Sermons

Ahaziah fell through the lattice of his upper room and lay injured. He sent messengers to Baal-Zebub, a foreign god, to ask whether he would recover. Then, when Elijah brought him word of God’s judgment, he did not repent. Instead, three times over he dispatched a captain with fifty soldiers to seize Elijah and bring him back.

Ahaziah wanted to live as he saw fit, and for him it was easier to consult an idol than to cling to God. The first two captains and their men perished in fire from heaven, but the third captain humbly fell to his knees and pleaded for his life, and he and his soldiers were spared.

Before God there is no middle ground. Ahaziah, stubborn to the end, died just as Elijah had declared, while the captain who humbly sought mercy was given life. Sovereignty over life belongs to nothing in this world, but to God alone.

Jehoshaphat was a king who feared God, one who sought the truth even from the prophet Micaiah. Yet although he heard the prophecy that Ahab would die, he went out to the battlefield wearing the royal robes in Ahab’s place. This brought him to the brink of death, and a seer rebuked him for helping the wicked.

Strong faith does not exempt anyone from the hardships of this world. When Jehoshaphat, having received great blessing from God, allied himself by marriage with wicked Ahab, it was spiritual pride: he believed he could hold fast to his faith whatever the circumstances. To rely on one’s own faith is itself the place where a person falls before God.

Later, when Moab and Ammon came against Judah, Jehoshaphat fasted and cried out to God together with the people, and he went out with the choir set before the army. God himself fought for them and drove back the enemy. Yet he did not tear down the high places, and he again entered into friendship with Ahab’s son, so that the same weakness passed down to his children. For this reason, no one must ever put their trust in themselves.

With war against Aram before them, Ahab and Jehoshaphat inquire of the prophets what God’s will is. Four hundred prophets foretell victory, but Micaiah alone passes on God’s word just as it was given: the king will die in battle.

Earlier, when Ahab heard the warning of judgment, he humbled himself for a time, but he soon forgot that grace and hardened his heart. Though Micaiah was struck and thrown into prison, he did not trim his words to save his life, while Ahab, going into battle in disguise, chose compromise rather than obedience.

In the end Ahab was struck by an arrow and died, and Micaiah’s prophecy came to pass just as he had spoken. Yet God warns of judgment out of love, giving his people the chance to turn back. Just as the intercession of Moses and the devotion of the tribe of Levi turned a curse into a blessing, God’s will is that the word of judgment be set aside and the word of blessing be fulfilled.

Ahab coveted Naboth’s vineyard and offered to pay for it, but Naboth refused, saying he could not sell the inheritance of his fathers. When Ahab took to his bed and would not eat, his wife Jezebel produced false witnesses and had Naboth stoned to death, and Ahab claimed the vineyard for himself.

Ahab’s greed was where the sin began, yet without Jezebel at his side urging that greed on, it would probably not have gone so far. Sin does not do its work alone; it comes to fruition where a person’s own desire meets the prompting of those around them. When Ahab heard the word of judgment, he tore his clothes, fasted and humbled himself, and God deferred the disaster to the next generation.

But Ahab bore no fruit in keeping with repentance: he neither restored Naboth’s good name nor gave back the vineyard. As a result, the sin passed down to his children’s generation, and the judgment God had pronounced came to pass just as he had spoken. Whoever comes to see their wrongdoing must turn from it at once and wholeheartedly, and bear the fruit of repentance.

Ben-hadad gathers his army and lays siege to Samaria. At first Ahab is willing to give in to his demands, but they do not stop there; each one grows more unreasonable than the last. Twice God hands Israel’s paltry army a great victory, yet no sooner has the battle been won than Ahab makes peace with Ben-hadad, settling the matter as he himself sees fit.

The demands of the wicked never end with the first. Sin that slips in through the gap left by a small compromise grows until at last it takes hold of the very center of the heart. It was not Ahab’s obedience that saved Israel; God himself stood against pride and delivered his people. Yet even in the face of such grace, Ahab goes back to his palace troubled, with no repentance.

The prophet disguises himself and comes before the king, leading Ahab to declare with his own lips, “So shall your judgment be; you yourself have decided it,” and then pronounces judgment on him in those very words. Just as God chose us of his own accord when we had nothing that could qualify us for salvation, Ahab too was offered the chance to turn back, right to the end. As long as we live in the flesh, that same opportunity is held out to us again and again, and there we must not stop at grief but repent.

As Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, the people spread their cloaks on the road, wave palm branches and cry out, “Hosanna!” The word is not a shout of praise but a plea: “Save us, please.” Yet only five days later those same people have become a crowd shouting for him to be crucified.

The salvation they longed for was worldly power to free them from Roman oppression, but the salvation Jesus meant to give was the restoration of a broken relationship with God. From the moment humanity was driven out of Eden for its disobedience, it stood under God’s judgment with no way of escape, and Jesus gave himself as a ransom to close that gap. The crowd that turned away as soon as Jesus’ path parted from their expectations is also a picture of ourselves, for whenever God’s work runs contrary to what we expect, we too can all too easily end up standing against him.

