This Sunday Pastor Barron brings a message from II Kings 1:1-16, entitled, “Elijah: A Man of Faith & Conviction”.
So Ahab the king of Israel dies, and Ahaziah is now the king. It happened that this king had suffered a bad fall, and as a consequence, laid in his bed quite ill. He sends some messengers to make inquiries of the local deity, Baal, to see if he’ll recover from his injuries. Then the angel of the Lord interferes, telling Elijah to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, asking them “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?” Elijah proceeds to give the word of the Lord, saying “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.”
When the suffering king discovers upon their return that Elijah was the man who came to meet his messengers and deliver the unwelcome report, the king proceeds, three times, to dispatch a captain with fifty of his men–two dispatches are destroyed by fire, while a third captain shows wisdom the others didn’t have.
Elijah asks King Ahaziah “Is there no God in Israel?” That question is also for us, and we’ll be looking at it from a realistic perspective, not from religious lip service.