Well, as Pastor was mentioning here, I don't know, I call him Pastor Dad, too, like Alicia does. As he was mentioning, I've got a couple more classes that I have to knock off after this semester, so I'm getting towards the end. I'm trying not to have some senioritis with everything, but it's been a good program. I'm thankful for it, and I'm looking forward to bringing you the word tonight. Tonight, we're gonna look at 2nd Kings chapter 1 so you can start flipping over there in your Bibles. So we're gonna be in 2nd Kings chapter 1 and as we've seen in our series We've had this guy around in our series Elijah, obviously But we've also had this guy named Ahab and Ahab has not been a great guy But tonight I have good news for you Ahab has died and we're gonna look at who takes over for him and so This section of scripture in 2 Kings 1, I wonder how many of you actually know this section of scripture? Does anybody say, when I say 2 Kings 1, is there like a favorite verse from it that you know of? Can you have that like posted somewhere in your house of 2 Kings 1 something? No, it's largely something that I don't feel that we know about or that we remember as often. And so when I got this assignment, that's also a little intimidating because it's not something I've heard any preaching on. I didn't even get to listen to much on 2 Kings. But tonight, I think there's gonna be some things that you can take home with you tonight and go throughout your week with. So if you'll turn with me in 2 Kings, we're actually gonna look maybe a page back. We're gonna look at the end of 1 Kings chapter 22. in verse 51. We're gonna read this whole section here first before we get into it so that you guys know the flow of the story. And as I read, I'm actually gonna need a little bit of participation from you. So I know it's Sunday night. I know some of you might not have gotten your nap this afternoon, but I want a little participation, and this is how it's gonna go, okay? I'm gonna read through this whole, this little section at the end of 1 Kings 22, and then I'm gonna read all of 2 Kings 1. And at the end, I need you to participate with me, where at the end I'm gonna say, this is the word of the Lord, and I need you to respond then and say, thanks be to God. And we're really thanking God that we have this book, and it's accessible, and we have it with us today, and we're gonna read through it. So, I'm gonna say, this is the word of the Lord, you guys are gonna say, Thanks be to God. Okay, so you guys, I'm gonna say, this is the word of the Lord, you're gonna say, thanks be to God. All right, let's get into it. So Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel and Samaria in the 17th year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. And he reigned two years over Israel, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he walked in the way of his father, in the way of his mother, and in the way of Jerome, the son of Nabath, who made Israel to sin. He served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger in every way his father had done. So we're not off to a good start. Verse one of chapter one of 2 Kings. After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel. Now Ahaziah fell through the lattice of his upper chamber in Samaria and lay sick. So he sent messengers telling them, go inquire of Baal's above, the God of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this sickness. But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, arise and go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and say to them, is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron? Now therefore, thus says the Lord, you shall not come down from your bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die. So Elijah went. The messengers returned to the king and he said to them, why have you returned? Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore, you shall not come down from your bed which you have gone up, but you shall surely die. He said to them, what kind of man was this who came to meet you and told you these things? They answered him, he wore a garment of hair with a belt of leather around his waist. And he said, it is Elijah the Tishbite. Then the king sent to him a captain of 50 men with his 50. He went up to Elijah who was sitting on top of a hill, and he said to him, O man of God, the king says, come down. But Elijah answered the captain of 50, if I'm a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50. Then fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his 50. Again, the king sent to him another captain of 50 men with his 50. and he answered him and said, O man of God, this is the king's order, come down quickly. But Elijah answered them, if I'm a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50. Then the fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his 50. Again, The king sent a captain of a third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of his fifty went up and came and fell on his knees before Elijah and entreated him, O man of God, please let my life and the life of these fifty servants of yours be precious in your sight. Behold, fire came down from heaven and consumed the two former captains of fifty men with their fifties, but now