I appreciate Justin always being ready to preach as well for me. He has, we also had a talk with Pastor Puyon, some A couple weeks ago, I guess it was, and continuing to make plans for the UK and looking forward to that transition time. A matter now of certain funds that have to be had to make a transition from the US to the UK. We hope also, we're talking anyways to him about having a booth at the NCFIC conference where Pastor Pouillon will be speaking, where Justin, his family could have a booth to explain the spiritual condition of England and their plans and perhaps some other things according to what we finally resolve upon with Pastor Pouillon. We're trying to possibly get him to come here to be a part of a service here with us. Don't know if that's gonna take place yet or not or whether it be virtual. We'll see about that. But you can continue to pray for Justin and Heather and the children as we continue to move forward with these things and look to the Lord in all this. So Justin, if you will come. This afternoon, I will be turning in God's word to 1 Kings chapter 18. And we'll be reading verses 17 through verse 40. And it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah that Ahab said unto him, art thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house and that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and thou has followed Balaam. Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel to Mount Carmel and the prophets of Bell 450 and the prophets of the groves 400, which eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together unto Mount Carmel. And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord. But Baal's prophets are 450 men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks, and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it into pieces, and lay it on the wood, and put no fire under. And I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on the wood, and put no fire under, 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, And Elijah said unto the prophets of Bel, choose one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first for ye are many, and call on the name of your gods, and put no fire under. And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called the name of Bel from morning until noon, saying, O Bel, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, cry aloud, for he is a God. Either he is talking or he is pursuing or he is in a journey or perventure he sleepeth and must be awakened. And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their manor, their knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them. And it came to pass when midday was passed that they prophesied unto the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that there was neither voice nor any to answer nor any that regarded. And Elijah said, and 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. And Elijah took 12 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. 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. 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 onto the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. 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. And the water ran about the altar and he filled the trench also with water. 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. 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. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. 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. 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. And may the Lord bless this reading to our hearts. And so in our text, we find a very difficult portion of scripture here in the history of the nation of Israel. By this time in Israel's history, the kingdom is divided. Long gone are the days of the golden age of the nation of Israel. The golden age that was being ushered in by David and then continued on into the reign of Solomon, his son, those days are gone. Gone are the days of the temple at the center of God's worship that was built by Solomon, Solomon's great house. All these things are gone. Gone even is the devotion of one of their great kings, King David. He had such a great devotion because he was a man after God's own heart. Gone are those days. And we see very sad tidings as we read through these historical works where the people are brought back to see that God is the God of Israel. But then very shortly after that, they fall right back in to sinning against him and going back to the tables of the idols. And so we have here, just like in the book of Judges and in the other accounts given of the historical narratives, we see that they have been laid bare. There has been a famine. There has been a great drought for three years. And so the Lord is, of course, preparing the ground of their hearts for this event through that drought. And it's all due to the horrible sin of the kings that the people had. They often would lead the people astray, and that's what we have here. Ahab is a very wicked king. He has also a wife who is a very wicked woman. We associate, when we say the name Jezebel, we often think of a wicked woman, and this is where it comes from. And she was much like those women that Solomon took up, who led him away from the true God. But what do we see? We see that despite man's sinfulness and