Trusting God One Day at a Time - 1 Kings 16:29-17:7

We're going to spend the next six weeks looking at the story of Elijah and looking, tracing, kind of his journey through the second half of one King. So this morning we're going to try and do two things. First, we're going to set the scene. We're going to have a bit of context about where we find ourselves. If you're thinking, I know one Kings is in the Old Testament, but that's pretty much all I know.

That's okay. That is totally fine. We're going to kind of set the scene together this morning. And then the second thing we're going to try and do is we're going to meet Elijah today and we're going to read about him as he steps onto the scene. And so as we prepare our hearts to come to God's word, why don't we pray together?

Our God, we come now excited to open your word together, Lord. We thank you that it is living and active, Lord. And we come with the expectation that you're going to speak to us through it. And so we pray that our hearts would be opened, that our ears and our minds would be open to hear what you would say today. So through your Holy spirit, would you speak in Jesus name we pray.

Amen. One of the professional hazards of being a pastor is the emails I receive. Now, before you start to get worried and think, oh no, he's talking about me, I'm not. I'm not speaking about any of the emails that you send me, feel free to send me emails. I sit there at home waiting for them so you can send them.

But there are other emails I receive and one of the most regular emails I receive are the offer of a baby grand piano. I get probably at least one of these a week. People are desperate, which I never knew people are desperate to give away baby grand pianos. So much so that that's just a selection of some of the ones I've received recently. So you can see that they come in pretty regularly if they weren't scammers.

But we would have enough baby grand pianos to give you one or to open a showroom or. I don't know what it is, but we get a lot of these emails about these pianos. The other type of email that I receive from time to time is a different type of email. It's not trying to give me something, it's trying to tell me something. And these emails are very, very long.

They have lots of capital letters, lots of bold text. They often come with random looking attachments and links to other pages on the Web. And I must admit, the first one I read from then on, I just kind of skimmed them because they're all saying pretty much the same thing. They're saying, we are under attack. We are under attack.

This is the worst possible time in all of history to be a Christian. We. We need to rise up, we need to fight back. You know, the thing that jumps out to me from these emails is the sense of panic. The person who has sat there and written them and then found all these different churches email addresses and then sent them off is panicking.

There's a sense in these emails that God has taken his eyes off what is happening, that this persecution that they say that we're facing and which absolutely the church faces in different parts of the world. And we should expect that. I mean, Jesus says it, but there's a sense that this persecution is something that has just crept up on God's people. Now, I don't reply to those emails. I don't reply to them.

I'll reply to your emails, but I don't reply to those ones, and I don't reply to those emails. But I think if I did, the thing that I would say is, yes, I'll have the piano. But the thing I think I would say is I would say that if you think that opposition to God and opposition to God's people is a modern phenomena, that it's something that's just suddenly appeared, then you aren't reading God's word carefully enough. Because as we come to 1 Kings, we see that this is not a modern phenomena, that the opposition to God's people is not something that is a modern challenge that we suddenly have to face. It is something that has been there for a very long time.

And as we come to see the story of Elijah, we see a time when. When things weren't a little bit challenging for God's people. Things were really, really dark. And so let's step into the context of 1 Kings, and we're gonna turn to 1 Kings, chapter 16. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there.

We'll be starting from verse 29, and the words will also be up there on the screens behind me. It says this Ahab son of Omri began to rule over Israel in the 38th year of King Asa's reign in Judah. He reigned in Samaria 22 years. But Ahab son of Omri did what was evil in the Lord's sight, even more than any of the kings before him. So first we're told where we are and when these events that we're going to read, happen.

We read that this is the 38th year of King Asa's reign in Judah. I'm going to try and capture a lot of history in a couple of sentences. All right, so go with me here. After God's people entered the promised land, the land that he had prepared and promised to them, they looked around at the neighboring nations and they said, we want a king like them. And so God warned them, but they insisted, and God gave them a king.

And so first they had Saul, and then they had David, and then they had Solomon. And after Solomon died, the people, actually the nation split into two. There was a civil war, and we ended up with the northern kingdom, called Israel, with 10 tribes, and the southern kingdom called Judah, which was in the south, and it had Jerusalem, and the temple was in the south, and two tribes down there in Judah, which is what we just Read in verse 29. The Southern Kingdom, there's a king on the throne for 41 years. King Assa is there for 41 years.

