Right now, I am His and He is
mine is my favorite hymn. Next week it might be something
else, but right now that is. Alright, 1 Kings. Thank you Scott
for reading that. I know it was lengthy, but I
want to preach from this whole chapter. 1 Kings chapter 20. Now here is another question
that was asked by the Lord in verse 13. Behold, there came a prophet
unto Ahab, king of Israel, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou
seen all this great multitude? The enemy Ben-Hadad, he was the
king of Syria, and he came up against Israel with a well-fortified,
massive army. There was 127,000 soldiers that he came up against
Israel with. It says, plus horses and chariots. In our day, they'd be like saying,
plus fighter jets and B-1 bombers. They think at least 4,000 chariots. That was the main artillery in
that day. A massive enemy came up against
them and Ben-Hadad was proud. He was secure in all his numbers
and proud and feared nothing, absolutely nothing. Now Israel
on the other hand, it was a different story. God had reduced Israel
down to a very small remnant. It was all that was left. And
yet God said in verse 13, Behold, I will deliver it into thine
hand this day. And thou shalt know that I am
the Lord. Now during the first battle,
the Lord made it so that the king of Israel and his remnant
sent this giant army retreating. It says they went out, 7,000
men and these 232 captains, and they went out and said every
man slew his man. Everybody they came up against,
they slew them. And when the enemy saw that, the rest of the
army retreated. They left. Ben-Hadad did too. They all retreated. But then
Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, blasphemed God. He called His servants and
all His people, they called Him the God of the hills. rather
than God of the plains and the valleys. And they said, that's
why we didn't defeat them. We couldn't operate our chariots
in the hills like we can in the plains. Let's get them out in
the plains. It would be a different story. We'll whip them then. We'll get them out in the plains.
So they said, why don't you do this? Take those kings away.
Those 32 kings were 32 kings of 32 different nations and all
their armies that were having to fight under Ben-Hadad, because
he had taken them captive. He said, ìTake those kings away
and put your own skilled captains in their place, and letís put
the army back together, horse for horse, chariot for chariot,
and letís go back into the plains and it will be a different story.î
And in the verse 27 it says, ìAnd the children of Israel pitched
before them like two little flocks of kids. There was nothing to
them, but the Syrians filled the country.î And there came
a man of God and spake unto the king of Israel and said, Thus
saith the Lord. I'm seeing a pattern here. This
thing of the Lord sending His Word through His messenger and
His messenger saying, Thus saith the Lord. This seems like it's
becoming important to this passage, doesn't it? And what did he say? He said, because Syrians have
said the Lord is God of the hills and He is not God of the valleys,
therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thy
hand and you shall know that I am the Lord. And they pitched
over one against another and when it came, the children of
Israel slew of the Syrians a hundred thousand footmen in one day.
That is a major victory. You know that? 7,000 men and 213 leaders slew 100,000
footmen. And to make us understand that
God did the delivering, the 27,000 that were left went back into
the city to retreat and a wall fell on them and they died. And
they died. So Ben-Hadad fled and he's the
only one that was left out of that army. There's more people
back in the city, more servants back in the city, but he's the
only one left out of that 127,000 people that God said, I will
deliver them all into your hand. He's the only one left. God's
appointed him to death. And the Lord commanded Ahab to
slay him. He commanded him to slay him.
Ahab was to obey the word of the Lord and slay him. But he
didn't. He didn't. See, the enemy, Ben-Hadad,
he came, sent his servants out there dressed up in symbols that
symbolized repentance and humility. And they came to Ahab, bowed
down, and they were just listening to hear anything Ahab would say.