their moving away from the Lord God, that what do we see? We see that God is a faithful Lord. That even in the midst of their apostasy, He still has a covenant with them and He is still keeping His end of the bargain. Now, of course, He's not happy with them for their sin. He's not happy that they've moved away, but He still is faithful unto them and they are still His people. He still has a remnant during this day and age. Now, of course, we will talk about it later, and you see in 1 Kings 19 that even Elijah thought he was the only one left, but the Lord had to remind him, no, I have others. And this Elijah, if you've done a character study on him, he's one of the greatest prophets in Israel's history, him and Elisha. and they were great miracle workers. This is one of those miracles we see him performing at the hands of God and he was brought forth to be a mouthpiece during these bleak spiritual times. The Lord sent him and he of course goes to the king and he tells him directly, this is why you're being under the warning of the Lord, under the wrath of the Lord and this drought, you are the cause of it. But in verse 17, we see that what? He blames Elijah. Why are you the one that trouble with Israel? But Elijah uses very plain language in verse 18 and tells him that it is his sin that has brought this about the nation of Israel. Elijah in verse 21 puts before the northern kingdom there, the nation of Israel, a preposition. And he says, why halt ye between two opinions? If you look in the margin of your Bibles, it usually will say thoughts. It could be translated thoughts or opinions. But essentially they were at a crossroads. They were wavering between whether God was God and whether Bell was the real God. He presents before them the correct way. And we see this over and over again in scriptures that God says there is what? Christ says in the New Testament, there's a straight and narrow and there's a wide path. And you're on one or the other. Now, as men, we love to be in neutral ground. We want to be able to take part in all of it. And modern man, especially, we don't want to commit to one thing. We want to be neutral. We want to be in the middle, the in-between. But that's not how God presents it. And that's not how Elijah is brought to this people to present it. He says, if it's God, serve him. If it's Baal, serve him. Stop trying to mingle the two. And this puts forward, and then in this, we see that Elijah then puts forward a contest between the two. And he says, we'll have two bulls and we'll take those two bulls and we'll sacrifice them accordingly. And then whoever calls down fire from heaven, he will then be the God that we follow. And of course, in our reading, we can very much see that, you know, Bell did nothing. Despite the antics of the prophets, there was no fire that came down, no answer, no nothing. And so we see who the true God is. Many lessons can be drawn from our text today. The one that I want to hit on today and to draw together is especially that we need to examine whether we serve God or serve Bell. These are our only two choices, either you're for God or you're against God. Now, I know in the world, men would say, well, I don't have any hard feelings toward God, but I don't care to go to church or listen to the word of God or do any of that, but I don't curse God or do anything like that. That doesn't matter. He says you're either for me or against me. He doesn't say, well, if they don't curse me, they're okay. No, you're either for him or against him. Another lesson that can be drawn from this, it's a serious warning, is that if we look at Ahab, Ahab was witness to all of this, but Ahab was no different after it. And we, in familiarity with Christianity and with church, we run into that danger. We have the word of God presented to us each and every Lord's day. But then do we walk out of here no different for it? And so we must be careful. We must not be Ahab. If you look in verse 41, after this event, Elijah said unto Ahab, get thee up and eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance rain. Ahab was not in awe over what God just did. He was hungry and thirsty. And so this puts over to us a warning that we must take advantage of the times that the Lord is gracious and allows the word of God to be presented to us. Especially you young folk, as you're raised in the church, how much longer will the Lord bring a prophet or his word in front of you telling you these things? And so we must look at and examine which path we're on. We'll deal first with the wide path. And that can be in verses 17 through 29. Well, what do we see about the wide path? Well, we know that from Scripture that it's condemned. It is not paraded as something that's okay to be on. It's not paraded as being the easy path to heaven and eternal life. And we see that in verses 17 and 18. Very first out the gate, what do we see? He goes, verse 1 of chapter 18, he's told, Elijah is told in the third year to go show himself to Ahab and I will send rain upon the earth. So Elijah goes out to find Ahab and he finds him. And as soon as he comes into the view of Ahab, Ahab is like, Hey, you're the one troubling us. But in that case, it was not him. It was actually Ahab's sin and the sin of the people that troubled him. And throughout the Word of God, even into the New