We are in 1 Kings 18 this week.
Today - Scene 2 - verses 16 - 40.
What is it about competitions that we so love? I am writing this during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver ... and the buzz is alive! Football season has just ended ... and the Super Bowl, once again, attracted a phenomenal audience. In our reading today, we observe a most remarkable competition. I wish we could sit around a table and talk about the parts of the scene that stood most dramatically out in your minds. We do end with a winner and a loser. Sometimes we think of this as a competition between the prophets of Baal and Elijah. And that is what the people see with their physical eyes. But the opposing sides of this competition are Jehovah God and Baal. It seems strange to me since Baal is actually a non-person, a non-thing. He doesn't exist. Or does he?
What in the world are we to gain from this reading? Is it merely a most entertaining story - one that would make quite a visual feast for Hollywood? You have seen enough movies to be able to visualize this scene: 400 priests in their "priestly attire" frenetically dancing around an altar, loudly crying out to Baal, even cutting themselves to let their blood flow as a blood offering. (Notice they did not go all the way to human sacrifice of themselves like they did for babies). Then visualize Elijah, in silence, picking up the 12 stones from the altar to Jehovah - the stones that had fallen around the neglected altar, preparing the bull, and then pouring water over the whole thing until it even filled the trench. How many jars of water? Twelve. Four jars, filled three times. And with this focus on twelve, Elijah calls these people back to remembering the covenant relationship they had with Jehovah ... back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Visualize the fire that drops from heaven and licks up the entire arrangement - sacrifice, wood, altar, water - all. Quite a story! The good guy wins.
Again, what are WE to gain? To me, the most powerful verse in this section is verse 21. Read it again. Can you hear Elijah place the same question before you? Do you have an answer? The Israelites did not. Did they not understand or were they too ashamed to answer or were they not sure? Don't know.
Listen to some statements from the NIV Application Commentary by August Konkel:
The Baal cult against which Elijah battles is in essence a religion of
materialism. The rule of Baal and the timely appearance of the fall
and winter rains were crucial to agricultural success and the economic
success of Israel. ... Materialism has the power to bring about a
strange kind of double-mindedness. Desire for wealth displaces
allegiance to God, though loyalty to God is claimed just the same.
Listen to Jesus in Matthew 6: 24
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love
the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and Money.
You see, it actually is the same competition still going on. The battle is for allegiance. The battle is for the mind and heart of man. So Elijah is asking you and I as well, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if wealth, money, the 'market' is God, then follow that." We know who is the final victor in this competition. We have observed a visual. Whose team are you on?
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