Praying with the Former Prophets

1 Kings 18 Well, the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel blew my mind today as I was reflecting on it. There are some really weird details in the chapter that come together once you see it. First, the chapter opens much like the previous one: Elijah was sent to King Ahab with something to do about rain. In Chapter 17, it was to announce that no rain would come, and in chapter 18, it was to cause rain to come. We will remember that the rain was shut up because the people of Israel had turned from God and refused to repent from their wicked deeds. The second weird thing is that we will remember that James claims that the prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective. He supports that claim by referencing these two visits of Elijah to King Ahab. Neither one of these visits shows a prayer in the actual story. When Elijah went to King Ahab, he did not announce the return of the rain, but instead called all the prophets of Baal to Mount Carmel for the iconic showdown between the gods (the Lord God against the pagan gods). This is the only time in the story when Elijah actually does pray, but it was for God to demonstrate who He is before the people, not for rain to be restored. We might recall that God sent fire from the heavens to consume the offering and the entire altar. Then Elijah led the people as they rebelled against the prophets of Baal, and they all killed 450 false prophets. Usually, by this point, we have forgotten about the promise of rain at the beginning of the chapter because this story seems to go in a different direction. That amnesia makes the rain at the end of the story seem like a confusing end to the story. Elijah told Ahab to go home and prepare for the rain, while he and his servant went up on a hill to watch the rainstorm come in. Even when the rain wasn’t coming, Elijah kept sending his servant to look for the approaching clouds because he knew they would come. How does all this make sense? God sent Elijah to announce—and apparently pray for—rain to cease in the land because the people refused to repent. After three and a half years, Elijah came back to restore the rain. He called the people to the showdown and prayed for God to demonstrate who He is. God did demonstrate His power before the people and the people returned to God. Once the people had returned to God, there was no longer reason for God to withhold His blessing. So, Elijah’s visit to Ahab was the occasion that brought about his prayer, which in turn brought about the repentance of the people, which in turn brought the rain. It is a very roundabout method, but the whole thing was about Elijah visiting Ahab to bring the rain through prayer. This gives new meaning to what James wrote about the prayers of a righteous person. I think, more than anything, this should inspire prayerfulness in us. Let us be people who pray, having seen what it can accomplish. Let us be people who are obedient because we know obedience is often the vehicle of answered prayers. Let us pray in ways that might not be clear to us because we know that God uses all of it for good. 1 Kings 19 I am convinced that Elijah’s flight into the wilderness after Mount Carmel is one of the least understood passages in the Hebrew Scriptures. We always teach that he had some sort of pity party, but even that does not explain the passage well. There is a lot more going on that is tragic and deserves our prayer. Elijah was asked what was going on in his heart and he offered to God that he wanted to die because he was no better than his fathers. At the next asking, he elaborated on the point. He said he had been jealous (or zealous) for God and no one else like him was left. Most commentators remark that his prayer is only how he felt because it did not reflect reality, but I am not so sure. The passion Elijah had, that we translate as jealous or zealous, is an emotionally charged passion that gives fuel to grandiose action. In Paul’s great discourse on the nature of love, he argues that this zeal is incompatible with true love, at least for followers of God. It is fervor or something akin to bloodlust. Reading the prayer in that light, you can feel his hatred for the wicked people in Israel. He was stirred up with an indignation against these people who had rejected and blasphemed God, and he wanted to purge the land of them. Even after the success he had on Mount Carmel, it was a drop in the bucket. That is why he was depressed. Even after a huge victory, he was no closer to cleansing the evil from the land than anyone before him had been. But God’s response was to take him to Mount Sinai and put him in the cave. The text does not say “a” cave, but “the” cave. This seems to suggest the crag from which Moses saw the back of God in Exodus. God’s response was to bring Elijah back to where God had announced His true name: Yahweh, Yahweh, the God Who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and overflowing with both loyal love and trustworthiness, Who loyally loves to the thousandth degree and lifts away iniquity, transgression and sin, but by no means pardons the punishment of the guilty, punishing to the third and fourth generation those who hate Him. It seems God wanted to remind Elijah who He is. It seems He wanted to remind Elijah what His expectations of His followers were as He had explained in the Torah on that very mountain. It was remedial training on how to trust and follow Him. Elijah did not seem to understand because he never changed his answer, and finally, God had to spell out for him how He would purge the land of the apostate Israelites. This makes me question my own motives. How do we see ourselves as part of God’s plan? We are important to the plan only because God has given us value in it. Are we getting wrapped up in the role we want to play for God or the results we think we should be achieving for Him? Or are we resting in His name, the name that demonstrates His trustworthiness and righteousness? Let us pray for our hearts to be right in this and for our hearts to be open when God tries to take us through remedial training.