"Yahweh vs Molech: and the end of Roe" 1 Kings 18 Sunday Morning Worship Service

I have no idea how people who are protesting Roe v.

Wade and the end of that, I have no idea how they will continue to protest.

Riots in the streets, I'm sure, and taking over state houses and courthouses and screaming and maybe even burning down the Supreme Court.

I have no idea.

But I do know one thing with absolute certainty.

As they cry out to their gods, that their gods will not hear them.

As they dance around and scream and lance themselves and cry and beg and proclaim that things aren't right, and the ending federally recognized access to abortion is the end of the world, and they demand that their God answer them.

We know that their God will not answer them.

We know that he will not bend his ear towards them, he will not hear their prayers, and he will not respond.

Ever since Roe v.

Wade legalized abortion at the federal level in our country, abortion has really been mainstreamed, and the ability to take the life of one's child has achieved almost a religious status in our society, hasn't it?

Now that Roe v.

Wade is overturned, people are certainly acting like their idols have been overturned.

Like the Philistines did when Dagon fell over and broke into pieces.

People are responding.

Really, the only rational way to describe it is that their irrational responses are tethered to the fact that it is most certainly a religion.

I think in our country, in our culture, abortion has received a religious status.

The god is self-esteem-esteem, the god is self-fulfillment, and abortion is the sacrament.

You think that to truly achieve the kind of life that you need and the life that you desire, it requires sacrificing your child, often your firstborn child.

This is hardly new in American culture.

This has been around even since the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, there was the god of Molech.

Molech was the god of the pagan nations, the nations that were around the Israelites, and Molech was worshipped through child sacrifice.

Usually the firstborn child.

The idea behind Molech worship is that you would take your child and pass him through the fire, is the language that would use.

Your child would be burned in the fire, and then often the ashes would be put in a jar in the house.

This is according to the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary.

The jars would be put into the wall of the house.

And the idea is that as your child is dead, you're now building your family on the foundation of your child's sacrifice.

Meanwhile, your child has gone into the afterlife where he is preparing the way for you to follow him.

So it was very much this idea that by sacrificing your child, you were securing a better life for you here in this world, but most importantly, a better life for you in the next world, because your child will be expecting you and ready to receive you.

So it's almost like he has to take one for the team.

He goes there first to welcome you.

It was a very common thought process in the nations of the ancient Near East.

The Canaanites followed that kind of worship.

The nations around Israel did in the Old Testament.

Stephen in Acts chapter 7 says that even the Israelites bought into that.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

The Israelites themselves embraced Molech worship.

They believed the lie that in order for them to have a happy and successful life here and in the next life, it required sacrificing a child now.

The child would die for the well-being of the parents, and this is as it should be.

And it was certainly a religious ritual.

I think we're very familiar with that.

We wonder how can people respond the way they do in our world today over making it more difficult to get an abortion, and that explains it.

It is a religious act.

Now, how?

As they dance around and scream and yell, what are they, who to whom are they praying?

What are they appealing to?

It really is the same God that people appealed to in the Old Testament, the God of Molech, sometimes referred to as Baal.

Baal is a more particular name.

Baal is the rain god.

And so my thoughts this week have just been drawn back to 1 Kings chapter 18.

1 Kings 18 · chapter mention

So let me invite you to open your Bibles to 1 Kings 18.

We see here in 1 Kings 18 that really the most epic showdown of God versus Baal, of the true God versus false gods that's described in the Bible.

Now, before we work our way through 1 Kings 18 this morning, it would be helpful for you to understand that normally God in the Old Testament, or God in the Bible, doesn't do showdowns.

Normally God doesn't go toe-to-toe with the devil.

Normally God doesn't tell Molech, I'll see you at high noon on Main Street.

And that's good.

There's very few of these showdowns described in the Bible.

Like Job describes a showdown between God and the devil, the ten plagues, the showdown between God and the gods of the Egyptians.

The temptation narrative in Matthew 4 describes a showdown between Jesus and the devil.

We'll return to that next week.

But this here, 1 Kings 18, is a classic example of that storyline.

The devil, through the God of Baal, the rain god, goes toe-to-toe with Yahweh.

As I mentioned, these showdowns in the Old Testament are unusual because God normally doesn't feel the need to prove his godness to people whom he made.

You understand the logic, of course.

Imagine a child who makes a little clay person, you know, a person out of clay and puts it in the fire and has this little clay doll.

And imagine if the doll could talk and demand, these are a little Barbie doll-looking thing, and demand to the person who made it, prove to me that you exist.

What I made you, that's my proof.

Believe in me or I'll break off your arms.

I mean it's it's silly.

God is not summoned by creatures that he made to prove that he exists.

I had somebody just yesterday tell me they have a hard time believing God made the world in six days because the world's big.

I mean, that's a lot to make in six days.

My response to that is to think through like, does it get easier if you give them a million years?

I mean, is it a timetable problem?

Is that what we're dealing with?

I can't believe that God made the universe because who could make that many things in that short of an amount of time?

Fine, more time.

It's not a timetable issue.

It's a creator-creature distinction issue that God made the universe.

He can make it in a half of a second if he wanted to.

It's not an issue of time, it's an issue that he made us and we are made by him.

