Answers Bible Curriculum: Lesson 11 - God Uses Elijah

Well, if you guys remember, about 35 years before King Ahab, we have this king named Jeroboam. He's the first king of Israel, once we have the divided kingdom. And Jeroboam just basically makes up his own religion, right? He doesn't want people going back down to, to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh.

He wants to keep everybody up north and so he creates some golden calves again, harkening back to the old days, right? And says, sets them up and says you guys should worship. This is the God that delivered you guys out of Egypt and you can sacrifice at, Dan, or, what's the other place? Bethel.

Was it Bethel in the south and Dan in the north. And so he just makes up his own religion. It was a festivus for the rest of us. If you guys have any idea what that means.

It's made up a brand new religion just to keep everybody in control. So 35 years later, if you track the different kings in, in the north. You have a certain king and this one's bad, this one's bad, this one's bad. 35 years, you come to Ahab and he is not just bad, he's the worst.

Why is he the worst? Is he's really, he and Jezebel together have brought Israel full on into Baal worship, idolatry, this is like old Canaanite religion. So let's ask the question, just setting things up, why in the world Would Israel, we're not talking about some. In a non-Jewish country, we're not talking about a bunch of Canaanite leftovers or pagans that are surrounding Israel.

We're talking about right here in Israel, people are now worshiping Baal. That would be like, in the Bible Belt, all of a sudden everybody turns over to Buddhism or to Islam. I don't know, maybe that'll happen here soon, we'll see. so what's the big appeal about bale worship?

Well, first of all, bail worship has the, support of the royalty, right? Especially Jezebel, she's fanatical about it. She's, we're gonna find out later, she's got 450 of her own profits. She's got these other people running around.

So she's a big-time pro-Bal queen. Ahab goes, seems like he's into it too, not quite as much as, as Jezebel, but It tends to be that people will frequently follow the God of the leaders of that country, right? Because, whatever the, the religion that's in at the moment, that's gonna help you business-wise. It's kinda like why do presidents always go to church in the United States?

It's because if you want to be president of the United States, you better go to church, at least pretend like you have some affinity for Christianity, otherwise people really don't wanna, they're gonna be shy to vote for you. and just about any country around the world, whatever the main religion is, people are gonna gravitate towards what's in at the time, so. As a, as a Jew, if you want to be in with the establishment, you wanted to follow bail. secondly, let's think about this here.

Baal worship is not a Johnny come lately religion. This is old-time religion. Baal worship, at least in Canaan, predates Judaism, right? We're not saying that it's, it's better than Judaism or obviously, the true God had been around since the beginning of time.

But when you're talking about Canaan, Baal worship was there first. And so it had the appeal in Israel of like that old time tradition, like what's going on right now in Mexico. It's been going on for quite a while. There's this movement to want to go back to the Aztec religions.

Let's reject our Roman Catholicism. We need to get back to the old-time religion when we were really worshiping our gods, our native gods. and this, this goes on, this goes on in the United States where people are wanting to, you'll find different people groups like say Native Americans going back to their old-time religion, rejecting Christianity, so on and so forth. I remember a movie years ago, I'm trying to remember the name of it, it was Tommy Lee Jones, there's some kidnapped kids.

And so the, the, the, the mom of the kidnapped kids is a Christian lady and she's worried and trying to run out and find her kids, but Tommy Lee Jones is this guy that's traveled around and he's really into the Native American or Indian religion. And throughout the movie, it contrasts Christianity and the Indian religion. And of course, being a Hollywood film, which religion do you think seems more profound? Well, it's the Native American faith and so the mom gets sick and, and so Tommy Lee Jones and the Indians, they're doing their incantations and he's given her an amulet and there's smoke and all this sense of history and tradition.

And then the little girls over there reading out of the begats of Genesis, Adam begat this person, that, and, and the contrast is, look how feeble the Bible is just reading about begats when you got Tommy Lee Jean Jones over here making smoke and pronouncing words that we don't understand and there's this real mystical, mystical music in the background. And of course, it's through the Native American prayer that she gets healed, not the feeble reading of the Bible. So you have this battle of the religions and so in Baal worship, you have the, the royalty is supporting it.

It's got this old time, traditional feel.

By the way, that's, one of the reasons why we're seeing this movement back to Eastern Orthodoxy and even Roman Catholicism in our culture. Do you guys realize that? That there's this movement of if you track Baptist faith right now. a lot of the conversions to Eastern Orthodoxy in the US are coming from people that have come out of Baptist churches.

Why is that? Well, when they're interviewed, a lot of times they say, well, it just seems like Eastern Orthodoxy has this sense of tradition. The sense of connectedness to the past. And that's, that's what they're describing.

Same thing with baal worship. It's like the good, good Jewish people be like, our religion is fairly, it doesn't seem as profound as the Baal worship that goes way back and connects us to the land and our past, the fertility God that's gonna bring us, and that brings us to our third reason why bale worship could be appealing is Baal worship. Who is Baal? he's the male part, the counterpart of Ashara of the fertility god.

It's like Bale's gonna bring rain and controls the weather and causes things to come up from the ground. So if you're a good businessman, you're out there farming, you wanna make sure that your crops grow. Bales, he's like the relevant God. He's the one that's going to, to bring the rain and, and really is gonna help you with your business.

