40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 16:5-17:1 (Episode 313)

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Kings come and go. Some reign for a while and some for only a few days. Some are murdered. And some do the murdering. But idolatry remains through it all. But God is about to speak through a prophet named Elijah. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there while you're over there, make sure that you go to 1517.org and peruse all the other things that we're doing. We've got events that are happening all the time. We have speakers out and about, probably one coming somewhere near you. You can go check that out. We have conferences. Check those out. We have got articles and videos. We have videos of past conferences, all kinds of stuff. I mean, you can spend days and days and days and never exhaust all the content

over at 1517. Thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of content. And so if you're wondering what the scriptures have to say about a certain thing, or if you've got some verse that you're trying to understand, there's a decent chance that we've wrote about it, talked about it, podcast about it. So you can go and find out some stuff. Chad, we ended last week in 1 Kings 16 in kind of an awkward spot. It wasn't any good news going on, which is not strange for the book of 1 Kings. But we got a bad prophecy for a guy

who's going to get eaten in the street like a dog or by dogs. Or maybe he'll die in the field and get picked apart by birds. And that's kind of where we left it. So we got any good news today? I think so. Maybe not immediately.

but uh yeah we got some we got some coming up uh i i can't wait to actually get to the end of this chapter uh only because chapter 17 is going to take us into the life ministry of elijah which is always fun that's gonna get fun yeah so so if uh if the material so if you've been listening to this and uh you're thinking man we just go from king to king to king to king it's relatively predictable this guy sinned this bad thing happened to him his son reigned but he sinned this bad thing happened to him it seems like it's extremely repetitive and predictable if that is your impression well congratulations you've kind of got the message in fact that is what the narrator is trying to get across is that all these guys are walking the same path of destruction it's not the

the straight and narrow but it's the broad it's a broad way that's going to destruction every single of time. All of them are walking the same path, falling off the same cliff over and over. So we're going to take ourselves through the end of chapter 16. And then once we get past that, then we're going to focus on something a little bit different. We're going to begin to see how God is going to use the ministry of Elijah and then his successor, Elisha, which will take us all the way through 2 Kings chapter 13. So beginning with the next chapter, we're going to be introduced to these two prophets whose lives and ministries will actually encompass a large part of the first and second kings. But before we do that, we've got to get through this list of kings here so we can

understand the predictability of their sins and the punishment. So verse 5 through 7 of 1 Kings 16 basically just wraps up the end of Baasha. So it says the rest of the acts of Baasha, what he did, his might are they not written in the books of the chronicles of the kings of israel so baasha sleeps with his fathers he's buried at tirzah tirzah at this point is serving as the the capital city of the northern kingdom we're going to find out in a few verses that under the reign of a guy named amri it's going to move it's going to move from tirzah to the capital we are more familiar with samaria but we're not there yet right now it tears up so basha dead ila or ella his son reigns in his place and then it says moreover the word of the lord came by the prophet jehu or yehu

the son of hanani against basha on his house both because of all the evil that he did in the sight of the lord provoking him to anger with the work of his hands in being like the house of jeroboam and also because he destroyed it so this is the again this this pattern of a prophet is sent by god he speaks against this wicked king and what the prophet prophesies comes to pass so we move now from baasha who is the third king of the northern kingdom we had jeroboam then we had nadab and now we have baasha we're going to move to baasha's son so the fourth king in the northern the kingdom whose name is Elah. So in the 26th year of Asa, king of Judah, so this is this alignment we have where every time a king in the north takes the throne, his year of taking the

throne is coordinated with the certain such a year of the king in the south, and then also the reverse of that if a king in the south takes the throne. So 26th year of Asa, king of Judah in the south. Elah, the son of Asha, begins to reign over Israel in Tirzah, and he's got a pretty short reign. Not as short as another guy we're going to see in a minute, but pretty short. Two years. That's it. Why? What happened to it? His servant Zimri, who was commander of half of his chariot, so this is some sort of military leader. I don't know if that was like an official designation, half of the chariot leader, but he's the guy over half of the chariots, conspires against him so baasha is uh is tying one on basically he's at tirza he's we're told he's

