Confronting the King

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in 1 Kings chapter 16. 1 Kings chapter 16 this morning. I told you before I don’t often write out everything that I’m going to say, but part of this I did write out this morning because I wanted to make sure I said it exactly as I planned to.

And so I’m going to share this first part with you that I’ve written out. I want you to take just a moment and imagine yourself in a country that was founded on the worship of the one true God. You got that idea in mind?

Anybody know a country like that? A country founded on the worship of the one true God and one that has been blessed by him beyond all imagination. Imagine that country and imagine yourself there.

Now imagine yourself to be a citizen of that country, one who loves that country and who loves God. Can you picture it? Are you there?

But now imagine that your country has spent the last 70 years or so drifting away from its godly foundation. You look around and what you see around you is that those who lead the country and the government, the culture, and even the religious establishment, they’ve totally forgotten their principles and they’ve totally forgotten the reason why God put them there in the first place. And as the people have wandered further and further from God, they’ve begun to follow leaders whose hearts were far from God.

And those leaders, in turn, have led the people still further and further from God in a vicious downward spiral. You look around you and the nation is now openly hostile toward God. This country founded on the worship of the one true God is now openly hostile toward God, breaking every commandment they can possibly think of, and shaking their collective fist at God and daring Him, defying Him to do something about it. They’re consumed by a lust for power and for possessions.

satanic ideas and influences are flaunted throughout society. God’s rules about marriage and intimacy set up for our own protection have been thrown out the window. Self-control, something that was once considered virtuous, is now treated as an outdated notion, and people are encouraged to throw off all of their restraints.

The people bow down and worship nature, which they ensure is protected, while parents murder their own children because they’ve been convinced it’ll make their lives better to do so. Acts of violence have become commonplace, both against others and against oneself. The word of Almighty God is given no credibility, but blasphemous spiritual gurus, the positions of the stars, the palms of our hands, and visions seen in smoke are all believed to authoritatively show the way forward.

And anyone, anyone who dares speak up and claim that God’s word still applies to man, faces intimidation, exile, or worse. How many of you think I’m talking about America? It sounds a lot like America today, but I actually wrote this looking at the book of 1 Kings, chapter 16, thinking about Israel in the 860s BC.

I kept telling Charla earlier in the week, this is giving me goosebumps. It’s giving me goosebumps to look in the scriptures and see what life was like in King Ahab’s court and see the parallels between it and our world today. See, we like to think the world is the worst it’s ever been.

It’s never been this bad. I don’t know. Sin is sin, and sin has been around since the beginning.

And sin is going to be around until Jesus comes back and sets everything to right. The problems we’re facing in America today in 2016 are not new problems. Which on one hand is a sobering thought because it’s been all these thousands of years and the problem is still not solved. But on the other hand, it should be reassuring to us because these are not new problems. God doesn’t look at America in 2016 and say, oh, what am I going to do about that?

Now, the same God who was in control in Israel back in the 860s BC is in control in America in 2016. He’s the same God who’s been in control from the beginning of creation. He’s not caught off guard or surprised by any of our circumstances, any of our breaking news.

I know this time of year in the summer, I’m always thinking, what is the Supreme Court going to mess up now because they come out with their decisions at the end? What’s going to be the new thing that thumbs our nose at God now? And I’m often shocked, as many are.

You know what? God is not shocked by any of it. And these problems are not new.

And God has solutions for us today, just as he did for Israel over 2,000 years ago, almost 3,000 years ago now. We look at the world and we see how dark it is. We see how ugly the world and how violent and how hateful and how sinful the world is and how it seems to be getting worse all the time.

And when we look back at the scriptures, we think all the time in Bible days, they were in this golden age. No, they were real people living in real times with these same real problems. And God gives us an example. God gives us many examples of how we’re supposed to respond to the world around us.

But one that I love to look at is Elijah. and one of the things that I love about Elijah is that he seems real now that’s not to say that any of the Bible characters are made up they’re not fake if the Bible says they were real then they were real but a lot of the Bible characters we see only the good side of them some of them we see only the bad side of them some of the villains Elijah we see the good and we see the bad we see a man who was willing to take bold stands for God but we also see a man with real weaknesses and fear and God, I don’t think I can do this. It’s too hard to stand alone.

And I think we find ourselves in the same position. We know that we should be, we know we should take bold stands for God. We should stand for the truth.

We should stand for righteousness. We should stand squarely on God’s word. And yet sometimes we’re fearful of doing so.

Folks, we’re not alone in this. And the life of Elijah shows us that God can use us in spite of our fears, in spite of our problems, in spite of our shortcomings. God can use us.

