The Courage to Say No

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

I want to start this morning by reading you something that I wrote a few years ago as an introduction to this morning’s message. Imagine with me for a moment that there was a country that had been founded by worshipers of the one true God, that that country had been dedicated to Him, and that it had been blessed by Him beyond all imagination. Now imagine yourself as a citizen of that country, one who loves your country and loves the God who has sustained it.

But now you’re torn because your country has spent the last several decades drifting faster and faster from its godly foundations. You look around in disbelief as those who lead in the government, the culture, and sometimes even the religious establishment, appear to have forgotten the God who put them in their positions of influence. They’ve neglected to honor him, which is the reason God put them in those positions in the first place.

The people’s hearts have wandered far from God, and they’ve embraced leaders whose hearts are cold toward God, leading the nation into a vicious downward spiral into the depths of depravity. Before long, the nation has become generally and openly hostile toward God, breaking His commandments like it’s their job, shaking their collective fist at God and defying Him to do anything about it. They are consumed by a lust for power and possessions, Satanic ideas and influences are flaunted throughout society.

God’s rules about sex and marriage put in place for our protection have been thrown out the window. Self-control, once considered a virtue, is considered weak and outdated as people are encouraged to throw off all restraint. People bow down to worship nature, which they ensure is protected at all costs, while parents murder their children because they’ve been convinced it will make their lives better.

Acts of violence, both against others and against oneself, have become commonplace. The word of God is viewed with relentless skepticism, while blasphemous spiritual gurus, physicians of the stars, the palms of men’s hands, and visions seen in smoke can authoritatively show us the way forward. And anyone who dares to claim that God’s word still applies to mankind faces intimidation, exile, or worse.

And this probably sounds familiar to you, but I did not write this about America in 2020. I wrote this looking at what the Bible records about Israel in the 860s BC. But it does sound familiar, doesn’t it?

And so when you realize what was going on in Israel in the days of King Ahab, I’m sure you can understand why I periodically want to go back and look at the life of Elijah, just in my own study as well as in my preaching, to see a good example of how to navigate life when the world around us has gone mad. And the funny thing is I had decided, or I don’t know if I decided, God led me. I don’t know what the right way is to explain all that.

But the decision had been made, the plans were already in place, to start moving this direction before I realized midweek just how mad the world was going to go. And it just seems to get crazier and crazier, doesn’t it? As we look at the life of Elijah, and we’re going to spend the next few weeks doing this, there are so many parallels between their world and ours that it gives us an incredibly instructive example of how we serve God when the world around us has gone mad.

And I want to preface this by saying the last time I preached on the life of Elijah was back in 2016, and I had some people come to me afterwards thinking I was meddling. I was meddling in their vote. Somebody said, I know when you’re talking about the darkness of this kingdom, you’re talking about Trump.

No. When you’re talking about the darkness of the kingdom, I know you’re talking about Hillary. No.

Let me tell you what, I have been involved. I’ve been deeply involved in politics since I was 18 years old. I served four terms as the elected county chairman of the party I’m registered in.

I’ll give you some idea of how involved I’ve been. And I can tell you that the problem we face is not unique to one party or one politician. The problem we face as a nation predates any of our elected officials.

It predates our parties. It predates America itself. The problem we face is the problem of sin that’s been going on thousands of years since the Garden of Eden.

America’s problems and the insanity in which we find ourselves are the result of mankind’s sinful nature and our tendency to wander away from God. And so I think it’s good for us to look at the life of Elijah, not just for me, but for us as a church, because it’s not just me having to navigate the craziness. It’s all of us.

We’re all stuck in this position. And even though we’ve all had high hopes for 2021, I think we all knew it wasn’t going to, just because we reached this arbitrary point on the calendar, it didn’t mean somebody was going to wave a magic wand and suddenly the world was going to make sense again. Now, the world’s not going to make sense again until we see revival. And so until then, we’ve got to know how to navigate these waters.

So if you would, if you haven’t already, I know it’s been on your screen. We’re going to be in 1 Kings chapter 16 and into the beginning of 17 this morning. And if you’ve turned there with me already, if you’d stand as we read together from God’s word.

