Good morning everybody. At least the weather permitted us to come here. Probably would be a good way to open this up if I tell you a story of very early on in my journey. For me to grow in grace I knew that very early on I needed to be a prolific reader, and God directed me to good books very, very early on. I started off reading all the wrong things, and within six months, through a few influences, I was able to come across some really good literature. And a lot of those came through the publishing company The Banner of Truth. press and they would sell a set of books called works, the works of John Flavel, the works of Thomas Brooks, Jonathan Edwards, and one of them that had quite an influence on me very early on were the works of John Newton, and most of you would know his name because he wrote one of the most well-known hymns in modern Christendom, that is Amazing Grace, but his letters were written in the late 1700s, early 1800s, and it was part of what became the Evangelical Awakening in England, and three of these letters were written to a man on the context of Mark 4.26 through 28. And in verse 28, you have in the context a parable of a farmer's planting. And in verse 28, it says that the plant springs up and it's talking about a corn plant. Mark 4.28. First there is a blade, then there is the ear, and then there is a full corn in the ear, and John Newton took each of those three parts and broke it down to the three parts of the growth of the Christian and the Christian life. And he called the first person A, the blade, and that's a novice in the faith, and B, a more mature Christian who has gotten at least a good assurance and is well into the journey, and then finally the more mature Christian. And as I was putting this sermon together, I was studying the life of Elijah and want to use three parts of that history, which begins in 1st Kings 17, and take an incident in each of those three histories to describe three parts of the growth of the Christian life, A, B, and C. So the context of 1 Kings 17, beginning with verse 1, And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the sojourners of Gilead, said to Ahab, Is the Lord God of Israel lives before whom? whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide yourself by the brook. careth, that is before the Jordan, and it shall be that you shall drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and dwelt by the brook careth, that is before the Jordan." So Elijah comes on the scene so mysteriously he just has a narrative we don't know almost anything about him. Not of his mother, not of his father, and he's a Tishbite and some say we don't even know where Tishba is. So he is a mysterious prophet that is raised up because the nation of Israel had become so corrupt with idolatry So Elijah appeared on the Israel stage during one of the darkest hours of the nation's sad history. He is introduced to us here in 1st Kings 17, and we have but to read through the previous chapters to discover what a deplorable state God's people were then in. Israel had grievously and flagrantly departed from God, and that which directly opposed him had been publicly set up. They were worshiping Baal and Asherah. Never before had the favored nation sunk so low, and this is a quote from A. W. Pink, but I would say as well, in the days of the judges, if you read the book of Judges chapter 2, that state of Israel was deplorable as well, and it is summed up by the phrase, every man did that which was right in his own eyes. There wasn't yet a king. 58 years had passed since the kingdom had been torn in two following the death of Solomon. So beginning with the son of Solomon, Jeroboam, there was a apostasy, an apostasy that was so prevalent that it ended in the Assyrians coming in and taking over the northern kingdom, which was 10 tribes, which are often referred to as Ephraim, which is the main tribe, and then there were the two southern tribes, and that was Judah and Benjamin. But during that brief period, no less than seven kings had reigned over the ten tribes, seven until we get to the history of Elijah, and all of still more tragic to behold how there has been a repetition of the same in the history of Christendom. The first of those seven kings was Jeroboam. Concerning him, we read that he made two calves of gold and said to the people, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods. Well, where did we hear this before? When Aaron fashioned a golden calf and set it up, they didn't know where Moses was. And so they said, here is your God. And then you had the abomination after so quickly receiving the Ten Commandments and Moses delays his coming that they start worshiping and violating the Second Commandment. by worshiping this golden calf. And that history is so bad that Josephus, who was a historian of the Jews, leaves it out of his history. And here we have it repeated with Jeroboam. He says, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold, your gods are here, O Israel. which brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And that was just the beginning