The Hidden Places
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · May 31, 2026 · Elijah series
Jeremy MacDonald opens the Elijah series in 1 Kings 16 and 17, contrasting King Ahab's worship of Baal with Elijah's God, who provides through a widow. He asks what we sacrifice for, since it shows who is Lord, and invites trust in the God who provides.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The Elijah series
Topics: Faith, Discipleship, Worship
Transcript
[0:01] Hey, who or what have you sacrificed for lately? There's probably somebody in your life that you're like, "Oh, I give it all for them." There's probably, maybe this weekend, there was an opportunity at that second piece of cake, and you made the sacrifice, and you're like, "No, I'm in for just one." Maybe for some of you, even just this last couple of days of sports experiences, it felt like a bit of a sacrifice to stay up late only to watch the Canadiens lose. We mourn with those who mourn. Canada in the quarterfinals, and then I know we've got even some folks, Arsenal did not beat Paris. So, I'm just saying, we're just mourning with those who mourn. You sacrifice for all sorts of different things in your life. That's a part of the experience, and it's part of your journey and part of your life. And what I am fascinated by is how the things that we might sacrifice for kind of can reveal something about us.
[0:57] And so this morning, we're starting this brand-new teaching series on the life of Elijah, and as we dive into it, this is really fun for me. One of the things that has been a part of our family's story is that we've got three kids, and we've named each of them their middle names with a character from the Bible, a person from the Bible that we pray unique prayers over their life from that person's story. And so we have Ryker, Archer, and Ember. Three really cool names, I know. Thank you. And then Ryker, who's in the room, Ryker Elijah, we actually have been praying for over a decade parts of Elijah's life over my oldest son, Archer Daniel, Ember Ruth. And so being able to go for the next few weeks through the life of Elijah, I've been really thrilled at learning and growing, even in my understanding, and I think it's going to be helpful for you and for me, because sometimes, speaking of sacrifice, actually, sometimes when we look at the biblical story, it can feel a little bit like when you open the drawer.
[1:53] You've got one of these, I'm sure, in your house. This was just a little while ago that we actually took a look at this at our home and made some fixes with it. But the biblical story kind of looks like this sometimes. Do you have this at your house, too? No? You're better than me. I understand. That's okay. No, we carried. I think we moved this. I think we moved this from Miramichi to Ontario. I think we moved this same ball back to Moncton and then did eventually deal with it. But cords, the cord drawer in your house. I'm just messing with you. But the cord drawer in your house sometimes can feel like, man, it's so confusing. There's so much there. Are these really connected? And then you kind of piece through, and as you clean it up, which we did, you're like, oh, this thread or this cord, it starts somewhere and ends somewhere else. And I think sometimes with the biblical story, when you look at it, it can feel confusing because there's so many things going on. But then when you pull a thread and you can kind of follow it through, you see how it threads through the whole story and how it might connect, and when we learn a piece of it, it gives us, I think, an appreciation. When we come to the story of Elijah, we're going to discover, I think, one of those threads over these next few weeks that brings to light not just his story, but the whole biblical story, and maybe even your story, too. But to get there, we have to start in 1 Kings chapter 16. You can follow along.
[3:17] And before we even hear about Elijah, we have to know about somebody that he's about to speak to, and this somebody is King Ahab. King Ahab. And so 1 Kings, let's throw it on the screen, "was the son of Omri, and he began to rule over Israel." Now, what happens in the biblical story, again, it's just interesting to kind of watch the narrative of Scripture. There's Genesis. You get to Noah. You get to Moses. The Israelites, they escape Egypt. They wander through. They come into the Promised Land. There's the new kings, and so you've got Saul, you've got David, you've got Solomon. And then they go into this season where God's people end up with rulers who don't rule them well, rulers who don't bring their hearts towards the Lord. And instead, as we're going to find out with King Ahab, he's one of the kings in the nation of Israel that would lead them astray, the people astray. And so King Ahab becomes an important part of the story because in Elijah's life, it's going to almost feel like there's not two sides to the coin. It's kind of like there's the King Ahab approach and there's the Elijah approach and understanding. And for all of us, we will learn from both sides and how they operate. So, King Ahab, this is what happened. So he became the king.