So we don't get to order him or summon him around.

Think of the hackneyed story of the physics professor who takes the chalk and says, I can prove that God doesn't exist.

Listen, if God exists, he will stop me from dropping the chalk.

Clunk.

Ergo, no God.

I mean, well, imagine if God had to respond every time some arrogant physics professor summoned him.

In that analogy, who would be God?

In that analogy, the physics professor would be God, right?

He's the one exercising authority over deity.

Which probably matches the physics professor's own worldview, I'm sure.

Would be a sad showdown, and one in which I'm glad that God doesn't feel compelled to respond.

But there are a few times, as I mentioned, where God does respond, and one of those is in 1 Kings 18, and we're just dropping in in the middle of the story.

It is an insane scene.

Israel, which is the ten tribes, not Judah and Benjamin.

Those are the two tribes.

Judah and Benjamin have Jerusalem.

The line of David is in Judah.

But Israel is the ten tribes.

They're the north part of the country.

They have rejected Yahweh.

They have rejected the line of David.

They have rejected Jerusalem.

They instead have their cow gods.

They worship these idols.

And Dan up on the north side of the country and down in the south on their border with Judah.

They worship these idols and they are all in for the rain god.

The problem is that they're not getting rained on.

The problem is that because they're worshiping the rain god, God is withholding rain.

And it's to teach them a lesson.

And we understand the way sin works.

You would say, well, you should repent from worshiping the rain god if he's not giving you rain.

Like that's the one thing the rain God should do.

It's not working out for you.

Try, I don't know, the God of droughts or something instead.

But you understand the way sin lies to you.

Sin convinces you that if only you pursue it more, then you'll be happy.

The person who is materialistic thinks if only they have more things, then they'll be happy.

And the more things they get, the less happy they are.

They don't realize the error of their ways.

They keep doubling down.

The person who's all in on sexual immorality thinks, I mean, it never actually satisfies them, but they think if next time it might.

And they keep doubling down.

And the person who hoards money, who's greedy, do they ever have enough to not worry about tomorrow?

Of course not.

They think the problem is they're not sufficiently greedy.

And so it is with the rain God.

You worship the rain God and you think it's not panning out, you just worship him harder.

You worship the God of self-esteem, self-fulfillment.

The problem is your trial will get in the way of your happiness, and you sacrifice your child.

Does that produce happiness in you?

Of course it does not.

But you're committed now.

There's no turning back.

And such was the case with Israel.

They were all in with the rain God, they weren't getting rain, they were dying in the drought.

Ahab, their king, he responds by wanting Elijah, Yahweh's prophet, dead.

That's how he responds.

They're worshiping the rain god.

Elijah says, Stop worshiping the rain god and repent.

Meanwhile, there's a drought.

And so the king says, Let's kill God's prophet.

Later on in a couple chapters from now, the king is going to say, throw God's prophet in jail, and unless God gives us success, we're not going to let him out.

Imagine taking God's prophet hostage for negotiating against God.

That happens in chapter 22 of this book.

But for now, Ahab has just said, I want Elijah and I want him dead.

And so Elijah, who I really think is okay dying, I mean, he runs away.

He lives out in the wilderness, but he's not afraid of death.

In fact, in the next chapter, chapter 19, he's going to wish for death.

But for now, Elijah reappears.

And he tells the king, Fine, I'll meet you tomorrow, 9 a.m., Mount Carmel, and bring all the prophets of Baal.

And we'll have a showdown.

We'll settle this once and for all.

And so Ahab shows up.

There are thousands of people that come with him.

I mean, the king has traveled out from Samaria to Mount Carmel.

Mount Carmel is right along the Mediterranean coast.

You can see the Mediterranean Ocean from there.

If you look forward, so behind you would be the Mediterranean Ocean.

In front of you is the Valley of Armageddon.

On your left is Nazareth.

On your right is where Solomon's stables would be.

If you look straight ahead, you can see the Sea of Galilee.

I mean, everything is right there.

And so they walk across the valley, thousands of people with the king.

They ascend Mount Carmel, and there's Elijah by himself.

450 prophets of Baal, thousands of spectators, and Elijah.

You see this in verse 20 of 1 Kings 18.

Ahab gathered all the people of Israel.

450 of the prophets of Baal in verse 22, it says.

They met on Mount Carmel.

Elijah came near to the people, verse 21.

And Elijah rebukes the crowd.

So imagine Elijah is standing there and just this army of people comes up and they're surrounding him.

They've been hunting him for months.

And Elijah begins by declaring, How long will you go limping between two different opinions?

So Elijah does not start with a conciliatory tone.

Winsom is not in his vocabulary.

How long are you going to go hopping back and forth?

The word limping here, it's the word for hopping on one leg.

Between two opinions is how the ESV renders it.

It's literally between two branches.

He's creating a picture of a child in a tree that is hopping back and forth between the same two branches like they can't decide where they want to sit.

And Elijah says, that's what you all are like.

You can't decide if you believe in Yahweh or Baal.

You can't make up your mind.

How can you confuse the two?

One made the world, one doesn't exist.

One causes rain, and one doesn't exist.

How long are you going to go back and forth?

