1 Kings 18:30-46

1Ki 18:30-46

30. And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.

31. And Elijah took twelve 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:

32. 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.

33. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock 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.

34. And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

35. And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

36. And it 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 have done all these things at thy word.

37. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and thou hast turned their heart back again.

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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 brook Kishon, and slew them there.

41. ¶ And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain.

42. So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees,

43. And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.

44. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.

45. And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel.

46. And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah; and he girded up his loins and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.

Elijah's Sacrifice

When the worshippers of Baal had tired themselves, and had awakened no response in reply to their vehement prayer, it became Elijah's turn to prove the Lord God of Israel. At his bidding all the people came near, and he proceeded to redeem his own side of the challenge.

"And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down" ( 1Ki 18:30 ). Let us recall the circumstances. Elijah is alone, religiously, upon Carmel; all the prophets of Baal were there, and all the prophets of the grove. Not only were they present, they were also highly excited. The day has gone against them. Whatever happened now could tell nothing in their favour. Ahab was there, in all probability. Great numbers of people were there. Unless Obadiah was there, not a man in all the host sympathised with Elijah. And yet the lonely prophet proceeded to build the altar of the Lord that was broken down. The altar of the Lord had been thrown down by the fury of the people, and Elijah put it together again stone by stone. The Lord could have answered without an altar, but why should human means be spared? The Lord could grow harvests for us, but why should we be spared the labour of tilling the ground? The very act of ploughing does us good; so does the act of coming to church; so does every effort that lies in the line of duty. Elijah would be stronger to pray from the fact that he had been engaged in building the altar. Prayer comes well after work. Why build an altar on a lonely mountain when it could be used only once, and then be done with for ever? Why not have built it in a city where it could have been used from year to year? It would be worth while to build the largest and costliest cathedral ever reared by human hands, if but one sinner were converted in it one soul turned to Christ and then the edifice built of precious stones were thrown down, or unroofed that it might be haunted by the wind. God knows nothing of our poor miserly economies. He sets a soul in price against the universe!

"And Elijah took twelve 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" ( 1Ki 18:31 ). But the kingdom was divided, and one part was called Judah, and yet Elijah speaks of Israel as one. We know the meaning well. There are grand occasions in life in which all differences, divisions, schisms, alienations, are sunk, and the true union is realised and proclaimed. England and America are no longer nationally one; monarchy and republicanism are a long way from one another; but there may arise controversies in the history of the world when the vital element that makes all Anglo-Saxon peoples one will assert itself, and bring many voices and many testimonies into the unity and emphasis of one mighty thunder. Elijah looked at Israel in its oldest and best aspects. Chargeable with serious defalcation it certainly was, yet he knew that in erecting that trial-altar he touched every nerve in the heart of undivided Israel, and made every son of Jacob a helper in his prayer.

Having made his preparations complete, and the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice having come, the westering sun glowing upon Carmel, and the hush of a solemn expectancy falling upon the chagrined and wonderstruck mob of false prophets and their dupes, Elijah came near the altar 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 have done all these things at thy word; hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again" ( 1Ki 18:36-37 ). Notice what elements combine in this wonderful prayer: ( a ) What a drawing together into one body again of all that was pathetic in God's relationship to the past, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, names that were ornaments and histories; a battle in every accent, a victory in every syllable! ( b ) What a projection of the past upon the destiny of the future: we make too little of the past; we grasp a hair when we might seize a cable, when we pray, a thousand years should crowd their sacred triumphs into our supplications; all the holy dead should swell the voice of our tender cry and make it thunder in heaven as a mighty appeal: when you pray your mother prays, and her mother, and a long line of womanly intercessors, ( c ) What a wonderful power of concentration, of asking for one thing, of making the point clear. Do we always know what we are praying for? Do we ask for many things, without asking for one in particular? Are there not occasions on which life narrows itself into one want and into one demand? ( d ) What an example of simple and direct argument in prayer! We are to put the case as we see it. We see its under side or earthly aspect. God asks us to tell him what we see; to urge the case from our own point of view; and having done so, we are to leave it in his hands. Elijah did so, and this was the result: "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" ( 1Ki 18:38 ). Regarding this as an answer to prayer let us see what there is to account for it ( a ) A great occasion; the false prophets had been challenged; they were present to witness the result; a king and a nation had been appealed to. ( b ) A holy character; Elijah was not an experimentalist, not a speculator; he was a holy man tried and proved, and held in high esteem in heaven; it is constant holiness that flames out into exceptional and peculiar power, ( c ) A worthy object; it is for a distinct and indisputable revelation of God, and this revelation was required not so much for an intellectual as for a moral purpose, namely that the heart of the people might be turned back to God. Thus however sensational (to use a word that is often misapplied) may have been the mere method of the answer, there are round about the whole incident reasons of the simplest and weightiest nature.

So much for the prayer for fire; it will be interesting to contrast with this the prayer of the same prophet for water. Elijah went up once more to the top of Carmel, and prayed unto the Lord for rain. The prayer for fire was answered at once; the prayer for water was not. By putting the two instances together we shall see how they explain one another, and what a striking argument for their common probability is established. Notice as the fundamental fact that the prayer for fire was answered instantaneously, and that the prayer for water was not answered until it had been offered seven times.

There was an urgency in the one case which there was not in the other. The king was waiting; so were the prophets; so were the people; it is an unprecedented crisis in the history of the nation. In the case of the rain, the prophet was alone; no immediate expectancy on the part of the public was to be answered.

We are not to live in the unusual and the exciting, but in the ordinary and regular. It was good for Elijah himself to be taught that he was only a suppliant, not the Lord. God has always been sparing of his exceptional manifestations. Christ was sparing in his miracles: he never did them merely for the sake of doing them. Elijah was but human, and if he had always received the same instantaneous reply that was given in the case of the fire his very power in prayer might have become a temptation. It is in the nature of man to push his success towards disastrous ends.

No human imagination would have risked such a conjunction of immediateness and delay as is given in this chapter. Such a contrary act on the part of God is a simple impossibility to the imagination. It amounts to what is called, sometimes foolishly, a discrepancy or contradiction. Yet it is the very law of the mystery of our life! We live it, but dare not imagine it! Great honours are followed by great reverses to keep us sober. God will not bring his way within the sweep of our reckoning; he will not admit us into his secret places; we see part of his way; a whisper of his method we may hear, but not the thunder of his power.

Out of this reasoning comes the high probability of the historical and literal truthfulness of the whole narrative. Literary completeness there is none. No attempt is made to satisfy the suggestions of fancy. All tricks of management, all skill in artistic disposal of incident is ignored, and truth is left to attest and vindicate its reality.