[4:31] "But Ahab, son of Omri, did what was evil in the Lord's sight, even more than any of the other kings before him." And so there are kings over the nation. This was one of the bad ones. And the text says, "As though it were not enough to follow the sinful examples of Jeroboam," which is one of the older kings a few generations above him, "he married Jezebel." Now, Jezebel is confusing because I'm like, "What's wrong with Jezebel?" And sometimes you get into the situation where you've got a family member, and you're like, "He was such a sweet boy until he met her." You know what I mean? Or you're like, "Oh, she was just such a kind girl until she started dating him." And maybe that's like you've got kids, and you're praying against that relationship or like. You know what I mean? You've got that sibling, and you're like, "Hey, I'm happy when I go over, but geez, they're not helpful." This is a little bit of what the setup feels like in this situation. But the point isn't just that everything was done to Ahab. Ahab himself had a ton of agency, and when he married Jezebel, he himself was actually disobeying what the Lord had asked him to do. And he, in fact, would then lean into, as we're going to find out, what was coming from the culture of Jezebel and where she was from began to infuse into King Ahab's reality world and how he led.
[5:48] So Jezebel in particular, and this is kind of why she's not a very helpful or healthy figure, she was the daughter of King Ethbaal. Now, Ethbaal's interesting in terms of the language because he's from this area of the Sidonians, which is going to come into play later. A little bit of history lesson. Sorry if this is like, "I'm not here for history." Okay, it's going to be kind of interesting, I think. But hopefully you will too. So he's of the Sidonians, and he began to bow down. This is Ahab. He began to bow down in worship of Baal. Now, this particular idol is sometimes also called Baal, so if you're looking for proper pronunciation, but let's just be clear. It's okay. Can I just give you clarity from the front? You can call it Baal, Ba'al, Bal.
[6:34] It's all going to be the same thing. We're going to think about it as being this idol in particular that shows up throughout the Scriptures. And what's interesting about Baal is that the name of Jezebel's father actually kind of translates to something like "Baal lives" or "Baal is alive" or "Baal is with us." And in the Old Testament, we see tons of examples of how the people of Israel, God's people, the one true God, we're told, "Do not worship idols. Do not create idols. Do not do anything with idols. Idol is bad, God good. Idol is evil, God, the one true God, the only one worthy of your worship." And we see this constant kind of tug and pull, and at least for me, I'm like, "Why?
[7:20] How in the world would the people that got the whole, like, the waters were parted, the Passover happened, they've got the powerful God. Why do they end up thinking about this fake, false god, Baal?" And I think what happens is, and even when you look at the history of the people from Sidon, Sidonia, is that the nature of these idols wasn't necessarily that they were really evil, it was that perhaps they were practical. And here's kind of the idea. So the worship of Baal, what happens is that Baal was actually the one in their minds that would provide things like rain, harvest, fertility, and life. And the way that an idol would work is that you would be able to do a particular type of thing, a particular type of sacrifice, a particular type of worship, and then you would get what you were looking for. You would get the rain, you would get the harvest, you'd get the fertility, you'd get the life.
[8:17] And in some ways, the idea of idols were that they were very comprehensible, or maybe it's like they were manageable. I can understand. I can put that in a box. This is my expectation with this idol, Baal, and I get what I need back from it. It's a responsive kind of experience. And so as we kind of wade into this story, what I maybe want to suggest, and this is just my suggestion, is that the nature of an idol like Baal was not that he was obviously evil, although he was, but he wasn't a person. He was an idol. The appeal of Baal was that he was practical for the people. The people could have control and an understanding of what was expected, and they leaned into it. And for King Ahab, he was coming in and experiencing and learning about this culture of this worship of this Baal, and he begins to worship that same false god.
