Thank you for listening to this sermon from Seven Springs Presbyterian Church. If you want to learn more about us, please find us on Facebook or visit us at sevenspringspresbyterian.com. Like I said, we'll be in First Kings chapter 18. We'll begin in verse 20, but we need to kind of remember where we left last time and that was we left the scene with Elijah commanding the King Ahab to be able to gather everyone together as we read last time in verse 19. Now therefore send and gather all Israel to meet me at Mount Carmel and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. And that is exactly what we see as we see Elijah there the demanding prophet and with the authority that Ahab although he is king he has no power over Elijah and he has to do what he says. And that is so Ahab sent all the people in verse 20 of Israel and gathered together the prophets together at Mount Carmel. Now we see Elijah being the powerful prophet in this chapter. The previous chapter in chapter 17 we saw him do great things. The prediction of the drought and being able to say that rain is not going to come and that is exactly what happens in that That chapter, No Ring Comes, he raises the widow's son at Zephira, Zerephath, from the dead. And so he's the one who directs Ahab. He's the one that speaks. He's the one that proclaims. And this shows something. It shows that Ahab really has no power. The queen of hearts in Atlas Wonderland will say, off with his head or her head. And yet here, Ahab has no power to be able to do such a thing. that he understands as we met Elijah the Tishbite from Tishbe in Gilead, as the Lord lives, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word. And so Elijah throws down the gauntlet and is able to be able to set up a great challenge and he starts with this great challenge and that is where we will begin with the contest of the gods in verse 21. 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. This is a very straightforward teaching that Jesus says that no one can serve two masters. Either he will hate one, and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. There is hate and love or despise and devoted. You cannot serve God and money. And we'll look at this more in depth, Lord willing, when we get to the Ten Commandments in our sermon series in Exodus in the Sunday morning services. But most of the issue I think that we have specifically with the first commandment is not necessarily the concept as a whole. It's normally one word in there. And the first commandment is that you shall have no other gods before me. Jesus puts it this way and says, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. This is what Moses writes in Deuteronomy chapter six. Verse 13, it is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. And I think the big issue that we have with the first commandment is not necessarily that we are called to be able to worship God, to be able to glorify God. The issue is the one word there, no. That you shall have no other gods before me or him, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. The problem is that often we don't serve God alone. We actually think that this is our priority, that we put God first, and then we can have all these other gods, all these other idols, as long as they don't then surpass God, then that's fine. And that's normally how we understand the first commandment. But we need to understand that that's not, it's not that you shall serve God and or put him first and then have others, but it's God alone. You shall have no other gods. And actually we think, and the end I think is the very dangerous part that we, a dangerous part and place to live. Because what you're really saying when you say that the no doesn't matter or the alone doesn't matter, is that what you're saying is God is really not enough. that I need God and something else. I need God and something else to be able to help us. He's either not strong enough, he's not good enough, and where the danger is that these other things creep in. And often this is the great issue in the Old Testament. It's not that Israel goes out and completely disowns God and completely walks away from God and His worship. But what they do is they start to add to God. They start to build another temple here and worship God off the site. They start to be able to, with a little bit of Baal worship there, a little bit of astral pull there. And they say, well, I'm not putting these gods, you know, God is still my God. But it's probably good to have a backup, you know, good to have something off the side. But we need to understand here, God is a jealous God. That when we speak of God and serving God alone, God is a very jealous God. It's, you know, I've heard a preacher once put it, that it would be quite a different idea if a husband came or a wife came to a husband and said, you know, I love you. I love you a lot, but I've decided, you know, I'm going to pursue, you know, another woman or another man. Look, you'll always be my number one, but, and how dangerous that is, and yet how frequently we do that with God. How we often then put other things, idols, to creep in. This is one of the dangers in one of the churches in Revelation. I know your works. You're neither cold nor hot. Would that you would either cold or hot. Because you are lukewarm, you are neither hot nor cold, and I will spit you out of my mouth. And so the issue here is that here Israel is limping between these two options