Our scripture reading today is from 1 Kings chapter 18. We'll be reading verses 30 through 40. Today we pick up again with the account of Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Through the influence of Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, idol worship has overrun the northern kingdom of Israel. Despite God's warnings through the prophet Elijah and others, Baal worship has become the dominant religion in the land to the point where the lives of the prophets of the Lord were endangered. As a result, by God's doing, the land has been without rain now for three and a half years. God has demonstrated with clarity that he is the Lord, And that Baal is an impotent god who can do nothing. He can neither give rain and crops, nor can he withhold them. Last time we saw how Elijah demonstrated that Baal is unresponsive to the pleas of his prophets. who passionately cry out to him all day long, their bodies bleeding from cuts they made with swords and lances, trying desperately to get Bell's attention. But there was nothing, no reply. It's now Elijah's turn. Since early in the day, the prophets of Baal petitioned their God, and now it's early evening. Verse 29 tells us that it was the normal time for the daily evening offering, an offering that God had commanded in the day of Moses. So let's pick up the story. This is verse 30, 1 Kings chapter 18, beginning at verse 30, and this is the word of God. 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 12 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. And he made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two sieves of seed. And he put the wood in order and cut the bowl in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood. And he said, do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And he said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time. And the water ran around the altar and filled the trench also with water. And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, oh 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. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, the Lord, he is God, the Lord, he is God. And Elijah said to them, seize the prophets of Baal, let not one of them escapes. And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to the brook, Kishon, and slaughtered them there. May God add his blessing to this reading of his word. What does it take to change someone's heart? The answer to that question is difficult. It's elusive. Same things don't work for everyone. It's a question of what moves us, what's important to us, and that can be very different for different people. And it's a mystery why one thing moves or attracts one person, but not another. We're complex creatures. Often we have no idea. why we do, why we're drawn to certain things and not others, or why we tend to invest our time and resources into some things, but we avoid others. Why is one person a believer in God and another an atheist? Sometimes unbelief can arise from a lack of knowledge or from a wrong way of looking at the world. Sometimes it can arise from misplaced priorities where we just desire something more than we desire God. Sometimes our heads even tell us that we should honor God as our creator and love him with a whole heart. And we know that failure to do that leads to death. But still, we don't follow through on what we know. That's what the Apostle Paul describes in Romans chapter 1 and also in chapter 7 of that same letter. In chapter 7, he describes an individual who knows God's commandments, aspires to do them, but ends up doing what he doesn't want to do. Have you ever had an experience like that? Well, what's the solution for this? How does a heart committed to pursuing its own desires change into a heart that desires God and the things of God? The Bible tells us that there's only one solution and that it lies in God himself. Our God is in the business of changing hearts and minds. And that's what we see in this passage that we just read. So I have two points this morning. One is God's gracious intent, and the second is God's powerful action. First, God's gracious intent. We see this intent pictured and also stated in verses 30 to 37. We see it pictured in Elijah's actions. He rebuilds an old altar that had been used for the worship of the Lord, but had since been torn down. Apparently in the interest of the new vogue of Baal worship, all vestiges of the older order not only had to be abandoned, but also removed. not exactly our modern Western idea of religious liberty. God was not just ignored here. He'd been driven out. His altars were torn down and his prophets were in hiding for fear of their lives. In the face of this, God would have the right to reject Israel. as they had rejected him. But surprisingly, he doesn't do that. Instead, what we see is his gracious intent. Out of his grace, he sends his prophet to bring these people back to him. Now, frankly, if it had been up to me, I would have said, that's it. I've had it. I'm out of here. But thankfully, God is is a lot more gracious than I am. I'm grateful for that every day. And so despite their obstinate and rebellious ways, God has compassion on them. He loves them. He wants them. And so he seeks them. The picture we see here is of the shepherd in Jesus parable who goes out looking for his lost sheep. The picture is of Jesus himself who says that he comes to seek and to save the lost. At this moment in their history, Israel is desperately lost and they're headed for destruction. But out of his love, the Lord sends his prophet to find them and to rescue them. And the first thing Elijah does to demonstrate this is to rebuild this altar that had been defaced. The altar was a symbol of their former relationship with God, a place