And what we see from the life of Elijah is that this one man came in and spoke up. And that was the work of God all throughout it. Elijah was just the vessel that God chose to use.

But this one common man spoke up and did what God told him to. And incredible things happened. God turned people around.

Some of the people were revived. Some of the people were challenged by God’s word and didn’t respond in a positive way. But either way, where there had just been sin and wallowing in it before, now there was conviction.

And I’ve said for many years that the funny thing about conviction is you can’t stand still under conviction. You can’t do it. Conviction will either drive you toward God or it will drive you further away from God.

But you can’t stand still under conviction. It seems like I always talk about conviction when my mother’s in the congregation, which is funny because she’s the one who really first taught me about conviction. I would say, this friend at school, why is she acting like such a jerk?

She’s under conviction. That was mom’s answer. She’s under conviction.

I got so tired of hearing they’re under conviction, just like I got so tired of hearing, you know, this, I got so tired of hearing, be still. You know, there are some things that Mama says that are biblical, but they’re right. You just don’t want to hear them all the time.

And I would hear all the time, they’re under conviction. They’re just under conviction. They’re acting that way because they’re under conviction.

She was right. Because when you’re under the conviction of God, you don’t just stand there and take it. You lash out in one way or another.

And you either break toward God or you break away from God. And so God used this one man who was willing to stand against the darkness of his world to bring conviction of sin to the very dark nation of Israel at a time when it was needed, at a time that before that, everybody had just been comfortable in their sin, and God said, no, this is not right, I don’t like this. And so he sent in Elijah, and God used Elijah to irritate them and to convict them, and many, not all, but many of the people turned back toward God.

And folks, that gives me hope, and it should give all of us hope, that even though we see the darkness closing in around us, you know what, we’re probably not a Christian nation anymore. And we probably, the truth is, we probably haven’t been for quite some time. But you know what, that’s okay.

We don’t have to huddle together and say, well, let’s just all be good together here in our little room until the end comes. And we don’t have to say, well, if we can’t beat them, join them, and cast our lot in with the darkness. It tells us that we can stand boldly against the darkness of this world in a loving way and be a light for God and a light for Jesus Christ. And yeah, we may not turn the nation back to God.

I’m not talking about electing the right people and making laws that will make everybody act right again. I think Russell Moore said it very well at the Southern Baptist Convention this year. Laws that force people to act like Christians will just send a lot of fake Christians to hell.

It doesn’t make real Christians. I testify. by.

He nailed it. I’m not talking about laws. I’m not talking about retaking the government.

I’m talking about standing firm for the principles of God’s word and being a convicting influence in this world in hopes that some people will break toward God. It’s going to drive some people further away, but you know what? We can’t leave the darkness.

We can’t leave the dark world comfortable in its sin. We can’t leave ourselves comfortable in our sins. So I want to set this way so you understand that when we’re talking about Elijah, he’s like us.

Knows that something’s wrong. Knows that God is calling him and the nation to something different and just a little bit afraid to do something about it. I think probably most, if not all of us in this room are in that same boat.

We know something’s wrong with America. We know something’s wrong with Oklahoma. We know something’s wrong in our community and with our friends and our neighbors and people don’t seem to have the same respect for God anymore.

And the world around us, even in our little corner of the Bible belt, seems to be growing darker. And it’s scary sometimes to step out and do something about it. But this real man in real times was in the same real situation we’re in.

And yet God used him to do incredible things. He came into a place, we’re going to read, starting in 1 Kings chapter 16, starting in verse 31. Actually, we’re going to start in verse 29.

And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel. And Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years. You probably remember the stories from Sunday school about King Ahab.

Not a good man. Wanted to kill the prophets of God. He killed Naboth just because he wanted his land.

You name it, he did it wrong. And this is what we’re going to talk about here. And Ahab, the son of Omri, verse 30, did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him.

Think about that. When you look after the split, after Solomon died, Israel split into two kingdoms. They had a little civil war thing going on for a couple hundred years. The northern kingdom was called Israel.

The southern kingdom was called Judah. The northern kingdom never had a good king. Not one.

The southern kingdom, Judah, had a mixture of good and bad. The northern kingdom never had a good king. and yet the Bible here says that Ahab was worse than anyone who was before him.

That’s a lot of bad guys to say he was worse than all of them. He did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sons of Jeroboam, the son of Naboth, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, the king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him.

Now, what is he talking about there? The sin of Jeroboam. Jeroboam was the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel.

