"The God Who Shows Up" (June 21, 2026 Sermon)

Text: 1 Kings 18:20-40

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

A drought that will not break. A nation hedging its bets. A prophet who refuses to let the crowd hide behind silence. We sit with 1 Kings 18 and the unforgettable showdown on Mount Carmel, where Elijah puts the real question on the table: who do you actually serve when the stakes are high and the sky stays empty? 

We walk through the story’s tension and its sharp edges, from Ahab and Jezebel’s embrace of Baal worship to the prophets’ frantic religious performance and Elijah’s bold repair of a ruined altar. We talk about why Elijah drenches the sacrifice with water, why the fire matters, and why the phrase “no voice, no answer, no response” still haunts anyone who has ever trusted a god that cannot hold the weight we put on it. Along the way, we offer a pastoral note on the “limping” metaphor, making clear it is not aimed at disability but at a chosen, divided posture of the heart. 

Then we bring the text into modern life, where allegiance gets split in quieter ways: faith that blesses peace while normalizing violence, prayers about debt inside an economy built to trap people, creation as “gift” treated like a commodity, and Jesus as Lord rivaled by nationalism or political identity. The good news we cling to is simple: we limp, but God does not. God stays faithful to the poor, the stranger, and the vulnerable, and droughts can end when we stop playing the fence and choose a life that serves both God and neighbor. If this resonated, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find us.

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Transcript

Opening Prayer And Invocation

SPEAKER_00 0:01

O God, you have the power to make a desert, a place of renewal, and a cross, a sign of redemption. Send your Holy Spirit so that we can hear you and entrust ourselves completely to you for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

Scripture Reading From 1 Kings

SPEAKER_00 0:20

The reading is from 1 Kings 18, verses 20 through 29. So Ahab sent to all the Israelites and assembled the prophets at Mount Carmel. Elijah then came near to all the people and said, How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal then follow him. The people did not answer him a word. Then Elijah said to the people, I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, Baal's prophets, number four hundred and fifty. Let two bulls be given to us. Let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire on to it. I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. Then you call on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The God who answers by fire is indeed God. All the people answered, well spoken. Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many. Then call on the name of your God, but put no fire to it. So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, O Baal, answer us. But there was no voice and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud, surely he is a god. Either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened. Then they cried aloud, and as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them. As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation. But there was no voice, no answer, and no response. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

The Mount Carmel Showdown Setup

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Back to the text. So as I was saying, I don't know if any of you all are fans of old Westerns, Western movies or Western books, but there's always that cliche, cliche um shootout scene, right? Where the two men are in the streets and uh they're they have their hands kind of hovering over their holster. I can't do the whistle really well, but you hear the or whatever, you know, and a tumbleweed's going by. Everybody's shutting the doors of their shops because they know that trouble's about to come. Well, that's kind of what this story is. It's this classic showdown between the prophets of Baal or Baal, however you want to pronounce it, and Elijah representing God. Well, the uh the prophets of Baal had their turn, not to much success. So, where we pick up now is what happens when Elijah and Yahweh get their say. So we pick back up at 1 Kings 18. When Elijah said to all the people, Come closer to me, and all the people came closer to him. First he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be your name. And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord. Then he made a trench around the altar, large enough to contain two measures of seed, and next he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. Then he said, Fill four jars with water, and pour it on the uh pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood. And then he said, Do it a second time, and they did it a second time. And again he said, We need more water, do it a third time, and they did it a third time, so that water ran all around the altar and filled the trench also with water. And at the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back. And then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, The Lord indeed is God, the Lord indeed is God. Elijah said to them, Seize the prophets of Baal, and do not let one of them escape. And then this last sentence all of his preachers try to ignore or read very quickly. And then they seized them, and Elijah brought them down to the water Kishon and killed all of them there. So, yeah. Not a happy ending for the prophets of Baal. Friends, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

A Modern Drought And A Porch Storm

SPEAKER_01 6:16

All right, glory, glory, hallelujah. It rained a few days ago. I don't know if it did where y'all are, or y'all were, but where I live in southeast Guilford County, we finally had a big rain on Thursday night, which is good because my poor yard is about as poor as parsed as the Sahara at the moment. I'm guessing yours might be as well. I'm guessing you know that our region here in the triad is in a severe drought, one that I'm told at this point would require approximately 15 inches of rain in the span of a month to get us out of. So when it finally rained a substantial amount at our house last Thursday evening, our youngest Winnie got scared of the thunder when she was trying to sleep. So I invited her to join me on the front porch of our house, where we have about half a dozen rocking chairs. And together we sat and listened to the rain, watched the lightning, and marveled at the thunder. So I tried to show Winnie that such a storm is actually a beautiful thing that our world needs for our plants and our trees to grow and flourish. Now, though our drought here in North Carolina has only been going on for a few months, the droughts in today's passage that precipitated these events had gone on for more than three years.

