Fallen Hard

1 Kings 18:25-29 ESV

25 Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” 26 And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. 27 And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” 28 And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. 29 And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.

Something that I think all of us have realized throughout our lives is that sometimes the only way that we learn certain things is by learning them the hard way. But the good thing about learning things the hard way is that after the fact, we don’t really want to do what made us learn the hard way anymore. And if we do repeat what we did before, well, I guess it just shows that we didn’t learn after all, and thus, we are in need of another hard lesson.

I have learned this lesson on several occasions, and indeed continue to learn this lesson myself. But there is one particular occasion that I vividly remember when I was insistent on learning something the hard way and how my dad had let me learn the hard way.

You see, from a very young age, like sixteen years old, I and everyone around me knew that I had a serious drinking problem. My buddies would drink with me, but it would always seem like once they had enough for the night, I was just getting started.

I was feeling the consequences of my choices very quickly and by the time that I was eighteen years old, I knew that drinking was just out of the cards for me, that I simply could not drink responsibly. And so, I quit.

I didn’t drink for about a year when I started thinking that I was probably missing out on a lot of fun since I didn’t drink anymore, and so, I was back off to the races.

I had moved back in with my parents not long before this, and they could tell right away that I was drinking again. My dad told me that if I wanted to live at home with him and mom, I couldn’t be drinking.

But I thought, “I’m just getting started again! And it’s really fun!” So, tearfully, I hugged my dad and told him that I still needed to learn some hard lessons before I was ready to quit, and thus, I was out of the house again and moving from place to place, typically not the nicest places, and it wasn’t until five years later that I had my eyes opened and could see just how far I had fallen. And once I saw how bad things had gotten, I was finally ready for a real and permanent change.

In our reading for today, what we are going to see is how the people of the northern Kingdom of Israel had found themselves in a similar spot, how they find themselves learning the hard way just how bad things had gotten for them and realizing that it is no one’s fault but their own.

Now, we need to remember the setting taking place here. Israel had fallen deep and dark into heresy, haven fully given themselves over to idolatry for generations now. And back in verse twenty-one of this chapter, we remember how Elijah had told the people that they couldn’t keep limping between two deities, that either Baal is God or Yahweh is God, and they needed to decide for themselves which one they would follow. But the people wouldn’t give him an answer.

It was kind of like the situation with my dad and I, I just hadn’t learned hard enough yet, and apparently that was the situation with the people of Israel at this juncture, but after what takes place in our reading for today, they are going to see firsthand just how bad things had gotten for them.

So, last week we had read of how Elijah had issued the challenge to the Baal prophets, for them to handpick one of two bulls that would be selected by “all the people” and then cut that bull in pieces and lay it on the stacked wood that they had placed on the altar and pray to Baal to send fire from heaven to consume the offering.

And so, having presented the rules of the challenge, we then read what is written in verse twenty-five of our reading, which says:

1 Kings 18:25 ESV

25 Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your god, but put no fire to it.”

So, again, Elijah gives the Baal prophets the first choice as he said he would give them back in verse twenty-three. And the reason why Elijah says he gives them the first choice is because they “are many”.

Again, this shows the numerical mismatch between the two parties; 450 Baal prophets against one prophet of Yahweh. And so, Elijah says that because they are many, they have reserved the right to first selection, almost like how the team with the best record will receive the first seed in a tournament. And again, he tells them to place the bull upon the wood without setting fire to it.

Now, this probably seemed like an easy challenge for the Baal prophets or at least it must have seemed like an easy challenge to the people who watched on as they received these prophets not only received first choice, but they were also many and thus offered a multitude of voices, and of course, they believed Baal to be the god who had power over fire, so they likely thought that this would be a walk in park.

But as we proceed to verse twenty-six, we see that it wasn’t really as easy as they likely thought it would be. We’re actually going to look at like the first two-thirds of verse twenty-six for now, which reads:

1 Kings 18:26a ESV

26a And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered.

So, the Baal prophets did as they were directed, they prepared the bull, laid it on the wood, and called upon the name of their god, Baal. In fact, they didn’t let up, all morning long they called out to their “god”, pleading for him to rain fire from heaven and consume the offering that they were presenting to him.

But it didn’t matter how long or how fervently they called out, for, despite their best efforts, they received no response. They received no answer. No fire came from Baal… it was almost like they were calling out to a god that is not truly God. It was almost like they were calling out to nothing.

But again, they would not be deterred, and so, they continued, as we read there in the very last line of verse twenty-six, which reads:

1 Kings 18:26b ESV

26b And they limped around the altar that they had made.

This “limping” that is spoken of is in reference to doing what we might consider to be like a ritualistic dance, almost like a rain dance that Native Americans would perform for their “gods”.

So, essentially, they said, “if Baal isn’t going to answer through our verbal pleas, maybe we can convince him if we dance for him!”.

