The Glorious Name of God

1 Kings 18:22-24 ESV

22 Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. 23 Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. 24 And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.” And all the people answered, “It is well spoken.”

I had a friend growing, who, when he was very young, was named “Alex Allen”, but “Allen” was not the surname of his biological father, it was the surname of his mother. And the reason why his mother decided to give her son her own surname instead of his biological father’s surname is because my friend’s biological father had already, before my friend was born, expressed the fact that he didn’t intend on caring for his son.

But then when my friend was in 5th or 6thgrade, his stepfather adopted him and became his legal father, and so, my friend’s name was now “Alex Griffin”.

Now, like I said, my friend had a biological father who didn’t amount to much and so he was proud to finally have a father that claimed him and gave him his name.

I remember hearing about how he would be sitting in class and the teacher would do roll call, and because the roll call sheet hadn’t been updated, his name was still listed as “Alex Allen”, so, when the teacher would call out what the sheet said his name was, he would just sit there and not say anything. Eventually, the teacher would look at him and say, “Alex, don’t you hear me calling your name?” And he would respond by saying, “My name isn’t Allen, my name is Griffin!”.

I asked him one day, I said, “Why do you get so bent out of shape when the teacher calls you “Allen”? after all, that’s what she has on her sheet.” And he then asked me, “Do you want people to call you by the wrong name?”

It made sense… that wasn’t his name anymore, that wasn’t who he was anymore, and so, he didn’t want to be called by that name anymore. And so, he decided that unless the teacher called him by the right name, he just wasn’t going to respond.

In the narrative that we are working through this month, we come across a pretty similar situation. You see, those who followed after the Lord in Israel and those who followed after Baal in Israel both legitimately believed that they were following after the one true God. But the Lord and Baal are not the same, the one true God has to be one or the other.

Well, at the close of our reading from last week, Elijah had reminded the people who had been assembled on Mount Carmel of this fact. He said, “You can’t follow both the Lord and Baal and act like their both the one true God, you have to choose one!”

Well, the people weren’t quite ready to make a decisive call on that just yet, and so, they just didn’t respond to Elijah’s call for them to decisively choose one.

But though the people would not respond to Elijah’s call, in our reading for today, we are going to see the response that Elijah gives to the people’s non-response.

In other words, he is going to give an answer to their non-answer. He is going to set forth before the people something that will make them take a solid stance in the matter. In our reading last week, Elijah had said that the people had been “limping between” two different opinions, but what Elijah is going to set forth here will cause them to walk straighter than ever before.

He does this first by setting forth the insurmountable odds that he faces in verse twenty-two, where we read him say:

1 Kings 18:22 ESV

22 Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men.

So, we are reminded here of the numerical mismatch. He says that there are 450 prophets of Baal who are present on the mountain, “prophets” who also have the favor of the king, but he says that on the mountain, there is but one prophet of the Lord, that prophet being Elijah himself. He alone “is left” to publicly declare the glory of the Lord on the mountain.

Now, this is stated by Elijah to accentuate the scope of what will inevitably prove to be a great victory for the Lord in the light of overwhelming odds.

You see, it was thought that the more people calling out to God, the more He was to respond. It would kind of be like if I started wearing a really ugly, pink, polka dotted suit coat every Sunday. If one of two people say, “Pastor Nick, that coat is atrocious, you should stop wearing it!” I might ignore it and keep wearing the coast. But if twenty people come to me and say the same thing, I might be tempted to pitch my ugly suit coat in the trash.

And in the same way, it’s almost as though the people thought that their “god” Baal could be convinced to do something if there were a lot of people asking him to do it. You know, if one or two people ask him, then he will probably just ignore the request, but if a number like 450 people ask him, well then, he just has to do what they want him to do.

But Elijah says that he doesn’t need assistance from any but the Lord Himself. This doesn’t mean that if there were other bold worshippers of the Lord on the mountain with him that he wouldn’t appreciate their prayers, but he says, “It’s just me, and I know that God will answer me.”

And so, having reiterated the great odds that he was up against, Elijah then proceeded to set forth the terms of the challenge that he had in mind, first saying in verse twenty-three:

1 Kings 18:23 ESV

23 Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it.

So, the first thing that this makes plain is that the terms of this challenge are entirely in favor of the Baal prophets. Elijah tells the people present, those who he told to decide who they would follow to decide for themselves two bills for this challenge.

What this shows us is that Elijah was clearly not meddling here. He had just told these same people to make up their minds, to stop limping between two opinions and they wouldn’t even respond to him.

