1 Kings 18 - Are You Ready To Rumble?

Well, welcome to the Bible Babels Podcast.

It is great to be with you now in person. And this is all due to my brother, Samuel Self. Great to have you with us on the podcast, Sammy.

And as always, I'm Bryon.

This is Carlos.

It's great to be with you. We are going to just jump right in today to 1 Kings chapter 18. And this is one of those chapters of the Bible that is many people's favorite.

It's got an incredible story, a great battle, God doing an awesome miracle, and I love this chapter. Sammy, I think you mentioned this is one of your favorite Old Testament accounts. Yeah, I think it's...

If it isn't top one, it's got to be at least top three. Gotcha. What would be a couple of your others?

I mean, probably the parting of the Red Sea, and then, you know, God protecting Israel by collapsing it on the Egyptian army as they're chasing them.

And then, kind of a weird one, but I really enjoy the story of Ruth, just the God's grace that he gives to her, even though she's a Moabite who were enemies of God, but yet he, God still shows the mercy because she recognized who the one true God is.

So that's great. And as a single guy, he, you know, really sympathizes with the story of Ruth. He's out there hoping that someone will be gleaming in his fields.

And it'll be a good day for Sammy. Who knows? Do you have maybe some some Old Testament accounts that would be maybe your favorite?

Well, one of my favorites is Joshua.

I love the Book of Joshua. Just so many great truths. And I just love the, you know, the walking around the walking around Jericho 13 times.

It's just a great story about God's power in their life. And then, you know, right after that, they mess up. So that's one of my favorite stories.

I like that.

Great. Whatever passage I'm reading at the time, I really enjoy, but First Kings 18, the showdown of Elijah and the, and the priests of Baal is just way up there as far as one of my favorites. So we're just going to jump right into the chapter.

The first part of the chapter happens if you'll remember from last week.

Elijah says, hey, there's not going to be any rain in Israel, unless I say so, in an effort to get Israel and Ahab to realize that Baal, the sky god, was not really the one in charge of the rain. There was only one true god.

And so Elijah runs, he's fed by ravens. He is able to drink from the brook, Kareth, and then you have, after that brook dries up, he goes to the land that Jezebel, Ahab's wife was from, Zidon, and there's a widow woman there that feeds him.

And for a very long time, three years, a little more, a little less. And in that story, we just saw God's grace, that God's not out to punish us or to harm us. He wants to show his power in our life.

And just the great truth that comes from that. So now in 1 Kings 18, they've really run out of water in Israel. And it says there was a sore famine in Samaria, which would be kind of that capital area of Israel.

And so Ahab gets Obadiah, who was kind of his steward, his guy that was over his household. And he tells him, okay, you're gonna go one direction, I'm gonna go another direction, and we're gonna try and find some water somewhere in Israel.

Obadiah goes and he runs into Elijah. Now, a couple of things about the story. Obadiah was a person that loved the Lord.

It says he feared the Lord, he worshiped God. And so much so that after Elijah told Ahab and Jezebel, hey, you're in the wrong, there's not gonna be any rain.

Jezebel goes on a killing spree and kills a bunch of the prophets of the Lord that were in Israel at that time. But Obadiah loved God and worshiped him. And so he took a hundred prophets of the Lord and he hid them in a cave.

And it said he fed them with bread and water. And that's a lot of people to feed.

I know it was more expensive for me going from feeding myself to feeding me and my wife to now feeding me, my wife, my baby, and right now you and my parents who are visiting. But feeding a hundred people would be incredibly expensive.

Not only that, but he took these hundred prophets, bread and water. That they weren't by the brook Carith like Elijah was, and they weren't having ravens coming and feeding them.

But Obadiah was doing all of this hard work that God hadn't necessarily told him to do, but he saw a need and an opportunity, and he took it. That's a lot of people. What's maybe the most people that you've had to provide food for?

Maybe a kid's activity, maybe you and a bunch of friends.

Probably a kid's activity. Just recently had to get pizza for 30 kids, so they ate a lot of it.

They did. I don't think you've ever had to feed many people. I've been the recipient of people feeding me for now 15 years.

Just this past Sunday night, we had to feed 150 people almost.

