8/23/2015 Elijah Begins Pastor Josh Sheldon

We had some discussion in my office just a few minutes ago as to whether

I am, this morning, going to preach in this place for the

first time using not paper, but a tablet, a very modern

device.

This, and I'm not gonna move it very much because I don't want the text to move.

Now, whether or not anybody has ever preached with a tablet from here before, we weren't quite certain.

It could be that Conley Owens has used a tablet once up here some time ago.

But it is beyond doubt, I will stand on this truth, I have never done this.

I have always used paper.

Now, my last version of the sermon that I'm going to try to bring to you this morning on Elijah, and this obviously is not the sermon, this is

all introductory, isn't it?

Was on my desk, and it was very marked up, my final

editing comments, and my practice is to come in here early Sunday morning, I read it through one more time, I

print out my final version, I put it here, and then I read to you from that version.

The printer this morning did not like that plan.

The printer said, no, we're not going to work this morning.

And we had a couple of the men here who are familiar with how to work with these things, and the printer would not

cooperate with them either.

Very graciously, they took my text off my computer, emailed it to one of the men who owns this

tablet, put it on this tablet, and now it's on this pulpit for me to try to preach to you from it.

So if I fumble and stumble this morning, more than usual, because I know I often fumble and stumble, that's my

excuse, that's my reason.

I'm trying to use this thing, if it turns, I'm trying to, if all of a sudden I stop, I didn't forget where we are,

I've got to get this thing going again.

So with all those excuses, with all that background, it's a time

for God to especially be glorified.

We were talking just a few, even sooner ago, and

when these kind of circumstances come, we know that God is sovereign, we know that all is

within his providence, and the more my plans fall apart and my patterns are not going to

be in place, the more reliant I, we,

must be upon him.

So let's see what he shall do.

Let's pray.

The words of my mouth, the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, my strength and

my redeemer, for it is upon you that we rely, it is you we wish to glorify.

Help us, help me, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, Dale read to you from 1 Kings chapter 17, and as you

who've been here for a while know, as my practice, when we're going through a narrative, we tend to go at a rather slow

pace and repeat things, so you will probably hear that introductory section on

Elijah the prophet a time or two more before we move even further into

it.

That will be our text this morning, but before we begin speaking of Elijah

and his first meeting with Ahab, and his announcement of the coming drought and the

consequent famine, and all these things which we're fairly familiar with, but we will dig into them a bit,

I want to set as firmly as I can in our minds

the state of Israel to which Elijah was sent.

I don't mean the state geographically, we know where that was, that's the northern kingdom.

I mean their spiritual state, where they were at.

Psalm 14, the first three verses say, the fool has said in his heart, let me emphasize that

better, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

They are corrupt, they have done abominable works.

There is none who does good.

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there is any who understand, who seek

God.

They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt.

There is none who does good, no, not one.

It seems that whenever God in the scripture casts his gaze upon

humanity, this is what he sees.

He says he sees men playing the fool by denying him.

In Genesis six, the scripture says when he looked down from heaven, what did he see?

He saw only wickedness.

That man's heart, his imaginations were set on evil continually, it says.

When he came down to see the city and the tower that man was making so soon after the waters of the flood receded,

what did he see?

He saw man striving to make a name for who?

For himself, not for God.

Reaching up to heaven to glorify who?

Himself, not God.

The fool again, over and over in scripture, time and time again, saying there is

no God.

And this is the essence of idolatry.

Idolatry being the essence of the state of Israel at the time of Elijah.

It is man breaking the restraining bonds and casting off God's cords in this constant reenactment

of the second psalm.

Everybody worships something.

Even the atheist, when he says he acknowledges no God, he recognizes no deity, when he

claims that the spirit world is a myth, when he explains all of life by physical laws, at least as best as

he can figure them out, he has simply made himself the object of his own worship.

He is God for him.

The other type of idolater, the one who bows down to an actual image that represents a god or a

deity or some sort of force, like maybe people were wearing or maybe still use those pyramids

because there's supposed to be some thing that happens with them.

No better, no worse in the same spiritual state, really, as the atheist.

Well, this was Israel in the time of first and for that matter, second kings.

From the beginning of the divided kingdom when Israel's first king, who was Jeroboam, we spoke of him a few weeks ago,

when he set up the altars of the cow gods that represented the true God, remember, he said, these are your

gods of Israel who delivered you out of Egypt.

