We Must Choose The Lord - 1 Kings 19:4-8 :
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you." He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.
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Thanks God, that the Bible is not shy to call a shovel a shovel, and it does not even try to dodge hard questions of any fields in the material or spiritual world. However some lectionaries, like the one, maintained by the Vanderbilt University in the USA, sometimes give the feeling that they are quite overselective regarding the Bible readings in the weekly Pericope system, we use.
Maybe the method of John Calvin was a bit extreme, as when he arrived in Geneva, he began his preachings there with the Book of Genesis, and took all the verses as they came in sequence throughout the whole Bible regardless of the season. And when he finished, he restarted to read and exhort the Book of Genesis again. Although this method did not prevent him to misunderstand the major messages in the Bible, but at least he did not select the texts of the readings just as he saw fit.
From one of our recommended Bible Readings for this Sunday, which is a broken of, selected piece of text from the stream, we would know close to nothing regarding the context and that what is going on, not even that who is talking to God in the story.
Of course after a little maturity achieved among Bible stories, we know that it is about the adamant faithfulness of Prophet Elijah and his fleeing to the Mountain of God.
The context in this case starts with an almost joyful event that the king, called Ahab, had his wedding. He was the seventh king of Israel, the son of Omri, a powerful warlord and a crafty military leader. The king followed the ancient royal method in marrying by getting a bride from abroad in order to make allies or create dynastic relations along geopolitical lines.
A royal wedding should have supposedly been a cause for a nationwide celebration, however some shadows could have been foreseen in advance.
The bride, Jezebel, came from Tyre, a mighty city state of the old Phoenicia, a part of an ancient civilization on its own right. Her moving to Israel, into the royal palace of King Ahab caused a major cultural shock on both sides, because exactly that how deadly big was the gap between the Phoenician idolatry and the worship of the God of Israel.
Jezebel as the princess of Tyre, ex officio was rendered a High Priestess of the idolatrous cult of Baal, the fertility god of the Pantheon of Canaan and the Zeus-like king of the gods there.
It was the high priestess duty to cultivate the worship of Baal and to render regular services and sacrifices to satisfy the cult. It could not have been a problem in Tyre or in Sidon, but this was Israel.
When the new queen brought the Baal worship with herself, and King Ahab built shrines to that, the king also allowed the Baal priests of the queen to forcefully convert the people and to kill the resisting Israelite priests.
It eventually culminated into a civil-war-size resistance led by the Prophet Elijah, who said that "As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." And a deadly three year long drought came to pass according to his words, as he cursed the land, because of the sin of the king.
King Ahab should not have sought a bride outside of Israel, and when he did, he should not have let the foreign idolatry take over the country, as he turned even himself into a Baal worshiper, and had the prophets of the Lord God mass murdered, as his queen wanted.
However just as his marriage, his royal house was not made in heaven, and he had been a wicked king even before his wedding as it is written in the first book of the Kings chapter sixteen that “Ahab, the son of Omri, did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord God above all that were before him.”
At the final showdown between the parties Prophet Elijah called for an ordeal on the Mount Carmel between the Lord God of Israel and Baal, the Canaanite idol. Him against 450 Baal Prophets (priests).
When the Baal prophets were not able to make Baal answer them with fire from Heaven, the Lord answered Elijah as it is written that “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces. They said, "The Lord, he is God! The Lord, he is God!" Elijah said to them, "Seize the prophets of Baal! Don't let one of them escape!" They seized them. Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and killed them there (by the sword).”
When the Baal prophets were not able to make Baal answer them with fire from Heaven, the Lord answered Elijah as it is written that “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces. They said, "The Lord, he is God! The Lord, he is God!" Elijah said to them, "Seize the prophets of Baal! Don't let one of them escape!" They seized them. Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and killed them there (by the sword).”
It is a harsh, even a cruel picture, but it is in the Book of the Exodus that “He who sacrifices to any god, except to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed (put to death).”
Although the Biblical context contains the tough reality of the ancient methods of the harsh dealings with the competitors, (which is today deemed unimaginably and generally inhuman), nonetheless the event of the ordeal must show us that life and death are at stake whether we choose the Lord or we turn against God.
Elijah called the Israelites to choose between the God of Israel and the world of the idols, by saying that "How long will you waver between the two sides? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." The people answered him not a word.”
Mass executing of the Baal priests by Elijah was rather a revengeful action of an open warfare against the invaders than a civilized philosophical dispute, and it just began to escalate.
After Elijah had complained to God on the Mount Horeb, that he might have been be the last one in all Israel, who is for the Lord, God told Elijah that “ you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. You shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi to be king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah to be prophet in your place. It shall happen, that he who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and he who escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. Yet, will I leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed the idols.”
We might think that this is an ancient horror story.
Nonetheless, we can see that century after century, when people and whole nations despised God’s Ten Commandments, what horrible disasters kept systematically hitting the sinning families and the countries of all continents and era after era. Inhuman blood-sheds of wars and famines, plagues and natural catastrophes on and on, sometimes without a pause for centuries.
We must choose the Lord until it is not too late in order to avoid the fate of our ancestors who bitterly perished too often.
May God save us, for the sake of Jesus, the Son, our master and brother, by the Holy Spirit, Amen.