And things like that. So if you start, things start going awry and, you didn't really believe what your parents tried to teach you in temple anyway, and there's this bail god that's gonna help you with your business, hey, why not? The 4th thing is probably most appealing, and that is that bail worship didn't have the sexual restrictions that Judaism had. Judaism required that you get married to one wife and you stay married and you stay sexually pure and even if that relationship with your wife isn't going so well, you still stay committed to her till death.

Well, that's not too appealing. To a younger generation that's coming up, that's starting to reject the values of the parents as we always see, right? Bale worship offered you the opportunity of sexual freedom. In fact, you could actually feel good about your sexual freedom because you could just go down to the local bail temple, pick up a, a bail prostitute, have sex with a prostitute, and that would be your worship, your offering to bail that day.

Wow. So you don't have to feel restricted sexually. You can go out and actually worship bail with sexual freedom. Sounds a little bit like today., the, the religions that people are, are inclined towards, and again I, I always go back to Hollywood because I think Hollywood has so much influence of our culture.

How do they tend to portray, a Christian person or Christian family in a movie. It's like they're very sexually restrictive and, and we're very tight, we're very uptight and worried about things and, and we don't seem to have the power. Of the Buddhist monk. We don't seem to have the power of, of the Indian priest or the Native American priest and, I get what's another movie, what's that one where, Tom Cruise goes off to Japan and then he becomes a.

A samurai and so he shows up and he's just a dorky American, doesn't understand the sense of tradition and just, like old Buddhist tradition and the samurai tradition and finally he kinda gets his act together. What we do in our, in our, in our culture is we do this thing that Ravi Zacharias calls Westernism is we take Eastern ideas, baptize it with Christian thought. And then we pretend like it's Eastern thought when in reality it's Westernism. It has nothing to do with what Buddhism is really about or what Native American religion is really about or what paganism is really about.

We baptize it, make it seem like it's a good thing. Like we think karma is a great thing, right? karma's like, oh, you're gonna die and then you'll be able to go into karma and be with your lover again and, romance, we'll be together forever and ever and ever in karma. No, real karma is the thing you're trying to escape.

Karma is bad, right? But in what, in Westernism, we make karma this good, wonderful thing that helps a nice romantic movies. I have to say that's, that's the bale worship that we're talking about. Can you see how that would be appealing, especially to a younger generation that wants to reject the values of their parents?

And so that's what we're coming into. We come into chapter 18. Go ahead and open up to First Kings 18. We're gonna kinda, because there's a lot that we wanna do this morning, I apologize, we're gonna skip all of our review from last week.

I'm just assuming that you guys all remember what we did last week and that you benefited from it and you loved it and And then we're gonna trust that you guys. understood it. OK, so, so this week we're moving it, so we're talking about Elijah. Next week we'll talk about Elishah.

And then we're gonna go back to chapter 9 and hit Jonah. So, so let's Let me get us to our Versus here after the. All our memory device stuff. Do you guys remember this?

Did we do this memory device stuff last week? OK, so we're actually right here, the divided kingdom 7. So we're in the divided Kingdom period. first Kings 17, we'll just do a little overview and then 18 is really where we want to be.

You guys remember in chapter 17. We've got Elijah shows up on the scene. And he just does this little, God calls him to go to Ahab. What does he tell Ahab?

It's not gonna be any rain until the Lord gives me the word to bring rain back, to bring rain back to the country. See you later. Boom, then he hits the road, right? And the Lord says, hey, you go off, you're gonna go hide in this Kishtron Valley, I think, and I'm gonna give you water.

And by the way, I'm gonna have the ravens bring you your food. That'd be pretty nice. And so he's there hiding from Ahab. Why is he hiding from Ahab?

Yeah, Ahab, remember Ahab and Jezebel, these are baal worshippers. Elijah is just like his name says, this guy, his name means Yahweh is God. He comes, he gives this prophecy, he hits the road, he's hiding from Ahab, and then, so then there's just no rain. Why would the Lord hit rain?

As the way to bring, bring a curse upon Ahab and Israel. Yeah, it hits Bale right in the heart, right, right in the head. Bale's supposed to be the one that's controlling the weather. He's the one that's bringing fertility.

Rain brings fertility. He hits the rain god and right where it hurts and so then, Elijah has to go hide. We have him, then the brook runs out and so he says, hey, I want you to go meet up with this widow and, and the widow's gonna provide for you. The Lord miraculous miraculously is causing, the, what is it, the dough and, and stuff in the jar and the oil to, to multiply almost like Jesus in the, in the loaves and fish, and then her son dies and Elijah raises him from the dead.

So Elijah is just this crazy. Prophet guy that God is using in pretty amazing ways. and so that brings us to chapter 18. And so let's go ahead and let's start in verse one.

And we're, and then we'll, we'll make some comments on the way. And so, let me just give you the big, the big overview is basically, what is, today is like Sunday, which should be the Lord's Day, but a lot of people think of it as NFL Day, right? So you got big teams going out there battling. So, in this chapter, we basically have the battle of the gods.

This is Yahweh versus Bale. Yahweh's going to play on Bale's home turf. And there's 450 profits to 1 and so it doesn't look good. the, Yahweh's ratings in the press, he, he has a plummeting approval ratings in the press and if they were to try to figure out who they thought was gonna win this particular game, all of the experts would be saying Bale, Bale is gonna win.