[9:14] Put it this way, one of the commentators, John, he says this specifically about this Baal and the other kind of gods of that time, small G gods. "They were favorites among the common people because these were the acts of deities whom it was thought could be depended upon to get things done." That's the nature. Hey, I need something done, and so I'm going to sacrifice to this god, and it's going to give me what I'm looking for. Okay. That's King Ahab, and that's the idol. Our story, though, in chapter 1 goes this way. "Now Elijah." Differently, shifting gears, changing things. "Now Elijah, who was from Tishbe," Tishbe? I don't know, "Gilead." The interesting thing about places in the Scriptures is that they reinforce the fact that this isn't just a character in a story, but a human being that walked the earth.
[10:04] What we find over time is that the nature of the historical evidence, the archaeological evidence, continuously surprises and even baffles people who are far from God or who don't believe in the Scriptures because they just keep reinforcing the things that Christians have been saying for thousands of years, that these are real human beings and real places. And so I love when those details are included because it reminds you and reminds me that Elijah was a real person. And Elijah told King Ahab, which is crazy. You think of somebody that would actually speak up to a king, a little bit of, like, you should be nervous because of what the king has authority to do to you, what the king has authority to do to the people around you. And Elijah speaks to the king, remember the king who's been worshiping Baal, who's turned away from the one true God, and this is what Elijah says to him: "As surely as the Lord," this is an important word, the Lord, the one who we serve, the God of Israel, the one that we should commit our entire lives to, that Lord, the God of Israel, "lives."
[11:14] Do you remember Jezebel's father? Baal lives? The idol lives? No, no, no. Elijah says, "The God who lives, the God I serve." You may not serve Him anymore, Ahab. I serve this God, the one that we've told stories about for generations, the one that's rescued us from Egypt, the God who we can point to the place where we worship Him consistently. This is the God that I'm speaking of, and this God has a message: "There will be no dew or rain during the next few years until I give the word." Oof, that's intense. And for me, reading it, just cruising through on my Bible in a year, I'm like, oh, that's bringing condemnation on these people.
[12:01] But what I think is kind of interesting is although perhaps there's an element to that, I don't think that the drought is primarily a punishment. I think the drought is actually doing something a little bit more specific. You see, remember, Baal was actually the one that provides rain, harvest, life, fertility. Baal was the storm god. And in a nation and a region where the people were beginning to worship, and the king was wanting to worship this storm god, Elijah comes in and says, "I've got a word from the actual true God. You think your god's in charge of the rain? Let me just tell you, there's now a drought in your god's territory, your fake god's territory." And so kind of the way that we can think about it is that Yahweh was establishing His power. This is what John says in his commentary on 1 Kings, "Establishes power both by shutting off the rain and then by preserving the life of His servant, Elijah, in the barren wilderness." You see, Elijah delivers that message, and then he actually gets called.
[13:01] God sends him into the wilderness to be by a brook, and the ravens actually feed Elijah, which is kind of confusing because the ravens were actually an unclean animal according to the Israelites and their law. And yet God surprisingly is showing up in a way that he wouldn't have expected to bring the provision that he needed. So Elijah's being fed. He has the brook, but then it dries up. The ravens stop coming, and the Lord says something to Elijah to carry us into this next part of the story. He says, "Go and live in the village of Zarephath near the city of Sidon." Remember where Jezebel is from. "I have instructed a widow there to feed you." Which is, again, kind of confusing because a widow isn't somebody with means. A widow is at the low end of the social structure.
[13:49] She's not somebody that can usually provide for somebody, and yet here he is getting fed or hopefully getting fed from a widow. And what John says is that the Lord raises the stakes by taking His servant, Elijah, directly into Baal's home territory because this was located on the Mediterranean coast about eight miles south of where we were learning about Jezebel and where this worship actually comes from. And so Elijah shows up in town, sees this widow. She's collecting sticks. He says to her, "Hey, can you get me a drink? I'm kind of thirsty." She says, "Sure." And then as she's going, he says, "Oh, as you come back, can you also bring me some bread? I'm a little hungry."
