Who do you serve?? That was Elijah's question to the Children of Israel last week.. Israel's leaders (King Ahab and Jezebel) had led them into a place where they were more and more comfortable allowing the worship of idols alongside of their worship of Yahweh God. God finally said; That's enough!…

He sent Prophet Elijah to stop all rain for three years and, then, there was this massive showdown on top of Mt. Caramel… Elijah, King Ahab, 950 false prophets and all the Children of Israel.

1Kings 18:21 Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, “How much longer will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him! But if Baal is God, then follow him!” (Who you gonna serve)

You remember…Elijah had the Baal boys choose a bull, cut it up and lay it on the wood on their altar. He then got his bull ready for sacrifice using the same ground-rules… Then (you all) call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the true Lord. The god who answers by setting fire to the wood is the true God!” All day Israel's Idol Boys tried to get their false gods to send down fire…Do you remember the words of Scripture describing their success?...

There was no sound, no reply, no response…

Then Elijah called on the God of heaven and…

38 Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! 39 And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The Lord—he is God! Yes, the Lord is God!”

We ended the sermon there, last week, but that was by no means the end of the day's events… Do you know what comes next in I Kings?

T or F -They all had a picnic while Elijah admonished the false prophets to lighten up their message and be more open to the possibility that Yahweh was the true God…but was careful not to phrase his sentences in any way that might have seemed intolerant or insensitive to their beliefs?

We live in a pluralistic world where we are constantly taught that no one's views are more right than any one else's. I even heard in the last election cycle that the greatest level of immorality in this world comes from those who don't consider all spiritual views of equal value…

In the Bible there is no such pluralistic thought. There is one path to God and Gods goes to great effort to preserve the purity of that one path.

The way this particular Biblical story ends leaves us all recoiling… yet God knew it was the only way to preserve the purity of what the Israelites had just re-learned.

1 Kings 18:40  Then Elijah commanded them, "Seize the prophets of Baal. Don't let anyone get away!" They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there. (NIV)

That's seems awful…but imagine the effect, of that single day, on the Israelites who started the day as part-time idol worshippers, then watched God's fire fall from heaven, and ended the day watching all the prophets who led them into idolatry … killed.

Israel headed home convinced, at least for a while, that there was only one God, Creator of the universe, who had chosen to reveal himself to, and through, them… and they'd better not mess up again by playing around with little useless carved images in place of the worship of the One True Almighty God.

Before they get anywhere near home they're going to get yet another lesson that's going to convince them, even more, deep into their soul, that there is one God and only one God.

Here's how it unfolds…

1 Kings 18:41 Then Elijah said to Ahab, “Go get something to eat and drink, for I hear a mighty rainstorm coming!” 42 So Ahab went to eat and drink.

Three years without rain and now the man who stopped the rain is predicting rain again.

I have no idea why Elijah told Ahab to go get something to eat…I have no idea why Ahab did it… I imagine Ahab was just in a daze…

He drive's his chariot through the local Checkers muttering…"I gotta eat…I gotta eat! Why Ahab…why would you want to eat after the slaughter you just watched?

"I don't know…Elijah said to… I gotta eat…it's going to rain"…

King Ahab was used to calling the shots…nobody did anything without his approval and this whole day had been completely outside his control. Elijah and the leaders of Israel had just killed off all his spiritual leaders right in front of his eyes without his permission…and the most scary thought of all that began nagging at his mind…Was how he going to tell "dragon-breath" Jezebel when he got home.

Meanwhile Elijah leaves the cleanup to others and is puffing his way back up to the top of Mt. Caramel…

…But Elijah climbed to the top of Mount Carmel and bowed low to the ground and prayed with his face between his knees. 43 Then he said to his servant, “Go and look out toward the sea.” The servant went and looked, then returned to Elijah and said, “I didn’t see anything.”

Once again we see this odd switch from powerful, commanding, exhorting, sarcastic prophet, who oversaw the death of 950 false prophets… to a man on his face before God…looking for the next step.. the next words to say. His word commanded it not to rain and his word was chosen to start the rain again but he knows full well that the weather is God's to command and he is completely dependant on his Heavenly Father.

I find it interesting that when Elijah climbed to the top of Mt. Caramel… he didn't point himself in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea. If you are at the top of Caramel… you can turn one way and see the Sea and the other way and see the valley of Megiddo/Armageddon. Elijah positions his face away from the Sea puts his face between his knees…and prays.

If his prayer was anything like his two earlier recorded prayers… he was begging God to show his power and come through in backing up the prophetic words Elijah had already uttered…. I'm imagining here…

God, you told me, your humble servant, to go into Ahab's court and prophesy that the rain would stop because of Ahab and Israel's disobedience and I did that and then I ran and hid by the brook and then you came through and reinforced my words by stopping the rain for these last three years….and then there was that widow's unending jug of oil and her dead son raised to life. God… you taught me, through all of that, that I am really empty and the only power I ever have is when you fill me and flow through me.

