Fit for the Master’s Use
By Pastor Matt Black
18
November 2007
Lord's Day evening
1 Kings 18:1-16
Introduction: Open your Bibles to the book of I Kings 18:8-16. We are continuing our study on the life of Elijah. He lived an amazing life. He came out of obscurity. He didn’t have much education. He didn’t have much wealth. He was virtually unknown, a humble farmer from Gilead. But he had a heart for God, and He trusted God in the darkest of circumstances.
We’re going to talk about that tonight. So the title of this evening’s message is “Trusting God in the Darkness”.
Let’s go ahead and read 1 Kings 17:1-16, “And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth. 2 And Elijah went to shew himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria. 3 And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. (Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly: 4 For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.) 5 And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts. 6 So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself. 7 And as Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him: and he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my lord Elijah? 8 And he answered him, I am: go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here. 9 And he said, What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me? 10 As the LORD thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not. 11 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here. 12 And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of the LORD shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy servant fear the LORD from my youth. 13 Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the LORD, how I hid an hundred men of the LORD’S prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water? 14 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here: and he shall slay me. 15 And Elijah said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely shew myself unto him to day. 16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to meet Elijah.”
We come to this place, and we see that Elijah has been in hiding for three years, and praying for three and a half. His time at the Brook Cherith and with the widow at Zarephath were Elijah’s seminary training. The life of faith is quite simple. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy path” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
I was struck by this truth in 2 Timothy 2:21, “If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master‘s use, and prepared unto every good work.”
God is about to use Elijah in one of the mightiest miracles of the Old Testament before 400 pagan priests of Baal.
Here we come to three lessons from these verses.
I. A man fit for God’s use is a faithful man!
A. You need to trust God in private. You need to do right when no one is looking.
It is extremely important that Elijah know what it is to serve God in obscurity before God will use him in the public view.
B. You need to be faithful when no one but God is giving you praise. You see it is not gifted men that God uses, but faithful men. Now some of His faithful men are gifted, but faithfulness is the first requirement to be used of God.
If you are not willing to sit at a Brook for God or to serve a widow lady for God, then you certainly will not be used of God in a public way. The Lord said in Luke 16:10, “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much”. God gives great things to those who are responsible with little. What is done in secret is sometimes your best training. What is done in secret matters more than what is done in public.
So everything Elijah learned at the Brook Cherith and with the widow of Zarephath, he was going to need on Mount Carmel. The dependence that Elijah learned on God in the quiet times, he was going to use in the more difficult and dangerous part ministry that was ahead of him.
Application: Now some of you have been laid up from service from time to time through health problems or unemployment. You haven’t been able to do what you want to do. You feel like you’ve been taken out of the way. But God always has a reason for putting the barriers of life in your way. Think about Elijah! He never complained, but made covenanted to serve God in little things where ever he was. He never charged ahead of God, but waited patiently for the Lord to direct him, and that ultimately meant a higher and greater usefulness and greater influence from the Lord. All the time Elijah was waiting and praying. Waiting and praying are good tools of training for ministry!!
How do you get a faithful life?
C. You need to be faithful to God one day at a time. Look at verse 1. We come to verse 1 now and we read, “And it came to pass after many days”. Now Elijah was actually out of public ministry for three years. But Spirit of God records it how we should all view our lives. He says it was “after many days.” Listen, we cannot count our lives in years, but we must depend upon the Lord day by day.
God’s provisions come one day at a time. Luke 11:3, “Give us day by day our daily bread.”
God’s power comes one day at a time. 2 Corinthians 4:16, “For though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” We should number our days. “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14).
So we need to trust God in private if we are going to be faithful to God in times of trial.
II. The second principle is: A man fit for God’s use is a patient man.
A. We need to wait on God’s timing. God can be four days late and right on time. The Bible says in verse 1, “it came to pass”. God is never hurried. God’s plans will be carried out in His time. Do not think that God has forgotten you. The Lord never forgets any of His people, for has He not said, “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are continually before Me” (Isaiah 49.16)?
We read in verse 1, “And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth”. Remember what Elijah said to Ahab three years earlier? Look back at verse 1 of chapter 17, “And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word” (17:1). We know that God “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Ephesians 1:11).
B. In order to trust God in the tough times, we need to wait accourding also to God’s sovereignty.
Now things were bad in the land. Verse 1 Kings 18:2 says, “There was a sore famine in Samaria”. Now we could ask, where was God in the famine? And the answer is: on His throne ruling the universe. You see, “Our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased” (Psalm 115:3).
