SEP 21 2025 | Elijah: From Drought to Downpour S1E6 | Walking with a Limp

Sea Change Church · Elijah: From Drought to Downpour · "Walking with a Limp" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · September 21, 2025
1 Kings 18:17-21
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

and move us to give, move us to pray. Move us to serve. And we ask us all in Jesus mighty name. Amen. The book of one Kings Chapter 18, verses 17 through 21, when Ahab saw Elijah Ahab said to him, is it you, you Troubler of Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but you have and your father's house because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the bales. Now therefore, send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asra who eat at Jezebel's table.

So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near to all the people. And Saidhow, long will you go limping between two different opinions. If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word. This is the word of the Lord. Good morning if you have your Bibles open up to one Kings 18. We're still following Elijah through his story and his battle with King Ahab.

And, uh, in about 2005, I was on a plane going to England, and I sat next to Coolio. I don't know if you know Coolio, gangster Paradise. Somebody backside said, you're gonna talk about Gangster Paradise. I said, well, yeah. So I was sitting with him and we were just talking, right? And I knew it was Coolio because he had a distinctive hairstyle, right? And he had cut a hole on the top of his hat, and his hair was coming outta the hole, and he was wearing a Cincinnati Reds cap.

And I said, and this, this is one of my favorite things that anyone has ever said to me in my whole life. He said, I said, uh, oh, Coolio, you're a Cincinnati Reds fan. He goes, no, that's Seper coolio, yo. And I was like, oh, that's exactly what he said to me. I was like, that is so cool. You don't even like that team. You're just wearing a hat with, with like, you've, you've co-opted that 'cause you're coolio. So I thought, I'm gonna do that. That's cool.

And there's a bunch of baseball teams. You guys are just looking at me. This is a hilarious story. Whether you think it's hilarious or not, it's hilarious. And I was, and so I thought, I'm gonna do that. So for my birthday, a few years back, I got, I found all the baseball teams that had a's, because I wanted a for Adam Yo. And so I got Atlanta, uh, I got the Angels, right? And I, I got Oakland, right? And so I was wearing these around, and I was like, yeah, I'm a Atlanta, you know, and here's the problem.

I'd be at the zoo, right? And people would walk up to me and they'd say, oh, eight town, let's go. Hey, how's the team doing? I'd be like, I have no idea. I don't like Atlanta. I've never been there actually. So I don't know, you know. And, uh, they'd always look at me and I'd, and they'd say, well, why, why where? And I'd say, well, that's a for Adam. Yo, It didn't work. I stopped doing it 'cause it was just so awkward.

Oak Hotel, you know, or whatever, you know? I was like, no, that doesn't work. I realized, they realized very quickly I had no allegiance to the hat I was wearing. Right? When we see this, this passage, Elijah's coming in, and he's asking them, how long are you going to waiver between two opinions? How long are you going to have an allegiance towards this one thing? You're professing, but then you have no allegiance to the thing that actually matters.

I want you to write on the top of your notes, allegiance, or you can write loyalties, one or the other, but allegiance. And what we're seeing is Elijah is asking a question of the people he's confronting, the prophets, and he's asking the people to, um, choose. Now Joshua does this as well, whom we you serve. But as for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord. And so what I wanna set up today, as in this passage, is really to ask ourselves the question, are we, uh, do we have full loyalty to Jesus Christ?

Or do we have a competing allegiances? The sermon's called Walking with a Limp? Because he, because he draws this incredible metaphor, Elijah, as he's speaking to the people, he basically goes on to say in, uh, verse 21, how long will you go on limping between two different opinions? And I don't know if that resonates with you, but it sure resonates with me because I realize when my, my singular focus changes from just following God to whatever that, that, you know, um, cornucopia of different things and loyalties that I can, uh, follow or be a part of.

When it changes, all of a sudden I feel like I lose stride. I feel like I'm not walking in a rhythm. I feel like I'm losing. And that is exactly what Elijah is saying here. Go to verse 21. And Elijah came near to all the people. And that's a, that's a messianic. Um, uh, you know, Jesus came near to the people that is a messianic, uh, homage to the New Testament, to all the people. And he said, how long will you go limping between two different opinions?

Here's your big idea for the day. God is searching, he's searching, he does search the land. For people who don't limp between loyalties, but live in solitary allegiance to him, is that you? Are you the one who is saying, here am I Lord, send me. Or do we have a host of competing allegiances where you're saying one thing with what you're wearing in front of people, but on the back channel, there's a whole bunch of other allegiances to things that you want to follow, the things you give your time to, you give your emotions to you, give your heart to you, give your body to, and this is a great question, and it really sets us up because Eli, Elijah is asking Israel, do you want to just follow God?

