Elijah and Elisha for Today
Baalism and the Lord
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Baalism and the Lord.
Genre: Sermon Series
Lesson: 2 of 16
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[Rushdoony] Our scripture is I Kings 17 verses 1-7 and our subject “Baalism and the Lord.” I Kings 17 verses 1-7, Baalism and the Lord. “And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord: for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook. And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.”
This is a highly offensive text, one which is embarrassing to many churchmen. They regard it as crude supernaturalism; it’s very difficult to believe because it involves not only a miraculous feeding but a miraculous feeding by ravens, this attitude of so many churchmen is due to their Baalism. What is Baalism? Baalism is any and every religion which is in essence naturalistic. Baalism sees no power, authority, or any kind of activity except that which is derived from naturalistic process. For Baalism all power and authority come from the world of nature, from naturalistic processes. Therefore Baal worship also involved the worship of the forces of nature, the powers of man, and especially the power of the state. Baalism was always and still is syncretistic. Baal worship is ready to change from one Baal or power to another again and again throughout history men have chosen the winning side as a religious act because for them power is what they worship. After all we have existentialism which emphasizes the moment and the powers of man. We have the thought of Mao Zedong which says “Power proceeds from the gun barrel.” We have the opinion of Stalin who felt that the greatest number of legions militarily constituted the greatest power.
Baal means Lord, we encounter the word in various forms in antiquity. Bel, in Babylon, and in other forms as well. Baal worship is simply the worship of the Lord of a system of thought. The question then is “where is our Lord?” What a man sacrifices for is his Lord, his God, and therefore wherever a man places the center of power, the center of authority, there he locates his God.
Now the concern of Elijah was with Mishpat{?} righteousness or justice, and the question of course throughout history has been “from whence cometh justice? From whence righteousness?” Is it from existentialist man? Is it from a gun barrel? Is it from God or the state? Who gives the law? Asaph has an answer to this in Psalm 75 verses 6-8; Asaph declares “For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.” According to Asaph power is not of this world but of the Lord, a God who is beyond history. And God as the judge raises up one and puts down another and governs all of creation. It is he who brings judgment upon the ungodly. It is he who nullifies all human power and brings it to naught. Asaph is emphatic as to his answer “judgment is of the Lord.” And the Lord is the God, the triune one.
Jeremiah 10:23 & 24 speaks also to the subject. “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing.” For Jeremiah very clearly man, having been created by God, can never understand himself except in terms of the Lord, because the way of man is not in himself. It is not man who determines his own being, nor creates his own nature, the existentialist, the contrary. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps, and so man needs the Lord. “Oh Lord correct me but with judgment, not in Thine anger lest Thou bring me to nothing.” All this is to the point in terms of Elijah’s experience. God in His providence brought judgment upon all Baalism, the drought struck Israel and not only Israel but all the lands round about.
God declares through the Psalmists in Psalm 24 verse 2 that life is founded upon the seas; that there is no security for man in this world but only of the Lord. And Psalm 93 verse 3 declares “Thou turnest man to destruction and sayest ‘return ye children of men.’ Scripture is emphatic that the plagues, the floods, the droughts, the disasters of history are the judgment of the Lord, that God in His judgment never allows man to have security in this world lest his trust in this world be maintained. The Baals of this world are consistently destroyed.
Thus God brings drought, a devastating and a radical drought upon Israel and all of the world round about. On top of that He brings to naught all the works of man by using a raven to feed his servant, witnessing to the fact that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Such a miraculous feeding is anti-naturalistic. It is an offense to all Baalism. Baalism, let us remember, held that all power and authority are derived from naturalistic processes and therefore Baalism always the most scientific religion of the day and also the most foolish because it worshipped the things of this world, it placed its stress upon process and power, it saw the focal point of power as the focal point of truth.
Thus in antiquity the point of power was always the power that was worshipped, it was the power that was seen as the truth. This is the kind of thinking we have today in men like Eric Voegelin who sees a variety of truths throughout human history and leaps in being so that as a new focus comes to human history and power, a new focal point of truth appears. Voegelin is perhaps the greatest single philosopher of our day for modern Baalism. Moloch worship of course was the worship of the state, it was a form of Baalism.
Now when Elijah speaks he declares, this is his word to Ahab: “as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word.” In a radical defiance of Baal worship of the state and of Ahab God makes Himself and His servant Elijah the point of power. Elijah was in his person the epitome of helplessness, one lone man against the powers of a powerful state, but it shall be, Elijah says “according to Thy word.” God has given me the power to determine the length of the draught and the point of its termination. The Psalmist says of the saints of the God He suffered no man to do them wrong. Yeah he approved kings for their sake saying “touch not mine anointed, do my prophets no harm.” God protects the man of faith.
Humanism is our modern Baalism, humanism is that form of Baalism in our time which says that man is the center of power and creation, and therefore man is the determiner of law, of righteousness, of justice, that it is the word of men that must prevail. It was not Ahab but Elijah that was fed by the Lord and Paul summons us in I Corinthians 5:7 saying “let us purge out the old leaven lest we be purged out of the house of the Lord.” Today we face Baalism in every area of life, in the church and out of the church. False religions, the essence of which is that man is the Lord, that man determines power and authority, that man can say “it shall be done” and it is done, and men look to their salvation at the hands of the state, the scientific socialist state. They believe that morality is born out of natural power and process so that in one day abortion and homosexuality are evil, and in another by an act of state they become legitimate. All such thinking, all such acting, is Baal worship. Baal, let us remember, means Lord. And the question that confronts us in every age is always the same, a question of Lordship. Lord is simply the old fashioned for a new term, sovereignty.
Today we believe in national sovereignty, or the sovereignty of man, or the sovereignty of a humanistic world order. But the word of God declares through Elijah and through all the saints of old that God alone is the Lord, He is the sovereign. Where is your Lord and mine? Where we locate our God there we locate all our hope, all our power, all our authority and our future. We determine all our today’s, yesterday, today and tomorrow, in terms of our faith. We sacrifice to that which is our God, and if our God is ourselves or our family then we sacrifice to that rather than to the living God. Men inevitably put all their eggs in one basket. Man being a religious creature must move in terms of faith and he will center his faith either in the living God or in an idol.
We have here a conflict between Baalism and the Lord. We know the outcome, the Lord triumphed. And in every age however great the odds seemingly against God’s saints, the Elijah’s of history triumph. They may stand alone in the eyes of men, but they stand with the Lord. And this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Let us pray.
Almighty God our heavenly Father we thank Thee that Thou hast called us to victory and that Thou hast declared that Elijah was a man like unto us but he prayed in faith and Thou didst command history in terms of his prayer. Fill us with the same faith oh Lord that as we face the Baal worship of our time we may in the power of Elijah and the power of Thou the living God command the nations and the people of our time and bring forth Thy righteousness and Thy truth to the confounding of all Baalism. Grant us this we beseech Thee in Jesus name, amen.