There's too much in Bale's favor for him not to win this battle of the gods. And so let's start in verse one and we'll make some running comments as we run through. Verse 1 of 18. And it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the 3rd year saying, go present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth.

OK, so the 3rd year, we're left 3rd year after what the text really doesn't say, but if you cross reference this with Luke 4 and James 5:17, we know that this is, this has been 3 years since Elijah pronounced. No rain, right? And so 3 years, there's been no rain. This has been pretty tough on everybody.

God says, I'm gonna bring rain now. What's the problem with that though? If God just suddenly causes it to start raining, What do you think? Ahab and Jezebel and everybody up north is going to say.

Yeah, they're gonna say bail, he finally come through. All right. So everybody's just gonna worship Bale and say, all right, he's been rejuvenated. Maybe he had to take off for a while, maybe he was doing battle.

We don't know where he was, but now he's finally back and he's rejuvenated. So God's gonna set something up to make sure that people cannot give bail credit for the return of the rain. So in verse two, so Elijah went to present himself to Ahab, and this is just like Elijah. Now think about what God's telling him to do.

Go to the guy that's trying to kill you. And I want you to give him a word. But Elijah, he just does what the Lord says. That's one of the things that's so cool about Elijah.

God says, go do this, go see this widow. He's like, OK. He's gonna go into this river and I'm gonna send you ravens. They're gonna take care of you.

He's like, oh, OK. And so he goes and he presents himself to Ahab. And there was a severe famine in Samaria. And so now we get some background and Ahab had called Obadiah, who was in charge of his house.

so Obadiah is this administrator. I don't think this, this Obadiah doesn't have anything to do with the other Obadiah, the prophet, right? Is that true? I was, I meant to look that up, but does anybody have any, any notes in your, in your Bible?

I'm pretty sure that this is a different Obadiah. If somebody finds that, let me know. I ran out of time to look that one up. But the parentheses here is now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly.

for so it was while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord that Obadiah had taken 100 prophets. And hidden. The 50 to a cave and had fed them with bread and water. So this guy is a believer in the administration of Jezebel and Ahab.

So totally different role here for Obadiah. Some commentators back on Obadiah that he's this coward who's compromising and just stand in there in the good graces of the king and queen. but the text here seems to speak of Obadiah in a positive way. that this is just another role that a believer, someone who loves the Lord might have is like Daniel was in the administration, right, of, Nebuchadnezzar or no, up there in Persia, Belshazzar, right?

Is that right? And so, the Lord can use people in different ways. Obadiah is being used within the structure. Elijah's running around like, he's like.

hitting Ahab face to face and then hitting the desert. a lot of people think of Elijah as the bold one, and that's true, but in a lot of ways, Obadiah is there day to day having to deal with his neck's on the line every single day, and here he is secretly helping the prophets of Yahweh, just like, people hiding Jews during World War II. And so he's, he had done this in the past is the implication. so verse 5, and Ahab had said to Obadiah, go into the land to all the springs of water and to all the brooks.

Perhaps we may find grass to keep the horses and mules alive so that we will not have to kill any livestock. So we're gonna go out and, and try to find some food for our livestock. So they divided the land between them to explore it. Ahab went one way by himself, Obadiah went another way by himself.

Obadiah cares about saving lives of the prophets. Ahab cares about what? His horses and mules. It's almost like save the whales, kill the babies.

the same, same, same thing we have in our culture, right? We're just totally backwards upside down, but that's Ahab's concern. It's the same one. OK, so Obadiah, this is the same Obadiah from later on, in the minor prophets, so we'll go take a look at that later.

in a future lesson, we'll hit Obadiah. So here's what happened. So now Obadiah was on his way and suddenly Elijah met him. And he recognized him, fell on his face and said, Is that you, my lord Elijah?

This is the way a lot of times prophets seem to show up in the book of First Kings. They just like suddenly there, there they are. And, so Obadiah recognizes him, so he had prob maybe he was there in court when Elijah came and spoke the pronouncement three years ago. Perhaps he had seen some of these face-offs with Jezebel and Obadiah and Elijah in the past.

We're not really sure, but he recognizes them. Then verse 8, and he answered and said, It is I. Go tell your master Elijah is here. So you would think that this would be good news for Obadiah that Ahab's been looking for this guy.

Elijah's my hero. I'll get these guys together, maybe we'll get this thing all worked out. But notice Obadiah's response in verse 9. So he said, how have I sinned that you are delivering your servant into the hand of Ahab to kill me.

As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to hunt for you. And when they said he is not here, he took an oath from the kingdom or nation that they could not find you. And now you say, go tell your master Elijah's here. And it shall come to pass as soon as I am gone away, the Spirit of the Lord will carry you to a place I do not know.

So when I go to tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me. But I, your servant, have feared the Lord for my youth. Was it not reported to my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord? How I hid 100 men of the Lord's prophets, 50 to a cave and fed them with bread and water?

And now you say, go tell your master Elijah's here. He will kill me. This is a befuddling turn of events. because what, what is Obadiah's real fear?

Is he afraid Of Elijah and Ahab meeting up? Or what's his real fear here? Yeah. So he's afraid, he's gonna leave Elijah here, run over to Ahab, say hey, I found Elijah.

