Good morning. Turn with me, if you would, to
Isaiah chapter 52. Open our worship service this
morning with a passage from Isaiah chapter 52. While you're turning our pastor
and janitor on vacation and Lord will never return home to us
today, right today, we plan on seeing them home. So remember
them in prayer. Isaiah chapter 52, we'll start in verse seven
and read through the end of the chapter. How beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that
publishes peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth
salvation, that saith unto Zion, thy God reigneth. Thy watchman
shall lift up the voice. With the voice together shall
they sing, for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall
bring again Zion. Break forth into joy. Sing together. Ye waste places of Jerusalem,
for the Lord hath comforted his people. He hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy
arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth
shall see the salvation of our God. Depart ye, depart ye. Go ye out from thence. Touch
no unclean thing. Go ye out of the midst of her,
be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. For you shall not
go out with haste nor by flight, for the Lord will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your reward. Behold, my servant
shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled
and be very high. And many were astonished at thee. His visage was so marred more
than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. So shall
he sprinkle many nations. The Kings shall shut their mouths
at him for that which had not been told them shall they see
and that which they had not heard shall they consider. We'll end
our reading there. Let's pray together. Our holy heavenly father, we
pray that you be with us this morning. that your word would
go forth in power and that we'd be blessed that this truly be
a time of worship. We thank you for this opportunity
that you've provided, for the right that we have to come before
you in Christ's name. We have much to be thankful for.
We thank you for this assembly of your sheep, that we can be
together, fellowship together, like-minded, and together worship
you in our Savior's name and hear of Christ. learn of Christ
and see him with eyes of faith that you've given us and with
a heart of faith that you've given us to believe. We pray for continued faith.
Father, you see fit to not leave us alone. Remember that we're
dust. We're thankful that you've seen
fit to call us children for Christ's sake. We pray for our brother
Luke as he stands here this morning. We thank you for him. We pray
that you strengthen him and give him recollection of his studies
and give him a message from you. We pray that you be with him
as he speaks. Give him words and we pray that
you be with us as we hear. Open our hearts to hear. Pray
for those of our congregation and elsewhere, those that we
think of even now that are undergoing whatever the trial that you brought
may be. That you bring them through it in your time, that your will
be accomplished. Think of those who are mourning
and sick, brokenhearted. Think of those of us that are
so often cold in heart that you strengthen and turn our hearts
again to you. We pray this thankfully in Christ's
name for his sake. Amen. We welcome our brother
Luke Coffey this morning. I don't really know what to say
other than we love you. We're very glad that we're here,
that you're here. Glad that we're here too. Glad that you're here
along with your lovely family. And we pray that you come preach
the message the Lord's put on your heart. We've been praying
for you. Good morning. If you would open
your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 17, 1 Kings I'm sorry, chapter 18. 1 Kings chapter 18. This morning
we'll look at a very familiar Old Testament story and go verse
by verse through it. The story of Elijah and the two
sacrifices without fire. with those that were worshipping
Baal and those that were worshipping the Lord. And there's a lot of
things in this, but one thing I want to focus on this morning
is a simple question that we all must answer. Which God is
God? Which God, little g, is God? Capital G. In verse 21, we see
where this question came about. It says, And Elijah came unto
all the people and said, How long halt ye between two opinions
or two thoughts? If the Lord be God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. This is a really simple question
and a question that whether we understand or realize it, we
answer this question all the time. And everybody in the world
answers this question. Some people answer it by saying
out loud, I don't believe there is a God. Some people answer
it by going through the motions and saying, oh, yeah, I believe
in God. But in this story, we put two different ideas against
each other, the God of Jacob and the God of Baal or Baal,
who they call their God. And the importance of this is
that if we can't answer this question, eventually it will
be answered for us. To start, we must say this. None
of us are able to answer this question correctly on our own.
On our own, I think the answer we would all come to, or we would
all think in our mind is, I'm my own God. That's what we want. That's the way we're born in
sin. We worship ourselves. We really do. But thankfully,
the true and living God shows some people who he is and makes
them to see him, understand him and to love him. But he does
that. So when I say which God is God and we must answer this
question, we all obviously need to know that we aren't able to
believe in the true and living God. We can't do that on our
own. But thankfully, he does that. He shows his people and
look in verse 19. Or look at verse 17 first. And
it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him,
Art thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled
Israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken
the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam.
Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel
and the prophets of Baal 450 and the prophets of the groves
400 which eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab sent unto all the children
of Israel and gathered the prophets together unto Mount Carmel. And
Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye between
two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him.
But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not
a word. And then said Elijah unto the
people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord. But Baal's
prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them therefore
give us two bullocks, and let them choose one bullock for themselves
and cut it in pieces. and lay it on wood, and put no
fire under. And I will dress the other bullock,
and lay it on wood, and put no fire under. And call ye on the
name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord.
And the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all
the people answered and said, It is well spoken. And Elijah
said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves,
and dress it first, for ye are many. And call on the name of
your gods, but put no fire under. And they took the bullock which
was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of
Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But
there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon
the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon that
Elijah mocked them and said, Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is talking, or he is
pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and
must be awake. And they cried aloud and cut
themselves after their manor with knives and lancets till
the blood gushed out upon them. And it came to pass when midday
was passed, and they prophesied until the time of the offering
of the evening sacrifice. And there was neither voice nor
any to answer or any that regarded. And Elijah said unto all the
people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near
unto him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken
down. And Elijah took twelve stones according to the number
of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, under whom the word of
the Lord came, saying Israel shall be thy name. And with the
stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he
made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two
measures of seed. And he put the wood in order
and cut the bullock in pieces and laid him on the wood and
said, fill four barrels with water and poured on the burnt
sacrifice and on the wood. And he said, do it the second
time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the
third time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran
round about the altar, and he filled the trench also with water.
And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening
sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God
of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that
thou art God of Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I
have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear
me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God and
that thou has turned their heart back again. Then the fire of
the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood
and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was
in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their
faces and they said, the Lord, he is the God, the Lord, he is
the God. And Elijah said unto them, take
the prophets of Baal, let not one of them escape. And they
took them. and Elijah brought them down
to the Brook Kishon and slew them there. This story has an
ending that we all see and we all understand. And having heard
the gospel and heard this story before, it seems so obvious how
it's going to end. And let me give you an illustration
of a story that I'm sure many of you have heard about how many
people or how odd it is that we actually understand how this
story ends. In Mexico, there was a young
man or an older boy who heard the gospel. And he heard about
who the Lord was. And in his house, their gods
were little statues on the mantle. They had a bunch of statues across
the mantle. And the son kept telling his
dad, Dad, you need to come. You've got to hear about who
God is. You need to hear this. And his dad was adamant. I've
got my God. I've got my God. Well, one day
the boy got some courage and he took a little hammer and he
smashed all the gods but one. And he laid the hammer next to
the last one. And when his dad came home, he
was furious. He started screaming, who did
this? Who did this to my gods? And the little boy just kind
of stayed back. And he finally came to him and
he said, you did this. And the boy said, I didn't do
it. He said, he did it. And pointed at the idol with
the hammer next to him. And the dad looked at him and said, you
and I both know that that God can't do anything. And the boy
said, that's what I've been trying to tell you. It seems so obvious. who God is. And throughout the
Scriptures, and if we said just up to this point, we have had
so many stories and so many examples, especially for the children of
Israel, who were the people who were there, they should have
obviously known it. But if they don't know it, we
should realize that we would never know it. These people saw
all these examples and these personal experiences. And yet
in this moment where Elijah says to them, how long are you between
two opinions? He's like, you can't make up
your mind. And he says at the end of verse 21, when he said
that to them, he said, and the people answered him not a word.
Elijah said to all the children of Israel, this is in kind of
a valley with mountains around all the people of Israel. We
don't know how many thousands of people this was, but he said,
here's what we're going to do to figure this out. But when
he says you got to pick either the Lord or you got to pick Baal
and no one said a thing. Not one person raised their voice
up and said, well, it's God. It's the Lord. It's not Baal.
No one said it. They didn't know they had to
be shown. So look here. In verse 19 it
says, Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel unto
Mount Carmel. The first answer or part to this
question or the answer is everyone will see the truth. Elijah said
you gather all the people and everyone came. Every single person
will see the truth someday. Whether the Lord shows it in
this life or we find out in judgment, every single person one day will
have their eyes open and see He is God. And they'll see it. In verse 22, it says, Elijah
said unto the people, even I, only I remain a prophet of the
Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. The power of our God does not
come from how many people believe on Him. There was one person
who believed on God and 450 prophets of Baal. The prophets of Baal,
their numbers did not give their God power in the same way that
our God does not get His power from our belief in the number.
