Before we come to God's Word this morning, let's bow our heads and our hearts in prayer together. Our great God and Heavenly Father, we confess that in many ways we have weary bodies, weary minds, weary souls. And so many of our thoughts and our attitudes are shrouded in darkness. And we need the light of your word to shine into our souls that in your light we might see light. We pray that you would give us understanding, Lord, as to our motives and our ways that we might leave this place this morning better equipped and with greater desires to serve you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Please turn in your copy of God's Word to 1 Kings chapter 22. 1 Kings chapter 22. Our reading is going to start in verse 51. It's actually going to continue through the entirety of chapter 1 of 2 Kings. 1 Kings. Chapter 22, beginning at verse 51. This is the holy, inerrant, inspired, infallible word of the living God, which lives and abides forever. 1 Kings 22, beginning at verse 51. Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel and Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and he reigned two years over Israel. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of his father, and in the way of his mother, and in the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. He served Baal and worshipped him and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger in every way that his father had done. After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel. Now Ahaziah fell through the lattice in 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, 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 the 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? And they said to him, there came a man to meet us and said to us, go back to the king who sent you and say to him, thus says the Lord, is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baals above the God of Ekron? Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die. He said to them, what kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things? They answered him, he wore a garment of hair with a belt of leather about 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 the top of a hill and said to him, oh man of God, the king says, come down. But Elijah answered the captain of 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. Again, the king sent him another captain of 50 men with his 50. And he answered and said to him, oh man of God, this is the king's order, come down quickly. But Elijah answered them, if I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty. Then the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty. Again, the king sent the captain of a third fifty with his fifty, and the third captain of 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 of him. So he arose and went down with him to the king and said to him, thus says the Lord, because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal Zobob, 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 the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die." So he died according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had spoken. Jehoram became king in his place in the second year of Jehoram, 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 the chronicles of the kings of Israel? Amen. Thus far the reading of God's word. A very interesting passage to say the least, one that has intrigued me for many years. Not the least of which because you have a situation where men are dying by the word of a prophet, which we'll come to in a minute. But first, as we come to this passage, we see that one of the main characters is this man Ahaziah, the king of Israel. The passage does not reveal much about him. He was a king for a short period of time, only two years. But what we have laid out for us in this passage is enough for us to understand about him and why he did what he did. If you turn back to verse 51 of chapter 22 in 1 Kings, We see that this man was the king of Israel. It says in verse 51, Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel and Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. He reigned two years over Israel. Now, the actual significant thing about Ahaziah is not so much that he's the king as much as that he's an Israelite. Now, think about redemptive history. What does it mean to be an Israelite? Well, what it means to be an Israelite is that God had brought you and your people out of the land of Egypt to be His special people. He had called you out of that land of slavery to serve Him. In other words, this was not a situation where God said, OK, well, I'm going to deliver you out of bondage. Now you can go and you can be your own masters. You can kind of form your own destiny. You can live life how you want it. God made it very clear. The reason He brought them out was to serve Him. It's very similar to what we find in the New Testament where it says that we were bought with a price. We're not to serve ourselves and our own bodies. We're to serve the Lord. The people of Israel were God's special people. God gave them laws to obey, commandments to follow. He was to be their God. and they were to be his people. All in this covenant relationship that he had brought them into. Ahaziah was an Israelite. Ahaziah was one of the covenant people of God. Ahaziah, in a sense, had a God. The God of Israel. But Ahaziah lived a very wicked life. And it's summarized very clearly for us in one verse, really, in verse 52, where it says, he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And it kind of summarizes it in three ways. He walked in the way of his father, his father being Ahab, who was renowned. It's the one king that the author in the Book of Kings kind of focuses on as being an idolater, leading the people astray. There's a couple chapters focused on Ahab and his wickedness and the evil that he did and his rebellion. And it says, Ehuziah, he followed his father's footsteps, was just like him. He also walked in the way of his mother, it says here. His mother was the infamous Jezebel, a name that's become renowned for wickedness and for evil. It says he was just like his mother. Meaning that he didn't love the Lord God, he didn't serve the Lord God, he sought after other gods and loved them and obeyed them and directed his life according to them. And then though, it goes back a little bit farther into history and says in verse 52, he also walked in the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. And this is really a summary of the fact that his heart was not faithfully devoted to the Lord God. If you remember the history of Israel, Jeroboam was the king who did not want his subjects, his people going down to Judah to worship in the place where God had chosen to set his name. He didn't want to risk defectors. as it were, back to Judah. So he said, you know what, let me set up a place in Dan and Beersheba where the people can go and worship. And that was a sin to Israel. It caused Israel to engage in idolatry. And they left off, for the most part, most of them left off serving the living and true God. But we learn one more thing about Ahaziah. And that's in verse 2 of chapter 1. In verse 2 of chapter 1 we read that he fell through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria and lay sick. We don't know hardly anything about the events of his life, but we know that at one point in his life there was an accident. and he felt he must have been walking over some sort of terrace or lattice. He fell through it, and it describes it as a sickness, whether this was a sickness or an injury that's described as a sickness. He's obviously, at least what he thinks, possibly at death's door. Because he says later in verse 2, So this was not a minor injury. This is him thinking, I might be at the end of my life now. This might be the beginning of the end. So not only is he an Israelite, not only has he lived a wicked life, but he's now at the point in his life where he's in a situation that's troubling him. He's in what you could call a deep trial, and he doesn't know the outcome of that trial. And don't we find ourselves in a situation like this? I wonder if anybody here this morning could say that I'm in some way in the midst of a deep trial. I'm in the midst of a difficulty. I'm in the midst of a situation. I'm not sure what the outcome will be. And I feel like I need to take some kind of action. I feel like I need to do something. I'm at a crossroads in my life. I'm facing a difficulty. What is my next step going to be? What am I going to turn to? What am I going to resort to? And maybe even as you think about that situation, it could be a small difficulty or maybe you were at death's door. Maybe you feel like you are at death's door. What is your next move? What has your next move already been? That's where we find Ahaziah. Well, what's his plan? Well, his plan is very succinctly summarized for us in verse 2, where he says, he sent messengers telling them, go inquire of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this sickness. So he sends someone to the god of Ekron. Now you read this passage and it does not seem like he's giving this much thought. In other words, it seems like this is his sort of, I don't want to call it knee-jerk reaction, but for him this was a relatively easy decision. In other words, if you didn't know any of this man's history, you might say, wait a minute, he's the king of Israel. Why is he going outside the borders, as it were? Why is he going outside the territory, as it were? Doesn't he have something local he could go to? And we have this type of situation, don't we, when somebody might be sick, and they decide to go for surgery somewhere else, maybe even in another country, and the question always arises, oh, I guess they didn't think that there was somebody local that could deal with this issue, that could help them with this issue. And it doesn't seem like he really, though, is, it doesn't say he wrestled with this a lot. You know, he really struggled with what to do, and finally he came to the conclusion, you know, I need to go outside. You see, this is just another line in Ahaziah's life, another step in Ahaziah's life where he's not turning to God. What he's doing here, he's been doing his whole life. There's really probably never been a time where he had any sort of difficulty, And he said, I need to go to God right now. I need to turn to the God of Israel. I need to seek after, I need to look after God. So here he is, he's sick. And what does he do? He's done the same thing he's done his whole life. And let me tell you, dear friends, dear brothers and sisters, you know, sometimes we flatter ourselves with this idea of, well, I'm gonna do something here, and I know it's not exactly the right method. I know God really probably wouldn't approve of what I'm doing. But this is not a big situation. It's really not a big deal. I mean, if this was a big deal, yes, I'd pray. And I would trust in God. And I'd rely upon God. But it's not easy to change. And when you develop habits in your life of continually, time and time again, turning to another God, as it were, turning, not resorting to God, taking a different course of action, you can't just all of a sudden, now a deep distress has come upon you. Say, oh well, now I'll turn to God. It's not in your DNA. It's not in your blood. your knee-jerk reaction, as it were, the easy decision for you will be taking the path that you have always taken. And doesn't this impress upon us the need to, even in the smallest things, making sure that we're obeying God, that we're turning to God, that we're resorting to God? A. His eye never did it, and now he's at death's door and we find him not doing it again. It's not a surprise. Now, in my previous example, with someone who might go out of country to get a surgery, usually it's a situation where they have a very high opinion of a physician that's outside our borders. You read this passage, and one of the things that jumps out at you is actually Ahaziah does not really have that high opinion of the god of Ekron. In other words, he doesn't think this god can help him recover. You know, this isn't a situation where he says, well, listen, I will go and see if, and cast myself at the mercy of this God, plead with this God to heal me, and I really believe that this God will restore me. He doesn't even consider that an option. It's like he says that that possibility is completely out of league for that God. I mean, he does not have a high opinion of the God of Ekron. All he wants to know is that this God can tell him the future. Remember, he thinks he may be dying. This is not, well, you know, I don't have to go to the best of the best. I mean, he's the king of Israel. He's going to be taking the path of action. He's going to be taking the course of action that he thinks is the very best. When you're dying, you don't goof around. You don't sit back and say, well, you know, I can try a couple of things. If this one doesn't work out, I'll be OK. If this one, no, no. You narrow it down to the one thing that you think is the best course of action you can take. And A, as I clearly thought, this is the very best thing that I can do, even though this God doesn't have the power to actually deliver me from this sickness, to actually raise me up and heal me, that's my best option. That's what I'm going to do. And don't we sometimes, friends and brethren, do the same thing? We're in a situation where we should be turning to God. but we end up turning to someone else or to something else. And there could be a gazillion ways this could happen. And let me give you some examples. Maybe it's a health situation. And instead of really, at the end of the day, your trust being in God and you're looking to God, you're trusting in doctors or in medicine or procedures. Or you want fulfillment. And instead of turning to God for the greatest fulfillment, you turn to your kids or your family, and you find your greatest fulfillment in them. Or you want love, and instead of turning to God, whose love is better than life itself, you turn to a significant other, or someone that you would like to be a significant other. Or you want security, And instead of turning to God to provide that security, you look to your job. And you say to yourself, as long as I can retain this job, then I'm okay. Or you need wisdom. You have a big decision coming up. And instead of turning to the Lord, you turn to other people and their supposed wisdom and their supposed advice. And we can multiply this time and time and time again. And in the small situations of our lives and in the biggest, we can find ourselves not resorting first to God and all that he can offer and instead turning our attention and our desires and our hopes to something else that we actually, at the end of the day, don't even necessarily have high hopes of and great expectations of. Are you acting like Ahaziah did, that God isn't even an option? You see, it's not even like a prophet had approached him. Ahaziah doesn't even consider Jehovah in this section. And are you in a situation where you're not even considering God? Or, when the Lord looks into your heart, He understands that He is your only option. That yes, yes, you're undergoing a procedure. Yes, you're getting advice from other people. Yes, you're pouring yourself into your family and kids. Yes, you're doing well in your job and you're doing your best, but you're not at all in any way banking your hopes on those things. but you're banking your hopes on the Lord God. Well, God's response is a powerful rhetorical question in verse 3. Through Elijah the Tishbite, the question comes to the king Ahaziah, is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-Zebub? God takes this very, very personally. God takes this very, very personally. In other words, He says to Ahaziah, you're acting, first of all, like I have no claim on you. You're acting like I have no claim on you. Don't you acknowledge my right to you? And this is one of the overwhelming themes in this passage. Ahaziah, you're an Israelite. I am the God of Israel. I have a claim to your affection. I have a claim to you turning to me, and looking to me, and calling out to me. This is why I saved you, as it were. Saved you, the people of Israel. So that I could act like a God to you. What kind of God am I if I don't do these things for my people? So, he says, you're acting like I don't have a claim on you. You're not acknowledging my right. Or, maybe, Ahaziah, you're acting like I don't care. Now, it would be very easy for Ahaziah to think that God didn't care, right? I mean, Ahaziah