Class begins about 40 minutes into the video.
<inaudible> one, two. Testing. One, two. Testing. One, two. Good evening. Can you hear me?
Yep, we got it. All right. Good evening. Welcome to the live stream or of our Bible class at the Collierville church of Christ.
We are glad that you can be with us tonight online. And, uh, we were going to start out this evening.
We’ll have a song opening prayer and then we’ll have class and then a closing song. If you have any announcements,
any prayer requests, please send a text to Aaron or I or Tommy and, uh, we will get it on our,
at the end of the livestream this evening. We will start singing our first song, the night be let the lower lights be burning.
Let the lower lights be burning. Yeah. Bradley AB father’s mercy. See for ’em is<inaudible>, but to a<inaudible><inaudible> uh,<inaudible><inaudible> sin a cross.<inaudible><inaudible> yeah,
man.<inaudible><inaudible> the a bang.<inaudible><inaudible> for the lights. Uh, um, uh,<inaudible> uh,
uh,<inaudible><inaudible> Cindy<inaudible> cross.<inaudible><inaudible> you man, harass you.<inaudible><inaudible> I see.<inaudible> the,
so pause.<inaudible> yeah.<inaudible> sure. Uh,<inaudible> uh,<inaudible><inaudible><inaudible><inaudible><inaudible> Cindy<inaudible> a cross<inaudible> so<inaudible><inaudible><inaudible><inaudible> let us pray our father in heaven,
we are thankful for you and your blessings and your love that you can care you have for us. We were reminded each day of how you watch over us and you protect us and take care of us.
We are thankful for the opportunity to come to you in prayer with the things that are on our minds.
Be with those that are struggling with illness at this time that are stuck at home because of this virus and be with them,
comfort them and pray that we can be an encouragement to you. We are thankful that we can still do what we are doing with our live stream,
with the technology that we have today and we are thankful that we can still study your word even though we are far away from each other.
We pray that you be with those that are dealing with a loss of loved ones, be with the Cooper family and comfort them and pray that you watch over them through this hard time.
Thank you so much for what Christ has done and his sacrifice and his love and care for us to come to this earth and to die and to be on the cross where we should have been.
We pray that we strive each day to shine our lights throughout the world, especially during a time where people are more focused on spiritual things,
that we can be that shining light to them. We pray that you continue to be with us as we go through our study here this evening.
As you, we do pray. Amen.<inaudible> I was joking with Tommy and Eric earlier as to whether or not I should have my iPad up here that had a clock on it so I’d know what time it was when I went 50 minutes.
And uh, they, they both indicated I should actually, uh, just allow them to ring the bell.
Uh, and so we’ll see if you hear a bell ring and you, you’ll know they decided I went too long.
We are in first Kings chapter 19. In our studies this evening as we continue with our series of studies on the life of aligned ship,
uh, uh, Elijah’s life and, and the record of his life as is found here in first Kings,
uh, beginning in chapter 17. As he comes on the scene, chapter 18, you have the confrontation between him and the 450 prophets of bale.
You find the, the rain returns to the land of, um, the Northern kingdom of Israel. After three years where it hasn’t rained,
there’s been no Dew on the ground. The economy’s destroyed the, uh, the, the plant life and,
and the harvest and, and the agriculture is destroyed. People have died. I mean, all of this is in desolation.
And then you have the confrontation on the top of Mount Carmel. God establishes with clarity that he is the Lord,
that he alone is the Lord. That bale has no power whatsoever, that the profits of bail are completely fault and they will die at the end of,
uh, the encounter with Alijah. The people and Alijah will put them to death. And we noticed that,
that it was in complete accordance with the law of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 13 tells us that one who seeks to draw Israel away from the Lord,
one who makes a prophecy and that prophecy doesn’t come to pass, one who claims to represent another God and it’s not Jehovah.
