1 Kings 18.
LONG was Elijah’s stay at the widow’s house in Zarephath of Zidon, while the famine grew worse, but in the third year he was there, it being now three years and six months (James 5:1717Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. (James 5:17)) since he had seen Ahab, God answered the prophet’s prayers (James 5:1818And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. (James 5:18)). Elijah was now to show himself to king Ahab. That evil man was out with his steward, Obadiah, searching for grass to keep the horses and mules alive. Obadiah, like some others of whom we read in God’s Word, was a true child of God in a wrong position. While the servant of the wicked Ahab, he had been able to care for a hundred of God’s prophets, when Ahab’s wife Jezebel undertook to kill them all, but he missed the blessing, and spiritual elevation of Elijah’s position, because he preferred the world’s glory to the separation from it, which Elijah knew and practiced. He could serve the Lord only in secret, being afraid to act openly for Him whom he had known since he was a boy (verse 12). Obadiah was engaged, when Elijah and he met, in trying to improve the condition of things in a scene on which God had passed judgment as though to turn away that judgment. How like so many of God’s beloved people today!
Ahab came to meet Elijah, who gave him a word for his conscience (verse 18), and told him to gather all Israel, and the eight hundred and fifty false prophets to Mount Carmel, a mountain 12 miles long, forming a notable promontory, the only one in Palestine, at the south of the Bay of Acre on the northern seacoast. Ahab sent the call of Elijah to all the children of Israel, and gathered the false teachers together to Carmel. Now came Elijah with a searching question to ask his people:
“How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord (Jehovah) be God, follow Him, and if Baal, follow him!”
There was no answer; indeed they knew not what to say. Long under the influence of the teachers of false doctrines (and having willingly followed them, too), there was yet a memory of other and happier days when the God of Israel had His place among them. Now, Elijah stood alone of the Lord’s prophets, while Baal, the idol, had four hundred and fifty, not including the prophets of the groves.
Elijah proposed and the people agreed, that two bullocks be provided and sacrificed; one by the prophets of Baal, and the other by himself: then the true God would be shown by an answer of fire from the sky. This proposal itself makes clear how far the people were from God; it should have been sufficient to deliver His word to them to reach their consciences.
In the quiet confidence of faith, the servant of God gave the first opportunity to the prophets of Baal, who probably very unwillingly took the bullock given them, and prepared it for the sacrificial fire, afterward calling on the name of Baal from morning to noon, but there was no voice nor any that answered.
At noon Elijah mocked them, telling them to shout louder, and the poor creatures did so, even cutting themselves till the blood gushed out on them. Midafternoon was reached without their being able to get any reply from Baal, and Elijah then called the people near to himself; he repaired the altar of the Lord there, which was broken down, so recognizing that which was due to God. Then taking twelve stones according to the full number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob (not the ten only, of Israel), he built an altar in the name of the Lord.
These two first acts of Elijah have a voice for our own day when the beloved people of God are following leaders who reject His faithful Word, and spread doctrines of their own invention; when also the scriptural Church of God which includes every true believer in Christ, is split up into many bodies.
In order that there might be no room for the suggestion which Satan would readily put in some minds, that Elijah already had fire prepared, and was only pretending to call down fire from God, he asked for a large quantity of water to be thrown on and around the sacrifice and the altar he had just made. Then Elijah prayed, addressing God as the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, — going back to the assured promises, which the law given at Sinai could not annul. And the fire descended, licking up the water, the sacrifice, the wood, and even the stones and the dust. Deeply moved, the waiting people acknowledged their God as so displayed in power, and Elijah demanded the immediate destruction of the four hundred and fifty agents of Satan who had practiced his wiles among them. They were all put to death forthwith at the brook Kishon which flows close to Mount Carmel. Thus was God vindicated before His people, the evil of idolatry judged among them.
As Ahab’s concern before had been, not with searchings of heart as to the cause of the visitation from God in the famine, but with grass for the animals, so now his mind turned readily to eating and drinking, to which Elijah directed him. Then the rain, and Elijah outstripping Ahab in a swift journey to Jezreel where the king’s residence seems to have been at this time, not very far to the eastward of Carmel.
ML 08/21/1927