1 Kings 17–18

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let's worship together.

My Savior loves, my Savior lives, my Savior's always there for me. My God he was, my God he is, my God my soul is from this.

Once died to be my Savior, strange so once did I.

My Savior lives, my Savior loves, my Savior lives, my Savior. Christ alone my hope is found. He is my light, my strength, my song. His cornerstone, his solid ground. Firm through the fiercest heights of love. Righteousness, scorned by the ones he can't. Righteousness for me and stands in my defense. Jesus is yours. Lord, as we study your word tonight and see how sin had to be taken care of by the blood of animals,

Lord, we just thank you so much for your sacrifice. Sacrifice for our sins. Lord, you're the only one. Just have your way as we get into your word. Hello? Hello? Cool. How are you guys doing? Well, I'm nervous, to be honest. If I'm being real. It's a little different than teaching college kids, huh? You guys are all more mature than me, I think. So, let's get started.

We're going to be in 1 Kings chapter 17. And we're going to get a little context in the end of chapter 16. But before we get started, let's go ahead and pray and ask the Lord to help us out. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that we can open up your word, gather together and study your word. I pray that you would just open it up for us and speak to us, each individually.

And we love you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. So, the portion of scripture we're reading about happens to be about King Ahab. King Ahab. He's kind of a bad dude. But one of the coolest guys in all of scriptures is the prophet Elijah. And we get to talk about him and God's plan for his life. I think the biggest thing that before we get started and get into it that we need to remember is

God is a God of love. He's a God of justice. He's a God of absolute adoration for the children of Israel. And right now, they're in a time of rebellion, open rebellion to the Lord. So, with that lens, we see Elijah being used to call Israel back to the Lord. There's a time of chastisement. There's a time of punishment in order to bring the Israelites, as well as King Ahab, back to the Lord.

And you'll see that's the goal in this. It's not like God just being a judgmental. God and a harsh God for no reason. The goal is really to bring them back to himself. So, let's go ahead and get started in verse 29 of chapter 16. It says, in the 38th year of year of Asa, king of Judah. Asa was one of the good kings. He's noted as being a man who fought, walked in the pattern of David.

Which is a good thing. Good sign. He did all of the... The good things and Ahab, the son of Omri, became king of Israel and Ahab, the son of Omri, reigned over Israel in Samaria, 22 years. Now, Ahab was the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. That's an interesting thing to note, because Israel was separated into two kingdoms from Judah, following Rehoboam.

To... Israel, following after Jeroboam. They went two separate directions. Judah being the line after David, after Solomon messed up. God kind of wanted to separate them. And you'll see Judah has the... They have a lot more... The only good kings that ever happened. Israel has none. But up until this point, Ahab is the absolute worst. And it says... Now, Ahab 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 Nabat. And I wanted to go back and just talk about Jeroboam and what he did. Jeroboam built Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim and dwelt there. Also, he went out from there and built... So, God had given half of the kingdom, or the ten tribes of the kingdom, to Jeroboam.

Rehoboam had two. The Benjamites and Judah. And God made a promise to Jeroboam. If he would walk in the ways of David, if he would walk in the way that he was supposed to, walk in obedience to the Lord, God would bless him, just like he did to David. He gave him this warning. He gave him this promise. And as we'll see in a little bit, God is always faithful to his promises.

Every time God makes a promise, any time God gives a word, any time God says he's going to do something, he is faithful and just. We are faithless, and we'll see Jeroboam got faithless. He was fearful. It says right here that he was worried about the kingdom. The ten tribes that he had were going to go back to the kingdom of Judah if he let them go to Jerusalem to sacrifice and worship the Lord in Jerusalem.

He was worried about losing his kingdom. He didn't listen to what the Lord said to him. That if he walked in the ways of David, that God would bless him. And where he was. He was worried about losing things. He was fearful. And it led ultimately to him for him to compromise. And since he was the king, since he was the leader of the of the the known world, the Israelites at the time, he set the tone.

He not only compromised, but he led the Israelites into compromise. And. And. And one warning I would say for all of us is fear does lead to compromise. Fear, when we fear what is outside rather than the Lord, it leads to compromise. And he was in fear of losing his kingdom. My question to you guys is, what is in your life now that you're fearful of losing,

fearful of, that you fear more to lose rather than fearing the Lord and walking with the Lord? What would you trade for your relationship with God? I would venture to say there's things in my life that as I was going through this passage that I had to take before the Lord and confess and really check my heart because there are things that I can be holding above the Lord or fearful of losing more than the Lord or desire more than I desire the Lord. And here, Rehoboam's heart is that.

He wants this kingdom more than he wants to be obedient to the Lord. And let me tell you guys, obedience to the Lord is so much better than whatever the world has to offer. Obedience to the Lord may never get you the riches, may never get you the money, may never get you the glory, but obedience to the Lord will get you heavenly rewards that are so much more valuable, that don't rot, that don't get burned up, that don't go away, that are eternal rather than, temporal. Anything this world has to offer is temporary.

Nothing is worth it, worth your salvation. Like what does Jesus say? How can a man, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul? Is gaining in this world worth the loss of your eternal soul? Anyways, so this compromise that he did was he built two calves of gold. He set one. One in Bethel and one in Dan so that the children of Israel didn't have to go all the way to Jerusalem

to sacrifice to God in the manner that God desired, right? We have to remember that God is a perfect and holy God. And as such, if he wants to be worshipped and he has prescribed a method of how we should worship him, that's how we should come to him. We shouldn't compromise and do our own thing. We shouldn't compromise and try to worship him how, well, this is how I've always done it.

