Kings Week Two (2)

Good morning… Our Primary Passage: 1 Kings 17:1-6

Last week I mentioned how Solomon started His reign on the right track. God told Solomon in a dream to ask Him for one thing, and it would be given to him. Solomon answered with a desire for wisdom, but a particular kind of wisdom. Solomon responded,

“give Your servant an understanding heart to judge your people and to discern between good and evil. For who can govern these great people of Yours?”

Solomon received the wisdom of Good and Evil and chose not to follow that wisdom towards the end of his life. The evidence of his wisdom being real is because He led Israel in the only time of peace in their entire history. And Solomon’s fade to black didn’t happen overnight, and we know this because God told Solomon from the start,

“Moreover, I will give you what you did not request—both riches and honor—so that during all your days, no man in any kingdom will be your equal. 14 So if you walk in My ways and keep My statutes and commandments, just as your father David did, I will prolong your days.”

Solomon lived a long time compared to many of the Kings of Israel, so Solomon’s fade was slow at first and pointed.

He married the daughters of surrounding kings, including the daughter of a Pharoah. 1 Kings says that “he loved them all,” and from the sounds of it, he caved to every one of them.

He was even allowing them to openly worship false gods and set up not one but two temples in Northern Israel. One for Chemosh and one for Molech. Chemosh is the god of the Moabites, and Molech, the god of the Ammonites.

Now looking at this closer, specifically the Moabite tablet, an object found during an archeological dig in 1868, not only are Chemosh and Molech, the same false idol, he had at least one other name as well. The other name and perhaps the one most know him by is Ba’al.

Solomon does not introduce Ba’al worship, but he certainly endorsed it. So, how does the world’s smartest man fall so miserably?

Simple, he chose to fall in love, not with just one woman but lots of women that didn’t meet God’s strict rules for the spouse of the King of Israel, or any of the Israelites for that matter. Scripture shows us two things right off the bat.

The First thing is that God cares whom His children marry. Your life is shaped by the people you allow to shape your heart.

This decision is not one for your parents to make; it is a decision as individuals we must make. If you want a life and children that respect and honor God, you had better do those things, and you had best pick someone who does the same.

Now, with that said, there is no guarantee that they will follow in the foot steps of you and your spouse, but they certainly will have a better chance than if the two of you don’t both follow God with all your hearts.

And that with all of your hearts part is important, it is more than just pretty words that we say.

Follow God. Follow Him intently, and follow Him always with all your heart.

The next thing is that, just because the devil changes his name doesn’t make him any less real.

Ba’al worship was all but wiped out under Kings Saul and David; Solomon knew a life of freedom from the horrors of Ba’al. Horrors such as human sacrifice, and ritualistic assault, were something he would only know from stories.

Perhaps, that is why he was so easily swayed to believe that things were not as bad as his parents told him they were. After all, is that not what the devil is doing with our children today? Is that not what he did with you?

Don’t believe me? Okay, please do me a favor, go home and type the word Ba’al B-A-A-l and see how often you see the introduction to this insidious demonic entity Biblically, versus other sources that introduce Ba’al anywhere from an evil bad guy to a misunderstood demonic hero of sorts.

And so, while we may snub our noses up at Solomon’s foolishness, let us not do so without understanding what has been going on right under our noses today.

With that said, this spiral of sin led to Solomon’s son not wanting to wait for dear old dad to die, which ultimately caused a civil war that split the nation into two kingdoms, not unlike what happened following the Korean War.

The split resulted in the Northern Kingdom called Israel, and the Southern Kingdom called Judah. Israel had no good kings despite the prophets that God continued to send their way. The Southern Kingdom was close to half being good and half being bad.

As we make our way through the list of kings in the northern kingdom, it comes to one o the kings of the northern kingdom called Ahab, and this is where we meet the Prophet, Elijah. Which is where our text picks up this morning.

So, if you are able please stand for the reading of God’s word to us this morning.

1 Kings 17:1–6 ESV

1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” 2 And the word of the Lord came to him: 3 “Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4 You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 5 So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. 6 And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.

“Let us pray!”

So, Elijah shows up on the scene as a Tishbite or settler. This guy most likely planned out his entire life by this point, planning to settle in Gibeon, when God calls Elijah out of his planned life and makes him a prophet.

Elijah’s first act in the Bible as a prophet was not an easy one. He was sent to go before King Ahab and did the following. He confronted him, cursed the land to famine, and left in a true mic drop worthy fashion.

First off, this was very brave not just because Ahab was king, but because Ahab was a king to whom the lives of human beings meant little to nothing—seeing as he was highly motivated to make Ba’al worship the official religion of Israel.

