Thank you for listening to this sermon from Seven Springs Presbyterian Church. If you want to learn more about us, please find us on Facebook or visit us at sevenspringspresbyterian.com. Like I said, we'll be in 1 Kings chapter 20. We come to a new section, you might say, this evening. It's all one of one major story that we're looking at, but particularly in chapters 17, 18, and 19. We've been in the same period of time during the reign of Ahab, but the focus has really been, you might say, on Elijah. And Elijah is the prophet and he's the main person that we follow as we go along in our time. Ahab has played a very large role but you might say then Elijah is the main character. Well technically speaking God is the main character, character, actor, I never really know a good term to be able to use but he's the main person. in the story but Elijah has kind of been the central part of that. However what we see in chapters 20, 21 and 22 is really the demise of Ahab but really Ahab becomes the main character. We'll kind of note this as we go through, but God's really not mentioned a lot specifically on the lips of Ahab, although God does work through the details. But you might also say there's a difference between chapters 17 to 19. where the focus is really internally on the nation, internally with the relationship between Israel and their God and their King. And then what we move in these, the new section, chapters 20, 21 and 22 is more external. The foreign side of Ahab's reign. So the first might be domestic, the second foreign. but it's still all connected. As we remember how we ended in chapter 19 where Elijah was there with the Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, and this should always be in the back of our minds. We've been told exactly what is going to happen in the next coming chapters into 2 Kings right into chapter 8 and 9 we actually know all the way to the end of 2 Kings. We know exactly what is going to happen. The prophet who prophesied Jeroboam and what is going to happen through Josiah. But in 1 Kings chapter 19 the Lord told Elijah exactly what was going to come about. And the Lord said to Elijah, Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. And Jehu the son of Nimshi, and you shall anoint to be king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-Mehola, You shall anoint to be prophet in your place. And the one who escapes the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death. And the one who escapes the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death. Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him." So it's quite simple what is going to happen in the next coming chapters. We know exactly what's going to happen. Quite simply, God is going to judge Israel for their unfaithfulness towards Him, for their sins, for the sins of the King. Hazael, Jehu, and then Elisha will be God's appointed judges. But yet God will still remain and show grace as we see in Romans chapter 11. Chosen by grace, these 7,000 people that God is leaving as a remnant. Now, before we get to this, the actual passage site, I want to be able to take a big step back and to be able to understand how these three chapters kind of tie together and go into one broader story. And if we come to these stories that we find in here, and we see them merely as just individual stories. I think we can miss the point of why they're grouped together. We need to understand that the Holy Spirit never inspired someone to be able to write scripture merely just to be able to fill in words, to be able to get some form of word count, some form of deadline. He didn't put them in some sort of order just for entertainment purposes or merely just for any other reason. He's not including information merely just for including information's sake. And so when we come to sections like this in the Bible, it can be difficult. It appears merely like there's this collection of random stories. Why does Naboth's vineyard have anything to do with the relationship between Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria? How does that at all connect with any of this? How does then the false prophets in chapter 22, how does that relate to this period of time in these scriptures? And so this can be difficult when you come to these portions of the Bible. It really just appears like a random collection of stories. And if we merely just read them as individual stories, we might be able to gain some insight into them. But I think you miss a lot of the important pieces of information. And more importantly, I think you miss the theological implications of the stories as they intertwine with one another. So this is why we're gonna take a brief step back. We're gonna get into the first 12 verses tonight. But we need to be able to understand about all of these stories. Now within this section between chapters 20 verse 1 to 22 verse 40, there's a lot of verses in there, but really there's five major stories within this time in this section. Firstly, the battles of the hills of Ben-Hadad. And then secondly, a part of the second part of that is the battle of plains with Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria. The