Testament, we see that this wide path is condemned. It's on its way to eternal damnation. It's on its way to leading away from the straight and narrow. Christ says there's few and far in between that will find the narrow. It's very hard to find it. And Elijah here is, of course, heralding the truth. He's telling Ahab that you have forsaken the ways of God. His commandments, and then of course, followed after the idolatry. Forsaken here in the Hebrew means to leave, abandon, forsake, neglect, apostatize. It's to turn away from the truth. It's to go the other way. It's not put on solid foundation, the solid ground. As we're told in that parable of the two men that build the houses, one builds on a sandy foundation. And if you've ever built a building, Sandy foundations are no good. You have to have a solid foundation. The foundation has to be solid and strong because that's what keeps the building intact when there's shifts to the environment around it. But another theme that we can see here out of this is not necessarily the condemnation of this path But those who are the herald of truth for the commandments of God, they often get the raw end of the deal. If you are heralding the gospel to a lost world, don't expect everybody to be chummy with you. They will not. We see that in Ahab and Elijah's exchange. The world loves to make Christianity its scapegoat. But this is farther from the truth, of course. I mean, the Lord blesses Christians. blesses the world because Christians are present in this world, but yet we are seen as the troublemakers. And that's how it's been all throughout history of the church. Was it not with the apostles? They were gathered up and beaten and told not to preach in the name of Jesus. And there was even talk of them turning the world upside down with their teaching. And then of course you have Nero in Rome when he set the fire to the city and it burned. Who did he blame? He blamed the Christians and that's when began the great persecution of the Christians by the Roman Empire. Elijah comes before Ahab here to share the truth. You would think Ahab would be overjoyed to understand why this is happening in the nation of Israel, why they've been in a drought for three years, but instead he's laying the blame at Elijah's feet. The world is full of misery and disaster, but every bit of it is due to sin. And when we come before people and tell them that, they don't like it. The charge often is, I remember back after Katrina or 9-11, the churches were full and everybody's wondering why God would allow something like this to happen. And as soon as men start preaching that it's because of your sin, the sin of this nation, people are, oh no, God's horrible. We don't want no part of that God, instead of taking the blame themselves. The same with our first parents. They were guilty of eating the fruit that they were forbidden to eat, and then they start passing the buck as they stand in judgment. It's a steep price to pay for telling the truth. It's not an easy thing. It's not one that was a great and easy thing. And Elijah, we see even in chapter 19, what happens? He gets scared and he runs even after being protected by the Lord. And we even see that of Obadiah in verses 11 through 15 of this same chapter. As Elijah is going to meet Ahab, he meets Obadiah first, who is one of Ahab's servants. And it says, and now thou sayest, go tell thy Lord, behold, Elijah is here, and it shall come to pass as soon as I am gone from thee, that the spirit of the Lord shall carry thee with her. I know not. And so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me. But I, thy servant, fear the Lord from my youth. And was it not told my Lord when I did, when Jezebel slew the prophets of the Lord, how I hid a hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water. And now thou sayest, Go tell thy Lord, Behold, Elijah is here, and he shall slay me. And Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, I shall surely show myself unto him this day. So even Obadiah was scared of Ahab. But then Elijah goes right into his presence with no issues. We even see I mean, besides the blaming for this famine, there's not much as far as fear of his bodily harm. But the heralds of truth are often threatened. Even our own Lord Jesus Christ was. Turn with me over to John chapter 10 and verse 39. This is one of several in the life of Christ. And this is right after he's telling them of being the good shepherd and how his father holds on to those sheep and none can pluck them from his hand. We see those religious leaders, they're very angry. In verse 39 of John chapter 10, therefore they sought again to take him but he escaped out of their hands. And then one more place, over to Acts chapter 16 verse 20. This did not escape even the apostles. And brought them to the magistrates saying, these men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city. And so when we're preaching the truth and when we're telling people the truth and pointing out to them their sins, this is the treatment we receive when we're telling them that you are on the wide path, you need to turn out of it and stop going down it. This is what we receive at the hands of the people. The truth of God troubles the wicked, but we still have nonetheless a responsibility to tell those. But back in our text, we see the wide path