Two Types of Stirring

There is a story of a bride going to visit a coal mine with her white dress on.  She asked the miner leading her into the ground, "will I get dirty?'  He replied, "I can tell you one thing.  You won't come out looking like you did on the way down."

1 Kings 16 tells us about a king who is on the way down into the coal mine.  In this case he, the husband, is the one who is about to be drenched with soot.

The sixty years of rebellious leaders before him were "trivial" (1 Kngs 16:31).  Ahab went further and willingly married into a family of murderers and sexual prostitutes.  1 Kings 21:25 notes "there was no one who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up."

There is another sort of "stirring" mentioned in the New Testament--"And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works." (Hebrews 10:24).

Before one considers a marriage it is important to contemplate what type of "stirring" the other person will do in the years to come.  A sober analysis beforehand may bring a signal of trouble.  The prophet Amos raised the question "Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?"  Obviously no.  If one is trying to stay clean while the other is making trips deep into the coal mine, it will follow that both will end up being dirty.

Had Ahab taken a lesson from the miner he would have known that one important thing--when you knowingly choose the wrong person you never come up looking like you did on the way down.

Rebuilding what God has Stopped

Hiel of Bethel rebelled against God by rebuilding Jericho despite a divine curse that Joshua had invoked generations before (1 Kngs. 16:33, Josh. 6:26).  Jericho represented the Lord's first victory in the establishment of a nation under Him.  God had destroyed the city and it was not to be reconstructed.  Any who dared would lose both his firstborn son and his youngest.  Hiel disobeyed and received the consequences.  Elijah appeared in the very next verse (17:1).  It was not coincidence that God's servant was now speaking against the king.

The verses teach a godly principle--"don't rebuild what God has stopped."

Noah is a less severe example.  After the many years of building the ark, Noah then lived inside it while the world was destroyed by the flood.  When the time came to let the animals out and for his family to again take up the creation command to "be fruitful and multilply, and fill the earth" (Gen. 1:28, 9:1,7), did he hesitate? Was he tempted to hang on to the ark as something sacred when God was calling him to move forward?  The ark was quickly becoming a sign of another time, another command of God.  Would he try to renew that trace of the familiar or press forward into the new?

Would he try to rebuild what God had now stopped?

God gives fresh vision while we often have difficulty in letting go of the old.  We may not provoke God as Hiel did, but we can swiftly become guilty of disobedience if we continue to ignore His call into a new direction.

Is God doing a new work?  Don't rebuild what God has stopped.

Plagiarising Elijah

Although I was fascinated with the pastor's sermons on Elijah, I moved to another province and never finished hearing them. Fourteen years later the tapes were being given away to clean out the church's library.  I was starting my own series, and as I recalled the quality of his teaching, I gladly took them home and set them with my own study books.

I compared the illustrations.  I checked the paragraphs.  Recognition came.  It was no wonder the preaching had been so good.  It was about 98% Chuck Swindoll's.

Plagiarism can take away your grade on a paper.  It can cause you to fail a course.  It can revoke your degree.  It can also destroy your testimony.  What I thought was excellence was parroting.  What I believed was sterling character was now tarnished.  No one knew but God.  Now I did.

Sometimes preachers compliment each other by saying they will steal each other's sermons.  I've never been comfortable with that.  Borrowed sermons are borrowed convictions.  The one who steals a sermon also steals their own spiritual growth.

Good preaching comes through conviction.  Sweating and grappling with a passage until it is opened up to you by God grows deep roots.  Study hammered on the anvil of time makes the passage your own.  Stealing takes away the reward of a job well done.

After one has finished their study, and then turned to other books, there is the satisfaction of discovering that one's thoughts are also similar to other Bible teachers.  The same Holy Spirit that opened the text for you also illumined them.

Do we ever use another's work?  Yes, we can.  We give them credit.  We do not steal it and then present it as our own.

Ahab's Monument

God can take our lives and condense them into a single statement.  Alexander Maclaren noted that God can take a waving forest, compact it, and represent it so it appears like thin seam of coal.  Much can be said about Ahab's life, but here it is declared in short form.

"Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him."

One night 1 Kings 16:33 leaped off the page while a friend and I discussed Elijah's times.  "What a horrible thing to say!", we both concluded.  We both felt the tremendous impact of the thought.  In only a few lines, God had written Ahab's obituary, and it was not a pleasant one.  What if we read these lines in the newspaper about someone we knew?  Or, if it were possible, what if we could read such a thing about ourselves?

Contrast the life of David.  The most comprehensive biography of any one person in the Bible is David.  Sixty-two chapters of Scripture teach us about the man after God's own heart.  Only a chapter before in 1 Kings 15:5, David's life is also condensed into a single verse.  "David did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."

God gave a truthful assesssment of David.  He had pleased God, except for his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband Uriah.  There was nothing amiss with God's assessment.  It was just.

God will write our monument for all to see in the final judgement.  What will He say?  We know that for many there will be a "well done, good and faithful servant"(Matt. 25:21).  For others there will be an "away from Me, I never knew you"(Matt. 7:21). 

Let us live so our final monument is nothing like Ahab's.

The Appearance of Elijah

Year after year. Sin after sin. Apostacy after apostacy. There has been no godly king in Israel for over 50 years. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel now rule. In actuality "Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him"(1 Kings 16:33).

There appears a man out of nowhere in the royal court. He is "a hairy man wearing a leather belt around his waist"(2 Kings 1:8). His name means "My God is Yahweh."

He walks into a palace that was built as a fortress for King Omri, to see a king that has the military ability to harm him. He never once acts like he is supposed to be polite. He has no protocols. No introductions. No deference to the royal position.

"As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew or rain these years, except at my command"(1 Kings 17:1). No arguments. No negotiation. No compromise. No escape clauses.

This is the way it will be.

Elijah's name is synonymous with courage. He stands in a sharp contrast to his time. His story echoes through history and challenges us today. Will we stand for God as he did? Do we ever entertain the idea of living like him? Are we even found to be willing to pray for the Lord's strength to follow in such a way?

Let us learn from his journey. Let us attempt to follow him in boldness through the power of the Holy Spirit.
From there, we will address our world today with the posts to follow.