From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: That's what the apostles prayed when they were threatened in Acts chapter 4 by the Sanhedrin: "Speak no more in the name of Jesus." And they prayed, "God give us boldness so that we can speak your word as we ought to speak."

That's a prayer God wants to answer. God is looking for people who will be bold for him and have a holy boldness, that their walk will match their talk. And when your walk matches your talk, then you can really make a difference for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Larry Nobles: Elijah is known as the prophet of fire, bold and strong as he stood alone for the Lord. Well, what can we learn from his life and ministry? This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve.

Thank you for joining us today and this month for another great series from Pastor Jeff to help each of us stand for righteousness in our fallen world. The series we begin today is called Holy Boldness: Lessons from Elijah, the Prophet of Fire.

In these eight lessons over the next couple of weeks, Pastor Jeff's going to share some insights from the life of Elijah that will encourage us all to be faithful as we stand up for our faith and witness for Jesus. Today we'll find out the secret to Elijah's ability to stand firm in dark times. To find out more about this series, go to fromhisheart.org. Now though, open your Bible to 1 Kings chapter 17 and let's begin the first message called Faithful to Stand.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: If you have your Bible, please turn to 1 Kings Chapter 17. Starting a new series on the life of Elijah. I heard about a pastor and he was having trouble with the chairman of the deacons because the chairman of the deacons would sit right in the middle of the church and, Sunday after Sunday, he'd fall asleep during the pastor's message.

The pastor was getting so frustrated because he thought, "You're supposed to be an example." So he thought, "Well, I'm going to fix him. I'm going to fix this." During the middle of his sermon, the chairman of the deacons fell asleep.

The pastor just kind of deviated from his sermon and he said in just a regular conversational tone, "All of those here who want to go to heaven, stand to your feet." Well, they all stood to their feet except for the deacon who was sleeping. So he just sat there.

Then he told the people, "Okay, sit down." And then he said, "Now all of the people in this room who want to go to hell right now, stand up!" And he said it loudly. The deacon heard "stand up," so he awoke and he stood up.

Everybody else is seated. He's standing up and he's looking around. He said to the pastor, "Pastor, I don't know what we're voting on, but looks like you and I are the only ones for it."

Sometimes you can stand up for the wrong thing. We're going to talk today about standing up for the right thing. Faithful to stand. As the song says, "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross."

Elijah was faithful to stand when no one else was standing up for the Lord. He lived in a difficult time period and he was God's man. We can learn a lot from him. You know, the need of the hour today, I've entitled this series Holy Boldness, because that's really what we need.

That's what the apostles prayed when they were threatened in Acts chapter 4 by the Sanhedrin. "Speak no more in the name of Jesus." They said, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to obey you or to obey God, you be the judge. We cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard."

They went back and they prayed. They prayed, "God, give us boldness so that we can speak your word as we ought to speak." The Lord shook the place where they were praying and God gave them great boldness to share the word of the Lord.

That's a prayer God wants to answer. God is looking for people who will be bold for him and have a holy boldness, that their walk will match their talk. When your walk matches your talk, then you can really make a difference for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Larry Nobles: Are you faithful to stand for the Lord? Let's look. 1 Kings chapter 17. This is the first time we're introduced to the prophet Elijah.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Elijah lived in the 800s B.C. He had a ministry from 870 to 845 B.C., 25 years of ministry. He ministered during the reign mostly of King Ahab, wicked King Ahab.

This is what the scripture says: "Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, 'As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.' And the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 'Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And it shall be that you shall drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there.' So he went and did according to the word of the Lord; for he went and lived by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he would drink from the brook."

I want you to notice with me three encouragements from this passage of scripture, three encouragements from the life and the beginning of the ministry of Elijah, encouragements to help you and me stand faithful for the Lord.

Encouragement number one: We can be faithful to stand even in the darkest of days. Even in the darkest of days. Now listen, our days are dark and they're getting darker by the hour. We live in a time of spiritual apathy and a time of gross immorality and all sorts of apostasy taking place all around us, and churches bailing out on the word of God all over the country.

