1 Kings 18:20-39
When You Really Need God to Show Up
Today’s story might be called, “The Great Show-down at Mount Carmel.” It is an ultimate, winner-takes-all kind of challenge, Yahweh God vs. Baal. Which one is real? Which one will come through for his people? But why all the fuss?
Let me give you a little historical background. Civil war has split the kingdom of Israel in two. The northern kingdom has suffered a series of corrupt kings, the latest of whom is King Ahab. His father signed a deal with the King of Phoenicia, and sealed it by having Ahab marry the King’s daughter Jezebel. Boy, that was a mistake! Jezebel was an ardent worshiper of Baal, the Canaanite god of rain, lightning, and thunder. So Elijah, the great prophet of God, prophesied a period of drought, striking this false god right in his specialty area. There has been no rain for some time. Ahab allowed his wife, Jezebel to persecute and kill many of Yahweh’s prophets. Hundreds are now hiding in caves in fear of their lives. So God guides Elijah to a showdown with King Ahab and his 450 prophets of Baal.
Today’s passage begins with Elijah challenging the people in verse 21 to choose a side, to take a stand. It’s not that they’re against God, but they’re not really sold out to God either. They’re just drifting along. And Elijah says, “How long will you waver between two opinions?” The literal translation means to “limp along between two twigs” or “two forks.” Yogi Berra once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Elijah says, “Just choose a side, folks! Quit straddling the fence!” It reminds me of when Jesus says to the church in Laodicea, “I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were one or the other. So because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth!” (Revelation 3:15-16). God doesn’t like us to be lukewarm in our walk with him. He wants all of us!
So Elijah proposes a clinical trial. (I’m doing a bit of research at the VA now, so I’m going to dazzle you with my research-ese.) Elijah proposes a clinical trial with a standardized test protocol for each side. Both Yahweh and Baal are supposed to be able to control thunder, lightning, and storms. So Elijah says, “Why don’t we do a little experiment and see which one comes through first?” Each side will choose a bull for sacrifice and lay it on an altar. The first God to burn up the sacrifice wins!
Graciously, Elijah allows the prophets of Baal to go first. They lay their animal on the altar and begin to pray. From morning until noon they cry out to Baal to come through, but they hear nothing. Verse 26 records, “There was no response; no one answered.”
So the false prophets get louder and wilder. They begin to dance and stomp and shout. Elijah gets a little snarky with them: “Hey, maybe you should shout louder. Maybe your god fell asleep!” So they do. They get louder. They scream, they dance, they even cut themselves, trying to get Baal’s attention for three more hours. But still no answer. Verse 29 records the result: “There was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.” It is a trinity of silence.
Another great prophet, Jeremiah, once wrote about idols (in Jeremiah 10:5) - “Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.”
Now I’m guessing you don’t have a statue of Baal in your living room. Neither do I. But certainly we have other idols. An idol is anything that substitutes for God, anything we worship ahead of God, anything that gets first place in our life. It could be our status in the eyes of others. It could be our pride in never being wrong. It could be the clothes we wear or the food we eat or the car we drive or the TV we watch or the rank we retired with. If it comes before God, it has become a false god, an idol, and it will not satisfy, it will not fulfill.
God knows this. This is why our God is a jealous God. He’s not jealous because he has some kind of God-sized ego. No, he is jealous because he alone can fulfill the deepest needs of our life, because he alone can give us God-sized love and a God-sized purpose. The first of the ten commandments reads,
“I am the LORD your God ... “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:2-5a).
God wants all of us, not just part of us, and he allows no substitutes. Elijah says, “It’s time to get off the fence. Choose a side. Choose a God!” Are you ready to choose God, to put him first in everything, to put him top rung on the ladder of your life priorities? That’s what he wants.
But the other thing I want us to catch today is how dependent Elijah is for God to come through. Elijah calls for silence from the crowd and invites people to gather in closer. He then uses 12 stones for a visual illustration. It’s a reminder of when the 12 tribes crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land (Joshua 4). Joshua instructed the people then to make a pile of 12 stones to mark the event for future generations. God uses Elijah’s object lesson to remind the people, “I am your God. I always have been, and I still am.”
Elijah prepares his sacrifice and then does a strange thing: he messes with the standardized protocol. He tips the scales to his opponents. He drenches his entire sacrifice with water, so much water that it even fills the troughs around the altar. And remember, this is during a major drought, so not only is Elijah making it more difficult for God, he is testing the faith of the people. Then Elijah begins to pray.
Can you imagine standing up to an evil king and 450 of his false prophets? Can you imagine putting God to the test by not only requesting fire from heaven but first soaking the sacrifice with water? What guts! What audacity! What faith!
Really, Elijah senses that his country needed a royal wake-up call. He has a weak king and an evil queen, and his fellow countrymen are vacillating between God and Baal. All the prophets of the one true God are either in hiding in a cave somewhere or long dead. Elijah alone is willing to take a stand. It’s a dark time. Elijah is counting on God to come through.
Have you ever been counting on God to come through? I believe some of you have, as you have watched your loved one take the great pilgrimage from this life to the next. That must be one of the greatest trials this life has to offer. Yet, truth be told, most of us Americans go along in life fairly self-reliant most of the time, very rarely sensing the need for God to come through for us. Sure we have challenges, but we trust in pills for the aches and pains; we trust in doctors; we trust in hospitals; we trust in therapists; we trust in our pension. And sometimes we pray, but how often is the prayer just an afterthought? And we wonder why our faith is mediocre. Sometimes we are just limping along with the rest of the world, lukewarm in our response to God.
God wants all of us. When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, he responded without hesitation, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). There is no halfway response here. God wants our total devotion.
In Elijah’s great showdown, God responds immediately. Lightning strikes the altar and completely consumes the sacrifice, even the water in the troughs around it. The people fall on their faces and repent, turning back to the one true God. “Yahweh, he is God; Yahweh, he is God.” And God brings refreshing, life-giving rain again, all through Elijah’s faith.
You may not have witnessed a lightning strike from your prayers, but if you think back, most of us have those experiences where we know God is real. We know God answered our prayer. We know God was there.
One of the times I think of recently is with my Veteran I told you about on Easter. Fred trusted his life to Jesus in our Bible study group. And I see evidence of the Holy Spirit working on him all the time. This week he shared how his old nature would snap at people and get so angry if they let him down, particularly VA workers. He would blow up at them. And yet, something in his spirit now is telling him this is wrong. So he finds himself in a battle between his old self and his new self. I showed him in scripture where the Apostle Paul talks about that, how we all face it. And I encouraged him to keep trusting the Holy Spirit as he shows Fred a new way to react to disappointment and letdown.
I see God at work in Fred. It is awe-inspiring when we see God at work. We need to hang onto those moments during times of drought, when God seems silent. God loves us. God knows every need of our hearts. God wants us to love him and to freely choose him, to say, “Yahweh, he is God; Yahweh, he is God.” Let us pray:
Elijah prayed, “Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” God, answer us. Show us that you are God. We don’t want to put you to the test in an arrogant sort of way. Just remind us of the many evidences you give us that you are at work all around us. And help us to choose you, to choose life over death, as Moses put it, to choose not to be lukewarm anymore in our response to you, but to choose you fully, as we watch what you want to do in and through our lives, in Jesus’ name, amen.