God did deliver them out of Egypt.

Yahweh, the true and living, eternal God, did do that.

But he was not those calves.

The right god, worshipped, represented wrongly.

Ever since Jeroboam, that was the rule of the land.

But under Ahab, there's a new depth of depravity.

He didn't try to worship the true God wrongly.

He dispensed with God altogether.

And who did he raise in favor of the true God of Israel?

Well, it was his wife, Jezebel's favored object, Baal.

Capital B, double A, El.

The word means master.

It's sort of like the word Adonai for Lord.

Baal meant master.

He was the God of nature.

He was the dispenser of thunder.

He was the bringer of fertility to land and to people.

Into this quagmire, into this morass, into this mess, God sent

the prophet Elijah.

And we introduced him in some detail last week, so I won't repeat it very much this morning.

He comes from nowhere, no introduction, no parentage, no prophet school affiliation.

He just shows up and he stands before the king.

Now, we must remember when a man, a prophet, whoever stands before a king

is almost never the man and the king.

Think back to 1 Samuel 12, when Nathan confronted David for his sin with that famous parable

about the man who took another man's only sheep.

A man who had everything took a sheep from a man who had only that sheep.

I won't repeat the whole parable.

I just want to make the point when Nathan finally said, well, you are the man,

that was not just Nathan and David.

That was Nathan.

He had waited in a line with all the emissaries, all the ambassadors, all the functionaries, all the people who were

always hanging out with the king.

It was very public.

Likewise, we have to assume when Elijah went and stood before Ahab, it

wasn't just man to man.

It was the man, Elijah, and the whole court around Ahab at that time.

The word and.

And Elijah the Tishbite said to Ahab, and connects us with what came just before.

That's verses 16, 29 to 34.

We read them last week, but just to remind you, that tells how Ahab

worshiped Baal and even built a temple for it.

And there he set up a wooden image, a totem pole of sorts.

And he showed even more spite for God.

You read this at the end of chapter 16.

Even more spite for God when he had his servant Hiel rebuild Jericho.

Now why is that spite for God?

Because Joshua, the son of Nun, spoke for God when he cursed anyone who should rebuild

Jericho.

What did Joshua say?

He shall lay the gates with his firstborn and his youngest son.

In other words, you're gonna lose your children if you try to rebuild this city that God destroyed

when Israel first came into the land of Canaan.

And in accordance with the curse, the truth of God's word that Joshua spoke, Hiel lost

both of his sons.

This is the context into which this most powerful of prophets appears.

So let's look at this a bit.

Let's look at this beginning of Elijah's prophecy, his

prophetic ministry.

As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be not dew nor rain

these years except at my word.

Now, one might expect when telling a king of impending disaster that there might've been some more

eloquence, at least give some more detail.

Remember, here's Ahab.

He's the wicked king.

He's not just a wicked king.

The scripture says he was more wicked than all who came before him.

And the way I read that is if you took all the wickedness of all the kings from Jeroboam up to Ahab's

father Omri, if you added all that wickedness together and made it into one batch of

wickedness and compared it to Ahab, Ahab outdid it.

So what's Ahab going to say?

Well, we don't have a word from Ahab until chapter 18, just before that

famous confrontation of Elijah and the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel.

So we don't have a word that Ahab actually says for a few years.

But I'm trying to read into the man a bit what we know of him from this.

From the scripture.

What would he do when this oddly -dressed man who just shows up,

knew where to find him, confronts him with that?

How was he dressed?

He was a hairy man wearing a leather belt.

Really?

No rain?

Just who are you exactly?

Elijah's son of who?

And you went to which school of prophets?

You come, just come stand before me and tell me a powerful,

successful king.

The economy's rolling along.

Our neighbors are afraid of us.

We're militarily secure.

Really, no rain?

And you're saying that God gave you the power to stop the rain and someday you're gonna pray when you feel like it and it's gonna come back.

Can you feel the sarcasm, the derision?

This man who set up Baal?

This man who rebuilt Jericho?

How would he react to Elijah the prophet standing and telling him that God

says disaster is coming?

That's all he said.

Accept it my word.

The simplicity has its appeal.

Too often flowery speech is just really fear of man.

