Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Amen.  Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal occurs during a dark time in the history of the kingdom of Israel.  King Ahab was the most wicked man ever to sit upon the throne, and his wife, Queen Jezebel, introduced child sacrifice as one of the many abominable practices done by the people in worship of idols and foreign gods.  As punishment for Ahab’s crimes, Yahweh did not send rain upon the land of Israel for three-and-a-half years.  Yes, you heard me right.  “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth” (Jas. 5:17, ESV).[1]  So it was in the context of incredible spiritual darkness and a devastating drought that Elijah took on his enemies.

They gathered at Mt. Carmel, a range of foot hills along the Mediterranean coast.  At only an elevation of 1,724 feet, Mt. Carmel was not impressive for its peaks but for its lush vegetation.  The downward slope of the mesa was so beautiful that King Solomon compares the beauty of his bride’s hair to Mt. Carmel in Song of Songs (Songs 7:5).  Isaiah speaks of “the majesty of Carmel” (Isa. 35:2).  Apparently, this idyllic peak was quite the paradise on earth.  As such, the area had been long regarded by pagans as a sacred place, especially for those who worshiped fertility gods like Baal.  (Aside: Today the area is the largest National Park in Israel).

But due to the drought and famine, Mt. Carmel was probably just a tinderbox waiting for wildfires to destroy it.  It is against this background that Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a kind of duel.  The 450 prophets of Baal represented their false god.  Elijah alone stood up for the One True God, Yahweh, the LORD God who made heaven and earth.  He was vastly outnumbered—or so it would seem from the point of view of popular opinion.  But Elijah was confident that Yahweh would defend his name.

Each side would be given bulls to offer in sacrifice to their respective god.  But here was the catch: neither group would set flame to the wood upon the altar (1 Kings 18:23).  Instead, Elijah told them, “You call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the LORD, and the God who answers by fire, he is God” (v. 24).  So they agreed.

So the prophets of Baal setup their altar, laid wood and the bull upon it, and then spent all morning crying out for Baal to answer.  But of course, Baal was not a real god at all.  And so, Elijah tells us, “There was no voice, and no one answered” (v. 26).  The prophets of Baal became exhausted as they limped around the altar.

Elijah taunted his opponents with terrific insults.  “Get a little louder!” he suggested.  “Maybe Baal is daydreaming.  Perhaps he is going to the bathroom or gone on vacation.  Maybe he’s taking a nap” (cp. v. 27).  In their desperation, the 450 prophets of Baal even resorted to cutting themselves and spilling their own blood in the hope of attracting Baal’s attention (vv. 28-29).  Yet again, “there was no voice.  No one answered, no one paid attention” (v. 29).

Finally, Elijah’s turn came.  He took twelve stones to build a simple altar, reminding Israel of the twelve tribes whom God had rescued from the worship of foreign gods during their time of slavery in Egypt.  Next he dug a trench around the altar and laid the wood and bull upon it.  But then he did something incredible: he had the people repeatedly pour water over the sacrifice and the wood until the altar was so drenched that water filled the trench around it.  What an extravagant waste of water during a time when it had not rained for 3.5 years!  People were dying left and right.  Water was more precious than gold.  But Elijah was trying to make a point.

Elijah prayed to Yahweh:

“O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word.  Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back” (vv. 36-37).

 

Elijah didn’t even get to finish his prayer.  Before he could even say, “Amen,” God sent fire down from heaven that consumed the bull, the wood, the stones—and the water—in one fell swoop.  Like an explosion, everything was gone in an instant!

At once, the Israelites realized that Yahweh was real.  “The LORD, he is God!” they shouted.  “The LORD, he is God” (v. 39).  They finally realized that Baal was a fraud—and so were his false prophets.  So Elijah told the people to gather up the prophets of Baal and put them to death right then and there.  450 pagan priests died that afternoon.

Then Elijah told King Ahab to hurry up and get out of Dodge, because rain was coming, and it was going to flood the land, washing it clean of its wickedness and sin.

God did a marvelous work on top of Mt. Carmel, by which his prophet Elijah had one of the most glorious moments of his ministry.  Yet Elijah’s triumph over the prophets of Baal precipitated an assassination order from Queen Jezebel.  In the next chapter, 1 Kings 19, we find Elijah on the lam.  Ironically, he will flee for his life at the same time that he begs God to just take away his life and let him die.  After his biggest success, Elijah experienced his greatest failure.  Amazingly, this encounter between Elijah and Yahweh takes place on a mountain we have already visited: Mt. Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai.

That’s what it means to be a Christian in this world.  We also live in a world full of pagan gods that seek to steal away our souls from God: Buddha, Shiva, Krishna, Allah, money, power, fame, success, sex, and many others.  Like Elijah, we seek our moment to shine, to confound all our enemies and put them to flight or shame.  We must admit there have even been times when we wish that we could have killed 450 prophets of Baal in a day—or at least their present-day equivalents.

And like Elijah, we experience that our greatest failures often follow close upon the heels of our greatest successes.  We give into temptation or despair shortly after making a bold confession of faith.  We are persecuted because of the good works of love we carry out in Christ for our neighbor.  We go straight from the mountain peak into the deep, dark valley of the shadow of death.

Life is difficult.  Ministry is hard.  The disciples of Jesus will not have it easy in this world.  In fact, Christ promises us, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33b, NIV).[2]  “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matt. 10:24-25).

The world hates us because it hated Jesus first.  The Roman occupiers and the Jewish priests took our Lord, the only Son of God, and nailed him to a cross, killing him because they couldn’t bear to listen to what he had to say, and they were filled with jealousy at his mighty works.  Jesus’ path took him straight from the Mountain of Transfiguration to his own valley of the shadow of death.  He died like a criminal on Mt. Calvary because his enemies succeeded in carrying out their death threats against the Lord of heaven and earth.

Like us, Jesus experienced what seemed to be his greatest failure after incredible, mounting successes.  Yet here is the great irony of Christ’s death on the cross: in his greatest failure came his greatest success.  For by dying on the cross, he overcame death.  And by taking our sin upon himself, he destroyed the power of sin and the devil.  His death is our life.  His defeat was our victory.  His loss was our win.  That is why Frederick Buechner rightly calls Christ’s crucifixion “The Magnificent Defeat.”

We know the story didn’t end on Good Friday.  Something even more marvelous happened three days later when he rose from the dead.  But that is the story of Easter, and it belongs to a different day and a different season.  For now, let us rest on Mt. Carmel and the Mount of Transfiguration, where Elijah appeared with Moses to speak with Jesus of his coming “Exodus,” his departure from this world and into the next (cf. Luke 9:31).  In the name of the Father and of T the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

[2] All Scriptures marked NIV are from The New International Version, 1984 ed.