They don't want to renounce the rain god.

Everybody worships Baal.

Yahweh is the God of Judah.

Yahweh is the God of Benjamin.

Yahweh is the God of Jerusalem.

They don't want to go all in with him.

Nevertheless, they are Israelites, mind you.

So they can't renounce Yahweh either.

They're kind of stuck.

And Elijah just rebukes them.

If Yahweh is God, verse 21, follow him.

But if Baal, follow him.

This should remind you of Revelation.

Stop being lukewarm.

Listen, if you want to worship Jesus, worship Jesus and follow him.

If you want to worship yourself and materialistic and money and your own success, then do that.

But get all in somewhere at least.

Stop trying to live in both worlds.

And how does somebody respond?

Who lives that kind of life, who claims the name of Christ and yet lives for themselves.

They're not ready to renounce Christ.

They can't explain that.

But they're not ready to stop living for themselves either.

They don't know what to say where they're confronted.

And that's what you see at the end of verse 21.

Elijah confronts the thousands of people with that.

He's not even talking to the 450 prophets of Baal.

They've at least made a decision.

He's talking to the nation.

And they don't know how to answer him.

Elijah said to the people, I.

Only I am left.

Of all the people on the hillside, it's Elijah alone who worships Yahweh.

Now we know God has other prophets in the land.

We learned that in the book of Romans, but at this showdown, at this moment, is Elijah versus the world.

One against 450.

And so here is his challenge.

Let two bulls be given to us.

And let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it into pieces and lay it on the wood, but don't put any fire on it.

And I'll prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, and I won't put any fire on it.

You call in the name of your God, I'll call upon the name of Yahweh, and the God who answers by fire, he is God, and all the people answered, it is well spoken.

So that's the showdown.

Two cows are brought out.

Moo.

And Elijah, he doesn't even claim home bull advantage here.

He lets them choose which cow.

You go first.

You choose your maybe one cow is more combustible than the other.

I don't know.

Think of our rule for splitting desserts in our family.

So one of the kids, whoever splits the dessert, the other child gets to choose which one he gets.

It's like every parenting book could be distilled to that little piece of advice right there.

And that's the the thr the showdown.

You choose the cow.

You cut him up.

You ask your God to make him catch on fire.

And if Yahweh answers first, Yahweh wins.

So you can see how this is a low-threat engagement here.

Because if you don't believe in God, neither God is going to respond.

You follow this?

I mean, for the atheists, it's 50-50.

Roll the dice, see what happens.

At the very least, you can imagine the crowd's response to this.

At the very least, this is going to be entertaining.

So that's what's happened.

The crowd says, hey, it's well spoken.

Great idea.

Let's settle this.

Verse 25, Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it.

You go first.

If you're following the Stanley Cup right now, you know how important that is.

You get the first game.

You are many.

You call upon the name of your God, but don't put any fire on it.

So they took the bull that was given them and they prepared it, and they called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon.

So for three hours, 9 a.m.

to noon.

These people are dancing around, calling out, oh Baal, answer us.

But there was no voice.

No one answered.

And so they limped around the altar they made.

That's the same word from earlier in the story, by the way, same Hebrew word.

Earlier they're limping between two opinions.

Now they're limping around the altar, and it's designed to be humorous.

The narrators want you to picture all of these 450 prophets hopping on one leg around a slaughtered bull as they're praying to a God that doesn't exist.

At noon, Elijah mocked them.

I picture Elijah like in his little soccer dad chair.

Watching this whole scene play out.

For three hours he lets this go on, and now Elijah starts cracking jokes.

He says verse 27, Cry louder.

For he is a God.

Maybe he just can't hear you.

That's the problem, right?

Baal's not answering.

Maybe Baal just can't hear.

Maybe he's musing.

That's the word for meditating, studying.

He's in his office.

He's got to preach on Sunday.

He's preparing.

So you just gotta be louder.

You just gotta be louder.

If you're a false God, who do you pray to?

I mean, that's just kind of the joke here.

If you're a false God, what are you studying?

If your God is in his office reading, freshening up on information, what kind of books does he need to read?

It's supposed to be a little bit humorous.

What does your God need to prepare for?

Does he have to learn things?

Does he have to pray before he acts?

Maybe that's what Baal is doing.

He's got the sign on his door, don't disturb, so you gotta yell louder.

I have that experience in my office.

I have a sign on my door that says, studying, do not disturb.

I've read it many times because I don't think that's what people read when they read it.

They read knock louder.

Maybe he's relieving himself.

Maybe Baile's in the bathroom.

That could be it.

He's got the door closed, so he's not listening to you.

You've just got to yell louder.

That's what children think.

They knock on the door and the parent says, I'm in the bathroom.

Give me a minute.

And so what they hear is, Oh, I've got to be extra loud.

That's what it'll take.

That's what Elijah said is happening with your God.

He's got the door closed in the bathroom, so just shout louder.

Maybe he's gone on a journey.

There's a story in the ancient Near East about Baal worshippers needing rain and praying to Baal, but Baal had gone on vacation with another God, and so a neighboring God had to come in.

And answer the prayers for Baal.

You know, like fire stations that backfill for each other.

