I Kings 12:1-19:21

[00:00:00] Just a few things I would like to say in a general way about this portion of the word. We're dealing now with the divided kingdom, which begins in the word with one king, the first book of kings, chapter 12, and runs right the way through to the end of chapter 17 of the second book. As I've already said, it's a period of some 400 years covered. [00:00:32] The two kingdoms are quite distinct. [00:00:37] I particularly wanted you to note that from this map, which I think is quite a good one, you can clearly see the pink is Judah and the green is Israel. The two kingdoms were quite dist. [00:00:53] It was not only that they had their own king, but they had their own capital. In the south, it was Jerusalem. It always remained Jerusalem. To all the different, very varied history of the kingdom of Judah. It was always Jerusalem, always the same house, royal house, always the same priesthood, and always the same house of God. That's very important for us to understand. But in the north, in the kingdom of Israel, in the green kingdom there, it was very different. First the capital was at Shechem, then it moved to Penuel, then it moved from there to Tirzah, and from Tirzah it moved to Samaria. [00:01:47] They had a quite different religion really in many ways. Whilst it was. It used the name of Jehovah and the worship on service of Jehovah, it was in actual fact a BAAL Jehovah religion. It was a very debased form of the true faith, mixed and compromised in a variety of ways, as we shall find out then. Not only that, but we must also remember that the kingdom of Israel comprised 10 of the 12 tribes. In actual fact, it's more probable that it comprised nine. [00:02:30] Whereas the kingdom of Judah comprised usually of scripture, it only tells us a one or two Judah and Benjamin. But in actual fact we know from history that it was Levi as well. So we find that the kingdom of Judah comprised Judah, Benjamin, Levi and also Simeon. Do you remember that Simeon allotted territory by Joshua was south of Judah. And it is believed that when the kingdom of Judah became a separate king, the tribe of Simeon had already been so merged into it and so intermarried into it that it was well nigh part of it. So really it's very difficult to talk about 10 tribes and two tribes. [00:03:18] Of course, there would have always been members of Judah and Benjamin living in Israel and therefore part of Israel. There were always those who belonged really to other parts of the Promised Land living in the south. That's important to remember. Anyway, generally speaking, the south comprised Judah, Benjamin and Levi. And probably Simeon, whereas the north comprised most of the other nine or possibly 10 tribes. That's important for us to understand. [00:03:52] Then again, we ought also to realize in a more general way that in the Books of Kings, Israel is dealt with far more fully than Judah. Now, why, since Judah is the choice of God, and Judah, in the end, is the kingdom that remains faithful to the Lord, even though it goes into captivity, it is the one that's going to be brought back to reprocess the land. [00:04:26] Why is it that the Holy Spirit dwells more upon Israel, the Kingdom of Israel, than the kingdom of Judah, for instance? Why is it that the kings of Israel are always given precedence over the kings of Judah, so that in the whole record of the two Books of Kings, we find that the Israelite kings are placed first, always first, the Israelite kings, when it comes, for instance, to dealing with the first of this line, Jeroboam of Israel and Rehoboam of Judah, Rehoboam is the true heir to the throne. Yet we find that Scripture takes up Jeroboam and deals very much with Jeroboam and deals very little with Rehoboam. Now, why is that? And why is it that in the Books of Chronicles, Israel is hardly mentioned or regarded, whilst Judah is taken up and dealt with quite fully from beginning to end? [00:05:28] The answer, I think, is that here we are dealing really with apostasy. And the roots of apostasy are backsliding, of decline, of disintegration. We're dealing with the roots that bring about such compromise and in the end, collapse. Whereas with the Book of Chronicles, we find that much of that side is passed over. It's not even mentioned. David sin, for instance, is not mentioned in the Book of Chronicles. Many other things like that are not mentioned. Chronicles is dealing with, as you know, with a very different aspect altogether. [00:06:11] In Judah, as I've already said, we have only one royal house from beginning to end, 19 kings and one queen. On here there are only 12 kings and one queen. The rest are to come next week. We grow. Here we have 19 kings only, but we have nine dynasties. [00:06:32] It becomes almost monotonous how some army officer or other conspires with a few others of his captains and officers, very much like modern days, and then wipes out the king and himself becomes king. It becomes quite monotonous how all the way through, it's the army. It's always the army that is the hotbed of intrigue and conspiracy. Removing the king, taking the throne, setting up a new royal house. Only a little later to be again destroyed. So we need to recognize that. And then also it is interesting that all the kings of the north are bad, whereas the kings of Judah are mixed. Some are good, some are middling and some are bad. [00:07:20] And then perhaps most important of all, we find that the prophetic, prophetic ministry comes into its. [00:07:31] That is the most important thing about this period. We find now that gradually the prophetic office takes a place that it has never had before in the whole of the Bible up to this point. Indeed at the end we find that prophetic ministry has superseded everything else. The priesthood, even the high priest, the king, the governor, all begin to move into the background. And we find that as we come toward the end of Old Testament history, we find that the prophet is supreme. This is very, very interesting that it should be prophetic ministry which now comes to a fuller and fuller place all the way through, as we're going to see. [00:08:21] Well now then, shall we turn together to the 12th chapter of the first book of Kings? [00:08:29] The division of the nation into two camps. [00:08:35] I don't think we need to dwell upon it for very long, except to point out that Rehoboam was exceedingly foolish. You know, he first went to the aged counselors of his father and asked them what he