Talk 10 - False idols vs the living God

0:00 For those of you who are new with us this morning, or not regularly with us, we have been looking at the Old Testament and going through the kings of Israel, learning lessons as we go along. And you have arrived this morning at one of the most dramatic scenes in the entire Old Testament. And we're going to plunge right in by reading it. And it is in 1 Kings chapter 18 and verse 16. We'll read from there and then I'll give a little bit of the context when we're finished the reading. So this, we begin Obadiah. He was the administrator of the royal palace. And he went to meet Ahab, who was the king, and told him.

0:55 And Ahab went to meet Elijah, and Elijah was the prophet. So these three characters at the beginning. And when Ahab saw Elijah, he said to him, is that you, you troubler of Israel? I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied, but you and your father's family have. You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the bowels. Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, How long will you waver between two opinions?

1:48 If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him. But the people said nothing. Then Elijah said to them, I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has 450 prophets. Get two bulls for us. Let Baal's prophets choose one for themselves and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. Then you call on the name of your God and I will call on the name of the Lord.

2:29 The God who answers by fire, he is God. And then all the people said, what you say is good. Elijah said to the prophets of Baal choose one of the bulls prepared first since there's so many of you call on the name of your God but do not light the fire so they took the bull that was given to them and they prepared it and then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon Baal answer us they shouted but there was no response no one answered and they danced around the altar they had made at noon Elijah began to taunt them shout louder he said surely he is a god perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened so they shouted louder and slashed themselves as swords and spears as was their custom until their blood flowed midday passed and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice but there was no response. No one answered. No one paid attention. Then Elijah said to all the people, come here to me. They came to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down.

3:50 Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come saying, your name shall be Israel. And with the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. He dug a trench around it, large enough to hold two sails of seed. And he arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and led it on the wood. And then he said to them, fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood. Do it again, he said. They did it again. do it a third time, he ordered.

4:27 And they did it the third time. And the water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench. And at the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed, Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, 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. And then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. And when all the people saw this, they fell prostitute and cried, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. As I say, one of those fantastic scenes when you just love to be filming it and setting up the drama.

5:36 Let me sketch the background very briefly. Ahab was now king of the 10 tribes of Israel. And we don't need to wait very long into a story before we're given a summary of his rule. We read in chapter 16, Ahab did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He was the most evil king they'd had to date. And the key evil was this. under the influence of his wife Jezebel, he introduced into Israel the worship of Baal. Now, you may have heard it pronounced Baal, but since that's the name of a footballer, we're going to call him Baal, and I think that is probably more accurate.

6:25 Now, this wasn't merely a perversion of the worship of God like Jeroboam had previously introduced with the golden calves and his alternative centers of worship and so on. This was a major step further. This was the introduction of another god to rival Jehovah. Now Baal was the storm god worshipped by the Phoenicians who were a seafaring nation where Jezebel came from. The nearest Celtic equivalent was called Tarnas. And if you've ever been present beside the sea in a storm, as you'll see from these photographs coming up, you can understand why pagan people might think that a god was involved. If you look closely at the wave, you could even imagine you're looking at the face of the god. such is the power involved.

7:30 If you're thinking in that way, you could easily think that. And they called this God Baal, which basically means Lord or Master. So Baal worship was therefore the worship of one of the great powers of nature that people perceived as controlling their lives and their livelihoods. Because Baal also was a fertility god, another of the great natural powers, the processes of reproduction on which, of course, life depends. And as such, Baal was often represented by the symbol of a bull because of the importance of bulls to a largely rural and agricultural community for the reproduction of livestock. And any of you involved in that aspect of farming will know all about this. But it wasn't just agricultural fertility, but human fertility. Baal worship often involved shrine prostitutes and uninhibited sex.

8:44 Now, this development was much worse than Jeroboam's idolatrous perversion of the worship of the one true God. This was elevating the powers of nature as the supreme realities that control people's destiny. And of course, in those days, they made idols to represent them, the Asherah poles, the bulls, and so on. But when you strip away those more lurid ingredients, you find underneath this basic belief that it is the fundamental forces of nature that are the powers that have made us and that control our destiny. Of course, today, most of us, I suspect, tend not to bow down and worship literal idols of bronze or wood or stone. But when you get rid of God, it's not that you believe nothing. You could end up believing anything because it is very, very difficult to believe nothing. Have a go.

