There is a broad road and it leads to destruction. Ahab was on the broad road and the vast majority of those who would have called themselves God’s people were on the broad road with him. What does it look like to progress further and further down the broad road? Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick and Colin, you mentioned the broad road, so to begin with, what do you mean by that? Well, actually it is so familiar because you look at what happened with Ahab, it really is a picture of what is happening in our culture and in our society increasingly today. So, here’s this man, what does he do? He begins to break the commandments of God, he says I want to do things that God has said should not be done and he does them. So what happens next? He ends up taking the next step, which is that worship begins to change. He can’t worship the God who made that command, so he has to worship other gods and so the culture begins to change and as that whole process goes, he provokes the anger of God and ultimately ends up ignoring the warnings of God so that the word of God has no weight in his life. You know, I look at that road and I think, boy, that is exactly the path that our culture is on and thank God he sent Elijah, the brightest of the prophets at the worst of times in Israel’s history and this man comes with a conviction about God’s truth and a courage to stand. We need that the Lord would raise up a generation of Elijahs because our culture is going fast down the road that Ahab chose. Well, we can learn a lot from the story of Elijah and the courage the Lord gave him when he needed it. So, if you can, join us in the first book of Kings, chapter 16, as we begin the message Courage When You Need It. Here’s Colin. We began last week with the definition that leaders are people who set out on a journey and take others with them and today I want to introduce you to two leaders who moved in very different directions. Ahab, who took a journey of rebellion against God and led thousands of people with him, and Elijah who chose a very different path, a journey of obedience to God, and found himself very much out on a limb. He felt that he was out of touch with his culture, out of line with where people were. It was an uphill struggle for him. He often was very lonely. He sometimes felt sheer exhaustion from the ongoing strain of continually, it seems, swimming against the tide of where the culture is going, and if you’re a Christian believer today, you’re probably experiencing that in some way, shape, or form. Ahab and Elijah, both leaders, both people of vast influence. With Ahab only within his own lifetime, Elijah still, down to this day, through the scriptures that speak of his ministry and give him as an example and an inspiration even to us today, two men, both leaders, different paths, different directions, and extraordinarily different outcomes for their lives. So let’s begin with Ahab. I hope you have your Bible open at 1 Kings chapter 16. The pattern of the book of Kings is to give a headline, a kind of summary, of each king followed by a more detailed description of the key decisions or the key events in that king’s life. And the account of Ahab begins in 1 Kings chapter 16 and verse 29. We’re told that in the 38th year of Ahaz, king of Judah, that is the two tribes that the south are described as Judah here, Ahab, the son of Omri, began to reign over Israel. That’s the ten tribes in the north. And Ahab, the son of Omri, reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. Twenty-two years. That is a long time. That is an entire generation this man was on the throne. Previous reigns, and there had been six kings before him in the northern area of Israel. Previous reigns had been a lot shorter. Kings had been murdered. Kings had been deposed. But not Ahab. He was around for a long time. And because he was around for twenty-two years, that meant political stability. And with political stability, economic prosperity. But I want you to look at what God says about him in verse 30. Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the eyes of the Lord more than all who were before him. Notice that phrase. He did more evil in the eyes of God than all the kings who were before him. Now if you look back a few verses to verse 25, you will find that the same thing is said about Ahab’s father, Omri. It says in verse 25 that Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he did more evil than all who were before him. So you see what is happening with each generation. There is a slide going on in the culture further and further away from the truth of God, deeper and deeper into the darkness of evil. Omri did more evil than anyone who came before him. And then he died, and his son came to the throne, and Ahab did even more evil than anyone who had gone before him. He went even further. Evil went from bad to worse under Ahab, and at that time it got to the worst it had ever been. There’s a famous Baptist preacher by the name of R.G. Lee who memorably described Ahab as the vilest toad ever to squat on the throne of Israel. That’s a pretty memorable description, and gets to the point that Ahab is the low point. There has never been anyone as bad as this man. That is what the Word of God is saying. Now, you remember that our Lord Jesus spoke on one occasion in Matthew chapter 7 about two roads. He said there is a broad road and it leads to destruction. And he said there are many, many people on it. And Ahab was on the broad road. And the vast majority of those who would have called themselves God’s people were on the broad road with him. That was why it was so lonely for Elijah. Now, I want us to follow the steps in Ahab’s journey. What does it look like to progress further and further down the broad road? That’s what this leader did, and he took thousands of people with him. I want to show you four steps down the broad road, and I think you’ll recognize that they are steps that are being taken by thousands and thousands and thousands of people today. Here’s number one. Ahab’s journey began when he broke the commandment of God. Verse 31. He took for