And God Answered                                                              4/24/49

 

Scripture:  I Kings 18: 17-39

 

Text:  I Kings 18: 24;  “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.”

 

Recently I have enjoyed hearing a recording of the great oratorio, “Elijah,” by Mendelssohn.  It is a splendid musical setting for the stirring story of a great Old Testament prophet.  Elijah was a man of great courage and integrity, living in times troubled by degeneracy in his nation.  When Ahab had become king, he took, as his queen, a woman from a neighboring heathen tribe.  Her name was Jezebel.  Jezebel was a determined person.  she had no notion of abandoning the religious practices of her tribe which suited her evil manner of life much better than the highly ethical religion of Ahab’s people.  She had altars built to the gods of her people, brought in her priests to perform their idolatrous rites, and conducted a campaign of extermination against the prophets of Jehovah.  And her husband let her do it!

 

The prophets who survived were those who hid for their lives.  Governor of the royal household, Obadiah, was one of those who secretly hid away about a hundred of the prophets, fifty to a cave, and saw to it that they were supplied with food and water.  The chief of the prophets, Elijah, had to flee for his life too.  It was humiliating, and desperately discouraging to have to hide away, and Elijah would rather have died - in fact, later on, prayed that he might die.  But there was still work for him to do at that time.

 

For the time came when, guided by an overwhelming conviction that he must do something courageous, he showed himself to Ahab.  The whole country was troubled, for a long drought had struck the land.  There had been no rain.  Brooks dried up.  Grain withered.  Flocks were thirsty.  The sun shone in merciless heat.   People suffered and complained.  It was a time dreaded by rulers, for suffering discontent is the fertile hotbed for the growth of revolution.

 

Also, people were looking around for a scapegoat, as they so often do in trouble or disaster.  Many decided that the fiery prophet, Elijah, was to blame for their distress.  He had spoken very plainly about the intrigues and cruelties of Ahab and Jezebel.  Especially, he spoke against the strange innovations in morality and religion imported by the heathen queen, Jezebel.  He was very blunt indeed, and far from tactful.  Not only was royal wrath kindled against him, but simple-minded, drought-ridden people began to say, “Our trouble is caused by that man Elijah.  He has not only aroused the anger of the king and queen, but of their gods as well.  And so the rain is withheld and trouble comes to all of us.”

 

Elijah knew of all this.  When he showed himself to the king, Ahab bellowed at him, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel?”  Elijah answered back: “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and hast followed Baalim.”  The superstitious worship of the many gods known as Baal, that was the trouble, declared Elijah.  Israel had long since progressed far beyond that to a point where they acknowledged one God -- not gods of caprice but one God of righteousness.

 

Elijah, so runs the ancient story, dared the king to undertake a test.  People -- many people -- were to be gathered on Mount Carmel to witness the test.  Altars were to be erected, one to Baal and one to Jehovah.  A slain bullock was to be placed as a sacrifice on each altar.  The priests of each religion were to conduct their usual ritual except that no fire was to be lighted.  It was to be left for the true God to accomplish the convincing wonder by igniting the sacrifice.  It was agreed that the God who answered by fire should be recognized as the true God of the people of Israel.  The king could hardly ignore such a challenge without losing face.  And no oriental can endure a loss of face -- even occidentals are strongly like that, too!

 

And so 450 priests of Baal were on hand to do their part.  Their altar being built and the sacrifice in place they prayed, “O Baal, hear us.  O Baal, hear us.”  They ran and leaped about the altar.  After about a half day of that, they even began slashing themselves with knives.  The sun was hot on the stones, but there was no fire.

 

Finally as the sun began to lower in the west, there were calls for Elijah.  The crowd wanted to see what he could do.  An altar was prepared, the bullock slain, and cut up, and the pieces placed on the altar.  Then it was all drenched with what they could get of the precious water.  Then Elijah knelt and prayed, “Hear me, O Lord, that this people may know that thou art God.”  Then fire descended and consumed the sacrifice, and all the people fell on their faces and cried out, “The Lord, he is God.  The Lord, he is God.”  With the people so thoroughly convinced, it was easy for Elijah to pursue an advantage.  The 450 priests of Baal were all rounded up and slain in a bloody purge that very evening.

 

There is more to the story.  Elijah was too much of a hero to be touched then.  When Ahab told Jezebel about the test, she was so infuriated at the failure of her priests and their destruction that she swore an oath to have Elijah killed.  And he had to go into hiding again.  So goes the constant struggle between what is right and what is evil.

 

Now and then some wag has a bit of crude fun out of these Old Testament stories.  I once heard a fellow, with complete disregard for scientific history as to the discovery of petroleum and the invention of matches, remark that he guessed Elijah was a pretty clever fellow at that!  “He had his helpers pour kerosene over his sacrifice.  Then when nobody was looking he struck a match on his shoe and slipped it into the kerosene.  No wonder he got a blaze out of it!”  Such crude fun, like the utter fantastic unreasoning foolishness of a lot of comics, can serve as an expression of the doubts that modern folk have concerning an Old Testament story.

 

Personally, I think that they are beside the point.  Even if the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel could somehow be proved to be entirely fictitious, it would still have its inescapable point.  There are ways in which it becomes evident to thoughtful man that what is morally right eventually triumphs!  Even after the most brutally evil of men and women defy the right and batter it down, it comes up again like the green of life after a winter’s freeze.  Man doesn’t have to be forever proving it.  It is demonstrated by the God of things as they are.  Man needs only the good sense to observe it!

