Standing Along in the Gap

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And can you see what that is?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Some of you on the pop front row may have to help some of those in the back so that they can uh

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I saw this in the lobby this week and I thought I should put it in Lost and Found.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And I said, ah, I'll use that as a sermon illustration this week.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Um few of you know what a compass is for, don't you?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah, finding your directions.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Uh those under eighteen probably don't know how to do that anymore with a compass.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: When I was sixteen I was in Pathfinders and I joined orienteering and my friend and I thought we were

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Going to win the orienteering competition at Camperie.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: All I can say is three hours later, the search teams found us.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: As we were trying to find our way home.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: So I was excited when I when I got uh the cell phone and they had this thing, you know, that maps and I was really excited that I came back from Mongolia my

Pastor Dale Tunnell: daughters gave me the the phone and they said, Dad, use this and uh I learned how to use the maps and I was going to show my parents how smart it was.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And we were traveling on a road that we had traveled for years and we knew where the hotel was that we were going to stop at.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We weren't in the habit of stopping at hotels, but I said, Hey, I'm gonna have my GPS find the hotel for us

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And when it got off early at the wrong exit, I wondered what was wrong with my GPS.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And I said, Oh, maybe there's something happened on the interstate that it's taken me around and uh

Pastor Dale Tunnell: going to bypass a traffic problem or something and uh so I followed the GPS and it was getting late and late at night and I followed the GPS and I followed the GPS

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And finally we were in the middle of the middle of nowhere and it said, you have arrived at your destination.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And my parents were following me in their car, and I went back and I told them, We have arrived at our destination.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And they laughed and I s told 'em how smart my GPS was and I said, Well it

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I was trying to delete somebody that didn't pass their orienteering honor, so what should I expect?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Um You know, sometimes we rely on some things to get us some places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And even when we rely on the GPS that we think is really, really, really, really smart and accurate.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And most of the time it seems to be until I use it, or until I rely on it for something really, really important.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And then when it gets me those places that I want to go, you know, 98% of the time, you kind of put confidence in it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And then what does it do?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What do you use to guide you in day-to-day life?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Which leads me to our story today.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We sing the song about Elijah, and for the next several weeks we're going to be talking about Elijah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And just me saying that, you're going to say, I know the story of Elijah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And that's okay.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You know the story of Elijah, but I'm going to tell you, these are the days of Elijah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Elijah is one of those oh fantastic stories.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean he's right up there with with

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Moses, he's right up there with with Peter and John the Baptist and and Paul and and and and Joshua and and I mean Elijah is

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I'm just going to tell you Elijah was quite a prophet.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was he was

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Quite a man of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was the kind of person that you could you could easily look up to

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But the days of Elijah, when he came into to his responsibility, when he came into his his prophethood, when he came into the responsibility that God had called him for

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Let me tell you, those were not good days.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: When you think about the people of Israel, we tend to like to think about them at their at their zenith

Pastor Dale Tunnell: For a hundred years they seemed to go what we thought was was what we think is pretty good.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They had three kings that led them for their first hundred years during kingship.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now during kingship, who were those first three kings?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Saul, David, and Solomon.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And it got so high that what we tend to refer to as the zenith of Israel

Pastor Dale Tunnell: When Solomon was there and he was having people from other nations come to him to learn about what Israel was doing right.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The beauty of what God had designed and desired for his people.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It was moving in the right direction.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But then Solomon's heart began to be tempted and began to to fall away.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And after Solomon

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It didn't go so well.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: There was a civil war.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It became a divided kingdom

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We know the divided kingdom.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Boy, I try and read that back there.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Can I read it up here?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: A little bit better.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Israel and and and Judah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Israel the kingdom of the north.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Judah the kingdom of the south.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah, I need to go get my eyes checked, don't I?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Uh the uh

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And if you read through Kings and Chronicles, if you're like most people

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If you're like me, you tend to get confused.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Because there were there were kings of the north and kings of the south and and

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They tend to say, and so and so became the king, and so and so was the king of the south, and and so and so was the king of Judah, and so and so was the king of Israel, and they kind of overlap and they christen cross

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And when they write them in Kings and and Chronicles, it's easy for us to get confused.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I kind of put it up here on the I found uh something that had it printed out this way.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I don't know if you can read it

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If you come up front here, you can kind of read it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Talks about the Northern Kingdom and you can see those names at the top.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Is there a light on here?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If there is, I'm not getting it to work.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's okay.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: At the top there you can read all of the or if you can't read it, all those names at the top.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Kings of uh Israel, they were all bad kings.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Israel, from the time that they split, did not have any good