That's the kind of place that Elijah lived in because in Elijah's day he was facing Ahab. He came on the scene in the worst of times for Israel. The scripture says in 1 Kings chapter 16, talking about this new king in Israel.

Now, you need to remember something because you'll get confused if you don't understand what happened in Israel's history. God called his people. Remember, he called Moses at the burning bush. "Go to my people, say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord, let my people go.'"

Pharaoh wouldn't do it. So God brought plagues. The children of Israel came out of Egypt. They went through the Red Sea. God drowned Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. They went and they got the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.

Then they went to go into the promised land, but they were too afraid. They were too unbelieving, so they didn't get to go in the promised land. They said, "There are giants there. We can't go." So God made them wander around in the wilderness for 40 years.

They spent a year in the wilderness for every day they spied out the land and said, "God's not able to bring us in." So after those 40 years, all those people that said God can't do it, they had died. Then God brought a new leader on the scene, Joshua.

God brought the people in and they took the land of Canaan, the land of promise. Joshua was their leader. Then when Joshua passed on, they had judges. We have the whole book of Judges about all the different judges that God brought.

Finally the people said, "Hey, we need a king. We need a king. We want to be like the other nations." Samuel, who is the last judge, he brokenheartedly said, "Okay, if you want a king, God's your king, but you want to have an earthly king. All right, this is what's going to happen."

They chose Saul. Saul was king for 40 years. He was a bust. He was terrible. So after Saul passed off, God chose David and David was king. After David was king for 40 years, then his son Solomon was king.

Solomon served and everything was great under Solomon's reign, although Solomon's heart didn't stay faithful to the Lord. After Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king. Rehoboam was a big idiot.

Under Rehoboam, the kingdom split. The 12 tribes of Israel that made up the one nation Israel, 10 of those tribes said, "We're not going to follow Rehoboam." Rehoboam was king in Jerusalem, where the temple was.

So they went and they said, "We're going to have our own kingdom." The 10 tribes split from the two tribes. The two tribes became known as the Southern Kingdom, or Judah, and their capital city was in Jerusalem. It was Judah and Benjamin that made up those two tribes.

The 10 tribes, they formed the Northern Kingdom, called Ephraim or called Samaria because the capital city was in Samaria or, most of the time, they're just called Israel because it's 10 tribes. They started out wicked from the get-go.

Their first king was a man named Jeroboam. Jeroboam was the son of Nebat. He was awful. Every king in Israel's history after the split is compared to Jeroboam the son of Nebat. He's the standard bearer for bad kings.

This is what he did. When he became king, he said, "Now I'm in trouble because the people have to go to Jerusalem to worship. I don't want them to go to Jerusalem to worship, because if they go to Jerusalem to worship, they're going to finally say, 'Hey, why are we fighting? Why are we separated? Let's just get back together.'"

He said, "That wouldn't be good for me because then they'd kill me." So what he did was he set up a golden calf in Bethel and a golden calf in Dan. He said, "Behold your gods, O Israel, that led you up out of Egypt. You don't have to go to Jerusalem. You just worship here at the southern part in Bethel or at the northern part in Dan, and that is your god."

It was a terrible, horrible sin. All the kings after Jeroboam, they followed in that same sin. We come to king number seven in this divided monarchy. His name is Ahab. Verse 29: "Now Ahab the son of Omri became king over Israel in the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah. And Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And it came about as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshipped him. So he erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab also made the Asherah," which is the female consort of Baal. "Thus Ahab did more to provoke the God of Israel more than all the kings of Israel who were before him."

Ahab is wicked to the core. One of the things that makes him so wicked is he marries Jezebel. Her name means "chaste." What a misnomer that was. She is like marrying the devil. She is awful. She is totally committed to Baal worship.

Baal was the false god of the Canaanites. Baal was a god of rain and a god of fertility. The way you would worship Baal is through sexual immorality because he's the god of fertility, fertility for flocks, for fields and for your own family. That was part of worship.

When God told them to take the promised land, he said, "Drive out all those people." Why? Because if you let them stay here, you're going to pollute yourself with their wicked, evil ways and their pagan religion. The people of God didn't do that.

