With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.”
“Do it again,” he said, and they did it again.
“Do it a third time,” he ordered, and they did it the third time. The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.
– 1 Kings 18:32-35
Have you ever been caught outside in a sudden rainstorm? Most of us, when it starts to rain, have the impulse to run and find shelter immediately in order to avoid getting soaked. But if you get soaked, then there’s no point in hurrying to get shelter – you can’t get any more wet than you already are, right?
Have you ever had a period in your life where you were blindsided by a “sudden rainstorm” that wouldn’t end and it soaked you to your bones? Perhaps it was an incident that ended up making a massive dent to your finances, or something happened to you and the various repercussions of that event kept coming and coming and coming at you, like ocean waves breaking against the rocks. At the end of it all, you were just “soaked” and didn’t care if it rained anymore – you were as wet as could be.
It may be at that point you may have cried out, “God, what are you doing? What’s going on? I can’t get any more wet than I already am! At this point, you’re just wasting water since there’s no dry spot left on me! I don’t want to be the next Job! What’s the point of all this?”
This is where I currently find myself in my life: wet as a drowned rat, chilled to the bone. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve asked God directly in abject frustration and exasperation, with my hands on my hips, “What are you doing to me?“
It’s gotten to the point where I’ve asked God directly in abject frustration and exasperation, with my hands on my hips, “What are you doing to me?“
Despite my frustration and general anxiety with my current life situation, I continue to read Scripture. Every morning when I put my son down for his nap, I brew some coffee and sit down for about an hour and read my study Bible. I am neck-deep in the Old Testament, my favorite Testament. It is amazing to see how God worked with the Israelites over a span of hundreds of years. You really start to understand and get the big picture of what God is trying to do and how much people keep failing at meeting God where He is at.
There is something about seeing the macro plan in action that makes you understand and appreciate what God is trying to do with micro us. It is like completing a jigsaw puzzle. Once it is all done and assembled, you can step back and remark at the picture that formed. As the one who assembled the puzzle, you are deeply aware that the picture you formed couldn’t be assembled completely if some of the pieces were missing or placed in the wrong part of the puzzle.
I am obviously making a metaphor for all of us human beings as God’s puzzle pieces (that is what our life’s purpose is) but what is the big picture that God is assembling?
It is Him. It is His Glory. The Bible consistently tells us that everything that God does is for His glory. He is very intentional about planning and aligning things in human history to 1) save and redeem the remnant of fallen humans that has chosen to follow Him and to 2) proclaim that He is the One True God and should be worshipped and glorified. Salvation and redemption of humanity also glorifies God. The whole endeavor that God is on is ALL ABOUT HIS GLORY!
This was in the back of my head as I read the story of Elijah and the challenge he made to the prophets of Baal in the book of 1 Kings. Let me set the stage for you. Elijah is the last prophet of God left in the time of King Ahab, around 855 B.C. Apostasy has overtaken Israel and the people don’t follow God fully. To challenge the status quo and restore God to His rightful place in worship, Elijah challenges 450 prophets of the false god Baal to a public contest of sacrifice to see whose god is sovereign.
His terms? Get two bulls. They each would slaughter a bull, cut it into pieces and put it on a wood altar but not set fire to it. The Baal prophets and Elijah would then each call on the name of their god. The god who answered by fire—he would be declared the one true God.
The contest sounded good to the people, so they agreed. The Baal prophets prepared their altar and sacrificed a bull they chose, and spent the entire day chanting, dancing and shouting to Baal. As the day drew to a close and evening came, Baal still hadn’t answered his people, so Elijah began to prepare his sacrifice and arranges his bull on an altar.
This is where the story gets interesting. Rather than be content with an altar of wood and stone and a bull ready, Elijah tells the people around him to get some water and to dump it on the altar. Not content with just one dousing, he has the people to do it three times. At this point, the altar is dripping wet with so much water that the runoff water filled a trench that Elijah had dug around the altar. The wood and the meat were soaking wet and would be impossible to light.
Elijah prays a single, quiet prayer: “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.”
When he finishes his prayer, the Bible records that fire fell from heaven and burned up not only the sacrificial bull, but also the soaking wet wood it was on, the stones of the altar, the soil it stood on, and on top of that, it also boiled away all the water in the trench!
This was something that only God could have done! This shocks the people so much that they bow down in worship to God. Baal had lost; God had won. Further, the people could not say that Elijah did it, nor that the bull was lit by some other natural occurrence. God received the full credit, and thus the full glory, by doing the impossible. He showed the people who He was.
If God wants the world that is blind to Him, like it was in the time of King Ahab, to see His glory, then it stands to reason He will do something equally remarkable and amazing like He did for Elijah’s wet sacrifice. He will do something that would cause people to respond by giving Him glory. God is always in the business of His glory; He has never stopped.
God is always in the business of His glory; He has never stopped.
In Romans 12:1, the apostle Paul says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” If you understand that your life – indeed, ALL of life on Earth – is about giving worship and glory to God, then in the times of your life when you find yourself being a dripping, soaking wet offering, much like a certain sacrificial bull, I would challenge you to gaze heavenward because God may be allowing your life to get soaking wet to show you and those in your life that He can still set you aflame for Him and show the world His glory. So much, actually, that when people look at your life, all they can do is to bow down and worship Him.
To God be the Glory.
Photo credit: The image for the header was created by Designed-One.
