Elijah and the Prophets of Baal
Scott Bayles
First Christian Church
The movie To Save A Life opens in theatres next week. It’s a co-production of New Song Community Church and Outreach, Inc. that focuses on a high school student named Jake Taylor. Jake has it all—friends, fame, a basketball scholarship, and the hottest girlfriend in school—until an old, unpopular friend from his childhood walks onto campus with a gun in his hand and pain in his heart and shoots himself in front of his classmates. In the wake of the tragedy, Jake begins to question what he wants his life to be about. He starts seeing life differently and making choices that cost him his friends, his girl, his reputation and his popularity. Jake learns that it isn’t easy to go against the crowd; it’s hard to do the right thing and make the right decisions when everyone else is making the wrong ones.
The prophet Elijah knew all about that.
Once, a long, long time ago, an evil king came into power over God’s people—the nation of Israel. His name was Ahab, like the obsessive Captain from Moby Dick, and the Bible says, “Ahab…did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him” (1 Kings 16:30 NIV). The Message calls him a “new champion of evil!” First, he seduced the people of Israel into worshipping false gods and then made it his personal mission to stamp out any remnant of genuine faith left among God’s people. He hunted, tracked, and slaughtered every prophet of the one true God. On the run, hiding in caves, afraid for their lives, Ahab eventually killed them all—all but one, that is. Enter Elijah.
Elijah was the last prophet of God left in the Eastern world. Obadiah, a servant of King Ahab even told Elijah, “The king has searched every nation and kingdom on earth from end to end to find you” (1 Kings 18:10 NLT). He even threatened the kings of other nations that might have been harboring or hiding Elijah, but God continued to protect his last prophet. He never allowed Ahab to find Elijah, until one day when Elijah walked right into the king’s palace.
The king could hardly believe his eyes. He said, “So, is it really you, you troublemaker of Israel?” (1 Kings 18:17 NLT).
“I have made no trouble for Israel,” Elijah replied. “You and your family are the troublemakers, for you have refused to obey the commands of the LORD and have worshiped the images of Baal instead” (vs. 18 NLT).
Then, Elijah issued a challenge. He told Ahab to gather all the prophets of Baal and all the prophets of Asherah and meet him on Mount Carmel. There, in front of all of Israel, Baal’s prophets would prepare a sacrifice to their god and Elijah would prepare a sacrifice to his God. Elijah said, “Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of Yahweh. The God who answers with fire, He is God!” (vs. 24 HCSB). Out of sheer, stupid pride Ahab agreed to the challenge.
As this contest plays out, there are several principles and lessons we can learn that are just as true today as they were back in the days of Elijah. The first principle is this:
• THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE FALSE PROPHETS IN THE WORLD THAN PREACHERS OF TRUTH!
There were 450 prophets of Baal gathered on Mount Carmel that day, along with 400 prophets of Asherah. Elijah was outnumbered 950 to 1. As the contest began he wanted the crowd to be clear that he was the underdog, so he announced it, “I am the only prophet of the LORD who is left, but Baal has 450 prophets” (vs. 22 NLT).
Over the centuries, however, things haven’t changed that much. Sure, there are a lot of churches all over the world and nearly a third of the earth’s population claim to be Christian, but there are just as many false prophets in the world as there were back then. Many of them may not look like prophets. Some wear lab coats and pocket protectors, for that matter. But the message is still the same: your God isn’t real!
Atheism is the fastest growing religion is America. Under the cover of science and reason, many atheists are often the most aggressive protagonists and are just looking for any opportunity to get into an argument with Bible believing Christians. Of course, atheists aren’t the only false prophets in the world today. There are countless other religions in the world, each claiming to be the true religion. The Mormon Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are perversions of the church Jesus built. Islam ardently and often violently opposes Christianity at every turn. Scientology and Kabala have celebrity endorsements. Perhaps, the greatest lie of the postmodern movement is that it just doesn’t matter what you believe.
Mark Hooper was my professor of World Religions in college. He once told the class about a missionary trip he took to India. While he was there he met and befriended a local fellow who was a Buddhist. This man took Dr. Hooper around; showing him the sites and helping him get acquainted with the area. He was a kind and friendly fellow. One day, he took Dr. Hooper to a Buddhist temple. When Mark walked in, he was amazed by all the strange and peculiar statues lining the walls of the temple—each on representing a different god. Suddenly he felt a little poke in his side, as his friend gestured toward one of the statues saying, “You see that one. You recognize that one, don’t you? That’s your god.” Mark looked up to see a statue of Jesus on the cross—as if he were just one among many. You see, in their minds, you can be a Buddhist and Christian—you can worship whatever god you want. That’s how the world wants us to think too.
