Paul free on the Damascus Road. God set Jesus free to be the embodiment of the Word.
God can set you free by receiving God's Word through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Jesus says in Luke 4:18: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for those who are bound up and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
The junkie with the cooker at this sermon's opening is now a free man because he turned away from his sinful addiction and allowed the word of God to come into his life. And he discovered that the prayer saints never stopped praying. If Christ can free him from crack; if God freed Elijah from fear of Jezebel's traps, freed Jesus from the bonds of Satan's wraps, God can free you and me from the chains of hopelessness and despair. If you're gonna be a prisoner, be a prisoner for Christ. If you're gonna be a slave, be a slave for Christ. If you're gonna be a terrorist, be a terrorist for Christ, but don't be held hostage out of fear and ignorance of the power of the Lord!
Break free from the chains of fear and annihilation! Break free from the chains of ignorance and despair! Break free from the four walls of addiction and self-destruction! Break free from those things which hold you hostage and prevent you from being all God wants you to be!
Break free from those solitary confinements, those mini-imprisonments which dash your desire to live freely and wholly in Christ!!
