Grace to you and peace, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you care to. Open your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 18. As you’re turning there, I want you to hear something that is important to God. Above everything else in our lives God wants to have: our hearts, our worship, our focus and praise. God wants to be number one and have our whole heart.¹

In the Ten Commandments number one is:

You shall have no other gods before Me.²

When Jesus was questioned, “What is the most important commandment?”

Jesus said, “Above all else, we are to:

love the Lord your God
with all your heart, mind,
soul and strength.³

God wants all of our heart, not just part of it and certainly not just the leftovers. So what does Satan try to do to hurt God? He tries to take the hearts of the people away from the one true holy living triune God and get people to worship and serve anything else,⁴ which is something Satan’s been doing for a long time.⁵ Putting false gods in the place of the one true God is called the sin of idolatry. Now if you are taking notes write this down:

False gods promise
what only the true God provides.

For example: Money is a pretty popular false god. What does money do? Money promises what only God can provide. Money promises happiness and security. That is what many people believe. The reality is it doesn’t really make secure. The reality is it doesn’t really make happy. It’s a false promise.

Money says if you have enough you’ll be happy, but it doesn’t matter how much money you have. There are things, very important things, no amount of money can buy, like: family, real friends, real dignity and respect and real love. It’s a false promise. It’s a false god.

At the time of Elijah many people were living idolatrous lives, following false gods, be they idols of wood or stone, or idols of the heart. As we learned last week, Elijah was called by God to confront evil king Ahab who was married to the even more wicked queen Jezebel. Ahab was the eighth consecutive evil king.

The Bible says he did more evil in the eyes of God than anyone before him. He was the worst of the worst, and the worse thing was: he continued turning the hearts of the people away from God toward the false gods of Baal and Ashtaroth.⁶

Baal was the fire god. Ashtaroth was kind of like Baal’s wife, and the people were no longer worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were worshiping false gods. The false gods promised, “If you worship me, we’ll make your crops grow. If you worship me, you’ll have a better life.”

False gods promise
what only the true God provides.

God raises up Elijah to confronted the king saying:

As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.⁷

As we saw last week, there is a major drought. People are dying. There’s a famine. It’s the worst thing you could imagine, and God sends Elijah into a time of hiding and preparation. Why? Because king Ahab wanted him dead.

God takes Elijah to the place called the Cherith Ravine. If you were here last week you heard Cherith means: “The place of cutting down.” It’s a place where God humbled him and developed him into even a stronger man of God. God fed him by morning and evening, with ravens who would drop bread and meat, and he drank from the brook.⁸

One day the brook dried up. God called Elijah to move to a place known as Zarephath, where there was a widow whom God used to provide for Elijah⁹ with just a little bit of oil and a little bit of flour which miraculously never ran out.¹⁰ Then one day the widow’s son died.¹¹ This man whose faith was being hewn and grown, took the son up to his room and God raise this boy from the dead.

What we see is the prophet developing into the man of God. The man God wants him to become. He had been in hiding, but now the time has come. God wants him to go confront the evil king, and here’s where we pick up today.

It is about three years into the drought and in 1 Kings 18:17-18, we see them together again. Starting at verse 17 it says:

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him,
“Is it you, you troubler of Israel?”

And Elijah answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals¹²

Most people I know aren’t worshiping the false gods of Baal or Ashtaroth. The false gods people worship today are much more socially acceptable. A lot of people worship the false gods of money. People worship the false gods of material possessions: your house or your car. It could be your image, your look. It could be your favorite sports team. It could be your career. It could be your hobby.

So Elijah steps into this situation and he makes a very strong statement. He looks at them and says, with all the authority of God, “People, it is time to quit wavering. It’s time. Quit wavering between gods. Quit going back and forth. It’s time to stop.”

Watch what he says to the king in verse 19-21.

Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”

So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel.

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 Mim; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word.¹³

I can guarantee if Elijah were here today he’d say the same thing to us. Pick a side. I think he might say, “If your false god, whatever it is, really is God then sell out to it.” In other words: if it’s material possessions then quit just accumulating them a little here and a little there. Go for it, get into massive debt. Steal if you have to. I’m not joking about this.

If the greatest thing is accumulation, then everything should be justified to obtain that goal, and stealing would be justified. How about, “Don’t ever give again. Don’t ever do anything generous, because that would diminish your ultimate goal of accumulation.” If material possessions is truly God then go for it.

If your image is truly God don’t just kind of do it. Get in the gym three hours everyday day. Ignore the fact that you’re going to die. Don’t even think about that. That would totally disqualify the god of your appearance. Buy whatever clothes you need and go for it.

If your house is that your god quit doing one little room at a time. Go into debt. Take out a second or third mortgage. Hire the best contractors and landscapers. If those things are your god, then quit playing around.

But! If Christ, the Son of God, is the one true God, then quit your wavering. Serve Him with all your heart. Don’t just claim Him and then live like He doesn’t really exist. Serve Him!

How long will you waver between two opinions?¹⁴

Elijah proposes a showdown.

Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it.

And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, He is God.¹⁵

I bet they were thinking, “You idiot. Do you know who you’re dealing with? We are going to call on Baal – the god of fire. You’re going to get smoked! Silly prophet.”

Verse 26, scripture says:

And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered.¹⁶

They’re dancing around and shouting. The Bible says there was no response. Nothing happened.

Now I love this part: Elijah starts playing with them. This is funny. This is a man of God, and he’s going to mess with them. Here’s what he does in verse 27

At noon Elijah mocked them saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

If you read on in verses 28-35, what did they do? They shouted louder. They danced more. They went crazy. They started to cut themselves, because that’s what they did for worship at times. Scripture says they shouted all day long.

The sad thing is many of us, maybe we don’t dance for the false gods all day long, but maybe follow it all life long. Dancing, praising, pursuing, serving, and worshiping the false gods that promise, but never deliver all life long.

Then finally, at the end of the day, they’ve danced and cut themselves into exhaustion, but nothing happened.

Then Elijah does this. In verses 33-34 he tells them to pour copious amounts of water over the sacrifice and altar he has built. Three times they douce it with water, until the ground is soaked and water is standing.

Then in verse 36

At the time of the offering of the oblation [offering], Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.”

Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.”¹⁷

As I read that, I feel such care for so many of you, because there are those of you who walked with Jesus and then you walked away, and you put something else on the throne of your life. Today God is calling to you, so you can turn your heart back to Him. That may be why you’re here, because God has been working on you, calling you. Turn your heart back to Him.

Why doesn’t God do that kind of stuff today? Why doesn’t God show Himself like that? I’ve asked those same questions. Then I realized: In an infinitely more beautiful way, God showed Himself to us two thousand years ago, when He left Heaven, became one of us, lived a perfect and sinless life so that He could die for us on a cross, and then be raised again, so we could know Him and know how much He cares and how far He’s willing to go to save you. When you really know Jesus, all the false gods just seem to fall and fad away.

God, we ask that You would touch our hearts with that question, “Who is your God?” We pray we would be humbled, and in a Spirit of repentance, we would dethrone all the false idols that are standing in the place of where You want to be, where You belong. That we would hold You alone before us as God, Savior and Lord.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

=======

NOTES
1Exodus 20:5