Pastor Dale Tunnell: kings.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: In Judah they had seventeen kings.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh I should say kings of of Israel, they had nineteen

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Kings of the the south there, Judah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And that Judah is the area where Jerusalem is, seventeen kings.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Eight of them were

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We call them good kings, but some of those, if you are looking at this, are in the written in the gray.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That means they're partially good, partially bad.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But they had eight that were good dish.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Uh the rest of them, the other nine, were what we call bad kings.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Right in the middle of this

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Right in the middle of the kings of Israel, there, uh king of the north, Israel, uh you'll find Ahab

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Ahab is there in the middle and he is a king of Israel and he was not a good king.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But I'm going to show you how bad it was.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If you could turn in your Bible, uh or if you don't want to turn your Bible, I think I have it on the screen, 1 Kings 13, 33.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: After uh

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Solomon when the kingdoms split, first Kings thirteen, verse thirty-three

Pastor Dale Tunnell: See if I can find it here in my Bible.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I like to write it here.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It says, and and after this event Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But again he made priests from every class of people for the high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Whoever wished, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This was just after Solomon.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Begin worshiping on the high places

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now sometimes we ask what are the high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I'd often ask that question myself, until I went to the country of Mongolia and I discovered what the high places were.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The high places were those places up on the mountaintops.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And up on almost every mountaintop they would have a mound of rocks, something like this.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: There would be a stick stuck in that mound of rocks.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: and there would be the blue flag or blue pieces of cloths wrapped around it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And this uh w was happening on the high places

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And should a place become more a established high place, they may

Pastor Dale Tunnell: build a building there.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And should it become even more established, it was enlarged and enshrined and made white and gold and it uh

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The people liked these high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The people there in Mongolia were always going up to the high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now it's funny

Pastor Dale Tunnell: As Christians, as Seventh-day Adventists, with the young people there, I would ask the young people, what are we going to do on Sabbath afternoon?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And they'd say, let's go for a hike.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And you know where they want to hike?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The same place you want to hike.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Don't you like climbing to the mountaintop?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's what they wanted to do.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They wanted to climb to the high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And so every time we'd climb up to a high place, you would see something like this.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And if it was a high place that was not used very often,

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Not frequented by a lot of people, you would all still always see some stone stacked up

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And when people got up there, they would tend to walk around the stones because that's what their culture had taught them to do

Pastor Dale Tunnell: As a way to worship at the high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oftentimes I would see people up on the high places, they were offering offerings of their food, offerings of milk.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: To the gods on the high places.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's the kind of thing that was happening during the time.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Who are we talking about here?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Jeroboam

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That kind of thing was happening up on the high places, the the ridges of the mountaintops.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But it even got worse

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We keep reading here, First Kings fifteen twenty-six

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, I see I missed uh a couple of kings there.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's okay, I'll go to first Kings fifteen, twenty-six

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And Nadab, the sub 25 says, and Nadab the son of Jeroboam became king over Israel.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: In the second year of Asa, king of Judah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's why we

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Have a hard time remembering who does what.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And he reigned over Israel two years, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and he walked in the way of his father, and in his sin by which he had made Israel sin

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do you see what's happening here?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The sins continue.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The next one comes along.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Did I have that one twice?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The next one comes along, Basha.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Verse 34 says, And he did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin by which he had made Israel commit.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The sins were continuing and continuing and continuing

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Continues in Omri did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all who were before him.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It's almost as if the the one before him, they said, oh, he was that bad.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I can I can do it but I can do bad better.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Is that what they'd say?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I I I can be worse.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I I I can I can go a little bit further

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I can see how how far away from the Creator God can I get?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Sometimes we I read through these verses and I'm thinking about this and you wonder how they could do this.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This was the people that a hundred years before, they were the pinnacle of the world.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They were on top of things.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They were the world was coming to them to see how to do things right

Pastor Dale Tunnell: and now they were so far you would kind of expect this from the people of the world around them, from the from the Canaanites, from the Phoenicians

Pastor Dale Tunnell: from the the the the countries that are you would expect it from those people but these are God's people

Pastor Dale Tunnell: These are God's people that have the sanctuary in their midst.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They are connected to

Pastor Dale Tunnell: By family, by blood, by relation to the people in Jerusalem.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They have the Word of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They have been sent prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet

Pastor Dale Tunnell: to them, to give them the word of the Lord.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And yet it seems like what's it say?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Omri did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did worse than all who were before him.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How bad does it have to go?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You wonder, would it be possible for this that kind of thing to happen in the Seventh-day Adventist Church?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How long have we been around as a church?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Just over oh I'll just say a few years, right

Pastor Dale Tunnell: About in the same time prophecy as we're talking about from Solomon to we get to Omri or Ahab.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do we see shifts in our church that are for the worse?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: See us as a church becoming more worldly.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: See us as a church adapting to the culture around us.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Sometimes I read this and I just want to shake my head and say, how can they do this?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How could it happen?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How could they go so low, so far, so

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And when I think about it so fast.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But I don't have to ponder it long.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I understand how it happens.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It happens one step at a time.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It happens little by little.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean that's the way it happens in our lives, isn't it

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, some of the things we say when we were were children, I will never, and you can fill in the blank.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Of what it is you're never going to do.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And now you look at yourself as a little older and well, what I thought I would never do has now become habit.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How does it happen?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: One step at a time.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: One step?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Uh uh maybe we don't like looking at ourselves.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We'd rather look at, you know, our brother or our sister, or we'd rather look at aunts or uncles, or we'd rather look at our cousins or or classmates or

Pastor Dale Tunnell: or those people, we can see how did it happen?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Makes you wonder how it could happen

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's Omri.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Say, how could it get any worse?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The degradation of society

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It's almost as a there there seems to be a rush in their mind to see how bad they can they can make themselves, how evil can they become

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What's that last phrase say?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: More than all that were before him

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How can they handle such things?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How can they they they they get themselves to the place where they are where they are are are are that low

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean I I I I try and and wrap my mind in this is this is not just lifestyle activities

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is is not just uh what they're doing at home.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is worship

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean this is what their worship has become

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Not their their their activities, not their their sporting events, not their what they are are are watching and ab observing in their in the sporting arenas.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is their

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Worship services.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Their worship services have gone worse and worse and worse and worse.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And it gets to the place where

Pastor Dale Tunnell: thirty one And it came to pass as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebot, that he took his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbal, king of the Sidonians, and he went and served Baal and worshipped him.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do we understand what's happening here?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Remind ourselves who is Baal?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's the god of rain and the god of fertility.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's the God that they have started worshiping, the God of rain to to make things grow upon the earth, and the God of fertility to cause them to have children.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And the worship of that had become so that

Pastor Dale Tunnell: sexual activity happened during worship service.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You can you know, in your your imagination you can almost kind of understand how you could how how how God's people could get to a place like that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Well or can you understand how God's people would get to a place like that?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Maybe that's okay for the for the for the bar rooms, or that's okay for the the dance halls, or that's okay for the the out there, but in worship service?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is what they have brought in to their worship service as the people of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is the desire has become the desire of their heart.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It's interesting, those other one kings that we read about, their spouse is not mentioned

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The wives are not listed there, but Jezebel is listed there

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I think there are a few reasons for that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: One is what's it say?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: She kind of led in this Baal worship.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If you read in scripture there, she was a prophetess of Baal, which means she kind of participated in that worship.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's who he chose for a spouse.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I'm gonna give you a commercial.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Are you ready for a commercial?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If you are not married, listen carefully.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Choose your spouse carefully

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I don't think everybody heard me.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If you are not married, listen carefully.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Choose your spouse carefully

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Life has a lot of problems in it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Marriage has a lot of challenges to it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Choose right.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Choose carefully.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Or you may end up like Ahab did with someone that leads you astray.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now, we we kind of think, well, maybe he would be led astray anyway.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah, that's true.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Maybe he would have been led astray anyway, because that's the example that he had from his father

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's the example that he had from his grandfather.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's the example he had from his great-grandfather.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's the example they had there in Israel.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: So, yes, maybe he would have been led astray anyway, but he did not choose well.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Choose carefully.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Have people sometimes come and ask me, Pastor, will you give me counseling?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I want to get married.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But I'm marrying someone that's not a Seventh-day Avenist.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What do you say in an instance like that?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Don't get married to them.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, Pastor, but they're a good Christian.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They're uh and you can add the denomination that they are.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And my response is, don't get married to them.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, but Pastor, I love them so very, very much.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And I say, Yeah, that's what my Bible says.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Be not unequally yoked to someone unless you love them very, very much.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Is that what your Bible says?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Sometimes we don't think this thing through

