A Believer’s Response to Adversity

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This morning we’re going to be in 1 Kings chapter 18. It’s not what I planned, but God often has other ideas. And I want to talk to you this morning about the story of Elijah.

And I know I’ve alluded to this story a few times in the last few weeks, and so it’s probably a good thing just to go through and talk about it. And there’s so much of Elijah’s ministry and life that we could look at and study that we’re not going to have time to study all of it today. we may look at another passage tonight.

But one passage in particular that I want to look at this morning deals with his showdown, if you want to call it that, for lack of a better word, showdown on Mount Carmel. And when we begin in chapter 18 of 1 Kings, now I’ve told you before when the two kingdoms split, when Israel and Judah split apart, the northern kingdom of Israel never had a good king. Now, the kingdom of Judah sometimes would have wicked kings, sometimes would have good kings.

It seemed like they went back and forth. But Israel never had a good king. As a matter of fact, King Ahab, who we’re going to talk about a little bit today, who was married to Jezebel, was really sort of the cream of the crop.

He was an evil man, but he was probably the best king out of all of them that Israel had. And Elijah and Ahab were not good friends. They were sort of mortal enemies because Ahab was involved in idolatry.

Ahab was involved in wickedness. And, of course, most of you are probably familiar with the things that his wife was involved in. That’s why we, I don’t hear it so much anymore, but I know back in my parents’ and grandparents’ day, they used to refer to certain women as Jezebel.

So the whole royal court, the whole country was involved in things that they ought not to be involved in. And Elijah was sent by God to prophesy to the royal court and to the nation, to the northern kingdom, and say, you really have got to change your ways because you’ve drifted away from God. And when they wouldn’t listen, God sent Elijah to tell King Ahab that there was going to be a drought for so many years.

And so Ahab, even though Elijah was sent by God, you know, Elijah didn’t wake up one morning and say, gee, I think I’d really like to be on the most wanted list in the kingdom of Israel today. So I think I’ll go and mess with the king. Nobody in their right mind does that.

Elijah was sent by God. The only reason he went and troubled the king is because God sent him to. The only reason it didn’t rain is because God made it not rain.

So none of this was Elijah’s fault, but instead of blaming God, Ahab says, I’m going to blame Elijah and says, you’re the one who troubles Israel. And so from that time on, King Ahab was out to get Elijah. And we pick up in verse 17 of chapter 18, and it says, It came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?

Are you the one, Elijah, who’s making all the trouble in Israel? And Elijah, first of all, he’s clearly misunderstanding what’s going on here because God is the one who stopped the rain. But I think Elijah answers it exactly right in verse 18 when he says, And he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house, In that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam.

Okay, so he gets it exactly right. When Ahab asks Elijah, are you the one? Are you Elijah?

Are you the one who has troubled Israel? Elijah says, don’t look at me, buddy. It was you, and it was your father, and all those who came before you, because you all forsook God.

You ignored God. You ignored God’s commandments, and you have followed Balaam. And we talk about Baal, the false god, and we talked about it the last couple weeks, the false god Baal that so many people in ancient Israel worshipped.

Balaam is actually the plural of that. So not only are they worshipping one Baal, one false god, he says you’ve worshipped many of them. Just as many as you could get your hands on, you’ve worshipped them.

So you want to look at who’s troubling Israel here? You go look in the mirror. I’m assuming they had mirrors at that time.

Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel and to Mount Carmel, And the prophets of Baal, 450. And the prophets of the groves, 400, which eat at Jezebel’s table. So he said there are about 850 prophets of these false gods that are running loose in Israel.

450 who are prophets of Baal, who serve him. And 400 prophets of the grove. There were people worshiping trees.

You heard me right. They were worshiping actual trees. Not they cut the trees down and took the wood and built statues of their false gods.

No, they’re worshiping the actual trees. And we would look on this today and say that, I mean, how uncivilized, how barbaric. And we would look at somebody today who worships trees and prays to nature and say they’re a little backwards.

And yet in this kingdom, things were so upside down that the elites were the ones worshiping the trees. You mean you worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? How old-fashioned, how backwards can you be?

We’re the smart ones. We’re the sophisticated ones. We pray to trees.

and we know that they were involved with the elites of the kingdom because it says the 400 prophets of the grove ate at Jezebel’s table. And so he says, gather to me these 850 false prophets. We’re going to see just who is troubling Israel here.

And so in verse 20, it says, So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together unto Mount Carmel. And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him.

But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. First of all, I have to say, I really have to admire, I really have to admire the kind of courage that an Elijah must have had.

