Daily Devotional For Friday, June 12, 2026
Good morning and good day Southside! In 1 Kings 18:1-40, we read of a contest between one prophet of God, Elijah and a bunch of pagan prophets of Baal. You know this story and in the end God wins, Elijah wins, Baal and his prophets were killed. We live in a world where when someone or something goes wrong, we want to cast blame. We want justice. For example, the drunk driver who killed an innocent person, we should blame them and seek justice. But today, there is a shift away from this in two ways: either the person plays the victim card – the drunk claims he/she is a victim of the disease of alcoholism or they seek to blame someone else – they blame the bar for selling them too much alcohol.
Another way we see this today among people of faith is they want to blame God for the problems in their lives that came as the natural consequences of their own sin. It’s God’s fault. In our story today, we are in the 3rd year of a 3-year drought and famine. King Ahab and the Israelites are blaming God and His 300 prophets for this. God had warned them their sin would not go unpunished. This caused King Ahab to hate and blame Elijah. We know there were 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah who ate at Jezebel’s table. That is 850 false prophets to the one last prophet of God – Elijah.
So, the time had come that God sent Elijah to King Ahab to tell them the drought and famine were about to end. Rain was coming. If God was going to send the rain, why send Elijah to tell King Ahab. Why not just let it rain. The point was that God was about to demonstrate how useless, fake, impotent and dead were the idols of Baal. In order for God to forgive them, the people would have to repent. Once they repented, the rain would come. The people killing all the false prophets of Baal was their repentance and the rain came.
Elijah faced a worse enemy than King Ahab and who was that? – King Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, who was the royal face of the worship of Baal. She had promised to seek out and slaughter anyone who opposed or did not worship Baal. As Jezebel was quickly slaughtering the 300 prophets of the Lord, King Ahab did nothing to stop her. So, it will all come down to a contest to see whose God is the real God – Yahweh or Baal.
In the story Elijah made a proposal of sacrificing bulls on an altar. He proposed to set them on fire, but pray that their Baal gods send fire down to the altar. The prophets of Baal agree and go first. Nothing happened. They prayed, danced, cut themselves and nothing happened. Then Elijah told people to bring 12 stones to build his altar. Each stone represented the 12 tribes of Israel. He dug a trench around it to hold about 3 gallons of water. Then he told the people to bring 4 jars of water and pour on the bull and the altar. Then he told them to do it a second time and then a third. Obviously the bull and the altar were soaked beyond being able to catch on fire. Elijah prayed to God and God sent fire and it burned up the bull, the stones, the altar and all the water in the trench he had dug. The people cried out, “The Lord is God. Yes, the Lord is God.” Bye-bye prophets of Baal.
In Elijah’s prayer, his prayer was for the people to know that Yahweh was the only God. God answered that prayer. What this lets us know is that there are terrible consequences when we pursue idols. Either Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords in our lives, or He is not. There is no middle ground here. If Jesus Christ is God, then follow Him to heaven. If your idol is an idol or another god, follow him to hell.
Reflection Assignment: Take a moment and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you any idols you have. An idol is anything or anyone that comes first or before God in every area of your life. Confess it, repent from it and make Jesus Christ your God. While we do not have such contests today, the end result is the same. Where have you seen someone’s idol bring them to ruin? What idols in your past did God discipline you and you repented? What did you learn from this?
Scripture To Meditate On: 1 Corinthians 10:14, “Therefore, my believed, flee from idolatry” (NASB).
Prayer To Pray: “Dear Lord, please reveal my idols. I want to get rid of all of them. I want no one but You as the one I worship and the One who controls my life. Please do not let me go another moment with idols in my life. Help me to flee from them. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly