Jason Hensley - Class 1: Ahab's Israel

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   This is day one of the 2022. Idlewild Bible School. Our first period teacher is brother. Jason Hensley. His General subject is Elijah. A man of like passions, today’s topic is ahab’s Israel, brother, Jason, good morning everyone. It’s very nice to be here to see you all Ruth and I left California on June 18th and we just got back so it’s very nice. It’s very nice to be back.

2. 0:29

   We ring the greetings of your brothers and sisters at Shippensburg. So in Pennsylvania, I’m sure they would love to see you all. We’re going to be talking about Elijah this week, which is a topic that I actually I requested to talk about it because I was so excited about Elijah and the committee very nicely said.

3. 0:47

   Okay that that would be fine. So what we’re going to do as we walk through this series on Elijah’s today, we’re going to talk about ahab’s. Israel, to First, we’re going to look at what was the text that Elijah was living in and then we’re going to spend time essentially looking at his early life. So tomorrow is going to be about Elijah’s drought. So we’re going to actually spend an entire class on 1st Kings 17 verse 1.

4. 1:16

   I know it’s kind of crazy but it’s Phil, you know, that makes it fun, right? So, we’ll do First Kings 17 verse 1 tomorrow, we’re going to talk about the Ravens. You remember that Elijah fed by Ravens. So, we’ll discuss Elijah at the brook the next day after that, we’ll talk about Elijah with the Widow, then Mount Carmel.

5. 1:36

   This is going to be an interesting thing to discuss. Not caramel particularly because I don’t know about you. But when somebody says Elijah, what do you think of? Like you usually think about Mount Carmel, maybe like this is kind of how I always pictured him. I saw this guy with a really big beard, right?

6. 1:55

   We know he was Harry. So he had it had a real big beard. And you almost see him striking, like a superhero pose, right? And his beards like blowing in the wind would, like, triumphant music in the background or something. So that’s how I always pictured. Elijah. Maybe you weren’t that way, but to me, he was like the superhero guy who went up and said you guys are losers get with it, right?

7. 2:17

   Right. And you’re like, wow, he’s so cool. I wish I could be that cool. We’re going to see, I think that it scripture actually paints a little bit of a different picture as far as Elijah goes, and I think that’s going to be really helpful. So that’s really what we’re going to get to.

8. 2:35

   When we talk about Mount Carmel, it’s all going to kind of lead up to that. And it’s going to climax here when we talk about the voice, as he leaves caramel and goes to Mount Sinai and that’s where we’re going to finish it now. I know that’s not the full Elijah story, there’s still a few other pieces here but that is the point.

9. 2:55

   At Mount Sinai in Elijah story when he is told by God. You know what, you need to go, anoint someone else. So it’s almost like this is the point where God says, okay, I’m going to keep working with you and I’m gonna keep working through you but your time as a prophet is dwindling down.

10. 3:14

    So that’s where we’re going to take it this week and what I hope we can see is that maybe if you had that Superhero picture of Elijah that maybe we can have a more realistic picture. That’s one of the things that I think is is just beautiful about the Bible and it makes it unique as far as a lot of books.

11. 3:35

    And that is it actually paints people as they are. It paints people as they are, you know, it says, here’s somebody who did some really good things, but they had some real struggles that they went through and sometimes in our desire for heroes or things like that or or, you know, I read a lot of books for kids, right? Because I have a lot of kids.

12. 4:04

    So you read a lot of kids books and you always get. Here’s the good guy. Here’s the bad. Guy and life’s not really that way. Right? There’s there’s not somebody that you look at you say oh yeah, everything that person ever did in their life was bad. There’s nobody like that, right? And so scripture shows us that’s not true.

13. 4:25

    You know, you look at Elijah and you think. Yeah. He was a good guy, but was everything he ever did. Good. Definitely wasn’t and I think it’s helpful for us to come with a realistic picture and recognize. Oh, you know what? This is actually the picture that scripture is giving to us of him and I think we can learn a lot from that. So that’s the plan.

14. 4:45

    Each class is going to have a main message. This first message today is that God is in control. So these are messages about how God works every day. This is the main thing that we want to remember. So I teach Middle School. I recognized, you know, that as humans, it’s sometimes hard to remember more than one line.

15. 5:06

    So, that’s the big thing each day. Remember this one line, and I even made it easier that each line starts with the same first words. All right. So, so here we go. God is in control. That’s today’s thing to remember. These are going to be simple lessons but their lessons, that I really think we need to hear every day. God is in control and I’m going to suggest you. These are lessons that Elijah also needed to hear. So the first one is, God is in control. Tomorrow’s is going to be that God hears prayer Wednesday is. This one’s kind of long?

