Transcript
So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him; and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
Then it happened, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, “Is that you, O troubler of Israel?”
And he answered, “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 on Mount Carmel, the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”
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 falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people answered him not a word. Then Elijah said to the people, “I alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Therefore let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, 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 the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God.”
So all the people answered and said, “It is well spoken.”
Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one bull for yourselves and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it.”
So they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying, “O Baal, hear us!” But there was no voice; no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar which they had made.
And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention.
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. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Israel shall be your name.” Then with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord; and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two seahs of seed. And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, “Fill four waterpots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.” Then he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time; and he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar; and he also filled the trench with water.
And it came to pass, at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, “Lord 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 this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”
Then the fire of the Lord fell 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, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”
And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there.
Then Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink; for there is the sound of abundance of rain.” So Ahab went up to eat and drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; then he bowed down on the ground, and put his face between his knees, and said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.”
So he went up and looked, and said, “There is nothing.” And seven times he said, “Go again.”
Then it came to pass the seventh time, that he said, “There is a cloud, as small as a man’s hand, rising out of the sea!” So he said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot, and go down before the rain stops you.’ ”
Now it happened in the meantime that the sky became black with clouds and wind, and there was a heavy rain. So Ahab rode away and went to Jezreel. Then the hand of the Lord came upon Elijah; and he girded up his loins and ran ahead of Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.
During World War Two, when British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery came to Africa to take command of the British forces in Africa, he came into a very bad situation. Because the British were being soundly defeated by a very skillful German general by the name of Rommel.
And Rommel was so skillful at desert warfare that he had in fact gotten the name the Desert Fox. And it appeared that it would only be a matter of time before the Germans would drive the British soldiers and how they out of Africa.
Shortly after his arrival, Field Marshal Montgomery was in the company of another British general by the name of General Lord Ismay. And Montgomery made this remark. He said, “It’s very sad that a man can reach the peak of his generalship and then suffer such a serious reverse that it ruins his career.”
And General Lord Ismay said, “Don’t be depressed. It may be that you will win through.”
To which Montgomery replied, “My dear fellow, I was not talking about myself. I was talking about Rommel.”
And would you believe it? That under the leadership of Field Marshal Montgomery the British scored a victory, defeated the Germans in Africa.
And I probably don’t need to tell you, do I, that one of the keys to successful warfare, whether we are talking about physical warfare or whether we’re talking about spiritual warfare, now one of the keys to successful warfare is courage and confidence. Courage and confidence.
And I’m going to suggest today that courage and confidence are very critical to you and me because we’re all engaged in the spiritual warfare of the Christian life.
Now in studying First Kings 18 we’ve already met one guy who didn’t have much courage. In fact I would call him one of the chief scaredy-cats of the Bible. You’ll remember him. He was Obadiah. He was in charge of Ahab’s household.
And when Elijah suddenly appeared to him and told him to go bring Ahab because you because assure himself to Ahab, Obadiah said, “No, no, no, no, no. I can’t do that because as soon as I leave you the Lord will snatch you away. And then when I bring Ahab here he won’t find you and that’ll be the end of it for me.”
Now as a matter of fact I happen to think that one of the reasons that God allowed Elijah to encounter Obadiah before the remainder of the incidents of this chapter is that in Obadiah Elijah saw once again the folly of being fearful instead of trusting the Lord.
And I’m going to suggest to you that in the story that follows, which is for most of us a very familiar story particularly if you grew up in Sunday school, and it is certainly one of the most famous stories of the Bible, but in this story we have one of the most outstanding examples of courage and confidence that you will find anywhere in the Word of God.
As you know eventually he persuaded Obadiah to go and get Ahab. And remember that Ahab is the king with the power of life and death.
And when Ahab comes on the scene he doesn’t exactly overflow with courtesy or grace. He says, “Is that you, O troubler of Israel?”
And Elijah is not exactly deferential to King Ahab because Elijah replied, “I haven’t troubled Israel. You’re the one who has troubled Israel because you’ve forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you’ve served the Baals.”
And then as if that were not enough he said, “Now I’m what I want you to do is gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel and be sure that the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of the goddess Asherah are there as well.”
Now if you or I had been standing next to Elijah at this moment we might have leaned over to him and whispered, “Elijah, don’t dig yourself into too deep a hole. You’re one man, right? And you are making sure that there would be eight hundred and fifty pagan prophets at this gathering. All of them hate everything you stand for.”
But of course Ahab goes ahead and does what Elijah requests. After all it’s been three and a half years since there’s been any rain and Ahab probably feels he’s got to humor this guy hoping that they get some rain.
And so all Israel assembles on Mount Carmel including the prophets of Baal and Asherah. And Elijah is not lacking in courage with the whole crowd there.
Elijah this morning, or you said one of the chief fears that people have is standing up in front of an audience and speaking. As I do as the parent they not one of those who was deeply afflicted by that fear. So he stands up in front of the nation of Israel and all of these pagan prophets and Ahab.
And he says, “How long are you going to falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him. And if Baal is God, follow him.”
How is it possible to get much bolder than that? And please notice there are no loud amens from the audience. No one says hallelujah. No one says, “Preach it.” And Elijah preach it.
The Bible says the people answered him not a word.
And then Elijah says, “I’m going to throw out a challenge. I’m just one prophet and there are four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal.” And he throws out the challenge that both sides should take an ox and they should place it on wood and on an altar presumably. And then they should pray to their God to bring down fire to consume the sacrifice.
And so he says, “Whichever God answers by fire, let Him be God. He’s the God that you should be worshipping.”
And this time the people at least expressed their approval of the idea. They said, “It is well spoken. Go for it. Go for it.”
And so Elijah goes for it. And in his confidence he says to the prophets of Baal, “You go first.”
So the prophets of Baal kill their sacrifice, place it on the wood. This is early morning now. And they began to cry out, “Baal, Baal, hear us!”
They don’t hear us. And the morning runs on and on and on and nothing happens. They began to dance around their altar.
And finally at noon, my honey at noon, Elijah cried, “Now I mean he’s a god, isn’t he? Maybe he’s meditating or maybe he’s just busy. He could be away on a journey or he might be asleep and you need to wake him up.”
And if we’re standing there with Elijah we’re going to lean over to each other and say, “Careful, Elijah, careful. Did you notice that all these men have knives? There are four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal who are frustrated because they have yelled and screeched and danced around there all morning long. You’re going to mock them, make fun of them? Careful, careful, careful.”
But of course we know why Elijah is doing that. As in other places in the Bible he is mocking the folly of idol worship, worshipping gods that can’t see, they can’t hear, they can’t stretch out their hand, they can’t do anything for their worshiper.
Well they didn’t turn their knives on Elijah. They turned their knives on themselves. So this must have been part of their ritual. And they begin to cut themselves and the blood is gushing out of these prophets of Baal.
And they keep up this commotion until that’s just about time for the evening sacrifice, standard time at the temple in Jerusalem. We’re approaching probably somewhere around six o’clock.
And the Bible’s comment on this is very precise and definite. The Bible says, “But there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention.”
There was nobody there for Baal was a false god.
Now it’s Elijah’s turn. And Elijah finds twelve stones. Apparently there had been an altar to God on Mount Carmel that was broken down. And he reconstructs the altar with twelve stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel.
He cuts up his ox and places it on the wood on top of the altar. And then this is odd. He takes a trench around the altar which the Bible says was capable of containing two seahs of seed of grain.
See, now that comes out in measurements that we can understand to something over four point three bushels. So this was not just a shallow trench. This was a fairly sizable trench.
And then after he’s got the trench dug and after he’s got the animal on the altar he turns to some men and he says, “Fill four water pots with water and bring them here and pour them on the sacrifice.”
And if we’re standing there we’re going, “What do you think you’re doing? I mean if you do get fire down from heaven it won’t burn up the sacrifice. So it’ll look like a defeat even if it’s a victory. What do you think you’re doing pouring water all over your sacrifice?”
