Tales of the Tishbite

And the title is, Tales of the Tishbite. Tales of the Tishbite.

There is a statement made by, I think, George Santegna. Actually said many of you have heard it many times. Those who refuse to remember the past are condemned to repeat it. That tells us we should learn from the lessons we go through, or the lessons that other people have gone through. I would read many books in the past so I could read of people's successes. Also failures, so I did not have to necessarily go through the same failures.

The Tishbite, the man I want to talk about today, the Tishbite, he's mentioned in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Romans, Malachi, and a few other books.

So the Tishbite was very respected, very revered.

But I want to bring into focus one question that the Tishbite was asked 2,500 years ago. And it's a question that I hope we can answer today when we're through with this message. And the question the Tishbite was asked is, why are you here? Why are you here? Have you ever been asked that question? Maybe you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. I bet every one of us been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But occasionally we are at the right place at the right time. I just heard this week in Chicago, what happened two weeks ago, that an individual actually won the lottery three times in a month. So I guess you would have to say he was at the right place at the right time. Unless his life really turns upside down, it sometimes does when you win that. Right place at the right time. I felt like I was in the right place. In 1981, St. Petersburg, Florida, when I met the woman sitting on the front row, hopefully she felt the same way. She doesn't feel like it was a wrong place at the wrong time. After 29 years.

Has God ever asked you that question? What are you doing here? Have you ever asked yourself that question? What am I doing here? I think of Mordecai in the story of Esther, in the book of Esther, where he asked her the question for who knows whether you have come to this kingdom for such a time as this, if you remember the story. It was a serious question he had to ask his niece.

Perhaps people should have asked themselves this question in Scripture. How about Samson hanging out in Delilah's parlor?

Maybe he should have asked the question, what am I doing here? I'm a judge. I'm a judge of God's people. And I'm nothing but a common whoremonger. Or perhaps David on the balcony of his palace late one night. He had asked the question, what am I doing here? I'm the king, not a peeping tom.

Could have saved him a lot of grief.

You ever thought about that yourself? Have you ever thought that, hmm, I'm part of the priesthood? Because you are. You're called out from the world.

Have you ever said to yourself, because I'm part of the priesthood, I'm training to rule as a king, as priests in God's coming kingdom. I don't need to see that.

Maybe I don't need to watch that. What am I doing here? Maybe I don't need to act that way.

Maybe I don't need to go there.

Or why am I with these people? Why am I with these people?

I reflect back to a time in 1978. It was 19. It was at a place where I should not have been.

By God's grace. I am here today. But I was in the wrong place the wrong time with the wrong people. So many young people find out today. So I ask the question, what are you doing here? Just like God asked the Tishbite. Like you turn to 1 Peter 2, if you will, 1 Peter 2 and verse 9. Peter wants to make sure at the end of his life that he points God's people in the right direction. So in 1 Peter 2 and verse 9, power scripture to me, this is one of the first that I memorized many years ago.

In the New King James it says, But you are a chosen generation, you called out, ones you. A royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And I want you to look, proclaim the praises of him. And we can do that verbally, or we can do that by the example that we set before people as we live, God's way of life. I'll read from the New Living Translation because they put it just a little bit differently. I hope it helps us. It says in verse 9, Well, in verse 8 it actually talks about, says the people of the world, they stumble because they do not obey God's words, so they meet the fate that was planned for them. And then it says, But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people, you are royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others a goodness of God, for He has called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Said, Once you had no identity as a people, now you are God's people. Once you receive no mercy, now you receive God's mercy. What a blessing! What a blessing! Peter goes on in 2 Peter 1 and verse 2 through 3 actually says that we are partakers of the divine nature, partakers of God's very nature. He has given His Holy Spirit so that we, if I can put this in the right context without people jumping to conclusions, there's part of God in us.

Do we use it? Do we realize that we have a part of God? In us. Because we have His Holy Spirit, His 1 Corinthians mentions quite a few times. Are you fulfilling your destiny, whether, in your little corner of the world, in your time?

Have you ever read a biography or even autobiographies of famous or successful people? Perhaps it was business books. I read quite a few, like Jack Welch's book, Trump's Art of the Deal, the Iacocca, various things when I was in business.

But I was not called to be a king or a priest in business. Took me a while to figure that out. It's not why I was called by God. I was not called to be a professional athlete. For one thing, I was not the lottery winner of the gene pool, as our favorite athlete around here, LeBron James, is. He won the lottery when it comes to genes.