Baal went away, and so the sun god from Egypt will respond to the calls until Baal returns.

Maybe that's what's happening.

Baal's on a field trip.

He's on a family vacate with other gods.

That's why he's not listening.

Maybe he's asleep, Elijah suggests.

The word sleep here is a euphemism for death.

Maybe your God died.

So you gotta really yell.

Gotta wake him up.

Elijah's already resurrected somebody from the dead.

Can't Baal?

If Baal is really a God, can't he himself be resurrected?

Maybe you're just not yelling loud enough.

So you see the logical conundrum Elijah is painting here.

You know, your God.

He's gotta be doing something else.

I remember one time I really needed to talk to Steve Hawley about, I don't even remember what it was now, but I really need to talk to Steve Hawley.

So I text him and I call him and he doesn't answer the phone.

And I finally I think I get a hold of Kathy, who says, he's golfing with some friends.

Golfing?

I need to talk to him now.

And he's golfing?

I didn't approve of this.

So there's some very natural things that could be happening.

It would be natural for a person to take a nap.

Amen.

Looking at the clock right now.

It would be natural for a person to go to the bathroom.

Nothing's more human than that.

Somehow it'll still be funny, though.

It'd be natural to need to go study.

It'd be natural to go on vacation.

That's what people do.

But does your God do those things?

People are crying out to Molech right now to answer them for abortion.

Doesn't he know?

Doesn't he know what the Supreme Court was going to do?

Doesn't he know?

Did he just turn off the news for a while?

You've got to wake him up.

So those are the questions Elijah asks.

And it ends with them.

The more Elijah makes fun of them, verse 28, they cry louder.

And then, verse 28, they cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances until the blood is gushing out of them.

They start slicing their wrists and their arms.

Blood pouring everywhere.

They're trying to get Baal's attention, chase down the logic here.

They need to do something to let Baal know they really, really mean it this time.

This is not foreign logic to us.

I've told you this before, but it bears repeating again.

I remember when I lived in Mexico, I was close to the basilica, and people would take the metro to the basilica and they would get off of it, and they would buy cactus needles and they would put them in their hands and put them in their knees and they would crawl into the basilica to have their offerendas heard by God.

You know, they were making pledges that God would answer their prayers if they could demonstrate how much they needed it through their own personal suffering and pain.

And sometimes we fall into that.

We say, God, if you answer my prayer, I'll give up this.

God, if you I need this so bad, if you hear my prayer, I'll give up soccer.

I'll never touch a soccer ball again.

You think, does God hate soccer?

No, but I like it, and so I want God to know that I'm serious, and so it's negotiating with deity.

That's what the prophets are doing, lancing themselves and so now they're hopping on one foot, they're bleeding out, they're yelling at a god that's in the bathroom.

And I just love the way verse 29 says they do this all the way until past noon, the end of verse 29, but there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention.

Nobody heard.

Beyond the people on the hillside, there's nobody that cares.

Even the Baal worshippers up in Lebanon, they don't care what's happening down there.

The Baal worshippers down the coast in Jaffa, they don't care.

There's other cities of Baal worshipers that aren't Israelites.

They don't care.

Nobody cares.

It's a false God.

Then Elijah says to the people, Come near to me.

Elijah's got stagecraft here.

He huddles everybody up.

All the people came near to him.

He then repaired the altar of Yahweh.

Apparently there was an altar that was for Yahweh.

It had been in disrepair, it had been thrown down.

Elijah repairs it.

He took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of Jacob, the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of Yahweh came, saying, Israel will be your name.

So this is not a subtle dig.

Okay, Elijah is making the altar here.

Twelve stones for the 12 tribes.

This is in Israel.

They are not the 12 tribes.

They are 10 tribes, two are missing.

What happened to those two?

Well, they are in Jerusalem, where God wanted them to be.

These are the rebel tribes up here in the north.

These ten tribes are ten because they rejected Yahweh, they rejected the temple, and they rejected the Davidic line.

That's what's going on.

And so Elijah is reminding them of that by putting up twelve stones.

You don't get to break away from Yahweh.

His promise was given to Israel.

Here's all twelve stones to remind you of that.

And again, it's not subtle.

The author lets you know this.

Twelve according to the tribes of the sons of Jacob, that's the twelve tribes, to whom Yahweh came, saying, Israel will be your name.

Well, the ten rebel tribes, they took the name Israel.

They're in a no-win situation.

They call themselves Samaritans, Samaria, that's their capital, because they rejected Jerusalem.

They have Samaria.

However, they're Israelites.

They can't escape the name.

They can't escape the name.

The stones he built an altar in the name of Yahweh, and the name of Yahweh is according to his will.

He made a trench about around the altar as great as would contain two sayas of seed, like two bags of seed on top of each other.

He put the wood in order and he cut the bull into pieces and he 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 jar is kind of an unfortunate translation.

It's a big like jelly can.

They hold like 50 gallons of water.

That's what this word is.

So it's like, you know, take 200 gallons of water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.

Do it a second time, and they do it a second time, and now a third time and a third time.

So they drenched this thing in 600 gallons of water.

It's like a tanker truck.

And water ran around the altar and filled the trench.

And then at the time of the evening offering, Elijah the prophet came near and said, Oh Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, Israel.

