opportunity to meet tonight.
Thank you for the things you have recorded for us in the scriptures. For, as the apostle told us,
these things were written for us, even though they occurred
thousands of years before our lifetimes. And even, Lord, though
they come from that portion of the These were written for us. So
we pray that you would give us the grace to see and understand
the things that you have left here for us, that we might benefit
from them. In Christ's name we pray, amen.
All right, we're gonna read the first 16, actually 15 and a half
verses. After a long time in the third
year, which we, last time we met, which was a couple of weeks
ago, We determined that was likely sometime during the third year
of his stay with the widow in Zarephath. After a long time
in the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah, go and
present yourself to Ahab and I will send rain on the land. So Elijah went to present himself
to Ahab. Now the famine was severe in
Samaria. and Ahab had summoned Obadiah,
who was in charge of his palace. Obadiah was a devout believer
in the Lord. While Jezebel was killing off
the Lord's prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets
and hidden them in two caves, 50 in each, and had supplied
them with food and water. Ahab had said to Obadiah, go
through the land to all the springs and valleys. Maybe we can find
some grass to keep the horses and mules alive so we will not
have to kill any of our animals. So they divided the land they
were to cover. Ahab going in one direction and
Obadiah in another. As Obadiah was walking along,
Elijah met him. Obadiah recognized him, bowed
down to the ground, and said, is it really you, my lord Elijah? Yes, he replied. Go tell your
master Elijah is here. What have I done wrong, asked
Obadiah, that you are handing your servant over to Ahab to
be put to death? As surely as the Lord your God
lives, there is not a nation or kingdom where my master has
not sent someone to look for you. And whenever a nation or
kingdom claimed you were not there, he made them swear they
could not find you. But now you tell me to go to
my master and say Elijah is here? I don't know where the spirit
of the Lord may carry you when I leave you. If I go and tell
Ahab and he doesn't find you, he will kill me. Yet I, your
servant, have worshipped the Lord since my youth. Haven't
you heard, my Lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the
prophets of the Lord? I hid a hundred of the Lord's
prophets in two caves, 50 in each, and supplied them with
food and water. And now you tell me to go to
my master and say, Elijah is here? He will kill me. Elijah
said, As the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, I will surely present
myself to Ahab today. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab
and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. Now, as with most
of the Old Testament stories, we can view them and apply them
in two ways, and both of them are useful for us. We can look
at the story cared for in this world, and
then we also look at them and see pictures of Christ and his
gospel. Now, we're going to look at this
story both ways, but I don't think I can cover both ways in
one sitting without making it overly long. So this evening,
we will just look at this story from the viewpoint of an example
of He sees to it that His Word gets
where it needs to be, that His people are taken care of, and
that even the most powerful of people are under His sovereign
control. So, let's take note of the Lord's
sovereign providence in the lives of His people. We read and take
great comfort from Romans 8. for good to them who love God,
who are the called according to His purpose. Now it doesn't
mean that all things work together just by chance. What it means
is God works everything together for their good. There is not
a single thing outside of His control. Now He is the Sovereign Lord
over all, that is over all things, all people. But He is especially
the Sovereign Lord of those who follow Him, who truly follow
Him. And I say especially so. He's
no more their Lord, but they acknowledge it. and believe in your heart that
God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. A person who
is not willing to own up to God's right to be sovereign ruler over
all, he's no follower of the Lord's. You know, people get
mad at God because he allows certain things to happen. Now
wait a minute, and I'm not saying that a believer, that after a long time in the
third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah, go and present
yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the land. Now, did
the Lord afterwards have a choir of angels singing in the temple? to do what he told him to do.
The next words are, so Elijah went to present himself to Abraham. because He is the Sovereign Lord,
and His people acknowledge it. Now all through this study of
Elijah, we have seen that he did what he was told to do, and
he didn't do anything until he was told to do it. Elijah didn't do anything until
the Lord told him to do it. And when the Lord told him to
do it, he got busy and did it. In fact, when he first went to
Ahab and delivered that little one sentence sermon, there'll
not be rain nor dew in all of Israel until I say so. Well,
I know that, you know, when you look at it from the viewpoint
of the flesh, I would have said my piece and I would have high-tailed
out of there. Because I would have known what was coming next.
