Johnson, S Lewis: Elijah 01 ~ 1 Kings 16;21

twenty one. First Kings chapter sixteen and verse twenty one. Then were the people of Israel divided into two parts. Half of the people followed Tibni, the son of Ginath, to make him king, and half followed Amri. But the people that followed Amri prevailed against the people that followed Tibni, the son of Gines. So Tibni died, and Omri reigned. In the thirty and first year of Asa, king of Judah, began Omri to reign over Israel, twelve years. Six years reigned he in Tirzah. You remember that we are now in that part of the Bible in which the kingdom of, of Israel has been divided. There is the southern kingdom, Judah, and the northern kingdom, known generally as Israel. And so we're reading about the northern kingdom. Elijah was a prophet of the northern kingdom. Verse twenty four: And he brought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria. But Amri wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord and did worse than all that were before him. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger with their vanities. And vanities are idols. Now the rest of the acts of Omri which he did, and his might that he showed, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? So Omri slept with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, and Ahab, his son, reigned in his stead. And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa, king of Judah, began Ahab, the son of Omri, to reign over Israel. And Ahab, the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove. Now, a grove, most scholars believe, was something like a pole, which was designed in a way to be an idol representing a goddess. And Ahab made a grove, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. In his day, in his days did Heal the Bethsaida build Jericho. He laid the foundation thereof in Abaram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Zegu, according to the word of the Lord which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun. That was the fulfillment of prophecy. And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Kirith that is before Jordan. By the way, just for your help in reading the Bible, as I have said to you many times, I'm not sure that I understand how to pronounce every word in the Old Testament. There are one or two that occasionally slip, but I know the way to read them, and that is to read them as if you understand exactly how they should be pronounced. Don't hesitate, for if you hesitate, you're lost, as the pro- as the proverb says. But I will give you this little hint. Almost all words in the Bible that begin with a CH are pronounced like a K. In other words, don't hesitate. Don't say, just say Keres, and it happens to be right in this case, and you'll be right most of the time. Keres, that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord, for he went and dwelt by the brook Keres, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, drank of the brook. May God bless this reading. You can see a great deal of difference between the second hymn that we sang and the first hymn, and there is no question about the Christianity of Isaac Watts. Notice the second stanza. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ my God. He was no Unitarian. All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood. By the way, Isaac Watts was pastor of an independent church. In fact, my memory serves me correctly, it was called the Independent Church. That's what we think we are. Now, today we are beginning a series of studies in the prophet, the prophet, uh, Elijah's life, and so will you turn with me to the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of First Kings. Our subject is prayer, proclamation, and strange bravadas. Elijah was Jehovah's answer to Baal. He is apparently so important in divine revelation that he is mentioned more in the New Testament than any other prophet. As you know, he appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration with our Lord Jesus, and furthermore, it is stated in scripture that Elijah the prophet shall come again before that great and terrible day of the Lord. Elijah's name means Jehovah is my God, and I don't know how that must have sounded in the days in which Baal became so prominent. I wonder if men looked at Elijah and said his name is Jehovah is my God, or Jehovah is my God, as over against the gods of so many of the Israelites that day. But at any rate, Elijah is a man who comes with almost superhuman power. He's a man who seems to be not a citizen of the ordinary earth in which we live, but almost a retainer of God's kingdom and God's throne and God's court in heaven. He was a rugged, stern, solitary man who has been called by his commentators the prophet of fire. And yet he is likened to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. When the Lord Jesus asked his disciples, whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? They said, some say you're the prophet. Some say you're Jeremiah. Some say you are Elijah. So there must have been some things about Jesus Christ that parallel the life of Elijah in the Old Testament. Now, we often think of Jesus as meek and lowly in heart only. Now, he was that, but he was also extremely inflexible in his holiness. In fact, if he had not been holy, he could not have gained our souls by his sacrifice on the cross. If he could not have been, if he was not just and righteous himself, he could not have been our savior. And so that sternness and ruggedness that existed in the prophet Elijah also existed in