let my life be precious in your sight. Then the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, go down with him, do not be afraid. So he arose and went down with him to the king. And he said to him, thus says the Lord, because you have sent messengers to inquire of Beelzebub, the God of Ekron, is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word? Therefore you shall not come down from your bed which you have gone up, but you shall surely die. So he died according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had spoken. Jerome became king in his place in the second year of Jerome, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, because Ahaziah had no son. Now the rest of the acts of Ahaziah that he did, are they not written in the book of Chronicles of the kings of Israel? This is the word of the Lord. Thank you. So, are we okay now? We've got this book, we've got this chapter in this book, and much like a Pauline letter, we can just read it and almost leave it alone, right? No, this isn't a very clear passage of what you and I are supposed to take home with us, is it? And as I started reading this, I thought, how do I apply this to my life here in Ipsy or here in Ann Arbor or wherever you live? How do I take this chapter that I just read, how do I take that home with me? And as I dug in, I began to see that there are several things that we need to learn here tonight. So stay with me as we look at this passage. Now starting off, I have a few questions for you as a way of illustration. So how many of you out here really like to drive in a car? Does anybody like road trips? Anybody at all? Some, I'm seeing some hands. Okay, there's some hands going up. Now, of those of you that like road trips, how many of you have to be the one that is driving? Okay. Kathy's hand went up very quickly. She's like, that's me, right? And I am the same way. So I'm the one that has to be driving if I am in a car. And if not, there's this inner dialogue with me in my head that I'm sorry if I have to ride with you somewhere. It may be easier to just let me drive. There's this inner dialogue of, oh, you could have sped up a little faster or we could have slowed down a little quicker before approaching that stop sign or that other car. And I'm always on defensive mode. I'm like, I'm looking at what the cars are doing around me. I'm seeing what's going on. And that is my struggle, is if I'm with someone and they're driving, I feel like I'm the perfect driver and I should be the one to command this vehicle. And so I want to tell you a story a little bit of one of these times where I wasn't the driver, and it's very vivid to me, and I think you'll soon see why. So when Alicia and I first got, well, this was before we were married. We were out in Utah. We were summer interns at a church in Utah. It was a church planning church in Utah. And we had this little Ford Fiesta that was like our intern car. So, tiny car, it was a little stick shift car, it was great on gas mileage, but it wasn't very fast, let's say. It was a very economical car. And we had a friend who was part of this internship, and he he still drives like this, but he thought that he was driving this car as like the principal driver of the Mercedes-Benz Formula One team, okay? So he would drive that car, he would think he was hot stuff when he's behind the wheel, and he would go fast, and he would stop quickly, and he would go around corners pretty quickly. And I'm saying this, and I want you to remember this, because I can still picture a time where we were coming down a mountain road, And we were coming to the infamous yellow light decision. Do you guys know the one I'm talking about? The light turns yellow, and you're in that gray area. It's like, should I stop? I'm going pretty quick. Maybe I can make it through. And me, being the perfect driver, decided the right thing to do would be to stop, to slow down, wait our turn. We weren't really in that big of a hurry. And to just wait for traffic to go. Now, my friend had a different take on it, and he actually decided the rational thing to do would be to downshift this car and to cruise through this light and to take a sweeping turn onto the highway. Now, I don't know exactly how fast he was going, but I can still picture this. I remember grabbing the handle of the door, the door handle of the car. You guys know this move, right? You grab something in the car. And I can remember hearing the tires on this little Ford Fiesta squeal as we went around the corner. on this turn. And so I am fairly confident that as my friend went 50 or 60 miles an hour around this corner, that I can say he was wrong in the way that he turned that car. Is anybody nodding with me? I see some nods. Some people are kind of affirming that. And I'm using this as a funny illustration to intro our first point here that we actually have a big idea in this sermon. And the big idea that we, we often say that around here, the big idea I want you guys to bring home with you is that we need to be careful where we turn. So the big idea is be careful where you turn. And here we have a new king in Israel, Ahaziah. And Ahab has died, and this is his son. And in the introduction information at the end of chapter 22, we see that things