Introduction:
A. The story is told of a frog who went to see a fortune-teller to learn about his future.
1. Gazing into her crystal ball, the fortune teller said to the frog, “You are going to meet a beautiful young woman. From the moment she sets eyes on you she will have an insatiable desire to know all about you. She will be compelled to get close to you—you’ll fascinate her.”
2. Excitedly, the frog asked, “Where will I meet her? At a singles’ club?”
3. “No!” replied the fortune-teller, “You will meet her in a biology class.”
B. Today, countless people seek to know the future.
1. Newspapers and magazines carry horoscope columns.
2. Television networks advertise psychic hotlines.
3. Magazine racks at grocery store checkout counters offer paperback books on astrology, horoscopes, and other occult subjects.
4. The Internet provides a vast array of merchandise for people who are curious about securing information about their fortune and their future.
C. To many, this hype may sound like sheer silliness and may appear to be nothing more than harmless fun.
1. After all, what’s so bad about reading your daily horoscope?
2. But what we need to realize is that this is enemy territory.
3. All this stuff related to fortune telling is anything but silliness and harmless fun.
4. As we will learn from our story today, God is not pleased when His people turn to and trust in anyone or anything other than the living God.
D. So let’s spend some time working through today’s very interesting story from the life of Elijah and see what lessons God would want us to learn about trusting in God alone.
I. The Story
A. As you will recall from our study of the life of Elijah thus far, Elijah was a wanted man.
1. He had once delivered God’s unwelcome message to the king and as the lengthy drought began to take its’ toll, Elijah’s name became a household word across the land of Israel.
2. So, Elijah became famous, but certainly not popular.
3. Everybody, especially the king, wanted to get their hands on him.
4. Elijah’s heroic and successful showdown with the prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mt. Carmel only intensified their desire to eliminate him.
5. God protected Elijah and delivered him from who knows how many traps that had been laid for him.
6. And as we saw in our sermon last week, both Ahab and Jezebel finally went too far, and God finished them off rather swiftly, just as God had predicted through Elijah.
B. This is where we want to pick up the story today.
1. The Bible says: So the king died and was brought to Samaria, and they buried him there. 38 They washed the chariot at a pool in Samaria (where the prostitutes bathed), and the dogs licked up his blood, as the word of the Lord had declared.
40 Ahab rested with his fathers. And Ahaziah his son succeeded him as king.
51 Ahaziah son of Ahab became king of Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned over Israel two years. 52 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, because he walked in the ways of his father and mother and in the ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. 53 He served and worshiped Baal and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger, just as his father had done. (1 Kgs. 22:37-38, 40, 51-53)
2. So, Ahab died, just as God had predicted.
a. But Ahab’s death did not mean that all was well in the land.
3. Ahab’s son, Ahaziah, most likely his eldest son, succeeded him.
a. As you might imagine, the son of Ahab was just like his father, and so for the two years that he ruled, he “did evil in the sight of the Lord.”
b. Just like his mother and father, he served Baal.
4. We don’t know much else about his reign, but we are told about an accident he had.
C. The Bible says: Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers, saying to them, “Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury.” (2 Kgs. 1:2)
1. As you can see, the Bible doesn’t give a lot of information about the accident.
2. Perhaps he broke a leg or broke his back or damaged an internal organ in the fall.
3. Maybe he was paralyzed.
4. What is certain is that it was some kind of serious injury or resulted in a serious illness.
5. When the injured king realized he wasn’t recovering, he got worried.
6. Having been trained by his parents to handle such complications in life by consulting pagan deities, Ahaziah sought counsel from the god of Ekron, hoping that that god would tell him if he would recover from the injury.
D. Ekron was one of the five major Philistine cities and was a city known for its practice of divination.
1. Apparently the god “Baal-zebub” was housed there.
2. The name “Baal-zebub” is a combination of two Hebrew words.
a. “Baal” means “lord or god.”
b. “Zebub” in noun form means “fly.”
c. Together the two words mean “god of the fly” or “lord of the fly.”
3. Old Testament scholars have many different theories about the god “Baal-zebub.”
a. All we know for sure is that this “fly god” was housed at Ekron, and was believed to speak about the future through its seers and witches and priests.
4. The only time the name Baal-zebub appears in the Old Testament is in this chapter of 2 Kings, where it appears 4 times.
a. In all 4 places it refers to the same false deity, the god of Ekron.