They were going to catch anything they could say that they could
use for their advantage. And when they asked him, they
said, Ben-Hadad says, let me live. He prayed that he would
let me live. And he said, he is my brother. And they caught that. Now he
wasn't his brother Israelite. He was his brother in the sense
they were both kings. Ahab regarded his royalty more
than he regarded any worship of God. And he called him his
brother. And they caught that and they
said, oh yes, he's your brother. And he said, ìBring him to me.î
And so he came there. And when he got there, Ahab pulls
up in his chariot. I mean, Ben-Hadad pulls up in
his chariot. Tell me if youíve ever heard
this. Heís the loser. Ahabís the victor. Ben-Hadadís
coming to surrender. Ben-Hadad pulls up in his chariot. And a symbol of extending friendship,
he tells Ahab, ìGet up here in my chariot with me.î And then
he tells Ahab, ìNow hereís what Iíll do. He's given him conditions
of surrender. That ain't how it works. He said,
here's what I'll do. I'll restore to you what my father
took away from you and you can build cities in that. And Ahab
realized that's going to be some personal profit coming to me.
I'm going to get rich off this deal. And so like a true politician,
instead of obeying God's Word, he said, I'm going to let you
live. And I'm going to enter a covenant
with you. And from here on out, we're brothers." And he let him
go. He let him go. And so, once again, the Lord
sent forth his prophet, verse 42. And he said unto him, Thus
saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a
man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life
shall go for his life, and thy people for his people. And the
king of Israel went to his house heavy, Do you know what he had
been better off doing? Going to God's house and not
being mad, but repenting. And not being displeased against
God's messenger, but rejoicing that it brought him to repentance.
But instead he went to his house heavy and displeased and came
to Samaria. Ahab was a wicked king. He never
once believed God. Not ever. Our subject this morning
is the necessity of obeying God's Word. And here's my point. It's absolutely necessary, absolutely
necessary that we obey the Word of God. Absolutely necessary. Now first of all, the Word of
God we are to obey is to believe on His Son. We're not living
in the age that Ahab lived in. Now Ahab, let me read something
here, this just came to me. Let me read you something. This
describes the age Ahab lived in. Let's see if I can find this
real quick. Hebrews 2, it says this. It says, the word spoken by angels
was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompense of reward. That was that old covenant time
that Ahab lived in. But now listen to what it says
now concerning the gospel of Christ. How shall we escape if
we neglect so great salvation which at the first began to be
spoken by the Lord and was confirmed to us by them that heard Him,
God also bearing them witness with signs and wonders and different
miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to His own will.
So you see, just as Ahab was to obey the word of the Lord
in his day or suffer, we are to obey the gospel in our day
or suffer. What does the Gospel teach us?
What is the Gospel Word of God that we are to obey? Some men
came to Christ one time and they said, what works must we do to
be saved? And the Lord said this, this is the work of God. Stop
working your way to God and believe on Him whom He hath sent. A man in his nature He can be
religious and he'll do any work you give him to do to work his
way to God. You tell him to stop working
and believe on Christ, that's the one work he can't do. It's
not a work. He's being ironic. You've got
to stop working trying to come to God and believe on Christ.
A man by nature can't do that. We have a greater enemy than
Ben-Hadad. It's a greater army than they came up against. God
Himself is our enemy if we meet God under the curse of the law.
And you talk about an enemy. God Himself is our enemy if we
meet God under the curse of the law. And our own selves are our
enemy. And not only that, Satan and
all his seed in this world and powers and principalities and
rulers of the darkness that we can't even see are our enemies.
And sin, death and hell are our enemies. We have a greater enemy
than Ben-Hadad and his army. But Christ Jesus the Lord is
the faithful king. He's nothing like Ahab. He's
the faithful king. In eternity, God the Father promised
Christ that He would deliver all His enemies into His hand.
He came to him just like He came to Ahab and He said, you see
all this great host before you? I'll deliver it all into your
hands. And you'll know I'm the Lord. I'll deliver it all into
your hand. He said this to his son entering covenant with his
son. And his son said, Who shall rule this battle? Who's going
to strike first and rule this battle and lead my people? And
God the Father said, You will. You will. And we see down there
now, when Ahab showed Benedad mercy, He showed him mercy. It was in disobedience to God,
because it was against God's Word, which is God's Law. Anything that comes out of God's
mouth is His Law, it's His Word. And it was against His Word,
it was against His Law. And so when that prophet came
to him, verse 39, he said, Thy life for his life, or else thou
shalt pay a talent of silver to redeem life. And in order
for God's law to be honored, when our Lord said, I'm going
to deliver this host into your hand, and He entered into covenant
with His Son, the condition was, you're going to lead the battle.
