If you have your Bibles turn
with me please to 1 Kings chapter 22. We are going to finish up
our study in 1 Kings tonight. We will start 2 Kings next Wednesday. There are some words in the last
chapter spoken of Jehoshaphat. We will deal with these when
we get to Jehoshaphat. We will come back to these words
and look at them as we deal with 2 Kings and also in the Chronicles.
1 Kings chapter 22. I just want to read one verse
of Scripture. And that's verse 34. Verse 34. The title of my message tonight
is effectual. And a certain man drew a bow
at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints
of the harness. Wherefore, he said unto the driver
of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host,
for I am wounded. Let us pray. We bless you and thank you for
your word, which is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our
path, the entrance of which gives light and understanding to the
simple. We know, Father, that the written word, the words you
have given men of old who are spiritually inspired to write
these words down for us, that blessed word is about your Son,
the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank You, Father, that we
can look at this passage and any other text and context within
this book and find Him, for we know that all Scriptures are
about Him. We bless You, Father, for revealing this to us, ceasing our stumbling about in
this book, trying to find something. Help us, Lord, to remember that
You have spoken in these last days in the language of your
son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we pray for those of
our company who are sick and going through trials and different
tribulation. We ask your help for them. We
remember especially Wayne and Vern, Henry, Mickey, and Ralph,
and Jenny, and Dave Long, especially as he's suffering with his cancer.
Father, we pray that you'd be with him, be with Gloria as she
ministers to him. make His pain easier to bear,
comfort Him in this time by fixing His heart and mind upon Jesus
Christ. Help us, Lord, tonight as we look to this passage of
Scripture. Would You be pleased, Father,
to reveal Your Son to us? May we see Him as He is, high
and lifted up, exalted for the work that He did on Calvary's
tree. Bless us tonight, Father. Cause us to honor Him and get
glory for Yourself. We pray in Christ's name, Amen. Now the man Ahab, the king of
Israel, as we have seen in our studies in this book, is an exemplar
of total depravity. He continued in the idolatry
of his fathers, He worshipped the golden calves, continued
to mix the worship of God with the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth,
refused to tear down the groves in the high place where every
manner of debauchery was committed under the guise of worshipping
God. He had no concern for human life, not even flinching on his
wife had Naboth killed to acquire him a vineyard. And even in the
face of God's mighty hand, he showed no sense of guilt or remorse. As God shut up the heaven for
three and a half years and countless people died. There were many
widows in Israel, let's say. Our Lord said in Luke chapter
4, in those days when the Lord shut up the heaven for three
and a half years, Ahab didn't care. Also, as he witnessed the
fire from heaven on Carmel, he was not moved when 430 prophets
of Baal cried and wailed to no avail. And he sat mute as Elijah
summarily slaughtered 430 false prophets. He was intractable
in his rebellion and only made a show of repentance when he
got caught. And after a brief foray into sackcloth and ashes,
he immediately returned to his old ways in his fatal pursuit
of Ramoth Gilead, which is where we are in this passage. His nominal
repentance And remember, Old Testament repentance is outward
acts of contrition. Outward acts of contrition symbolized by putting on sackcloth
and rolling around in ashes and putting ashes on your face. A
modern day rendition of that Old Testament contrition would
be weeping and moaning at a church altar or what men call rededication
or reconsecration. He did that and according to
this word, it bought some time as God gave His family a temporary
reprieve in judgment. We'll find in our future studies
that His family is also slain as God had promised they would
be. His repentance is Old Testament
repentance which under the conditional covenant was accepted And for
the offender, actually, according to the nature of the covenant
and the strictures of the covenant, actually recommended him to God
in that covenant. In that covenant. New Testament
repentance, we know, has nothing to do with acts of contrition
or anything visible. It is the heart and mind recognition
and acknowledgement that the only thing that recommends us
to God is Christ and Him crucified. That's what New Testament repentance
is. Old Testament repentance never reaches the heart or the
mind, but rather addresses behavior and visible manifestations of
humiliation, acting contrite, or what Paul called in Colossians
chapter 2, voluntary humility. Voluntary humility. And as vile
and as rebellious as Ahab was, he is but a mirror of ourselves.
He is a mirror of ourselves as we are born into this world in
our carnal depravity. And his demise here is not one
whit different than what any one of us by nature deserves. We deserve to die for our sin.
One fellow said, we have seen the enemy and it is us. It is us. Now in our text tonight,
we come to the end of Ahab. This has been predicted and promised,
threatened and now fulfilled. He is going to be finally square
with the house. It is his life here for Bin Adad's. That's what this is all about.