where God had been acknowledged and sought and worshiped. It was also a place of sacrifice, a place where animals died. This was a symbol that a right relationship with a holy God is a costly thing for sinful people to obtain. And they were a sinful people. All of us are sinful people. All of us have failed to love God fully and to keep his commands. And the Bible says the wages of sin, the penalty for this failure is death. By rebuilding the altar, Elijah is rebuilding the avenue, the path, the way back into loving fellowship with God. God would accept the death, the sacrifice of a substitute to remove the barrier of sin that stood between him and his people. Now what's still unclear to the Israelites at this particular time is that it would be God himself who would provide sacrifice to regain his people. He would pay the price for sin himself by allowing his own son to die, not on this altar made with stones, but on the altar of the cross. That's how much God loves his people. That's how much he loves us, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And the altar that Elijah builds is a symbol of all of this. It's a symbol of a restored relationship with God that would come about through the sacrifice of God's own son. But we also see God's gracious intent in the words of Elijah's prayer. That's in verses 36 and 37. In these words, we see God's purpose clearly stated the end goal of all that's happening here in verse 36. He prays, let it be known this day that you, oh Lord, are God. that you are God in Israel, that I'm your servant, and that I've done these things according to your word. See, he's praying for a change of heart. These people would see something that they're not seeing at the moment. And then in verse 37, he prays that this people may know that you, oh Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back There's the goal. That's the purpose of all of this. Elijah doesn't pray that God's judgment would rightly descend on a wicked people. That would have been a temptation, I think. I'm guessing that after three and a half years of no rain, that it was not only Jezebel who wanted Elijah dead, A lot of people would have been with her on that. But instead of condemning his enemies, Elijah prays for them. That's what Jesus did on the cross. And that's what Jesus instructs us to do. To love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us. And why should we do that? Why should we pray for the good of such people? Well, it's because we serve a God who is filled with gracious intent. He's a God who saves sinners, who, when we were still sinners, sends his son to make us right with him. God wants us to show grace to others. Because that's what he's done for us. God wants his children to be like him. And so he wants us to pray, Lord, be gracious to this enemy of mine. Change his heart. Change her heart. Turn their hearts to you. Because that's your plan. It's your intent to rescue sinners. If you're someone living in unbelief and rebellion against God, know that as God sent Elijah to the Israelites, he sends Jesus to you and to me. Jesus who gave his life for sinners like us. Who, like Elijah, prays for sinners like us. That each one of us should turn back to God. Don't let this opportunity pass you by. Turn to God. Follow Jesus. Your sins will be forgiven. You'll be accepted by God. because God's intent is a gracious one. That brings us to the second point, God's powerful action. What takes place next after Elijah's prayer is one of the most impressive events in scripture. This is not the first time that fire comes from the Lord to consume a sacrifice. We see this in Leviticus, book of Leviticus, chapter nine, at the start of the ministry of Aaron and his sons as the priests of Israel. Fire comes from the Lord, it consumes the offering, and we're told that the people, when they saw it, They shouted and they fell on their faces. We see this sort of thing again in 1 Chronicles 21 when King David offers a sacrifice to God on the site where the new temple would be built. And then again in 2 Chronicles 7 when King Solomon dedicates the new temple that had finally been built, and now here with Elijah on Mount Carmel. But what makes the Mount Carmel event especially impressive, I think, is the backdrop of the contest going on here. Based on the rules of the contest laid out by Elijah, the God who responded by fire, he would be God. And from a human point of view, the contest was lopsided in favor of Baal. In golf terms, these prophets were given a huge handicap. There were 450 prophets of Baal to one prophet of the Lord, 450 voices to one. Moreover, the prophets of Baal would have all day to get a response from their god. And then, Elijah kicks things up one more notch by ordering his sacrifice to be doused with enough water that it filled a small trench dug around the base of the altar. It was about four and a half gallons of water that filled that trench. So things were good and wet. There was no possibility that some human trickery could be pulled here in getting a fire going. And unlike the prophets of Baal who made a loud nuisance of themselves all day long, Elijah prays a short and simple prayer asking that God would make himself known and that the hearts of the people would be changed. Now we'll talk more about prayer next time. But what immediately comes to mind here is the reminder that Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount about the fact that we have a Heavenly Father who already knows what we need before we ask and is willing to give it. And so we don't have to pack our prayers with a lot of empty filler thinking that this will get God's attention and somehow answer us, somehow move him to answer us. Elijah prays simply, prays directly, and what we see in response