third part, the third story is Naboth's vineyard. The next portion of that is Ahab's repentance and then fifthly the battle of Ramoth Gilead with Jehoshaphat. So these five stories, they're standalone stories. Now, the first two both deal with Ben-Hadad. They're somewhat interconnected, and they are, as we'll look at. There's one real major battle that's happening. They're divided by seasons. One happens in the spring in the plains, and one happens earlier in the hills. So we can see these clear markers throughout this of the stories that are start and end and they find a conclusion, there's an end to the story that happens with Ben-Hadad. Now, he appears later, it's important to the stories later, but we see these clear things. But it's more than meets the eye, that every one of these stories has an interaction with a prophet. And that's one of the key things that we're gonna be focusing on. That over the course of time, we made about six different prophets throughout all of these stories. All of these prophets then interact with Ahab as king. So we see this overlap that all of these stories are telling us something about Ahab and particularly God's role, God's prophet and what he says to Ahab. So we see this important part that these stories are then not merely just random stories, they're trying to tell us something about how Ahab the king interacts with the prophets. And as you start to be able to read through these, what you start to be able to see is, we don't even need to be able to go into the details of this, we'll get there as we go through each of these stories, but we must start with the question as we notice that, what's the interaction that Ahab has with the prophets? What happens in the end? Always a good question to be able to ask. God provides prophets for a reason. And we saw this, didn't we, with Saul and Samuel. It was very, very clear. The interaction between the king and the prophet, Samuel. Actually, Saul did not listen to the voice of the prophet. He listened to his own voice. And he did not carry out the judgment that he should have that was required by and told to him by Samuel. You saw it with David and Gad and David and Nathan, didn't we as well? That here you have a prophet and how the king interacts with the prophet is very important. Dale Ralph Davis, as he always does, puts it in a quite interesting way. No other king receives such a literally battering from the sacred rider. But no other king is the likes of Ahab had come along. Chapters 20 to 22 then indeed intend to display Ahab's repeated and fatal oppositions to the word of Yahweh. So we start to be able to see this pattern. And then this helps us to be able to see that they're not merely a collection of stories just put together at the end to try and fill in some space, not merely just tried to be able to tell us a little bit more about the reign of King Ahab, but we start to be able to see the bigger, broader story that's happening. So how, before we get into the interaction, how can we then, when we come to things like this, what are some tools that we can do to be able to help us understand how do we find the main point when we come to passages like this? The first thing is that I find really helpful is to start by asking questions. Why is this here? Is one of the great questions we can ask. Again, if we believe that the Holy Spirit has inspired the Bible and given us all of Scripture, then nothing merely just happens by chance and nothing is merely just there for any reason. That God has included it in His Word for a particular reason, and that's helpful for us to be able to understand. Why, often questions come up, why is this part so long? Why is so much time given to this? That can sometimes be the greatest pointer that there's something that the Holy Spirit, through his inspiration, wanted us to be able to understand. So therefore, we should spend more time diving a bit deeper into it to be able to ask those questions. The second thing is read through it as stories. and not merely just in isolation of one chapter at a time, to be able to just start early and to be able to read through it. As you're reading through it, start writing down questions or notes. Why does this happen? Why is this here? And once you start to be able to read through it in one sitting, then I think you start to be able to see the... that there's more than just one story. If you sit down and just say, I'm gonna read the story of Naboth's Vineyard, and then we dive into that and dive into that study, then that can be helpful. But context is one of the biggest clues when we start to be able to see this. And then you can start isolating the stories one by one. See if there's any similarities, any patterns that persist throughout all of this. So if you have a group of three stories that are put together, the first two have similar endings, but the third one has a drastically different ending, then you start to be able to say, well, there's a difference between the first two and the third one. And you start to be able to see not only the similarities, but the differences. A simple example, three little pigs, right? Three little pigs. The