In the north, things are very different because they have coups, they have assassinations, they have a whole lot of instability. And they have seven kings in the same period. The latest of the kings in the north that we've just read about is Ahab, son of Omri. We read that ahab rules for 22 years. So it's actually a time of somewhat political stability.

He has a long reign compared to the ones that have gone before him. But spiritually, we find that Ahab builds on the legacy of the kings before him in the north. And it's bad. We read in verse 30 that Ahab does what is evil in the Lord's sight, even more than any of the other kings that have gone before him. Then we turn to verse 31, and we see what's happening.

As though it were not enough to follow the sinful example of Jeroboam, he married Jezebel, the daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidians, and he began to bow down in worship to baal. First, Ahab built a temple and an altar for BAAL in Samaria. Then he set up an Asherah pole. He did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than any of the other kings of Israel before him. So we read a brief reference to Jeroboam, who was the first northern king.

And Jeroboam had wanted to stop the people from traveling to the south. He didn't want the people in the northern kingdom to go down to worship at the temple. And so he'd set up altars and idols in the north to try and stop them from going. Jeroboam's intention was not fully to abandon God, but rather to worship God on his own terms. By the time Ahab comes along, things have gotten much, much worse and even worse.

Ahab decides to marry Jezebel. And we read Jezebel is the daughter of King Ethbaal, a Canaanite king. Now, Ethbaal was a priest king, and so he was a priest for a Canaanite God named baal. His name, Ethbaal, literally means with baal. And so when Ahab marries Jezebel, he's not just marrying a daughter of a neighbouring king, he's actually marrying into another religion.

Ahab launches straight into the worship of his queen's God. We read that he builds a temple to baal, he sets up an altar, he sets up an Asherah pole. Asherah was another Canaanite God. It's a significant shift because before this time, idol worship had been acceptable. But now idolatry in Israel goes from being permitted to command it.

Ahab makes baal, effectively makes it the state religion of God's people. And so we read that in verse 33, that he has done more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than any of the kings before him. We then read this strange little aside in verse 34, and if you've read on, you will have seen it there. It was during his reign that Hiel, a man from Bethel, rebuilt Jericho. When he laid its foundations, it cost him the life of his oldest son, Abiram.

When he completed it and set up its gates, it cost him the life of his youngest son, Segub. This all happened according to the message from the Lord concerning Jericho, spoken by Joshua's son Abraham of none seems random. All of a sudden we're getting a history, a bit of information about where we're set, and then all of a sudden we get this little aside that says, oh, by the way, Jericho was rebuilt and this guy's sons died while they were rebuilding it. Now, historians don't really know how his sons died, whether it was they got sick, whether this was part of child sacrifice, which was sometimes the case in those ancient civilizations. But the reason it's here is actually important, and we're given a clue to that because we're told that this had been declared that back in Joshua, after God's people had conquered Jericho and the walls had tumbled, Joshua stands on the rubble of the city and he declares, this is what God's message is.

Don't try and rebuild this city. Don't try and rebuild it. If you do, you'll pay for it with the deaths of your first and second born sons. It's a warning from God to the people, do not rebuild. And then we read in 1 Kings 16 that Hiel comes and he says, I'm going to rebuild.

It's a clear example. And it's there for us because it shows us that God's people have stopped listening to him. They've stopped taking his word seriously. But we discover that God has not stopped keeping his word. And that's going to be a thread that we see throughout.

So let me capture that for you. We're here in the northern kingdom of Israel. We're under an evil King Ahab in a time where the people of God have stopped listening to him, where they've turned their backs on him, and where there's incredible hostility to those who remain faithful to him. And that's where we land when we turn the page to 1 Kings 17 and we pick up the story of this man named Elijah. And so we're going to spend the rest of the time that we have in just the first seven verses of 1 Kings 17.

And there are three things I want to highlight to you. They're up on the screen there. 3 thoughts about Elijah's faith, this model of faith in a hostile time that we see. Firstly, in verse one, Elijah stands before God. First, second, Elijah waits where God puts him.

And then third, Elijah lives on what God provides one day at a time. So let's turn to verse one of chapter 17. Now Elijah, who was from Tishbe in Gilead, told King Ahab, as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel lives, the God I serve. There'll be no dew or rain during the next few years until I give the word. Elijah appears out of nowhere.