our Lord Jesus Christ, and men saw that there was something similar about the two. When we look at Elijah, we remember that God is never through with great men. We look about us in the twentieth century, and we think of men like Winston Churchill. Where would we have been without Winston Churchill? Or some of us may think of Douglas MacArthur. Where would we have been without Douglas MacArthur? Or even if we look at the bad men of the twentieth century, we come to the conclusion, since it is God in the final analysis who is responsible for the men who sit on the thrones of earthly kingdoms, that there is some way in which men like Khrushchev and Stalin and Trotsky and others have served the purpose of God too. The worst times, however, demand the best men, and times were very bad in Israel when Elijah the Prophet came on the scene. In Ahab's day, there was need for a man to arrive who would not give Israel new theology, but who would simply declare the ancient theology and reaffirm its great principles in the ears of people who had forgotten them. That is the kind of day in which we live today. We do not need more theology in the twentieth century. We certainly do not need new theology. We do not need the kind of new theology that so many are forced to hear today. We need more faith in the theology that we already have in the Word of God. Charles Kingsley said that he did not want merely to possess a faith, but he wanted a faith that possessed him. And Kingsley's words are certainly appropriate today, for today is a day in which we need, as Christians, to lay hold of, in a deeper way than ever before, the faith that we have as represented in the Word of God. Let's look this morning first at the circumstances of the appearance of this remarkable prophet. Israel was at a crisis, and Elijah comes as the harbinger of reform and recovery. Ahab's reign was a reign of wealth and splendor. After all, he succeeded the great Omri. Now, Omri does not appear in the Bible as a great man, but if you went to the annals of the Assyrian kings, you would discover that for one hundred years they referred to Israel as the house of Omri. He was a great man, historically. In the word of God, of course, we read Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord and did worse than all that were before him. But in his day, he was a great man. Men looked off to his kingship, and they spoke highly of his ability as a world figure and as a ruler in the little land of Palestine. Now Ahab succeeded him, and Ahab, the Bible says, was a man who walked in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. It was Jeroboam, remember, who was the first king of the northern kingdom. Now, Jeroboam did not do things that might have seemed really bad to us if we had lived in that day. He had been brought up in Egypt, and he had become acquainted with the Egyptian gods, and when he became king, all he did was simply introduce the worship of Jehovah by means of the Egyptian gods. He didn't deny the worship of Jehovah. He just brought up some calves and set up worship at Dan in the north and Bethel in the south, and, and then he made the figures of the calves, and he said, these be the gods that brought thee out of Egypt. And if you had gone to Jeroboam and said, Jeroboam, are you denying the worship of Jehovah? He would have said, oh no. This is just a different way in which we worship the same God. After all, in the final analysis, the Babylonians and the Egyptians and others were all worshiping the same God. I do not deny Jehovah. I am a worshiper of Jehovah. I just think that we ought to put other gods alongside of him, and we can understand him better through them. There are many today who feel like that. They feel that alongside the trinity of Chris- Christianity, it is perfectly all right to worship other gods, the gods of the Hindus, or the gods of the Mohammedans, or the gods of the Taoists, or whatever it may be. But the word of God says that Jeroboam was one who made Israel to sin. Because, you see, the God who is the genuine and true God is an exclusive God, and he does not want to give his glory to anyone else, for it is wrong. It is not only wrong, but it is sinful and evil, and it always produces evil too. For you see, men live like their gods. They that make them are like unto them, the Psalmist said. And God knew that when the worship of Jehovah was abandoned and other gods were worshipped, who were not holy gods like Jehovah, the people would soon become unholy. And that is exactly what happened. Baal worship came into the land. Baal was the god of fertility, and so there were Baals for everything. And ultimately, in order to express the worship of the god Baal, the, the most lascivious kinds of rites were engaged in, and even children were sacrificed to the fire in worship of Baal. False gods always lead to evil and immorality. Now that's looking at it only naturally, but God spoke out very strongly against the gods that Jeroboam allowed to come in, and particularly Ahab. But Ahab's greatest mistake was in the wife that he took. This is something that happens in the twentieth century. Sad to say, I know of some men of whom it can be said that the greatest mistake that they have ever made is in the wife that they have taken. Ahab, apparently for political reasons, married Jezebel, the daughter of Esbaal, a priest who usurped the throne of Zadan, or Tyre. And this Tyrian princess was a very unscrupulous woman. She was the Semiramis of her age. She was cruel, and furthermore, she was lustful, and above all else, she was