Good morning and welcome to those joining us on KJJR radio. We are glad you are with our family this morning. I want to thank Pastor Ralph Boyer and Pastor Don Dukes for the great job they did preaching the Word while Grace and I were on vacation. Thanks to our website, I was able to get in on their messages. They opened the bread of life and fed us well! What a meal!
Today we begin a new sermon series on two of my favorite prophets of the OT - Elijah and Daniel. This morning we begin with the story of Elijah. Elijah was a salty prophet for a tasteless time. Open your Bibles to 1 Kings 16, beginning at verse 29.
Let me set the context for you. The year is 874 BC. Long time ago, but we’ll discover, human nature hasn’t changed all that much. Israel is rich and powerful, but her spiritual and moral depravity has become so deep that even the nations around her are repulsed by her behavior.
The story begins like this – “In the 38th year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab, son of Omri became king of Israel and he reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty two years.”
150 years earlier, following the death of King Solomon, the nation of Israel was split by a civil war into a northern kingdom called Israel and a southern kingdom called Judah. Part of the reason for the split was Solomon, David’s son. Remember him? When he was crowned king over Israel, the Lord promised to give him anything he desired.
Solomon pleased the Lord by asking for wisdom and God granted it. But wisdom alone cannot overcome our sinful nature. Solomon became a wise fool. Flip back to 1 Kings 11. “King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter – Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from the nations about which the LORD told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew older, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God.”
Kids need fathers, and Solomon was not only absent, he was a negative role model. As a result of his apostasy, Israel split in two and a150 years later a man named Ahab was crowned king of Israel, northern kingdom. Back to 1 Kings 16:30 “Ahab, son of Omri, did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him… he married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians and began to serve Baal and worship him.”
Let me tell you about Baal. Baal was the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon. He was seen as the god of fire, lightening, storm. He was credited with bringing the rain that produced the fertility of the soil. But Baal, like all demonic gods, was a self-centered beast and needed to be aroused to act. The worship of Baal centered around ritual cult prostitution and child sacrifice.
The driving force behind the worship of Baal should sound familiar - money, sex, and power. When the Hebrews, who were shepherds, came into Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, they knew nothing about farming. What they did know is that the LORD had provided all they needed over their last 40 years in the desert. He proved himself again and again as their provider, their protector, their leader, the one who never abandoned them no matter how badly they messed up, the one who taught them how to live and not fall back into slavery.
But once again, instead of asking the Lord how to do this new farming thing, they went to their Canaanite neighbors, the ones they were suppose to drive out because of their incredible depravity. And the Baal worshipping Canaanites said, “This is how you bring the rain and assure a good crop. You visit the temple prostitutes, pay your money, which gets Baal aroused and he sends the rain.”
As time went on it wasn’t only young girls who were enslaved in this sex trade, it was young men, and children. And then what do you do with the unwanted babies? You sacrifice them on the altar of Baal. Thousands of Hebrew babies were killed and their blood flowed down the ravines and stained the soil of Israel during this time – all in the name of arousing an idol, a demon, by the name of Baal.
As I prepared this sermon, I thought of the blood shed by the 50 M babies aborted in America since 1973 and the ground stained by their blood. If this isn’t a pagan sacrifice, I don’t know what is. What god are we worshipping? Who is benefiting from this sacrifice? How did it get so crazy?
The similarity between this ancient time and ours doesn’t end here. King Ahab and his cronies saw themselves as sophisticated, powerful, elite. They considered themselves modernists, syncretists, realists. They were so deceived by their own depravity that the hideous became normal, even desirable. Such is the nature of sin and unless the LORD intervenes we are lost.
With that in mind, let’s jump down to Chap 17:1. One day a rawboned desert prophet storms up the palace steps, past the astonished guards and into the throne room. With fire in his eyes and thunder in his voice, he confronts King Ahab. “As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.” And he’s gone!
The name, “Elijah” means “The LORD is God”. Not Baal, not power, not money, not sex. The LORD is God! Is he? The truth is there is no other God, there are only idols, imposters, and demons.
Elijah’s challenge is a slap in the face of Baal and his female counterpart Asherah. They were supposedly the gods of thunderstorms, rain, and the productivity of the earth. Yet Satan never creates, he only imitates. He imitates and desecrates. He takes what God creates beautiful and good, and makes it dirty and depraved. He takes what is holy and makes it profane. He turns freedom into bondage, life into death, joy into mourning. Maybe you know about that?
Baal claimed to be god of the thunderstorm, Psalm 29 tells us who really rides on the crest of the storm. Honor the wonderful name of the LORD, and worship the LORD most holy and glorious. The voice of the LORD echoes over the oceans. The glorious LORD God thunders above the roar of the raging sea and his voice is mighty and marvelous. The voice of the LORD destroys the cedar trees; the LORD shatters cedars on Mount Lebanon. God makes Mount Lebanon skip like a calf and Mount Hermon jump like a wild ox. The voice of the LORD makes lightning flash and the desert tremble. And because of the LORD, the desert near Kadesh shivers and shakes…The LORD rules on his throne, king of the flood forever. Psalm 29
There are at least 3 important lessons here. Here’s the first one –
Persistent sin has real consequences. God warned Israel before they entered the Promised Land. “Be careful or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD’S anger with burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish for the good land the LORD is giving you.” Deut. 11:16-17
Elijah watched the spiritual collapse of his nation. He watched them persistently reject the LORD’S way in favor of the idolatry around them. Now they were about to experience the consequences of their rebellion.
Second lesson – Spiritual compromise is a progressive disease! I’ve never met a person who set out to destroy their life and future. Yet like the frog in the kettle when you warm the water gradually enough, we acclimate to the sin around us until we no longer can identify holiness from depravity. One day, it’s too late, we can’t escape and we end up cooked.
God has called us to be holy. The word doesn’t mean better than, it means different, set apart for a special purpose. Read with me what Jesus said in Mt 5:13-16, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Mt 5:13-16
Which brings us to the third lesson. The LORD alone is God! He alone is our provider, protector, shelter, rescuer, deliverer, savior and redeemer.
“The word of the LORD came to Elijah. “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there. So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan and stayed there. The heavens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.” Kings 17:2
It isn’t Baal who provides, protects, and shelters Elijah in the judgment of drought. It is Jesus. He is the bread of life, the spring of living water, the rock in whose cleft we and Elijah find shelter. And it is by the shedding of his blood that our sins are forgiven, and we are delivered from the consequences of our sin. How different from Baal who is powerless to save.
Who will be your God? Next Sunday we will hear about the battle between the LORD Yahweh and the imposter Baal. We’ll hear Elijah challenge the people, “How long will you go limping between two opinions. If Baal is God follow him, but if the LORD is God follow him.” AMEN
Prayer: Forgive us for the ways we have acclimated and compromised ourselves to the paganism in our culture. You sent Jesus to die on the cross to set us free not for sin, but from sin. Unless we as your people are willing to follow you, be transformed by you into the holiness we will be swept away by the depravity around us. Yet you have chosen us, saved us, not just for ourselves, but for the sake of bearing witness to a dying world around us. Give us courage to live for you, be changed by you, be your salt and light in our families and in the world. In Jesus name. AMEN
