Gluten Free & God Seeking: Elijah & the Show Down on Mt. Carmel in 1 Kings 17

Monday, January 1, 2018

Elijah & the Show Down on Mt. Carmel in 1 Kings 17

Sometimes we think that God is all powerful, and He doesn’t need our prayers. Again and again it touches me how much God needs man’s cooperation. And I saw it again when I was reading chapter 10 in the Life-Study on 1 & 2 Kings on Elijah who was an incredible Old Testament prophet. In 1 Kings 17 Israel’s idolatry was so bad that Elijah prayed that the rain in Israel would stop. So for three years there was no rain, and of course without rain, there was a severe famine in the land.

God shutting up the heavens was definitely an attention-getter to make the Israelites consider where they were spiritually. At this time most of them were worshiping idols. Can you believe it?! In the account given in 1 kings 17:17-40 Elijah challenges King Ahab to a duel of sorts—he proposed that they would make two altars and that the God who answered by fire would be Israel’s God. So Ahab tells all the prophets of Baal to build their altar.

Then Elijah repaired the altar of Jehovah and then dug a deep trench all around it. When both altars had bulls on them, the prophets of Baal began to cry out for Baal to answer with fire and consume their offering. But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. This put them into a kind of frenzy and they started cutting themselves in hopes that this would make Baal bring down fire. Elijah who knew God very well sort of mocked them and told them maybe Baal was sleeping or on vacation. When it looked like they had exhausted every means with Baal, Elijah did something sort of peculiar. He took four jars of water and started drenching his offering with it, not just once but three times. Everything was so wet that it made the water ran down and fill the trench.

Elijah must have felt that he was going to make it crystal clear that Jehovah WAS God because if you’ve ever made a campfire you’ll know it’s a bit hard to get something wet to burn.

When it was Elijah’s turn, every eye was upon him. He prayed this beautifully simple prayer: Not a minute later, fire came down from heaven and consumed not just the bull, but every stick of wood, the stones, dust, and even the water in the trench!

I think God was so fed up with His people worshiping Baal and Asherah that He was more than ready for this show down! What the Israelites saw made them all say twice-- Jehovah He is God! But do you notice here that God didn’t do all this alone? In his prayer Elijah was in complete obedience and cooperation with God, and this allowed God to touch the hearts of His people and turn them back to Him. Writing this post at the beginning of this year reminds me again how important all of our prayers are for God to carry out His will on this earth!!