[14:35] And she says, "I'm so sorry, but these sticks that I'm gathering is so that I can light a fire and cook the last of our bread for my son and I. We only have a little bit of flour and a little bit of oil. We're going to make that meal, and then we're probably going to die." And Elijah says to her, in that like, ooh, that moment of absolute scarcity, that moment of not having anything to offer to this person, in that moment of not knowing what was going to happen next or maybe actually knowing what was going to happen next. She knew she was going to die. He says to her, "Don't be afraid. Go ahead and do just what you've said, but make a little bread for me first."
[15:24] It's pretty bold. But he says then, "Use what's left to prepare a meal for yourself and your son, for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, the true God you've heard of," and you're in the region where the Baal god is the one that people talk about, and you can point to the temple, and maybe you've offered sacrifices there, and you know who is supposed to be providing for you. But let me tell you what the real one true God says. The God of Israel says, this is what He tells you, "There will always be flour and olive oil left in your containers until the time when the Lord sends rain and the crops grow again." And so she did as Elijah said, and she and Elijah and her family continued to eat for many days. There was always enough flour and olive oil left.
[16:17] And this is the nature of this God, this God that we sung about earlier today, this God that we're reading about, Elijah's God. It's a little unexpected. It's a little bit challenging. What happens, and then this is what the commentators say, that as the ravens were unexpected providers in the previous incident, so a widow is an unlikely provider here. If she was to be able to carry out Yahweh's command, the true God, it would clearly be up to Him to provide the means because she did not have it. And so He does. And I'm sure in that moment, she's like, "Wow, what a beautiful gift. What an incredible God, the God that is providing for me in this moment." And maybe even she would start sharing some stories, and there would be whispers of, like, "Hey, I know you guys keep going to that Baal temple, but I got a God who's got way more power. I'm learning about this God who actually is going to provide for me." And in some ways, she gets this incredible moment of witnessing a miracle at her hands.
[17:21] And I don't know about you, for you, but for me, in those moments that I've seen God move, you think, like, "Oh, this is great. Let's stay here. Let's enjoy. God is providing." And it's unfortunate to know that even in the midst of those moments where the miraculous can happen, there's still times when the doubt and the uncertainty creeps in because situations and circumstances can change, and they change for this woman pretty suddenly. You see, sometime later, the text says, "Sometime later, the woman's son became sick. He grew worse and worse, and finally he died." And in that moment where her son dies, surely it's the most confusing, frustrating, difficult thing. You're like this, and she kind of responds as such. It's like, "I thought the Lord was doing the work in me, and here I am. I clearly have done something wrong, and my son is taken from me, and everything's going south, and I've lost the one thing that I was hoping.
[18:23] What is happening?" And it's difficult to know in those moments, it's difficult to understand and appreciate in those moments what trust in the one true God would look like. Because in those darkest moments, that's where we believe that the Lord is still shining. It's in those moments that we still believe in His sovereignty, but it's easy to say it, it's so hard to live it out. And for her, I'm sure in those moments, there was a lot of uncertainty. But not just for her, but for Elijah, because Elijah's witnessing the miracle as well, and he's with this woman and in this home and thinking, "God, surely there's a different story here." And so he begins to pray. Elijah cried out to the Lord, "O Lord my God, please let this child's life return to him."
[19:13] And as often as we should pray these kinds of prayers, and we should always, of course, ask for the miracle, we recognize that the will of the Lord and what God does in these types of moments is not always exactly what we might want. In this instance, though, the Lord both heard Elijah's prayer and answered it in the way that the mother was hoping. The Lord heard Elijah's prayer, and the life of the child returned, and he revived. And then the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know for sure that you are a man of God and that the Lord truly speaks through you." And this is not the thread that we're following, but I do wonder in this kind of example, I've read that so many times, and I've wondered, gosh, is there places and people in my life that my trust in God and my faithfulness to Him might become an example to the others?