16. 5:44

    God gives lessons that push us beyond our comfort zones. So God is actually going to put us in situations where we say. I know this is the right thing to do. But I don’t feel good about it, you know, this doesn’t feel like it’s what I should do, you know, and and it and it makes you a little uncomfortable. God gives lessons though these this discomfort comes with fantastic blessings.

17. 6:12

    God decides when it’s time for judgment and that’s a big one. And I think that I would suggest to you as Elijah’s this was the Crux of Elijah’s big problem. It wasn’t that the Judgment was bad, but it was that Elijah thought he could decide when it was supposed to come. So God decides when it’s time for judgment and finally on Sunday Saturday Saturday we’re going to say God doesn’t relent and this is something that I think is beautiful about the way that God works.

18. 6:41

    That we are basically going to see Elijah saying, no, it can’t be that way. God, that’s not okay. It can’t be like that and it’s almost like Elijah’s running and hitting his head against the wall over and over and over. And God says, no, it actually is and he brings him back over.

19. 6:54

    And Elijah says, no, and he runs away and hits his head against the wall and God says no, actually it is that way. And this is one of the Beautiful Things is that God says Elijah. You’ve devoted yourself to me. I’m not going to let you go. You know, I am going to teach you this and you’re going to learn it even if I have to take you and make you live in a cave, all by yourself. You will learn this lesson.

20. 7:19

    So we’re going to see that in the story of Elijah today. With ahab’s Israel, here’s the plan. We have three sections as always Jeroboams religion. So let’s discuss a little bit about jeroboam because that’s going to provide our context and the big reason that it provides a context is because Omri is ahab’s, father.

21. 7:42

    And Omri. We’re told does worse than anyone who came before? So we need to understand how bad jeroboam was so that we can therefore understand how bad Omri was. Because, you know what? It says when Ahab became king he did Worse than everyone who came before him, right? So, you know, it was like a chain of Badness, right? Like going up steps here.

22. 8:09

    So with Ahab, you actually get that he was worse than all murmuring. So as we put this together, what we want to be able to see is okay. Jeroboam was bad, Omri was bad bad and Ahab was bad, bad bad. All right, so that’s that’s what we’re going to see is we put this together. Now again, the Bible doesn’t show us cardboard characters. So we’re going to notice Yes, Ahab is painted as bad bad bad but there are good things he does. And that’s a helpful thing to recognize the main lesson is that God is in control.

23. 8:42

    And that education is powerful. I had to put that in, you know, as a teacher education is powerful. This is this is what God wants to use to change the World to Change lives. It’s not that you go up and you force somebody to change, but it’s that the word of God teaching. This is what changes things when we have these conversations about, what does it mean to follow God? I always like to have why questions? Where we ask, why is it like this? So here’s something to Stew on during this class why was Ahab worse than everyone else.

24. 9:20

    What made him so bad and in fact, you know, like, how do you define that Omri? Omri was bad bad. So, how do you get worse than bad bad? Like, what does that mean? Does that mean, you know, Omri worshipped Idols for like nine hours every day and a have worshipped them 10 hours. Like how do you, how do you define that? Like, what does it look like?

25. 9:43

    So, that’s what we want to try and figure out what, what made a have so bad. So as we start, let’s discuss jeroboam. All right, now let’s talk about his last name, jeroboam the son of nebat of nebat, who made Israel sin, right? So, this is the last name of jeroboam basically, you see it basically, every time he shows up, That would really be sad. I don’t know if you ever thought about that, but like, you know, if you were named like Jason, who was a loser or something like that, like that that’s essentially like, what what happens when it shows up with jeroboam. So he becomes jeroboam the son of nebat who made Israel sin, like the guy who messed up everything. Okay?

26. 10:25

    So that’s jeroboam. Now, let’s talk about how he did it. So, basically, if you look at almost every king of Israel, you will notice Is that there are described as walking in the sins of jeroboam, not all of them, so jeroboams not described that way. But I mean, that’s kind of obvious because he was jeroboam.

27. 10:46

    So he obviously walked in his own sins. Ela is not described that way, but all these other kings here are in addition. Let me show you the rest of the slides here. Here’s the other kings, you might want to just take a picture of that or I can send you the slides. So, you will notice so far we’ve seen Ela was not described as sinning after the way of jeroboam. So we have two kings.