Ahab, Jezebel, Baal, And The Famine

SPEAKER_01 7:35

And the text gives us a very clear reason for it, too. This three-year drought was because the Israelites, under the leadership of King Ahab, began to worship a pagan idol named Baal. As a reminder, last week we observed the split of Israel into two kingdoms, with Solomon's son Rehoboam arrogantly ostracizing his constituents to the point of rebellion. And so Jeroboam and the ten of the tribes of Israel seceded from the monarchy and became what was known as Israel in the northern territories, while Rehoboam and the remainder of the people became the nation of Judah in the southern part. And today's story concerns the events of the northern nation of Israel since the events of last week's passage. Jeroboam's reign lasted 22 years and was followed by a series of rather unremarkable, short-lived reigns. Fast forward to the year 869 BCE, and the worst of them arrives, a man named Ahab. No, not the captain from Moby Dick, but another person named Ahab. Scripture does not hold back on its disdain for this king. 1 Kings 16, 33 says unceremoniously, Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel that were before him. This was largely because Ahab took for himself a wife named Jezebel, who was the daughter of King Ethbal of the Sidonians. Now the Sidonians worshipped a pagan idol named Baal, that we've already mentioned, the God of fertility. And not surprisingly, Jezebel brought with her the religion of her home. And King Ahab led the Israelites away from worshiping God and instead turned their devotion to Baal. Needless to say, God did not take kindly to this turn of events. The first commandment is pretty clear, and the Israelites, not for the first time, mind you, seem to have forgotten it. So God brought forth a prophet to set the record straight and return the Israelites to faithfulness, and his name was Elijah. He was a Tishbite. His first face-to-face encounter with King Ahab is one that I've always found quite comical. Elijah runs into Ahab in the wilderness while Ahab is literally walking around looking for water for the Israelites, because things have gotten that desperate. It's an absurd notion when a drought gets so bad, the king himself has no better idea than to just wander around looking for water.

Projection, Power, And A Prophetic Comeback

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Apparently Elijah's reputation preceded him because the first thing, the evil King Ahab says to Elijah is, Is it you, you troubler of Israel? Now here I want to pause to acknowledge this thing called projection. Projection is a psychological term for the phenomenon when one person accuses another of something that they themselves are guilty of. For example, a corrupt politician might accuse another one of being corrupt as a way to distract from their own corruption. Ahab calling Elijah a troubler of Israel is ironic, as the text is very clear that the drought and the resulting famine are a divine indictment of Ahab's sinfulness, not of Elijah. Elijah, however, will have none of it and simply replies to Ahab, I have not troubled Israel, you have troubled Israel. So this is, of course, the very first biblical record of the famous comeback. I know what you are, but what am I, right? And so this begins, as I said, one of the most epic showdowns in all of Scripture. Elijah challenges Ahab to a contest at a place called Mount Carmel, and the rules are simple. Ahab is to bring his prophets of Baal, and Elijah will represent God, and we'll see which God is, which God shows up. And so they do just that. On one side of the duel is Ahab with 450 Baal prophets, and on the other side, all by himself, is Elijah representing team Yahweh, right? Two altars are built, one for each team. Each altar has a slaughtered bull on top, and each team takes turns, asking their God to send down fire from the heavens to ignite the altar. Elijah graciously offers Ahab and his Baal buddies the first turn. But before the contest formally begins, Elijah invites the Israelites, all who have gathered to witness this great contest, to abandon their worship of Baal before things get nasty. This is what he says.

Limping Between Opinions And False Worship

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Elijah says to the Israelites, How long will you go limping between two different opinions? He says. Yes, indeed, friends, there is time for compromise, but Elijah reminds us that there is also a time to take sides, to let our yes be yes, and to let our no be no. And now it's worth pausing here to note that Joshua said something very similar long before Elijah ever showed up to Mount Carmel. He says, you may remember the phrase, now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, Joshua told the Israelites then, choose this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my household, anybody know how knows how it is finished? We will serve the Lord, right? Friends, the limping, so to speak, of divided allegiances is as old as the people of God themselves. Every generation since has had to reckon with the same question. When it comes to whom we actually serve, where does our loyalty land? But of course, Ahab doesn't heed Elijah's final warning, and so the contest begins. For hours the prophets of Baal try to get Baal to show up. They limp around the altar, the text tells us in this kind of bizarre, comical pagan dance, hoping to lure Baal into bringing the fire. They need his proof of Baal's existence and superiority. But the limping routine doesn't do the trick. So in desperation, the prophets draw out their swords and begin cutting themselves, hoping that spilled blood will prompt their idol to act, but lo and behold, nothing seems to work. And then Elijah decides to rub salt in their wounded pride by taunting them with a little bit of potty humor. Yes, you heard that correctly. Elijah mocks them by saying, Cry aloud, perhaps your God is asleep and must be awakened. Now, you would not know this from reading the English, but that phrase in Hebrew is actually a Hebrew euphemism for what someone would say when they had to step away to relieve themselves. So Elijah is feeling pretty confident that God's going to win this contest. In fact, he's so confident that he instructs the Israelites to douse his altar with water, not just once, but twice, and then three times, because he wants to make sure that whatever's about to go down cannot be mistaken for a trick or some sort of illusion. Finally, Elijah lifts his hands to the heavens and asks Yahweh to show up to establish his divine authority to remind the Israelites once again that the first commandment is the first commandment for a reason. And sure enough, fire rains down from heaven, swallowing up the whole altar, cooking that bowl, and then licking up every ounce of water that is poured upon it. So the conclusion of the contest is at the same time predictable, bloody, and swift. The Israelites unsurprisingly start whistling a different tune. They go, Oh, oh yes! Yahweh is God. We've been saying that all along. And then Elijah orders the slaughter of the 450 prophets of Baal. Ahab reads the room and flees into the arms of his wife Jezebel, and the three-year drought comes to an immediate end.