should do over this request from the tribes of the north to have their burden and taxes lightened. You must remember that all Solomon's great building works had meant very big taxes, rates and taxes of a very big and onerous kind as far as the people were concerned. [00:09:11] I promised you that when we take chronicles, I will put figures on the board for how much actually the temple alone cost. It is fabulous even by modern day sums. Much of that money was raised from the people. And in other ways we had to recognize that and to see that it had become so heavy for the people that they made a quite legitimate request that Rehoboam lighten their load. [00:09:41] He refers to the aged counsellors of his father who tell him that he should be wise and if he is gentle with the folk of the north, he will find that they will respond, which was all in keeping with the wisdom of Solomon and his days. But he goes to the young men, his contemporaries who had grown up with him and they were very hot headed and they said, you deal with this with a very firm hand, otherwise they'll just put push you all over the place. They'll do exactly what they want to do with you at the very beginning of your reign. You've got to take hold of them. Very firmly. So Rehoboam says, if my father has just urged you, I will whip you. [00:10:26] I'm going to deal with you very strongly. And he sent the man who was in charge of all the task work, who was a very hated man, Adoram, to over into Israel to organize the hard labor. The result was that Israel stoned him to death. I don't think anyone wept over it, but they stoned him to death. And that was the end of the united kingdom. [00:10:55] Jeroboam was declared king in the north. Rehoboam fled to Jerusalem and really could do very little about it. One good point about Rehoboam. When he collected together the army, he could have crushed Jeroboam within a few days. [00:11:14] But the word of the Lord came through a prophet saying, do not do it. This is the way of the Lord. And we must say this in favor of Rehoboam, that he obeyed the word of the Lord when it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have crushed the northern kingdom at its birth. He recognized that this was the will of God, that he had come by the word of the Lord. [00:11:41] Now we want to dwell for a few moments. Even though we cannot dwell on all these kings, we must dwell for a few moments on Jeroboam. Because right the way through the record of kings, you get Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, mentioned often. The little word goes like this. He walked in the ways of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. [00:12:07] Now, what exactly did Jeroboam do that he is always referred to as the arch fiend in the whole situation? What exactly did he do? Well, if you look together at chapter 12 from 25 to chapter 14, verse 20, you will find much of what he did. First of all, he made his capital in Shechem. Then he moved it to Penuel. Then he moved his capital to Tirzah. He settled down in Tirzah. [00:12:42] Then I want you to notice, and this is the sin with which he made Israel to sin. I want you to notice Jeroboam's attitude toward the Lord. [00:12:53] The first thing we find in these chapters is that he has two golden calves or bulls made. One is placed in Dan, right up in the north, the northern extremity of the kingdom, and the other is placed in Bethel, the southern extremity of the kingdom. Now that was a definite act of Jeroboam. [00:13:18] He put a golden bull at the very northern end of his kingdom and a golden bull at the very southern end. Of his kingdom. And it says that he built a house around them. [00:13:31] Don't get the idea that he wanted people to worship his bulls. Oh, no. He wanted the bull to be the symbol of the Lord's presence. In other words, he took a very grave. [00:13:45] He broke away from what had been the symbol of the Lord's presence in the south. The symbol of the Lord's presence in the south was the cherubim. [00:13:56] He took the golden bull or calf as the symbol of the Lord's presence. [00:14:04] People very quickly began to worship the golden bull or calves. And people flocked. It says, if you read those chapters, it says they flocked even to Dan and to Bethel. People made pilgrimages all the way up to the very far north of the country to worship the Lord as it were, vested in this golden bull, and then come all the way back to Bethel and often worship there. That was one thing that he did. We've also got to recognize that the golden bull played a tremendous part in Canaanite religion. Now, I'm not going to go through all that we said about the high places, but you know how sensual and depraved it all was. This was the first step to marry the true faith in the Lord for something that was utterly evil. It was the work of evil spirits and demons. [00:15:06] So the first step was taken, a very simple step. Oh, Jeroboam didn't mean them to worship the golden bull. All he wanted them to do was to recognize that this was the symbol of the invisible Jehovah. [00:15:19] That was the first thing that happened. The second thing that he did, it says, is that he built houses of high places. Danish, he did not just leave the high places where the people went up to worship as know, but he actually built houses, shrines on those high places and made it part of the official religion of the kingdom of Israel. In other words, he lent to it royal and government recognition. That is the next very important thing. More serious than even that, he recruited a completely new priesthood from those who were not Levites. You know, the law had said that the only priests that could function were of the tribe of Levi. [00:16:06] He recruited anyone. The authorized version says base fellows, but that's not quite correct. He just recruited anyone, any of the common people, any one from any of the different tribes who wanted to be a priest. He recruited into his priesthood. [00:16:26] He also made a new festival, quite simple. Why he did that, it was because he was very afraid that all the people would go up to Jerusalem, from the north to the house of God for the great feasts of the year, particularly the New Year festival, which was the feast of Tabernacles. And therefore he said, if they do that, their allegiance will be won back to Judah. [00:16:54] So he instituted a new festival in the new year. But many of us at a superficial reading would not see the Satanic inference. [00:17:09] It is simply