28. 11:16

    Now, if you want to count jeroboam as well, we have three kings who are not described as following after the ways of jeroboam out of 18. That’s pretty bad. Oh sorry. There there’s Scioscia I forgot he was the last one. So you got three out of 19 Kings who are not directly associated with jeroboam sin.

29. 11:35

    However, if you look at, when God destroys Israel, here’s how he describes the destruction. Second Kings, 17 21 to 23. It says, when he had torn Israel from the House of David, they made jeroboam the son of nebat King, jeroboam drove Israel, from following the Lord, and made them commit. Great sin. The people of Israel walked in all the sins of jeroboam did. And look at this, they did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight.

30. 12:03

    So even though three of those kings are not described as following in jeroboam sin. God’s Divine summary here is that sin never stopped. That was always what was going on with Israel? okay, so as you can perhaps Envision on the Badness meter here, jeroboams sin, Would you agree it ranks? Pretty high, right?

31. 12:31

    Like this is this is not so good. Okay, well what we want to ask, then we’re always asking this question, why? Why was this so sticky? You know what made it so that every single king after jeroboam said, oh yeah those cows, you know those golden cows. Yeah. That’s good, right? You know that that I gotta do that.

32. 12:56

    Why, you know, it’s it just seems even kind of random like who actually wants to bow down to a golden cow anyway. Like But, for some reason, it had very strong sticking power. So why, and what, particularly was this sin? So let’s talk about what jeroboam ended up doing as we read this. See, if you notice, what is so Sneaky about what jeroboam does. Okay, we’re going to notice there’s there’s strong sneakiness here and that sneakiness makes jeroboam ‘s sin, very sticky, it makes it stay around. So, look for the sneakiness here, first, Kings 12, 26 to 29. I’m this isn’t the ESV, by the way. And jeroboam said, in his heart.

33. 13:43

    Now, the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to others to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord of Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord to rehoboam King of Judah. And they will kill me and return to riobamba King of Judah.

34. 13:58

    So the king had counsel and made two calves of gold. He said to the people you have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your God’s o Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt? He set one in Bethel and the other he put in An now, what do you notice? Anybody, you’re going to shout this out if you want. I don’t know if you feel comfortable with that or not, but I don’t mind.

35. 14:22

    What was that since like, the Wilderness outside of Sinai, you might notice. In fact, so you got two kinds of cold right. In addition, he says, behold your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt? Which I don’t know if you’re aware is actually a quote from Exodus 32. So, quote of Exodus 32 for when Aaron says that to the people. Now, here’s an interesting piece. When Erin says to the people, behold your Gods who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

36. 14:50

    Do you know what he says in the next verse he says, tomorrow is A feast unto Yahweh. That’s fascinating, right? Here’s this cow right. And Aaron says, oh, and by the way, everybody tomorrow, we’re going to dance around. We’re going to celebrate what Yahweh has done and everybody would be looking in there. Like, but Aaron that’s a cow, you know? Like what do you mean?

37. 15:14

    And for Aaron this wasn’t a oh, we’re going to make Idols because we know Idols have power. Everybody knew God. Delivered them from Egypt. And Aaron was saying, well, we haven’t seen Moses. We don’t know where Moses went. So let’s get a replacement. You know, let’s have something we can actually see touch.

38. 15:32

    So he says this Idol here, this represents Yahweh to us, so you can picture. Jeroboam is taking the power of that tradition and saying, oh no, this isn’t an idol. This is Yahweh. Okay, so that’s an interesting piece. What else do you notice about the sneakiness here? I got a little excited and underlined it. He puts one cow in Bethel and one and Dan. Now, if you’re aware of your Israel, geography Dan is in the north and Bethel is in the South. So you got Dan in the north Bethel in the South. Now, there’s a few other pieces here, these locations. Yes, we’re strategic because of their placement, but in addition to that Bethel, if you translates it, if you translate, it means House of God who named it that by the way. Jacob Wright.

39. 16:26

    Why did he name it that? Because he saw angels ascending and descending there. Now, can you picture this? Just put yourself in the shoes of like a faithful Israelite, right? You walk up to jeroboam and you’re like, jeroboam, are we supposed to Worship in Jerusalem? Jeroboam says, oh yeah. Yep, you are. But You can also Worship in Bethel. I mean, didn’t Jacob Wright?

