Elements of Earnest Prayer (1 Kings 18:36–37) | Hearts Aflame (Part 7)

Transcript

MO 35
Elements of Earnest Prayer
6/14/2026
I Kings 18:36-37
Michael Otazu

Good evening, Church. Happy Lord’s Day evening to you. We are back in this periodic series, occasional series, HEARTS AFLAME. It’s a series that I cooked up in my head when I was going through various readings in the Bible and found out that I just love reading prayers. I really enjoy reading the prayers of Scripture that we find from different people recorded in these perfect pages of the Bible. I found myself just jotting down notes and outlines so much that I figured well hey, next time I’m in the evening pulpit I ought to just start an occasional series and go for it so that is what I did.

We’ve been now through six different profound prayers of Scripture. There are so many more prayers that we could do. A few of you have made some good suggestions to me of which prayers you’d like us to study together, and I have noted them all down and I am hoping to get to them someday. I have logged them away on my spread sheet, and I am hoping to get to them eventually in the future.

But so far, we’ve looked at six prayers. We began with Hannah’s prayer of praise when the Lord granted her a child, back in I Samuel 2. We looked at Paul’s prayer for the believers in Ephesus as they sought divine help in growing in sanctification. That was Ephesians 1. In Psalm 51, we saw David’s prayer of confession and repentance after he committed some egregious sins, adultery and murder to be specific. In Exodus 32, we traced Moses’ prayer of intercession which was fascinating. He intercedes on behalf of Israel, between Israel and Yahweh and he pleaded with God to show mercy to them even though what they deserved was death and His wrath. Then we went to Ephesians 3 and saw the Apostle Paul pray for God’s power to be brought down and used to strengthen those saints in Ephesus as they learned to live with each other even though there were Greeks and there were Gentiles and there were Jews all mixed together with different cultures and that was a hard thing. Paul said, Lord please come help them, that was a fascinating prayer.

Then most recently, we looked at Matthew 26 which might have been one of my favorites. This is we saw Jesus’ amazingly profound prayer to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. In that prayer, Jesus opened up a window for us into the heart of the God-man, who felt real feelings and experienced real stress and real sorrow and real grief. It was a prayer that gave us a better understanding of the proper place for emotions in prayer. We saw that grief and sorrow and emotional agony aren’t unique feelings just to us today. Rather, God Himself, Jesus, felt those feelings to a far greater degree than we do and yet, in such a wonderful example for us, He forced His own heart into submission to the Father’s will. Jesus asked for that cup to be taken from Him. In a very real sense, He didn’t want to go to the cross and yet right after He asked for that He said not My will by Yours be done. So, if you missed any of those prayers and you want to go back and study them, you can probably find those sermons somewhere on our website. They are probably organized on some list somewhere.

But the seventh prayer I’d like us to consider in this occasional series is actually going to come out of the Old Testament again. If you would open up your Bibles to I Kings. We’re going to focus on I Kings 18, but we’ll go back to grab some of the context before we get into the meat of the prayer. This prayer is really short. It only takes up 1 ½ verses in I Kings 18, but it packs a punch. Not just because of the words in it, but also because of the context of it too. You see, we’re parachuting into a historical context here every time we do some sort of one-off message like this and that’s fraught with trouble if we’re not careful.

This is a dark day in Israel’s past, and we need to understand that. It’s one in which God’s people have largely turned away from their God. They’ve turned their back on Yahweh. The context here in I Kings is a bleak one. If you recall some of the broader strokes of Israel’s history, you might recognize that the events here which we’re going to look at this evening, took place after the kingdom was divided. The kingdom was united under David’s and Solomon’s rules. Those were the last two kings to reign over all of Israel as a whole. But after Solomon died, the sin and corruption which had been taking place led the Lord to cause the kingdom to split, to fracture into two. A northern kingdom, Israel, and a southern kingdom, Judah. And so, the economic prosperity of the united kingdom of Israel was lost of course. New geopolitical tensions have dominated the news of the day as we enter into I Kings here. Energy was spent less on trade and joint building projects and more on antagonistic efforts between ethnicities. God’s people simply devolved into a brokenness brought on by their own rebelliousness and sin. And all of this was the result of the people’s own failure to commit to worshipping the Lord, to commit to worshipping Yahweh their God the way He demanded to be worshipped. That’s what it all boils down to. The law of entropy was seen in action in their spiritual discipline. There was a lack of orderly discipline in their worship and in their religious thinking. Their love for the Lord broke down over time until it was non-existent. Then, no surprise here of course, idolatry made its way into their hearts and practices. The vacuum in their hearts left by their rejection of God, the one true God immediately sucked in a whole host of false gods. The vacuum was powerful when God left.