Yep.

And so this was a huge feed that Obadiah did that was really out of his pocket, that he wasn't getting a stipend or anything from the government to be able to pay for all of this. This was just him following the Lord.

So Obadiah goes, he's really kind of been living on the edge as a double agent working for the Lord and working as the head of Ahab's household.

So then he runs across Elijah and Elijah tells him to go tell Ahab, hey, Elijah's here, really, he's here for a showdown. And Obadiah goes, oh no, are you here to kill me?

Don't you know that as soon as I tell Ahab, hey, Elijah's here, that then God is going to take you away, you're gonna be whisked off somewhere else. And then Ahab's going to kill me.

Hasn't it been told you what I've done for the prophets of the Lord when Jezebel was slaying them? I hit 150 men, or I hit 100 men of the Lord's prophets by 50 in a cave and fed them with bread and water.

And now thou sayest, go tell thy Lord, behold Elijah's here and he shall slay me. And Elijah said, as the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him today.

So, Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. So Ahab and Elijah meet up. Ahab tells him, art thou he that troubleth Israel?

And Elijah answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, and that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim.

Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal 450, and the prophets of the groves 400, which eat at Jezebel's table.

So here he has just this massive, it's not really a battle, but it's a showdown that's gonna take place. And it's one prophet of the Lord versus 450 prophets of Baal, and 400 prophets of the groves.

And those were just places where they would worship various nature gods and things like that, rather than the sky god, Baal. This would be crazy. I am not necessarily as much of a fighter.

If I have to try and defend my family, I would try and do so. But I'm taking down, depending on the size of the person or how much they work out, maybe one or two people. Say to me, how many people do you think you could take in a fight?

I would probably say maybe two or three. I'm not that strong. I'm decently tall, so I think I have that advantage.

But even then, that can be my weakness. How many people could you take down?

It depends.

Yeah. Oh, Carlos could take, like, 100. There's the old question, would you rather take on one horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses?

I'm going to go with one horse-sized duck.

That sounds terrifying.

I would say a hundred duck-sized horses. There you go. But these are not Elijah's odds.

It's, he's got 850 prophets against him, and it's just him.

So all of the people of Israel and all of the prophets come to Mount Carmel, and Elijah tells the people, how long, halty, or that phrase meaning, like, limp, how long are you going to limp between these two opinions?

If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.

You see, over these three years, it's been this thing of we're going to continue to follow Baal, even though that there's been this drought, that there's been this terrible stuff that's taken place here, we're still going to follow him.

Then said Elijah to the people, I, even I only remain a prophet of the Lord, neglecting the other hundred prophets that Obadiah has been hiding and feeding, but Baal's prophets are 450 men.

Let them therefore give us two bullocks, two cows, and let them choose one cow for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on wood and put no fire underneath, and I will dress the other bullock and lay it on wood and put no fire underneath it.

And call ye on the name of your gods and I will call on the name of the Lord. And the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, it is well spoken.

So he gives here a challenge. Okay, we're gonna have two cows, we're gonna put them on altars, and we're not gonna light anything on fire, and whichever God can call down fire from heaven is going to be the true God.

As we've talked about before, Baal was the sky god of the Canaanites and of several other nations. And so it was okay, we're gonna have your sky god against this God that's supposed to be the God over all.

Whichever one can bring down fire would do this. Now, back in those days especially, a lot of the false religions were very demonically influenced. So it could have been that these people had seen powerful acts take place through the power of demons.

And we see that several times occur in scripture. But this is quite the challenge. I would feel scared if I was Elijah, and I would feel scared if I were the prophets of Baal.

Probably a little bit less scared if I were the prophets of Baal, because maybe they were thinking, okay, even if this doesn't work out, we'll just take out Elijah and we'll be like, okay, if his God was really God, he would have protected him from

us. Maybe that was their thought. So then it tells us what happens. They took the cow which was given them, they dressed it and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon saying, oh, Baal, hear us.

But there was no voice nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. This is kind of a pathetic scene.

I'm actually kind of glad at the moment that we have a video for this because at first they're like, Baal, hear us. And then all of a sudden they're like jumping on the altar. They're like, Baal, hear us.

