“Now consider this, you who forget God …” (Ps. 50:22, NKJV)
Elijah provides the Baal prophets with ample time in which to call on their gods. This is however not without its strategic significance – the more hours pass, the greater the anxiety and desperation of the Baal prophets. At the point when their spiritual and physical resistance is tested to the extreme, Elijah steps into the triumphant position, of which we read in 1 Kings 18:27-29: “And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, ‘Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.’ So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention.”
When his turn eventually comes around, the prophet uses the opportunity to make known “the manifold wisdom of God … by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10)! Every characteristic of Baal that became clear from the public demonstration, is pointed out – but it is not only an enumeration of the negative characteristics of Baal; the counter to this eventually becomes the proclamation of Yahweh, the Living God! Elijah also accentuates certain parts of Yahweh’s stipulations negated by the Baal worshippers. In contrast to the God of Israel who neither slumbers nor sleeps (Ps. 121:4), Baal is presented as one who is “sleeping and must be awakened”. The notion of cutting themselves so that the blood sacrifice be increased (as was also the case in the Marikana conflicts), directly opposes a Scripture such as Deut. 14:1-2: “You are the children of the Lord your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor shave the front of your head for the dead. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”
Do not forget that according to the law of Moses, idolatry is punishable by death – Deut. 13:12-18; 17:2-7 makes this crystal clear. Then you more clearly understand that Elijah, by being a spiritual standard, was actually judging the Baal prophets. One thinks of the Psalmist’s declaration in Ps. 50: 21-22, which is just as applicable to the Baal prophets: “These things you have done, and I kept silent; You thought that I was altogether like you; but I will rebuke you, and set them in order before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver”. How frightful is the notion of forgetting God.
Noah is the prototype of someone who merely did what God had called him to do, and through that “condemned the world” (Heb. 11:7). This is the mark of true identity and authority.
- Selah: Do you walk in spiritual authority?
- Read: 36; Matt. 14.
- Memorise: 14:36 (a beautiful typology of the power of a spiritual mantle!)
- For a more in-depth understanding: Listen to the teaching of Tom Gouws, available on CD: Spiritual Warfare in the Third Dimension?