drinking himself drunk in the house of a so-called arza so here's this king who is three sheets of the wind he's drunk and zimri comes in and just takes him out strikes him down kills him no doubt the the easiest uh uh what what's that word for killing a king uh assassination yeah yeah regicide or something like that yeah no doubt a very a very easy murder taking place here because the guy's wasted zimri comes in kills him and then basically takes the throne in his place so that that king uh had a pretty short reign two years he's assassinated zimri takes over this is uh going to be the the back and forth that we see all through the northern kingdom you know you barely get a dynasty established maybe it's a son maybe it's a grandson and there's

a coup there's an assassination somebody else takes over so now zimri is is is king if we can call him that so he begins to reign and as soon as he gets on the throne what does he do well he does the same thing that's going to happen in other cases and it has already happened he takes out the competition he murders all of the male relatives and we're even told the friends of the king that he just assassinated of course because if you you know if you leave a son well that son might be raised in secret somewhere he's going to come later on when he's 18 or 20 or whatever and he's going to try and take the kingdom away from you so what do you do you wipe out the competition so zimri murders not only the king but he actually but he goes on to take out all the

males of that guy's relatives including his friends so zimri destroys all the house of baasha now he did this of course out of completely sinister murderous selfish motives but he also in doing it we're told fulfilled the word of the lord which he spoke against baasha by yahoo the prophet so this again is this the same pattern where god says it's going to happen and it does happen and how does it happen it happens by the hands of sinful men in this case zimri is a guy who does it yeah and you see this a lot i think i think maybe the best example uh where this is like really spelled out of how this works is uh in the book of habakkuk which we'll get to years from now we'll be we'll get there so this will be you'll be this will be new again to you when i say

this. But God tells Habakkuk, hey, check it out. I'm going to send the Assyrians. And Habakkuk's like, what? What? The Assyrians? Yeah, the worst. Yeah, like, wait a minute. So you don't like what your people are doing, so you're going to send people that are arguably worse than them? What does that mean? It means that God is like, hey, I'm going to use wicked people to make a point here they're going to bring about and of course what the assyrians do was prophesied as well and that's how it comes about and so even the even to the people of that day to the prophets like sometimes it's shocking that this is the way it goes but god can deliver a word and that word is often carried out by unrighteous people and usually what follows that is those unrighteous

people whether the babylonians or the assyrians or whoever are themselves impunished yeah what they did yeah yeah yeah so uh that that's what happens god says i'm going to use these wicked bad horrible people babylonians assyrians whoever and then he's going to turn around and punish them for what for what they did uh so that there is justice in in that in that respect yeah it's not so this is a case though it's not as though this dude going out and murdering and a guy's entire family and all his friends that god's like that's exactly what i like to see uh no obviously that's all evil and wicked. It's just something that God knows is going to happen when you dabble in a bunch of idolatry, and people have turned their back on God. This is the sort of thing that

happens. Yeah, if you have idolatry, expect to see death all around you. That is the inescapable impression that we get from all of this. What are they doing? We're told in verse 13 there, we've seen this repeatedly provoking the lord god of israel to anger with their idols now in the last episode we talked about these pejorative words for for idols um i think one was referred to as a as a as a horror uh that the queen mother had made we also saw that the dung deities referred to this is another this is another insulting word against idols this is a little bit tamer the word here is is hevel which is the word that we encounter in the book of uh of ecclesiastes where we read about vanity vanities which is how they have a name so the word here would be

something like god they wrote god to anger with their vanities i suppose in fact some translations might even render it that way so hevel is like vapor breath vanity so these these idols in other words are emptiness nothingness we might say so they're worshiping that which is nothing and when they that which they sow to nothing they will also reap so they themselves will resemble that which they worship as gk bill puts it you resemble what you revere either for your ruin or restoration and we see that of course over and over in the history of israel and that wraps up that particular guy. Now we're going to shift here to his usurper, the one who assassinated him, Zimri. And if you thought that the guy he assassinated had a short reign, two years, well, you ain't