Now we come to Ahab's reign, 874 B.C., and this is what is happening. God sends Elijah in that situation. Jezebel is busy trying to kill all the prophets of the Lord and set up Baal worship and say, "Phooey on Jehovah God. We're worshipping Baal here."

She has 400 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah and they eat at her table regularly. It's a dark time in Israel's history.

Larry Nobles: Well, today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, he has certainly explained how important it is to be faithful to stand up for God, even if you are doing it alone. He'll have more from this first message, Faithful to Stand, and the series Holy Boldness in just a moment.

Elijah was known as the prophet of fire because he was bold and strong as he stood alone for the Lord. What can we learn from his life and ministry? How can this truth encourage each of us in our faith and witness for Jesus?

These messages in the Holy Boldness series will speak to your heart and God's calling on your life. It's also our special gift of thanks this month for your support of any amount to From His Heart. To get your copy of these eight dynamic lessons in the format of your choice, call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhisheart.org.

Again, the series: Holy Boldness. It's available in CDs, DVDs, MP3 download or on a USB flash drive. With that gift, we'll also send you the booklet Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer. Thank you for supporting this outreach, which is literally reaching the world on radio, television and online, making an impact on lives across this nation and around the world. Now, let's get back to part one of the message Faithful to Stand from the eight-lesson series Holy Boldness: Lessons from Elijah, the Prophet of Fire.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: It's a dark time in Israel's history. Now Elijah comes on the scene. He tells Ahab, speaks right to his face and says, "There's not going to be any rain. No rain except by my word. No rain for years."

We read about in James chapter 5, it was three and a half years before there was rain. You go for three and a half years with no rain or no dew, you're in trouble, big-time trouble, because everything starts to die. That's what he said to Ahab.

Now who is Elijah? Elijah is the Tishbite. Tishbe is a place on the other side of the Jordan. It's on the eastern side of the Jordan River. The rest of Israel is all on the western side of the Jordan River. This is on the eastern side.

Elijah is a nobody from nowhere. He lives on the back side of nowhere. He's just this guy. He's kind of a rugged guy. He's not educated the way you would be educated in the high-brow schools. He's not like that. He's not erudite. He's not learned and polished and just refined.

He's a John the Baptist kind of guy. He's eating locusts and wild honey. He's that kind of guy. You want to know what he's like? He's a little like Phil Robertson, Duck Dynasty kind of guy. That's Elijah the prophet. He's fiery, but he's from the back side of nowhere.

You know what's so cool about that? Sometimes we think, well, for God to use someone, they have to have the right pedigree. They have to have the right family. They have to have the right training and the right education. That's not true.

For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his. God is looking around today, looking at those listening on the radio. He's looking to see: are there some people who will love me, who will have a heart for me, who will stand for me, who will walk with me and speak up for me? God is looking today to see if there's some people like that.

Elijah was faithful to stand even in the darkest days and you and I can be too. Second encouragement from this passage: We can be faithful to stand as we recognize who God is. We recognize who he is.

Don't discount the fact that Ahab is a big shot. He is king. He is over all the armies. Back in the day, in Bible times, if you're king, what you say goes. If you want to have somebody killed, they're killed.

It's just so different than today. You're not president when you're king. You're king and your word is the law. That's the way it works.

So here comes Elijah. He comes from the other side of the Jordan. He comes across the Jordan. He gets up in Ahab's face and he says in verse 1, "As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word."

Boldness. Power. Judgment spoken to Ahab. Now how did he get that? Well, he knew three things that you and I need to know because they're three key things that give you holy boldness, that give you the ability to stand up even in the face of difficulty and danger and darkness.

He knew this first of all: the Lord, Yahweh, is God alone. The Lord God is God alone. The name Elijah means this: "The Lord is my God. The Lord is my God." Lord all in caps, L-O-R-D all in caps, always refers to the name of God, Yahweh, Y-H-W-H, the tetragrammaton, the four letters.

