Scripture: 1 Kings 17:1; 18:1-2, 20-24, 36-39, 41-42, 45a; Matthew 8:23-27
You’ll notice that we are taking a break from my sermon series in Philippians… and we will do so for the next three weeks of this incredibly important capital campaign. Rest assured, Philippians will still be waiting for us when we get done. But for the sake of our church’s future, for the sake of this campaign, and out of obedience to the Lord, I am convicted that I need to preach three messages related to “Prayer, Power, and the Promises of God.” That is the name of this three week series.
There’s a lot going on in today’s scripture from 1 Kings 18, which I will read in a moment. I invite you to read the entire chapter when you get home. It’s a dramatic, at times funny, and cinematic passage of scripture. Someone should make a movie of it!
What you need to know, in order to understand it, is that this is the time of the divided kingdom of Israel—in the north you have the larger of the two kingdoms, which retains the name “Israel.” In the south, you have the southern kingdom, called “Judah,” which includes Jerusalem and that’s where the Temple is located.
Elijah is a prophet of the northern kingdom, which is ruled by a succession of wicked kings—unlike the southern kingdom, there’s not a faithful king in the bunch—but the most wicked of all of them is Ahab, the king in today’s scripture. Under this king’s leadership, nearly all the people of Israel have turned away from following the one true God, Yahweh, and are instead committing idolatry by worshiping Baal. As punishment for this idolatry, God has sent a three-year famine on the land. But in chapter 18, the famine will soon come to an end—but not before the people of Israel see a dramatic showdown between the prophets of Baal and Elijah, the prophet of Israel’s one true God, Yahweh.
Let me read this passage, along with a short gospel passage from Matthew chapter 8. Draw near and hear the word of the Lord… [1 Kings 17:1; 18:1-2, 19-24, 36-39, 41-42, 45a]…
First this from chapter 17…
Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”
Now from chapter 18…
After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, “Go, show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth.” 2 So Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. Now the famine was severe in Samaria.
20 So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. 21 And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word. 22 Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men. 23 Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. 24 And 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.” And all the people answered, “It is well spoken.”
36 And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “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. 37 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.” 38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. 39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.”
And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of the rushing of rain.” 42 So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel. And he bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees.
45 And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel.
And now a reading from Matthew 8:23-27
23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. 27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
I’ve told some of you before that it’s my regular practice to read the Bible through once every year. The New Testament and the Psalms twice. I follow a particular Bible-reading plan. I’ve only been doing it for four years now—don’t get excited. I promise I’m trying to sound pious by telling you this. It’s just that reading the Bible like this has become a matter of survival to me. It’s a lifeline to me.
But it just so happens that in early January of this year I was reading Matthew chapter 8 as part of this reading plan. It’s a very familiar story. Most of y’all know it: Jesus and his disciples are onboard a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee in the midst of a life-threatening storm. The only problem is, Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat—while the disciples are battling wind and wave, bailing water, working desperately to keep the boat from sinking.
Until at last, they wake up Jesus and say, in Matthew 8:25: “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.”
Have you ever considered that these words are a prayer? Of course they are! The disciples are in trouble. And they quite literally go to Jesus and cry out for help. That is a prayer! That is an excellent thing to do when we’re in trouble. Only… the version of the story in Mark’s gospel gives us a little more detail about what’s underneath the prayer. Because, in that version of the same event, Mark lets us know the emotion underneath the words. Because in Mark 4:38, the disciples say to Jesus, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Oof! That prayer isn’t as good. Make no mistake: A bad prayer is infinitely better than no prayer at all, but do you see the difference? In Mark’s version, it’s clear that these disciples are doubting the very character of Jesus: As if to say, “Jesus doesn’t care about us. Otherwise we wouldn’t be going through this crisis!” And from this place of doubt, the disciples are deeply afraid.