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We need to to read the scriptures and and see what it says here.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And these things are written down for us as an example to us.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: as an example to us, something that we can can can learn from.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Something that we can can grow from.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Prophets and Kings, page one fourteen.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Says under the leadership of Jezebel

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He erected heathen altars to many high places, where in the shelter of surrounding groves the priest and others connected

Pastor Dale Tunnell: with this seductive form of idolatry, exerted their baleful influence until well nigh all Israel were following after Baal

Pastor Dale Tunnell: She's mentioned because she helped lead astray.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: She's mentioned because 1 Kings 21, 25, but there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: She she was a leader in this relationship.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: She was the one that uh

Pastor Dale Tunnell: motivated him.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: She was the one that in encouraged him

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I know sometimes I'm still on the commercial here, sometimes people think that if they can overcome this, it's okay to be unequally yoked.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Say, but they're a good Christian, okay?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Think about some things.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: When you have children,

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, Pastor, we're not gonna have any children.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah, lots of people have said that and it doesn't turn out that way.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: When you have children, are you going to take them to church two days?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: A week?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Those of you that have children, how long is that gonna last?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How many of your children want to go to church twice a week?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Doesn't usually last very long.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What are they going to do?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Where are they going to choose?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They go to grandma's funeral.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They hear the phrase from the pastor, oh, she's looking down from us in heaven

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God needed someone else to sing in the choir.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: She's become an angel that she's going to look after us.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You can talk to her in heaven now because she's taking care looking after you.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What do you what are you gonna say?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean these are are are real problems for this kind of marriage

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I'll go on here.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Prophets and Kings, it says Ahab was weak in moral power

Pastor Dale Tunnell: His union by marriage with the adulterous woman resulted in disasterly both to himself and to the nation, unprincipled and with no high standard of right

Pastor Dale Tunnell: doing his character was easily molded by the determined spirit of Jezebel

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Some commentators say that Jezebel was the woman of the hour.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The woman of the decade, as they ruled together there.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Baal worship, with its its seductive ways, was sucking Israel dry.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Spiritually.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, they were worshiping the God of rain, they were worshiping the God of fertility, and and things seemed to be moving along, but

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The picture that I've given to you right now, I want you to recognize, these are the days of Elijah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Look outside your church.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What do you see?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I'm hoping you don't see it inside the church

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I'm telling you, the days of Elijah are not just back in First Kings chapter sixteen.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But they are very much alive today, in our day and age.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, and it breaks my heart to say it, but it is true, even in the church.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Sometimes I feel like

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We've lost our compass.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We've forgotten where North is.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We've forgotten how God wants to lead us.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: All right, that's by way of introduction.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yes, it is 1204.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You want the good news?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The meat of the the the message is just verse one of chapter 17.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The bad news is, one verse can be stretched a long ways.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Our scripture reading was chapter 17 verse 1.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, let's see.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I'm going to keep going here.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Chapter 17, verse 1

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at

Pastor Dale Tunnell: My word.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Can you imagine going in to the king to say something like

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Can you imagine going into the president to say something like Can you imagine going into the governor of the state of Arizona to say something like that?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean just just imagine yourself.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What would provoke you?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What would make you strong enough to go in and do something like that?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And I know what you're thinking.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: There is nothing, nothing in the world that would cause me to do such.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I know I skipped a slide, I'm going to go back here.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Amos eight one says, Behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord, that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What kind of famine was going on in the days of Elijah?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What was it?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: A famine.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They were not studying the words of the Lord.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They were not reading the scriptures that had been given to them.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They were not practicing what they were being taught in the sanctuary message.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They were not understanding what God had called them to do.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They they just had gotten so far off base they were turned around and headed the wrong direction.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Elijah saw that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Elijah saw that in those days and in that time.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Elijah saw what was happening.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now yes, it says Elijah the Tishbite.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You know what a Tishbite is?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Somebody from Tishba

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do you know what a where Tishba is?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah, it's on the screen.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It's open book test.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Gilead.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do you know where Gilead is?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah, I had to go look for it also.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Gilead is part of that northern kingdom up there.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Part of uh where the tribe of Manasseh was.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Uh it's a mountainous region.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You're out in the hills.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Not a lot of people out there.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Elijah was probably homeschooled or didn't go to school, spend his time out in nature

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That's where Elijah came from

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But yet he saw what was happening to the northern kingdom, and it was overwhelming for him