And his rebellious reign will come to an end and the dogs will
lap up his hemoglobin. The wages of sin is death. That
never changes. The soul that sinneth it shall
die. That never changes. Justice will have its pound of
flesh. That never changes. Because God does not change.
God does not change. Now Abraham has sought to escape
the execution of his sinners in this battle by dressing in
the garb of a common soldier. He has instructed Jehoshaphat
to dress in regal array, basically painting a target on the king
of Judah's back. And that plan fails when Jehoshaphat,
when charged by the army of Syria, cries to God and is delivered.
And then here in verse 34 we have this brief, concise report
of how this king met his promise appointed in." A very brief sentence. He has in his mind dodged the
bullets many times. He has taken refuge in the lies
of the false prophets and hidden in falsehoods while rejecting
the true counsel of the one true prophet that told him how it
really was. And his false prophets will soon
be looking for holes to hide in. And Ahab, all we can say
about him is that he is a gone Jesse. It's over for Ahab. Now
the brevity of this account is its beauty. And the succinctness
is its strength. It simply says, And a certain
man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel
between the joints of the harness. Wherefore he said unto the driver
of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host,
for I am wounded. And there you have it. No frills,
no ifs, no ands, and no buts. It's the end of Ahab. And this
short, concise report begins with these words, a certain man. A certain man. This is an intriguing
little phrase that's often used and employed in the Holy Scriptures.
And it can basically be taken in three ways, a certain man. First, it can be taken as every
man. And every man is an instrument in the hands of the sovereign
God. So a certain man is every man. Humanity is God's property. And every man, woman, and child
serves Him in His grand scheme of the salvation of the elect.
They serve Him fully. They serve Him completely. They
serve Him successfully, whether He puts them in glory or whether
He sends them into the flames of eternal hell. Nebuchadnezzar
said, He doeth His will in the armies of heaven and among the
inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His hand or say
unto Him, What doest Thou? Men act according to their corrupt
nature. They act according to their depraved
will and all the while they serve the Almighty in His great purpose
and plan. Nothing falls outside the scope
of God's intent and purpose. Nothing whatsoever. Those who
crucified Christ did so because they hated Christ. They didn't
want Him to be near them. They wanted him out of the picture.
He was scaring up and stirring up religious men against him. They would not have him reign
over them. They would not accept the fact that he said he was
God. And they wanted him dead. And so they gathered together,
Scripture says, against thy holy child, Jesus, the Pontius Pilate,
and Herod, the Jews and the Gentiles gathered together for to do whatsoever
thy hand had before ordained to be done. They were acting
exactly the way they felt, in that they were serving the purpose
of God down to the letter. Just as the words of David, hundreds
of years before, cried the words of Christ from the cross, My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? This is a certain man, a
certain man. This certain man is one of God's
instruments. Secondly, a certain man can be
taken as a particular, specific man, whose use is specified in
the context that we find him. That applies here also. And thirdly,
a certain man can be taken to mean no man in particular, one
who among many is present at a given occasion, and seeing
that God holds the reins of every scenario, Any or all of these
three would apply to this certain man. This certain man, whether
every man, a specific man, or any man, or no man of consequence,
is an instrument employed to fulfill the judgment against
Ahab. He doesn't even know it. He's
just a soldier in an army, shooting a bow, shooting an arrow, rather,
in the air. It says, this certain man drew
a bow at a venture. At a venture. This is like that
little children's poem I remember when I was a boy. I shot an arrow
in the air, it fell to earth, I know not where. He drew a bow
at a venture. He drew no bead on any target,
and in the throes of the battle engagement, he drew a quill from
his quiver and loosed it into the fray. At a venture. Interesting
words. Adventure is language fit for
people, for human beings. It might be well rendered on
a chance. On a chance. That is a word employed
by impotent humanity to designate a thing to be outside their control.
Adventure. We'll do it adventure. We'll
give it a shot. And that's what he did. But venture or chance
is not outside any control. It's just outside man's control.
