Against All Odds.....

“How long will you go limping between two different opinions?

450 to 1......... I hadn't needed to think about odds in a long time....my mind immediately returned to cuddling up with dad on the sofa, newspaper in hand, pencil strategically tucked behind his ear as we watched the horse racing on a Saturday afternoon.

When I was around 10, Dad took the time to explain what the tic-tac men were doing and what they were trying to say to their co-workers at the racetrack by using bizarre hand gestures. Tic-tac men communicated easily with one another, but I doubt there were any gestures that could express the message Elijah wanted to convey as he stood on Mount Carmel facing the 450 prophets of Baal.

Elijah wanted to communicate something, but not to the prophets, at least not yet.

Elijah spoke to the people; he spoke to Israel.

“How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” 1 Kings 18:21a

You could have heard a talent drop... there was no response from the assembled crowd…. just silence.

On Mount Carmel, three parties stood, each determined in their beliefs and stance: Elijah, the prophets, and King Ahab, .... but the people, the Israelites, God's chosen people, stood undecided, double-minded, and unsteady….and silent.

….And the people did not answer him a word. 1 Kings 18:21b

The people desired the best of both worlds.... oh, they hadn't completely removed God from their lives; rather, they had added Baal and other gods to it. They had been attempting to worship both Baal and Yahweh, their motive?......to gain the most benefits from both!

…as we would say nowadays, they both wanted their cake and to eat it too.

But Elijah served a jealous God, a God who would not stand for worship due to Him being given to other gods…. even one who it was believed controlled the weather, who controlled the rain, something Israel had not seen for over three years.

It had been a difficult few years for Elijah; King Ahab had the dubious reputation of being the evilest king to reign over Israel, and his choice of wife only added to this. Jezebel was a power-hungry murderess; the Lord's prophets were assassinated at her order, and once Elijah declared a drought, he became Jezebel's arch-enemy.

1 Kings 17:1

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”

What happened on Mount Carmel is the stuff of children’s stories. It's the underdog versus a horde of outlaws, right versus wrong, good versus evil.

I don't know about you, but as a child, whenever I read a story with a similar theme, I would imagine myself as one of the characters.

But I wonder which character any of us would identify with in this story…possibly Elijah,100% sold out for God, risking his life for his God?

A prophet of Baal perhaps?....goodness no, surely none of us could identify with those….but the people, those who stood silent before Elijah and his God….could we find ourselves stood with this mass, stood between the prophet of God and the false prophets, caught in a moment of indecision, in a spiritual wavering, in worldly desires….in a lukewarm comfortableness?

What would it take to shake these people out of their indecision, and their double-mindedness?

They watched the prophets, Baal’s prophets, shout, and dance, cut and slash, limping through the blood-soaked dust. They heard Elijah taunt and ridicule their deity, the god in whom they had put their hope for rain, for refreshing for their failing crops, and relief for their dying cattle…. “Perhaps he is asleep, perhaps on a journey…perhaps he’s on the toilet”…Elijah’s taunts caused them to shout louder, slash and cut deeper, and bleed freely, but no one answered; their worship was empty…their god was not there….he never had been.

Now it’s the turn of Elijah, and he ups the ante, like a street performing magician he calls the people closer to watch him, to watch him set his stage...… “Come, come close and have a good look.”

He repaired a ruined altar of the Lord using all the twelve stones symbolising a united Israel and dug a trench around the altar. He then placed the wood on the altar and laid the cut pieces of the bull on it. Elijah then had the people soak the altar with four large jars of water….the water soaked the sacrifice and the wood and filled the trench…and then Elijah said to do it again!...and when they had done that he said to do it again!....in a land where there is a drought Elijah had 12 jars of water poured on a dead bull….but he knows something that the people don’t know…

Elijah knows the rain is coming….why?...because God said so.

450 to 1……. But there was no hysteria, no shouting, no spear-slashing, no hobbling and bleeding around the altar from Elijah, no absent deity, no empty worship, just 58 words of heartfelt prayer. 1 Kings 18:36-37

“Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again”.

Then God did what Baal could never do: fire fell from heaven, and the stones, wood, bull, water, and dust were all consumed…all that was left was God.

Elijah’s question to the people had been simple, choose, choose because your attempts to serve both gods have crippled you, they have caused you to limp. Their attempts to have the best of both worlds had crippled them we too can see that any indecision, half-heartedness, any reluctance to follow Jesus’s commands in all their fullness will cripple us and cause us to limp.

Sometimes it is too easy to grow accustomed to our sins, to our failure to follow all of God's commands, and it is too easy to give other gods, other idols, our attention, and time…. Especially when these gods, these idols, are not evil in themselves. Too easy to flit between Christ and this world, between Christ and our favourite sin, between Christ and our cosy, half-hearted, not quite bowed, uninterrupted life, giving God just enough to make us feel secure. But our God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5) which means God is jealous when we give to another something that rightly belongs to Him.

The people of Israel saw 450 prophets, their bodies covered in wounds and their blood gushing out. But we see our God, we see Jesus, hanging on a cross, with His body wounded, his blood gushing out. They saw a horrendous scene of fools desperate to hear from a false god, but we see a glorious display of love when the one true God spoke to a world of fools.

Remember, ladies, that we have been purchased from sin and death by the blood of his Son, not the blood of false idols and false prophets.

When God exposes the idols in our lives to be lifeless, powerless, and full of deception, then we too need to slaughter them, just as the prophets of Baal were slaughtered at the Kishon. Far too often we tolerate them. We say we have removed them, but they hang around, close enough to reach out to in moments of weakness.

Sometimes, more frequently than we would like to admit, we find that the life of faith is much harder than it was described to us…..God’s “wonderful plan for our lives” is often hard and painful….but it is also better…it is better because our victory is not measured by the lack of conflict and failure in our lives but by the fact that He is ours, and we are His, that in the times of our failures, we are secure in the knowledge that our disobedience is paid for in the obedience of Jesus, and thus we are made acceptable in His sight.

To slaughter those idols may mean quite literally removing some things from your life, it may mean giving up a relationship, or a friendship or ceasing to go to certain places and being involved in certain things. You know the idols of Baal and Asherah in your life that God has exposed to you…but what will you do?