And the way you're going to win the warfare for your people is,
you're going to go forth and honor My law. Because all those
that God will show mercy, the law says, we have to die. And so before Christ could come
to you and me and give us mercy, What's he got to do? He's got
to obey God's Word. He's got to fulfill that law.
He's got to give His life for our life. Then He can show us mercy because
God's Word has not been disobeyed. His law has been fulfilled. He's
been honored. Then He can show us mercy. Do
you get that? Do you see that? This is the whole deal here,
because Ahab showed mercy at the expense of God's Word, His
Law. He dishonored God, and so God
said, I'm killing you. It's your life or His life. But
Christ then recovered and came forth and said, I'll give my
life for thy life, so that I can honor Your Word, and it won't
be dishonored, and you won't be dishonored, and I can show
them mercy. And so that's what Christ did.
When the time came, the price of our redemption from the curse
of the law, it wasn't silver and it wasn't gold. It was the
precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ as a lamb without blemish
and without spot. His precious blood. And He came,
and by His obedience, He redeemed His people by His blood from
the curse of the law. That means God's honored, His
law's honored, His word, every word He's ever spoken about Christ,
any promise He's ever given to His children, every word of this
book's been accomplished by Christ and honored by Christ, and God's
whole moral law, His ceremonial law, everything's been honored
by Christ. And when he did it, his people
did it. When he did it, all his people
in his loins did it. Do you remember when Scripture
says Levi, who was born years and years and years after Abraham,
it said when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, Levi paid tithes
to Melchizedek because he was in Abraham's loins. Abraham was
going to have a son, and he was going to have a son, and he was
going to have a son, and all down the line, one day Levi would
be born. That meant Levi was in Abraham's
loins. And God said, and Levi paid tithes
when Abraham paid tithes. We, all God's people, whom He
chose and gave to Christ in eternity, were in Christ when He came forth
and obeyed God, and we obeyed God in Him. We did everything
He did. We honored God's Word in Him.
Salvation and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
it's not by our obedience to the law of God. I wish I could
get that through to people. It's not by our obedience to
the law of God that salvation and sanctification and redemption
are accomplished. Romans 4, 2. If Abraham were
justified by works, if he was justified by keeping the law,
he would have whereof to glory. but nobody is going to glory
before God. What says the Scripture? Abraham
believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. The
righteousness of Christ was imputed to him through faith in Christ. Christ who was Abraham's righteousness. Who was that that came to Abraham
and Scripture says, preach the Gospel to Abraham? I don't know
if He sent a man to preach the Gospel to Abraham or not. Maybe
He did, I don't know. But I do know this, just like
He does us, Christ came through that preaching and spoke to Abraham
in His heart and He told Abraham, you see all this great multitude
of your enemies, Abraham? See all this great host of your
enemies? I will deliver them all into your hand and you will
know this day I am the Lord. He comes to you and me in the
time of His grace and He speaks this word. And He makes you behold
all your enemies. And you see them. You're like
two little flocks of kids. And there's this great host of
enemies that's against you. Your own sin, God's wrath, Satan
and his seed and death and hell and sin and everything. And you
say, I can't overcome this enemy. And then He says to you, I will
deliver it all into your hand. And He brings you to Cast your
care upon Him. The difference between Abraham
and Ahab was Christ conquered Abraham. He defeated that enemy
in Abraham, his own sin, his own sinful self. It brought him
to believe on Christ. If we're going to obey God by
believing on Christ, we're going to have to first repent from
our works and from our doing and come to Christ asking mercy
from Him. Look down here at what the servants
told Ben-Hadad, verse 31. His servants said unto him, Behold
now, we've heard... Have you heard? Have you heard? Heard what, preacher? That the
kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings. Have you
heard that the King of Israel, Christ Jesus the Lord, is the
merciful King? He is the Father of mercies.