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I didn't put it on the screen here, but Spirit of Prophecy says his whole life was devoted to the work of reform, to rebuke sin, and to press back the tide of evil.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That was his whole life to press back the tide of evil.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now some of you have been to the beach, right?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You know how the tide works, don't you?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: How do you press back the tithe?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Can you press back the tide?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, you can try.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You can you see the waves coming in, and if there's going to be a storm, you may put out a few sandbags, and what are those sandbags going to do?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Their help a little bit.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And you may say, I need more sandbags

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And if you had a few more sandbags, they might could help a little bit more, and then you realize that even that little bit more is not going to save your property, and you say, I need more people.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: To help me put out more sandbags.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It says his whole life was devoted to the work of reform, to rebuke sin, to press back the tide of evil.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He sees the tide of evil, he uh views the apostasy of Israel

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And his heart breaks.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He's spending time with God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He's having his devotional life

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And he he he's talking to the Lord about it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: James five seventeen says, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now I know very few of you have read that text

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Because when if I ask you, is Elijah a man of prayer?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And you would say yes, and I ask you, give me an example of Elijah praying, and you would give me the example of when he prayed.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: On Mount Carmel for Oh, you'd probably say for fire to come down from heaven first.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And then the second one you would say Elijah prayed for

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But we forget this prayer.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: James tells us that he was a man with a nature like ours.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What kind of nature do you have?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: A nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Think about that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Why in the world would a man looking at the days of Elijah, looking at the times in which he lives, why would he pray for it not to rain?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He's jealous for the name of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: All of his people

Pastor Dale Tunnell: All of them.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He looks at them and he says, they are praying to the Baal God, and when rain falls, they are glorifying Baal.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Not the Creator God, not the Creator God that gives rain.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They are doing acts, uh atrocious acts in their worship service, and they are excited when they get

Pastor Dale Tunnell: get pregnant and have so many children and this is they they give glory to to Bael God when children are a gift from Yahweh

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And Elijah's heart breaks.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He sees what is happening, and it says, What's the text say?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He prayed

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Earnestly that it would not rain.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Come on, Elijah

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Is that really the kind of prayers we ought to be praying?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, you think about that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What's going to happen if it does not rain?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Drought.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What's gonna happen when there is drought?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What's gonna happen?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Famine.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Crops are gonna die.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Animals are going to die.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If crops die and animals die, that means people are going to die.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Elijah, why in the world are you praying for no rain?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You ever pray for something bad to happen to somebody?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, Elijah's heart is such that he is praying the kind of prayer that parents pray for their children.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We pray those prayers.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God, my child has gone so far away from you.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Please do anything to draw them back.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Well, what does anything include?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Well, you know, blush them in such a way that they'd be drawn back.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I've tried that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You know, send them a prophet to tell them the good news of salvation.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God says, I've tried that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Well, you know, make them hit their head on the cross so it hurts.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Are you willing for them to hit their head on the cross so it hurts?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, these are agonizing prayers.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That that the Elisha is praying here.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He's praying for God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, do I say this in a in a cruel way?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He is saying this so that, say, God twists their ear to turn them in the right direction.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do you ever have to do that with your

Pastor Dale Tunnell: With the cows when you worked in the dairy to try and get the cows to go where you wanted them to go?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean that's

Pastor Dale Tunnell: One of the methods we used in the dairy to to motivate cows to turn when they were not going where they were supposed to go.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Would you ever pray that prayer for your children?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God twist their ear?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God get their attention?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God do something?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You ever pray for them to end up in the hospital?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: So they're flat on their back and they have to look up?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean what do we have to do to get them to look up

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, this is the prayer that Elijah is praying.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: According to James five.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Testimonies to the Church, Volume three.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Says Elijah's faithful soul was grieved, his indignation was aroused, and he was jealous for the glory of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He realized that Baal was getting the glory that only God deserved

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was trying to to push back the tide of uh of evil.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was trying to put up the sandbags to protect Israel

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was jealous for the glory of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, we studied about that in the Sabbath school lesson, didn't we?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Okay, I won't go off there

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was singular of mind in purpose.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That was important to him.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The glory of God

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He wanted God's glory to be exalted.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He wanted God's glory to be to be held up.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was jealous for the glory of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was jealous for his reputation.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was not jealous for his own reputation.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was not jealous for his own livelihood.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was not jealous for the life of ease.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He was jealous for God's glory.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Says Elijah's faithful soul was grieved, his indignation was aroused, and he was jealous for the glory of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is what uh we might call tough love.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Elijah had been reading.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Book of Deuteronomy, what does it say there?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Chapter eleven says, And this shall be that if you earnestly obey my commandments, which I command to you today, to love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: with all your soul, that I will give you rain for your land and its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Hallelujah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We say, What an awesome God we have.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock that you may eat and be filled

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods, and worship them.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The warning sign is there Take heed, do not go off the path

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Did it say here?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Lest the Lord's anger be aroused against you, and he shut up the heavens, so that there be no rain.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What had Elijah been reading

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It looks like he had been reading Deuteronomy chapter 11.