seen nothing yet. This guy's going to last a whopping seven days. So it's the 27th year of Asa, king of Judah, when Zimri, the usurper, reigned for seven days in Tirzah. Is that even long enough to be a king i mean have you is there a process that you need to go through that can be complete that i mean a week yeah it seemed like you know it doesn't even count if it doesn't at least last a month you're just a usurper at that point i don't know if you ever really reigned yeah what are you gonna what are you gonna do i mean we are talking that's one of the funny things here because uh skipping ahead a little bit this guy who only reigns a week and is killed it says that he also did evil in the sight of the lord walked in the ways of jeroboam made israel to

sin so this guy who only lasts a week he basically follows the same pattern as the people that came came before him so the the when he when he assassinated the king the army was encamped this place called gibithon which is with philistine city and uh the troops heard what had happened. Zimri has conspired, they were told, and has killed the king. So they're away, basically, besieging this Philistine city. When word reaches them, hey, there's been a coup. Zimri, the guy that was in charge of half the chariots, he stepped in when the king was drunk, killed him. He's on the throne now. So what do they do? Well, the Israelites who were there said, we don't want that guy to be our king. We don't want Zimri to be our king. We want Omri,

who is the commander of the army he's the general we want him to be king over israel so they basically put the crown on his head so now we got two kings you got zimri who usurped the throne you got omri general omri we'll talk more about him in a minute who is made king by the army so now you got to figure out you got two kings you got to figure out who's going to be the real king so that happens very quickly omri goes from this philistine city takes his takes his army with him and they besiege the capital city of tirza where uh zimri is hanging out zimri is you kind of get the impression he just like he's on his uh the palace roof watching what's happened and when he realized the city is taken he says you know what i'm not going to be taken i'm going to make

sure that i die in my own self-chosen way so he goes into the citadel of the king's house what does he do he uh he pours gasoline all over everything sets place on fire more or less burns the king's house over him with fire and died and that then we have in verse 19 that passage i referred to a couple minutes ago because of his sins that he committed doing evil in the sight of the Lord, walking in that Jeroboam way, making Israel to sin. Verse 20 is almost humorous.

Now the rest of the acts of Zimri and the conspiracy that he made, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? I can't imagine there's a lot there. Very briefly. It's a paragraph. Yeah, a little footnote. Zimri, commander of half the Chariots,

assassinator of the king, died soon thereafter. Tell you what, if you're going to It's not like murder the king and take the throne. This is just old school usurping knowledge. You've got to make sure that the general is involved and on your side. Oh, otherwise you're just setting yourself up for inescapable failure, right? Yeah.

It's going to happen. You need to conspire with that guy. Make sure that he had the troops on your side. I mean, what are you doing, man? You get the feeling he's like, you know what? The king's drunk. and I always wanted to be a king. So, yeah, I'm just going to take my chance.

I really didn't plan this out, but here's what I'm going to do. I can be king for a week. Yeah, he might have been drunk too. But, you know, anyone who burns their – chooses suicide by burning the house around them, I think the guy has more problems. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't seem very – he doesn't seem real thoughtful or stable.

Yeah, a little unstable there in his approach to things. Anyway, that's Zimri. I think maybe, I don't want to say this for sure, but maybe the shortest reign in the Northern Kingdom. Now, he gives way to this Omri character who ends up being a significant, probably besides Jeroboam, the most significant king in the Northern Kingdom. And I'll explain why in a second. Let's kind of introduce, find out more about him. so picking up with verse 21 it says the people of israel were divided into two parts so we we did have two parts we had omri general that the that the army said was going to be king and we had zimri the usurper and now we have two more now we have and so replacing uh zimri is now a guy named tibni t-i-b-n-i so that's the two parts half the people followed tibni the son of

Gannath to make him king and half followed Omri. But the people who followed Omri were told overcame the people who followed Tiffany, the son of Gannath. Now this makes it seem as if I was like, you know, after a few days, the Omri crowd won out. It wasn't like that. It took four years for this to happen. And the way we know that is the way they lined this up with the regnal years of Asa, king of Judah. So I don't want to make it too complicated, but basically it took about four years of civil war in the north before the Omri group was able to overcome the Tibni group. So anyway, he becomes king, Tibni dies. This happens in the 31st year of Asa, king of Judah. So Omri begins to reign over Israel. It's got a fairly long reign, 12 years. Six of these,

