In the early morning hours of June 11, 1997, Michael Jordan called his personal trainer to his Salt Lake City hotel room. His trainer found him curled up in the fetal position, sweating profusely and shaking, after a round of terrible vomiting. Game 5 of the NBA finals was scheduled for that evening, and the Chicago Bulls were tied, two games to two, against the Utah Jazz. Whoever won the game that night would have a decisive advantage heading into the next game, with only one more win needed to clinch the championship. Jordan saw a doctor, who diagnosed his condition as likely food poisoning from a pizza he ate the night before. The team trainer told Jordan he needed to sit out the game that night, but Jordan was utterly determined to play. He stayed in bed and vomited all day until almost 6pm, getting up just in time to make it to the stadium for the 7:00 tipoff. Then, in a condition of exhaustion and dehydration, he led the Bulls to victory with 38 points. That game has been known ever since as the “Flu Game,” though it wasn’t really the flu but a bad case of food poisoning. From there Jordan led the bulls to their fifth NBA championship of the 1990’s. A day that started out as a complete disaster became instead one of the defining moments of Jordan’s career. His terrible sickness became the context in which Michael Jordan demonstrated the sheer determination that made him the greatest basketball player of all time.
There is a similar dynamic in 1 Kings 18. It is a dark time in the northern kingdom of Israel. King Ahab and his Sidonian wife, Queen Jezebel, have made the worship of the false god Baal official policy in the kingdom. As a result, Elijah, the Lord’s prophet, announced that neither dew nor rain would come upon the land until he said otherwise, and for over three years the land was bone dry. As you see in this account, the king had to resort to scouring the land for any trace of vegetation that could be used to feed his livestock. The kingdom lay under the spiritual darkness of idolatry, the people suffered under a severe drought, and the Lord’s prophet Elijah had been gone from the land for an extended time. There would be plenty of reason to look at this situation and be discouraged about God’s people and his purposes. And yet, the disastrous situation in Israel became the context for a defining moment in showing us who God is.
Discouragement can take a real toll on us. When we face discouragement about the advance of God’s kingdom, we lose motivation to worship and serve the Lord. We turn our hearts toward other things, the things of this world, hoping to find some solace in them because our deepest wells of joy have run dry. And yet, it is in dark and discouraging times that God’s character has an opportunity to shine, as this story reminds us. At such a dark time in Israel, God shows up in a remarkable way. If you are facing discouragement about God, his kingdom, or his purposes, I encourage you to take heart. Learn to look for those hidden, surprising ways that God is always at work, because God is always up to something. What is he up to here? And what might he be up to in our day? Let’s note three encouraging truths about our God from this story.
First, we see in this story
That term “providence” simply means God’s purposeful sovereignty by which he governs and directs all things in creation.1 In all the ages of human history, there has never been a single second, and there never will be, when God will fail to have a faithful people on earth, a people who worship him and bear witness to his Word. Yes, God’s people are often a small minority. In the days leading up to the flood, a grand total of eight people out of the total human population worshiped the Lord. But from those eight God preserved a remnant through judgment, and he gave them a new world to inherit after the waters receded. This story in 1 Kings 18 shows that same pattern at work during the dark days of Ahab’s reign.
We have already seen in chapter 17 how the Lord preserved the prophet Elijah through the drought by sending ravens to feed him and then by sending a Sidonian widow to do the same. It’s worth noting here that in chapter 18 we discover from Obadiah’s words that King Ahab has been searching for Elijah high and low and has been unable to track him down because of the Lord’s protection. According to verse 10, Ahab sent search parties to the nations all around Israel, and when the other nations claimed that Elijah was not within their jurisdiction, Ahab made them swear oaths to affirm it. The Lord kept Elijah hidden for three years from the king who wanted him dead and would stop at nothing to find him.