We say Yahweh or Jehovah. We're not really sure how to pronounce it because the Jews didn't pronounce that because they said, you know, it says "Don't take the name of the Lord thy God in vain for God will not leave him unpunished who taketh his name in vain," Exodus 20 verse 7.

So they said, "Just don't even try and say it because you might mess it up." So when you're reading, just say Adonai. Don't say Yahweh. Well, he was a man whose name meant "the Lord is my God" and he understood there is only one God. It's not Baal. It is Yahweh.

In Isaiah chapter 45 verse 5, the Lord says this: "I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no God." Now Baal was supposed to be the god of rain. He's supposed to be the god of fertility.

So when Elijah says, "As the Lord lives before whom I stand, there's not going to be any rain," God is showing to Ahab and Jezebel who God is because he's shutting it down and Baal is not going to have any power to bring rain. Why? Because Baal is nothing. That's why.

It's almost like when the Lord brought the plagues on Egypt. Every one of those plagues that came on Egypt, that came after one of their gods, one of the things that they worshipped. They worshipped the Nile. The Nile was the life-giving water, and they worshipped that and God turned it to blood.

They worshipped the sun and God turned it to blackness. They worshipped frogs and God said, "You guys like frogs? I'll give you frogs. You're going to have frogs coming out of your ears." And God gave them the plague of frogs.

They had frogs in their bowls that they ate in, frogs in the palace, frogs everywhere. God was showing them and he was destroying all their false gods. The last plague that came on the Egyptians was when God killed the firstborn, even in the house of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh considered himself a god, but Pharaoh couldn't do anything against Yahweh, the God of Israel. He knew that the Lord is God alone. Secondly, he knew that the Lord is to be feared and obeyed.

Why did Elijah do what he did? Why did he step up the way he did? Because he knew that there is only one God and that's Yahweh. I need to fear him because he's God, and revere him because he's God, and obey him because he's God.

Elijah knew that the Lord God was God alone. He knew that the Lord was to be feared and obeyed and when God gave him a word, he had to speak that word. He wasn't afraid to speak even to the king. Why? He wasn't afraid of the king because he feared God. And when you fear God, you don't fear man.

Larry Nobles: What an encouraging truth to know that when we need courage to stand alone, God is with us. And we'll continue to explore the secrets to being faithful to stand as Pastor Jeff Schreve brings the conclusion to this message next time. Make sure that you're with us then.

Today's message was part one of the lesson Faithful to Stand and it's one of eight in Pastor Jeff's empowering series, Holy Boldness: Lessons from Elijah, the Prophet of Fire. This series can help you get out of the darkness and stand daily sharing the light of Christ.

This eight-message resource series contains other lessons like Answered Prayer, In the Cave of Depression, A Slap in God's Face, Heaven Can't Wait, and more. And it's our special thank-you gift this month for your support of From His Heart of any amount.

In case you didn't know it, the monthly support of our listeners is what allows us to be here each and every day, sharing the heart of God with you, your city, and the world. Pastor Jeff is our chief volunteer. He receives no income from this ministry.

Everything you give goes to getting these messages on this and nearly 900 stations on the air each and every day across America, not to mention the world. His uncompromising preaching is what we all need to hear.

With your gift today, you'll be helping spread this good news to a lost and a hurting world. And for your gift this month of any amount, we'll send you the series Holy Boldness: Lessons from Elijah, the Prophet of Fire, and we'll also include Pastor Jeff's companion booklet, Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer.

Just call 866-40-BIBLE and make your gift today. You can get it on CDs, DVDs, MP3 download or USB flash drive, your choice. God is using his people. Will you be faithful to stand? Will you stand with us this month? Call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhisheart.org and request the series Holy Boldness and the booklet Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer.

Thank you for joining us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting you'll be with us next time for part two of this encouraging lesson called Faithful to Stand. Here's just a little bit of what's to come next.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: We can be faithful to stand even in the darkest of days. Elijah did that. We can do that. He was a man, as the scripture says, with a nature like ours. He's not Superman. He's just a man. And what he did, we can do.

Larry Nobles: Join us then, as Pastor Jeff will open up God's word and share real truth, real love and real hope from his heart.