The kingdoms are divided. Our study this evening is set in the northern kingdom, which retained the name, Israel. And in this northern kingdom, Jeroboam I, just a few chapters prior to ours, built centers of false worship in the cities of Bethel and Dan. He reasoned to the people that it was too far for them to come to Israel (Jerusalem) to worship Yahweh. It was just such a waste of time and resources according to Jeroboam. So instead, Jeroboam thought he would bring God to them. Only it was not the true God who he brought to them. All he brought to Bethel and Dan were golden calves. It was a ploy to intentionally turn the hearts of the people away from worshipping Yahweh and to be distracted by the façade of idol worship. What is fascinating about Jeroboam’s evil plan is that we’re told in I Kings 12, that it was all crafted to try to make the people more controllable and more submissive to his domineering leadership.

That is interesting. We get a window into his reasoning for it in I Kings 12. Selfish and corrupt leaders are always trying to distract their population of subjects to passive distractedness. This is true forever. This was true back then; this is true since then and it’s true now for sure. They are always, these leaders, these evil leaders, are scheming to feed people sugar water instead of real nutrition. And so that is what Jeroboam’s great contribution to Israel’s history was.

He introduced systematic, government-backed idolatry as the opium of the masses. The rest of the chapters leading up to where we are tonight in I Kings 18 recount the downward spiral of this northern kingdom as they chased after their false gods and they doubled down on their rejection of the Lord.

In chapter 15, Jeroboam’s house falls in embarrassing fashion. Baasha takes power over instead. Baasha did much evil and was judged by the Lord accordingly. Baasha is put out of the throne and Elah reigns for just two years before being assassinated by Zimri. Zimri takes control of the unstable northern kingdom here and then it lurches even further into paganism and idolatry. It’s just getting worse and worse and worse. Then Omri is put into power and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord just like the other kings before him. No surprise there. So, the Lord caused another succession to take place, and then finally, Ahab becomes king of Israel.

We are told in I Kings 16:30 that “Ahab, the son of Omri did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh more than all who were before him,” which is a profound statement. Ahab is an evil, evil man. The next verse there in I Kings 16:31 tells us that “as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians as a wife, and went and served Baal and worshiped him.” Ahab was the worst. He took the evil that was normalized by all of the evil kings before him, and he made those evils seem like child play. That is what the text is telling us here. Jeroboam was terrible, leading the people straight to idolatry of course. Omri was even worse than Jeroboam, we’re told. And now Ahab comes along, and the text tells us that he considered those evils trivial. He thought that they didn’t go far enough, so he took what was given to him and injected the steroid of blind sinfulness into it and set out to take Israel into the deepest, darkest pit of sin that he could possibly think of.

At the end of chapter 16, we see that Ahab built a temple for Baal right there in the capital of the northern kingdom. Then of course driven by this new wife, this Phoenician princess Jezebel and her prodding, he constructed Asherah which were tall poles which were meant to encourage the worship of the female counterpart to Baal, Asherah. Disgusting idolatry was rampant under Ahab’s reign. Because the flavor of the idolatry of the day surrounded fertility, all of the perverted ritualistic practices went on in the temples. Priests would take temple virgins and sexually abuse them in the temple as some sort of twisted worship. They would take the purity of the laws of Yahweh, and they’d spit on them with their vile deeds. With Jezebel, this Phoenician princess, pulling the strings and then Ahab willing to go along with whatever she said, they plunged Israel into catastrophic moral darkness. Anyone who dared to try defending the worship of the one true God, Yahweh, would be sought out and martyred. The whole culture was saturated with sin. People turned from the Lord in masses. They capitulated to the societal pressures. The state-funded, government-backed religion of Baal worship and Asherah worship was accepted as the norm. Children were born into this of course and they knew nothing beside it. It got bleaker and bleaker and darker and darker.

Then seemingly out of nowhere, a new character enters the scene. Look at the beginning of I Kings 17 with me if you would. God has spent the last many decades before chapter 17:1, allowing the law of entropy to do what it does, allowing the natural sinfulness of man to do its corrupting work. Now, as the scene is darkest, God introduces this unlikely man in I Kings 17:1, “Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead.”

Elijah the Tishbite. Elijah. He came from Tishbe and no one knows where Tishbe is. We kind of know but locally no one would have known where Tishbe was because it was on the outer frontiers. No one really cared about Tishbe. And then there’s this guy Elijah who comes walking out from Tishbe, the small settlement on the frontier and he is concerned. Elijah the Tishbite, a man of no renown. A man without royal blood. A man without any sort of training. And so, Yahweh sends this unlikely man, Elijah to confront Ahab and Jezebel. You’re already sensing a trend here. We’ll pick it up later, that God uses unlikely people to do big things for Himself.

But He sends Elijah here to confront Ahab and Jezebel. Someone must be an outspoken defender of Yahweh and Elijah is the man. God sends him to be the mouthpiece of truth and orthodoxy. We’re told here in 17:1 that “Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, (went directly to the king himself and said) As Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” So, God tells Ahab, through this prophet Elijah, that He is going to demonstrate for all to see that the Lord has had enough. Judgment is upon the land in the form of a severe drought. The Lord is going to show Ahab who is actually in control and He’s going to do it by striking where it hurts the most. Without precipitation, without dew even, everything dies. Life can’t be supported without water. Basic fundamental reality of this world.

