Text: 1 Kings 18:20-40, Gospel Driven Words Let Your Voice Be Heard

In our passage this morning, the nation of Israel is spiraling further and further toward destruction and captivity as a divided people. The kingdom at the point of this passage is now a divided kingdom between the southern people of Judah and the Northern Territory of Israel and while there were a few kings of Judah who remained faithful to God, none of the kings of the northern kingdom pursued the Lord and are marked by a common phrase as each new king of Israel is introduced and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

None, perhaps was worse than Ahab king of Israel. A few chapters prior to this morning’s passage we are introduced to Ahab and his sinister wife Jezebel and, well, we’ll let the text speak for itself to describe him and the state of the nation of Israel, 1 Kings 16:30-33 tells us this: 

1 Kings 16:30-33 (ESV) 30 And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him. 31 And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. 32 He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. 33 And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

This was where the northern people of Israel found themselves as a people; under a wicked and godless government rule with the masses listening to the dominant voice of falsehood in the world and in the midst of this wickedness, in the midst of an evil people under an evil government, God raises up one voice, one man in the midst of many voices leading the people away from the Lord, in our passage this morning, as we continue our series on Everyday Leadership, biblical leadership principles for every Christian, we see Elijah, The Outnumbered Leader who sees people being deceived and in need of transformation and what he does, the means he uses to transform a culture is at its heart, the gospel. His Gospel Driven Words Let His Voice Be Heard.

As Elijah sets the stage for this celestial standoff between The God of All Creation, the God who has made his name known Yahweh, and the false god Baal, something else happening here. The nation of Israel at this point in the text is a monarchy and the monarchy, the governmental structure has led people away from Yahweh and into all sorts of evil. This goes beyond being a religious crisis to a national crisis. Spiritual warfare has crossed into the realm of national crisis.  In as much as this is a story of Yahweh verses a false god and false beliefs about God it is also a story of a cosmic sovereign Yahweh verses an earthly sovereign, Ahab.

The worship of Baal according to what we read earlier in 1 Kings 16 was a government sanctioned activity, the king led, directed and celebrated the worship of a god that turned the peoples eyes away from Yahweh, and in all of this Elijah stands as the lone voice. He references this in verse 22 “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD”.

Friends this is a very contemporary narrative for us as a people in a country that is divided, that sees godlessness running rampant with people being led deeper and deeper into sin and evil, justifying and in some cases even celebrating human atrocities. Everything we read in our catechism reading this morning has been violated by humanity and as such we see the repercussions in our country. Our nation is in despair and needs the voice of truth and friends as the church, as the people who are called by God’s name we stand as Elijah, we stand as the outnumbered voice, we stand as the collective lone voice that must speak on behalf of God into the lives of people, into culture, but as we go to the polls in just over a week we are either going to put ourselves in a positio