Our God is God. Look in verse 25. And Elijah
said unto them, Choose you one bullet for yourselves, dress
it first, for you are many, and call on the name of your gods,
but don't put any fire. And they took the bullet which
was given them, they dressed it, called the name of Baal from
morning until noon, saying, Baal, hear us. But there was no voice
nor any that answered, and they leaped up and down at the altar. They leaped upon the altar which
was made. Our actions have no bearing on the power of our God.
What we do, the way we do things, it has no bearing on the power
of God. These people jumped up and down and who knows what all
they did. It gave their God no power. Our actions have no bearing
on our God. Look at verse 27. And it came
to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, cry aloud for
he is a God. Either he's taken He's talking
or he's pursuing or he's a journey or a pair of venture. He sleepeth
and must be awake. This verse has always made me
a little uneasy in the sense that Elijah shows great faith
here. He knows exactly what he's saying. He knows the power of Baal. Elijah
has been shown of God and given this example of what he's doing
with these two sacrifices. But it still scares me. I believe
in the God of the Bible. I believe him. But it scares
me to say these things or to act in the way that Elijah does.
Now, Elijah is led of the Lord. I don't mean that. But the thing
I want to say is that the faith of these prophets of Baal or
the faith of Elijah here, that that prophet didn't have power
and his did. This sounds weird. Our faith
has no bearing on the power of our God. We have no control over
His power. He is almighty. Now, so many
people in false religion think that their actions, their beliefs,
the things they do controls part of their salvation. Nothing we
do, nothing we say, nothing we believe has any effect on our
God. Our God does things to us. Our God controls us. We have
no power over Him or influence on Him. Look in verse 28. And they cried aloud and they
cut themselves after that manor with knives, with lancets, till
the blood gushed out upon them. These men or men and women, the
prophets of Baal, they had serious devotion. They really were doing
anything they could to give their God power. But their devotion
didn't give any. It doesn't matter how much they
believed. God is God and their God had no power. It didn't matter
their devotion. And then finally, verse 29 says,
and it came to pass when midday was passed, they prophesied until
the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. And there
was neither voice nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. They spent from the time sun
came up, the sun came down worshiping their God and nothing ever happened.
All of these things show us that we don't give our God anything. We have no control, no influence,
no part. And I'm repetitive here, but
it's so important we realize the first part of understanding
who God is, is that He is God. The definition of a God would
imply that we can't do anything about it. We don't control it.
He controls us. So in verse 33, It says here, and he put the
wood, Elijah put the wood in order. He cut the bullock in
pieces and laid him on the wood and said, fill four barrels with
water and poured on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. And
he said, do it the second time. And they did it the second time.
And he said, do it the third time. And they did it a third
time. And the water ran around about the altar and he filled
the trench also with water. Elijah It wasn't enough that
all these people were watching and that Elijah had a sacrifice
and the Lord consumed it or the Lord brought fire down. Elijah
wanted to show these people or he wanted them to see that it
doesn't matter what I do here. I'm not the one who is going
to consume the sacrifice. I'm not the one who's going to
provide the fire. I'm sure when these people were seeing this,
They were thinking to himself, I wonder if there's going to
be fire show up on the sacrifice. He dumped barrel upon barrel
upon barrel of water on it. And if you've ever tried a lot
of fire with wet wood, it just doesn't work. But he was showing
there's nothing that man can do to prevent the sacrifice. The Lord Jesus Christ came and
made an effectual sacrifice, and there's nothing that any
man could ever do to affect that or to change that. The power
of God is complete and His mercy and His sacrifice and His Lord
is effectual. There's nothing we can do to
stop it. Look in verse 36. After pouring all that water
on it and it came to pass at the time of the offering of the
evening sacrifice that Elijah, the prophet, came near and he
said, Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known
this day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant
and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me,
O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord
God and that thou has turned their heart back again. After all these things that I've
said about our God. We have no effect on him. We
can't control him. We don't give him his power.
He has almighty power and we don't have any effect on that.