has not cared about God at all his whole life. And so sinners, when they've departed from God, they can have a tendency to think, sometimes not always wrongfully, well, I mean, I can't go to God now. Well, what's God going to do now? I mean, I'm not going to actually turn. He doesn't care to help me. I haven't obeyed Him my whole life. I've been turning from Him my whole life. I've never resorted to Him once. And now I'm going to go when I'm at death's door and I expect Him to care? I mean, you can imagine that if the thought even crossed Azi's mind that these thoughts might have followed. And he might have said, forget that. You know, I mean, that would, that would just look clearly like I'm acting, using God as a mercenary to heal me of this, of this sickness. But, God is saying to Ahaziah, you know, I'm not the one that broke off the relationship. Right? And all these things, Ahaziah is the one who's departing from the living God. It's not a situation where God broke off the relationship. Ahaziah is the one leaving. Ahaziah is the one resorting to somebody else. And as it were, God was so patient with his people, and one of the messages he tells them over and over and over again is, essentially, I was there, and you completely ignored me. So Ahaziah might have in his mind, but God doesn't care, and God's saying, no, despite all you've done, it was still my desire for you to come to me. It was still my desire for you to reach out to me. Or maybe Ahaziah thought God couldn't help. Now, he had a very low view of the god of Ekron's power, Beelzebub. Clearly, it's at least possible, I should say, that he had an even lower view of God's power, Jehovah's power. Again, unless he thought there's no way I can go back to the god of Jehovah because he doesn't care about me, it's very possible that he says, listen, I don't believe this god has any power to heal. I don't believe he has any power even to tell me when I'm going to die. So God's taking this very personally, and whatever ways that Ahaziah's thinking in his mind these three things, in whatever level, you can see it's a very personal offense to God. It's an insult to God. And we need to understand that though Ahaziah didn't actually speak to God, his actions spoke volumes of what he thought about God. And as I said last week, God is always the great situation that we are in. Every single thing that you do, every single word that you speak, every single decision that you make is saying something about God. And that's what was true with Isaiah. And the question comes to us, what are your responses right now in the situations that you're dealing with? What are they saying about God? What your belief is about God? What he thinks of you, whether he cares or not about you? What his power is? What is right over you is? What are they saying? Now, there's one thing that I thought of that we often can do, and it's this. We first try another alternative. So you can picture maybe Ahaziah doing this. This is kind of like, this is really what I'm trusting in. And then maybe, though he didn't do it in this passage, then going and saying, well, I'll pray to God just in case that works too. Now, he didn't do that. But sometimes we can get in a situation like this. We will try all these other means, and then we'll also pray. And we say, well, I prayed. I mean, I ask God to help me, and I ask God to deliver me, and I ask God to give me wisdom, and I ask God to heal me. And we sort of think that by just throwing the prayer out there, we're trusting in God. And that might not be the case. Was God your first resort? When you're praying to God, are you actually believing that He is your only hope? Now, when I say prayer, I understand that there are times where you literally might not be able to audibly say a prayer before you have to make a decision or course of action. But it's your life breathing this, that everything I do is by the grace of God and I need God every step of the way. And I'm dependent upon Him for all I have. And as I'm going through any difficulty and any trial, my only hope is in Him. How many times do we act and then pray? instead of praying and enacting, whether or not it's a literal prayer or an attitude of prayer. Now, it's clear God expected Ahaziah as a citizen of Israel to resort to him. It's clear from what we said before. God says, his appeal is, is there no God in Israel? He said, you're in Israel. I'm the God of Israel. This doesn't make sense what's going on. The only way that this would make sense, Ehaziah, is if you were not an Israelite. Then to some extent, he's saying, this would make sense. God never brings this type of claim to, let's say, the Edomites in these direct words. As it were, Israel's a special people. He expects something different from them. or if there was no God in Israel. If Ahaziah said, well listen, we don't have a God, so I gotta go somewhere. But God commands the respect of his creatures and especially of his people. And there's a sense in which every person sitting in this room, God has a claim on you. Now you might not be a Christian, God still has a claim on you. You're his creature. God made his creatures to be dependent upon him, to turn to him. But especially if you're a Christian in here this morning, if you're one of the people of God, God has a claim on you. He saved you so that you could be his very own. He saved you so that he could help you, so that he could deliver you, so that he could be your God and so that you could be his people. You said that you could turn to other gods in your times of distress, so you could rely on somebody else. Turning to somebody else is telling God, I'm really not being loyal to you. And I thought of it in this way, sort of by way of illustration. Let's say that it came tax time. two weeks from now, a week and a half from now, on many people's minds, comes tax time. Now, many of you know, some of you might not, that I'm a certified public accountant. We do tax returns. I don't do a lot of them myself, but I tell people I know enough to be dangerous. But what would you think if you were speaking to Leah, And it's a public conversation. I'm right there. And Leah says, you know, I'm really worried about this tax return. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it. I've been trying to find somebody who can do this for us. I can't find anybody reliable. So tomorrow I'm going to be driving down the road, and there's a guy down there who can do the tax return. I mean, you'd be thinking to yourself, whoa, whoa, whoa. Something's weird about this situation. Something's really weird because her husband is an accountant. Her husband can deal with this. Why isn't she turning to him? Why isn't she going to him? Why is she acting like she's maybe not even married or why is she acting like her husband doesn't know anything about the situation or can't help at all? And you'd be tempted to think, well, there's something weird in this relationship. You might even think this seems to some extent to be disloyalty, even. And if I stepped it up a notch, and let's say that, and turning the tables, I came back from work one day and said, I'm just really, I'm just really tired. I'm stressed out. I just need to have some good human interaction to boost my spirits. And I came home and I said to Leah, you know, there's this person at work that's just, they're really fun to hang out with, and it happens to be a female, and I just need some stress relief. I'm going to go be hanging out tonight at Dave and Buster's or something like this, right? Wait a minute. This is not just weird. This is disloyalty. This is unfaithfulness. This is betrayal. I mean, she has a right as my wife to think that when I'm stressed and discouraged and tired that I would go to her. I mean, that's the nature of the husband and wife relationship. And you can see how God is interacting with Ahaziah here, thinking the same exact thing. He's saying, Ahaziah, I have a right to demand your loyalty to me. I have a right to expect that when you have difficulty, you'd come to me, that you'd resort to me. And this is almost betrayal in my eyes. This is much more than you just maybe not making a good decision. And it didn't matter that Ahaziah had led a completely wicked life up until that point. God never relinquished his claim. And there's never been a human being in the history of the world that God has relinquished his claim upon. where God has said, as it were, well, you know what? I don't have a claim on you. I won't hold you accountable for what you do. You can turn to any other God with no repercussions. No. God always maintains his claim on his creatures and especially on his people. And God is saying, essentially, you went to a competitor. And I'm sure you've been in a situation where, and I face this sometimes in my work, where there's business transactions and somebody has to give word that they're changing vendors. And it might be a very long-standing relationship. I've used this vendor for years and years and years. And then they have to go and say, well, I'm changing. Oh, who are you going to? Well, I'm going to the guy right next door who's trying to put you out of business. And it's like, whoa, okay, well, I guess we're not friends anymore. I mean, that can have that twist or effect. You know, and that sort of sense can come across in that way. And God is saying, this is a first-degree insult. Not only are you not coming to me, you're going to the God next door who's a competitor to me. Is there no God in Israel that you're going to inquire of Baal Zebub? It should have taken, in those days, a lot for somebody to cross borders for help. This was people's state. I mean, how many times, think of it, even with the greatness of the God of Israel, how many times were people, as it were, crossing borders to come into Israel to serve Jehovah and all the wonders he had done? You have in all of Jericho, you have Rahab. And Rahab says, we all know what the God of Israel did, and nobody's leaving our God to serve him. Except me. That's essentially her testimony. I mean, people were very, very loyal to their gods. Very, very loyal to the gods of their nation. It's a very nationalistic type of attitude and a lot of national pride and loyalty. And so for Ahaziah to sort of betray all this and go to the god of Ekron is a huge step. The world was, as it were, not nearly as small as it is today. You know, now we easily go, I buy things from here and I buy things from there. Back then, your nationality, your national gods were everything to you. And to cross borders would have been a first degree insult. Think of even Naaman when he wanted to be healed from his sickness. It took him a while to warm up to the fact of going to another country. And Ahaziah is like, hey, let's go send somebody to God of Acheron. This is a first-degree insult. He went to a competitor. And you can sense the anger of God that he takes, the offense that God takes to this insult. He sends messengers to intercept the men. It's like, I'm not even letting this go one more step. Elijah go and intercept those messengers. I'm