Jerry’s Grill: In times like these.
Some of us may have not totally shaken off the holiday spirit yet and in just a few weeks, the first quarter of 2008 will already be history. This quarter may be remembered with only a few things. On top of the list are the exposes and scandals that smeared even the highest office of the country. Thus, the cry for TRUTH. Like me, you may be at loss on what to believe and who to listen to. But, these are strong reminders to what happens in a culture that moves away from God. During King Ahab, Israel as a nation suffered the darkest moment in history.
First, things that were very important to God become were treated trivial. Verse 31 in 1 Kings 16, says, that Ahab “considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat.” Jereboam didn’t deny the reality of God, but in order to please the people, he mixed the worship of God with elements of paganism that were popular in his day. Ahab followed Jeroboam’s lead and did the same thing. It wasn’t a big deal to him. We don’t know why Ahab thought it was trivial to sin against God. But so he did.
First Kings 16:31 says, “Ahab married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him.” Jezebel’s father, Ethbaal, murdered his way to the throne of Sidon by assassinating his own brothers. He was a worshiper of the god Baal; his name, “Eth-baal,” means “I’m with Baal.” Ahab’s father Omri had done more evil than any of the kings before him. Then came Ahab, who married Jezebel. Ahab and Jezebel ruled during a time in which God was forsaken and Baal was worshiped, and the culture slipped deeper and deeper into darkness.
The name Baal means lord or master. Baal was worshiped as the god of rain and fertility. A number of years ago, archeologists unearthed a large library with inscriptions in various Near Eastern languages. Much of the writing described the escapades of Baal and his consorts. What the writings reveal is that the worship of Baal mixed deviant sexual aggression and perversion with frightening cruelty and murderous violence. In one text, Anat, another of Baal’s lady friends, invites a gathering of male guests to her home where she massacres them all. After the slaughter she wades hip-deep in the blood and gore and “her liver swells with laughter, and her heart swells up with joy.”
Significantly, we live in a flippant, sarcastic culture that treats spiritual concerns as trivial issues. The Bible suggests that happens when we move away from God.
In Romans 1 we’re taught that the sin underlying all idolatry is the worship of the creation instead of the Creator. The physical, sensual world was created good; it was to be received as a gift from the Creator and enjoyed in submission to his laws of life. But the human tendency is to turn away from a relationship of faith in God the Creator and turn to forces in nature so that they become the false gods we serve. We take sex, for example, which was created to be a sacrament of intimacy uniting husband and wife, and turn it into an obsession that is worshiped for its own sake as a source of pleasure and power.
Is our culture any better than ancient Israel under the influence of Baal when it comes to sexual obsession and indulgence? Internet pornography, with its thousands of websites, is making big money. Even if we never hear the name of Baal mentioned, our modern decadence looks a lot like the culture of the cult of Baal.
The worship of Baal was not about a love relationship with a god of goodness and holiness. It was about doing what was necessary to prosper. Baal sent the rain, grew the crops, imparted prosperity and multiplied money. A person served Baal to get what he could give: pleasure, power, and prosperity. Our modern materialism and consumerism looks a lot like the culture of the cult of Baal.
Here are the important things we can learn. When a culture turns from faith in God, spiritual issues are trivialized, the darkness deepens, and God is provoked. But, let us not forget the second truth - when the time is right, God sends Elijah to bring light into the darkness and call people back to himself. Although God ultimately brings the light through Jesus, he also brings it through people like us who believe in him.
In 1 Kings 17:1, Elijah claims that he serves the Living God. The True faith in the reality of God leads to a consciousness that you are his servant. Hebrew phrase translated “whom I serve” can be literally rendered “before whom I stand. “It gives the picture of a servant standing in the presence of a king and waiting for his directions. Elijah was standing in the presence of Ahab, but he was conscious of the presence of God. It doesn’t matter how dark the world gets if you hold firm in your heart this conviction: The Lord God lives and I am in his presence as his servant at this time and in this place.
It’s important to understand the darkness. It is also important to understand that God brings the light through people like us who possess certain core convictions: The Lord God lives; I am in his presence as his servant; I have access to God’s power through earnest prayer. When we receive Christ, we have the light of God’s presence literally within us. Like Elijah, let that light shine bright in your life.
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