In Who Do You Trust?

Intro

Has anyone here ever had to do a trust fall exercise?

Typically these are done as an exercise to help groups or teams of people learn to trust each other.

They are often done during retreats and training for leadership and other organizational groups.

The concept is simple, you have to stand and close your eyes and then fall backward without looking at where you are landing because you are trusting that the group you are with is going to catch you; hence the name trust fall.

Maybe an example might make more sense… show video clip.

Now, things were looking pretty good here. Everyone was in position, all he had to do was fall back. But instead he fell the wrong way. It wasn’t that his support system had abandoned him, he just fell in a direction that they were not positioned.

And while we don’t get to see how it ends, I think we all have a pretty good idea and someone may have ended up with a bloody nose.

This morning we are wrapping up a 5 part series I have been preaching called Downfall: lessons from the book of 1 Kings with a final message on this topic.

Big Idea

Trust is something that all of us want, but struggle to give away. Think about it.

Who here wants to be known as the one no one can trust? The one who can’t keep their word? The unreliable one?

But at the same time, we ourselves often find it very difficult to give our trust to others even though we want them to give us theirs, why?

Because for most of us, someone at one point or another has likely broken our trust in them.

It is like you were the guy in the video thinking your friend or family member was their only fall flat on your face.

And so now, trust is hard for you because you don’t want a repeat of the past to happen in your life.

And when it comes to trusting God, well that can be even harder because how many know that sometimes, in fact many times, God does not do things the way we think he should or will.

And so we, whether consciously or not, simply don’t trust him.

Instead we trust in our money, talents, capacity to perform, own understanding only to find that in the end, those things weren’t worthy of our trust.

This morning in our text we are going to be looking at a different king than who we have been studying. That king’s name was Ahab.

Not only are we looking at King Ahab, but we are going to compare his choices and life to that of a prophet named Elijah.

And what I hope you can see today is the difference that can happen in a person’s life when they trust God and when they don’t.

Power in the Text

If you remember, after King Solomon the kingdom of Israel was split in two. The northern kingdom was called Israel and the southern kingdom was called Judah.

Ahab was a king in the northern kingdom of Israel and this is how 1 Kings 16:29-30 NLT describes him.

29 Ahab son of Omri began to rule over Israel in the thirty-eighth year of King Asa’s reign in Judah. He reigned in Samaria twenty-two years. 30 But Ahab son of Omri did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, even more than any of the kings before him.

Now remember, the northern kingdom of Israel did not have a single good or faithful king after the split, and we learn that Ahab was the worst one of them all. His evil and wicked ways new no end.

He too broke the command not to marry a woman from one of the foreign nations that had been driving out of the promised land and married an equally if not more wick woman named Jezebel.

He built temples and alters to pagan gods like Baal and according to the Bible did more to provoke God’s anger than any other king to come before him.

As a result, God sent the prophet Elijah to bring judgment in the form of a multi-year drought.

Then the Bible says that God sent Elijah to live in seclusion, away from King Ahab and out of his reach. During this time God continued to move in Elijah’s life.

He was fed by ravens each day until the brook dried up from the drought.

Then he went to live with a widow named Zarephath and her son where he performed multiple miracles.

flour and oil

brings son back to life

After 3 years of drought, and really what was probably an act of mercy wherein God was giving Ahab the chance to recognize that his false gods were powerless and that he needed to turn to the living God. The God of his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God was done waiting.

Finally the time has come for Elijah to have a showdown with King Ahab and to prove once and for all whose God was really in control.

1 Kings 18:1 NLT Later on, in the third year of the drought, the Lord said to Elijah, “Go and present yourself to King Ahab. Tell him that I will soon send rain!”

Now, keep in mind that for years King Ahab was on the lookout for Elijah, likely to have him killed and now after 3 years these two come face to fact.