not allowing them to go to the god of Ekron. Let's stop this, cut this off in the root. He says in verse three, arise, go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and say to them. And then the messengers in verse five, they return to the king and he's like, what are you doing? What have you come back? And they basically say, we were told to come back. And God's like, yes, this isn't going another step farther. You're not going to that God. I'm offended by what you're doing. Well, it went from bad to worse for Ahaziah, didn't it? Because he didn't resort to God. And this is the way it always turns out for people who don't resort to God. In all this passage, he never gets the hint that, yes, let me repent of my sin, let me now turn to the Lord, and maybe something good will happen. We don't know. It's complete conjecture. What would have happened if Ahaziah confessed his sin? God has a track record, though, and many times, many times, He'd say almost all the time, you might say. He's willing to forgive sin for those who are truly penitent. But Ahaziah just refuses to do this. And it's always going to go from bad to worse when you refuse to turn to God. And at the end, for Ahaziah, that meant dying. That meant dying. He went from a situation where, I don't know what's going to happen, to a situation where he actually dies. And it's always going to go from bad to worse for you when you don't resort to God. Now, we get to this situation then where there's these men that he sends to Elijah. And, you know, it seems like, okay, is this the same theme of what's going on before? What's happening? What's the significance of these men going, calling to Elijah, Elijah calling down fire on them, you know, can seem a little bit cryptic. What's going on? Well, really the best way to understand this is A, Isaiah's continued disrespect for God. That's what's going on. He's continuing to disrespect God by disrespecting the messenger that God had sent. And so you have this whole scene in verses 9 through 12 where we read as follows. Then the king sent him a captain of 50 men with his 50. He went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, O man of God, the king says, come down. He's bossing Elijah around. I mean, basically saying, you're a criminal. I'm sending officers, soldiers to come and arrest you. Like, you're a common criminal. Think the way they treated Jesus, right? Jesus said, you've come out to me with swords and clubs, like I'm a common criminal. They're treating Elijah like he's a criminal. All he's done is give a word to the king. This is disrespecting the messenger of God. And you know how many times there's somebody who's very famous, and then they get arrested, and it's kind of embarrassing for them to be led through the crowd, and they're covering their face, and they're embarrassed that they're in handcuffs. And that's sort of what's going on here. It's embarrassing. It would have been, in a sense, embarrassing for Elijah to be arrested. and then brought to the king like he was a criminal. This is disrespectful. And then he demands him come down. It's like he's talking to a kid. Get down. I mean, it's not a request. It's a command. We're in charge. You need to obey us. Ahaziah, these captains with the authority of Ahaziah are saying, I'm the authority figure in here, you need to be listening to me. He's not respecting at all God's authority in all that's happening. He's not respecting the authority of God in the situation. And then later on, the next guy comes. And I guess this guy was under the, in verse 11, this guy's under the impression of, the guy before me was a little bit too soft. So he says, come down quickly. Like, okay, enough of these games, Elijah. You need to get down right now. Again, this is just blatant disrespect for the man of God. They don't really seem to think he's a man of God, because that's why Elijah says, if I am a man of God. It must be that Elijah sensed to some extent, you don't really think I'm a man of God. You're using this as sort of, okay, this is what you call yourself. But we don't really believe it. And so Elijah says, okay, well, if I'm a man of God, if I really am, which you don't believe I am, but if I am, let fire come down in judgment. It's basically to condemn you for speaking so lowly to me, for speaking so disrespectfully to me. So again, these verses are just showing Ahaziah's continued disrespect for God. And then you have this wise man at the end. He gets it. He doesn't want to die like the other men. And he realizes the key to living and the key to surviving is respecting the messenger of God. And so he comes and he bows down. He comes and he pleads. He falls down before him. He does not command him at all. He's entreating him. In other words, he's recognizing, you're the messenger of God. You really are a man of God. I'm trying to do my job. Help me to do it in a way that doesn't cost me my life. And so he goes with him, and there's no indication that he in any way apprehended him. You probably get the sense that maybe Elijah's walking forward, and they're just following him like, nobody's going near this guy. We're just going to follow him to the king, and we're going to just let him go. Maybe they surrounded him, but it almost seems certain that they didn't apprehend him in any way and treat him like a criminal. And the lesson for us, of course, is if we want to be wise, we need to recognize and respect God's claim over us. We need to recognize and respect God's claim for us. How many times are we in a situation