wolf does the exact same thing in all three instances. He huffs and he puffs and he tries to blow the house down. But the three little pigs, there's something about the first two pigs that we need to pay attention to, and there's a difference with the third. You have one that straw and sticks, and what happens? They fall down. But what happens with the bricks? The emphasis is on the bricks, right? The emphasis is on the third pig with the bricks. And we're able to be able to see that pattern just through reading about it. Now you can get into more of the construction methods and different philosophies that you have there, but just that's a simple thing that we understand that is ever before us, and it's true in biblical narratives. That right after Exodus 15, when they sing the song of Moses, Exodus 16 to 17, we see repeated trials that come upon the people of God. There again, not merely this collection of, they're teaching us each, one individually teaching us about who God is and what he is doing for his people, but collectively they tell us a story as well. We'll see it when we interact with Elisha and Elijah. What we'll see is there's patterns of repetition between Elijah and Elisha. That both of them raise a dead widow's son, a widow's dead son. Both of them provide for widows. They have very, very similar things. You see contrasts of similarities and differences between Esau and Jacob. They both have large families. Judah and Joseph, you see this with Tamar and Potiphar's wife, these two stories put together. Again, if we just read them as isolation, but they're put side by side for a reason. So in this instance, as I read through these passages trying to understand, I simply went through and noted and tried to divide it up. And in these micro stories, these smaller parts of this big story, I always be able to, chapter 20, I think is one big story, but I think you can see in two parts dealing with Ben-Hadad. But here, I simply started jotting things down. and started noticing this similar pattern that happens. An event happens, Ahab does something, and a prophet comes to Ahab. And eventually, what the prophet says comes to fruition. Now, it doesn't happen immediately, but it does. And you see this pattern throughout all of these stories. Ahab does something, the prophet comes, and tells of an outcome that carries out and is done. That leads to the third and final tip that I think is helpful when you come to things like this, and that's the movement and progression. So you see the similarities, you see the differences after you read through it, after you've made notes and things like this, but where is it going? What's the movement that we see? We saw this with the kings. What we saw was this repetition between the kings from Jeroboam to Ahab. We see this repetition, this similarity, right? Of these kings that come one after another. But not merely you see the similarities of the seven kings, you see a movement and progression as you go. You might say this cycle, this spiral of the kings getting worse. finally in their culmination of Ahab, the most, terrible English again, the most wickedest king that there is. So again, you see that movement and progression, where do you start and where do you end up? The end of chapter 16, we're told that Ahab is a wicked king that has ever lived. And it's easy for him to be able to do the sins of Jeroboam. Again, this contrast to Jeroboam. You see it in the plagues in Exodus. It's not merely the 10 plagues are there to be able to say, I gotta hit 10 plagues. The 10 plagues are a spiral of each judgment getting worse of these signs and wonders, moving down to death and decay until finally death comes to the firstborn. You see it in the book of Judges. What you begin with is, is this period of time in the judges where everyone's doing what is right in their own eyes, but eventually you see this spiral and this outcome, this movement, this progression where Israel becomes like Sodom and Gomorrah with the tribe of Benjamin. So they're becoming, so once we start, where does Ahab start and where does he end at the end of this period of time? So we know where this tale is going to end. 1 Kings chapter 19 has already told us what's gonna happen at the end of all of this. Hazael will be king of Assyria. Jehu would be king over Israel. Elisha is going to be the prophet to replace Elijah. But at the beginning of chapter 20, we don't have Hazael, we have Ben-Hadad, who's king of Syria. We don't have Jehu as king of Israel, we've got Ahab as king of Israel. And Elijah is still the prophet. So you see there's movement and progression, that's going to be the outcome, we already know that. So how do we get there? What we'll see as we go through. We see that these three judges have not been anointed yet as kings or prophets. So we see this movement and progression. We can start, even before we have started reading into each of these detailed stories, we're already aware that we need to be paying attention to the prophets and their interactions with Ahab. We need to be paying attention to all of these players, you know, Israel and who's the king of Israel, the king of Syria. We