Then, right after God has Elijah say this to Ahab, He instructs Elijah to leave and run away and hide from the wrath of Ahab. Good advice. Ahab’s pretty mad at this point. Elijah obeys. Somehow, he gets away, he hides, the rest of chapter 17 recounts how the Lord protects and feeds Elijah in his wilderness hiding. God even empowers Elijah to raise a widow’s son from death, further legitimizing him as a genuine prophet, not just some nobody from some no-name town. He is legit.

Then chapter 18 tells us that after these years of this punishing drought, the Lord orchestrates another meeting between Elijah and Ahab. Ahab comes to Elijah and the scene is set for us here in I Kings 18:17-40, “Now it happened when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, “Is this you, troubler of Israel?” (they meet again) And he said, I have not troubled Israel, (these are Elijah’s words) but you and your father’s house have, because you have forsaken the commandments of Yahweh and you have followed the Baals. So now then send and gather to me all Israel at Mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”

God is setting up here an undeniable show of His strength over and against the supposed strength of Baal. Many of you who’ve grown up in church know where the story is going, you know how it’s going to end, but it’s still fascinating to see how it builds up. He tells Elijah to challenge Ahab to a duel in which Ahab’s side has all the chips stacked on it. And Elijah is just one dude, with some God named Yahweh, who everybody has forgotten. Ahab sent a message, verse 20, among all the sons of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. Ahab is stupid. He actually, genuinely, thinks that he’s going to win this thing. He’s so deluded in his sin and so twisted by Jezebel and so committed to his evil that he fails to see the idiocy of what he is doing. He’s not only doing what Elijah told him to do, to invite 850 false-prophets of idols, but he also sends word out to all the sons of Israel, which was not requested of him by the way, so that they can all come and apparently, he thinks, watch him win this battle. He’s so blind that he really expects Baal and Asherah to show up and make him look good in front of his citizens. It’s all a stage set by a providential God who knows what He’s doing.

Verse 21, “And Elijah came near to all the people.” So, he sees this golden opportunity here with the people around to address the Israelites and confront them about their idolatrous drift away from Yahweh. He says, verse 21, and Elijah said, “How long will you be limping between two opinions?” What an indictment. How long will you be limping between two opinions? How spiritually lazy do you have to be to fail to see the foolishness of the lies you’ve been fed by your government.

What a way to describe the people’s failure to stand firm in their commitment to the Lord. “How long will you be limping between two opinions?” How brain dead are you, just limping around, never standing for anything. Even your own lives you don’t stand for Him. He says I Kings 18:21-24, “How long will you be limping between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people did not answer him a word. (It was quiet) Then Elijah said to the people, I alone am left a prophet of Yahweh, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men. Now let them give us two oxen; and let them choose one ox for themselves and cut it up, and place it on the wood, but place no fire under it; and I will prepare the other ox and put it on the wood, and I will not place fire under it. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of Yahweh, and the God who answers by fire, He is God. And all the people answered and said, “That is a good word.”

Pause right there for a second. Have you ever read this response from the Israelite onlookers and sort of given them some credit in your mind? They are willing to go along with this thing. Good on them. That’s kind of how I read it before to be quite honest. But really, they don’t deserve any credit for that response. Let’s be real. They’ve been told the rules of this challenge, and they don’t respond with, No, No, Elijah, we believe in Yahweh. You don’t need to do this to prove it. No! They respond with simply, with sure. This is easy for us. We’ll just sit here and see which god is real and which god is fake. You’ll settle it actually for us in our minds. We don’t really care one way or another. We’re just here for the show. Sure, that is a good word, Elijah.

That’s what you call limping between two opinions. They’re lost in their sinful stupidity. Look at I Kings 18:25-27. “So, Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose one ox for yourselves and prepare it first for you are many, and call on the name of your god, but place no fire under it. Then they took the ox which was given to them, and they prepared it and they called on the name of Baal from morning until noon saying, O Baal, answer us. But there was no voice and no one answered. And they limped (there’s a lot of limping going on) about the altar which they had made. (What a picture. You can just imagine them limping around. Some sort of sad weak dance) Now it happened at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, call out with a loud voice, for he is a god; either he is occupied or relieving himself, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.”

An exquisite use of righteous mockery if I’ve ever seen it. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you shouldn’t mock evil. Evil of all things ought to be mocked. Amen, Amen. I said it for myself.

I Kings 18:28-35, “So they cried with a loud voice and gashed themselves according to the custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out on them. Now it happened when noon had passed, that they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice; but there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention. Then Elijah said to all the people, ‘Come near to me.’ So, all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of Yahweh which had been pulled down. Then Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of Yahweh had come, saying, Israel shall be your name. And with the stones he built an altar in the name of Yahweh, and he made a trench around the altar, large enough to hold two seahs of seed. Then he arranged the wood and cut the ox into pieces and placed it on the wood. And he said,’ Fill four pitchers with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.’ And he said, do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And he said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time. And the water flowed around the altar, and he also filled the trench with water.”

