1 Kings 18 (1)

1 Kings chapter 18. It's a long chapter, it's 46 verses, but the good news is I have three nights to get it done. So we're not going to try to do the whole thing tonight, but we'll read a section of the chapter and then see how we do.

So 1 Kings chapter 18, and we'll begin at verse 1. And it came to pass, after many days, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go show thyself unto Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth. And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.

And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly, for it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in a cave and fed them with bread and water. And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks.

For adventure we may find grass, to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts. So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it. Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself.

And as Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him. And he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my lord, Elijah? And he answered him, I am. Go tell thy lord, behold, Elijah is here.

And he said, What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab to slay me? As the Lord thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee. And when they said, He is not there, he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not. And now thou sayest, Go tell thy lord, behold, Elijah is here.

And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know not. And so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me. But I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth.

Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the Lord? How I hid an hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water. And now thou sayest, Go tell thy lord, behold, Elijah is here. He shall slay me.

And Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him today. So, oh, but I went to meet Ahab, and told him. And Ahab went to meet Elijah.

And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I've not troubled Israel, but thou, and thy father's house, and that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam. Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table. And we'll break off the reading there and save the rest for tomorrow and Wednesday, God willing.

First Kings 18 is one of the big showdowns of the Old Testament. Similar to David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, Gideon and the Midianites, Samson and the Philistines, these are all in that same vein. And if you even half listened in Sunday school, or Vacation Bible School, which was better than me most of the time, then you're quite familiar with the material here in First Kings 18.

Now just a quick note about the timeline, most of you would know this, but just to remind us, Elijah emerges on the scene in about 860 BC. I don't like BCE, before the current era. We all know what that means, it means before Christ.

So 860 is about when Elijah emerges, when the reign of Ahab was relatively well established. We know that he reigned from 874 to 853. So Elijah appears to him in the middle of his reign, and Elijah was ministering in the northern kingdom of Israel.

He was primarily a speaking prophet rather than a writing prophet, like Isaiah and Jeremiah were. And he was on the scene for a relatively short period of time. And you remember how his departure took place in Second Kings 2. He is taken away supernaturally during the reign of Jehoram of Israel.

We find Elijah here in our chapter after a period of three years of no rain or dew, which is exactly what he prophesied and told King Ahab about in verse 1 of the previous chapter. He was bold enough to go to Ahab and tell him to his face that there would be no dew on the ground, there would be no rain from the skies unless he commanded it. He's a prophet of the Lord, this is the word of the Lord.

Now that wasn't going to be good for Baal or his wife and their supposed fertility. That wasn't going to be good. And yet God determined to send rain.

We read it right in It came to pass after many days, it's been about three years or so, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year saying, go show yourself unto Ahab and I will send rain upon the earth. So God's determining this is the time rain is going to come. But that wouldn't be all.

Otherwise, if God just sends the rain, the people of Israel who have turned to Baal, who have been worshipping him, Baal and Asherah, they might think, well, you know, Baal's been a little bit MIA for a few years, but he's shown back up. He has risen from the dead and he's back. Baal is back and he has given us rain.

No, no, no, that cannot be. That cannot be. Baal cannot be given credit.

So therefore he first must be discredited. He has to be discredited. And Dale Ralph Davis says, and this needed to happen clearly, publicly, obviously, decisively in living color and on national primetime.

And that's what we'll see tomorrow night. After Baal is exposed as a non-God, then no one should give the credit to him for the rain that comes afterward. So this has to occur first before the rain is sent.

So there's this big God contest in Israel, if you will. Who is the real God? Is it Jehovah? Is it Yahweh? Or is it Baal? Now verse two says that Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab and there was a sore famine in Samaria. Now that makes total sense that there be a sore famine in Samaria.

When you have three years and no rain, three years of no dew upon the ground, you're going to have a famine. And there was a reason for it. There was a reason behind the famine and it wasn't just the lack of rain because behind the lack of rain was the real problem.