need to be paying attention to all this. We can then start to be able to see God's hand of providence working throughout all of this. So even though we haven't studied each word and each sentence, what everyone says, we're able to know what we're looking out for and how we're trying to be able to interact with it. Then we can start asking questions. How does this fulfill the prophecy? Or how do these move the pieces to be able to fulfill the prophecy later down the road on the world stage to be able to fulfill that prophecy given to Elijah from God in 1 Kings chapter 19? How does this then fulfill maybe the prophets that are interacting with Ahab as we read through these stories? How do we see Ahab interact with these prophets? Is it positive? Is it negative? Does he end up following through, listening to them? Does he change his ways? Does he repent? So now we start to be able to see how all of this can be helpful when we start to read through stories like this. Instead of merely just trying to cherry pick and trying to say, you know, is there some form of moral lesson in this particular story, we can start to be able to understand some of these moving pieces, the broader thing of what's happening. That's where we begin in verse 1. Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, gathered all his army together. Thirty-two kings were with him. and horses and chariots. And he went up and closed in on Samaria and fought against it." So Ben-Hadad is the king in Syria, known as Aram, northern part of Israel. This is where kind of Abram kind of moved from. And so Ben-Hadad is a very common name. We've met a man before called Hadad, who was the king of Edom, I think from memory. And so Ben-Hadad can be a kind of a common name. Again, we don't necessarily have equivalents in this in America. I can think of two examples that might relate. The first is that of popes. Popes often will carry on a name. So the current Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but he goes by Pope Francis, not Pope Jorge. So he chooses a name when it's an official title that he chooses. The other is Kings of England. I tried explaining this to the kids the other day on Independence Day, just about kings in England and their history, but they normally take on their Christian names. This isn't always the case. So they might take on, you know, King Charles has four names actually, so he gets to choose from four that he is able, but three times in history it hasn't been the case. Queen Victoria was actually Queen Alexandria. King Edward, Victoria's son, was actually Albert. And then George VI, Edward, his brother, abdicated the throne. Wallis Simpson, an American, he married her and she was divorced and so he couldn't be the, so he abdicated the throne. But he was born Albert, but known Bertie, but he took on the name of his great-grandfather, George. Now some people thought that Charles wasn't actually going to go by Charles because Charles I and Charles II were not necessarily super nice kings, particularly if you're a Presbyterian or a dissenter in our camp. So some people thought that he might not take that name, he might go by George because George is a very strong name, particularly historically. Now enough about history of monarchs and British monarch, but here all that to say is to be able to say Ben-Hadad is a very common name. And Hadad doesn't mean that Hadad is his father. Hadad is actually a name of a god that would worship. Hadad or Adad is another way, god of storm or god of thunder. And so many times what they would take on is the name of the gods and see that divine appointment of them being the king. So again, it's a very common name. Most people think he's Ben-Hadad I, you know, in the history books and things like this. But here, Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria. He gathers all this army together. We see chariots and horses, and this is always a sign of a very strong army. Chariots and horses were a sign of wealth, special training, special materials, all going in to be able to manufacture all of these things, and then also not merely just the purchasing of them. the upkeep of having all these horses that are ready for battle to be able to know. Some people know about this more than others in this room. But it's always a sign of strength when you see an army with chariots and horses, always a sign of strength. And we also see 32 kings that are with him. Now again, we must be thinking in our mind, this is an enormous army, and it is. We'll find more about the numbers later, but what we need to understand is it's not kings as we would normally think of kings and presidents. Nations around this time, there were very, very fluid in their movements, they would rise and fall. Nations would be more local, regional, family structured. So these people that would be called kings, not necessarily kings of great large nations, but more little pockets. It's hard to be able to find an example today of what this would look like in United States of America. Again, we don't have kings, so it's hard to be able to find what that is, but it may be a little bit more of a young America underneath the Articles of