implacably hostile to the worship of Jehovah. She wanted the God of the gods of Baal to be the gods of the land of Israel. And so it was necessary for God to act. And a man appeared on the scene whose name was Jehovah is my God. And you can understand why Elijah was given that name. Clarence McCartney says that Elijah was the loneliest and grandest man in the Old Testament. He is a man of thunder and lightning, of fire and whirlwind, and the very name that was given to him expresses the bent of his ministry. Jehovah is my God, not Baal, not the gods of fertility. Jehovah, the ever-living God, the covenant-keeping God. This God is my God. You know, it would be wonderful if today, in the midst of the age in which we live, there were some men who would stand up and say, Jesus Christ is my God, like Isaac Watts did. I believe in the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and the atonement through Jesus Christ. For when a man stands like that, God is free to move supernaturally, and he did in the life of Elijah. It states that Elijah was of Tishbe in the land of Gilead. Now, Gilead was to the east of Jordan, and that's a wild, rugged, rocky region. In Elijah's day, it was the home of nomadic hillbillies. And so the sovereignly chosen Baum from Gilead was not a professor. Professors are good in their place. Unfortunately, they don't always stay in their place. He was not a reverend. Reverends are almost never good. Mr. Sturgeon said, why should we steal an attribute that belongs only to God? But for those genuine men of God who don't like to be called reverend, they have their place too. Elijah, however, was just a man who grew up out in the sticks, so to speak, but he had an opportunity to come to know God, and he did come to know God. He came to know him in a very intimate way. In fact, all of the priests and religious men of that day apparently did not know God as Elijah did. Oh, there were other prophets. There was Obadiah. There were seven thousand that had not bowed the needs of Ba- the needs of Baal. But Elijah is the man who stands out above the rest. And he was just a man that came from the hill country. And furthermore, he had some things going against him too. He had some things going for him, but some things were definitely going against him. In the second book of Kings, it is stated that he was an hairy man and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins, and that was his name, Elijah the Tish- Tishbite. Imagine a hippie who has come to the help of Israel. I wonder what Ahab thought when he saw Elijah striding up, and he saw this hairy man with this girdle about him and a mantle thrown around his shoulders. He must have turned to one of his aides and said, you know, this fellow looks like a great big bug that's coming, a beetle to be exact. And then as he looked at Elijah, he said, say, you're about two thousand years before your time, brother. But he soon discovered that Elijah's message wasn't yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, no, no. Apparently, by the way, did you know that the Hebrew text says, when it says that he was a hairy man, it says he was Lord of hair. That's the Hebrew expression. He was Baal, R, Baal means Lord. He was the master of hair. Boy, he would be popular in the twentieth century, wouldn't he? He had a mantle which he threw around his shoulders. Now, apparently that mantle had to do some- had something to do with the prophetic office. In fact, this so often happens, you know. Elijah began a trend, and the trend was afterwards for the prophets to have a hairy garment because they wanted to walk in the line of Elijah. And you remember in Zechariah, when we were going through it recently, in the thirteenth chapter, in the fourth verse, we read, and it shall come to pass in that day that the prophet shall be ashamed every one of his vision which he has prophesied, neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive. In other words, apparently from the time of Elijah, the prophet liked, I imagine that most of the prophets had long hair, and they had a girdle about their loins, and they threw a mantle around their shoulders in order that you could look off and say, now there's a prophet. Now, I'm not going to say all I'm going to say about this, but I just want to make this comment, maybe two comments. Number one, that it always is human. When God lays his hand upon a man and uses that man, raises him up and speaks to people through that man, the person who has no spiritual discernment or little spiritual discernment will look at him and evaluate his effectiveness by his outward appearance. In other words, today you can look on the street and say, well, there's the Reverend Doctor so and so. There's the Reverend Doctor such and such. You don't know him, but there are the, there are the signs. But often there is no reality. Sometimes there is, but often there is no reality. Now, to get right down to the mundane, we had a great preacher in Dallas for many years. His name was Truitt. And I think anybody who has known Jesus Christ honors the name of Dr. Truitt, who was for many years pastor of the First Baptist Church in this city. He was a man who was a great preacher. He had a great heart, and God greatly used him. Now, I don't want to say anything against Mr. Truitt, because I'm a great admirer of his, but I do know this, that Mr. Truitt, when he went into the pulpit, he went into the pulpit, and he usually put his hands on the pulpit desk like this, with one foot forward and one foot back, and he preached, and he preached