But is Elijah the only prophet of the Lord left in the northern kingdom? No, he’s not. In this story we are introduced to a high-ranking member of King Ahab’s administration named Obadiah, who was Ahab’s palace administrator (something like the president’s chief of staff today). According to verse 3, Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. We wouldn’t expect King Ahab’s palace administrator to be a man who feared the Lord. That would be like Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff being a secret ally of Ukraine. And yet, Obadiah worshiped the Lord, and not Baal, and he held a strategic position in Ahab’s kingdom. So when Queen Jezebel went on a rampage against the Lord’s prophets to try to exterminate them from the land, Obadiah was uniquely positioned to save the lives of 100 of the Lord’s prophets by hiding them in caves and secretly supplying them with food and water. Just when it seems all is lost, and Baal worship is going to rule permanently, we see that the Lord has one strategically placed servant, Obadiah, ready to protect the prophets of the Lord from death. That is a striking example of his providence.
Moreover, after the showdown at Mt. Carmel, when it became clear that the Lord is God and Baal is not, Elijah seized that moment to leverage the power of the crowd gathered there to apprehend all 450 prophets of Baal and take them to the brook Kishon for execution. King Ahab had no ability to stop the crowd, and they assisted Elijah, who by God’s authority temporarily assumed the power of the sword and put Baal’s prophets to death, according to God’s command in Deuteronomy 13:1-5. So what 1 Kings 18 shows us is that, just when the situation seemed dire in Israel, and Baal worship threatened to swallow up the whole nation permanently, God nevertheless preserved his prophets and orchestrated the slaughter of Baal’s prophets. No matter how bad things appear, the Lord always has his Obadiahs and his Elijahs waiting to carry out his will.
In Matthew 16:18, Jesus said, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Jesus promised that he will build his church, and that his church would storm the very gates of the Hades, the realm of death itself. Over the years we have sent out pastors and church planters to spiritually dark places. Why, for example, did we send the O’Day family to Salt Lake City about a decade ago? That place is dominated by Mormon teaching and influence, and per capita it has the lowest percentage of evangelical believers of any other place in America. But we sent Timothy there because of Jesus’ promise to build his church, a church that will storm the gates of death and call sinners to life. And you know what? It’s happening in Salt Lake City, and it’s happening in a thousand other places. You don’t see it on the evening news, but Jesus Christ is building his church, brick by brick. You can trust the God who providentially preserves a people for himself, even and especially when it looks like we are a tiny minority in a godless world.
In his providence, God rules over all things. But he also allows us the privilege of participating with him in the unfolding of his plans, which is another element in this story. And so a second encouraging truth about God from 1 Kings 18 is
There are two prayers from Elijah that God answers. The first is about fire, and the second is about rain. The first comes in the context of the showdown between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal. The purpose of this showdown is clear from verses 21: “And Elijah came near to all the people and said, ‘How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.’ And the people did not answer him a word.” Elijah confronted their sin of syncretism, blending together the worship of the true God with worship of a false god, and told them it was time to choose one god or the other. But the people didn’t answer because they liked keeping their options open. Why did they have to choose? Couldn’t they hold on to both gods and get benefits from both?