That individual was to be put to death. And so the enactment of the execution of these individuals was in accordance with the law,
whether or not the King was willing to go along with it or not. Now it’s interesting to know that Ahab’s present and he doesn’t stop it,
but I don’t think he would have succeeded in stopping it had he tried then, uh, when the confrontation is over,
Elijah tells a Hab. Do you hear the sound? The sound of the rain? And he tells a house to go and to go home and he will,
Elijah will go up to Mount Carmel and he will pray for, and each time that he prays, he’ll send his servant to go look out into over the ocean and sea or the over the sea divine out.
Whether or not there are any clouds. First time, nothing. Second time, nothing. Third time,
fourth time, fifth time, six times, nothing. Seventh time the servant comes back and says, I see a small plowed or rising out of the sea.
That’s when Alijah sends his servant to go tell a Hab. You better get home now because the rain is coming.
And then Elijah through the power of the Lord will arrive at Jezreel before a Hab will, even though Ahab will be on a chariot and Elijah will be on foot.
That’s where we pick up in chapter 19 in chapter 19 we find the prophet who scaled the mountain of mountain Carmel will be decimated into the Valley of despair and we’ll confront God at Mount Sinai.
And there are some incredibly powerful lessons to be found here in first Kings chapter 19 but there are also many things that are misinterpreted and and miss taught from these verses.
So we’ll try and cover some of those as we go along. Chapter 19 verse one and Ahab told Jezebel all that aligned you had done also how he had executed the prophets with the sword.
Then Jessebelle sent a messenger to align. Just saying, so let the gods do to me. And more.
Also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time,
Ahab comes home and he tells Jezza bell. Um, you know, those 450 prophets of bale that came probably came with you from,
from uh, uh, Sidon from your father. Uh, those profits that, that came to, to Israel,
um, they’re all dead now. How did they die? A logic killed them. And so jazzy Bell’s response being the,
the thoughtful and, and con, uh, you know, very self conscious person that she was decided to send a messenger to Elijah saying you’re dying before the day’s out.
But just like her prophet whose prophecies were wrong, so was hers and her Val that she made before her God was as good as the profits statements that came from bail.
And that is, it wasn’t kept either. Elijah though will flee. Verse three, we read. And when he saw that he arose and ran for his life and went to bear Sheba,
which belongs to Judah and left his servant there. So Elijah leaves Jezreel, he goes across the border into the Southern kingdom of Israel,
the Southern kingdom of Judah, and arrives at, um, bear Sheba and then leaves his servant, the one who he sent to Ahab to tell him to go home.
The one who he sent to look out at the sea, the servant who’s been with him all this time,
he leaves him at that place. Um, some have questioned, and I think it’s because perhaps Josephus who,
who suggests that this servant is actually the son of the widow, uh, from chapter 18. Um,
or do you mean chapter 17? Uh, I don’t know that there’s any evidence to suggest that one way or another,
it’s simply just simply stated that Elijah has a servant. And so he leaves his servant behind there in Judah and continues on himself.
He goes, another day’s journey, verse four into the wilderness and came and sat down under a Juniper tree and he prayed that he might die and said,
it is enough now, Lord, take my life, or I am no better than my fathers. Alijah has just confronted 450 prophets of bale.
He has just confronted a how and now because of the animosity and the threat of one woman, Elijah has fled the land and sat down under a tree and asked God to take his life.
Now we find two other occasions, uh, that I know of for certain where prophets ask God to be done with them,
uh, to, to, to take their lives. One of them comes in the book of numbers.
Uh, if my memory serves me correctly, it’s numbers. Chapter 11, where Moses has, has just had it up to here with Israel and with their complaining and with their constant lust and desire for more and not being satisfied with what God has given them.
And they’re just growing this towards God and towards Moses. And he finally says, God, will you just kill me?
The second one is Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 20 verses 14 through 18 in that passage where Jeremiah talks about his desire to to stop prophesizing because the Lord is mighty and the Lord is awesome and the Lord is going to do all of this.
But in the meantime, Elijah is receiving such scorn and receiving such mistreatment at the hand of Israel. No one believes in which by the way,
the Lord told him at the beginning, no one would, but no one believes him in all of this.
