I use to think this was a power encounter between God and Baal but that is wrong. Baal has no power. Rather God demonstrates his power here so that his covenant people would believe in him and worship him only.
You can then appreciate the place that Obadiah found himself in. He worked for Ahab, in fact he appeared to be one of his most trusted advisers, but he was also a believer in God. He stood between the most powerful man in the physical Kingdom of Israel, someone who could take his own life […]
In this series on 1 Kings we discover one disappointing king after another and in this sermon we come to the lowest point where King Ahab decides to institute the cult of Baal as the state religion. God, by his grace, however, doesn’t let him get away with it and sends his prophet to rebuke […]
King Ahab marks a new low in Israel’s relationship with God. There is the entry of a powerful woman, Jezebel, who brings her gods from Sidon to Samaria. There is no-longer any pretence that they are really worshipping God, as they have done in the past but now there is no room for God at […]
In this Sermon we look briefly at a number of the kings of Israel and how each of them failed. The primary reason for their failure was because they refused to acknowledge God and even though some of them has a success of sorts, none of their success was beneficial to God’s people and brought […]
If there are lessons to be learnt from Asa for us as individuals is that as Christians, we can become less gracious and in fact harsh as we become older. The more important lesson is that we start to rely on ourselves too much and less on God! Our natural inclination is to rely on […]
We sometimes think to ourselves that people cannot escape a legacy of depravity? We sometimes think that people are forever trapped by their upbringing; that they are merely products of their environment? The thing was that our text tells us that God refused to destroy Abijah’s house because of his promise and love for a […]
One commentator I read wrote that Jeroboam was busy taking his people back to Egypt. When Jeroboam first comes on the scene, he is a kind of Moses. Moses pleaded with Pharaoh to ease the burden on the Israelites and Jeroboam did the same. Rehoboam was like Pharaoh at that time and said, “I’ll make […]