And it's not a great scene for them and not really doing a lot for them. And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, Cry aloud, you know, cry louder. For he's a god.

Either he's talking or he's pursuing or he's in a journey or a periodventure. He sleepeth and must be awaked. So now he's just, he's being sarcastic with him.

He's like, okay, maybe if you say it a little louder, maybe he's not in the area. Maybe he's sleeping. You need to wake him up.

It's just really pathetic for them. Don't you love sarcasm, Carlos?

I do love sarcasm.

Yeah, that's, sarcasm is a great thing. And I think you're the best friend I've ever had. Just kidding.

Just kidding. But here he is just being sarcastic with them. And he really does show a lot of faith in God that like, okay, I believe God's going to pull through and do this thing.

Because you don't read anywhere in the passage that God tells Elijah to do this. It's nowhere in there. So he might just be stepping out in faith and going, okay, God, I'm going to trust you for this.

Then we see the prophets of Baal's response. It says, they cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets until the blood gushed out upon them. Like they're cutting themselves trying to say, like, pay attention to me.

And obviously nothing was happening because Baal's not a real God.

It came to pass when midday was passed and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that there was neither voice nor any to answer nor any that regarded. It says, there wasn't anyone that cared.

And I think that's great. Aren't you glad we pray to a God that does answer?

Yes.

If all we were ever doing was praying and cutting ourselves and jumping up and down on the altar going, God, please hear us. That would be crazy, but we can see what Elijah does. Says Elijah said unto all the people, come near unto me.

So all this has taken place all throughout the day. It's the time of the evening sacrifice now. And all the people came near unto Elijah.

He repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying Israel shall be thy 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 measures of seed, so a lot of grain.

He put the wood in order, cut the bullock, the cow in pieces, and laid him on the wood and said, fill four barrels with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. Now, if you'll remember, they're in a huge famine.

So he's asking for four barrels full of water to go onto the sacrifice. This is crazy. He said, do it the second time.

So that's now eight barrels. And he said, do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

So now we have 12 barrels. So there's 12 stones that make the altar. There's 12 barrels full of water that they've poured onto this altar.

Came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant and that I've done

all these things that thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God and that thou has turned their heart back again.

Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice 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 they said, the Lord, he is the God, the Lord, he is the God. And Elijah said unto them, take the prophets of Baal, let not one of them escape.

And they took them and Elijah brought them down to the broke Kishon and slew them there. It's crazy, it's nutso. Not only that the fire fell, that's a huge, incredible thing, but it took out the offering, which was kind of the point.

It also took out the stones. It took out the water, the 12 barrels of water full that had gone into the trench, and it burned up all the dust in that area.

This isn't necessarily the most biblical whatever, but if you've seen Thor, whenever the Bifrost comes and there's the fancy little thing, I kind of view that kind of thing happening, but way, way more powerful.

That the fire comes, everything's burned up. And then Elijah gives the people of Israel something to do.

He says, hey, these prophets that have been lying to you for all of these years about how powerful God is, now that you know that they've been lying to you, they've been taking your sacrifices that were supposed to go to God and to God's priests, now

you need to eliminate them. And there's 450 of them. So that was probably a little bit of work that went into it. Not to mention Ahab and Jezebel are there.

I would assume there would be some armed forces from their army that were there. Not only that, but there were the 400 prophets of the groves as well. But after they saw God do that, my instant thought would be, I'm getting out of here.

I'm not sticking around to see if God's gonna call down fire on me. And so then what happens right after this is Elijah prays for rain and God gives it.

And now that the people have realized, okay, we know who the true God is and we know who the fake God is. And we know the people that have been lying to us all this time.

Very often in our lives, we can be pursuing and following the wrong gods, gods that won't deliver on their promises.

And Sammy, what would be maybe some gods that, I'll just say for kids, for people under 18 or 20 or whatever, what are some common things that maybe your generation would follow and be like, man, I really want to give all of my time to this.

I want to give my money to this. What would be some of those things?

I think a pitfall or a god that we can tend to serve is social media or social life, hanging out with people that make us feel good and that maybe aren't Christians, but they make us laugh and we enjoy being around them.