of the declension, the beginning of the apostasy. So we have in verse 1, Elijah tells of the Lord's judgment and Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, "'As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, "'there shall not be dune nor rain these years "'except at my word.'" And then he pronounces that this drought is going to come upon the nation for three years, and Elijah himself is gonna feel the effects of that. But God tells Elijah, after this great pronouncement of this drought that is coming, to hide himself, and he is to live three years by the brook. In my mind's eye, I am from Montana, and my family lived in a town called Townsend, and it never had more than 2,000 people. And we would go there, you know, every couple of years, Betty and I and our two young kids at the time, and to go back to Michigan, where I lived for 32 years, we would go up Highway 12, and it was a beautiful mountain pass, and there was a mountain stream that came down the mountain. And I used to go up there all the time to fish if we were there for a week or so. And the distance to the summit of this pass, I knew every road that went off to the side. And I could picture in my mind's eye these cabins, small cabins that were just 20, 30 feet from the stream. And I thought, boy, it would be kind of nice to spend a night there. but that's about all I would last. I mean, you think about no possibility of any cell phone signal, no electricity in some cases, but to be by the brook Kerith for three years, it was also for the prophet's own personal good that the Lord now bade him hide yourself. He was in danger from another quarter than the fury of Ahab. So he wasn't just escaping the fury of Ahab, God was preparing him for a future mission. The success of his prayers might prove a snare, tending to fill his heart with pride, and even to harden him against a calamity, then desolating the land. Previously, Elijah had been engaged in secret prayer, and then for a brief moment he had witnessed a good confession before the future held for him yet more honorable service, for the day was to come when he should witness for God, not only in the presence of Ahab, but that he should discomfit and utterly rout the assembled hosts of Baal. But the time was not yet ripe for that. Three years he was to be secluded by the brook Charith. The time wasn't right for him to do what God was leading him as a prophet to do, neither was Elijah himself properly prepared. And listen to this quote, and this is by A.W. Pink, and I first heard this quote 40 years ago when I started this journey. Chuck Swindoll had this radio station, and he's teaching through Elijah, and I heard this quote by A.W. Pink, and it's so profound that the two times I've taught on the biography of A.W. Pink, I have used this quote. He says, oh, my reader, the man whom the Lord uses has to be kept low. Severe discipline has to be experienced by him if the flesh is to be duly mortified. Three more years must be spent by the prophet in seclusion. How humbling. Alas, how little is man to be trusted. How little is he able to bear being put into the place of honor. How quickly self rises to the surface and the instrument, Elijah, in this case, is ready to believe he is something more than an instrument of God. How sadly easy it is to make of the very service God entrusts us with a pedestal on which to display ourselves. But God will not share his glory with another, and therefore does he hide those who may be tempted to take some of the honor to themselves. It is only by retiring from public view and getting alone with God that we can learn our own nothingness." Well, I'm using this illustration as a picture of a young Christian in Christ, maybe a novice in Christ, a babe in Christ. And this time of waiting on God prior to a great change in the lot of a saint is very common in the Bible. You have, for example, Joseph in Egypt. Before his great advancement in Egypt, he must lie in the dungeon to humble him and prepare him for such honor and prosperity. Number two, the brothers of Joseph in Egypt, before Joseph reveals himself to them and they receive that joy and honor and prosperity, which were the results path through a train of difficulties and anxieties till at last they are reduced to distress and are brought to reflect upon their Often these are times that God uses for us to reflect upon our misery before he reveals his love and mercy, which is a sermon by Jonathan Edwards that I read again this week. And it can happen after we have become Christians and we are babes in Christ, or it can come to us prior to our conversion as it was in the case of Christian and pilgrim's progress. It was some time before Christian was awakened and he had that burden pressing upon his back before he went through the slough of despond. and went to the wicked gate and was let in. God emptied him of his innate self-righteousness. Number four, before God brought the children of Israel into Canaan, He led them about in a great and terrible wilderness through a train of difficulties and temptations for forty years, that He might teach them in their dependence on Him. and the sinfulness of their own hearts." Deuteronomy 32 verse 10. He found Moses in a desert land and in a waste howling wilderness. He led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye and 5. We see this important lesson brought out plainly in Christ dealing with His beloved apostles on one occasion to return to Him flushed with success and full of themselves. They told Him of all the things, both of what they had done and what they had taught. 