According to Elijah, they were “limping” between options. Their worship was, in a sense, injured by their lack of commitment. So Elijah set up a challenge to make it abundantly clear who is God and who is not by seeing which God answered prayer. He gathered a crowd on Mount Carmel, and Baal’s 450 prophets went first. They set up their altar, laid their bull carcass on it, and then called upon Baal to consume it with fire. They called out to him from morning to noon. They engaged in a ritual dance around their altar as they chanted their mantra, desperately seeking Baal’s attention. But nothing happened. So Elijah started to mock them by speaking of Baal as though he were a mere man: “Maybe he is deep in thought and can’t hear you. Maybe he’s stuck on the toilet. Or maybe he went away on a journey. Or he’s just asleep, so cry louder!” This is a holy form of mockery. Mockery has an important function if we use it wisely. There is obviously a bad way to mock. If you mock someone who is weaker than you, you are just being a bully. But that is not what Elijah is doing. Elijah is mocking the whole ideology of Baal worship, which at that moment had the full force of the crown behind it. When we mock, with wisdom, the powerful ideologies and institutions of our society that oppose God, we deflate the illusion that those institutions are all-powerful, and thus encourage others to stand up to them. The author of 1 Kings even seems to mock the prophets of Baal himself when he says in verse 26 that they “limped around the altar that they had made,” referring to their ritual dance as limping (same word from verse 20). Eventually, it got so bad that they started cutting themselves with swords and lances, spilling their blood in hopes of somehow getting Baal’s attention. This story reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:7: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” Pagans think their gods are limited in the same ways that we are, so prayer is about saying enough words, or performing outlandish enough actions, to distinguish yourself among all those begging for his help and somehow draw your limited god’s attention. But the true God is not limited. We don’t have to compete for his attention. He sees all, hears all, knows all. Our prayers are not for his benefit.
After the deafening silence of Baal’s non-response, Elijah takes his turn. First, he repairs the altar of the Lord that had been torn down. That altar was probably one of the old “high places” where the Lord had been worshiped prior to the building of the temple of Jerusalem. It had likely been torn down during Queen Jezebel’s campaign against the worship of the Lord. Elijah restored the altar and laid his bull on it, and then he did something quite shocking. He had a trench dug around the altar, and he commanded that four large jars of water be poured over the sacrifice and the altar. And then he commanded it again. And then again. What’s shocking about that act is that he used a large quantity of water during a prolonged drought. That water was a precious resource that could have been used for drinking, and Elijah was using it the same way a magician might ask an audience member for a $100 bill so that he can tear it to pieces and then make it reappear inside a lemon or something like that. Elijah was using this precious water for dramatic effect, to make it abundantly clear that only the power of God could consume this utterly drenched sacrifice on this wet altar. Some things are more important even than life-sustaining water in a time of drought.
So there sat the soaking wet corpse of a bull, on a soaking wet altar, with a trench full of water all around it. And then Elijah prayed. His prayer is very short and simple. He called upon the Lord in faith, and the true God of heaven and earth heard and answered. What is described here is probably a lightning strike, not from the storm god Baal, but from the Lord. It was a bolt of fire from heaven that set the altar ablaze. And according to verse 38, it burned so hot that it consumed the sacrifice, then the wood, then the very stones of the altar, and it dried up all the water in the trench. This was clearly the power of God on display, and the people fell on their faces and confessed that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is the true God.
But that moment is not even the climax of this story. It’s a prelude to the true main event, which comes at the end. This chapter is about the end of the drought, and that happens after the showdown at Carmel. And if you think about it for a minute, it makes perfect sense why it had to happen that way. God imposed a drought on Israel for their worship of Baal, and if he had ended that drought in any other way, the people would have assumed that Baal brought the return of the rain. So the Lord very publicly demonstrated that Baal has no power before he granted rain again. And once again, he acted in response to Elijah’s prayer. Verse 42 tells us Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, bowed down, and put his face between his knees, which is a posture of prayer. Then he told his servant to go look toward the sea. The servant came back and said, “Nothing.” So Elijah did it again. And again. And again. Six straight times he prayed, and nothing happened. But then on the seventh time, the servant reported that a small cloud had started to form, a sign of the coming deluge and end of the drought.
