The King Who Rediscovered the Word - Chronicles Of The Kings (Week 6)

You guys are enjoying Chronicles of the Kings.

It's been a good series.

It's not really been a lot of history.

It's been a lot more like in-your-face stuff that you may not expect from the Kings.

Some of you have asked about Will and Alyssa.

Alyssa's due, her baby's due next week, and she still hasn't had her baby, but she is having some regular contractions, so pray for them.

We'll have a baby soon.

Who came expecting something from the Word of God today?

Anybody?

I hope so.

I think God has something to say to us.

I always like to say, expectation is a cousin of faith.

And so when you show up expecting something, God meets you at that level of faith.

Amen.

And we don't want to just be spectators here.

We want to be all the way locked in.

And so today, I get the privilege of preaching about Ahab.

Ahab is the most ruthless king of them all.

If you've thought the other guys were bad, wait till we finish up today.

In doing that, I just kind of want to start out with a question because really this isn't as much about learning history facts about a king as learning more about our hearts and where our hearts are positioned and how we can align our hearts with what God has for us.

Amen?

And so the first question I have for you is this What has God entrusted to you?

That's a real question.

I want you to think for a second, what is it that God has given you?

You know, another way to say it is, what is he placed in your hands on loan to lead, to protect, to grow?

What are those things?

Because those are the things that have been entrusted to you.

When you become a Christian, you enter into this relationship with Jesus, and he gives you things.

You realize everything you have comes from him.

And then we're called to be stewards.

And so for some of you, it's a marriage.

My wife's been in the Philippines for three weeks.

I've been doing great during those three weeks.

She came home last night, and my grade dropped severely.

For others, it's your children.

The children is the biggest challenge.

God's put them in your hand.

How are you stewarding that relationship?

For some of us, it could be your leadership influence.

Maybe at home or maybe in the workplace or in ministry.

How are you stewarding the leadership position God has given you?

He's given you a voice.

What about your ministry gifts?

We're the body of Christ.

With the body comes an assortment of gifts.

The nature of gifts is not everybody, not even Denny Snelson, as talented as he is, gets them all.

And the reason we don't get them all is so that what Jaman and Nishon said, we need each other like the body.

What gifts have God given you?

What has He entrusted to you?

And how are you stewarding those?

How are you stewarding them outside of this building through the week?

How are you stewarding them inside the building?

Because the culture, the Spirit of God, the family that God is building here is not dependent on one person or the man of God to go up to Moses and get the word and then come down and create the family.

No, the family is created by being the family.

How are you doing with the gifts, the ministry gifts God has given you?

Are you using those?

Are you growing those?

Are you protecting those?

What about your testimony?

Nishaan quoted it.

We overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb, which we sang about, and the word of our testimony.

You're the only one with your testimony.

Are you stewarding it?

Do you regret it?

Do you are you ashamed of it?

Even if you've been a Christian since you were three years old and, you know, like Bradlin, you had a hard time sinning.

There's people here, sometimes sinning comes hard.

For me, it was real easy.

Lisa's probably not a really good sinner.

Like she struggled.

She tried to live in rebellion.

Lisa couldn't do it.

Even in that, are you stewarding what God, those seeds and the word that God's put in your testimony?

Your resources, the finances, the blessings that God has put in your hands.

Or what about this one?

We're talking about what God has entrusted to you.

Simply the next step of obedience.

He's already made clear to you.

He's entrusted you with a word.

Are you acting on that word?

I better move on because if I'm preaching to this space, we'll just second service will run into the first service.

Or first service will run into the second service.

The Bible is remarkably consistent on this point.

God, I love this.

God entrusts his people with responsibility.

I wouldn't do it.

I wouldn't trust me.

But that's the way the kingdom is set up.

Now let me ask you an even harder question.

If you thought question number one was hard.

What happens when God's people stop stewarding what he's entrusted to us?

The only way the kingdom advances is us stewarding what God has entrusted to us.

And if we shrink back, what happens to the kingdom of God?

What happens to mid-cities kneeling?

What happens to the discipleship culture that's here?

