We looked at the last event of the mount Carmel confrontation. It is Elijah telling Ahab to go eat and drink because the famine is about to end. Elijah announces this as the sound of the rushing of rain. It is pretty clear from the text this sound was not something they were hearing at that moment. What is important about this statement is the confidence Elijah has in the promise of God. God had told Elijah to go see Ahab and He would send the rain. Elijah does this and believes what God has said will happen will happen. Elijah goes and prays after this for the rain to come. We see a persistence in Elijah’s prayer. He sends his servant to look to the east for a rain cloud as he prays. He does this seven times. Until the servant returns with the announcement of a cloud in the distance the size of a man’s hand rising from the ocean. This is a points us to the importance of praying for God’s promises even when we know He is going to do something. There is still a need to pray even if we know it is going to come to pass. We see this in Jesus life as He prayed to the Father for things which were intended. We see this Revelation at the end of the book when Jesus promises He will return soon and John responds by praying, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” This last mount Carmel event really emphasizes the importance of consistently and earnestly praying for the things God has promised. There are a lot of reasons we can state for the importance of this but probably the most important is prayer is a means by which the glory of God is manifested. When God’s people pray and things happen it is clearly God who is seen as taking action. It is God who is glorified. This should be our heartbeat and our prayer.

We focused our attention on singing songs of Thanksgiving to God and reading different notes of Thanksgiving that the congregation had put together over the course of the last few weeks. As well as spending time in Scripture on examples of Thanksgiving being offered to God. May your heart be drawn to thankfulness towards God as you listen.

We explored the famous confrontation with the prophets of Baal on mount Carmel. It is really easy to get caught up in the details of what went on and miss the way the apex of this event is brought about in response to prayer. This is truly a confrontation between the true God of Israel and the false god Baal. Elijah stacked everything in favor of Baal. He met at their high holy place. He let the prophets of Baal take first pick of the bull to be sacrificed. He gave the prophets of Baal the first opportunity to call on their god. He prepared his own sacrifice and had it completely soaked with water. No worshipper of Baal could say Elijah didn’t give them the opportunity or make it difficult for their god to respond. But no matter what they did or how they called on the name of Baal nothing happened. Elijah appears to have really enjoyed the show because he engaged in a bit of sarcasm, suggesting their god might be on a trip, or maybe he was going to the bathroom, or couldn’t hear them and they should call louder. After all the preparations and many hours of opportunity for Baal to respond Elijah simply prays and God answers with a blast of fire so hot it consumes the sacrifice, the water, the stones of the altar and the dust under the altar. The description leaves us with the impression of a small crater as all which is left. God’s response to Elijah’s prayer was to display His power and turn the hearts of the people back to Him. This is exactly what Elijah prayed for. The people responded by declaring Yahweh is God. The penalty for those who lead the people of Israel in false worship is death according to Deuteronomy 13. Elijah called on the people to seize the prophets of Baal. They took them to the brook in the valley and slaughtered them all there.

We explored the famous confrontation with the prophets of Baal on mount Carmel. It is really easy to get caught up in the details of what went on and miss the way the apex of this event is brought about in response to prayer. This is truly a confrontation between the true God of Israel and the false god Baal. Elijah stacked everything in favor of Baal. He met at their high holy place. He let the prophets of Baal take first pick of the bull to be sacrificed. He gave the prophets of Baal the first opportunity to call on their god. He prepared his own sacrifice and had it completely soaked with water. No worshipper of Baal could say Elijah didn’t give them the opportunity or make it difficult for their god to respond. But no matter what they did or how they called on the name of Baal nothing happened. Elijah appears to have really enjoyed the show because he engaged in a bit of sarcasm, suggesting their god might be on a trip, or maybe he was going to the bathroom, or couldn’t hear them and they should call louder. After all the preparations and many hours of opportunity for Baal to respond Elijah simply prays and God answers with a blast of fire so hot it consumes the sacrifice, the water, the stones of the altar and the dust under the altar. The description leaves us with the impression of a small crater as all which is left. God’s response to Elijah’s prayer was to display His power and turn the hearts of the people back to Him. This is exactly what Elijah prayed for. The people responded by declaring Yahweh is God. The penalty for those who lead the people of Israel in false worship is death according to Deuteronomy 13. Elijah called on the people to seize the prophets of Baal. They took them to the brook in the valley and slaughtered them all there.

