Let's bow our heads one more time and go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we so thank you for the privilege of praying tonight. We thank you for the privilege of fellowship and communion with you because of your Son through the Holy Spirit. We ask that you'd be with us in a special way. Help us to have the word of God applied to us and to be changed by it. So thank you for your word. We thank you for the privilege of suffering with Christ and being reviled for his name. Pray that you'd empower us and help us even now in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we as Christians naturally gravitate towards the promises of God. And it's a good thing. We've prayed tonight and we've been praying based on the promises of God in the prophets and in various parts of scripture. When we read that all God's promises find their yes in Jesus, we naturally as Christians get a thrill to start pleading God's promises before Him. We have liberty to pray before God all the things He's promised to His people throughout the ages or to take comfort in them. So for instance, promises like, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Promises like, if you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? or this precious promise, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. But other promises are more strange to us. We don't tend to dwell on them as much as those comforting promises. Promises like this relevant one from Matthew 10, 22, where Jesus is speaking to his disciples and he tells them, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. Maybe it's not a pleasant guarantee, but it's a guarantee nonetheless. Like master, like servant, we're guaranteed our portion as Christians of hatred and dislike from this world. While carrying a message of the coming judgment and a way of escape for sinners, those in trouble mark us, the Christians, as the troublemakers. While carrying a message of the coming judgment and a way of escape for those in sin, those in trouble mark us as the troublemakers. And that's what the text we're going to be going over tonight is pretty much all about, 1 Kings 18-17, if you want to turn there in your Bibles. And as you turn there, a little bit of background might be helpful. In this portion section of 1 Kings, we're introduced to two characters, Ahab and Elijah, false spiritual leadership, true spiritual leadership. Ahab, the most wicked of the kings of Israel up to this point, leading Israel into idolatry and immorality, contrasted with Elijah, a mighty prophet. And as Ahab's leading Israel to idolatry and wickedness and immorality, Elijah's grieved. And he probably prays to God, Deuteronomy 11, verses 16-17, where God warns the Israelites that if they were to go to idolatry, He says to them, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord has given you." Elijah probably pleads that to God. God shuts up the heavens, and there's no rain for three years. And after three years of God's constant provision towards Elijah, his smile on Elijah's life, him using Elijah in various ways in Israel, he calls Elijah to go back and to see Ahab, to tell him that the drought will cease. And on his way, he runs into the godly prophet Obadiah, who says to him, is it you, my Lord Elijah? He tells Ahab, after Elijah tells him to tell Ahab, Ahab meets Elijah, and that's where we have our text. Let's read it together. 1 Kings 18, verse 17, which says, When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, Is it you, you troubler of Israel? Friends, while carrying a message of the coming judgment and a way of escape for sinners, those in trouble mark us, the Christians, as the troublemakers. So brothers and sisters, two brief, brief observations from this text, one from Ahab's kind of point of view and the other about Elijah. We begin with Ahab, Ahab the reviler. If you read through 1 Kings, particularly the chapters that are dealing with Ahab, you see a pattern when it comes with Ahab. He loves to sin, he loves clinging to his sin, and he hates being confronted with it. And he has this pattern of addressing prophets, namely Elijah and Micaiah, when he comes to see them. He has this kind of trademark way of dealing with them. So we see how he addresses Elijah in this text. When Elijah comes to see him after Naboth dies, Ahab, in the midst of his sin, says to Elijah, have you found me, O my enemy? And concerning another prophet, Micaiah, faithful prophet that we heard about some time ago in an evening devotional, what does Ahab say of him? He says, I hate him. Why? For he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil. So we see, then, in Ahab's instance, except for one temporary instance, a regular refusal to repent when confronted with coming judgment. Maybe your mind goes to different examples in the Bible. Think of Herod and his love for the preaching of John the Baptist in Mark 6, verse 20. He loved Orthodox preaching. He was interested in it, puzzled by it. But the moment the preaching became searching, And it became about Herod's immorality and sin. He wanted to have John the Baptist killed. Same thing kind of going on here with Ahab. Friend, how about you? When through the preaching of the word, or through counsel, through fellowship, you're confronted by the word of God concerning your sin, how do you react? Are