this. The New Year festival was the festival of Canaanite religion. [00:17:17] It was the time of the year when all these rights were acted out more definitely than at any other time in the year. [00:17:30] So he took a definite step by creating a new festival in the kingdom of Israel. He once more wedded even more deeply the religion of Canaan to true faith in the Lord. Now that is the beginning and forever after that is referred to as the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, with which he caused Israel to sin. It was quite simple in its beginnings. He took a little bit of the world and a little bit of the Lord and he stirred them both together and got a new religion. [00:18:16] That's the kind of thing I'm very sad to say is only too prevalent today in what we call Christendom. A little bit of the world, or a good deal of the world and a little bit of the Lord mixed very well and truly together. So that one is Christianized and the other is thetalized. And the two things are then presented to us as Christianity. Quite simple. [00:18:44] Oh, it's an age long process of the enemy to do just that kind of thing. So don't think we're living in new days. Nothing is new, said the preacher in ecclesiastical in Ecclesiastes. And it is perfectly true. There is nothing new under the sun and nothing new. What we have today is something that has been the age long device, the enemy. So we will pass over Jeroboam. [00:19:13] It's interesting that the Lord warns Jeroboam, very interestingly. And I think we will dwell for just one moment upon this. A prophet is sent. [00:19:26] A prophet is sent to Jeroboam. [00:19:29] And he comes to the altar and he cries out, o altar, altar. [00:19:39] And delivers a very strong word to Jeroboam concerning the fall and collapse of his house, the judgment of God, in other words. But the point I want you to note is this, and this is full of instruction for us. [00:19:57] The Lord's people are found in the south and in the north. [00:20:07] Let's get that perfectly clear. The Lord's people are found in the south and the north. And never once, from God's standpoint does he ever let that fact lose its significance. At every point of recovery Till Israel is taken into captivity. To end, to go off the face of history. [00:20:30] At every point of the movement of God, it is always to remind everyone that it is one nation. They are all the people of God. God never takes on the division. He always stands for the whole 12 tribes of his people. [00:20:48] But at the same time, it is perfectly clear from the story of the prophet that a large number of the Lord's people are on the wrong ground and a small number of the Lord's people are on the right ground. When the prophet goes onto the wrong ground, he is told to go to his people, to the people of God. But he is told not to eat anything, not to sleep anywhere, not to turn to the right or to the left. He is to go straight to the people of God in the Lord. He is to deliver a message from the Lord, and then he is to get right back out of it. Now you know what happens. He delivers his message. It has a tremendous effect. He gets on his ass and rides away as quickly as he can. And an old prophet follows him, a prophet who is a godly man, but mixed up with the people of God on the wrong ground. [00:21:45] And he stops him and he says, will you not turn aside into my home and stay with me? And the old prophet from Judah says, no, I cannot do that. The Lord has. [00:22:00] The prophet from the north lies and said, ah, the Lord has said to me that you should turn into me this night and stay with me and sup with me. And the prophet from Judah listens to what he thinks is the word of the Lord by this prophet of Israel. And he turns in. [00:22:23] And then a very strange thing happens. While they're sitting and eating, the word of the Lord comes to the prophet of Israel and says, because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord in eating and supping and sleeping in Israel, you will die. [00:22:41] And the prophet of Judah, as you, if you read, saddles his ass, gets on it, goes a certain way, a lion comes out, mauls him, and he's killed. And there the story is that the other old prophet goes, picks up his body, puts it in his sepulchre and asks for his bones to be put beside him. A very pleasant way of ending his life. And I should imagine perhaps he felt at least he was ridding his conscience of some evil, since he was partly responsible for it. Then why should the Lord deal with a faithful man like that? [00:23:15] Why are they not all the people of God? Were they not two prophets of the Lord? Why does the Lord deal so strongly doesn't the Lord want fellowship? [00:23:29] Here we learn one of the deepest lessons we can learn. In days of decline and disintegration, when many of the Lord's people are on the wrong ground, we must always stand for the unity of all the people of God. But we must never become involved with any of the people of God who are living on the wrong ground. [00:23:53] This is the thing that many people, through sheer sentimentality, cannot quite see. They interpret that the love of God means that you must be loose withal and condone everything and get involved in all kinds of contradictions. No, there's nothing of the kind. [00:24:11] If you belong to the people of God who are on the right ground. You must always stand for the essential unity of all the people of God. Not the Judah, not just Judah, but all the people of God. Every single one. [00:24:25] But you must never get involved. Never sleep on the wrong ground, never eat on the wrong ground, never get your life mixed up with things and movements and institutions and organizations that are on the long ground. You lose your spiritual life. You contravene deep spiritual principle in days of decline. [00:24:49] Now we are dealing with days of decline. Now we are dealing now with days in many ways which we're going to find continually where are very reminiscent of our own day. Now, why have I dwelt on that point for a while, for rather a long time? Simply for this reason, the Holy Spirit takes the reign of Jeroboam as foundational to the whole period of the divided kingdom. And we are now going to find that continually it is the sin, as I have mentioned, of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he caused Israel to sin, that is harped back to all the time and all the way through. This question of mixture between the two companies of the people of God is going