He’s going through. He just said, God, could you just just kill me? The three things that you see that connect these three different profits and this expression that comes from them is frustration,
frustration and discouragement at the inability of the person, the mouthpiece, the prophet, to change the hearts and minds of the people.
And one of the things that you and I have to think about and you and I have to deal with on a regular basis,
is what do we do? How do we react when people don’t believe what God’s word says? Okay,
what is our reaction? What is our response? When we tell people and tell people and tell people and tell people and tell people and they simply won’t obey.
They won’t look at God’s word. They won’t change their life. They won’t return to him. They won’t repent and stop living in sin.
All of this is the real problem in Elijah’s mindset. Elijah’s running from his life, from the threat of Jezza rebel,
but aligned, just not falling down under the tree in despair because of the threat of jazz rebel and Elijah doesn’t really want to die.
If Elijah had wanted to die, he could have stayed there with jazz rebel and Jessebelle would have taken care of that for him.
She’d have been more than happy to remove his head from his shoulders. The problem isn’t Jesse Bell and the problem isn’t that he really wants to die.
The problem is discouragement. The problem is that Elijah, his focus has gotten into the wrong place and you and I,
as we go through our lives, we have to be careful that we don’t begin to put the focus in the wrong place aligned.
GIA just had one of the most victorious circumstances of his entire prophetic life and his despair comes when it didn’t turn out the way he thought it would.
Now we don’t have recorded here exactly what Elijah, his perspective was on how he fought this confrontation with the prophets of bale and and it wrote,
remember he also sent for the profits of Ashraf though they didn’t come. He there. There’s no indication of a clear indication of what he thought would happen as a result,
but he did confront the people and say, it’s time for you to choose. It’s time for you to decide if you’re going to worship bail or if you’re going to worship Jehovah.
That’s what the whole confrontation was about. Not the profits but the people, but now you find the influence of the leadership of the people specifically Jezza Bella Ahab is enough to turn back the tide against the people’s decision.
It is very hard to convince a multitude of people to repent when their leaders won’t. One of the things that you see over in the book of Jonah is when Jonah is sent to Nineveh,
it’s very interesting to point out and to notice that Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh and even though he’s reluctant to go,
he doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want them to be saved. He goes in and he preaches the message that if in eight days they don’t repent,
they’ll be destroyed. And we read that their repentance was from the least all the way up to the greatest of them,
the entire spectrum of the people from greatest to least and everywhere in between, repented but not so in Israel.
A Hab witnessed the confrontation between the prophets of bale and Alijah and a halves perspective on Elijah has still not changed.
Hey, how has conf has seen this confrontation between the Lord and between bale and the Lord has proven that he is God and yet a Hab still tells Jesse Bell and still allows Jezza to threaten Elijah’s life.
The discouragement comes when we think we’re going to have success and then we don’t. But part of the problem is that definition of success and that’s where God is going to set a Lija correct.
Uh, straight. He is going to set Alijah straight on the definition of success. So Elijah says,
just kill me now. Uh, allow me to die, take my life or I am no better than my fathers.
Somewhere in aligned to his mind, he has a standard, he has a standard to compare himself to.
Um, maybe this is the standard of success that Elijah’s looking for. Maybe this is the indication that we have because Elijah’s saying all the prophets who came before me didn’t turn Israel around and I thought I was going to be different.
I fought, they were going to listen to me. I fought that the nation was going to repent and I’m no better than my fathers.
So I have what value am I? Okay. So perhaps that is what he is saying here. Then as he lay and slept under a broom tree,
suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, arise and eat. Then he looked and there by his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water.
So he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came the second time and touched him and said,
arise and eat because the journey is too great for you. One of the factors that comes into discouragement is often exhaustion.
When you are exhausted, you don’t think straight. When you are exhausted, you begin to think about things differently than when you’re rested.