aren't gonna get better for the leadership in Israel. And it says he ruled two short years, and he had a very bad end. And he was bad in every way like his mother and father were. And first tonight, we're gonna see Ahaziah's turn to Baal as our first bad turn of our message tonight. So this story here, as we pick it up, if you're just reading in 2 Kings 1, this story actually picks up fairly quickly. There's not a lot of background info of what he did in his kingdom work. There's not a lot about what he did specifically, but we have this one event, and it starts with him, in verse one and two, starts with Ahaziah falling out of a window of his palace here. And so as I started reading this, I thought to myself, How did that happen? Like how do you just fall out of a window? And it was tall enough and on a second story or something that he's actually sick or paralyzed. So I started to think. I said, how in the world did this guy fall out of a window? So I thought maybe he had too much to drink or maybe his wife gave him a nudge out the window. Maybe they were in an argument. I just wanna encourage you as you read to really picture what's going on, to dig down and to see what's going on in the text, because a guy just falling out a window doesn't give us any details of that. So try to see the sites of these Old Testament narratives as we read through them. And Isaiah here, much like we do, as he's sick, as he's probably paralyzed, he asks a question about his sickness and about his ailment. And we often ask that as well. So he's curious, he's like, am I gonna recover from this fall? And the problem here in Ahaziah's life is not the question of whether I will be healed from this. The problem here is where Ahaziah turned for his answers and where he finds comfort. He quickly shows his source of knowledge and the source of where he turns to. Read with me verse two. It says, I'm reading ahead a little bit. He falls out the window and he goes right away to this idolatrous God, this God of Ekron here in our text. And it's interesting to go into the wording of this. It's fun to do word studies and see. And the God of Ekron, actually the MacArthur Study Bible, gives a little bit of a take on what that means. And really, it can be translated Lord of the Flies. And MacArthur in his Bible, he's almost thinking this is a Hebrew way of almost being sarcastic or poking fun at these gods here or the Lord of the flies and saying, this is the guy that you looked at, the Lord of simply the flies. So it's interesting to just see that even in Hebrew, when they wrote this, that they could have been poking fun at the place that he was going. And here Ahaziah just starts off on a bad foot. We already have the summary that he's evil, but now we see it in practice. And in reading for this, Charles Swindoll in his commentary, he says this, he says, having been trained by his parents to handle such complications of life by consulting pagan deities, he sought counsel from the god of Ekron. And after the writer here, after Charles Swindoll pointed this out, and after reading that summary chapter, or the summary at the end of chapter 22 of 1 Kings, It's something that it points out in this text that he did exactly what his father and what his mother did. So it's almost like we see that he was just doing what he had been taught. And so as a parent, I myself read through this, and I was even convicted that our little daughter, Selah, she's four, you guys, most of you know her, she's gonna look at me and see where I turn for answers and where I turn for comfort. So parents of kids, out there that's just a side note to file away but Our kids are watching and they're seeing what we do, and someday they'll have to deal with where we turn for comfort and where we turn for answers. And so, continuing here in verse three, this is where we see Elijah introduced. I started to read it, and so the angel of the Lord comes to Elijah, he says, arise to meet the messengers, and he really calls on him to call out Ahaziah for his foolishness. And the wording of what the angel of the Lord tells Elijah is, it's almost in a language similar to how Elijah was interacting with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. He says, is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going up to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? This isn't really an answer that he needs to give. This is more of a rhetorical question here. And one that, no, the obvious answer is no, God has not gone anywhere. God, if I'm doing my math correctly from what I read, God was on the scene probably about 15 years ago on Mount Carmel, and At that time, Ahaziah would have been about seven years old. And so a seven-year-old would have known what was going on. A seven-year-old was probably told by his dad what had happened to him. It's like a recap from his dad coming home from work. He said, oh, this fire came down and all these prophets got killed and everything. And so Ahaziah wouldn't have been naive to the situation of God thundering in Israel. And Elijah calls him out for it. This question here was meant to bring conviction, not necessarily give an answer to. And Elijah tells the messengers to go back and to tell Ahaziah of his words. So for this first