1 Kings, Chapter 18 (part 2) - Pray Again | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] Shalom friends. Welcome back to the Prophets of Israel Daily. This is part two of chapter 18. [music] I'm Jeremy Compel here with my dear friend Arimwitz and of course this series is powered by the land of Israel network and you can visit us at the land of Israel.com. All [music] right. So part one of chapter 18. The stage was set on Mount Carmel. Elijah alone against 450 prophets of Baal. The whole nation is watching. called to stop hopping between two opinions and finally decide. The terms are agreed. There's two altars, two bulls, no human fire. The God who answers by fire, he is God. And now the contest begins. So the prophets of Baal go first. So verses 26- 29, they take their bull and they call on Bal from morning until noon. Oh Bal, answer us. And there is no voice. No one answers. They leap and they dance around the altar. They made nothing. And then Elijah begins to mock them. I think this is the first biblical trash talking recorded in history. And it just makes you lovely. Verse 27 like call out in a great cry for he is a god. Perhaps he's in deep thought or busy or maybe he's on a journey. Or maybe he's asleep and he must be woken up. That's just so funny. He's trash talking. >> Last night I was telling you, Jeremy, before we started recording that I'm telling my kids these stories at night as they're falling asleep, and I said I sort of adlived it. I said that Elijah said, "Maybe Baal is on the potty right now." And my kids just burst out laughing. I just love that he mocks them because there's real theology hidden inside the sarcasm and it's really worth looking at. You know, look at what Eli Yahu taunts them with. Maybe your God's thinking. Maybe he's busy. Maybe he's traveling. Maybe he's asleep. Every one of those is a jab at the fundamental absurdity of idolatry. Because every one of those describes a God with human limitations. A God who can be distracted. A God who can be preoccupied. A God who can be away or unconscious or simply not paying attention. And Eli Yahu is exposing the whole lie. A god you can make, a god of wood and stone and human imagination is a god small enough to be busy elsewhere when you need him. His he's mocking not just Baal, but the entire idea that the divine could be limited in anyway. And it makes you think about our own idols. And I'm not trying to cast stones at anyone but myself. You know, we we we we still have them. Anything we put our ultimate trust in that isn't God, money, status, power, our own strength, when we fear someone else in the world, it's happens. It's it's a modern ba and it has exactly the same fatal flaw Eli Yahu is mocking. It's limited. It will always eventually be asleep or on a journey at the moment you need it most. The money runs out, the status fades, the strength fails, the idol is busy elsewhere. And here's the deeper point. The prophets of Bal respond to the silence by screaming louder and cutting themselves, working themselves into a bloody frenzy because that's what you do when you have a false god. You have to manufacture the intensity yourself because there's no one actually on the other end. The frantic effort is the tell. When the thing you're worshiping isn't real, all you can do is scream louder and louder into that silence. >> Yeah, that's exactly it. The silence and the screaming, it just can't fill it. And it goes on like that all day. Blood is pouring from their self-inflicted wounds. And the text says with simplicity, there was no voice, no answer, no one paying attention. And then evening comes and now it's Elijah's turn. And so he puts on a show. verses 30 through35. He repairs the broken down altar of the Lord with 12 stones, one for each of the 12 tribes of Israel. He digs a trench around it and arranges the wood in the offering. And then he commands them to drench the entire altar in water, 12 jars poured three times over in the middle of a three-year drought. And the water runs down and fills up the trench. So he removes every possible natural explanation. And I want to add another dimension of the midash here in Kings 18 26. It says they leaped upon or around the altar. And the unusual verb there, it's like the the whole drawn out spectacle. It invited the sages to ask what were these prophets of Bal actually doing up there all day? And the answer in the midashic tradition is that their frantic activity was partly a cover up, a distraction for this attempted trick. When they were trying to secretly ignite the fire by themselves as like a fake response from Bal, he was the same man mentioned at the end of the last chapter who rebuilt Jericho. The midash tells us that the prophets of Bal arranged for to hide underneath the inside of the altar so that at the right moment he could kindle a fire from below and make it appear that Bal had miraculously answered by somehow sending them a fire. And Ela leaves no question. He drenches his altar with water. And of course, God does his part and doesn't allow to ever really ignite any fire. But then he prays and this is what he says. Hashem hashem elohim. Answer me oh Lord. Answer me. That this people may know that you, oh Lord our God. And then the fire of the Lord fell. And the fire falls down from heaven and consumes everything. the offering, the wood, the stones themselves, the dust, it just every drop of water that was in the trench. The entire nation shocked falls on their faces and cries out, "Hashem, huh? Elohim. Hashem, huh? Elohim. Hashem, he is God. Hashem, he is God." >> Yeah. And Jeremy, those words, Hashem, Elohim, should reverberate through every Jewish soul because we've never stopped saying them. They are what we cry out at the very end of Yum Kipur, at the closing of the Naila service, at the uh the climax of the holiest day of the year, right? As the sun sets and and the the gates of heaven are closing, the whole congregation calls out seven times. And it comes straight from here, straight from Mount Carmel. And Jeremy, I don't know if you ever seen what I'm about to describe, but back when I lived in Jerusalem and I went to the Western Wall far more frequently, I used to see something that made this scene out of Mount Carmel come alive for me in a way that I'll never forget. Jeremy, you remember of Adess? I think he initially introduced me to him. He was so often at the Western Wall. He was a prophet-like figure, at least in my eyes. He he was always dressed in torn and tattered clothes, and he was almost always just immersed in prayer. And I remember there were times when I would see groups of young IDF soldiers come over to him and ask for blessings and ask him to speak to him. There's a time actually in specific that I'm thinking about. I couldn't hear what he said to them, but I remember what happened next. Within minutes, these Israeli soldiers, young men in uniform standing at the stones of Jerusalem would begin shouting together from the depth of their soul of their souls, Hashem, huh Elohim again. Hashem hu Elohim again and again, seven times. And every time I saw it, I felt like I was watching an echo of Mount Carmel. 