He is blessed. He is 6'9", weighs 270 pounds, and has such great athletic ability.

I was not called. Neither are many of us. Called to be a king or a priest of ball fields.

Most of us were not called to be movie stars or singers.

Why were you born? Why are you here? It's a question many people ask. Even entertainers, even athletes. I wonder why they're here. Because after they fulfill their destiny and become a king of their trade, they're still in emptiness. Still don't know after they have the fourth house and the 18th car. And another million in the bank. We are called to be partakers of the divine nature now, here and now, as preparation for the job that God has planned for all of us.

Do I live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God? Sometimes I need to be focused. I need more vision. I need examples because sometimes you turn around in your life and you can be discouraged, depressed. You can feel like the whole weight of the world is coming down on you. Well, there are tough times because it's a tough world. And it's hard in this world to be a righteous man or woman in a very unrighteous world. So I want to look at today a story of a leader, these tales of a Tishbite, because he walked the walk. Because he walked the walk. The same walk that hopefully we are trying to walk.

The amazing thing about the Bible, and some people like to mock it, say, how could this be true? If you've ever read biographies, especially autobiographies of people in the past, some people who live today, a lot of times, unless they're trying to sell a lot of books, they will tell the good things about their life. And especially biographers, they will tell only the good about someone's life.

But the Bible, because it's written, inspired by God, but written by many men, telling the stories, they actually tell both the good and the bad about someone's life. See, if you really wanted, if you were a Hebrew or Jewish person, and you wanted to make David who is up here in their life, you could have written a book about David, and you would have left out all the bad stuff, because there's some bad stuff that David did. But this Bible tells you, both good and the bad of the walk of his servants, which also is encouraging to me because I'm not perfect, in case you didn't know that. If you have any doubts, ask this woman sitting on the front row after 29 years.

We're not! But that's what's inspiring about reading some of the heroes. Some of the people who stood tall in the scriptures, you also saw that not only did they stand tall, they could also fall. And then they had to get back up again.

One of the greatest examples of that is the Tishbite. And I wondered, as I studied this a few years ago, from various books, series of tapes, all the study I did about him, I wondered why he wasn't in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, because it lists all the great men and women of faith. But yet, the Tishbite isn't listed among them. Yet, we know from a transfiguration he's going to be in the kingdom of God.

So I think that helps us to lay out, perhaps, his story, as his life is laid out for us in really short amount of pages in the Bible. But he's considered one of the greatest men of the Bible.

He was from a land called Tispe. Tispe. You can't even locate it. They don't even know where it's at today. It's such an obscure little piece of land in the Gilead region, just south of the Sea of Galilee. And it was known to be a very rugged, hilly, rocky land. If you've ever driven through the land of Kentucky, going north, you'll find there's some flat pasture where they can raise crops and horses and cattle. But then there's also a mountainous, rough area, just a short distance from those flat lands. This is kind of what the land is described at the time, 2,500 years ago.

And out of this rough, desolate, tough land, God's man of the hour appears out of nowhere. Literally appears out of nowhere into our Bibles. He shows up, dressed in a camel hair cloak held together with some thick, crude leather belt, which is a stark contrast to the sophistication of the other city dwellers. Even the language from that area, south of Galilee, was considered by some to be crude and coarse and backward. Just hill people, mountain people, farmers, uneducated, unsophisticated hay seeds, we might say today. Even the speech was set apart, as you can read about in Judges 12, by just a single word as they went to battle called Shibboleth. I remember outside of my hometown in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was a city called Shelbyville, Tennessee. And Shelbyville is how most people called the city Shelbyville. Except if you were from Shelbyville, they said Shibboleth had their own way of saying it.

So I'm talking today about Elijah. Elijah the prophet.

His name was no coincidence. His name met the Lord. He is the real God. So what does his name mean? L-E-L, meaning God. I, meaning personal. Jai, meaning like Jehovah. He's a real God. We don't know anything about Elijah's parents. We don't know anything about any brothers or sisters. We just know that he shows up, and they believe from his age, somewhere around 30 to 33 years of age, on the scene, his first appearance standing before the king of Israel at that time.

It's interesting because for those of us who know the story of the Great Divide, the Great Divide happened about 60 years before Elijah showed up here in the Bible. The Great Divide was after Solomon's death. Jeroboam decided to take his own kingdom by taking 10 of the tribes and separate from Solomon's son, Reoboam. And so we had the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.

