1 Kings 18:16-29,40 – Worshipping an Empty God
There is a story about the President of Labatt’s Brewery, who went over to the Vatican for a private audience with the Pope. The meeting went something like this:
“Holy Father, we are prepared to make a donation of $10 million to the church if you would simply replace ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ with ’Give us this day our daily beer.’”
“I’m afraid, that’s not possible, my son.”
“Could you do it for a bigger contribution, say $25 million dollars?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, my son.”
“Holy Father, here is my final offer. Change ‘bread’ to ‘beer’, and I will write you a cheque right now for $100 million dollars.”
The Pope picked up the phone and said, “Cardinal Mancini, how firm is our contract with Pillsbury?”
Ah, the temptation to compromise, to sell out to the highest bidder, to try to bring together “what is right” with “what I want.” We are not the 1st civilization to try to synthesize the 2. The day of Elijah was the same. Elijah faced stiff competition from a group of people who were sold out to serving the enemy. But Elijah had very little to say to them. Elijah had the strongest words for people who wanted to serve the false god Baal in addition to the true God YAHWEH. Let’s read 1 Kings 18:16-29,40 to look at the contest on Mt.Carmel.
As we continue to chew on this passage of scripture, we can see that Elijah was up against the 450 prophets of Baal. I want to take a few minutes to look at the worship of false gods in Israel. Now, even though our 21st-century minds are far more advanced than these folks’, I believe that we have fallen into the same worship as the ancient Israelites, even the same worship as the false priests of Baal. What did Baal worship look like back then, and how is it that we are guilty of the same thing today?
Well, Baal was the chief god of the Canaanites. He was lord of the pantheon – that is, the culture’s collection of deities. He was a storm and weather god, the god of good crops. He was the master of wind and rain, thus of fertility of the land and the earth. Now, religions that deal with fertility place great emphasis, of course, on reproduction – in the land, in the crops and in the womb. This explains the stress on sexual conduct in the context of Baal religion.
I mean, in worship of Baal, besides the child sacrifice, the snake-reverence and the bodily mutilation, there was a lot of sex. Erotic frenzies and erotic dancing would be included in worship. As well,
Baal worship involved temple prostitutes. That is, to have success in battle or some other need, men would go to the temple to visit priestesses. It was considered good luck to have relations with these priests, which in the original Hebrew meant, “holy ones”. It was as if their holiness and anointing would fall on anyone who slept with them. It certainly was a religion that said, “If it feels good, do it.”
One of the many things that separated Baal worship from YAHWEH-worship was the idea of “who made whom”. The Bible says that God made man in His image. But Baal worship flip-flopped that. Baal worship attributed man’s characteristics to their god. That is, Baal was a god with the same needs and hungers, same emotions, same appearance as man. In ancient paintings by Baal worshippers, it is extremely difficult to tell which ones are humans and which are gods. They thought that Baal was just like them, except perhaps stronger and longer-lasting. In essence, they made Baal in their image. Thus, the gods expected what people would expect. People did what they figured the gods wanted, which was what they wanted. Baal worship, boiled down to its simplest components, was doing what you want. Worship of the gods was equal to worship of self. They called it religion, but it was really self-gratification.
Which brings us to today. This country is filled with people who live to please themselves but call it religion. It’s sanctified selfishness. They say, “Live for Jesus!” but they mean, “Make me feel good.” They think that going to church means getting a warm feeling. They think that their opinion is the only right one. They think that it’s everyone else who is unspiritual. They think everyone else has to change, but never them. Folks, that is not worship of God, but worship of yourself.
Elijah addressed this in v21. I love his words. The literal translation of this is: “How long do you mean to hobble first on one leg and then on the other?" or "How long will you continue to hop back and forth on 2 branches?” The wording suggests jumping around, never getting situated in one spot. It also suggests a bird bouncing around from branch to branch, never knowing where to settle. It pictures worship of Baal – the pleasure, the lust, the fun, the greed, self. And it also pictures the worship of God – the contentment, the peace, the forgiveness. And Elijah said, you can’t have both. You can’t worship self and God and expect to enjoy it or take pleasure in it. Famous preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote these words, commenting on this passage of scripture, from the viewpoint of how Satan would see us.