What happens to the life change in our youth?

In the next generation, in our kids?

What happens if we stop really being faithful with what God has entrusted to us?

Can you really call yourself a disciple of Jesus while remaining passive towards what he's called you to do?

Is obedience optional?

Those are the questions we're going to wrestle with today.

I told them earlier it's a tough, it's going to be a tough one.

You already know.

But I believe one of the greatest dangers facing the Christian life is not always open rebellion.

More often it's subtle passivity towards Jesus.

God, I don't want Neely to be a passive church.

I want to know, I want the city to know that we exist.

I want to make a strategic impact.

And we don't do that just through initiatives and programs.

I appreciate things like our mid-city SERS, or we go out and we mobilize everybody and we're out one day.

Well, that's, all right, one day we did good.

What about the other 364?

We are a mobilized army, a family out doing kingdom work with what God has called us to do.

Spiritual passivity is the posture of inaction that refuses to embrace God-given responsibilities.

You should be asking yourself right now, am I spiritually passive?

Am does this define me?

A posture of inaction.

Spiritual passivity rarely announces itself.

It's disguised sometimes.

Like we're pretty good at dressing it up in spiritual things.

But why aren't you doing anything with your life and what God's called you to do?

Well, brother, you know you're in trouble.

You start with brother.

Well, brother, I'm just waiting on God.

Well, God's probably waiting on you.

No, I just want to be humble.

So humble we don't even use the H.

What about avoiding difficult conversations?

Well, you know, blessed are the peacemakers.

What about, man, we need somebody to step up.

We need somebody to step in to get, you know, get in the game, start making disciples, leading a group.

We need somebody, I mean, there's holes, you know, in serving.

We need more ushers.

We need somebody to make some coffee.

I don't know, whatever.

Well, somebody else will step up.

I don't have to do that.

What about knowing what is right and never acting on it?

Here's the thing: make no mistake.

Spiritual passivity is never harmless.

We're gonna learn that today.

Every responsibility we neglect.

Let me say this again.

Every responsibility we neglect becomes ground.

We surrender.

I don't want to be a surrendering people.

I want to be an advancing people.

When we fail to steward what God has entrusted to us, we actually don't simply stand still.

When we fail to steward what God's entrusted us, we surrender ground God has called us to guard.

If he has placed you here in his kingdom, and you are a Christ follower, and he's placed you in Midland Odessa, and he's placed you in that job, and he's placed you in that gym, if he's placed you in that grocery store, then he's done it for his kingdom purposes and advancement.

So we don't need to be a people that shrink back.

This morning we're going to see that pattern unfold in Ahab.

Most people think of Ahab, they think of what the Bible calls him.

He said he's the most evil king, the most wicked kings in Israel's history.

And rightfully so.

But Ahab wasn't just wicked, he was passive.

He kept surrendering what God had entrusted to him.

God had made him king, given him a covenant, put authority on him.

And over and over and over, what we see in Ahab's life is one of weakness, cowardice, and surrender.

And that's how he became evil.

Before we're told a single story about Ahab, God gives us the verdict.

He says, Ahab, the son of Amrah, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.

Now, there's some evil dudes in the Bible.

Wouldn't you say?

I mean, that is quite the testimony, the legacy.

How does a king become the most wicked ruler Israel had ever known?

Well, that's the question we're going to answer today.

And as we follow the story, we're going to discover you know, this really isn't just about an ancient king.

This is about every disciple, that's me and you, and you all in the balcony, that are tempted to surrender the very responsibilities that God has entrusted to us.

This is not something we'll only see in the life of King Ahab.

This will be something that if we reflect and look in the mirror, we'll see that there's that tendency in our lives as well.

We're going to go through three scenes.

Hopefully, we'll get to them all.

Where God entrusted responsibility and Ahab surrendered it.

We're going to see what it cost him.

We're going to see what it cost the people around him.

And eventually we'll see what it cost the king who had to come and do what Ahab couldn't do.

So let's go to the first one.

I haven't told you even to open the Bible yet.

Praise God.

We love the Word of God around here.