The wrath of the king. Elijah didn't. He didn't do anything
until God said, go to Kareth Ravine. Or the wadi of Kareth. And that's when he went. Now,
it would be good for us to live our lives that way. Now, I realize
we're not going to get that kind of message like Elijah got, but
we should not make a move until we are as confident as we can
be that the Lord is in it. It is written if the Lord, unless
the Lord built the house, take labor in vain, who built it? When we went to India a year
ago last November, they stopped and showed us a place that was
for sale, a bunch of land, and the plans, Parshu and Babu, they
had these, the idea would be nice if they could get that land,
build a school on there, and an orphanage, and this was something
going on in their mind, and we were asking about what prices
for that would be, and I kind of got And after I'd been back in the
States for a while, I said, I wrote to Parshu. And I said, well, Parshu, I said,
what are you thinking about that property and building a school
and, you know, moving the orphanage there? I said, see, I was kind
of excited. He wrote back, said, I don't do anything until the
Lord tells me to. And I thought, well, the older man got taught doesn't mean it is. And so, that's
what our attitude ought to be. Do whatever he says, and as much
as possible, don't do anything until he says to do it. Now,
no one can claim that Jehovah is their God if they are unwilling
to do what he says. Now remember, Elijah's name is
really Eliyahu, and it means my God is Jehovah. or the only ones who can make
a legitimate claim to that are those who are willing to do what
he says. In Matthew chapter 13, well, in Luke 6 first, in Luke
chapter 6, verse 46, the Lord said, why do you call me Lord,
Lord, and do not do what I say? It's awful easy to say Lord.
Now, Paul said, if you confess He wasn't talking about faith
to which you add good works, you know, unless you add good
works. That's not what he was talking about. He was saying if you claim
to believe, In other words, where Matthew
is recording the same message that Luke's recording in chapter
six, but in Matthew 13, the same message is being recorded, it
just doesn't record those specific words. But the Lord said this
in Matthew 13, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will
enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the
will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day,
Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name
drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly,
I never knew you away from me, you evildoers. Therefore, everyone
who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is
like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came
down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that
house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the
rock. But everyone who hears these
words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a
foolish man who builds his house on sand. The rain came down,
the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house,
and it fell Now, it was in the middle of
that somewhere that he says what Luke records, why do you call
me Lord and then not do what I say? So it's one thing to say
Jesus is Lord. I remember, I can't remember, moral character. How do we know
that? Well, if it requires great moral
character to prove that we think Jesus is Lord, but none of us
can prove it. And then we look at those, some
of those, particularly in the Old Testament If you read some of the things
they did, none of them would be a member in good standing of most churches
these days. So we're not talking about that
kind of thing. It may bear on it some, but we cannot go that
direction because that's not really what the Lord's talking
about. What is the command that God has given us? John tells
us, in the book of 1 John, Now, you cannot call Jesus Lord
and not really trust Him, which means those who are saying, oh,
Jesus is my Lord, and yet they are trying to supplement His
righteousness with their own. And if you listen to the songs
and don't pay attention to who's singing them and what else they
believe, they're fine songs. But I know the group they come
from. And so I kind of had to put a disclaimer on there. I'm
not saying that I agree with what this organization is teaching.
Why? Well, they're, close, the Seventh
Day Adventists. Well, they tell you right away
what they're about. They're about a Seventh Day Sabbath. They're
real big about celebrating. And I think, and I'll give them
this. They don't say we believe in
the Sabbath and then say it's on Sunday. and truly believing? No, that's
not what it's about. How do we keep His commandments?
By believing Him, which involves not trying to establish our own
righteousness. So, He is the Sovereign Lord,
and He is acknowledged as such by all those who truly have a
right to claim, My God is Jehovah. Second thing we learn is this.
God sovereignly has arranged to put his people in the places
they need to be in order to carry out his purpose, even in the
very household of his worst enemies. Obadiah. Now Obadiah, you'll
notice he's got his name in that Now the first part of his name
means servant. And the last part is the name
Jehovah. You've got Eliyahu and then you've
got Obadiahu. But here's an individual living
in the northern tribes, and we'll find out later, there were only
7,000, at least that's the number God gives. There were only 7,000
in that entire northern region who had not bowed the knee to
Baal. Well, Bediah was one of them, and where is he? He is Ahab's steward. Ahab, you know, does kingly things,
but so far as running the court, the king's court, the day-to-day
events, that's under Obadiah's control. Now Ahab, of course,
he represents everything standing in opposition to God. You know,
as we've read, gone through the book of Revelation twice, we've
seen how You know, the devil is the enemy of God, the enemy
of God's people, but he has agents in the world. And then you've
got those agents representing the political powers in the struggle
against God. You've got false religion and
struggle against God. And then you've got the seductive
powers of the world and all of its fleshly appeals and all that. And actually, in the court of
Ahab, you've got all of that because you've got Ahab. who
represents the political powers in opposition to God. You've
got his wife Jezebel, and Ahab's willing to go along with her.
But Jezebel was the big one to push Baal worship, because she
comes from the area where Baal is the chief god. And then also
all of the corruption that was going on in the court. So Ahab's
court is a good representation of the world. Why? Because he has put Obadiah
in a position of earthly power that can be used
to the benefit of his people. See, God doesn't need the king. I am sure that Ahab and Jezebel
thought that they were safe from the intrusion of the Lord into
the very palace. I mean, you know, Ahab didn't
worship the Lord. Jezebel was trying to kill all
the prophets. So they figured their little
citadel there, you know, in the city of Samaria, they were safe.