I also think, for me, I think something that is a pitfall is video games and YouTube.

I spend a lot of time on that, which I should maybe be focusing my time on, making better videos or doing something that's more productive than just wasting my time doing what I enjoy.

So I think those are maybe the couple areas that my generation fails in this area. Yeah, definitely.

I think with social media, kind of that god of attention and of approval that we try and get from other people that never really delivers like we want it to, or sometimes the gods of entertainment that we just want to be amused, we want to feel good

without maybe putting in any effort into anything. Carlos, what's maybe a couple that maybe people more in our generation, adults, particularly young adults might fall into?

Probably, whether it's schooling or their need to work, they need to attain this job title to feel worth, or they have this heavy expectation on them from their family members, their friends.

I don't want to be the one out of my friend group, out of my family who is doing something that isn't that cool, like being a doctor or all kinds of stuff like that.

I think what we struggle with more is not so much technology, but the approval of our peers and how our family members react to us because we find their opinions of us so important.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think it's such an important thing to remember that having approval from someone that might be a peer isn't a bad thing, but when we pursue that more than anything else, that would be a terrible thing to spend our life doing because God has

already given us his approval through Jesus Christ. That we're not working to try and earn anything from God. It's we simply sit back and enjoy the benefits and everything that he's given to us that unified that reconciled relationship with him.

And for our generation, that's such a true thing. We need to rest in who we are in Jesus and then everything else flows from that. So then when we're interacting with people, we're not trying to get from them.

We're trying to give to them the same acceptance and love that we've been given. And I think that's such a great thing. The gods of this world will never give us anything that Jesus hasn't already given us in complete fashion, in a perfect nature.

If we want to have that enjoyment, that happiness, Jesus has given us that through his Holy Spirit. If we want acceptance and approval and love, he's already given us that. If we want purpose and we want meaning, God has already given us that.

I think it's great that God goes through a process of quite literally burning up, of burning up and purging out the old gods in our life so that that way then we can follow him completely. Any other thoughts on the passage?

Burning up cows, taunting people, sarcasm? It's just amazing of how powerful that fire was. It wasn't like, oh, if it maybe burned up the water and took the meat, that would be in and of itself, would be pretty cool, but it took way more than that.

I would have been terrified being the prophets, even being Elijah, of like, okay, if this is how powerful God is, it's just in a very small task, how much more powerful is he in our lives versus in, you know, when we're facing sin and when we're

facing temptation. Yep. So, there's nothing that he can't destroy that we need taken out of our lives or have victory over. Anything for you, Carlos?

One of the things I love most about the Bible is that, especially in the Old Testament, we see a nation of people who know, they should know, like, man, I am God's chosen people, right?

So, I should be living for him. I should be living, giving my life to him. But most of the time we see that's not the case.

Yeah.

And just like today, there's a lot of people who don't live for God, who are living in the world.

And there's always one person in that passage of scripture who goes in and makes a difference. And we think to ourselves, I'm just one person. I can't make an impact where I am, but that's actually the exact opposite.

That's Satan trying to deceive you. And one thing we can learn from scripture is that you can be a significant impact just by being that one faithful person that is being a lighthouse in their workplace, in their family.

Yeah, that's so awesome. I love it. Well, that's all we have for this week.

I believe it's either next week or the week following.

We have another guest that's going to be with us, Pastor Micah Bosworth of the Ridge Point Baptist Church in Wenatchee, Washington, and a great friend of ours and looking forward to having him on. Thank you, Sammy, for being on and great to have you.

And thanks for helping set up some of this video stuff. And we're going to try to replicate that even when Sammy's not here, just as another way of being able to interact with the podcast.

And hopefully it's enjoyable being able to see some faces and expressions and me jumping up and down on a chair. Hopefully that's something you enjoy. But this has been Bible Bowels.

As always, please feel free to DM us or to comment on any of our social media posts on Facebook, Instagram. You can email us. I told Carlos we should get a TikTok, but he told me no.

So I think it'd be funny though. Anyways, thank you so much for watching and or listening. I'm Bryon.

This is Carlos.

Thanks for joining us. This is Sam.