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Living a Life of Significance: Courage
By Dale Yerton
I
Kings 18:1-2 The famine in Israel was
severe. It hadn’t rained for over three
years and everything was dying. Jezebel
reacted in violent anger blaming Jehovah for the curse and killing His
prophets. Ahab blamed Elijah for their
trouble and spent his time trying to find grass to feed his animals.
Courage
is birthed from our convictions. We
must find something bigger than ourselves if we are going to live lives of
significance. Until we find something
big enough to die for, we do not have anything big enough to live for.
1.
Challenging Obadiah
Obadiah
had a beautiful name which meant “the servant of Jehovah.” But Obadiah had a problem, he feared the
Lord, but he served Ahab. He was a
closet believer who lived his life in fear.
He had lived this life of duplicity for so long that he could not
recognize the truth when he heard it.
He believed Elijah was setting him up for a trap. His faith was so weak that he didn’t believe
Elijah would do what he said he would do.
Obadiah
may have fooled Ahab, but he was not fooling Elijah. He said he feared the Lord, but the truth was he loved himself
above everything else. Only godly
convictions will give us the courage to risk our lives for what we
believe. Elijah forced Obadiah to take
a step of faith and go tell Ahab that he wanted to meet with him that day.
2.
Confronting Ahab
Confronting
kings is dangerous business, especially those who are angry with us and who
blame us for their problems. But if we
are going to live a life of significance, we must be willing to tell those in
authority the truth. Speak the truth in
love, but speak it. Elijah knew Ahab
was the leader of Israel. As the king
of Israel he was able to bring the whole nation together, and Elijah wanted the
nation to make a decision. He called
for a showdown between himself and the prophets of Baal.
3.
Conquering Baal
The
big problem Israel faced was not the drought.
The drought only pointed out that they had a problem of deciding which
God they were going to serve. They had
given up on Jehovah, but Jehovah hadn’t given up on them. They were a divided nation and a house
divided cannot stand. Were they going
to serve Jehovah, or were they going to serve Baal? That was the real issue.
Since
Baal was the “sun god,” Elijah offered them a proposition. Both he and the prophets of Baal would build
an altar, place a sacrifice upon it, but put no fire under it. Let the god which answered by fire be the
true God which they worshipped. The
Israelites loved fireworks, so this sounded like a good idea to them. The prophets of Baal might have felt they
were being backed into a corner, but there was not much they could say about it
since their god was the sun god.
Elijah
yielded to the 400 prophets of Baal.
They certainly were in the majority, so he offered them the first chance
to call fire down from heaven. They
might not have had much power, but they could put on a good show. They began leaping around the altar calling
on Baal. They cried louder and began
cutting themselves. When nothing else
worked for them they began prophesying.
It was all impressive, but there was no fire. In fact, everyone could see that no one was paying attention to
them. There was no voice, no answer, no
fire.
Elijah
couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease them.
He urged them on by saying their god was busy; maybe he was on a
journey, or he might have gone to the bathroom. In desperation they cut themselves until they were bleeding very
badly.
4.
Calling Israel
Now
it was Elijah’s turn to pray. Very
deliberately he called to the people, “Come near to me.” First, he repaired the altar which was
broken down by placing twelve stones together.
Remember, there were no longer twelve tribes because of the division
between Israel and Judah, but Elijah was reminding them that the covenant of
God was stronger than the failures of men.
He emphasized his point by calling for twelve barrels of water to soak
the sacrifice. There would be no secret
fire hidden in his altar. Elijah began
to pray and not once did he mention fire.
He only asked that the people would recognize the true God and worship
him. Though he didn’t specifically
mention fire, the fire came consuming the sacrifice, the stone altar and
licking up the water in the trench around the altar. The reason Elijah could act with such courage was he was doing
what God had told him to do. His
convictions brought about a courage which caused Israel to repent, and the day
they repented the rain returned to the land.
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