to be underlined and emphasized all the time. We're going to find as we go through that it is the mixture that is underlined and the mixture that causes the trouble. It's the mixture that brings the death in. And yet the strange paradox is the Lord will not be with Judah if she stands on the ground of Judah, only Judah. And any ministry in Judah must be on the ground of all 12 tribes. And that is why you find that all the prophets refused to be localized. They refused to believe in Judah. [00:26:16] They saw far beyond Juba to the whole family of God, even though they knew it's more than their life's worth to get involved with the people of God on other ground. That's very important for us to understand. I Suggest that you read very slowly when you can, those chapters from 12 to 14 of First Book of Kings. [00:26:42] Well, you know what happened. A Jeroboam son falls ill. And he tells his wife to feign herself as another woman to go into Judah and to go to the prophet Ahijah and to find out what the prophet Ahijah. I can't stop here. I'd love to tell you a story of how Spurgeon once preached on this very text. But the great thing was that all those people of the north were on the wrong ground. Even Jeroboam knew that the word of the Lord could only be found authoritatively at Jerusalem. [00:27:24] And he had to send his own wife, dressed up and disguised as another woman, to find out what was going to happen to his own son. He didn't find some very happy news because the Lord told Ahijah that this woman, famous fameth herself to be another, is Jeroboam's wife. So before she'd got him through the door, he said, and who art thou that painest thyself to be another? And got down to, as we put it, vast tax rather swiftly. That was the end of Jeroboam. Judgment was announced. God said, because of your sin, the Lord is going to sweep your house right out of Israel so that there will not be as much as one male child left to your house. [00:28:10] Then we find scripture from chapter 14, chapter 15, 14, 21, 1524. We find Rehoboam of the south is now taken up. [00:28:24] And we find that Rehoboam is himself a bad king. [00:28:31] There's nothing good about Rehoboam. We find that his mother is an ammonitess. [00:28:37] Now we begin to see that the root of the trouble goes back to Solomon and all his rites. And we find that those wives have had a tremendous influence upon their children. [00:28:48] And Rehoboam, we find, is only too prepared to allow the high places to continue in Judah and indeed to go much further than that to actually himself burn incense there. [00:29:06] Then we read of a very, very sad point. In the time of Rahab. It says Egypt attacked Judah and spoiled the Lord's house. [00:29:17] Egypt took the gold and the silver. All those wonderful shields that Solomon had made, solid gold that were so thrilling to him, were taken by Egypt. The Lord's house was robbed of its gold and silver vessels. This is the first point. Now we've come to the house of God being robbed. Is that not indicative of something? At the very beginning we find that something is lost in the house of God that's where it all begins. That's the focal point of the attack. Something is lost in the house of God in Judah. Then Rehoboam is followed by Abijam, who is also bad, it says his heart is not perfect. Abijam is followed by Esau. Now, Esau is a good king and he begin by the grace of God. A very real work of reformation. His heart was white, it says, and he walked in the ways of David, his father. He put away the idol, he stamped out the religious prostitution as far as possible. [00:30:27] He slew the priests of baal. [00:30:31] He deposed the Dowager Queen mother, who was a real nuisance in the land. We shall find by the way again and again that it's the Queen mother and the Dowager queen mothers that were tremendous influence in these days, tremendous influence over their king. He deposed her. He had the strength to put her right out of action. And then we find that his alliance, whilst he himself walks before the Lord and really does. And a real reformation is effected in Judah, which, by the way, if the Lord in grace had not come into Asa, Judah would have gone the same way as Israel. Yet because of Esau, the thing that we know the Holy Spirit is putting his finger on all the time, the high places are stamped out, well, not quite stamped out, but the religious prostitution side of it is stamped out and the priests of BAAL are wiped out. However, there are one or two things that we find that are not so happy. The first thing is that he does leave the high places. He stamps out the depraved forms of worship in them, but he leaves the high places and evidently leaves the grove. [00:31:55] He also, toward the end of his life, makes an alliance with Syria. [00:32:01] And this, I'm afraid, was a very big weakness. For any alliance made between nations in those days was looked upon as an alliance between the gods of the two nations. So in other words, it involved Judah in a recognition of the gods of Syria, and indeed in many cases meant that Judah's Jehovah was looked upon as a battle God or a smaller God to the God of other nations. This was a real weakness. And the end of Asa is not so happy. For he takes the gold and the silver out of the house of the Lord to send as gifts to Syria. The end is that it says rather cryptically that Asa had diseased feet and could not walk. [00:32:58] So that's the end of a reformation. A real move of God. A real move of God, albeit in weakness, which by the grace of God, stemmed back the flood. [00:33:12] Now, the scripture from 15:25 to 16, verse 28 leaves Esau and comes over here to Nadab. [00:33:23] And very swiftly we find Nadab is dealt with. In this chapter or two, we find we are taken right through from Nadab to Omri. First of all, Nadab, king, and he's evil, says without any shadow of doubt, simply the verdict is he is evil. And we find that Baasha, one of his army officers, conspires against him and assassinates him. And the whole of Jeroboam's house is utterly destroyed. And the scripture just simply says, according to the word of the Lord. [00:34:03] So Jeroboam is ended. And then we find that Baasha comes to the throne. He is an evil man. The scripture says quite simply that there's nothing good about him. And again the word of the Lord comes to him that his house will also be destroyed. Like Jeroboam, he dies. Elah comes to the throne. Elah is also an evil man. In other words, what does the Holy Spirit mean by evil? He means simply that these people are advancing and establishing what Jeroboam began. [00:34:42] In other words, the whole thing is becoming more institutional, more organized, and more set than ever. With each successive king, Elar is deposed by Zimri, also an army man who reigns, I think I'm right in saying, for just a few days if that. That's all he wanes. When he is slain by Omri, there's civil war over Zimri. Zimri is a nobody. And he slays Elah and then himself finds that the kingdom of Israel is not prepared to holy follow Zimri. So in the intervening period, with a civil war waging, the people try to make Omri another army officer king. And we find that Cimri commits suicide in the house. He gets inside, sets the whole thing on fire and ends himself in that way, civil war continues. The people are not quite decided that Omri should be king and nominate a man called Tibney. [00:35:50] But then Tibney is killed by Omri and Omri comes to the throne. Now this is very important, for the house of Omri is probably the greatest of all the kings of Israel. Archaeology has told us that Omri was the man now probably better known than any other. This is what is called the House of Omri or the House of Ahab. [00:36:19] Omri is an evil man, there's no doubt about that. It is very interesting that whilst he is mentioned in so many of the other records of nations round about, Scripture gives him four or five verses. That's all it has to say about it just passes over him in virtual silence. He is just an evil man. He is just going on in the way that all the others are going. The thing is becoming more and more set in its way politically. Omri is the greatest from St Solomon. Omri is the man. Because of the suicide of Zimri in the royal palace at Tirzah, he decides that there's a bad omen in that place. And he moved his whole capital from Tirzah to Samaria. Omri is famous because he was the one who built Samaria. Samaria was just a hill. There was nothing there. And he actually fortified the hill and built Samaria. He made Samaria what it was, the capital of the kingdom of Israel. Indeed, he gave that name. Later on, that name was to be given to the whole northern kingdom, right down to the days of the Lord. They were to be called Samaritans from then on. [00:37:43] Then we come to Ahab and we have really now reached the crisis point in the history of Israel. [00:37:53] That is why more chapters are given to Ahab than any other king in the history of Israel. Why? Because Ahab marks the great point of crisis in the history of the kings of Israel. [00:38:13] He was much more evil. It says clearly that he was more evil than any of his fathers. Ahab, he was much more definite. He was married to a woman called Jezebel, who ever after ensuring scripture is the very symbol of evil and iniquity. [00:38:34] Jezebel was the daughter of a Phoenician king. It was a political alliance. [00:38:40] She herself worshipped the most debased God of all. And when she was brought into the royal court of Israel, she was allowed to bring her God and her religion with her. Now, Jezebel is one of the greatest influences in history around this point. For it was Jezebel who by working around Ahab and through Ahab, brought almost to an end true faith in the kingdom of Israel. Let's not over underestimate the strength of Jezebel in the story. In many ways, Elijah is dealing with Jezebel, and well he knows it. It is interesting that he's not afraid of Ahab. He's not afraid to go and confront Ahab and stand in front of Ahab. But he is afraid to confront Jezebel. He flees for his life. When Jezebel decides that she's going to do something about Elijah. It is also interesting that it's Jezebel who's keeping all the prophets of BAAL alive. She's feeding them. [00:39:52] It's not just that she's interested. She is, in a sense, the great influence behind the religion of baal. It says that Ahab's policy was a tremendous policy of, as it were, Baalizing the whole of the kingdom of Israel. He built an altar to baal, he built a house for baal, he built Asherah, which, you know, all that means. He built groves or Asherim everywhere. [00:40:28] He instituted a priesthood, a definite priesthood of baal. [00:40:34] And Jezebel followed her policy not only by paving the way for all this, she went that one step further and slaughtered all the prophets of the Lord that she could find in Israel. [00:40:51] So with Ahab, you have reached the darkest point in the history of Israel. [00:41:00] Everything is at an end. A man like Elijah could say, I, even I only am left. [00:41:08] He knew, of course, that Obadiah had saved a certain number, had hidden a hundred fifty by fifty in two caves and was feeding them. But he could say before the Lord in all truth, that as far as he was concerned, he was the only outspoken, courageous prophet of the Lord in the whole kingdom of Israel. Now here we have the key. [00:41:33] It is just at the darkest point that God's greatest prophet is raised up. [00:41:40] We know nothing about Elijah. We don't know who his father is. We don't know who his mother is. We don't know anything about his background at all. Elijah the Tishbite just suddenly walks onto the scene. And here we have one of the most interesting and most instructive principles of all. If we don't get any farther than this evening, let's just get this, that in days of decline and disintegration, one man with God is a majority. [00:42:10] Even the true prophets of the Lord were so afraid of losing their lives that they evidently lived year by year in a cave. [00:42:19] They did not dare to put their head outside that cave. They had to stay in there. And Obadiah, who was steward of the royal court, who was a true believer, a God fearing man, kept them alive. [00:42:35] But what about the honor of the Lord? What about the glory of the Lord? What about the name of the Lord? Evidently the prophets of Jehovah, when it came to the question of whether they were going to survive or whether it was the glory of the Lord they chose to survive. [00:42:51] Not so, Elijah. [00:42:53] Elijah is the one man who in days of decline is prepared to be dogmatic and prepared to be categoric. [00:43:03] The others were afraid. [00:43:06] Now days of decline demand categorical dogmatism. [00:43:15] Go away and think about it. Days of decline demand categorical dogmatism. That is why you get A man like Luther, taken up by the law. Many people are quite convinced that Luther lacked a lot in humility