turn in our passage, the question is not the problem, it's the where the Ahaziah looked for answers. Because first here we see the king of Israel turning to idols for answers instead of turning to Yahweh. Secondly, Isaiah, looking for more answers, turns to his own force and sending men to get answers for him. So as we look at this second turn, read with me in verse seven. And he, Isaiah, said to them, what kind of man was he that came to meet you and told you these things? And they answered, he wore a garment of hair with a belt of leather around his waist. And he said, it is Elijah the Tishbite. It's funny how immediately Ahaziah knows who this is. This wasn't a secret. He wasn't saying, OK, well, now who is this? Some guy that was probably hairy or wearing a garment of hair and then has a leather belt. Doesn't really narrow it down, but Ahaziah knows right away who that is. And continuing here in verse nine, the king sent a captain of his 50 men with his 50, and he went up to Elijah, who was sitting on top of a hill, and he said to him, O man of God, the king says, come down. But Elijah answered the captain of his 50, if I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50. Then fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his 50. So as readers here, maybe you've read through this before, maybe this is bringing it up, or maybe this is brand new to you, did you happen to be taken aback by what the narrative and the scene here was? Once again in Elijah's life, there's fire coming down from heaven. Now I know when we read the Bible, we've seen certain supernatural occurrences, we've seen miracles in the New Testament, we've seen people being raised from the dead, but these people and you and I don't go throughout our days and often see fire coming down from heaven, at least I don't in my daily life. And so as we're reading through this, you should come to a point and almost say, again, like Elijah and in his words and his interactions with God, there's fire coming down from heaven again. Did I just read that right? And God, once again, here in our passage, used fire falling from heaven to defend his prophet. One of the resources that I read, it's a commentary by Dale Ralph Davis, says this. It says, again, we see our uncomfortable God. Yahweh is furious, not tolerant. Holy, not reassuring. Loving, not nice. God is quick here to defend his prophet and to defend Elijah with fire yet again from heaven. And continuing in verse 11, we see that again, Isaiah goes to his military strength. So he sends another captain and his 50 men, so 51 guys, to go pick up this prophet. And notice here, again, the words that the captains say. So in verse nine, it says, O man of God, the king says, come down. The second captain says, in verse 11, O man of God, this is the king's order, come down quickly. The first captain here actually seems pretty casual. It almost sounds like he's answering a police call from a non-emergency number where it's like, hey, go check this out, go find this guy, and we're going to send you 50 guys to go with you. So pretty good odds that he should be able to handle one guy and bring him in. And the second one, though, shows a little bit more emphasis when he says, that he needs to come down quickly. So he obviously knew what happened to the first group of guys, and he's adding a little bit of urgency to his voice, and he knows that this prophet here had just caused something to happen where fire had consumed him, or the first captain and his 50 men. So in the end, we see that he is also burnt up by fire from heaven. And in the end, 102 men are killed by Ahaziah's actions here. And one quote I want to read to you is by this commentator, Krumacher. It says, one would suppose that the intelligence of the second defeat would have caused change in Ahaziah's mind and induced him to conclude a truce of his impious war. But no, he has resolved to hold it out to the last. So I thought of this, I've heard this before, where, have you heard the definition of insanity? Do you guys know the definition of insanity? I'll read it to you. This is off the internet, so it's true. It says, insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. So from our definition, Isaiah is insane here, because yet he sends two captains, and he's not done, so he sends a third. So the third captain, though, is gonna be our third turn in our message tonight. So the third captain actually turns to Elijah's authority instead of his own strength. So look with me at verse 13 and 14. Again, the king sent a captain of a third 50 with his 50. and the third captain of his 50 went up and came and fell on his knees before Elijah and entreated him, oh man of God, please let my life and the life of these 50 servants of yours be precious in your sight. Behold, fire came down from heaven and consumed the former captains of 50 men with their 50s, but now let my life be precious in your sight. So here we see that there's some heart change here with this captain over the first two. We see that he approaches this a little differently than the first two. And so first, the captain here, he actually lands on his knees before he says anything to Elijah. So already we see he's off to a little better start. than the last two. And whether he