Now here in verses 36 and 37, we are finally getting to our focal point for this evening, the text for this evening, this earnest prayer from Elijah to the one true God. He says this. I Kings 18:36-37, “Now it happened at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, O Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your slave and I have done all these things at Your word. Answer me, O Yahweh, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Yahweh, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again.” I Kings 18:38-40, “Then the fire of Yahweh 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. And all the people saw it and fell on their faces and said, Yahweh, He is God; Yahweh, He is God. Then Elijah said to them, ‘Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.’ So, they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there.”

It’s a powerful narrative. It’s not a story. I don’t like calling these stories. These are true historical facts, every single word that we just read describes a real thing that happened on a real mountain named Carmel. This is fascinating stuff. It’s almost sci-fi stuff that fits better in that category of our minds. But in reality, this is absolute truth.

What I would like to do with this text is offer to you a few elements of earnest prayer. Again, this series is about prayer, and I sometimes take some liberty and get into some theological issues which I will do again tonight. But I’d like for us to get at least six elements of earnest prayer out of this. They will lead us through this at least topically and a bit exegetically as we work through it.

The first one is this: Earnest Prayer Is Ignited By Trouble. We have already seen that Israel was in full-on, all-out rejection mode when it came to her relationship with Yahweh. This is one of the lowest points in Israel’s history as we’ve already seen and it’s because she lost her love for God.
Elijah comes on the scene as this bright spot in a very sad era. Trouble is all over and evil is dominant. The pressure cooker of a corrupt society is pushing in on the people and Elijah is tasked with spearheading an attempt at restoring order and truth. But this is par for the course when it comes to how God works. He has always worked through the macro events of history and the particular details of individuals’ lives to make the world see that He’s really in charge. That is the theme of the whole testament even. One of them at least.

Israel is stubborn. His people at this point in history were remarkably short-sighted. They were focused on exclusively whatever they would scratch the itch of the day. Then Elijah comes as a representative of this extreme minority at this point. He comes onto the scene defending some old stories about some god named Yahweh who’s said to have done some stuff for our ancestors way back when. And in the eyes of the people at this time, Yahweh would do nothing for them, even if He was real. He’s as real as Santa Claus to them.

So, you can imagine the pressure that this puts on Elijah. He’s seeing the situation clearly and he wants more than anything for the people to see that their covenant God still cares for them and wants them, but they’re too blind to see it. And so, it’s in this context of immense trouble, powerful pressure that Elijah looks to the heavens and utters this prayer. He’s standing on Mt. Carmel, and he’s just watched hundreds of foolish false prophets limp about around the altar to Baal, cutting and maiming themselves until the cracks in the rocks around there ran red with blood. He’s witnessing one of the worst displays of evil and insanity in history and he responds by praying. His response is to focus his attention not on the altar before him and the logistics of lighting it on fire, but rather he focuses on prayer. Not on the people around him who expected him to do something at this moment. He focuses his attention not on the doubts which might’ve been creeping into his mind about this whole thing. No. He focused his attention on prayer.

He approached His God in humble, earnest prayer. I think that there’s something which should be said here about Elijah’s determination to pray in the face of immense pressure. There’s a lot of implication here for us to pick up on and apply to our own views of prayer. So often, when we’re under pressure, what do we do? What do we do when we’re under pressure? In times of trouble, times of pressure and anxiousness and concern, we often just pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and grit our way through it right? We take urgent gritty action instead of slowly and trustingly pray. The first response when we encounter trouble so often and foolishly is how do I get through this right now. What do I need to do? Who do I need to meet with? I need to talk to my wife. We need to figure this out. Let’s look at the budget again. Let’s figure out who’s going to pick up the kids. Let’s figure out how I’m going to navigate this issue with my boss.

Rather, I think at least an implication, a loose one here is slow down. The pressure is not that bad. You have time for prayer. Slowly and trustingly pray. In times of trouble, we need not turn exclusively to ourselves for answers. The time will come to be gritty. It’s not right off the bat. We need not turn to our own powers and abilities as a first jerk reaction. When the going gets tough, the faithful believer’s immediate reaction ought to be to hit his knees and spend some focused moments in prayerful reorientation of his heart. The answer to our troubles isn’t found in just pushing our way through the problem and the pressure with shear human determination and strength. No. The answer isn’t us, but HIM. We’re not to be apathetic in action either. That’s not what I’m promoting here. But were to be quicker to pray than we are to write out our step-by-step plan to get through whatever our troubles are for the day. The mature believer is quick to pray, not quick to think he can fix his problems on his own.