We're given no backstory. There's no kind of information on his family line, on exactly where he's come from. He just kind of appears. We're told he comes from Tishbe in Gilead. Tishbe is rough country.

It's high country to the east of the Jordan. It's a long way. It's rural and it's remote. It's very, very different to Ahab's palace there in Samaria. But there's something else significant that we're told about Elijah.

His name in the Hebrew is Eliyahu, which means God is my God is Yahweh, the name Yahweh was a Hebrew name for God. It carried a deep meaning to God's people. It carried the knowledge that God always was and always is, and always would be. It is a significant name that says God does not change and God does not fade. It was a name given to the covenant making and covenant keeping God.

It was the name attached to every promise that God had made to his people. And so in a nation where the people have turned their back on God, where the king has turned them towards this idol baal, who he thinks is calling the shots, God sends Elijah. God sends a man whose very name is a rebuke to the king. Just saying his name reminds Ahab of the covenant keeping, the living God who he's turned his back on. Elijah comes to Ahab and he says to him, this is the judgment of the living God, the God who is lord over Israel, the God that I serve.

There will be no rain and no dew in the land. No water at all until I say so. Now we look at the Old Testament and we see God's judgment come in different ways. But here it comes as a drought. It comes as, there'll be no water, there'll be no rain, there'll be no dew.

Now God's judgment coming this way is not an accident. That God would come in the form of a drought is not an accident. Because the idol that Ahab has turned his people towards, baal, was the Canaanite storm God. He was the God that they believed sent the rain and sent the dew that watered their crops, that kept their crops growing, that fed them. And so Elijah walks into the throne room of Ahab and says, you think BAAL has control over the rain?

You think this idol has control over the rain? Well, guess what? He doesn't. BAAL is powerless over the true God of Israel. But there's something else significant here.

Because centuries earlier, God had told his people, he'd said to them in Deuteronomy 11 that if you turn away, if you follow other gods, that I will shut the heavens and there will be no rain. In Deuteronomy 28, he says to them that the sky above them will be bronze and the earth beneath them will become like iron. Remember what we saw a few moments ago with Haiel, who embarks on rebuilding Jericho. God's people have stopped listening to his word, but God has not stopped keeping it. And here it is again.

The drought is not God losing his temper. It is simply God doing exactly what he said he would do. He said, if you turn away this will be the consequence. But I want you to see this this morning. Because the drought which Elijah comes and declares as judgment for their sin is also God's covenantal mercy.

I don't know about you, but prosperity pretty quickly convinces me that I don't need God. Prosperity convinces us that we have it all together on our own. You see, if the rain had kept coming, if the crops had kept being plentiful, if the barns had kept being full, the people wouldn't see the need to return to God. So God's judgment comes, but it also comes as mercy to draw the hearts of his people back to him. You know, I'm struck by Elijah's courage.

He appears out of nowhere. He walks up to Ahab, the king, this powerful king, and he says to him, hey, guess what? It's not going to rain. Now, that's not the way to go and make yourself popular with the king. The king that can have you put to death at a moment's notice for any reason.

Elijah walks up and says, no rain until I say so. It's incredible, but there's actually a clue as to why he has that courage. Because in verse one, there's four words there. He says, the God I serve. The God I serve.

The Hebrew that sits underneath that phrase is significant. It literally means the God before whom I stand. Elijah here is using the language of the royal court. He's using the language that would describe a servant standing at attention in the throne room waiting on the word of the king. So just in those four words, Elijah is saying, ahab, I'm not standing before you.

I'm standing before Yahweh. Ahab, I am not standing before you. You're not really on the throne. Yahweh is.

You see, Elijah had a conviction that I think changes our lives when we hold it as well. Ahab's earthly power is insignificant to him compared to the power of the one who really sits on the throne. You see Elijah, as he comes to Ahab, he actually knows which king he's standing in the presence of. And it isn't an earthly idol worshiping king. It is Yahweh, the promise keeping, living God.

Over in the New Testament, James, which we're doing a series on later this year, James tells us how this conviction grew in Elijah's heart. It says this in James 5:17. Elijah was as human as we are. James wants you to know there's nothing superhuman superhero about Elijah. He's just like you and me.