God had plainly told his people that if they turned away from him, that if they worshiped other gods, that if they disobeyed his commandments, this would take place. We go all the way back to the book of Deuteronomy, right? In the covenant language that God made with his people. Deuteronomy 28, the Lord shall strike you with drought and with blight and the heavens over your head shall be bronze.

It's hard for rain to penetrate that. The heavens over your head will be like bronze and the earth under you shall be iron. Hard to grow anything on iron, maybe algae or moss, but nothing helpful, nothing with substance.

The nation's problem was not just that the ground was hard, it's that their hearts were. That was the real issue. They had once again, as they had again and again and again in the past, they had disobeyed God's commandments and they were paying a heavy price in turning to Baal and his female counterpart Asherah.

And so this showdown has to take place. The showdown to follow in our chapter has to occur. Now this first little section here I've entitled the setup for the main event.

This is really just the setup for the main event. We haven't even gotten into it yet, but it's very important to see what is going on here so that we can appreciate the event when it takes place. So before we read about the main event, we're going to look tonight at three meetings, three face-offs.

If you're into boxing and fighting terminology, this is what we might call the undercard. So these three face-offs. Now they're not exactly going to be fist fighting, but there's tension and there's friction and there's even intense in-your-face arguments as we see Elijah and Baal making accusations against each other.

But we're going to look at these three meetings, these three face-offs. In verses three to six, the first one is between Ahab and Obadiah. Ahab and Obadiah.

And the tension there is largely behind the scenes because we're told in that interchange, we have a little parentheses in that interchange between the two of them, that Obadiah has hid 100 prophets of the Lord. Ahab doesn't know anything about that. If he did know about it, he wouldn't be too happy.

And Jezebel certainly wouldn't be too happy because she's trying to destroy the true prophets of the Lord. But we read here about Obadiah that he has hid 100 prophets of the Lord, which would put him at odds with Ahab and with Ahab's wife. So we have the tension behind the scenes, but that's the first face-off we're going to look at is between Ahab and Obadiah, the meeting of the two of them.

And then in verses seven to 15, we have a meeting with Obadiah and Elijah. And the tension there is right out in the open as Obadiah expresses fear for his life. He seems to think he knows how this is going to end, right? I'm going to tell Ahab where Elijah is because he's been looking for him for a long time.

And then whenever I bring him back to this place where you tell me that you are, the Lord will have whisked away his prophet, and then he's going to turn on me. And in fact, he says three times over, he says, and he's going to want to kill me. So we have a meeting with Obadiah and Elijah, and the tension is clear and it's out in the open.

And then finally, we have the face-off between Elijah and Ahab. Verse two has prepared us for it, right? And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab, but it doesn't happen right there. We have to wait for it in this chapter, which lets the pressure build until we finally arrive at that meeting that takes place in verses 16 to 19.

And the tension there is extreme as both men call each other Israel's troublemaker. So let's look at these three meetings then. And then after we go through these three meetings, we'll close with a handful of lessons from these verses in our chapter.

I don't imagine that we're going to eight o'clock. We'll definitely be getting out a little early. Typically people aren't too upset about that.

So first then, we'll look at this meeting of Ahab and Obadiah in verses three to six. So verse three begins by telling us that Ahab calls for Obadiah. Ahab called Obadiah, who was the governor of his house.

So that's very interesting that Obadiah is obviously a man of great authority within the palace, within the kingdom. Ahab had made him his head domestic administrator, a position that obviously Obadiah would use for the Lord. We see that in what he does, which is stated in verse four.

I'll just stop and say, here's a man who's working for someone who is wicked. And yet he uses that position, he uses the job that had been given to him to somehow still honor the Lord in that job. That's a good lesson for all of us, isn't it? Wherever you're working, whatever you're doing, ask the Lord, how can I honor you in this job? And if we're tempted to say, well, the conditions at work aren't so great, probably better than working for Ahab and Jezebel.

