Ahab, Jezebel, Elijah

Transcript

As the screen tells us, our topic for the next few weeks is going to be Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah. We actually have read this in our readings recently. I think it's a wonderful story, has some incredible lessons that we can apply to our own lives. It gives us insight into the world of the Israelites in the Northern Kingdom. Sometimes we can overlook that because it is, you know, and rightfully so, it is heavily focused on Jerusalem in the Southern tribes, because that is from, you know, the House of David, and that is where the promise of the Messiah is going to come. But the Northern Kingdom during its heyday was pretty substantial. If you look at this map right here, you can see that for all intents and purposes, it was almost double the size of the Southern Kingdoms. Obviously, that makes sense, right? Out of the 12 tribes, 10 of them are going to go up to the North, or, you know, the Northern tribes are going to be their own kingdom, and the Southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin. And you can see as well, you know, the Northern Kingdom, they have access to the sea. They had seaports, which is going to help them prosper a lot more than the Southern tribes. If you look at that, do they have access to the sea? No. Who's blocking them from the sea? Yeah, so they, you know, they're blocked from, you know, having ports. Now, this is going to change during the time of Christ. They're going to have access to the Mediterranean. But the North, the Northern Kingdoms are going to be the kingdoms that have access to the sea, to the wealth of the Mediterranean as well. I'm not saying Jerusalem was like a backwater kingdom, because it wasn't. They still, you know, got, they still made money through trade and stuff like that. But the Northern tribes are going to be larger, bigger armies, bigger economies, and they're going to have access to more wealth than the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin. For, you know, the Southern Kingdom was landlocked. And listen, there's plenty of landlocked countries that do very well. But having access to the sea, particularly during this time, was very important for economic and cultural growth. And that's one of the reasons why the Northern Kingdoms economically was more successful than the Southern Kingdoms. Their major kind of allies and also adversaries were the Phoenicians up north. The Phoenicians were known for being sea traders. And also Aram, which was an ancient name for Syria. Is Syria still around? Yes. Is it in the same spot? Yes. Is Israel and Syria still contending for land? Absolutely correct. Yes. So we're going to be focusing on the Northern tribes looking at the cultural differences, the religious differences with the Southern Kingdoms. And also, eventually we'll get to, after we kind of set the stage here, we will get to Ahab, the House of Ahab. And it's not going to be called the House of Ahab. It's actually going to be called the House of Omri. Because Omri is going to be one of these great kings of the north of Israel that we don't really know a whole lot about. You know, first kings and chronicles give us a little bit of insight. But if we look at the archaeological record, we find that Omri did some pretty significant things. The biggest thing was he is going to build up some area into a, you know, a pretty good sized city with fortresses and stuff like that. So anyways, so we know the general history of this split, right? Around 930 BC, after King Solomon's death, the United Monarchy is going to split into two, you know, political and religious areas, the north and the south. We know that Solomon's reign was an incredible reign, as we're going to look, you know, get a look at. But he did it at a price. If we look at the account of first kings, we find out that there was heavy tribute placed upon not only the foreigners that were living in Israel, but also the Israelites themselves. They actually had to take time out of their year to go and help Solomon build all of his, you know, his buildings. He was a great builder. And he built up in the north. He built down in the south. So, you know, I think it was like every three months or something like that. They had to go and become workers for nothing. And this obviously upset particularly the northern tribes. They felt that they were doing all of the work for Jerusalem. For the house of David. We're doing all the work so you can become rich and famous while we're the ones really building all of these monuments that you love so much. And so there was resentment. And this resentment is slowly going to build up as we're going to see. It was by the hand of God, obviously, that scripture, you know, says that it's going to be a split. But it's really fundamentally going to change the history of the Israelites in the north and the Israelites in the south. Samaria is going to be the capital. And the Samaritan woman is right in this whole area up in the north. And Samaria is going to be a euphemism for the northern tribes. In First Kings and in Chronicles, they mention Samaria as kind of being, or Ephraim. Ephraim as well is going to be. But yes, Samaria, this area is still going to be around during the time of Christ. There's still going to be animosity as well between Jerusalem and Samaria or the north. You know, the north was always an area of darkness where all the bad stuff happened, right? The further you got away from Jerusalem, the worse it got, right? That's why the Galilee was always looked down on by the people that lived in Jerusalem. Like the backwater Galileans, always a problem up there. So, yeah. Yes, Jim? I would just qualify, Rich, and you can explain it, that the Samaritan woman was not a northern Israelite. Oh, yes, correct. Let me, yes, let me explain that. Yes, the Samaritan woman most likely was the descendants of people that were brought in by the Assyrians to re-inhabit the north. So, ethnically, she was not an Israelite or a Jew. She was from some other ethnicity from in and around there that had been brought into the north by the Assyrians. Remember the Assyrians? They brought all the people in there, but they were getting killed by lions and they're like, we've got to bring one of the priests of Yahweh into this land to teach them because if they don't know the ways of Yahweh, he won't let them live in the land. And so, they brought one of the priests from the Jeroboam idolatry, from the north, brought them in here and that's where we get the religion of the Samaritans. They knew all the history of the Jews, but they had different ideas as well that was based upon the worship of Yahweh by Jeroboam. Remember, in the north, they did worship Yahweh, but it wasn't by the Levites. It wasn't in Jerusalem and they allowed all kinds of other things to go on as well. So, when you say about the north, the sin that made Israel to sin, how many times is that referenced? A lot. And it references back to Jeroboam who took away the north's ability to go to Jerusalem every year as we're going to see. And he set up his whole religion. It wasn't a new god. They still worshiped Yahweh, but they had their own rituals, their own routines. They took the seat of religious authority from Jerusalem and put it in Dan and they put it in Bethel as well. Okay? So, that sets the stage. Any other questions before we move on? All right. So, listen, this little area of Israel, I actually, speaking of Israel, I talked to Jason yesterday, so he's doing fine, you know, like he's down in Florida. He sent me some pictures. It looks like they're having a nice trip, so the weather looks great. So, he's safe, everything's cool. You know, in this small area about the size of New Jersey, look at all the stuff that's going on. Look at all of the kind of the people in the nations that are, you know, the size in New Jersey. A lot of incredible stuff came out of this area, but it's a very small area and they're packed in quite a bit and they're always squabbling about control. All right. Let's just take a look at this picture, first of all. This is Solomon taking like a selfie with all of his wives and concubines. I thought that was pretty funny when I saw it. It's like, yeah, hey. And as humorous as that is, this is going to cause a lot of problems for Solomon individually, but also it's going to cause a lot of problems for the nation as well. Let's take a look at First King's, the 11th chapter. I did a search for Solomon's wives and one of the image came up like that. I'll send it to you. No, I know you, I know you, I know you, honesty. All right. So if we look at the 10th chapter of Kings before, you know, it talks about the incredible things that Solomon did, like verse 14 of the 10th chapter of First King's. Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 660 and 6. So 660 and 6 talents of gold, 666. Is there some kind of a connection there? I don't know, but Solomon made different leagues and different treaties with a lot of these people and he cemented these treaties through marriages. Very common in the ancient world. Very common in the Middle Ages as well with these, you know, very powerful families from Germany and from England marrying each other. At one point, all of the kings and queens right before World War I, all of the kings and queens of Europe were related to each other. That's a fact through Queen Victoria. And so she kind of, you know, she had a ton of kids, she had a ton of grandkids and they would send all of these, they would marry all of these people up in Europe, right? So right before World War I, all of the royalty in Europe were related to each other. And so a lot of people call it like a family war, a family squabble. So like for instance, the King George of Great Britain was first cousins with Tsar Nicholas II, first cousins. They used to hang out. They grew up together. They used to go on summer trips and everything. Blank, major, major blank. Oh, the Tsar, Wilhelm II, he was the grandson of Queen Victoria. So they're all related. They would all have like family gatherings together and no one like poor little Willy from Germany because he was always too rough and gruff and he used to be, bully people because his arm, let's see, his left arm was shorter than his right arm. So he was compensating constantly for the fact that he had a short, withered arm. And that was because he had a bad birth and one of the English doctors went in there and tried to, you know, pull him up with forceps. Sorry for the graphic, but he messed up his arm in the process. So I just went down a major rabbit hole for no reason. This is what just happened. All right. All right. So Solomon's going to have this incredible country. Money is coming in. Very prosperous for everybody. But it was on the backs of the people, both foreigners and also the Israelites. Their tax burden was incredible. It was very, they were complaining about it as well. So anyways, you know, Solomon had chariots, verse 25, they, you know, all of the, and all the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart and they brought every man his present, vessels of silver and vessels of gold and garments and armor, spices, horses, mules, a rite year by year. So every year they're bringing tribute to Solomon. He was one of the greatest kings in that area, probably the greatest king. And not only that, he also was a very wise man and, you know, the list of things that he did. He wrote all kinds of books. He was really interested in the natural world. He was interested in philosophy. He would have people come. It was almost like a philosophy school in Jerusalem. It was the go-to place if you wanted to kind of talk about things. So this was like the pinnacle of Israel's history. And it happens pretty, pretty quickly, doesn't it? You know, you have Saul kind of fighting for control. David fights for control of this area as well. He does amazing, expands all the way up into Damascus, all the way down into Egypt, or parts of Egypt, so did incredible. Solomon comes along. It's a time of peace and prosperity. You know, I think he said that Solomon made silver as plenteous as stones or something like that, right? And obviously it's a euphemism to tell us about how wealthy Israel was at this time. Things were going great. He's getting all kinds of stuff, trading, right? He made, him and Hiram, the Phoenicians, right? They're going on different excursions throughout the Mediterranean, all the way over to India as well. Yes, they went all the way over to India. They're bringing all kinds of exotic animals, all kinds of exotic spices, big, big money items. And this is obviously why Solomon is going to be extremely wealthy. People who want are going to go see Jerusalem and Solomon and his court, the Queen of Sheba, we know the story, okay? So Israel is doing fantastic. God is with them. Solomon is making all the moves, all the right decisions, because God is guiding him. What could possibly go wrong? Could it all set up? But King Solomon loved many strange women. You know, it's interesting. You look at, you know, all of the accomplishments of Solomon, and it's almost like wiped out by this one statement, but Solomon loved many strange women. It reminds me of his father. When David had subdued all of the lands around him, he looked up, right? And he saw the city of Jerusalem and he saw Bathsheba. It's the same thing, drew away his heart, causing him to commit adultery. Think about the terrible things that happened because of this one act. Think about the terrible things that are going to happen because of Solomon's lack of wisdom. He didn't let the wisdom of God guide him. He let his lusts, his fleshly lusts and desires guide him, and so here he was. And in fact, this is going to be a metaphor for the Jews because Nehemiah is going to bring it up when they come back right after the exile, and they were marrying all kinds of different women during this time. And he said, you're doing the same thing that caused Solomon to sin. You're loving many strange women. And so we're talking about, now Solomon is going to have a harem, okay? And it's really just a collection of women that, you know, and I specifically say that, a collection of women, because really that's what it was. Solomon didn't have a close personal relationship with a lot of these women. It may have been, Solomon might not have even known the names of some of these women, but it was a status symbol. Nine hundred women are in your harem, incredible, Solomon, but they missed their homeland. They missed the culture of their homeland. They missed the religion of their homeland. And so Solomon being the, you know, sympathetic, loving husband, sure, go ahead. What harm, what harm could do it? But the problem was, he has all of these women bringing in their religious ideas. They were from Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Amorites, Zidonians, and Hittites. And he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his harem. It's the beginning, his heart was set to God. Remember, remember when he was young, Solomon was young, and he's like, I am, like he was probably 18, 19 years old, something like that, and he's like, I'm just a child, how can I go in and come out with such a great people, give me wisdom. He's not asking God in this situation, he's just letting it happen. He's allowing the things of society to get the better of him. This was very common in the ancient world, but it took his heart away, drove his heart away from God. And he allows his wives to build temples and shrines all around Jerusalem. Let's take a look at it. Yeah, for Solomon went after Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Melchum, the abomination of the Amorites. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord as did his father. Then did Solomon build in high place for Chimosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. There's something interesting here. They set up these shrines on the hill before Jerusalem. So it was Mount Zion that they're building these things on, these shrines. And these shrines would overlook Jerusalem. In other words, here's the shrine to Molech or to Chimosh, right up here. Yahweh's temple is down here. What's the message? What's the visual? What's the optics? We're greater than Yahweh. We're up on the hill looking down on Yahweh. We're still the top dog. Molech, tougher than Yahweh. Baal, tougher than Yahweh. Look at where we are. We're taking over land in the land of Israel, in Yahweh's land. We're taking over, baby. This is how they looked at it. In fact, remember when Naaman was cleansed of his leprosy? What was something that he brought with him back to Syria? Anyone remember? Dirt, yeah, dirt from the land of Israel. He bought a couple sacks full, if I remember correctly. And he did that because the land of Israel was Yahweh's land. So he was bringing a tangible aspect of Israel's land with him to lay before the threshold of his God. Remember, he says, when I go in with the king, right, forgive me when I go down. When I bow down to him. But he took Yahweh's dirt from Israel and put it on the threshold. They did the same thing. And remember, when Dagon fell down, they wouldn't step on the threshold. So it's the same type of reasoning in the ancient world. If you have a portion of a God's land, you have access to that God at all times. And so he's bringing with him actual land that had power in it. Yahweh's land with him in order to have Yahweh with him at all times. Gods and land were connected like crazy in the ancient world. There's a little thing in there too about, we might get to this, but I can't remember. It might have been what they have. But he said, remember the Israelites beat them in the mountains? And he says, Yahweh's a God of the mountains. Let's fight them in the plains. That's where our God is tough. No, God, you know, Yahweh is God of everything. So this is the mentality, obviously. And so not only was it spiritually defiling, the physical optics of it were sending a message to the ancient Israelites as well. Solomon was sending a message. Yahweh isn't that important. Yeah, Yahweh's our God. But hey, everyone can have a God. You got a God. You got a God. You got a God. And they built them all along on Mount Zion. All right. Yeah, in verse nine, and the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods. But he kept not that which the Lord commanded. God appeared to him twice, and it still wasn't enough for Solomon to keep himself on that straight and narrow way. You know, the world was very tempting to Solomon. But, you know, when you look at Ecclesiastes, and it's, and most people say that Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon towards the end of his life. He was kind of looking back on everything. And what does he say? Vanity of vanity, saith the preacher. All is vanity. It's emptiness. And he goes through things. I tried to build vineyards. I tried to build houses. I built these luscious, you know, gardens, these lovely ponds. It's all emptiness to him. But when he was younger, when he was in the mix, right, when he was dealing with the day-to-day stuff of Israel, how to make Israel strong, how to make these alliances strong. How do we, you know, how do we keep the house of David from falling? Well, this is what he did. He made all of these political deals. And in the end, it caused him his kingdom. And it's going to cause Israel to sin greatly as we go on. All right, so we'll say goodbye to Solomon here and all his wives. See you later. All right, this is some, just some archaeological stuff. But on the left-hand side there, this is an artist's rendition of Molech. And they would offer child, children to Molech. They would also offer, the worshippers of Baal would also offer children as well. Baal was associated, obviously, in Canaan and also up in Phoenicia. But Molech was also an important god as well. All of these gods, in order to appease them, required child sacrifice. An abomination to God, a complete abomination. And he uses that word. He doesn't say, hey, I don't like it. He says, it's an abomination to him. And so, you know, he didn't want child sacrifices in his land. He didn't want this type of worship at all. Because, you know, you think of religion, you think of culture as well. They're tied together. And so, if your culture requires you to kill your own children, that's going to have major ramifications in your culture. It's going to change your culture. On the right-hand side, you have a picture of Ashtaroth. Ashtaroth, Ishtar, all of the kind of the feminine gods, the goddesses, very powerful in the ancient Near East. They would, you know, they would have, they were fertility goddesses. You had the Ashtara pole where you would kind of dance around. There was different types of groves that they would make, that type of thing. So, again, two major gods, Molech, Baal, and also Ashtaroth as well. I got you, I got you, Chris. One of the things too is Baal and Ashtaroth were married in some Canaanite text, okay, just FYI, Ashtaroth was Baal's consort. Chris. Yeah? This may be a little bit of a stretch, but oftentimes these themes come back around to connect. And so going back to the rabbit hole that you went down a little bit about the lead up to World War I and the relation of the kings. But, you know, many people saw that war, World War I, as kind of a, excuse my language, a pissing match between the kings who could get most of their subjects to die for them before the people would rise up. And it became really a war of attrition. What kings had sufficient power that hundreds of thousands of the people would die for them until finally we had the Russian Revolution. So, you know, this same idea of offering your children to Molech, the kings were somewhat, okay, exhibiting that same thing, just sacrificing their people to their glory to say that these people will die for me. Right. And how many did die. Yeah. And how that shaped the world today. I think that, you know, the idea of monarchies is so much pushed against. Yeah. 100%. You know, millions of people died on both sides, you know. And, you know, the Russian Revolution, tens of millions of people. So, yes, do we still offer up our children in this society? I would say we do. I say, you know, we do. In a lot of different ways. In a lot of different ways. But anyway, so this was important, obviously, to the ancient Canaanites. It was important to the ancient Israelites as well. But, you know, the Israelites were always bombarded by the culture and the religion of all the people around them. Constant. Even from the time of the judges. Right. They were warned about it. No, no, no, no, no. We're going to follow Yahweh. 100%. Joshua, definitely. We're going to follow you. We're going to follow. Don't worry about it. What's the problem? Well, we know immediately when Joshua and the elders that outlived Joshua died. Problem. Straight away. Straight away. Okay. Now, let's, we're not going to do like a deep dive into this, but this is pretty interesting to me from a political point of view. So, Jeroboam was from the tribe of Ephraim. Was Ephraim like an important tribe or like a backwater? Definitely an important tribe, Rich. Yes. Correct. Butch, exactly. So, it was an important tribe. It was probably the most important tribe, most populous, the strongest, and this goes back all the way to the time of Joshua. Joshua was from Ephraim, and he led the people into the land. So, that's power. You have one of the great leaders of Israel coming out of Ephraim. Gideon was in this area. Remember they had the big fight with the Bimelech? Bimelech is in this area. They wanted to make him king. The son of Gideon. Remember they had the big civil war. If you could say Shibboleth, Thiboleth, right? One person said it wrong, gone. And so, this is where all of this stuff is happening. There's a lot of history in Ephraim, particularly during the time of the judges. Sheikam is in Ephraim as well. I'm going to find out. That's extremely important. So, Ephraim is in some backwater. You needed Ephraim. I'll give you an example. In order for, let's say, like a democratic candidate to win the presidency, they need California, right? They need those 54 votes, and they've traditionally voted for the democrats, okay? That's 54 electoral votes. They need it. If they don't get the 54, it's over. And so, Rehoboam was in a similar position, as we're going to see. He needed Ephraim in order to be king. He's down in Jerusalem. He's got an uprising on his hands up in the north. Jeroboam has been a rabble rouser. He started out as a servant of Solomon. He was over Ephraim. He was like the governor of Ephraim. He was the head guy of Ephraim. He oversaw the, you know, all of the tribute, all of the workers. He oversaw all this. He was a really smart guy. He was a great manager. Perhaps some would say even kingly, but foreshadowing, foreshadowing. He rebels against Solomon. He rebels against the high taxes. Solomon wants to kill him. Jeroboam high tails it down to Egypt. Okay, which is interesting. There was another, let me see here. Yeah, 1 Kings 11, where was this? Oh, yeah. Also, Hadad the Edomite. The Lord stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite. Guess where he fled to? Egypt as well. Very good, Christian. He went down to Egypt. It seems that Egypt was a political breeding ground for enemies of Israel or enemies of Solomon. Jeroboam's down there. Hadad the Edomite is down there as well. There was political shenanigans going on, and the Egyptians were in the mix. Egypt wanted Canaan as a buffer zone. They wanted areas that could supply them with an area that was peaceful and strong, but would keep out the northern invaders like the Assyrians, the Babylonians, those type of, the Assyrians themselves, keep them out of here. We don't want them. Yeah, so they go down to Egypt. Remember, once Solomon died and Rehoboam established himself in the south, what did Egypt do? Shishak, remember him? He attacks Rehoboam. He actually took stuff, he took all valuables out of Jerusalem. Remember the gold shields that Solomon had made? Egypt took all of them. Pharaoh took all of them, and Rehoboam was going to make bronze instead. Cheaper. So Egypt is involved in this, and it seems to be that Egypt was anti-Jerusalem or anti-southern tribes and pro-northern tribes. Jeroboam was down in Egypt. He lived with the household, in Pharaoh's household, Jeroboam did. Hadad the Edomite also lived with Pharaoh in Pharaoh's house. They raised him like a son. So there's intrigue here, brothers and sisters, okay? And so, you know, sometimes when we read the accounts in scripture, we read it, and like, okay, yeah, but there's a lot of stuff that the Bible tells us. You just got to kind of slow down and maybe do a little research on the historical and cultural aspects of it. But this was a major political upheaval during this time. Solomon's building projects, his house, the temple, all of the different stable areas that he built, all of these fortresses that he built, it's going to add to his power, but it's also going to undermine his power as well because there's going to be a lot of resentment towards the house of David for their greed and their pride. You don't think about that, but when we think about, you know, the interactions with Rehoboam and the people, right, there's some pride there. There's a lot of pride there. And so Solomon wants to kill Jeroboam, but once Solomon dies, free for all. I'll give you another example. It's kind of like when, and this is going to happen in 2028, okay? Trump can't run again. Yes, I can. Trump, right, Trump can't run again. So there's going to be a massive, you know, there's probably going to be 12 to 15 Republicans that want to go into the primary. It's going to be a big Donny Brook. They're going to be calling in, you know, this, that, and the other. And then on the Democrat side too, it's going to be the same thing. You're going to have 10 to 15 people running for president. And so this is actually what was happening. Once Solomon dies, it is a free for all. Who's going to control these areas? Who's controlling the north? Is Rehoboam going to be king of the north and south? Oh, we'll see about that. Jeroboam leaves Egypt right at this time, and he goes up into Ephraim, and he starts the rebellion. And so Rehoboam isn't stupid. You know, he's got some, he's got some counselors. Solomon's counselors was there. So Rehoboam goes up to Shechem, the king. He's leaving Jerusalem to go up to Ephraim. Well, that's, that's interesting. That's, that's interesting. We'll, we'll look at that. Jeroboam is the leader of this rebellion, okay? And he says, look, you've got to lighten the tax burden. We're getting killed here. We can't feed our families. We're gone half the year building all of your buildings. We're a little tired of it. And so Rehoboam hears them. Okay, I hear what you're saying. And so he asks his advisors, the elders, the, you know, Solomon's counsel, yeah, it might be a good idea to lower their burden. Speak comfortably to them. Speak kindly to them. I hear what you're saying. Absolutely. We're going to, we'll work together on this. We'll knock it down, sure. But the younger ones, they were looking for what? They were looking to establish themselves as the power. We're the guys now. I'm the guy. And they weren't, you know, they were full of pride. They wanted that power. They're like, you want to see taxes? I'll show you taxes. And so they're saying, look, we're not lowering your taxes. We're upping your taxes. And so not the best thing to say to people that are upset about their taxes. And so there's going to be a revolt. There's going to be a rebellion. And Rehoboam is going to lose the northern tribes. In fact, he barely escapes with his life. He's up there because Adoram, he was over the tribute. He was over the taskmaster. He was the head guy that collected the taxes and oversaw all of the workers. So he was hated. He represented everything that was wrong with this tribute system in the eyes of Ephraim and of the northern tribes. All to what? To enrich Rehoboam now? To enrich the house of David? What portion do we have in David, they said. What are we doing? They don't care for us. They're in it for themselves. There's one family down there of the house of David. And they're just putting us to work. We're going to do all of this stuff. They're taxing us to death. What are we doing? We don't have any portion with David anymore. Okay? And Rehoboam has to high tail it out of Shechem or he would die too. Adoram got stoned to death and Rehoboam almost did too. And he took off and he luckily made it back to Jerusalem. And that's it. Okay? Ten tribes split. Jeroboam was crowned king in Ephraim and Shechem. There's going to be some battles, yeah. But God is actually going to stop the infighting. He said, brothers should not fight against brothers. But that isn't going to prevent, you know, them from fighting each other. And the kings and the chronicles talk about that. But Israel is always going to outlast the south just because they're going to be bigger. All right? So the house of David is left with two tribes, Judah of course and also Benjamin. And we know that because, you know, Benjamin and Judah actually were pretty tight. They were right next to each other as far as inheritance is concerned. And we know that the house of David and the house of Saul, you know, through marriage actually, you know, they were close as well. Even though at, you know, at the end of the day there was tremendous amounts of friction and death, they were close at one time. Okay. So why Shechem? It was the power base of Ephraim. We talked about this, Abimelech. It's, you know, it's not way up north, but it's also not, it's far away from Jerusalem as well. Jerusalem is down south. Shechem is kind of in the middle of Israel. And so historic place of gathering. If you want to look up Joshua 24, this is where they went to divide up the land. They went to Shechem. It's important. And of course the need for Rehoboam to secure the north, which had been upset about Solomon's heavy tribute burning. You know, in a certain way, and this was smart on Rehoboam's part, he was paying homage. He was going to the power base of Ephraim. You know, whether or not that, you know, he wanted to show that the power of Jerusalem extends up to the north, right? The king is coming up north, but he was paying homage to them as well. All right. So this is just very quickly. We've got a couple more slides to go. In order to prevent the Israelites from coming down to Jerusalem to worship every year three times, remember three times a year, they would go to the temple. They had been doing this through, with David, right? They went up to Jerusalem to the tabernacle. That's where the tabernacle was, it was in that area, excuse me, excuse me. And they were doing it during the 40 years during Solomon's reign. So, you know, you're talking about, let's just say 60 years, conservatively, 60 years of Israelites, north and south, going to worship in Jerusalem in the temple. Okay, so that's a, that is an established routine. This is going to change with Jeroboam. Jeroboam saw the danger in allowing the northern people to come under the influence still of Jerusalem. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. Up in the north, we're going to put a little shrine. Down in the south, we'll put a little shrine right in Bethel, about 10, 15 miles from Jerusalem. You don't have to go down south to Jerusalem. These be your gods, oh Israel. And they're going to set up a shrine or a small little temple in Bethel. There was a temple in Bethel. There was also a temple up in Dan. And they made the golden calf. The golden calf reappears. These are your gods. And so, again, I want to reiterate, this wasn't a new god. This was Yahweh they were worshiping in their own way, their own way. They're doing it their own way. Levites don't, no, no, no. Levites don't have to be a priest. No, anyone can be a priest. Anyone can be a priest now. And so, instituting new festivals as well. You know, think about the law, all the festivals in the law. And so, what they're doing is they're saying, no, no, no, no, no. We've got our own rituals and routines. God's rituals and routines, no, no, no. His festivals, no, no. We've got a new one. And so, throughout chronicles and throughout kings, this was the sin of Jeroboam that made Israel to sin. And it wasn't, you know, you could call it idolatry, but it was really the wrong worship of Yahweh. They were worshiping Yahweh just in their own way. And here, you can go to these, you know, up in Dan right here. This is actually the temple site or the ritual site up in Dan. And you can see it's got, you know, a lot of time, you know, nice trees there. It looks like a nice kind of wooded grassy area. It's a nice area. And those are the ruins on the left-hand side. A little sketch of what it looked like as well as it stood. And there, you can see the altar. They kind of made an altar on where, you know, what the altar would look like. That's inside of the courtyard itself. And on the right-hand side, you have some of the tools that they used. The little shovels to take out the ashes off of, from the sacrifice, that type of thing. They mentioned the law of Moses, by the way. And so, you can see they're using a lot of the things found in the law, but they're doing it their own way. And it's not in Jerusalem. God put His name in Jerusalem, put His name in His temple. That's where He would dwell, He says. Jeroboam says, no, for political reasons. And in a way, you can understand what Jeroboam's thinking. I don't want them going down there. Who knows what they're telling them? They can form rebellion. You can go down there, you can form a rebellion, send them back up. You've got a problem on your hands. And so, we're not going to do that, Rieboam says. Rieboam was a good leader, okay, from a, from a, from a, from a, like a secular point of view. He was a smart guy. He led Israel for like 20 years or something like that. But he was doing religion his own way. Isn't that what the world's all about today, brothers and sisters? Doing religion their own way. So, we just have to, you know, a lot of things that ancient Israel struggled with, we struggle with as well. The fight is the same.

