Morning Service, 26 April 2009
Who was Elijah? How was it that he was so honoured with Moses by God in bringing him to talk with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt 17:3)? That fact alone should be enough to say we ought to get to know this man and understand his ministry. But a further encouragement to us is a consideration of the times in which he lived. It is rightly said you cannot understand the history of a person unless you understand the history in which they lived. Knowing the times help us to both understand and appreciate the ministry of Elijah, but more they make his ministry very personal to us in the light of our times.
What we know of Elijah’s life and ministry begins in 1 Kings 17:1. The thing that is striking, as we will note next time, is the sudden appearance of Elijah on the scene (17:1). But there is nothing sudden about the scene’s appearance.
It is about 58 years since the division of the Kingdom of Israel after the death of Solomon. Within the Northern Kingdom which retained the name Israel, there had been a succession of 6 kings, whose record reads like a rogue’s gallery. It is not to be missed that God’s Word declares of each King that he “did evil in the sight of the Lord after the manner of Jeraboam the son of Nebat who made Israel sin”. But the darkest page of that album of spiritual and moral treachery belongs to Ahab the son of Omri. Omri is said to be worse than all who went before him – showing an escalation in wickedness along the line of kings – but his son is said to be in a league of his own!
In 16:31-34 we are given a description of the times of Ahab and as a result of the state of the nation. It is against this background that Elijah seen to be the man for his times. Yet he was not a man of his times. Bishop Hall calls Elijah ‘the eminentist prophet reserved for the corruptest age’.
What are we told about the age to which Elijah spoke, and what do they tell us about assessing and responding to our times? It was a time when there was
1. Contempt for the Word of God
This is firstly seen in Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel. The first thing that is said about Ahab , indeed as that which showed his defiance of God, was that he married a foreign wife – Jezebel, the daughter of the Phoenician king Ethbaal.
Why is this painted as such a serious sin? Because it showed contempt for the Word of God which explicitly commanded that no Israelite was to marry anyone who did not belong to the covenant community; which command God had not rescinded (see Deut 7: 1-6; Joshua 23:12-13; Judges 3:5-7).
Nor was this merely a personal sin. Kings in Israel were theocratic monarchs, they ruled under God and for God – and were to do so according to the Book of the Law as their guide. He was personally but also publicly contemptuous of the Word, effectively saying to the nation ‘You don’t need to take seriously God’s Word, that it is too restrictive, too irrelevant in our modern and enlightened age’.
Secondly in Ahab’s introduction of Baal worship into Israel. Meaning ‘lord, husband, owner,’ Baal was the chief god in Canaanite religion, the storm god who allegedly provided the rain necessary for the fertility of the land. Ahab’s father-in-law was a high priest of Baal.
Not only did Ahab join his wife in worshipping Baal, he built a temple to Baal in the capital, Samaria. While Jeroboam broke the 2nd Commandment, by this Ahab broke the 1st Commandment, and further institutionalised Baal worship as the state religion. He established an anti-theocratic policy for his dynasty.
The point is that this would not have happened if God’s word had had the place it ought to have had in the lives of the people. Otherwise Baal worship would never have been allowed to be introduced and to co-exist with the established worship of God, let alone to replace it entirely. They were to worship God alone and only the way God had commanded. The people sadly increasingly ignored what God had said and did their own thing.
Thirdly, the contempt for the Word of God is seen in the rebuilding of Jericho, the first city destroyed in the Israelite conquest of Canaan. By this victory, done totally by God, God showed He was the Saviour Warrior King of His people.
And its ruins was to be a permanent memorial to God, for which God had forbidden Israel to ever rebuild Jericho and he had in fact pronounced a curse upon any who dared to do so – Joshua 6:26ff .
But Ahab treated God’s curse with contempt. Ahab contracted Hiel from Bethel to rebuild Jericho but instead of refusing out of a fear of and reverence for the Word of God, Hiel went ahead with the project. They did not believe that the word of God’s judgement would come true. They despised God’s word.
The rubble heap of Jericho was to stand as a perpetual reminder of the reality of God speaking of Hs holy power to judge sin and also of the grace of God to save His people and to bring them into a place of blessing. But having gone over to Baal, Ahab was determined to eradicate the monument to God’s holiness and grace, by this definitive act to eradicate every reminder and hint of Yahwehstic religion. Jericho had been the door into the Promised Land for God, now Ahab was seeking to make it the exit door for God. In effect he was removing the Word of God, showing contempt for its proclamation and its curse. But it backfired, for immediately upon this statement we read about the curse applied upon that family, and when it wasn’t listened to applied yet again. Hiel’s two sons were covered with stones as a declaration of the Word of God.
2. Corruption of the Worship of God
The institutionalisation of Baal worship as the state religion didn’t just happen.
Two things occurred: the corruption of worship from within through syncretism, and the corruption of the worship from without through compromise.
a. through syncretism. The prior history of the kings showed that it could and did happen because of the corruption of God’s worship beginning with Jeroboam.
When Jeroboam, the first in the line of wicked kings, set up the golden calves at Bethel near the border with Judah and on the road to Jerusalem, and in Dan in the north he did not set out to worship false gods. They were aids to worship, allegedly aimed at sparing the people from demanding and finically costly journeys to the Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:28). But not only was this contrary to the Word of God, it corrupted the worship God instituted.
