Choosing a God

I Kings 18:1,17-24

August 13, 2006

Dr. Larry D. Thorson

1 After a long time, in the third year, the word of the LORD came to Elijah: "Go and present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the land."

17 When he saw Elijah, he said to him, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel?"

18 "I have not made trouble for Israel," Elijah replied. "But you and your father's family have. You have abandoned the LORD's commands and have followed the Baals. 19 Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel. And bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table."

20 So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. 21 Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him."
      But the people said nothing.

22 Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the LORD's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 23 Get two bulls for us. Let them choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. 24 Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by fire—he is God."

The theme verse for our Bible school this year was Isaiah 40:27 “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint”.

Isn’t that a beautiful verse? “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength”. If we want to soar like an eagle we have to make a daily choice to wait for the Lord. That’s why our Bible story today is about making choices. This week in our valley alone families had no less than four Vacation Bible Schools and a church music school to choose from. In addition I kept hearing different children talking about birthday party sleepovers, beach trips and all sorts of other options at the same time as our Vacation Bible School. So in a way every morning of Bible School was like a contest to see how long we could keep kids coming back.

Every day I feel like I’m in a great big contest like one of those grocery store contests where they’ll give you everything that you can fill your cart with in five minutes. Which items are the most expensive and flat? Don’t fill the cart with fluffy potato chips. There are so many constant decisions to make.

Often the choices we make have to be made very quickly and they’re not very obvious. I don’t know how many of you have said when you had to make a hard choice “Well I need to pray about it.” But then you pray and come out exactly where you started, not knowing what choice to make.

In our Bible story we read of a choice between two gods, Baal and the one we know as God or Yahweh. Well that seems like an easy choice. I’m not going to choose Baal. Or would I? Choices are rarely simple.

The first Baal was a Canaanite fertility god who promised to help the crops grow and to make the land bountiful for his worshipers. Sounds kind of silly doesn’t it? But I wonder how many of you keep a rabbit’s foot or some other good luck charm.

Both my wife and I as pastors have actually been like rabbit’s feet for a number of people. A man was facing surgery and asked for me to pray with him at the hospital just before the surgery. I’m always happy to do that and perhaps I can be of comfort to you in a time of stress. But just my presence won’t ensure a successful outcome. Your prayers will be heard just as much as mine.

We actually make our pastors Baal gods. We even make our church a Baal god. We think if we go to church good things will happen to us. Well maybe but people can become more interested and more involved in a church than in a relationship with God. They are not the same. We have to make a choice everyday throughout the day to worship at the altar of God and not the altar of Baal.

An altar is a place where we get right with God. In the olden days people would bring sacrifices of animals to the temple and present them on the altar. When Jesus, God’s Son died on the cross he was the final perfect sacrifice on God’s altar. No longer do we need to present sacrifices on the altar because the perfect sacrifice has covered us. That’s why in the Presbyterian Church we don’t have an altar. We have a communion table where we remember the final sacrifice of Christ with the bread and juice.

So all the other altars should be destroyed but of course they’re not. At the one we worship God our creator, who cannot be controlled and who mysteriously leads us through the drama of life. At the other altar we worship Baal who is far more manageable. He is a god we have shaped with our own hands and, thus, a god that we control. Best of all Baal makes no demands of us—only promises.

We come to church on Sundays, and claim that we have but one God. How do we really make sense of the teachings of Jesus about love and grace in our highly competitive, cutthroat world? It isn’t that any of us think that Jesus is wrong. No, we think he has the truth. We just don’t know if the truth works in our society. For example, how long would any of us last out there if we just keep turning the other cheek? So we wonder if maybe Baal has any alternative strategies for our enemies. NO! That’s wrong!!

Suddenly the air is pierced by the voice of Elijah who screams at us in v.21: “How long will you go limping with two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him.” Then the text tells us, “And the people did not answer him a word.”

That silence is our confession. We were afraid of this. Elijah has exposed our implied polytheism with the gods of creed and pragmatism. But two gods cannot co-exist. Choices will have to be made. Spiritual renewal in a person’s life always begins with a choice, a decision. And when we

realize the serious implications of this decision, we can only stand before the altar of the Lord in silence.