[20:11] I wonder, for her, it became Elijah's faith. It was Elijah's prayer. She's seeing the Lord do good things, but it's through the prophet Elijah, and she's like, "Now because of your faith, because of what's happening here, I now believe and trust in your God." And I think sometimes, for any of us that have chosen to follow Jesus, and I know not everybody here has, but I just wonder if sometimes part of what people are looking for is to know if you actually believe this. Like, yeah, you're here, and yeah, you show up. These are all important, good things, but that person you work with wants to see you trust Him even in those darkest moments. And when you do, the faith of the people around you is transformed because they recognize if you can have faith in that moment, oh, my goodness, your God must be real to carry you through that.
[21:06] It's been part of your story if you've ever shared, like, "Hey, I was at the darkest, lowest moments of my life." I was talking to a couple people here today that were just sharing from first service, like the lowest moments and the trust and faith in God in those moments and how He carried me through and this testimony that I have speaks to His goodness, and people can see it and they're drawn closer to God because of it. But we're not following that thread. Sorry, that was a bit of an aside. Okay, John writes this about this particular section. He says, "Not only was Baal thought to be the life-giver through rain and dew, he also represented," think about this fake god, again, this idol, "he represented the triumph of life in the larger fertility cult, where he was temporarily defeated by Mot," or Mote, who was the god of death. And then, again, the story goes that this fake god was restored to life through the activity of his sister, lover, wife. It's really not a PG-13 kind of a thing.
[22:04] If you ever want to, don't, like ancient . Just know that they're a little sketchy. But as Elijah demonstrates, it's Yahweh, the true God, who gives life and no other. Hey, you thought that your false god could give you what you were hoping for? No, but this God certainly can. And this is the issue, right? For the people that were worshiping Baal, they were expecting Baal to provide food, they were expecting him to sustain life, they were expecting him to defeat death. That's the expectation on the idol, on the false god. This is why we give to it. This is why we sacrifice. If we do the right things, we get the right results. And so this is the setup. This is on one side and on the other, we're getting a chance to experience what Ahab and Baal are about and versus Elijah and the one true God are about. And it kind of looks like this.
[22:57] It's like with a dividing line on one side with the prophets of Baal and Ahab. You've got the right rituals, the right priests, the right sacrifices. I do these things. It's clear, it's understandable. I can comprehend it. I go through these motions and then I pull the machine and I get what I'm looking for on the other side. And on the other part of this, you've got a God who uses an unclean bird that nobody was expecting. A foreign widow. How am I supposed to believe and anticipate this? And a depleted pantry? This God is so different than this idol. The idol is so clear because the idol offers the control that I'm looking for. It's the ability to actually know, okay, if I do these things, I get these things.
[23:45] I say these magic words, and then I'm supposed to get this result. That's the expectation of the idols. But this God of Elijah requires the faith. The faith to wander where He asks. The faith to make a loaf of bread not knowing where the next one's going to come. The faith to go to the desert knowing that perhaps the Lord will be there too. Growing up and reading the stories of the idols, I always was so confused because I'm like, how could they be so dumb? I can do dumb things, but how could they be so silly? It's so odd that you would give up towards these worthless fake things.
[24:37] But as I was kind of reading and trying to understand a little bit more of Elijah's story, I recognized, do you know what happens here is that Baal or Baal simply means Lord, master, or owner. In fact, there's all sorts of ancient gods who carry this name, different depictions of them in different regions of the world. Jezebel's family, there's Baals that become part of the launch of Carthage, and child sacrifice is a part of some of them. And it kind of comes from this idea that Baal just means Lord, master, and owner. And I think what I would hope we could wrestle with a little bit here this morning is who or what do you sacrifice for?
[25:30] Because it's so interesting that we've carried that language into our world today. We don't offer the same kind of sacrifices. You can't point to the Baal temple down the road and say, "Oh, this is where you go if you want to offer a sacrifice to Baal here," and you buy a dove on the way in, and that's your sacrifice. But you would be right to say there's lots of things in my life that I sacrifice for, and the nature of the sacrifice isn't necessarily that the thing you do is right or wrong. It's you ask yourself the question, why do you do it and follow the line of thinking to the end, and you might discover that you're sacrificing for something that's false instead of something that's true. Let's try it on for size.