So his reign divides in two. Six of these, he reigned at Tirzah, which was the old capital. Then verse 24 tells us that he decided in a sort of a David move to shift the capital. So David shifted the capital to the city of Jerusalem. And this kind of Davidic pretender, we might call him, Omri, he shifts it as well. He bought the hill of Samaria from a guy named Shemer. for a couple of the talents of silver. Then he fortified this hill and he called the name of the city that he built Samaria

after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill. In Hebrew, the word play there is a little more obvious. So our English Samaria in Hebrew is Shomron. The three, the SH and the M and the R, those three consonants are also represented in the guy's name, Shemer, that Omri bought the place from. So Shomeron or Samaria, as we call it, was purchased from Shemer for this two talents of silver. And then Samaria becomes kind of two things. Samaria is now the name of the city itself. So you can talk about the city of Samaria, but you can also talk about the region or the country

of samaria so sometimes we refer to it as the northern kingdom sometimes we call it israel sometimes we call it samaria all of these are the designation for the same same place the northern part of or the part of judea so now we have a shift no longer are the northern king is going to reign from tirzah now they're going to reign from samaria from from here on out in fact through the very end of the northern kingdom when they're destroyed in 722. Now, verse 25 tells us that Omri basically followed the same way. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and we've seen this before. We're told also he did more evil than all who were before him. So it's like all these guys are in a competition. We're going to out-evil one another. Oh yeah, my predecessor, I know that

he was evil. Well, I'm going to be more evil than he is. Verse 26 says he walked in all the way of Jeroboam in the sins that he made Israel to sin, provoking the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger by their idols. That's that word for vanities again, to anger by their vain idols, their vanities, their empty gods, we might call them. And then wrapping him up, 27 and 28 says the rest of his acts, they are also written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. Omri sleeps with his fathers. He is buried in Shomron in Samaria. And then Ahab, you probably recognize was that guy's name? Ahab, his son reigned in his place. We're going to have a lot of time to spend with Ahab. Now here is kind of the interesting thing about Omri. That was, let's see, that's

verses 21 through 28. So relatively brief description of the reign of Omri. If you only had the Bible, you wouldn't realize what a significant character Omri evidently was. so to begin with and i didn't realize this uh until i was studying this passage there's there's a lot of scholars who think that omri was actually not even an israelite he was probably phoenician and the reason i think that is first of all with all these other kings we're told that so and so was the son of so and so we're not we're never told that omri was a son of so and so so there's no patronymic attached to him as there are with all these other israelites what's more that name omri is not a hebrew name but it does match some names close to omri or omri themselves that are

mentioned in some phoenician name list so there's a good chance that he was from of a phoenician background and why is this significant because we're going to hear a lot more about the phoenicians that's the Tyre-Sidon area, because there's going to be intermarriage. There's going to be a Phoenician princess by the name of Jezebel, who is going to marry Ahab, who is the son of Omri. So if this is true, and it probably is, so Omri's not an Israelite, and that might have been actually the reason why so many were opposed to him. The guy had this division. Well, why would we want a non-Israelite reigning over us? So it took some time. No one just, they didn't just accept him right away it is funny probably it is kind of funny that you would have like rank

idolatry going on but then also be like this guy's not even an israelite like what does it mean to be an israelite exactly yeah what does it even matter to you if you're if you're worshiping baal and asherah why are you worried about making sure you have a pure israelite as your uh as your leader isn't that sort of what it means to be an israelite is like that talk about majoring in minors yeah so he's by the phoenician background uh and so the most the most telling feature of all this is that omri is internationally known so there are there are two different inscriptions from the ancient world one from the assyrians and one from the moabites who actually mention Omri. So there's a, it's called the Black Obelisk. This is a Neo-Assyrian

inscription, and it refers to the Northern Kingdom as the dynasty of Omri. It doesn't call it Israel, doesn't call it Samaria. It refers to the Northern Kingdom as the dynasty of Omri. So this is the Assyrians describing the Northern Kingdom by a name that points to Omri as the founder of it. That's one thing. Then you have what's called the Mesha Stele. This is from Moab and there's a whole lot to it. But in this particular stele, Omri is said to have captured and oppressed the Moabites during his reign, which points to the fact that not only is Omri shifting the capital to Samaria, but he's also expanding the empire. He's actually going south across the jordan and south in order to capture moab and to no doubt you know extract tribute