Ahab, you can find him in 1 Kings chapter 18.

1 Kings 18 · chapter mention

I'm just kind of telling a story this morning.

There's too much Bible to read, to read it all.

Hopefully you're doing your homework.

If you're not, if you haven't done it up to this point, you can do it after.

I encourage you to go read this.

Ahab had been a king for some time, three and a half years, and there's not a drop of rain that's fallen on the northern kingdom.

It's a three and a half year drought.

Something we know about here in West Texas.

We don't see a whole lot of rain.

But could you imagine three and a half years?

I mean, think Lion King and the pride land under the rule of Scar.

Not a drop of rain.

The land is bone dry, cisterns empty, the crops non-existent.

The entire kingdom is bent.

Giving praise.

The entire kingdom is bent under the weight of a drought.

No one can explain away.

Except it isn't hard to explain.

This isn't a weather event.

We're talking about the drought in the northern kingdom.

It's not a weather event, it's a theological statement.

Why was there a drought?

Well, we see that Jezebel, the wife of Ahab.

Now, Jezebel, she was a bad person.

And she gets a bad rap.

But she is only able to operate in the ground in which Ahab surrenders.

So Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, had imported Baal.

And you've heard of Baal worship.

Well, that was a Phoenician God or deity, I said it this way, who supposedly controlled rain and fertility.

That's what Ba did.

And so here the covenant king Ahab marries Jezebel and then brings in her Phoenician God and says, Let this God loose, because this God is the God of rain and fertility.

Now we know why there's a three and a half year drought.

Because we serve a God who says, I will not be mocked.

If you want to bring in Baal, I will show you who controls the rain.

I control the rain.

Not your politics, not your alliances, not the gods you borrowed from your neighbor.

Me, God, I control the rain.

And into the drought, Elijah comes.

Elijah's God's prophet.

His name actually means, I love this, his name actually means Yahweh is my God.

Can you see how those two are juxtaposed?

And we're going to see that a war is about to break out.

And as Elijah comes on the scene, Ahab's first words to him, 1 Kings 18, 17.

And this just, I haven't really been able to move past this because this is so common and so funny.

It is you, he says, Is it you?

O troubler of Israel.

Now, Ahab has messed up the whole nation.

And he sees the prophet of God for the first time, and he calls him the troubler of Israel.

As if it wasn't his actions or inactions that have caused the problem for the nation.

Yet he blames him.

So think about it.

Ahab caused the drought, he married Jezebel, imported Bell worship, built altars, he created the conditions for the moment.

He was Scar, if you remember the best movie of all time, Lion King.

And then when the consequences arrived, he pointed at the prophet and called him a troublemaker.

You know, we often do the same thing.

When God has placed someone in our lives, a spouse, a mentor, a group leader, a pastor, a close friend, and they start asking us questions that expose our passivity or expose our compromise.

We don't, our first instinct isn't always hi.

I'm grateful for you, Dustin.

Thank you for that.

Unfortunately, we usually get a little bit upset.

We get defensive.

We say things like, you're always on my case.

Who said that in here this week?

Casey, did you say that?

Okay.

You just don't understand what I'm going through.

Usually with your lip poked out.

You don't understand what I'm going through.

I just don't need this right now.

The very people God has called us into our life to help us.

And here's the painful part.

Unfortunately, definitely sign up for this as a pastor.

Not only do you get pushback, you get pulled away.

People that don't want to follow God, if at first when they push you back, it doesn't succeed, they'll just pull away.

Nation on scripture, Proverbs 18:1.

Proverbs 18:1

A person who isolates himself rages against all wise judgment.

As soon as you start fooling around with the things of God, you start walking away from the people of God.

We isolate from the very people God has positioned in our lives to tell us the truth and bring us back to Him.

The move is as old as the garden.

Adam abandoned his responsibility and blame Eve.

Eve abandoned her responsibility and blamed the devil, the serpent.

And now we see Ahab walking in the same pattern, abandoning his responsibility and blaming everybody, including the man of God, the prophet of God he just met, Elijah.

And then comes Mount Carmel.

Over in 1 Kings 18, there's about 20 verses.

One of the most amazing stories, one of the most radical stories in all the Bible.

If you struggle with the fear of the Lord, I encourage you to read 1 Kings 18, 20 through 40.

We'll see on Mount Carmel.

I mean, we've been watching FIFA, right?

The World Cup.

It's been amazing.

Crazy crowds and crazy people and crazy games and amazing challenges.

It doesn't match up to Mount Carmel.

450 prophets of Baal versus Elijah.

450 to one.

They meet on the Mount at Mount Carmel.

There's two altars, two sacrifices, one test, which God will answer by fire.

And so the prophets of Baal plead, 450 of them.

They plead all day to their little G, God, but heaven remains silent.

Then Elisha prays a simple prayer, and the fire of God falls onto the altar, consuming everything on it.

It is the defining confrontation of the northern kingdom, of all of northern kingdom's history.

Elijah's God, Yahweh, answered by fire.

And in the midst of that, y'all have to read it.

I don't have time to tell you more than that.

We find Ahab.

What is Ahab doing?

Ahab is watching.

He's there, standing on the mountain, watching the fire fall from heaven, watching the people fall on their faces, watching one of the greatest moments of spiritual clarity in Israel's history.

He's watching and he never leads.

You would think at that moment he would come to his senses and think, man, God has shown up.

Now we know what to do.

But no, he doesn't.

He has the authority, the platform, God-given responsibility to call the nation back to Yahweh.

It was his moment.

Yet he says nothing, and he does nothing.

This is spiritual passivity, the posture of inaction that abandons God-given responsibilities.

What has he entrusted to you?

This is who Ahab has become: a king without conviction and zero courage to stand up for God.

So Elijah asked the question the king should ask.

We have it over in 1821.

He says, How long will you go limping between two opinions?

Some of you need to ask yourself that this today.

How long will you waver between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, follow him.

But if Baal or any other false God is God, follow him.

Has God shown up in your life?

Has he showed you who he is to you?

If he's shown up in your life, then follow him with all your heart.

Elijah's asking, how long will you look like you're walking with God without actually walking with God?

How long will you look like, pretend like, show up and kneel like you're following God and you know you're not really following God?

And then the most devastating line of the chapter, man, this one got me.

Says, and the people answered not a word.

Elisha asked that question and people were silent.

Why?

Well, the king modeled it.

When the king watches, the people watch.

If you call yourself a leader, if you're a leader in your home, a patriarch, a father, a mother.

If you don't read your Bible, you think your kid, the kids are going to read their Bible?

If you don't commit to being part of the community, do you think your kids are going to commit to be part of the community?

If you are okay with soccer being God, do you think your kids are going to be okay with soccer?

Sorry, Dustin.

Soccer being God?

Now, football's a different story.

We'll talk about that in a couple months.

You're tracking with me.

They had a front row seat to the power of God and they went home unchanged.

Spiritual maturity is not measured by what you witness, it is measured by what you obey.

Spiritual maturity is not measured by what you see.

I mean, that's part of my problem with us crazy charismatics.

We like to run, skip from mountaintop to mountaintop moments.

We like the presence of God.

We like the goosebumps.

But life isn't all about the mountaintop moments.

It's not about what you witness in the mountaintop moments, it's what you obey in the valley.

That's why I hear we say that participation is better than observation.

Because we want to be a people with a forward body lien.

Using the gifts that God is entrusting, not regressing from what God has called, not surrendering what God, not guarding what God, but actually moving forward with what He's called.

The only way you do that is stop watching and start participating.

If you're happy just to come here and be a consumer, next week Jamal will be cooking popcorn.

You'll probably complain, it's too salty.

I'm just kidding.

We can't be consumers in the house of God.

We can't be watchers.

Ahab stood by and just watched.

He didn't lead.

Can I tell you, wherever, whatever God has positioned you, from the youngest to the oldest in this room, He's called you to lead.

He's given you a new heart.

Not just so you can, you know, sing, I'll fly away, oh glory, and one day go to heaven.

