You may be seated. Good evening, Smyrna Presbyterian Church. My name is Jackson Taylor. For those of you who do not know me, me and my wife and my two-year-old daughter, we are missionaries in Kenya, and we are just delighted to be here with you tonight and for the rest of this summer. We're just honored for the fact that I'm able to come and to speak with you guys and get to teach you. So I thank you for that privilege. So before we read from tonight's scripture reading, I want to pray and I want to ask for God's help. to understand his word, to apply his word, and to believe his word. So he would join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this opportunity to come before you in your word. We thank you for the sufficiency, the inerrancy of your truth. I pray that tonight that we would have hearts that are open to your word. May you give us eyes to see and hearts to believe, minds to understand. May we do it all by the grace that is given through you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. If you would please join me in standing for the reading of God's holy inerrant word. Our scripture text for tonight is 1 Kings 18, verse 20 to verse 40. And verse 20, so Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. 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. If Baal is God, then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word. Then Elijah said to the people, I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men, Let two bowls be given to us, and let them choose one bowl 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 bowl, and lay it on the wood, and put no fire to it. 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. Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose for yourselves one bull, prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your God, but put no fire to it. And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it, and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, answer us. But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar, that they had made. And at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened. And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation. But there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention. Then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. And all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. And Elijah took 12 stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be your name. And with the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. and made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two sieves of seed. And he put the wood in order and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood. And he said, do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And he said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time. And the water ran around the altar and filled the trench also with water. 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. 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. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offerings 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 said, the Lord, he is God, the Lord, he is God. And Elijah said to them, seize the prophets of Baal and let not one of them escape. And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and slaughtered them there. This is the word of the Lord. So there was a time in my life where I was chasing after something, and when I got it, it honestly left me feeling pretty empty. After college, I graduated with a degree in geography, against the advice of most family and friends, but miracles still do happen today, because I was able to get a job in the field that my degree was in. So that was absolutely amazing. And when I got hired at my job, I was hired on as an intern, I thought this is just protocol, I'll be hired maybe two, three months, six months tops, then I'll be hired on full time. This was kind of the culture of the company I was at and I didn't think anything of it. So I wanted to be hired on for a couple of reasons, double pay, job security, and who doesn't love paid vacation? So this is all the things that I was looking forward to that I thought was going to come very quickly to me. Like most things in my life, I was wrong. And after about six months, I began to think, what's going on? What is happening? And after about a year, I began to think, okay, what is wrong with me? Why can't I get hired on? Is it me? I saw other interns come and go. They were getting hired faster than me. And I was thinking, what is happening? I honestly couldn't think about anything else. I became obsessed with it. Every day at work, I would just bug my coworkers constantly and say, What's happening? Why is so-and-so getting hired? What is wrong with the process? Is it me? What's going on? And I was obsessed, and I could think of nothing else. Every day that went by, I desired it more and more and more. And in a sense, I worshipped this job. And finally, after what felt like 100 years, but it was actually just two, I got an interview, and I was hired. Awesome. Everything will be great from here on out. I was wrong again. The thing that I desired more than anything in this world, I finally got, and it didn't deliver what I thought it would. What I thought would fulfill all of my desires and satisfy my soul, it actually left me feeling more empty than before. I don't think I'm alone in this. Have you ever felt this way or been in a similar situation where you chase after something, you wanted something so badly other than the Lord, and when you got it, it didn't quite fulfill you the way that you thought it would? Maybe you looked for self-worth in the amount of social media followers you had or the amount of likes you have on your pictures on Facebook, only to discover that your desire for affirmation can never fully be satisfied. Maybe you sought your validation in the size of your bank account, only to realize that that number was never quite what you wanted it to be. Maybe you found your identity in your spouse, kids, your appearances and your abilities, only to realize that those things will fade away and they will let you down. When we seek after things other than the Lord, we're doing what the Bible calls chasing after idols. And I know many of us, when we hear the word idols, we think, oh, that's just an Old Testament thing. They chase after idols, those stone statues, those wooden carvings. What does that have to do with me? Well, yes, in America, maybe we don't see people worshiping those kinds of idols, but our idols are nonetheless there. They're absolutely present in our lives. And to kind of define what an idol is, there's a couple of ways to look at it. So an idol is pretty much anything that receives the worship that God alone deserves in our lives. All too often, do we find ourselves placing the things of this world upon the throne that is God's. Tim Keller, he's a lot smarter than me, and he wrote a book on this called Counterfeit Gods, and he quotes and defines idols in this way. He says, anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, and anything that you seek to give you what only God can give. See, as people created in the image of God, we are created to worship. The question is not, do we worship? It's, what do we worship? And in order to turn from our idols, in order to turn from those things that cannot fulfill us into the arms of the Lord, we must recognize their inability to fulfill us. towards the one who can. And that is what we'll learn from our text today is this, is the Lord is the only one who can fulfill us. And if this is true, then he alone is deserving of our worship. So the first thing that we'll take a look at is in verses 20 to 24, is the fact that we as the people of God, we cannot serve two masters. And as we dive into this text, I want to kind of give a little bit of background, because the text in 1 Kings 18 is actually a climax to a bigger story that's taking place in the history of Israel. So this story is taking place at the time of the divided kingdom of Israel. Under the reign of Solomon, you had one kingdom in the land, and after Solomon, things got a little dicey, and the kingdom of Israel split. You have the northern kingdom, Israel, and the southern kingdom, Judah. And for the sake of our story, the king of the northern kingdom at this time, his name is Ahab. And if you know anything about the kings, many of the kings in the Bible are not highly spoken of. And Ahab, he's one of them. He's described like this. We are told that Ahab did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. That's not good. But even worse, he worshipped the false god Baal, the storm god of the Canaanites, and he did more to provoke the Lord than all of the kings of Israel who were before him. And if you know anything about those kings, they did some terrible things. In Ahab, what we're seeing from the Word is that he's the worst of the worst at this point in time. And this calls for action. And this is why this showdown is taking place. And because of the sins of Ahab, God has sent the prophet Elijah to gather all these people together. He's bringing them all together on Mount Carmel to figure out one thing. Who is God? Is it Baal? The idols? The people? Or is it the Lord? So the stage was being set, being set for a final showdown, so to speak. You've got Elijah, Ahab, Israel, and the 450 prophets of Baal all gathered together on the top of this mountain. Think about how epic that would be. So you see in the red corner, you have Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, who has redeemed a people out of the world and called them to himself. In the blue corner, you have Baal, the storm god of the Canaanites, and those are the two gods, so to speak. They're going to be facing off on this mountain. And after they arrive at Mount Carmel, Elijah, in a sense, he does something bold. He goes right up to Israel and he intentionally calls them to place their bets, choose, decide who you're going to follow. He says in verse 21, how long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal is God, follow him. See, during this time, Israel had not been faithful to their Lord, to their God who had provided for them in the wilderness, who had given them a land and drove out the people living there. He had saved them from slavery in Egypt, and yet they continued to turn away from him to chase after the idols of this world. They, in a sense, wanted their Baal and their Yahweh too. They were hedging their bets, so to speak, by trusting in what the Lord had to offer. Yeah, we would love the land that you have to offer us, the provision in the wilderness, but, you know, Baal, he's the god of fertility. He will bring rain down for our crops, so we kind of want that too. So we're gonna chase after him, we're gonna worship him so that we can get those good things. We'll kind of spread out our bets so that we can get all our bases covered. But Elijah was not really having any of that, and he confronts them. and wants them to decide who they're going to follow. They were going to straddle the fence no longer, and they were going to decide, is the Lord God or is Baal God? And Israel's response to Elijah's question, honestly, it was rather shocking. You see, Israel was God's treasured possession and the recipient of his covenant promises. been the recipients of his faithfulness time and time and time again. This question should have had an easy answer. The Lord is God. We've seen it. He's proven it to us many times over. Yet, their answer was this. There was no answer. We're told in verse 