And when the two countries split, Judah in the south had Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. And all the Jews were supposed to go and worship at Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Jeroboam got the idea, hey, if we let our people go down to the southern kingdom, there’s this rivalry thing between the two kingdoms even when we’re not at war.

They spent time at war, and it was kind of a love-hate brother-sister relationship. they’d fight it out and slug it out and hate each other. But when anybody else interfered, then they kind of teamed up sometimes.

It’s just not a good situation. There’s a rivalry there. And Jeroboam said, you know what?

If we send our people down to worship at the temple there, then they’re going to make connections with the people in the south. They’re going to have some loyalty to the south. They’re going to have some loyalty to the king there because they’re going down there and they’re worshiping and this religion is going to keep everybody unified.

I might just lose my throne. That’s going to be a problem. So he said, I know what.

I’ll build some places where they can worship. I’ll build some places up here where they can worship. What’s wrong with worshiping?

I mean, shouldn’t we worship all the time? What could be wrong with that? Well, God said they had to worship in this one particular way.

And who is Jeroboam to change that? So Jeroboam came up with this great idea that nobody had ever thought of before. I’ll build some golden calves.

Oh, wait a minute.

God already said no to that when Aaron did it when the people did it when Moses was on Mount Sinai and I’ve told you before go back and read that for yourself but as I’ve reread it my understanding of it is they weren’t worshipping the cow god they just thought they were worshipping a visible symbol of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob they thought they were worshipping the right God they were just doing it the right way because God said no statue don’t build any images of me because there’s no image it’s just going to give us a false picture of who God is because no image can really capture all of who he is so they’d be worshipping a false image of God same thing here these people haven’t learned anything in 500 years it’s been 500 years ago that that happened and I know that story was passed down but he said not only am I going to build a golden calf I’m going to build two big ones and put them in different parts of the kingdom, one at Dan and one at Bethel.

And I’m going to put up these golden calves so the people of the northern kingdom can go worship there. And they can go worship God there and then they don’t have to be inconvenienced to go to the southern kingdom which works out pretty well for me. And so he put up these calves and the people went and worshipped and even though they probably started out thinking we’re worshipping Yahweh, we’re worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they look at those calves and they get wrong ideas about who God is and they’re worshiping idols.

And God always says no to idolatry. And so the sin of Jeroboam was the worship of idols. The idea that we’re going to lead people astray to worship these false representations of God.

And it says it came to pass as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sin of Jeroboam. So in other words, this grievous sin that had been committed by his predecessors in office for around 70 years, all the kings of Israel had led the people in idolatry, Ahab did it like it was nothing. He just did it like he’d been doing it for years.

Have you ever seen somebody that, you know, there’s something that’s difficult for you and you really have to work at it and they just do it like it was second nature. Don’t you hate those people? Not really hate them.

But doesn’t that drive you crazy? Something that’s so hard for you and you have to really work at? They just come and do it like they’ve been doing it all their lives.

I hated that when I was a kid, trying to learn to ride a bicycle. I’d get so mad at Dad trying to teach me, and he’d get mad at me. It just, I had to work at learning how to ride a bicycle.

I had friends who, it’s like they came out of the womb riding a bicycle, and that frustrated me even more. I had to work at it, and it was second nature. Some of these kings probably had to work at being bad, but Ahab, for him, it was just, yeah, it was just second nature.

It just came to him. It was a light thing. for him.

Of no consequence at all. So much so that he even went a step further and it says he took to wife Jezebel. If any of your grandsons or sons come home with a woman named Jezebel, tell them to run.

Because no good comes from that. They should have known. I mean, isn’t a Jezebel a bad thing?

He took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians. He married a pagan princess. Now God had been telling them for years don’t marry into the pagan countries don’t marry these pagan women and it’s not because God hated them or thought they were inferior but he knew that the women would come in and they’d whisper their sweet little nothings and they’d convince the nice Jewish boys to worship false gods there’s a movie called My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the mother says yes the man is the head of the family but the woman is the neck and she can turn the head wherever she wants it to go there is a lot of truth in that statement.

There’s a lot of truth in that statement. And God knew that these men would be putty in the hands of their foreign wives and they would convince them to worship these false gods and so he said don’t do it. And a lot of the problems they run into in the Old Testament are because they broke this command not to marry the foreign women.

Well he marries one of the worst of all of them. Not only is she a Baal worshiper but her father actually has the word Baal in his name. they are committed to Baal worship.

So not only are we going to set up idols and we’re going to worship God in the wrong way but we’re going to actually bring in other false gods and we’re going to lead people to worship. What is essentially Satan? Please understand me on this.

