Alright, if you would, turn in your Bibles of 1 Kings chapter number 18, 1 Kings chapter
number 18.
The title of my sermon is Unashamed of the Gospel, Unashamed of the Gospel, and I want
to put an emphasis on the Gospel because there's a lot of things that we can be unashamed of
in this life, whether it be some kind of achievement, whether it be a business, whether it be riches
or wealth.
You know, there's a lot of things that we can be unashamed of, but the Bible teaches
that we should be unashamed of the Gospel.
Now you're there in 1 Kings chapter number 18, we have a lot of people here that are
unashamed of something.
Let's take a look there at verse number 19.
The Bible reads, "So this is Elijah speaking, 'Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel
unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal 450, and the prophets of the groves 400, which
eat at Jezebel's table.'
So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together unto Mount
Carmel."
So here we see Elijah, he's rebuking Ahab for him serving Baal and saying, "Hey, let's
gather together all the prophets of Baal and all Israel."
So notice this, it also says all Israel is there as well, so there's a big group of people
here of false prophets as well as just the children of Israel, they're just gathered
together at this place and skip down there to verse number 26.
So basically in this story, just to kind of set up some context, you have the prophets
of Baal and you have Elijah and both of these groups have a bullock and they're going to
call to their God and pretty much pray for fire to come down from heaven to devour that
bullock.
Now let's see what the children of Baal do or the prophets of Baal, the Bible reads in
verse 26, "And they took the bullock which was given them and they dressed it and called
on the name of Baal from morning even until noon saying, 'O Baal, hear us.'
But there was no voice, nor any that answered.
And they leaped upon the altar, which they may notice these people are in front of everybody
crying out to Baal from morning even until noon."
They're crying out for hours and hours unto a rock, unto a stump, unto somebody that's
no God.
And, you know, they're doing this in front of a lot of people.
They have a lot of boldness and they're not ashamed to do this thing.
Skip down to verse number 28, "And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner
with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them."
And, you know, people that are wicked, you know, oftentimes they're going to be cutting
themselves and, you know, they're making a big show.
They're unashamed of wickedness and, you know, we see people today that are out and proud
and, you know, there's false prophets out there that are unashamed to preach a false
gospel in order to get money.
And the prophets of Baal here are no different and they're cutting themselves all the way
up until the evening.
You know, verse number 29, the Bible reads, "And it came to pass when midday was past
that they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that there
was neither voice nor any to answer nor any that regarded."
So these people are yelling out, they're crying out, they're cutting themselves, they're calling
out unto Baal all day long and they get no answer, but hey, they're unashamed of that.
They're doing that, you know, without fear and you know, Elijah, he ends up calling on
the name of his God and God ends up sending fire down and devouring his sacrifice because
Elijah was bold.
And you know, even in this story, we have 450 prophets of Baal and we have one Elijah,
you know, even though Elijah was outnumbered, he had the boldness.
He was unashamed of the God of the Bible.
Turning your Bible to Romans chapter number one, Romans chapter number one, and you know,
people often are unashamed to make a fool of themselves, you know, whether it be the
prophets of Baal, whether it be a false prophet, you know, people will just say the stupidest
things online, also on social media where they just run their mouth and they're not
ashamed of it.
You know, they do it, they have a following and they just say the stupidest things, you
know, even if it makes them a fool or they'll just make like a stupid TikTok video of them
like wrecking and like a bike crash or something and they're not ashamed of it.
But hey, we should be unashamed of the gospel.
Look down in Romans chapter number one, verse number 16, the Bible reads, "For I am not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth to the Jew first and also to the Greek."
We ought not to be ashamed of the gospel.
We should glory in it.
We should go out and preach the gospel.
We as mighty men, we should take the charge, and we should go out and preach the gospel
on a weekly basis.
It's the power of God.
It's able to change somebody's eternal destiny.
The prophets of Baal, they're calling out to a rock.
We have the rock, we have Jesus Christ, who's able to change somebody's eternal destiny
just by a simple faith in him, and hey, why are we ashamed of the gospel?
The false prophets, the wicked people, they're not ashamed of their false God.
The sodomites, they're not ashamed of being a freak.
We ought not to be ashamed of the truth.
We ought not to be ashamed of the gospel.
That's all I got.