21, Israel did not answer him a word. Their silence was alarming. It showed that their full allegiance was not with the Lord, but rather they were serving two masters. And Elijah then sets the term of this clash that's about to take place. Elijah says in verse 22, it's me against the 450 prophets of Baal, one versus 450. So he tells them to bring two bulls of their choosing. The prophets of Baal are to choose the bull, prepare it and put it on the altar, but they are not to set fire to the bull. And Elijah says, I'll do the same thing. And whoever calls out to their God and he answers by fire, that's the winner of the contest. That's the decider. That is the true God. Okay, so all the people come together and they agree. And the showdown was set to begin. But this concept of straddling the fence, as Elijah puts it, limping between two opinions or serving two masters, it reminds us of the words of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 6, 24, we see Jesus saying these exact words. He says, And what we're seeing here is what Jesus is saying is we can't do two opposite things at the same time. I think if you try to do this, it's very simple. You can see. You can't stop and go at the same time. Have you ever played red light, green light? You just can't do it. We can't jump and sit down at the same time. It's impossible. We can't swim and drive a car at the same time. And Jesus in this passage in Matthew 6, he's talking about money. So let's put it in the context of money. Is it possible to be a generous giver, yet be obsessed and greedy for gain? No, it's not, because you will tightly hold to that money that you're supposed to be giving generously. Serving two masters, if it's something that we're seeing is not possible, then like Israel, we too are called to choose whom we will serve with our lives. Because we do the same thing that Israel has done here. We limp between two different opinions. We chase after those other gods who we think will fulfill us, yet they cannot. So are we going to chase after God, or are we going to chase after sinful idols? And what we're seeing from this part of the text is that following God is an all or nothing pursuit. It's not something that we just get to add on to our lives. It is not periphery to what we do. It is central to our being as followers of Christ. To trust in the Lord is to follow him with our whole lives, not just for an hour and a half on Sunday morning. We can't say the Lord is God on Sunday morning, but something else is God Monday through Saturday. These verses are a calling to us as the people of God, not to straddle the fence, but to follow and worship the only one who is worthy of our pursuit. We should be asking ourselves daily, have we given ourselves fully to the worship of our God? Are we still 50-50 with the world? Are we doing what Israel has done here, hedging our bets, spreading out our worship? Have we made him first in our homes? Have we made him first in our hobbies? Is he first in our jobs? Will we serve the God of all creation or the idols of this world? When Israel was met with this question, they had silence. That was their response. But as we'll see as the story unfolds, the ensuing showdown that will take place will do much to change their minds. Which brings us to our second discussion, which is idols cannot save. We see in verses 25 to 29 that Elijah, he comes into this battle, he's got a plan, he's got a battle strategy. He's got a two-part strategy, actually. First thing he wants to do, he wants to disprove that Baal is God, okay? So he wants to disprove the divinity of this false god that was being worshiped by the Canaanites. And the second thing he wants to do is not only disprove that Baal is not God, but he also wants to prove that the Lord is God. And he'll do this in an interesting way as we see the text unfold. In order to strengthen his case, Elijah gives the prophets of Baal every conceivable advantage that he could possibly give them. Every head start, everything that he could think of. Some of those advantages are they had more prophets. It was 450 to 1. They got to choose the bull they wanted to sacrifice. So they got to have the best pick, so to speak. They got to go first. If they would have called down and fire would have come down, contest over. There would have been no need to continue any further. And an answer by fire would have been right up Bill's alley. He was the storm god. Lightning down, thunder, I'm not up. a person to ask on weather, but it would have been right up his alley, his specialty, so to speak. And as we'll see later, Elijah even covered his altar and everything in water, which I don't know if you've ever tried to make a fire. Trying to make a fire with dry wood is hard. Trying to make a fire with wet wood is actually impossible. So what do we see? Prophets of Baal, they get to work. They waste no time. They chose their bull, they prepared it, they called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon. They cried out to Baal saying, O Baal, answer us, but there was no voice and no one answered. Because that didn't work. They tried to change it up a little bit, change up the strategy, try to do something else. So they began limping, as the Bible tells us, around the altar that they had made. And at noon, Elijah had seen them doing this for some hours at that point, and he began to mock them. He began to ask them funny questions such as, Maybe he's sleeping, maybe he's traveling, or maybe he's relieving himself, just poking fun at their God's inability to do anything. And because Baal continued to be silent, they did the next thing that obviously flows in logic is they started cutting themselves. They spilled their blood in order to convince and manipulate their God to do what they wanted him to do. But after six hours, still