These people were clearly not in favor Elijah, but though they were not in favor of Elijah, I’m sure that they desired the favor of the king. So, if these people were to select two bulls for this challenge, one for Elijah and the other for the Baal prophets, they would surely choose with an eye to harm Elijah and favor those who stood on behalf of the king.

But then the odds were stacked even higher against Elijah as we read that when these bulls were selected and then brought forward, not Elijah, but the prophets of Baal were to “choose one bull for themselves”.

And so, there is a numerical mismatch, 450 to 1, he leaves the general selection of the bulls in the challenge to the indecisive people, and then, he even leaves the specific selection of which bull should be used in the challenge by each party to the opposing party. Again, this reveals how Elijah had dramatically stacked the odds against himself.

Then, after laying out the guidelines for the selection of bulls, Elijah goes on to describe what each party was to do with the bulls that they select when he says that each party is to cut up their respective bull into pieces and then lay the flayed pieces of the bull on the wood that they had stacked on their respective altar.

Now, doing something like this would certainly be unusual for us today to do, but this was the typical manner that priests in ancient days would apply when offering sacrifices.

But though that was usual practice in ancient times, the unusual comes into play when Elijah tells the Baal prophets to put no fire to the wood after they put the flayed pieces of bull upon it.

You see, until fire is put to the wood and it burns the flayed pieces of bull, all the pieces of bull are, are flayed pieces of bull, a non-sacrifice. It doesn’t become a sacrifice until it is burned up.

And this is where the real challenge comes into play as we read Elijah say the following in the first part of verse twenty-four of our reading:

1 Kings 18:24a ESV

24a And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.”

Ok, so Elijah tells the Baal prophets that after they place the flayed pieces of bull on the wood, they are to call upon the name of their god, Baal, while he does the same, but calls upon the name of the Lord, Yahweh.

What this indicates is that both Elijah and the prophets of Baal believed that the deity that they worshipped was the one true God, but just like my childhood friend, Alex Griffin, God will not answer to just any old name, no, He will answer only to His name.

So, Elijah says that if God answers to the name, Baal, then that means that Ahab and the Baal prophets were right when they said that Baal is the one true God. But if God answers to the name, Yahweh, then we know that Yahweh is the one true God.

And Elijah says that the way in which the one true God would answer, would be “by fire”. This means that God, when His name is properly called upon, will answer the call by sending fire from heaven and consuming the flayed pieces of animal, turning them, at that point, into a proper sacrifice.

The people present would have recalled the account given in the book of Leviticus when God accepted the offering of Aaron the High Priest, when He sent fire from heaven and consumed the offering. They would have remembered that record and said, “Yes, the one who can perform such an act is clearly God, for He had done that same thing centuries ago.” Furthermore, both Baal and Yahweh claimed to possess the power of fire. Thus, the challenge was that whichever deity was proved to possess the power of fire would be proven to be truly God.

Thus, after Elijah presented what would have seemed to have been a very unfair challenge to himself, he asked the people that he had originally addressed back in verse twenty-one if this demonstration would effectively decide for them what they before could not and would not decide, and they answered, using the very last words of our reading, “it is well spoken”.

What I think we should appreciate most about our reading for today, this historical account is the patience of God, the mercy of God, but most of all, the grace of God.

I think that I can confidently say that none of us have to look far to find an impatient person, all you have to do is find the nearest mirror and you will be looking right at one. We are all naturally impatient people, expecting others to bear long with us, but being quick to get frustrated with others.

Well, I thank God that He is unlike any of us. The people of the northern kingdom of Israel had, for centuries dabbled in idolatry, practiced injustice, and mastered the corrupt art of godlessness. And for centuries, God patiently endured with this people.

And as He patiently endured with this people who had been faithless for so long that they legitimately forgot Who God is, He was merciful to them.

Again, when we think of being merciful, how often are we truly merciful? Sometimes it seems as though we are out looking for opportunities to give someone “what they have coming to them” and tell them how it is. But God had withheld His judgment to this point, being more and more merciful to a faithless people that had long ago abandoned Him for the worship of idols, for worship that would damn them.

But most all, God is most gracious in all of this. He is gracious as He will, later on in this chapter, lovingly put on such a miraculous display of power that the people will have no choice but to acknowledge that Yahweh, the Lord is God indeed!

This is grace, this is love, infinite love, unspeakable love, love that I don’t understand, but love that God brings to people like you and like me and makes us receive it.

He comes to us, and we stand there like one whose fists are clenched, and He pries each one of our fingers back, places His blessing in our hand, and closes our fist once again.

It is a love that you and I are not apt to receive, a love that we don’t naturally submit to or want to receive, but it is a love that He makes His elect receive. Beloved, that is love, that is grace!

Amen?