What does your life look like if you just did 24, just 24 hours? I'm not asking you to go beyond that just one day to completely follow God. No other allegiances, no other loyalties, no other pursuits, but only pursuing God just one day. What does it look like to do that? What we find is that there are consequences when we have competing allegiances to God. And you're gonna see those consequences in this passage play out, and I think they build a bridge to our lives because I see the same thing that happens with, with Ahab losing the plot, losing an understanding of where God is in the peace, what's actually happening to him.

He's losing a sense of reality. His compass that is pointing towards what he thinks is happening is actually not what is actually happening. It's going backwards. He's blaming the wrong people, blaming the wrong reasons. And this tends to happen when we change our allegiance or we have a competing allegiance. Here's two things that we saw happening in Israel at this point. Um, and this is happening, and this is a national issue that was happening in Israel at the time.

When sin blinds you, God's prophets look like the problem. Elijah's become the problem, right? God has sent Elijah for a reason to call his people home, but Ahab sees him as the problem. He has lost touch, he has lost vision. He has gone blind to who the people of God are, and he is calling the people of God, the troubler of Israel. He has lost the plot. Well look at that in our lives and how oftentimes we can ea easily be blinded.

Maybe you're not blinded to who the prophets are in the world because this is a national issue, if we're gonna exe the scripture pa this passage, uh, correctly. But if we do want to draw, uh, something to our lives, are there things that have become blurry and dim in your life because you're focusing on other things? It's hard to look in two directions at the same time. The second thing we see is Israel was limping, as I said, between allegiances, while Elijah was running with God in verse 46 of this same passage, right after mentioning how they're limping, Elijah has this incredible Holy Spirit led the spirit of God led, um, run where he just runs with the horses basically, and he outruns all the chariots and all the people that are chasing him.

And God just is upon him. And all of a sudden you see him at full stride. When was the last time you were at full stride? Is it God's fault? Is it perhaps your fault? It's like, you know, you, you, you're, you're taking a, you know, a hoe and hitting your foot on, you know, over and over again or a shovel and banging your foot over and over again, and then wondering why you can't run blaming it on the wrong reasons. And so we see those two things. Here's our first one.

When sin blinds you, God's prophets look like the problem. Israel is limping between allegiance while Elijah with the running with God. And I hope we can, uh, by the end of this, get you to a place where you can get your allegiance back on track and begin to pick up the pace and begin to run. I'm not talking about burning yourself out, I'm just talking about running with God. Because when we run with God, he can have a supernatural ability to expand your margins, your abilities.

Uh, go to verse uh, 17, when, when Ahab saw Elijah Ahab said to him, is it you Troubler of Israel Circle Troubler? And he answered, I've not troubled Israel, but you have and your father's house because you abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. What I think is interesting is, and maybe it was just, um, you know, a a, uh, turn of phrase or, um, something that he just said, but when Ahab saw Elijah Ahab said to him, is that you?

Now, my question is to myself as I'm reading that, did he actually not recognize Elijah? This happened all the time with Jesus. Jesus was regularly with his disciples doing miracle type things, walking on water, standing at the shore, being near them, and he was unrecognizable to the people closest to him. All of Israel didn't recognize when the Messiah had come. And most of Israel doesn't recognize that the Messiah has come to today, although he is continuing to reach the Jew first and then the Gentile, as the scripture says.

And as Paul says, I want to say that when we are not following with a so allegiance to God, you are going to become more and more blinded to the people of God when the people of God speak to you, to the messages of God, to the things that God is doing in society. If you have a, perhaps a political allegiance that tends to get a little bit more of your time than your allegiance to following Jesus's passionately, I have a feeling you're going to be blinded and begin to see Jesus through a, perhaps a political lens or whatever that lens is.

It doesn't have to be that. It could be carnality, it could be debauchery. Whatever we want to put in between us and Jesus, Jesus will oftentimes be seen through that lens. And so Ahab was at a point where he didn't even recognize the people of God. And I will say this happens to nations too. When nations walk away from God, God oftentimes will send people to speak truth to that nation. And the people who are in charge of that nation, or the power brokers of that nation will see that person as evil and say that that person is the problem.