Transcript

All right, we had very briefly last class kind of given an introduction into this time period. Obviously, from the headline, we're going to be looking at Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah primarily. But it's also good for any story or any historical event to have some background. Why did it happen in this area? Why were these people involved? Why did they act in this way and not another way? So, it's important to give some background. We know from the split about Rehoboam and Jeroboam, Rehoboam wanted to keep control of this area, but the northern tribes were tired of the House of David taxing them to death. And they said, look, you've got to lower the burden or we're out of here. And Rehoboam made the mistake of listening to his young friends. He was going to be a big tough guy. And boom, the once unified House of David in Solomon's kingdom was no more. The ten tribes in the north, centered primarily in Ephraim, are going to split away from the House of David. And now there are two Israelite kingdoms, one in the north and one in the south, as we know. Now, the catalyst for all this was the taxation, because remember, Solomon loved to build things. He was a great builder. He built his own house. He built the temple as well. But he built other places, like the Tower of Milo and some other places. The big house where he kept all of the armor and stuff like that, the golden shields. Anyways, this cost money. This cost time. This cost effort. And people were tired of building stuff for Solomon. So anyways, Jeroboam was going to be the first king of the northern kingdoms. He's going to found the kingdom and his family. And he's actually going to do pretty well. And God actually tells him, we're not going to look this up, but God actually tells him, if you follow me, if you follow my commands, if you worship me appropriately, I will be with you and your family. I won't take the kingdom away from you. Unfortunately, Jeroboam makes the decision not to worship God appropriately. He's going to what? He's going to set up his own religion and their own rituals. Based upon the rituals of Yahweh from the law. Let's not forget this. In their minds, the northern Israelites were worshiping Yahweh in their own way. And it was really an amalgamation of the worship of Baal and the worship of Yahweh. Kind of like, you know, melding them together. Pretty interesting. And he makes two calves, right? One up in the north, up in Tel Dan. You can actually go there and check out the golden calf. It's not there, but the platform is and the altar and all that. We showed some pictures last year, last year, last Saturday. And also in Bethel. Bethel, which is interesting, is one of the first sites that God is going to reveal himself to Jacob. Remember that? This is where Jacob saw the angels going up and down. Up and down the ladder. And so Bethel, the house of God. And so Jeroboam is going to take over Bethel and make it like a cultic center for Yahweh. Based upon the golden calf. And we know he did this to prevent people coming down from the north, coming down to Jerusalem to worship at the temple. He wanted to prevent that. He wanted to prevent that interaction. And that's what he did. It actually worked out great. You know, in the short term, in the long term, it was one of the reasons why he's going to completely lose his kingdom to the Assyrians eventually. There is going to be massive wars between Judah, between Rehoboam and Abijah. He's going to lose territory actually to Judah, which is interesting as well. And he's going to die naturally. You know, there's no, one of his sons is going to die too. Remember, he asked the prophet whether or not his son is going to live. And he said no. And it says that God found something good in the child. So that's an interesting story. The picture here is a picture of Shechem, the ancient city of Shechem. This is going to be the very first capital of the northern tribes. It's not going to stay the capital. It's going to move actually two more times. It's going to stay in Shechem. Then it's going to move to Tizra, which is a little bit north. And then once Omri build Samaria. Samaria isn't going to exist during the time of Jeroboam. It's just going to be a hill. But Omri, the father of Ahab, is going to buy this hill and he's going to build a pretty massive city on it that's going to be very prosperous for a period of time. Okay, just like Solomon was a great builder, the house of Omri and his son Ahab are going to be very, are going to be builders as well. And you can actually go to Samaria today and kind of check out, you know, check out exactly where, you know, where the walls were and stuff like that. All right, so that's Jeroboam. We're going to go pretty quickly through these, okay, just to kind of give you an overview. Nadab, not a whole lot is said about King Nadab. Very short reign of, you know, like a year. You can't really do a whole lot in a year. He is going to besiege a city in Philistia called Gibbathon, but he's going to be assassinated there. Someone's going to kill him, okay. He is the first recorded king, Israelite king, to be assassinated. All right, well, you could say Ishpochef, right? Ishpochef was kind of assassinated as well, but he's going to be assassinated. Didn't really do anything. Hostile relations with Judah, okay. All right, now Baasha, Baasha was the third king of Israel, and he's going to be a pretty good king. He's going to get the throne by killing Nadab and Jeroboam's family. You know, in a very short period of time, there's going to be a lot of assassinations, families coming in, new families coming in, and so Jeroboam's family is going to be wiped out. It's going to be wiped out, and that actually happens quite a bit in the ancient world where one family grows to prominence and power, and they kill off all their rivals. That's been going on since the beginning of time. Let's take a look at this. In 1 Kings, in the 15th chapter of 1 Kings, you can see kind of some of the politics that are going on here. In 1 Kings, 15, in verse 17, well verse 16, and there was war between Asa and Baasha, king of Israel, all their days, so they didn't get along. And Baasha, king of Israel, went up against Judah and built Ramah that he might not suffer any to go out or come in to Asa, king of Judah. So he built like a fortified city and used it to prevent any supplies or any people from coming into Jerusalem. They were going to starve them out, and they built this kind of fortified city to prevent the trade or anything from happening in Jerusalem. Verse 18, Then Asa took all the silver and gold that were left in the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house and delivered them into the hand of his servants, and king Asa sent them to Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, and he makes a league with them. So Judah is going to take all of the, you know, their treasures that they had both in the house of God and in Asa's own house, and he's going to give it to Ben-Hadad, who was the king of Syria, which was north of Israel. And Syria is going to come down and invade Israel. And because of that, Be'ashah can't end, or can't finish the fortification of Ramah and the defeat of Jerusalem. So that worked out. That political move by Asa worked out. It cost him probably millions and millions of dollars. But he prevented Be'ashah from strangling Jerusalem. Let's see, yep, so we talked about that as well. So in that 15th chapter, in verse 6, yeah, so verse 20, So Ben-Hadad haken unto king Asa, and sent the captains of the hosts, which he had against the cities of Israel, and smote Ijon and Dan and Abel Beth-Machah, and all Siniroth, and all the land of Naphtali. So he left off building Ramah. And so this gives us a little insight, brothers and sisters, into some of the politics that is going on here. You know, Israel had no, the northern tribes had no qualms about making leagues with non-Israelites, and so does Judah as well. And this is going to transpire for the next few hundred years, where these small kingdoms of Israel and Judah are trying to make leagues with stronger nations, stronger nations like Syria, Assyria, Babylon, and of course Egypt. And sometimes their political maneuvers are going to work out, but other times it's not. And one of the worst political maneuvers are decisions which is going to be made by Hezekiah, right? He's going to open up all the stores, all of his wealth, and the ambassadors of Babylon are going to see everything, and it's going to be the catalyst for them, obviously, to come and take over Jerusalem, to put pressure on Egypt. So there's going to be a lot of war, obviously, between these two. And so this is, war never really strengthens a country that are evilly matched. And so this is going to be a kind of continual thing between the northern tribes and the southern tribes. You know, Judah never really got over the fact that they lost control of the north. Their hold on the north really was very tenuous, as we're going to see, because of geographical issues. And we talked about it last Sunday that Israel, the northern tribes, had access to the coast. Judah did not, and that can be a problem, right? You can control your coastline. You can control trade quite a bit more. And that's what's going to happen with northern Israel. During the time of Ahab that we'll see next class, he's going to make a league, actually, going to become almost one with the Phoenicians who are up in the north. And we'll take a look at that a little bit. The Phoenicians, you want to talk about a group of people that had completely different views than Israel? Yeah, those were the Phoenicians. And we can take a look at that, too, in Isaiah and also in Ezekiel in our next class, where God kind of lays it on the line about the issues that he had with the Phoenicians. You know, they were so obsessed with the making of money and commerce that they forgot about other people. They forgot about the weak, the needy. They forgot about justice. And in fact, if we look at the prophet Hosea, which we will later on, those are the same types of things that God is talking about to Israel as well. They had become rich and powerful under the House of Omri. And under Ahab, they had become very powerful. But they had forgotten about the poor and the weak and the land. And they were just interested in gaining more power, more wealth, and more control. So again, that's a story as old as time, isn't it? One person or one group of people just kind of takes all of the power and the control and all of the wealth of other people. And they oppress them. And that's what was going on, unfortunately, in Israel. That's what we're going to see. Questions, comments? Will we go on? A couple sips of coffee. Hold on here. Okay. Yes. When you talk about Rama, it's a city that's north of Jerusalem, south of Israel. Yes. And it's like a buffer. It was built primarily to strangle trade with Jerusalem. So right on the main road there, they built Rama. It was like a fortification. And they were expanding it so that they could prevent any trade coming from Jerusalem and going anyplace else. From Jerusalem? From Jerusalem and to Jerusalem as well, in both ways. And so it was really Israel's way or Be'ash's way of kind of just putting Jerusalem like in the corner, right? And you can't, no one's going in, no one's coming out. It was a way just to strangle them. And so Be'asha is forming an alliance with King Hadad, who was in an alliance with his father. Right. So Asa actually makes the alliance with Ben Hadad to come down and invade Israel because Be'asha was building the city of Rama. And I think it says there too, Steve, that because they left building Rama, they had all of this building materials that they took and then they built certain aspects of Jerusalem with this building material. They strengthened Jerusalem with it, like the walls and fortifications and stuff like that. So that was interesting. One last thing. During the time of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, Rama is going to be the place where the Babylonians are going to divide up the booty from the capture and destruction of Jerusalem. And this is where in Jeremiah it says that Rachel was weeping for her children in Rama and she could not be comforted because, you know, families were being split up. They were being taken slaves out of their land. So there's quite a bit of history having to do with Rama. It was an important city or became an important city. All right. Zimri. Eli is not, you know, again, one year. He's assassinated while he gets drunk. Okay. Not great. You know, what are you known for? I was killed while drunk. Oh, okay. So again, this is just another example of political instability in the early years of Israel. You know, this is going to be the second guy that's going to be assassinated up in the north. Now, we didn't have, we don't have this political instability down in the south in Jerusalem. You still have the House of David continuing on being passed on to their sons. There isn't really a whole lot of assassination going on, so there is some political stability. And that's really one of the reasons why it's going to continue for as long as it did. Israel is not going to have political stability. There's going to be, you know, usurpers that are going to come along, they're going to kill the previous king and the family, and this is just going to be continued upheaval. You know, there's going to be certain kings that are going to bring stability, like Jeroboam II, he's going to bring stability. Ahab and Omri, they're going to bring stability. I know we don't like to hear that, but in some ways, you know, Ahab did bring political stability. And so, Zimri, he's going to be a military commander. He's going to end up killing Elur and Bayash's family, and he's going to rule for seven whole days. And so, there's going to be carnage and civil war, and I think he, yeah, he commits suicide by fire. He sets the whole palace on fire, I believe is the story, and he dies within this fire. You know, what a way to go. So, no real accomplishments, and he's going to have a brief rivalry between Omri and Timni, and Omri is going to be victorious. He's going to beat these guys. He's going to unify the kingdom. Let's take a look in 1 Kings 16. Then were the people of Israel, talking about the northern tribes, divided into two parts. Half of the people followed Timni, the son of Gnath, to make him king, and half followed Omri. But the people that followed Omri prevailed against the people that followed Timni, the son of Gnath. So, Timni died, and Omri reigned. You know, this is, I don't want to say this is aggravating, but it is kind of aggravating to me from a historical point of view. There's more to this story. You know, I want to know the details of how this went down. You know, we have this little statement, but, you know, I'd love to know more details about this, you know. Half, half, and half, you know, it was like a big civil war, and we get two verses on a massive civil war. It's not right. So, anyways, Omri is going to take over all of the north, and that's going to be a good thing for Israel, because it's going to end the civil war, it brings stability, and they get a brand new capital out of it called Samaria. Let's take a look at this in 16. Yeah, he's going to, yes, okay, yes, verse 23. In the 31st year of Asa, king of Judah, now think of this, all this is happening, by the way, brothers and sisters, while Asa is reigning. There's just one stable king in Judah, while up in the north, civil war, assassinations, drunk guys getting killed, another one being burnt in the fire, instability, like you wouldn't believe. Down in Judah, smooth and easy, baby, right? Asa's the only guy, he's there for 31 years. It's unheard of, okay? Omri began to reign, he's going to reign 12 years. Six years reigned he in Terza, okay? So, that's where he's going to reign for six years. He's going to make that, that's really where the capital of the northern tribes were after Shechem, they're going to move it up to Terzra. Let's see what happens then. And he brought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver and built on the hill and called the name of the city, which he built after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill Samaria. And so, he is going to buy this area on this, it's a hill, okay? And he's going to build a city on top of it. And so, here is Omri moving the capital city from Terza to a capital that he is going to build. It's a much better location, it's a stronger area. That's an, on that picture right there, it's an AI picture, you can put like different parameters in it. I, you know, I think it makes it, makes Samaria look probably a little bigger than it was, but I think it's pretty cool. And then it said, you know, do you want to add some like vineyards on the outside? Yes, I do. Vineyards. Then it said you want to add terraces. Yes, terraces. So, this is the picture that it came up with. I think it's pretty cool. Silence phones, please. So, Omri is going to, you know, become king. He's going to found Samaria, fortified hilltop city. It, it is going to, it is going to last quite a, it's going to last even though it's going to be, you know, taken captive or try to be taken captive by the Assyrians and other people. It's actually a very well fortified city. It's going to last, I think, three years. Remember, Jerusalem is only going to last a year when they are attacked by the Babylonians. Samaria is going to last three years, okay? So, you know, differences, you know, whether or not it was because of the geography or because of a lot of different things. But we talk about Samaria being defeated and the northern tribes being defeated by the Samaritans, you know, by the Assyrians. They just didn't roll over and give up. They fought for a very long period of time. But in the end, you know, it just, they're just too strong. So, yeah, so the big thing, two big things that Omrai is going to do. Number one, he's going to build Samaria, the new capital city. It's kind of like what Constantine did with, he moved the capital city from Rome out into Byzantium and changed it to my city, Constantinople, my city. Pretty sweet. And so this is what Omrai is going to do as well. The second big thing he's going to do, he's going to ally himself with the Phoenicians. In fact, he is going to have his son Ahab marry a beautiful, stable, ethical, moral Phoenician princess called Brenda. Huh? Seeing if you were paying attention, Sister Brenda. Jezebel, right? I remember when my girls were little and we'd go over Wes and Brenda's house. And Wes, you know, I don't know, he might, I think McKinsey had like some, like nail polish on or something like that. So Wes would go, oh, what are you going, little, what are you doing? You're looking like a Jezebel over there. That was pretty funny. So, yeah, and that's, you know, Jezebel has obviously a negative connotation, obviously, as we're going to see. So, all right, any questions on this?