Psalm 50:15 gives us good advice on this point. “Call upon Me says the Lord in the day of distress; I shall rescue you, and you will glorify Me.” At the beginning of this series last summer, we studied Hannah’s prayer of thankfulness to the Lord when she was finally given a son. But just a few verses before that in I Samuel 1:10, we’re told that she prayed a prayer that was not so joyful. This is before here prayers were answered. I Samuel 1:10-11. “She, bitter of soul, prayed to Yahweh and wept despondently. And she made a vow and said, “O Yahweh of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a seed amongst men, then I will give him to Yahweh all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head.” First reaction for her was to pray a prayer that was quite sad but raw and honest.

Psalm 18:6 “In my distress I called upon Yahweh and cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry for help before Him came into His ears.” When we’re confronted by life’s troubles and pressures, we ought to train our hearts to cry out to God alone. The temptation is to seek to find a way to get ourselves through it. To rely upon brute force and human ingenuity. But of course, we know that in moments of sobriety like this evening, as we look at these truths in Scripture, such thinking is just foolishness, isn’t it?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention or draw some parallels between the cultural idolatry of the day in I Kings 18 as we’re reading and even our day today. This passage isn’t about what pride month is, and I don’t plan on talking about pride month for the rest of this sermon. But my goodness, aren’t there parallels? Hasn’t our world turned away from Yahweh? Aren’t we surrounded by people who care a lot more about the idols? Maybe not golden calves and idols with names, but their version of idols way more than they care about serving the Lord, the one true God.

I think we ought not to think of ourselves as invincible to these cultural pressures. No yes, this is a wonderful church. This is a wonderfully stalwart church. Praise the Lord for that. Those brick walls are really strong. Keeps out all the gay pride flags and nonsense in June especially. But we’re not immune to cultural ridiculousness. We’re not perfect. We don’t have some sort of barrier around this building that protects us from everything. I think we ought to take it seriously when the culture around us turns to idolatry. I’m going to take it seriously and what’s our gut reaction? Pray. Oh Yahweh, will you please come here and do a work of protection. Will you please keep us from this ridiculousness.

That was our first element of Earnest Prayer, Earnest Is Ignited By Trouble. Second element and we’ll go a little faster through these next few so I can leave time for the last one. The second one is Earnest Prayer is Reverential.

We get this now out of the first part of verse 36. I’m going to read this first part of verse 36 again here and I want you to zero in with me on the how of Elijah’s approach to the Lord in prayer. The how of how he does it. I Kings 18:36, “Now it happened at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said.” We’ll stop there. There’s a lot there for us to pick up on.

Elijah doesn’t approach God in an emotional frenzy, does he? I mean you read the passage that proceeds with this. It’s pretty chaotic. There’s blood everywhere. There are 450 prophets of Baal limping around. This probably took hours and hours. They dug a massive trench; a big moat filled with water. There was a lot going on here. Really Elijah should be scared for his life because if this doesn’t happen, he’s dead. Yet his prayer begins with this framing, “Now it happened at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said.” He didn’t come here and exclaim. He didn’t come near and frantically babel about. He came near and spoke. He was steady, he was calm, he was measured, he was reverent. I think we can take a lot from that. When we approach God are we doing so calmly? Are we doing so reverentially? That’s a good word that you should associate with your prayer life. Reverential. I think it characterizes a lot of what we do here at this church. Some people come in and say why isn’t everybody dancing around your stage and lifting their hands above their head and waving flags and stuff.
The answer is, not that we don’t love the Lord as much as you do, it’s rather that we respect the Lord. We revere Him. We approach Him calmly, respectfully, reverentially, just as Elijah did here. Psalm 145:18, “Yahweh is near to all who call upon Him. To all who call upon Him in truth.” We call upon Him in truth. Not in emotional frenzy. But in truth.

Think of the way that Abraham approaches God in Genesis 18:27, I like the way it’s phrased there. “Now behold, (Abraham speaking) I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes.” It’s a great way to approach the Lord, isn’t it? Exodus 34:8, Moses approaches the Lord this way. “Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship when he encountered God. He said, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord,” and he goes on to pray.

Solomon, in his famous prayer for Israel in this same book, I Kings 8:22-23 said, “Then Solomon stood before the altar of Yahweh before all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands toward heaven. And he said, (notice the reverence here) “O Yahweh, the God of Israel, there is no god like You in heaven above or upon earth beneath, keeping covenant and lovingkindness to Your slaves.” He reveres Yahweh. That’s throughout Scripture. You can find it all over. You can find it in the New Testament. All the Apostles, all the Biblical writers revered the Lord. It’s a calm approach to God.

I want to know when we lost this reverence. When did we start calling God daddy God? I know we chuckle at that and that’s kind of preposterous. It won’t happen here ever. But there are churches even in this town who are doing that ridiculousness. They claim to believe the same Gospel we believe. What happened to the evangelical church? When did progressive pastors think they could start getting off by addressing God as their daddy? When did Jesus become our best friend? When did we lose our reverence for God?