The northern kingdom of Israel had their own king, Jeroboam. The southern kingdom had their own king, Reoboam.

And God actually promised Jeroboam, because Reoboam had come so corrupt too, that if he would follow him, he would give him blessings way beyond anything that Solomon even had. He had had a chance to be the wealthiest man who ever walked the earth.

But Jeroboam started the kingdom with all the tribes except Judah and Benjamin.

And they were very prosperous, very, very prosperous. Israel had six kings before Elijah showed up. Six kings over the 60 years. And as the Bible tells us, every king was bad. Every king was bad. The first two were idolaters. The third was a murderer. The fourth was an alcoholic and a murderer. The fifth was guilty of spiritual treason, idolatry, adultery, everything imaginable. And the sixth was described as the worst of a bunch of all of those.

But the sixth king had a son named Ahab. The sixth king had a son named Ahab who became the seventh king over Israel. And shortly after he became king, Elijah makes his presence known. Because this new king was something else, you must understand that this new king was wealthy beyond compare. The nation at Israel at the time was as wealthy as Jerusalem and Judah had been, even under Solomon. Hard to believe. But God was truly trying to bless them so that they would follow him and know where the blessings came from.

God called Elijah to come before the king because he wanted the kingdom that had been turning away from God to turn back to God. And like this country, a few generations from the time they had split or divided had gotten further and further away from God. They were no longer a nation under God, but they wanted to be a nation under God's. One wasn't good enough. They strayed. They became adulterers. God wanted them to change.

They left God for something more, better, and new. Israel worshipped the created instead of the creator. They were very materialistic.

They were given a new religion, a new exciting religion that the king had presented to them by his new wife. She became the new spiritual leader. She became not only the queen, but she became the prophetess for the worship of Baal and Asherah. And to make sure when she moved, because it was a marriage of convenience, and not only that, she was described as a beautiful woman. So her father and Ahab's father decided to put together two children so that there could be a financial benefit and also physical benefit to that. So Amri married his daughter, married his son, Elijah, off to Ahab, married a lot of names, to the son. He married his son to Earth-Baa, who was the king and also the priest of Phoenicia, the Sidonians, where Tyre and Sidon.

And when he married them, she moved down to the kingdom of Israel. Because actually, where she married, she married very well because the kingdom was a lot wealthier than her small little kingdom she had grown up in, even though she was used to wealth also. But with her, she brought with her to introduce to this new nation that she was going to be living in. She brought people to help her show how to worship more than just one God. She brought with her 450 priests, prophets, of Baa. She also brought with her 400 priests or prophets of Asharoth to teach this very spiritually oppressed people, who only were smart enough to have one God, that they could have many gods and that they could prosper and have actual enjoyment from their worship. As her father was named Urba'al, he was a very powerful man.

And he made sure that his daughter had everything she wanted growing up, as long as she became a priestess and would teach this religion. The palace she moved in rivaled Solomon's. As a matter of fact, you can even find it on there now if you want to Google Omri's House of Ivory, because Omri, they have his father built this beautiful palace and they found remnants of it today. You can even find all the walls were carved out of ivory. All the pictures, all the statues, everything that was there was ivory. It was one of the most magnificent palaces ever built. That was their palace in Samaria, and they also had a summer home in Jezreel, just at the foot of Mount Hunna, which was a beautiful, also ivory-clad home. So Ahab was raised in wealth, extreme opulence. There's nothing they could not afford at that time.

But as his new bride, Queen Jezebel brought, taught her new religion with such zeal and vigor, she took everyone by storm. She even outlawed the worship of this funny religion she had heard about called Yahweh, a religion of worshiping one god. And she so outlawed it when she came in, because she was a very strong personality. That she actually said anyone caught worshiping, the penalty is death.

So she wanted to change the whole nation very quickly. One historian, Jeff Lucas, wrote, said, B'al worship was an active, energetic pulse of evil, which became hugely popular with the masses. B'al worship played on the perverse human hunger for an occult power and bizarre sex.

Worshipers of B'al and Asherah believed that the gods needed humans to act out certain instructions in order to get what they wanted. It was an agrarian society. They were very prosperous. When there was no rain, what happened?