It may be a bad prayer, but Jesus is gracious enough to answer even bad prayers. Matthew 5:26: “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”
And I thought of that famous painting by Rembrandt of this particular scene. Many of you know it. Preachers often point out that the Dutch master pulls a little prank in this painting: he paints himself into the painting… One of the disciples, in other words, is a self-portrait… He’s the guy near the front holding onto his hat. And how does he look? He looks worried… He looks afraid. And the reason Rembrandt painted himself into the picture is because why? Because he identifies with these fearful disciples.
And preachers like me often point out this detail so that we, too, may identify with these fearful disciples. We sort of give ourselves permission to identify with them… as a way of soothing ourselves, saying, for instance, “There, there, Brent. It’s okay that you’re a scaredy-cat—even though Jesus says time and again not to be… Because after all, you’re just like these twelve disciples onboard that boat! Because like them, you too are afraid when you’re in the midst of one of life’s proverbial storms! Whew! What a relief! All of us are in the same boat! You know… Peter, James, John… and Rembrandt… and Brent White… and each one of us! We’re all a bunch of scaredy-cats too! Even though, of course, Jesus says in a couple dozen places that we disciples should never be afraid. But in this particular instance, when Jesus commands us to do something, it’s really okay not to obey him. He doesn’t really mean it when he says, in so many words, “Fear not.” Whew! Good thing Jesus loves us anyway.”
See… that’s the comforting message I took away from this story for the first, um, 40 years of my life as a Christian.
But when I read this same scripture from Matthew 8 around January 3 of this year, I no longer took comfort. In fact, I felt convicted. I thought, “This lesson that I’ve been taking away from this story for the past 40 years is the wrong lesson!”
Which is why Jesus rebukes his disciples…
So, yes, by all means… He calls his disciples in Matthew 8:26 “people of little faith.” But he does not expect or want his disciples to remain “people of little faith.” He expects them to change and grow and become sanctified and, by God’s grace, become people of big faith.
And that includes you and me!
And there’s evidence in scripture that these very same fearful disciples do become people of “big faith.” We see this throughout the Book of Acts, of course. But let me give you one great example that fits perfectly with this episode in Matthew’s gospel.
Peter was chief among those disciples who go to Jesus terrified: “Jesus, don’t you care that we’re going to die?” In other words, “How can you sleep at a time like this, Lord?”
Well, good news! Peter finds the answer to this question many years later… as recounted in Acts chapter 12. Days earlier, King Herod Agrippa I arrested Peter’s dear friend and fellow apostle James… the brother of John. And Herod executes him. And he has every intention of doing the same to the number one apostle of Jesus, to Peter. So Peter is arrested and imprisoned. He’s facing trial the next day. He’s facing death the next day. And listen to verse 6: “Now when Herod was about to bring [Peter] out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison.”
Notice my three favorite words: “Peter was sleeping…” It was a deep sleep, too. The angel had a hard time rousing him.
As you know, it’s nearly impossible to sleep when you’re scared… when you’re anxious… when you’re deeply stressed… when you’re worried… When you refuse to heed the words of the Lord, who tells us, again and again, “Fear not, therefore,”[1] the Lord who rebukes his disciples for being “people of little faith.”
But… in Acts 12… in another moment, like that moment on board the boat, when Peter’s life was on the line, Peter is clearly no longer among those “little faith” disciples. He has become a bit more like his Lord, hasn’t he? He is not afraid!
All that to say, no more excuses! Because we all have the power we need right now to change and grow and be sanctified, such that we can obey the Lord when he says, “Fear not.” Because we have the very Spirit of God living within us.
Think about what that means!
In 1 Kings 17, verse 1, when Elijah goes to confront the powerful King Ahab, he boldly says, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand…” Before whom I stand. He repeats those same words in chapter 18, verse 15: “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand…” The point is, from Elijah’s perspective, he always stands in the presence of the Lord. The Lord is always right there with him, no matter where he goes.
Is that true for us, too?
Imagine that every scary thing you face in your life, you face with Jesus’ arm around you. As if you could see and feel his his arm around you, all the time, and see and feel that he’s next to you, all the time… If that’s what you truly believed, would you ever, ever feel afraid?