Now, remember what I said earlier about Solomon’s reintroduction of Ba’al just under different names? Also noteworthy is that it was here in the northern kingdom that those high places or temples were made for him.

Elijah went from confronting Ahab to a nice little place by a stream where ravens brought him food while he lived there. The Raven’s are the first miracle God did on Elijah’s behalf.

Once the stream dried up, God instructed Elijah to go to a widow in Zarephath, a village in the outskirts of Sidon, the principal Phoenician city-state located in modern-day Lebanon.

Once there, he finds her in the fashion that God said he would, and Elijah asks her to make a cake for him.

She probably wasn’t very amused as she informed him that she would make one last cake for her and her son, and then they would die.

But her faith was in rare form because she believes Elijah when he says he is man of God, she obeys God and makes what would have otherwise been the last cake for Elijah. The result was that her ingredients lasted for the rest of the famine. That miracle was the second!

Sometime later, the widow’s son, who was already sick, falls ill and stops breathing. His mother, the widow, cries out to Elijah;

“What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”

And he said to her, “Give me your son.” Elijah takes the boy and cries out to God, saying;

“O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn by killing her son?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”

The boy starts breathing again, and this is the 3rd miracle involving Elijah.

Three years into the famine, God tells Elijah to go and speak with Ahab. The same Ahab that was not only searching city to city but also country to country to kill Elijah.

Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, was particularly scary as she tried rounding up all those pesky prophets and having them killed. Yet, Elijah obeys and heads out to confront Ahab.

Ahab’s wife Jezzabel was so into Ba’al worship that she had a few hundred of their priest that ate her table. So, Elijah calls them out for a challenge at Mt. Carmel in front of all of Israel.

So, everyone shows up, and Elijah tells the people that if Lord is God, then worship Him, and Ba’al is God, then worship him. 450 Prophets of Ba’al try getting Ba’al to accept their sacrifice by laying it on the altar, and regardless of whether Ba’al was in the habit of showing up or not doesn’t matter cause one thing is for sure, He wasn’t about to come and try to take on the Spirit of God. It didn’t matter how much they begged, pleaded, and so forth from sun up to noon, and nothing from ole’ Ba’al.

We have seen the fearless Elijah, who stood before a King with a wife who wanted him dead. We have seen Elijah trust God and accept the provisions that God deems sufficient. We have seen Elijah work miracles amongst God’s people, and now we are about to see my absolute favorite depiction of Elijah in scripture. Or what I like to call “playground Elijah.”

The prophets of Ba’al are out there chanting away or dancing in the sun. Whatever they were doing didn’t matter because it wasn’t working. After several hours Elijah responds mockingly

“… saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

His mockery must have struck a nerve because they did cry out louder, and they started cutting their flesh as was their custom, and they continued this through their remaining hours of sacrifice. Ba’al never showed up, and now it was Elijah’s turn.

He took 12 stones, built up an altar, dug a trench, and had them pour four water jars on it, then refilled and repeated the process of drenching the altar, the wood, and the sacrifice, two more times. His prayer was simple;

“O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. 37Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” 38Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. 39And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The LORD, he is God; the LORD, he is God.”

Now, this is A brutal blow to Ba’al. The fact that Ba’al didn’t show up was disastrous, but God was not done. You see, God had a very strict set rules that He placed on Israel and Judah, about how He intended idol worships to be dealt with where the Israelites were concerned.

So Elijah commanded the people to cease the prophets of Ba’al and killed them.

Now I know the modern conscience wants to say that was mean, or unfair. Well, Elijah didn’t care, and even if he did God didn’t. There is nothing about Elijah’s character that suggests he was a killer, so how is he capable or justified in this seemingly strange action?

Simple, Elijah and the Israelites there that day had seen those very same men torture, rape, and kill Israelites regularly. How do we know that? Well, do a study on the practices of priests of Ba’al, and you will see that was the case because that was a requirement of Ba’al worship.

This day we are looking at here Ba’al was dethroned, and this was good old-fashioned justice. If this seems unsavory to you, then you should know that God is a God of justice.

God is not concerned with political correctness because there is no true correctness apart from what He says is correct.

So, don’t be guilty as so many ignorantly are placing the conscience of today on the Bible. Because the conscience of today is duplicitous at best, and the conscience of the Bible is steadfast and certain.

Now that we have seen up to this point the basic events of Elijah’s ministry, I want to point out something.

This last account shows us something that I don’t feel we should just Passover.

The false gods of this world will always demand your mutilation in some way. They will always take from you more than they will give.