Have you heard that? He is the King who shows mercy.
And they said, let us, I pray thee, put sackcloth on our loins
and ropes upon our heads and go out to the King of Israel.
What did that mean? Sackcloth. It was an old rough
cloth that was ugly. They are going to take off their
pretty garments. and put this old ugly sackcloth
on around their loins. And they're going to put ropes
around their necks and go out to Him. They're saying by that,
we're nothing. We're nobody. We're not able
to do a thing to defeat you or to come into your presence. We're
not worthy of you at all. But we're coming to you as your
servants with these ropes around our neck. And we're begging you. We're praying you. Let us live. Have mercy on us. The mercy Ahab showed was disobedience
to God when they did that to him. But Christ laid down His life
for His people and everybody that comes to Him begging mercy.
This is what Christ says to them. Look down at verse 32. He said,
He is my brother. That was sin in Ahab. It won't
be sin when Christ says it to you who come to Him for mercy.
He's the firstborn among many brethren. The whole purpose for
which He came is that He might get all the praise as the head
of God's family who came and saved all His brothers and sisters.
He's the elder brother. He's the brother. Verse 33, "...and
He caused him to come up into His chariot." That's friendship
and reconciliation. You see, God's in Christ. He's reconciled His people to
Himself. And He's going to come and put
the Word in the heart of His people and cause you to be reconciled
to Him. And we're going to be friends
in the same chariot. That's what He does. That's what
Christ does. Ben-Hadad came saying what He would restore. Christ
comes and tells us what He has restored for us. And He enters
into a covenant with us just like Ahab did with him. Here's
the difference. There was something Ben Hadad
was going to have to do. He was going to have to restore
some things himself of his own hand. Christ comes and enters
the covenant and says, it's all finished. Everything that God's
Word demanded of you, I have fulfilled. It's all finished.
It's done. Sinner come to Christ, repentant,
asking mercy, believing on Him. His thoughts are not your thoughts.
He will have mercy on you. Listen to this, when the gospel
was preached to Abraham, by God's effectual grace, it says, he
staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but
he was strong in faith, giving glory to God. He came in sackcloth. He came with a rope around His
neck. That's giving God all the glory. Coming in faith to God,
trusting God, knowing trusting God will give you mercy. That's
coming to God, giving God the glory. Why did He do that? He
was fully persuaded that what God had promised, God was able
to do. Are you persuaded that what God
has promised, salvation is a promise? Trust me, I'll work it all out
for you and bring you and present you to God and you'll be spotless
and without blemish. That's Christ's Word. That's
His promise. Do you believe He's able to do what He says? That's
what faith does. Faith is fully persuaded that
what He's promised, He's able to perform. And therefore, it
was imputed to Him for righteousness. That righteousness Christ had
made Him as His surety was imputed to Abraham as His righteousness. Because it was His righteousness.
Through faith. You believe on Christ and the
righteousness of Christ will be imputed to you. It's written,
it wasn't for His sake alone that it was imputed, but for
us also to whom it shall be imputed if we believe on Him that raised
up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses
and raised again for our justification. You know, if you want to call
faith a condition, I don't have a problem to do that. You know,
salvation is unconditional. Christ has done everything and
He gives you the faith to believe Him. But it's necessary. You're
going to have to believe on Him. I'm going to have to trust Christ
if I'm going to be saved. And you're going to have to believe
on Christ if you'll be saved. That means that faith and trust
in Him is putting down all our works. Faith has said, I don't
trust in Me at all. Trust in Him. And that's what
the Lord brings His people to do. So that's the first word,
brethren. The first word of God we must
obey is this gospel of Christ. If we don't believe Him, we'll
end up just like Ahab did right here. Now here's the second thing
that we must obey. When the Spirit of God has effectually
called us to faith in Christ, when He's already called us to
faith in Christ, we're to obey the Lord's Word by fighting this
fight of faith, trusting King Jesus alone. That means once
you enter into faith, trust in Christ, you don't say, well,
I got that out of the way, now I'm going to go back and never
come darken the door of the church house and live like hell the
rest of my life. No. It means you continue in Christ.