Probably better. So that's what Obadiah, he's able to use this position to do something that would be a greatly honoring thing to the Lord. And the rest of verse three, though, tells us that Obadiah feared the Lord greatly.

He feared the Lord greatly. And I'm glad that this is here, because the temptation might be for us to think, well, wicked Ahab and wicked Jezebel, if there's someone working in the palace for them, especially a man that is so close to the top, he must be evil as well. He's not.

He's not. We're told very specifically here that Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. Just in case we're not sure how to treat him, the text helps us out.

He's a man who fears God. So we're obviously to view him in a positive light, regardless of the fact that he works for King Ahab. Now, the next verse gives us evidence of that by what he did.

Verse four, for it was so when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord that Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in a cave and fed them with bread and water. So while Jezebel is hunting down and executing the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah is running a prophet protection program, not a witness protection program, a prophet protection program, and he manages to hide a hundred of them in caves, splitting them in two groups of fifty. Apparently, he feared the Lord more than he feared Jezebel in taking such a risk as this.

I think it was Oswald Chambers who said, when you fear God, you fear nothing else. Whereas, if you don't fear God, you fear everything else and everyone else. Well, Obadiah feared God and it's clear when we see what he was willing to do here.

Verse five says, and Ahab said unto Obadiah, go into the land unto all fountains of water and unto all brooks. Per adventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive that we lose not all the beasts. So here's a verse that tells us, that shows us the extent of the famine, the extent of the lack of rain in Samaria.

These were terribly desperate times. Look at what the king is having to do. And sadly, the king cares more about the physical welfare of his animals than the spiritual welfare of his people.

Rather than turning to the Lord and saying, Lord, what have we done? He's trying to find water to save his animals and doesn't care anything about the welfare of his people. You'll notice the contrast then here. Obadiah saves prophets.

Ahab wants to save horses and mules. As F. B. Meyer said, Ahab was seeking for grass instead of seeking for God. That's what was important to him.

Pretty sad. What a rebuke of Israel's king right here in our text. Sometimes that can be a bit of our problem as well too.

Our focus gets on the material, on the physical, on the tangible, on the financial, right? So long as the economy's going well, as long as I got, you know, the pantry's full and there's money in my bank account, well, I guess everything else isn't really that important. Obadiah's great treasure. What was important to him? It's clear what was important to him.

What was important to him was the word of God which would come through the prophets. He hides them. That was a treasure to him.

That was something worth, that was something, and those were people worth saving. He had such a great value of the word of God. One thing to have a famine, one thing to have a famine.

Obadiah understood it's an utterly tragic thing to have a famine of the word of God. Isn't that what Amos warned about in chapter 8 of his prophecy? Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. That's when there's a real tragedy, when there's a famine of the, hearing the word of the Lord, and Obadiah says, we don't want that to happen.

Jezebel's cutting down true prophets. He's hiding them because he values the word of God so much. How precious is the word of God to us as his people? Well, verse 6, so they divided the land between them to pass throughout it.

Ahab went one way by himself and Obadiah went another way by himself, and so desperate in their search for fodder, they each take half of the countryside. They're searching its many villages and springs for any grass they could find, and that's when the second meeting takes place, the meeting of Obadiah and Elijah. This is now verses 7 through 15.

So verse 7, and as Obadiah was in the way, it's hard to dramatize this enough because of how significant this is. As Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him. Nobody had seen Elijah in a long time.

Suddenly he's here, and he knew him, and he fell on his face, and he said, aren't thou that my Lord, Elijah? And he answered him, I am. Go tell thy Lord, behold, Elijah is here. So at last, after such a long period of time, someone sees Elijah.

This is more rare than seeing Sasquatch, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, okay? This is big time here, and the amazing thing is, he's not even that far away. Ahab has sent people out to one country after another to try to find him. Elijah's right nearby, just miles from Jezebel's hometown, and he's not been discovered, and now he abruptly appears, as he usually seems to, showing his face to Ahab's right-hand man, and I imagine if you're Obadiah, you're looking for something to tie him to so he can't get away.