9:57 It's actually extremely hard to do. I don't think it's possible. Contemporary materialism believes that it's the fundamental forces of nature, gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear forces, weak nuclear forces. These are the powers that explain and control our existence. So you could say that materialism is a form of Baalism. Now into this context steps Elijah the prophet. His name means Yahweh is my God. No ambiguity there.

10:35 That's clear enough. He was not one of the writing prophets of the Old Testament, but he is in fact the most mentioned prophet in the New Testament. He's a huge figure, Elijah the Tishbite, whatever a Tishbite was. It sounds like a mosquito bite, but Tishbites, obviously, that was a particular tribal group. And we read in 17 verse 1 that he said to Ahab, as the Lord, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word. So this is Elijah stepping onto the stage, facing the king who had introduced the worship of the storm god, and he's telling him to his face, there isn't going to be any storm, no rain for years. Now, that was certainly throwing down the gauntlets. The challenge to the worship of Baal was obvious.

11:41 There was going to be no celebration at harvest of the great Baal who provided the rains this year. And notice how he begins. As the Lord, the God of Israel lives whom I serve. Elijah spent his life living and serving the God who lives. he knew God as the living God if you remember back when we were talking about the decor and design of the temple we commented then that the temple, the house of the Lord was full of representations of living things God as the living God we are, according to Paul in the New Testament the church of the living God. Not a dead God, not a museum piece, but a God who lives. And Elijah knew God as the living God. The next thing that happened was that God told Elijah to go and hide in a ravine.

12:56 Now that's understandable from a safety point of view, because we later learn of Ahab's wife's murderous activities, trying to wipe out the entire group of prophets of the Lord. And we also learn that Ahab put out a search warrant on Elijah, searched for him not just in the nation, but in other nations to try to get him. But I think there's more to it than safety. Go hide yourself. God was preparing him for the next public appearance, which was going to be even more dramatic, the one that we read, the showdown with the prophets of Baal. I haven't time, I wish I had this morning, but I haven't the time to go in detail into these incidents that we read about in chapter 17. But I encourage you to do that.

13:57 There's three of them. In the first, God tells Elijah to go to a ravine, but it's a great hiding place, but there's just one problem. They can't nip out in the local shop to get food. What do you do? And nobody knew where he was, and even if they did, they couldn't get at him. So how was he going to survive? And we discover that this living God, the creator, is not hard up for means of transport when he wants to keep his servants alive. And he arranged a twice daily airlift of food, not using drones, but using ravens.

14:38 Elijah then learning about what it means that God is the living God. God's not simply interested in this big public confrontation with the prophets. He's interested in Elijah's breakfast and in his dinner. He's the living God. He arranged the transportation of his food. Fantastic little story. The second one, when the brook dried up because of the drought, God then instructed Elijah to go to Zarephath where a widow would look after him. So now the issue was not transport.

15:15 The issue was there was no food to transport. He asked the widow for food and drink. And she replied and listened carefully again. As surely as the Lord your God lives. I don't have any bread. Just a little oil. In fact the widow was about to prepare her last meal for herself and her son. And then wait for inevitable death.

15:45 and Elijah invited her to trust his word that if she gave him the last bit of food, God would supply her need. What would you have done? Well, she quickly saw the reality, the logic of her situation. She had no resources of her own. She had nothing to lose, so she trusted Elijah and the food supply never ran out. What does it mean that God is the living God? Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread. Sometimes we forget.

16:23 It's easy to, isn't it? Because maybe we have so much that we've forgotten what it means that actually, ultimately, God is the source of the means of life that we require. How much better to enjoy the food as if it came directly from the hands of the living God, as ultimately, of course, it does. The Father knows what we need, as Jesus said, and as Jesus pointed out, he still likes to be asked. Let's not take it for granted. It's so easy to lose sight of it. see beyond a supermarket and her fridge and the cupboard, that ultimately God is the source of her food. Then the third incident, the widow's young son became so ill that eventually he stopped breathing, and she instinctively thought it was a punishment, when in fact it was designed as a positive lesson that God not only supplies the means of life, he is the source of life.

