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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
The account in tonight’s Reading has many makings of a movie that might merit an academy award: there is drama, comedy, and action, as an outnumbered underdog prophet precipitates a “showdown” between two “gods”, atop a seaside mountain. The mountain? Mount Carmel, the fourth of the Bible’s five mountains to which we lift up our eyes this Lent, having previously considered the Mountains of Ararat, Mount Zion, and Mount Sinai. Mount Carmel has the lowest elevation of the five mountains we are considering in this special sermon series, and, like the Mount of Olives that we will consider next week, Mount Carmel is not the site of the giving of a covenant. But, Mount Carmel is, like the other mountains, the site of a special appearance or manifestation of God, which we are blessed to consider.
Tonight’s Reading of 1 Kings chapter 18, which narrates the prophet Elijah’s “showdown” with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, obviously comes before last week’s Reading of 1 Kings chapter 19, which narrates Elijah’s afterward running for his life all the way to Mount Sinai. The Lord on the top of Mount Carmel’s dramatically revealing Himself to be the only true God did not keep Elijah from fearing Jezebel, a non‑Israelite Baal worshiper and the wife of King Ahab. King Ahab is thought to have wanted an impossible peace between the different religions and the different people in his northern kingdom (Mulder, TDOT, VII:333), and so Ahab was at odds with both Elijah and the God Whom Elijah represented, and King Ahab’s God‑fearing official named Obadiah (not the prophet by that name) was sort of caught in the middle of their being at odds.
As we heard in the Reading, King Ahab called the prophet Elijah the “troubler of Israel”, but Elijah made clear that Ahab troubled Israel by Ahab’s abandoning the commandments of the Lord and instead following the Baals. Elijah likewise asked the people how long they would go limping between two different opinions: one opinion that the Lord was God, and another opinion that Baal was “god”. Those two “opinions” were mutually exclusive! And, the people seemed to know it, as they did not answer Elijah a word to his question, though they essentially agreed to his proposed “showdown” of the two “gods”. If the Lord was the true God of the universe, then He should have been the God of each of them as individuals. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther one time said that Elijah accused the people of believing one thing in their hearts and of doing something else in their deeds, and Luther said that split is true of everyone who is outside of Christ (Luther, ad loc Hebrews 2:2, AE 29:123; confer TLSB, ad loc 1 Kings 18:17-40, p.568).
Sadly, that split arguably is also true even of us on earth who are in Christ. For, we who believe and are in Christ know what we should do, but we do not always do it. As St. Paul describes in writing to the Romans (Romans 7:7-25), we have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out. We do not do what we want, but we do the very things we hate. Our inner beings, our redeemed natures, delight in God’s law, but our fleshly members, our sinful natures, wage war against our redeemed natures, against God’s law, and against God Himself. Taken by itself, our rebellion warrants us temporal death and eternal punishment. But, God delivers us from our bodies of death through Jesus Christ our Lord. As in the prophet Elijah’s prayer on Mount Carmel, the Lord God turns our hearts back to Him, that is, He enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin and to trust Him to forgive our sin. As we did in tonight’s Psalm (Psalm 118:25-29; antiphon v.27a), we call out for the Lord to save us—essentially “Hosannah!” in the original Hebrew—and He hears our cry, and He saves us by grace for Jesus’s sake, through faith in Him.
Regardless of what was in the hearts and lives of the people, King Ahab, and the prophets of Baal, there really was never a question whether the Lord or Baal was the true God. Elijah believed and, at least on that occasion, lived that way. Elijah seemingly was told to expect not a natural flash of lightning but a miraculous fire to fall from heaven and consume his offering (Keil-Delitzsch, ad loc 1 Kings 18:38, p.249), as fire had come out from before the Lord and consumed the burn offering when newly-consecrated priests Aaron and his sons made the first offerings at the newly‑consecrated Tabernacle (Leviticus 9:24; confer Keil-Delitzsch, ad loc 1 Kings 18:22-25, p.245; confer Keil-Delitzsch ad loc 1 Kings 18:38 p.249). In Elijah’s case, the fire consumed the offering and much more! Aaron and his sons’ offerings, Elijah’s offering, and all such offerings and sacrifices in some sense pointed forward to the once‑and‑for‑all final sacrifice for sin of Jesus on the cross (for example, Hebrews 10:12). True God in human flesh, Jesus our High Priest shed not the blood of bulls or goats, but, out of God’s great love, He shed His‑own most‑precious blood, for your sins and for my sins. He died in our place; He died the death that we deserved. His resurrection from the dead in part showed that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. So, when we, like the psalmist in tonight’s Psalm, move from believing and confessing that the Lord is God in general, to believing and confessing that the Lord is our God in particular, then we are forgiven our sinful nature and all our actual sin. We are forgiven as we repent and receive God’s forgiveness through His Means of Grace, His Word and His Sacraments.
In tonight’s Reading, we heard that the Lord’s showing Himself to be God also showed that Elijah was His servant, who spoke and acted at the Lord’s word. Elijah may have thought that he was the only faithful servant left (confer 1 Kings 19:10, 14), but, as we heard, Obadiah had hidden 100 others. God, His prophets, and His miraculous signs all go together. We might like—but we do not need—fire to fall from heaven, for we have other miraculous signs from God (confer Luther, ad loc Genesis 4:3, AE 1:249, cited by TLSB, ad loc 1 Kings 18:38, p.570). In tonight’s Reading, the twelve jars of water poured on the burnt offering and the wood might make us think especially of Holy Baptism, where water and the Word work forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God about Holy Baptism. Similarly, in tonight’s Reading, Jezebel’s table fellowship with the false prophets of Baal and Asherah might make us think especially of the Holy Supper, our table fellowship with the true prophets and true believers of the Lord, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us, and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so they give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Truly, He Who comes in the Name of the Lord is blessed, as are we who receive Him! The Lord’s signs show-forth His glory, and His followers believe in Him (John 2:11).
In tonight’s Reading, the Divine sign on Mount Carmel worked to convince the people, where the drought for years up to that point had not worked to convince the people (confer Luke 4:25; James 5:17). The Lord convincingly revealed Himself as God; the false prophets were put to death; and the Lord ended the drought. King Ahab and the people presumably returned to their everyday lives, ideally changed by the whole experience. Likewise, we are convinced that the Lord is God and are changed by our experience. Paraphrasing Psalm 100, and so giving a title to the tune with which it has been associated for centuries, tonight’s Office Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 791) describes how we, knowing that the Lord is God, respond to the Lord’s blessing us with praise. As we are faithful, we may be called “troublemakers”, as was Elijah, but, with reference to tonight’s Reading, Luther one time said that the faithful’s being called essentially “troublemakers” by the unfaithful was a good sign (Luther, ad loc Genesis 6:3, AE 2:20, cited by TLSB, ad loc 1 Kings 18:17, p.569). And, though we do not kill the false prophets, as Elijah did, we know that the truth ultimately prevails; Divine justice is carried out, at least on the Last Day.
As we heard tonight, Mount Carmel was associated with Elijah, and it was also associated with Elijah’s successor Elisha (2 Kings 2:25; 4:25), for whom Mount Carmel is said to have been a spiritual retreat and in whose life Mount Carmel is said to have served an “even more important role as a sacred site” (Mulder, TDOT, VII:334). On the internet, there are videos of various lengths recounting the events of tonight’s Reading, but none of those videos approach being an Academy-Award-winning movie. Though the account in the Reading has many makings of a movie that might merit an academy award, what matters most is what it makes of us and what we make of it: chiefly, a comforting reminder that the Lord is God and that, in Christ Jesus, He forgives us our sins through His Word and Sacraments.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +