Thursday
Evening Bible Study
December
13, 2012
Introduction
Do people see Jesus? Is the gospel
preached? Does it speak to the broken hearted? Does it build up the church? Milk
– Meat – Manna Preach for a decision Is the church loved?
After the death
of King Solomon, the
kingdom of Israel split into two nations.
The northern
kingdom would be known as “Israel”, and would be made up of ten of the twelve
tribes of Israel.
The first king,
Jeroboam, led the people away from the pure worship of Yahweh by setting up
alternate worship sites in Bethel and Dan, each with their own golden calf to
be a substitute for God.
The southern
kingdom was known as “Judah” and would be made up of the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin.
The southern
kingdom would always be ruled by a descendant of King David.
The book of Kings follows the
various kings of both the northern and southern kingdoms.
Last week we followed events in the northern kingdom as one dynasty was replaced
by another, and we are now in the time period when Ahab and Jezebel rule the
northern kingdom.
Ahab was known as the most wicked of the northern
kings.
During this time of great wickedness, God has a man that He’s been using – the prophet Elijah.
Elijah’s ministry began with the warning that there would not be any rain
until he says so. The nation has now been in a drought for three years, along
with a famine that accompanies a drought.
Elijah’s greatest moment is about to happen, but before this “shining
moment”, Elijah himself went through a time of
refining and pruning as he too had to live in the land of drought and famine.
18:1-15 Searching for water
:1 And it came to pass after many days that
the word of the Lord came to
Elijah, in the third year, saying, “Go, present yourself to Ahab, and I will
send rain on the earth.”
:1 in the third year
James tells us
that it was actually 3 ½ years. (Jam. 5:17)
(Jas 5:16–18 NKJV) —16 Confess your trespasses to one
another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective,
fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah
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. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven
gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
Elijah is a
person of whom we expect to see show up in the last days during the Tribulation
period.
(Mal 4:5 NKJV) Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before
the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
We think he will be one of the “two witnesses” of Revelation 11.
(Re 11:3–6 NKJV) —3 And I will
give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two
hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.” 4 These are the two olive trees and the
two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. 5 And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds
from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them,
he must be killed in this manner. 6 These have power to shut heaven, so
that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over
waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as
often as they desire.
Notice what the “witnesses” do – including calling down fire from heaven
and stopping the rain.
Also notice the length of their ministry – 1260 days, or, 3 ½ years.
:1 the word of the Lord …I will send rain
Elijah had said,
(1 Ki 17:1 NKJV) And Elijah the Tishbite, of the
inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall
not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.”
But here we see that it wasn’t “Elijah’s word”, but “God’s Word” that really counted.
Sometimes it gets confusing, to be able to tell when it’s just a person
that’s speaking, or when it’s really God speaking through a person.
I think that some of Elijah’s trouble is going to come because Ahab thinks
that it really is just Elijah that is causing all this trouble, when it’s
really God that Ahab has problems with.
:2 So Elijah went to
present himself to Ahab; and there was a severe famine in Samaria.
:2 severe famine in Samaria
Play Samaria
map clip
During this drought, Elijah, who is from Tishbi, spends time at Cherith,
then at Zarephath.
He now shows up in the vicinity of Samaria, the capital of the northern
kingdom.
:3 And Ahab had called
Obadiah, who was in charge of his house. (Now
Obadiah feared the Lord greatly.
:4 For so it was, while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah had taken one
hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty to a cave, and had fed them with bread
and water.)
:4 Jezebel massacred the prophets
We don’t have the actual account of this event recorded, just the mention
of it.
:3 Obadiah feared the Lord
Obadiah
– “servant of Yahweh”
Lesson
In the world
But not of it. Influencing our
generation.
Obadiah is a good guy.
And he’s working for a bad guy.
Kind of like Daniel working in the Babylonian government
of Nebuchadnezzar.
Be careful of thinking that as a believer you need to withdraw from the
world and join a monastery. Jesus said,
(Mt 5:14–16 NKJV) —14
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill
cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they
light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light
to all who are in the house.16 Let your light so shine before men, that they
may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
We shouldn’t be hiding from the world, we should be impacting it.
Well maybe not quite that impacting.
:5 And Ahab had said to
Obadiah, “Go into the land to all the springs of water and to all the brooks;
perhaps we may find grass to keep the horses and mules alive, so that we will
not have to kill any livestock.”