Transcript

Let's talk briefly about what our class is going to look like today. First off, we're going to just kind of take a look at the Phoenicians very quickly, because obviously Israel and the Phoenicians are going to have a pretty important relationship, good or bad, mostly bad, as we're going to see. But the Phoenicians were very important people. They were very successful people, not only in this general area of Canaan in Lebanon, but also across the Mediterranean. We'll take a look at that as we go on. The second part is going to take a look at Baal worship and what that entailed. What did that look like? How did it affect the Israelites? Obviously we know that God detested Baal worship, and it was one of the things that Elijah was constantly chiding Ahab about. In Jezebel. Jezebel was a Phoenician. She was from the city of Zidon. You can see it right up there. She was entrenched and enmeshed into Phoenician culture, the worship of Baal, all that kind of stuff. And so you can understand why God was constantly telling them not to worship Baal, because it wasn't just the worship of a god. It was the taking on of a whole culture of a different group of people. And as we're going to see, the worship of Baal was the foundation of the Phoenicians. And their worship, the things that they did to worship Baal, not great. Really opposed to foundational principles of Yahweh in the law. So let's just take a look at this map. I think this map is very informative for a couple of reasons. It shows where the ancient cities of the Phoenicians were, but it also, if you can see there, it tells you what kind of stuff they were trading. The Phoenicians are going to be great traders across the Mediterranean world. And some ancient historians have said that they even looped around Africa, all the way over to India. Some have said that they made it up into England as well, that area trading for tin and other products. But they originally started in the north of Israel. What is modern day Lebanon today? Lebanon, you know, it's been war ravaged for a very long time, but really a beautiful country. And at one point in time, before it became radicalized, and like the PLO and the other kind of radical Islam organizations came into Lebanon and really did significant damage. Hezbollah, as Enve wrote. Anyways, beautiful country, and it was the center of timber production, the cedar forest. This is why Solomon is going to reach out to Hiram, who was the king of, one of the kings of the Phoenicians, king of Tyre, and he is going to give him a whole bunch of cedar wood. And you can see right along there that the cedar forest of that area has played an important part in the architecture and the building of ancient temples and ancient buildings as well. Because Solomon is going to use cedar to build his own house. And you can, you know, cedar was a very durable wood. It also has a nice smell, right? Some people say it has a nice smell. I like the smell of cedar. Some people don't. Who, all right, okay, let's do this. Who likes to smell of cedar? Thank you. Who does not like this? See what I'm saying? We'll allow them. We'll allow them here. All right. The other thing is, and we're going to see this in our multimedia presentation. Phil, just giving you a heads up. Multimedia presentation. 12 minutes, buddy. 12 minutes long. I'll let you know. You can see that purple dye came from this area. That was a big moneymaker for the Phoenicians. Wine, pottery, olive oil, wool. You can go down into Israel. Israel also has, you know, wine was their big thing. Olive oil was their thing as well. Agricultural products. Look at down below in the southern part of Judea. Perfume. That was a big seller as well. And so they would get all of the things to make perfume and actually manufacture it there. And that was big money. Remember, all of the major trade routes on land is going to go through this area. And they're going to, it's going to be a pretty wealthy area in certain aspects, okay? This is going to be one of the things, if we look at like the minor profits. Well, Isaiah talks about this, right? Isaiah and Jeremiah. Ezekiel talks about it. All the prophets really talk about it. And it's about inequality in wealth and resources. And so I'm just thinking like Amos and Hosea. They rail against the elites in Samaria that had all of this money and power. And they weren't helping the poor. That is a constant theme in the Old Testament in the prophets consistently. So anyways, that's Phoenicia. The Phoenicians aren't just going to stay in this area as we know. Take a look at this right here. Here is all of the areas, the blue, where they set up shop. They set up different colonies. Their main colony was Carthage. And you can see that where Africa, northern Africa kind of jets out into the Mediterranean Sea and right by Sicily as well. They're going to have colonies on Sicily, down in Spain. And you can see all of these areas, particularly on the northern coast of Africa, where they're going to set up shop. And this makes sense, obviously. If you're constantly going from one place to another in ships, it makes sense for you to have places where you can stop off and resupply. Remember, these ships couldn't go months and months at a time without food and without water. Oftentimes, they would stay close to the coast in order to find safe harbor or to get supplies. Supplies went very quickly. And so it would make sense to have these places where they could stop over, get some rest, resupply, and continue on their journey. In fact, the British are going to do really the same thing. When the British Empire was kind of growing, it became the world's first really naval superpower. And they had all kinds of little places in the islands where they could stop to resupply with different types of supplies, obviously mostly food. But as the British turned away from sail to steam, they needed coal. And so they started making bases where they could resupply their coal as well. And one of the main areas that was on the Cape, the Cape of Good Hope on the bottom of Africa. And that's going to turn into South Africa. And the Dutch are going to be there and stuff like that. So just interesting, interesting stuff. Carthage and Rome are going to go at it. The Punic Wars, Carthage was a superpower. But Rome, through, you know, just constant grinding, they were eventually going to beat Carthage. The Phoenicians are going to, you know, produce one of the great generals of all time, Hannibal. Hannibal was a Phoenician. All right. We think of him as not, you know, being from that other side of the world. But he grew up in Carthage. Carthage was a Phoenician colony. It was a Phoenician city. So when we think about the Phoenicians, we think about, you know, sailing and stuff like that, obviously. But they were great warriors. Hannibal was one of the great warriors. Came over the Elves with the, you know, with his army and with his elephants, the majority of which died in the cold. Elephants don't particularly like cold. I think they started out with like 40 or 50 elephants by the time they got into Italy. I think they had like seven or eight left. So not great. The elephants are not made for mountains. And just one other thing. You can see in the green where the Greeks had their colonies and their cities and towns that they started. And so it's interesting. There's almost like a line of demarcation across the middle of the Mediterranean. In the northern area, the northern Mediterranean, the Greeks kind of controlled everything. In the southern Mediterranean, the Phoenicians controlled things. But eventually with the Romans, the Romans are going to want to control everything. So they just started fighting everybody and taking over all of the Mediterranean. And that's how it all started. Okay. Questions, comments on this? One of the things that's really going to grow – go ahead, Steve. Yes. All right. I'll finish this thought. One of the things that's going to really grow south, the Romans, about the Phoenicians, is their propensity for child sacrifice. They would sacrifice their firstborns, particularly times of drought and severe environmental catastrophe. You would sacrifice a child. And it was very gruesome. We'll look at this in a little bit. But the Romans – it was offensive to them that they would kill children on purpose like that. This was also offensive to Yahweh as well. It never even entered into his mind, he says, to have this done. He was against child sacrifice. He said it was an abomination to him. But the practice of child sacrifice was real and was common in the land of the Phoenicians. And so, obviously, this is going to kind of bleed through the culture in Israel. They took on the practice. They took on the practice of child sacrifice. And it was abhorrent to God. Brother Steve? Yeah. Just kind of a stupid comment. I'll be the judge of that. I was just going to talk about – do you remember being in Boston when the circus would come to town and they'd bring the elephants out from the trains? Oh, the elephants, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Listen, that was years and years ago. I almost ran into an elephant at the circus. Have I ever told this story before? Oh boy, this is going to be a deep thought. I'm going to make it very quick. We were at the circus. I was like five years old. The clowns came out and they were like, you can get on the train. You can get on the train. But I didn't want any part of it. Jason wanted to go on the train with the clowns. So I went on the train with the clowns. I didn't care for it. I was freaking out. I got off the train and started running back to my seat, which was in the Boston Garden. I did not see the elephant that was going. I almost ran into the elephant. The clown grabbed me, brought me to my parents. I didn't care for the clowns or anything. I'll watch you. I don't want to participate. All right. Let's quickly kind of go over just what bail means and the significance of it and how very popular, bail worship was very popular in ancient Canaanite society. And we're going to see why. Bail simply means lord or master. And we see some of this cultural stuff too because Saul is going to name one of his sons, I forget his name, but anyways, Jeroboil as well, Gideon's name. Bail is in that name. And you're going to see that a lot of bail terms are going to be found in some of the names of Hebrews. And so they're going to use it. And that simply means lord or master. But it had a relationship, obviously, to bail. And so it's kind of like naming yourself Muhammad or naming your kid Muhammad but not practicing Islam. It's like a cultural thing. And so that's why you see some names in scripture that have bail in them. And it just simply means lord or master. Very prominent deity, as we talked about. He was part of the pantheon of gods. When we say pantheon of gods, we mean many gods that sometimes work together, but also sometimes we're fighting each other and we're very jealous and try to do tricks and stuff like that, particularly the Greek gods. I think we're all familiar with the Greek gods and the stories. They're pretty cool stories. But just think about all the shenanigans of Zeus. Apollo, Hera being jealous of Zeus and killing this one and that one. That wasn't Yahweh. These were, in the minds of Greeks, these were gods that they were petty. They were always fighting. Sometimes they loved humans. Sometimes they hated humans. So anyways, now we're talking about the Bronze Age and the Iron Ages. Look at the time frame we're talking about here, brothers and sisters. Twenty-five hundred years. Twenty-five hundred years of one religious practice. That's a very long time. I mean, you know, Christianity's been around for over 2,000 years, right? So just think about that. The continuation of the worship of Baal. It was a foundational practice of the Canaanites. They knew nothing else. And so when the Hebrews come in and they have their ideas of monotheism and there's only one God, his name is Yahweh, he's the king of the universe, what do you think all these Baal worshipers are going to say? Nah. Yeah, we're all set with that. He was the storm and fertility god. That's pretty important. He controlled the thunder, lightning, and rain. Okay, in a harsh climate, rain obviously is very important to the survival of crops, animals, and yourself. And so if you don't have rain, you're not going to do too good in Canaan at this time. Okay? He had a thunderbolt as his weapon. Kind of like a Thor situation, right? He's a thunderbolt. Zeus had a thunderbolt as well. So you can see kind of the connection with all of these different gods and the imagery that they conjure up in the ancient world, all right? You can look at this picture. This is kind of an artist's depiction of Baal taking a child. The child is being sacrificed to Baal. And again, this didn't happen on the reg, but it did happen frequently, particularly during times of environmental stress. Like if there wasn't rain, rain would be a big one. As an aside, brothers and sisters, the first confrontation that is recorded in Scripture between Ahab and Elijah was over what? Anyone know? It's over rain. Let's take a look at it. In 1 Kings, Chapter 16, we get an overview of Ahab. Omriah is his father. Remember, Omriah bought Samaria, the hills of Samaria, and then built a pretty massive city. Archaeologists say that Samaria was a pretty sizable city, and it was ornate. It had ivory everywhere. It was a beautiful city. Anyways, in Ahab the son of Omriah, verse 30, 16th chapter, 1 Kings, In Ahab the son of Omriah did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it came to pass as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the sons of Nebate, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ephbal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove. And Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. So that's a great little overview of Ahab. As if it was a light thing, God says. Not only are you worshiping this false religion of the two bulls or the two cows that they worship. These be your gods, O Israel. Now they're introducing on a national scale the complete worship of Baal. He had a temple built. So think about this. This wasn't just kind of isolated areas where pockets of the population are worshiping Baal like the old times. Ahab, with obviously the help of Jezebel and that connection with the Phoenicians, instituted Baal worship on a national scale. This is your god now, Israel. Baal is your god. How have the mighty fallen, brothers and sisters? That's what we come to. The children of Israel worshiping Baal as a nation. Now, we talked about rain, right? So verse 17, we're introduced to Elijah. And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives before I stand, there shall not be dew or rain these years, but according to my word. So Baal, just to kind of think about the spiritual significance of this. Baal, the great god, the universal god of Canaan and the Mediterranean, top dog, lightning. He's in charge of all the rain. He's in charge of making the crops grow, the fertility of animals, the fertility of people. All is dependent upon Baal. But yet, it's Elijah that says, oh wait, Baal is not in charge of the rain. He's not in charge of the environment. In fact, I'm just a man, but God has given me the power to control the rain. And Elijah says, there will be no rain until I say so. And so immediately, that is an attack upon the power of Baal. And that's the, it kind of starts this confrontation and this war where Yahweh through Elijah faces off against Baal. Who are you going to serve, Elijah is going to say? And so, you know, that's kind of the premise of the whole thing. Baal was typically the son of El. He was kind of the high god, the creator god, that type of thing. He had a mother named Ashara. She was the goddess of the sea and motherhood. In some texts, he's linked to Dagon. Remember Dagon, the Philistine god? There's some connection with Dagon as well. There's a lot of overlapping with these gods, brothers and sisters. His concert was Ashtaroth. You guys remember Ashtaroth? She's mentioned in Scripture. Goddess of fertility. He also had another concert named Anat. She was a warrior goddess and his sister. But Ashtaroth was the main kind of goddess of this area. Fertility and she was the love deity. And this is Aphrodite is going to kind of take you in Greek literature. Diana of the Ephesians also was going to take on a lot of these characteristics. Isis from Egypt. There was a big cult following of Isis in the Greek and Roman world as well. So anyways, picture right here of Ashtaroth being destroyed. Right here is a statue or an idol of Ashtaroth. And looks like an Israelite is going to smash that to bits. All right. Here is a temple of Baal. This is up in the northern part in Lebanon, which