nothing had happened. And we're told in verse 29, there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. So we see a failure. The prophets failed to bring fire down from their idol, for the obvious case, for the very fact that he is not God. He is incapable of doing what only God is capable of doing. And the more of an advantage that the prophets had, it made their failure all the more evident. So most of us probably know the saying, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, right? So that's exactly what Elijah was trying to do. He was trying to build up these prophets, giving them every advantage possible, knowing that they had all of these advantages, yet they were still going to fail. So he would build them up so that when they fell, it was all the more pronounced. I think, think of it in terms of a foot race. So if we were going to race, a 100-meter sprint, and I gave you a 90-meter head start, so I've got to go 100 meters, you've got to go 10 meters, and I still beat you, you would think, wow, this man is so fast, and you would think I was even more fast than if we had started at the same point. Because of that head start, you thought that my speed was absolutely more emphatic, so to speak. This is exactly what Elijah did with the prophets. They had every advantage, a huge head start, but still couldn't do anything to prove that Baal was God. And I think it's important to stop and think for a second, because a lot of us, we can hear about idols and all of these things and think, why are they bad? Why are they dangerous? What's the big deal having this straddling the fence? And idols are dangerous for that very reason. Because on the surface, they don't seem like idols. On the surface, they don't seem dangerous. They don't seem as if you're devoting your worship to them. They're sneaky in that way. But they're dangerous because in our pursuit of them, they cause us to turn our backs on the Lord towards them. They cause us to misplace our worship. When chasing after idols cause us to disobey God, this is sin. Is that hobby keeping you from coming to public worship? Is that promotion at work causing you to stay later and later, causing you to neglect your family? Is your desire for control causing you to trust in your own strength rather than resting in the strength of the Lord? And yes, though these pursuits are not intrinsically evil, they are not evil in and of themselves when they take the place in our lives that only God deserves, they are idols. But as we have seen here from this text, that idols can do nothing. They can not bring fire down from heaven, nor can they save us. So if idols cannot save us, we should not put our trust in them to fulfill us. Money can't answer your prayers. Power cannot provide you with ultimate peace. Success cannot forgive your sins. Politics can't make us righteous before God, and control can't bring you eternal life. Sometimes we think they can, but they can't. But the good news is there is one who can do all of these things and has done them for his people. The Lord can. The Lord answers the prayers of his children because he is a gracious father. The Lord is able to bring peace between a holy God and wretched sinners like us. Only the Lord can forgive our sins through the atoning sacrifice of his son on the cross. Only the Lord can make us righteous before himself by giving to us by faith a righteousness that neither we deserve nor can we earn it. Only the Lord can bring us eternal life through Jesus Christ. Worshiping idols is like drinking salt water. It satisfies for a moment, but it cannot save you. Which brings us to our last point, which is this, only the Lord can save. We see this in verses 30 to 40, that after the failure of the prophets of Baal, Elijah seeks to show the second thing that he wants to show. He's already proved that Baal is not God, and now he is proving the Lord is God. And he draws Israel near to what he is about to do. He doesn't want them to miss it, and neither should we. And Elijah, what he does is he rebuilds the altar using 12 stones to represent the 12 tribes of Israel, to represent the unity of the people of God. And just as he gave every advantage to the prophets of Baal, he does the opposite for himself. He gives himself every possible disadvantage. And you might be thinking, why is he doing this? Okay, hasn't he already made his point? Well, no, he wanted to make an even bigger point. Because oftentimes throughout scripture, we see miracles performed and there are people who doubt, who do not truly believe, who make excuses and say, no, that's not really God. And I'm sure you've probably seen people do it in your own lives. But what Elijah wanted to do is he wanted to silence all possibility of doubt and he wanted all recognition to go to the Lord so that there would be no debate about him being Lord. So that's what he did. He did everything that he could think of to put himself at a disadvantage. He puts the bull upon the altar, but he has people dig out a trench so it's almost in the earth. And then he pours water upon the bull, the wood, the stones, four times, and even has the trench filled up with water so that it was completely submerged. And like I said earlier, the chance of fire catching on something that is submerged in water is impossible. I wouldn't say try it, but I couldn't imagine setting a fire underwater would be something that someone is capable of doing. But after the altar set, Elijah prays to God. In contrast to the prayers of the prophets of Baal, his prayer is short and sweet. He doesn't cut himself, doesn't pray for hours, doesn't limp around an altar. He simply just prays. And his prayer has a double purpose. His first thing he wants to do is he wants to show that the Lord is God, that he is high above all others and there is no one equal