"There," says the devil, "I am every thing that is bad. I do sometimes pretend to be an angel of light, and put on that garb. But you do really excel me in every respect, for I do it to get something by it, but you do not get any thing by it.
You do not have the pleasures of this world, and you do not have the pleasures of religion either. You have the fears of religion without its hopes; you are afraid to do wrong, and yet you have no hope of heaven. You have the duties of religion without the joys; you have to do just as religious people do, and yet there is no heart in the matter. You have to sit down, and see the table all spread before you, and then you have not power to eat a single morsel of the precious dainties of the gospel." Wow. Strong words.
Singer Steve Taylor wrote: “Double lives take half as long.” And a friend of mine used to say, “Double-mindedness leads to half-heartedness.” I’ll tell you, if you are fed up with church or people, if you complain often, especially when things don’t go your way, if you hold grudges and gripes, chances are good you are worshipping yourself. You are looking to please yourself and make yourself happy. But if this passage says anything about false worship, it’s this: your personal god will fail. No matter what they did, the priests of Baal could not get an answer from their god. They tried waiting longer, they tried to turn up the volume, they tried jumping around, they tried beating up on themselves, they tried working harder. But in the end, their god quite literally left them high and dry.
And so will yours. When you live to please yourself, you will find that nothing will please you. You will jump to the next thing, the next feeling, the next power struggle, the next grievance, looking for something to fill the void. And nothing will. You see, dedication or devotion to a cause doesn’t make it worthwhile. Even if you are working hard to do something noble and right, if it’s not for God, then it will fail. It will crumble to the ground. Whether it’s pleasing yourself, giving yourself some sort of mental condolences for how things are, or whether it’s pleasing others, or even if it’s running away and avoiding the issue, doing something for only yourself – for your comfort, for your safety, for your well-being, for your peace of mind, for your will –will fail.
So how do you deal with false gods? How do you get over it? Elijah said 2 things: 1) repentance. V37 – he prayed that the people’s hearts would turn back to God. The first thing you need to do is realize that you have been guilty of idolatry – worshipping yourself. Realize that selfishness has no place in the heart of a true Christian. Admit your failures to God. Fess up! Turn your heart back to god. Philippians tells us that we are to have the same attitude as Jesus, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!” Jesus gave up all rights to Himself.
And as His followers, we must realize that we are not living to please ourselves. 2 Corinthians 5:9 says: “So we make it our goal to please him.” It is God we were made to worship, not ourselves. Repent from your selfishness – turn away from it, and turn to God.
Now, if this first thing wasn’t drastic enough, Elijah also said in v40 to grab the false prophets and kill them. Wow. That’s what we need to do, too. First, we need repentance from our selfishness. And 2), we need a slaughter. We need to die to ourselves. Galatians 5:24 says this: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.” Romans 6:6-7 says this: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”
These are drastic words, and drastic measures. But they seem to be the standard for Christians. To say “no” to self when God wants something different. To pray when schedule or priorities want to shove it out. To obey when the flesh, the self, wants to do its own thing. To forgive when holding on to your injured self seems safer. To turn your head and turn your eyes when TV wants to appeal to your indulgences. To support the church even when you don’t get it all your own way. To think on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy, when it’s so much easier to think about whatever the culture says is OK. To ask God to show you your sins and weaknesses and ask Him to forgive and cleanse you, even when you really don’t want to change. These are tough words and tough actions, but God seems content with nothing less than all.
I’m told of a doll company in Denver, CO, which has the perfect item for people who just can’t get enough of themselves: My Twin Doll. Apparently, for between $130 and $170 US, you can have a doll custom-made to be a mirror image of yourself, right down to the hairstyle and clothes. Just send the company a photo, and soon you can go to sleep cuddling a doll-sized version of the one and only you.
Is that you? Do you love yourself too much? It might be time for some of you to realize that you have been hopping from branch to branch, wavering between 2 opinions, trying to please God and yourself. It is time to admit it, and commit to God today to die to yourself and live for Him.