1 Kings 18:17-19 NLT 17 When Ahab saw him, he exclaimed, “So, is it really you, you troublemaker of Israel?” 18 “I have made no trouble for Israel,” Elijah replied. “You and your family are the troublemakers, for you have refused to obey the commands of the Lord and have worshiped the images of Baal instead. 19 Now summon all Israel to join me at Mount Carmel, along with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who are supported by Jezebel.”

Elijah has just challenged the King of Israel, in front of everyone. Not only is he challenging King Ahab, he is challenging the very beliefs of everyone present.

1 Kings 18:20-21 NLT 20 So Ahab summoned all the people of Israel and the prophets to Mount Carmel. 21 Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, “How much longer will you waver, hobbling between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him! But if Baal is God, then follow him!” But the people were completely silent.

Elijah wasn’t holding back. He plain asked the people to make up their mind. That they could not have it both ways.

You either believe that the God of Israel is one and only true God or you believe in Baal. You cannot believe both so get off the fence and choose a side.

and you could have heard a pin drop, they were silent.

They were being called out in their hypocrisy and the silence was deafening.

Then he goes on to say, I am it. I am the only prophet left and you have 450 prophets of Baal. Let’s see once and for all whose God is worthy of our worship.

So Elijah has the the prophets of Baal choose a bull to sacrifice and tells them to put it on the alter with firewood but not to light it, instead to pray to their god to send fire and burn it up.

1 Kings 18:26-29 NLT 26 So they prepared one of the bulls and placed it on the altar. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning until noontime, shouting, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no reply of any kind. Then they danced, hobbling around the altar they had made.

27 About noontime Elijah began mocking them. “You’ll have to shout louder,” he scoffed, “for surely he is a god! Perhaps he is daydreaming, or is relieving himself. Or maybe he is away on a trip, or is asleep and needs to be wakened!”

28 So they shouted louder, and following their normal custom, they cut themselves with knives and swords until the blood gushed out. 29 They raved all afternoon until the time of the evening sacrifice, but still there was no sound, no reply, no response.

He was trying to get them to see how ridiculous they were being and how powerless their god was. They were trusting in a god who cannot hear them because he was no god at all. Yet they were doing all kinds of foolish and even harmful things to themselves because they were trusting in the wrong thing.

Now it was Elijah’s turn, only he took things up a notch and had a trench dug around the alter that his bull was on and had 4 large watering jars of water poured over the alter, the bull, and the wood. He did this 3 times until everything was soaked and the trench was filled with water.

1 Kings 18:36-39 NLT 36 At the usual time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. 37 O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.”

38 Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! 39 And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The Lord—he is God! Yes, the Lord is God!”

Why it Matters/Closing

Elijah had a difficult choice to make. He knew that going against Ahab was going to be be unpopular and could cost him his life. He also knew that for the most part, everyone around him agreed with what King Ahab had been doing.

In the 3 years of the drought God was testing Elijah and Elijah had to trust God in his seclusion.

Everyone around him seemed bent on defying God’s word, but Elijah stayed committed. He continued to trust that God knew what he was doing, even when Elijah didn’t.

Maybe in your life you have been put in a position to make a choice about who or what you are going to trust in. Perhaps you weighed the risk and chose to trust in the easy thing, which was ultimately the wrong thing.

Do you know what happened to those prophets of Baal?

1 Kings 18:40 NLT 40 Then Elijah commanded, “Seize all the prophets of Baal. Don’t let a single one escape!” So the people seized them all, and Elijah took them down to the Kishon Valley and killed them there.

We might not be worshiping false gods like Baal or Asherah, but we do worship other gods like money, sex, our bodies, our pursuits, and our priorities. Or simply put, our sin.

And in worshipping these things we are killing ourselves.

Romans 6:16 NLT 16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.

Trusting in God leads to life and Elijah experienced that life even when his circumstances were difficult.

As we lead our families let us learn from King Ahab’s failure and Elijah’s success and choose to trust God and choose life.