and these two opinions. And Elijah comes and says, you need to choose. You need to draw a line in the sand and choose a side. There is no fence sitting. And Israel here is at a key point, a critical point. They need to choose. They need to make a choice. The Lord or Baal? You got to follow Yahweh or you got to follow Baal? This is a very important point in history that we need to be able to understand, that the Westminster Catechism in chapter 25, when it speaks of the church, it speaks in section 5, it explains what the true church is in section 4, that there's grading levels, more pure, less pure. according to the doctrine of the gospel taught and embraced ordinances administered and public worship performed more or less purely in them. So here is a sliding scale on one side you know you have pure, on the other side you have less pure and it's based on the doctrine of the gospel, the ordinances ministered, the sacraments and then the public worship. Those three things are kind of the scale that the divine put in and said, here's how you know if you're a pure church or not. But section five explains the purest churches under heaven are subject to both mixture and error. So on that sliding scale, there's more or less, but there is not perfect. But then there's this scale where on the point where it comes to, and some have so degenerated that they become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. And so there comes a point where you become less pure, that you're not a true church at all. And Israel at the point that we've been going through has been degrading and become less and less pure. And over the last years, quickly or slowly, however you want to see this, they've degenerated, degraded their worship of God. They've elevated their worship of Baal. Even as we looked at in chapter 16 where we began, even with Jeroboam earlier in the chapters, and we saw that from Jeroboam to Ahab was a great degradation. that to begin with they set up the golden caps and said, these are the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt. At least there was some connection to their backstory and their story of where the ordinances God had given them. And they kind of twisted and distorted their true, the worship of God into their own form and fashion. But then it comes to a point now they've just started worshiping Baal instead of the house of the Lord, they've got the house of Baal. And so, And Elijah is saying that there needs to be a line in the sand, they need to be able to choose. And it's such a clear statement, yet what did the people do? The people, sadly at the end, surely you would be able to at this point say, we choose Yahweh. The God who has rescued us, the God who has delivered us, the God who has provided for us, the God who has shown us His power and His might time and time again, the God who has made His promises to our fathers of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, the ones who have set us free and delivered us over time and time again, the one who has given promises to David, and we choose Yahweh. But yet what do they do? They don't answer Him a word. So what does Elijah do? Elijah sets out a clear challenge, a contest for them. And the challenge is really about one word that he said before. And how long will you be limping between two different opinions? The issue is that there's two opinions and you're limping between the two. If, the important question here, if the Lord is God, then follow him. If Baal, then follow him. It all comes down to this question, if. Now I like Microsoft Excel, I use it almost for everything. Sarah mocks me. There's a problem, Excel will fix it, generally. But in Excel, you don't need to know much, but in Excel, there's a formula called if. And that formula is quite simple. You ask it one question, if, If this equals this, if it doesn't equal this, whatever it is, and it returns a clause, either true or false, and it bases the information on that cell, whether it's true or false. That if question, if it's true, then this is what's gonna happen. If it's false, then this is what's gonna happen. And here, Elijah is programming and saying if. If Yahweh is God, then follow him. If Baal is God, then follow him. We need to understand that here Baal and Yahweh are two different options with two different names, two different opinions. There's many religions that might seem similar to us. This was Jay Gresham Aitken's, the big part of his book was the word and. Christianity and liberalism. that he said that they're not even, you couldn't call them the same religion. They're two different opposite religions. And so Elijah is here saying, if. You need to make a choice. How are they going to decide which What's the clause they put in that Excel statement? What's the question that they ask? And it's simple. The question is simple, if Yahweh or if Baal, and the simple contest is who can start a fire? We see this in verse 22 and 24. Then Elijah said to the people, again we notice Elijah is the one who is the powerful one in this process. That here the people have been answered and here Elijah sets all the parameters and sets all the rules. Elijah says to the people in verse 22, I even I only am left a prophet of the Lord, but by all his prophets of 450 men. Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves, and cut it into 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 on it. And you call upon the name of your God, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, the God who answers by fire. He is God. And all the people answered, it is well spoken. So here's the contest laid out. Which God can start fire? That's what you see there at the end of verse 24. And the God who answers by fire, He is God. This is a challenge that Elijah puts forward. The people are agreeable to it. Here the people get to be able to get the first choice of which bull. He spells out here that he's the only prophet left, and Baal's prophet's 450 men. Again, I think we could go into the reasoning why he thinks he's the only one left, but we know that there's at least 100 prophets that have been hidden in the cave by Obadiah. And so he states there that he's the only prophet left. I have one versus 450. Advantage is given to Baal. Now why this specific challenge? Well specifically, Baal was the god of rain, the god of fertility, but also the god of thunderstorms. Now if there was ever going to be a time where you could start a fire quite easily, thunderstorms would be a great chance to be able to do that after three years of drought. Drought in this time, in this period, in the desert, and to be able to start a fire. In Australia, we have things called total fire bans that are completely, they happen regularly. Basically, if there's, the formulas that they put in, the wind rate is high, the temperatures are, over a certain time and there hasn't been rain for a certain period of time, there was just no fires or anything. You wouldn't be able to do certain things. And so they create all these total fire bans and they say you can't, and there would have been in Israel at this point a total fire ban for sure. Ahab was sent Obadiah around to try and find some water and some grass so they could feed some calves and everything was dry and barren. Now, if you were to have strengths and weaknesses, say for a trivia night, if someone was to call you up and said, look, we need one person to be able to fill the slot on a trivia team. You know, what do you think you could bring to the table? What gifts? You know, I'm very, very limited. I'm not someone you really want at a trivia night, unless the topic of Bible knowledge comes up, English Puritans, Westminster, maybe English monarchs, specifically in the Tudor period, the Stuarts, maybe Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. Construction, that's never been a topic that has come up on a trivia night. But most of the time, there are things like pop culture and songs, spellings, you know, I'm useless in all of those things. But you want to have a strength to be able to play to. And for Baal, his strength would have been starting a fire after three years of drought. And if you were to ask Baal, which two categories would you go in to be able to show your power as a god? Rain and thunderstorms. They would have been his two strengths to be able to choose as a god. But yet what has he not been able to do? Bring rain for three years and now he won't be able to start a fire. So the contest has been set, the parameters and rules have been laid out, everyone is agreeing to this. Now before we get to the first part, we should again make a few comments about how important this is. Verse 21, when Elijah spells out, how long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him. If God is God, follow him. And here again, we see the Bible quite clearly always speaks in two different ways, giving two different options. In Psalm 1, you have the wicked and the blessed. Jesus speaks of the narrow gate, the wide gate. Moses, as he separates the people, a blessing, a mountain of blessing, a mountain of curses. Jesus separates the people in the final days from the sheep and the goats. You have heaven and hell, light and darkness, life and death, truth and falsehood, righteous and wickedness, faith and unbelief, obedience, disobedience, love, hatred, humility, pride, wisdom, folly, forgiveness, vengeance, hope, despair, grace, judgment, unity, division, liberty, bondage, holiness, and purity. Then why do we always live in the middle? Why do we often think there's a third way that we can kind of make it work for us? It's never worked before. Why do we always try and find the best of both worlds? Why do we believe we are unique and we think that there's more gray in this world than there ever has been before? I mean, the list could go on, but what this really means is we need to be able to put our money where our mouth is, or so to put it another way. our faith where our heart is. And we're not perfect, but imagine just for a moment if we truly believed that God is God and we followed him. If we truly believe that God heard our prayers and answers our prayers according to his will, wouldn't we pray more fervently? Or if we truly believe that God is the God who is able to be able to change a person's heart, the most wicked of people, God would be able to bring them to their knees. Let's stop and think about that. How would that change our prayers? The hearts of the most wayward child, do we think there's no hope for them? And yet the God of the Bible is the one who listens to our prayers. Not our own God, not the other option God, most wicked of rulers and yet God is able to change their hearts. I mean we could go on but sadly I think that when we think about these Israelites and there they are living in the middle seeking to be able to worship two separate different gods and yet we do the same all the time. You and