If you haven’t turned there, go ahead and join us, and it’ll be on your screen for you as well. 1 Kings chapter 16, we’re going to start in verse 29. It says, In the 38th year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri became king over Israel.

And Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria 22 years. Now Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Naboth, that he took as wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbael, the king of the Sidonians.

And he went and served Baal and worshipped him. Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a wooden image.

Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. In his days, Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation with Abiram, his firstborn, and with his youngest son, Segob, he set up its gates according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken through Joshua, the son of Nun.

And Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word. Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, Get away from here and turn eastward and hide by the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.

So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for which he went and stayed by the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening. And he drank from the brook.

And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. And you may be seated. What we see from this passage is that in Elijah’s day, Israel had just sort of dived headfirst into sin.

Like they took it as a challenge to see what the previous generation had done and say, well, we’re going to ratchet it up and go a step further. And the political and the religious authorities that God had put into place to lead the people to him were actually leading the people away from him. They were doing the opposite of what they were supposed to do.

And we see as they have these kings who just got worse and worse over time. And as the people grew worse and worse over time, and I mean, you can make the argument as the kings grew worse, they led the people to grow worse. But I think also many times our politics reflects our culture.

So it could be that the people put up with it because they were already far from God. So they put up with kings that are far from God. I think they just went skipping hand in hand away from God.

And as we see that what one generation did sinfully in moderation, the next did to excess, we see that sin rots a country, rots a nation from the inside. That’s what happened with Israel. The sin got in there and began to rot the nation, and it didn’t just stop with this one little thing that this king allowed or participated in.

They took it a step further with the next one, took it a step further. It’s like they were in competition to see who could be the most sinful. Israel had been ruled by a succession of wicked kings for 57 years from the time the kingdom had split after Solomon died.

So at this point, when we’re talking Israel, we’re talking the 10 tribes in the northern part of the country. They’ve split into two kingdoms. And Israel, you may be familiar with some of these stories during this time period. This is again after Solomon.

Judah, the southern kingdom, had some bad kings and they had some good kings and they jumped back and forth and there’d be times of revival, and that’s why God let them go a little longer. Israel never had a good king during this period. Jeroboam was the first king of this northern kingdom, and he set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel, because that had worked out so well in the wilderness for him, right?

That God was okay with that. He said, I have an idea, let’s build two golden calves. Again, they’re trying to escalate everything.

And he set up shrines for these golden calves at Dan and Bethel, sort of on the southern border of his kingdom where he was hoping that he could encourage people, don’t go all the way to Jerusalem to worship, don’t go down to the temple because he didn’t want people having ties to the southern kingdom. Just stop at Dan and Bethel on the way and worship the golden calves and everything will be fine. And so the Bible describes how deeply Jeroboam provoked God as king of Israel and how wicked he had been.

But then along came Omri, Ahab’s father, who was worse. And there were a few kings in between there because they were always overthrowing each other. Omri was worse.

But then Ahab was worse than that. As bad as Jeroboam was, as much as he upset God, the Bible says that Ahab was even worse. In verse 30 of chapter 16, it said, he did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.

More than all of them. And he was unmatched. He was unmatched in his wickedness.

It says in verse 31 that he treated it like it was a trivial thing to walk in the sins of That means what Jeroboam went out of his way to do with this idol worship, Ahab did it like it was second nature. It’s nothing at all. It’s just what I do.

And went beyond that. He went beyond just following in the steps of Jeroboam. He married a pagan princess named Jezebel.

They weren’t supposed to intermarry with the pagan tribes around them. Not because of a racial thing, but because God said, they worship these false gods and they will lead you astray. And they’d already seen that happen with Solomon.

Solomon had been blessed by God, really beyond any king of Israel, and yet he broke God’s law in that one area and started collecting wives like they were going to quit making them. Leave some for somebody else. He was collecting wives.

He was collecting them from every conceivable pagan tribe, and next thing you know, he’s letting them build pagan shrines all over Israel, including right there in the palace. He started with a little compromise, and next thing you know, he’s got idols right there with him. So they’ve seen how this can happen.

Ahab didn’t care. He married this pagan princess named Jezebel. He joined her in her idol worship.