And God, that thing earlier today was the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life! It wasn't hard to set up those false prophets for failure... they never had a chance to get fire down out of heaven… but man when my turn came and I prayed:

“O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. …Prove that I have done all this at your command. 37 O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God…

God my faith was there…My trust was in you… but at that moment it was all on the line. I knew that there was not one thing I could do to make it happen…I knew that Israel's future, my prophetic future, my very life was on the line… I could see Ahab's Secret Service agents just straining to come and take me out. If you had waited five minutes to respond I would have been "Elijah the former prophet"…

But wow God!!… you came through with that immediate bolt of fire right out of heaven burning up everything burnable and some of what wasn't burnable…Man the stunned look on King Ahab's face was priceless… Then to watch he, and his guards, standing there frozen while Israel killed all the prophets of Baal and Ashereth…

Then for me to tell him to go eat and him to drive off to Checkers muttering "I gotta eat"…. that was priceless!…

But now God… you've got me on the bubble again… When I blurted out that it wasn't going to rain three years ago… that was a huge step of faith…but I was hidden away. I'm not hidden now God…. Ahab is munching at the foot of this mountain…By now the news of my prediction is spreading like wildfire through the children of Israel. They are all waiting expectantly….

Sooner of later I've got to head down this mountain and meet them all. If it's not raining my reputation is ruined… but more importantly God…so is yours.

God… I have no power in myself! Everything I have ever done was done through your infinite power. God you stopped the rain… please… start it back up again.

Elijah sends his servant to go look west toward the sea…Oddly, he didn't choose to just turn and look himself.

He waits for the good news that a storm is brewing… the servant comes back. Nothing…nothing but blue sky! Elijah starts praying more earnestly… this clearly wasn't going to be as easy as the immediate bolt of fire from heaven. He sends the servant a second time…and a third time, fourth, fifth, sixth….

Is he getting desperate or is his faith strong every time???... I'm not sure…

We do get a little bit of insight into his mind from the New Testament book of James. In a Scripture teaching us to pray and hang on to God in faith… James says:

 James 5:13 Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray…. 14 Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.

16b ….The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. 17 Elijah was as human as we are (like passions), and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! 18 Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

James clearly writes this to get us to believe God in the midst of the impossibilities in our lives… But he is also letting us know that Elijah put his prayer pants on one leg at a time just like us. We see Elijah doing bigger than life miracles and we don't tend to relate…but every one of his prayers we read and the testimony of James says he was just as unsure of himself as we tend to be.

He was unsure about himself…he was not unsure about his God!!!

You know what that feels like…You are sure of God's power… you know he exerts his supernatural power into the lives of other people… You've seen him transform impossible situations…. but when it comes to your life and your impossible situations your prayers sometimes seem to hit the ceiling and bounce back..

Q: Is God as concerned with the issues in your life as he is the person in the next chair?

Q: Is God not only listening to your prayers but honestly wanting to answer your prayers?_______________

Q: Was God more tuned to a prayer from Elijah than he is to a prayer from you?____

Q: Was Elijah more sure of his faith in God than you and I are?_______________

In the Bible… seven is the number of completeness and some may think that Elijah was comfortable waiting for the seventh go-round. I don't buy that. God hadn't uses sevens any other time in his life… in fact Elijah had become used to immediate answers to his prayers.

If he knew the cloud wouldn't show up until the seventh time why send the servant to look each time.

I think from time one…Elijah was looking for a positive response. With each negative response…Elijah's prayers became more desperate and more insistent. He wasn't afraid to ask God to prove himself! and everything was on the line this time. There was no place to run and hide. He had to come off this mountain, sometime, and there were, literally, hundreds of thousand of people between him and a quiet retreat.

Seven times Elijah told him to go and look. 44 Finally the seventh time, his servant told him, “I saw a little cloud about the size of a man’s hand rising from the sea.”

For sure, faith came rushing into Elijah with this news… Remember, there hadn't been any clouds for three years… And a cloud the size of a man's hand at a distance meant a bigger storm was brewing. I was out in a boat on Friday and we saw a little darkness on the horizon that turned into a blinding rainstorm an hour later. So it was to be here…

Excitement fills Elijah and he sends a message straight to Ahab who's just returning from his Checkerburger…

Then Elijah shouted, “Hurry to Ahab and tell him, ‘Climb into your chariot and go back home. If you don’t hurry, the rain will stop you!’”

Elijah has that deep sense of fulfillment that comes from praying earnestly about something and then watching God answer in a miraculous way. Every cloud that formed over Elijah's head sent a tingle down his spine…

 45 And soon the sky was black with clouds. A heavy wind brought a terrific rainstorm, and Ahab left quickly for Jezreel.

Ahab is not having the same positive thoughts as Elijah. He has been living in rebellion to the God of heaven. His special prophets are all being buried down in the valley. He's got to go home and tell Momma Jezebel the news, including the fact that her special "prophets of the groves" have died as well.

Ahab is hightailing it back to the capital as fast as his state-of-the-art chariot will take him… He looks up just in time to see Elijah, robe tucked in his belt, scrawny white prophets legs pumping… go around him in the passing lane.

46 Then the Lord gave special strength to Elijah. He tucked his cloak into his belt and ran ahead of Ahab’s chariot all the way to the entrance of Jezreel.

What's amazing is that with all the tuning to God that Elijah had experienced…he somehow missed the fact that he should have been pumping his scrawny white prophet legs in the opposite direction of where Jezebel was waiting for him. It reinforces the fact that he was a man "with like passions as us".

Conclusion:

1 Kings 19:1 When Ahab got home, he told Jezebel everything Elijah had done, including the way he had killed all the prophets of Baal. 2 So Jezebel sent this message to Elijah: “May the gods strike me and even kill me if by this time tomorrow I have not killed you just as you killed them.” 3 Elijah was afraid and fled for his life…. (NIV) (but that's a story for next week)