you the type, like Ahab, to continually resist and book against every confrontation from the pulpit, from fellowship, from talk amongst yourselves, every confrontation of your sin by the word, or do you as a Christian, even if time has elapsed, melt before the confronting power of the word and seek to repent? Now you may be okay with conservative theology, but how about when it comes to convict you? How about talk about the coming judgment with you in mind? Is it a nuisance? Would you rather bypass the searching and get to disassociated facts? Friends, that's the spirit of Ahab, would not be confronted, hated confrontation, hated talk of the coming judgment. And not only this, notice what Ahab does. Elijah the prophet comes to give a message of relief after years of God's just judgment on Ahab's wickedness. And what does Ahab do? He places the blame on Elijah the innocent. Instead of him being accused, he's rightfully accused, as being the troubler of Israel, he pits the blame of God's judgment squarely on Elijah's feet. So in this instance we have the guilty one placing his guilt on the innocent. Now, you may be sitting here again, if you're not a Christian, or you may think you're a Christian, don't have a healthy relationship with conviction of sin and listening to the Word of God preached and read and sung. You may be sitting here and insisting that all the ills and the problems of your life and your sin And your misery is all outside yourself. The factors are outside yourself, has to do with upbringing and politics and the way you were brought up, the friends you had around you, maybe it was betrayal or abuse. And friend, there may be real legitimate reasons you're suffering right now that are really outside yourself. It really may be abuse or a friend betraying you. and causing you to suffer in some way. The fault may really lie elsewhere with your suffering. But my friend, you can't say that about the judgment of God. You can't place or pin the blame on anyone else when it comes to the judgment of God for you. Friend, what does Jesus require of you? Jesus tells you, keep the commandments. And he means all of them, including, you shall have no other gods before me. Loving him with all your heart, keeping your heart perfectly pure and perfectly cleansed from all wickedness. And how are you doing on that score? If you'd be honest, you'd see that your heart is more like Ahab's, more like the wicked than the righteous. It's bent on disobedience, and it's bent on injustice. Friends, you can't blame God's judgment on anyone else. His law, the mirror of his law, makes clear that it falls justly on you. And you deserve, and we deserve, God's judgment as much as Ahab. That's the problem for you. Eternal hell, eternal wrath of God, that's the problem. Here's the solution. Look at how the guilty Ahab places his guilt on the innocent Elijah. It's unjust. It's evasive. It's problematic. Friends, out of love, God in his justice takes your guilt and the judgment you deserve and places it on the innocent Jesus Christ on the cross. He counts the innocent Jesus dying on the cross bearing your shame as guilty on your behalf. Ahab counts Elijah as guilty and it does nothing. God counts Jesus as guilty in your place and it will save you if you turn from your sins and trust in Him. You can put the blame on certain evils and problems in your life in the ether. or on certain phenomena, this one, that one, it's vague and out there. God in His love, God so loves you, if you'll trust in Christ, that He doesn't put the blame you deserve out in the ether out there. He loves you so much that He puts the consequence and the judgment squarely on the head of His only Son. So friend, do you want that Ahab-like heart in you that hates confrontation, hates talk about the judgment, and pins the blame on everyone else outside yourself. Do you want that heart to be changed? Do you want to escape the coming judgment? You can't will it. You've got to trust in this Savior, and He'll take that heart and He'll change it. But that's Ahab. Ahab stands guilty. stands condemned, he won't budge, he resists Elijah, he calls him the troublemaker, the one who's troubled Israel, even though he's the one that's brought about the judgment of God on the nation, along with the nation. What about Elijah? That's our second brief point. Elijah rebuked, reviled, he's the one who's reviled. And we know that Elijah stands in a long list of the godly who bear the image and name of their Savior and are reviled because of it. Think of Noah preaching repentance to the people of the day and they mock and scorn him. Think of Moses' issues. Even Jeremiah who speaks all the word of God to the Israelites and they seek to kill him as a result. Think of those, that long list of godly prophets. And Elijah's in that company. He's on the other end of Ahab's blame and of his reviling. And he's reviled, as we said, for being the messenger and cause of God's coming judgment, which is as ridiculous and absurd as hating your favorite news reporter or the Wall Street Journal, something like that, for bringing in a report of war. Again, this is an instance of, like master, like servant. If you, Christian, are bearing Christ's image, and Christ's message, be sure you will be reviled as these men. Christian, you have no doubt encountered this