[26:18] You know the job that you sacrifice for, the career? Well, I'm going to sacrifice. Not wrong to wake up early and to go into work and to be on time and to show up and work hard, to study more at night so that you can be prepared for the next day. Those are not wrong things. To sacrifice a little bit of temporary pleasure so that you can do a good job, right call, but why do you do that? Well, because I want to put a good effort forward. Okay, why do you want to do that? Well, because if I put a good effort forward, maybe I'll get the promotion, and I'll have job stability. Okay, why do you want to do that? Well, because if I have job stability, then maybe I won't have to worry, and there'll always be money in the bank account, and I can be in control, and I don't have to ask for anything from anybody.
[27:11] There it is. Control, right? Control to sacrifice towards a god that would let you live without an understanding of faithfulness or walking in faith, because if I could just be in control, then I don't actually need a God of the universe to provide for me. I can do it on my own. I don't know your story, and I don't know what you sacrifice for, but here's what I do know, is that if you walk it through to the end and you ask yourself this hard question, why do I do that? And why do I do that? What I think you discover is that your sacrifice, and this is the bottom line, your sacrifice shows your lord.
[27:57] Your sacrifice will reveal your heart and reveal who's ultimately the master of your life. And maybe the name isn't Baal, but maybe it's a level of control you are desperate for. And here's the easy thing for me to say from a platform, it's a really hard thing to live out, is that what you might need most of all is the kind of experience that forces you to walk in faith, because the God of the universe is asking you to step out in obedience to Him, and He will provide for you. And listen, yeah, it's good to clap. It's good to clap. And we're going to respond, but listen, you've got to also do the work in the moment to be like, "Hey, but what's going on in this heart of hearts?" Because honestly, if I'm not careful, I can deceive even myself to recognize that the reason I do these things, the reason I sacrifice for these things is for the wrong motives. And listen, you take the same thing.
[28:53] You go back to the work example. You're like, "Why do I wake up early?" Well, it's because the Lord has given me gifts that I need to deploy for the sake of others. He's caused me to recognize His goodness, and I need to share it with others. He's given me gifts to deploy for the sake of others. I need to love my neighbor as myself, and so I wake up early and show up to work, not for the control, but for the opportunity to serve others. And you see, the sacrifice is different. Could be the same look from the outside, but in your heart, would you be willing to wrestle with, for even just a few moments, what are you sacrificing? And who ultimately is it for? And is it for the control, or is it for the God who provides?
[29:46] And as you pray that, recognize that then we can respond. Once you isolate it, once you recognize it, once you see it in your heart, wherever it is, whatever's stirring up in there, that you can plant a flag and say, "No, no. Today, I want to make sure." King Ahab messed it up, but when Elijah came, he said, "It's the God whom I serve." And today, you can be the one to say, "This is the God that I serve, the one that provides. I step out in faith. My God is the one that's sovereign. My God is the one who is awesome. My God is the one who I will give up everything for. Whatever He leads me into, I will follow." But would you, for a few moments, as we sing this song over you, just pause and ask the Spirit of God to kind of root out maybe an idol that might be sitting somewhere in your heart.
[30:37] Heavenly Father, what a gift it is that You would hand down from generation to generation these texts that we could learn and reflect on the mistakes of an evil king from thousands of years ago, but in the midst of it, celebrate the faithfulness of a widow, the faithfulness of Your prophet, that they might look to You and be willing to sacrifice all things, because as they gave up even the mediocre measure of their control over to You, You were faithful and just to provide what they ultimately needed. And so, Lord, here in these moments, we know that we can reflect back to You Your worship and Your honor and Your glory, but we pause for a moment to realize and recognize it requires each and every one of us to own the fact that we root out of our hearts that idolatry so that we can sing authentically to You.
[31:36] And if we do that well, Lord, we just trust and pray that You would receive our worship and receive who You truly are, that we could sing fully and strongly and unhindered and unencumbered, recognizing who You are, that You indeed are sovereign. And so, Lord, do the work in our hearts for these next few moments and point out to us where You would have us work. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.