Confederation before the Federalist Papers came out and the Constitution was around. More localized and regional. And so these 32 kings, whatever size they would have been, had alliances and allies, these small families, tribes. Some of them would have been large cities. Some of them also could have been nations. But often what you would find is these politically small tribes would align themselves with a larger nation with more resources to be able to help them in battles. They're vulnerable. But if you partner with someone like the Assyrians in this case, Aram, who's larger, who also has all these other allies, if something was to happen to you, then they would come to your aid. That's what you would kind of promise. You would promise to their king, make a covenant with their king, We'll see Ahab do this actually with Ben-Hadad later in the chapter. But you make a covenant with them and you kind of say, we'll fight your battles if you come and help me fight ours. Or if we'll give you this certain thing and you kind of do this. And so Australia kind of has a very similar military strategy. I haven't read any official documents saying as such, but we kind of, we'll help anyone, you know, we'll help Britain, we'll help America, we'll come alongside and be your allies because we realize that we have quite a large land mass, but we don't have a large population. So if we were to be attacked, We'd need a lot of strong allies, and who better than America to be your ally, to be able to come and help and assist you. So that's what we're seeing with these 32 kings. So we see the extent that Ben-Hadad has of power as a powerful king. And so what he does is he then, in verses two and three, is he sends messengers into the city to Ahab, the king of Israel, and said to him, says Ben-Hadad, your silver and your gold are mine, your best wives and children also are mine. So we see the power of the sinful heart, what's happening during this time. He seeks to be able to take over, sets up a siege around Samaria and says basically, you give me your money and your wives and your children, you see the power of that sinful heart that there's never enough that you can get. The sin of greed, the sin of lust, the sin of even getting more power. comes to this. Now he says, your best wives. I'm not sure really what that means. Does Ahab try and send the other wives or does that then also mean his best wives and his best children? And as Ahab sends them out, Ben-Hadad's going, no, no, no, I don't want these children. I want your other well-behaved ones. So I'm not sure exactly what that means. But Ahab's then response is quite surprising. It's surprising in one way, it's not surprising in another. When we've interacted with Ahab, Ahab really does not seem to be a strong king with a strong backbone. He seems really to be able to be swayed one way or another, a really typical yes man, you might say. But here, King Ahab, And specifically what's heightened throughout all of these stories is it's not specifically focusing on Ahab as a person, although that is true. Specifically what we see this repetition throughout these stories is the king of Israel. So again, he's not merely just a man, he's functioning as the role of the king of God's covenant people of Israel. And here, the king of Israel answered, as you say, my lord, O king, I am yours and all that I have. So here, your best wives, your best kids, you're silver and gold, and Ahab says, take him. I'm yours. You can have what you want. So Ben-Hadad then responds. He responds in verses five and six quite simply, messengers come in again and said, thus says Ben-Hadad. Now interesting what this pattern, thus says Ben-Hadad, is often the refrain that's used, thus says the Lord. So again we see that interaction of these roles of these foreign kings seeing themselves as some form of deity that comes in. And he says, Thus said Ben-Hadad, I send to you, saying, Deliver me your silver and your gold, your wives and your children. Nevertheless, I will send my servants to you tomorrow about this time, and they shall search your house and the houses of your servants, and lay hands on whatever pleases you, and take it away. So Ben-Hadad Ahab says, go ahead, take them. They're all yours. I'm yours. Take whatever you want. And Ben-Hadad responds and says, maybe I should have asked for more. And so he actually raises the bar and says, I'm not merely going to take your gold and your silver, your wife and your children, the best ones. I'm also going to take whatever pleases you, everything. Now this is not merely just, you know, Ben Haddad's fallen on hard times and he's really struggling to be able to make ends meet. So he's really trying to show his power in a powerhouse to be able to threaten other nations. If you can go in and do this to a nation, then other nations really won't want to fight you. And so, but we also need to understand that what he's actually saying here is not merely, you know, give me your, he's actually saying, I've won. This is a victory. This is what you would do after you accomplished and demolished all of your enemies. If you go in and you take and plunder the whole city, you'd