They're gonna run back and Elijah's gonna be disappear because the spirit of the Lord will have taken him away. So what does this imply about what's happened in the, what happens in the past with Elijah or a prophet like him is this guy's prone to just up and disappear. Like he, here he is, all of a sudden, he's the spirit has taken him away somewhere else. We don't really know what that means.

We'll see a little bit of that later in the chapter. but these prophet guys, they're flighty, right? They're, they show up, they disappear, where did they go? Are they up in the brook?

Are they're in the caves? We don't really know where they are. And so he's, I think Obadiah, for him to have this concern, to really think that his life would be at stake, there must be some background that Elijah's a guy that just doesn't stick around very long. And so Elijah has to kinda tell him, hey, no, don't worry, we're OK.

So verse 15, then Elijah said, as the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand, I will surely present myself to him today. So he gives an oath. And as you guys know, uttering oaths at this time. That's, you're gonna, you're gonna keep it, otherwise, your head is forfeit before the Lord.

And so he gives this oath, so Obadiah feels good. Verse 16, so Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him and Ahab went to meet Elijah. So this would be the first time that these guys meet up face to face in about 3 years, right? So you can think of this old western, these guys walking towards each other, just facing off, staring at each other.

This is a very interesting scene to to be a part of. So then verse 17, then it happened when, when Ahab saw Elijah, the Ahab said to him, Is that you, oh troubler of Israel? One of the best lines in the whole Bible. You could just imagine,.

Elijah's got on the back of his jersey, Trer of Israel, that, anybody pay attention to Major League Baseball, how they've done this thing a couple of weeks ago where they put the nicknames of everybody on the back of their jersey. Yeah, there's some pretty good ones like, I think Trout was just like kid. And Chris, any favorite ones you had the The machine makina la machina. Yes, that's some pretty cool, nicknames on the back of jerseys and stuff.

So at least according to Ahab, if he were putting up suggestions for the nickname for Elijah to be troubler of Israel, which in from Ahab's perspective would be true, right? But Elijah comes back and says, I have not, troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have. In that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the Baals. Now, therefore, send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel.

The 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets. Of Ashra who eat at Jezebel's table. This is, this is setting up for quite a face-off. So bring the 450 profits or the, yeah, pro Prophets of Baal, 400 prophets of Ashra, that's kinda like the feminine counterpart and that are eating at Jezebel's table.

We're gonna go to Mount Carmel. So he picks a spot that's not really pro-Yahweh. This is a place where Baal is already being worshiped and it's a pretty popular high place of Baal worship. So, it's kinda like USC playing at Stanford or something.

And so that's where they're gonna face off. So, basically, so Elijah is not, is, he, he doesn't really accept this nickname Trouble of Israel. He wants, he wants that to be on the back of Ahab's jersey and and really historically would say that's true. Ahab's really been the true troubler of Israel.

If we want to put something on the back of Elijah's jersey, we could call him Bringer of Rain. That's actually one of the baseball players, I forget which one he plays for the. Up there in Toronto, was it Toronto Blue Jays. His, his nickname is the Bringer of Rain.

I thought that was one of the cool, cool nicknames. all right, so we're set up now for this, this face-off. So verse 20. So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.

And Elijah came to all the people and said, how long will you, will you, falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, follow him. But the people answered him not a word. The fact that Elijah saying this falter between two opinions.

What does that seem to imply about his audience? So, so just remember what we have here. We know that we've got Ahab and we've got the 450 and the 400, but then you've also got this whole gathering of the crowd of Israel. And so Elijah's addressing Israel and he says, how long are you gonna falter between two views?

What's that imply? Do you think that the, the crowd that is gathered. are they exclusively worshiping Baal? Are they exclusivists?

No. In fact, most pagan gods did not require exclusivity. Baal would not be offended at all if they worshiped Baal and they also happen to worship Molech and then they also happen to worship Yahweh. And so what's implied here is that the crowd that's gathered, these guys are probably worshiping Baal.

Many of them probably afraid of Jezebel and afraid for their life, and they're also worshiping Yahweh. They're trying to keep a little bit of Jesus in their life, a little bit of Yahweh, while they're also worshiping, Baal, and Elijah's representing Yahweh himself and saying that's not gonna happen. Yahweh will not allow other contending gods. If you wanna follow Baal, follow him.

And so he's calling them to put their beliefs into practice. He's basically saying, you cannot just have theology, you must have discipleship. You must follow, you must be a learner and follower of your God. So, if you wanna go follow Baal, become his disciple.

If you want to follow Yahweh, become his disciple, follow him. But this idea that we can have syncretism, the idea that we can do like what the Roman Catholics did, the missionaries as they came into the Caribbean and just baptize people and let them worship their false gods and just call them different saints, that's not gonna happen. You've got to worship me exclusively. would be what the Lord would be saying here through Elijah.

So what are we gonna do? We're going to set up this test. Verse 22, then Elijah said to the people, I alone am left a prophet of the Lord. But Bale's profits are 450 men.

Therefore, let them give us 2 bulls and let them choose 1 bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, lay it on the wood. But put no fire under it, and I will prepare the other bowl and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it. Then you call on the name of your gods and I will call on the name of Yahweh. And the God who answers by fire, He is God.

So all the people answered and said, It's well spoken. Let's, let's do this thing. It's on. Let's have this, this competition.

Now notice, Elijah says that he's the only prophet. Obadiah had rescued at least 100, so that had obviously been in the past. So at some point, Jezebel would have found those prophets. Those guys are now dead and gone.

So, Elijah's the soul, he's the last of the Mohicans, right? And so, he sets this thing up. And as we're gonna see, Elijah isn't just making up a task. This is something the Lord has directed him to do.

So if you get this idea that you want to just go do some challenge, you're at your UCR and you're talking to your professor, and you say, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you what, professor, whosever is God brings down fire into this classroom, let him be God. Unless the Lord has directly told you to do that, I wouldn't do it. But Elijah, who is this freaky prophet guy that's just disappearing places and ravens are feeding him and he's laying on top of widows' sons and raising them from the dead and things like that.

That's the guy who God, if God instructs him to do it, he does it and the Lord's coming through.

We're talking about a prophetic type of activity and we'll, we'll talk about that more here in a second. I guess, let me give you a little preview. There are those of us who are Obadiahs, which I think is the vast majority of believers who have ever existed in the world. And then there are those who are Elijah's, which is a smaller group of people, and God is using both sets of people, but just because you're not being used in an Elijah type way, don't feel like, oh, I'm only hiding 100 prophets in caves.

I'm only giving water and food to these prophets hiding from Jezebel. Who am I? No, whatever you're doing, wherever the Lord has positioned you can be used greatly of him and glorify Him, even if it just seems rather hum hum or ho-hum. So look at verse 25.

Now, Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Oh, we already read. No, no, OK. So Elijah said the prophet of Baal, choose one bowl for yourselves and prepare it first, for your many, and call on the name of your God and put no fire under it. So they took the bowl which they, was given them, and they prepared it and called in the name of Baal from morning, even until noon.

Saying, oh Bale, hear us. And there was no voice, no one answered. Then they leaped up about the altar which they had made. So you need to imagine, a lot of times when we read these stories, we've heard them since a lot of you guys have probably heard this story since you were little in Sunday school.

Raise your hand if you've heard this story since you were probably little. All right. So a lot of us hear this stuff and what we imagine is a bunch of white guys on a flannel board, right? Wearing very colorful, clothing, and we don't have any real concept of the pagan setting that this is.

These people are not speaking English. They are speaking some form of Semitic language, some ancient form of Hebrew. when they're praying to their God, imagine some Native American rain dance ceremony. These guys are dancing around, praying in a foreign language.

They're burning incense. Imagine these movies that you've seen here recently with Native Americans or some Buddhists and all of the power and mystique of the Eastern or the Native American religion. That's what's going on here. And, and their, and their multitude of incantation, incantations and, and so on and so forth.

If this would be made by Hollywood, Hollywood would make this seem very profound and mystical and you'd probably start seeing little spirit things moving and Bale would show up and do exactly what these guys were asking him to do because that's just what Hollywood does. It always favors. The bad guys when it comes to this thing. so they began to leap upon the altar.

And so it was at 120, so we're talking 3 hours they've been doing this. Elijah mocked them, saying, cry aloud, for he is a God. Either he's meditating or he is busy or he is on a journey, or perhaps he's sleeping and must be awakened. Why don't you try his cellphone?

Try his beeper. Maybe he's off bowling. We don't really know. one of the terms here when it says he's busy, the literal idea there is he's probably in the bathroom.

He's off going to the restroom. Now, Elijah's mocking them, but as, as we see it, according to their reaction, They don't really see it as mocking because a God like Baal is not like a God like Yahweh. They had no concept. Baal was not omnipresent.

Baal was not omniscient. It's very possible that Baal was in a completely different place at that time. it was very possible that Bale was sleeping. In fact, in some of the Eucuritic tales that where people are writing about Bale from their own perspective, there's, one tale of Bale's sister comes to find him, I know, somebody comes to find, to ask for bail, and she says he's not here, he's hunting.

And so this was in their own tales that Bale, Bale very well might not be there and they might need to yell louder to get his attention. It kinda reminds me of what Bob Bell would tell us back in the day. I don't know how many of you remember Bob and Betty Bell. They're missionaries.

Bob's passed away. but they were missionaries to, Haiti. And the thing that's very interesting about the religion in Haiti, it's dominated by voodoo, but all the Haitians believe in God. In fact, they believe very much of the things that we believe about God, but they don't know and don't believe that God is omnipresent.

And so the likelihood that God would have any interest in Haiti whatsoever is slim to none. He's probably in the United States or he's over in Israel or some important country. But God doesn't really care about Haiti, but the demons are in the millions. And so if we're gonna get any help whatsoever with the demons, we need to go to the voodoo witch doctor because God's is probably not in Haiti at this time of year.

And so the that's similar to the idea here with bale is it's very possible that bale's just not around. And so, So then we see Where do we pick up here? So verse 28, so they cried aloud and cut themselves as was their custom with knives and lances. It's interesting how much, how much pagan religion involves cutting, tattooing, bodily harm.

It's not unusual until the blood gushed out of them. And when midday was passed, they prophesized until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, but there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. So here these, these pagans have gone through this, this whole ritual, trying to get Bale's attention and no go. Bale is, is nowhere.

To be found. And so how long has this worship ceremony gone on now? Approximately Yeah, at least it could be that it went 9 to 3, but perhaps 9 to 6. this has gone on a big part of the day.

lots and lots of repetitious prayers and obviously dancing and incense and cutting and all that stuff. Verse 30, then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. So all the people came near to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. Now we get an interesting tidbit.

