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| EXPLORE THE BIBLE: (20–25 minutes) Explain the following background to today’s story. • The King of Israel, Ahab, married Jezebel, who brought into their marriage Baal worship. Baal was a Canaanite god of storm, weather, and fertility. Baal was the most significant god in this culture because their culture was based on agriculture, so Baal, the god of storm and fertility, was very important to the people. The land depended on rain. • Ahab did evil in the eyes of God and joined his wife in worshipping of Baal. He built an altar and worshiped Baal and led the people of Israel astray. The prophet Elijah then received a word from God and told Ahab that there would be no rain until he declared so. Thus, there was a famine in Israel. • The third year of the drought God told Elijah to go to Ahab. This is where our story of Elijah comes in. The test on Mt. Carmel was not only to see whose altar would burn—Baal’s or God’s—but also to see which god would bring rain on the land. The people needed to decide which god they were going to serve because Israel could only have one god. Choose students or ask for volunteers to play the role of the narrator, Elijah, and two bulls in a skit of today’s story. The rest of the class should be divided in half—one group is Baal’s prophets and the other group is “the people.” Ask students to read the passage from I Kings 18:20-40 and plan how they will play their parts. When they are ready, go through the skit, with the narrator reading and the other students acting out their parts. Continued... |
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