But it says, and yet when he prayed, God earnestly That no rain would fall. None fell for three and a half years. When he prayed earnestly, you see, the courage that Elijah had that enabled him to stand before Ahab had actually started on his knees before God.

Elijah could be bold and he could be courageous because he had spent time seeking God on his knees. I don't doubt that as Elijah, this faithful follower of God, saw what was happening in Israel, I don't doubt that he was there crying out to God in despair, saying, God, how could this happen? How could your people go so wrong? And it's that that equips him with boldness to go before Ahab. It's time in prayer, so I'd encourage you to do the same.

You don't need to fear the powers of this world if you know the one in whose presence you really stand. Let's turn to verse two and to our second point. Elijah waits where God puts him. Then the Lord said to Elijah, go to the east and hide by Kerith Brook, near where it enters the Jordan River. Drink from the brook and eat what the ravens bring you, for I have commanded them to bring you food.

Now, if I was Elijah, I'd be surprised by this, because God's word has come in power. It's the big moment. Elijah has turned up to Ahab, and now God says, go and hide. Like surely God. The next thing is for me to go from town to town to declare this to everyone, to tell them, turn back to God.

God says, go east. Go to a place in the middle of nowhere and hide. And in verse five, we read, so Elijah did as the Lord told him, and he camped beside Kerith Brook, east of the Jordan. Elijah goes there to Kerith Brook, and we read that he camps there. And that word camped is an important one because Elijah isn't just stopping for a night.

He's setting up there. He knows that he's not just on the way somewhere more important. That's where God wants him to be. Cindy and I went camping a few weeks ago, and one of the things I find really interesting is people's camping setups. I like walking around the caravan park, and I only do fancy camping, all right?

I've got my own bathroom. I've got my own shower in a tent, but with a bathroom. And we walk around the campsite, and there's some serious money going on there. Like, people have got caravans, they've got four drives, they've got these impressive setups. The thing I reckon, that shows the next level of camping commitment is actually not that big caravan or that big tent or whatever it is.

The next level of commitment is the people who bring a doormat, who bring a doormat and put it outside their tent or outside their caravan. I'm always like, you are in here for the long haul. Like you're really setting up now. I reckon if doormats were a thing back in the Old Testament, Elijah would have had one. Because this wasn't a night or two.

This wasn't a night or two. God doesn't even tell him how long he's going to be there. God doesn't say where he's going next. He just says, go there and wait. And so Elijah does.

There's probably a practical reason why he does this, because he's just gone to Ahab and declared a drought. And one night, two nights, a few weeks without rain is not a drought. And so Elijah goes and waits for the drought to come. But there's something bigger going on here than just the weather. And the thing that is going on here is that this is a time, remember, before God's Word is written down and in their hands, like you and I can hold a Bible in ours.

The Holy Spirit is not yet dwelling in every believer the way the Holy Spirit dwells in us. If God's people want to hear from God, they have to hear it through the mouth of a prophet. And God's just taken the prophet away. This is judgment that sits underneath the judgment. It isn't just that the rain stops.

Israel wanted a God they could manage on their own terms. And so God gives them silence and lets them find out what it is like to live without a word from Him. Later in the Book of Amos, God describes a famine worse than any drought. He says the consequence of their sin will bring a famine not of bread and water, but a famine of hearing God's word. I think we can so easily forget what a blessing it is to hear God's Word.

I think we can so easily become complacent in reading it, in hearing it spoken, in listening to it preached. Because there is a blessing in being under the Word of God, of having the Word of God at work to bring encouragement and to bring correction and to help us to reform our lives. Can I encourage you, Church? Perhaps you have grown complacent about having the Word of God in your life. Don't grow complacent, particularly if you're in a season of waiting.

But even if you're in a season of plenty, don't grow complacent. Dwell in God's word. Don't make his hearing it a distant priority. Experience the richness of it. Don't make coming and hearing it spoken and preached an occasional thing and steal from yourself the very thing that God has given you to be bread to your soul.

Let's turn to verse six and to our final point as we close this morning. Elijah lives on what God gives one day at a time. The ravens brought him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he drank from the brook. But after a while, the brook dried up, for there was no rainfall anywhere in the land. This isn't the first time that God has brought miraculous provision for his people in this way out in the wilderness.

