20.4.12a - 1 Kings 18 - The Lord, He Is God

Why doesn’t God answer our prayers? Today we are going to be looking at the most famous story of Elijah’s. This is an epic showdown between Baal and Yahweh found in 1 Kings 18. This battle answers the question, “Why doesn’t God answer our prayers?” It doesn't totally answer that question, but it begins to answer it. Next Sunday, we will see how Chapter 19 continues to answer this question, but today we are going to see the first reason.

In 1 Kings 18:1, Elijah is told by God that it is time for the drought to end. So God commands Elijah to go and speak to Ahab. Elijah goes to the servant of Ahab, Obadiah, who is a devout man and tells him to bring Ahab to him. After some reluctance, Obadiah agrees to bring Ahab to this place and they meet in 18:17. Listen to the conversation...

1 Kings 18:17--20 (ESV) --- 17 When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?” 18 And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. 19 Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.” 20 So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel.

Troubler of Israel

Notice how Ahab is accusing Elijah of bringing about all of this trouble for Israel. This is typical of how people react when things don’t work out the way they think that it should. We start to cast blame. It’s what we do. Elijah is the trouble maker because he pronounced a curse against Ahab and Israel. It is all Elijah’s fault. He has offended Baal, and now Baal won’t send anymore rain down. This is why Ahab has been trying to kill Elijah. He thought that the death of the offender would result in the return of Baal and her rain. This is the scenario that Ahab has worked out in his head. But this is not nearly the truth.

Elijah looks at Ahab and tells him the truth. He says, “You are the trouble maker. You are the one who has abandoned the commandments of the Lord to follow the Baals.” Elijah calls Ahab out for his apostasy. It is interesting that Elijah did not say this back in Chapter 17. He just let Ahab stew over the curse for 3.5 years. Now, he approaches him and they each share their point of view. Which one is true? Which god has caused this drought? Elijah tells Ahab to gather the prophets together at Carmel so that they can find out.

The Battle Of “gods”

This is going to be the closest thing to a blockbuster fight that we have seen since David and Goliath. In this corner we have 850 prophets belonging to Baal and Asherah and in the other corner we have Elijah and the Lord, Yahweh. All of Israel comes to witness this event, so there are literally thousands in attendance. Everyone is invested in this. They are ready for the death of those responsible for this drought. Elijah comes near to Israel and makes a speech.

1 Kings 18:21--24 (ESV) --- 21 And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word. 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.”

Elijah is extremely outnumbered, but he challenges them to a match to see whose God can bring down fire and consume the sacrifices. This sounds good to them. Elijah even gives them first crack at it since they have so many people. The assumption is that this should be easy and quick for you to do, if your god is able. This seems to be a sudden death match up, with the first god to produce fire being called the ultimate god everyone should worship.

Crying For Baal

So they start to set up their sacrifice and they build their alter. Then, they call on the name of Baal from morning until noon that day saying, “O Baal, answer us.”

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.”

This has to be one of the funniest passages in scripture. You can just imagine these 850 men spending hours calling out to Baal expecting him to answer and prove himself before all of Israel. This shows that they are not trying to pull one over on the people or that they know Ahab will kill them if they don’t try. But it seems like they really believe that Baal will set that sacrifice on fire. Then, Elijah starts taunting them by coming up with excuses for them. If he really is a god, he must be busy. If he is a god, he must be on a journey, asleep, or relieving himself. Not all translations put that in there, but that is what the Hebrew idiom meant. Elijah tells them to cry louder and they respond by crying louder and cutting themselves so that blood runs down them. It starts to get graphic and they start to get desperate. Nothing happens. There is no sound. There is no voice. There is no fire.

Calling On The Lord

Elijah calls all of the people to him and repairs the altar of the Lord in front of them with the 12 stones that represented Israel. Then, he added the wood and made a trench around the altar. He had men bring in 12 jars of water to pour on the sacrifice and fill the trench.

1 Kings 18:36--40 (ESV) --- 36 And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. 37 Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” 38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. 39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.” 40 And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.” And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there.

God is responding to this prayer battle to show his ability to everyone. After this, Elijah prays for rain and it rains. The drought is ended.

What Do We Learn?

Understanding the purpose behind this story is not difficult. This is a prayer battle. This is an attempt to settle once and for all time the challenge of God’s opponents. Elijah starts by asking the people, “How long will you ride the fence?” They are assuming that it is better to be neutral than to make up their mind and pick a god to worship. This is the story of our society today. America has returned to an idea that is centuries old, thinking that it is a modern idea. Our society says, “We can worship all of the gods out there. Just pick whichever one you like and worship it. They are all the same and we are all going to the same place by worshipping them.” They don’t realize that they are actually delusional. All religions cannot be true because all religions profess different theologies and different ideologies.

Someone who says that all of the religions are basically the same is lazy, disrespectful, and emotionally violent. They are trying to say that they know better than everyone else and that their religion, which blends the things they like in all religions, is the only one that makes sense. They are acting like choosing a religion is just like choosing your favorite flavor of ice cream because there is no absolute truth. It’s all relative. So many people believe in relativism without even realizing it. But relativism contradicts itself. Saying that all truth is relative and that there is no absolute truths is an absolute statement professing to be true. Saying that all religions are true can’t hold up because my religion says all religions aren’t true. Being neutral and accepting all is neglecting to get into the details of religion. It is lazy, disrespectful, and emotionally violent. We are not doing the dirty work of finding out what is true and what is false.