Elijah’s two prayers in this story have a lot to teach us. On the one hand, he prayed for fire, and God answered immediately. But after that, he prayed for rain, and he had to persevere in prayer, seeing no results six straight times, before the Lord answered on the seventh. Why does God answer some prayers quickly, and other prayers he delays his answer while we keep praying? I don’t know. The answers are hidden in God’s mysterious will. But this story shows us that our part is not to understand the mysteries of God’s ways. It is to pray and, if necessary, to keep praying, and to keep praying, and to keep praying, knowing that there is a God in heaven who hears and answers prayer. In James 5:17-18, James holds up Elijah’s prayers as a model for us. What stands out to me in those verses is when James says, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.” When I read the stories of Elijah, it’s easy to assume that’s not true, and that Elijah was some kind of superhuman demi-god. He raised a dead kid to life. He called fire down from heaven. He never even died, but was taken up directly to heaven by a fiery chariot. And yet, he was a man with a nature like ours. James says that to show us that what matters in prayer is not the abilities of the one who prays, but rather the God to whom we pray. The reason Jesus told us faith the size of a mustard seed could move mountains is because the power does not reside in the faith itself, but in the object of faith, who is the Lord who rules over fire and rain. So let Elijah be to you an example to pray, pouring out your heart to the Lord, and if necessary, to keep praying until you get a resolution. Tonight we will gather at 6pm for the purpose of praying together as a church. I strongly encourage you to be here if you are a member of the church, for calling upon the Lord together is one of the central acts of our congregational life. Some of our requests will be answered quickly. Others we will pray for over a series of months, or even years, before we see God answer. But in either scenario, our prayers offered in faith are never wasted. If you are facing discouragement, one of the best things you can do is come and pray with us, and then we’ll see what God does in response.
We have seen how this story highlights God’s providence and his power. But you really see his heart on display with one final, encouraging truth:
If you see the big picture of what is happening in this story, I think this is a story about God renewing his covenant with Israel in spite of the fact that they don’t deserve anything from him. This story started with a drought, which was the imposition of one of the curses of the covenant from the Lord in response to Israel’s idolatry (Deut. 28:22-24). Sending rain again after the people have confessed that the Lord is God shows that God has restored the blessing of his covenant.
Elijah’s actions on Mt. Carmel also point us in this direction. Look again at verses 30-32: “Then Elijah said to all the people, ‘Come near to me.’ And all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, ‘Israel shall be your name,’ and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord.” The altar Elijah rebuilt had twelve stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Of course, this happened within the borders of the northern kingdom, which only had ten tribes (and the southern kingdom of Judah had two). But this symbolic action recalled the truth that in spite of current political realities, Israel was one people, chosen by God to be bound to him by covenant. And the twelve stones recall two earlier events. One was in Exodus 24:4, when Moses at Mount Sinai set up an altar and twelve pillars, each one representing one of the tribes of Israel. That was the moment when God first made a covenant with Israel. Another event was when in Joshua 4 the priests carried the ark of the covenant into the middle of the Jordan River, and the water stopped flowing, drying up so that the people could cross over into the land God promised them. After that event Joshua commanded that twelve stones be taken up from the bed of the river and set up as a memorial of God’s fulfillment of his promise, with each stone representing a tribe. Elijah’s altar recalls these two prior covenantal events, showing that the God who made a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai and kept his promise to give them the land when they crossed the Jordan is now reclaiming his bride, Israel, out of his jealousy for her.
But then notice also what the Lord does for King Ahab in this story. Ahab, who under his wife’s influence promoted Baal worship, was the real “troubler of Israel,” as Elijah made clear in verse 18, and yet the Lord showed astounding patience with him by offering him another chance to rule as a righteous king. I see that as the main point of verses 41-46. Note first that Elijah told Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of the rushing of rain” (v. 41). That sounds like a command to celebrate God’s blessing of rain, the lifting of his curse on the land. It may even suggest a feast of covenant renewal similar to when Moses, Aaron, and the seventy elders of Israel went up on Mount Sinai to eat and drink as they beheld the Lord in Exodus 24. So Ahab went up and ate and drank, and then the rain came. It poured so hard that Ahab had to get his chariot down the mountain quickly so he wouldn’t get stuck. And on his way down toward his part-time residence in the city of Jezreel, we read about this odd detail in verse 46: “And the hand of the LORD was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.” Elijah was supernaturally empowered to run ahead of the king’s chariot for a distance of about 17 miles. But why? I think this was one last gesture of grace from the Lord to King Ahab. By running before his chariot, Elijah honored King Ahab’s royal office, and he gave King Ahab a picture of a reset and the possibility for a new future before him if he does not spurn the grace of God. When Elijah runs before his chariot, Ahab sees a picture of what it might be like for the prophet and the king to work together, with the prophet honoring the king and the king following the prophet. The Lord is telling Ahab, “I have every right to destroy you for listening to your wife and promoting the worship of Baal, but instead of doing that, I am wiping the slate clean and giving you another chance to follow my Word and rule this kingdom in faithfulness. Will you receive this opportunity to repent, or reject it?” What is remarkable about the patience of God here is that Ahab has done absolutely nothing to deserve this. He has been a silent bystander to everything that has happened. He has expressed no repentance, and yet God has given him another chance. What he will do with it, we will see in chapter 19.