But the four pitchers are poured out. And then Elijah says, “Go do it again.” Break your record. Go do it again. And they pour out four more times.
Now Elijah says, “Do it again.” And by this time, folks, the sacrifice is as wet as it can be. The wood is absolutely wet. The altar is wet. And the trench around the altar is filled with water.
Now I ask you, is Elijah courageous? Is he confident that God is going to respond to him?
Don’t you see what we have here is a marvelous demonstration of a man standing all by himself confronting a nation, a hostile king, eight hundred and fifty hostile prophets, and putting himself in the least probable position by pouring water all over his sacrifice?
This is a man who has not only courage but the courage that comes from confidence in God.
And the question that I want to ask at this point in my talk is, do we have that kind of courage?
If you happen to be the only person down in your office or maybe in your classroom who is willing to speak up for God, do you do it? Or do you kind of retreat and say, “Well nobody is interested in that. Never mind. They’ll kind of look at me strange if I do it.”
If you are the only member of your family who’s really committed to following the Lord, maybe your spouse is not sympathetic, maybe your kids don’t respond, do you kind of back off? Or do you say to yourself, “I’m going to stand for the Lord even if no one else does. If I’m the only member of this family I’m going to do what the Lord wants me to do even if I’m the only one who does it.”
And how about us as a church? It’s easy for us to be bold and courageous if the church is rapidly growing. We’re seeing great big crowds in the morning meetings and all of these things. But how about when the crowds fall off? How about when some of the people seem to drift away from the Lord? Are we kind of discouraged? Do we feel like throwing in the towel? Or are we committed to courageously stand for the Lord even if everybody else leaves?
We want to stand there for God and we have confidence that God will hear and answer prayer.
I think possibly because Elijah was a prophet we tend to dismiss the fact that he’s as courageous as this. But remember that the book of James tells us that Elijah was a man of feelings like ourselves.
If this is not a situation in which a guy could get scared I don’t know what situation there would be in which Elijah could get scared.
And Elijah has confidence in God. And of course it paid off.
And what I think is impressive is that you know Elijah doesn’t have to scream and scream like the prophets of Baal. He doesn’t have to dance around the altar like they did. He doesn’t have to take a knife and cut himself trying to persuade God to listen to him.
He says, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel, that I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word.
Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”
Very simple, very direct, very basic prayer.
And then what happened? The power of God falls on the sacrifice and consumes the sacrifice. And then it consumes the wood, wet wood that was under the sacrifice. And then it consumes the stones with which the altar had been built. And then it licks up all of the water in the trench.
God came through. He did because Elijah had confidence that he would.
And the result of this is a spiritual miracle in Israel because the nation, the people who represent the nation there, fall on their faces and they say, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”
And Elijah seizes the opportunity to carry out a command that is given in the book of Deuteronomy. And he sees to it that the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal are taken down to the brook Kishon and executed in accordance with the Word of God.
A marvelous and spectacular triumph. But there’s still one problem, folks. The fire of God has fallen. But we need rain, right? We need rain.
And so after the prophets of Baal are all executed Elijah says to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink.” Apparently they had made plans for Ahab and his party to eat up somewhere on the slopes of Mount Carmel. It was not uncommon to have an outdoor feast like this apparently.
And he says to Ahab, “Go eat and drink.” And then Elijah goes up into Mount Carmel.
And notice here, folks, he does something when he’s by himself but he didn’t do in the presence of the nation of Israel. He falls down on his face on the ground and he puts his head between his knees.
In the presence of the children of Israel he is bold and courageous and calls after God. But in the privacy of his private prayer to God here he is deeply humbled.
I want to suggest to you that the secret of boldness in front of men is humility in the presence of God. Remember that the Bible says, “God resists the proud but He gives grace to the humble.”
And if we go into the presence of God with a lot of self-confidence and pride and a high opinion of ourselves we’re probably going to come out with not very much.