makes sense obviously. But here you go. Here is a temple that still is here today. High places were obviously areas that were elevated. Elevated areas. Hills, nice areas like groves, water supply, that type of thing. And so whenever the Israelites would destroy these areas, they would not only destroy kind of the idols that were there, but they would also kind of cut down a lot of the trees just to destroy the grove itself. But you would find these places all over, find these groves all over the place in Israel. To Baal, to other people, to Ashtaroth, to different types of gods. What was I going to say? It comes and goes. Comes in, goes right out. They had their priests and the prophets led ceremonies involving ecstatic rituals with shouting, dancing, self-laceration, sound familiar, brothers and sisters. This is exactly what's going to happen on Mount Carmel at the great confrontation between the prophets of Baal and Elijah. Yeah, so the mentality of the ancient people in the ancient world was the gods were up high. Okay? People were down low. But if you can get higher and higher, you want to get as close to the gods as possible. What's the closest part to the heavens? A mountain. Keep climbing up. That's one of the reasons why they tried to build the Tower of Babel. Remember that? Want to reach up to the heavens. Want to be part of the heavenly system. And so that's why they would put these groves and these temples on elevated areas. In fact, that's what the Israelites did, didn't they, when they built the temple? They built it on the elevated area in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. So, all right. Sacrifices and rites. Animal offerings, obviously, such as bull, sheep, goats, or deer. There is some evidence that they also sacrificed pigs, which would be another reason why the Jews wouldn't particularly care for the worship of Baal. And this was Baal's dominance over the herds, the fatality, that type of thing. Now, the fatality rites included sacred prostitution. And this wasn't just female prostitutes. It was also male prostitutes. And so they would mimic Baal's unions with goddesses, ensuring agricultural abundance. So they had to go through these rituals. It was ritualized. It was part of their culture. Well, the prostitutes and the people, they need to have sexual relations. Have to happen. If it doesn't, then nothing is going to grow. The herds are going to shrink. Problems. And so here's a couple examples of fertility idols or fertility goddesses. On the right, you have Astaroth. Obviously, in the ancient world, it was always like, if you can see this one on the left. This one's a little bit older than the one on the right. This one on the left is pretty old. I want to say like seven to ten thousand years old. And so you can see, obviously, the ample breasts, the ample hips, the stomach. And it says two things. It says that this woman right here, obviously, can feed children. No problem. But the ampleness of the woman as well talks about not only fertility, but also it talks about ample supplies of food. This isn't a very skinny woman, is it? It's an ample woman. She has extra layers of fat on her for the lean times. She's going to produce a lot of children, definitely. She's got a little extra weight on her. She can feed the children, no problem. So this is just kind of the mentality. And so this is why these idols or these statues look like they do. They made these to portray a certain idea about them. Lastly, human sacrifice, particularly children in extreme cases of environmental stress. There was a drought. Drought was probably the biggest thing. They would offer firstborns. They would offer children. Okay? This is the last one. Festivals and magic. The New Year cycle. Priests would enact the bail cycle, enacting the battles and resurrection. The deal was he would go and he would fight. He would be killed in some way. Then he would be raised up. He would fight his enemies, so on and so forth. Continue, the cycle of bail. And so in order to help bail in his fight and to help bail make them prosperous, they obviously had to have these rites and these festivals to help bail through the magic that they could say. Remember we talked about magic a couple years ago, how important magic was in the ancient world? Magic also, you had to say the right words, the magic words. There were literally magic words that you had to say, or the right or the festival was invalid. So say the right words, butchie, okay, your magic words. Incense, libations, different vows, they were all part of this. In the cult, it focused on like sex and fertility, right? And so that would be appealing to kind of the basic principles of human. Oh, a lot of fertility, right? Sounds good, okay. And so this type of thinking would be blended in with local traditions. Do we see that in the history of Israel and Judah? Yeah, we do, absolutely. There was quite a bit of blending, right? Blending up in Israel and also down in Judah as well. And you can see this is, you can actually go, this is actually down in Judah, which is south of Jerusalem. But you can see the Baal Stone, the Asterisk Stone, the incense where they would offer incense, and this would be a high place. This would be obviously up on a hill or a mountain or something like that, and this is where you would go to offer your offerings to Baal. This was all around, and this is what the faithful, you know, the 7 ,000 that would not bow their knee to Baal, now kiss his image. This is what they had to deal with. It was everywhere. You know, it was the majority religion during the time of Ahab and Jezebel. It was the majority religion. It was the natural, national religion of Israel during the time of Ahab. You believe it? It happened.

Transcript

All right, so let's just remind ourselves what we're talking about here, obviously Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah. Two weeks ago we talked about the Phoenicians, the importance of the Phoenicians as a civilization, how they affected Israel, how they affected trade, that type of thing. And so, you know, a lot of Elijah's confrontations with Ahab, and really a lot of the confrontations of the ancient prophets had to do with idolatry, the worshiping of other gods. But in a lot of instances as well, and sometimes this kind of gets lost in the shuffle, the prophets were really concerned about social issues, particularly the oppression of the poor, the oppression of those that were less fortunate. And this was happening not only in Samaria, but quite frankly in all of the major civilizations of the world at that time. You had a very small group of people at the top, maybe 10% of the population. The rest of them, 90% of the people, just kind of lived hand-to -mouth, day-to-day existence, trying to eke out a living, whether it was agriculture or herding or anything like that, so it was tough. But let's take a look at some of these. You know, so these are obviously God's word to the people at that time, particularly the leaders. Now, Amos talks about this quite extensively, and we'll look at a few here in the third chapter of Amos. Amos, tough to find sometimes. All right, third chapter, verse 9. Publish in the palaces of Ashdod and in the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say, assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and behold the great tumults in the midst thereof, and the oppressed in the midst thereof. So there was oppression in Samaria. You know, archaeology tells us that Samaria was a great city. It was built by Ahab's father, Omar, and it was, you know, massive palaces, massive temples as well to Baal and to other people. It was known, I think, as the Marble City. I think that's correct. So a lot of wealth is coming into the city of Samaria. The northern tribes are getting very wealthy, or a small portion of the northern tribes were getting wealthy. The rest of them were not. They were being oppressed by the rich and the powerful to get more money and to get more power. It is a story as old as time. All right, Amos 4, I like this one. Hear the word, verse 1, ye kind of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria which oppressed the poor, which crushed the needy, which say to their masters, bring and let us drink. So this was the attitude of the leaders of Samaria, ye kind of Bashan. You know, the kind of Bashan were really massive bowls, and David is going to use this, right, the bowls of Bashan. Up in the north, again, the north in Israel's mind was always where bad stuff happened, right? This is where all evil came from. The north, the north. We read in our readings a few nights ago about the great Gogian host. Where did it come from? It came from the north, okay? It comes down from the north. The Romans came down from the north. The Assyrians came down from the north. The Babylonians came down from the north. The north is bad in the eyes of the ancient Israelite. And so the kind of Bashan were very strong, powerful bulls. They were bigger than normal bulls. They were more aggressive than normal bulls. And that's why they're always used as, you know, they're always big and fat and angry. You know, and so that's what he's calling the nobility at that time. You're big and fat and no one likes you. Amos 5, 11 and 12. For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and you take from him burdens of wheat, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you have not dwelt in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgression and your mighty sins. They afflict the just. They take a bribe and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. So all kinds of oppression and corruption is happening during this time. And God through Amos is speaking out against it. You shouldn't do this. You should help the poor and the needy, the fatherless and the widow. That was a tenet throughout the law. It was a foundational aspect of the law. That the community was to help those that were afflicted, that were oppressed for whatever reason. And then lastly in Amos 8, verses 4 through 6, Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn, and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by the seat, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works. So God is very clear about what he thinks about the oppression, about the strong and the rich and the powerful taking advantage of the poor. And that's exactly what was happening in Samaria at this time, brothers and sisters. Samaria was a great city. It was a very wealthy city. It had access to all of the great trading centers up in the north that the Phoenicians had. They made money off of the Phoenicians. And this is one of the reasons that we're going to see right now. This is why Omar's house and Ahab, his son in particular, made a league with the Phoenicians, particularly the city of Sidon, by marrying a Phoenician princess. This Phoenician princess, the beautiful, lovely Jezebel. So Jezebel is really infamous in Scripture and really infamous in our society as well. Those people that have kind of a rudimentary understanding of the Bible may remember this story, Queen Jezebel. Jezebel also is used negatively in revelations where God is talking about the wickedness that is going on in one of the Ecclesiastes at that time that they were following after Jezebel. Some type of prophetess that had power in that Ecclesia for whatever reason, and she was taking them down the wrong path, the wrong doctrinal path. Obviously the same is true of the original Jezebel as well. This was a political marriage between a powerful house, the house of Omar, and the house of the king of Sidon. She was born into a royal house. She was wealthy. She knew only pleasure. She knew only riches. She never wanted for anything in her life. She was raised to be a leader. Sometimes we think, well, oftentimes we think the ancient world was run completely by men. Yes, kind of true. But also women, particularly in the background, wielded considerable power for influence, particularly on kings and other rulers. So just keep that in mind. Jezebel in this instance is not going to be in the shadows. Jezebel is not in the shadow woman. Jezebel is out and about. She's controlling the secular aspects of Samaria. In other words, the political aspects of it. She's in the mix in that. We know that Ahab wasn't really a strong king sometimes. We're going to find out as we go on, probably next week maybe. Depends on how many rabbit holes we go down. But we're going to see that Ahab really wasn't strong of mind, and he needed the prodding of his wife to get things done. Remember with Naboth, he was all sulky and everything because he couldn't get the vineyard. Jezebel's like, I'll take care of it for you. And so the Phoenician states, like we talked about, they were known for their maritime dominance. In other words, they had hundreds and hundreds of ships. They went everywhere in the Mediterranean. They went down into the Red Sea. They went over to India. They were everywhere. Them and the Greeks were really the first civilizations that really exploited maritime trade, really expanded it in the Mediterranean. Purple dye we talked about. You know, the smashing up of kind of the guts and the shell of mollusks, right? This is where you got the purple dye, very expensive. They worshiped deities like Baal, the storm god, the fertility god, and also Ashtaroth, the goddess of love and war. Both of these gods and goddesses are mentioned in Scripture. Archaeology tells us that, yes, they worship Baal. Remember Jehu said, you know, to get all the Baal priests into one place, you know. I'm going to, you know, Jezebel or someone. Anyways, you know, Ahab served Baal a little. I will serve him much. So, you know, this was a very common, you know, it was a very common ancient civilization setup where a particular city or a particular region of the earth had their own god. So the god had its own territory. And so in order to appease all of the gods and all of the territories, you needed to at least have a shrine to all of these gods, maybe a temple, depending on it. And so this is how idolatry infiltrated into Israel. You know, they said, look, we're not going to follow the law as far as what God wants us to do with the stipulations of the Levites, how to worship God. They rejected all that. Jeroboam said this is how we're going to worship. And so very slowly, maybe not even slowly, very quickly actually, idolatry is introduced into the north. Idolatry is introduced in the south as well in Judah. And it's a constant, constant problem. And this was prophesied actually. The angel of the Lord, remember when they came in the first couple chapters in Judges, the angel of the Lord confronts Israel and says, why haven't you taken all the land? Why are all these people still on the land? What are you doing? And so it said that the people wept because the angel of the Lord said, I'm not going to help you drive these people out. They're going to be thorns in your sides. They're going to be problems for you. And that's when the people wept. And from that point on, history and scripture says that there was constant fighting between the Israelites, the early Hebrews, and all of the other people. And you know, it's an up and down thing. A lot of times Israel remained focused on Yahweh and the things of God. And then other times every man did what was right in his own eyes. Think about all the kings in Israel that were all, and he, you know, he followed after Jeroboam, the sin of Jeroboam, that type of thing. They were all wicked primarily. You know, there was a couple like Jehu had a good time, you know, had a period of time where he followed after God. But the majority of these kings in the north did their own thing. They were very into wealth. They were very into power and trade. And this is one of the reasons why they were always trying to make deals with the Phoenicians. Okay? That picture right there actually is Zidon, modern day Zidon. You can go there. It's in Lebanon, modern day Lebanon, you know, obviously right on the water. And so this is a city that people have lived in for thousands and thousands of years, continuously. Some of the oldest cities, the continuously inhabited cities are found in this area, like Jericho, extremely old. Mount Carmo, settlements in and around Mount Carmo. People have been living there for thousands of years. Damascus, I think is probably the oldest continual city with people. Jerusalem itself as well. Very ancient cities. Populations that have been living in this area for thousands and thousands of years. Okay, so some background on Jezebel. We're told, let's take a look at 1 Kings 16. Gives us some info. 1 Kings 16, verse 31. Yeah, verse 31. I think I said the house of Omri? Yeah, it's Omri, not Omar. I think I said Omar once. It's Omri, the house of Omri, father of Ahab. Okay, verse 25, let's just set the stage, right? But Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord and did worse than all that were before him. All right, great job. You're doing great. Verse 28. So Omri slept with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, and Ahab his son reigned in his stead. Let's take a look. Well, verse 30. What does God say about Ahab? So his father Omri, the other wickedest king ever. Oh yeah? Verse 30. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. We've got another record. And it came to pass as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebate, right? As if that had been a little thing to completely make up your own religion to worship God. That's pretty much what they did. There was a semblance of truth. There was a semblance of the law in the northern kingdoms, but it wasn't. They were worshiping God on their own terms, not on God's terms. And this is the struggle. It was the struggle with the people of Israel. It's the struggle with us now as well. We're like northern Israel a lot of times in our lives. We do what's right in our own eyes. We don't follow after God. We make little changes sometimes in things, our thought processes. And very slowly, that's how corruption sets in, into an ecclesia and also into individuals as well. Once we change our thinking, we can change our thinking for the better. We can change our thinking and outlook for the worst as well. I tell kids that all the time. You know, it's all about your attitude. It's all about your thought process. You have a good positive thought process, you go in places. If everything is negative, then everything is negative. Simple. All right. So verse 31, so if that had been a light thing, Scripture says, a small thing, that he took the wife, took two wives, Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. So, you know, that's, you know, how are you going to be remembered in your life, right? Ahab, wickedest king in Israel. Okay. Why was he wicked? Well, he made some bad decisions. He made some decisions that are going to affect him in a negative way, that are going to affect the northern tribes as well. Not only does he take a Phoenician princess as his wife, he completely embraces Baal worship. In fact, up until that point, there was no temple for Baal. Who built the temple of Baal? Ahab. Why did he do it? Loved his wife. Gordon, true love. True love, Gordon. Jezebel and Ahab. I'm going to build you your own temple. Thank you so much, Ahab. And so this is what happens. You know, and it's a lot like how Solomon, you know, the same thing happened to Solomon really, right? Is all of his wives, you know, he built temples and groves too for all of his wives. And Ahab is doing the same thing. Did Ethbel exist or is he just made up like, you know, everything else in the Bible? Oh, surprise, surprise, it's not made up. He actually existed and, you know, we have some references and it's called extra biblical confirmation. Josephus talks about a history called the Annals of Tyre by Meander and he wrote about Ethbel and his reign and things of that nature. So this guy did exist. Did he exist during the time of Ahab? Yes, he did. Okay, so he's going to rule Tyre. He's going to rule the Zidonians as well. And so he was a high priest. He was an asteroth. He was a high priest of Asteroth, the goddess of love and fertility and war, by the way, as well. And so he had tremendous religious power, but he's also going to kill the king. He's going to assassinate the king. And so now this Ethbel character is not only king, but he's also a priest as well, a very powerful priest. And so there's that combination of political power and religious power coming together in the ancient world. Always happened, always happened. There's Ethbel right there, little AI action, right? Very, you know, what is he wearing? He's wearing that purple, right? He's definitely noble. If you put the purple on, straight away nobility butcher. That might be your problem. Actually, what do I have? A little something. Just think about it. That's right. All right. So this actually gives us some, you know, some interesting background. So this is really, you know, she grew up in a religious house. She grew up in a house where her father was a high priest of Asteroth. She knew all about Baal and Asteroth. Remember, in the ancient world, in the ancient Canaanite cosmology, Baal and Asteroth were married, okay? And every year they needed to do fertility rites, okay? Every year they needed to do fertility rites where the king in a sacred prostitute would have relations in order to continue the cycle of life. If that didn't happen, the cycle of life would stop. And so they had to do this every single year. And so this is where we get the idea of sacred prostitutes. Baal worship included prostitution. There were sacred prostitutes there. Child sacrifice, we talked about that as well. Jezebel would be immersed in this. This was her religion. These were her beliefs, okay? So there was a certain amount of deviance associated with the worship of Baal. Child sacrifice, we talked about that as well. In fact, the Romans, they always thought that the Romans were just kind of slandering the Phoenicians or the Carthaginians by saying that they sacrificed children. In fact, recently they've actually just found children's bones, and they're burnt and stuff like that. So did it happen? 100% it did. And it usually happened, brothers and sisters, during times of agricultural stress caused by weather. And in fact, I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago. Remember Elijah tells Ahab, hey, no more rain for three years, okay? That was a tremendous amount of stress on the land of Israel. Most likely child sacrifice was being done in order to bring the rain. Most likely that's what was happening. Okay. Let's see. Yeah, Ugaritic texts. So in modern-day Syria, there was an ancient civilization, and they used the same language as the Phoenicians and also the Hebrews as well. So we have a lot of great texts that talk about Baal myths, portraying queens as divine intercessors. That's interesting. So Jezebel really was the intercessor between Baal and the Israelites, okay? Again, did this really happen? No. But in their minds it's happening. Jezebel had a very important role in ancient Israel society. She was the intercessor between Baal. She was the high priestess of Baal. That's a tremendous power and tremendous amount of control. And so this idea of the queen, her being the center of attention, making all of the decisions, kind of fits the pattern that we're looking at, particularly in Phoenicia. She brought these ideas down into Israel, and they never left. Ahab's building temples to Baal. There's shrines everywhere to Baal and to other gods. Israel, who was supposed to be separate from all of this, they were to worship one god, Yahweh, creator of heaven and earth, looked like all of the other different countries that were there, all of the different nations. Couldn't tell the difference. Couldn't tell the difference. And that's a good question for us, excitation for us. You know, can God tell the difference between us and people in the world? You know, there's no difference. There should be differences. There should be very clear differences. All right. Something interesting here, this was found. This is called the Seal of Jezebel. And Brother Brian is not here, but I think he would attest to the fact that on the right-hand side, these are all different Hebrew letters that are inscribed on this little seal. The seal would be like a signet or something like that, and you would press down and seal it. This was her seal. It spells out Jezebel there. But you can also see there's a lot of Egyptian symbols here as well and a lot of Babylonian symbols. You know, it looks like a lion with some wings. You can see another, you know, some other stuff. It looks like the god Horus down there as a hawk. So you can see in her seal, brothers and sisters, that there are influences from other civilizations, from Babylon and also from Egypt and Phoenicia. She put this on her seal. And so this is a seal, obviously, to show that she is in control. She is the power, really not behind the throne. She is the throne in a lot of different instances. So is Jezebel just like symbolic? She is a symbolic person. Not symbolic, actually lived, lived in this area. We know who her father was. We know who her people were. We know how she lived and thought and practiced her religious beliefs. So the Bible is accurate on this. And so that should increase our faith. All right, we talked a little bit about this, but Jezebel's marriage to Ahab was all about politics, you know. Israel wanted to secure these trade routes and have access to the ports of the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians and the Israelites worked together a lot. In fact, the Phoenicians were one of the gentile groups that helped Solomon build the temple. And so the temple was built by Phoenicians. Phoenician woodcutters cut down all of those trees, made them into rafts, floated them down, and then they drug them up to Jerusalem. So they were very skilled. They could make ships like crazy. And in fact, Solomon had a – he made ships along with Hiram, and he brought in probably 666 talents of gold. Remember that? That's 666 talents of gold he brought in a year. Pretty interesting. But in another instance as well, Jehoshaphat and Ahab, they made a league together at one point. And I think they had ships as well, but they were wrecked by a storm or something like that. So even the Bible references the fact that they had ships. They had these transports. They were using, you know, ships to transport goods from one place to another, and it was very important. So let's take a look. Yeah, so we talked about that in 1 Kings 16, promoting idolatry, erecting a Baal temple. In 21, 1 Kings 21, 25. 21, 25. Yeah, this is kind of the last statement here. But there was, in verse 25, but there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did the Amorites, whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. So there it is again. Ahab was the wickedest king, and he did all of this stuff. He opened up Samaria and opened up the children of Israel to all kinds of types of different idol worship, the worshiping of false gods, not giving Yahweh the credit as the creator. They were giving credit to all of these other false gods. And this was endemic in Samaria. And Jezebel is going to be overseeing all of this. We know that she's going to persecute Yahweh's prophets. And she's going to keep 450 Baal prophets and 400 Asteroth prophets as well. So this was a big expense. But let's take a look in 1 Kings. This is very common as well. The king and the queen and the nobility, the government would kind of have its own set of religious leaders, that type of thing, and religious workers. So 1 Kings 18, verse 4. Actually, this is pretty incredible in 3. We're introduced to Obadiah. What did Obadiah do? Verse 3. And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. That must have been something. Obadiah was a righteous man. He worshipped God. But yet he is running the house, the household of Ahab. It's like a secretary of state situation. He's Macho Rubio. Just got another job. All right. So now Obadiah, it says, feared the Lord greatly. He fears the Lord greatly in this house of Ahab. Imagine what he had to deal with, brothers and sisters. For it was so when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord that Obadiah took 100 prophets and hid them by 50 in a cave and fed them with bread and water. And so Jezebel is trying to just wipe out Yahweh worship in the north. Baal is taken over. This is Baal's land. It's not Yahweh's land. I'm the high priestess. See you later, Yahweh. Verse 19. Yeah, well, in verse 19, now therefore this is the gathering at Mount Carmel. Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal 450 and the prophets of the groves or Ashtaroth 400 which eat at Jezebel's table. So these people were all of the expenses of these religious prophets and religious workers. They were all paid by Jezebel. So she had at her disposal these 400 prophets of Baal. Most likely kind of oversaw the Baal worship in the land of Israel. Probably they each had an area that they controlled, kind of like priests I guess in Amman sense or bishops, that type of thing. But they were part of Jezebel's household. How much would the expense to feed 800 people be a day? What do you think in the ancient world? It's a lot. Just 800 people every day got to be fed. We know that Solomon had a massive amount of people in his household as well that he had to support. The same type of thing. So let me just say this. If an individual is able to support 800 people from their own pocketbook every day, they're pretty wealthy. They have some cash on hand. And so it just gives you a little insight into the wealth that was going on in Samaria. Ahab and Jezebel were wealthy people, but they oppressed the poor. They oppressed them by taking their money, but they oppressed them even more by introducing a false religion with no hope of salvation. None whatsoever. And that was the most destructive thing that they could introduce. And that's really unfortunately why they were scattered. The lost tribes of Israel, the ten tribes, gone to the wind. A lot of them were going to end up staying in Persia and Babylon and that type of area, but a lot of them would just lose track of them. Funny little story, like in the 900s, 10, like thousands around there, there was a group of like Turkish nomads up in the Ukraine area called the Khazars. And they asked, they were pagans, and they asked their diplomats from Islam, from an Islamic country to go, talk to me about your religion. They give them the spiel. They didn't like the idea that they couldn't drink. Under Islam, as a Muslim, you couldn't drink. They didn't like that. Says drinking is a major part of our culture. We're not giving up booze. Okay, next one, the Christians come. Christians kind of give their spiel. They didn't like, they liked Christianity, but they didn't like the fact that they could only have one wife. They liked to drink and they liked to have a lot of wives. The third were Jewish rabbis went up there, okay, and they embraced Judaism. Have you ever heard of the term Ashkenazi? Okay, Jason, you may have heard that, okay. These are Jews from Europe, from this area. A lot of the Jews from this area can trace their lineage back to this group of people called the Khazars, okay, extremely interesting. They were pagans, but were converted by Jewish rabbis to Judaism. And so this is one of the reasons why you have a lot of Jews living in that area. They're not ethnic Jews, but they converted to Judaism. And so this is why we have a lot of European Jews, and we have Semitic Jews as well, Sepharic Jews actually, from the Spain area and also from the Middle East. That was just a rabbit hole. Congratulations. You got me to do a rabbit hole, okay. Okay. I'm going to do one more slide here. Yeah, so, you know, her likely upbringing, we talked about this as a priestess, blended religious authority with autocratic rule, perfect. Common and Semitic city-states were kings, queens were semi-divine. So there was a lot of, like, melding of the gods and, hey, if I'm the representative of the god, I'm kind of a god though, right? And so a lot of times, you know, they would worship the kings and queens as well. You would pay homage to them. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the Romans couldn't stand the Christian. The Christians would not pay homage to Caesar. Caesar, from the time of Augustus Caesar, actually Julius Caesar too, were considered divine. They were gods on earth. And so you had to worship Caesar by putting a little incense in, to burn a little incense. Christians wouldn't do it, wouldn't burn any incense to Caesar. And this is why they began their persecution. And the Roman judges, they'd be like, hey, you know, what's your problem? Okay, you know, great, you got this god, but it's a little incense. That's all you got to do, problem solved. Wouldn't do it. And so the stubbornness of the early Christians and the fact that they would die before offering a little sprinkle of incense on the altar really began this hostility with the pagan Romans, you know, just looking to stick it to the Christians. You know, we know what happened. Anyways, we know from archaeology as well, they have done an extensive dig of Samaria. And it depicts a small, Samaria was a big city, but there was a small group of elites that controlled the city. They lived in luxury at the backs of the poor and to other people. Okay, and so she lived in an opulent court. And you know, this is, we know this, right? Remember, she's going to paint her face. We'll look at that next week.