But for now, marvel at the fact that God gave him this undeserved opportunity. It is astounding grace that God would renew the covenant with a people and a king who did nothing to deserve it. It is an indication of how patient God is with us. In Romans 2:4-5, Paul writes, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.” The patience of God is meant to lead us to repentance. He gives us time, undeserved time, to turn from sin and receive his grace and forgiveness. But if we spurn that, we only store up more wrath for the day of judgment to come.
On July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon at Enfield, Massachusetts, that has come to be known as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It has been studied in high school and college literature classes across the country and may be the most famous sermon in American history. The main doctrine Edwards proclaimed in this sermon was this: “There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” What does that mean? It means that God has every sufficient reason to condemn the wicked already. He has no covenantal obligation to be patient with them. He owes them nothing whatsoever, and so the fact that they have been given life and breath for the present time is from his sheer grace alone. The point of that sermon was not that Edwards had some sadistic pleasure in the thought of God’s judgment on the wicked. The point was that he wanted his hearers to know that every breath they took was an undeserved gift of the grace of God. Every passing second was another second in which God’s patience extended the offer of the gospel to them. Edwards, who was not necessarily known as a dramatic speaker, had to pause during his sermon several times due to the cries coming from the congregation, where fear and the conviction of sin took hold, and led a number of them to confessions of faith in Christ. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is not primarily a sermon about God’s wrath. It is about his incredible patience, holding out the hope of salvation to those who repent before it is too late.
Perhaps some of you are here today because God wants you to stop taking his patience for granted. Maybe you have never turned from your sins and to Jesus Christ in faith. Maybe you grew up in a Christian home, or you’re still growing up in one now, but you have never made the faith of your parents your own. How do you know if it’s time to do that now? Well, are you breathing? Then it’s time. Or maybe you have confessed faith in Christ, but you’re not living like it. It could have been the slow drift of a thousand daily decisions that led you away from him, or maybe you fell into a sin that felt so weighty to you that you have no idea how to face it. When you feel distant from God, often times the natural response is to put your head down and just try to ignore it. Tell your conscience to shut up enough times, and eventually it will. If that’s you, I call upon you to stop taking God’s patience for granted. It is meant to lead you to repentance. If God gave Ahab another chance, he holds out the same opportunity for you. Don’t spurn his grace.
There are any number of reasons you might be discouraged today. If you look at the moral decay of our society and see the apparent weakness of the church to combat it, take heart from this story. Remember that in his providence God always has an Obadiah strategically positioned to preserve his people, and he can turn the tide against the false prophets of this world in an instant. If you find yourself discouraged in prayer, take heart from this story, and remember that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Sometimes you may pray and see God move immediately. Other times you may see nothing, and you’ll have to keep praying, and keep praying, and keep praying. But no prayer offered in faith is ever wasted. If you find yourself discouraged because of your own sin, take heart from this story, recognize the incredible grace of God’s patience that is over you right now, repent, and return to the Lord. We worship a God who raises the dead. The last thing we should ever be is discouraged. Amen.
Series1-2 Kings