from them so and this is a this is a moabite inscription so they themselves are describing what omri did to them now i say all that to point out that this was a significant figure probably the most impactful and internationally known king of the northern kingdom and yet so that's kind of the historian's perspective and yet the biblical perspective is yeah omri yeah he uh he shifted the capital samaria and he was a really evil guy because he engaged in idolatry and that that's that's really all you need to know it's it's just it's a fascinating different perspective in other words the bible's not concerned about what your uh you know your international accomplishments were as a king or what you did with regard to you know the moabites

or how the Assyrians, they knew you by name, so on and so forth. The Scriptures aren't concerned about that. All they want to know is, were you an idolater or you were a worshiper of Yahweh? And if you're an idolater, well, then that's really all we need to know about you. Yeah, in fact, I mean, the only thing that sets him apart, really, in the text of Scripture that we have is that it just tells you this. It doesn't exactly tell you what it was, but it just tells you that he did more evil than all who were before him.

so yeah that's a lot but that's not the legacy you want to leave behind the most evil like nobody up to this point has done more bad things than this guy yeah and that it is you do get this vision as if there's this growing a heap of of idolatrous trash and like every every new king that comes along makes the heap a little bit higher yeah a little bit higher uh just keeps devolving farther and farther into this uh this idolatrous mess yeah it's it's you don't but so far we've had like one guy who who did not increase the idolatry but even though he didn't exterminate it entirely reduced it it's just one one guy in fact maybe one guy maybe you do need to not like exterminate it altogether yeah yeah you need a you're gonna need it's well they need

a major surgery uh and that will be partially offered by the king named yahoo later but even what he used does isn't isn't enough i mean it the northern kingdom is doomed from the start because they're founded on they're founded on idolatry they're founded on the the golden calves of dan and bethel and the changing of the the calendar and the change in the priesthood and this ongoing rebellion against against jerusalem so they're they're doomed from the start yeah they're like a they're like a mathematical equation that you know takes up three pages and in the second line there's already a mistake right well that mistake's going to carry through to to the very end i'm not saying that repentance wasn't possible but uh until that mistake is

corrected that is until there's repentance of the idolatry and a return to yahweh then yeah they're they're doomed to fail now we have one more king that wraps up this chapter and his name is Ahab, the son of Omri. So the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah. So through all this change of kings, assassinations, coups, whatnot, Asa has been the king in the south. You can imagine he's like getting updates. They're like, hey, king Asa, guess what? There's a new king once more over your brothers in the north. So 38th year of the king in the south, Ahab, the son of Omri begins to reign over Israel. Now, he's got a really long reign, 22 years. And we're told, this is going to be surprising to everyone, so prepare yourself. Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord

more than all who were before him. It's like, more once again. And verse 31, I love the way it puts it and as if it had been too light a thing for him to walk in the sins of jeroboam like that wasn't enough i mean it was that was just it was it was minor league sinning that was way too little to do as if that had not been enough he took for him jezebel the daughter of et baal so that king himself has Baal's name in his name. He took Jezebel, so she's a princess, the daughter of Etbal, king of the Sidonians. So she's a princess from Sidon. I mean, we usually don't associate the word princess and Jezebel in the same sentence, but that's who she is. She's a princess of the Sidonians, the Phoenicians. So he did that. He married Jezebel, and he went and served Baal

and worshiped him. How did he do this? He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal in Samaria, capital city. So this is the officially sanctioned idolatry in the north. And he also made an Asherah, probably an Asherah pole. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings who were before him. So that's all of Ahab. Now, there's an interesting tidbit that's added here at the very end, verse 34. So we're talking about Ahab. We're talking about all the things that he did. We're talking about how he worshiped Baal. He worshiped Asherah. He married a Phoenician princess who's going to bring all of her idolatrous trash along with her. And in the midst of all this, how does the chapter end? Verse 34, in his days, that is in the days of

Ahab, El of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Aviram, his firstborn. And he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son, Seguv, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Joshua, the son of Nun. If you want to look it up, that's back in Joshua 6.26. You might remember the context. After the Israelites destroyed the city of Jericho, the very first city they conquered in the land of Canaan, then Joshua said he laid an oath on them. He said, cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds the city of Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates. So that was the curse that was laid upon the city of Jericho.