I’m going to ruin a Christian artist for you. That’s one of my favorite things to do. Ruin Christian music artist for people. I don’t know if any of you like Kings Kaleidoscope. They have some catchy tunes. They have this one song. I was befuddled to hear it. I had it on a playlist, mainstream worship playlist on Apple Music and they came on. It was like a song of prayer, and I thought that was kind of cool, that’s catchy and then the “f” word came through. I thought wait a second, what? Went back, played it, had the little “e” next to it on the song. The “f” word in a song of prayer. I go and I looked it up and I found an interview with the guy. Apparently, this guy, a lot of people like him. Mainstream, generally conservative Christian artist, he says “well I’m just being honest. Just be honest. That was really “bleeping” hard, and I just wanted to be honest in my song.”

Ok now honesty, I’m all for. You need to change your heart though at that point, right? We lost reverence for God. We have lost reverence for the Lord, haven’t we? I love that we are so careful with the words that we say when we pray to the Lord. I love that we slow down, take a pause before we pray. Instead of just, hey Lord, thanks for what you did for me today, Amen. Slow it down. Revere this awesome God before us.

Here’s the third point and we’ll get this out of the next part of verse 36. Earnest Prayer Respects God’s Authority. “Now it happened at the time of the offering in the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, O Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel.” You sense the respect for God’s authority there? “Oh Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be know that You are God in Israel.” How often do we rush into prayer with guns blazing, treating it like God’s our genie in a bottle without stopping to vocalize our appreciation for His authority? How often do we do that? If we’re being honest more than we should. We go to the Lord, and we just immediately start asking for stuff. We go to the Lord, and we just immediately start telling Him about our troubles.

Now He wants us to ask for stuff, we’ll get to that. He wants us to tell Him about our troubles; we’ll get to that. But there is an orderliness to prayer here. It’s shown throughout Scripture and we see it right here in this opening line from this prayer of Elijah. Oh, Yahweh the God of Abraham, I respect your authority. Oh Yahweh the God Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are the God of Israel and I understand that and I respect that and before all these people looking at me and with blood dripping down these rocks, I want everyone to know that I respect your authority. If no one else does, I do. That’s a good way to open a prayer.

Matthew 6:10 shows us Jesus doing a similar thing when He shows us how to pray. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 26:39, we looked at this in our last installment of HEARTS AFLAME. This is Jesus. “He went a little beyond them and fell on His face prayed saying, My Father, if it’s possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” You are the author of history. Your will should dominate my will. I want to recognize Your authority. Luke 22:42 says “Father, if You are willing, (Jesus again) remove this cup from Me, yet not My will but Yours.” James 4:15 says, “Instead, you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” Prayer is large part an exercise of submitting yourself to God’s authority. Every time we bow our heads and get on our knees, every time we open up that prayer journal and start writing stuff down, every time we’re in the car and your praying, that’s an exercise of bending yourself to God’s authority. Getting before the throne, throwing yourself at His feet, asking Him to change you. Respecting His authority.

Similarly, this is our fourth element of earnest prayer. Earnest Prayer Remembers One’s Rightful Place. If you understand His authority, you will remember your rightful place. He says in this prayer, “O Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your slave and I have done all these things at Your word.” I have done all these things at Your Word. I am Your slave, he says. He identifies himself right after he identifies God’s place, he identifies his place and he identifies his place as way below God’s. Never does he think God is his daddy. Never does he think Jesus is his homeboy or his friend or whatever. This is the God of the universe. Elijah doesn’t mess around here. He says you are God. Let it be known that you’re the God of Israel and I, as for me, I am just your slave. Slave. I have no will in this. You say, I do. No questions asked. I have done all the things at Your Word. I’ve prepared for this situation. We’re now on this mountain. I’ve done everything to Your specification, because I’m your slave.

I think we all, in our normal lives, have experienced that humility can go a long way. Employees at work don’t last very long when they’re extremely prideful. March into the boss’ office and say hey listen here, you’re the boss, but I could also be a boss. When you’re a boss, I know that on paper you’re above me on the orb chart but really people like me more. Humility goes a long way, right? We learn this just in everyday life. Hey boss, you’re the boss. Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll make it happen. Now on a very small scale that’s how it looks. On a very grand scale when we approach the God of the universe, ought we not to have even more humility? We ought to do what Elijah did here. I’m your slave God.

James 1:10 says “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord. There is really no other option when you are in the presence of the Lord. You have got to be humble; and if you’re not, it won’t last long.

Mary called herself in her prayer “a slave of the Lord.” Paul constantly calls himself in the New Testament “a slave of Christ Jesus.” I know it’s almost cringey how cliché this is and you’ve probably heard this sentiment before, but I think there’s a level of truth to it. Prayer looses power when pride enters the room. I’m probably putting myself with a bunch of progressive pastors when I quote that. It is true right? Prayer looses power when pride enters the room. It’s pithy, it’s cliché almost, but it’s true. If you bring pride into your relationship to the Lord in the way that you pray to Him, everything you’re asking for here is just losing value. What are doing? You’re embarrassing yourself; you’re looping around.