He turned the worship of God into a convenience, worship with minimal personal sacrifice, worship that appealed to people rather than approved by God. His real agenda of course was always political – by keeping the people from Jerusalem, he kept them from realising what they had lost and form seeing what little he had really done for them. Worship was politicised. He knew that if the people continued to worship in the Temple of Jerusalem, eventually they would want to be reunited under the rule of the king of Jerusalem – which wasn’t him.
With the passage of kings, the ‘aids’ to worship became the idols of worship and then the gods they worshipped. God was increasingly marginalised to the fringe of spiritual activity and thought. So when Jezebel came with the religion that seemed so successful in her homeland, and came with great sensual appeal (for its means of communicating with Baal was not through verbal prayer but sexual activity), it found a very easy entry into the life of the nation.
b. through compromise. The worship of Baal was not new to the people of God. The ease with which Ahab and Jezebel brought it in and then made it the state religion shows that it already had a place in the worship life of the people alongside the worship of the Lord God of Israel. Indeed the ease of its acceptance suggests it had a warm place in their hearts. In their hearts God was forced to share a place with Baal –the worship of God being what one had to do, that of Baal being what one really wanted to do. So the worship of God became increasingly a routine, an outward form but empty of spiritual reality even in its syncretistic state. But now their precious Baal worship could come from out of the shadows, and be done with royal approval, and with official temple prostitutes.
3. Carnage of the People of God
When we speak of the carnage of war, we speak of the suffering and death often inflicted. What we are being told here is that there was a deliberate policy not only to establish the religion of Baal, but also to eradicate the competition.
Jezebel was fanatically evangelical in her promotion of the worship of Baal.
As the historical record unfolds we see that Jezebel with Ahab’s support was proactive in exterminating God’s prophets (“For so it was, while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord…” (1 Kings 18:4). It is seen also in the relentless pursuit of Elijah (“As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to hunt for you… he took an oath from the kingdom or nation that they could not find you.” (1 Kings 18:10) ).
There were believers but they were anonymous like Obadiah or hidden away by men like him. They knew that to say you believed and served God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was to put your head in the noose.
The degree of Jezebel’s hostility and its brazenness is seen when the news came of Elijah’s victory on Mt Carmel she was not humbled but incensed and enraged; she was not cautious but aggressive.
These were dangerous days to be a worshipper of the God if Israel, let alone a prophet. The scene we find ourselves confronted with is of battle between God and Baal for the hearts of God’s people, with the tragic reality that the people following their king chose Baal.
Jezebel’s father’s name Ethbaal meant “Baal is alive” – and Jezebel meant to make it so in Israel, and in this the weak pragmatic Ahab not only concurred but became an active partner and so did the nation.
When Elijah burst onto this horrendous scene in the national life of Israel he came challenging that claim. Indeed his very name means “My God is Yahweh”!
Ahab is given such attention in the biblical record because ‘he led the nation to the fork in the road and forced it to take the path of destruction’ (Van’t Veer). Elijah is given such attention because he was God’s man holding up the stop sign, calling the people back from the edge of the precipice of destruction.
What do we learn from all of this?
1. We learn something of the insidious nature of sin – it builds from small beginnings, perhaps imperceptivity at first… but over time a foul monster spits its vileness and fire of rage against all godliness… from Jeroboam’s aids to worship that were an adjustment of the Word and Worship of God to wholesale rejection of Ahab. No sin is harmless; all sin which is tolerated is actively at work to strengthen itself… just as the full blown idolatry of Elijah’s day was the culmination and inevitable outcome of a process which had small beginnings, so too it is often the case with all kinds of sin.
2. We learn that the door for sins increase is contempt for the Word of God. This is why Paul stressed to Timothy “preach the Word in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:1). A strong ministry of the Word, where the Word strongly holds our heart and mind, is the only protection against sin and antidote to sin. Jesus’ constant reply in defence was “what does the Word say?”’ and His constant call in advancing against sin’s hold on the mind and heart of people was exactly the same. What place does the Word have in our hearts and churches – is it the inspired, authoritative and sufficient Word of God?
3. We learn that one of the clearest tests of the regard we have for the Word of God, as to whether we exercising a heart-contempt to it, is in the area of worship – when worship begins to be shaped around the edges to make it more appealing to man (albeit under the guise of wanting to please God in relevant ways)… and where the appeal is fleshly rather than spiritual in nature – remember Jesus said our worship is to be spiritual when he said “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth”.
4. We learn that we do not live in all that different a world to that of Elijah. The anti-Bible, anti-Christian policy is increasingly evident in our day – even in countries whose modern democracies owe their existence to the Christian faith. We see these things developing a-pace here… the active design to eradicate all mention of the God of the Bible from public life and society in general, to marginalise biblical witness… if possible to deem those with biblically shaped and governed consciences ‘cranks’ and eventually enemies against decency and order. ‘There is no doubt that our present Government’s attitude towards Reformed, Evangelical, Bible believing, Bible reading, non-ecumenical churches is that they would rather we didn’t exist. To them we are, at best, a nuisance and at worst a threat to their liberalising ideals’ (Robert Robb).
5. We also learn, and will see as we progress through the life of Elijah and Elisha, that God is not weakened let alone silenced, and will demonstrate His power and grace even in the days of darkest of apostasy. The great declaration of the NT which is looked for and foreshadowed here is that the Messiah reigns and has won the decisive battle, and the flow of history for all the opposition of the enemies of God, is that of bringing all things under His feet. So we are encouraged to cry ‘My God is Yahweh!’