By the way, I guess it’s hindsight 2020, but men no good can come from hooking up with somebody named Jezebel. You’d think the name would have been a clue. But he joined her in her.

. . He didn’t lead her to worship God.

She led him to worship Baal. He made an altar to Baal, verse 32 tells us. By the way, we’re not just talking, oh, you’ve got your religion, I’ve got mine. Baal was a demon.

It’s a demonic religion, as we’re going to talk about in a little bit. He built an altar to this demon god. And what was even, I mean, it’s objectionable enough that he’s building altars to false gods, that he’s not worshiping the true God.

But to add insult to injury in all of this, the worship of Baal, this cult of Baal involved ritual prostitution as part of their worship. It involved self-mutilation. Later on in the story of Elijah, we’re going to see that these people were jumping up and down, cutting themselves, hoping the blood would somehow get Baal’s attention.

And it involved child sacrifice. You wanted something from Baal. You take one of your children down to the cult shrine. You sacrifice them on the altar and you hope Baal will give you what you want.

Where I got that part in what I wrote about they murdered their children because they thought it would make their lives better. It was not just a difference of religious opinion. This was satanic.

And he just invited it in. He said, this is great. Yeah, this is the thing we’re doing now.

He maintained groves for the worship of Asherah, another pagan goddess. This is where they would bow down and worship trees. And their priests practiced divination and fortune telling.

Divination, they’d try to talk with spirits of the dead. Instead of seeking guidance from the spirit of the living God, they would seek guidance from the spirits of the dead. And they were involved in fortune telling.

And Ahab thought all of this was a great idea, and the people just went right along with it. It wasn’t just Ahab who lost his mind. It seems like all of Israel had lost its mind as well.

Elijah talks later on about feeling like he’s the only one left. Do you ever feel like you’re the only one left? We come here partly to remind ourselves, keep going, you’re not the only one left.

But sometimes out in the world, it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one left. Many of them had lost their minds though in going along with what Ahab was doing. And we see this mention at the end of chapter 16 about this man who rebuilt Jericho.

And it talks about building the foundations of the walls on his firstborn and the gates on his youngest child. And that’s because there was a prophecy after God destroyed Jericho in the book of Joshua. Joshua said, if this city is ever rebuilt, it’ll be built on the foundation of the children of the one who builds it.

Because they were going against God’s judgment and saying, we’re going to set Jericho back up again. So this man said, I don’t care that God destroyed Jericho. We want Jericho back.

And he lost his children, just like he was warned. So the people were going along with this active rebellion against God. And in the midst of all this, God sent Elijah to say no. We read this about what he said about the rain, but you’ve got to read between the lines and understand the implication of it.

God sent Elijah to say no. It’s enough. Enough is enough. And as the world goes crazy around us, God’s people have got to be brave enough to stand up and say no. We’re not joining you in this.

We’re not doing this. We’re not going along with this. No.

Enough is enough. And it’s gone too far. Now please understand when I say this.

Again, I’m not necessarily talking about politics. I’m not one who believes that we should go and do things by law that force people to act like Christians. Number one, because if we do that, that same gun can be turned around on us and eventually they can make it illegal not to be a Muslim or a communist or whatever they want to do.

I believe in religious liberty. But the other side of that coin is forcing people outwardly to act like Christians doesn’t really accomplish anything. They just act like Christians all the way to hell.

Christianity is about a change of heart, not just a change of behavior. The change of behavior follows the change of heart. So when I say we stand up and say no, I’m not saying it in the sense that like I do with my children.

No, and I’m going to, you and what army, I’m going to stop you. I’m going to force you to do the right thing here. That’s not the kind of standing up and saying no that I’m talking about.

But God’s people instead have to say no in the sense that this is wrong. Somebody has got to tell you the truth about this. Somebody has got to not go along with this.

As we see violence in our country inside and outside the womb, somebody’s got to say no, this is wrong and not be cowered into silence. As we see God’s design for marriage and sexuality that was put there for our benefit, for our good. As we see that definition being ripped to shreds, somebody’s got to say, no, there is not a consensus on there.

We disagree. This is what God says. Elijah didn’t come in with a military coup and overthrow Ahab.

He simply came in and said, this is what God says. No. It’s a story that I’ve heard many times on the radio where this talk show host talks about interviewing a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps.