with great power, and he would not have been surprised if he had known spiritual truth, if twenty years later he went into the Baptist churches over the South and discovered that man after man went into the pulpit, put two hands on the pulpit desk with one foot forward, and began to preach. But they were not through it. They were not through it, at least a great number of them. You see, men often look at the outward and think that the power rests there. It does not. Elijah had a mantle, but it had no great significance other than the fact that it was for God and for Elijah, symbolic of the unction that was upon him. And of course, when Elisha came and God threw Elijah, both the waters with the mantle, and Elisha took his mantle, it was a symbolic thing only to indicate that God's power now rested with his scholar and successor, Elijah. Now, the texts also say about Elijah that he troubled Israel. Now, of course, that's from the viewpoint of Ahab. He met him one day, and he said, art thou he that troubleth Israel? And how often that too is the response of men. It is not the man of God who troubles Israel, it is the ungodly king who troubles Israel. But it is necessary for God to stir up the people. And so, in reaction against the word of God, we say, art thou he that troubleth Israel? I would gather from this that Elijah was not that tactful, polite, courteous kind of man who never gives a forthright message at all. I would gather from this that he was fearless. I would gather from this that if it is necessary for him to be tactless in order to be true to the word of God, he will be tactless. I would imagine that he was a John Knox kind of man. John Knox's funeral, when Regent Morton was giving some words of eulogy, he uttered what Geddes McGregor has called the inevitable words about John Knox. Here lies a man who neither flattered nor feared any flesh. I think Elijah was that kind of man, and that's why a great change occurred in Israel through the ministry of Elijah. He wasn't afraid to speak out from what he saw in the word of God. James tells us that he was righteous. Bill McRae has expounded the significance of that well this morning. It also says in James that he was a man of like passions with us. I think that means that he was not only fearless, but on occasion he was fearful. He was not only a shaggy lamb, but he was also a frightened little bird at times. He not only was a hawk, but occasionally he was a dove in moments of weakness. He was rough, and at the same time he was tender. Mendelssohn has caught Elijah's character very well in his Elijah with its rapid alternations. Well, that was Elijah. Now, Elijah appeared one day in the court of Ahab. Time was ripe for reproof, and it was needed someone to take up the wise word of, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt worship the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul. For Israel has gone after Baal, and there are gods on almost every hill. And these gods are gods which represent fertility, for Baal was the fertility god. And it was the claim of the Baalites that their gods were responsible for all the blessings that came from heaven. Baal brought the rain, Baal brought the sun, Baal brought the fruitfulness of their crops. Baal was responsible for their prosperity. And so a thunderbolt one day crashed in Ahab's court when this hairy beetle ca- this bug, this hairy prophet came in in front of the king and said to the king, as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. Now, the Bible does not say the kind of effect, it does not say anything about the kinds of effects that this had upon the court and upon Ahab. I just imagine that they were thunderstruck, because after all, this was a bolt of lightning and a crash of thunder that had come. I would imagine that their mouths opened and they just stood looking. Imagine the audacity of someone coming in the court of Israel, in Jezreel, in his very palace, and standing before him and uttering these words. But he did it. And you notice from this first verse that there is a clue to Elijah's living. The text says that Elijah was of the inhabitants of Gilead. He was from the little village of Tizne or Tishbe. Now, I would assume that since almost all the villages east of the Jordan were just little tents, collections of tents, that he was really a nomad. But he was from that area. That's where he lived. But really, Elijah did not live in Tishbe. He lived in the presence of God. Did you notice that? He says, as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand. That means before whom I minister. That means whose servant I am. Oh, I live in Tishbe, all right, but I really live in heaven before God. That's what Paul means when he addresses the Colossians as the saints which are at Colossae, but adds that they are also in Christ. For you see, every one of us lives in two spheres. The trouble with so many of us in the twentieth century is that we live primarily in Dallas instead of in Christ. But if we live in Christ as much as we live in Dallas, what a tremendous change would occur in Dallas. That's what happened in Israel. So the man comes, and if you had looked on that little court, you would have probably been amazed. You would have said, my, look at Ahab. Isn't that a wonderful garment in which he is dressed? Those long, flowing, expensive, gold bedecked robes, and that beautiful room with all of the tapestry, and the architecture of this palace, and all of the courtiers. Isn't this a magnificent place? And then this hairy man comes in and talks about a God