The gods were not pleased, and B'al was the god. They believed of the sky, of fire, of thunder, of lightning, of rain. And his mother was Asherah, who was the goddess of not only fertility, but of production of not only children, but of which they figured was a blessing from their god if the women became more pregnant. They became more productive in the animals, having more offspring. So she promised all this stuff if they would worship. And even though the nation was very wealthy, when is enough enough? And so to add to the scene of all these new gods that came in, a few dozen shrines were installed all over the land with male and female prostitutes that would teach you, you backwood farm people, how to be more productive in worshiping your god. The worshipers of all were driven by a frenzy spirit. And they fed that passion. She fed that passion. And if they needed more rain, which they usually did, there was nothing better than to wake up one of their gods, the god of the dead, mocked. And so if it could not be done by the cutting of themselves or the actual people as they taught them that they needed to bleed a little bit, then if something was really not going well, then it was time to sacrifice a baby child.

To the god of mocked who would wake him up. And so many children, many little children, some barely born, had to be usually less than a year old, was brought before the gods and actually burnt alive. As they appease the god of mocked, as they appease the god of Baal. I remind you of today.

You see all the abortions today. It makes us turn around and view, hmm, we have the god of choice today, don't we? So many people worship the god of convenience because a child could be inconvenient. Today, its tissue is just a commodity. Life was not worth much in Ahab and Jezebel's kingdom. See, Baal was worshiped as the god of the sun, the fire of the universe, and all controlling god of the crops and productivity. By the time Elijah appeared in the scriptures, the nation was spiritually bankrupt. They had bought into this new religion so much that there were barely anyone who believed in the god of their forefathers, even 60 or 70 years before. See, god needed a man who could stand up and tell the nation, let's stop it. Let's turn it around before it's too late. He found that man. His name was Elijah. I'd like you to turn to 1 Kings 16. We're going to take just a short journey in about 15 minutes through the life of the Tishbite. And we're going to hear tales of the Tishbite. And I hope you will read from chapter 16 all the way through chapter 19. We're going to skip through this. It makes a very interesting study. As you see, one man's life laid out before us all. As not only an example of one who goes through problems, but one who also has to deal with his own humanity, as all of us do. So in 1 Kings 16 and verse 29, it says, in the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah, the southern kingdom, Ahab, the son of Amri, the northern kingdom, became king over Israel. And Ahab, the son of Amri, rained over Israel in Samaria for 22 years. For 22 years, this wicked man, his wife ruled.

Thankfully hers was a little shorter reign than that. In verse 30, now Ahab, the son of Amri, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And it came to pass as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that he took as wife Jezebel, the daughter of Uth-B'al, king of the Sidonians. And he went and served B'al and worshipped him. Then he set up an altar for B'al and the temple of B'al, which he had built in Samaria. That's unique because the altar of B'al is where you would take the children to sacrifice them and the temple to B'al. So it wasn't like they took the children over here and nobody really saw. But it was all part of the worship as they would all just celebrate this child being thrown into the fire. Just like Molech had children sacrificed to him. Verse 33, And Ahab made a wooden image to Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. And now we come down to chapter 17. And Elijah, the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be due nor reign these years except at my word. So here Elijah just shows up and goes to the king and says, Because of your wickedness, guess what? You're not going to have any reign until I say so.

And so, as you can imagine, he made as quickly as he came on the scene, he disappeared from the scene. Because in verse 2, Then the word of the Lord came to him and said, Get away from here! And turn eastward and hide from the brook. It means hide out. You need to get out of the way. To the brook, carroth, which flows to the Jordan. And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. For he went and stayed by the brook carroth, which flows into the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. Doesn't sound like a bad life, huh? I mean, here he never even had to go work for food. Ravens just brought it to him. But you have to understand, this brook wasn't much of a brook.

And it was more of a mossy kind of pond. So imagine your drink coming from a pond scum. Okay? Not exactly the grade A place to be hanging out. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. So then he would have had to just go get water wherever he could have it right there by the brook carroth. What's interesting here, it doesn't tell you, but he was there about a year by himself, totally by himself. Because the king, as you find out later in the book, the king and the queen all of a sudden realized there's no rain.

This quack needs to be put to death. So they actually hired him in. Actually hired people to go find out anywhere. Where is this guy? And let's kill him.

So after the brook had dried up, he had been there for a year, and you can imagine his communication with God if you were by yourself for a year. All by yourself, nobody to talk to. Wondering if somebody's going to find you. Wondering if the Ravens are going to show again this next time for their maybe 650th meal. Took a lot of focus and vision.