So why is this verse added to the very end of the chapter? why is the the record of the rebuilding of jericho and the death of these two sons in fulfillment of prophecy included as well i think what's what's implicitly being suggested here is that there is a there's a reversal of the conquest happening jericho was the first city that was conquered and now in this day of the the the re-canonization of israel this bringing in of idolatry, this mingling with the nations, the setting up of altars to Baal and Asherah, basically turning Israel into Canaan once more, what do you have? You have a reversal of the destruction of Jericho. That city that symbolized Israel's victory over the Canaanites now is

rebuilt as a symbol of the victory of the Canaanite theology over the Israelites themselves. Yeah, this is more of what we were talking about, where God is looking over this land and it looks more and more like his people have never been there yeah it's a it's a going back it's a reversal to the the pre-conquest days or yeah i mean outside of some yahweh worshipers here and there what are you seeing you soon basically canaanites and perizzites and hivites and jebusites except they're all israelites at least in name the israelites according to the flesh but not according to promise that's not good news that wraps up the that wraps up the end of chapter 16 now we are going to uh begin to see some good news as we

transition over to chapter 17 because here after all these kings this back and forth we're finally going to be introduced to someone who is going to give us hope because he's going to be basically the old testament john the baptist yeah who's going to call us back to the lord you know as right before we get into elijah here that as you like read through all these kings and you read through all this idolatry and all this provoking of the lord which when you read that like you know when you're like this man provoked did more to provoke god than anyone else like sometimes it almost feels like the provoking like you know in like the new testament when it says like it tells fathers not to provoke their like provoke their sons of anger yeah right right in

other words they don't do things that you know are going to frustrate and anger your children there's a part of this that almost that almost seems intentional right like there's there's not just like a disregard for god it's more it's more flagrant and blatant than that it seems more intentional than that that you're letting god in your face yeah yeah and and then if you go all the way back, and we talked about this, to Saul, when Saul has got to exterminate some idolatrous kings and a bunch of people and a bunch of livestock, and it seems harsh, and it seems like, man, that's a lot. And then he doesn't do it perfectly. He keeps just a little, you know, there's some sheep bleeding in the background. There's some cows mooing. They got a king that's captive.

and samuel loses his mind over this whole thing you read that story you're like what this seems like an overreaction from god like god is super upset about this samuel's super upset like is it really that big a deal then you read through this list of kings you're like oh yeah it is a big deal because this is exactly the sort of thing that god was like this is why you have to get it all out root and stem yeah it's uh it's one of those 100 for the like kind of things right Just like no wife would ever be happy with her husband being 95% faithful to her. So the Lord is never happy with anything short of that wholesale fidelity because he knows exactly where this is leading. Yeah, and it's not as though Saul is even not doing it because he wants to dabble in some idolatry.

That's not why he didn't follow all the way through. He just was like, it seemed like too much. it seemed like well that seems i'm not gonna i can't i'm not gonna go that far that's crazy but what god is saying is like i don't want any of the ingredients of idolatry laying around unless someone put those ingredients together and we got idolatry again yeah because it like paul says little leaven leavens a whole lot yeah you gotta get rid of all of it all the leavens gotta be gone you can't have it a little bit laying around even if you don't intend to use it for that purpose. I don't want it accessible. And this all goes to the cross, of course. This

is exactly why God didn't reserve a few sins that Christ did not pay for. Yeah, because if all was not paid for, then none is paid for. If there's still a few sins out there that Christ did not die for, then he didn't die for any of them, because that undermines everything. So like you said before, when I think we were in Joshua, God always deals with sin in its totality. right he doesn't doesn't leave anything behind just like idolatry needs to be dealt with in its entirety uh so christ had to deal with all our sins in their entirety as well so uh yeah that's a a good thing to keep in mind as we wrap up this section about these particular kings now we are of course not anywhere close to being done with the kings we're just going to shift a little bit