opposition if you've walked with God for any length of time. You know the stark difference between the two addresses Elijah gets in 1 Kings 18. Notice Obadiah Addresses Elijah before Ahab gets to him and he says is it you my lord Elijah in verse 7 and then in verse 17 Ahab says is it you you troubler of Israel? You've known both You've known sweet fellowship with the people of God that speak kindly to you and love you for the sake of Christ And you've known perhaps in your evangelism with a son or a daughter, a father, a grandmother, a friend, a co-worker who's not a Christian, the other side. So, you've experienced it and it's maybe given you some discomfort, some sadness, some mourning, some discouragement because you've trotted on with the gospel and you've been stopped and treated vilely as Elijah. How do we get comfort in the midst of discomfort when we bear the message of Christ and inevitably get opposed like this? We could look at Matthew 5 where Jesus says that we will be called blessed when men speak evil of us, for ours is the inheritance of eternal life. We could look at 1 Peter 4 where the Spirit of God and glory rests on those who experience this kind of hatred. You could take some level of comfort as Jesus kind of tells us to take comfort in us being in a line of godly men who've been reviled and persecuted. It's one thing to have this in common with various prophets, men, and women of God in the past. That's one thing. But it's another for us to have this in common with Christ himself. Jesus bore this kind of reviling, this you troubler of Israel, this kind of hatred, to some degree in just about every sphere of his life. From family who thought he was out of his mind, friends who had abandoned him, and the religious elite who thought he was a blasphemer and a fool and sought his death. And this Jesus not only died and was buried, but is now risen with that physical body that went through this reviling and this persecution and this sort of hatred. He lives in heaven with that body as our sympathetic high priest who deals tenderly with us in heaven and has not only gone through it, but shares the treasure of allowing us to fellowship with him in his sufferings. So what do we do when we've been reviled? We rejoice according to Jesus. We have a high priest who has suffered as we have, has been touched in temptations and sufferings as we are, and desires that we should fellowship in his sufferings as he's in glory, praying and taking access of the treasury of comfort at his right hand. We have a great reward in heaven. 1 Peter 4.14, the spirit of glory and of God rests on us. We do what Elijah does in the next verse, knowing all these things. We keep on keeping on, he tells Ahab, you're the troubler of Israel, you're the one that's brought this evil. We keep on keeping on for the sake of love and obedience. Friends, Jesus has told us, we ought not to be surprised, he's told us as a guarantee that we will be hated, spoken evil of, reviled. What are we to do? To be surprised after he does that and gives us treasure after treasure of the spirit of glory resting on us and him as a high priest being there for us and our reward being great in heaven. Should we step back? Friends, we keep on keeping on for the sake of love and obedience, uncompromisingly preaching this gospel, the coming judgment and the way of escape to all who are like Ahab. knowing our reward, knowing our Jesus suffered the same way. Friends, we ourselves were Ahab's and God delights in taking obstinate, hard-hearted Ahab's and transforming them into sheep through our sharing of the gospel. So despite the revilings, we press on hoping and expecting for great things. And in the meantime, when we're cast aside like this, as we're guaranteed to experience, we fellowship with Jesus Christ in his sufferings. So friends, if you're like Ahab here, would you keep playing the blame game with your sin? Jesus took all the blame, shame, and consequences of your sin if you'll trust in Him. And Christian, as long as you're on earth, take it as a promise from Jesus Himself. You will be hated by all for my name's sake. The troublemakers will call you the troublers. They did it to Elijah. They did it to Jesus. Therefore, rejoice. Keep on the main thing. Keep heralding this gospel where the sovereignty of God has you in that moment. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your telling us and assuring us and guaranteeing us of opposition. Lord, we ask that you would give us power by the Spirit of God A knowledge that discouragement in it ought to drive us to Christ as our High Priest, who will supply rich treasures of comfort and power from the Holy Spirit, and to cause us to continue to herald the gospel, to be as uncompromising as Elijah and Jesus, expecting and hoping in you for great things. Lord, we do pray for those who have not trusted in you, even the young here who might have godly parents, but have not put their faith in you. We ask that you would transform them, give them new hearts, cause them to be born again by the Spirit of God, and to escape the coming judgment, and to love Jesus Christ, and to love holiness, to be godly, faithful members of this church. We thank you so much for this passage of scripture, and we pray that you'd be with us tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.