and grace. Why did the law take up Luther? They say he shouldn't have taken up Luther. He should have taken up a quiet, gentle, meek man. No days of decline demand Elijah. [00:43:44] The only way that the Lord gets to. [00:43:47] What does Elijah's name mean? It means God. [00:43:51] The God Jehovah. In other words, his name is the key to his mission. What is God doing with Elijah? He is sending him as one man into the darkest situation in the history of the people of God in Israel. And he is sending him in to restate the simple fact that Jehovah is the God. There is no other God. Jehovah is the God. Now, he had a very big array of enemies. [00:44:26] He had a man who was the son of the greatest political king of Israel. [00:44:34] He had a woman who for cunning and intelligence and deceit and forcefulness could not be matched. [00:44:44] And the whole country, now, shall we put it like this? Canaanite. [00:44:50] So that the children that were growing up knew not what it was to believe in the Lord. Their believing in the Lord was an altogether different thing. [00:44:59] It was a terrible mixture. [00:45:03] What do we find? [00:45:04] Elijah's ministries? We find the first thing he does as he comes onto the scene is to announce a three year drought. [00:45:15] And this is very amusing if you look into the context. For you see, BAAL is a nature God and the thing that announces reformation or his great move to restate his claims on Israel is to show that Jehovah is far and far and above any nature God. Let's see what BAAL can do about a three year drought. [00:45:40] Let's watch all the prayers, let's watch all the dances, let's watch all the rites, all these terribly depraved rites to keep the cycle of nature moving. Let's see whether they can do it. No doubt it brought out the worst in the nation. No doubt it increased the rites. No doubt it increased the worshippers at the shrine. They must have flocked to the shrines, the farmers and everyone else. Their crops were failing, their income was failing. They must keep the cycle of life moving. So they flocked up to the shrines of baal, they flocked to the grove, to the Ashurum. And there they tried to keep the cycle of life moving, only to find that the Lord had commanded and announced a drought for three years. [00:46:27] Now God challenges when the drought is on its way, it's at the end, Almost. Almost. At the end of the three year drought, the Lord challenges And he tells Elijah. [00:46:40] What has Elijah done for two years? [00:46:47] Ahab hates Elijah, and he threatens to kill him if he can lay hold of him. Where does Elijah hide? [00:47:00] The Lord tells him to go to a brook called Cherith. [00:47:04] And he does another remarkable thing. [00:47:08] He causes that brook in that year, those years of drought, to just keep on flowing. [00:47:16] What's BAAL doing about this? [00:47:19] And he causes the ravens that are under Baal's especial care to feed Elijah. So day by day, the ravens bring Elijah's food. Day by day, Elijah drinks of the stream until there comes a point. Oh, it didn't take the Lord by surprise when he dried up the brook and said, now, Elijah, you are to go to Zarifah. [00:47:47] And Elijah goes to Zarifah, and there he finds a Gentile nun. [00:47:53] And he asks her if she has any food. She says, yes, I've just got a little tiny bit of food. I'm making a last cake, gathering a few sticks. I'm going to burn, and I'm going to make the cake, and then I'm going to give to my son and myself, and we're going to die. And Elijah says, please give me first the cake, then feed yourself and your son. [00:48:15] And such was the faith of that woman that she baked the last morsel of food that was going to keep her and her son alive and gave it to Elijah. [00:48:28] That is a thing that in the 20th century here in Richmond, at Halford House, and very few of us would do, we would decide that the children should come first or certainly that we should come first. [00:48:45] She had to beat the last thing she had. [00:48:50] But you know what happened? [00:48:52] Elijah said, I'm living with you. As if that couldn't have taxed her faith more. [00:48:58] Many of us would be most annoyed if a prophet came and said he was going to live with us. [00:49:03] It would be too much for us. [00:49:06] But this prophet of the Lord was going to live with this woman, and she had got a being, and she'd already given him everything. Now he said, now look, every time you go to that battle, you'll find something. And so every day she goes and down to the bottom of the barrel, she goes and scoops up a little bit. That just seems only enough to keep the three of them alive. But every day she does it for quite over a year, on and on it goes, day after day. The battle never, never ended. She just scraped a little bit together, just had enough for herself, her son and Elijah. Now what is this that the Lord is doing? [00:49:46] He in the most wonderful way is teaching us that any testimony in days of decline has got to be utterly dependent upon the Lord. [00:49:57] That's why the Lord in days of decline will not allow us to do what other people do. That's why the Lord will shut us up if he's going to do anything to the most supernatural and superhuman deliverances. [00:50:14] Because he's going to make sure that no one who believes in this naturalistic, rationalistic type of God, who can only do that which is rational and natural, he's going to make it abundantly clear that this testimony is identified with the God whom it took place. [00:50:41] That's why the woman's son died. [00:50:45] That is the end. [00:50:47] You would have thought the Lord wouldn't test her that far. She'd already given everything. She was prepared to see the prophet eat and herself and her son die. Then she had him live with her. She could have well said. Well, I've given everything. Surely he's just to put it rather crudely, a scrounger. He's going to live here with us. Telling me that we're going to get a lot out of that barrel. I've got no guarantee. Now, of course, if he waves his hand over the barrels and five or six barrels appear packed with meal, which I can see straight away, six months sustenance. Well, of course I'll keep the pocket. Oh, no. She walks much by faith as Elijah. Now the Lord deals her the most bitter blow of all. She's been so good to the Lord. She's been so good to the Lord's prophet. But he takes herself. [00:51:39] Is this the way the Lord treats people who treat his people well? [00:51:47] But