III. The third principle is this: A man fit for God’s use is a God-fearing man!.
“And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts” (verse 5). Now this is not the prophet Obadiah, but a manager of King Ahab’s household. Ahab doesn’t see what a disaster his kingship is! He is so proud. He has fallen so far from Solomon’s day. This is just now 61 years after the kingdom divided. This is also a lesson that you reap what you sow. And if you sow to the wind, you will reap the world wind!
God is able to humble the most exalted men. Because when it comes right down to it, all men are just men. Remember the famous words of one of the greatest kings of the ancient world, Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:37. He says, “Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.” We read in Psalm 108:12, “Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.”
A man, no matter how great he is, can be taken out by a microbe that he cannot even see. Man at his height is still vulnerable to Almighty God. He is still vulnerable to catastrophe and sickness and death. All men die. All men suffer illness and disease. And here the King of the land is gathering grass for his animals along side his butler.
And yet listen to the words of Ahab in verse 5 of 1 Kings 18. He speaks of gathering grass. He’s worried about earthly things!! He does not see his sins when the judgments of God come down. The heart of man is hardened until God softens it. As Jesus said in John 6:65, “no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.”
Man is not softened by judgment, but by grace. When you see a person in great trial who is softened, it is not the trial that softened the heart, but the grace of God. This also shows us that there can be no purgatory. Judgment does not soften wicked hearts, it only further hardens them. It is divine grace and the Spirit’s work and drawing that softens the heart of man.
Now in this passage, I want to introduce to you three men: Ahab the coward, Obadiah the servant, and Elijah the prophet.
If you are a man or a woman of God, you must never fear man. You must always do what is right. And here in verses 3 and 4 we find a servant of the King who has more royalty in his character than King Ahab could ever dream of having. Look at verses 3 and 4, “And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. (Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly: 4 For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water”.
I want you to see a man that does not fear God, and it is king Ahab. His house is ruled by a woman. Men, the Bible says that you are the head of your home. Now you’ve got to rule in love and in kindness, but your wife and your children must also know that you are firm. Ahab couldn’t rule the country much less his home. Verse 4 tells us that “Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD”. No mention of King Ahab. He’s out looking for grass to feed his mules!!
But we see another man in these verses who did fear God. It was Obadiah the servant. And he was not first a servant of Ahab. No, Obadiah was a servant of God! Look at verse 3, “(Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly: 4 For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water”.
And then we come to another man who served God and did not fear man. It is Eilijah himself.
It was dangerous for Elijah to return to Samaria. The Apostle Paul he counted not his life dear unto himself (Acts 20:24), but was ready to be tortured and killed for the Lord if that was what God wanted.
So we come to verse 7 and we read, “And as Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him: and he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my lord Elijah? 8 And he answered him, I am: go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.”
Elijah does not fear man. He does not try to hide his identity. He is who is in broad day light. Obadiah was hiding the prophets of God from Jezebel and he knows that Elijah’s life is in danger. We read in verse 10, “As the Lord thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee”.
Here we learn another reason why we should not fear man. We are immortal until God is finished with us.
No famine, no dried up brook, no King with all his armies could find Elijah. He was perfectly safe in the care of the Lord.
Obadiah knew that Elijah was being protected by the Lord. That is why he didn’t want to deliver the message that Elijah was here to the king, because he though just as easily as Elijah had appeared, he would also disappear. Obadiah reviews Elijah’s request in verse 11. He told Obadiah to “go [to Ahab and], tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.” He says in verse 12, “And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know not ; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth”.
Of course Obadiah doesn’t want to give the message to Ahab. Obadiah knows that Elijah is God’s man. He cannot be harmed as long as God is using him.
And of course Obadiah is made of the same stuff as Elijah. Obadiah asks Elijah in verse 13, “Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the Lord, how I hid a hundred men of the Lord’s prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water?”
Obadiah was not being boastful but sincere when he talked about the great things he did for God’s prophets.
So Elijah reassured him in God’s name, and Obadiah obediently complied with his request: (verses 15-16) “And Elijah said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely shew myself unto him to day. 16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to meet Elijah.”
Conclusion: So what is the lesson here? If you are fit for the master’s use, then no matter what trials come your way, you will have a legacy that far outlasts a compromising King! You will have the legacy of a faithful servant or a patient prophet. We talked about the work of the ministry this morning. Are you a man or a woman fit for the master’s use?