 

The basis of all decent morality codified in the Ten Commandments, is not the result of one terrifying clap of thunder from another world.  It is what sensitive and thoughtful people have observed to be the laws of good, the laws of God.  When a person disciplines himself by those laws, he finds the good in life.  When he disregards them, choosing the precepts of his own whims, he misses the good in life.  When a nation governs itself by these laws it remains morally sound and strong.  When a nation abandons these laws, it decays and some power, from within or without, arises to overthrow it.

 

We are not accustomed, in our day, to look for answers, as by magic, to our prayers.  Perhaps we do not with sufficient faith look for answers to prayer at all.  O there are some who get excited about somebody’s assertion that salty tears appeared on a plaster face when somebody kissed it.  But what difference does it make if they do get excited over a miracle-hunt?  Neither individual souls nor nations get any nearer to the goodness of God or real salvation.  That comes only by knowing the precepts taught and lived by Jesus.

 

In a spiritual sense, we do worship the God who answers with divine fire.  Our problem is to recognize the fire when we see it.  We get preoccupied with our own desires when we pray.  “Lord deliver me from this burden, this illness, this sorrow.”  “Lord, grant my request for ---” and then we enumerate the things and circumstances we want.  And that is not at all amiss!  Our Lord taught us to pray each day for “our daily bread” -- and to be thankful for it when received.

 

One of our frequent troubles, however, is that we are not willing to hear God say “No.”  And sometimes “no” is the answer to our prayers, so obvious that we can not or will not, recognize it.  Anyone who has been, or even imagined being, a parent, should be able to understand that sometimes the heavenly Father must needs say “No” to His children for their own good or for the better accomplishment of His more important purposes, or for the sake of justice to his other children.  It takes a great deal of faith -- a great deal of faith, to pray, “not my will, but Thine be done.”  But there comes a great serenity of soul to those who can pray in that spirit.

 

Now to return in spirit to Elijah’s Mount Carmel.  The lesson of that place and that story is that the true God of righteousness is above all else.  Of course it is our desire to know then, the character of God so far as we can perceive it.  For one thing, God has been revealing Himself through the ages as humane.  (I did not say human, but humane).  After the first fratricide Cain was confronted with the voice which asked the inescapable question, “Where is thy brother Abel?”  [Genesis 4: 9].  When Abraham in deep and earnest devotion felt moved to offer his own precious son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to God himself, he was restrained by the voice which commanded, “Lay not thine hand upon the child.”  [Genesis 23: 12].  Centuries later, the prophecy of Hosea echoed the truth in these words: “For I desired mercy and not sacrifice.”  [Hosea 6: 6].  Through the centuries it has gradually dawned on thoughtful and sensitive minds that God’s creatures are precious in His sight and that he has a purpose for each.

 

It seems to me that any institution, ecclesiastical or civil, which takes away the freedom and dignity of the individual soul, is in error and setting itself against the revelation of God.  When the Vatican issues a statement to the effect that Princess Anne, who married Michael of Romania in the ceremony of the Greek Orthodox church, is living in grave sin which can be righted only by a return to the Roman Catholic faith with an agreement to rear her children in that faith, there is displayed the same hand of ecclesiasticism seen in medieval times.  That sort of ecclesiastical grip made necessary the Protestant, or “testifying,” churches which have sought to come closer to the hand of Christ as revealed in the gospels.

 

There is a sense in which the Princess lives in sin -- the same sense that drives all mortals, including the personnel of the Vatican --- all of us --- to our knees with the prayer, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”  Whoever attempts to exclude a sincere  Christian from the Kingdom of God shuts the door of God’s mercy on himself.

 

God must be first in civil affairs, too.  God will bless the employer who discriminates among employees on no ground except merit; the city that refuses to segregate; the community that keeps its conscience keen.

 

A university dean was on a trip to the Pyrenees where he saw the way of simple mountain shepherds with their sheep.  He found one bringing his sheep in for the night, guiding them with his staff.  As each sheep went through the gate, he called it by name.  “How can you call them by names, when they all look alike?” he asked.  “The same way you do people,” said the shepherd, “by their faces.”  He had cared for them long enough, and looked at them carefully enough, to recognize each and to call them by name.

 

There are places in the world where sheep have no names.  Where an injured one is destroyed.  There are places in the world where men are conscripted for war or for industry, with no choice of their own will, where police are spying instead of protecting, where elections are a mockery, where human beings are merely pawns of the party-ridden state.  There are other places where people have names, freedom, individual ambition, where the strong help the weak, where the sick are healed, the hungry fed, where friends help without fear.

 

This is the great struggle of our age -- of every age.  Bitter voices say with brutal determination, “We know where we are going.  Get on the wagon or out of the way.”  Others say, “We purpose to go where God leads by the signs made known through ages.  Will you join us of your own free will and desire?”

 

From sunrise to sunset, the priests of man’s idolatry cry unto their gods, dramatically, but in vain.  But call on the name of the humane God and see how a divine fire begins to burn on the altar of your souls.  The God who answers with that fire, “let Him be God.”

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 24, 1949.