:6 So they divided the land between them to
explore it; Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by
himself.
Ahab and Obadiah are out to look for places to put their livestock.
:7 Now as Obadiah was on his way, suddenly Elijah
met him; and he recognized him, and fell on his face, and said, “Is that
you, my lord Elijah?”
:8 And he answered him, “It is I. Go, tell your master, ‘Elijah is here.’ ”
:9 So he said, “How have I sinned, that you are
delivering your servant into the hand of Ahab, to kill me?
:10 As the Lord your God
lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to
hunt for you; and when they said, ‘He is not here,’ he took an
oath from the kingdom or nation that they could not find you.
Elijah is at the top of Ahab’s “Most Wanted” list.
:11 And now you say, ‘Go, tell your master,
“Elijah is here” ’!
:12 And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from you, that
the Spirit of the Lord will carry
you to a place I do not know; so when I go and tell Ahab, and he cannot find
you, he will kill me. But I your servant have feared the Lord from my youth.
Obadiah thinks that God is going to play some kind of cosmic joke on him. He’s
afraid that if he goes and tells Ahab to come and meet Elijah, that something
will happen to Elijah and Obadiah will be in trouble.
:13 Was it not reported to my lord what I did when
Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord,
how I hid one hundred men of the Lord’s
prophets, fifty to a cave, and fed them with bread and water?
Keep this in mind for chapter 19 – Obadiah had rescued 100 prophets of
Yahweh. Elijah will think that he’s the only prophet left, when there are many
still left.
:14 And now you say, ‘Go, tell your master,
“Elijah is here.” ’ He will kill me!”
:15 Then Elijah said, “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I
stand, I will surely present myself to him today.”
:14 He will kill me!
Lesson
The Pessimist
When times are hard, we can fall into the trap of thinking that all of life
is bad and God is out to get me.
Illustration
The Optimist
Solomon wrote,
(Pr 15:15 NKJV) All the
days of the afflicted are evil, But he who is
of a merry heart has a continual feast.
Be careful of falling into
the trap of thinking that everyone is out to get you and everything will turn
bad in the end. Just ain’t
so.
18:16-19 The Challenge
:16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him;
and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
:16 Obadiah went to meet Ahab
Obadiah has been through some tough times.
There has been a horrible drought.
He’s tried to stay faithful to the Lord.
But he looks at Elijah as if Elijah isn’t someone he can trust. He sees Elijah as someone who just causes
trouble and heartache for people. He’s adopted some of Ahab’s views on Elijah.
Lesson
Don’t be afraid of God’s will
Sometimes we become like Obadiah, always afraid of what God is going to “do
to us”.
Just like the widow when her son died, she said,
(1 Ki 17:18 NKJV) So she said to Elijah, “What have I to do with you, O man of God?
Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to kill my son?”
Yet her son’s death had nothing to do with her sins. In fact, God was planning on using Elijah to
raise her son from the dead.
Paul said that
to understand God’s will for our lives, we needed to
give ourselves totally to God:
(Ro 12:1–2 NKJV) —1 I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable
service. 2 And do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that
you may prove what is that good and acceptable
and perfect will of
God.
When we let God have complete control of our lives, we
will prove to others around us that God’s will is good, acceptable, and
perfect.
:17 Then it happened, when
Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, “Is that you, O troubler of
Israel?”
:18 And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s
house have, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the Baals.
:17 O troubler of Israel
Lesson
Whose fault?
Back in 1997 there was a goofy movie called “Rocketman”. It was about a future mission to Mars, and the
hero of the movie was kind of like a Jerry Lewis character. All through the movie he kept doing stupid
things and then saying, “It wasn’t me…”
” clip
When David
got to the point in his life where he faced the giant Goliath, he knew he could
do it because he had faced a lion and a bear (1Sam. 17:37).
Elijah has
been living in a time of horrendous famine.
He has seen God provide for him.
I don’t get the idea that God dropped a huge feast on Elijah from the
ravens. I don’t get the idea that the
widow woman’s pantry was suddenly filled with bushels of food. But Elijah saw God provide a little each day,
enough to survive. He has learned to
trust God one day at a time, for each day’s miraculous supply.
God is
impressed by your heart, not the length of your prayer.