630. And listen to how Jesus responds. And he said to them, come you yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while for 31. This is still as gracious remedy for any of his servants who may be puffed up with their own importance and imagine that he cause upon earth would suffer a severe loss if they were removed from it. I am not right now a student for the ministry. I get opportunities to teach and I like to teach because I read these things and the full heart wants to have been. But it would be foolishness in me to suppose that because of this little work or any place where God puts me to teach cannot be carried on when I'm taken down and put into the grave. In the book called The Christian Ministry, and this has required reading for our ministerial aspirants, as far back as I can remember, this is my 41st year as a Reformed Baptist, and we have trained people for the ministry, and we have used this book, The Christian Ministry, written in the early 1830s by Charles Bridges. But if you remember in 1 Timothy 3, that it says that Qualification for the ministry is that he is not a novice, that he is not a new Christian. And he says, it is evident, however, that this ministerial standard presupposes a deep tone of experimental and devotional character. And sometimes this takes a while to learn by sometimes painful experience. A novice is disqualified for the work of the ministry. The bare existence of religion provides but slender materials for this important function. A babe in grace and knowledge is palpably incompetent to become a teacher of babes, much more a guide of the fathers, a school of adversity, of discipline, and of experience united with study and heavenly influence can alone give the tongue of the learned." There's a book that's been very, very helpful to me, and remember we're on point A, the babe in Christ, and how he is more dandled upon his father's knee, not exposed to hardships, but he's new in this war and he has to And Alexander, the book is called Thoughts on Religious Experience, says, quote, young Christians are often greatly deceived by the appearance of the death of sin. They think they've conquered it when they're young, when it only sleeps or deceitfully hides itself, waiting for a more favorable opportunity to exert itself anew. When a babe, when a young one experiences in some favored moment the love of God shed abroad in his heart, His sins, his indwelling sin, appears to be dead, and those lusts which ward against the soul to be extinguished. But when these lively feelings have passed away, and carnal objects begin again to entice, to tempt him, the latent principle of iniquity shows itself, and often that Christian who had fondly hoped that the enemy, indwelling sin, was slain, and the victory won, and in consequence cease to watch and pray, is suddenly assailed and overcome by the deceitfulness of sin. Christians are more injured in this warfare by the insidious and secret influence of their enemies, lulling them into sleep of carnal security. by all of the more open and violent assault. They're more often conquered when the devil comes as a serpent and deceives them than when he comes as a roaring lion. Every servant that God deigns to use must pass through the trying experience of That's what Elijah is going through before he is ready for the triumph of Mount Carmel. Remember, Mount Carmel is when he rose up against Baal and they put the sacrifice there and commanded that these people cry out to their gods. That was a great moment in Elijah's history. But before he could be there, he has to have the trying, waiting experience of three years at the brook. careth, and a brook dried up." This is an unchanging principle in the ways of God. Joseph suffered the indignities of both the pit and the prison before he became governor of all of Egypt, second only to the king himself. Moses spent one-third of this long life at the backside of the desert before God gave him the honor of leading his people out of the house of bondage. David had to learn the sufficiency of God's power on the farm before he went forth and slew Goliath in the sight of the assembled armies of Israel and the Philistines. Thus it was, too, with the perfect servant, even Jesus, thirty years of seclusion and silence before he began his brief public ministry, and our Lord was perfect. Yet, it says at the end of Luke 2 that he grew in wisdom and stature in favor with man. But now, the letter B, first the blade, then the corn, the letter B, the second stage of the Christian, and we're going to look at another story of