When False Gods Fail

Welcome to an audio teaching from Windsor Park Baptist Church in Auckland, New Zealand.

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A few weeks ago, I went to the skin doctor for my annual checkup.

While I was there, I pointed out to him just this innocuous little freckle on my shoulder.

And the doctor said, it looks like a sunspot.

I don't think it's anything particularly to worry about at all, but but it has changed, so perhaps we should take a sample just to be sure.

Well, three weeks later, I receive a phone call from the doctor on a Thursday night, and he says the biopsy results are in and it's melanoma.

It's serious.

We need to cut it out as soon as possible.

There'll be two separate surgeries.

There'll be a little narrow excision and a wide excision, and then possibly also a sentinel nymph load biopsy, after which we'll need to remove some of your lymph nodes.

It sounded serious.

Have you ever received a diagnosis like this?

A serious diagnosis, one that requires radical, urgent treatment.

Well, this morning I wanted to explore with you a story from the Bible that centers on a serious diagnosis and a radical prescription.

The story is set in ancient Israel around about 850 years before the time of Jesus.

So it's it's an old story, but it's a story that I think speaks with remarkable relevance into our world and into our lives today.

You can find it in 1 Kings chapter 18, verse 1.

1 Kings 18:1

1 Kings chapter 18, and let's read from verse 1.

1 Kings 18 · chapter mention

After a long time, in the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah.

So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab.

Now the famine was severe in Samaria, and Ahab had summoned Obadiah, his palace administrator, his chief operating officer, and Obadiah was a devout believer in the Lord.

While Jezebel was killing off the Lord's prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, fifty in each, and had supplied them with food and water.

Ahab, the king, said to Obadiah, Go through the land to all the springs and valleys.

Maybe we can find some grass to keep the horses and mules alive, so that we will have we won't have to kill any of our animals.

So they divided the land that they were to cover, Ahab going in one direction and Obadiah in another.

Okay, so so in these two opening scenes of the story, we see that Israel is sick.

The land is dying.

It hasn't rained for three years.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, the blazing sun scorches the parched earth, leaving the fields dusty and barren.

The famine in Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel, is so severe that the king and his chief operating officer are forced to scour the countryside, looking for every blade of grass that they can find to keep their animals from dying.

So drought, famine, death.

These are the symptoms.

But what's the cause of this sickness?

Well, let's read on.

Verse 7.

As Obadiah was walking along, Elijah met him.

Elijah, uh, whose name means my God is Yahweh, he meets him.

Obadiah recognizes him, bows down before the prophet on the ground, and says, Is it really you, my lord Elijah?

Yes, he replied.

Elijah is here.

What have I done wrong?

asked Obadiah, that you are handing your servant over to Ahab to be put to death.

As surely as the Lord your God lives, there is not a nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to look for you.

And whenever a nation or kingdom claimed that you were not there, he made them swear that they couldn't find you.

But now you tell me to go to my master and say, Elijah is here.

I I I don't know where the Spirit of the Lord may carry you when I leave you.

If if I go and tell Ahab and he doesn't find you, he will kill me.

Yet I, your servant, have worshipped the Lord since my youth.

Haven't you heard, my Lord, what what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord?

I hid a hundred of the Lord's prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water.

And now you tell me to go to my master and say, Elijah is here.

He'll kill me.

Elijah said, As the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today.

So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him.

And Ahab went to meet Elijah.

And when he saw Elijah, he said to him, Is that you, you troubler of Israel?

I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied.

But you and your father's family have.

You've abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals.

Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel, and bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table.

Okay, so this is the diagnosis.

Israel is suffering from a severe case of idolatry.

King Ahab of Israel has disobeyed the commands of the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, by choosing to worship another God, a false god, an idol, Baal.

Now, Baal was a god who the neighboring Phoenician people worshipped.

They believed that he was the god of storms and rains, that he controlled the heavens.

That's why they actually called him Sky Strider or Cloud Rider.

They believed that it was Baal who controlled the heavens, who sent forth lightning and rain.

It was Baal who blessed the earth with fertility and fruitfulness.

Now you think about it.

In an arid climate where two or three bad harvests can be the difference between life and death, you can see why this kind of God might have a certain appeal.