You come hear Christ. You rejoice in Christ. You unite
with Christ's people. You follow Christ and His Word
because we depend on Christ. We're God's chosen remnant sent
forth to do battle with the great enemies in this world. God's
elect whom He shall call out. They're enemies in their minds
right now by wicked works. You know how He's going to fix
that? He's going to purge their conscience through the blood
of Christ. You know how He's going to do that? Through the
preaching of this gospel right here. That's why we're here.
That's why we're left here. Why did God conquer this enemy
for wicked Ahab? He didn't do it. Why did God
conquer this people for this wicked king who didn't believe
Him? He didn't do it for the wicked king. Who did He do it
for? Verse 15 says, All the children
of Israel were 7,000. God told Elisha in 1 Kings 19.18,
He said, I've left me 7,000 in Israel, all the knees which have
not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him.
God said, I've got 7,000 chosen people in Israel. Now, I'm not
suggesting to you that that was the exact 7,000 that God had
elected. There might have been more. I
don't know. But I am telling you this. With it being that
close in connection, it's to remind you and me, everything
God's doing in this world right now, everything Christ our conquering
King is doing from Heaven's glory through His people in this earth
right now, is not for the kings in the nations of this world.
It's for His elect scattered throughout this world. That's
what He's doing everything for. That's why this world's held
in store. And He is going to call every one of them out. Even
so, at this present time also, there is a remnant according
to the election of grace. So that is who we are sent forth
to conquer. Because there are enemies in
their minds right now, dead in sin. And this Word is going to
be the Word by which He gives them life. And then the rest
of the world, they are enemies of God as well. And they are
going to be conquered through our Gospel too. You know how? God is going to harden their
hearts. further harden their hearts with it, because they
hardened their own heart and wouldn't believe Him. He's going to conquer every enemy,
every one of them. When God told Ahab He'd deliver
the enemy into His hand, Ahab said, verse 14, he said, by whom? And he said, ìThus saith the
Lord, even by the young men of the princes of the provinces.î
Look at verse 15. ìThen he numbered the young men
of the princes of the provinces, and they were two hundred and
thirty-two. And after them he numbered all
the people, even all the children of Israel, and they were seven
thousand.î You know what these two hundred and thirty young
men of the princes were? Young men of the princes. You know
how you have senators and they have pages? that are working
for free and just doing their bidding and whatever they tell
them to do, they go do it. Young folks that are trying to
get into politics, that's what these men were. They didn't know
a thing about fighting. They didn't know a thing about
battle. They weren't soldiers. And God said, that's what I'm
going to use to lead the army. And there weren't but 232 of
them. And then of all the children
that he was going to use to fight in the battle, there wasn't but
7,000 against 127,000. What's God showing us here? What's He using these people
to paint us a picture of here? God hath chosen the foolish things
of the world to confound the wise. God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which are mighty,
base things of the world, things which are not, yea, to bring
to naught things that are. Why? That no flesh shall glory
in His presence. When they get done, they had
to say, God delivered them into our hand. There is no way we
could have done this on our own. And just to show it, God made
sure 27,000 men escaped back to the city and then God knocked
a building down on them and killed them. To show you, I did this,
you didn't do this. Well, He's left us together and
we have to be a little small, foolish, weak, ignorant, not
mighty little band, a little remnant to go forth and spread
this Gospel in the world so that we don't glory in our flesh for
anything that gets done. We glory in the Lord alone. That's
why he's using the remnant he's using. That's why he put us here.