There's no prison cell out in the wilderness, and there's nothing to tie him to, so notice what he says in verse 9. He said, What have I sinned? What have I sinned that you would deliver your servant into the hand of Ahab to slay me? As the Lord thy God lives, there's no nation or kingdom whither my Lord hath not sent to seek thee. And when they said he's not there, he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not. And now thou say'st, Go tell thy Lord, behold, Elijah is here.

By the way, this tells us the extent of Ahab's searching, doesn't it? He's looked everywhere to find Elijah, to no avail. He sent servants to this land, and to that land, and to this country, and to that country, and he can't find him. He is as helpless as the God that he's been serving.

He's as powerless as Baal. He can't find grass for his animals. The king of Israel can't find grass for his animals.

The king of Israel can't find water. The king of Israel can't find one man, although he possesses an army of tens of thousands of men to do it. He's just as powerless as the God he serves, Baal.

He can do nothing. And that's, well, sorry for that spoiler, but I think you know the rest of the story already. We know who the real God is, right? Then verse 12, Obadiah is still talking.

He says, It shall come to pass, as soon as I'm gone from thee, that the spirit of the Lord shall catch thee whither I know not. And so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find me, he shall slay me. But I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth.

Then he tells them what we've already learned in this chapter about how he hid the prophets of the Lord in the cave and fed them with bread and water. And now you say, go tell thy Lord, behold, Elijah is here and he's going to, he's going to kill me. So Obadiah tells Elijah three times here, Ahab's going to kill him.

Verse 9, you saw it there, right? Verse 9, he said, he's going to kill me. Verse 12, he's going to slay me. Verse 14, he shall slay me.

I know what's going to happen. Yes, I know I have my prophet protection program, but so does the Lord. So does the Holy Spirit.

His is a lot more effective than mine. And he's going to somehow take you to some other part of the country. You're going to be teleported somewhere else.

And just as I come back here and say, King Ahab, here's Elijah, he's going to be gone. And then Obadiah will be, oh, goodbye. Yeah, that's what's going to take place.

He's going to do me in. It's like what happens, right? So often it happens in movies or films. Officer, I know exactly where he is.

See, he's right. He was just there a minute ago, right? How many times does that happen? That's what's going on here. And I know, I know that some are critical of Obadiah here.

He says he shouldn't have been so fearful, you know, thinking that he's going to die. And he really should have put his trust in the Lord. But, you know, imagine this, a servant of God who prefers not to die.

I don't think there's any reason to blame him for that. So what does Elijah do? He gives them some assurance. Verse 15.

Elijah said, as the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand. So he takes an oath. He says, I will surely show myself unto him today.

Today. Great assurance in that word today. There are other words of assurance in scripture that you might think of when the Lord said today and brought great assurance.

This is one of them. So Elijah gives Obadiah his word. Under oath.

I'll meet with Ahab. I'll meet with him that very day. And that brings us to our third and most intense face-off.

That is the meeting of Elijah and Ahab. And this is what so far the chapter has been building toward. We had to, we first were told this back in verse two, that Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab.

And at last we're there in verse 16. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him. And Ahab went to meet Elijah and it came to pass.

So Elijah didn't get swept away. When Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, art thou he that troubleth Israel. He's ready to unload on Elijah.

Everything that's happened in this country, the economic deprivation, the famine that's been so severe. It is all you. You're the troublemaker.

It's because of what you said to me when you said there was going to be no rain upon the earth. And he lets him have it. He lets him have it.

Yeah, Elijah did say there shall be neither rain nor dew these years, except by my word. He's basically calling him troublemaker. You're the one who's troubled Israel.

Troublemaker. That's quite a title. But Elijah would end up being in pretty good company when you read the New Testament.

