Kings: It's Time to Choose - Audio
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we're in the in the middle of a series on Kings first and second Kings and to lay all my cards on the table before this series we did a series on the tank commandments I called the 10 principles and it was kind of startling when you when you go through that series and recognize just how how much our culture is moving away from the the way that God says this is what the context that we require for flourishing and I'm personally a little bit pessimistic about where we're headed things could be turned around at any moment and I believe that my trust that it seems to me like it seems to me as though our culture is moving in a bad direction one that's increasingly hostile and antichristic and so this series is really about creating a culture of resistance I think that one of like my jobs there may be the biggest job beyond just sharing the gospel is is preparing us fortifying us for what it looks like to live in a hostile culture to have a counterculture a culture of resistance that's strong that's faithful that can weather the storm and so you saw last week or two weeks ago we did Obadiah and Elijah like what's what does it look like to have rules what how do we how do we operate in an antichristic culture today we're going to be looking at the big things that God sometimes does and so join me as we look at first Kings 18 so Obadiah we saw him a couple weeks ago Obadiah went to meet Ahab that's the king of Israel and told him and Ahab went to meet Elijah the prophet when he saw Elijah he said to them is that you you trouble or Israel Elijah is like nope I have not made trouble for Israel he replied but you and your father's family have you've abandoned Yahweh's commands and followed the balls or bales that's a that's the the Semitic word for Lord or master so there's Yahweh who's the Adonai Lord and then there's the balls of the bales that they're at master so who's the real master here and so Elijah tells Ahab summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table Jezebel is Ahab's wife what's going on why are there all these prophets who are they prophets to well the first thing to note is Mount Carmel I got a picture here of Mount Carmel Carmel is the the Hebrew for a garden of God Carm Carmi is garden and El is God garden of God the question though is which God is this garden belong to on the left you can see a map of Israel Israel and then to the the northwest is Phoenicia and if you look at the bottom left of the map I don't know if you can make it out but in red letters it says Mount Carmel and then there's that dotted line that that shows Israel's land and just across the Kishan River from Mount Carmel is is Phoenicia that's Tyre and Sidon you might remember Jesus talking about Tyre and Sidon in the New Testament why is this important well it's important because Phoenicia is the home of Jezebel Ahab's wife this is where she grew up where she's from and that's where she learned to worship and so Elijah is taking us and taking the people of Israel to the like the dividing line between Israel that's supposed to be Yahweh's territory and Phoenicia which is supposed to be Baal and Asherah's territory who are Baal and Asherah we're not exactly sure which of the bales Elijah's fighting with it where we think it might be a guy named Melkart he got a picture of him up here Melkart's on the right he was the god of the underworld and he had a mistress her name was Asherah she was the goddess of fertility she's on the left both of those artifacts are are from roughly the period what we're talking about 900 BC ish somewhere in there and they're both available you can view them at the museum and Tel Aviv in Israel they're still there it's pretty cool so the
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The big things that God sometimes does.