Ahab asked another question, verse 14. Then he said, Who shall
order the battle? Who's going to strike and who's
going to lead and who's going to command these men? And the
Lord answered, Thou. Who else would lead the children
of Israel and be their conquering commander than the King of Israel? Thou will. Who else shall lead
God's true spiritual Israel and conquer all His enemies through
His gospel but Christ, the King of Israel? Christ is working
right now in this world just as real as He did when He walked
this earth. He's doing it through His preachers. Was He working
that day? Was He working there? How did
He do it? He sent His prophet and His prophet
said, Thus saith the Lord. And then he worked in providence
what he said he would do. And then he sent his prophet
saying, Thus saith the Lord. And then he sent his prophet
saying, Thus saith the Lord. That's what Christ is doing right
now. Where do we get our strength for this battle? After that first
battle, verse 22, the prophet came to the king of Israel. He
said, Go strengthen thyself. Well, where do we get our strength
for this warfare? I can do all things through Christ
which strengthens me. The same one who is our strength
for fighting this fight of faith is the one who is the captain
of our warfare who accomplished this war for us. For our enemies
in this world, we are like this little remnant. The children
of Israel, verse 27, they pitched before them like two little flocks
of kids and the Syrians filled the country. Isn't that what
Paul said about us? Isn't that what Paul said about
his church as it's written? For thy sake we're killed all
the day long. We're counted as sheep for the
slaughter. That's what we are. The enemy
looks at you and me. You think the big mega church or even this
big church right up here on the street, you think they got any
thought about this little hole down here in the flood zone?
That's just a little flock for the slaughter down there. Oh, nay, in all these things
we're more than conquerors through Him that loved us. He's going
to get the glory. Oh, we believe Christ is our
strength when everything's going good and we're on the hills and
everything's going right. We believe Christ is our strength.
Yes, sir, He is. You let Him let us behold our
weakness and we come down in the valley And we don't have
any strength in ourselves. Is He our strength then? He said, the Syrians said, the
Lord's God of the hills, not the God of the valleys. He said,
I'll deliver this multitude in your hand in the valley, just
like I did in the hill. Yes, He's the God of the valley,
just like He's our strength in the hill. We don't have any strength
but Christ. So, we pray God give us grace
to obey Him, That's Christ's church under Christ's command,
depending upon Christ's strength in the valleys as well as in
the hills. And God our Savior and our King
shall keep us and conquer all our enemies just like He promised. Just like He promised. But to
obey Him, He says, you continue following Me. You continue trusting
Me. You continue looking to Me. Now thirdly, we are to obey God
in this fighting of this faith by using one weapon in this warfare. There's just one weapon we can
use in this warfare. It's the preaching of Christ
and Him crucified in truth. In truth. We don't preach ourselves,
we preach Christ and Him crucified. And we don't whittle it down
and water it down, we preach Him in truth. The disobedience
of Ahab was this. He dishonored the Word of God
by showing mercy to a sinner who God said has got to die. Now you think about that. God
said, being Hadassah, has got to die. And Ahab dishonored God's
Word and dishonored the Lord by showing him mercy instead. You see, if we bring the law
down, if I came to you today preaching and I told you now
that you've been called by Christ and you've come to Mount Sinai,
now you need to go back to Mount Sinai and back to Moses, and
I take the Ten Commandments and I bring them down to your level,
and I lie and tell you that there's some way that you can now keep
those commandments, You'll stop looking to Christ and you'll
start looking to yourself and you'll be like all the rest of
the self-righteous, illegal churches in this world that claim they
preach grace but really preach works. And if I do that, you
know what we've done? We've dishonored God's Word,
we've dishonored Christ, showing mercy at the expense of His Word. You've got to die first. You've
got to be brought to see you can't do a thing. And you've
got to constantly hear that. If we say God loves all men without
exception, He wants to save you, if you'll just make the blood
of Christ effectual by making a decision for Christ. If I stood
here and begged you and told you that, you know what I'd be
doing? I'd be showing you mercy at the expense of Christ's Word
and at the expense of Christ my King. Christ is the author
of salvation and Christ is the finisher of salvation. And if
you're going to know that, He's going to come and make you know
it. Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power. He comes
and He gets the glory of God. Are you in Christ Jesus? Who
of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
and redemption that He that glorieth, let Him glory in the Lord. But
if I turn it over to your hands, I'm doing just what Pontius Pilate
did. He turned him over to the will
of the people. Your will and my will by nature. Yeah, you can do anything you
want to as long as it's sin. Because that's how your nature
will let you do when you're dead in your sins. Yeah, you can get
up and go out there and play in the sunshine, jump in the
creek if you want to. Everything you do will be sin because that's
how your heart is. You can join a church, you can
do many benevolent works, you can do anything you want to,
but your natural heart is sin and all you'll do is sin. God
has to come and give a new holy heart, make you bow to Christ
and put a new constraint in your heart for everything you do so
it's not legal anymore. Now it's constrained by the love
of Christ because you see what Christ has done for you. Change
that message and we've done what Ahab did. We've shown mercy at
the expense of God's Word. If we receive men that come and
they give their terms for surrender like Ben-Hadad did, they say
what they're going to do for God, how they're going to let
God do something for them, that's doing exactly what Ahab did.
Showing mercy at the expense of God's Word. So our one weapon
in this warfare, brethren, our one weapon is the Gospel of Christ
and Him crucified preached in truth. The Word of God is quick
and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It's our
weapon. It pierces to the dividing asunder
of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow and is a discerner
of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any
creature that's not manifest in His sight, but all things
are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
When this Gospel is being preached, there's two edges to this sword.
This Gospel first has to pierce you and pierce right into the
thoughts and intents of your hearts and kill you. It has to
reveal to you what you are and slay you and kill you. That's
what it's got to do first. Paul said, before the commandment
came, before Christ came in the Gospel and made me hear the law,
I was alive, I thought. I was doing all these works and
if you just saw me, you would have said I was a Pharisee, a
Pharisee, I wasn't immoral, I wasn't any of that. I was as righteous
as you could be outwardly as touching the law blameless. But
when the commandment came, what happened? Sin revived and I died. That's what's got to happen.
That's what had to happen. Ahab had to slay Ben-Hadad. I'm here today trying to slay
me some Ben-Hadad. That's what I'm trying to do.
But my only weapon is the preaching of this Word. If it happens,
Christ will do it. Christ will do it. The Spirit
of God will do it. God make us like this prophet in this passage.
Look at this, verse 13. Behold, there came a prophet
unto Ahab, king of Israel, saying, Thus saith the Lord. And he declared what the Lord
said to the king. And everybody knew how wicked
Ahab was. You know how wicked Ahab was? Wicked Ahab let his
wife, Queen Jezebel, call all the shots in Israel because he
was just too weak and stupid to be a man and be a king. And this prophet came to him
and said, Thus saith the Lord. And then in verse 28, there came
a man of God who spake unto the king of Israel and said, Thus
saith the Lord. What's our message? Thus saith
the Lord. You know, it hurts me when people
depart, when people reject me, when friends reject me, family
rejects me for preaching this Word. It hurts me. But you know
what my consolation is? I have showed you this Word and
showed you what this Word says. And I have the confidence that
God gave Samuel. They haven't rejected you, Samuel.
They've rejected me. And even when we're declaring
God's Word and it means our own hurt. Look at verse 35. A certain man of the son of the
prophet said unto his neighbor in the word of the Lord, Smite
me, I pray thee. Smite me. That man he spoke to looked to
his own reason, looked to himself. And he thought, that doesn't
make any logical sense to me to smite you. I'm not going to
do that. But you know what he was doing by that? He was disobeying
the Word of the Lord. But this man right here, he didn't
question God when God said, you go to your neighbor and you tell
him to smite you and wound you. He didn't say, well, let me offer
another suggestion. Here's how I think we ought to
do this. No, He went to him and said, in the Word of the Lord,
He went to him and He said, smite me, I pray thee. You know what
Christ the prophet did when He came to this earth? He came obeying
the Word of the Lord. He came saying, smite me, smite
me. And He was smitten. Awake, O
sword, against the man that is My shepherd. Smite the shepherd.