Let’s get a fifth point here. Earnest Prayer Is Bold In Supplication. So, after he’s done all these things, he’s already carefully approached the Lord in prayer with reverence. He’s already carefully approached the Lord with specific deference to His authority. He’s already approached the Lord in prayer in an acknowledgement of his own rightful and lowly place in the relationship as a slave and now ventures he to be bold in his supplication.
He says this, I Kings 18:37, “Answer me, O Yahweh, answer me.” He’s making demands here. He’s saying please do this that this people may know that You “oh Yahweh are God and that you have turned their hearts back again to you.” Answer me O Yahweh, answer me. We got to have a category for saying God, answer me. I need an answer. I really want an answer. Please. Your prayers can sound that way. In fact, I think they ought to. It’s modeled for us throughout Scripture. The problem is usually we start out that way and we forget about all the other stuff.

Do it in order. Be reverential. Submit to God’s authority. Call yourself a slave. That is a good practice to do in prayer. Remember your rightful place and then be bold in supplication. Hebrews 4:16 gives us a New Testament principle here. “Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” I John 5:14,15. “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, (that’s an important caveat, it’s got to be according to His will) He hears us.  And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, (again according to His will) we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”

There’s boldness there. Ephesians 3:12, “We have boldness and confident access through faith]in Him.” And then of course Philippians 4:6. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Let them be made known. Do not just come to Him in prayer, be reverential, respect His authority, call yourself a slave, Amen. No, He wants the rest of it too. We’re told to do it. We’re told to supplicate. We’re told to ask Him for things. Lord oh Yahweh, answer me. This is important in my mind.

Matthew 7:7-8. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.   For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” You will never get it if you don’t ask for it.

Finally, our sixth element into Earnest Prayer is this. Earnest Prayer Is Eager For God’s Glorification. I think this might be the main point of it all. If you walk away with nothing else out of I Kings 18; it is that God ought to be glorified; and when He is not, He will make it such that He is.

Elijah gets to play a small part in this as he asks for God to glorify Himself. Look at it there, verse 37, “Answer me, O Yahweh, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Yahweh, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again.” He’s asking for something according to God’s will. We’re importing that from the New Testament that’s a principle that we have now that we live under. You ask according to His will; you will have it. That’s what Elijah’s doing here. Lord, I know, You told me the plan. We were out in the wilderness for a few years during the drought. You told me all about this. You told me how to do this. It’s here, it’s happening, O Yahweh, You’re in control. You’re in authority. I’m just your slave. Please answer me. Why? What? What is he asking for? At this point He could ask for a lot of different things. He could throw a wrench into I and ask for something for himself.

No! It says that this people may know that you O Yahweh are God and that You have turned their heart back again. Elijah’s most ultimate desire wasn’t that he would win the contest. He wasn’t feeling bad about mocking Baal just a little bit prior to this. He wasn’t concerned with his own life even though he knew that if God didn’t answer him here, he’d be killed. Elijah wasn’t concerned with earthly things. He was concerned with what? What is revealed as his heart’s greatest desire as he finishes this greatest prayer of his life on this mountain with everyone watching. He wants to see God glorified! “Answer me, O Yahweh, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Yahweh, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again.” He wants the watching world to know that they were all wrong and that God is God and that Baal is nothing. He wants them to know that they must turn back to this Lord so that they can receive life. They can receive the blessings that come with being in a covenant relationship with Yahweh at this time. He wants them all to know that they need to turn to Yahweh so that He would receive all of the glory which He deserves, as the Lord.

Elijah’s primary goal in all of this is to see God’s power highlighted, and so he prays for it. Elijah isn’t the only one who prays for this for this reason. Jesus the Son of God Himself prays to the Father in His distress. We looked at this last time. John 12:27-28, “Now My soul has become dismayed (Jesus says) what shall I say.” He’s at a loss for words in this prayer and we get that record. “Father, save Me from this hour. But for this purpose, I come at this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Jesus in His inner turmoil in the garden of Gethsemane was turned all around in His mind. Of course He is omniscient. Of course He is God. And yet He is feeling these emotions. “He says Father what shall I say?” That’s a quote. Father save me from this hour? Shall I say that? For this purpose, I came to this hour Father. He is reminding Himself. Glorify Your name Father. That ought to be the driving force of all of our prayers for all time. Yes, you can pray about your job situation. Yes, you can pray for a spouse. Yes, you can pray for the salvation of others. You ought to do all those things. But why do you pray for them? So that God would be glorified. It’s the underpinning of everything in the universe. God’s glory. He deserves more of it, and He will get more of it and we ought to want to be a part of giving it to Him.

Elijah here in the showdown on Mt. Carmel displayed the same commitment to the Father’s glory that Jesus displayed centuries later. In God’s glory which is the ultimate concern of all faithful believers, Elijah asked for it, begged for it. Said answer me God. It’s not our own reputation and honor that should drive our prayers. Rather it is His and His alone.

We should seek to understand that God works in such a way as to highlight this in Himself. You see this throughout the Old Testament. You see it throughout the New Testament. Especially with these large form narratives as we see large swaths of history portrayed in just a few chapters like here in I Kings. We get to see the thread which ties everything together which is that God always works to bring Himself more glory.