3,000 years later, Jewish soldiers in a rebuilt Jerusalem crying out the exact words Israel cried out when the fire fell from the skies over Mount Carmel. And and that cry never left us. Maybe it was forgotten sometimes. It was maybe relegated to a whisper sometimes, but it never left the Jewish soul. And Jeremy, I know how strange that must sound right after everything you just described because the prophet of Bal, they shouted too all day long and the heavens didn't move. Ela says a few quiet words, aneni, hashem, answer me, Hashem, and the fire falls. But I think that's exactly the point. There's shouting and there's shouting. Bal worship is human beings, like we said, desperately trying to manufacture the presence of the divine. More noise, more drama, more frenzy. Maybe if we can scream loudly enough, something will happen. Eli doesn't have to manufacture anything. Hashem is already there. Hashem is already real. Hashem is already listening. The prophets of Bal shouted because they were trying to make something false become real. These soldiers at the Western Wall, the Jewish people, shouted because they suddenly recognized something real that had been there all along. Their volume didn't create the truth. The truth creates the volume. And that is an enormous lesson for our own prayer. Hashem is not moved by spectacle. Prayer isn't about manufacturing God's presence. It's about it's about stripping away everything that prevents us from recognizing that he is already there. And then when that recognition finally breaks through sometimes you just can't help but shout. And maybe that's why we shout these words seven times at na on yum kipur on the day of atonement when it comes to a close. It's one of the most powerful parts of the whole service. We are not discovering something new. We are reaching beneath all the confusion and all the fear and all the divided loyalties and all the all the hopping between two opinions and touching something the Jewish soul has known since Mount Carmel. Hashem who Elohim >> I I can't help but feel like yes this is prophets of Israel daily and I know that there will be thousands of people that'll be watching this many times later but we are releasing this right around Yom Kipur when all of Israel is still echoing that noise that call that prayer Hashem I elohim that's how the Yomkeer service ends and we're learning it right now and to me we didn't plan that that's just a spice cart that's being dropped on us to know that Prophets of Israel Daily is something marvelous. Anyway, I just want to say the there's uh the aftermath obviously what happens now. Elijah has the people seize the prophets of Bal. The false prophets are put to death at the brook of Kishon. The idolatry that had captured Israel is just decisively broken. And now finally comes the thing that this whole three-year story has been building towards the rain. The people repent for a moment and immediately the blessing comes. Verses 42 through 45. Ela climbs to the top of Carmel. He bows himself to the ground, puts his face between his knees, and he prays. He sends his servant to look out toward the sea and nothing. Go again, he says. Nothing. Seven times he sends him. And on the seventh time, the servant says, "I see a little cloud small as a man's hand rising out of the sea. And that tiny cloud becomes a great black storm. the heavens open and after three years of drought, the rain comes pouring down and the land is healed again. >> Yeah, Jeremy, I I don't want us to end without just touching on that detail, the seven times because after all the fire and the thunder, it might be one of the more powerful moments in this very powerful chapter. Because think about it, Elijah has just done the impossible. He called down fire from the heaven in front of the whole nation. If anyone in history had earned the right to expect an instant answer to his next prayer, it's ali in this moment at the peak of his prophetic power. And he bows down and prays for rain and looks and there's nothing. And he prays and looks and nothing. Again, nothing. Seven times he sends his servant to scan an empty sky before the tiniest wisp of a cloud finally appears. Even Eli Yahu, even right after Mount Carmel, had to pray and persist and keep looking again and again before the before the answer came, you know. And friends, there's a a part of me that really finds that comforting and instructive because we tend to think that if our faith were just strong enough, the answer would come. And here is the greatest prophet of the age. And even his even Eli Yahu's breakthrough came only after the seventh look. And I think part of the lesson is that there there may we need to have that persistence in our prayer. It's part of the journey. It's part of what it's about. The rain was always coming. God had already promised it back in verse one. But it is still required of Elijah to bow low and to pray and to look and not give up when the sky stayed empty. So often in our own lives, the blessing is already on its way, already promised, already forming out over the sea where we can't see it yet. And our job is simply to keep praying, to keep looking, to keep faith through the the sixth empty sky until the seventh reveals the cloud. Redemption rarely arrives on the first look, but it comes to the one who refuses to stop looking. >> Wow. It's beautiful. I think that's really the perfect way to land it, Hari. And that's what First Kings 18 teaches us. I mean, for Israel today, Mount Carmel was the moment the whole nation drifting and divided. They were all called back. And in a single instant, they saw the truth and fell on their faces, calling out, "Hashem, huh, Elohim?" And we're living right now in just such a moment. I mean, our people are being gathered home and we're watching the unfolding miracles of Israel in this land. And so much of our world is just hopping between two opinions. And we've had all of the force of jihad come against us. Iran, the kamas, the Houthis, and all of them united, tried to destroy Israel, and Israel emerged stronger for it. And so Carmel is the promise that a people can be called back, that truth can fall like fire from heaven, and after the long drought, the reign of redemption can finally come. And so may our generation be the one that stops hopping between opinions and chooses wholeheartedly the God of Israel. And like Elijah, watching the sea, we keep looking with faith until the cloud appears and the healing rains pour down. My friends, I want you to know that I enjoy learning these Tanakh stories so much. It is a highlight in my life. But I also want you to know that I would love for you to take the next step on the journey and join us live at the Land of Israel Fellowship. It's a global community, hundreds, so many families from different countries around the world. 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