Now, I don’t think for a minute that he wasn’t scared. Everything I read about Elijah, he seems to be an intelligent, observant human being. There’s no way, ladies and gentlemen, that you could be in a position that Elijah’s in.

Even understanding God is in control, even understanding all of these things that you’re on the side of right, and knowing that you’ve been sent to do this, I know there’s a confidence that comes in that, but there’s no way that there’s not a part of him that’s afraid somewhere. And I’ve heard people say that the definition of courage is not that you’re afraid, but that you’re afraid and you do the right thing anyway. This man had incredible courage to be able to stand as he did and say, I’m the only one here.

And he mentions that later on. I’m the only one here. And there are these 450.

And not only am I going to stand against them, I’m also going to stand against the king. And I’m going to confront and rebuke the entire nation. That is it.

Guys, today, somebody stood up and rebuked the entire nation. They would be vilified. They would be run out of business.

Their livelihood would be taken away. They wouldn’t be able to work. They wouldn’t be able to own a home.

Wouldn’t be able to eat. and he is headed down that road. He’s headed down that road.

And so he says to the people, how long, halt you between two opinions, how long are you going to waver back and forth between the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Baal? How long? You know, really, and we’ve talked about this some, you cannot, there’s no overlap between the two.

They are mutually exclusive. When Baal says you worship me and pray to me and also while you’re at it, you can pray to the spirits and the false gods You can pray to the God of child sacrifice over here, and that’s okay. And the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob says, No, if you worship me at all, you must worship only me.

There is no room for compromise between those two positions. And somehow the people were saying, Yeah, but we can make both of these work. No, because if you’re worshiping any other gods, you’re not worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And so he says, How long are you going to halt between two opinions? There is a choice to be made here. There’s a decision that has to be made.

And he stands before the entire nation and says, you’ve got to make a choice. You’ve got to decide now. Don’t wait until tomorrow.

Don’t wait three more years. You’ve got to decide now who you’re going to serve. Are you going to serve God?

If the Lord is God, if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is God, then you need to serve him. And the implication there is serve him only. Serve him only.

And serve him to the fullest of your ability. as he demands and as he deserves. He says, but if Baal is God, then if you decide in your infinite wisdom, people of Israel, if you decide that Baal is God, then stop flirting with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and do what you’re going to do.

I think, you know, obviously here Elijah wants the people of Israel to worship the one true God because he understands he’s the one true God. He understands that the God of the Old Testament is the only God worthy of worship. But I think he’s really to the point.

He’s really to the point of throwing your hands up. You have to do that with your kids sometimes. I don’t care what you do.

You’re going to do what you want to do anyway. I’m not to that point. Mine are still little.

But I’m imagining when they get to be grownups, okay, you’re going to make your own choices. Do what you’re going to do. Just make a decision.

He looks at the nation of Israel and says, you know, I’d really like for you to do the right thing here. But just do something. Do whatever you’re going to do.

I don’t much care anymore. Just pick one and follow them. Now, I’m sure he wouldn’t encourage the worship of Baal because there were going to be consequences for them.

But his major source of irritation here is that they are trying to go back and forth. Trying to worship the idols, trying to be involved in the wicked practices, and still say that they’re worshiping God because he’s included there in their list of deities. And you want to talk about a point in time when silence is deafening.

It says here that they answered him, not a word. And I can’t tell you for sure what the people of Israel are thinking at that point. I can only speculate.

But I know sometimes when you throw out a rebuke like that and the people don’t answer, they’re either thinking, I want to hit this guy, or they’re under conviction, thinking he’s right, we know we’re wrong, and there’s no excuse we can make here. So the people answered him not a word, and after a period of silence in verse 22, then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord. But Baal’s prophets are 450 men.

And we know from other places, he was not the only prophet of the Lord that was left. It’s mentioned elsewhere that there were some prophets of the Lord that were being hidden in caves. But the point here is, folks, God’s word is correct in recording.

I don’t want you to think there’s an error here in the Bible by my saying that. God’s word is correct in recording what Elijah said. Elijah really said, I’m the only one left.

God’s word is also correct in recording that there were other prophets. But what we need to focus on here is that Elijah really thought he was the only one left. Because there may have been other prophets who had not bowed the knee to Baal, but they were all in hiding.

And I’m going to say, I don’t blame them. I don’t blame them. If you’re in the country where Ahab and Jezebel are going to put you to death, you know, I’m not going to bow the knee to Baal, but I might not stick around to find out what they’re going to do.