But Elijah, unlike us Christians, was living on the other side of the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. So if Elijah understood that he was always in the presence of the Lord, it’s even more true for us! We literally have God himself living within us! Because we have God the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, living within us: That’s what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 6:19, when he says that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit, he says, is also the Spirit of Christ. So our Lord Jesus is even closer to you than if he were standing next to you with his arm around you! Can you even imagine? That’s the reality!
Again… why are we ever afraid?
Earlier this year, while reading Matthew 8, I sensed the Lord telling me, in that moment—with great compassion and love—“Brent, I’m giving you permission not to be afraid. Ever. In fact, I’m giving you power not to be afraid. I’m giving you faith not to be afraid.” That’s what I sensed him saying to me!
And I’m telling you… by God’s grace… I’ve changed. Don’t misunderstand: It’s not that I never feel afraid. We have an emotional and biological response of fear. But man… I don’t baby that emotion anymore… I don’t coddle it anymore… I don’t say, “There, there… It’s okay.” When I feel fear coming on, I fight it… with prayer and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s Word. And I promise I’m winning victories over fear that I had never won before! Praise God!
Anyway, in January, I sent a message in the family chat on our phones that I had this spiritual experience. And my daughter Elisa responded, “Look out, Satan!” But that’s right…
I want this testimony to be an encouragement to you. God wants you to overcome fear… and he’s given you the power through the Holy Spirit. Believe that you have that power. Pray for that power! 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God gave us a Spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.”
And this brings us back to 1 Kings 18. I want to focus on verse 21, perhaps the most famous verse in the chapter: “And Elijah came near to all the people and said, ‘How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.’ And the people did not answer him a word.”
Baal was considered, by people who worshiped him, to be a god of agriculture… and fertility. Baal, his followers believed, controlled the weather… he brought rain for the crops. He knew how to make things grow. Baal provided food for the people who worshiped him.
But remember where the people of Israel came from: For 40 years they wandered in the wilderness as a nomadic people. They didn’t grow crops. Their God, Yahweh, fed them every morning with miraculous “bread from heaven,” called manna.
So when the Israelites came into the Promised Land, think how tempting it was to look at their foreign neighbors, the natives in the land, and think, “Maybe their god, Baal, knows how to take care of us better than our God Yahweh. Why don’t we ask Baal to do that for us?”
Of course they should have remembered that their God was the One true God, the God over everything… and that Baal was no god at all… But they easily and often forgot that fact.
All that to say, it was in part out of fear that these Israelites looked to Baal to provide for them and to take care of them in this new land… Because they thoughts, “Maybe our new foreign neighbors know something we don’t! Maybe their god, Baal, is more powerful than our God Yahweh.”
My point is, Israel originally started worshiping Baal, in part, out of fear… the fear that Yahweh, their God—the One trueGod—wouldn’t provide for them.
That’s what this contest on Mount Carmel between the prophets of Baal and Elijah was supposed to settle once and for all.
And it’s in this context that Elijah says, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions?”—by which he means, the belief that Baal is really god, or the belief that the Lord is really God. But “If the Lord is God,” Elijah says, “follow him.”
And I believe that’s an urgent message from God’s Word to us—to members and regular attenders of Five Forks Methodist. “If the Lord is God, follow him.” And “follow him” doesn’t just mean, “In my head, I believe these facts and these doctrines about God, and about his Son Jesus, and about what God has done to save the world through Jesus. Yes, yes… I believe all of that is true.”
“Follow him” means, among other things, “Trust him with your life… Trust that what he tells you is really true… Trust him enough to put into practice what he tells you… Live with the integrity of your faith: if you say you believe something, live like you believe it… Live your life in a way that’s consistent with what you say you believe.”
Sometimes in the Bible, the pagans are better at this than the believers. Sad but true. There’s another place in the very next chapter of 1 Kings, for instance—see chapter 20, verses 23 to 28—when the king of Syria launches an attack against Israel and the Syrians lose the battle… big-time.