in our focus as we move into the life of elijah because we're going to hear more much more about the prophets and what they're doing it's going to be a kind of a welcome break too and then there'll be a longer stretch where we hear more about especially the the prophetic interaction with with these kings and one of the themes that we're going to see emerging is the narrative seemed to be designed almost to make fun of the kings to to show their their their lack of power to poke fun at the the fact they have absolutely no control over the situation whereas the the prophets do so the kings will be basically lost they can't do anything to save themselves and then the prophet will come along and because he has the word of god in his mouth he is able to

for instance cause a famine or to bring rain or to give food or to open eyes of the blind things of things of that nature so there's going to be a repeated emphasis upon the fact that these kings powerful though they seem to be and powerful though they think they are in reality hold no power. All the authority is going to be wrapped up with God, Yahweh, who then is embodied in and represented in these prophets who speak in his name. Yeah, and it seems like that you have this inserted in here so that you know that God is not simply reacting to things, but he is actually doing things as well. Because you read this list of kings and you're like, man, God's in this mode right now where he's just reacting to everything that man is doing, which is not

entirely true that god is actually doing things and you get to see that more clearly in the prophets that god is like up to something yeah yeah he's not just a reactionary deity he's he's the one who's going to be using these prophets in order to steer history in the direction that he wants it to go so let's at least kind of uh get a feel for what elijah is like uh we don't have a lot of time to to introduce him uh to get into his story but he's his name by the way uh we say to Elijah, but it's Eliyahu in Hebrew, which is a very cool name because it means Yahweh is my God, which is just, if you're going to bring a prophet in who is going to call people out of idolatry, what better name than Eliyahu? Yahweh is my God. So Elijah or Eliyahu, the

Tishbite of Tishba and Gilead said to Ahab, so this is a direct prophetic address to the king. and that's not unusual you're going to you're going to see these these prophets are they have they have courage uh there's there's no hesitation for them to be right in the face of the most powerful person in the country and to speak words to them they don't want to hear so elijah says to ahab as the lord as yahweh the god of israel there's a little reminder as to who he is as Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives before whom I stand. Neither shall there be dew nor rain these years except by my word. Now, that's such a direct insult, not just to Ahab, but to the God that Ahab worships, because Baal was considered to be the God of the skies, the God of clouds, the God of

weather the god of rain the god of fertility so for elijah to say that that there's not going to be any rain there's not going to be any ado it's basically to say whatever you want to say about baal in essence he is nothing he's a non-entity he's a he's an empty he's a dung deity he's a he's an empty god because he's not going to be able to affect whatsoever any of those conditions that are ascribed to him he's not going to be able to give you any rain until no rain is going to come until i speak my word yeah i like this as the lord lives too because they've been uh living as though god does not exist and uh it seems that elijah said hey about to find out that uh god's not dead yeah that god that you thought you put in the grave and erected a statue of baal over

over the top of that grave guess what yeah he's still alive and he's about to remind you that uh he is not only alive but he's very much at work through me in order to call you back from this path that you've gone down back from the path that the whole nation has gone down back to himself and uh and we'll see this most uh most obviously in the it's kind of the uh the neo-sinai move where you have this competition between elijah and the prophets of baal on mount carmel where Elijah says to them, basically, don't keep limping between these two opinions. So don't be a half-worshipper of Yahweh, a half-worshipper of Baal.

It's an either-or. It's not a both. It can never be a both because God is never the God who's going to share his bed with another deity. It's Yahweh and Yahweh alone or not Yahweh at all. So that's where Elijah is going to be taking us. And along the way, as we'll see in the rest of chapter 17, God is going to use him through some individual instances, such as feeding the widow and being fed by God in the wilderness. Elijah is going to become kind of a representative of Israel as a nation. So what God does for Israel, what God does for Elijah, he wants to do for all Israel if they will only repent and come back to the worship of him.

all right well we have run out of time we will uh next week get a break from you know just talking about kings and we will get into uh this character of elijah uh which is going to be a pretty interesting narrative so i'm excited to to get into him but we have to wait uh chad i'll see you next week all right see you then