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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

Fire From Above

That what the world is going through now, what is gripping the world, is a sign of what is to come.

What we've seen over the last year is really a warning.

I don't know about you, maybe I'm not the only 1, but this is a hard week for me.

You know the weight of work, personal things, you know your life.

Sometimes even as a Christian you begin to doubt and question and ask God, where are you?

Being a Christian does not mean that you are always on your A game.

The secret to being a Christian is that you go to God even when you're failing.

So our talk today, we're gonna look at 1 of my favorite Bible heroes.

But our scripture, as was read so well, is found in the book of Hebrews, the 12th chapter.

Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 28 says, "'Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, "'let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

Verse 29, for our God is a consuming fire.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled Fire From Above.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word and to worship you.

Lord, we understand that we are not worthy of your mercy nor of your grace.

But Lord, as we come before you today, we come in humility.

Wash us in your blood and cleanse us from all unrighteousness as we approach your throne.

Lord, once again make me a nail on the wall.

Lord, the nail has little to no value, but we would ask that the nail would just hold a portrait of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Instead, Father, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

This is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

We'll go to the book of First Kings chapter 16, verse 28 and 29.

We see the transition of power of the northern kingdom of Israel.

1 Kings 16, 28 says, So Omri slept with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, and Ahab his son reigned in his stead.

Omri was not the best king and when he died, his son Ahab took the throne.

Verse 29 says, and in the 30 and 8th reign 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 20 and 2 years.

For 22 years, the Northern Kingdom is led by Ahab.

As we're going to see that this poses challenges that Israel will never recover from.

Just to give you a little bit of geographic orientation, Remember that what was once a unified kingdom of Israel broke into 2 parts predominantly because of Solomon's choosing of wives that were pagan and the introduction of pagan worship by Solomon and then his son Rehoboam being 1 of them.

The kingdom splits and you wind up with these 2 kingdoms.

Supposedly the same people with the same God, but 2 different kingdoms.

And if you look at the history, here's Rehoboam, who kind of continues in David's reign.

And just to show you where we are, here's Ahab, who reigns for 22 years.

And You can see that the 2 kingdoms split, and they have totally different lineages of kings.

To show you where we are in time, because sometimes you read the Bible, you don't see it in context, and it's important to understand where you are.

When you look at it, Elijah is 1 of the first prophets, really.

Everyone, most of whom we think about after Moses is all of these other folk, Jonah, Amos, Isaiah, Joel, Micah, you can see at around the time of the exile, Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah.

He carries a burden unique in all that he goes.

He travels up and down and inside of both nations, but he carries a very powerful message as he does this.

In 1 Kings 16 and verse 30, it says, "'And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight "'of the Lord above all that were before him.' "'Ahab is corrupted even more than all the other kings "'who have been corrupted.' We step into our story today at a time when Israel is at its spiritual lowest point, spiritually lowest point.

It is failing spiritually and overwhelmingly, and here's why.

Ahab, Omri, and the other kings have led Israel into a path of repeated sin and violation against God.

The worship of Baal, which was fought so hard in the time of the judges over and over again, seems to continue to mount itself and be reintroduced into Israel until its leadership itself accepts the worship of a false god.

Verse 31 says, and it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him, speaking of Ahab, to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him.

Here, he doesn't just fail God in that he chooses to serve Baal.

He cements his decision by who he marries.

He marries a daughter of Ethbaal, and you can see the word Baal in her father's name, and even Jezebel is really Jezebel, a play on Baal.

We'll talk more about him in a second, but he accepts Jezebel as his wife, and Jezebel is a strong personality, a strong character, as we'll see in a series on Elijah.

So over the next couple sermons, you will see that she is a strong character.

She knows what she wants and she gets it.

And when she gets Ahab, Baal worship is heightened in Israel.

Verse 32 says, And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria, in the capital of the state of ancient Israel.

He builds a temple to a false god and worships it.

He made a grove, which is 1 of the ways that they would worship these gods, Baal and Ashtoreth.

And Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, this is a very powerful statement here, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

He set up a temple to worship the false god.

He set up groves where they would do some of their rituals and practices.

And Baal was not simply just another god to worship.

Baal was a god who had some of the most evil, seductive, and murderous worship practices.

Here's a statue of what Baal would have looked like.

Baal is the God most actively worshiped in Canaan and Phoenicia.

He's the storm god, the head god of Canaan.

This is all gonna be important in our story.

Spring mist and summer dew, which nourish the crops.

Therefore, Baal is considered responsible for the fecundity, particularly of the earth, for the growth of vegetation, and for the maintenance of life.

His father in their pantheon is a God named El, who was once considered the creator God.

And I honestly think that some of these folk took El, who was probably the way that they had interpreted the original God of the Bible, and from that took and made this pantheon.

He takes over from El, and now he is the 1, they say, is responsible for all the moisture, wetness, the rain that feeds the vegetation.

In fact, here's another picture of him here.

He has a stick on his hand, and he pops people upside the head with it.

He stands on the water and on the mountains.

All of these symbolisms matter in our story.

Nonetheless, he is not a god of vegetation.

While the word Beal means simply master or owner and is a lord, right?

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Fire From Above

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