40. 16:54

    Didn’t Jacob? See Angels ascending and descending and and didn’t he named it House of God right? And you can Picture People Say oh yeah. Oh yeah, that’s true. You know. And what about this jeroboam could even say something like? And if it’s good enough for Jacob, I’ve heard it’s good enough for me, right? So you can picture that.

41. 17:15

    Obviously, I’m not saying he said that but he could have right? He could have if you wanted to. So you see that in Genesis 28 17. That is where Jacob names at Bethel. He says, surely this is the house of God, are his words now? Dan is a little bit different. Dan is interesting, it was for hundreds of years, the site of another Tabernacle.

42. 17:36

    So you remember that weird story and judges where a woman says I’ve lost Eleven Hundred shekels of silver. Remember that? And her son comes up and he’s like, oh yeah, Mom, I stole them and she says wow. Blessed be our way, right? It’s really strange. And, and he says I’ll give them back to you.

43. 17:56

    And she says, thanks, son. Here, I’ll give you 200 of these shackles and you can make an idol. And he says, okay, you know, and he makes an idol and then the danites come they like besieges house, they take his Idol and he runs after them and he says, why did you take my idol?

44. 18:10

    And they’re like, go away or we might hurt you and he says, okay and he goes home. It’s really there’s a lot of weird stuff about the story anyway, the danites take the idol and They go up to lo and behold the city of Dan, it’s in judges 18 verse 30. They go up to the city of Dan and they say. We’re going to make a tabernacle with this idle at it and to legitimize the idol.

45. 18:36

    We are going to have a very important person as our priest. It’s just so happens to be Moses’s, grandson. So there’s another one of those, if it’s good enough for Moses grandson, it’s good enough for me, sort of deals. Now, again, all of this is Tainted with the whole. This is also Yahweh worshipped at the same time.

46. 19:02

    You know, when Micah’s mom says thanks for giving me back the money. She says, blessed, are you by Yahweh? My son. That’s judges. 17, blessed, are you by Yahweh? And then she says, I’m going to give you 200 of those shackles, but she specifically says, I’m going to give you 200 of them to dedicate to Yahweh and Michael makes an idol.

47. 19:21

    Now it probably wasn’t Here’s, you know, idle whatever bail, blah, blah, blah bail Mica or something. You know, it was this Idols, Yahweh, same kind of thing as the golden calf. And so, that’s why Micah, then does this whole thing to try and get a levite as his priest and he says, now God will bless me because I have a levite as my priest. So you can see all of this that this was Yahweh worship. So it was very sneaky in that, it wasn’t straight out idol worship.

48. 19:50

    If anybody came to jeroboam and said, well, wait a minute jeroboam, this isn’t right? He could say, oh, Wait. Wait, wait, wait. This is Yahweh. You know what? What kind of issues do you have with this? This is building on tradition. We’re building on Jacob on Moses. Like surely you don’t have any issues with them.

49. 20:08

    And he keeps the priesthood. In addition to that if you keep reading through First Kings 12, he allows anybody to be priests. So he keeps the priesthood, he just removes the exclusivity of it and he creates a feast like the Feast of Judah. Probably, the Feast of Tabernacles, he just moves it one month later, which by the way, also has a precedent in the law. Do you remember that?

50. 20:28

    Celebrating a feast one month later? That that was what you were allowed to do. I believe it’s numbers nine Numbers chapter 9 if you were unclean. So God actually said, you know, you can celebrate a feast one month later. So all of these things have connections to what they were actually allowed to do. The point of all of this is that jeroboam probably still stated that he was worshiping Yahweh and that’s an important piece. Therefore, I think we can back this up by the name of his son. Now, it’s important to grasp this. I Think.

51. 21:02

    In today’s society, we don’t think a whole lot of our names. You know, we name our kids like names that we think are cool and pretty and like sound nice but I don’t know. Maybe maybe you did when you were naming your child or your children. Maybe you thought about like what their name means or something like that.

52. 21:21

    But it was a little different back then, everybody spoke Hebrew, right? And if you gave, when you named your kid, it was basically, like you gave them a Hebrew sentence, as a name. So, for instance, abijah means, Yahweh is my father, A biter Yahweh is my father. Now if you were going to just tell somebody oh by the way, did you know, Yahweh is my father you want to know how you’d say it in Hebrew? It was abijah.

53. 21:55

    So names. in scripture, have a huge significance, I think a lot more than we think now, This kid was named by jeroboam, right? We think of him as the bad bad King, who made Israel sin, he named his son, Yahweh is my father. And so, every time people would talk to him they’d say, hey, Yahweh is my father. Can you, you know go clean your room or whatever, right? Like this, this would just be like imprinted on this kid’s head.