Elijah was from Gilead which was a rugged land and the people there were known for being like their land, sort of like the

American frontiersman.

Whether Elijah actually had the capacity for flowery speech, we can't be sure.

We don't have any examples of it.

And even at Mount Carmel where we'll be with him in a few weeks, Lord willing, even there

his address and his prayer were models of brevity.

They were densely packed with content and meaning but his prayers, his speech was very

simple, very brief.

And so here standing before this king who is leading Israel into its darkest hour in

one sentence gives him an entire prophecy.

As the Lord God of Israel lives, he says.

I mean the gauntlet is thrown down.

Who lives?

Who's the living God?

Is it Baal, the one that you king are worshiping, the one that you king have made a statute that Israel

must follow?

You build him a temple, you set up his image.

Is he the living God or is it Yahweh?

As the Lord God of Israel lives, the true and living God.

Well if Baal is the God of Israel, then let him bring rain

when the Lord God says otherwise.

Let him whom you worship, Ahab, let him overrule this

decree that I'm giving you from God.

Let him show his power in what's supposed to be his land.

Gauntlet's thrown down here.

The whole tone of Elijah's ministry is right here in this opening confrontation.

And Elijah says, as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand.

Elijah's standing before God is all that makes it possible for him to stand before men.

And we can apply that immediately to ourselves this morning.

If we're Christians, how are we able to stand before men?

Because we stand before God and we know that.

It's our standing before God that allows us to say anything for him and therefore to be before men.

Confidence at this point is the only way to remove all fear of man and to speak rightly for God.

I mean, as long as man is feared, the message from God is at best diluted.

Why is he to be heard?

Because he stands before God.

And this is important.

Luke 119 has the angel saying to doubting Zacharias,

who said in essence to him, why should I believe you?

Do you remember what the angel said back to him?

I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God.

I stand in the presence of God and therefore, you need to believe and act upon what I say.

He said, I stand in the presence of God, this still Gabriel, and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings.

But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take place because you do not

believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their own time.

Do you hear the correspondence between that angel speaking and the authority with which he speaks and what Elijah was saying?

Because it's before God that I stand, therefore, hear my words and listen.

I would also say there's another correspondence there.

That the angel said to Zacharias, these glad tidings.

Now, what glad tidings?

That your wife, aged Elizabeth, is going to have a son.

And of course, that son's going to be John the Baptist and John the Baptist is going to point to Jesus Christ and say, behold, the Lamb

of God who takes away the sin of the world.

These are glad tidings indeed.

I think there's a correspondence there still with Elijah.

Because when Elijah said, there will not be moisture, there will not be dew, there won't be anything coming from the ground to help

these crops except at my word, this is a glad

tiding.

Because God is sending his word.

God is giving warning.

God has sent a prophet to speak the word of God to sinners who need to be corrected by that rod.

Elijah's boldness before man is no more, no less than any of us who know Jesus Christ should have.

Peter followed this model when he refused to obey the Sanhedrin's command to stop preaching Christ to the people.

But this was no in -your -face audacity.

It was a confidence bred from humility and a humility that was birthed in the certainty that he stood

before God.

If we keep in mind just who it is we claim to represent, which is the God of all the universe,

the maker of men, the holy one who brooks no sin, yet forgives all sin for the sake of his son

Jesus, if we remember that we are his ambassadors, there will be humility.

And by humility, power in our speech.

Not our power but God's who stands against the proud but gives grace to the humble.

And Jesus Christ says in that day, in that very hour, the Holy Spirit will give you words to speak.

I don't say that we just walk blithely and start

prophesying to people.

We need to know the word of God.

We need to know what God actually says.

We'll get to that later.

So don't leave now and say, okay, the pastor just said, go off and start prophesying to people

and announcing doom to them.

No, that's not what we're saying at all.

Do not do that.

You, I, are not Elijah.

It's not our power, but it's God's power.

Well, eloquence for this prophet.

Eloquence gives way to clarity.

Perfumed words fall in favor of simple truth.

To stand confident like Elijah, to know God's word well enough that we just state it.

I think these are good lessons from us.

We don't like to take the histories that we have in the scripture and just moralize and say, therefore, be bold like Elijah.

Because these narratives are not given to us for that reason.