And so they’re all in hiding. And as far as who is standing in front of the people, as far as who is standing in front of the king, as far as who is standing against the prophets of Baal, he is the only one left. And he says, I am the only one.

I, even I, only remain a prophet of the Lord. He says, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men. And that’s to say nothing of the 400 prophets of the grove that we’ve already mentioned.

The 400 men that are out there praying to trees and eating from the queen’s table. So he says, I stand alone against these 450 prophets of Baal. And in verse 23, let them therefore give us two bullocks and let them choose one bullet for themselves. Hey, I’m feeling generous.

They can choose which bull they want. Let them choose one bullet for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on wood and put no fire under. And I will dress the other bullock and lay it on the wood and put no fire under.

So they’re setting up for a sacrifice. In the Old Testament law, they were required at times to make burnt offerings. They were required to bring a bull and offer it, cut it in pieces, burn it.

And then I don’t, you know, I’ve tried. Guys, I’m so glad Jesus fulfilled the law and we don’t have to go through the sacrifices and ceremonies because I’ve tried to understand all the different sacrifices they have to make and what they do with them. And I would be in big trouble.

but they would make the sacrifice and then I don’t know where they would go from there. But they would cut the bull in pieces, they would offer a burnt offering to their God and so on. And this is something else we need to understand too.

Worship of idols often takes on some of the characteristics of the worship of the true God. And what I mean by that is the devil is not creative. The devil will try to, instead of inventing his own thing, the devil will often try to counterfeit what God has set up.

And so instead of making all new ceremonies, these prophets of Baal, they were also cutting bulls up and putting them on the altar and offering burnt offerings. It looked similar to the worship of the true God, but it was completely different. The prophets of Baal were going off of what they saw being done already in Israel and saying, well, we’re just going to take that and rework it for our own purposes.

When you get right down to it, the devil is not creative. He can only counterfeit what God has tried to do. And so they come to do these sacrifices, and they’re going to offer these burnt offerings of these bulls, but they’re not going to set up a fire.

Now, that’s going to be their God’s job. And he says in verse 24, Elijah says, And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord. And the God that answereth by fire, let him be God.

And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken. Okay, that sounds good. We’ll do that.

And the reason he can say here that the God who provides the fire is the true God is because he knows that it has to be one or the other. There’s not a risk here. There’s not a risk here of both of the altars being engulfed in flames.

Because either the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is true to his word, and he’s the only one, or he’s not true to his word. So if the fire appears on the altar of Baal, That means this God is not who he says he is. And yet if the fire appears over here, it’s guaranteed nothing is going to appear on the altar of Baal. And he says, we will let the gods provide for themselves the fire for their burnt offering.

Whoever’s God answers with fire, let him be God. And the people said, okay, that sounds good to us. Finally, the people pipe up and have something to say.

Verse 25, and Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, choose you one bullet for yourselves and dress it first, for ye are many, and call on the name of your gods, and put no fire under. So he says, y’all go ahead and go first. Of course, that’s my oaky paraphrase, y’all go ahead. Y’all go first, pick out which bull you want, put it out there on the altar, because, you know, there are so many more of you, so you go ahead.

Then they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, as we would expect, but there was no voice. nor any that answered.

And they leaped upon the altar which was made. So they start hopping up and down. They’re crying out to Baal from the morning to noon, Baal hear us, Baal hear us, Baal hear us.

And there’s no answer. So naturally they start jumping up and down trying to attract his attention. And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, cry aloud for he is a God.

Either he is talking or he is pursuing or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked. And I don’t know about y’all, I think this is one of the funniest verses in all of Scripture. I try not to be, but I tend to be a little bit of a sarcastic person anyway.

And so I see at times, whether he intended it or not, I see at times in the Bible where God may have employed sarcasm just a little bit. And I really see this man speaking on God’s behalf, one of the clearest examples of this. They’re jumping up and down trying to get their false God’s attention.

And Elijah starts to mock them and says, yell a little louder. He can’t hear you. I love that.

Maybe he’s talking to somebody. Maybe you’re interrupting his conversation. Maybe he’s on the phone.

He didn’t say that, but if it were today, maybe he’s on the phone. He can’t hear you. He’s pursuing.

Maybe he’s chasing someone else. Maybe he’s on a trip. Yeah, that’s it.

Maybe he’s not home right now. yell a little louder. Maybe he’s asleep.

You’ve got to wake him up. He can’t hear you. Yell louder.

Maybe he’s out shopping. Maybe he’s on the phone. Maybe, I don’t know about y’all, but I think that’s pretty funny.

And they don’t seem to respond to him. I mean, they do what he says, but they don’t seem to have any smart, snappy comeback for him. All they can do is yell louder.

See, even the idea of their God is one that was much more limited in power than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even in their conception of God, yeah, we want to worship Baal, yeah, Baal’s the greatest, Baal’s the best. You know what? Baal is like the God of fertility and the God of, I think, the sun and maybe a few other things, but then they had another God in charge of agriculture.

They had another God in charge of the forest. Obviously, they had the prophets of the grove. They had the God of fish. They had the God of this and that.

He’s not even the God over everything. even in their own minds. And so they realized, yeah, we’ve got to cry louder.

So they cried aloud and they cut themselves. In verse 28, they cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets until the blood gushed out upon them. Thinking, okay, maybe we could spill our own blood and get God’s attention, get Baal’s attention.

And you know what? In our world today, there are still people who are spilling their blood, trying to get their God’s attention. And this morning, we can be thankful that we have a God who spilled his blood for us.

And we don’t have to spill our blood for him to listen to us. It says in verse 29, and it came to pass when the midday was passed and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that there was neither voice nor any to answer nor any that regarded. So they continued going until evening crying out to Baal. There was no voice that answered.

No answer heard. And he says here, there was no one even listening. Verse 30 says, And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me.

And the people came near unto him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be thy name. And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord.

And he made a great trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And so in the northern kingdom they said, well, it’s not that we’re not worshiping the God of our fathers anymore. It’s that we’re going to worship him along with all these other pagan gods.

But you notice, it doesn’t say the altar of Baal had to be repaired. It says the altar of the Lord had to be repaired. So while they said we’ll worship God along with all these other things, God went by the wayside.

God always goes by the wayside when we say, well, we’ll take something else in addition. If we treat God as though we can take him or leave him, eventually we’re going to leave him. And they had let this altar fall into disrepair where Elijah had to repair it even to use it.

And Elijah builds a trench around the altar. And in verse 33, and he put the wood in order and cut the bullock in pieces and laid him on the wood and said, fill four barrels with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. And he said, do it the second time.

And they did it the second time. And he said, do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

So four barrels of water three times. That is 12 barrels of water. That’s not a smart move, seemingly, for someone who’s trying to set this thing on fire.

And the water ran round about the altar, and he filled the trench also with water. Okay, let’s bring in some more water and fill up the trench, too, just for good measure. And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.

And Israel is just another name for Jacob. That’s where the nation of Israel got its name. Let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.

Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this thy people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. So what he says here, he cries out to God, and he’s not frantic and hysterical like the prophets of Baal. He merely prays to God and says, Let the people know that you’re the God in Israel. Let them know that you’re the true God.

Turn their hearts back. And even when he’s praying God that God would be glorified in all this. And even when he says, let them know that I’m your servant.

That’s not praying. God, tell them I was right. Tell them I told them so.

What he’s saying is they need to know that when I have spoken and said it came from you, it really did come from you. Even at that, when he says, Lord, let them know I’m your servant. It wasn’t a prayer about, Lord, vindicate Elijah.

It was, Lord, vindicate your word. And he says in verse 38, or it says in verse 38, Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. So there was so much fire and it was so hot that not only did it burn up the sacrifice as it was supposed to and the wood as it was supposed to, it burned up the stones and the dust and vaporized all of the water that ran around the altar.

And when the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal. Let not one of them escape.

And they took them and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slew them there. And that would sound like, you know, I wouldn’t advocate we go out and slaughter the infidel today. The reason for this, the reason why I just want to answer because there are so many people who look at the Old Testament and say, well, it’s a book of murder and genocide.

Why did they kill these other countries? Because these other countries, these other false prophets, they were involved in so much violence themselves. We talked a few weeks ago about the people who fed their children to the burning statue.

Those are not people you want running loose in polite society, if I can say it that way. Those are the people who are killing children. Those are the people, these are the people who had slaughtered God’s prophets.

And he says, there’s got to be some justice here. There’s got to be some protection against this happening again. But what’s important to notice here is that he cried out to God.

On the face of it, what he was asking God to do seems impossible. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen God send down fire from heaven.

I’ve talked about it, but I’ve never seen it happen. I’ve certainly never seen anything that was sopping wet, burst into flames out of fire from heaven. This is not stuff that happens every day.