his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ephbal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him. Now, you can check this out in Deuteronomy 7 and verse 3 if you would like to. When God’s people entered into the promised land, God gave them a clear command that they were not under any circumstance to marry people who worshipped idols. Now, it’s very important to understand what the issue was here. The issue is not interracial marriage. It is not interracial marriage, and we know that because Ruth, in the Old Testament, who was a Moabitess, married Boaz after she took refuge, the Bible says, under the wings of the Lord, and she was included in the line that led to Christ. And so, we know for sure that God smiles upon the marriage of a man or a woman of different race when they marry in the Lord. But God speaks very clearly to his own people with regard to entering a marriage with someone who does not submit to him. Here you are, you submit to God. Here is someone else who does not submit to God. That’s not being equally yoked. The Bible speaks about that often. But Ahab pays absolutely no attention whatsoever to that. What did he care about the word of God in old books like Deuteronomy that were written hundreds of years before his time? He would have said, to justify his position, that he was dealing with political reality. And the political reality of the day was that Assyria to the north was growing exponentially, it seemed, in power. And Ahab is presiding as king over these ten tribes in the northern part of Israel in Samaria. And he’s worked it out. It doesn’t take a genius to think about this. He’s thinking, I need a strong ally. I need some way of bolstering my defense against this threat from the north. And it seemed to Ahab that the Sidonians were just the answer. What better way to cement an alliance with the Sidonians than for him to marry the crown princess, the daughter of Esbaal, whose name was Jezebel. And that is what Ahab did. Ahab came to the throne about sixty years after the death of Solomon. He was the seventh king in line after that awful schism in which the kingdom had ruptured with the ten tribes in the north separating themselves from the line of David that continued the Davidic kings ruling in the south. And it’s interesting in this verse that seven kings on, sixty years on, just more than a half century on from the time of Solomon. We read here that for Ahab it seemed like a light thing to walk in the sins of Jeroboam. Vast changes had happened over just half a century since the death of Solomon. Sins that would have seemed shocking to one generation now within fifty years seemed light and trivial to another. And older folks who could remember back sixty years to the time when Solomon was on the throne must have wondered what in all the world has happened to our nation in just more than fifty years. Have you ever asked that question of our nation? Have you ever felt that what seemed shocking fifty years ago seems light and trivial to younger people today? Can you begin to say how could a culture have moved so far so fast in just more than fifty years inside one lifetime? Well this is exactly the situation that we find in 1 Kings and chapter 16. Well I think we’ve all probably asked questions like that. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called Courage When You Need It. Part of our series, Surprising Influence of a Godly Life. It’s a look at the story of Elijah and if you ever miss one of our messages you can always go online to openthebible.org.uk and catch up or go back and listen again. Open the Bible is supported by our listeners and if that’s something you’d like to do we have an offer this month. It’s a book called The Fight, a practical Christian handbook and Colin will be talking about it a little later after the message. It’s a gift to you if you’re able to set up a new donation to the work of Open the Bible in the amount of £5 per month or more. More details later and on the website. Let’s get back to the message now. Here’s Colin. Ahab broke the commandment of God and the culture was just charging down that path in all kinds of ways after him. But that’s only the beginning. Second, he subverted the worship of God. Look at verse 32. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria. Now what a change this is. It’s only a hundred years since David had planned for the temple of God and sixty years or so since Solomon had built it. Now here we are, these years down the line, and Ahab is on the throne and the ten tribes from the north having separated from Jerusalem in the south where that temple is, now Ahab takes it upon himself to build a house not for the Lord but for Baal and to have an altar for Baal that is inside the house of Baal that he built. Friends, please think about this with me with your Bible open. No one who takes the Bible seriously can say that all religions are different ways of saying the same thing. Nobody who takes the Bible seriously can say that all religions are different ways of coming to the same God but by different roots. There is one God and Baal is not God. That’s what we’re learning here. And the very first commandment, not one that’s tucked away somewhere up the list, but the very first commandment that God gives to his people is this, you shall have no other gods before me. What does that mean? It means that there is one God, but because it is our nature to rebel against him, we invent other gods who will sit comfortably with our pleasures. What that means is this, that our first sins hide inside the apparent sincerity of our man-made religions. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me, says the Lord. And what is the second commandment? The second commandment, you shall not make for yourself an idol. It’s very fascinating to me just how sin progresses within a culture. Jeroboam, who was the one who led the rebellion in which the ten tribes to the north broke away from the line of David, what a terrible thing that was to do. And when he did that, he set up in the north an alternative worship center. In fact, he set up two alternative worship centers, one in Dan and one in a town called Bethel, because he didn’t want the people going back down to the temple of the Lord, which was in Jerusalem in the south. And so here’s what he did. He made two golden calves, he put one at the center in Dan, the other one in the center at Bethel, and he said this. You can read it in 1 Kings 12 and verse 28. He said of these idols, he said, these are your gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Now, you see what he’s saying? He’s saying, hey folks, we’re all worshiping the same God, but we’re doing it in our own place and we’re doing it in our own way. And in doing that, saying, hey, we’re all worshiping our own God, but we’re doing it in our own place and we’re doing it in our own way, he broke the second commandment. That’s what Jeroboam did. But now Ahab goes a step further. He doesn’t bother about saying, hey folks, we’re all worshiping the same God and we’re doing it in our own place and in our own way. He’s saying, we’re worshiping Baal. We’ve moved beyond the God of the Bible. He’s obsolete. That’s old stuff. That’s history. We’re living in a brave new world now, and we’re living in a new contemporary kind of a way. And so not only does he break the second commandment as Jeroboam did, he breaks the first one as well. So Ahab reaches a new dark point in the history of God’s people. He has now come to the place where not only does he break the commandments of God, he’s gone further. He has come to the place where he feels that he has the freedom to choose his own God as well as his own lifestyle. And that’s how it progresses. People begin to say, I have the freedom to choose my own lifestyle. You walk down that road a little bit, the next thing you end up saying is, I have to have the freedom to choose my own God. So that’s what happened in just a short period of time. Ahab’s journey. Step number one, he breaks the commandment of God. Walk down that road, it won’t be too long before you’re taking step number two, which is he begins to subvert the worship of God. Worships another God, his own God. Third, he provoked the anger of God. Look at verse thirty-three. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. Now friends, this word provoke is very important. It tells us that anger is not God’s natural state. The pagans, of course, believed in gods who were always angry, gods who were always needing to be placated, gods who were angry by nature. The Bible tells us that God is love. That is his nature. It never says God is wrath. It says God is love, but he can be provoked to anger. He hates evil, and when people pursue evil, he is provoked, notice the word, to anger. Even then, the Bible says that he is slow to anger. But Ahab had been now for years on a sustained assault in the pursuit of evil. He did more to provoke the anger of God than all the kings of Israel who were before him. So are you seeing the steps in the journey? I have to have the freedom to choose my own lifestyle. I choose my own morality. Not long before you take the next step, I have to be able to shape my own God. Not long before you’re taking the next step, he’s provoking the anger of God and bringing the nation to the very edge of judgment. And notice the fourth step. He ignored the warning of God. You’ve been listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith, and today we’ve been looking at the story of Ahab and what it’s like to progress down the broad road. The message is part of a larger series called The Surprising Influence of a Godly Life, mainly focusing on the story of Elijah. And we’ll do that in the next part of our series, looking at how Elijah was able to stand against a darkening culture. If you ever miss one of our messages, you can always go online, catch up, go back and listen again to any of the previous messages at openthebible.org.uk. There you can download an MP3 for free or stream the messages online. Also on the website, you can find Open the Bible Daily, a series of short two to three minute reflections written by Pastor Colin Smith and read by Sue MacLeish. You can now find Open the Bible Daily as a podcast on your favourite podcast site. Just search Open the Bible UK. Starting in August, you’ll also be able to hear the full Open the Bible programme as a podcast. We’ll be posting more information about this on the website very soon. Open the Bible relies on its listeners to keep this programme on the radio and on the internet. People like you. This month, if you’re able to commit to a new regular monthly donation of £5 or more, we would like to thank you by sending a copy of John White’s book, The Fight. Colin, who is this book written for? Well, it’s for every Christian who wants to grow, and that has to be every Christian. I mean, it’s every one of us. This is just a practical handbook on how to grow in the Christian life. It has been helpful to me over many years. I first read it as a young Christian when I was a student in college. It’s still valuable for me today. John White just goes through some of the basics of the Christian life. How to pray, how to grow in holiness, how to seek the guidance and the will of God. It’s very practical, laid out very clearly and drawn wonderfully from his deep understanding of Scripture. It’s written in a compelling manner. And so if you’re looking for something that will help you grow in the Christian life or something that you could give to someone who needs to grow in the Christian life, this is a really helpful, practical, accessible and biblical handbook. And The Fight has stood the years of time, and I’m just delighted that there is a new edition available now that we’re able to make available to all of our listeners. So this book, The Fight, is our gift to you this month if you’re able to start a new monthly donation to Open the Bible of £5 per month or more. You can find details on our website, openthebible.org.uk. For Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick. Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll join us again soon. One man found the courage to go in a very different direction, in a very dark culture. Find out how Elijah did it next time on Open the Bible.