But then God says, do something else. And in verse 8, he said, Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Arise, go to Sarafath, which belongs to Sidon. Wait a minute, Sidonians. Wait a minute. I'm trying to stay away from Jezebel, who's wanting to kill me and her husband. And so you're telling me I'm south of them. You're telling me to go north, up through, past some area, and go a hundred miles to Tyre and Sidon, which is where Sarafath is, between Tyre and Sidon, which is in the Phoenician Empire. So you're telling me I've got to travel all that way with people looking for me to go live in her own territory, where the whole nation worships for all.

Yes. Yes, you do. He said, because there's a widow there to provide for you. In verse 10, So he arose and went to Sarafath, and when he came to the gate of the city, indeed, a widow was there gathering sticks, and he called to her and said, Please bring me a little water and a cup that I may drink. How long did it take him to cover that hundred miles? How much water was there? Can you imagine he was pretty thirsty? Because there was no rain. There was a drought that had been going on for over a year. Verse 11, and as she was going to get it, he called her and said, Oh, excuse me.

Can you bring me a morsel of bread with that, too? First time she met him. Then she said, As the Lord your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour and a bin and a little oil in the jar. And see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, and that we may eat it and die. They were going to have their last meal.

And she was just going to go in and die. So you can imagine how skinny this woman must have been, how skinny her son must have been, because this was the last meal they were going to eat. As I'm sure the drought covered that area, they hadn't had rain either. And verse 13, Elijah said to her, Do not fear, go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first. That's awfully bold. I can imagine what my grandmother might have said to him. I mean, what my mother would have said to him. Because I don't believe she was that old, being her son was small enough to pick up in your arms.

And bring it to men afterwards, make some of it for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, the bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth. So she went away and did according to all the word of Elijah. And she and he and her household ate for many days. As a matter of fact, they ate for the last two years on that flour and oil.

That should have been used up. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke to Israel. Now, it happened after these things, after quite a long time, that the son of the woman who owned the house became sick. And his sickness was so serious that there was no breath left in him. He died. So she said to Elijah, What have I to do with you, old man of God?

Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to kill my son? What's sin? Scholars have debated that for years. Most, and I believe, that she realized after living with a man of God, after living with Elijah for two years, I think she kind of knew that her gods were not welcome in her house anymore. And she had the realization that there was only one God, and that she had been, as most of them had, idols all over the house, I'm sure those were gotten rid of.

But in verse 19, he said to her, Give me your son. So he took him up in his arms and carried him to the upper room where he was staying and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, Oh Lord, my God, have you also brought tragedy on the widow with whom I lodge by killing her son? Pretty point blank question, he asked God. And he stretched himself out on the child three times and cried out to the Lord and said, Oh, oh my God, I pray. Let this child's soul come back to him.

Three times he had to do it. Not just one, three. So sometimes we have to ask. Even Elijah has to ask more than once. Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came back to him and he revived. And Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. And Elijah said, See, your son lives. Then the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that you are a man of God and that your word of the Lord in your mouth is true. So you had a conversion process here. She had converted from being a pagan to being a follower of the true God.

And then we have the story that takes place because then it was time for Elijah to make a trip, trip back to his country. And you can see the story, and I want you to read it because it's where Elijah gives the message to Ahab as he goes back and confronts the king again after three years. And verse 17 of chapter 18, it says, Then it happened when Ahab saw Elijah that Ahab said to him, Is that you, O troubler of Israel? In the actual Hebrews, is that you? You snake? Is what it actually means? And he answers that, I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have, and that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and you have followed the Baal's. Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. What's interesting is that who eat at her table? People were starving to death and they were eating at the table. Yeah, where were the prophets? Eating at the table. They had plenty to eat and to drink. He was bringing that point out. So here it had been three and a half years. No rain, not a cloud in the sky. And Ahab said, Okay, you caused all these problems. What am I going to do with you? And he said, Tell you what to do. I challenge you then. Meet me on Mount Carmel with all the people. And how many people?