What are you gonna do then?

Heaven isn't fat babies with diapers floating around on clouds.

We'll be leading in the next life.

If you don't like it in this one, you certainly won't like it in that one.

God is calling us to switch gears, to stop watching, and start leading.

What we don't steward, I'm gonna skip a whole part just so Dustin doesn't freak out.

We don't what we don't steward, we surrender.

God is so faithful that that thing he told you to do, if you don't do it, he'll raise somebody else up to do it.

I mean, we see that in the story of Elijah.

He literally says, Am I the only one left standing for God?

It almost broke him.

Why?

Because one person's not supposed to do the work of the community.

You know, there's a principle of leadership.

It's called the 80-20 principle.

Do y'all understand what it is?

Or the 20% of the people do everything for the 80.

It's like natural.

It happens maybe in your home, it happens at school, it happens in your job.

Let it not happen in the house of God where 20% do all the participation and 80% sit around observing.

Let's be that family.

I loved it.

This week we had this little pickleball gathering.

I don't know if you heard about it.

The reason you didn't is it just happened virally.

It happened to get a word in his prayer closet.

We need to play some pickleball.

So let's get a committee.

Let's talk about it for about six months.

Figure out the best thing.

Make sure we have pickleball tournament.

It's not the way this happened.

We had some faithful members said, you know what?

We need some community.

Pickleball's fun, usually.

Except Kristen and I didn't win a game in our whole time we played, but we we competed hard.

They said, Hey, we're gonna have pickleball night.

And about 60 people showed up.

That's the kingdom of God, that's the family of God.

I'm sorry if you didn't get the invite.

Don't be mad at me.

That just needs to happen all the time.

Somebody make a brisket.

I'll come.

Movement two in 1 Kings 21.

Man, we are in trouble.

We see the king who surrendered sometime after Mount Carmel.

We see this dude, Naboth.

He owns a vineyard.

It's right by Ahab's place, and Ahab goes to him and says, Hey, I want to buy your vineyard.

Y'all need to read this story.

It's crazy.

I mean, he made him a fair offer.

Sell me your vineyard or trade it for a better one.

Nabeth refuses, not out of stubbornness, not because he disliked the king.

He refuses because he feared God, because in those days uh it wasn't just about swapping property for economic purposes.

Under God's covenant, Israel's land was never merely property to be bought and sold.

It was the Lord's inheritance.

And so the Lord had given Nabah this vineyard.

And so he said, Look, I would want to sell it to you.

I appreciate the king's money, but I can't.

I fear the Lord.

Now you would think that Ahab, the covenant king of the land of Israel, would say, Cool, I get it.

I'm called to protect the covenant.

I'm the leader of the I'm the leader of this nation.

I'm called to raise a godly nation.

Maybe you're the leader of your home.

God's called you to raise the be the leader of your home.

Instead, guess what he does?

He takes his ball and goes home.

He's like, I can't believe that, Naboth.

He runs home to the palace, he gets on his bed, and this is what the Bible says.

Ahab went into his house, vexed and sullen, and lay down on his bed and turned his face and would eat no food.

Instead of leading, he pouted.

And in Ahab's passivity, guess what happened?

Space opens for evil to rule.

In walks, into that vacancy walks Jezebel.

Into the vacancy where you won't lead, where you shrink back, where you take your ball and go home, where you get mad at the pastor, where you get mad at your group leader, where you get angry that it's too cold or it's too hot.

Not for those that said it was too cold or too hot in here today, but you understand.

Whatever petty little thing that will cause you to go lay on your bed and pout, you shrink back from being the man of God that he's called you to be, the woman of God that he's called you to be.

And when you shrink back, you think it's not impacting anybody.

I'm just in my fields.

Oh no.

When you shrink back, you give up territory.

And guess what?

Evil is happy to invade that space.

So guess what?

Here comes Jezebel.

Jezebel says, Do you now govern Israel?

In other words, if you won't be the king, I will.

He basically takes his stuff, his signet ring, his authority, his name, his office.

He uses the issue royal letter, and he basically says, Have Naboth executed.