This is the first time this has been revealed in this narrative, is that there's actually a broken down altar of the Lord there. That, that Israel used to worship Yahweh way back in the day at some point, but that altar had been destroyed. And so now, Elijah goes over and this would have taken some time and rebuilds this altar. So Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the Lord, the word of the Lord had come, saying Israel shall be your name.

Why, why is it significant that he takes 12 stones? As opposed to say 10 stones. Yeah, one for each tribe, and this is, remember, this is during the time of the divided kingdom. So the, there's 10 tribes in the north and or 10.5 and 1.5 in the south, however you want to construct it.

And so, the Lord through Yahweh is saying this is really my will is that you guys would be unified. I do not approve of this divided kingdom thing. verses 32. Then when the stone, with the stones, he built an altar in the name of Yahweh.

And he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two saas of seed. I didn't look that up, so I, I'm just imagining that's a lot of seed. and he put the wood in, in order, cut the bowls in pieces, and laid it on the wood and said, fill 44 water pots with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. Then he said, do it a second time.

Then he, and they did it a 2nd time. Do it a 3rd time. They did it a 3rd time. So the water ran all around the altar.

and he was, and he also filled the trench with water. So we would assume that this is what the Lord had told them to do. obviously, water and fire don't mix real well. So if this Thing works, this is, this is a big deal.

Just to see fire from heaven is a big deal, right? See fire come down and licking up the water and then burning the altar would make it even bigger. And it came to pass that time, verse 36 of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came and said, And I want you to notice the length of his prayer here. The content And the length.

So he said, Yahweh God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and I am your servant. And that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that these people may know that you are Yahweh, God, and that you have turned their hearts back to you again. If we're making a movie that's from a Christian worldview, there's a bunch of swelling music.

This is like Henry the Fifth pronouncing his, hey, let's go fight the bad guy's speech., every war movie's got somebody who stands up and makes a big speech, right? And they're swelling music and everybody goes, yeah, let's go do it, Lord of the Rings, what have you. And so this is that type of moment. He's like, here's what the Lord's about ready to do, but here's, so his prayer probably takes all of 15 seconds.

their prayers were all day. And so there's even something there being presented from the Lord. It's like, we don't have to jump and cut ourselves and run into a big frenzy in order to get the Lord's attention. Yahweh is omnipresent.

He's all powerful and he cares., we can, we can look at what's going on here. When you think how stupid are those bale worshippers just be running into a frenzy trying to get the attention of their God, felt like that they've got to just do all of these things, to get his attention. But can't we also just be be evangelical bale worshippers that we think that in order to get God's attention, in order to get God to really move, we've got to read the Bible 3 hours in the morning.

if we miss our prayer time, then God's, he's upset with us.

If we don't show up every Sunday at Sunday school, God's not gonna listen to us. And I do hope you show up at Sunday school, but why are you showing up at Sunday school? Is it, are we trying to, we feel like God's not gonna listen to us if we're not at Sunday school? And if we ever miss a care group, if we're not going to one every week, if we're not doing this, if we're not witnessing every single day.

If we're not going to Path of Life, if we're not going down to Mexico every time Pastor Mike goes to Mexico, if we don't go on a mission trip to the Philippines, if we're not teaching our kids a certain way, if we're not doing this and that, then the Lord's gonna be disappointed and upset and he's not gonna hear us. if you, if you just compound all of the different Christian activities, all good activities, but many times we can, if you just compound everything, just a cornerstone that we say, hey, these things are available to you.

And if you take it upon your heart that these things aren't just available, I need to do all of these things for God to be pleased with me. You could be busying yourself 20 hours a day with Christian activities and feeling like, well now maybe, maybe God will listen to me.

we need to be very careful about what are our motivations in coming before God. God is a God that wants to be our God and we can cry out to Him in 5 seconds and he's there, hearing us because of the finished work of Christ. And, and many of us, our lives are not gonna be Elijah lives. Many of us, our lives are just very normal.

We're making breakfast in the morning for our kids. We're putting our kids to bed at night. We're going to work and we're earning money. We're trying to be a good testimony at work.

We're opening up our mouth for the gospel. We're making good, trying to do the best we can to make good choices in life. When we fall, we're repenting of sin and asking people for forgiveness. Much of the Christian life is lived in the mundane as we're just trying to honor the Lord and good, and, and.

In his goodness and kindness, but do we feel like that we need to busy ourselves into a bail-like frenzy in order to, for him to want to hear us? If so, then we're not understanding the finished work of Christ and the full access that we have to the Lord, that we're not, we should not fall into the temptation of being modern day. Bale worshippers. And so I'll have to say that, so, Elijah gives this 15 2nd prayer, very simple.

He basically just acknowledges Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and, and Israel. And he, he asked a few things. He says, let it be known this day. That you are God in Israel.

God, may you let it be known that you are God. You are the only God, and that I'm your servant. And everything I've done here, I haven't just made up. I'm not like Jeroboam.

I've just done what you told me to do. All this stuff and this The sacrifice, the face off, this is all from you. Hear me, oh Yahweh, hear me, that these people may know that you are Yahweh. And that you have turned their hearts back.