bring out everything that you wanted. And this is exactly what Ben Haddad is doing in this instance. So he's trying to be able to plunder Ahab while he's still alive. And Ahab is basically just rolling over saying, you know, yes. He's basically just waving the flag, the white flag, and saying, you've defeated me. And so we see this drive of this passage that begins with Ben-Hadad and this conflict between Ahab as the king of Israel. Now, what should you do in this instance? Now long before you should be interacting with them, what we'll see later in chapter 22, Jehoshaphat, a good name again for those keeping track of potential names for baby Rickard if it's a boy. But what would a godly king do in this situation? Well we see Jehoshaphat in chapter 22 says, inquire first the word of the Lord. This should have been the first thing that he does as king of Israel. Go to find a prophet to be able to help us to know what to do. But what does Ahab do? In verse 7 of chapter 20 we find out that the king of Israel called the elders of the land and said, Mark now and see how this man is seeking trouble. For he sent to me for my wives and my children and my silver and my gold and I did not refuse him. And so he basically says, now He's seeking trouble, he's seeking to be able to find something to be able to create trouble in this time. So the elders respond in verse 8 and they explain that the elders and all the people said to him, do not listen, do not work in sin. Here the elders are saying, you know, you shouldn't do this. Again, this is a really weak political move on Ahab's part because really what he's doing, although he might be trying to preserve his own life, he's actually not protecting what he's meant to be able to do. Why is a king meant to be able to be there? One of the reasons was that they wanted a king in the first place was to fight their battles. And yet this king is just saying, go ahead, take all my subjects, take all my things, that doesn't matter. But here what we see is the elder saying, don't listen, don't consent. And so he sends messengers to Ben-Hadad in verse nine, and tell my lord the king, all that you first demanded of your servants I will do, your servant I will do, but this thing I cannot do. And the messengers departed and brought him word again. So he says here that he can do the first part but not the second part. Now what does that normally mean? So we know that there's three things, three categories that he is asking for. His money, his wealth, the gold and silver. The second part is his wives and his children. And the third part is whatever pleases Ahab, whatever they come and find. So it could be a combination and you can do the first two categories but not the third. Or you can do the first categories, our gold and our silver, but not the wives, children, and the possessions that we have. Now specifically, I tend to believe that you can do what I promised at the start. I'm a man of my word. You can take my best wives, my best kids, my money, and my gold, but don't touch anything else. That's kind of what we see. So I think here what he's moving to is he's not admitting defeat. He's saying he's loyal, but he's not admitting defeat. You see eventually that he does make an alliance, a covenant with Ben-Hadad. So in verse 10, we see Ben-Hadad respond another time and he said, the gods do so to me and more also if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls of all the people who follow me. And here we see this main conflict then start to grow. Ben-Hadad then makes an oath, spoken about them quite in depth recently, but basically Ben-Hadad is saying that the gods would hold him accountable for what he is saying and what he is doing. That if he does not bring Samaria to dust, then he would be judged by the gods. This is exactly what Jezebel said when she finds out about the prophets of Baal and what Elijah did to them in chapter 18. So may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow. So again, we see this pattern of these oaths that are made from these foreign people. And finally in verse 11 we see the surprising thing that Ahab grows a backbone. Him who straps on his armor boasts himself as he who takes it off." So Ahab really came back with some fighting words. Ben-Hadad basically says, I'm making an oath that I'm going to destroy you and wipe you out. Now Ahab turns around and says, it's easy to put your armor on. It's who takes it off, that's the real question. If you can take your armor off after a battle, that means you can boast about that. But putting on armor is not worth boasting about. And so it's really about who is going to win. Now we notice next week that Ahab, or next time when we study this, that Ahab has no idea what he's going to do. You look down in verse 13 and 14, a prophet comes to him and explains the Lord is going to fight this great multitude for them. and that he would know who is the Lord. And Ahab turns around in verse 14 and says, who? Who is going to fight this great multitude? So here, Ahab is saying, be careful what you say to Ben-Hadad. You can boast after you take your armor off. But here, he doesn't know who's going to win this