also. What about it? It supports, it is supportive of worldliness. We see down through here as they're doing The prophets of Baal are performing their sacrifice. There's all this clamor and noise, and then they start cutting themselves. And it's just this wild craziness going on to summon their God. Now, therefore, sin and gather to me all of Israel, and this is verse 19, unto Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal, 450 and the prophets of the groves 400, which eat at Jezebel's table. Now these prophets, the bell there, the bell is of course, is not just one idol. This is several various forms there. It's the supreme male deity of the Canaanites and the Phoenicians. And then the grove there, in a more modern translation, you might have that as Azera. But in the King James, it's transcribed as Groves. But it is in the Hebrew, Azera, which is the chief goddess. So we have the male counterpart and the female, the husband and wife. This is not new as far as mythology and human making. Even Greek mythology had this. It had it with Zeus and Hera. And then, of course, the Romans copied that with just different names. and then over into the Persians, and all these would have, and the Egyptians also, they had a supreme leader God with his wife or queen, and these are the two that were being presented in that day and age. They walked in the ways of the idols, the sinful and lewd practices became appropriate behavior. And this is why I was talking about the support of a worldliness. It finds those behaviors as okay and passes them off as common behavior. Just like in Paul's day in the Corinthian church, he was talking about not shaving your head because there were prostitutes in the local worship place that had shaved heads. And so it was common practice. The people were totally fine with it, but it made them look as if they were partaking in that behavior and partaking in those things. And so this, this is appropriate. It becomes a part of their normal behavior. And we see that even today. All that we, we in scriptures is wrong and, and, um, and called sinful. It is now common practice. They try to make it law and try to pass it upon, uh, everybody else's as being the right and acceptable behavior. We just ended what they call pride week. And that is what that is all about. It is about publicly testifying that they are like that and they're okay. And that everybody else should accept it when the word of God says otherwise. And we see also in verse 19, the word eat. There was these Azariah priests or priestesses, they would eat. They were all eating at the table of Jezebel. She supported them. And there was also this physical support. But in eating, that means something more of an intimacy. She was familiar with them. She enjoyed their company. For if you were a king or queen and you didn't want somebody eating at your table, you didn't have meat at your table. So you were accepting of that and you were fine with it. Now in verse 20, we see that God brings Ahab and asks him to send unto the children of Israel and gather the prophets together unto Mount Carmel. He wants an audience of the children of Israel and then the prophets also. But why does Ahab meet the demand? This is a very curious relationship here that's starting to form. Ahab did not seem like he was a sympathizer of Christianity, probably quite the opposite if he was an idolater. He had no room for God or the God Yahweh or any of the commands because he was breaking them. But yet he still does what Elijah asks him to do. Based upon Obadiah's testimony, Ahab seems to be a harsh man. He didn't care about life. He was actually apparently painted by Obadiah as being a very quick to temper and then to kill, to where Obadiah was scared of him. Also, if you know anything about kings and the monarchies, well, they would not be known from taking orders from the lowly. So here we have this relationship going on but Elijah's boldness at the beginning of their conversation must have impressed him. He was now, Ahab has a secret impression of Elijah's spirituality and power and he was impressed with that. And this is much similar to John the Baptist and Herod. It says that Herod, when he ordered John the Baptist's head to be chopped off after his daughter, half-daughter, whatever she was at the time, he was very sad. Now, of course, he was not a Christian. He had no concern over what John was preaching, because he was put in prison because John was telling him that that was not his wife, it was his brother's wife. And so, there's kind of this same relationship going on. There's some mutual respect. And so Ahab does what Elijah asked, and they bring the prophets and the people onto Mount Carmel. Now, Mount Carmel was in the western portion, butting a bunch up against the Mediterranean Sea on the western side of Israel. And this is where northern, northwestern side of Israel, and that's where they're going. It's on a top of a hill. And also on this wide path we see confusion and instability. Elijah's reason for gathering the people was to put the preposition before them. As I said earlier, how long wilt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him. And this is in verse 21. Now in the Hebrew, this translated is, when you be lame upon two crutches. It's kind of the symbolic of just when you're on crutches, you're