Still 'fine-tuning' our process. You can get to the original article HERE
NOTE: THIS ARTICLE is a reprint from the blog of reverend Kevin Rogers of New Song Church in Windsor, Ontario and is reproduced here for your convenience. You can visit the his blog called "The Orphan Age" HERE.
There have always been meetings between religious leaders
and political leaders. It is imperative that godly leaders be ambassadors of
another Kingdom and not be used as political pawns or propagators of the king’s
ideology.
So, we have a meeting between King Ahab and Israel’s most
wanted man Elijah.
1 Kings 18:
16 So
Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. 17 When
he saw Elijah, he said to him, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?”
18 “I
have not made trouble for Israel,” Elijah replied. “But you and your father’s
family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the
Baals. 19 Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me
on Mount Carmel. And bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the
four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”
Ahab’s first line is to accuse Elijah of being the troubler
of Israel. Elijah fears God more than the king and retorts that Ahab and his
father are the ones that have brought trouble to the nation.
Baal was the storm god leading the pantheon of lesser gods
and it was his responsibility to bring rain to the land. Elijah had prophesied
that it would not rain for three- and one-half years because of the idolatry
and it was so. God was sending a message to Israel about their spiritual
adultery.
When people assume to have a better idea than God, they
become prideful and project the blame for their consequences on the godly. ‘We’re
not the trouble, you are.’
Elijah calls Ahab to assemble the 450 priests of Baal and
400 priests of Asherah on Mount Carmel to have a summit on who controls the
weather. Ahab does not dismiss this, because Elijah had prophesied this
draught. The political agenda depended on continuing to promote the Baal
worship that people wanted and surely this was an easy win to upstage the
judgmental intolerance of the lone prophet.
1 Kings 18:
20 So
Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount
Carmel. 21 Elijah went before the people and said, “How long
will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if
Baal is God, follow him.”
But the people said
nothing.
The people were indecisive about the true God, and their double
mindedness was destroying their souls. Is the true God Baal or the Lord? Baal
was the name of a presiding deity in a community of deities; therefore, the
worship of Baal included that of many gods. But if the presiding deity were
overcome, so would all the rest be. The people would soon discover anew that
the Lord is the one true God.[1]
Here we see a lesson about true faith. While others think
that ambiguity is a virtue and it’s safer to keep your options open, the true
believer possesses a degree of certainty that calls for exclusive commitment.
It takes faith to hope and to believe in evidence that has not yet appeared.
Anything less than that may not be faith at all. It might be
a wishful calculation or an idea that bolsters our ego, but real faith calls us
to God.