in heaven. You know, have you ever looked at mountains when the mists are covering them? I lived in Switzerland for a time, and often in Switzerland, the mists cover the high mountains, and if you were to go out driving, you would look at the little hills. Oh, they would be mountains in Texas, but they're really little hills over there. And they are beautiful little hills, and you admire them, and you talk about their beauty until in a moment the wind comes and the mist is whipped away from those gigantic skyscrapers, and your breath is taken away as you see the beauty that had been hidden. And that's the way it was in the day that Elijah came into the court of Ahab. If you had looked at the court and marveled at that, you would be like a man marveling at the beauty of the little hills. But when Elijah came in, the breath of wind came, and the mist was blown away, and we got a look at the God of heaven, who sits upon his throne that is above all human thrones, and the others pale in insignificance by it. There shall not be not only rain, not dew nor rain, but according to my word. You follow Baal. He's the god of the rain. We shall see who's the god of rain. Let the god that answereth by rain be the true god. The next chapter he will say, let the god that answereth by fire be the true god. And so now he has challenged them. He's challenged the gods of Baal. Produce your rain. There's not going to be any rain except according to my word. We were treated to a series of lectures last year or year- the year before at Dallas Seminary by William Ward Eyre. He referred to this in his one of his messages, and he said that when Elijah came in, he spoke very sharply to the king, and he said he once heard Billy Su- Sunday preach on this, and that Billy Sunday said that after he had said to Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. That Billy Sunday stopped and said he also said to Ahab, and Ahab, to explain that, I want to tell you that it is going to be so dry that you're going to have to prime yourself before you're able to spit. Now, that is not in Holy Scripture, but Billy Sunday's expositions were sometimes not really holy either. But anyway, at any rate, Ahab has been challenged, and Ahab's God has been challenged. And I just wonder what happened as Elijah turned around with all the dignity of the prophet of God and walked out of the presence of Ahab, I wonder if he finally recovered his courage, and as Elijah's figure retreats, he yells out, stop that man! But nobody does anything. I think the fear of God has fallen upon the court of Ahab. Because, you see, when the man of God speaks up, when the man of God proclaims the word of God, there is always something that accompanies it. And there is something that accompanies it that makes the hearts of men like water. And do you know what it is? It's the power of God. The power of God. For when the gospel of Christ is proclaimed, it is proclaimed with the power of God. And that is why, when we stand for him, we can always be sure that we have God's power behind us. That's why we know in Believer Chapel, as long as we stick to the pages of Holy Scripture and proclaim this word, we have God's power. And it's guaranteed to us by God, and we know it from his word. We just need to live before the God who lives a little while, like Elijah did. Well, now the word of the Lord came to Elijah again. Elijah, it's time to hide. And I can understand that. I think God is very practical. This man has suddenly become number one, the public enemy number one in all the land of Israel. The word is out, get Elijah. And the person behind this is the queen, but the people are not happy either, because, you see, the rain doesn't come. Their fro- their crops do not become ripe. The grass begins to turn brown. The cattle begins to low for water, and there is no water. They look at the streams, and the streams begin to dry up. The rivers are dry, and it's all because of that prophet of Jehovah Elijah, and they hate him. So it's time to hide. And so Elijah hides. But of course, from Elijah's standpoint, there was a reason for this. It's only in the times of hiding that we really come to know God. I read somewhere not long ago that no spiritual discovery is ever made on a crowded street. And so Elijah goes to the east of Jordan, to the little brook Tiris, and it must have been in a rocky, out of the way place, and he sat down by that little brook because God had said that he had commanded the ravens to feed him. And there he listened to the voice of God, and he came to know God better. He came to understand something about the next steps that God would do for him, and the things that God would do through him, and he was fed. But you know, this was a tremendous act of faith. God had said to him, I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. Do you know anything about ravens? Well, you know the word ravenous, don't you? A ravenous eater? Have you ever seen a ravenous eater? Well, come over to my house when I miss a meal sometimes. I become like a raven. A raven is known for the fact that he can eat tremendous quantities of food. As a matter of fact, if you feed ravens, I don't recommend it, but if you do, you're liable to be feeding in your hand. Now, to think that the ravens would come and give him food, Elijah must have said, what did you say? Our Arabim? Or did you not mean Arabians? That's the way the modern scholars read that. The Arabians were going to come and feed. Can you not a- listen, that would have been a bigger miracle. Imagine the Arabians coming in the