And so, like a cancer, the worship of Baal has spread rapidly through Israel, thanks mainly to Ahab's wife, Queen Jezebel.

She was a princess from Phoenicia, and she had brought to Israel a deep devotion to Baal.

So determined was she to displace worship of Yahweh with worship of Baal, on the other hand, that she had killed off all the prophets of Yahweh that she could find, replacing them with 450 prophets of Baal.

So that's why the land of Israel is dying from drought and famine.

The people of Israel, alongside their worship of Yahweh, have begun to now also worship Baal.

They're committing idolatry, they're worshiping a false God.

In a famous commencement speech at Kenyan University, Kenyan College, David Foster, who as far as I can tell is most certainly not a Christian, said these words.

He said, in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.

There's no such thing as not worshiping.

Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship.

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship, be it JC, Jesus Christ, or Allah, be it Yahweh, the God of Israel, or the Wiccan mother goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you'll never have enough.

Never feel you have enough.

It's the truth.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly.

And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

Worship power, you'll end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, and you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

In other words, he's saying, idols promise life, but they actually deliver death.

I was reading recently about Chris Evert.

She was the leading female tennis player in the 1970s and the 1980s, if you remember, if you're old enough to remember.

Her career win-loss record was the best of any singles player in history.

And she lived for winning.

She lived for the applause that came with winning.

And as she was contemplating retirement, she was consumed by terror.

This is what she said to an interviewer.

She said, I had I had no idea who I was or what I could be away from tennis.

I was depressed and afraid because so much of my life had been defined by me being a tennis champion.

I was completely lost.

Winning made me feel like I was somebody.

It made me feel pretty.

It was like being hooked on a drug.

I needed the wins, the applause, in order to have an identity.

Idols promise life, but they they deliver death.

I know this from bitter experience.

So let me ask you, what idol are you worshiping?

According to Tim Keller, an idol, a counterfeit God, is anything that we look to or or lean on because we think it can give us the security, the significance, the satisfaction that only God can give.

The question is not whether you have an idol.

You do.

We all do.

I mean, in the words of John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer, the human heart is an idol factory.

So what idol are you worshiping?

What are you leaning on to give you the security, the significance, the satisfaction that only God can give?

That idol promises life, but it's killing you slowly.

And if you're a Christian, it's killing your witness.

So what's the cure?

What's the treatment?

Well, let's read on in this story to find out.

Verse 20.

So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel.

Elijah went before the people and said, How long will you waver between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, if Yahweh is God, follow him.

But if Baal is God, follow him.

But the people said nothing.

And then Elijah said to them, I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets.

Get two bulls for us.

Let Baal's prophets choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it.

And I will prepare the other one, the other bull, I'll put it on the wood and not set fire to it.

And then you call on the name of your God, and I'll call on the name of the Lord Yahweh.

And the God who answers by fire, by lightning, he is God.

And all the people said, What you say is good.

So Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you.

Call on the name of your God, but do not light the fire.

So they took the bull, given to them, and they prepared it.

And then they called on the name of Baal.

They called on the name of their God from morning until noon.

Baal, answer us, they shouted.

But there was no response.

No one answered.

So the priests they intensify their efforts with a ritual dance.

The text goes on to say that they danced around the altar that they had made.

And then at noon Elijah began to taunt them.

Shout louder, he said.

Surely he is a god.

Perhaps he's deep in thought, or busy, or traveling.

Maybe he's sleeping and must be awakened.

So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until the blood flowed.

In Phoenician mythology, Baal, their god, descended into the underworld during the dry season and needed to be brought back to life in order for the rains to come.

So by slashing themselves, the prophets of Baal were ritually identifying with the dead in order to stimulate Baal's revival back to life.

That's why they're doing this.

But the text says, midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice.

And then these words, but there was no response.

No one answered.

No one paid attention.

No one, it seems, was listening.

By the rules of this contest, Baal, the god of the storm, the god of rain and lightning, is clearly no god at all.

He's a counterfeit God, an idol.

But is Yahweh any different?

Well look at verse 30.

Then Elijah said to all the people, Come here to me.

And they came to him.

And he repaired the altar of the Lord which had been torn down.

Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob from Israel, to whom the w word of the Lord had come, saying, Your name shall be Israel.