And the fact that Elijah wakes up is a woken by an angel eats and then goes back to sleep is a woken again,
eats it is an indication he is exhausted from fleeing the Northern kingdom of Israel. And from all of the events that have transpired,
uh, how long has it been since he ran from Mount Carmel all the way to Jezreel? We have no idea of,
but probably not very long. So all of this is taking place and Alijah is depleted by way of his,
his health, his resources, his energy, and, and now he’s still going, uh, or he’s about to be.
So the angel wakes him up and says, the journey is long and it is too great for you.
So he arose and ate and drank, and he went in the strength of that food, 40 days and 40 nights.
As far as Horeb, the mountain of God, Elijah leaves the Northern kingdom of Israel and he doesn’t go to Jerusalem.
He doesn’t go to the temple. He bypasses Judah completely and goes to Mount Sinai. Did God tell him to go there?
We don’t read that he did specifically, but the angel knows where he’s going. The angel knows where he’s headed and the angel says,
you’re not getting there on your resources. You’re not getting there on what you have prepared. You need more.
And so God provides for Elijah and Elijah goes in the strength 40 days, 40 nights as he goes to Horeb or Mount Sinai,
the mountain of God. And there he went into a cave and spent the night in that place. And behold,
the word of the Lord came to him and he, that is the Lord said to him, Elijah,
what are you doing here Elijah? Sometimes when we begin to attempt to escape our problems, we’re confronted with someone.
In this case, it’s the Lord with Alijah saying, what are you doing here? Why are you fleeing Elijah?
Why are you running away? The Northern kingdom of Israel is waiting on you. My people are up there.
You have just had this victorious event over the profits of bale. Elijah. What are you doing here?
But this is also for Elijah was sake. Not just because you know. Maybe the Lord doesn’t know why he’s there.
No, the Lord knows God wants a Lija to know why he’s there. What are you doing here,
Elijah and Elijah’s response and it’s interesting. We’re going to read this response twice verbatim word for word. Elijah’s fought through this.
Elijah knows why he’s there. Elijah knows why he’s, I mean you think about this. He’s been traveling for 40 plus days.
He left the land of Israel that day and he has stopped only to sleep and to eat and he’s come all the way to Mount Sinai.
He knows. He’s thought through. He’s all of this travel time to think about why isn’t he where he’s supposed to be?
You know kids do that right there. They’re not where they’re supposed to be and you go, child,
why are you here? And you see the wheels and their minds start turning is they conjure up an answer or they immediately respond with an answer,
which is when you know they’ve fought through why they’re where they’re not supposed to be you. They’ve actually given some thought to this.
All right, what’s my answer going to be when that asks why I’m here? Because here is not where I was told to be.
God told Elijah to go to Ahab. God said it’s time for the rain to come back. God told Elijah that it was time to confront the province of bale.
God didn’t tell Alijah to flee and so God wants a lie. Just explanation for why Elijah is at Mount Sinai.
So he said, verse 10 I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant,
torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone them left and they seek to take my life in the midst of discouragement,
in the midst of despair, we often internalize and look at ourselves and focus on ourselves and lose perspective on reality.
Now, had Elijah been zealous for the Lord? Yes, he had had Israel torn down the altars of God.
Yes, they had had Israel killed the prophets of the Lord. Yes, they had all of the facts in that part of the statement were true,
but the conclusion that Elijah had come to because of those facts was blatantly false, but Elijah was only looking at Elijah.
Were there those in Israel’s seeking to take his life? Yes, there were, but was he the only one left and did Elijah?
No, he wasn’t the only one left. Some might think, and some might even say without stepping back and thinking about it,
well, Elijah has just come to the conclusion he’s the only one faithful Lord. No, this isn’t even true and Elijah knows it.
How do I know that? Turn back. Chapter 18 chapter 18 Alijah meets up with Obadiah, Obadiah the one who has hidden a hundred of the profits of,
of, of the Lord to save them from Jessebelle. He meets up with Obadiah and tells Obadiah, go tell,
Hey, have to meet me. Oh, but I have reveals to him and and apparently believes him to have already known that Obadiah saved the a hundred prophets of the Lord and that Obadiah is fear of the Lord from his youth.