Deuteronomy 11 · chapter mention

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It looks like he had been studying it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It looks like he had been praying about it.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It looks like he had been he he had the grasp the understanding that he wanted God to be glorified and not Baal to be glorified

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He had grabbed the understanding that God was willing to do anything to get his people

Pastor Dale Tunnell: To be in a relationship with him and to love him and to care for him and to be in a relationship with him so that they could could grow together

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He did not want them off worshiping other gods because he knew that those other gods were not good for them.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And he knew what we studied in our Sabbath school lesson that those other gods were worshiping demons.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And that was not in his people's best interest.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: He said that he wanted to bless his people

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But Elijah understood that he was willing to do anything.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And so Elijah prayed

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Have you been reading scripture?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do we do we do we get into the to God's word?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, if I were to ask how many of you have a Bible, all your hands would go up.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: If I were to ask how many Bibles do you have, there would be some of you that could not count how many Bibles you have.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But if I were to ask how many of you read your Bible every day, it's not enough just to have a Bible

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And it may not even be enough just to read your Bible.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We know what Scripture says.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Revelation chapter 14, verse 12, here is the patience of the saints.

Revelation 14:12

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Here are those who keep the commandments of God.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And the faith of Jesus.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is talking about in the last days.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: This is talking about at the end of time.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God is going to have a people that have patience.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God is going to have a people that are our commandment-keeping people.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God is going to have a people that have faith of Jesus.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Are we praying about such things?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: The Elijah message Malachi chapter five, four, verse five

Pastor Dale Tunnell: says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: What's this talking about?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Yeah, we'll talk about this later.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: In detail.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But I'm going to tell you in the last days, it says God's going to have a people that are Elijah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do you want to be in Elijah?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Oh, be careful how you said that because we just described the days of Elijah.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You remember our description of the days of Elijah?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Do you want to go talk to those people?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now come on.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They're they're if they're church people and they just have the minor sins, I might be willing to be a prophet and go and talk to those so that I can correct

Pastor Dale Tunnell: You know, they just need a a a a a friendly nudge.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: They don't don't require too much.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I might could be an Elijah to the

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But to be an Elijah to a church that has drastically.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Would you say it was drastic?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: In how far astray they had gone.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: To be an Elijah to people like that, that would be that

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I don't know if I can do that.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: We might say.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Ezekiel twenty two, verse thirty says, So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy

Pastor Dale Tunnell: But I found no one

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God's looking for a person.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God's looking for a people to stand in the gap

Pastor Dale Tunnell: God's looking for a person to to be the Elijah for the for the days of Elijah today

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Now I know we like this other text better, Isaiah 6, verse 8.

Isaiah 6:8

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It says, I heard a voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who shall go for us?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And Isaiah answered.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Here am I, send me.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Isn't that much better?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Would you rather hear that one or would you rather hear this one?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: And I found no one

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I mean, that requires for somebody to to to step up.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It requires for somebody to step up.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: It requires for somebody to help pack the sandbags and stem the tide.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Friends, these are the days of Elijah

Pastor Dale Tunnell: These are the days

Pastor Dale Tunnell: That we are living in.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: These are the days that God is looking for an individual.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: To stand and to say there is only one true Creator God

Pastor Dale Tunnell: These are the days that God is looking for somebody to say, Come out of Babylon, my people

Pastor Dale Tunnell: These are the days God is looking for someone to prepare the way in the wilderness

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Will God find someone to stand in the gap?

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I hope we.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I hope you I hope I will be that person

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Our Father God, we understand that these are the days of Elijah, and I ask, Lord, that you would help us to stand in the gap.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: so that you might be lifted up, so that you might be exalted, so that you might be glorified, and so that the world might be drawn to you

Pastor Dale Tunnell: I pray this in Jesus' name.

Pastor Dale Tunnell: Amen.