17:33 Life itself comes from God. As Elijah prayed for the little boy, Lord my God, let this boy's life return to him. God answered and Elijah gave him back to his mother saying, Luke, your son is alive. God is the living God. Elijah learning now to seek God, to pray, to seek God, to restore life, to save life. And ultimately, again, that is where life comes from. When we fall ill, we seek out the medics, and they are wonderful in what they can do, but they're also limited in what they can do. As good doctors will tell you, they can treat, but they can't heal.

18:19 Only God can do that. And he has built in magnificent mechanisms into our bodies so that they are capable of recovery, a fascinating topic in itself. And then sometimes he intervenes directly to maintain our lives in order to fulfill the purposes for us. And over the years of our lives, God will give us many experiences, perhaps of ill health and recovery, of direct intervention, Through which we learn important lessons, but in the final analysis, it rests with the Lord, whether we live or not. And understanding that makes a huge difference when facing serious illness. To get it into my head that whether I live or die, I am with the Lord. and he is in control of the circumstances of my life. He is the living God.

19:34 My relationship to him is eternal. Not even death itself can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Or to put it in modern terms, everything will be okay. But it's time for Elijah to step into the public arena. And opposition had been building all this time. Jezebel, Ahab's wife, had busied herself murdering as many of the Lord's prophets as she could find. She didn't find all of them, thanks to the head of the palace administration. Fantastic.

20:14 I love the way civil servants play roles in the Bible. If you're a civil servant, please, you should rejoice at this point. Obadiah, what a character. There needs to be a society, an Obadiah society in every civil service. It's fantastic. Without the king knowing, he managed to save the lives of 100 prophets, hiding them in two massive caves. And because of course he was an administrator, he knew how to do this, organizing their food supply in a time of famine. It is an amazing story.

20:46 I just love it. He was the Oscar Schindler of his day. What courage. Not a preacher, not an evangelist, a civil servant, an administrator. Fantastic. He wasn't called to lead a great revival like Elijah was. He couldn't change government policy. He couldn't change the nation.

21:04 But he trusted in the living God and discovered that he could use his skills and position to save some. And I wonder if we have the same faith and courage, faith in the living God and enough imagination to see how God might use our position and skills likewise to save some. But even his courage failed when Elijah suddenly turned up at Obadiah's door and told him to arrange a meeting with King Ahab, he was petrified. He feared for his life. If Elijah had the habit, you see, of appearing and disappearing, and if Elijah just went off because the Lord called him somewhere else, and he was left, Obadiah facing Ahab, that was curtains for him. And listen to how Elijah responded. As the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today. Amazing courage.

22:08 He was risking his life, but he faced Ahab in confidence in the living God and what he was doing. And Elijah told Ahab to gather Israel together in Mount Carmel, bring with him the prophets of Baal, all 450 of them, plus the 400 prophets of Asherah directly under Jezebel's patronage, so the odds are 850 to 1. And when they gathered, Elijah challenged the people, how long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him. You notice he's appealing to logic, to reason. And the people we are told said nothing in reply.

23:08 Well, what could they say? They had grown up believing in God, but now for years they'd be trying to combine the worship of God with the worship of Baal, wavering between the two, resulting in God's judgment upon them, a terrible drought. If there was ever to be a recovery, if there was ever to be a revival, they needed to face this core issue and make a decision. That's the issue. If you study great revivals, you'll usually discover that there is one key issue at the heart of each of them. And this is the key issue here. If the Lord is God, follow him. If Baal is God, follow him.

23:57 But don't try to do the splits. It doesn't work. Now, it is easy for us to be critical of Israel and their behavior. But try to enter into this. The worship of Baal was pervasive and seductive. Can you imagine the scenes across many homes? Kids coming home from school. Mom, Dad, we were taught in school today that what ultimately is in charge of the weather patterns, the storms, the rain that fertilizes our crops is actually a God they call Baal.

24:35 And the parents are playing, well, that's not what we taught you. That's not what you learned in the temple. we learned in the temple when we are gone. Yes, I know, dad, but when we talked about God, the teacher just laughed. And they told me that the people in the temple are out of touch. They're unscientific, relying on a Bible that was written hundreds of years ago. They're sure today that it's Baal who's behind the storms, not your God. You know, our neighbors have started to worship this Baal, and their crops and livestock have done far better this year than ever.

25:09 Surely there must be something in it. Or imagine some of the older young people saying, well, to each other, we went to one of their celebrations last night with a friend from school. It was really something. I mean, you know, our stuff is just so traditional and boring and dull. This was exciting. The music was amazing. The dancing, everybody seemed to be having so much fun. The priests are really cool.

