how did god defeat the priests of baal through elijah?

Jezebel won’t be put off that easily and threatens Elijah’s life which of course sets up chapter 19 and following. So Elijah leads the crowd down to do their killing and the rains come and the swollen river washes the bodies down to the sea where the Sidonians and other Baal worshipers will see them and the land will be purified by the drought ending rain. We’re really not OK with God, or anyone else deciding besides ourselves. This, ironically, puts us right into the lap of Ahab and Jezebel and the rest of the human race. We’re really into us deciding what is right and what is wrong and what the answer should be for what is wrong.

We’re really against anyone getting killed that doesn’t “deserve it” in our opinion, or in other words, what we’re really into is us deciding who lives and who dies. We say we’re against killing, but we’re not really. I’ll have ample illustrations from popular movies and culture to identify how many deaths we celebrate because “they deserved it”. The WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) in my audience may kvetch that this is another “bad story” of religious persecution at the hands of an evil OT God or what-have-you. If the Lord wanted them dead in that manner then “who am I to judge?” All those priests would die at some point. I won’t complain about the Lord’s right to determine the timing of anyone’s death. She clearly had an agenda she was pursuing. Yhwh tribalists may celebrate the slaughter of the pagan priests, after all Jezebel had been slaughtering the priests of Yhwh in a rather ungenerous exception to normal polytheistic practice. In my sermon I’m going to attempt to add some complexity to the picture. Here we finally had binary “proof” that Yhwh is God and Baal was not and after the big showdown Elijah lead the crowd down off of the mountain and slaughtered nearly 1000 prophets of Baal and Asherah. It is paradigmatic of prophetic confrontation. I’m preaching this week on 1 Kings 18, that great passage of prophetic confrontation.

How did god defeat the priests of baal through elijah?