54. 22:29

    Yahweh is my father, you always my father? So I think that’s important, you know, it would be like, if you named your son, Michael, he, who is like God, right? It would be like, if you always just called him that sort of calling him Michael, you I said, hey, he who is like God, Right, it makes a big difference. Okay, so that’s jeroboam so you can see yes bad because he made every mess everybody up.

55. 22:54

    But weirdly enough there was still this, like aspect of Yahweh Worship in it. So let’s talk about Omri. So things start to change with him ahab’s. Dynasty starts, one generation earlier, with Omri Omri, takes the leadership during a Civil War. I don’t know how much you thought about like the history of Israel but it’s really weird. So let’s let’s get introduced to a few characters here. The king at the time was Ela, Ela does not rain for very long. He is the son of bay Asha, which probably doesn’t mean a whole lot because they didn’t really do anything important. So they Asha Ela, they were the Kings Eli’s, the king at the time, Omri is a commander of the Army zimri is a leader of the Cavalry.

56. 23:39

    So these are two like Warriors and the king at the top. Okay, we’re good. That make sense to you, or your king at the top, okay. Zimri decides to start a rebellion against Ela. He goes, and he kills Ela and his whole family. So I don’t think we often let the sink in a lot when we’re reading scripture.

57. 24:03

    But can you imagine that kind of thing taking place, you know, that that would throw a nation into chaos like the leader gets assassinated and not just the leader, but their whole family by the leader of the Cavalry. Okay? So that happened. What then takes place is zimri says, you can figure this part out, right?

58. 24:25

    I’m now King. Okay. Well maybe peace will come back. Not Anarchy. That’s not really how it goes though. Because the people then say, yeah, but zimri, we don’t like you, right? You know, you leave the Cavalry, whatever zimri. We don’t think you’re very good. We don’t actually want you as the leader. So the people say, no zimri. You’re not the king even though now he’s in the palace. So think about the chaos here, Zim reason the palace the people say no no no that’s not gonna work. Work.

59. 24:50

    Actually, we want Omri as the king. So now you have the leader of the Cavalry against the leader of the army. This would be like, I don’t know what the Air Force versus the Marines or something like it. It’s that’s bad, right? You really don’t want that to happen in the country. You’re living in like you, you hope that that the Armed Forces will provide stability and stead of fighting one another? And that’s what’s going on here, okay, so Omri then says, okay, well, how about this?

60. 25:20

    This is Emory, I’ll come in besiege you in the palace and zimri says, oh yeah. Well, I have a plan and zimri lights. The palace on fire and dies. That’s what he does. He reigns for a grand total of seven days. Okay. Now, if you were an Israelite, you’d say who glad that didn’t last very long Civil War is done, you know?

61. 25:43

    Now there’s going to be peace, but guess what? There isn’t because what then goes on to happen is war continues. Another guy shows up named Tiffany and Tiffany says, Omri. I don’t want you to be king. Let’s fight this out and half of Israel, says, yeah, actually, that’s a good idea, whatever, that was about so half of them.

62. 26:05

    Follow Armory, half of them, follow Tiffany. And now there’s Civil War for four years. So here’s how you can. Here’s how you can time this. First king 16:15, says, in the 27th year of Asa, king of Judah. So you’ll notice the stability by the way of Judah. 27 years here, zimri rain, for how long seven days, right?

63. 26:29

    27th year of Asa zimri, rain seven days. Okay, so zimri becomes king in the 27th year of Asa. And finally, Omri puts down all these rebellions and he becomes king in the First year of Asa. So, there’s Civil War for approximately four years. Okay, so that’s the situation in Israel. So now you ask, you know, Omri brings a little bit of stability, but somehow he’s worse than all those who had come before him now, maybe just because he brings Civil War, you know, and that’s clearly not awesome. Here’s how scripture describes it. Omri did, what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did more evil than all who were before him for. He walked in the way of jeroboam the son of nebat, so he did that.

64. 27:19

    And in the sins that he made, Israel sin provoking, the Lord, the god of Israel to anger by their idols now, if you just said that verse, What, what would you take out of that? How How is he worse? It’s it’s kind of weird, right? Because he it says he was worse than everybody because he walked in the way of jeroboam and you’re kind of like well wait a minute. How does walking in the way of jeroboam make him worse than jeroboam?