kind of wobbling back and forth. You're not really in a center because you're relying on those crutches to keep you up. They were unstable and uncommitted. They didn't just leave God and the things of God. They actually tried to add to it. They brought in these idols to them. Elijah sets a decision to the people. They should stop wavering between God and the idols. This made them seem very unstable. And there's a text in James 1, chapter 1, 6 and 8 that talks about a double-minded man, that he's unstable, that you can't get a decision out of him. There's indecision. They were trying to serve two masters, and that's Matthew 6, 24. They were trying to yoke themselves equally with holiness and unholiness, righteousness and unrighteousness, light and darkness, life and death, Christ and Bilal. And that's over in 2 Corinthians 6, 14 through 18. It tells us that we cannot unequally yoke ourselves to these things. Because what do they have? They have their total opposites of the spectrum. They can't be put together in marriage and yoked together. None of these have any business together. Now, of course, this is a relevant question for all times. It's a relevant question to our own hearts, to any that we meet. How long will you be between the two? How long will you be in indecision and unstableness? This is a question, of course, of true versus false religion. But we see what? The people in verse 21, they can't even give him an answer right here. They answered him not. They were silent when he asked them this. So we see this at the beginning, he puts it before them and they're still not sure what to do or how to answer. So then he says, okay, we will of course do a contest to see who is truly God. And he puts that before them and they're more happy to see that. They're more happy to do that. And they're totally fine with it because even in pagan religion, they did sacrifices. They did animal sacrifices. So there was no foreignness when he said, let's get two bulls and you take one and I'll take another and we'll dress these things and see who answers first. They were not thrown off by that. They actually liked that. They were completely fine with it. And we see their devotion. And their devotion as pagan worshipers is actually to be admired to some extent, not that they were worshiping the wrong deity or the wrong perceived deity, but they were devoted about it. They were serious in the matter and we see all the activity. And we also see their faith. They have faith. Those who are atheist and agnostic, they have faith. It's just not faith in God. The evolutionists, they have faith. It's just they have no desire to have faith in God. They believe in something. They attach a belief into that evolution or whatever, but it's the wrong belief. And so even unbelievers have a faith. They might believe in themselves. They might believe in their money or their physical glory or whatever, but they are believing in something. They have a faith. It's just the wrong faith. And it's a great show. as is all idolatry in verses 26 through 29. They choose their bull, they process it and they put it out. They set up an altar for the sacrifice. After dividing up the bull, they then begin to cry on bell. And of course, Elijah lets them go first. It's earlier in the morning and they begin. Well, here comes noon, comes lunchtime, but there was no answer, no fire. No nothing. They're crying, they're moving about, they're calling upon a bell to answer them, and nothing. You can probably hear the crickets chirp. So now they become more animated. They leaped upon the altar. In our text, the leaping upon the altar there, it is a start to a dance. It's some type of cultic dance. They begin to dance. So it's now gone from calling upon to dancing And then we see Elijah, which is actually one of the more humorous parts here where he mocks him. It's a sanctified mocking. And he says, you know what? Call, dance, do whatever. Well, you know, if he's a God, well, maybe he's talking or pursuing. or journeying or sleeping. And these are all acts that they associated with Bell, the idol, which we know from many of the texts in the Old Testament about idol worship. They gave humanistic activities to these idols because they made them just like themselves. They were comfortable with that. And so we have the same thing here. He could have been talking. He could have been pursuing, the pursuing there is using the restroom. If you look that up, the definition using the restroom or journeying or sleeping, but instead there's nothing, there's still nothing. And then we see they carry it one step forward, they begin to wail again and they start to cut themselves because that's what they did to draw what they believe drew the attention of their idols was their blood. And aren't you glad today that our God, the great God of heaven and earth, doesn't require us to cut ourselves. He is not interested in our sinful, dirty blood, but he was interested in his son's blood. Once and for all, he doesn't keep requiring it of us. He doesn't require us to cut ourselves or to bodily harm ourselves. He said, I will do that to my son for your sake. So you don't have to go through that. But they were hoping to get this idol's attention and they did not. When God established worship, when God established worship, it is ignored by men. We often