Millions. There were millions of people. Because he said he wanted all. They want all to see. And come to this Mount Carmel, which is an 1800-foot mountain. Highest point, everybody knew where it was. And we're going to see. As a matter of fact, at the foot of Mount Carmel was King Ahab's summer home. And so he gets all the people to come up there and says, Okay, we're going to see who's God. Either by all, Ashraf or the God that I worship. Not all the nation wanted to worship. And so in verse 20, So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel. Except there's... And it actually says that almost all the people, unless they were too sick to make it up there, decided because here was... They were all looking for something to happen because they were all going to die. Because there was no food, no water. Very little left. And so they're going to see the show. Let's see who's really... What God we should worship. And so what happens? Everybody shows except for...

Jezebel and 400 prophets. Asherah, her prophets to Asherah, which is a female goddess, they didn't show. Yeah, but the 450 prophets evolved, but all showed. And so, verse 21, And Elijah came to all the people. You can imagine the crowd on top of this mountain. It just had to be this amazing thing. And here he stood on top of the mountain, and here were 450 prophets of all, all dressed in their fancy robes and all in this thing. It was a showdown at the Carmel Corral, if you could say that.

And so Elijah came and said, How long will you falter between two opinions? You people, you knew at one time. Your fathers, your grandfathers told you what it was like. It's only been 60 years. Two generations. You should have known about the true God who took you out of slavery, brought you out of Egypt.

If the Lord is God, follow Him. But if by all, then follow Him. But the people answered Him not. And so you can see what happened. He actually told the 450 prophets of Baal. He said, This is how it is. You build an altar, and we'll take this bullet, we'll cut it up, set it down, and then you call fire down from heaven. And since your God is the God of fire, then they shouldn't be too hard for you. And so what did they do? Sure! Okay? All the people you can imagine. And this happened early in the morning. And so they got their stuff together, and they started chanting, Oh Baal, Baal, Baal, Baal. God had worked themselves up until frenzy, asking Him to set fire down. Nothing came. It's noon. It's after 1. They've been doing this for four hours. Nothing, not a cloud in the sky. What happens?

Elijah sits back and goes, Where's Baal? Maybe he traveled off somewhere. You can read this yourself. Maybe he's, as the scriptures say, busy, but what he actually says is, Maybe he's going to the bathroom and can't get it. From the original Hebrew. Mocking their God. So what happens? They go another three hours till they got three o'clock in the afternoon. So they've been doing this for seven, eight hours. They are exhausted. They finally start taking their knives out and cutting themselves to where it says, They cut each other so much the prophets did, bleeding on top of the already pieces of bull. They were laying there. Obviously, flies all over it. You can imagine the people sitting there waiting for something to happen. They're sweating. They're hot. It's nasty. It's disgusting. Flies are all over them. These people are cutting themselves blood. It says, Gosh, don't ever anyone. Don't ever give up.

Till they were totally exhausted. What happens? He says, Step back. Step back. And so here, what does he do in front of all the people? He says, Come here. Come to me. And you can imagine the mass of people, because they're tired. They've been watching this show for seven, eight hours. He's unjaded. The people all move towards him. What does he do? He takes 12 stones. He's like God had instructed Moses and the former leaders. And he built the altar out of 12 stones. Why is that unique? The stone for every tribe, right? But what did he do? He took 12. He didn't take the altar. Because, see, this was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This was the God of Judah and the God of Israel. And so here, the last two stones, you can imagine him putting on and calling out the name of God and calling out the name of Joseph. And then he comes to Judah, and he comes to David. And then he lays the bull on him. And then, one of the shortest prayers. See, sometimes you think, well, you know, I really didn't get to pray as much as I need to today. How about a 15-second prayer called out fire? Because that's all that's always needed. So let's go there as we wrap up today in chapter 18. And so, after he had had this bull here, bull had laid there, and then he said, I want you to take something from Judah's trench all the way around this altar. So it would hold gallons and gallons of water. And then I want you to go down to the river Cushing, which I mean, they would have had it. And this water had to be very valuable. And these people, you know, they were thirsty. You know, it is like we have our little bottle of water today. Wouldn't possible then. And so here they're coming down to this, so they had to bring up big gallons and gallons of water, because he said, I need you to pour it all over the altar. And so that it runs in all the valley that I cut across here, this ditch. So there's water everywhere, and these people have to be thinking, oh, you're wasting that water. And then what happens?