If you won't take that land, I will.

And I don't have a problem having someone killed.

So false witnesses are summoned, the innocent's condemned, Naboth is stoned.

Ahab never forged the letters, he never recruited the witnesses, he never picked up a stone.

He simply refused to exercise the authority that God had given him or had entrusted to him.

And yet, when God sends Elijah to confront him, the charge is direct.

Look what it says in verse 19.

1 Kings 21, 19.

Ahab, have you killed and also taken possession?

God doesn't say Jezebel killed, he holds Ahab accountable.

Because the kingdom of God, here's the truth: abdication is not innocence.

That's about as plain as I can get it.

Being soft is not being innocent.

Your softness costs the people around you.

Passivity is never private, it always costs someone else.

The same principle is at work today.

When parents neglect to disciple their children, someone else gladly will.

When believers stop pursuing holiness, the world is not going to leave them unchanged.

The world's going to grab a hold of them.

When the church assumes someone else will pray, someone else will evangelize, someone else will make disciples, then the mission dies.

Every one of us is be informed by something, whether it's social media, political ideologies, consumerism, entertainment.

The question is not whether discipleship is happening, it's the question is who is doing the discipling.

After Naboth is dead and Ahab takes possession of the vineyard, the narrator stops to deliver his epitaph.

Get this, 1 Kings 21, 25.

There was none who sold himself.

He's talking about Ahab.

Verse 25.

There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited.

Ahab was a sellout.

He would have called himself a Christian, but he sold out when things got tough.

And the crazy thing is, it doesn't just happen usually in one big moment.

Here's our warning.

It happened in one compromise, one little act of cowardice, one little refusal to lead.

And one thing led to the other.

And now he's responsible for killing someone.

So the question is unavoidable.

Where have you checked out?

Let's go to movement three.

Chapter 22.

Basically, the consequences have arrived.

Let me summarize this for the sake of time.

I'll try to say it, man.

I'm skipping some good stuff, but chapter 20, Ahab was supposed to eliminate Benedad.

Well, as you know, Ahab's got an obedience problem.

He thinks he knows a better way.

There's a reason, Proverbs says, lean not to your own understanding.

Yet he had leaned to his own understanding so much that he didn't know another way.

So in chapter 20, instead of exercising judgment on Benadad, he makes a treaty with him.

Two chapters later, now he's fighting back with him.

He's taking back what he should have never given up.

And then he goes into this battle, and then there's like one godly man that's still in the court of Ahab.

He's the prophet, Makaiah.

Micaiah basically says this if you go to war, you will die.

How many know when you become numb to the truth of God, the word of God, what God is speaking to you, when you become numb to it, all of a sudden you can't hear something as clear as, if you go to war, you will die.

Even though God had plainly warned him, Ahab thought he knew a better way.

How many times have you been?

I've been in that trap.

I know what you told me to do, God.

But maybe I can do it this way and survive.

He thought, Ahab, what he did?

He disguised himself as a common soldier and went out to battle anyway.

I would encourage you not to do spiritual warfare without the armor of God.

Don't go in your own strength.

We'll see it in the life of Ahab.

We'll also see it in those brothers, the sons of Skeva, that came in and tried to prophesy and be people of God, and the Bible says they ran out naked.

Now there's naked and naked.

I'm not sure what the difference is.

I think when I mean you got an earring on.

But anyway, they ran out naked because God ran them out of town.

How many know some of you all have been trying to fight battles in a disguise?

Not obeying what God had called you to do.

And ultimately what happened was he went out in disguise and a random, the Bible says, I love this.

A random arrow.

How many know with God there's nothing that's random?

But without even the intentions of the enemy shooting at him, God made sure that judgment would find him.

Said it pierced him between his armor.

He was propped up on his chariot, he bled out, and he died.

Because he thought he knew another way.

All he did was spend the last hours of his life disguised as something he really wasn't.

He was called to be a king.

But he was disguised as a common soldier.

Can I tell you, church, that God is calling us to be kings?

Men and women.

To lead.

To preach, to make disciples, to make a difference, to serve.