I thought about Paul and Silas and Philippi and they go into that town and they've got intentions to bring the gospel there and to win people to Christ. And then there would be an assembly there in Philippi. And I think about the fact that there was a group of angry men that came before the magistrate and said, these men are Jews and they're troubling our city.

They're disturbing our city. They're troublemakers. Pretty good company to be in the likes of Paul and Silas.

And I thought about what the chief priest said to Pilate about the Lord Jesus. He stirs up the people. Troublemaker.

No, he's wrong. He was wrong. But that's not bad company to be in.

Just make sure that it's not the believers that are calling you that. The ungodly says that it's one thing, but if fellow believers are saying troublemaker, that's not a badge of honor. That's a mark of shame.

We shouldn't be causing trouble among God's people. But it wasn't really true that Elijah was the troublemaker. And he lets Ahab know it.

Verse 18. So the temperature's rising. He answered, I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father's house and that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you have followed the Baals.

You're worshiping Baal and Asherah. The real cause of Israel's trouble, the real reason for the drought was Israel's idolatry, including Ahab's. Can't help but notice the text emphasizes Ahab's sins of omission.

You have abandoned the commandments of the Lord. You've forsaken the commandments of the Lord. These are things that you have not done that you should have done.

Sins of omission. And then, of course, we also have the sins of commission and you have followed the Baals. This is what you have done that you shouldn't have done.

This is what you should have done that you have not done. And then Elijah speaks further in verse 19. He says, all right, so this is what we're going to do.

Now, therefore, send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal 450 and the prophets of the groves 400, which eat at Jezebel's table. Bring them all to the mountain, to Mount Carmel. So this was near the northwest border or the border of northwest Israel and Phoenicia.

I think it's near modern day Haifa. An Assyrian king noted this location in his annals, referring to it as the mountain of Baal. The mountain of Baal.

This is Baal's home turf. This is where the contest is going to happen. And I'm thinking Ahab's going, yeah, that sounds like a really good idea.

Let's do this right here. He's going to have what we would call the home field advantage in the main events about to unfold. But I want you to notice the last phrase of the verse.

It's quite shocking, which describes both the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah. They eat at Jezebel's table. This is how deeply embedded this Baal worship was in Israel under Ahab and Jezebel's leadership.

This was not just a dabbling about with idolatry. I mean, for one, she's liquidating the true prophets of the Lord. But then false prophets, false prophets are brought into the palace, living at state expense, sanctioned and supported by the king.

While the loyal prophets of the one true God who happened to survive her purge were hiding in caves with just bread and water. What a contrast. And so this showdown absolutely has to take place.

Now let's gather up a few closing lessons from this part of our chapter. We'll spend a few minutes with this just to finish up. I'm particularly thinking about lessons here in these verses for servants.

I think there's a lot of lessons here for servants. Obadiah was a servant of God. Elijah was a servant of God.

Obadiah's name actually means servant of God, servant of Yahweh, servant of Jehovah. And Elijah was clearly God's servant as well. Obadiah was a servant placed in a very troubled and treacherous administration, and yet he served God there very faithfully.

We see it in what he did with the prophets of God. So you have Obadiah and we have Elijah, both of them servants. By the way, every Christian here, every person here who knows Christ, you're a servant.

You're a servant of the Lord. You're a full time servant of the Lord. All of us are.

And I think we have plenty of verses to prove that in the New Testament. When Paul is speaking to all the believers in some of these assemblies, he writes them by letter and he'll say something like, you serve the Lord Christ. Serve the Lord with fear and gladness.

These are verses that relate to all of us. We're all full time servants of the Lord. And so just some closing lessons about servants.

The first one is I want you to see the variety of God's servants. The variety of God's servants. You couldn't have two men any different than Obadiah and Elijah.

And not everybody can be an Elijah. I'm glad for that. I don't know what it would look like if everybody was like Elijah.

It would be pretty intense all the time. And not everybody can be like Obadiah, who had the resources and was in a position where he could do such consequential things for the Lord. Not everyone is in these situations and the men are totally different.

