Strange title, right? It comes straight out of Scripture. What I’m about to share with you is not soft, warm and fuzzy.
I just take Scripture as it presents itself to me and try not to avoid things that are uncomfortable. And then sometimes I share them with you, dear reader.
So take this as just an insight I’ve been pondering, and an opportunity to ask the question of whether it applies to you, even a little bit. Honesty with ourselves opens the door to wisdom and growth.
You may be familiar with the story of the prophet Elijah’s monumental confrontation with the prophets of Baal and Asherah at the top of Mount Carmel.
Ahab and his very wicked, pagan wife Jezebel despised Elijah, considering him nothing but a troublemaker. Yet Elijah was a real deal prophet of Yahweh, and they knew it.
Elijah gets tired of their idolatrous practices while calling themselves Jews. He begins taunting the crowd of idol worshippers:
“How long will you go limping over two opinions? If Yahweh is God, go after him; but if Baal, go after him” (1 Kings 18:21)
In other words, If you’re going to worship Yahweh, then start doing what is right and keep his commandments. But if you want to worship Baal, go for it. (Yahweh is going to deal with you however he wishes in the end, anyway).
The verse ends with the statement, But the people did not answer him a word.
They won’t respond with a verbal argument, so Elijah challenges them to a more dramatic kind of physical and spiritual challenge.
The false prophets were to sacrifice a bull, place it on the altar, and cry out to Baal to consume the sacrifice with fire. Elijah would do the same, and call out to Yahweh. “The god who answers by fire–he is God.” (v. 24).
The prophets of Baal went first. This is where the second mention of limping occurs:
[They] called upon 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 around the altar that they had made.
Most word study sources I searched give the sense of an unsteady, ritualistic, crazed dance around the altar, as though they were in a demonic trance. Then they added in the lovely element of cutting themselves and smearing blood all over the place.
Demon worship was and will always be a very ugly, gruesome affair.
Baal didn’t show up, of course.
Then it was Elijah’s turn. He killed his bull, placed it on a pile of sticks and 12 stones representing the 12 tribes, and then drenched everything three times, until water formed a moat all around the altar.
When Elijah calls upon Yahweh, fire whooshes down, consuming not only the sacrifice, but all the wood, and all the stones (I didn’t know stones burned up, but these did), and then dried up all of the water.
It was an unquestionable, conclusive victory for Elijah and the God he served.
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As I read this story carefully this week, I couldn’t help but consider how it might apply to the church of Jesus Christ. I think sometimes we limp around before God, in either or both of the ways that Elijah accused the Baal worshippers of limping.
Sometimes, we are just double-minded. We love the Lord (or at least tell ourselves and others that we do), but in reality we invest a lot more time and energy in other pursuits. Our opinions shift with the wind, and we lose our fire for him. We get distracted by the world and do not offer ourselves as living sacrifices upon the altar.
I know this is mixing metaphors, but we go limping about, back and forth, like
children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes (Eph. 4:14).
The Lord wants us to grow up, and let our hearts become firmly established on the truth of the Word of God. He wants us fully conscious and steady in our faith.
In the second case, we may be participating in a variety of religious activities that God never prescribed, and therefore they don’t truly honor God. And they don’t do much to help us love our neighbor better either.
You see, Jesus gave us a bottom line, the Greatest Commandment, which is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
We can go limping around the altar, crying out, performing songs, and impressing people with our talents, but it might be circling around the wrong altar. Or presenting the wrong sacrifice. The fire of God doesn’t come.
Do we want the fire of God to come?
Or borrowing another illustration, do we keep our lamps full of oil so that at any time the bridegroom comes to call, we are ready to catch his flame and light up?
I’m not accusing anybody of anything. I’m just asking questions. I’m asking the Lord to reveal to me any idols that keep his fire from falling, any forms of worship that are not truly focused on him, and any double-minded immaturity that would keep me from blazing for him. And I’m extending a gentle invitation for you to ask likewise.
As we see with the continuation of Elijah’s story, there were dire, deadly consequences for those men who worshipped the wrong god in their outrageous, misguided ways.
As for Elijah, he needed rest, restoration, and revelation after these events, and God provided all three. He will do the same for us as we lay our own lives on his altar and invite his fire to come down.