Can't get to me. And they went and hired one of
the Lord's faithful And he had. And so there he is
in Ahab's household. The Lord has a man on the inside. They wonder, well, how can you
work for a person that will do such and such? Well, particularly
in politics. Right now, in our country, we
get to vote for who? And here you have a man, Ahab,
in outright confessed opposition to the Lord. Married to a woman
who's been opposed to the Lord from the day of her birth and
is Yet there's Obadiah in the middle
of it, and he is there, put there by God to serve a purpose, even
as he acts as a servant to Ahab. He is in truth the servant of
Jehovah. So let every believer work his
job. I'm sure he was in charge of
seeing to it that Ahab's army was provisioned. He had to see
to it that the other servants in the household got their orders
and all that. But he wasn't responsible for what Ahab did with the army. He just did his job. And let
us do it knowing that God, now think of this, God is sovereign
enough that even as you're in there serving the ungodly with
your fleshly labors, God is using it as service to him to bring
about his purpose and the providential care of his people. God doesn't need kings. He simply
puts his people among them to act as his agents. Obadiah was
not a policymaker, but he was in charge of Ahab's household. and well-being. Therefore, God, and this is,
you know, I was studying this this afternoon, and whenever
I'm trying to teach, you know, you look at the story, and you
kind of want to get an angle on it, or whatever you call it,
a theme that's being brought out here. And it really wasn't
that long before we left to come here, I suddenly seen, boy, what
a demonstration of the sovereignty of God is in this whole passage
here. Because we have a story occurring
within a land utterly opposed to God, even as they had God's
name on their lips. And God has Elijah there, and
Elijah comes and goes according to God's pleasure. Obadiah is
right there in Ahab's household. Meanwhile, Jezebel's doing all
she can to kill the prophets of the Lord. But God uses Obadiah
to take the things from the household of Ahab to provide. that was determined to destroy
those prophets. And he did it by the hand of
this man named Obadiah, whose name means the servant of the
Lord. Now, Obadiah was out doing what Ahab
had told him to do, which was, and this shows you just how hard-hearted place that might have a little
bit of pasture and stuff to save his horses and mules. He didn't
say, Obadiah, we've got to find some place in this land where
food's growing that we can feed the people. He didn't care if
they were dying. He said, I want to make sure
we don't kill any of our animals. Well, Obadiah, he could have
said, well, that's pretty hard-hearted, Ahab. You know what? No. He just
went out and did what he was told. And in so doing, God, once
again, he's worked things out. The path of Obadiah and Elijah
cross. And Obadiah recognizes him, pretty
sure that it's Elijah. And he, in reverence, bows down
to him, you know, and he says, is that you, my lord, Elijah? And he says, yes, it is. You
go tell Ahab. Now, this shows you that even
though Obadiah feared the Lord, he also had fleshly fears. And that's us, isn't it? Aren't
we just like that? I mean, I sit here and tell you
about the sovereignty of God and how much it means to me when
I'm studying and preaching, and yet I worry about a lot of things.
That doesn't make any sense, does it? But that's the way we
are. And Obadiah was concerned that
if he did what Elijah told him to do, it would result in his
destruction, his death. And he kind of argued the point
with him. He said, look, I've been doing
everything I can to preserve the prophet. So Elijah, as the prophet of that
day, now understand that the word prophet is applied to many
kinds of people. We read about a hundred prophets
which Obadiah had preserved, but they weren't prophets like
Elijah was. Generally speaking, there was
only one of the Elijah kind of prophets on the scene at any
given time. Someone to whom God spoke directly. And then they
went out with a message. But the word prophet actually
means a spokesman. That is in its most general sense.
And so these other prophets of the Lord were merely faithful
men. Preachers is what they were. They studied what God said, as
much of the scriptures as was available to them at that time.
And they declared the word to others through the hand of Obadiah,
and Elijah comes, the prophet. Verse 16 says, so Obadiah went
to meet Ahab and told him. And Ahab went to meet Elijah. Elijah didn't go to Ahab. Now, if you were the king, and
someone you didn't like wanted to talk to you, say, well, we'll
pencil him in for tomorrow at noon, but my pencil's done he'd have sent some soldier to
eliminate him. Why did Ahab go to where Elijah was? Because
God sovereignly made him do it. The heart of the king is in the
hand of the Lord. And he turns it, whether, wherever
he wills, like the rudder of a ship. He may have used God honored himself by honoring
Elijah and making Ahab the servant of Elijah. And things may look scary. And times can get tough. We may be hiding in caves. But
if he puts us in a cave, we can rest assured there's an Obadiah
out there somewhere. And we can be sure there's an
Elijah out there somewhere.