A few years ago on an episode of the Oprah Winfry Show, while taking questions from her audience, Oprah said, “There are many paths to what you call God.” A woman sitting in the audience spoke up and said, “What about Jesus? You say there is more than one way, but there is one way and only one way and that is through Jesus!” Before quickly cutting to commercial, Oprah said, “No, no. That’s not true. That can’t be true.” Why can’t it be true? Because Oprah says it can’t.
The first time I flew on an airplane was when I went to visit the Freed-Hardeman University campus. I was traveling with two close friends and as we boarded the plane, I happened to glance over at the cockpit. Inside the cockpit there was what looked like a large round compass. In order to take us safely from O’Hare Airport in Chicago to the airport in Nashville, there was only one direction the pilot could fly. Now, imagine if the crew and passengers on board thought that was narrow-minded of the pilot and they thought we ought to take a vote on which degree we should fly the plane. Or maybe we could take turns choosing the direction. Or maybe we should just fly around in circles for a while. I doubt I ever would have gotten onto another plane. Folks, truth is just one degree out of three hundred and sixty. From here to heaven, there is only one way.
It’s hard to stand up for what we believe when it seems like everybody is against us. But listen, if Elijah could do it—if he could walk right into the palace of the king who had hunted him like a dog and stand up to him—then so can you! He stood alone against all the sin and evil in his generation because he trusted in God. And that’s just what we need to do today. So the lesson we need to learn from this principle is this: Stand up for what’s right, even if you’re standing alone! The next principle we discover in Elijah’s story is:
• JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS POPULAR DOESN’T MEAN IT’S RIGHT!
Since there were so many prophets of Baal, Elijah allowed them to go first. They prepared a bull for sacrifice by cutting it into pieces and laying it on top of the wood on their stone altar. Then they began to shout and pray, asking Baal to set the sacrifice on fire. But, of course, nothing happened.
After a couple hours had gone by, around noon, Elijah started mocking the prophets of Baal, saying, “Call a little louder—he is a god, after all. Maybe he’s off meditating somewhere or other, or maybe he’s gotten involved in a project, or maybe he’s on vacation. You don’t suppose he’s overslept, do you, and needs to be waked up?” (vs. 27 MSG).
“So,” Bible says, “they shouted louder, and following their normal custom, they cut themselves with knives and swords until the blood gushed out. They raved all afternoon until the time of the evening sacrifice, but still there was no sound, no reply, no response” (vs. 28-29 NLT).
No matter how badly these prophets wanted their god to be real, he wasn’t. No matter how much they believed it to be true or how many of them believed it, it still wasn’t true. And just because the majority of people today believe something to be true or right, that doesn’t make it so.
William Pen once wrote, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong even if everyone is for it.”
It maybe the popular opinion of high-school girls’ that there is nothing wrong with bare midriffs—but that doesn’t make them modest. It may be the popular opinion of anthropologists’ that humans evolved from apes—but that doesn’t make my grandpa a monkey. It may be the popular opinion of congress that gay couples have every right to be married—but that doesn’t make it moral. Popularity doesn’t determine reality.
I once heard the story of a railway gatekeeper who, one very cold night required every passenger to show his ticket before passing through to the train. With everyone standing in line, cold and uncomfortable, there was a lot of grumbling and complaining. As one of the passengers held out his ticket, he said, “You are a very unpopular man tonight.” The gatekeeper replied, “I only care to be popular with one man, and that is the superintendent.”
Elijah could have been very popular with his people and saved himself a lot of running and hiding, if he had just caved in and followed the crowd. He was a renowned prophet with a powerful reputation; they might have even made him the high priest of Baal. But Elijah new that there was only one person he needed to be popular with. “No man can serve two masters,” Jesus once said (Matthew 6:24).
If we try to be popular with the world, we will lose our popularity with the Lord. We’ll have lots of friends, but we’ll lose the one Friend who is above all others. We may win applause, but we will not hear those precious words: “Well done, good and faithful servant… Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21 ESV). The lesson we learn from this second principle is this: God’s opinion is the only opinion that matters! There’s more that we can learn though. The third principle we uncover during Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal is:
• THERE IS JUST ONE GOD AND THERE IS NOTHING HE CANNOT DO!