see, what do we see crop up? It's man-centered. It's work-based. It's a working out because we are built to work and that's what we want to do. And so this also carries with it the extremes like cutting. We have to do something. We have to harm ourselves. Just like you see with the Catholic Church. They have some who whip themselves and do these crazy things because they believe it makes them closer to God. But no. It is His Son that draws us to Him. Instead we see the outcome in verse 29 that there was neither voice nor any answer, nor any regarded. It was silent. There was no fire. There was no works, no voice from heaven. There was nothing. And so our second portion here, which will cover verses 30 through 40, is the right path or the straight and narrow. Time for the evening sacrifice, which is about three o'clock in the afternoon. Elijah had let them carry on like this. I'm sure they were probably about done for with the cutting and the crying and the dancing. They were probably tired and wore out. And so Elijah says, okay, now it's my turn. Let me start. The prophets of Baal had a good part of the day to summon Baal, but they failed. Now I've got five points here and we're kind of shortly running out of time, but let me move through these so we can see how those on the straight and narrow, what the practices are of those traveling this one. It's established, not new. And this is verses 30 and 32. He repaired the altar. He did not create a new altar for the sacrifice. It says he repaired the altar. This altar was oftentimes in Israel's history, they would make altars from rocks and they were often on, you know, mountains or mountain sides. And this was an old one. It was probably built in the times of the judges. So he just cleans one up that's already there, an old one. And then he adds 12 stones and those 12 stones are for the nation, each of the sons of Jacob. Now why 12? That's a very curious thing because the 12, this was the divided kingdom, this was Israel, this was the northern kingdom. Why did he put 12? Well he put 12 because they were still one people in the eyes of God. They were still his people, he still had a covenant with that people. And so we see that he did not create a new altar. He did not create an invention to the worship of God. He took a hold of what was already established, what was already there. And so we do the same thing. God has established the way to worship him. It is not for us to change that. It is not for us to add to it. We don't need to do any of that. He has established it. It is God ordered, number two, He put the wood in order. He cut up the bull. And as you look at this, as you're reading, it kind of skates through the prophets of Bel and how they're preparing and getting started. And here we have Elijah. He's putting the wood in order. It actually says that, that he puts the wood and builds the altar and then he does the Trent and then in verse 33, and he put the wood in order and cut the bullock in pieces. There's like this deliberate moving and preparation. It's not just thrown up there and then he starts to pray to God. Everything neat and tidy before the laying of the sacrifice on top. We serve a God of order who has established how we are to worship. Is not our God amazing that he does not require great feats of acts from us. As I said about the cutting, that we are not required to go to certain locations. He doesn't require us to go see certain men. No, He has set forward exactly how we are to worship Him. And we can do it in spirit. We can do it in the privacy of our own homes. We can pray unto Him and talk to our Lord and talk to the One who is the great Creator of all the universe. When we are in trouble, we can call to Him. We don't have to dance about or cry out and wail. We just talk to him in the quiet of our souls. And it is God only. Number three, and this is verses 33 through 35, asks for water to be poured out on it. And it's four barrels, three times. It's so much water that it saturates the bull and the wood, and then it goes off into the trenches around the altar. They are in the middle of a drought. There's some question of even where they got the water from. They think it was out of the Brook Kishon, that it was still running, had a little running, but they would fill it up. Or maybe there was a bunch of caves, apparently in this Mount Carmel, and maybe some springs that they got the water. But either way, they found the water, and nobody questioned him asking them to pour the water out in the middle of a drought. But the whole point of this was to make it that there was no mistake that it was God that did this. And we see this even in our own lives. He does things and works providence to a point and gives us circumstances that there is no question that it was not anyone but God. And it is a great testimony when we see God moving in this way And we see number four, it includes prayer. He begins to pray, verses 36 through 37. He doesn't dance or he doesn't cut, he doesn't wail, he prays. God is a spirit, a living spirit. And so he addresses God in the manner that God has provided, which is prayer. And this is a good godly prayer. He says in verse 36, And it came to pass at the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel. He's petitioning to the fact that he was the God throughout the history of