You might remember the story as they wander out in the desert before they enter the promised land, his people wake up to find every day that God has provided miraculously for them. And God says to them, don't gather more than you need for today. Don't gather more than you need for today, because tomorrow more will come. Here we see the same thing, Elijah, Every morning and evening, God uses the most unlikely of sources to bring him what he needs. Birds.

Now, I don't know much about ravens. I've always felt like birds were dirty and so I stay away from them. But I don't know much about ravens. But what I do know is that they're scavengers. And so they are not going away and baking.

It's not like that movie Ratatouille. But with ravens, they're not going away and baking and making beautiful food for him and taking him fresh loaves of bread and cooking him fresh, fresh steaks to eat. Ravens are scavengers, and so they're bringing Elijah what they scavenge. I wonder if that can feel a little bit confronting for us, because Elijah has spoken God's word, and here he is struggling under the consequences of it. He doesn't appear to have an abundance.

He hasn't arrived at the Kerith Brook to find a secret storehouse to full of food just waiting for him. He's sitting there week by week by week, next to this drying brook. It's slowly dying. And he's waiting on the provision day by day, of what God will bring to him. You know, I think often we can think that that's not an abundance, but you actually can't have a greater abundance than what God brings you every day.

And so he waits here day by day. There's something else happening. God is building in him a heart that trusts him, because we'll see next week that there's coming Provision again, but in a different way and in a different place. That's going to require even greater trust. And so here at the Kerith Brook, God is building in Elijah a heart that trusts him for his provision day by day.

You know, there's times in our lives where we have plenty. And I reckon we probably don't learn to trust him just like we do in those times where we don't have enough, where we're believing day by day that he might provide for us what we need.

Over in Matthew, the disciples come to Jesus and they say to him, how should we pray? And Jesus says, pray like this. And there in the middle of the prayer, you might know it, the Lord's Prayer. Jesus says and prays, give us today our daily bread. He doesn't pray, give us today all that we're going to need for the next six months.

Give us today an abundance of everything we will need for the rest of our lives. Instead, he says, give us today our daily bread. God wants you to keep coming back to him. God wants you to develop a heart of trust that knows that he loves you, he is good, he has an abundance for you, and he wants you to trust him day by day by day.

As we close this morning, let me remind you of where we started. We started with this idea that God's people have stopped listening to him, but God has not stopped keeping his word. And so he sends Elijah. And over the next five weeks, we're going to follow Elijah's story. But here's what I want you to remember across the whole of this series.

I want you to remember that this is ultimately not about Elijah. It's ultimately not about Elijah. This ultimately is a story of God not forgetting about his people. Over in Matthew 17, we get an even greater picture of this because Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a mountain. And while they're there, they see Jesus in all of his glory standing there with Elijah and with Moses.

And then God speaks and God says, this is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy. Listen to him. When the disciples look again, Elijah and Moses are gone and Jesus is standing there in front of them. You see, this is what Moses and Elijah always have always been pointing forward to. They've been pointing forward to that Jesus is the pinnacle example, the best example, that God has not stopped keeping his word.

You see, while judgment comes on the people there in 1 Kings as a consequence for their sin in Jesus, judgment comes upon him as a consequence for my sin and for your sin. Isn't that an incredible image that God, the promise keeping God, Yahweh, the living God sends his own son to take upon him the judgment for our sin so that through Jesus death and his resurrection that we might have life.

So this series is about God not forgetting his people, God keeping his promises. And I pray that you'll be encouraged as we work our way through. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you for your word this morning. Lord, we thank you for this moment in the Old Testament that feels like a different time because it is.

It feels like a different place because it is. There's a lot of it that is hard for us to understand the culture of and the time in which it happened. But God, we thank you that it speaks to us, Lord, that it reminds us of who you are, that you are the covenant keeping God, the God who made the promise and the God who keeps it. And so Lord, we thank you for that in our own lives. Lord, I want to pray this morning for those who maybe don't know the hope of having surrendered their life to Jesus.

Maybe they don't know what it is like to be able to come to you in times of plenty, but in times of waiting, in times of struggle, to be able to come to the God who is faithful, who keeps his word, who loves them. And Lord, I pray that you'd be stirring that in their hearts this morning that they might surrender their life to you.

Lord, we pray that as we work through this series that you would keep our eyes fixed on you, that we might come to understand, understand you in a greater and deeper and better way. So we ask you this in Jesus precious name, Amen.