Your job, family, friends, all of those are wonderful, but you let them come between you and God, you let them become your God, and they can stress you to the point of thinking you will lose your mind, and you will stress all of them in the same way. So, learn to keep them in proper balance.

You worship sports, gambling, drugs, alcohol, sex, entertainment, food, and it doesn’t matter; it will always demand more from you than you thought it would. All of those things require you to sacrifice your flesh in some way.

All the gods invented by humanity, the gods created based on demonic influence, all of them hold that thing in common, the desire for your sacrificial destruction somehow.

We have the only God who ever sacrificed His flesh on our behalf. Our God is the only God that offered Himself up to be mutilated for us.

You see, Elijah’s purpose in someways was to answer the question; is there really only one God? Interesting enough his name answers that question. Eli-jah means “the Lord is God!”

But this portion of his story shows us a God that insistent on being the only God of Israel. And when we consider the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, we see that instead of demanding our mutilation, He submitted Himself in our place.

False God’s require much work to earn their favor. God’s salvation is by grace through faith alone.

J.D. Greear points out that false gods are demanding but so are the secular gods of society today.

“Popularity, money, or beauty demand that you dance like a slave to please them. So if money is your god, you dance like a slave for it, to get into the right school, to get the right job, to get that promotion. If beauty is your god, you dance—sometimes literally—so you’ll feel good about your body. If popularity is your god, then you dance for your circle of friends, desperately seeking to gain their approval.

These secular gods are just as much idols as the demonically influenced Ba’al is.

So, in closing...

This is only half of Elijah’s story, but the point is clear. If your life feels like those things important to you are killing you, its because they very well may be.

I urge you this morning to consider who or what it is you serve. We all serve or live for something, the question is If it is not God that consumes your time, then what is. What in your life is more important than God?

Exodus 20 and 34 tell us that God is a jealous God.

He doesn’t play games with us and will only bide you playing games with Him for a certain amount of time, and then He’s done.

And when that happens, when that times comes, you will be faced head on with what you worship. Is it the desires of the flesh or the need of the spirit to have a closeness with God?

Let us take a few minutes to reflect on the word delivered this morning.

Why is it that only God Almighty was willing to give His body up for mutilation for us, and yet we find it so incredibly hard to lay down those things we worship that we know seek our destruction?

In a moment we will approach the Lord’s table where we will remember Him as He intended based upon the lamb He became offering himself up as a sacrifice to be poured out for us.

But first we will take a few moments to pray in anticipation that hearts will be found pure before almighty God.

Let us pray....

The Lord’s Supper

So, as we prepare our elements this morning, let us consider together God’s purpose of the incarnate life of Jesus Christ.

As we consider this together let me start us in prayer.

“Lord, we pray that You would still our minds and quiet our hearts as we approach this communion table today. We ask that You would draw each one of us into ever closer fellowship with Yourself, as we partake together of the bread and wine, in grateful remembrance of what You did for each one of us, on Calvary’s cross.

Help me Lord, to approach this communion table with reverence and godly fear, as we share together in the bread and the cup. Lord, we remember how on the same night that You were betrayed You took a piece of bread, and blessed it and broke it, and gave it to Your disciples and said. “eat this in remembrance of Me.”

We also remember how You then took the cup and told them. “this is the new covenant in My blood, do this in remembrance of Me.” Lord, we partake of this bread and drink this cup in remembrance of what You did on our behalf, on Calvary’s cross, and praise and glorify Your holy name.

Amen.”

1 Corinthians 11 tells us starting in verse 28;

1 Corinthians 11:28–32 ESV

28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

With Every Head Bowed; Let us examine our hearts together, for a moment, being throughly honest with ourselves before the throne of God, praying as each has need.

1 Corinthians 11 starting in verse 23 reads;

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 ESV

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,

24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

"The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, eat you all of it"

Eat and Pause...

Pray

1 Corinthians 11:25–26 ESV

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

“The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, drink you all of it”

Closing Prayer:

“Lord Jesus, what a privilege to be able to come before Your throne of grace and partake of the precious sacraments of bread and wine, in remembrance of Your atoning sacrifice on the cross of Calvary.

Thank You for dying for me on the cross and paying the enormous price for my sins, so that I may be forgiven of all my faults and receive Your indwelling life.

May I never forget the enormous price that was paid on my behalf. May I never forget that I have been bought with a price, the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. May I live for Him from this day on, knowing that Your body was broken and Your blood was spilt for me,

Thank You, Lord. In Jesus' name,

Amen.”

Let us worship together as Heather leads the singing...