If Obadiah is faithful and you have to assume the servant of aligners is faithful to then we know the statement from Alijah is an overstatement of the reality that Alijah knows to be true.
But when someone is in despair and when someone is, is discouraged, an overstatement of the truth is often what you’ll get because they feel like they’re the only ones.
They feel like I’m the only one doing anything. I’m the only one saving anybody. I’m the only one teaching anybody.
We’ve never heard a preacher say anything like that at a congregation. Have we? I’m the only one.
Rarely true. We need to be thinking about ourselves in view of God. And heres where God is going to confront Elijah.
Then he that is the Lord 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 in pieces before the Lord.
But the Lord was not in the wind, but after the wind and earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake.
Uh, and after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. No where we get to where the Lord was.
What are the shared elements of these things? Shared elements. These are powerful. I mean, you’ve got,
you’ve got a wind that’s breaking rocks in pieces. This is, this is not, this is not,
you know, your casual nice summer breeze coming off the ocean. This is a wind that’s shattering the rocks and the mountains.
And if that wind was an impactful and dramatic and powerful enough, then you’ve got the, uh, the earthquake that comes.
And if the earthquake wasn’t enough, you’ve got fire that comes. But God’s not in the dramatic nor the powerful forces that are exhibited here.
Now, this is not to say God doesn’t use dramatic events, or God doesn’t do dramatic things, or God doesn’t show his power,
his greatness, his might go back to the plagues. Go back to the confrontation on Mount Carmel. All of these things are extremely powerful exhibits of God’s presence,
but God’s focusing on the profit. Now God’s teaching the profit, not the people. And the prophet needs to learn something important.
So then we read the remainder, uh, verse, well then after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire and after the fire,
a still small voice. So it was when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave.
Suddenly a voice came to him and said, what are you doing here, Elijah? After all the powerful exhibit of God’s power,
majesty mite, and all of them, the presence of the Lord is not there. Yeah. Finally,
the presence of the Lord exhibited not with great power, not with great mind, but in a quiet voice.
This is not to imply, and this is not to proclaim it because this is the only time this occurs,
this way that we should be expecting to hear God in a still small voice or that anyone who claims they heard God in a still small voice actually did that.
That’s not what we’re supposed to learn here.<inaudible> God’s making a point about profits. God’s making a point about his influence and the way he works because all throughout Israel’s history there have been dramatic events and there’s been dramatic turns of events and there’s been dramatic things and none of those dramatic things have caused Israel to be faithful.
They crossed over the red sea and there was great rejoicing and not long after that they were complaining. They were saying,
you brought us into the wilderness to kill us and then God would provide them food from heaven and not later.
Not long after that, they’d be complaining that God brought them in the wilderness to kill them because they were tired of the dry bread.
And then God would provide water from a rock miraculously. Here’s water enough to to, to, to provide water for millions of people and all of their cattle.
And not long later they’re complaining again. The dramatic and powerful events that Israel would see would never turn their hearts to God.
But the quiet teaching and instruction of a prophet would now with Israel always repent. No often Israel would reject to the prophet,
but the message always conveyed God’s presence and fulfilled God’s purpose. You see, Elijah was successful when Alijah trusted the Lord and spoke his word Alijah was not successful when Alijah decided what the results of that were supposed to be.
That’s when Elijah became discouraged, when the results he wanted weren’t the results he got. So then notice what we read.
God again, says, what are you doing here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant,
torn down the uh, your altars killed and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left and they seek to take my life.
Then the Lord said to him, go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus and when you arrive annoying hazy L as King over Syria,
you notice there’s no dialogue back and forth between the Lord about Elijah’s perspective. None at all. God sets Alijah straight by telling Elijah,
get back to work. Your problem, okay is that you are focused on you, so I’m going to give you something to do.
I remind myself so many times of my self and my brothers growing up. Invariably we’d be home and this would happen a lot during the summer because we weren’t doing school.
We would come to mom and be like, Hey, we’re bored, so pitiful. We’re bored. Can we do this?