And this group of people who are called by the state of Israel the righteous among the nations. These people who are called the righteous among the nations are the ones who are recognized by the state of Israel as those who worked in Europe to save Jews from extermination. People like Schindler, if you’ve seen the movie Schindler’s List. People who sheltered them, people who hid them.

And this talk show host tells the story of interviewing this woman and saying, what do we do as the world grows dark around us? Where are the righteous among the nations today? Where are the people that are going to say, stop the madness?

And the story is it’s so often repeated. This woman tells him, you have to understand the righteous didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and decide to be the righteous among the nations. They simply refused to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.

As God’s people, when I say we’ve got to stand up and say no, I don’t mean a grab for power. I don’t mean being angry. I don’t mean telling people it’s our way or the highway, but I mean as the world plunges headlong towards sin and towards Satan’s design, we tell them the truth of God’s Word, and we refuse to go over that cliff with the rest of society.

Because the no doesn’t come from our opinion or our authority. I know we live in a world where, well, who are you to tell me that your way is right and my way is wrong? I said, my way is not always right.

Don’t tell my kids that. I’d say don’t tell my wife that, but she’s right here. I’m not always right.

My opinion is not worth all that much. And I really don’t have the authority to tell that many people that much that they ought to do. The good news about this when we say no, when we say this is right and we say this is wrong, is that as long as we stick to what this book says, we’re not speaking our opinion or our authority, but his.

Elijah didn’t go and say, you’ve got to stop what you’re doing, and there’s no rain because I said so. So this is what God said. God has something to say.

God has something to say about the way we live our lives. God has something to say about the choices we make. God has something to say about the way we treat each other.

All the things that we look around us in our society and we see it getting out of control, my opinion and my authority aren’t going to do anything to stop that. But God has something to say. And just like with Elijah, he called him to step up and say no. And you know what?

I think Elijah, as I read the story here, I think Elijah was pretty reluctant to do so. that his job was just to be obedient to God and let God handle the situation. That is the Lord God of Israel lives.

This is all about what God has to say. It’s all about God’s authority. Before whom I stand, he says in verse 1 of chapter 17, I’m merely his servant.

That was Elijah’s position on this. I’m just his servant. You don’t like it, take it up with him.

And I’ve said that to people. And it sometimes catches people off guard and they kind of chuckle. It’s funny, but I’m not joking when I say it.

When I’ve said it from the pulpit or when I’ve said it one-on-one with somebody, listen, you don’t like it, take it up with him, I’m just the messenger. I just work for him, he makes the decision. When we speak up and say this is what God’s word says and the world says, well, who are you to tell me?

Oh, I’m nobody. I just work for him. And he told him, as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be due nor reign these years except at my word.

Now, don’t get off track because he said except at my word. Elijah had no power over the rain or lack thereof, but God had given him. God had told him, go and say this.

Not that Elijah was going to get to the point where I think they can have a little rain now, but they weren’t going to have rain until God sent Elijah back to say on God’s behalf, you can have rain. The issue here is there’s not going to be any dew or rain. And some of us might think, hey, that’s great.

Picnic weather, outdoor sports weather, that’s great. We have farmers in this congregation who know the importance of rain and the right amount of rain and at the right time. I remember a few weeks ago conversations in Sunday school about we need rain for this crop.

No, we need it to hold off another week while we get this crop in. Folks, you go without rain long enough, you’re in trouble, especially if you can’t just run down to Walmart. And even running down to Walmart, we’ve seen that’s not always there because there was a lack of rain in a certain part of the world and we can’t get our tomatoes or whatever for a while.

What Elijah was telling them was God is not pleased with the direction you’re going. And there are going to be consequences because God takes this seriously. This is not a little thing to God.

God decides what’s right and what’s wrong and he does not play around with sin. And I just want to add here at this point that the world thinks that that’s because God’s harsh. And it’s really because God loves us.

Because God knows the devastation of sin. Just on the way here this morning, I was listening to an audio book and it was talking about this issue with marriage and sexuality. It’s saying the world says that God’s standards on that are repressive and they make life harder and they make life worse.