I, all of us, if we're truly honest, do serve two masters. And it's not that we don't think that our master isn't, God isn't the most powerful, the greatest, but often what it is is there's one on the side. We'll worship two or more idols or gods. And I think this passage should be a great reminder that we shouldn't be limping between two opinions. That there is no other God than our God. There's nothing our human mind can make, that can create, that is greater than the God of the Bible. That we should have hearts filled with praise and adoration. and give all praise and glory and honor to the God that has revealed Himself through the Bible, the Great I Am, the Holy and the True, the Elf and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Everlasting from Everlasting, the Thrice Holy God, the Good God, the Gracious God, the Merciful God, the Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit. And yet what we see, sadly, is the Israelites turn to be able to worship creation rather than the Creator. exchanging the immortal God for mortal things. If the Lord is God, follow him, as Jesus puts it. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. And often it's the hardest thing, it's not necessarily giving up some things, It's giving up the last thing, that one thing you want to be able to hold on to, to be able to deny yourself. As Jesus puts it, if anyone would come after me, if anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. And here, we need to understand again, as the Bible does so frequently, it cuts really to the heart. The issue is the people do not worship God as they should. And they have thought to be able to replace God and to be able to bring in some other God. But God's a jealous God. And so Elijah sets forth a contest to be able to prove to them who their God is. And so the rules of the contest, again, are quite simple. They are to choose, prepare, call upon the name of your God and put no fire to it. And so we see here the challenge of the first part of this challenge in verse 26 to 29. 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, Baal, answer us. But there was no voice and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And 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. And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances until blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation. But there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention. So here the contest has begun. They've chosen their bull, and they set it up. And we see this scene set and broken up into three parts of us, morning, noon, and evening. that began by calling upon his name as they limped around the altar. As Elijah said, you need to stop limping and choose a God. And now they're limping around the altar. At noon, Elijah cries out and mocks them with four different things. He says first that they're crying aloud. For he is a God, he is musing himself, he is musing. Now different translations are found in the Old Testament, complaining, talking, being anxious. Some have suggested not to be too crude, that this is a term for digging a hole for excrement. Paired then with the second part of the mocking, that he's relieving himself. Now again, we don't need to be in middle school to be able to find this somewhat humorous. That here, that we see that there's a humorous side to it, but there's an also serious side to it. That when we start to begin to create false gods from creation, they take on and they look exactly like creation. They have these things they need to be able to deal with and they act exactly like creatures. The third thing is that he's on a journey, and this is often one of the reasons why people would think that their gods would not answer them. They had a simple philosophy of how God works, and they had all these formulas to try and understand how God works, and if there wasn't any rain, then the problem was either me, so I needed to be able to sacrifice more, more blood, more whatever, and to be able to appease the gods so that he would give me, or he or she would give me what I want. Or the problem was that these gods often would be able to go and they'd fight battles. Your god could be dethroned. Your god could be killed, taken out. And so they would go and fight battles to be able to make sure their kingdom was safe. And so Elijah said, well, he's off on a journey. Now we think this is somewhat humorous, but there's some truth to that. The prophets of Baal went, well, that's a possibility, yeah. He might not be here. The fourth thing is that perhaps he's asleep. He must be awakened. Again, to be able to see the humor in this situation, that Elijah here is mocking them, and he knows that nothing is going to happen. Elijah's not politically correct, you might say. He's not open-minded. He's not going to pass the diversity training. But there's a reality. He's speaking the truth. But at noon, the session increases. Their crying aloud does not work, so they need to be able to take things to the next level. Verse 29, a scene to be able to behold. As they cry aloud, they cut themselves, as was their custom, with swords, lances, until blood gushed out upon them. Their solution for their God was to mutilate their bodies. How opposite we see gods and their theology and how that impacts how we act and what we do, that here you have opposite gods. Again, you have Yahweh who seeks to be able to protect the body made in his own image, later