But I think Elijah's certainty, that because he stood before God and knew what God had

said and the confidence that they gave him, I think these are good lessons for us.

Now, the coming disaster, the drought that is going to bring famine is going to

prove God's word.

I mean, Elijah said no rain, and there was no rain.

That it would later start again at his word at the very moment he made an end to this judgment

confirms all the more that it was God who did this.

There's another thing that happens, or I believe happened, because of

the drought that came and the famine that it brought.

You know, when people have

no hope of food from one day to the next, what do they do?

You're going to come away from spiritual matters and you're going to focus solely on staying alive.

You're gonna be worried about the day -to -day matter of getting anything on your plate.

I've only been hungry in my life.

I've never been starving.

But I believe that one of the things that would happen here is you don't have time to go and worship Baal

if Baal's not bringing any water and the crops aren't growing, you have no food.

Now, this is secondary to the fact that it's God who stopped the rain.

But hunger focuses us on the stomach and leaves little time for the idolatry that they were

going into.

There shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word.

This man just said, first, that God said there'd be a drought, and second, this rough and tumble guy

claimed by divine decree that he held the key to bringing back the rain.

With boldness, he stands on the word of God before whom he stands.

And this is a good time for us to ask, how did he know?

We have nothing in the scripture that says anything like the burden of Elijah from the Lord.

Or as we read over and over in the book of Jeremiah, the word of the Lord came to the prophet and said, say

unto, well, in Jeremiah's case, Zedekiah, king of Israel.

We don't have anything like that.

He just shows up and he says this.

We know from reading the scripture he spoke accurately and truly, but

how did he know that God said there'd be no rain?

Well, James, in the New Testament, James tells us in chapter five and verses 13 through

16, he tells us in this ending of the epistle,

he's speaking about praying, he says you must pray with faith.

And I don't wanna go too deeply into this because our brother Steve has covered it so well in the preaching series that he's had on James

and he will, Lord willing, return to it soon.

But I only want to point out that James' example of this is Elijah, praying with faith.

It's Elijah, he said he was a man with a nature like ours and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain.

And it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.

His was a prayer of power because it was bathed in faith.

But Elijah didn't simply land on what he thought would be an effective way to punish Israel and then return the nation to

their senses.

How did he know this?

What was his prayer where he prayed earnestly to the Lord God?

Why did he pray for drought and not for earthquakes, for example?

Well, A .W. Pink, he posits that Elijah, when he prayed earnestly

for this drought, he's praying on the basis of the scripture.

Deuteronomy 11, verses 15 through 17.

And a good number of commentators agree with him.

And this makes sense.

This is Moses speaking to Israel.

And it shall be that if you earnestly obey my commandments, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve him

with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain for your land in its season,

the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain your new wine and your oil, and I

will send grass in your fields for your livestock that you may eat and be filled.

Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods

and worship them.

Lest the Lord's anger be aroused against you and he shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no

produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.

It's as if Elijah prayed to God something like, Lord, they have not obeyed your word.

You did send rain in abundance when they did, and as they plummeted towards false gods, you remained good.

You sent sun and rain on the unjust all the while waiting for them to repent.

Now they worship other gods as their national symbol.

It's as if he said, Heavenly Father, it's too much.

Do what your word says, O God of Israel.

Provide no more for them.

Close the heavens as though they were bronze that your people who are called by your name

might repent.

A powerful prayer is not one of great length or eloquence.

It's not even one that comes from a vast and intricate knowledge of the scripture, at least not necessarily so.

A powerful prayer is one that begins with faith.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God.

A powerful prayer believes that God is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

And a powerful prayer is seasoned throughout by scripture, by

knowing what God says.

I think this is what Elijah prayed.

And I think this is the basis on which he prayed, knowing God's word, knowing that God said, if you act this way, this is what I will

do.

And Elijah's not saying, Lord, this is what I think you should do to Israel to make them repent.

He's saying, Lord, this is what you in your word have said.

And O God, work through me if that be your will.

He says, there shall be neither dew nor rain.

We have to stop for just a moment here also.

We have to understand that there never is moisture falling from the sky unless

God says so.

And what this means is not so much that God is sending drought as that he is not sending the rain.

Now this may seem subtle.

It may sound to you like a distinction without a difference.