Verse 35, so the water ran all around the altar, and he filled the trench with water, and it came to pass at the time of the evening sacrifice, three o'clock in the afternoon, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, this is a prayer, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, let it be known this day that you are God of Israel, God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word, not just him, because people were beginning to look at him. Hear me, oh Lord, hear me that this people may know that you are the Lord God, and that you have turned their hearts back to you again. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust, and it licked up all the water that was even in the ditch. That wasn't a piece of beef laying there. It burned it all up. I'm taking his ignition from up in the heavens. Boom! If you've ever lit a fire and made a mistake like I did when I was a kid, and thought it was kerosene, it was gasoline, I go, whoo! You know? And it just... It does. That's what happened here. All these people just saw this good done. Now, all the people saw it. They fell on their faces and they said, The Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God. And Elijah said to them, Seize the prophets of Baal. Do not let one of them escape. So they seized them, and Elijah took them down to the work Kishan and executed them. Cut their heads off.

From all the people. And you would think, wow! But then what happened?

Ahab is all shook up. He heads back. He heads back to sniveling. Spineless man that he is.

And he goes back to his house and sees the wicked witch, as I call her, that psychopathic murdering evil witch that is Jezebel. And she said, How dare this man when she heard that he had killed this. And she sent him a letter, sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, guess what? If I don't do to you what you did to them, it's going to be done. And just like Dale's sermon, sermonette today, something came over him. Here, Elijah could stand before 450 men, the whole nation, because it turned bad, the whole two million people would have killed him, because he was the reason they didn't have water, didn't have food and their kids and their crops died. He could stand before all of that, but let this woman, who was fearless, just write him a message, and he took off like a scalded dog. There was fear, where he says, fear not, behold the salvation of the Lord. Well, guess what? He feared. He couldn't stand still. So what did he do? He ran. He ran. He didn't all run 100 miles. He ran 300 miles. How long did that take him? A long time. He ran 300 miles to get back to Mount Sinai, where the whole problem was exacerbated. Because I want to, as we wrap up in chapter 19, in verse 9, as he makes his way to a cave, he's fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. And verse 9, he said, there he went into a cave and spent the night in that place. Behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, What? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? Here, the man of God, one of the few men of God at the time, he had given all this power to, had run like a scared little puppy. And God asked him, what are you doing here? So he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord of God, of host, for the children of Israel, forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with a sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life. No, they weren't. The people weren't. Just Jezebel.

Then he said, Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, and behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks and pieces before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind, after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. But after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. But after the fire, a still, small voice came. And sometimes God will ask us in that still, small voice that we hear in our minds, in our conscience, and he says, So it was when Elijah heard it that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And suddenly a voice came to him and said, What are you doing here, Elijah? And what did he do? He cried again. Oh, everybody's after me.

And he said, Then go and do my work. And he said, What happened? What happened? This great man of God. God gave him three things to do at this point. Three things to do. I want you to do with the rest of your life. I want you to go make, as am, an annoying him king of Syria. Then I want you to go down, I want you to make Eli's shot. Put your man on him and make him a prophet. Then I want you to go, and I want you to anoint Jehu, as king of Israel. You know what he did? He went and anointed Elijah. He didn't do the other two. He didn't do the other two. What happened to Elijah? Elijah? He was taken up, we know. Elijah saw it. He was taken up. He was taken up into the sky, into the verse 7. He was taken away by God. Now, we know, because six years later, he writes a letter, so he's somewhere on the earth. But God was through with him. As great a man as he was, he will be in the kingdom. He reached a point where God had to ask him, what are you doing here? He was not doing God's work. He may ask us that same question someday. So God took him out of the picture and got somebody in who would finish God's work, and that was Elijah. So what are you doing here? I will ask you to help. I will ask Maurice to hand out her today. Everyone of you, if you have this, fine. Make it English. Give it to somebody who can use it. We have a book with this called What is Your Destiny? It tells why you are here. Hopefully you know why you're here, but occasionally you may need to read this again. But if not, you know somebody that's going to come there and they're going to ask you, I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I was even born. We have the answer to that. And this is a, I wanted to give each and every one of you this, because that is such an important question to all of us, to this world. What is your destiny? It is to be in the family of God. Brethren, we have been given an incredible opportunity. And when you truly understand it, it's as great, if not greater, than the work He gave Elijah. We have to make sure we follow through even to the end. Because it said, He who endures to the end, the same shall be saved. Why are you here? Why are you here today on the Sabbath, worshipping God as He tells you to? Why are you here out of 6 million people in the Fort Lauderdale, Miami area? Why are you here? We all need to be able to answer that question. And know our destiny is before us. Let's fulfill our destiny, because that's why we're here.