25:34 It can't be all bad, can it? And then maybe imagine the older ones talking to each other. What do you think, guys? I know the temple teaches that sex should be kept for marriage, but these priests of Baal are saying it's okay. Sex is natural, like having a drink. What's the harm? Why can't we be free to do what we feel like? As long as, of course, no one feels coerced.

25:58 And one girl dares to speak up and say, look, I'm not so sure about this. But her friends then make fun of her. Don't be so old. You don't still believe all that stuff that Moses taught, do you? That was a million years ago. Come on, this is today. What are you afraid of? We're all going.

26:13 You want to be one of us? And you really like the guys there. They're fantastic. And so it happened that many, particularly of the younger ones, still claimed to believe in Jehovah. But their views on sex were no longer what Jehovah taught. And they justified it by saying, well, that was then. This is now. We live in a modern world.

26:35 Things change. I know it used to be called immorality, but today it's called being true to yourself, being authentic, living your own truth. But God hadn't changed, and he still hasn't. God is not some dead God. He is the living God. He's the source of life. He's the inventor of sex for our joy and flourishing. But to protect its enjoyment, he gave it under certain restrictions.

27:03 and they had flaunted those restrictions, made a God out of sex, discovering as many do in the process, that it didn't end in joy and freedom, but in the carnage of damaged lives and spiritual famine and sorrow and even death itself. And Elijah challenged them, how long are you going to keep this up? How long are you going to hesitate between the two, waver between the two. Baal or God. If there's going to be a revival, you have to make your mind up. Who is the true God? Well, Elijah instructed the prophets of Baal and Asherah to build an altar, put wood and a bull on it as a sacrifice to Baal, but they were not to set fire to the sacrifice.

27:59 They were to leave it. And instead, call upon Baal and ask him to send down fire upon the sacrifice. And Elijah, in turn, would build an altar and then call on Jehovah to send down fire on it. The God who answers by fire, He is God. And again, notice the issue. Who is the true God? The true God is the one who responds, who speaks, who answers by fire.

28:36 I'm having a little competition here. The prophets of Baal went first. From morning to midday, they danced around their altar. They called out to Baal, Baal, answer us. They shouted, but there was no response, no voice. And at noon, Elijah started to taunt them, shout louder, surely he is a god. Perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling. Maybe he's sleeping and must be awakened.

29:12 And one of the phrases could probably be translated, perhaps Baal has gone to the toilet. Now, this is a bit of fun here, isn't it? And you might say, gosh, a prophet using a bit of sarcasm here. Well, perhaps some sins are so stupid that they deserve all the mockery that they can get. I mean, if you worship the process and powers of nature. Some are impressive like the storm. Some are rather humble like going to the toilet. And it is absurd to worship the process and the natural forces in the natural world as ultimate reality.

29:50 But they danced and shouted and cut themselves with swords and blood flowed. And they became more and more frantic in their shout right through the afternoon. But we listened to the refrain. There was no response. No one answered. No one paid attention. Please notice that. It is repeated.

30:09 There's no response. Baal has no voice. Gaia has no voice. The sun has no voice. Cry all you like out to evolution, natural selection. There is no voice that comes back. Cry all you like to sex as a God. There is no voice that comes back.

30:31 Cry all you like into the emptiness of the universe with all the despair of your heart. But if you remove God, there is no voice coming back. And if you make a God out of all that money can buy, cry out to that. Cry out to your yachts and your holidays with which we fill our lives to try to find meaning and purpose. There won't be a response. This is the tragedy of it. People giving their entire lives to the pursuit of wealth, power, sex, believing that it is fate or evolution or gravity or something else that explains their existence, but then calling out in despair at the end of the day for meaning, for purpose, for ultimate value and love, and there's nothing there. The universe has no voice.

31:31 It is just a thing. Elijah called the people to him. He constructed his altar with 12 stones, one for each of the tribe, even though they were a divided nation, and he dug a trench around the altar and placed the wood and the sacrifice on top. Imagine the drama. Then he asked them to get water. You probably noticed that as they read it, to fetch the water three times, pouring water over the whole thing so that it filled everything, ran everywhere, filled the trench. He wanted to ensure that what happened next would be self-evidently of God. And then he prayed, let it be known that you are God.