This is the time to ask whether we are holding on to success and prosperity in this world more tightly than to salvation. Each day we must lift our gaze from ourselves back to God, so that our thanksgiving and our lives do not go separate ways, and so that we do not quietly slip our own merit in alongside the merit of Christ. The salvation already received comes not from our devotion but wholly from grace, and within that grace all that remains is to live out with joy the Kingdom of God, which will be brought to completion with Jesus at his return.

Elijah, who called down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel and defeated the 850 prophets of idols, crumbles at a single threat from Jezebel and sits beneath a broom tree, asking to die. God does not rebuke him; instead he gives him bread and water and touches him.

Even those of great faith come to moments when fear of the world’s power brings them to their knees. The moment God slipped from view, all that filled Elijah’s eyes was his own frailty and the size of his enemy. God was not in the great and strong wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in a still small voice; he chose to meet his people not in the outward miracles they long for but in a lowly place.

God upheld the discouraged Elijah to the end, giving him a new charge and telling him that seven thousand remained who had not bowed the knee to Baal. As he once waited for Noah, so God keeps hold of the weary and the fearful by the wrist and does not let go. The sermon calls its hearers to lay down the fears of this world, listen for that still small voice, and take the next step.

Ahab blames Elijah for the drought the whole nation is suffering and hunts for him, but he has things backward. It was Ahab’s own idolatry that brought on the drought. The people waver between God and Baal, trying to serve both, and cannot answer Elijah’s question at all.

Baal is a god who promises material abundance and personal advancement, but fruitfulness, increase, and fullness are blessings that belong to God the Creator alone. To waver between God and the world is not moderation but unbelief that tries to serve two masters at once.

When Elijah prayed over the altar drenched with water, God answered with fire. So that no one could doubt it, God showed the whole world that Yahweh alone is the true God. God is the final victor, and when people keep him at the center of their hearts and set the order of their love right, he supplies what they need.

After proclaiming the drought, Elijah hid himself by the brook Cherith, but when the brook dried up, God sent him to a widow in Zarephath, in the land of Sidon. With the last handful of flour and a little oil, she was about to make one final meal for herself and her son and then die; yet she did as Elijah asked and made him bread first.

The miracle of flour and oil that did not run out gave her hope of living, but not long afterwards calamity struck: her only son died. She blamed Elijah, saying it had come upon her because of her sin. Yet this was God’s providence, meant to carry her a step beyond a faith content with the plenty this world affords. What God desires is not a faith that enjoys the things of the world, but one that comes to see that the world holds no hope and looks to God alone.

Only when her son was brought back to life at Elijah’s cry did the woman at last confess that Elijah was a true prophet and that God is the Lord of life. The God who chose this Gentile woman, the weakest and most unregarded in the world, and brought her to such faith, wishes to choose and raise up even the least of us as well. It is when we look not to people or circumstances but to God alone that true faith bears its fruit.

The kings of northern Israel fall one after another. Baasha wiped out the house of Jeroboam, only to walk in the very same ways, and his dynasty ended with his son. Zimri reigned for seven days; then, after Omri, Ahab at last comes to the throne. Ahab served Baal, a foreign god, and provoked God to anger more than any king before him.

As God judged the wicked, so the curse Joshua had pronounced long before came true for the man who rebuilt Jericho. Whether it speaks blessing or curse, not one letter of God’s word fails. Yet in the midst of that dark history, the prophet Hanani and his son Jehu, one generation after the other, boldly proclaimed the word of the Lord.

The world grows ever darker and more wicked. Yet whatever course it takes, God’s people are to bear the calling he has entrusted to them to the very end, hold fast to their faith, and hand it on to the next generation. That is where they must stand.

Asa was a good king of the southern kingdom of Judah, who rooted out idolatry and defeated the million-strong army of Cush. In his later years, however, when the northern kingdom of Israel invaded, he sent treasure to the king of Aram and asked for his help instead of turning to God, and when disease struck his feet, he relied on physicians rather than on the Lord.

Yet Scripture still says of Asa that “his heart was wholly true all his days.” The sin of weakness that springs from human fear and the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit stand on quite different ground where forgiveness is concerned. Judas Iscariot went on committing small sins until his heart grew hard, and in the end he betrayed Jesus. Peter denied Jesus three times, but because his failure was a weakness born of fear, he repented, was restored, and went on to lay down his life as a martyr.

There are sins from which a person may still turn back, and there are sins beyond restoration, which deny God much as a child might disown a parent. Whoever thinks their own sin small and treats it lightly will find their heart led down a road from which there is no return. Christians must receive grace with reverent fear, and the moment sin comes to light, turn from it completely.

When Asa became king, he removed the idols, the high places, and the Asherah poles left by his grandfather and father, and commanded the people of Judah to serve only Yahweh. Even when the Ethiopians invaded with an army of a million, Asa led a force less than half that size and cried out to God, and God struck them.

Even after the war was over, Asa did not settle into ease; he renewed the covenant once again and burned the idols. Yet even his grandmother, Queen Mother Maacah, was serving a wooden Asherah image. Asa did not overlook idolatry, even in the person closest to him, and deposed her on the spot.

True reform means cutting out first not the sin of others, but the sin beside oneself and within oneself. If one truly seeks the good of a loved one’s soul, there are times when the resolve to cut off that relationship is needed. Only when one’s own faith first stands upright before God does one gain the strength to rescue the soul one loves as well.