And yet he asked God to do something miraculous, not for his own reasons, but God so that you will be vindicated so that the hearts of the people will be turned back. And God did something that only God could do. Folks, the God that Elijah served on Mount Carmel is the same God that we serve today.

He is still in the business of doing things that only he can do. And I tell you this not so that you’ll think, well, I can go build an altar in my yard and call down fire and God will convince everybody. Not necessarily.

You know, when we think about, I have wondered myself, why miracles seem to happen so much in the Bible and in biblical times and then we don’t see it so much now. These kinds of miracles. Well, probably the reason for that is the Bible covers a period of what I want to say about 4,100 years, 4,200 years.

These are kind of spaced out, and he hits the highlights. That doesn’t mean that God wasn’t working at other times. God can do things like this, but that doesn’t mean he always answers in big ways like this with fire.

God often does miracles in ways that are less flashy, if we want to say it that way, but they are no less impossibilities from our standpoint. There are no less things that only God could do. The God that did these things, the God that Elijah served is the same God that we serve and is still in the business of doing what only he can do.

Even if we don’t see things like fire falling out of the sky today, it doesn’t mean that God is any less powerful today. It’s the same God we serve. And it’s the same God that we want to have with us or rather that we want to be with.

It’s not so important that God is on our side as it is important that we’re on God’s side. It’s the same God we want to be on his side during times of adversity. I want to share a few things with you this morning that I’ve jotted down before we leave out of here today.

Because there are a lot of things that we could talk about this morning from this passage and from this story. And I could spend an hour just talking about the power of God, I think. I think I saw a head nod, very subtle.

I told you I can see y’all now. I will not spend an hour here talking about anything. But I could spend an hour probably talking about the power of God from this passage.

But what I want us to look at this morning, how this applies to us, because I not only try to teach what God’s Word says and what it means and what it meant to the people who it was originally written for, but also how it applies to us in our day. We can look at this and look at Elijah’s story and Elijah’s involvement here as a picture for how believers are supposed to respond to times of adversity. We live in times of adversity.

We live in times where it is not as difficult as it could be to be a Christian, but maybe more difficult than it used to be. We are not being, at least in this country, we’re not being thrown to lions. We’re not being put in concentration camps, although that does happen in parts of our world today.

I didn’t get to read the story, but I saw a headline where a woman who is something like eight or nine months pregnant in, I hope I don’t get the country wrong, but I think it’s Sudan, is being faced with the death penalty for having converted to Christianity. It made news here. We don’t suffer through things like that, but we still live in a world where it is difficult to be a Christian, where it is difficult to really live as a Christian.

I know there are people all over this country, supposedly 84% of our country are Christians. Guys, if 84% of our country was Christian, we’d live in a much different society. And I’m not even talking about the politics.

I’m talking about the culture. We would live in an entirely different country. It’s one thing to call yourself a Christian, but we live in a country.

We live in a world where if you begin to practice your faith, it becomes very difficult for you. If you try to live by what God teaches, it’s very difficult for you. And we face times where it would be easy.

And again, I don’t knock those prophets who were off hiding in the cave. You know what? I probably would have been right there with them.

But we live in a country where it’s easier to go hide in the cave. And yes, we’re going to stay true to what God has told us to do. We’re going to stay true to what God said.

But we’re going to hide ourselves off over here, and we’re just going to ride out the storm. That would definitely be easier. And it’s probably the road I would pick more often than not.

But much more, I’d rather be somebody like Elijah, who says the adversity is not going to stop me from doing God’s work. The adversity is not going to stop me from standing where God tells me to stand. I think all of us would prefer to take the easy road and be in the cave, but I would hope that we would have the wherewithal to stand where God tells us to stand.

And so three things that I think we could learn from this passage, as far as Elijah’s part of it, is that first of all, in adversity, we don’t turn back from God’s work, from God or his work. Believers, when God’s work becomes difficult, when it becomes difficult to be a servant of Christ, we don’t turn back just because times get difficult. We don’t turn back from doing the work of a Christian just because it, we, I’m trying to think of an example.

We, we, we’re in a society that’s hardened against the gospel. And a lot of times you try to, unless you have a really good relationship with somebody, you try to share the gospel with somebody, you try to share with them the good news that Christ died to pay for their sins. And we are shut down.

We’re marginalized. A lot of times people will act, will react with outright hostility. It used to be just indifference.

I don’t care. I don’t need that. while working in Norman one day, a man told us, yeah, I believe in God, but I don’t get into all that organized and committing stuff, and he’ll take care of it in the end.

Okay. I don’t believe he was saved based on what he told us, b

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