their nation. He established the nation. He's eternal and never changing. And the fact that he keeps his covenant promises. He promised Abraham. Your seed shall be a great number of people, a nation, and they'll inherit the land that I've brought you to. And has he not kept that promise? He kept it all the way to make them a nation, even in this division and this turmoil that's going on within the nation of Israel, he has still kept his promise. They are still in that land. Now, of course, they have moved away from him. They have not kept his commandments and they have chased after Bel and Azariah. But no, God was still faithful. The next statement, let it be known this day that thou art God, this speaks to God's aim to glorify himself as the only Lord. He is the Lord. There's a reverence here in Elijah's prayer. Through the response of the Lord, Elijah will be confirmed as the prophet of the Lord. And this speaks to, there he says, I am thy servant, and I have done all these things at thy word. And yes, as we talked about, the worship of God is dictated to us and established by him and in his word. And so we do the same thing. We do as he has told us to do. Turning them from their double-mindedness will of course be all the work of the Lord. And he says even that in 36. Let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel. And then he says over in verse 37, that thou has turned their heart back again. Who is the king and sovereign over the hearts of men? The Lord God Almighty. We see that even in example over in the New Testament. The lady Lydia there in Acts, what does it say? The Lord opened her heart as they preached to her. And she was then a believer. The Lord knows our hearts and he controls our hearts. Now for the last one, God, it's a God honoring life. When we're on the straight and narrow, we are honoring, we want a God honoring life. That's the whole point of the straight and narrow. The Lord responds and how does he respond? He rains fire down from heaven and licks up all of it. Even the dust it says in verse 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 dust. There was nothing left of it. There was nothing for them to say, oh, that was just some supernatural act that came about, lightning or something of that nature. No, it was nothing but the Lord God Almighty doing it. Elijah prayer was effective because he sought to honor the Lord. And this fire not only burned up the sacrifice, but it burned up the unbelief in the hearts of the people. It was a miracle. And it did exactly what miracles do. We see that in the New Testament. What do they do? They're to point people to God and how God operates. In their awe, Elijah commands them to capture the prophets of Baal. So they don't escape. They don't escape the condemnation of their leading the people astray. They go down to the brook Kishon and they begin to slew all the prophets. And then, of course, the theme of this would be that those on the straight and narrow seek to put away sin in our lives. We diligently mortify it, to push it out, to do away with it. We're not bedfellows with it. We don't have intimacy with it. We want to completely be free of it. Now, of course, we won't get free of it until that day we enter into glory, but we long for that day. And when we do offend, yes, we do offend the Lord, what happens? We are quick to return again to our Lord. We find here that there are two thoughts, two opinions, two paths. There's no in-between. There's no neutrality. Which path are you on today? Are you in the straight and narrow? Are you on the wide path that's leading off into destruction? Yes, that wide path has many opinions and what they think is opinions and it's wide and open and a lot of the vast majority of people are on it. But are you on the straight and narrow? That is the important question. We look to these things. We look to see whether we are on either one. We examine ourselves and examine our hearts for this matter. There was a great famine going on during this time in our narrative, but there was an even greater spiritual drought in Israel, much akin to the same that we have today. They had the living eternal God to follow, and they left the living eternal God to follow man-made idols. And I'm sure they had traditions, they had the stories of all that came before them, and the miracles that were worked, but they still left that God to follow the idols. In doing so, they now halted between two opinions, two thoughts. They were sitting on neutral ground, or what they believed to be neutral ground. But the two opinions are the only choices we have in this life, and this is where we make this decision. It's not after you get out of this life. You can't make that decision after that. It's done. It's over with. It has to be made in this life. Those not worshiping the Lord are condemned by the scriptures. We are either for God or not. There's no in between. Those on the true path worship God as he is established, only worshiping the living eternal God, praying to him and living a life honoring to God our Savior. And I ask again, are you on this straight and narrow or on you on the wide? And I hope that you can answer in the latter, that you are on the straight and narrow, that you are following after him and choosing to go after our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.