65. 27:55

    Okay, I think maybe we have a hint. There’s one place outside of the historical record that mentions Armory. And notice what it connects him with here. Says for you have kept the statutes of Omri and all the works of the House of Ahab. This is Micah 6:16 and you have walked in their councils that I may make you a desolation and your inhabitants a hissing.

66. 28:22

    So you shall bear. The scorn of my people, you notice what a connection with connects him with. Ahab. All right, it connects him with Ahab which is interesting. because, In the time of a have we definitely get more fervent false worship. So false worship becomes a bigger deal in the time of Ahab.

67. 28:47

    So First Kings, 18 19. Look at this. This is what Elijah says to Ahab. Now, therefore, send and gather all Israel to me a Mount Carmel, the 450 prophets of Baal, and the four hundred prophets of asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table, so they were 850 false prophets and they ate at Jezebel’s table.

68. 29:09

    Now, here’s why that’s interesting. Back then eating at somebody’s table. Didn’t just mean you know you walked up and you got some food and you ate it or something, it was perhaps a Hebrew idiom. This is it in the Hebrew? Oh, clay, she’ll con which means eight at the table. But it shows up in a number of different passages. Most notably in second Samuel chapter 9, it says up three times.

69. 29:37

    Now, you might remember because this was a reading, two days ago, who was told they would eat at David’s table. Mephibosheth. And what did that mean? That he would eat there? It meant mephibosheth. You’re going to be one of my son’s now. Didn’t just mean, you know, you’re going to come and sit here because I feel sorry for you.

70. 30:01

    It meant you’re going to come here and you’re going to eat with all the rest of my family. I’m adopting you into my family. So the fact that we get this phrase about the prophets of Baal and asherah at Jezebel’s table. I think indicates that false worship became so much more fervent at that time. So that’s one way.

71. 30:22

    False worship became a lot bigger deal. This was like family. Okay. So perhaps that began during the time of Omri. In addition, here’s what Micah goes on to say. So Micah 6 verses 11 and 12. Listen, see if you pick up what was going on at the time. It says, shall I equip the man with Wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights.

72. 30:44

    So remember Micah said you’re following the statutes of Omri? Shall I quit the man with Wicked scales? And with a bag of deceitful weights, your rich men are full of violence. Your inhabitants speak lies. Their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. So you see what’s going on. The place is full of violence.

73. 31:04

    People are attacking each other destroying each other and would you say that describes the time of honoree? I’d say, so right, a civil war. So you have deceitful weights you have lies violence and this is how Micah keeps describing that time. So Micah 7 verses 2 to 4 they set says the goodly has perish from the earth.

74. 31:26

    There is no one upright among mankind. They all lie in wait for blood and each hunts the other with a net. Their hands are on what is evil to do it. Well The Prince and the judge asked for a bribe, the great man mutters the evil desire of his soul. Thus, they weave it together.

75. 31:44

    The best of them is like a briar, right? That’s that’s a pretty terrible description, right? The best of them is like a briar, the most upright of them. A thorn hedge, the day of your Watchman of your punishment has come. Now, their confusion is a hand. So you can see this was not a good time because people were terrible to each other. And so that is how God describes the time of Omri. They’re lying in, wait for blood and hunting the other with a net, okay?

76. 32:13

    So perhaps in the time of jeroboam The vestiges of Truth. You know, this like these pieces of Yahweh worship, we’re almost functioning as like a stopgap. Sort of holding things back. and when you get to the time of Omri and Ahab that all starts to disintegrate, That disappears during a rain and the violence that characterized his Ascent, characterizes the whole rain.

77. 32:40

    And so, you’ll notice the contrast in the sons names. So jeroboam name to send a budget which means Yahweh is my father, right? Omri names his son, check this out Ahab this is really important. This is a quick Hebrew lesson if you want to say love and Hebrew, you say aha have. Okay I have That is not Ahab.

78. 33:05

    Okay, a halves name was not love. That would be like a total, you know, weird irony. It has name is not love. I’ll have it has name was OCH of. Are you gonna get that sound? Aha, which makes it a different word? It’s not a hobby, it’s octave. So, the reason that that’s important is, it doesn’t mean love.

79. 33:26

    It means my father is my brother. In other words, Omri says, I want my son to be just like me. You’ll notice the difference, right? My father is Yahweh versus my father is my brother So, you can see the difference in the names of their kids. So this is all about Omri and preserving his own way.