But after their defeat, the army generals come back to the Syrian king, in verses 23 to 25, and tell their king why they lost the battle: You see, “The Israelite gods are gods of the hills; that is why they won. But we can beat them easily on the plains… Recruit another army like the one you lost. Give us the same number of horses, chariots, and men, and we will fight against [the Israelite army] on the plains [you know, in the valley, on the flat lands, not in the hills]. There’s no doubt that we will beat them.”
And guess what happened? Yep, the Syrian army got routed by the Israelites. The Syrians lost 127,000 soldiers that day. Why? Because the Syrian god wasn’t really a god of anything at all.
But still… You almost have to admire their faith. They believed in their phony god so much—they believed so strongly in their religious doctrine that said, “Our god is the god of the plains”—that they were willing to risk everything… because of that faith… They were willing to risk everything for that conviction! The Syrians, in other words, were acting in a way that was completely consistent with what they said they believed! The Syrians believed that their god had all the power to protect, defend, and supply all their needs, and they followed that god!
What about us? We don’t believe in a phony God! We believe in a real God. Will we have faith? Or will we give in to fear?
What are we willing to risk because of our faith in the God revealed to us in our Lord Jesus Christ… especially in this season, as we stand at this most important crossroads in the life of Five Forks Methodist Church so far?
What are we willing to risk financially… What are we willing to give?
Because here’s what I believe is God’s Word to us at Five Forks Methodist… “If the Lord is God, follow him”!
So we follow him, for instance, when he tells us that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”[2]
We follow him when he tells us that “every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.”[3]
We follow him when he tells us that “every good and every perfect gift comes from above.”[4]
We follow him when he tells us that “my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”[5]
We follow him when he tells us that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”[6]
We follow him when we give—not reluctantly or under compulsion—“for God loves a cheerful giver.”[7]
We follow him when we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, trusting that all these things will be added to us.[8]
We follow him when he says, “Put me to the test with your faithful financial giving, and see… see if I won’t open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”[9]
We follow him when we remember that everything we have already belongs to him—that we are stewards, not owners.
We follow him when we open our hands… when we open our hearts… when we give boldly and joyfully… when we take risky steps of faith, because we know the One who will always take care of us when we do…
We follow him…
Because if the Lord is God—
then he is Lord over our hills and our valleys,
He is Lord over our fears and our finances,
He Lord over our plans and our future.
[Slight pause]
“If the Lord is God, follow him!” Amen?
I am working with the prayer team to begin a prayer initiative during our capital campaign. That effort will begin next Sunday. I will hand out at that time a seven-day devotional booklet that I’ve prepared, which will encourage us to pray and reflect on scripture… and to discern what God is asking us to give to this campaign. That’s next Sunday. And then the following Sunday, October 26…? We will turn in those commitment cards, telling the church what we will give, before the end of this year, as part of our “Bold Faith” campaign.
But right now I want to give you an assignment for this week… As you consider what God is asking you to give… over and above your regular offering… in order to secure this land and build this building that God is giving us… I want you to ask yourself, “Is there a small voice in my head saying something like this to me: I should give more to this campaign, but… I would like to give more to this campaign, but… It would be nice to give more to this campaign, except… [dot, dot, dot].
I’m asking you to consider whether that’s fear talking… rather than faith.
Indeed, you may be hearing the voice of the Lord telling you this: “I want you to take this risky step of faith… to give more than you thought you would or even could ever give. And when you do, I am going to break down this stronghold of fear that has too often controlled you. I want to show you that you’re going to be okay. I want to show you that I’m going to take care of you. And when you see that, it will be glorious.”
[1] As in Matthew 10:29-31
[2] Psalm 24:1 ESV
[3] Psalm 50:10 ESV
[4] James 1:17 ESV
[5] Philippians 4:19 ESV
[6] Acts 20:35 ESV
[7] 2 Corinthians 9:7
[8] Matthew 6:33
[9] Malachi 3:10