recognized Elijah and Elijah's God as king, he used some good situational awareness when he approached Elijah. because he was approaching this probably same spot. We don't know the exact timing of this, but probably the same spot where these first two groups of men had just been burnt up. We don't have a timeline of these exact events, but thinking that they're back to back, he definitely knows what happened, because he says it, right? He says that these two former captains in their 50s had been burnt up. So he knows what happened, and he's approaching the situation the way he should. And secondly, the captain here asks for mercy. So right out of the gate, he recognizes all this and he turns to Elijah and Elijah's authority and Elijah's God with respect and to appeal for the preciousness of life. And the saving grace for this captain and his 50 men was the way that he addressed Elijah. Elijah, he addressed Elijah with respect, and he implored Elijah to have mercy on him as he spoke. The script here changes from the first two men, and the first two men being very authoritative to this guy coming on his knees to Elijah. And think of the situation of that third captain. He's coming up on 102 guys that have just been wiped out, And he's being sent by a king who could take his life for not following orders as well. So this guy's really in between a rock and a hard place as he's staring down two people that seemingly could end his life. And the captain still decided to appeal to Elijah instead of demanding that God's prophet be brought before the king like a puppet. And for our fourth turn tonight, we're gonna look at Elijah turning to God's authority. So for our fourth turn in the story, I want us to think back. We've been studying Elijah now for, did you say five, six weeks now? It's back in, was it the end of January? end of January, beginning of February, we've been studying Elijah. And think back with me upon Elijah's life. So he calls on this drought in the land. He's faithful to God in hunger. He triumphs on the mountain of Mount Carmel over the prophets of Baal. And then he runs in fear and depression after that. We listened to Pastor, well not Pastor Ernie, we listened to Ernie as he spoke on that a few weeks ago. And now Elijah's sitting on top of a hill, confident that God will protect him. Look at Elijah's words with me. It says, if I'm a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50. Here he says this word for word twice in our passage. And it was interesting, because Ben Cantrell and I, Ben spoke a few weeks ago, or a couple weeks ago, that we were discussing or debating a little bit of what was Elijah saying with those words, if I'm a man of God? Now some people would say that Elijah's almost in a depressed mood, and he's almost with his hands, his head in his hands, saying, if I am, it'd be nice, sure nice if God would bring down fire from heaven. And we were talking about that a little bit, but I think that Elijah here, after studying through this, Elijah is saying this not as a legitimate question asking this, I think he's almost prescribing what he wants God to do to these guys. And I think Elijah has actually a bit of a swagger to him now with his confidence in God. I think he's sitting here saying, hey, if I am, let fire come down and consume you. Almost taunting these guys like he did on top of Mount Carmel. I believe this because of verse 15. So he listens in verse 15 to the angel and he goes with these men right in the face of Ahaziah. Elijah here seems to be swimming in the confidence of God as he goes with these men and he calls out Ahaziah face to face. So put yourself in his shoes. You're sitting, seems like it's a nice day for you and the angel of the Lord visits you and says, hey, go call out the king. Go call out the most powerful guy in the country and say, you're gonna die because of what you've done. Now, some of you guys don't like, and I don't actually like it as well, but don't really love confrontation. Some of you will think, oh, well, and I do this a lot too. Some of you think that, oh, I can, we often say, I can cover that one in love, we'll just not deal with that. But the angel of the Lord visits Elijah here and says, go do this. And as I read this, it's like, can you imagine going face to face with a king who has the power to kill you and also be surrounded by the guys that could do it? The king laying in the bed is not a physical threat, right? But the guys that could carry it out were, they were still there. And Charles Swindoll, I read from him earlier, he says about this, he says, we cannot help but admire Elijah's consistent heroism. The man is alone, standing before the younger king, and surely surrounded by armed warriors faithful to Ahaziah, who could have finished him off with one thrust of a spear. Yet God's man never gave that risk a second thought. He was so convinced, so committed to the Lord, that the thought of self-protection never entered his mind. So this once-cowering prophet is now restored to his confidence in God and what God can do for him as he's sitting on top of this hill, seemingly taunting these hundreds of guys. Now as we should ask with most Bible passages, you should ask, what do I do with this? So we've gone through it, I've