Just outside man's control. The lot is cast in the lap, saith
the scripture, the disposal thereof belongeth to the Lord. Don't
be mad at those people that win big at the casino. The lot, the
disposal of the cast lot, is in the hands of the Lord. All
of them. Just like those that lose, there
are those that win. And God is yet in control. In Ecclesiastes, if you'll turn
over there just for a moment. In Ecclesiastes chapter 9. The wise man said this in verse
11, I returned and saw under the sun. Now, that's everywhere. That's what that phrase means,
under the sun. Ecclesiastes 9.11, I returned
and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, but time and chance happeneth
to them all. Now, who's in control? God is
in control. With men, they look at it and
say, well, that army was greater. It should have won the battle,
but it lost. It lost. They look at a wise man and say,
he ought to be rich, but he might be as poor as dirt. And they
say, well, that's just the way it worked out. That's just a
venture. That's the chance of it all. Indeed, it is. But it's
God who controls chance. What men call a venture is but
the mystery of the secret of sovereign providence employing
all things to bring the elect of God to their expected end.
That's what this world is all about. That's what human history
is. From the first man that walked
the earth until the last one that walks the earth, everything
they do, think or say is ultimately designed and will perform. the
intent and purpose of God in the salvation of the elect. Nothing else matters in this
world because when this world is gone, all that will be left
is Christ and His elect. That's what matters evidently
if that's all that's left. He drew a bow at a venture and
that arrow was a guided missile. He didn't know it. He didn't
have the guidance system. He just shot it up into the air.
And this bullet had a name on it. It was a predestinated projectile
of prophecy, a dart destined to the heart of the king with
ballistic accuracy outside the pale of science and technology.
It pierced the bosom of Ben-Hadad's benefactor, because the Lord
had said, you let him go, your life for his. And this arrow
landed by coincidence, not hardly. just where the chain mail joins
over the heart. There's a little joint about
a quarter of an inch wide that separates the top part of the
armor and the little part of the armor. If the arrow landed
a quarter inch higher, it would have bounced off the armor. A
quarter inch lower, it would have bounced off the armor. But
he shot it willy-nilly, and it went square in that little slot
and went into the heart of the king. This is a guided missile. So Ahab dies. Ahab dies, his
reign ends and he is buried with his fathers while the dogs lick
his blood in the street. And in this certain man and his
act, and his result, we do not have
to stretch our imagination to see the efficaciousness of the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether text or context, the
Scriptures. The written word is about the
true and living word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord said,
you search the Scriptures, for in them you think you find eternal
life, but they are they which testify of me. And in Luke chapter
4, He opened the understanding of men to understand the Scriptures
when He told them about all that was in the Psalms and the Proverbs
and all the books of Moses and the prophets' words were about
Him, all things concerning Him. He opened up their scripture,
opened up their eyes to understand scripture in Luke 24. And in
type and picture, the certain man is the preacher of the gospel. In a pulpit or in a pew, he's
a preacher of the gospel. And he is every man. He's a specific man. He's any
man. And he's no man of consequence.
That's the minister of the gospel. That's what we are. We don't
count for anything. We're not going to make a greasy
spot on history. The preacher of the gospel is
described in scripture as a voice. A noise. The chief of sinners,
the least of all saints. He's called a slant of thunder.
Who before the cock crows will deny the Lord three times. That's
who the preacher of the gospel is. He is anything but special. Yet
He speaks words that are matters of life and death. You will not
hear of Christ without one. You will not hear of Christ without
a preacher. That's what the Scripture says.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
But how shall they call on Him whom they've not believed? And
how shall they believe on Him whom they've not heard? How shall
they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sinned? It's through the foolishness of preaching
God has ordained to save them that believe. What is the preacher?
He's the dirt pod in whom God has invested eternal treasure.
He's a nobody in a great battle. He's out in the middle of nowhere
with a bow and arrow. And that's all he's got. He is
the definitive example that salvation is by grace and grace alone.
You know what a preacher is? Look at him. And if he was honest
with you, he'd tell you that he hopes you never find out how
big a fraud he is. He's an example of God's grace.
He's an example of grace, not because he's special, but because
he's nothing, and he's no one, and he's of no consequence, and
he's not significant. He's a sinner. And if grace means
anything, he's the worst of all, like Paul said, the chief of
sinners. And this is the one. So that
no man can ever question that salvation is by grace. This is
the vile, wretched thing that God raises up to tell other sinners
how God saves them. He's an example of grace. And
he and his preaching is foolishness to the world, but it's through
that foolishness of preaching that God saves them that believe.
How does it work? Like electricity. Really well,
but nobody can understand it or explain it. Do you know Ohm's
Law is still a theory? They still call it a theory.
The theory of electricity. The preacher has but one arrow
in his quiver. He has but one string on his
guitar. And the arrow is the gospel.