Notice he uses the name Israel there.

For Jacob, Israel, the his new name to mark the twelve tribes.

Let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I'm your servant, and I have done all these things at your command.

Answer me, O Yahweh, answer me.

This people may know that you, O Yahweh, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.

So Elijah prays a very comprehensive prayer.

He's not dancing, he's not lancing, he's not prancing.

He's just praying.

God, hear my prayer.

Not only answer my prayer, in fact, look specifically what he's praying for.

Does he even pray for fire?

No.

He prays that God would save them.

God turn their hearts around.

That's what he prays for.

And that's the way salvation works, right?

I mean, I could pull the car over here if we had more time.

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

It's God who saves, and that's what Elijah prays for.

People think if if God is sovereign over salvation, why bother praying?

Well, if God's not sovereign over salvation, why bother praying?

You're like the prophets of Baal if God doesn't hear your prayer.

No, we pray for people to be saved because it is God who does the saving.

And that's what Elijah prays.

God saved them.

It's you who turns their hearts around.

But then fire of Yahweh fell and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trenches.

It even dissolved all the water.

When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, Yahweh, he wins.

Knockout blow.

He's God.

He is Yahweh.

He is God.

Elijah said to them, Seize the prophets of Baal, let none of them escape.

They seized them.

Elijah brought them down to the brook of Keshan and slaughtered them there.

Couple observations from this narrative before we get back to things at hand.

Let me give you an outline.

I got seven points.

We're going to rattle through them pretty quickly.

They're descriptions of the real God that are contained in this story.

How can you tell Yahweh from Baal?

How can you tell the God of the Bible from Molech?

There's seven pretty easy and straightforward ways from this.

First, the real God exists everywhere.

He's omnipresent.

Omnipresent, by the way, is just another way to say omniscient.

Omnipresent refers to him being everywhere, but God's not physically everywhere.

He's spirit, he doesn't have a body.

Omnipresence is another way of saying omniscient.

God knows all things.

He knows everything in the sky, he knows everything on the earth, he knows everything under the earth.

If you're at the bottom of your swimming pool and you have secret thoughts in your heart, God knows them.

If you're at the top of an airplane and you have secret thoughts in your heart, God knows them.

You hide in a closet and have secret thoughts in your heart, God knows them.

In other words, God is everywhere, meaning he knows everything at all times, including the things that are squirreled away inside your own minds.

He's everywhere.

And you see that in the story.

This story takes place at Mount Carmel.

This does not take place in Jerusalem.

It'd be one thing if fire fell from heaven and consumed the offering at the temple in Jerusalem, which is Yahweh's temple.

But this is not in Jerusalem.

This is out in Baalville.

This is up on Mount Carmel, Mediterranean Sea, border with Lebanon.

This is out there.

The highways come together there.

All the trade between Egypt and Lebanon comes right through here.

This is that place.

And that's where this goes down.

Yeah, there's an idol, uh an idol there to Baal.

There's also an altar to Yahweh.

Everything happens there.

Yahweh rules the world.

The gods of the ancient Near East were geographically located.

They had little zip codes that they responded to, but not Yahweh.

Not Yahweh.

He'll break Dagon to pieces out in the middle of Dagon territory, and he will burn up the altar right here in the middle of Baleville.

I had a student I knew in seminary, uh a friend of mine, actually in seminary from Fiji, and he told me growing up in Fiji, uh they were they were Hindu, Hindi people, and he had an epiphany one day when he was in high school, that there are more gods worshipped in Fiji than there are people in Fiji.

And he said it occurred to him as a as a high school student if that's true, it's more special to be a person than a god.

There's less of us.

He ended up meeting a missionary, and this is you know 20, 30 years ago, and God's providence, that missionary was actually working with the ambassadors for Christ, which is a group that Emmanuel Bible Church was sponsoring at the time.

And that missionary led this guy to Christ, sent him to the Master Seminary, and now he's planting a church in Fiji.

Crazy twist of God's providence.

This is before the internet.

You can have a guy on a remote island worshiping a million gods who has an encounter with the real God.

The real God exists everywhere.

Secondly, the real God is not swayed by numbers.

450 verse 1.

Thousands of people are on the king's side.

Thousands of people are all in with Baal.

It's the world against Elijah.

But God doesn't care.

God doesn't do field polls, He doesn't do research to figure out the direction of society before God says what is true or false.

God doesn't delegate his verdicts or his decrees to opinion polls or to other people.

God doesn't flatter, he doesn't build support, he doesn't cultivate momentum.

He just decrees things.

He's not swayed by numbers.

Oh no.

Anything but that.

God doesn't care.

He doesn't care about popular sentiment.

He doesn't read the room.

He just decrees.

Number three.

God is not limited by natural laws.

He's not limited by natural laws.

If Elijah was angling here for some kind of natural phenomenon, he wouldn't have soaked the meat in water.

He's not banking on some kind of natural phenomena here that God's going to use.

He's not trying to make it easier for God to answer his prayers.

He's just throwing himself at the mercy of the Lord.

God, please answer.

Because if you don't, they're going to kill me, which again is okay as far as Elijah concerns.