And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord Yahweh, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two sears of seed, litres and liters of water.

He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces, and laid it on the wood.

And then he said to them, Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.

Do it again, he said, and they did it again.

Do it a third time, he ordered, and they did it a third time.

Twelve, twelve big loads of water on these twelve stones in the idol, in the altar.

And then the water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.

And then at the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed, Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let it be known today, today, that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and have done all these things at your command.

Answer me, Lord, answer me, so that these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.

And then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.

Amazing.

In the middle of a cloudless afternoon, Yahweh sends the lightning over which Baal is supposed to have power.

And the passage says, When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, The Lord, He is God! Yahweh, He is God.

And then Elijah commanded them, seize the prophets of Baal, don't let anyone get away.

They seized them.

And Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley at the bottom of Mount Carmel and slaughtered there.

All 450 of them.

Slaughtered.

This is a radical measure.

But idolatry is serious.

Like cancer, it requires radical, decisive treatment.

In his commencement speech, David Foster Wallace went on to say these words.

He said, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is that they're unconscious.

They're default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just you just gradually slip into day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

If Wallace is right and the idols that we worship are largely hidden from our sight, how do we identify them?

Well, in his little book, Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller says that one way is to look at your imagination.

As William Temple once said, your religion is what you do with your solitude.

In other words, the true God of your heart is that thing to which your thoughts effortlessly go when there is nothing else demanding your attention.

What occupies your mind when you are brushing your teeth?

Some material possession?

Some relationship?

Your appearance?

Your reputation?

Your phone?

Of course, you know, one or two daydreams are no indication of idolatry.

But what but what do you habitually think about to get joy and comfort in the privacy of your heart?

Another way to identify your idols, according to Keller, is to look at your most uncontrollable emotions.

I mean, just as a fisherman looking for fish who knows to go where the water is turbulent, where there's a boil up, look for your idols at the bottom of your most painful, turbulent emotions, especially those emotions that never seem to lift and that drive you to do things that you know are wrong.

Look there.

So if you find yourself getting really angry, ask yourself: is there something here at the root of this emotion that's become too important to me?

Something that I must have at all costs.

And do the same thing with strong feelings or emotions of fear.

Ask yourself, am I so scared because something in my life is being threatened that I think is a necessity when it's not?

And what about that deep sense of despair?

Ask yourself, am I so despondent because I've lost something or failed at something that I think is a necessity when it's not?

Keller says that when you ask questions like this, when you pull your emotions up by the roots, as it were, you'll often find your idols clinging to them.

I think he's right.

A few weeks back I realized that I was feeling anxious and unhappy.

I'd given a lecture and it hadn't it hadn't gone as well as I would have liked.

And then I'd preached a sermon and that hadn't gone as well as I would have liked by a long shot.

And and then I'd conducted a meeting and it hadn't gone as well as I would have liked.

Each of these events had left me anxious and unhappy.

Why?

And as I thought about it, I realized that that deep down I had been wanting to impress my listeners.

And by my estimation, I hadn't succeeded.

That's why I was anxious and unhappy.

I I want people to think highly of me.

And even as I say this, I'm conscious that you probably think more highly of me because I'm being vulnerable and transparent with you.

And maybe that's even part of the reason why I'm sharing this with you.

I mean, idol worship is so hard to eradicate.

The human heart is an idol factory, as we heard from John Calvin.

So that that brings us to the close of the story.

Come with me to the last, last section, verse 41.

And Elijah said to Ahab, Go, and some translations say, go up, go up to the up the mountain, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain.

Now this seems like a strange instruction.

But when Yahweh and the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve descendants of Jacob, entered their covenant relationship, the leaders of Israel sealed that relationship with a covenant meal at the top of Mount Sinai.

And so with the people signifying their renewed commitment to this covenant, Elijah instructs Ahab to complete.

The covenant renewal by representing his people in a meal, a covenant meal on top of the mountain.

And with the covenant now restored, Elijah recognizes that the drought will end.

Rain is due.

And so we read in verse 42 Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground, and put his face between his knees.

Go and look towards the sea, he told his servant.

And he went up and looked.

There's nothing there, he said.

Seven times Elijah said, Go back.

The seventh time, the servant reported, A cloud is as just as small as a man's hand is rising from the sea.