to him. In verse 36, he prays, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel. He wants God and his majesty to be on full display without doubt. It is him that is doing this that day. He wants to settle the debate. But the second thing he also wants to do is he wanted Israel to turn their hearts back to the Lord. He did not just want to show off the Lord's majesty and power. He wanted Israel to see it and repent and turn to him. That is God's grace. In verse 37, we see Elijah praying, answer me, O Lord, that this people may know that you are God, that you have turned their hearts back. One commentator puts it, repentance is not possible without divine grace. And we see that in this passage. It is the Lord, through his actions, turning his people back to himself by his mercy and his grace. A hard-necked people like you and me. And after Elijah finishes praying, what happens? Well, the Lord brings down fire and everything on that altar is consumed. It wasn't enough just to consume the animal, that would have won the contest, but he consumes everything. The wood, the stones, the water, every drop of water was consumed. And this caused all who were there in the presence that day to see that the Lord is God, not Baal. And after this mighty act of God, Israel does something very interesting. If you compare what they did in the beginning, they were silent when asked, who is the Lord? And at the end, after seeing what God had done, they fell on their faces, and they said together, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. And this, you may have known this story before you even came here tonight. I think it's a very well-known victory in a sense of the Lord overcoming what seemed insurmountable odds to accomplish his will. But it's not the only time in scripture that we see something like this taking place, where God overcomes the obstacles that we possibly couldn't overcome. We see it, Israel crossing the Red Sea, David's victory over Goliath, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving the fiery furnace. Daniel, making it out of the lion's den. But there's one that puts all of these things to shame. It is the victory of sin and death upon the cross through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus, through his resurrection, our Savior defeated death for us. Death was no match for our God, and through faith in him, we too have victory through Christ over death. If your trust is in Jesus, you too can say with the Apostle Paul, oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is only through him that we have victory over sin and death. And yes, this is a great victory we see in 1 Kings 18, but many of us are probably asking this question, how does this apply to my life? What are some doable next steps that I can take away from this? On Tuesday afternoon when the kids are going crazy, I'm super exhausted from work, what are some takeaways that I can have? I think there are some very simple ones, just two things. The first thing is, being on the lookout, identifying our idols. Because if we are not able to identify those things that we're worshiping and looking to fulfill us, we will never know that they're there. It's like if you don't think that you're sick, you'd have no reason to go to the doctor. Why would I go to the doctor? I'm not sick. I say, wait, why would I turn from idols? I don't have any. But that is the first thing that we can do. But the second thing is this, we must recognize that we in our own strength are incapable of doing this. But we must also recognize that the Lord in His grace has equipped us with His Spirit and given us the strength to do that which He asks us to do. There are simple, simple ways to find out what our idols are, what we worship. Just asking yourself simple questions such as, where does your money go? Where do you spend most of your time? What motivates you to wake up in the morning? What is there that you love so much in this world that if you lost it, it would be as if your world came to an end? These are hard questions, but the people of God, we need to be asking ourselves these things. The good thing, though, is we are not left to our own strength to do this, but rather we are equipped with the Holy Spirit who we have been given to help us. The same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead has indwelt within his people to give us the strength to obey the word. We too can rejoice when Paul, when he says, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. Yes, there's going to be times where we feel weak. We feel like we have this losing battle over and over. We're able to identify those idols, yet we recognize, Lord, I just continue to worship this thing and I don't even want to. But that is the beauty of the gospel, is the fact that His strength is at work in us, even through our weakness. I'm not telling you to try harder, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but rather to look to the grace of God for the strength to turn away from idols towards Him. So I'll leave us with a question. What do you worship? Do you worship things that will fade away, things that are here today and gone tomorrow? Or do you worship the one true God who alone can save us, the only one who can fulfill us? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for your word. We thank you for the salvation that is earned for us by Christ and given to us by faith. For Lord, we were enemies, yet we are now children by the grace of God. I pray that this word would press into our hearts and that you would do a work in and through us, giving us eyes to see that which we are worshiping other than you and giving us the strength to turn away from it to you, O Lord, the one who is able to satisfy our souls by your grace. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.