As I mentioned, the very next chapter, he's going to wish for death.

He's just throwing himself at the mercy of Yahweh.

And God responds like God responds.

You know Occam's razor?

I've had people tell me they don't want to believe in Christianity because of Occam's razor.

The idea that there's two competing theories, you choose the one with the least amount of variables, you choose the one that's the easiest to explain and understand, basically.

So what's easier and more likely that the universe, you know, came and evolved, or that, you know, uh being outside of the universe spoke the universe into existence and all this kind of stuff.

And, you know, can we agree for a second that if you're standing like on the edge of the Big Bang or on the edge of the first of six days of creation, the Occam's razor doesn't do anybody any good at that point?

Like something that has never happened before is about to happen.

You can't logic or reason or explain that into or out of existence.

It just is.

You know, God violates natural laws all the time.

Nature works for God.

God doesn't work for nature.

You know, you read in the Bible that Joshua and his army pray that for a longer day so they can keep having victory, and so God extends the day, and you have people say, well, no, that would require the world to stop from spinning around the sun, and the world's going 24,000 miles an hour, and if it stops spinning, the trees would fly off.

Rabbits everywhere.

You know, God doesn't care.

He staples the trees down.

I mean, it doesn't matter.

He stops the world from spinning, and guess what?

Nothing happens.

The world stops from spinning.

Or he makes the sundial go back in Hezekiah's day.

Oh no, that could never happen because then the stars would be out of alignment, and not only would it stop spinning, but it'd go the other way, and you know, the jet stream would go the other way then, and now everything, the ecological system would fall apart if God spun the world the other way.

Okay.

It happened.

And somehow the jet stream still works, and nature didn't fall apart, and the stars are still up there in the sky.

Because everything works for God.

He just decrees it.

So don't get sidetracked on the logical components of fire onto a soaked piece of wood here.

That's not the point.

The point is that God can do what God wants to do, He's not limited by those kind of things.

Natural laws obey Him, not the other way around.

Fourthly, God is not a man.

This is why Elijah is mocking.

And yes, he's certainly mocking.

Certainly, you guys wouldn't bleed for a false God, right?

It's so interesting.

People always make God into their image.

They reason that way.

God made man in his image, and it's almost like we've never stopped trying to return the favor.

We want to make God just like us.

So people say things all the time.

If I was God, then this would be okay.

If I was God, I wouldn't have abortion be wrong.

Well, I'm sure.

If you were God, God would look just like you.

Except a little taller and skinnier, maybe, but if you got to make God how you wanted to, nobody is disputing that it would look different than the God of the Bible.

Of course it would.

But Elijah is the only one in the story not trying to make God like himself.

Elijah's the only one in the story who recognizes that he works for the Lord, not the other way around.

Because of that, God is accessible.

He's not hunting, God is accessible, he's not golfing, God is accessible, he's not in the bathroom, he's not taking a nap, he's not studying.

Psalm 121, verse 3, he who keeps you will never slumber.

Psalms 121:3

Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

Psalm 121, verse 3 is making a contrast between the gods, so-called gods of this world and the God of the Bible.

Psalms 121:3

The gods of this world don't hear their people.

The God of the Bible always hears.

Which leads to number five.

The real God answers prayer.

That's the main part of the story, isn't it?

The main thrust of the story is that all the dancing around doesn't produce any measurable effect on any so-called deity, and yet the short, simple prayer from God's people to him receives an answer.

And God answers prayer not for Elijah's glory, God answers prayer for his own glory.

And the prophets of Baal were frantic and repetitious and manipulative, and Elijah was not frantic, not repetitious, and not manipulative.

He didn't try to manipulate God, he didn't try to game God, he just appealed to God.

Prophets of Baal thought if they could just convince God that they are serious and he would listen.

But the children of God don't need to do that.

We know we're God's children.

We know he loves us and cares for us.

He knows what we need before we know we need it.

And so we pray like that.

We don't pray with lots of words, we don't pray with fancy words, we just appeal to God and God hears.

And this, I'm telling you, is my main takeaway from the Roe v.

Wade reversal.

You hear these people at protests and politicians saying, This has never happened before.

Never in world history has a country taken away a right like this.

Never, ever, ever.

There's no explanation for this.

And the more impossible they make it sound, the more I'm shaking I'm nodding my head.

You're right, there is no explanation for this.

It's never happened before.

The only explanation is that people prayed.

Do you understand how many people prayed and for how long and how faithfully?

50 years.

People praying for an end to Roe v.

Wade.

Fifty years.

We as a church prayed every year.

As families, you I'm sure many of you prayed every week.

Some of you, I'm sure, have prayed every day for this.

And the skeptic hears that and says, Yeah, but why would you have to pray for 50 years if your God's real?

Well, our God's real and he keeps his own timetable.

I wish it would have been one year.

But he answered our prayers this long into it.

That's okay.

We trust him.

We pray to him.

We don't make him punch in and punch out.

We serve him.

It's up to him.

But we know that God hears our prayers and God answers.

And so I do hope that you celebrate the reversal of Roe v.

Wade just based on that principle alone.

And of course, there's others who want to manipulate you and tell you, hey, you shouldn't be celebrating this because there's other people that aren't celebrating this.