She would I tell you all every week, probably the most important thing we do is behind these walls.

I see these little babies running around.

I don't think they're problems.

I think they're the next lawyer, the next doctor, the next teacher.

I thank you that my time, my effectiveness really is in its final hours.

Their effectiveness is just beginning.

Who else can I pour my life into except the next generation?

If you don't like the way things are now, do the best you can with what you got and pour your life into the next generation.

If you're a teacher, if you're a person that spends time in the next generation, I commend you.

Thank you.

But we can all do that.

We can all look for a younger person to mentor.

We can see a Joe Ginsbog up here and think, man, that brother can play the bass.

But maybe he needs someone to speak into his life.

He's got a great family.

There's people speak into it, but maybe I just need to pray a blessing over him today.

Are you with me?

Let me just wrap it up with this.

Three scenes we've looked at today, sort of.

And three surrenders.

He watched when he should have led, he pouted when he should have protected, and he hid when he should have stood.

And if we're honest, that's not just Ahab's story, that's ours.

What we need is not a better strategy.

We need a king to do what we can't.

And that king has come.

His name is Jesus.

We don't have time to jump into it today, but you can easily see how our king didn't hide.

How our king, through sweating tears of blood, said, I'll go to the cross.

He wasn't passive.

He didn't shrink back.

He cried out, Not my will, but yours, God.

Do you see how that is the opposite of Ahab?

Was basically saying, Not yours, but mine.

Jesus says, Not mine, but yours.

He didn't run from the cross, he ran to the cross.

He lived the life we should have lived.

Perfect and sinless.

He died the death we should have died.

In our place.

Thank God that the story doesn't end with Ahab.

That the story ends with Jesus.

So we don't have to feel guilty today about our passivity.

We just have to turn from it.

There's a, I got to tell you one last thing.

There's a crazy story here where Ahab basically comes to his senses and he tears his garment and he half-heartedly repents and calls a fast.

And God says this.

I think we might have it on the screen.

I just got to share this one with you.

Last scripture, 1 Kings 21, says, Have you seen how Ahab?

This is God.

I mean, this is the God we serve.

This is crazy.

I barely forgive someone who cuts me off in traffic.

Have you seen Ahab how Ahab has humbled himself before me?

Because he's humbled himself, I will not bring the disaster in his days.

Now his actions, his own actions, led to his death, but Israel wasn't fully judged.

How much more, people of God, when we take moments like this and say, you know what, I'm going to repent.

I'm going to turn from my passive ways and I'm going to pursue God with all my heart.

How quick is He to meet us there?

Do you see how quick God is?

Do you see the kindness of God that leads men to repentance?

Do you see his graciousness that is seeing?

It's like this.

We're walking out into this vast valley of darkness and we can't see, we can't make our way out.

We're just in the middle of darkness.

What we don't realize is that God is like right behind us, shining his light, the brightest light you've ever seen on our back.

You can't see it because you're looking forward.

But as soon as you turn around, you're faced with that light.

You're faced with that love.

You're met with his grace.

You're met with his mercy.

Can I tell you that's us this morning?

And that's all the time we have.

Stand up.

I gotta let you go.

I had a pastor one time that would do much like what I'm doing right now, be over time.

And he'd say, hey, if you want to hear more, come back next time.

But don't do that because this place will be full again.

We do have a podcast that you can listen to it again, though.

Okay?

It's good to see you.

Let's pray.

And let's just give God our hearts.

Father, in the name of Jesus.

We do not want to be a passive people.

We don't want the word to just tickle our ears.

We don't want to see fire fall from heaven and then be paralyzed in inaction.

Can you just raise your hands?

Father, make us a people that get in the game.

That steward what you've entrusted to us.

That don't shrink back.

God, mark us with spiritual action.

And remove from us spiritual passivity.

Lord, we repent.

We ask you to change us.

God, we ask you to raise us up as a mighty oak of righteousness in the great city of Midland.

And send us to the four corners of the nations.

Help us to obey.

Help us to steward what it is that you've entrusted us with.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.