Transcript

All right, so we're going to finish up our series on Ahab, Elijah, Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah. And we're going to take a look at kind of two big story lines. One, Elijah confronts Baal and, you know, kind of Jezebel's whole crew. And then Elijah is being pursued by Jezebel and he just kind of freaks out and takes off. He's in fear of his life. And so we'll take a look at that. But just to remind you very quickly, you know, in the ancient world, as we've talked about, a king or queen was semi-divine. So it wasn't, you know, you're not just dealing with Jezebel the person. You're dealing with like Jezebel the goddess. And she was big into Baal, as we know. She was most likely, she was the daughter of a king of Tyre, Sidon. And she also was a priestess. So she was very high up in the whole Baal, you know, worship. In fact, she had prophets and prophetesses eating at her table. So she was very close to these people. And she was kind of running the show when it came to the religion of Baal. And so you have this massive confrontation between the followers of Yahweh, who Elijah is the spokesman of, and Jezebel, and really the whole social and political apparatus of Israel at this time. And so you can understand Elijah's hesitancy, right, sometimes, to kind of get involved in this. But he's very bold. He confronts Ahab straight to his face. But once Jezebel sent him a message, like, I'm going to kill you tomorrow, he got really scared. It's interesting, because he had no problem confronting Ahab, because I think he knew Ahab was kind of a soft guy, kind of weak, as we're going to find out. But Jezebel didn't have any of those qualities. She wasn't afraid of Elijah, of God, or anybody. She was going to have her will done, or she was going to die trying. So anyways, Jezebel is living a life of opulence, Samaria, archaeologists tell us that Samaria was really a very opulent city, a lot of marble, a lot of granite. And so this was another thing, too, that the prophets of God were always instructing the people and the leaders of, you've forgotten about the poor. You're oppressing the poor. You sit upon your beds, Hosea says, and you think up more and more evil to oppress my people. And so the idolatry was one thing, but the oppression of the less fortunate in Israel was also another. And so both of those things were abominations to God. It wasn't just the idol worship. It was what the idol worship brought into Israelite society, this idea of a small group of people lording it over everybody else. And not caring about the weak, not caring about the widow and the fatherless. As the Old Testament tells us constantly in the law, it talks about that. You can't forget about the fatherless and the widow. They were the most vulnerable of society. OK, let's take a look, then, very quickly, because I want to get through this. And there is no multimedia presentation. Lisa, I know you're upset about that. Everybody is, actually. Sharon's going to leave. No multimedia presentation. So righteous. All right, 1 Kings 18. There has been a drought, remember, for three years. No rain. And we talked about, too, what happened to babies in Phoenician society when there was no rain, or a severe catastrophe of some kind. Well, we know that they were sacrificed. The Phoenicians practiced child sacrifice, particularly during harsh, difficult times. And this would be one of those things. You had a drought. And they would absolutely, in times of distress, would offer a child in order to appease Baal. So this was another thing that God was. It was an abomination to God. He said, I never even entered into my mind to have this type of thing happen. But here we are, right? The chosen people of God who were to be separate. They were to be a holy people, distinct, God says. They're doing the same craziness of all the people around them, offering up their children as a sacrifice. Offer. So we're not going to go through all of this. But in chapter 18, and it came to pass after many days, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, so three years of drought. 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. We know what happens when there's no rain in this area. You know, you have a small river of Jordan that you could do some cultivation with that if you were close to Jordan. But the majority of Israel relies upon rainfall. And if you don't, it gets a limited amount of rainfall as it is, and if that rainfall kind of drops off, you will absolutely have a famine, particularly in the ancient world. A lot of these people, their whole life is dependent upon that harvest. Their whole life is dependent upon enough rain. These are things that we are so far removed from. You know, we're not dependent upon rain or good growing seasons. It just shows up in our supermarkets, right, in our own minds. We're not close to the land. Maybe some of you are. Jason might be a farmer, right? You go to the vineyard over in Israel? All right. So major problem. Now, let's take a look at this. And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. No, Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. And it was so when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord that Obadiah took 100 prophets and hid them by 50 in a cave and fed them with bread and water. And so Ahab tells Obadiah in verse 5, Go into the land and 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 this is how drastic and how severe this drought was. They were searching the land high and low, looking for some grassland in order to feed the animals. That's how close it was to complete devastation. And Obadiah, in the midst of this, he's the governor of Ahab's house. Think about this. You know, the Bible says that of all the kings of the north in Israel, Ahab did more wickedly than them all. And in his house you had Obadiah, a believer of God. He was a faithful believer of God. And he's got to deal with this guy on an intimate level. Governor of the house, you had complete control. He was a very powerful man. He ran the show inside of Ahab's house. Almost like, I want to say, like a secretary of state situation, where you had the king. The king didn't want to be bothered with day to day things going on in his house and in the government. He only wanted the big things or things he was interested in. And so Obadiah is going to be taking care of all of these things. And on top of that, Jezebel, who he knew intimately as well, he was in the house. She finds out that the, he finds out that Yahweh's prophets are going to be killed. And some of them were, a lot of them were. And so this was before the confrontation with Baal and God on Mount Carmel. So we think about, like, why did all of the, you know, why did God allow all these Baal prophets to be killed? Well, number one, they were Baal prophets. They hated God. But number two, you could make the argument Jezebel started this religious war by killing the prophets of God before. But Obadiah is trying to hide these people, to hide them in caves. So what a stressful time for Obadiah. You have a faithful guy dealing with Ahab and Jezebel in their own house. He has all this responsibility. He's got to go find grassland for horses and for mules and bees, so they're going to die. Lot on his plate. And so, you know, we sometimes think that we get overwhelmed with our duties and our responsibilities. And sometimes we do. But, you know, Obadiah remained faithful even though he was in a pretty stressful situation. Like, how would we handle that situation? We're dealing with the wickedest king ever in Israel. Every day, here comes Ahab and Jezebel, these two. And you're like, disgusting. But you've got to deal with them. So listen, there's things in our lives, too, that we do not care to do. We don't like, you know, at work. Maybe we don't like a certain person. Whatever. You know, Monday morning, I know I'm going in and I've got to deal with kids attendance. Right, I've got to calm down. You're tardy, you're late, this, that, and the other. Do I like it? No, but it's necessary. We have to do it. And so Obadiah is one of these very quiet individuals. It just goes about his job in Scripture. When we think about faithful individuals, Obadiah, anyways, in my mind, doesn't pop up like, oh yeah, Obadiah. But when you think about it, what a tremendous statement of his faith. His life was on the line, brothers and sisters, every single day. But he knew that these prophets had to be protected. You know, where was the bread and water coming from, too? They were looking for water. It was a time of famine. So he's taking this bread and water from whom? Ahab's household, right? Didn't even know. All right. So this is one of these things they meet. Ahab calls Elijah the troublemaker of Israel. But Elijah has this great return. I'm not troubling Israel. You and your house are troubling Israel. This is your fault. And so again, you see the boldness of Elijah here when confronting Ahab. I just find it interesting that once Jezebel got involved, like, you know, he sent a message. Jezebel sent a message to Elijah and said, you know, by this time tomorrow, you're going to be dead. And so that really freaked Elijah out. All right, anyways, Elijah then, you know, proposes a contest on Mount Carmel. He's going to take on 400 prophets of Baal. And, you know, there were also 400 prophetesses of Asteroth as well. Remember, the majority of these prophetesses were sacred prostitutes. So you've got child sacrifice. You've got Baal worship. Part of Baal worship has to do with child sacrifice, but also sexual immorality as well. So it was all one big pile of ball of stuff that God did not like. And so we have this massive confrontation now on Mount Carmel, excuse me, up in the north. And I'm going to paraphrase this chapter. But the prophets of Baal get up there dancing. They're doing their thing. They're cutting themselves, right, to make their blood flow, very common in some of these cultic ritual practices, the cutting of the flesh in order to, you know, the shedding of blood, that type of thing. The more blood you would shed, the more fanatical you would become. Certain sects of Islam practice this as well. They will, at certain times of the year, they'll make cuts on their foreheads to make themselves bleed off from the back. They'll flog themselves, that type of thing. Yeah, like Opus Dei, as well, from the Catholic Church, they are very, you know, very, they're into mortifying the flesh anyways. And they'll flog themselves. Some of them did anyways. But that's frowned upon in the Catholic Church. But anyways, some people still do that. Anyways, massive confrontation. Elijah, as this thing goes on, our after hour, and they're dancing, cutting themselves, whatever. Elijah starts mocking them, saying, hey, is Baal on a far journey? He can't hear you. He starts making fun of them and mocking them. And so at the end of all of this, Elijah says to God, calls upon God to show them a sign. And fire comes down and consumes all of the sacrifice and all of the water, too, all of the water that was there. So you have, at a time of famine and drought, I always found it interesting that Elijah takes all of this water and kind of saturates the altar, kind of just making the point that even all of this water cannot prevent the glory of God or the fire of God coming down from heaven. And so all the people say, OK, we're following Yahweh. Now we're following God. And all of the prophets of Baal are killed upon Mount Carmel. So this gets back, obviously, to Jezebel, and she goes crazy. Let's take a look at it. Let's see, in verse 41, and Elijah said to Ahab, get thee up, eat, and drink, for there is a sound of the abundance of rain. Now just keep this in mind, brothers and sisters, that Elijah tells Ahab, get thee up, eat, and drink. In other words, you need to strengthen yourself. There's a storm coming. There's a lot of things happening. You need nutrients. Eat and drink. I think Ahab had times in his life where he just got bummed out, maybe depression or something like that, and he wouldn't eat and drink during these times, like with Naboth's Vineyard. Remember, he couldn't get his way, and so he was just being a sad sack everywhere. And Jezebel was like, what's your problem? So I think he did have these bouts of depression, and that he would just withdraw himself and not converse or eat and drink. So Ahab went up to eat and drink, and Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel, and he cast himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees. And seven times this happens, and so then the rain finally comes. Now let's look at 19. And Elijah, he has all of this energy, and he's faster than the chariot of Ahab, which makes sense, because the chariot most likely was getting stuck in the mud from the rain, that type of thing. So Elijah's just like chariots at five. Chapter 19, and Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and wherewithal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then you can just imagine that confrontation. How was your day, honey? So Jezebel's reaction is she sends a messenger to Elijah. So let the gods do to me and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. So she makes a sacred vow. This is a sacred vow, and in the ancient world, this was like the most important vow you could make. She makes a sacred vow to all of the gods and says, by this time tomorrow, you're going to be like one of the dead veil prophets. And so what does it say? Did Elijah go, can't touch me. Can't touch me, Jezebel. What does this says? Verse 3, and when he saw that he arose and went for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. Now let's talk about how scared Elijah was of Jezebel. He's up in the top of Mount Carmel. He flees. He runs away all the way down to the most southern point of Judah. He's out of Israel. He goes all the way down like 200 miles. It's about 200 miles from Mount Carmel all the way down to Beersheba. He's running for his life. He thought he was dead. He goes down to Beersheba, but he doesn't stop there, brothers and sisters. He continues on to Mount Hor, which is Mount Sinai. So it's like Elijah was going back in time, back in time to when the children of Israel are just getting to know God at Mount Sinai and the law is given. Think about how far they had fallen from this time. But Elijah was going back, 40 days and 40 nights even. He's staying. There's that symmetry. Elijah is in the wilderness now for 40 days. The children of Israel for 40 years were in the wilderness. Christ is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. There's all this symbology coming together. Now, Elijah is at the end of his rope. And we're going to take a look at some of these lessons. I think this 19th chapter is really wonderful. It would make a great excitation. But we're going to talk about this. Because Elijah, a prophet of God, had an intimate relationship with God. He was his property. He was his mouthpiece. But yet this event terrified him. He was terrified of Jezebel. And he flees to the southern point. It's kind of like, it's different, but it's kind of the same. Like when Jonah took the ships of Tashish to go as far away as possible from Nineveh, because God said, we know the story. He wants to go the furthest away. Listen, if God wants something to happen, it's going to happen. And so Elijah still had a job to do. He didn't want the job anymore. I'm done. I'm retiring. God said, nah, I still have stuff for you to do. All right. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. So we walked a day's journey from Beersheba. He was walking to go to Mount Worob, Mount Sinai. And he sat down under a juniper tree. And we requested for himself that he might die and said, it is enough now, O Lord. Take away my life, for I am not better than my father. He just had an incredible high in his life when the fire of God comes down and God, Yahweh, shows his people that I am truly God. I mean, what an awesome time. That would have been great to see. In Israel, it sounds like turns back to Yahweh. And now you're at a high. And now Elijah is just plummeted to the depths of despair, to the point where he goes, I'm out. I can't do it anymore. Just take my life right now, Lord. I'm not better than my father's. I'm nothing. He's depressed. OK, listen, we've all been there with our faith. We can face discouragement, discouragement that hurts us inside. Spiritual highs, we can crash down to emotional lows. That's life. It's up and down. We can feel exhaustion, fear. We can feel worthless in these situations. Elijah felt worthless in this situation. I'm no better than my father's. But here's the thing. What does God do? God prioritizes physical rest and nourishment. OK, that's interesting. Verse 5, and as he lay and slept, he was exhausted, obviously. So we joke, there's great commercials, snicker bars, hangry, right? You're angry. You give him the snicker bar and you're back to normal. Elijah is exhausted. His mind is emotionally exhausted. He hasn't had enough to eat and drink. So what happens? God what? Behold, there an angel touched him and said unto him, arise and eat. So this is, God intervenes, sends one of his angels to Elijah and says, hey, come on, buddy. Have something to eat. Drink something. Get your nourishment. Get your spirit back. And I think we need to be mindful of this, brothers and sisters, in our lives. We need to take care of ourselves. We're getting enough to eat. What's our diet like? Are we doing our readings? Are we praying? What's that like? We think about the needs of our physical body. But we have other needs. We have spiritual needs that we need to nourish. And are we nourishing our bodies and our mind? We can get burned out. Both of those things can get burned out. We all have responsibilities. So it starts with self-care. And Elijah needed a little self-care. And the angel of God gave him that, cooked him up a little meal. What does it say there? And he did eat and drink, and he laid down again. He took himself a little nap. He was exhausted. And so the angel of the Lord came and touched him the second time, arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee. He recognized it. And sometimes we have to recognize it in each other that, hey, is Brother Rich struggling with something? He looks his seams off. We need to be angels to each other, helping each other out. Elijah was a great prophet. He was awesome. He was one of the great prophets of God. He needed help. He needed encouragement. He needed to be strengthened. He needed an angel to touch him twice. We all need that, brothers and sisters. There's no shame in it whatsoever. None. All right. I like this, you know, honest prayer invites God's gentle response. And Elijah gave an honest prayer to God. I've had enough, God. I'm no better than my father's. You know, I've been talking about how bad my father's were. I'm no better than him. He just went for like a 200-mile jaunt. He was pretty tired, so he's saying a lot of things. But we should pour out these things to God. We should be open and honest with God. God knows what we need. We're told that. But there's a certain therapeutic therapy when it comes to speaking your innermost desires to God, your emotions to God, your sadnesses, your joys. When we become joyful, do we praise God? You know, we think about prayer oftentimes in the negative, like I've got to pray to God because I'm going through this, that, and the other. Do we just pray to God for all the great blessings and stuff, the graces that he's given us every single day? Every single day, are we grateful? And so, in verse 9, And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there, and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said unto him, What are you doing here, Elijah? It's the still small voice of God, right? The earthquake, the fire, all of those things. God was not there. He was in the still small voice. And so, can we hear God's voice in our lives? Or is it dinned out with the noise of the world, with the craziness of the world? Do we allow ourselves to find spiritual quiet? Solitude, not total isolation, but solitude. There is a place in our lives for solitude in prayer. Christ did it, a bunch, right? How many times does it say, like in Mark and Luke, after he had this big, maybe a big confrontation, he was healing thousands of people? What does it say? And he went off to a mountain alone to pray. And so even Jesus needed that alone time. So let's build it into our lives. Solitude in prayer. Not isolation, solitude in prayer. Sorry, I can't make it. I can't have any interaction, solitude in prayer. We're not monks and we're not nuns. We have to interact with each other. That's part of it. That's part of the process. Elijah had to interact with Ahab. Obadiah had to interact with Ahab in a very difficult situation. It happens, okay? We're not always going to see dramatic signs of God's influence and power in our lives. It's oftentimes the quietness of God. But looking back, afterward looking back on an incident in our lives, man, oh man, can you say, wow, God was. But I couldn't see it. I was blinded by my own fear. I was blinded by my own crazy thoughts. I couldn't see God's hand in my life at that time. But you're like, oh. You look back on something like two or three years later, you're far away from it, and you're like, man, how come I didn't see that? I don't know. How come we don't see anything? We're morons sometimes. That's the way it is. Chris, you had a question, comment? I would like to make comments. And yes, I would. Okay, go. Yeah, and I really appreciate it. Sometimes when someone's out front like you are giving a class like this, it opens up so many verses for you. So when thinking of Elijah, first starting with the words say Abraham, in the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen. I will provide. And so I'm thinking of the fire in the water, the spirit in the water, and of course the evaporation of that water. And the next thing Elijah sees is a small cloud on the horizon coming. So little types of the resurrection. But I'm thinking specifically of the verse that connects that Jesus came with the fire in the water, or the spirit in the water, and the blood. And that's the difference where God will provide. And he would provide that sacrifice that would go all the way to death where Elijah is kind of thinking that that's what's his ultimate fate. And that he has to give that great act of just giving himself at this point. And in the still small voice saying, no, I will provide that. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, great connection. Yeah, I like that too. He saw a cloud in the sky no bigger than a man's fist. Right? And then it filled the whole sky. It reminds me of the rock made without hands. It's going to completely destroy all the kingdoms of men and then fill the world. So, yes. Okay. Hey, here's, yeah. And so, let's see. Where am I? Beep-bop, beep-bop. Yeah, okay. So, verse 14. This is what Elijah says to God. I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword. And I, even I, own them. I only am left. And they seek my life to take it away. That's another prayer. It's another honest prayer by Elijah as he saw things. They don't care about you anymore, God. I love you. I'm jealous for you. Israel has forsaken you, torn down your altars. They hate you. They're worshiping Baal. I'm the only one left. It's called the Elijah syndrome, brothers and sisters, thinking you're the only one left doing the will of God. It wasn't true. We know Obadiah was doing the will of God in the midst of hostility in the household of Ahab. He was still doing the will of God. And so, you know, that's an honest prayer Elijah gives. He was wrong, but it was honest. He wasn't deceiving himself. Sometimes we can deceive ourselves, right? God talks about that. I think Paul talks about that, actually. He says, you know, be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man sows, so shall he reap. Very powerful verse. And I think it speaks to Elijah as well. Because God says this. First of all, he tells him, he's like, look, you have two big jobs to do. You've got to, Elijah, you've got to anoint him the next prophet, and you've got to anoint Jehu as the next king. He is going to be the vessel of my vengeance against Ahab and Jezebel. So he still had a job to do. And God's saying, hey, I still need you. You've got to go. He's got to go all the way back up north, by the way, because that's where Jehu was. All right. And so this is what God says to Elijah, and he says it to us as well. I have left me 7,000 in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him. And so God tells Elijah, hey, I've got my people. Now, is 7,000 like a very specific number? Like there was actually 7,000 in Israel? I don't believe so. I think 7,000 is a number with obviously special significance, a complete group of people, a small complete group of people that were still living the law. They still loved God. Paul picks up on this too, where he talks about early-day Christians. Same type of thing. I've reserved unto myself 7,000 who have not kissed Baal nor kissed his image. So God has his people, brothers and sisters, and we should never think that we're the only ones that have it all figured out. We're the only ones living the truth. It's a very boastful thing to say. We have to watch our pride sometimes, right? Thinking we have all of the answers. Thinking we are doing everything exactly right. And let's make sure that we are caring for ourselves and loving ourselves. And listen for God's whisper in our lives. He does a lot of whispering. We've got to get quiet. All right, a couple more things on this. At our lowest point, we can think about this in our lives. We can meditate and reflect on this. You know what? Our lowest angelic or unexpected help arrives. 100% has happened in my life. I don't know about the angel pot, but 100% God has provided unexpectedly in my life. God supplies strength for the two great journeys ahead. We're going to have journeys ahead, brothers and sisters. Old, young. We're going to have struggles. We're going to have temptation. We're going to have sadnesses. We're going to have tough times. We all will have those things in our lives. And Christ talks about this. He says, in this life you will have trouble, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. And so that's what we have to rely on. We have to rely on God. We have to rely on the goodness and the blessings of God. God has reserved unto Himself 7,000. And that's the question we should ask ourselves. Are we part of that 7,000? Or are we doing our own thing? Alright, last thing we're going to look at. This is really where Jezebel shines in all her glory. This has to do with Naboth's vineyard in 1 Kings 21. It tells us, and it came to pass after these things that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard which was in Jezreel, had by the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. It's a pretty good piece of land. It was a vineyard. It was well producing piece of land. And it was right by Ahab's house. I think he wanted to make a garden of herbs. He had different plans for it. Yeah, verse 2, give me that vineyard that I may have it for a garden of herbs because it is near unto my house and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it or if it seem good unto thee I will give thee the worth of it in money. And Naboth says, well, I can't do this. This is my inheritance. My father gave this to me. And his father and so on and so forth. This has been in my family for hundreds and hundreds of years. I can't sell it to you. My family inheritance. So Ahab, what happens? And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the word that Naboth had spoken to him. And he laid him down upon his bed and turned away his face and would eat no bread. He's got a real Eeyore situation here. Remember Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore? Eeyore always had the cloud around him. He could never catch a break. He always saw everything in a negative way. My mother called me Eeyore a few times. Didn't care for it. So Ahab's bummed out. He can't have this thing. And so he's isolated himself. He's laying on his bed. He's depressed. He didn't get his way. And he's not eating bread. You see that? He's not eating bread. He would eat no bread. Too upset. Too upset. Can't get the vineyard. Now Jezebel makes an appearance. Verse 5. Why is your spirit so sad that you're not eating anything? She asks. Ahab gives a story. I want the vineyard. He won't give me the vineyard. Jezebel's like, Do you not govern the kingdom of Israel? Aren't you the king of Israel? You can have whatever you want. Get up. I'll help you get the vineyard. And so what does she do? False witnesses against Naboth. Perversion of the law of God to get her own way. She was smart enough and cunning enough to know the law. He didn't follow the law, but she knew the law. And she used the law against a righteous individual. And this was like, that was it. The line was crossed there. And let's take a look at Elijah lays into Ahab. Verse 24. Him that dieth of Ahab in the city, the dog shall eat, and him that dieth in the field, shall the fowls of the air eat. But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. And he did very abominably in following idols according to all things as did the Amorites, whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. Now here's verse 27, very interesting. And it came to pass when Ahab heard these words that he rent his clothes and put sackcloth on his flesh and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went softly. So these words, brothers and sisters, had an effect upon Ahab. Had no effect on Jezebel. Zero. So I think there was this tension in Ahab. He could be manipulated very easily, it sounds like. He wasn't a very strong king. He could be manipulated. Jezebel was like the power behind the throne. It's interesting that the Word of God uses the word to sell. He sold himself to wickedness and to abominations. In other words, there could have been another path. He could have been a good king. But he chose Baal and he chose his wife Jezebel to do all kinds of wickedness. And so God, in seeing Ahab humble himself, what does it say? I will not bring the evil in his days. So all of this prophecy of evil and destruction, because Ahab humbled himself, delayed the destruction that was coming on his house. Didn't stop it. Merely delayed it. And so Jehu, who we talked about, Elijah had anointed him, overthrew Joram, who was the son of Ahab and Jezebel. So at the end, her death, it says she painted herself. And so she painted herself most likely like a goddess. We see these statues from thousands and thousands of years ago and they're just like stone. They're worn down stone, that type of thing. That wasn't the case at all when they worshiped them. They were brightly adorned with a lot of colors. A lot of times they put clothes on them as well. It was a representation of an actual god that they believed in. So here is Jezebel painting herself up as a goddess. Ashtaroth or Ishtar, one of these great ancient goddesses. And so she couldn't believe Jehu was trying to overthrow her. I'm a goddess. I'm running the show. And who was it that pushed her out? People from her own household. What does it say there? I think the two of the eunuchs pushed her out of the window. And so that's interesting. Obadiah was there. Were there other secret followers of Yahweh in the household of Ahab and Jezebel? And so she is pushed out by people in her own household. And that's a great question to think about. Were these people followers of Yahweh and they saw their chance? Don't know. Or they were just tired of Jezebel's wickedness and evil. But that's how she ends. She ends being tossed out of a window. And dogs are always looked at. We love dogs. Our society does. But in the ancient Middle East, dogs weren't pets. They were like scavengers. They were looked down upon, particularly in Jewish society. Unclean. They were always eating dead things. And so this was the end of Jezebel. They ate everything, leaving only her skull, feet, and hands. The thinking, the doing, and the walking. Great lesson.