But now Elijah is in the presence of God and he is on his face and his head is between his knees. And he says to his servant, who is apparently the only one with him, he says, “Go up and look out toward the sea.”
So the servant goes to a spot on Mount Carmel where he can look out over the Mediterranean Sea which is the direction from which they would expect rain to come. He goes out and he looks over the Mediterranean Sea. And then he comes back to Elijah and he says, “There is nothing.”
And Elijah says, “Go again.” And Elijah continues to pray. When the servant goes up he looks out and as you can tell from the passage he came back and said, “There is nothing.” When Elijah says, “Go again,” he goes up, looks out, comes back. There is nothing.
Six times, folks, Elijah prays. Six times the servant goes to look for some sign that God is hearing the prayer. And six times his response is, “There is nothing.”
Do you see the remarkable contrast here between the prayer that Elijah prayed in public and the prayer he prays in private? He stands up before the children of Israel. He says, “Lord, be made with fire.” Fire falls.
But now on Mount Carmel he says, “Lord, hear me.” And the servant keeps coming back and saying, “Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
May I suggest to you that there are two ways that God responds to prayer. I’ve been around a long time and I have known the Lord for in excess of fifty years. And I can honestly say to you that there have been many times when I have prayed to God where the answer came with stunning quickness. Big things, little things, but quickly, quickly, quickly.
But God doesn’t do that all the time. We would like Him to. That’s the way we want our prayers answered. But there are many other prayers that I have prayed over the years and prayed for years and years and years before they were answered.
And I want to suggest to you this afternoon that part of having courage and confidence in God is not just simply the ability to believe that He will answer prayer but the ability to believe that He will fulfill His word even when we’re looking for the answer and we see nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Elijah was a man who could pray both kinds of prayer. But the seventh time he sends his servant up. And his servant came back and said, “Well it ain’t much but there’s a little old cloud on the horizon about as big as a man’s hand.”
And the servant is probably thinking, “For what?” And Elijah says to Ahab, “Get in your chariot and get down to Jezreel before the rain won’t stop you.”
And by the time that Ahab is in his chariot the sky is dark with clouds and the wind is blowing furiously. And Ahab has to take off at the highest possible rate of speed to get to Jezreel to avoid the storm.
And then something very remarkable happened. Here is this prophet of God and he hasn’t exactly been doing races like Bob does over here. He hasn’t done the marathon recently.
And now the hand of the Lord comes upon him and he runs down the slope at a faster rate of speed than the chariot that is carrying Ahab. And he beats Ahab to Jezreel.
You know I’m reminded that the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 12, “Therefore, laying aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of God.”
The Bible presents the Christian life as a race. And I want to suggest this to you. That it is the Christian who has the courage to stand up for God, it is the Christian who has confidence that God will answer his prayers even when those prayers are delayed, it is that Christian who runs the Christian race at the fastest rate of speed.
You see the secret to spiritual warfare, the secret of the Christian race, are courage based on confidence in the Word of God.
I told you earlier about Field Marshal Montgomery and how he took over an army that appeared to be on its last legs. And one day he was in the headquarters and he saw an officer working on some plans. And so Montgomery asked what these plans were for.
And the officer said, “Plans for retreat.”
Plans for retreat. Montgomery said, “Tear them up. We’re going to advance.” And advance is what he did.
I’m wondering as I close this talk if you have any plans for retreat. Is there an area of your life that is very frustrating and you’ve been struggling with it for a long time? It doesn’t seem as if God will ever give you the victory over that. Are you planning to give up? You’re planning to retreat?
Are there prayers that you’ve been praying for many, many years that you can’t tell that God has done hardly anything at all? Are you planning to give up? Planning to retreat?
As a church we’re going through a fairly difficult time I think right now. The attendance is not what it used to be. You see some people leaving. Do we have plans to give up? We have plans for retreat?
Or are we determined under the leadership of Jesus Christ to advance with the fullest and firmest confidence in Him?
Remember the words of the songwriter: “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never sound retreat. He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Be swift, my soul, answer and be jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on.”
All right, question.