explained a few things about it, we've seen how Elijah interacts, and at the end though, what do I do with this passage? And remember what our theme was from the beginning, what our big idea was? It was be careful where you turn. The first part of this passage gives us a road map of terrible turns. Aziah looks to these worthless idols as he hopes that maybe he would get a good answer about his ailment or his paralysis here. Now for most of us today, I don't feel that we often look to a physical carved or physical made idol and ask it for answers. And if we do, we need to repent of that and we need to forsake that and we can talk to you, talk to pastor after if that's what you are doing. But I wonder, what's the big deal here? Turn with me to Exodus 20. Exodus 20, we're gonna see that God clearly spells out why this is a big deal and why Ahaziah was punished for this. All right, in Exodus 20, it says, verse one, and God spoke these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers of the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. So the question here is why did Ahaziah die in this passage? Well, it's the violation here of Exodus 20. As the king of Israel, he was punished because he looked to an idol to a god instead of to Yahweh. Secondly, Ahaziah looked foolishly to his strength and security of his military power and to take vengeance on God's prophet that called him out in his idolatry. So as we wrap this up, I don't think a lot of us do bow down to those idols. I don't think we're actively looking for four idols, four answers, but as quickly as I am to throw Ahaziah under the bus for such a empty request that he was making, I had to look at his reaction after hearing these words from Elijah, and him sending his force, and that's the one that hit me a little closer to home, with his idolatry of his strength that he had in front of him. So I had to ask myself, and I want you to ask these questions to yourself as well, where do I turn to for answers? What do I look to for answers? Is it maybe statistics or medical professionals or manuals of ways that we can do things? What do I find comfort in? Is it everything working properly? Is it food? Is it money? Is it location safety where we live? What do I long for? Is it ease and comfort and a quiet life? Honestly, after doing this, I needed myself to repent of things that I found comfort and answers from. I was convicted that I like to really have all my stuff working orderly. and everything seems safe and secure for me. Often when faced with an issue, I look to a process or a manual that can tell me just how to overcome something or to fix something or to make things even more enjoyable. If it's a health issue, I often like to turn to Google, which is the best way to turn to medical answers, or doctors to really show me what needs to happen as like a process instead of turning to God. If it's a financial thing, I like to turn to a budget. So studying through this, it didn't actually give me a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings as I got down to the end of this. And I want to ask you, what is your thing that you run to? What is your idol? What is your comfort? And personally, I fill this box with a lot of things that honestly distract me so I don't have to think about things. And I'm convicted of what I spend my time and money on. So I had to look at myself, and I'm thankful to God for this study, that he was working in me even this week of idols in my life that I quickly turned to over turning to God. After Alicia and I got married, we moved to Salt Lake City. Most of you know that. And we moved out there, we moved into a little apartment. And about a year after that was when COVID started. And we were actually looking at the time for a different place to live and we were looking for a condo. And so we looked for a condo, we found one. And the one that was in our budget and our price range needed pretty much a full remodel. And so I thought we could do this. It's the perfect time to do it when all the supply chains are disrupted. Let's remodel a condo, okay? And we had about two or three months before our lease ended at our apartment, and I thought we could easily get this done. And as we went through the process and everything, we were quickly frustrated by how hard it was to get even simple things that we can all get already right now. So cabinets was a big one. So our kitchen cabinets couldn't come in for two or three months, I think, and they were just standard stock, like, run-of-the-mill cabinets. And we actually ended up moving into this condo without a kitchen. So that's a great way to move into a place is no kitchens. We couldn't do dishes. We had to do dishes in the bathroom. And it was just a time in our life where I would not choose to go back to, but we still have some good memories from that time as well. But I found myself largely that summer being exhausted and burnt out with working on things, even though what I was working for in my own heart was fueling my pride of what I had done, and the pride and the idol of this condo that I wanted to have finished, have look perfectly brand new. And these delays kept coming up and kept making things hard for me. And at the time, I had a friend that came over, and