80. 33:46

    So, Ahab, basically does the same thing, but gets even worse. So, let’s talk about that. We got 10 minutes, so Ahab and Jezebel continue the antagonism towards God, but they actually do worse. And what we’re going to see is that they basically find what are all the things that the law says, now, let’s do the opposite.

81. 34:04

    So this is how it goes. Ahab, is worse than all, who were before him. How well he takes for his wife, Jezebel the daughter of f Bell King of the sidonians. Now, that’s the exact opposite of what the law commands. You weren’t supposed to take a foreign wife like that. So, Exodus 34 16 Excess 34:16 Deuteronomy 73, Joshua 23:12 makes it. They’ll make a very clear, no foreign wives can’t do that. So that’s 34:16 of Exodus Deuteronomy 73. Joshua 23:12. in addition to that, it says a had then went on to erect an altar for bail in the house of bail, which he built in Samaria and you made an asherah That’s also against the law.

82. 34:50

    No making Bales know making asherah it says their Exodus 34 13. You can’t do that Deuteronomy 75. You can’t do that Deuteronomy 12 3. You can’t do that. We know those things. Now What’s significant though is a lot of Kings broke the law. You perhaps won’t be surprised to know. Jeroboam did the same things.

83. 35:14

    Jeroboam married, a foreign wife, jeroboam also set up a stream so that would be the plural of asherah. So he set up a stream you’ll find that in First Kings, 14 15. So again, you have to ask What major bone worse? How are sorry, what made a have worse? Again we’re told to provoke the Lord, the god of Israel, to anger. Well, that’s said about jeroboam and First Kings 19, our first Kings 14 9 and 15 that he provoked, Yahweh to anger, they Asha.

84. 35:47

    Same thing said about him. And first King, 16 Ela? The same thing said about him and First Kings 16 amarilla, same thing said about him. So, What’s the big deal?

85. 35:59

    What do they have do? Well. A had probably worshiped Idols more than anyone else. But I think that’s why the last verse of this chapter matters. So much get this. Have you ever read through first King 16 and wondered? Why does this just suddenly show up? So if you’re reading First Kings 16, you get this whole story about zimri burning himself up.

86. 36:24

    I’m retaking over the Civil War, all this like back and forth and then they had becomes king and then it says he married Jezebel They did all these things. They weren’t supposed to and then just like randomly you get. In his days, Heil of Bethel, built Jericho, he laid its foundation at the cost of a buyer on his firstborn set up. Its gates at the cost of his youngest son, see gub according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Joshua, the son of nun, and that’s how the chapter ends. What like here’s all this stuff going on Israel. Everybody’s fighting down at a everybody’s bad. Oh and by the way, somebody tried to rebuild Jericho, but he couldn’t and his kids died and you’re like, Why is that there? You know what, what’s the point of that? What, why does the story just suddenly end with this? Okay, that’s a bunch of question marks. Okay.

87. 37:19

    So on top of that, not only is it just kind of weird that it’s there. The story also makes no sense. Right. What’s up with this a guy who’s like? Oh my firstborn son, just died when I laid the foundation of Jericho, I think I’ll keep doing it. Oh my next kid died.

88. 37:35

    When I put it the gates. Oh well you know oh my next kid died. Right? Like like this doesn’t make any sense and then he does it until all of his kids are dead. Nobody who is like a sensible logical person would do this. So, what’s going on?

89. 37:54

    Why did Joshua put the curse on Jericho in the first place? I think that’s an interesting question. All right, here’s my suggestion Jericho’s. The first city that Israel takes. Do you remember what God says about it? Everything in Jericho was devoted to destruction, it was devoted to God. I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered, you know, why it wasn’t like that in any of the other cities. Everything was devoted to destruction. So everything they saw even blankets clothes, all of that, had to be destroyed, why?

90. 38:28

    I think the reason is, This was the first God wants to make it clear. We are not going back to this. You come take the city. This is what I think about Kanan. You’re not going to have this worship. You’re not going to take any of it with you, destroy everything and so a can take some, right?

91. 38:46

    And so Aiken has to die, because God wants to make it clear, none of this will ever be in your camp. Okay. So then Joshua curses Jericho and says, you will never be rebuilt because what it symbolizes, Israel’s conquest of the land, we are getting rid of this way of life and we are going to start a Godly way of life. So with that, in mind, Any thoughts on what’s going on when somebody rebuilds Jericho?