But the question was asked, and I think it’s the right question, consider if the world just suddenly all of a sudden started following God’s standards on that and everything was limited to activity between a man and a woman in a lifelong commitment. What would the world look like? Would there be more broken families or would there be fewer?

Would there be more people going through the pain of divorce or would there be fewer? Would there be more children growing up without fathers in the home or would there be fewer? And that’s just one example.

God doesn’t decide right and wrong because he wants to spoil our fun. God decides right and wrong because he knows what’s going to hurt us and he knows what’s best for us. So he doesn’t play around with sin because it’s an offense to him, but he doesn’t play around with sin too because he loves us.

And so he told Elijah to go and say no. And we have a similar responsibility. To say no means warning others about the seriousness of sin and God’s seriousness towards sin. And this was demonstrated that the seriousness with which God views sin.

Sometimes we think, oh, God will just let it go. And it’s just a little thing. God’s not particularly bothered by this.

Folks, God showed us how seriously he views sin at the cross. Jesus Christ died on the cross. Jesus Christ underwent the ultimate torture, bearing the full weight of the wrath of God towards sin, because sin is not a little thing toward God.

And there, the seriousness, the gravity of sin was on display, but also the destructive nature of it all was on full display toward us. We have ample evidence that sin is a serious business toward God. It says in Isaiah 53 that it was the will of the Lord to crush Him, not because the father suddenly decided he didn’t like the son anymore, but because that sin had to be paid for.

That sin had to be punished. A holy God could not just look at what we do to ourselves and what we do to each other and just let it go. A holy God says that has to be dealt with.

And it says in Romans chapter 3 that God set him forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness. By sending Jesus to be this offering, by sending Jesus to satisfy the demands of justice, God demonstrated how He views sin, but He also dealt with the problem of our sin. And we look at this and we realize that as Christians, it’s our responsibility to stand up and say no when we see the direction things are headed.

We have to do it in love though. Don’t just stand out there and scream at everybody, you’re a sinner, you’re a sinner. That’s not going to get anywhere.

We speak the truth in love because God loves us and God loves them and God hates the sin that’s destroying people, but we have this responsibility to tell them, no, we have the responsibility to warn them the bad news that the sin that they loved, the sin that we loved, it’s not just us versus them. We were once there as well. The book of Titus describes, this is what you were before Jesus, and this is what you still would be apart from Jesus.

But to tell them the bad news of the sin that we hold so dear is going to destroy us. It’s going to our lives. It’s going to rob us of joy and it’s going to lead us to an eternity separated from the God who loved us and created us.

And then have the privilege of sharing with them the good news that all the wrath that God has toward this sin, all the judgment that this sin deserves, was born by Jesus Christ at the cross. And now there’s no condemnation for us if we’re in Jesus Christ. There’s no wrath there. There’s forgiveness.

Folks, our no, in the midst of a world gone mad, It does not come from a place of self-righteous judgment. That’s what the world thinks of us all too often. That you’re just looking down at me, you Christians who think you’re so good and you’re so perfect.

No, it needs to come from a place where they know we know we’re not perfect, that we were in the same boat that they’re in, and we’re reaching out to them as dying men to dying men, with the truth that God offers them something far better than this sin that seems so enjoyable for a season. Folks, we see in this passage, just as Elijah told Ahab that there would be no rain, God will judge sin. God will always judge sin.

And that judgment can either be borne by us or it can be borne by Jesus Christ. When we say no, it means we tell the world how seriously God takes sin. But we also tell the world the hope that He’s offered. Not in a church, not in a ritual, but in a person called Jesus Christ. And if you’ve never trusted Jesus as your Savior before today, it really is as simple as realizing that you’ve sinned against God, you’ve disobeyed Him, and that God will judge that sin, that we all deserve the judgment of God because we’ve sinned against Him, and there’s no way for us to escape it.

There’s nothing we can do to escape it. But Jesus Christ came and took that judgment on Himself. He suffered and bled and died on the cross to pay for our sins in full, and then He rose again three days later to prove it.

And now God offers us forgiveness, salvation, and peace with Him, a relationship with Him, an eternal life in heaven. He offers all of this. We will simply trust that Jesus Christ died in our place and ask His forgiveness.

Powered by atecplugins.com