battle. He's not quite sure of this. But what we see is Ben-Hadad thinks again that he's already won the battle. He thinks he could plunder Israel and he's celebrating like he's already had victory. You see this in our final verse tonight in verse 12. Ben-Hadad heard this message as he was drinking with the kings in the booths and he said to his men, take your positions. And they took their positions against the city. So this really helps set the stage of what is to come as we'll look at in a couple of weeks. But as we think about, you see here the kings are in their booths, they're in tents outside the city. They're already celebrating, thinking they've already won the battle. But it's interesting when we think about what God has already promised. He's promised that he would judge Israel. He's gonna judge Ahab on the mountain of God where he told Elijah. But we also notice that his plan is not merely just to judge Israel. A part of his plan is to judge Syria as well. Hazael, the king who's going to be anointed to be king over Syria, is going to be the person who dethrones Ben-Hadad. And so we need to be able to see that God's hand is moving in all of this. Ben-Hadad is also going to be judged by God as well. And so we need to understand that as this stage is set for this battle, Ben-Hadad is a great superpower. An alliance with 32 kings, with horses and chariots, we'll see that eventually in the hills of the plains, they come back to be able to find an army of a similar size. So we must assume that this army is quite a sizable army. We find out the second army in the Battle of the Plains. We don't know specifically the number here. But what we actually see is it's a large army that again, Ahab says, who is gonna win against this great multitude? But here God is not only just judging Israel, he also has made a promise to Elijah. Ben-Hadad made a promise to his God that he was gonna wipe out Ahab and Samaria, but God's not gonna let that happen. Remember that short little promise that's right at the very end of chapter 19 and verse 18. And yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him. And so again, we see God's promise here is God's preservation of his holy remnant is able to be able to preserve his people through this horrific time. And you see even Ahab is not necessarily acting wisely in this time. We'll see that he does make a covenant with Ben-Hadad, but he gets then rebuked by a prophet for making that covenant with Ben-Hadad. But again, Paul points this out in Romans chapter 12, has God rejected the people whom he foreknew? Here's a great example. Has God rejected His people? And the answer is no, that He has not rejected them. He had promised that He was keeping a small remnant, chosen by grace is what Paul says in verses five and six of these people. That just as there is now, there's a chosen remnant, chosen by grace. That God protects and preserves His people. Now again, you see Ben-Hadad make an oath to be able to destroy Ahab, this foolish oath, just as Isabel made a foolish oath as well. But why doesn't God destroy Israel, let this happen? It's because God has made a promise. didn't swear by another God, he swore by himself. This is Hebrews 6 passage that comes up when we talk about oaths and God making an oath. But in Hebrews chapter 6 the author of Hebrews says, For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself. So here God makes a promise to Abraham and who does he swear by? He swears by himself. saying, Surely I will bless you and multiply you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of His promise, He guaranteed it with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus is gone as forerunner on our half, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So here, the author of Hebrews points to the oath that the Lord makes with Abraham, but then he also then connects it to us today, where he says, we who have fled for refuge might have the strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. So God has made a promise to us. that He would not, He will preserve us. He will always remain and have a strong remnant throughout the world of His faithful people. And He will not let kings, even though they make foolish oaths or foolish things, to be able to come and take over and destroy His people. And we see this very clearly in 1 Kings chapter 20. Why does God not let just Ben-Hadad wipe out King Ahab? Well, it's not a part of his plan because he's still preserving his remnant in his time. And his judgment will not only fall on Israel, it will also fall on Syria with Hazael as well. So we see all of these things started to be set up throughout the hand of providence and God. And God keeping his promises to his people. Thank you for listening to this sermon from Seven Springs Presbyterian Church. If you want to learn more about us, please find us on Facebook or visit us at sevenspringspresbyterian.com. Seven Springs Presbyterian Church began in 1874 and is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America located in Glade Spring, Virginia. Please join us for worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. for His glory and His gospel.