where we have a difficulty, and we're in the midst of a trial, and we have to turn somewhere, and we treat God with disrespect? It's like, God, you don't have anything to do with this situation. Let me turn to the things I think will really help. And somebody might come to us with a word from God. Let me show you, let me show you what the Bible says, and it's like, I'm not listening to that. I'm not going to obey that. This is not significant to what I'm going through. And you're acting like these captains who are, listen, you need to come down here. I don't really believe you have a word from God. You need to come and give an account for yourself. When really, the one who has to give an account for himself is Ahaziah and his actions. And the end of the story is really a tragedy. I mean, you get through all this and nothing happens. Basically, the message is the same three times. You're gonna die, you're gonna die, you're gonna die, and now you die. It's a very, very depressing, sad story. But it's a very, very, very clear lesson, isn't it? People will die when they don't allow God to help them. People will die when they don't turn to God for help, like Ahaziah. And the Word of God calls for it very clearly today. Is there no Savior of sinners? Is there no Redeemer who's come into the world? Is there no God who's made heaven and earth who has enacted a plan of salvation? Is there not a God who's called men and women to repentance? Is there not a God who can actually change hearts? Is there no such thing as a God who can take out a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh? Is this not, are these things not true? These are all rhetorical questions that God, as it were, asks us in His Word. And because there are people all around the world, and even we ourselves are tempted to, turn to somebody else other than God, not believing what He said in His Word. acting as it were that God can't do this, that there's no God in Israel, that we don't have a God. Can anyone accuse us of ignoring God, of turning a blind eye to Him? Is there not a Savior who says, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest? Doesn't Jesus say this? Doesn't it mean then that we should turn to Him? Doesn't it mean that we should come to Him, resort to Him, call upon Him? And yet Jesus condemns people in his generation when he says, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. It's as if God says, I have come in person to deal with your situation. I have come in the flesh to deal with your situation, and you're refusing to resort to me. You're refusing to come to me. And dear friends, the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ was God's way of imposing himself on the situation to help his people. And it's the greatest disrespect when we turn away from our Savior and resort to other things to help us and other people to help us. And the preachers of the gospel have been about this for thousands of years, defending the honor of God, calling people to loyalty to God, calling people to trust in God, calling people to resort upon God, calling people to come to Him. And you will always be settling if you don't go to God. It will always be settling. for something less if you don't go to God. It will never be said, well, you know, they could have gone to God, but this other option, I mean, they turned to this person, they turned to this thing, they trusted in this, and it went actually pretty well for them. You see where that got Ahaziah? The Word of God says in no uncertain terms, you turn to somebody else, and it's not gonna go well for you. It will never be said of you that that option was actually a pretty good option. for you, that it ended up going pretty well for you, you will experience lesser love, lesser joy, lesser security, lesser wisdom, whenever you turn away from God. So as we think about Ahaziah, And we think about his tragic end, and we see how he got there. May the Lord God Almighty write it upon our hearts that we would have a renewed sense of loyalty to our God, that we turn to him in the midst of our everyday troubles and in the midst of our deepest distress, that it would never be said of us, as it were, dear Christian, do you not have a God that you can turn to, that you've done what you've done? Amen. Let's bow our heads and hearts in prayer together. A great God and Father in heaven, We are tempted, it seems, on every hand to turn to something else, to trust in something else, to resort to something else, to cry out to help for something else, to believe in something else other than You. And Lord, You have called us, Your people, to You, that You might be our God, that we might find in You our all in all. Lord, there is nothing that we need that cannot be found in you, that can't be satisfied by you, that can't be provided by you. Lord, help us to see the foolishness and the folly and the bitter end and the unsatisfying result of turning from you, the living and true God and our God, to anything else in this creation or anything else that we would dream of. Lord, we pray that these words of Elijah these words of yours that came through the prophet Elijah would resonate in our hearts and that we would commit ourselves again to you that would never be said of us that there was no God that we thought we could go to. That we didn't have a God that could help us. Might it never be the accusation that anyone can level against us. That we trusted in anything else but the Lord our God and in Jesus Christ, his only Son. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.