it is only to reveal something about deeper than anything that woman had ever, ever before experienced. [00:51:59] Elijah was able, by the grace of God to restore that woman. That speaks of resurrection. And that's another quality of the testimony. Days of decline. It must be resurrection from beginning to end. When things have died and they're beyond it, that's where God begins. So if you feel you're dead and beyond it, that's the point at which God begins with you and me. When we feel all forceful and full of energy and we can do it all, we're going to have a go. Then that means we haven't got to this point yet. We've got to be brought to Cherry and to Zarifat. And then we shall be taught there that slowly but surely, as we wait and we wait, and we wait and we wait, we die. [00:52:51] Until at last the Lord has to come in himself. [00:52:55] Well, it is Unremarkable, is it not? Ahab is scarring the land. Jezebel is scouring the land. They want the head of Elijah. But here is Elijah living right here near Mount Carmel. [00:53:14] He's living right near to Jezebel's own territory and at the base of a mountain which has always been contested between Israel and Phoenicia. Phoenicia said it was theirs, and Israel said it was theirs. My car was one of the most sacred mountains to Canaanized religion. [00:53:43] So we find the Lord speaks to Elijah, says, now, Elijah, you're to go and meet Ahab and you're to tell Ahab that I challenge all the prophets of BAAL to attest, and they are to come to Mount Carmel, which they consider to be so sacred, and they're to come to Mount Carmel, which is right on the very border of Baal's homeland. [00:54:09] So all Israel is gathered together to Carmel representatively. All the elders and the princes and the leaders of Israel are gathered together and the 450 prophets available now note the test. What does the Lord really do? Well, the thing that we're going to see is this. [00:54:31] There's going to be an altar made, and the God that answers by fire is going to be the God who is the true God. Let him be God, the God that answers by fire. Now, here is the point we want to make the seething. We shall not get much beyond these chapters. Now, what is Elijah? What is the Lord really trying to do through Elijah? [00:55:02] He is seeking to restate in emphatic and dogmatic terms his complete sovereignty so that the whole land and over his people we find that the prophets of BAAL are able to build an altar. They have a bullock. They cut him. It's evidently quite simple. There's nothing difficult about the way that they carry on. They have the numbers, they have the strength, they have the power, and they do it. And then we suddenly find that after they have called upon their. Upon BAAL from morning to noon and danced about like dervishes, cutting themselves to their blood, pours out on the altar, trying somehow to get BAAL to hear them and to answer by fire. By the way, fire was one of Baal's great qualities, his great characteristics. [00:56:04] The whole thing's been beautifully matched. It's all on Baal's ground. It's all on Baal's territory. Everything is beautifully and easily arranged for baal, and everything is made very hard for the Lord. Now what does Elijah do? He repairs the altar of the Lord. Every revival and days of decline begins with the cross. [00:56:25] You cannot trace a single movement of the Holy Spirit in all the years of Church history that has not begun with a fresh experience and appreciation of the cross. [00:56:38] The second thing that he does, he takes 12 stones. Now, why didn't Elijah take only two? Why didn't he only take 10? Why did he take 12? [00:56:49] Because he was establishing another important principle in the question of revival or reformation, the unity of all the people of God. The Lord will never commit himself to a little section, to a little group. He will only ever commit himself to a remnant who hold to the whole everyone. Elijah's one man with a vast crowd against him, and yet he stakes his life on the twelve tribes of Israel. [00:57:21] He puts twelve stones up, then he says he does it in the name of the Lord. [00:57:27] There's something very, very wonderful there. For you know what in the name of the Lord means, even in the Old Testament. It's the gospel in the Old Testament. In the name of the Lord. He was on what we call church ground there when he built that altar. In the name of the Lord. It was in the name. [00:57:45] His name's on you. His name's on me. [00:57:49] He built that altar not in one name, not in a name, on just one person, but a name that covered the people of God. Named with his name. Named with his name. [00:58:01] And then you note, it was at the time of the evening oblation. [00:58:07] Now, look, that's where Elijah was. Where was the evening oblation being offered? Right down here in Jerusalem. [00:58:19] But at the point that the evening oblation was being offered in the house of God in Jerusalem, Elijah appealed to the Lord. Isn't that wonderful? Now, those are the characteristics of revival. [00:58:41] It was the cross. [00:58:43] It was the unity of the people of God. It was the body of the Lord Jesus. [00:58:52] It was Christ at the very Lamb of God, at the foundation of everything, Christ our majesty. [00:59:00] And God answered by fire. It says when the fire came, it burnt the stones and licked up the water, and it was the end of baal. And all the nation just cried out, jehovah, he is God. No question of baal. BAAL was right out, Jehovah, he is God. [00:59:23] And almost immediately, Elijah says, after the execution of the prophets of baal, Ahab, I hear the abundance of rain now that was faithful, for the place was so arid and dry that to hear the abundance of rain was rather remarkable. And here is an interesting point. Elijah said he heard the abundance of rain, but then he had to go up on Mount Carmel with his servant and pray the rain there and he said to his son, go and see if there's a cloud. Someone might have said, elijah, you hypocrite. [00:59:59] Fancy telling Ahab that you can hear the abundance of rain. And there you are, sending that sermon up and down to the quest to look out to see whether there's a cloud. And he comes back in, tells, no cloud, no cloud. [01:00:10] And you said you heard the abundance of rain. No, says Elijah, the Lord has won this victory. Rains on its way. So he gets on his knees and he prays. And six times the servant comes back. Well, you know, most of us would have given