Elijah and Mount Carmel

There atop Mount Carmel Elijah confronts the false gods and proclaims the one true God. Is is only one prophet of Adonai facing 450 men who are prophets of Baal and yet his faith is firm. He challenges the prophets of Baal and builds an altar to the true God. The main part of the passage is 1 Kings 18:30-40 but I'll focus in on the main part here in which Elijah prays:

Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.

The phrase “turning their hearts back again” goes with Malachi 3:22-24 or Malachi 4:4ff:

Remember the Torah of Moses My servant, whom I commanded at Horeb - statutes and ordinances for all Israel. Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of Adonai. He will turn the hearts of fathers to the children, and the hearts of children to their fathers – else I will come and strike the land with utter destruction.

The fire does indeed fall and consumes everything including all the waters poured out on and around the altar. The people are led to worship the one true God and the prophets of Baal are killed.

We find, especially in the phrase of turning the hearts of fathers to the children and children to fathers, the restoration of fatherhood in the truest sense. The fathers as the head of the family are called to lead the family in the right worship of the one true God along with obedience to the laws of God which have now been written on our hearts and not just on stone tablets. They have also become completely fulfilled by Jeshua so that observing them now is not without His Presence to help as we are yoked with Him in an obedience flowing from love. This is what offering our bodies as a living sacrifice and the worship offered by mind and heart mean. Jesus complained, “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mt 15:7-9). There is a calling out here of extremes. We must avoid the kind of worship that is lacking the mind and heart that God asks for as well as the kind of worship that adds more but isn't what God commanded. The first extreme is often one of hypocrisy where one observes the letter of the law but with no heart and often engages in worldly pursuits separating worship or daily rituals from daily life. The other way this first extreme manifests is in the outright abandonment of following God's will as laid out for us in His Laws and commandments and teachings especially love of God and love of neighbor. The second extreme is going beyond what is commanded under the cover of worshiping God but is really adding the “commandments of men” along with a spirit of self-righteousness that is a lie. Think here of King Saul who disobeyed God. Saul is commanded by God through the prophet Samuel to utterly destroy all the Amalekites sparing nothing. Saul disobeys by sparing King Agag and the best of the sheep, oxen and lambs. He then goes to Carmel and sets up a monument for himself. You can see a sense of pride here and almost self-worship or self-righteousness. Samuel is not happy about it and looses sleep over this in his anger. He confronts Saul with his disobedience and Saul responds by blaming the people saying, “...I have brought A'gag the king of Am'alek, and I have utterly destroyed the Amal'ekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, and the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the LORD your God in Gilgal” (1 Samuel 15:20-21). He tries to cover the disobedience under worship. Samuel is not impressed and responds, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD he has also rejected you from being king” (1 Samuel 15:22-23). He is comparing this disobedience to idolatry. It is a far cry from right worship of the one true God. As a result of this disobedience of Saul, the Israelites suffer. David is later faced with having to fight the Amelekites and one of their decedents, Haman, an Agagite descendant of Agag, King of the Amelekites, plots to destroy all the Jewish people while Queen Esther risks her life pleading to save her people. Contrast all this with Jeshua who is described as saying, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,' as it is written of me in the scroll the of book” (Hebrews 10:5-7). Here Jeshua is restoring this right worship of God the Father as being the call to “offer your body a living sacrifice, the worship offered by mind and heart” (Rom 12:1-2). Jeshua is also through His obedience bringing salvation to all who will follow Him. We are being called to obedience and offering our whole being to God in right worship expressed through the obedience of love and the obedience of faith. We have lost a sense of this by not going deeper into the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. Think of the beautiful tradition of the door scroll, or the Mezuzah.

The Mezuzah is Hebrew for “doorpost” and it contains a scroll upon which is handwritten by a Jewish scribe the text of the Shema and commandments as in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21):

“Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is One.

And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul,

and with all your might. And these words that I command you today

shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them thoroughly to your children,

and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house

and when you walk on the way, when you lie down and you rise.

And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand,

and they shall be tefillin between your eyes. And thou shalt

write them upon the doorposts (nezuzoth) of thy house and upon thy gates.

Now if you listen obediently to My mitzvot that I am commanding you today -

to love ADONAI your God and to serve Him with all your heart and soul -

then I will give rain for your land in its season -

the early rain and the late rain – so that you may gather in your grain,

new wine and olive oil. I will give grass in your field for your livestock,

and you will eat and be satisfied. Watch yourselves, so your heart is not deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. Then the anger of ADONAI is giving you.

Therefore you are to set these words of Mine in your heart and in your soul.

You are to bind them as a sign on your hand, and as frontlets between your eyes.

You are to teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house,

when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.

You are to write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,

so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied on the land ADONAI

swore to give your fathers, as ling as the heavens are above the earth.

It is worth reading the entire passage of Deuteronomy 11. For now I quote only the above passages. The command is to place this blessed scroll on your doorpost. I grew up next to a beautiful Jewish family that did just this. Upon entering the home the father and each member would kiss the scroll and recite the Shema Israel prayer. It is a reminder especially to the father of the home to lead his family in this right worship of the one true God and to follow His commandments. He is to lead his family in an obedience of love. We see very clearly in the Bible that it says, “Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). We do the best as parents when we lead our children to an obedience flowing from love and trust instead of one of fear. Fathers, you are called to show God's love to these precious children and to lead them to love God as Abba, with Jeshua. The connection that we are called to see here is one of deep relationship with God in which especially the fathers as head of the family are called to lead the family into this loving obedience to God with and in God's Son, Jeshua, by the power of the Holy Spirit. There is a connection also to something modern society has lost a sense of valuing, - although thankfully at least at the time I write this it is making a resurgence. This connection is one that came natural to the Jewish people and Jeshua Himself was immersed in it. That connection is Faith, Family, and the Land. This will be the topic of Blog #3