Sermon Cloud

Well, football season has begun! So how many of you are Washington Redskins fans? How many of you are Baltimore Ravens fans? How many are Pittsburgh Steelers fans? And ... okay, how many of you are Dallas Cowboys fans? It is fun to have a team we identify with and cheer for.

How many of you are Washington Nationals fans? How many of you are Baltimore Orioles fans? Or Pirates fans? Now daily baseball games, and Sunday football games are fun to watch, but when does football get really exciting? [The playoffs] Right, play-offs time and particularly the Super Bowl.

When does baseball really get exciting? [The playoffs] Right, the play-offs and the World Series. Now the interesting thing about the play-offs and particularly when it gets down to the last two teams, everyone is asked to choose, to root for one or the other, even if neither team is our regular team.

Elijah also demanded of the Israelites and demands of us to choose: choose between the God of Israel, and all the other gods that are available in the world, including the god of money, the god of physical attractiveness, the god of success or fame, to name just a very few of the gods that are out there in our world today.

In Elijah’s day, the issue for the Israelites, was that they wanted to have faith in God and wanted to worship Baal also. Here’s how it all went down. Many generations after King David and King Solomon, a young man named Ahab became king of Israel. In order to forge a political alliance with the Phoenicians, a marriage was arranged with the daughter of that king, and her name was Jezebel. The Phoenicians worshiped Baal, who was the god of fertility, the god of storms and rain and lighting. When it stormed and lightning flashed they believed that Baal was speaking to them and voicing either his pleasure or displeasure with the people. When it rained, Baal was happy with them. When there was drought Baal was unhappy with them.

Jezebel came into the marriage insisting that Baal be the god of the Israelites, and she went about destroying all the priests, all the prophets and all the temples and altars that had been erected to honor God. One such altar was an historic one at Mt. Carmel. She also brought in 450 priests from her country to lead the worship of Baal in Israel. She also brought in about 400 young women to perform the rites of fertility in the worship of Baal. I am hoping I don’t have to explain what they did, or what people did with them. No wonder God wasn’t pleased.

When Jezebel began her destruction of everything dedicated to the God of the Israelites, Elijah prayed that God would keep it from raining. And it did not rain in Israel ... for three and a half years. Elijah kept asking Ahab and Jezebel, if Baal is the god of rain and storms, why hasn’t it rained. They in turn tried to kill Elijah but somehow he kept escaping.
Finally, it was time for the big showdown. Tired of the sinfulness of the Israelites worshiping Baal instead of God, Elijah called for a play-off. Elijah challenged Ahab and all the priests of Baal to a grand Super Bowl of prophets. And Ahab agreed, thinking that when Elijah had been shown up, he would seize Elijah and kill him, once and for all.

Elijah called all of the Israelites to meet him on Mt. Carmel the ancient place of Hebrew worship. He challenged the prophets of Baal saying, “You all make an altar, and I will make an altar. You all choose a bull, and I will choose a bull. You put wood on the altar, put the sacrifice on the altar, but do not light a fire. I will do the same. Then, you pray to your god, and I will pray to my God to strike the sacrifice and the wood with lightning and fire. Then we will know which is the true God.” Elijah took twelve stones from the old desecrated altar from ancient times, to build his altar, with each stone representing one of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Now the irony of all this is that if Baal is the god of storms, so then lightning should have been easy for him. Elijah set it up to give the prophets of Baal every advantage, knowing that only Yahweh is real, the God of Israel. He even invited them to go first. And just like the Super Bowl has billions of viewers from all over the world watching, Elijah had called all of the Israelites so that everyone could say that they were there, that they had seen it with their own eyes when Elijah proved the prophets of Baal to be false.

Well, the prophets of Baal began. They prayed. They danced around. They shouted. They called out to Baal. They went on and went on, but nothing happened. Around noon, Elijah started to mock them and taunt them. “Cry out louder! Perhaps he can’t hear you. Maybe he’s meditating and can’t be disturbed. Or maybe he’s on a journey. He could be on vacation, and won’t be back till next week.”

Now, in the original Hebrew, Elijah even suggests that perhaps Baal is indisposed, and can’t come out of the bathroom right now. The prophets of Baal began to get really serious, and as some middle easterners still do today, they began to cut themselves on their arms, their legs and bodies as signs of their devotion and seriousness, but all to no avail. Nothing happened at all on their altar.

came rolling in. It got fiercely windy and dark. Then ca-rackkkk! Lightning struck the altar like a perfect shot and it was so hot that it consumed the offering, burnt all the wood, and turned all the water to steam.

Finally by late afternoon Elijah said, “Okay guys, the day is getting late. Perhaps I should take a turn.” He instructed his helpers to pour water all over his altar and to soak the wood. Not once, not twice, but three times. There was so much water on the altar that it filled the mote he had dug around the altar. And then without a whole lot of hoopla or yelling, Elijah spoke confidently to God: O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back to you. There was no waiting. There was no period of silence or wonder. Suddenly in the sky, dark cloudslike water sizzling on a hot griddle.

All the people were so shocked and so scared that they all bowed down to the ground and repeated, “The LORD indeed is God. The LORD indeed is God.”

Wow! I wish that I had that kind of audacious faith in God! I wish that we all had that kind of faith and absolute certainty about the power of God. Can you imagine the amazing things that God could do in and through our lives if we lived out our faith flat out, with ‘no holds barred’? Why, we would see miracles every day. We would inspire others, every day. We would prove the power of God every day, to others and to ourselves. It would be a self-perpetuating cycle of faithful actions, complemented by God’s mighty acts, and that would fuel our faith even more, and we would do even more outsized acts of faith and trust in God.

God is ready to prove himself to anyone of us, at any time, so that we might have faith, and have it courageously. God is looking for people who will step up and live lives of complete trust and faithfulness.

God proves himself worthy all the time, and if we would just heighten our trust in God, and elevate our willingness to serve God, then God will work some amazing miracles through us, to make a huge difference in our world. Jesus went to the cross, willingly ready to lay down his life, because he wanted to show how great is God’s love for us. Even while we were still sinful, frightened, and selfish, God gave up his Son for us. God proved his power in life, and his power over death, by raising Jesus to life again. There is a God in Israel, there is a God in the world. The LORD indeed is God. Amen.