is nothing short of a dramatic demonstration of the power of God. Fire from the Lord immediately falls on this water-soaked sacrifice, and not only consumes the sacrifice, But everything else, including the wood and the stones that Elijah used to construct the altar, the way verse 38 describes it here, there was nothing left. You know how there are ashes left after you burn something? Well, verse 38 says that even the dust was consumed. There weren't even any ashes there. It's like the altar and everything on it was vaporized. And oh yes, the water in the trench was gone too. I get this picture of everyone standing at this spot, looking at this spot, where an altar once stood. And now there's this charred piece of ground surrounded by a trench. And verse 39 says that when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces. He said, the Lord, he is God. I mean, what else could you say? God's statement could not have been any more clear or any more decisive. And so what we see in this passage is not only God's gracious intent to turn his people back to him and save him, but we also see that he puts his power behind that intent and does what he sets out to do. God doesn't just hope to save his people. He does it. This is the power of God to save. The Apostle Paul speaks of this saving power of God in chapter one of his letter to the Romans. He says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. And what is this gospel? It's the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If fire from heaven was a dramatic demonstration of God's power aimed at saving these Israelites, then the death and resurrection of Jesus is an even greater display of God's power, not just in the power of the event itself, but in what it powerfully brings about. When Peter and the other apostles preached the message of Christ's death and resurrection in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people had a change of heart that day and believed and turned back to God. And since that day, millions upon millions of people have done the same thing when the gospel has been preached. We don't have fire. raining down from heaven, or people rising from the dead every day. Neither did the Israelites, by the way. These were not your ordinary, normal day experiences. They were special, one-time events designed to powerfully turn the hearts of a people who had become hopelessly enslaved in their idolatry, in their sin, And when we and others have the benefit of having these powerful works of God recorded for us and then proclaimed to us, we get a taste ourselves of this great power of God. And God continues to use these things to turn hearts, to turn people to himself. It's not always clear how that happens. It's a mystery here, but it does. And you know, you and I are part of that process. God calls us to be fellow laborers with him in this work of changing hearts. And we, of course, have no power in ourselves to change a sinful heart, but in God's hands, we can be instruments of that change. I recently reread an article about a survey done that had to do with people, how people come to Christ. And it talked especially about those who did not grow up in Christian homes and how for these, coming to Christ is often a lengthy process and tends to need more than one exposure to the gospel. When the survey showed something else that was very interesting, kind of humbling if you're a pastor, but the survey showed that the people most likely to lead unchurched people to Christ are not pastors or youth leaders, but personal friends. And so we may not personally see the dramatic results that took place on Mount Carmel or on the day of Pentecost. But that doesn't mean that God is not powerfully at work today in the world. He is. One report estimates that there are between 100 to 200,000 new believers being added every day throughout the world. If you're a believer, then you and I should be encouraged today. We may not be seeing this in our backyard, but it's happening throughout the world. We see in this passage a God whose gracious intent is to save sinners and who acts powerfully to do that. He takes no pleasure, the Bible says, in the death of the wicked. He doesn't want for us and for others the fate that awaited these prophets of Baal. It's a very somber note to end that scripture reading on this morning. But that's not what God wants. That's not his desire. And so he has sent his son. He sent his son to rescue us from destruction. So again, if you're a believer in Christ, continue to put your trust in Jesus and be encouraged to share the good news of Christ with others, to be a fellow worker with God in his saving work to the lost. And to those who are not yet believers in Christ, I again encourage you, consider these things. Consider this God of enormous grace and also enormous power. Turn to Jesus Christ. Receive his forgiveness. And if you do that, the promise of resurrection and eternal life are yours. Let's pray together. Our God in heaven, we thank you for your amazing grace. Thank you for your love, your compassion, your willingness to pursue us when we would have nothing to do with you. Thank you for sending your son while we were still your enemies. Thank you for the hope that is ours because of what Jesus has done on the cross. Lord, we pray that this good news would indeed spread to the very ends of the earth and that by your grace, by your powerful work, you would change hearts, bringing people back to you and Lord, As we hear about these things and see your great power, give us boldness. First, give us hearts of compassion as you have compassion for the lost. But give us boldness because we go not in our own strength, but in yours. So we look to you, Lord. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.