morning and the evening and feeding the prophet of Israel. That's what the modern scholars want us to read here. No, it's ravens. But Elijah, of course, Elijah must have in his heart said, ravens of all animals, ravens, why, they won't leave me a thing. But no God had said ravens. Furthermore, Elijah might have reasoned, well, the brook is going to drop there too, isn't it? And in addition, the raven was an unclean bird, according to the Old Testament. But the ravens were going to come by and visit Elijah in the morning and the evening, evening, and give him bread and flesh. Fifth verse says, so he went and did according to the word of the Lord. That's the thing you do. You see, it becomes a much greater miracle when the ravens come and do it, and that's what happened. And furthermore, did you notice that God said, I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there, there. I'm quite sure that Elijah was right by that brook every morning and every evening. He didn't say, now boys, this afternoon I'm going to be out in the field playing a little baseball, meet me over there and give me some food along about the regular time. No, he knew that God had said that he would be fed right there, right at that spot, and so he was sure to be at that spot. Now, of course, the lesson is obvious. When we are in the center of God's will, we can be sure of his provision. But we cannot be sure of his provision when we're out of his will. The food will be at the right spot. Did you notice in the Old Testament, when Israel was led through the wilderness by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, did you notice this about the manna? It followed the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire. That's where the manna was. That was quite an incentive to follow the cloud too, by the way. And so the prophet obeys in faith, and he is fed, and he is given daily bread for daily strength. And this is God's promise. Many years ago, there was a great preacher in Mr. Wesley's day. His name was Sam Bradburn. And Mr. Wesley, word came to Mr. Wesley that Sammy was not doing so well at one time financially, and so Mr. Wesley sent him a five pound note. And with the money, he enclosed a little word. He said, Dear Sammy, trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shall be fed. Yours affectionately, John Wesley. Shortly after, he received a prompt thank you note in which Mr. Bradman said, Dear Mr. Wesley, I've often been struck with the beauty of the passage of scripture which you have just quoted, but I must confess that I never saw such useful expository notes on it before. You know, when a man obeys God, he will be supplied provision by God. And so Elijah spent many, many days by the brook pure, and he listened and he learned. Now, in conclusion this morning, I want to call your attention to just a couple of lessons which are quite obvious, but one of them I want to spend about two minutes on. First of all, it's obvious that error has an insidious power. In spite of the stringent admonitions of the Old Testament that they were not to have such gods as the gods of Baal, Israel still went out and constructed their gods and followed the false idol. Now, today we are not in danger of pagan idolatry, I don't think. We're not in danger of the superstition that marks some of our professing Christian churches, but we are today in danger of human reason. The Christian faith is eminently reasonable, providing we have begun with faith, but we are in danger today of falling prey to new theology, new ideas concerning the person of Christ, new ideas concerning the atonement, new ideas concerning the word of God, in which the word of God is partly iron and partly clay, like Nebuchadnezzar's image. New ideas concerning Christian morality. We are not in danger of the other things, but we are in danger of these. And of course, this text speaks, speaks of the triumph of faith and the triumph of faith to the glory of God. For the one who gets the glory through all of this is God. And I think that it is very important to remember that the day is coming when our lives are going to be judged by the bit of our lives. And I think it's important for every one of us as believers in Christ, and if we're not believers, of course, the first step is to put our trust in Christ. It's very important for us to measure our lives against the will of God. Omri was a great king. If you had lived in Omri's day, you would have said he's a great man. He's one of the great leaders of the age. A man of tremendous ability. You would have been amazed and astounded at him, no doubt, but the scripture says hardly a few words of the, just a few words about him, and said he did evil in the sight of the Lord. And if you had looked at Ahab, you would have admired the beauty of his court. You perhaps would have admired the beauty of Jezebel. There would have been many noble things about this great man to comment upon, but in the word of God, it is he did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than the kings before him. Now, what would be said about your life? She was a raving beauty. He was a tremendous business success. He was a man who came up from nothing and made millions. Or he was a tremendous scholar, great intellect, or even he was a great preacher. But when God writes his little epitaph, will it be he did evil in the sight of the Lord? Now the final thing. You know, James and Bill McRae brought this out so well this morning. James says that Elijah was a man of prayer. As a matter of fact, James says something that it'll...