Can we watch TV? Can we, can we, we’re bored. Mom’s response was always 100% of the time.
If you’re bored, I can find something for you to do. Suddenly, we weren’t bored anymore. We could find something to do that didn’t involve chores and so we would go about our business.
But the problem was we had lost perspective. See, all the things that we chose to do after that moment in time were available to us to begin with.
All of those things were things we could have been doing, but we were too focused on us to see the opportunities to see the things that needed to be done.
God redirects Elijah’s focus back to work, back to Elijah’s purpose, because Alijah needed to remember that his job wasn’t determining success.
His job was doing the work, and that’s where you and I have to be. That’s where you and I have to get to in our hearts and minds in our Christian lives,
is determining our job is not to be the judges of success or failure. Our job is to be doing the work.
Okay, so then God says you go and on your way back. He doesn’t argue with Elijah that there’s somebody trying to kill him.
He doesn’t argue with Elijah that he might die. None of that’s under discussion. He just says you’re going back and on your way,
you’re going to Damascus. And by the way, this is going to set up our dis, our discussion of chapter 20 when he says go to go your way to the wilderness of Damascus.
And when you arrive, anoint hazy L as King over Syria. Also you shall anoint J Hugh, the son of Nimkee as King over Israel and Alicia,
this unashamed font of Abel may uh, may Hola as you shall you shall anoint as prophet in your place.
It shall be that whoever escapes the sort of hazy L J who with kit will kill and whoever escapes the sort of Jay who Elijah will kill.
Yet I ever reserved 7,000 in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to bale and every mouth that has not kissed him.
God says Elijah, you go and anoint the next King in Syria and then you go and anoint the next King in Israel.
By the way, just a reminder here from the Lord, he is not the Lord of one nation.
He is not the God of Israel. He is Jehovah. He is sovereign. When Jesus stands before pilot and says,
pilot, you could have no power except that we’re given you from above is the same point here. God says there’s a new King in Syria.
Go anoint him. Uh, just as it would be with David. When Samuel anoints David, it would be years before he ever comes to the throne,
but that didn’t matter. God said there’s the next King, because God is sovereign, not just in Israel,
but in Syria and every other nation as well. And God’s profits are sovereign in those nations. So God sends Elijah to go to Damascus and anoint the next King.
God sends Elijah to go annoys the next King of Israel. And God CEDS says to Elijah, you need help.
And so he sends him to Alicia. Uh, but he also reminds them, by the way, your statement was an overstatement.
I have 7,000 in Israel who haven’t bowed the knee to bail. I know who belongs to me. So then verse 19 so he departed from there and found a light of the sun or shade fat.
Who was plowing with 12 yoke of oxen before him and he was with the 12th then Elijah passed by and through his mantle on him and he left the oxen and ran after Elijah and said,
please let me kiss my father and my mother and then I will follow you. And he said to him,
go back again for what have I done to you? So Elijah turned back from him and took a yoke of oxen and slaughtered them and boiled their flesh using the oxens equipment and gave it to the people and they ate.
Then he arose and followed Elijah and became his servant. Elijah. The next prophet will be essentially told in in a similar way as what Jesus came to his disciples and said,
come follow me. Elijah will do it with his mantel. He will take his mantle and he will put it on Alicia.
As Elijah’s plowing the field, and Alicia knows what it means, it means I just became somebody disciple.
I just became a disciple of Elijah. I just became someone who walks in the steps of, follows them day in and day out and learns their ways.
Moses had Joshua. Jesus had the 12. Elijah had Alicia, okay. And it would seem as though part of the largest problem was he needed a companion who could endure the hard times with him.
You might remember that Paul always took someone else with him. There are a few times where Paul was alone,
but almost always, Paul has surrounded himself with helpers and Elijah needs the same thing. So they will depart.
And after Alicia makes this offering and provides for the people, he will become the servant of Elijah. Okay,
let’s go through the questions and then we’ll close. Uh, when Jezza bell threatened to kill Elijah for slaying the 450 prophets of bale,
what did Aligna do? Okay. Of course, he fled the land. He ran for his life.