I don't know if you see that happening in our nation today. We see that happening all the time. And so the word he says, he says, traveler, this word traveler is a, is a, is a, uh, Hebrew word. The word is er, that is the root. And it means to trouble to disturb, to stir up or to bring disaster. Now, we know if Ahab had the right lens on lenses on, he would've known that the trouble that was happening, this drought that was happening, remember this whole thing is set in a concept of a drought.

This whole drought was happening because of Israel walking away from God, but Ahab couldn't see that anymore. And so the things that were upon him, God was using tribulation to shake the tree of Israel, that he might bring them back. And God oftentimes uses tribulation to bring us back. It's not always everything that happens in your life. It's not a brought on by God. But sometimes God will bring things on. Sometimes he will allow things. Why?

Because he loves us and he wants to bring us back. I had a pastor when I was working at a vineyard church, and when I was a, um, youth pastor, we were talking about evangelism. He goes, I find evangelism most effective when the people of God are experiencing difficulty. He says, oftentimes, I just care for people, care for people, and I wait for the moment of, of opportunity. When the hand of, of God or, or providence or whatever you'd want to call it, something happens in their life, a health issue, someone close to them, passes a break of relationship.

He goes, is that moment I come in and I try to, at that moment be available, and I find that they're way more able to want to speak about the things of God. We're seeing that now in our society. I'm having the best conversations I've ever had about God ever in being a Christian for a very long time because the world knows that it's unhinged. People are looking for anchors, and people are looking for people that can see the truth, who the truth is set them free, right?

And then they speak to those, those people. But if you're gonna be like that, you can't have multiple allegiances because you're gonna start losing the plot. I stayed off social media mostly this week. It's just super toxic right now. It's so toxic. Um, I just thought, you know, uh, it's okay to slip away like Jesus did, um, and just be away. And one of the things I, I did notice a few things that I looked at, especially in the Christian community, were people who had a lot of opinions about things that I thought, show me that in scripture, huge opinions, huge, huge opinions about the church, about the people.

And they're all pointing to all these things and, and what's happening. And I thought, just show me that in scripture, because scripture is my compass. And if you have your eyes on the right thing, you're gonna be able to interpret the things of the day through a scriptural lens, not through your opinions. I wanna say I'm, I, I look at my opinions with a jaic eye. I don't want to be, uh, um, completely, uh, captivated by my own opinions and then also put in bondage to my own opinions.

But I want to continue to seek the word and to seek for truth. And so Israel had lost the ability to do this. They had looked at a prophet that had been sent to them, and they said that prophet is evil. You are the troubler of Israel. Even though this troubler was speaking the truth in a poem by WB Yates, I was, um, I was studying for this, I came across a poem on the second coming. He was one of the, the, uh, modernist war poets in the early 19 hundreds.

They had a lot to say to us, a lot to say to us, because there were, there was a whole movement of poetry that really spoke beyond, um, the political moment of the day. And this is what he said about a nation in the second coming that loses its ability to listen to its prophets, and they actually attack and sometimes kill their prophets. He said, things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loose upon the world.

The blood dim tide is loose. And everywhere this ceremony of innocence is drowned, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Let me, can I just read that last sentence again? The best lack all conviction. While the worst are full of passionate intensity, if you're a believer with, with multiple allegiances, multiple hats that you're changing out on, it's gonna be real hard to have a conviction.

It's just really, I find that myself, it's so hard to have a conviction. What, what Elijah is saying is saying, come back to God, stop limping, come back to a God. What does 24 hours look like? A fully following God, when was the last time? And maybe it's right now, you just had 24 hours of just following God passionately. This is what he's happening. And then people will ask themselves sometimes, why are these troubles happening in my life?

Because, you know, perhaps it is God using these troubles. And even if they aren't from God, he will use all things, will work together for good, for those that love God and are called according to his purpose. To call you back. I wanna say un like unlike Ahab, don't confuse conviction with condemnation. The spirit troubles us to save us. And when there is trouble in your life, there is always an opportunity to turn back to Christ.

There's always an opportunity to go back to the one thing. As Kiir guard said, Kiir guard said the one thing. There is one thing that matters, one thing, and that one thing is Jesus Christ. The second thing we saw was Israel's limping between, uh, allegiances. Well, Elijah was running with God, so they said, there's a juxtaposition there, Israel. He says they're limping. But just in a few verses later, Elijah will be running full stride.

A resolution to serve the Lord. If you're gonna have this, to go from limping to running requires a showdown. A a, lemme just say that again. A resolution to serve the Lord only requires a showdown. Um, I dunno if you've seen tombstone, Val Kilmer and Tombstone is sublime. Just sublime. I mean, when he is got the no no, just me. Big Val Kilmer guy, love, uh, I just love Val Kilmer. I won't, I won't do any, uh, um, impersonations.