But the way I said it, that God is withholding the rain, it gives a clearer idea that rain in the first

place is actively sent by God.

Jesus said that God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

What this means is that if a drop of rain falls on anyone, it's because

God willed it.

If rain doesn't come, it's not so much that he intervened and stopped what might have happened.

It means that he did not let that drop of water fall.

It's the same with the sun.

We could say that each photon that brings light and comfort goes where it goes and does what it does

because of God's direct will for that photon or for that drop of water.

The next thing the prophet does is by direct command from God,

is to remove himself from there.

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've commanded the ravens to feed you there.

There it is.

So he went and did according to the word of the Lord for 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.

You have in your bulletins, there's an insert that I prepared.

On one side there's a little map that shows you all the places in the ministry of Elijah.

On the other side of it is a calendar.

You'll find different versions of this.

Some of the dates people disagree on but they don't make a huge difference but that's the list of kings of Israel and Judah.

But you can see how far away from Samaria he was sent.

I didn't calculate the miles.

I didn't find it in any commentaries but you can see there it's a good number of miles.

It puts him on the other side of the Jordan River a little bit east of his supposed hometown of

Tishba.

And I'll just tell you, you see where it says Tishba there just west of where the brook Cherith is.

It points to where he was fed there by the ravens.

A lot of commentaries say no, we have no idea that a Tishba ever

existed.

But that map, it's the clearest map I could print out for you.

It posits that it's in that place.

Take that for what it's worth.

But he's a little bit east of the Jordan, certainly.

It's the territory that Reuben and Gad had asked for as their own.

On the east side of the Jordan, remember as Israel was coming to the land?

And those two tribes said, hey, this looks pretty good here.

Now it's not that they were in the east side of the Jordan.

It's not the promised land.

It's not the west side of the Jordan.

But Moses, this looks pretty good here.

Well, that land was granted to them on condition that they fight with the other tribes for their land on the other side of the

river.

And they promised to do that and they kept the promise.

And then they went back to the east side where you see that on that map.

I think they went back in much the same way that Lot looked with that wandering eye to the comforts of Sodom.

In that same way, they returned to this inheritance on the east side of the Jordan.

This was part of the northern kingdom.

It was under Ahab's rule.

But you know, a river makes a natural defense against intrusion.

Any general can tell you that.

Across the Jordan, Elijah would be safe from Ahab's soon to come search for him.

This enraged king tried to kill him.

Not unlike how insane Saul pursued David.

Not unlike how the serpent's seed always has and always will hate the woman's seed.

Cain killed Abel, Ham dishonored Noah, Pharaoh enslaved Israel, Saul hated David,

Ahab, Elijah.

Now the final contestants in this drama were of course Satan himself, the ultimate seed of the serpent.

No, it was a serpent himself.

And Jesus, the seed of the woman, the holy and righteous seed of the woman.

But for now it's played out by the human counterparts.

Clearly Elijah is safe from Ahab, though for the moment we can't be sure Ahab gave any

importance to Elijah's words.

He would later after some years without rain, but not then.

Elijah is not so much safe from pursuit as he is from pressure to speak an end to the drought before God's

time.

But more importantly into the point made by our narrator, Elijah becomes a living parable of the power of God

over creation.

Why did Elijah go from Ahab so quickly?

On one hand, the answer is very simple.

It's because he was commanded to.

They said Ahab never speaks in his first encounter.

It's not for a few years that we hear a word from him.

And then he calls him the troubler of Israel.

Well, the purpose of his being hidden isn't told to us explicitly or exactly, but we know

one thing that was proven there at the Brook Cherith where he stayed during this first part of the drought.

God's word was proven while he was there.

Not only did the drought come just as he who stood before the living God had said, but his

spokesman was provided for all his needs.

Elijah's needs were provided.

You see, if Baal was real, let him deal with this enemy.

Let him defeat God's chosen vessel for that day and place.

Let Baal say to Elijah, no, the ravens will not help you.

I command otherwise.

The stream will offer you nothing for your thirst because I do not wish it.

Let him do that.

I had in my notes that Yahweh, the true God, overruled Baal, but it's really not the

case.

Baal couldn't overrule Yahweh is the better way to say it.

The ravens did feed the prophet.

There was no food from the king's table to entice him to soften his message.