So, Elijah is calling for the people of Israel to make up their mind on who to serve. He wants them to stop being lazy, disrespectful, and emotionally violent. They need to recognize that God is not malleable and able to fit into whatever we want him to fit into. We must conform to his ways, he does not conform to ours. But they are unwilling to do that. Why? Why did they ever leave the Lord to worship ba’al in the first place?

Ba’al Is A Spiritual Lord

The word ba’al is a word that actually means spiritual lord. There was a beauty ba’al, a military ba’al, a rain ba’al, a party ba’al, a fortress ba’al (Asherah) and many others. The people would worship anything and call it their god. We might think this is primitive, but they were just willing to recognize and describe what they were doing. We don’t call anything our spiritual lord. We do not call anything our ba’al. But do we have any spiritual lords? Do we cry out for those ba’als to provide us with what we desire most? I think we all do this.

What are we are praying for and why are we praying for it? When we want something really badly we pray for it. We call out to God with faith, confessing our sins, remembering his promises, and we may even thank him ahead of time because we are so sure that he will give us what we want. We follow all of the rules to have an acceptable prayer. We may even make promises to stop sinning in this area or that if he will just give us what we want. We do our little dance expecting God to hear our prayers and give us whatever we ask of him. But that god is on a journey. He must be distracted, asleep, or relieving himself. He does not give us what we want so badly. We have to have whatever this is. We have to have good health, we have to have a marriage partner, we have to have children, or we have to have a successful job. We have to have enough rain to fill our land and make us wealthy. Fill in the blank. If we do not have this one thing, our god has failed us.

We are dancing for those lords to give us what we want. We are not focused on God’s glory. I think we do this little dance to our destruction. We try to follow all of rules on raising children, but our children do not turn our right. We try to follow all of the rules on marriage and our marriages don’t turn out right. We try to follow all of the rules on our job and we still do not succeed. We are dancing for our god to hear us. Dancing is a way to get our god to do what we want him to do. But our dancing does not work.

When dancing doesn’t work, we start cutting ourselves. We can’t seem to get over our prayers not being answered. So what do we do? We hate ourselves. We do things to hurt ourselves. Losing a boyfriend or a girlfriend should not result in suicide. Losing a child should not result in abandoning your spouse. When we can’t seem to get over our prayers not being answered, we let it have the spiritual authority over our life. It is not just a good thing that I would enjoy and look forward to, it is the ultimate thing. It is my ba’al. If it fails, we hate ourselves and we slash ourselves. Whether God gives these things to us or not, he is still in control and he still loves us. We have to see this, admit that we are doing this, and get passed loving these spiritual lords. We have to determine that we are going to worship God and find satisfaction in him whether these prayers come true or not.

God Is The Spiritual Lord

At the end of this story we see that God sends down fire, but he doesn’t send down fire to destroy the people. He could have. He could have roasted them because we all know that they deserved it for their idolatry. But God doesn’t send the fire down on the people. He accepts the sacrifice. He doesn’t ask for the blood of his prophet or the blood of the people. He accepts the blood of the bull. In the New Testament we read that the blood of bulls and goats has never been sufficient to take away sins (Heb 10:4). But there was blood that was offered on their behalf and ours 800 years later. We have all fallen into the same kinds of traps as these Israelites, but God has given an ultimate sacrifice that is supposed to turn our hearts to him. God is now expecting us to make him our ultimate. We don’t need a wife, husband, children, successful careers, good health, or even freedom to be content and blessed in this life. We can suffer the loss of everything and still be blessed because the love of God fills us.

How Do We Serve God Alone?

So when we pray and we find that God has not given us what we ask for, we need to evaluate who is our spiritual lord as we pray. This story says that when we pray to God and also worship ba’al we are making a grave mistake and we need to choose the Lord because He is God. That is what the people conclude at the end of the battle and that is what we must conclude as well. We must evaluate our hearts greatest desire. What kind of man was Elijah? Elijah was a man who was single minded. He was solely focused on the Lord and his glory. Listen to another thing that James said...

James 4:1--7 (ESV) --- 1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

The problem James points out throughout his letter is being double minded. We don’t feel like we are worshipping other gods, but we are. We have passions at war within us and we get upset about unanswered prayers so we pursue those passions more. We hurt ourselves and those around us while being unfaithful to God. God is jealous over our hearts. We have been focusing in on James 5 where James says that Elijah was a man like us and God heard his prayers. Now we start to get a little insight into what he means. Elijah put his faith, his hope, and his trust in the Lord for all that he needed to survive.

Conclusion

The point of Elijah’s drought and his contest was to turn the heart of the people back to God and it seems to work, but not for long. They will return to pursuing beauty, success, security, fulfillment, and happiness as their spiritual lords once things go back to normal. It is what they always do. They will continue in spiritual adultery and double mindedness. But the fact remains, only one god is living and active and able to bring down fire from heaven or come to earth to suffer and die for us all. Ba’al couldn’t do that and neither can anything else we put our trust in today. Our spouses cannot provide us with what we need in this life or in the life to come. Our children, our jobs, and our possessions are all just as temporary as we are. Don’t worship them or rely on them for satisfaction. Rely on God. How long will we ride the fence? Put your trust in God.