Notice that none of them said “I don’t know any Baal.” We all have a favorite Baal or two, and we all limp between two different opinions about God. We both believe that God will be faithful, and we do not believe. Those two opinions are what makes room for Baal in our lives. Oh, we never renounce our Christianity. We just pick up a little auxiliary, supplemental, just-in-case, plan B, plan Baal.

On Sunday, we say we believe God is the Creator, but most of the week we never wait for him. We say we believe Jesus Christ is the Savior, but we spend most of the week trying to be our own saviors. That is because we have grown weary waiting for God to be faithful. Some of us have suffered for years with broken bodies and broken hearts, loneliness and bad relationships. We don’t doubt that God could deliver us. What we doubt is that he will.

As Elijah said, we have two opinions about who is God. And so, we cannot run without being weary. In front of all the people, Elijah sets the rules for this great contest. First, the prophets of Baal will prepare a sacrifice on their altar, then he will prepare a sacrifice on the altar of the Lord. They will call upon the name of their god, and he will call upon the name of his. The god who answers

by fire, “He is God.”

From morning until noon the prophets of Baal danced in front of their altar crying out, “O Baal, answer us!” With some irony, no doubt, Scripture claims “they began to limp about the altar they had made.” By noon, Elijah was feeling pretty good about how this thing was going, so he starts to make a few jokes: “Cry louder. Maybe he wandered away. Maybe he’s on a journey. Oh, I know: maybe he’s asleep, and you better wake him up.” The prophets of Baal did cry louder and they cut themselves and bled for their god. “But there was no voice, no answer, and no response.”

That is the problem with Baal. It does not matter how frantically you try to make it save you, there will be no response from any god you have made for yourself. By three o’clock, Elijah figures enough is enough. He prepares the altar of the Lord and lays a bull upon it. Just for dramatic effect, he douses the sacrifice with twelve great jars of water and then he prays, After this, he stepped back and threw his arms up to heaven.

Suddenly a bolt of fire shot down from the sky. The altar exploded into flames as the fire consumed the offering, the wood, the water, and even the stones. The text says, “When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord indeed is God. The Lord indeed is God.’” I guess so.

What Elijah did was put his belief on the line. When Evelyn Rutherford came to me last spring and asked me about Vacation Bible School I said we weren’t going to have one this year because we didn’t even have enough teachers for weekly Sunday school where we would get enough teachers and children to do a decent school.

But Evelyn knew that God was calling her to do it and there would be teachers and students for that school. On Monday morning at 9:03, the first day of school

with VBS scheduled to start at 9:00 am there were two children present, Evelyn’s great granddaughter who’s moving to Iowa and a girl from Valley Restart. I felt like I had prayed fire from heaven and nothing came.

Little did I know that across the street God would send a man by the name of Coach Carter to run a basketball program in our gym and he made his athletes try our school. Little did I know by Wednesday we’d have 30 children enrolled and that we had bought the exact number of materials to give away so that every child went away with enough. Little did I know that God had prepared this Vacation Bible School and who would be there.

To worship God is to step out in faith even when it looks like you’re going to fall. The only way to know whether you have eagles’ wings or not is to fly. To worship Baal is to play it safe and control our whole situation.

This Vacation Bible School is just the beginning. On September 10 we are launching for the 2006-2007 school year a children’s choir that will practice at 9:00 each Sunday morning. We will have a class for parents who drop their children off during that hour. How are we going to do that, our music director is leaving?

The same way Elijah called down fire from heaven. By faith. We’re going to be a church that worships God not Baal. The 450 prophets of Baal can all line up and say we can’t pull it off. But this week I’ve been to a mountaintop and I’ve seen the fire of God. I’m here to tell you, you better buy yourself a fire extinguisher.

So what’s your decision? Are you going to trust your Baal and play it safe because to not step out in faith is to trust in Baal and Baal will ultimately let you down. You say that you trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation but what are you going to do to show God that you trust in his son?