Sometimes God uses an in your face style of an Elijah to confront evil. And he'll come to Ahab and put his finger in his face and say, the reason why this is happening is because of you. I don't think I could be that person.

In fact, I know that I'm not that person. But he also uses the behind the scenes faithfulness of an Obadiah to confront evil, using the resources that he had to hide those prophets of the Lord. So not everyone can be like Elijah.

Not everyone can be like Obadiah. And we're not supposed to be either. You're supposed to be you.

You're supposed to be you. God made you like you are to serve him, to serve him where you are. You don't have to find some necessarily find some field of service.

You're right where God wants you and you can serve the Lord wherever you are. Look in the New Testament. You'll notice how there were people that served the Lord together and they were totally different.

Think about how different Peter was from John and they served together at times. How different Paul was from Barnabas. They served together at times.

In fact, they even got into a fight once. Yeah, there were fights in the Bible where servants of the Lord got angry with each other and kind of went, they each went their own way. But they were different and God used them and they served the Lord.

You think about how different other characters are in the New Testament that serve the Lord, not necessarily together, but Mary Magdalene, how different she was from Mary, the mother of Jesus. Not all servants come in one flavor, thankfully. We're not like a bag of Werther's candy.

Everyone's exactly the same and some of them might make me choke. No, every one of us is different and that's totally fine, which means that God can use every one of us and he can use you. See, God's not so interested in us doing great works, but he has called us to do good works, every one of us.

It's not dazzling service, but devoted service that the Lord is looking for. He's going to reward faithful servants, not necessarily flamboyant ones like Elijah. So we can see here in these verses the variety of God's servants and thank God that there's a variety of his servants.

The second thing to emphasize here is I want you to see the integrity of God's servants, the integrity of his servants. Notice how both of them did exactly what God wanted them to do. They maintained that integrity.

First Elijah, he delivers the message that God told him to bring. You're going to go to Ahab and this is what I want you to say. He had to go to the king of Israel and tell him that there wasn't going to be rain on the earth until he commanded it.

Not an easy thing to do, but he did it because he was a prophet with integrity. He didn't change the message. He didn't soften the message.

He told the hard truth to Ahab. He was a prophet with integrity and Obadiah had integrity as a servant also. When we see what he did, he took that risk of preserving the word of God, preserving the prophets, knowing that Jezebel was wanting to destroy them.

He took the risk to hide them in the cave. In a lot of ways, Obadiah is like someone today working for an unbelieving boss. He shows us how to work in such a case and he did good work.

Obviously Ahab trusted him. He was right there at the top, the top of administrative duties in the palace. He had gained his trust and he did good work.

He did what Ahab wanted him to do so long as it didn't conflict with the word of God. So there's lessons here for us as well to do good work wherever we are. Do good work.

I think Martin Luther once spoke about this. He said, the maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays, not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps, but because God loves clean floors. He said, the Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

This has been something understood for so long, right? Wherever you are, just do a good job. Do good work in the company. Do good work in the office.

Do good work in the factory. Do good work wherever you are because the Bible tells us when we do, we're adorning the doctrine of God our Savior, Titus chapter 2. Obadiah wasn't called to be a prophet like Elijah. He wasn't called to be a king like Ahab.

He wasn't called to be a priest. He wouldn't be able to take these offices, but he was called to be a household administrator and he decided that he was going to be a good one. And so Ahab trusts him and he ends up being in a position to use the resources that he has to save these prophets from Jezebel's sword.

So wherever we are, wherever you are, do good work and we'll be adorning the doctrine of God our Savior when we do it. You know what that means to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior? It means to make the gospel look good, to make Christ attractive to the world. That's what happens when we do good work.

So as God's servants, let's make sure we display great integrity in our service, whatever that service might be, wherever we might be serving him. Listen, secular service is spiritual service. When you become a Christian, it transforms it.

