Are We Testing God’s Patience?

Sermon by Charles “Skeet” Shane

Providence-Fort Washington United Methodist Church

I Kings 18:20-39

Second Sunday after Pentecost – June 2, 2013

Many of us think of wickedness or evil when we hear the names Ahab and Jezebel. In I Kings 16:33 we read that Ahab “did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him”. This is saying something as most of the kings of Israel after the division of Israel into two nations, Judea the southern nation with the capital being in Jerusalem and the northern nation of Israel with the city of Samaria as the capital, were doing evil against God.

Ahab’s worst sin against God may have been his marriage to the pagan Phoenician woman, Jezebel who helped him commit all the other acts of wickedness for which Ahab was known. She was also responsible for Ahab making worship of Baal the official religion of Israel. They had 450 prophets and 400 priests and servants of Baal. Ahab built a temple which housed both male and female prostitutes, with whom the Israelites committed immorality in their worship of this god.

Ahab also built an altar where the people would sacrifice both animals and humans. He had also constructed a life size image of Baal. This image was made of metal (probably bronze) and was hollow so that a sacrificial fire could be built inside it. The stomach area was an open cavity and the arms of the image were extended so that the live sacrifice of human babies could roll into the fire and be consumed.

Also in I Kings 16:33 we read that Ahab made a grove. This means simply that Ahab planted a lot of trees around the hill where he had built the altar and the image. We know trees make a great sight and sound barrier when there is a large number of the trees between the people and place of sacrifice, and the people would not see or hear what was taking place.

In Deuteronomy 16:21 God had commanded that no trees were to be planted near the Tabernacle and by extension near the Temple, because the worship of God was not to be hidden but to be open for all to witness.

Another thing that Jezebel did was to cause the prophets of God to be found, and killed. However Obadiah who was the governor of the king’s house, feared God more than Ahab or Jezebel and hid and feed 100 prophets.

Yet through all this wickedness, God did not destroy the Israelite king. If fact, God’s goodness to a ruler as wicked as Ahab, demonstrates His longsuffering. And as we look at the ways that God showed mercy to Ahab we will begin to understand how God works today.

First, God brought chastisement. He had the prophet Elijah proclaim the sealing of the heavens for three and half years, so that not a drop of rain fell and the resulting drought caused the land to became parched and the crops to fail. This was far from punishment, as Ahab deserved death, not a drought. This was God showing His grace and mercy. He was offering Ahab a chance to repent of his sins.

Second, God revealed Himself to Ahab in the lesson we read today by the fire that consumed the offering. A few days before the lesson took place, God told Elijah to reveal himself to Ahab. I think that Elijah may have been a little bit worried about doing this as he knew that the word was that all prophets of God were to be put to death, but he went and found Obadiah and told him to go and tell Ahab that Elijah wanted to talk to him. Obadiah is now afraid that he may be killed because he thinks that it now going to be revealed that he had hidden the 100 prophets, but he is assured by Elijah that he will be safe.

When they meet, the first words out of Ahab’s mouth were “you are the man that has caused all the trouble in Israel?” Elijah answers that it is Ahab and his father that are the cause of the trouble and challenges Ahab and the prophets of Baal to show once and for all who is the true God of Israel. Ahab agrees and Elijah requires that all the people of Israel, the 450 prophets and the 400 priests and servants of Baal be told to go to Mount Carmel and two young bulls suitable for the sacrifice be provided for him and the prophets of Baal.

On the appointed day Elijah restates the rules for the day. First they were to build the altar, lay the wood without any fire, prepare the animals for the sacrifice and place it on the wood and finally to call on their god to send fire to consume the sacrifice. Elijah then told the prophets of Baal to go first to see if their god would hear and answer. Notice the timing of the sacrifices, first is morning until noon, at which time Elijah begins to taunt them saying “Cry Aloud: for he is a god, maybe he is talking (and cannot hear you) or he is pursuing (remember the purpose of the temples and the mythology of the gods who co-mingled with humans), maybe he has gone on a journey (some religious beliefs still say god created the world and then went away to let the people try to do enough good works to try to get to paradise) or maybe he is just tired and went to sleep and you have to wake him up. This seems to be a different and very bold Elijah who was in hiding just a few days before.