We worked through the section where Ahab met Elijah before going to Mount Carmel. In this meeting Ahab clearly lays the blame for Israel’s drought at Elijah’s feet. He calls him the troubler of Israel. Elijah doesn’t just take it but points out how Ahab is the one who has troubled Israel. He lays the problem of the drought clearly at the feet of Ahab. He points out how it was Ahab’s abandoning of the commandments of God and the following of the Baals which has caused all their problems. He then tells Ahab to gather the prophets of Baal and Asherah at Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel is a historical high place referenced by Egyptians and Assyrian documents. The Assyrians called it the Mountain of Baal of the Promontory. Dale Davis suggest it would have the been similar to calling it Baal’s Bluff. Elijah may have been setting the location at a central point of prime Baal worship. Ahab was probably thinking the goal in this meeting was to take care of the rain problem but God’s goal in this meeting was to take care of the worship problem

We explored the section which begins the famous confrontation with the prophets of Baal. There are two things really emphasized in the passage. First the importance of patience to the whole process. Elijah had really only been in two places over the course of three years. He waited on God. He rested by the brook being fed by ravens for the first part of the three years, and he rested at the widow in Zeraphath’s home for the rest of the three years. We grow easily impatient but God is always working and we see a snapshot of this as we see how He was revealing Himself to the widow and her son during this time. The Lord tells Elijah in the third year to go to Ahab and He would send rain on the earth. Elijah goes but as he is heading there Ahab calls Obadiah the head over his household to go with him to help look for water to save the horses and mules. They divide up to cover more area and start to search. Elijah meets Obadiah as he searches. This brings us to the second big point, what happens in these verses really emphasizes the way in which God works through ordinary means. Elijah tells Obadiah to go tell Ahab, “Elijah is here”. Obadiah’s response reveals how he will potentially be killed if he goes to get Ahab and Elijah is not here when he returns. Obadiah fully expects Elijah to be carried away by God because they have been looking for him for 3 years with zero success. He also reveals here how her fears God and twice how he hid 100 prophets in a cave and took care of them when Jezebel was trying to find and kill them. Obadiah has used his position as the head of Ahab’s household to serve God. He was aware of the work queen Jezebel was doing to find and kill the prophets. He used this inside knowledge to take action and move them to caves before the queen could get to them and kill them. But he not only hid them he brought them bread and water to keep them alive. God used this God fearing man in a powerful position in the house of Ahab to save His prophets. He did not use ravens or miracle jars of flour and oil. He used an ordinary God fearing man in a powerful position in the kingdom of Israel to save and provide for 100 prophets. This passage is a contrast to the miraculous provision for Elijah. In the contrast we see how God saved lives and provided for 100 out of 101 prophets through ordinary means. This emphasizes the normal way God is at work in the world. He orchestrates things and provides for His people through ordinary means. There is also a great foreshadowing of the way Jesus brings people to Himself. He uses us His bride to call people to come to Him. We see this foreshadowed in Elijah coming to Obadiah a God fearing man. Obadiah foreshadows the bride of Christ and Elijah again is a type of Christ. Here he sends the symbolic bride to go and call the symbolic pagan Ahab to come to him. All these verses really set up this picture. God could have had Elijah meet Ahab directly in the wilderness but we would not have been left with the picture which reminds us of how God works through the bride of Christ to call the world to come to Him. This does not mean they always repent but they are given the opportunity and are left without excuse.