5. The name does appear again, however, in the New Testament, in the Greek form Beelzebub.
a. The Pharisees did not believe that the power of Jesus was from God, rather they credited Jesus’ power to Beelzebub, the ruler of demons. (Mt. 12:22-24)
6. We cannot say for certain that this Beelzebub refers specifically to Satan.
a. The name could refer to one of the princes of demons who have charge over realms of the demonic world.
b. But we know for sure that this Beelzebub of the New Testament is related to the Baal-zebub of 2 Kings.
c. Both represent a source of demonic power.
E. So Ahaziah, when seeking to know about his future, turned to Baal-zebub.
1. Some people today might say, as they certainly did in Elijah’s day, “Aw, what’s the harm? That god is just a piece of stone or wood. It’s not alive.”
2. And that is certainly true, as far as the physical object itself.
3. But the problem has to do with what that object represents, and especially what it does to the idol worshiper.
4. The idol itself is just a piece of matter, but through the act of worship it becomes a point of residence for the demonic world.
5. This object that is worshiped, consulted, and sacrificed to is nothing in and of itself, but it can become the breeding ground for the whole world of demonic powers.
6. Paul explained this when he wrote to the Corinthians many centuries later: Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. (1 Cor. 10:19-20)
7. On the surface, Baal-zebub was nothing more than a hunk of stone or a chunk of wood, maybe in the shape of a fly, but from it emanated all sorts of supernatural, demonic powers.
F. That is why God stepped in when Ahaziah sent his messenger to consult with the god of Ekron.
1. The Bible says: But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?’ 4 Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘You will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!’” So Elijah went. (2 Kgs 1:3-4)
2. So we see that God quickly dispatched His prophet to the scene to intercept Ahaziah’s messengers.
3. God did not want them to have any contact with the demon-inspired god at Ekron.
4. So God told Elijah to stop them from making that journey and told him to ask them, “Is there no God in Israel that you can call upon? Why must you go to this god in Ekron?”
G. It is amazing how quickly God sometimes acts.
1. Here was Ahaziah, confined to his bed. He was not recovering from the injury and he wanted to know his future.
2. The Lord quickly stepped in and let him know that his very decision to go to a false god would seal his fate – he would not recover.
H. So Ahaziah’s messengers returned and told the king about the man who had intercepted them and they delivered the message Elijah sent.
1. At that point, Ahaziah had one question for them.
2. The Bible says: The king asked them, “What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?”
8 They replied, “He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist.” (2 Kgs. 1:7-8)
3. When Ahaziah heard the description, he knew exactly who it was – Elijah!
4. He had heard all about this “thorn-in-the-flesh prophet from his mother and father.
5. Now here was Elijah being a “thorn-in-the-flesh” with him.
I. So, like his parents, Ahaziah immediately gave an order for Elijah to be apprehended.
1. The Bible says: Then he sent to Elijah a captain with his company of fifty men. The captain went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, “Man of God, the king says, ‘Come down!’”
10 Elijah answered the captain, “If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men. (2 Kgs 1:9-10)
2. Never one to allow the enemy a foothold, Elijah acted quickly, and God protected his servant.
3. However, Ahaziah would not be deterred. The Bible says: At this the king sent to Elijah another captain with his fifty men. The captain said to him, “Man of God, this is what the king says, ‘Come down at once!’”
12 “If I am a man of God,” Elijah replied, “may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed him and his fifty men. (2 Kgs. 1:11-12)
4. Somehow the word traveled swiftly back to the barracks that the man on the mountain wearing the hairy outfit is not someone to take lightly.
5. When Ahaziah sent the third captain, notice what he did. The Bible says: So the king sent a third captain with his fifty men. This third captain went up and fell on his knees before Elijah. “Man of God,” he begged, “please have respect for my life and the lives of these fifty men, your servants! 14 See, fire has fallen from heaven and consumed the first two captains and all their men. But now have respect for my life!” (2 Kgs. 1:13-14)
J. At this point in the story, God gave Elijah more instructions.
1. The Bible says: The angel of the Lord said to Elijah, “Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.” So Elijah got up and went down with him to the king.