The gospel. And though he is looking for
lost sinners, he's looking for sheep, the elect, he draws his
bow at a bench because he don't know who they are. They don't
have a yellow stripe down their back so he can tell them if they
are one of the elect. He don't know who they are so
he draws his bow at a venture and he looses that arrow into
a crowd. He has no idea of the results
of his action. He knows for sure that it will
be a saver of life or a saver of death but he likewise knows
that the results have nothing to do with him. So a preacher
of the gospel, a minister of the gospel, whether pure or pulpit,
doesn't come up with ideas to get people to do things, ideas
or ways or schemes to get people to act in a certain way or to
move from one location to another. He doesn't do that because he
knows he has nothing to do with the results of that. He's got
a bow and he's got an arrow and he shoots it in the air. He shoots
it out into the midst of the crowd not knowing where it's
going to hit. What he does in theological terms is described
as a general call. A general call. When you tell
somebody about Christ, you've given what theologians call a
general call. You've told them to close with
Christ. You've told them that Christ saves sinners. The preacher
preaches, as it were, to dead men, relying on the Spirit to
breathe upon the dead bones. To take the things of Christ
and reveal them to His elect. However, the general call. The
general call. that bow drawn at a venture,
that arrow shot into the fray, is in the hands of Him who doeth
all things after the counsel of His own will. The general
call, which is the preaching of the gospel to every creature,
does not differ from the effectual call in essence or in subject
matter. It differs in application as
its results lie solely and entirely in the intent and the design
of the majesty on high. Every time I stand up here and
preach, I draw the bow. I shoot the arrow out there.
What does it do? Not my business. I just got a
bow and arrow. Well, what good are you? I'm
no good. The arrow's good. It'll land summers and God knows
where it will land. And here's the thing, it will
hit the mark. The gospel will hit the mark
and produce the predestinated result, and the bowman is unaware
of the mark it hit, or even if anyone was hit. He will have
no award ceremony or receive a medal, though it is his arrow
that pierced and ended the career of the royal rebel. He would
remain nameless and faceless, without pedigree, without title,
without recognition, because he just a certain man. That's all he is. Aiming at nothing. Aiming at everything. And unbeknownst
to him, the error he loses hits the precise mark between the
joints of the harness into the marrow of the ersatz monarch.
Because that's what the Word of God does. We can invent things to make
people get stirred up We can invent issues that make people
want to join this thing or that thing. Remember, a million years
ago, Jim Byrd was sitting in a restaurant with a preacher,
a legalist preacher, who was trying to start a work. And the
preacher told Jim, if I can just find an issue, I can build me
a church. And he found one. I think his
issue was abortion. And it's a big church still.
And they're still mad at them abortionists, and they're going
to kill them. They're going to kill them. They're just madder
than snakes, and the church is full every Sunday morning. But
there ain't no gospel preached there. No gospel preached. But
when the Word of God is preached, Scripture says, for the Word
of God is quick. That's quickening. Has resurrection
power, the Word of God does. Not my word. this word, where
the word of God is quick and it's powerful. Another place
is the gospel is the power of God of the salvation to everyone
that believes. Christ is the wisdom and the
power of God, the preaching of Christ. And it's sharper than
a two-edged sword. One man said it means it cuts
coming and going. Coming and going. It pierces
even to the dividing asunder. of the soul and the spirit, the
joints and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
the intents of the heart. I can't read your mind. I'm sure
you wouldn't want me to, but I can't anyway. But this does
every Every time it's preached, every time it's read, this arrow
hits the mark. Like one fellow said to a preacher
one time after he preached, I feel like you've been reading my mail.
You've been reading my mail. And the sinner dies. That's the
result of this gospel. That's the result of declaring
it. When you tell it to people, the sinner dies. He dies the
death, or he dies to the death, but he dies. He dies in self,
or he dies to self, but he dies. Colossians chapter 3 says, You
are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. You see,
there must be death for sin in the center of the substitute.
We meet and pray and preach the apostles doctrine and break bread
and then the disclaimer is said in Acts chapter 2 and verse 42,
and the Lord adds to the church daily, them that should be, and
the word should be there are appointed to, them that should
be saved. We do all that stuff, but none
of that stuff saves anybody. We meet here, that doesn't save
anybody. We pray, that doesn't save anybody. We break bread
together, that doesn't save anybody. We join together in the apostles
doctrine, that doesn't save anybody. The Lord adds to the church daily,
them that should be saved. And all we can say is to God
be the glory. That's all we can say. What else
can you say to that? And a certain man drew a boy
to venture and smote the king of Israel between the joints
in the harvest. Father, bless this story and
we pray in Christ's name, Amen.