Now, Elijah had sat silently through all of this all morning long, but then eventually he spoke to how ridiculous all of this was in verse twenty-seven, which reads:

1 Kings 18:27 ESV

27 And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

So, at noontime, after the morning had passed with the Baal prophets verbally pleading and ritualistically dancing to no avail, Elijah began to mock them.

“To mock” in this instance, indicates that Elijah made sport of, mimicked and ridiculed the very things that the Baal prophets were doing. So, at this point, Elijah likely starting derisively “limping” as the false prophets had been doing and probably even derisively repeating their phrases.

And as we continue in this verse, we see some of the ways that Elijah had mocked the false prophets, first, by saying, “cry aloud, for he is a god”. In saying this, Elijah is saying that if Baal is not only a god but indeed the God as these prophets claimed, then surely he can hear these pleas if they would just cry loud enough, and so, he encourages them to keep crying and to do it even louder.

He then goes on to mockingly “encourage” the Baal prophets to continue in their crying and pleading by offering what he says may be some reasons as to why Baal is not hearing and responding to the cries of his prophets, using actual theological beliefs held by those who worshipped Baal, by saying first that perhaps, “he is musing”.

To say that Baal is “musing” means that perhaps he is deep in thought. And so, Elijah says, “Maybe Baal is so deep in thought that he doesn’t notice the cries of his prophets”, so he encourages them to cry even louder so that he can “snap out of it””.

But he also goes on to tell the Baal prophets that it may not even be that Baal is deep in thought, he says that it may be that Baal is relieving himself.

When the text speaks of Baal “relieving himself” it literally means “on the toilet”. So, he mockingly says that the reason why Baal isn’t answering could be because he is in a private setting, on the toilet, so they just need to be patient and persist until he proverbially “gets off the pot”.

Elijah also says that it’s possible that Baal “is on a journey”, you know, out visiting family and friends, other “gods” some other place, and so, they just need to wait for his return.

And lastly, Elijah says that perhaps even Baal “is asleep and must be awakened”, that maybe they just need to cry louder and louder so that they can rouse him from his slumber.

It’s all so absurd, and that is the grand point of the mockery that Elijah had made of Baal and his prophets, to show the absurdity of following after such a worthless idol, one who could do nothing for them, and one who even according to its followers’ theology, show that he is so less god-like than the eternal God of Israel.

The Baal prophets knew that Elijah was mocking them, their god, and their theological beliefs, they still didn’t stop.

We read in verse twenty-eight:

1 Kings 18:28 ESV

28 And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them.

It was the custom and practice of those who worshipped Baal to offer human blood to their god, especially when it seemed like he wasn’t answering their prayers. Disgustingly, Baal theologians believed that their “god” was most pleased with human blood, human sacrifice, and so, when they really wanted to get his attention, they would cut themselves, make themselves bleed and have their own blood mingle with the blood of the offering that had been made.

And so, because pleading to Baal didn’t work, because limping around the altar, performing a ritualistic dance didn’t work, they hoped that offering human blood would work. This reveals just how far Israel had fallen as they participated in sick and disgusting forms of “worship”.

And they kept going, verse twenty-nine tells us, they kept up with their raving like lunatics until “the time of the offering of the oblation” that is, until around 3pm our time.

So, from early morning until the afternoon, the raving and the lunacy did not cease, showing that they had all the time that they could possibly desire to have Baal perform what they had requested. But alas! “there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention”.

There was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention, why? Why didn’t Baal answer his prophets? Because we didn’t have the power to answer his prophets. He didn’t answer because he isn’t God.

You see, if Baal really is a “god”, what that means is that Baal is a demonic spirit masquerading as the one true God. And so, if Baal, the demonic spirit is able to do anything, it’s because the God of Israel gives him power to do so. Baal has no inherent power residing in him, no one and no thing has inherent power residing in them, you know why? Because power is inherent, originates in God alone.

Therefore, in this narrative, it is clearly seen by all that if Baal possesses any power at all, it is borrowed power from a God greater than he, showing to all that Baal is not God.

How far they had fallen… they took the glory that belongs to God alone and exchanged it for a non-God. That would be like treating me like the president, but on an infinitely greater scale. I don’t have the power and the authority that the president has and treating me like I do won’t give me the power and authority that the president possesses. And so, treating me like I do would be pretty ridiculous.

And Baal most certainly doesn’t have the power and authority of God Almighty, and Israel treating him like he does doesn’t give him the power and authority that belongs to God alone. And so, treating him like he does is infinitely ridiculous.

This is the sad state of the fallen human race; apart from the gracious intervention of God, we will always take the glory that belongs to God and exchange it for what is not God. We will pursue that thing, whatever it may be as if it is God. But of course, nothing but God can be God.

Alas! This is the pitifully woeful state that our society is in today. Our society has rejected the Godhood of God, it has said to God, “We don’t want You! We don’t want you in our schools, in our workplace, in our morals!” alas! many times many have even said, “We don’t want You in our churches!”. How far we have fallen!

May God send an awakening to this land once again!