These deities, these gods that they worshipped are demons pretending to be gods. And so they went, he went along with her and served Baal and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.

He built a temple for Baal. Then he went a step further and said, we’re going to build an altar where we can make sacrifices and give offerings to Baal. It’s going to be wonderful. We’re going to do everything Baal wants. Meanwhile, the God of Israel is just kind of cast aside.

And Ahab made a grove. Don’t misunderstand this. He’s not planting trees.

God’s not mad at him because he’s opening a nursery here. God is upset. It says he made a grove and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

God is not mad because he’s planting trees. God is mad because he’s planting these groves of sacred trees that were carved with images where they would go and worship the goddess Asherah. When you see the word groves in the Old Testament, they would worship this fertility goddess.

and they would have groves of carved trees that they would bow down to. So no, it’s not that God hates trees. It’s that God said, God is mad because he’s engaging in idolatry.

See, this one false god, this Baal wasn’t enough. In his days, verse 34, did Heol the Bethelite build Jericho and he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram, his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son, Seagab, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun. We’ve got just a few verses to look at in chapter 17.

And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be due nor rain these years, but according to my word. So into this corrupt court steps Elijah. Now I’ve already talked a little bit about what was wrong with Ahab’s court and read you that story I wrote out about it.

But just to explain where all that stuff comes from, he was guilty of the sin of Jeroboam. We’ve talked about that setting up the golden calves in Bethel. He was more evil than any ruler before him.

He was just about as bad as you can imagine, treating even Jeroboam’s sin as a trivial matter. He married this pagan princess. He followed her in pagan worship.

He set up an altar to this demonic pagan deity called Baal. who was considered to be the god of storms. Among all his other portfolios, he’s like the sun god, infertility god. He’s the god of storms. That’s going to be important in a minute. His worship, no wonder God was so mad at these people.

The worship of Baal, like a lot of these other pagan deities, involved ritualized prostitution, child sacrifice, unrestrained, trance-like behavior, and self-mutilation. They would cut themselves and scream like wild people and run around. He set up groves for the worship of Asherah, and their priestesses practiced divination.

They would contact spirits, and they would tell fortunes, all of which God said don’t do. And so this place was bad. This world that Elijah stepped into was bad.

It was dark. Worshiping pagan demon gods and people killing their children because it would bring blessings from Baal. just a dark, dark place. Into this corrupt society God called Elijah.

And God didn’t just tell Elijah, you need to go and be good and be a light in the darkness so that people see how you live and they’ll see the difference. God sent him right into the heart of power, into the heart of darkness. God didn’t say, just go wander around in the villages and live your good life.

He sent him into King Ahab’s court, into the court of the most powerful and most wicked man in the nation, he sent Elijah. And he sent him with a simple point to make. Now his message is more involved than this, but the point that God is trying to get across here is enough.

Enough. So parent, have you ever had enough? Stop smiling back there.

You know I never did anything wrong. I’m sure I did. As parents, we get to a point where we’ve had enough.

And then the hammer falls. God had given them plenty of space to repent. But he’s getting to the end of his tether.

And their party’s about to be over. God said, enough. And so he sent Elijah in to talk to King Ahab.

And it’s a hard thing sometimes to speak to a powerful person. and tell them what they’re doing is wrong. I write to my congressmen and my senators and my state legislators from time to time, and I try to write them sometimes when they’ve done something good, and sometimes those are few and far between, and a lot of times I write them and say, hey, you messed up here.

Even in a respectful way and in a letter, that’s a hard thing to do. And Elijah was sent to the most powerful, as I said, the most powerful and the most wicked man in his country. with the message you have messed up.

And God said enough. And it didn’t help that Elijah was really nobody. He was nobody special. He’s an obscure man.

We don’t, it doesn’t say anything in here about his family. It doesn’t tell us his lineage, who his people were. We have no idea where he fits except that he’s a Tishbite.

We kind of know what town he’s from. And it says that he’s from the land, he’s from Gilead, which was across the Jordan River, still part of Israel, but he’s in the part of Israel that’s kind of the annex. It’s the other side of the tracks.

It’s sort of the forgotten about area. So God sent this guy from not a notable family who lives out in the sticks and said, you’re going to be the one. You’re going to be the one to go talk to the king.

God can use obscure people. We don’t have to be famous or rich or good looking or smart. I mean, hey, it helps, but we don’t have to be any of those things to serve God.

God can and will use whomever he chooses. And whatever he calls us to do, he will equip us for. So God chose this obscure man.

He was also a God-fearing man. Even his name tells us something about it. See, Elijah was able to challenge the darkness because he already had his life together before God.

