Today’s Old Testament reading (1 Kings 18:20-39) again features the Prophet Elijah taking on King Ahab and the practice of Baal worship. Many Israelites detested Baal worship, not just because it was a challenge to the worship of the true God, but also because it was a fertility religion. The people worshipped Baal by magic rituals, including human sexual acts, to give Baal power or to persuade him to act in some way.
Baal worship, however, did attract many other Israelites. They found it easier to worship an idol they could see than God, whom they could not see. The magic and the sexual rituals appealed to their most primitive instincts. It is always easier to mold God, or religion, to our idea of what He should be than to change ourselves to match God’s standard. Most false gods or idols, even idols that are not necessarily physical ones, are simply human beings or human passions drawn large.
Elijah objected to Baal worship in any form as a violation of Israel’s covenant with God. Elijah challenged everything that the people believed about Baal. Recall that Elijah opened his prophetic ministry by confronting Baal on his own turf, proclaiming a drought in the name of God.
Most Israelites did not speculate about the existence of gods other than the true God. Real life questions were of much greater concern. Who really controlled the rain, cycles of nature, life, and death? Which god could really affect human existence? If it were Baal, they would have to practice the magic to survive. Then they could live the materialistic, self-centered life that comes from serving gods of our own making. If it were the true God, then they would have to live by the high ethical and moral standards of the Law of Moses. Which god really mattered? Elijah would let God himself answer that question.
We should note that Elijah did not himself try to convert the people to belief in Israel’s God. What he did was bring them to a point where they were ready to decide. For the people to make no choice meant they would go on serving Baal. Not choosing FOR God is to choose AGAINST Him. The people said nothing when Elijah challenged their divided loyalties. Yet, they did come to a point where they were at least willing to decide.
That willingness to choose is a move toward faith because it shows an openness to allow God to work. If people are open to God’s work in the world, if they are willing to base a decision for God on God alone, then they will most often choose God. The church has no greater task than to move people toward a willingness to choose. Then it must trust God and His grace with the rest. So Elijah set up a test:
Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” And they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, there was no answer. And they limped about the altar which they had made.
And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry louder, for he is a god; either he is musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” And they cried louder and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. 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 heeded.
Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me”; and all the people came near to him. And he prepared the altar of the LORD that had been destroyed; Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the LORD came, saying, “Israel shall be your name”; and with the stones he built a new altar in the name of the LORD. And he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put the wood in order and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, “Fill four jars with water, pour it on the offering, and on the wood.” And 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. [Note: a total of 12 jars full of water. That number 12 again] And the water ran round about the altar and also filled the trench with water.
Elijah called for this contest between the true God and Baal and he set the conditions. Yet, he gave every possible advantage to the prophets of Baal. He wanted no accusations that he had done some sleight-of-hand to win. The narrator tells the story with delight here. The frantic efforts of the Baal prophets, the length of time they prayed, the sarcastic comments of Elijah about their god, all serve to ridicule Baal. Baal is not much of a god if the people cannot count on him in a crisis.
Isaiah made much the same point. The people would cut wood, use half for cooking their food and then make the other half into a god to worship (Isaiah 44:13-19). “Talk to your piece of wood,” the prophet Habakkuk later taunted, “and see if it can answer you.” (Habakkuk 2:18-19). Scripture tells Elijah’s story with absolute conviction that Baal is no god. He is only an absurd joke! No god is real if he does not matter in people’s lives.
Sadly, for many people today, God does not exist. Like the Israelites, most of us care little for questions about the existence of God. We are vitally concerned about the matters that directly affect our lives on a day-to-day basis: job, security, home, social life, etc. Especially in our western culture in which people pride themselves on self-sufficiency, many think they are the only ones who can affect these issues. They do not worship Baal. But they also have not chosen the God of the Bible. The idols of today are not wood and stone. People of today have made gods of themselves! Like the Israelites, they have never chosen FOR God and so they have chosen AGAINST him. Like the Israelites, they worship a powerless god who is laughable as a god. As Elijah shows in our story, worshiping an idol does not mean that God is not real!
There is another important aspect to the story. Not only do the people need to see Baal for the superstition that he is, but they also need to see the true God for the true God that He is. The story appeals to a wide range of symbols that forces the people to recall who the true God, the God of their fathers, really is.
The rebuilding of the ruined altar, the twelve jars of water, recalling the change of Jacob’s name to Israel, all served to call the people to return to the God of the covenant. The twelve stones had special meaning. They recalled the entire exodus event in which God had created the Israelite people from a ragged group of slaves. The Israelites had built a pile of twelve stones on the banks of the Jordan after they entered the land (Joshua 4). This served to remind them what God had done for them, that He would be their God and they would be His people.
Elijah set the contest with absolute confidence in God. He had no doubt that God was really God. He was willing to stake everything on that confidence.
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. 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.”
Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the water-soaked offering, and the water-soaked wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The LORD, he is God; the LORD, he is God.”
There is a saying left over from the peace marches of the 1960s: What if they gave a war and nobody came? After all the antics of the prophets of Baal, Baal never showed up. The god they called the rider of the clouds and portrayed with the fire of lightening flashing from his hands, fizzled that day on Carmel. That is the problem with gods that are not really gods; you can’t depend on them. To paraphrase an old television commercial, if you can’t trust your god, who can you trust?
Elijah’s quiet, brief, and elegant prayer stands in sharp contrast to the all-day binge of moaning and groaning by Baal’s followers. It is as if Elijah thought that God already knew what He needed to do. Elijah simply confessed God as God and asked for Him to reveal himself to the people.
Perhaps we need to check our own prayers to see if they resemble the prayers of the Baal prophets more than Elijah’s prayer. There are times of distress when we need to cry out to God from the depths of our being. Even in those times, we do not have to persuade Him to be God! Prayer that tries to coax God to action reveals more about the attitude of the one praying than it reveals about God. Prayer is not to convince God; it is to confess before God our faith in Him.
God answered the prayer of Elijah, evoking a confession of faith from the people: “The LORD, He is God!” Sometimes I hear people call for blind faith. “Just believe in God,” they say. I don’t think that there is such a thing as blind faith. At least, not at first. Faith must always be built on something. For Moses, it was a burning bush. For the Hebrews it was the mighty Egyptian army lying dead on the shores of the Red Sea. For the later Israelites it was the fallen walls of Jericho. For Hezekiah it was a deserted Assyrian camp. For John the Baptist it was the blind receiving their sight. For Mary Magdalene it was an empty tomb.
This story is not about Elijah, or miracles. It is about God. And it is about us. God will always do whatever is necessary to reveal himself to us human beings. He will always make the first move toward humanity. We must choose in response. It may be a great supernatural event like fire from heaven, or it may be a whisper, a breeze blowing through the trees. Yet, God will always act to show himself as God. If we are honest, if we have come to the place where we are willing to choose, who else could we choose but God?
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!