Elijah. If you will remember, if you read the story, Elijah is at a standstill wondering, what am I going to do? The brook is dried up. And God said, the ravens would feed me and I will drink by the brook in the way. And the brook dried up. So he is sent to a widow. And he commands her, she has nothing but her and the child. And because of the drought, they are down to a last meal. And Elijah tests her faith by saying, supply for me. And she said, we only have this much and then we're going to die and he prophesies that the barrel will never be empty and she'll have oil and she'll have flour sufficient until the drought is ended. But providentially in 1st Kings 17, 17 and 18, her faith is buffeted up and she sees a miracle and doubtless she believes that the God of Israel is the Savior and But in the providence of God, she loses her child. The loss of her child was a heavy affliction for this poor woman. It would be so to any mother. But it was more especially severe on her because she had previously been reduced to widowhood. That reminds me of, in the life of our Lord, disciples are coming in one direction, and the widow of Nain, who had just lost her son, and she's a widow, and the son is part of her livelihood, and the only part of her family. That child is raised from the dead by our Lord Jesus Christ, and Elijah is about to do this for her. her, but she's a new believer and her faith is being very much tested. And she said to Elijah, what have I to do with you? Oh, you man of God. Doesn't see God in this immediately. She blames the prophet. Are you come to me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son? Well, what sin would she be talking about? She was probably worshiping Baal. These people were in a deplorable condition. But we learn from Luke 4 that this is one of the people that God in his amazing grace and providence, though she was a Gentile, that he is going to show mercy to her. How wretchedly we requite God for His abundant mercies when His chastening hand is laid upon us. How often we rebel instead of meekly submitting to it, instead of humbling ourselves beneath God's mighty hand and begging Him to show, why are you contending with us? Job 10 verse 2. We are far readier to blame some other person as being the cause of our trouble. One minute you're praising God, you're walking around with songs and hymns and spiritual praises and a calamity comes into your life and it's insupportable and you violate the commandment of God that you are to trust Him in adversity as well as in prosperity. It is often God's way to employ afflictions and bring in former sins to our remembrance. In the ordinary routine of life, it is so easy to go on from day to day without any deep exercise of conscience before the Lord, especially so when we are in the enjoyment of a replenished barrel of oil. It is only as we are really walking closely with him or when we are smitten with some special chastisements of his hand that our conscience is sensitive before him. So quoting from John Newton, I mentioned that there were three letters written to a brother to help him understand three stages in the Christian life. The first state is A, the second is grace and the blade in the ear and the full corn in the ear. This is grace in the ear. B, the letter B represents the second Christian state. And John Newton says, I apprehend that in a state of B, that is, for a season after we have known the Lord, we have usually the most sensible and distressing experience of our evil natures. I do not say that it is necessary that we should be left to fall into gross outward sin in order to know what is in our hearts, though I believe many have thus fallen whose hearts under a former sense of redeeming love has been as truly set against sin as the hearts of others who have been preserved from such outward fault. The Lord makes some of his children examples and warnings to others as he pleases. Those who are spared and whose worst deviations are only known to the Lord and themselves have great reason to be thankful. Now this second person, represented by the letter B, does not meet with these things perhaps at first, nor every day, or as Alexander said, he is like a babe in Christ that's being dandled upon his father's knee and is not prone to have the trials that will come later. The Lord appoints occasions and turns of life which try our spirits. There are particular seasons when temptations are suited to our frames, tempers, and situations. And there are times when God is pleased to withdraw, the withdrawing of God. Why are you hiding your face from me? This is perceptive. God is just as near as always because he is omnipresent, but you will feel like God has hidden himself from you and that is expressed in Hosea 5 verse 15. I will go and to my place I will hide myself until they acknowledge their ways and then they seek. We're prone to spiritual pride, to self-dependence, to vain confidence, to creature attachment, and a train of evil. So Lord often discovers to us one sinful disposition by exposing us to another. He sometimes shows us what He can do