Is that not what we are called to do? Shall he suffer smiting
and in obedience to God's Word? And shall we not obey the Word
of Grace that saved us and be smitten for it? Sure we shall. A servant is not greater than
his Lord. He said, they rejected my Word. They ought to reject
your Word. We're to go forth and preach and say, smite me.
And not only that, as we're preaching, you know what we're preaching?
You know what I'm preaching? The message I'm preaching is
saying, smite me. Take away my fleshly doings and
smite all my good works and smite all my righteousnesses and smite
me down to nothing. Smite me and smite you. It's to our own hurt by nature
that we preach this Word. We're saying we're nothing when
we preach this Word. So whether our enemies reject
us or whether we have to declare it to everybody, sometimes I
study this Word and while I'm studying this Word, I'm smitten
so much by this Word when I'm studying it. My heart's broken
first before your heart's ever broken by it. And I stand here
and preach it to you and I think, what a hypocrite I am. I'm just
smitten in heart through this word I'm preaching. That's necessary. I have to preach it to my own
heart. That's what that prophet did. But it's a light affliction to
suffer in order for Christ to get all the glory through the
preaching of the Gospel. It's a small thing to be afflicted
to see His people call out and come praising Christ for doing
it all. Isn't it a small price to pay
if I'm not willing? And the Lord said, out of those
four types of ground, He said, there's going to be one of those
ground that will spring up, look like they've got a vine growing
and the roots are deep. And He said, but soon as offense
arises for the Word and persecution for the Word, they go away backwards. If I'm not willing to be smitten,
if I'm not willing to sacrifice, Worship and my service to God
doesn't cost me something. And it's worth what? That's what
I'm saying it's worth and that's what it's worth. Nothing. Those who Christ calls says,
smite me. The Apostle Paul said, I want
to be smitten. He said, I want to be conformed to the image
of His death. I want to be so obedient to God,
I'm willing to be strung up on a cross and be crucified if necessary. I want that. I do want that.
I just want to obey God. God, give me the grace to obey
You. There's going to come a day again in this country and this
world where God's going to use some men to that degree. We've
had it easy. Easy. This is a green tree right
here. It's going to be a dry tree.
And it's going to be a lot harder. But He has got to raise up men
that will renounce They'll renounce their enemies before they'll
renounce Christ and they'll be burned and sawn asunder or whatever
God has in store for them. But they'll do it by God's grace.
Just like Paul did. Just like you do right here.
So brethren, go to 2 Corinthians 10.3. Let me close this last
point and I'll close the message. 2 Corinthians 10.3. Though we
walk in the flesh, We do not war after the flesh, for the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God
to the pulling down of strongholds. They cast down imaginations,
the imagination, wicked imaginations we have in our hearts, thinking
God is how I think He is. God casts that imagination to
the ground, kills Him. Every high thing that exalts
itself against the knowledge of God, He brings it down. He
brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Do
you know what that is? That's bringing you down. to
cast all your trust and all your hope of salvation on the obedience
of Christ Himself. That's what this Gospel does.
It brings you down to say, I'm trusting Christ's obedience alone. And that is obeying the Gospel. That's faith. That's what the
Gospel does. And then the Gospel makes us
go forth and preach it, knowing the power of it, because we're
fighting this fight of faith, looking to nobody but Christ,
trusting Christ, and waiting on Him to call out His people.
And it makes you use just this one weapon. When you've experienced
the power of this one weapon, you realize, as Paul said, I'm
not ashamed of this one weapon, the Gospel of my Lord Jesus Christ,
because it is the power of God unto salvation. It's how He kills
and how He heals. this one gospel with these two
edges. Pray God to make us faithful now. Brother Art, if you'll come
lead us in a closing hymn.