Well, okay, but I prayed for it.

You're gonna tell me I can't celebrate an answered prayer?

Oh no, I'm gonna celebrate an answered prayer.

I prayed for it, and God answered the prayer.

So that's pretty much good enough for me.

That's awkward, so don't do that again.

There's a confidence in God, which produces a confidence in prayer.

Number six.

Just because God answers prayer doesn't mean that God doesn't use means.

Or to say it positively, even though God answers prayer, he answers prayer by using means to answer it.

So in this story, God used Elijah to bring about this.

He used the means of the person praying, for example, Elijah.

He used the faithfulness of the person praying, Elijah.

He used the faithfulness of others.

The other prophets, for example, that ministered to Elijah when he was hiding in caves.

The widow who ministered to Elijah when he was hiding, the prophet who carried the word from Elijah to Ahab at the beginning of chapter 18.

There were other people whom God used to bring about the answered prayer.

God still answers prayer, but he uses means for those answered prayers.

He uses means.

Now there's an inevitability, I think, and I've said this many times over the years, there's an inevitability to the reversal of Roe v.

Wade.

It was such a terrible, terrible decision, totally unjust and illogical.

And if you've read the original 1973 court ruling on Roe v.

Wade, you see how unjust and illogical it was.

It was basically gibberish.

You know, it's it's in a world written in a world without ultrasound without ultrasound machines, without neonatal surgery.

It reads like something from the Flat Earth Society, honestly.

It's like, you know, nobody really knows what's happening in a woman's womb when there's a child in there.

And so it makes sense to divide it up into three trimesters.

And in one trimester it could have these kind of rules, and the other these kind of rules, and the other those kind of rules.

I mean, it's it's fiction that is prefaced even with a nobody knows.

So what do you do 10 years later when there's ultrasound machines?

Do you pretend that nobody knows anymore?

What do you do when everybody has pictures of their ultrasound machines on the refrigerator and they weep their miscarriages?

What do you do then?

Pretend that nobody knows?

It doesn't make any sense.

There are some things that are so wicked that God can't let them endure forever.

We live in a world with common grace, with governments that check evil.

Some things are just frankly so wicked that God will stop them through the means of governments.

And abortion was certainly one of those things.

When President Obama was in office, he took this Martin Luther King Jr.

quote that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it trends toward or bends towards justice.

That's the quotes in the MLK memorial and everything.

President Obama took that, had it stitched into a rug that was displayed in the Oval Office.

And a lot of people on the political left were upset with the rug and that message that it sent because they said that that's a fatalistic attitude.

They said that means you don't have to work for social change or work to end racism or all those kind of things.

If the arc of the moral universe is long, but it is bending towards justice.

That means you don't have to work, it just gravity takes over, kind of thing.

But that's not what that quote means.

It's one of my favorite quotes.

I love that quote, by the way.

That's not what it means.

President Obama, of course, got it from Martin Luther King Jr.

He himself did not invent that quote.

It comes from an abolitionist preacher, 1853 or something like that, Theodore Parker, an abolitionist preacher, he said that, and he said it about slavery.

His point was that American slavery is so transparently wicked and evil, there's no way it can be allowed to last forever.

It's going to come to an end, he would say.

This was not a controversial thing for Christians to say back then.

Spurgeon himself said that if God didn't send a bloody war on America to punish us for the sin of slavery, then the God of the Bible doesn't exist as far as Spurgeon was concerned.

Again, it was not an unusual thing for Christians to say.

Some things, like slavery, are so horribly immoral that God must bring them to an end.

That's what that quote means.

Yes, it is ironic that it was displayed in the White House, but the truth of it is not ironic.

Something like abortion is so wicked.

Legalized federal abortion, saying it's a right in the Constitution, so transparently ridiculous and depraved that it can't be allowed to go on forever.

And so eventually it comes to an end.

But that doesn't mean that the means God used to bring it to an end are irrelevant.

I wanted to talk about this for a few minutes this morning because so many people at Emmanuel Bible Church have devoted so much of their life to that cause.

There's so many incredibly gifted people here that could have, you know, they went to law school and they could have practiced the kind of law that would have made them so much money.

And instead they went all in with pro-life litigation, all in with think tanks, all in with training other lawyers and raising up judges, and all in with getting into politics to make sure those kind of judges are appointed.

They had so many other better positions they could have gone to.

I know many of your children did that as I look around there.

I see parents of people whose kids did that.

They came from even wealthy families with massive opportunities at great colleges and universities, massive career opportunities, and they didn't take them.

And instead they went to labor for the pro-life cause so that Roe v.

Wade would be overturned.

And despite the people that worked for it, there's everybody else that prayed for it.

I want you to just be so thankful for that.

You know, you hear people in the news the past few days, it's been kind of funny actually.

There's a whole genre of these kind of comments of like, you know, now that Roe v.

Wade is reversed.

Christians, uh-oh, you're in trouble now.

Now you're gonna have to do things like you're gonna have to start medical clinics to care for the prenatal needs of moms.

Like the ones that churches have been doing for 50 years?

Like, we're gonna have to start one of those?

Oh great, we're 50 years ahead of y'all.

Oh, you know what?