In the same way that Abraham refused to share in the plunder in order that only God got credit for any wealth that he

attained, so also Elijah would be sustained while the nation starved.

See what was accomplished there at the Brook Cherith.

Sustenance for the prophet, yes.

God's demonstration that he rules creation by having commanded those ravens to do what they did,

yes.

But also, only God can get the credit.

Only God could get the credit for what happened there with Elijah.

How long it took Ahab to start searching for Elijah is unknown.

We know that he did.

In 1 Kings 18 .10, we learn that Ahab has searched everywhere for Elijah.

He even made his neighboring kings take oaths and confirm that they weren't giving him refuge.

This would have taken some time.

So Elijah wasn't exiled exactly.

Ahab gave no such order.

In fact, we have nothing from him until the middle of the next chapter.

Elijah's departure was really a judgment.

It was a judgment of Israel.

When Elijah left Israel, their famine began immediately.

And their crops, even though they weren't ruined right away, nor did they start to

starve for a year or so, but what began was a famine of a much more serious sort

than the one that they would be facing physically.

Amos 8 .11 describes it for us.

It says,

You see, there comes a point when the convicting word of God is withdrawn from those who refuse to be convicted.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, he spoke of not casting pearls before swine or giving what is holy

to dogs.

You know, he said this in exactly the context of withdrawing from people who, like swine or

dogs, the people of his day would have heard that as filthy pigs and vicious mongrel dogs,

people who refuse correction, people who refuse to hear the word of God.

Now, you remember this idea of Jesus saying, get the moat out of your eye, and then you will see clear, excuse me, get the plank out of your

eye.

Then you will see clearly to get that moat out of your brother's eye.

And immediately then he says, don't cast your pearls before swine.

Don't give what is holy to dogs.

They will trample it under the mud.

They will turn and tear you to pieces.

What's the context?

That one with that tiny little speck in his eye, after you've done business with the Lord, and you're ready to go

to him and show him or her their fault, and they won't listen?

That's the context of what Jesus is saying there.

This is the judgment of the removal of Elijah.

It's symbolic of the removal of the word of God from that land for that time.

Israel was willingly led by Ahab into the worst kind of idolatry.

Israel became the fool of Proverbs 13, 13.

He who despises the word will be destroyed, but he who fears the commandment will be rewarded.

Excuse me.

There it goes.

I think I can get used to this, but it'll take some getting used to.

Well, the brook eventually dried up, and Elijah was sent to Zarephath in

Sidon.

The imagery is important.

God's sovereignty was magnificently displayed in the ravens and his judgment in the removal of his spokesman,

and now Elijah is sent to a Gentile land, not just any place.

Sidon is where Jezebel, Ahab's wife, was from.

Her father was king of that land.

Elijah was sent from isolation at the brook straight into the enemy's stronghold.

Well, I don't think I left myself enough time with some of the logistics here to speak about

Elijah and the Sidonian widow, and I don't wanna do that too quickly, and I don't want to

bring it to you in an inaccurate way because I'm fumbling with the technology here, so I think I'm gonna

talk about Elijah with the widow when we come back to this,

and I'm gonna hold back now because with the fact that it's the example that Jesus Christ used when he begins his

ministry in Luke 4, it rises to a level of importance,

and I don't think I would have time to begin and finish it, and I don't want to treat

it that way, so I'd rather just make that a separate message.

Just a few thoughts to close us on this.

What was it that sent Elijah to Ahab?

We're gonna learn when we come back to this that Elijah didn't just go to Sidon.

He was sent to that widow.

That's the way Jesus says it.

What was it that sent Elijah to Ahab in the first place?

How are we to view the drought and the famine that ensued?

It's God's mercy.

It's all God's mercy.

Listen, by that I don't mean the warning.

I don't mean just the warning.

The warning is by God's mercy, yes, but showing his

power, showing his anger, showing his judgment, all the things displayed in

the withholding of the rain and what that brought to the nation, that's all from God's mercy,

but it is because it shows a wayward nation that they are in fact wayward.

Had God not sent Elijah, had God not sent his word, had God not provided any

judgment at all that could only be attributed to him, they would have just

kept going in their condemnation.

It's the same with all of us.

Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?

Have you acknowledged yourself to be a sinner?

That's such a hard thing for us in the flesh to understand.