for us and in us, and at other times how little we can do. By nature, we don't understand how little we can do. We have to be taught, and sometimes by dear and painful experience. By a variety of these exercises, this man, B, is trained up in a growing knowledge of himself and of the Lord. He learns to be more distrustful of his own heart and to suspect a snare in every step he takes. So the second stage is more of trial and conflict and more exposing to the rugged storm and the mindset of a warrior. in a war with the devil. But lastly, there is the mature years of the Christian that is often met with temptations to backsliding or covetousness, and sometimes severe trials come in to the more mature Christian to keep him from departing from God. And when he has recovered, he is more adapted to improving these trials by contemplation. God brings him through them and he reflects, he contemplates, and he sees, as he has never seen before, how dependent he is upon the Holy Spirit of God for every right action choice. and fruit in his conduct. The difficult trials are often not so much for their gaining Christian maturity and humility, but to keep them from backsliding and spiritual declension when they have been for a long time in a state without many difficult situations. And now I believe I can speak a little bit more experimentally. When I look back on over 40 years in this journey. If you would have told me 40 years ago, some of the people, including pastors who were my own spiritual leaders, would shipwreck their ministry, including the brother who preached at our wedding in Montana, I have learned that he has recently come out of the far country, but for 25 years he had shipwrecked his ministry and went completely back to the world. And so trials come into our life and they are very painful. And sometimes we despair of life itself. It's almost too much. But remember, it is far better to have that right eye missing and that right hand missing and enter into the kingdom than to shipwreck your ministry. And having begun well, you do not finish. So turning to the life of Elijah, chapter 19, verse 1. Now Ahab told Jezebel, everything Elijah had done. So Mount Carmel is in the past. Great things have happened that shown that there is only one God over Israel. And it did not change Ahab's heart, far less Jezebel. And so the king is reporting to his consort what everything Elijah had done and how he'd killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, may the gods deal with me be it ever so severely if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them, of the false prophets who were slain. You marvel at this. Here's Elijah, one minute he's being used so mightily of God, one minute David slays Goliath, and then things come to an impasse in his life, and the enemies are in pursuit of him, and the heart fails because God shows us what we are if we are left to ourselves. So Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba and Judah, he left his servant there, Wally himself, on a day's journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die. That isn't praying in faith. I've had enough, Lord, he said. Take my life, I'm no better. better than my ancestors, and he lay down under the bush and fell asleep." So A.W. Pink in his commentary on this, and passing from 1 Kings 18 to 1 Kings 19, we meet with a sudden and strange transition. shining brilliantly out of a clear sky. And the next moment, without any warning, black clouds draped the heavens and crashes of thunder shake the earth. This brings us to the saddest part of the narrative. The Tishbite Elijah is notified of the Queen's determination to slay him. What is his response to this? He was the Lord's servant. Does he then look to his master for instructions? Again and again we have seen in the past how the word of the Lord had come to him, telling him what to do. And will he now wait upon the Lord for the necessary guidance? Alas, instead of spreading his case before God, taking it in prayer to But before God, he acts on hasty impulse, deserts the post of his duty, flees from the one who sought his destruction. And when he saw that he arose and went for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there, notice carefully The wind he saw, he arose and went for his life. His eyes were fixed on the wicked and furious queen. Peter's eyes were fixed on the tumultuous waters, and he thought he was going to drown. And their eyes are not to the Lord, and therefore their heart quakes, and they cannot stand. Faith in God is the only deliverer from carnal fear. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. I will keep him in perfect peace. His mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you. Isaiah 12 verse 2, Isaiah 26 verse 3. Elijah's mind was no longer stayed upon God and therefore fear took possession of him. But remember, Peter was afraid, and he denied his Lord, but what did Jesus say to him before that happened? When you are converted, it wasn't that he was unconverted. There is a conversion that's the immediate effect of regeneration, a person is born again, but there are fresh conversions, so to speak, When your faith in God is once again invigorated and you go forth again in faith, and this is what happened to Peter and this needed to happen to Elijah. Backsliding occurs, says Archibald Alexander, when the Christian is gradually let off from close walking with God, loses the lively sense of divine things, becomes too much attached to the world and too much occupied with secular concerns. Until at length the keeping of the heart is neglected, closet duties are omitted or slightly performed. Zeal for the advancement of Christianity is quenched, and many things once rejected by a sensitive conscience are now indulged and defended. All this may take place and continue long before the person is aware of his danger or acknowledges that there has been any serious departure from God. He may keep up the forms of religion. He still may pray in the family. He's still there at church. You see him. You don't know anything is wrong. But more commonly, backsliders fall into some evil habits. They are evidently too much conformed to the world and often go too far in participating in the pleasures and amusements of the world. And then God comes in with his chastening rod, and sometimes, though it is the chastisement of a father and not the punishment of the judge, God has ways of getting our attention. Some of you well know this. I do not have to assure you of it. All afflictions are not, however, for chastisement, but sometimes for trial, sometimes to keep us from backsliding and departing from God. And they are kept in the furnace, and that heat is seven times until their dross is consumed, and their piety shines forth as pure gold, which has been tried in the So I will close this by a quote from John Newton in letter three, the letter C in the more mature Christian represented in Mark 8.28 by the 4.28 by the full corn in the year. Now the third stage, the mature stage, properly speaking, it's not that this new mature Christian, now mature Christian has more inherent strength in himself. than the first two Christians, he's just more aware of now his need of God to persevere. He is in the same state of absolute dependence as incapable of performing spiritual acts or of resisting temptations by his own will. power as it was the first day of its setting out. Yet, in a sense, this Christian at this mature stage is much stronger because he has a more filling and constant sense of his own weakness. The Lord has been long teaching him this lesson by a train of various dispensations, and by the grace of God he can say that he has not suffered so many things in vain. The heart, the heart has deceived him so often in the past. He's more wary. He's looking around. He never takes anything for granted anymore. He knows he has to pray to God now for everything in his course and his conduct and so the desire of his heart is realized and that he sees that through Christ I can do now all things. Now he is in a good measure weaned from trusting to his heart and therefore he does not meet with so many disappointments and having found again and again the vanity of all other helps he is now taught to go to the Lord at once for grace to help and every time need, thus he is strong, not in himself, but in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." When I was first buying these sets of works, I called them, by Puritans, Jonathan Edwards and I'm a young Christian. volumes of the letters of John Newton were one of my most prized possessions next to Jonathan Edwards because I needed this kind of instruction so bad because during the time I was so much in a state of A going into the second stage and that is realizing the conflict we are in with our own indwelling sin, the war that we're in against the devil, the deceptions of the evil ones. And added to that is I looked around and I saw so many that I had fellowship with, had good fellowship with, had defected and completely fallen away. By the grace of God, you know, a lot of people say it's not good to be an introspective person. For me, it was. I needed to be introspective. I needed to weigh these things. I needed to consider them so that I could get the benefit of them. And with that, I'll leave you with this instruction. But if you enjoy audiobooks, I've narrated these letters more than wants or you can get any of these things for free. For example, the letters of John Newton at gracejams.org or a free download from monergism.com and pdf or kindle format. This is my kindle which I do about everything with. But with that, because I've been a little longer than I usually am here, I will close in prayer. Holy Father, thank you for keeping us in the way, for teaching us, for upholding me, even my voice as I've been speaking so much. And we thank you for your grace and your mercy and that pray some of these things could be found useful, not just to the people sitting here, but as they are being recorded to Many people who tune into my site on Sermon Audio, we ask for your help, your guidance, and especially to keep us in the name of Jesus. Amen.