92. 39:19

    I think this guy Heil was advocating, let’s go back to this and as his kids are dying, he says, you know, I want to go back to the so bed, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter that there’s a curse. We are bringing this all back and that I think is why it’s there.

93. 39:39

    Because the question is, what makes Ahab so bad? And God says, well, let me give you an example. In his reign. People cared so much about this violent anti-god. Way of life. That they were willing to sacrifice their families for it. They were willing to sacrifice everything for it. And that’s that whole story of Jericho, that’s why it’s there about being rebuilt. So, this Becomes.

94. 40:10

    This is all the stuff I just said it happened. Jezebel didn’t just worship idols more than everybody else. I think, what we see is they’re actually trying to reverse God’s rule. They’re trying to rebuild Jericho, they’re trying to bring it all back. It’s not just oh here’s a cow that represents Yahweh. It’s no no no. We don’t want Yahweh anymore.

95. 40:30

    It was anti Yahweh. This is the big change. So you might remember. That one of the things that happens. Is that Obadiah hides? A hundred prophets of Yahweh. You remember why he had to do that? Because Jezebel was hunting them down. This is the first time we read about anything like that jeroboam tries to capture one prophet of God, it’s one time that he does that he tries to capture him and it doesn’t work. He tries and the prophet curses jeroboam and his arm like shrivels up.

96. 41:05

    It’s a funny story. Has his arms shrivels up and jeroboam like freaks out and says, Ah, please pray to Yahweh to heal my arm and the prophets like. Okay. So he prays and then jeroboam says, you want to come and eat dinner with me, right? Like it’s, it’s her again, a strange story, but it shows, Shows you there was not this hostility to Yahweh at that point. With Jezebel, there was kill all the prophets of Yahweh. She says to Elijah, May the gods do so and more to me if you are still alive by this time tomorrow, right, there was this intense hostility.

97. 41:39

    Now what I really want to bring out this is our main message as we wrap this up in the last few minutes. God is in control. So, can you picture the situation? Can you picture being Elijah and looking out and seeing that the leadership in the country is killing Believers and actively hunting them down?

98. 42:03

    Can you see why Elijah said things? Like only I am left. You can imagine how he felt that way. Now he wasn’t right. But here’s what’s fascinating about that. God says to him, Elijah, get wrong. You aren’t the only one. And in fact, I have this all under control on. I always have Do you know how God illustrates that? This is what I think is fantastic about the story. In the Elijah story, there’s one chapter we never look at. So, we always talk about Elijah and the Ravens Elijah living by the Brook.

99. 42:41

    All of this Elijah on the Widow. We talk about Mount, Carmel and Fire coming down from heaven. We talked about naboth, new boss, Vineyard Elijah saying you know if I’m a prophet of God but Fire come down from heaven and burn up these 50 men, all of this. How about this do you remember this story about? Elijah the story where A prophet comes to Ahab and says a have you’re going to win against the syrians. And they have says, okay and he fights the syrians and defeats them.

100. 43:06

     Do you remember that story? You might not, maybe you do its first Kings chapter 20, it’s a real Bible story. I didn’t just make it up. So if you want to look it up. Its first Kings 20, and the reason we don’t often think about it is because Elijah’s not in it. But that’s the story where everything changes.

101. 43:24

     It’s fascinating Elijah’s life goal is I’m going to convert a head. I’m going to convert a have you know how they have converts in a story where Elijah is not even there. And I think that’s so like God. Yeah, he says Elijah. I’m going to use you but you gotta understand. I’m the one who’s running this, I’m the one who knows when things are going to happen and so God changes Ahab in First Kings, 20.

102. 43:51

     So that, by the time you get to the story of naboth, get this Jezebel says, we’re going to accuse naboth. Do you know what they say? They say naboth. Cursed God. What can you imagine that like happening before the story of First Kings? 20? Maybe I’ll curse God. Why would anybody care? You know, they didn’t like, God.

103. 44:14

     And in fact, she uses Deuteronomy and she brings two witnesses against him. she in fact basis, what she does off the law and in 1st Kings 21 Ahab, humbles himself and repents. So I think it’s amazing to see, but the whole point of this is God is in control. And as we see things that scare us as it feels like, things are bad. Things are getting worse.

104. 44:46

     The point that we get from this is Elijah says, I better fix it. I better be the one to save everything and God says, no. That’s my job. Your job is to recognize. That I’m in control. And I’ll fix it. I’ll take care of it. If you can wait. If you can wait for my timing and so that’s what we’re going to see as we see Elijah and the drought tomorrow.