After the prophets of Baal had their turn and Baal failed to show up, it was Elijah’s turn. The Bible says, “He took twelve stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel, and he used the stones to rebuild the altar in the name of the LORD. Then he dug a trench around the altar large enough to hold about three gallons. He piled wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces, and laid the pieces on the wood” (vs. 31-33 NLT).
Then Elijah filled four jars of water and poured the water all over the sacrifice and the altar itself until everything as soaking wet. Then… he did it again. I have a hard time burning leaves after it ahs rained. I can only imagine trying to light this sacrifice on fire after soaking it so thoroughly. But then, Elijah wouldn’t be the one lighting the fire.
He prayed before all the people, “LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that at Your word I have done all these things. Answer me, LORD! Answer me so that this people will know that You, Yahweh, are God and that You have turned their hearts back” (vs. 37 HCSB).
Then, the Bible says, “Then Yahweh’s fire fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell facedown and said, "Yahweh, He is God! Yahweh, He is God!’” (vs. 38-39 NLT).
There is a God! Yahweh is his name. And there is nothing that he cannot do!
There is a song that my son learned in children’s church that goes: “My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do!” The thing I love most about hearing him sing that song is—he really believes it. He believes that there is nothing his God can’t do. You probably did too when you younger; when you had a child-like faith. But then we grow up. Life happens. We get put through the ringer. And somewhere along the line we stop believing it. Sure, when you come to church or talk with your Christian friends, you acknowledge that God is in control and nothing is impossible with him. But when you’re facing unemployment and wondering where your next check will come from, when your marriage is failing and you think you’ve tried everything, when you’ve made a mess out of your life and don’t know where to turn—do you really believe it?
Do you know how big your God really is?
Let me help put it in perspective. I want you to imagine for a moment that the earth is the size of golf ball. This is the earth [Holding up golf ball]. And you are here—this teeny tiny microscopic dot. Our Sun is quite a bit bigger than the earth. If the earth were the size of this golf ball, then the Sun would be a beach ball 15 feet in diameter. It could 960,000 of our earths inside of it. That’s enough golf balls to fill a school bus! That’s how big our Sun is. But on a cosmic scale, our sun is actually pretty small. I’d love to tell you about Beetle Juice, Sirius, Vega and others, but for the sake of time, I’m just going to skip ahead to the “big dog” of stars. Recently, astronomers discovered what they believe to be the biggest star in the Milky Way (that’s our galaxy). It’s called Canis Majoris. If the earth were a golf ball, Canis Majoris would be the size of Mount Everest—six miles high! You can fit seven quadrillion of our earths within. That’s enough golf balls to cover the entire state of Texas 22 inches deep in golf balls! That’s how big Canis Majoris is! And that tells us how big our God is.
Your God is so big that he spoke and the universe leapt into existence—not just one star or a hundred stars, but billions upon billions of stars. Three hundred billion star in our galaxy alone, which is just one out the 100 billion galaxies in the known universe!
If you are a child of God, you are a child of the star-breather!
Your God is so big, so strong and so mighty; there is nothing your God cannot do! No matter what the odds, no matter how difficult the task, no matter how much debt, no matter how big the mess, no matter who you are or where you’re from—if you believe in him, you have a star-breathing God on your side and there is nothing he cannot do! You can say along with Paul, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13 ESV). The lesson we learn from this principle is—by trusting in God, we can overcome any challenge!
Conclusion:
Finally, standing before all the people of Israel, Elijah announced: “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow Him. But if Baal, follow him” (vs. 21 HCSB).
You see, the real challenge was not Elijah overcoming the prophets of Baal, it was the people overcoming their own sinful nature. Elijah was fighting for their souls and the battlefield was within their own hearts. He asked them to make a decision; to stop playing games and hobbling between two opinions. And they did: “they fell facedown and said, ‘Yahweh, He is God! Yahweh, He is God!’” (vs. 38-39 HCSB).
Invitation:
You’ve got a decision to make, too. Will you follow the crowd or will you follow Christ. The path he takes isn’t the popular path. There will always be higher traffic on the broad road, than the narrow path. But Jesus came to earth for us to understand that God’s opinion is the only one that matters and he wants us to stand up for what is right, even if we’re standing alone, because the truth is—you are not alone. You’ve got the God of the universe—the hail-bringer and star-breather—on your side. And, together, there is nothing you can’t do. It is time for us to stop making excuses, stop hesitating and putting it off and decide once-and-for-all to follow the Lord our God!
