And it came to pass after many days
that the word of the Lord came to
Elijah in the third year saying, go and
present yourself to Ahab and I will send
the rain.
This was the third word that we know
that God gave to Elijah.
First he confronted Ahab and said there would
be no rain, the Lord taught him to
go and wait at the brook, he was
there almost a year where birds fed him
and where he got closer and closer to
the Lord and his character was being transformed.
The Lord told him to go to Tzeraphat
and a widow would feed them and for
almost two years they had miraculous food and
he became a family man, he became a
man of compassion and community as well as
consecration to the Lord.
He raised that boy from the dead, it
must have been a wonderful time for Elijah.
And he went to the stranger and to
the widow and to the fatherless, which is
what the Torah teaches us we should all
do, a Jew going to non-Jews.
But now the Lord says go back to
Israel and confront Ahab and I will send
the rain.
I'm not sure that Elijah's flesh wanted to
go back to Israel with the reign of
terror going on with Jezebel, Ahab looking for
him, everyone calling him the troubler of Israel,
Jezebel killing, executing and murdering the prophets, the
true preachers of the Word of God.
So he had to leave and there must
have been a wonderful farewell scene in Tzeraphat.
As he said goodbye to the widow, said
goodbye to the boy, looked back at them,
left, maybe the little boy was crying, that
was his spiritual father leaving.
And back he went, down the Mediterranean, toward
Mount Carmel and up on to Mount Carmel.
And there he had his second collision or
confrontation with Ahab.
You know in the Old Testament you really
learn character.
You can get a lot of theology in
the New Testament, but the Old Testament is
filled with great character studies like David and
Saul.
And you can see the difference, the contrast
between the two of them.
Joseph, all the great characters of the Tanakh,
the Old Testament.
And here we have this collision between two
men, Elijah, who stands with God, and also
Ahab, who is compromised.
For me, Ahab represents mixture man.
He's like a composite of a weak male
believer.
Men are supposed to be leaders in the
household, priests in the household, they're supposed to
have a prayer altar, they're supposed to lead
their children and father their children and teach
their children and be leaders to their wives.
And here Ahab was filled with carnality.
He wasn't doing any of that.
He married this demonic witch princess named Jezebel,
the daughter of Etbaal, which means man of
Baal, the false god of the Canaanites, and
brought all of this garbage, all of this
mixture, all of this sin, back into Israel
instead of him standing for the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
He's carnal man, and here he is confronted
by Elijah, who is the man of communion
and consecration and commitment to God.
Oh, brothers and sisters, we don't want to
be like Ahab.
There are Ahabs in the church.
There are Ahabs in the body.
They are carnal.
They're watching pornography.
They aren't the kind of consecrated people they
should be.
Not only that, he was compromised.
There was a little of religion, a little
of the true religion, and we bring in
all this other stuff.
He was the leader, and it was being
spewed about all over Israel.
The people were worshipping Baal and worshipping Jehovah,
half and half, and limping between two opinions.
There was confusion everywhere, and it was because
this man was carnal.
He was compromised, where Elijah was this man
of great compassion, this man of great community,
how he had been with the widow and
how he had been with her son.
Here was this man who was covetous.
He coveted his neighbor's vineyard against the Torah.
He wanted Naboth's vineyard.
He sulked like a little boy in his
bed, and Jezebel said, I'll get it for
you, and she did this whole setup of
lies and got people involved and stole it
and had the man killed.
See, Ahab covets things that really aren't supposed
to be his.
Ahab was a man who coveted.
He coveted his neighbor's property against the Ten
Commandments.
He goes down in the history of the
Bible as one of the great weak men
that could have been mightily used of the
Lord.
And here is Elijah, who's not coveting anything.
I mean, he lived in caves.
He lived at a brook.
Birds fed them.
He had a little bit of food.
He had a little bit of oil.
He prayed, and the Lord supplied all of
his needs.
You know, if you do things God's way
and you hear from the Lord, God will
always, always provide for your needs.
So here we have this collision of these
two men, the godly man, the man of
the spirit, you might say, and a man
of the flesh.
And you know that we are warring the
spirit and the flesh, and God is saying,
where are the men?
Where are the Elijahs?
Where is the Lord God of Elijah?
Not the false god of Ahab, Baal, which
means owner.
Men that are owned by their own delusions,
their own emotions, their own desires for things
they shouldn't want.
And so here we have this collision.
Not only that, not only is Ahab a
man of carnality and compromise and covetousness, he's
also a coward.
Because he dons, he puts on a king's
robes and pretends he's not Ahab, and he
actually got killed when he went up to
a war that he shouldn't have gone to.
He's a coward.
God is looking for some men of courage,
courage in the spirit.
Men who will take a stand.
Men who will be leaders in prayer.
Men who will say to their wives, honey,
it's time to pray.
Men who will have a family prayer altar.
Men who will bring their children around and
pray for them.
Whether the kids know the Lord yet or
not.
Men who will maybe even keep a journal
and say, see, we prayed for this three
months ago, and look what happened.
There's been a breakthrough.
Now you're doing better in school.
We need men who are fathers.
Elijah became a great father.
He was a father to that boy, that
heathen boy that he raised from the dead
in Seraphat, the place of refining.
And here is Elijah confronting Ahab, and Ahab
says to him, you're the troubler of Israel.
And Elijah says right to the king's face,
who wanted to kill him, but probably had
his soldiers with him.
And he said, I am not the troubler
of Israel.
You are the troubler of Israel.
Call all Israel to Mount Carmel, and let's
have a showdown.
So Elijah looks the king in the face
with spiritual courage because the Lord had spoken
to him, confront Ahab, and I will send
the rain.
You see, a prophet is a man with
a word that is not his own.
It's from God.
God told him, if you will confront the
king, I'm going to send a downpour of
natural rain and the rain of the spirit.
So he had this promise.
He had this courage because he knew the
Lord had told him.
So he was acting and obeying the word
of the Lord.
Elijah would hear the word of the Lord
and obey the word of the Lord.
He heard the word of the Lord because
he spent time alone with God.
That's how we hear his voice.
So he says to Ahab, now I want
you to call all of Israel up to
Mount Carmel.
Bring all the false prophets.
Bring all the false priests.
Bring the 400 that eat at Jezebel's table
where you're taking the money that comes from
the taxes and giving it to all these
people who are into all of this idolatry
and building temples to Baal and you're having
these feasts and all these carnal things are
going on.
Bring them all up there and let's have
a showdown, a confrontation between Baal and Adonai,
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
This is what the Lord is telling me
to do.
Elijah heard the word of the Lord.
He obeyed the word of the Lord.
You know, we need to build spiritual men
like Elijah, the Elijah legacy.
Here on Mount Carmel in northern Israel and
Galilee years ago, we started having men's summits.
We would call all the leaders of northern
Israel up to Mount Carmel to our place.
We would sit at the feet of Yeshua,
Jesus for three or four days and most
of them came, Jews, Arabs, Russian speakers, English
speakers and we sat at the feet of
Yeshua.
The Lord came.
There was no preaching.
There was no agenda.
The worship was pure.
It was beautiful.
God started doing things in us and between
one another.
It was wonderful to see what he did.
God is looking for some men who will
step out.
I know so many men.
They're so busy, leaders, pastors, others and you
look at them and you just have a
word of knowledge and say, you're not spending
any time with the Lord and they say,
you're right and why not?
I'm too busy with the works of God.
Brothers and sisters, get alone with God.
Get the word of the Lord.
Obey the word of the Lord and pick
up this Elijah legacy.
Don't be an Ahab.
Be like Elijah.