32:11 Answer me, Lord. Answer me. So these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you're turning their hearts back again. And then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water and the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, He is God. This is the issue. If Baal is the true God, follow him.

32:44 But if God is the true God, follow him. This isn't mere theory. This is not about proving the existence or non-existence of God as some academic exercise. This is how we live. Because you've got to live according to some reality. And either it's Baal or it's God. Fill your minds with all the philosophy and theology you like, but what matters in the end is what you actually believe as demonstrated in how you live. Whether you like it or not, you have to believe in something.

33:26 We each have a worldview, a set of beliefs and values that we live for and live by that depends on what we understand as ultimate reality. What explains my existence here? What controls my destiny? Is it the blind, impersonal, unguided forces of nature? Or is it the uncreated personal creator, the one who is behind my existence? He holds my life in his hands. The revival was not going to depend on generating a lot of excitement like the prophets of Baal were trying to do. whip up the emotion.

34:06 It was going to happen when people thought through the logic of what they believed. I love the fact that Elijah literally poured cold water on the sacrifice. I just think that's fantastic. Our emotions are wonderful things, but sometimes we need to just set them aside and give them a talking to. There are times where we can get excited in a setting like this. there isn't anything we wouldn't do for Christ. And then in school or in work, in our relationships, in our health, we have difficult times, a difficult year, and then all the lovely feelings disappear and disappointment and hurt and confusion. We need to focus our minds and tell our feelings to stay quiet for a while and think through the logic of what we believe.

34:59 How do you know which is the true God? many religions in the world, many on our doorstep. Who is the true God? How would you decide it? The answer is the God who speaks through sacrifice. That's what happens here. Jesus came into the world as that sacrifice, introduced to the world as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. He claimed to have come to die for our sin.

35:31 No one else has ever claimed that. There is nothing like this in the whole world of religions. Christ came, God has spoken through the sacrifice of his son. We don't need religions and moral philosophies that tell us to be good. My problem is that I can't. So how do I deal with that, with my failure and my sense of guilt in a moral universe where I instinctively know that there is such a thing as right and wrong, that what I do has moral value? God cannot say that it doesn't matter because that would simply be the same as saying that I don't matter because my actions don't matter. Jesus came to tell us that sin matters because our actions matter, because we matter.

36:24 And it must be judged by the fire of God's justice. But here is the supreme sign. The fire fell on him and not in us. In my place condemned he stood. That's the difference. There isn't anything like this. Search all the religions of the world.

36:52 You won't find this. They're silent when it comes to the issue of guilt or else they just try and explain it away. It doesn't exist at all. Let me be personal as I finish. Why have I sought to serve the Lord for 50 years plus? Why did Paul, he writes, Christ's love compels us. Because we are convinced that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. This is the logic.

37:47 This is the conviction. How long, if you are hesitating, if you're trying to play in both fields here, doing the splits, It's going to become more and more uncomfortable, and in the end you will destroy yourself and those around you possibly. How long are you going to keep going this way? Jesus warned us you can't serve two masters, two lords. You can't serve God and mammon. Mammon isn't money. It's the God of money. There's nothing wrong with money.

38:25 There's everything wrong with making a God out of it and what money can achieve. idols aren't necessarily the things we love instead of God they're the things we serve they're the things we trust they're the things we see as the supreme realities in case some of us have started to set up idols in our heart perhaps we need to listen to the witness of the spirit this morning in case we started to give trust and service to ideas and things, a trust that should only be given to God. If Jesus is God's son, who has come personally into this world and given his life for us, if Jesus is God's son, the heir of all things, if he is the king who is to come, then we would be fools not to serve him, no matter what we feel like on any given day. But if he isn't, then still be logical. Don't serve him. Don't waste your life.

39:37 Follow some other God. If this world is God, follow the world. But don't fall into this illogic foolishness of doing the splits and trying to have the best of both, because you will destroy yourself. How do I know the true God? The true God is the one who speaks. He's spoken in many ways, but supremely in this, he's spoken in his Son, who gave his life for us. Let's pray.

40:15 Father, we pray that we'll feel some of the strength and challenge of what the people were facing that day. How long would they waver? How long will we help us to make the choice convinced that one has died for us and he's died for us so that we would no longer live for ourselves. but for him who gave his life for us. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.