up. Six times we would have said, oh, we're wrong. [01:00:25] Quite. Well, I've made a big mistake on this. Now what am I to do in front of Ahab? [01:00:31] But no, the seventh time and seven means, oh, tested to come to a point of perfection, doesn't it? What a test. [01:00:40] But the seventh time, the serpent says, there is a cloud the size of a man's fist. [01:00:48] But I don't know how that was. Abundance of rain. [01:00:51] The lodge is. That's enough. We stop playing. The rain's on its way. It goes down to Ahab. He says, ahab, get into that chariot of yours and get cracking. Because the rain's going to come down so much that your chariot will get bogged down. That's what he meant. You won't get there. And he says, I'll act as royal runner. Shows what a strong, athletic man he was. He acted as the royal runner. Ran before the whole chariot, the whole. Right across the whole plain of Israel, he ran. [01:01:24] Never limped, never collapsed. He ran the whole way. [01:01:30] And then it says, in a very wonderful way, that the whole sky became so black out of that one little cloud. And at last the raven broke on the land. Well, when they had got in and told Jezebel what had you know, the story, what she did, she threatened to murder Elijah. [01:01:49] By that time. The next day, she sent a message to Elijah, said, if you're not like one of those prophets, my prophets, my personal profits that I feed from my own table out of my own treasury. You murdered every one of them. Executed them. I'll execute you. [01:02:08] Now, is this not interesting? Here is Elijah that stands before a king so politically strong, so so far and hateful a man. [01:02:24] And yet when that word comes from Jezebel, Elijah was so afraid that it says he fled for his life. [01:02:33] Now, this is just like a all. [01:02:37] Why did Elijah suddenly run? After all, if the Lord could have kept him on Mount Carmel, surely could keep him over one Woman called Jezebel. [01:02:46] But no, Elijah never stopped until he flung himself down under a juniper tree. [01:02:53] So worn out. And here I think there's a very wonderful thing. The Lord never rebukes Elijah. [01:02:59] This is where we go because we are also quick to rebuke. [01:03:05] Just when a servant of the Lord being used of the Lord and is tired out and worn out, then we come in with our body blows, sort of put things home and get things put right. But not the Lord. Never the Lord. [01:03:20] The Lord says not a word to Elijah. He sends an angel that cooks him an evening meal and feeds him and says, now sleep. And he sleeps under the tunip because he wants to die. He says, lord, I don't want any more. I want to die. [01:03:37] The master tape at this point was reversed and approximately 90 seconds of the message. Now Elijah's got to learn what is going to be his life long service. [01:03:52] Remember, we haven't got his whole life history here. We've only got a few points. [01:03:59] What is it to be? [01:04:02] What dost thou here, Elijah? Stand outside. [01:04:06] And then suddenly such a wind, such a whirlwind came, breaking the rocks, breaking everything up ventured. The Lord was not in the wind, thou Elijah had ever. He always thought the law was very much in the wind. You'll find that there's a lot of wind to do with Elijah. He was taken to heaven in a whirlwind. [01:04:27] He was learning a deep lesson. The next thing there was an earthquake. [01:04:32] Split everything open, trem everything trembled, crash, broke. [01:04:39] The Lord wasn't in the earthquake. [01:04:41] And then there was a fire like a forest fire that swept through. [01:04:49] Elijah had already seen the firefall on Mount Carmel. [01:04:53] But he learned the deepest lesson of all. The Lord was not in the fire. [01:04:58] And then there was a still, small voice, or as someone had said, a voice that was a gentle whisper. [01:05:11] And Elijah learned the deepest secret of God. [01:05:18] It was simply that revivals are not God's method. [01:05:27] Reformations and revivals, as we shall learn in the history of the kings of Israel and Judah, never really affected anything. [01:05:37] Thousands swept into the kingdom. [01:05:40] The rot temporarily halted only within a matter of days to be gone. [01:05:49] Where were all the thousands who said jehovah, he is God. Jehovah, he is God. Every one of them had gone back to the old ways. [01:05:58] All clouds. [01:06:01] What was the Lord teaching Elijah? [01:06:04] He was teaching Elijah to center his life now in the little group of people who meant business with the Lord. [01:06:17] For the Lord was going to teach Elijah and Elijah that through those small groups of people who in the quietness of their own heart had come to know God and love God and understand God. They were going to be the salt of the nation. And that is why he's told immediately to anoint Elisha. For Elisha's ministry was nearly exclusively to do with the prophets, with the schools of the prophets, the sons of the prophets, those companies of men who gave themselves wholly to the Lord. [01:06:54] For 7,000 that have not bowed to me, that was the Lord's way. [01:06:59] Oh, don't take me wrong, will you, on this question of revival. Here we are. With this we end. Here we are in days of decline. [01:07:09] I thank God for every revival recorded in church history and for all of his men. And I pray that God will give us some revival in our day, the thousands that will be swept into the kingdom, the work of God in that way, and the name of the Lord and the claims of the Lord restated categorically, as they always are in times of revival. The fire, the wind, the earthquake of revivals and reformations. [01:07:39] But God's way is to get people onto the right ground inwardly, and then to do a quiet but radically revolutionary work in them that reverts them to the Lord, whether they have to give their life or not. [01:08:00] Thank God for the outward, the dramatic, the sensational. [01:08:04] But the Lord's way is the quiet way of the Holy Spirit by which he apprehends men like Elisha quietly in a field and then makes them to be absolutely bulwarks against every kind of evil. [01:08:30] That's the way the Lord does it. May the Lord just help us in that way to see, as we see through history here on this board, just how the Lord does it. May the Lord give us grace. Let's pray for revival. But let's see that revival in itself is only something transient and temporary. What the Lord really wants is something inward and eternal.