he was just looking through some things, and he was also doing kind of the same project at his house. And as he was there, he made a passing comment to me, and it pretty much threw me into a tailspin of my life at the time. And the funny thing was, he didn't even mean to be very pointed with what he was saying. But at the time, it sent me into this tailspin where I really couldn't sleep well for a few weeks, and I couldn't really eat well. Elisa remembers this time, and she probably thought I was going crazy. But I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep for a while. I think both sets of parents were kind of concerned. And the time that he said this, to be transparent, it was really because I wasn't looking to God for my strength and for my answers. It was me looking to my own things and what I could do, and it was working well until it didn't, until I got to the point where I just could not do it anymore. And as you might be saying with this, it brought me back, and as you might be saying, well, that's an interesting illustration, but that's kind of an odd way to close this sermon. And when I look back at this guy that came over to our house, one of my friends, this was actually God's grace and he was my Elijah in my life that started to point some things out to me into where, unlike Ahaziah, I came back to God because he used him as a warning and as a grace in my life to forsake my idolatry of self and hard work. Now I want to warn you and encourage you with these words tonight. So the warning is, be careful where you turn. We need to examine our lives and see where we look to idols. And if we see that, we need to ask forgiveness from God, from our idolatry, and turn to God for our answers and comfort. To encourage us with this message, I want us to look and see that those of us who are believers can find forgiveness from our idolatry if we repent and if we forsake them and recognize the Lord as the only one that we worship and serve. Turn over with me to Deuteronomy. We're gonna look at Deuteronomy 1. And here in this passage, Deuteronomy is Moses' final sermon to the Israelites. Moses is sitting on the next step of going into the promised land. He's not gonna get to go, and Moses is kinda giving his final words in a sermon to the people of Israel. And so look with me down in verse 26. And Moses here is gonna remind them of how they've continually lacked trust in God and how they've doubted him. And I think Moses here actually doubts that they'll go in after he gets taken up on the mountain. So verse 26 says, yet you will not obey, you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. And you murmured in your tents and said, because the Lord hated us, he has brought us out of the land of Egypt to give us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. So Moses is calling them out for them not listening to God. But then, Moses turns and he reminds them why God is so worthy to be trusted. Look down with me following in verse 30. says, the Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes and in the wilderness where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son all the way that you went until you came to this place. And Moses here is saying, just like a dad would carry his kid. I don't know if he's, like they didn't have cars back then, but I often think of an asleep child in a car seat where you're carrying them in the house at the end of a night where you're driving back from somewhere and you're trying to transfer them into their bed so they sleep. Like that's what dads do, right? Dads sneak them out of their seat, walk them up to their bed and set them down so that they can continue sleeping. And Moses here is saying that. Like, God is carrying you like a father would. And he wants to care for you. And so reading through this, I was struck by the thought of where else can we turn? And why else would we turn somewhere else? Why do we often turn to the dumpster of idolatry for food when God has a feast for us if we turn to him? Unfortunately, Ahaziah here didn't get it, and he was punished for his repeated looks to idols. God sends Elijah to interrupt him. As I finish tonight, I want to read a quote that I actually started in the beginning of this. I only read to you the first half of the quote. And it's a great theological summary of our passage tonight. It's from Dale Ralph Davis. He says, talking about this passage, he says, again, we see our uncomfortable God. Yahweh is furious, not tolerant. Holy, not reassuring. Loving, not nice. But there is love in his fury. He won't let you walk the path of idolatry easily. His mercy litters the way with roadblocks. This is a wonder considering he so detests our idols. Let's pray. Lord, we come to you as a sinful and needy people. We ask you now that First, that we would forsake idols in our lives, that we would come to the source of life, and we would ask you for forgiveness from these when we turn to things we shouldn't. And Lord, as we think now on 2 Kings 1 and of Ahaziah and Elijah's life here, that we would be reminded that you take this seriously, but yet you care and you forgive us if we come back and we turn to you. Lord, we love you. We thank you for your word once again. And we pray this in your name. Amen.