I want to make this last point that I find implicit here in I Kings and I think we’ll end with this here because I think it serves as a good theological bookend for this prayer and the subject we’re considering here and that Elijah wants us to see it at least. God loves to set up circumstances such that the earthly odds are stacked against Himself. That’s just the truth. You see it everywhere. God loves to do that. He wants to make Himself by all measurables, the weaker-looking side in the contest against the powers of Satan and the world. He loves to display His unlimited power against the backdrop of rampant sin which looks so powerful and so consuming. He revels in it. He shows clear and simple truth in such a way that it would look foolish to the world. He sits there and receives the glory when people do believe it.

On Mt. Carmel, He had Elijah be outnumbered by hundreds to one. He had His altar drenched with water so that any normal fire would have a hard time burning it. He allowed for the popular thinking of the day to swing all the way to pervasive idolatry before intervening. Many generations of these kings lurched Israel in that direction. He allowed it. That’s alright. It’s going to set it up even better for what I have planned. God loves to stack the earthly odds against Himself, just to prove that He really is the all-powerful God of the universe.

The Apostle Paul probably more than anyone else grasped this. He wrote about it in a letter to the church in Corinth and I think we should go there so flip with me if you would over to I Corinthians 1 and we’ll end here. I want you to see how it’s articulated here to this church in Corinth.

I Corinthians 1:18-21. Paul writes this, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased, through the foolishness of the message preached, to save those who believe.” He goes on and we don’t have time to get into it, to describe the division that comes about by this foolishness and wisdom in contradiction to each other. There is division in this world because of this. There’s a division between those who see truth for what it is and those who reject truth and call it foolishness. The sad irony is that what the fools call foolishness only reveals and magnifies their foolishness all the more. The Gospel is utter ridiculousness to the world around us, right? And yet to us, it’s the most precious truth in the whole universe. It’s divisive. It separates the wheat from the chaff. The heart-breaking thing is that this dividing line often runs right down through households. Through families.

Luke 12:51–53 tells us this. Jesus explained this divisionary nature of His death and resurrection to His disciples. He said, “Do you think that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” A lot of division as a result of the Gospel truth.

We’re a long way from Mt. Carmel here as we read this, but the confrontation between the apparent foolishness of the cross and the worldly wisdom of idolatry is alive and well in our world. “Do you think that Jesus came to grant peace on earth? Jesus Himself tells you, no, but rather division. Jesus came to die on that cross and in so doing, create for the entire population of humanity, a clear dividing line. The word of the cross, it’s foolishness. If you think it’s foolishness, you’re perishing. But if you think it’s the power of God, you’re being saved. How you view that thing determines everything.

Paul writes right here in I Corinthians 1:18, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” The cross wasn’t in view on Mt. Carmel. Don’t get me wrong here. But the principle of the dividing line of belief surely was.

Are you willing to see the fire come down and burn up the altar in a magnificent display of power and chalk it up to happenstance or some other idol getting involved? Some people probably thought that sitting there on the mountain. Could you stand there on that mountain and say that really? Could you attribute what you just saw to the wrong reality, the wrong entity?

In our day, people look upon the cross of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the most historically verifiable fact in all of history and they always find a way to reject it. They will come up with new ways to reject it. They display their ironic foolishness in calling that which is wise foolish. For us Paul says here, we’re recipients of the granting of divine wisdom given to us by God Himself to lead us to the knowledge of the truth which is our salvation.

This is the beauty of the doctrine of salvation, brothers and sisters. The Gospel is something to which we’re called to respond with belief. But it’s also something that we can’t understand unless we’re predisposed by God to believe it. The point here is not to call upon the Corinthians to view the cross as God’s power and not as foolishness. Paul’s not saying hey stop looking at it as foolishness, look at it as wise. He’s not saying that. He’s saying the only way you can see it as wise is that if God makes you see it as wise, otherwise you’re in the category of thinking it’s foolish and you know what that does. It gives God all the glory. You can boast of none of it.

You can accept no credit for seeing the wisdom of it. Because without Him you would call it foolish. This is why no matter how hard we try and how patient we are in explaining, people still won’t believe in Christ. There are people out there who just will not get it. They’ll call it foolishness. Paul is telling us here that the world sees the cross as foolishness because they’re already perishing. Those who’re being saved, the chosen whom God predestined before time to come to faith, those people see the cross for what it rightfully is, the power of God.

This is the main point. God loves to stack the earthly odds against Himself just to prove that He really is the all-powerful God of the universe. Elijah shows us that in his prayer. The narrative of I Kings 18 highlights that as the undercurrent of the narrative. God is in control. Everyone else is merely playing catch-up. They’re limping about an altar that has no meaning. It’s my prayer that we would understand which altar is the one corresponding to the proper God, the one real God of the universe and that we wouldn’t limp about between two opinions as the Israelites did. Let’s pray.