The Real Super Bowl

Ok, you can stop rolling your eyes now -- this is not some sort of soap box post trying to convince people that the Super Bowl, its halftime show, and its commercials are all evil, and we should all be going to a Sunday evening church service instead. For starters, my church doesn't even have a Sunday evening service, and I will be surely semi-wasting 4 hours of my life Sunday eating more than I should, drinking way too much Diet Coke, and watching football in all of its undeserved hype. The Colts and the Bears just happen to be two of my most unloved teams (if this was a sports blog, I would use the word 'hated' instead). Anyway...

The scene -- a place called Mount Carmel, a mountain just along the Mediterranean coast due west of the Sea of Chinneroth almost 3,000 years ago.

1 Kings 18:21 - And Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, follow him." And the people did not answer a word.

And Elijah set the stage for the ultimate Super Bowl -- the showdown between Baal and Jehovah. There probably isn't a need for me to repeat the entire story, so if you are interested, I will refer you to 1 Kings 18:16-40. Basically, to sum things up, the Lord God of Israel smoked the false god Baal in a fire-making contest in front of all of Israel to prove that he was the only true God.

This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible, and in the book on Elijah that I'm reading, Pink takes several chapters to discuss this great event. So how does this apply today, and how in the world does it apply to the Super Bowl? Well, I admit that the Super Bowl comparison is a bit of a stretch, but honestly, for those people on that day, there was nothing more important than finding out who the true God was. And unfortunately, I'm afraid that in America tomorrow, there's hardly anything more important than finding out whether the Bears or the Colts win the Super Bowl. It's such a strange thing how people who don't even watch football during the year gather like flocks of sheep to watch the big game -- simply because it's a big party.

I almost wish that a present day Elijah would stand up and ask us all a similar question -- something like 'How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if the world or money or your job or whatever else is God, follow him. ' Sure, we don't seem to have a big problem today of someone going back and forth from Buddha to Jesus or anything like that, but we all have other gods. They may not be named Baal, but we certainly have idolatry problems today, myself included. This story is certainly relevant for each believer and non-believer alike. The sad thing is that our God is undefeated yet always the underdog. He will never go head to head against one of our false gods and fail. He has won time and time again and yet we still have days where we don't trust him, don't honor him, don't believe his words, etc. Why does God have to prove himself over and over again as the only god out there -- and that he is much more satisfying than anything this world has to offer? Oh well, whatever the case, if you are reading this, consider who or what is fighting against God in your own spiritual Super Bowl. Don't make the same mistake as the prophets of Baal - forsaking the only true God for a lie.