We see in this that our God hears our prayers. Our God hears the
prayers of his sheep. And what a prayer this is. And
then Elijah here simply says, Lord, show them who you are. And that's the prayer of every
believer. That's the prayer of every man
that stands up and preaches the gospel. Just show them who you
are. Show them that I have no effect
on this sacrifice. Show them that there's no way
for me to stop you from providing the sacrifice for your people.
He says, just Lord, hear me, that this people may know that
thou art the Lord God. Show them through this that you
are the only true and living God. Verse 38 says, Then the
fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood
and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was
in the trench. There is only one sacrifice.
Only one sacrifice. Only one of these two sacrifices
was consumed. And there's only one sacrifice
that has ever been acceptable to the Lord, to the God, Lord
Jesus Christ in the cross. That's the only effectual sacrifice.
If anyone wants to have any hope, if anyone wants to find any peace,
anything, the only way is through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And just like every story in the Bible, when we see it,
The example the Lord gives, He always goes a little further
to show us even more. I'm sure these people would have
been amazed at fire just shown up and the altar and the sacrifice
been burnt. But that's not enough. The stones,
the wood, the water, everything, the entire sacrifice was completely
consumed. And there's so much in this.
But to simplify this, just to say the Lord Jesus Christ on
the cross took all our sins, took everything. He was victorious
over our sin. He did every single thing that
we needed to be saved. And in replacement, he gave us
righteousness. He was perfect. He gave us what
we needed. His sacrifice was so effectual
that nothing was left. There was nothing there. And
then he rose and he was victorious. You could not have even seen
where this sacrifice was. It was gone. It was perfect.
I can't imagine what these people thought when they saw and they
probably some of them even thought, you know, I think Elijah is right
and this sacrifice is going to work. But when everything was
gone, they were left with what we see in verse 39. And when
all the people saw it, they fell on their faces. When someone
sees the power of God, when someone sees God in his true glory, there's
nothing to do except just fall down on your face. I mean, we
see in the scriptures that we couldn't look upon him. I mean,
we can't handle his glory. It would just disintegrate us. We couldn't handle it. But just
getting a glimpse of it, just a picture of it, is enough to
just drop a man to the ground. And then what do they do after
they fell on their faces? They all said, the Lord, He is
the God. The Lord, He is the God. It's
not enough to say it once. They probably just kept saying
it. They just kept saying it with their faces on the ground.
The Lord, He's God. We see it. And this is what we
need. As a child of God, we oftentimes
look at these stories. We see the children of Israel
and we can count how many times, whether it's at the Red Sea and
they bickered or the serpents come. All these stories we see
of the children of Israel being shown this amazing miracle and
the glory of God. And it's just right there. And
we just see in the next chapter how they just wander off and
they just can't figure it out. It's because we need to be reminded
of this. In those people, I'm sure they
thought to themselves, how could I ever have not remembered this? How could I have not done it?
But then in verse 40. We see where Elijah said unto
them, take the prophets of Baal, let not one of them escape. And
they took him and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon
and slew them there. Finally, we'll say this. Only
those who believe and are found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that sacrifice will be spared. That's it. If you are found anywhere
but under the blood, you're lost. You will be slain. And I don't
think we're naive enough to think that the Lord doesn't have to
show us this. These people were all in the same boat. Not a single
child of Israel spoke up and said anything at the beginning
when we said, do you believe on God or Baal? None of them
said a word. And what a relief that is. There
are so many moments of weakness that the Lord must again show
us and he must put us in his bosom. He must put us under his
arm so that when this moment comes, We're only there because
He's forced us, He's grabbed us, He's brought us. The whole
thing we talk about, we believe or we have faith, is just Him
making us to see it. He has to do what He's done here
for us and we see it. But all that are found outside
the Lord Jesus Christ will perish. So in closing, it's important
to see here, there is only one God. And though it feels like
most of the world has their own opinion of who God is, And the
actions of so many would seem to say that it is not the God
of the Bible and the devotion that we have or the actions we
do. None of it has any bearing. And thankfully, that's true,
because we like to think of the actions here as celebrating or
cheering or praying or having faith. But the actions that don't
matter that we have our unbelief, our lack of faith, our vanity,
our pride, our lust, all these things that we we constantly
are in. Thankfully, they have no bearing on our salvation.
That there is one God. And as it says here, Elijah,
in closing, will read his prayer again. Elijah said in verse 36,
Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this
day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant and
that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord,
hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God
and that thou hast turned their heart back again.