And there we see this hope. just think about the darkness of this period in Israel's history. That basically the whole country, it feels like to Elijah, and we're gonna see later, he's even depressed over it, even after this big hoopla and the victory of the Lord. He goes off into his victory party in chapter 19 and they're not breaking open champagne and spraying it on each other.

He goes off and he's getting depressed. Right? And he just wants to die. He says, Lord, just let me die.

He, he feels like there's just nobody's following you. And yet, here the Lord shows up and he's, he's turning, he's, he's turning his, the hearts of his people back to him. And we find out later in chapter 19 that he's reserved a remnant. As dark as it feels, there are still those that are following Yahweh.

And so there's great hope here. So let's see what happens. What's gonna happen? Oh no, the tension is building.

Who's gonna win? Verse 38, then the fire of the Lord fell down and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now, when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, Yahweh, he is God. Yahweh, he is God.

And again, you just have to imagine if you're there, this isn't a flannel borrow activity. This is like fire falling from heaven, licking up the water, consuming the sacrifice. I think all of us would be falling on our face. and be shaking with fear as this activity had happened.

Now, now, does this happen every day, even in the pages of the Old Testament? No, it doesn't, but it has happened 3 times before. Let's see. Where's my little Notes, cause I don't.

I don't memorize this stuff very well. Well, you guys remember like in Leviticus, like Leviticus 9. the very first time that the priesthood has been established and the sacrificial system is established, they do the very first sacrifice, and what happens? Fire falls, boom, consumes the sacrifice.

Basically God's saying I put my stamp of approval on the sacrificial system. Just crazy stuff, right? And then David goes to the place where the future temple is gonna be built. He establishes an altar.

the same thing, fire comes down, boom, consumes the sacrifice. Then when the temple is finally built in Solomon and they set up that first sacrifice in the temple, boom, fire from heaven. So each time that the fire falls from heaven and, and consumes the sacrifice, it was a an initiation of a different stage of the sacrificial system, which was meant to be a pointer to Christ, right? So you have the sacrifice that's offered by faith that we, we're not saved by our own works, we're not bail worshippers cutting ourselves and jumping up in a frenzy.

No, we're saved by the provision of God through the sacrifice is appointed to Christ. And, and so I think, I don't think it's too far of a stretch here if we remember the other times that the that the sacrifice has been consumed by fire to draw a connection to the sacrificial system and a connection to Christ. That there's, there's this, that God is here putting his approval on the sacrificial system approved by Yahweh and an absolute rejection of Baal worship and, and the paganism of this day.

And so again, we see this, this great hope.

Then in verse 40. Verse 40 is the verse that a lot of the commentators wish wasn't in the Bible. Up to this point, everything's cool and all right, God won, and Elijah's this prophet, and the people are gonna turn back to the Lord, and they're all gonna pull out their four spiritual laws, and they're gonna witness to the prophets of Baal. All the prophets of Baal are gonna receive Jesus, and then it's gonna be a happy ending, right?

That's what a lot of the commentators want to see happen. What actually happens, let's read verse 40. Elijah said to them, seize the prophets of Baal. Do not let one of them escape.

And they seize them and Elijah brought them down to the brook of Kishon and executed them there. They're dead. Now that's the way a good, Bronson movie would end, right? Or Clint Eastwood.

That's not the way you expect the story of Elijah to end. We want to see all these guys hear a good Billy Graham message and walk down the aisle. And that's not the way God deals with this. In fact, let me read you a quote of one commentator that's basically apologizing for Elijah.

Let's see if I can read this. Yeah. So this guy is a This is a cool guy, Dale Davis, he's my homeboy. You guys should get every book that he's written.

I'm not, and I'm not kidding. This, this guy's awesome. But he quotes from this guy named Benson, who says this. He says God's servants do not always respond as God planned, but he works with them in any case amidst the superstitions and hatreds of their times.

So Elijah didn't do what God planned, but God still works with Elijah even though he has superstitions and hatred towards this other people group. Is that, is that what the Bible wants us to walk away with from the story? I wanna suggest to you that the problem is not with God, the problem is not with the Bible, the problem's with us, is that we just have no idea how to properly view the judgment of God. And we don't think apostasy is all that bad of a, of a sin.

We really don't think that idolatry and paganism is all that bad. look at like the, you guys can see how many movies I watched because I'm using all these movie illustrations, but, the, Gladiator. You guys ever seen Gladiator? And the main character, Russell Crowe, he's running around with these two little idols of his mom and dad and his or no, his, his wife and his kid, and the way the movie makes you feel about it, it's almost like he's just pulling out pictures of his kid out of his wallet and yeah, there's my children, there's my wife and my kid, and then, he's praying to them.

Again, that's westernism. That is completely not what idol worship was all about. Idol worship was a terrible Terrible thing that put people in slavery and restricted. It was filled with demon worship and stuff like that.

And apostasy, again, think about it, Jeroboam created a false religion that eventually leads to bail worship that has people involved in temple prostitution, rejection of Yahweh entirely, bondage to various forms of bail. each idol, the various idols that they had were localized versions of bail. you had bail, but then every region had its own localized version of bail. Almost like Roman Catholicism has their localized versions of the Virgin Mary.

You guys realize that? So you got the Virgin Mary, but everybody's got their local Virgin Mary like Guadalupe in Mexico, that's the, that's the Virgin Mary for Mexico. She appeared in Mexico as Guadalupe and everybody's got their own little localized Virgin Mary. You've got your localized bail, bail, idols and stuff.

And so, all, what Elijah's doing here, remember, Elijah consistently just does what the Lord tells him to do, right? Lord says, do this, he does it. And so we get to the end of the story, he says, sees the prophets of Baal, these guys who have led us into this bondage and we're gonna execute them according to Deuteronomy 13. We don't have time to go back there, but just go back and read Deuteronomy 13:1 to 5.

And during this time in Israel's history, this is a theocracy. This is not separation of church and state time. During this time of separation of church and state, you and I aren't gonna go around executing prophets of Islam. But if we all lived in a theocracy underneath Israel where it was a violation of the Constitution and a violation of criminal law to be a false prophet and the execution or the, the penalty for that violation was death as it says in Deuteronomy 13, then false prophets were to be killed as a protection mechanism for the whole people of Israel.

Just look what happened. To Israel and its history when they did not practice Deuteronomy 13. And so Elijah's taking them back. when we look at these types of things, we've been so enamored with our pluralistic ideas, the idea that there's many different ways to God, that Christianity, maybe it's not so exclusive, maybe these Native American religions and Buddhists and Hindu, maybe everybody does have a little bit of the truth, and, and, and it's not apostasy isn't so bad.

when we, when we look at these things, we look at these things the way old Russian soldiers would look at a German toilet. Let me tell you what by that. It's an illustration I picked up here recently. In, in the spring of 1945, the Russians were coming in and taking Berlin, and many of the Russian soldiers were peasants.

They came from parts of Russia where they had no idea what indoor plumbing was. They had never seen a toilet. And so they come in to Berlin, which was a very advanced city, right? And they're going into these apartments and houses and seeing this.

White thing and they started peeling their potatoes in it. They were washing their food in it. They were doing everything in the toilets other than what you were supposed to do in the toilets. And meanwhile, they were defecating all over the city and urinating all over the city and some of the, the officers had to go around and try to train these peasant soldiers what a toilet, a German toilet was for.

And just like a, a, a Russian peasant soldier had no idea what they were looking at when they looked at a German toilet, we look at verse 40 in this chapter from our West, from our viewpoint, and we have no idea what to do with it. We want to say, oh, this is a moral problem in the Bible. But if we really were thinking correctly about, there's been this battle going on since the beginning between God and the devil, and the devil is really the one that's behind all false religion and all idolatry as the New Testament tells us, and that the devil is seeking to kill and destroy.

God is not going around trying to fix the, the disease of idolatry with a breath mint.

He is trying to deal with the disease of bale worship with surgery. Getting rid of the profits of bail. And we need to think that way ourselves about sin, about the devil, about the world. Too often, we just think that the world is something to be trifled with.

That the devil's really not all that bad. That apostasy and various religious viewpoints aren't really that big of a deal. Now remember, we do not live in a theocracy in a church state system anymore. Since the rise of the church, Jesus told it told Peter to put away your sword, right?

He lives by the sword, he'll die by the sword. And now we go out and we preach the gospel, and we're willing to suffer for righteousness' sake. We should not be those that are expecting the world's gonna applaud and say, oh, we love you Christians that are trying to bring God back to the culture and trying to, the exclusivity of Jesus Christ makes us so happy. It's not gonna happen.

But we go out, we stand for Christ. We, we worship the God of Elijah, the God of Yahweh, and we're willing to suffer, for his sake. tons to, to learn from this chapter. We're pretty much over time so we're gonna have to bring it to a close.

I'll be up here for questions. the last thing I would encourage you to do though is, is maybe read another chapter forward if you can, just to get a feel for the, I guess the human element of, of, of followers of the Lord. You'll notice that it seems like a lot of the followers of the Lord. have very unique, they're all over the place and their different personalities.

but there's so many of these guys in the Old Testament that are, prone towards, what would you call it, like, Depression. And they're not like running around like happy clappy, Jesus in my heart, we're so happy all the time. It's, it's life is tough. I'm battling with Ahab and Jezebel and Baal worshippers.

I'm tired, Lord, I wanna die. That's what happens in the celebration ceremony after Mount, the Mount Carmel victory. And, and I think there's something we can learn from even that. that, that this life, this side of heaven, there's ups and downs emotionally, there's ups and downs.

We know that God's gonna win, but we're plowing through some tough ground, by the grace of the Lord until we get there, right? A lot of joy, but it's not necessarily, it's not like something's gone wrong because Because we're having bouts of difficulty and depression and, and self-doubt and so on. Does that make sense? So read that, that chapter 19 and see what you guys think.

Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for the instruction of your word and Thank you for just a great chapter. Help us to think your thoughts after you. we, our minds are.

Being renewed by your Spirit as we study your word, but we still have this thing called indwelling sin and And, and we have these old patterns of thinking that are left over from our, our years of not knowing you. And even, even now, Lord, sometimes the world and the devil and the flesh try to break in and influence the way that we think. Help us to believe your word, help us to read it, and like Elijah was saying, help us to follow you. help us to really follow after you.

And we thank you for the examples of even people like Obadiah that Secretly and just within his, his job, within a pagan culture, he's being used of you. And then we have people like Elijah that are going out and being used of you and obeying your word. wherever you have placed each one of us, help us to step out and just be used of you and And Use the gifts you've given us, to stand and, and to be a light. In Christ's name, we pray.

Amen.