So Elijah said, Go and tell Ahab, hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.

Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds.

The wind rose.

A heavy rain started falling.

And Ahab rode off to Jezreel.

So the drought ends not simply with a light shower, but with a heavy downpour, a rainstorm that sweeps in from the sea.

I love this.

In Canaanite mythology, Baal conquered the sea god.

But here, Yahweh demonstrates that he is the real God by summoning the rain from the sea and bringing life to a dying land.

And the story finishes with these words.

So Ahab rode off to Jezreel, verse 46, the power of the Lord came on Elijah, and tucking his cloak into his belt, he ran ahead of Ahab, as if he were in Ahab's retinue all the way to Jezreel.

So the story ends with Ahab obeying Elijah, aligned with Elijah, and with Elijah's God.

And yet turn the page and you read that just shortly afterwards, Ahab is once again disobeying God, forsaking God, abandoning God's commands.

And once again, the people of Israel are worshipping counterfeit gods.

Idolatry is so hard to eradicate.

How do we break free from our idols?

Well, one answer from this story might be to take decisive action.

Because in this story we read that Elijah slaughtered all of the prophets of Baal.

Jesus said, if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

Now that's hyperbole, but sometimes it is clear that to stop limping between two allegiances, we do need to make a decision.

We do need to take decisive action, like confessing our idolatry to a trusted friend.

But there's another answer I want to leave with you from this story.

Thomas Chalmers once said that the only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.

The only way to expel an idolatrous love is to displace it with another love, a better love.

And did you notice that in this story, the covenant is renewed and the rain returned, the land restored, not because Israel has demonstrated repentance, but because of Yahweh's love.

The story starts with God's word to Elijah: Go and present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the land.

And the story climaxes with Elijah's prayer, where he says in verse 36, Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.

And then in verse 37, answer me, Lord, answer me, that these people will know that you are, Lord our God, and and that you are turning, you are turning their hearts back again.

So in this story, the rain was a gift from God, and the people's repentance was a gift from God.

From beginning to end, this is a story about a loving and faithful God wooing and restoring his unloving and unfaithful people.

He refuses to abandon them.

He takes the initiative.

You may have heard of Robertson McQuilkin.

He was the principal of a theological college, Columbia Bible College in the United States.

And he wrote a book about his wife, Muriel, who developed early onset Alzheimer's disease.

And over time she became more and more confused.

When Robert left for work each day, although he'd hired someone to stay home and look after Muriel, she would often go after him.

And the walk to work was just about a mile-round trip, but she would make it sometimes ten times a day.

At night, sometimes when he helped Muriel get ready for bed, Robertson would find her feet just bloodied and bruised.

And eventually he decided that he couldn't remain principal of this college and care for his wife.

So he resigned his position.

People were disappointed with his decision.

I mean, he had so much to offer.

He was at the height of his career.

Why?

And this is what he said.

Did I not promise 42 years ago, in sickness and in health, till death do us part?

But it's more than keeping promises and being fair.

As I watch her brave descent into oblivion, Muriel is the joy of my life.

Faithful sacrificial love.

That's the heartbeat of the story here in 1 Kings 18.

It's the heartbeat of all scripture, in fact.

I mean, it's the heartbeat of history.

Because one day, 850 years after this event, another prophet like Elijah, another mediator between God and people, climbed to a mountain to confront the forces of evil in a decisive showdown.

And there he offered to God a sacrifice, not a bull, but himself, once and for all, to reconcile his people to God, sealing a new and unbreakable eternal covenant between us and God.

And like Elijah, Jesus proved his identity with a miracle from heaven.

The miracle of resurrection and the miracle of Pentecost, when he brought down fire from heaven, not on an altar but on a people, like rain on a thirsty land.

And still today, Jesus says, if anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.

So why are you wavering?

That idol is a cancer.

It'll only bring death.

Get rid of it.

Take decisive action.

Confess it to someone that you trust.

And look to Jesus.

Look at what he did for you.

Look at what he sacrificed for you.

Focus on that.

Fill your mind, your heart with that, and his love will heal you.

Thank you for joining our audio teaching today.

If there are ways that we can continue to support you or help you in your journey, please reach out to us.

Head to our website, windsapark.org.nz, and you'll find various ways to contact us.

God bless.