Elijah And The Contest At Mt Carmel Series

Introduction: The story of Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal on the top of Mount Carmel is one of the most fascinating in the Bible! One lone prophet of the True God stood against 450 prophets of the idol-god Baal, with a group of Israelites gathered together to witness this event. The people who did choose to attend saw something that must have stayed with them forever!

Full disclosure: Sermon Central accepted and posted a message of mine based on this passage called “The Memorial That Disappeared” back in June 2021. This message is not just a copy and paste of that first message.

1 The words of Elijah to the people

Text: 1 Kings 18:20-25, KJV: 20 So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel. 21 And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. 22 Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the LORD; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men. 23 Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: 24 And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken. 25 And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.

The first several verses of 1 Kings 18 tell us that; first, the LORD has announced to Elijah that the days of drought are just about over and second, the LORD told Elijah to present himself to Ahab. My feeling is that Elijah was really happy about the drought (and, famine: verse 2) and not too excited about facing Ahab again.

It was during this time when Ahab sent Obadiah, a follower of the True God of Israel, to work looking for grass. To digress for a moment, how a God-follower like Obadiah was appointed to Ahab’s personal staff is something I’ve never understood but, praise the Lord, there are righteous men in high positions at many locations. Such was the case here. Still, Dr. Vance Havner and perhaps others observe that Obadiah should have been praying for the Lord to send rain instead of trying to find grass with Ahab (paraphrased from a book I read years ago).

Obadiah’s conversation with Elijah deserves a message of its own (brief, to be sure). The important thing is that Obadiah was afraid at first to report Elijah’s presence for fear Elijah would disappear. But when Elijah swore to Obadiah “I won’t leave”, then Obadiah met Ahab to inform him about Elijah.

The encounter between Elijah and Ahab was short and to the point. Ahab asked, incredibly, “Are YOU the one who’s troubling Israel?”, meaning, perhaps, “Did YOU cause all these problems?” Elijah’s reply was fearless. “No, you’re the one causing the problems” and listed why. Then Elijah issued a challenge: “Bring me all Israel, the 450 prophets of Baal, and the 400 prophets of the groves—those who eat at Jezebel’s table. Have them meet me at Mount Carmel!”

And Ahab, to his credit, did so. Clearly not all the people of Israel were there but we can reasonably project delegates, messengers, representatives, or similar. My own personal guess is that they sent some of the best and brightest—or, maybe, some of the most dedicated Baal worshipers to see and confirm just what was what.

Now that they’re all together, Elijah gave a very brief opening speech (and of course we don’t know how much more he did say, if anything).The first challenge or opening statement was a rebuke to the Israelites who seemed to be, according to some of the commentators, worshiping the True God of Israel but were also worshiping Baal “in addition to” or “making sure”. Right.

Then Elijah gave statement 2, a grounds or ground rules for the contest, Each group, Elijah on the one side, the prophets of Baal on the other; each was given a bullock (required for many of the Levitical sacrifices; see the first few chapters of Leviticus) and the instructions for how the sacrifice would be offered.

Elijah had spoken, and there were no more words to say to any of the people, whether Israelites or Baal’s prophets. Now was the time for action, and the prophets of Baal leaped (literally) into action as part of their rituals.