Now I say all the time, you don’t have to get your life cleaned up to come to God for salvation. But you know what? if we’re going to go challenge the darkness on God’s behalf, it helps if we have our lives cleaned up.

And that’s something that God can do. But even his name reveals how dedicated this man was to God. The Hebrew name here, we pronounce it Elijah, it’s Eliyahu, and it means my God is Yahweh.

We use the word Jehovah a lot in English, it’s the same thing. It’s the Hebrew word for God’s name is Yahweh. He says, that’s my God.

That is my ruler. Not Baal, not King Ahab, not the riches or power that you all worship, the Lord. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is my God.

He’s the one I work for, not you. Not you. And I think we’ve got to get that clear as well.

Sometimes we’ve got to remind ourselves, I don’t work for myself. I don’t work for the rest of the people in this room. I don’t work for the powerful.

I don’t work for society. I work for him. And that should be true of all of us.

He was an honest man. He came in, he didn’t flatter the king. He spoke the truth that Ahab needed to hear, even though it was a hard thing to say and a hard thing to hear.

He came in and he said, As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word. So he says a few things that Ahab needed to understand. First of all, God is still alive.

Hey, you’ve been running around focused on Baal, and you might have forgotten that he’s over there. But God is still alive. He’s still here, and he sees what you’re doing.

as the Lord God liveth. You might have forgotten about him, but he hadn’t forgotten about you. How’d you like to be reminded of that?

How’d you like God to send somebody and say, hey, you’ve forgotten about God, but he hadn’t forgotten about you. That’d be hard to say and hard to hear. And when he said, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, that place where he identifies him, the God of Israel, he’s reminding Ahab, he is still Israel’s God, even if you lead them astray.

He’s still the one in charge here. these are still his people, not yours. He’s still the one in charge.

And he says, before whom I stand, it’s another way of saying, I work for him. I care what he thinks about me. Now, why would Elijah need to say all this?

He’d need to preface it that way, because with the rest of the message he’s about to bring, they’re going to laugh at him. They’re going to think you’re just a peasant from out in the sticks who cares what you think. And he’s already set it up.

I don’t care what you think about me. I care what God thinks about me and hears what he said. The last part of his message is, this God who’s still alive, he’s not pleased with the direction that you’ve been going.

He’s not happy and he’s about to discipline you. He’s about to grab your attention and he’s about to show you just how worthless this Baal that you’re worshiping is. See, I mentioned earlier that he said, I mentioned earlier that Baal was the Canaanite storm god.

What did Elijah say that wasn’t going to happen? until he said so. There’s not going to be any rain for all these years.

And it’s not just going to be a short time. All these years there’s not going to be any rain until I say so. And you can pray to Baal all you want.

You can slaughter all the children you want. You can cut yourself and dance around like a crazy person all you want asking Baal, Baal, Baal, please send us rain. Please send us water.

Please make our crops grow. But I’m telling you that my God is bigger than your God and there’s not going to be any water until he tells me that there’s going to be water. He’s about to hit you where it hurts and get your attention because you’ve wandered far away and you’ve led the people far away.

Imagine, imagine being sent to the White House with that message. And this is not an anti-Obama thing. This is I don’t care who’s in the White House.

That’s going to be a hard message to deliver. And they would look at us and say, I don’t care. You’re just some, you’re just some bumpkin from Seminole, Oklahoma, who cares what you think?

You know what? This is what God said. And he stood against the power and he stood against the wickedness around him with God’s message.

But you know, he was also a humble man. Verse 2 says, And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.

So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord, for he went and dwelt by the brook of Cherith that is before Jordan. God told him, you deliver the message and you get out. But wait a minute, I’m the spokesman for God.

I speak for God. I should do the talk show circuit. I should go have my own TV show.

I should have my own radio show. I should have my own line of stuff. They should be doing a feature on me in all the big magazines.

No. take the message and go. He didn’t stick around and try to defend himself.

Try to explain himself. Try to make himself popular with the rulers. He took God’s message and he got out.

He went back where God told him to go. Which was good for him because they were about to be very, very angry with him for what he said. Folks, this is just the first message that we’re going to look at on Elijah and what we can learn from his life about how we respond to the darkness around us.

See, it’s not really about bringing political change to the nation. It’s not really about making everybody act Christian. It’s about being a light in the darkness.

It’s about being light in the darkness so that we lead people to repentance and to find salvation in God through Jesus Christ rather than just making them act right. And what I think we can learn from his example, just out of this story, is that we live in very similar times. I know, 3,000 years difference, it’s easy to look at it and say, oh, that was

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