Where We Split Our Allegiance Today

SPEAKER_01 16:32

But at a deeper level. This dramatic scene reminds me of what I think remains true to this day, that we are all guilty to one extent of another, or another, of playing the field, of both knowingly and unknowingly splitting our allegiance between different gods. And we can all, myself included, can be guilty of this from time to time. We say, blessed are the peacemakers, but then we fund the largest military apparatus in human history without blinking. We pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. While we all participate in an economy that is designed to keep people in debt. We confess that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, but then we can treat creation as a resource to be extracted rather than a gift to be shared. We affirm that every person is made in the image of God, but then we build systems that sort people by their economic usefulness. We baptize our children into a community that transcends nations and transcends borders, but then we let nationalism determine who we think deserves the dignity. And finally, we call Jesus Lord, but we reserve our deepest loyalty for whichever party or politician promises to protect what we have or bring back what we've lost. You see, the Hebrew word for limping is pesach, and it really just means the inability to walk straight and upright.

A Pastoral Note On The Limping Metaphor

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Now, a pastoral note, before I go any further with this image of limping, I want to pause and say something very clearly. If you are someone who walks with a limp, lives with a disability, or maybe whose body simply moves around this world differently than others, I want to be very clear. Elijah is not talking about you. Not even a little bit. When, in fact, if you look at what the prophets of Baal are doing in this scene, they're actually choosing to limp. They are performing it theatrically as a kind of desperate religious theater, mimicking a posture of vulnerability to curry favor with a God who can't hear them. So I want to be very clear. Elijah isn't condemning disability. He's condemning its cynical performance in the service of a lie. The limping that he's talking about is a limping of the soul, a divided loyalty of the heart. And it is something that is chosen and not giving, not given. So I just want to be clear that when I use the word limping this morning, I'm using it in the way that Elijah does as a metaphor for the condition of people who know exactly who God is and yet can't quite bring themselves to act like it. So today's passage invites us to reflect on the places in our lives where we are, again, metaphorically limping. When we say one thing and do another, when we pay lip service to one God, but then turn around and give our money, our trust, or our vote to another, uh, when uh predominantly white institutions such as ours post on social media celebrating Juneteenth while failing to actively dismantle policies and procedures that perpetuate racist systems. There are many ways, knowingly and unknowingly, that good people can fall into these postures, some that we may understand and some that we may be unaware of.

God’s Faithfulness And The End Of Drought

SPEAKER_01 20:02

But there is good news in this text. And the good news is this if the Israelites' limping serves as a metaphor for their unfaithfulness, then we likewise can affirm that God is always faithful. Because that verb limping in the Old Testament is only used to describe human behavior, but never God's. God is faithful, God is faithful to neighborliness, God is faithful to the poor and the downtrodden, God is always faithful to the immigrant, the stranger, the gay kid, the broke single mother trying to make ends meet, the farmer that's working so hard to feed others that he can barely feed his own family. God is faithful amid the droughts and the crises of our own making and amid the violent patterns of our own complicity. Throughout all of our mess and our muck, God remains faithful. So, friends, there is a time to compromise. There is a time to meet in the middle, but there is also a time to make a choice. A time to acknowledge that our capacity for allegiance is a finite resource, and that limping, so to speak, metaphorically, has really deadly consequences. And so here's the other piece of good news in this text that I'll leave you with today. Droughts do come to an end. Last Thursday, as I sat on our front porch with Winnie watching the rain come down and the thunder shake the ground beneath our feet, I was reminded that droughts do come to an end. They come to an end when we collectively choose to stop playing the fence and dividing our allegiances. They come to an end when we strive to live out our faith in ways that serve both God and neighbor. When we dare, as the prophet Amos once dreamed it, to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. In the name of God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us God's beloved children say.