Eight hundred years or so before the birth of Jesus, there was a man named Elijah sent by God to Ahab and Jezebel, the evil king and queen of Israel. King Ahab and the nasty Queen Jezebel led their entire nation into worshipping the Baals; false, pagan, Canaanite gods of rain, fire and fertility. As punishment for this and other evils, God sent the great prophet Elijah to tell them there would be no more dew or rain until God said otherwise. Let Baal provide rain!Finally, after three years of drought and terrible suffering, the LORD decided the time had come to confront things and turn on the water sprinklers again. So, with the help of his friend Obadiah, Elijah set up a meeting with Ahab. We pick up the story in 1 Kings 18:17-40.
When he [Ahab] saw Elijah, he said to him, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel?" "I have not made trouble for Israel," Elijah replied. "But you and your father's family have. You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals. Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel. And bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table." So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." But the people said nothing.
Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. Get two bulls for us. Let them choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire--he is God." Then all the people said, "What you say is good."
Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire." So they took the bull given them and prepared it. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. "O Baal, answer us!" they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.
At noon Elijah began to taunt them. "Shout louder!" he said. "Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy [in the bathroom], or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.
Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come here to me." They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which was in ruins. Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, "Your name shall be Israel." With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, "Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood." "Do it again," he said, and they did it again. "Do it a third time," he ordered, and they did it the third time. The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.
At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again." Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The Lord--he is God! The Lord--he is God!" Then Elijah commanded them, "Seize the prophets of Baal. Don't let anyone get away!" They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.
What a cool story! And what a great action hero from which to glean greatness here at Elim Church today! This great man Elijah spoke and the rain just stopped for three years. God sent Elijah into the wilderness to be fed by ravens and it happened. Elijah went to live with a poor widow and her son and Almighty God miraculously provided for all of them. The boy died and Elijah raised him from the dead. In our story today, Elijah set up a showdown with all his pagan enemies, stacked the odds ridiculously against himself, laughed as he did so and then singlehandedly called down fire from heaven and death on his enemies. Elijah wanted to cross a river and so he rolled up his cloak and struck the water and it parted. When the time finally came for this guy to go home to glory, God sent a fiery chariot just to escort him. What a guy!
Elijah. Elijah the Tishbite – that’s Tishbe in Gilead for those of you who ain’t familiar! Tishbite with a capital "T"
And yet Elijah didn’t seem impressed with all the flash and fireworks. This Elijah wasn’t driven by some sort of maniacal, action movie hero desire to conquer the world and have his own way. This man wasn’t chasing some superhero status; he was driven by something ever so much deeper. Elijah wanted one thing more than anything else in the world. And no where is Elijah’s deepest desire in life more evident than in our Scripture text today. There was one thing Elijah wanted so bad he could taste it. But Elijah understood a little staging and advance preparation were also necessary. He needs to prepare the people first…
Elijah captured attention. Elijah set the stage and then, in verse 30, the text is very careful to record that Elijah called the people to come near to him. Come close to me and see what I’m doing here. Come make sure I’m not doing anything tricky or deceitful. Come check me out and see for yourself all I’m doing. Come and see for yourself. Come near to me.
Elijah repaired the altar. Verses 30-31, Elijah took the time, as all the people were gathered around and watching, to rebuild the altar upon which the sacrifice would be made. As all the people watched his every move, Elijah reminded them what this whole confrontation was about. He reminded them of their great altar calling as a covenant people – how God had once chosen them, out of all the world, to serve as a beacon of life and hope to the world.
Elijah stepped out in faith. Verses 32-36 tell us Elijah dug a ditch around that altar and then doused the whole thing in a ludicrous amount of water. And in a time of drought, high up on a mountain, it must have been difficult to even locate this much water. Elijah faithfully created a situation from which only God could extricate him. This is a dramatic display of faith. Elijah is so certain of God’s intentions, he goes to almost comical lengths to make a point.
Elijah very dramatically, very intentionally set the stage. In many ways, Elijah did what we do every Sunday here in worship. We capture the attention of the people, we do our best to repair the altar by remembering the individual stones of our calling and then we prayerfully step out in faith waiting for the dramatic fire to fall from heaven – the answers of God to our prayers, the fiery Word of God speaking clearly and powerfully into our pagan foolishness.
And just exactly like Elijah, we too must want only one thing. The “one thing” point of the whole story boils down to Elijah’s simple prayer in verses 36-37: "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."
Let God be known! Let it be known today that you are God in Minneapolis. Let it be known that you alone are God in our country and in our world. Let it be known that we are just servants doing whatever we’re told to do. Let the entire world know there is nothing special or superhuman about us. Let the fire falling on our impossibly wet sacrifice and dripping altars reveal to the world that there is only one God and that this one God still wants His people back!
What sort of disinterested, disconnected Baal’s are you worshipping? In what gods do you truly trust? Are you trusting in the one True God, or do you trust in economics, politics, science, military might, family, friends, or some amalgamated, completely subjective collection of all of them? Does the Almighty, Triune God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel stand powerfully singular and all important in your life or is He just one of many gods?
Are we seeing the fire of God fall gloriously on our lives or are we limping goofy, bloody dances around a cold, dry altar, feverishly praying and cutting ourselves religiously, yet still getting “no response, no one answering, no one paying attention?” Is the fire of God licking up even the trench water in our lives or is our Baal just too busy in the biffy to bother with us?
What god is your life truly making known? What god does your life advertise most loudly? When was the last time you found yourself standing in front of a soaking wet altar, all the curious crowds of pagan, Baal worshipping people gathered around to watch, knowing only Almighty God could light that enormous, dripping, impossibly soggy looking thing on fire? What God is your life truly making known in the world around you?
Let God be known!
If God were more fully known in and through your life, if Almighty God showed up in some dramatic, inescapable way today, if the fire fell, how might things change for you? What would happen? How would things be different? Let God be known! Let God stand alone! Let the fire fall! Let the sacrifice and all the foolish prophets be once and for all consumed!
Thomas Aquinas, a medieval theologian, created what many argue is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of Western civilization in his Summa Theologica. It's a massive work: thirty-eight treatises, three thousand articles, ten thousand objections. Thomas tried to gather into one coherent whole all of known truth. What a great undertaking: anthropology, science, ethics, psychology, political theory and theology, all under God. Yet on December 6, 1273, Thomas Aquinas abruptly stopped his work. While celebrating Mass in the chapel of St. Thomas, he reportedly caught some sort of glimpse of God or clearer vision of eternity, and suddenly he knew all his great efforts to describe God fell so far short he decided never to write ever again. When his secretary, Reginald, tried to encourage him to do more writing, he said, “Reginald, I can do no more. Such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as so much straw.” Firm in his resolve, he wrote not another word and died a year later.
When the fire falls, all the second rate stuff in our lives just gets consumed. When God is clearly known among us, when we truly catch a glimpse of eternity, all the other gods and goodies we’ve made for ourselves just disappear. Even our latest and greatest thinking seems shallow…even our Summa Theologica isn’t so “summa” anymore! All other gods get consumed.
May the one true God be known among us! May the one true God powerfully stand alone among us! May we get to see what only God can do in the world! May the fire of God fall constantly here at Elim Church for all the world to see! May all our pagan foolishness be consumed and God alone be glorified!
Amen.