This is how I want to worship God. He needs to, you know, come down to my level. That's disobedience. That's not listening to the Lord. The commandment that he actually broke here, that he not only for himself but led the Israelites to break as well, is the making a graven image. It kind of reminds me of Aaron and the golden calf on Mount Horeb when Moses is up on the mountain and Aaron throws all the gold into the fire

and said a calf popped out. He was giving them their God rather than them worshipping the God, the true and living God. So he made these items. And again, led the Israelites into compromise, which at that moment in time, he kind of had them worshipping God, right? The God of Israel, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and Jacob, but not in the prescribed manner.

And compromise starts small, but as we'll see right here in the scripture that we're going to be in, it often does lead to idolatry. It often does lead, leads to even absolute and total rebellion like Ahab, where I no longer want to live for the Lord. Now all I want to live for is myself, my own selfish desires, my own lusts. And you start to take on the characteristics of the world rather than the characteristics of the Lord.

And God is spirit and he must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And if we're to worship him, if we're to follow him, we're to, we're to take his characteristics rather than taking the characteristics of our neighbors, those of the world, those who practice the things of the world. So we'll see the difference between, it started with Jeroboam, the compromise, but then we'll see here in 17, how it ended with a, or what happened with Ahab. So back to 16, it says, 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 Nabat, that he took as wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbal, king of the Sidonians.

And he went and served Baal and worshipped him. He took on the gods that they were serving, right? He not only took on the gods that they were serving, but he served that God, Baal and worshipped them, worshipped him. He was completely turned away from the God of Israel, Isaac and Jacob, or Jehovah, as we see that when it, when it is a capital Lord, it's usually Y H V H, which a lot of people will say is, is Jehovah.

There's everyone has their own theory on, on how that would be, how it got to Jehovah or if it is Jehovah or whatever it is. But I, I was reading through a book and G Campbell Morgan had his own theory. And it was this, that yeah, he means he will be, uh, uh, Hove means being and high. Yeah. It means he was. And if you add it all together, Jehovah, it means he,

that will be he, that is, and he, that was the idea that he is the all present existing God. Um, and this is the God that a hab is supposed to be worshiping and serving. And he is worshiping the God of, of, of the Sidonians, the Baal. And then he set up an altar for, for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had been, uh, which he had built in Samaria. Ahab made a wooden image,

a wooden image. Uh, you, we, we believe it's going to be the, the Canaanite goddess Asherah and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the Kings of Israel who, uh, who were before him. And in his days, he L of Bethel Jericho built Jericho. He laid its foundations with, uh, Biram his firstborn and with his youngest son say, gub, uh, he set up its gates according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken through Joshua, son of a nun.

Um, the interest of the interesting thing here in verse 34, if you go back to read Joshua, uh, six 26, um, it perfectly describes this situation when he builds, uh, this family builds, um, uh, built Jericho back up. Basically, Joshua curses, whoever, whoever does it, but he also explains how it's going to be done, that the firstborn, uh, is going to build the foundation and the second and the youngest is going to set up its gates. Um, and it was just really cool. Interesting.

With that being said, the context of, of Ahab and who he was, uh, a man, uh, who led the Israelites, uh, to, to worship the gods of the people around them rather than Jehovah. He was leading them in the wrong way. Uh, we have Elijah, the prophet coming in. Um, God's goal with Elijah was to bring the people back to the Lord, back to recognizing who God was, the God who rescued him from Egypt, right?

The God who, uh, helped David with, with Goliath, the God of David. He's trying to call them back. And with Elijah, the first thing he does is, uh, he tells him to go to, to Ahab and tell him there shall be no dew or rain these years, except at my word, the power of God to cause a drought, uh, a season of drought, uh, to where we'll see that Ahab and Jezebel, Jezebel starts going crazy against all of the prophets of, of, of God and, um, murdering them. And, but, but, uh, anyways, so causes the, uh, the, the drought.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, came to Elijah saying, get away from here, turn eastward and hide from the book. Cherith hide by the book, Brooke 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 shortly after he gives the, the command and talks to Ahab and tells him that there's going to be a drought.

The Lord gives him, gives him a command, a command that doesn't make any sense, but a command. Nonetheless, that, that tells him to go eastward to a brook that flows into the Jordan. And it will be that he can drink from the brook and then Ravens will come to feed him there. Right? So there's the command. And then there's God's promise that, uh, of, of providing for what he needs.

Um, and then it says, so he went and did according to the word of the Lord. I always like to stop there. And I, whenever it says someone, someone just went and did according to what the Lord says, whenever someone is just obedient to the, to the, to the command that the Lord gives, I usually like to stop there and try to just sit there because it's so beautiful when people just obey the Lord, just walk in obedience to the Lord, trusting the Lord that I may not understand what's going on. May not understand or may not even want a Raven to bring me food.

And if it doesn't make sense, whenever the Lord has given you a word, just do it. Just be obedient. Because, because obedience is better than disobedience. Obedience to the Lord, um, provides more lasting rewards, uh, eternal rewards that even though we may not see it now, we'll get one, we'll get them in heaven. And there's so much better. Um, so he went and did according to what the Lord said.

He went and stayed by the brook, which flows in 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, so the Lord answered his obedience obedience and provided for him what he needed. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Um,

so he's sitting there doing God's providing God's taking care of it. Um, kind of reminds me of, of when Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and all of these things will be added unto you. That simply obeying the Lord when he calls us to seek him to go after him, that he's going to take care of us. He's going to take care of all of the little necessities, all of the things that we need, the clothes that we need, the food that we need.

Um, he takes care of all of those things, but Elijah is, is, is obedient and waits. And then after a time it says, then the word of the Lord came to him saying, arise, go to Zarephath, uh, which belongs to Sidon and dwell there. See, I have commanded away.