The prophets of Baal began to cry out very loudly and to use knives and lancets to cut themselves. Even today many cults believe in self mutilation trying to get God’s attention. In their frenzy the prophets get on top of the altar to get their god’s attention. Now I don’t know about you, but if I thought my God was going to send fire to consume the sacrifice, I would not want to be right next to or to be part of the sacrifice.

 The prophets of Baal continued to do this until time for the evening sacrifice. Now let’s look at what Elijah was doing. He began to repair the altar on Mt Carmel by gathering 12 stones to represent the 12 tribes of Israel and building up the altar. He prepared the wood and the animal on the altar. So far this is the same routine as the prophets of Baal. But then Elijah adds another element to his preparations, he digs a trench around the altar and tells the people to take four barrels and fill them with water and pour them on the altar. This was repeated three times until the wood, the sacrifice and the rocks were so saturated that even the trench was full of water. Then Elijah steps away from the altar and cries out to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to show that He is the only true God of Israel. God sent fire from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, wood, rocks, and all the saturated ground under and around the altar.

Elijah told the people to capture the 450 prophets and the 400 priests and servants of Baal and take them to the river Kishon and there they were slain. Elijah then said to Ahab “ Go and eat and drink because there is the sound of abundant rain”. But the drought was not yet over as the actual rain did not start for several days.

This was not the end of God’s attempt to get Ahab to repent of his sins. The third thing God provided for Ahab was the blessing of the complete victory over the nation of Syria, even though the army of Israel was greatly outnumbered God was showing Ahab just how dependent he was on God. But Ahab allowed the king of Syria to live in defiance of God’s orders. In doing this Ahab refused to pay attention to God’s longsuffering. God’s longsuffering however, could not be trampled on any longer. God has had enough and He had Elijah proclaim a three-fold curse on Ahab. First Ahab would die in battle, second all of his sons would die, and third Jezebel would suffer an unpleasant death. If you want to read how Ahab died read chapter 22 of I Kings, and the death of Jezebel can be found in II Kings chapter 10.

The lesson we need to learn from Ahab’s life is that being slow to judgment does not mean that there is no judgment. God’s delay in punishing a person, even someone as wicked as Ahab, does not mean that the person has gotten away with wrong doing. It also does not mean that God does not exist or that He has forgotten the sin. God is longsuffering with us in the same three ways He was longsuffering to Ahab.

Hebrews 12:4-11 reminds us that when we fall into any sin, God’s first step is to chastise us, rather than to give us the punishment we deserve which is death. He wants us to repent and come back into a full fellowship with God.

The second sign of God’s longsuffering is His miraculous revelation to us. We may not have seen fire from heaven consuming a sacrifice like Ahab, but we have what Ahab did not have, the written word of God, the Bible, which shows us not one , but many of God’s miraculous revelations.

Maybe the most amazing of all the signs of God’s longsuffering may be that He continues to bless us, both believers and unbelievers, to remind us of His love for us. Of course we need to remember God does not reward us because we are good. But because He is Good. Romans 2:4 and II Peter 3:9 both remind us that God’s will is for all people to repent and be brought back into a full fellowship with Him.

Finally, we need to know that God’s longsuffering is not eternal. If we do not repent, judgment will come and that may mean that Christians will suffer some unnecessary problems here on earth. And according to Paul in Romans 14:10 and II Corinthians 5:10, when the believer stands before the Judgment seat of Christ we may lose rewards in heaven as well.

For the unbeliever the judgment is even greater and much worse. In John 3:18 we read that those who do not believe on the name of Jesus are condemned already, In Revelations 20:11-15 we read that these wicked people will stand before the Great White Throne of God where He will pronounce the judgment of eternal life without the presence of God in the Lake of Fire (which originally was created only for Lucifer and the fallen angels)

 Paul asked in Romans 2:2, “How can we that are dead to sin, live any more in sin?” And in verse 23 he writes “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So it seems the simple lesson is to repent so we can be ready to meet God at any moment!

AMEN.