Our secular job has a spiritual component as well. And so we can see the variety of God's servants and the integrity of God's servants. I just have two more.

Notice the adversity of God's servants. This should be expected. Ahab wants to kill Elijah.

I think that qualifies as adversity, right? And Obadiah was concerned that Ahab would want to kill him too, right? Three times he's afraid that he's going to be killed. Jezebel wants to kill Elijah. We'll see that in the next chapter.

Well, we won't see it, but you can see in the next chapter. And she's already assassinated many of the Lord's prophets. Ahab even blasts Elijah when he finally meets him again with the false accusation of being Israel's troublemaker.

These men both went through adversity in their service for the Lord. Called to speak the truth, Elijah faces adversity. Obadiah, called to serve in the palace, protects the prophets, he'll face adversity as well.

Expect adversity if you're serving the Lord. In fact, Paul said in 2 Timothy chapter 3, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, will be persecuted. So don't misunderstand it if it happens.

Expect it. You may even receive some adversity from other servants of God. We have enough New Testament examples to tell us that that's exactly what can happen.

So we have the variety of God's servants, and the integrity of his servants, and the adversity of his servants. And finally, I want you to see the security of God's servants. Ahab couldn't find Elijah.

He would have loved to have found him. He would love to have found him so he could have killed him. He couldn't.

Elijah was safe because God still had work for him to do. Jezebel couldn't find a hundred of the Lord's prophets. She would have loved to have found all of them and destroyed all of them.

They were safe because God still presumably had work for them to do also. And Elijah told Obadiah he had nothing to fear. He says, I'm going to, he's going to kill me, he's going to kill me, he's going to kill me.

He says, you have nothing to fear. This won't happen to you. He gives him an oath that he's not going to die even Obadiah was safe until his work on earth is done.

Every one of us, every Christian, you are safe until your work is done. Believe that with all my heart. The Lord allows things to happen to his people.

The Lord allows people to be afflicted with certain things. The Lord allows his people to go through fiery trials. The Lord allows some of us to be called home, but he will never take us home until our work is done.

And he has every resource at his disposal to make sure that that takes place. Normally, all the choir people came to church on Wednesday night to practice. And they ended, they tended to be early, well before the 7.30 starting time.

But one night, you can look this up, it's a very fascinating story. One night, March the 1st, 1950, one by one, two by two, they all had excuses for being late. Marilyn was the church pianist of Westside Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska, and she overslept on her after dinner nap because she took one every day.

So she and her mother were late. She would usually pick up her mother and they would go. One girl, a high school sophomore, was having trouble with her geometry homework.

That delayed her, so she was late. One couple couldn't get their car started. They and those they were to pick up were subsequently late.

All 18 of them, Christians, believers in Christ, including the pastor and his wife, were all late. And they all had different excuses. At 7.30, the time the rehearsal was to begin, not one soul was there in, they would sing in this loft, the choir loft.

This had never happened before. It had happened where two or three of them had been late, but every single one of them, all 18 were late. But that night, the only night that they weren't starting to practice at 7.30 was the night that there was a gas leak in the basement of the church.

And at precisely the time when they would have been singing, the gas leak was ignited by the furnace and the building exploded. The furnace room was right below the loft. They all would have definitely died.

How is it possible that not one of them was there? And that's a story that's been debated for a long time in Christian circles. But what I learned from it is simply this. God knows how to arrange circumstances to protect his people.

And stories like this seem to be the exception, right? Rather than the norm. But God knows how to protect his servants. I'm so glad that he does until our work on earth is finished.

And we're all going to come to that point where our work on earth is finished. And how are we doing with it as God's servants? If he can withhold rain from the skies, and if he can keep dew from the ground, and if he can rain down fire from heaven, as we're going to see him do, we can be sure that he can keep his servants safe until our work is done. And so ends then this setup for the main event.

The undercard is finished. The bell for the real contest is about to ring. And we'll pick up there next time, tomorrow evening, God willing.

Let's pray.