We explored the section where the woman who is providing food and shelter for Elijah during the famine suffers the loss of her son. This is a time of real trial for her. Yet in this trial we see God working to bring greater understanding of the God of Elijah and by this a greater hope in Him. Her immediate response to the death of her son is to connect it to her own sin. Perhaps she is even connecting it to her former life as an idol worshipper. One of the gods of the Sidonians was the god Mot. Mot was the god of death. Perhaps she had worshipped this god in the past. Elijah here responds to the woman’s distress and self-condemnation by asking her to give him her son. He carries the boy into his upper chamber and cries out to the Lord. He asks God to bring the child back to life. This is a great act of faith because as far as the Biblical record is concerned we have never seen anyone brought back to life prior to this in scripture. But Elijah asks for what must have seemed impossible. Yet God hears the prayer of Elijah and gives life back to the child. Just like Yahweh has shown himself as greater then Baal by stopping the rain and dew, He shows Himself greater then Mot by bringing the boy back to life. This double confirmation brings sure knowledge of the God of Israel to this widow of Zeraphath.

We worked through the part of Elijah’s story where the brook the Lord sent him to dried up. Elijah is recorded here as being obedient to God and staying by the dried up brook until the word of the Lord came to him and directed him to move on. When the word of the Lord did come to him the Lord sent him to Zeraphath. This was a town which belonged to Sidon and Sidon is where Jezebel’s father was king. This means Zeraphath was part of the center of Baal worship. God told Elijah He had commanded a widow there to feed him. As he approached the city he saw a woman gathering sticks and asked her to bring him a drink of water. She went to go get it and as she went Elijah asked her to bring him a piece of bread. She responded to him stating first that Yahweh his God lives. And just as He lives she has no bread baked and only a little flour and water which she intended to use for one last meal with her son before they died. It is amazing a woman in a town committed to Baal worship would acknowledge that Yahweh the God of the Jews was the living God. This really points out how the rain and dew being withheld really showed the power of the God of Israel over the power of Baal. In this woman’s eyes at least the God of the Jews had won. Elijah tells her to not fear and do as he said and Yahweh has said the flour she has will not be used up and the oil she has will not run out until Yahweh sends rain on the earth. Elijah was asking the woman to trust God and act on faith in Yahweh. The woman did exactly as Elijah asked and demonstrated her faith in the God of Israel. And God did as he spoke through Elijah and provided flour and oil for the woman, her son, and Elijah

The time of gathering to pray with your brothers and sisters in Christ is precious in the sight of God. Corporate prayer is a means by which glory is brought to God in our dependence on him and in the answers to prayer that God brings (which glorifies God in the hearts of the body of the believers who prayed together). Prayer is an awesome gift from God. May the people of God wield this gift and seek their God in prayer. God, the believer, and communication are the three core elements of prayer and the primary focus here.

We looked at the lives of three kings which are recorded for us in the book of kings but are not mentioned in the book of chronicles. This raises the question of why does the writer of kings see fit to recount these rulers to the people in exile he is writing to? The first king of the trio was named Elah. He was the son of Baasha and he ruled for 2 years and not only continued to promote idol worship but he did not lead his troops to battle but instead stayed in the capital and got drunk. He was an idol worshipping drunkard who shirked his duty to lead. His short reign and murder at the hands of Zimri shows God’s hand of judgment on him, and would have been a warning to the people. Zimri wipes out the descendants and friends of Baasha fulfilling the prophecy made about him. But Zimri faces a siege against the capital of Tirzah and burns down the palace around him and dies in the fire. His short reign of 7 days is a warning. The writer of kings tells us his reign was cut short partly because he caused Israel to sin in her idolatry. Zimri only reigned for 7 days but the worship of God is so important to God that Zimri is held responsible for not calling on the people to repent and return to the Lord. This is a real warning to readers of this book during any period of time. God will hold the leadership of people responsible for pointing their people to God. Zimri only reigned 7 days but God holds him accountable for not calling the people to return to Him. Omri laid siege to Tirzah and took over the rulership of Israel after Zimri. He was a really successful king by human standards. He established a new capital city of Samaria. He made peace with the surrounding countries including Judah. There is even an Assyrian document which refers to the northern kingdom as the land of Omri. But this king continued to worship idols and lead the people in this sinful practice. His worldly success is a total failure in the eyes of God because he failed at the most important thing; repenting and returning to the Lord. We wrapped up lost time with the death of Omri recorded for us in verse 28. While all this is happening in Israel Asa is ruling over Judah and Asa was a God fearing king in stark contrast to the idolatry which was being practiced in Israel.