called his temple. And here you have the followers of Baal. See, the body is something that can be mutilated to be able to bring their God happiness. Again, it's hard for us to truly imagine this scene. We come to church on Sunday and we're not feeling it, we're not getting the response we need, and so we need to elevate our worship. And so what we do is we go to our closet and we bring out the lances and the swords to be able to bring guts and blood everywhere, just hoping that our God would listen to us. Again, these are not minor paper cuts or abrasions, but the word that gushed out upon them really shows this gory nature of what they're doing. And the third and final part of the scene was that evening, in verse 29, as the midday passed, and they raved on, only translations, This is all, the only other time this word raved is translated, the ESV raved, it appears 114 times. Normally they prophesied. There was only one other time in 1 Samuel chapter 18, when this harmful spirit of God rushes upon Saul and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre. He did day by day and Saul had the spear in his hand. maybe there's some form of idea of some form of trance coming over you know when when someone speaks of their rage or their anger and they say I just saw red maybe this is what they're kind of speaking here but often what is used as is the Spirit of God coming upon somebody and then often what would happen is the Prophet then prophesies and produces speech and so we have the opposite here of Baha'u'llah And finally they come to the final thing to be able to make an offering of ascension. And so here in this three parts of these scenes nothing happens. But we need to understand that there's two different opinions here. There's two different ways. There are two different gods. In the sad reality when you worship a man-made God, you worship in a false way. You get exactly that, a God who is man-made, a God who doesn't exist. You see time and time again here in verse 26, but there was no voice and no one answered. In verse 29, but there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. Psalmist writes in Psalm 115, why should the nation say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens and He does all that He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold. They work the work of human hands. They have made mouths, but they do not speak. Eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear. Noses, but they do not smell. They have hands, but they do not feel. Feet, they do not walk. They do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them. And here's the reality, when you make something out of creation, when you make a god like Baal, they're not going to answer you, they're not going to hear you. Gold does not hear, silver does not hear, wood does not hear, stone does not hear. This is one of my favorite funny stories in the Bible is when Isaiah speaks of those who go out and make their own gods. And these craftsmen that are humans go out and they go and they make their gods and the ironsmith gets his cutting tools and he fashions it with hammers with a strong arm. The carpenter stretches out a line, marks with his pencil, shapes planes with a compass. And he shapes this idol into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man. He cuts down cedars in verse 14, chooses a cypress tree or an oak, lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest, plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it, then it becomes fuel for a man. And he takes part of it, he warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. He also makes a god and worships it. He makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire, the other half he eats meat. He roasts it and is satisfied. Also, he warms himself and says, ah, I am warm, I have seen fire. And the rest he makes into a god. His idol, he falls down to it, he worships it, he prays to it and says, deliver me, for you are my god. They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes. so they cannot see in their hearts, so they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is the knowledge or discernment to say, half it is burned in the fire, I also baked bread on its coals. I roasted meat and have eaten, I shall make the rest of it an abomination. Shall I fall down before a block of wood? He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? And here, Isaiah is painting the picture of here this man who goes to the tree, and half of the tree is a God, the other half is just practical for burning. And so too we see in this passage the sad reality that many of us will seek to be able to make our own gods and elevate them to the place of the God. And many people still prefer to be able to worship these man-made idols and gods, made with human hands, than the ones who, actually the God who actually formed the human hands, the God of the Bible. A great challenge, I think, here as we stop here and we know where this story goes, but the reality is that the people of God had been following this false god, Baal, that they had no answer for Elijah when he called out and said, you need to stop limping between these two opinions. If Yahweh is God, follow him. If Baal, then follow him. And sadly, I think we live in that limping mindset, in the middle, where we will say in one mind and one heart that we are true worshippers of God. And yet, in another, we will say that we other gods will creep in.