Utumishi Blog

I heard a great sermon the other day which reminded me of a tip that I was told some while back.  It is great to look for the Big Idea of a chunk of Scripture but it’s even better if you can find a verse in the passage that IS the Big Idea – a verse that gives you a key to the passage – a verse that gives you the whole thing in microcosm (in a nutshell).  Or to change the metaphor again – a verse which is like a view point from which you can look out over the whole land.

The preacher was speaking on 1 Kings 18 (the contest on Mt. Carmel) and he took as his key verse 1 Kings 18:21: “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”  This verse then provided the structure for his talk:

1. ‘How long will you go limping between two different opinions?’ (explaining how the people then, and we now, are exposed as those who try to have the ‘best of both worlds’, not wholehearted idolaters or wholehearted followers of the Lord but trying to get what we want from both);
2. ‘If the Lord is God follow him’ (looking at the example of Obadiah’s mundane faithfulness and dangerous faithfulness in the first half of the chapter – the bit we usually skip over to get to the ‘action’ on Mt. Carmel);
3. ‘If Baal follow him’ (looking at the attractiveness of a god made in our own image and the uselessness of such a god);
4. But we can’t follow the Lord, we need a Sacrifice (this was the brilliant bit – the twist – because actually we can’t follow God in our own strength, we can’t keep the covenant, we can’t approach a holy God, which is why we need the Great Sacrifice of which 1 Kings 18:38 is a shadow – when the fire of God fell on the Son of God and he was consumed in our place).

whole passage…