1 KingsElijahglorypuzzleRomanssacrificewet
A Dripping, Soaking Wet Offering
January 14, 2015
Devotionals
Comments Off on A Dripping, Soaking Wet Offering
Matt
With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.”
“Do it again,” he said, and they did it again.
“Do it a third time,” he ordered, and they did it the third time. The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.
– 1 Kings 18:32-35
Have you ever been caught outside in a sudden rainstorm? Most of us, when it starts to rain, have the impulse to run and find shelter immediately in order to avoid getting soaked. But if you get soaked, then there’s no point in hurrying to get shelter – you can’t get any more wet than you already are, right?
Have you ever had a period in your life where you were blindsided by a “sudden rainstorm” that wouldn’t end and it soaked you to your bones? Perhaps it was an incident that ended up making a massive dent to your finances, or something happened to you and the various repercussions of that event kept coming and coming and coming at you, like ocean waves breaking against the rocks. At the end of it all, you were just “soaked” and didn’t care if it rained anymore – you were as wet as could be.
It may be at that point you may have cried out, “God, what are you doing? What’s going on? I can’t get any more wet than I already am! At this point, you’re just wasting water since there’s no dry spot left on me! I don’t want to be the next Job! What’s the point of all this?”
This is where I currently find myself in my life: wet as a drowned rat, chilled to the bone. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve asked God directly in abject frustration and exasperation, with my hands on my hips, “What are you doing to me?“
Despite my frustration and general anxiety with my current life situation, I continue to read Scripture. Every morning when I put my son down for his nap, I brew some coffee and sit down for about an hour and read my study Bible. I am neck-deep in the Old Testament, my favorite Testament. It is amazing to see how God worked with the Israelites over a span of hundreds of years. You really start to understand and get the big picture of what God is trying to do and how much people keep failing at meeting God where He is at.
There is something about seeing the macro plan in action that makes you understand and appreciate what God is trying to do with micro us. It is like completing a jigsaw puzzle. Once it is all done and assembled, you can step back and remark at the picture that formed. As the one who assembled the puzzle, you are deeply aware that the picture you formed couldn’t be assembled completely if some of the pieces were missing or placed in the wrong part of the puzzle.
I am obviously making a metaphor for all of us human beings as God’s puzzle pieces (that is what our life’s purpose is) but what is the big picture that God is assembling?
It is Him. It is His Glory. The Bible consistently tells us that everything that God does is for His glory. He is very intentional about planning and aligning things in human history to 1) save and redeem the remnant of fallen humans that has chosen to follow Him and to 2) proclaim that He is the One True God and should be worshipped and glorified. Salvation and redemption of humanity also glorifies God. The whole endeavor that God is on is ALL ABOUT HIS GLORY!
This was in the back of my head as I read the story of Elijah and the challenge he made to the prophets of Baal in the book of 1 Kings. Let me set the stage for you. Elijah is the last prophet of God left in the time of King Ahab, around 855 B.C. Apostasy has overtaken Israel and the people don’t follow God fully. To challenge the status quo and restore God to His rightful place in worship, Elijah challenges 450 prophets of the false god Baal to a public contest of sacrifice to see whose god is sovereign.
His terms? Get two bulls. They each would slaughter a bull, cut it into pieces and put it on a wood altar but not set fire to it. The Baal prophets and Elijah would then each call on the name of their god. The god who answered by fire—he would be declared the one true God.
The contest sounded good to the people, so they agreed. The Baal prophets prepared their altar and sacrificed a bull they chose, and spent the entire day chanting, dancing and shouting to Baal. As the day drew to a close and evening came, Baal still hadn’t answered his people, so Elijah began to prepare his sacrifice and arranges his bull on an altar.
This is where the story gets interesting. Rather than be content with an altar of wood and stone and a bull ready, Elijah tells the people around him to get some water and to dump it on the altar. Not content with just one dousing, he has the people to do it three times. At this point, the altar is dripping wet with so much water that the runoff water filled a trench that Elijah had dug around the altar. The wood and the meat were soaking wet and would be impossible to light.
Elijah prays a single, quiet prayer: “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.”
When he finishes his prayer, the Bible records that fire fell from heaven and burned up not only the sacrificial bull, but also the soaking wet wood it was on, the stones of the altar, the soil it stood on, and on top of that, it also boiled away all the water in the trench!
This was something that only God could have done! This shocks the people so much that they bow down in worship to God. Baal had lost; God had won. Further, the people could not say that Elijah did it, nor that the bull was lit by some other natural occurrence. God received the full credit, and thus the full glory, by doing the impossible. He showed the people who He was.
If God wants the world that is blind to Him, like it was in the time of King Ahab, to see His glory, then it stands to reason He will do something equally remarkable and amazing like He did for Elijah’s wet sacrifice. He will do something that would cause people to respond by giving Him glory. God is always in the business of His glory; He has never stopped.
In Romans 12:1, the apostle Paul says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” If you understand that your life – indeed, ALL of life on Earth – is about giving worship and glory to God, then in the times of your life when you find yourself being a dripping, soaking wet offering, much like a certain sacrificial bull, I would challenge you to gaze heavenward because God may be allowing your life to get soaking wet to show you and those in your life that He can still set you aflame for Him and show the world His glory. So much, actually, that when people look at your life, all they can do is to bow down and worship Him.
To God be the Glory.
Photo credit: The image for the header was created by Designed-One.
Share this:
1 KingsElijahglorypuzzleRomanssacrificewet