Why did Elijah beg gone to let him die? The specific quotation is, I am not better than my fathers.
Question number three, when Elijah was standing on Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai, God appeared to him in a great strong wind,
be an earthquake. See a gentle whisper, whisper or D a fire. The answer is C. Number four.
Elijah told God that he alone be he his servant. See he has and his family, or D only the tribe of GAD had not forsaken God’s covenant.
According to verse 14 he alone had not forsaken God’s covenant. Number five, God a let Elijah die as he wished or B gave Elijah work to do.
He gave a Lija work to do. B, question number six who in Israel did God tell Elijah that he would not destroy?
The answer is 7,000 who he had reserved, who had not bowed to bail. Number seven, what was Alijah doing or excuse me,
what was the light show doing when Elijah went to him? He was plowing with 12 yoke of oxen.
What did Alicia want to do before following Alijah? The answer is kiss his father and his mother. By the way,
there’s no indication that he did go back to his father’s house. Instead, he took and sacrificed the oxen and followed Elijah,
and you may remember a time when Jesus was spoken to by an individual who said, let me be your disciple.
And Jesus said, you may. But he said, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said,
you can’t turn back. Once you begin this walk of discipleship, you can’t turn back and Elijah is going to learn the same lesson.
And Alicia, unlike the individual in the book of Luke, is going to make the right choice. All right,
we’re going to be, uh, we’re going to have a closing song and then a closing prayer. Again,
a reminder, if you have any announcements that need to be made, uh, go ahead and send those to me.
I do know, um, if he’s, if he’s still, um, struggling through it, but,
uh, uh, Beverly’s father is not doing well and they don’t expect him to live much longer if he’s even made it this long as of when I talked to her last night.
So, uh, keep Beverly pricing your prayers and the entire family as they go through this. It’s,
it’s very hard. Of course they can’t be there. They were able to go in and see him,
uh, one last time, but uh, keep Beverly and her family in your prayers.<inaudible> we will close with our last song and then Aaron will lead us in closing.
Prayer ought to be like the, Oh, it’s been like<inaudible> uh, this is<inaudible> gladly, uh,
for, uh, all of us. She is a fan.<inaudible><inaudible> Oh, to me<inaudible> read.
Uh,<inaudible> a man. A swing. A scar man.<inaudible><inaudible><inaudible> Oh, to me<inaudible> loving<inaudible><inaudible> uh,
being uh, uh, uh,<inaudible><inaudible> uh huh. Oh, you mean like the to me like the lesson read?
Uh, yeah. Oh man. I sweet. Uh, scar man.<inaudible><inaudible> deep. Ah,<inaudible> Oh,
to me.<inaudible> me now to receive a no, any, Oh, that I am and have,
I am<inaudible><inaudible> ah, ah, Shami. Oh. To me, I, the odd to me,
uh, like the<inaudible> uh, beer as<inaudible>. I’m in a suite, a scum and I fall on a us stabbed.
I know.<inaudible> deep on my<inaudible> let us pray. Our gracious father in heaven, we bow before you at this time,
grateful for the day that you’ve given to us and the life that we have been granted. Mindful of those who are struggling because of sorrow,
lost, loved ones and difficulties in life. We know that so many of us at times will go through despair like Elijah went through.
We pray that we will be mindful of the lessons of Elijah and the lessons many other times in scripture to remember to hold on to you,
to always serve you and to never give up. Help us to take each day the way that it comes to do good to those who are around us.
Provide for those who were in need and serve you faithfully in spirit and in truth. May we always worship and praise you acceptably and will you always please forgive us when we sin and fall short of your glory.
Allow us to be granted your continued grace and mercy. Give us your peace that we might when this life is over,
have that hope that you have promised to all those who love your appearing. Lord, we pray that you’d be with those who are struggling in foreign mission fields and in many other places throughout the world.
Pray that you watch over them as well. And all this. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.<inaudible>.