And one of the most offensive things about Christianity to the world in general is this whole idea of sin,

sin.

I'm not gonna bring up any names.

I don't wanna turn this to a polemic.

You who've been with us for a while, you know the names that I would bring up now.

People who just claim to be pastors, claim to be preachers of the gospel and yet deny the

existence of sin.

There are those in the world who say teaching children about sin is actually child abuse or should be

and yet when God sends his word to you

and convinces you that you are indeed a sinner and shows you that before him

you are depraved in a word, worthless

before him, nothing good in you.

Do we look upon that and say what a terrible thing.

Now I don't feel good about myself.

Now I don't have self esteem.

No, it's the mercy of God.

It's the mercy of God that gives us the truth.

It's the mercy of God that brings judgment that forces us to face ourselves.

It's the mercy of God that sent Elijah to Ahab.

The whole idea of the idolatry and this bell worship and the temple he set up, it's only mentioned there at the end

of chapter 16 but it's importantly mentioned there.

It's clearly the reason for the prophecy against Israel that Elijah brought.

Is this just God sending down smiting upon the people?

No, they will be smited but it's God's mercy, it's his love, it's his

goodness, it's his judgment, it's his severity against sin, it is all those things.

Yes, it's all of that but don't forget it's mercy and it's goodness and it's kindness.

It's not God's will that any should but repent and to

repent, we need to hear the word of God.

We need someone to come to us and say, thus saith the Lord.

He's still sending his word.

If it is a word you don't know, it is this, it is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Said this is a trustworthy saying that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief.

To save sinners, to save sinners.

I tell you with the same authority that Elijah stood before Ahab that if you will acknowledge yourself a sinner,

if you will repent before God and flee to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in his cross and how he

suffered for the sins that you committed and the punishment that you deserve and that by trusting him

to have accomplished all before God, you will be saved.

I can tell you that if you will repent, if you'll put your hope,

your trust, your heart, your faith in Jesus Christ, you will be

saved.

I can stand before you with the same confidence that Elijah stood before Ahab.

Elijah heard the word of God himself.

I have the same word from the same God in the scripture to be able to make that statement to you.

He's still sending his word.

His word has not been withdrawn from you.

If you don't know Jesus Christ, his word is here before you this moment.

Do you know Jesus Christ?

Are you like the people of God in Israel in 1 Kings 17 who knew God,

maybe know God, know of God, but have moved away from him?

Has he been by you forgotten as with them?

Ignored as with them?

I can tell you with the same authority Elijah spoke to Ahab, draw near to God

and he will draw near to you.

Return to God we could say with no damage to the text, return to God and he will return to you.

There's no shadow in him.

There's no darkness in him.

There's no variation.

There's no turning.

Hopefully you don't get tired of hearing this.

I learned it from Steve when he preached this from James.

What does all that mean?

It means when you sin, when you turn from God, when you forget God, when you act as though you're

not God's, his disposition towards you does not change.

But you still must repent.

You still must come back to him, 1 John 1 9 tells us.

With the same mercy that God sent Elijah to Ahab, perhaps this morning

God sent this word to you that if you've wandered away from God, return to God, he will return to you.

Repent to God and he is righteous and just to forgive

all your sin.

Behold the mercy of God.

Love enough to chastise.

Love enough not just to chastise but to warn.

Love enough to chastise and to warn and to make sure that we know that Israel knew then that

what came could only be from his hand, not just

random occurrence but from God himself.

Well let me close with that and say amen.

I appreciate your patience.

You can see how I had a little bit of trouble with this, keeping my eye on my notes here.

But Lord willing, I've said something worth having heard on your part.

About Elijah and about the drought that he brought and the goodness of God that warned and took credit

for it in order to what?

Bring them back.

Amen?

Heavenly Father, I give you thanks for the day that you've given us again.

For being able to come together, gathered around your word.

I pray Lord that if I've been disorganized, confusing in

any way, that you Lord would just grant to take that away

and to make your word clear.

But as I've spoken truly of your word, of this history of the prophet Elijah, the

king Ahab, spoken clearly of the Lord Jesus Christ and repentance before

him.

I pray Lord that those words would take effect.

You would grant us all true repentance to return to God, to follow him

rightly.

I ask it all in Jesus' name, amen.