But there's like a showdown, right? There's a showdown and some show up. Ready? Some are afraid to have that showdown. One guy was curly. I think that guy curly, you know, he pees his pants when the Val Kilmer shows up, you know, there's like, oh, it's just this crazy showdown. I have found that the many times I have made a stand in my life to say, I'm only gonna stand for Jesus again. It requires a showdown. I gotta show up to the okay corral of my soul and have a showdown.

It's a battle. It's not as easy. I'm just gonna do happy, happy go lucky following Jesus today. Gonna do it. Just gonna have a great day, bumper sticker. Just you put it back in my car. Re make a meme. It requires a showdown. It requires me to forge the word of the Lord in my heart, to make a resolution, to let go of things where my, the grip of my hand, like the one in scripture. Remember, he had said, he held the, the, the sword that he couldn't get his hand off the sword anymore.

If you hold a sword long enough, the grip of my hand on the thing that I want the precious just to let it go. Maybe you are, are you there in that place? What does it look like if you're gonna have that showdown, and maybe you need to have a showdown. I know that I need to have a showdown almost every single day. Some are bigger than others. Am I going to serve the Lord and let that thing go down? Verse nine 19. Now, some of the people, Elijah says, I love that.

Some of the people very much like Sermon on the Mount type stuff, uh, the people from all over Israel to meet me on the Mount Carmel and bring 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of ra ra who eat at Jezebel's table. What I think is interesting is Jezebel was feeding 850 prophets a day at her table. She just had, he was just surrounded with noise. I I doubt those 850 prophets has as much influence on Jezebel as your phone has on us.

I, I'm, she didn't hear all those, right? They weren't as good at the algorithm. They couldn't figure out what was going on. I doubt that those 850 prophets at Jezebel's table that told her what she wanted to hear, that spoke and, and, and gave her lies. And, you know, the enemy used has as much influence on her soul. As you know, the shiny gateway to hell has on ours, I'll continue to call it the shiny gateway to hell, even though I use one, it is a shiny gateway to hell.

They eat at Jezebel's table. And I guess the question is, is what table are you eating at? You know, in the, at the last Supper, once again, another tie-in. Do you see all these tie-ins with Elijah? You got 12 that are eating at the table of Jesus in res. In, in, in the book of Revelation, it says, we will come together and have a marriage feast at a table, but they're eating at Jezebel's table. And Elijah says, bring them all down to Mount Carmel and we will go up on Mount Carmel.

You see a resolution to serve the Lord requires a showdown, a resolution. And so he said, bring all the people, bring all the prophets, and it's just me. And doesn't it feel like that sometimes you got everything competing against you? You got maybe fam maybe you've made a decision to follow Jesus, and nobody in your fa family follows Jesus, and you got 850 against you. It feels like everything is against you. A resolution to serve the Lord requires a showdown, and it requires a fortitude of heart and fortitude of soul that if you are going to follow the Lord.

So we see, first of all, he's at Mount Carmel. Now Mount Carmel is that place of decision. If you don't know this, Mount Carmel, if you stand on top of Mount Carmel, it's a mountain range. It's not really a mountain, it's a mountain range. At the bottom of it, oddly, is the valley of Armageddon. Really? If you didn't know that, I've been up there before and stood there bef, um, uh, you know, at the one place that they kind of say, this is the spot.

Like, you go to Israel, and it's like, well, this is kind of maybe the spot, like a hundred percent for guaranteed this might be the spot. Um, but the valley of armor, the, the, you know, the, the, not the battle of Armageddon, um, where the battle of Arman will be, uh, is at the, is at the, the base of Mount Carmel. And that is where the, you know, the final battle will be. And you see that showdown happening. So it makes sense that he is up there above that, as we see that he's also outnumbered, like I said, and in the midst of all this that is happening, and I don't know if you feel that way right now, I know I feel a little bit like a pinball right now, and just ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.

And I, yes, this week I just had to go, whoa, we're we're dropping down into second gear rr. I'm like, no, done. I'm losing clarity. I need to have clarity. I need to sit under trees. I need to take a moment to stand and stare, uh, at life in a, in a different way. Um, began to realize that I didn't, I wanted to be able to make decisions. And so what happened here is these people were so filled with the messages of the, of the, of the bales and the prophets and all these people in Israel that they had come to a valley of indecision, a place of indecision in your life.

