Special Sunday Edition
Ethan Barton, Pastoral Resident, Tallowood Baptist Church
We’ve watered down the word “awesome” too much. We’ve made it synonymous with “kind of cool.” Anything can be awesome. But the proper meaning of the word invokes something too great for us to handle, something so brilliant that it knocks us out of our senses—something that can really only come from God. This story is a truly awesome display of God’s awesome power. With a single prayer, God sends a mighty fire to incinerate Elijah’s alter in milliseconds, a display so awesome that it caused thousands of heathens to collapse and proclaim his name. God’s awesome glory shall not be understated!
Elijah was in fact the only prophet of Yahweh during this time. Israel’s worst king in its history, Ahab, had begun wholeheartedly serving false gods and had even hunted down and killed all of God’s prophets. Faithfulness to God was near nonexistent. Hope had never seemed more lost. Yet Elijah’s faith was unshaken. So he challenged all of the prophets of Baal to a showdown to see which God would answer. From morning until evening, the prophets danced and shouted and begged and even cut themselves. No one answered.
What happened next was nothing short of a revival. What the people had trusted in had failed them, God’s power burst forth, and the people fell to worship. Oftentimes, that’s what we need to be revived. All distractions, especially those we’ve been inadvertently idolizing, need to be stripped away. That way, when God shows us his holiness, we too can fall prostrate and cry, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!”
When 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote that “God is dead,” he didn’t mean God had literally died—he meant faithful, zealous love for God was depressingly scarce. To an extent, he was right. The world grows secular day by day, and faithfulness wanes. But make no mistake: God is not dead. And neither is his church. Revivals still occur, and God moves in awesome power to make himself known and restore us to himself. The call to be prepared could not be more crucial!
As Elijah tells the people, if Yahweh is God, follow him. We cannot waver between two opinions! We cannot claim to serve him while at the same time devoting ourselves to worldly things! Sitting on the fence like that is not just a trivial shortcoming—it’s illogical. James 4:4 tells us that “friendship with the world means enmity with God.” Are we serving God, or are we serving anything else? A better question would be, what is that other thing we’re serving?
May we be revived as Israel was! May God reveal the depths of his glory and power and grace and strength and love to us, and may we run far, far away from our idols, so that we may respond to his awesome holiness with prostrate worship! The chorus of one of my favorite hymns says “turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” May we look at Jesus and be revived!