Now that Roe v.

Wade is reversed, you guys are gonna have to start teaching people that adoption is okay.

All right, we'll get right on that.

My favorite, my absolute favorite of that genre of comment is now that Roe v.

Wade is reversed, it would be only fair if there was some kind of legally binding contract.

The fathers would need to care for the mothers of their children and provide for them for their whole lives and the needs of their kids.

And if they won't sign it, then we won't be intimate with them.

Oh.

Did you just discover like an abstinence pledge?

You gotta be kidding me.

The world discovered marriage yesterday.

Don't take those people to heart.

When you hear people say that, they're just prancing around the bail altar.

Be thankful.

Be thankful for those that gave so much of their life to be the means that God would use to end it.

And then number six, most importantly, or sorry, number seven, most importantly.

The real God is approached through sacrifice.

The real God is approached through sacrifice.

You know, things don't change in Israel after this.

Elijah goes back up, the prophets of Baal slaughtered.

Elijah goes back up the mountain to look over at the Mediterranean Sea.

In fact, he hides around the corner from it, so he can't quite see the ocean.

He doesn't want to look.

This is where the weather comes from, there, by the way, is over the ocean.

He doesn't want to look.

He prays that God would send rain and then sends the weatherman out every 15 minutes.

And eventually it rains.

And he celebrates.

When the New Testament talks about this, the New Testament doesn't talk about the fire from heaven.

It doesn't talk about the altar.

When the New Testament talks about this, it talks about the power of answered prayer.

But there's a transition.

That even in the altar, God is only approached to sacrifice.

Elijah makes the sacrifice of the twelve stones.

The twelve stones are the twelve tribes of Israel, which mark the people that God kept ethnically distinct with their own law, their own language, their own customs, so that the Savior could be born into it and fulfill the law and then be the savior for the world, not just for Israel, but for all who would believe anywhere in the world.

So that's the function of the twelve tribes.

But he is Jesus is the savior for the world, not just by virtue of being born into Israel, or any Israelite could be the savior, he's the savior of the world by virtue of being born into Israel, leading a sinless life, and then dying on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins.

That's how God is approached.

Our prayers aren't heard by God merely because he loves us.

Our prayers are heard by God because he loves us, and his love for us is seen in that we pray to him through Christ, our sacrifice.

That's where the ballgame is here.

It's about coming to God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

He's only approached through sacrifice.

And so I want to rewind back to Moloch and we'll end with a little bit more talk about Moloch.

Why do people fall for the child sacrifice rituals?

Why do they think that sacrificing their child is the key to their own success or whatever?

Why do they buy that?

I mean, there's something in Leighton in human DNA that drives us that way.

It goes back to the fall.

We fell into sin, and God said to Adam and Eve that one of their children would crush the head of the devil and would bring peace to the world, reconciling God to man.

That was the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, 15, 17, 21, that there would be one of his descendants that would be the one to restore our relationship with God.

And of course, that descendant was Isaac initially, and God tells Abraham, You're gonna take Isaac up on a mountain and sacrifice him.

And Isaac takes the blade, Abraham takes the blade up, and God stops the blade and says, No, I'm gonna provide a better sacrifice, not Isaac.

And that's the war in every human heart.

Are you gonna put your faith in the sacrifice whom God provides or in the one that you make?

This is Cain and Abel.

Cain wanted to put the faith in the sacrifice that he made by his own hands.

That's the Molech worship.

You think something that I made, I can sacrifice and get me in a right relationship with how I want to be, my own course in life.

It's a war.

Do you put your faith in your seed or in the seed of God?

I know there's people in our church that have had abortions, and I know that there will be in the future.

I know that abortion is still legal in most of the country and is widely practiced.

I understand that.

I celebrate the reversal of Roe v.

Wade, not because it ends abortion.

I mean, abortion has been practiced through human history.

It will continue to be practiced.

I get that.

But I celebrate the end of Roe v.

Wade because now when somebody pursues it, they they can no longer say, I don't know if this is right or wrong.

I don't know what God says about it, and there's no laws about it.

I don't know that.

People use the absence of man's laws to say there's an absence of God's law.

Now when people pursue it, they will be stepping over man's law, which will provoke them to remember that God does have a law, and now they'll be acting contrary to both.

That's what that's what happens.

They'll be saying, I'm putting the faith in the sacrifice of my own seed over the faith and the sacrifice of the seed that God provided.

But I know some of you have had abortions, and I I know many of you know this, but some of you may not.

Even that sin, any kind of sin, is forgiven through faith in Christ.

That when you place your faith in Christ and in his sacrifice, your sins are forgiven.

It doesn't matter what you've done with your own seed.

Ultimately what matters is what Christ accomplished, the seed of God on the tree.

Lord, we're thankful that you have given us a way to have our sins forgiven and you've shown us the path to eternal life through faith in your Son, not through Molech.

We're grateful for the good news of Jesus Christ that He died to take away the sins of the world and that he dies for our sins.

I give you thanks for the person and work of Christ.

We know this week as we see people protesting and ranting and raving, their God won't hear them.

How precious to our own hearts is the truth that you hear us.

So Lord, we lift up these prayers to you in the name of your Son.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.