And I would say indecision is probably one of the worst places. One, I wouldn't say worst, most difficult places to be as a believer. Indecisions, miserable. You know it. If you've ever been in the middle there with one foot, you know, in Jesus camp and the other one, you know, wherever camp that is, it's so miserable. It's just miserable. But we tend to live there all over, over and over again, and we walk with a limp instead of running over and over again.

Verse 21, he says, Elijah came near to all the people. How long? Oh, circle that word. That's a great question. Two words. How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If, if, um, circle if, if the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, then you follow him. And the people did not answer a word because they stood in the valley of indecision. If you were gonna go from walking with a limp, and you know what that's like, or if you ever hurt yourself, I gotta, I was playing basketball yesterday.

I got a knee of the quad. This is just, I, I dunno if it was prophetic, I have no idea. Uh, my scripture today was also about Hezekiah walking with a limp. And I was like, oh, what are you saying, Lord? Uh, but I can hardly walk today. Like I got a, the, the legit, if you would've taken a sledgehammer to my, my quad. It's like, I'm like, oh, okay, Lord, I get it. I get it. I get what's going on here. If you have been walking like that spiritually, emotionally, mentally, it's gonna take valor, it's gonna take grit, it's gonna take fortitude.

It's gonna take a showdown of your soul to say, I want something different. Or we can continue to limp and meander in the valley of indecision. As I was, uh, preparing, uh, for this, I came across the story of Christy Brown. Christy Brown was a man who was born with, um, cerebral palsy so bad that his, his mother and his father would said, you know, we can just put him into the asylum. He's never gonna speak. He's never gonna walk.

He's gonna be bent and crippled his whole life. He has no future. We can just take him off your hands and put him into the asylum. But his mother wouldn't take that for an answer. And she began to pour into Christy Brown every day saying, you can be something. You can make a difference. You can take this limp and you can begin to run with this. And his life was changed. He, he has a quote, he says, even with my twisted body, I had to figure a way to straighten out my life.

And he went on to incredible things. In 1989, uh, this, this, uh, story was a moralized, was, was memorialized on, um, on film in a, in a movie called My Left Foot with Daniel Day Lewis. And if you're going to have a showdown to say, Jesus is gonna be the only thing in my life that matters, it might look a little bit like this. You see, Christy Brown was not willing to limp without trying to run. And he had someone that believed in him.

He had a mother, and the first word that he ever wrote with his foot that he taught himself to do. And you saw the kind of effort that takes because that is the kind of fortitude that it's gonna take if you're gonna follow Jesus. The first r he wrote, mother, I just felt like I should also say, moms, don't give up. If you, if you have a prodigal, don't give up. Keep praying. And to the rest of us, may we become a church in a time that, that, that needs voices.

We need the prophets. We need you to speak up, not your opinions, but who Jesus is. When people say you're speaking lies, I hate what you have to say. And they will point at you for one reason or another. We needed church that's willing to do that and to speak his name. And I gotta tell you, it's only gonna happen if you have the battle that Christy Brown just had. But it's a showdown with your soul. Let's stand if you would. I'm gonna bring the band forward for a final song as we spend time with the Lord for just a moment.

I think all that's left to say is to sing Holy, amen. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who wasn't is is to come with your creation. I raise you, the king of King and I with all creation. King, you and I, you Invite our prayer team up. Pastor Joshua and the prayer team are gonna be here to pray for you. We want to pray for you today. If you need prayer for anything spiritual need, you need the just someone to pray with the care, care for you, and prayer to lift you up.

If you have a physical need, emotional, spiritual, you just want to pray for someone else who's a prodigal. This team wants to pray for you. This church wants to pray for you. We want to pray with you and partner with you so that you can begin to run. I want to bless you now if you extend your hands. I wanna bless you, Lord God. We ask you would bless your people, Lord God. God, for all of us that know we've been walking with a limp and it's self inflicted, but we don't understand what's happening to us, God.

And we can't see you in the midst because you become unrecognizable to us for one reason or another. I pray that we can see you and just say, Lord, just in your own eyes, God, give me I in your own words, give me eyes to see just right now in your own hearts, just say, Lord, give me eyes to see. I don't wanna miss you. I don't wanna miss you when you're close. I don't wanna not follow. When you move where you go, I go where you, where you lead, I will follow.

So God, we bless your congregation. We bless this church. We bless God this nation, Lord God, and we thank you Jesus for all that you're doing. The name of the Father, son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.