16 He told the king, “This is what the Lord says: Is it because there is no God in Israel for you to consult that you have sent messengers to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Because you have done this, you will never leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!” (2 Kgs. 1:15-16)
2. Fearlessly, Elijah went to Ahaziah and confronted him face to face.
a. Picture Elijah standing there before the younger king, just as he had stood before Ahab, his father.
b. Picture the young king surrounded by armed warriors ready to finish off Elijah upon the king’s order.
3. Nevertheless, Elijah, the courageous man of God, stood alone in the gap.
a. The Lord spoke His rebuke through Elijah.
b. The Lord rebuked Ahaziah for approaching a false god for the help that he should only have sought from the Lord.
c. Listen again to Elijah’s piercing question: “Is there no God in Israel that you must seek help from this god of Ekron?”
d. Then Elijah pronounced God’s final sentence: “Because you have turned to this false god, you will never recover, but will surely die.”
4. The Bible says: 17 So he died, according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had spoken. (1:17)
5. God means what He says and God keeps His word.
II. The Application
A. Let me suggest two important lessons that we learn from today’s segment from Elijah’s life.
B. First, We learn that God is displeased with any occult involvement.
1. No matter what the motive, no matter how great the need, dabbling with the occult is sin.
2. What do I mean by the word “occult?”
a. Literally, the word “occult” means “hidden”.
b. It involves practices that are not approved of by God; including astrology, casting spells, consulting with spirits, sorcery, and witchcraft.
c. Occult practices such as Ouija boards, tarot cards, astrology charts, contacting the dead, and séances, are to be avoided by the Christian.
3. God’s Word is crystal clear on this subject.
a. Way back in Leviticus God gave this command to His people : “Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 19:31)
1. If we seek out a medium or a psychic, then we become defiled.
2. We become mentally contaminated, emotionally confused, and spiritually corrupted.
3. That may not be our intention, but that is the result.
4. Many people begin dabbling in astrology or fortune telling or Ouija boards just for fun or out of curiosity.
5. But these simple, harmless-looking games begin a process and they open doors that should not be opened.
6. Then it’s only a matter of time before the dark powers of demonic forces suck them in, and they find themselves ensnared.
7. As the forces of darkness capture more of their minds, they become driven by these powers and ruled by them, rather than being governed by God.
b. In the next chapter of Leviticus, God declares: “I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.” (Lev. 20:6)
1. Those are harsh words, but they reveal just how seriously God views the occult, and how harshly He deals with those who have dealings with any form of it.
c. Before the Israelites entered the land of promise, God gave them this warning: When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. 10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. (Deut. 18:9-12)
d. When we turn to the New Testament, we see that involvement with the occult is forbidden.
1. We notice that when Paul gave a list of sinful activities in Galatians 5:19-21, Paul included witchcraft. He concluded “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
e. Toward the end of the book of Revelation we read: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Rev. 21:8)
4. So it is clear from Scripture that God is not pleased with occult involvement.
5. God will punish those who involve themselves in these practices – that includes Ahaziah or anyone else.
C. Second, We learn that God is pleased when we trust Him only.
1. The Lord strengthens those who put their trust in Him.
2. If we are not grounded in the Word of God and seeking Him daily as our source of strength and knowledge for the future, then we, too, can easily fall prey to the lure of the occult.
3. As I said in last week’s sermon, “we must not play games with God.”
4. But it is equally important that we must not play games with the enemy.
a. Being not only the “lord of the flies,” he is also “the father of lies.”
b. When Satan gets us to believe his lies, he seldom loses.
5. Satan wants to get us to begin trusting in anyone and anything other than God.
D. Let me end with an illustration: As you probably know professional athletes are among the most superstitious people on the plant.
1. They are always looking for ways to manipulate and control their lives and careers.
2. Wayne Gretzky is arguably the greatest professional hockey player that ever played the game.
a. He was recognized by his number 99, and his half tucked-in jersey (right side in).
b. During his entire career he wore his jersey that way because he, like so many other sports players was terribly superstitious.
c. Did it help his game? Certainly not, but you would have trouble convincing him of that.
3. Truth is: no amount of superstition, horoscope watching, or psychic connections can assure you and me of our future, only Jesus can give us blessed assurance.
E. So, let’s put our trust in God alone.
1. We must trust God alone for salvation, and we must trust God alone for everything else.
2. God will bless us when we trust in Him alone.
3. Is that what you are doing? Are you trusting in God alone?
Resources:
Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility, by Charles Swindoll, Thomas Nelson, 2000.
