However, if you are not well, please feel free to email us at freedomfellowshiponline@gmail.com. I promise that we will pray for you, and ask for the Lord's intervention in your life.
WORSHIP
Here are today's worship songs. Please feel free to just listen to them, or to sing along as you wish, wherever you may be.
The Blessing (Live) - Elevation Worship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp6aygmvzM4
God of Revival - Bethel Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFWF9rSAWF8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFWF9rSAWF8
Way Maker (Live from Passion 2020) - Passion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idJgysaRKXU Message Title: Let Revival Come!
Scripture: 1 Kings 17-18
Date: April 19, 2020
INTRODUCTION
It was summertime. The sun beat down mercilessly on a dry and thirsty land. Streams and pools of water had dried up, the crops had failed, and food was scarce. The population of Israel was hurting, badly. No doubt vulnerable people were dying then too, just like today.
Why was this happening? Wasn't this nation known as God's chosen people? Why had God seemingly turned his back on them? Why did it seem as though the nation was cursed by God, rather than blessed?
Today we are going to look at how God used a terrible time of hardship and turned it into blessing. There is hope for us as a nation, too.
BACKGROUND
Elijah the prophet was God's messenger to the Israelites during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab was one of the worst kings the Israelites had had during their checkered history.
Greatly influenced by his Phoenician wife Jezebel, Ahab had spread the worship of Baal the sun-god throughout Israel. Baal worship was rampant in Israel's neighboring countries, and now this sick religion had spread its tentacles throughout Israel, God's chosen people.
Baal worship involved both men and women, and was centered around worshiping the sun, the God of fire. This was a fertility religion and promiscuity was a central part of worship. Possibly the worst part of these pagan practices, was that the people would sacrifice their children by burning them, as an offering to Baal (1).
No wonder that God forbade the Israelites to worship him like the surrounding nations did (2). Yet the Israelites had combined their worship of God, with the worship of Baal, creating a religion which was a travesty.
However, God does not give up on his people, despite the terrible things they were now doing.
So God sends Elijah to king Ahab, telling the king that God is going to impose a drought on Israel. This drought lasted three and a half years (3). The land suffered (4), and as a consequence in an agrarian society, people went hungry, there was famine in the land (5).
TIME FOR CHANGE
After the allotted time, God sends Elijah back to Ahab to announce that God was now going to cause the drought to finish - rain was coming. We see from this that God is a merciful God. The nation had not yet turned back to God, or away from Baal. Yet God said, I am going to send rain (6).
Then, having pronounced an end to the drought, God sends Elijah to call for national repentance.
Elijah calls the prophets of Baal to a show down on Mount Carmel. Elijah challenges them to an epic duel, to determine who is real - the God of their fathers, or Baal?
Elijah gets the prophets of Baal to build and altar and prepare a sacrifice, without lighting the fire. Elijah also, prepares an altar and a sacrifice. He, however, drenches the sacrifice and the altar with water, even filling a ditch around the altar with water. Now, God's prophet challenges the Baal worshipers to call on their God to send down fire from heaven. Nothing happens. They dance around the altar, cutting themselves, calling out for an answer from the sun-god. Nothing.
Then Elijah utters a short prayer. God responds immediately, sending fire from heaven onto the altar and the sacrifice. The fire consumes everything!
A CALL TO REPENTANCE
When the Israelites see how the God of their fathers responds, while the god called Baal is obviously just a figment of their imagination, they repent. "The Lord, He is the God, the Lord, He is God" (7).
God does not deal with us according to our sins (8). If God did punish us for our sins, nothing would be left of us. We murder our unborn children - 862,000 abortions in the United States in 2017 (9), around 56 million abortions each year worldwide (10). How does this compare with the child sacrifice of Ball worship? No, we do not burn them alive with fire. Instead we dismember them while their hearts are still beating, and throw them out with the trash.
Thankfully God is a merciful God. And there will be an end to the current epidemic.
It is time that we as a nation, and world-wide, turn back to God in heartfelt repentance. We have the blood of millions of unborn babies on our hands, quite apart from having left God out of our society.
We as a nation, and as individuals, need to beg the Lord for forgiveness.
PRAYER
"Lord, we turn to you on behalf of our nation and for ourselves and beg for your forgiveness. As a Christian nation we have turned away from you and slaughtered our children on the altars of convenience. We have thrown the Bible out of our public places, our schools have taught our children perverted sexual practices and abolished prayer, and we have rebelled against you.
"Please forgive our many sins, and bring the rain of revival upon this land again. There has been a drought of the Holy Spirit, please return and draw your people back to you.
"Thank you Lord, for your unending and totally undeserved mercy. Help us turn back to you. In Jesus' name, amen".
NOTES
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1. "The Canaanites worshiped Baal as the sun god and as the storm God - he is usually depicted holding a lightning bolt - who defeated enemies and produced crtops. They also worshiped him as a fertility god who provided children. Baal worship was rooted in sensuality and involved ritualistic prostitution in the temples. At times, appeasing Baal required human sacrifice, usually the firstborn of the one making the sacrifice (Jeremiah 19:5). The priests of Baal appealed to their god in rites of wild abandon which included loud, ecstatic cries and self-inflicted injury (1 Kings 18:28)" - https://www.gotquestions.org/who-Baal.html
2. Deuteronomy 12:30
3. James 5:17
4. 1 Kings 17:7
5. 1 Kings 17:12
6. 1 Kings 18:1
7. 1 Kings 18:39
8. Psalms 103:10
9. https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2019/09/us-abortion-rate-continues-drop-once-again-state-abortion-restrictions-are-not-main
10. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-worldwide
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