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‘But what can I do?’ Do you ever ask yourself that – as you look at the agendas and ideologies taking over in your workplace, or in your children’s school, or in the Church of England, or in the culture more widely? ‘What can I do?’ ‘What can we do, as a church?’ And you feel powerless and maybe even despairing. Well, that’s why God wants us to meet Obadiah this morning in 1 Kings. Because he must have felt like that. But he was used by God to change things – because he did what he could. So ‘Be an Obadiah’ is the message of today’s passage. So would you open the Bible to 1 Kings 17-18, and let’s get our bearings.

We’re in the Old Testament – the part of the Bible before Jesus, which pointed forward to Jesus. And back then, God was working not through an international people (the church) like today, but through one nation, Israel, whom he meant to be his witnesses to the nations around them. And as the name 1 Kings, suggests, we’re in the time when God’s people had kings. And they were meant, above all, to be spiritual leaders – to lead the people to be faithful to the LORD, who’d rescued them from Egypt, invited them into relationship at Sinai, and then given them their own land. And by that reckoning, Ahab, the king we’re looking at, was a disaster. Just look back to 1 Kings 16.29-33:

In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria for twenty-two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

So the people around Israel believed Baal was the god of fertility: the god who sent rain for you, your crops and your animals. And Ahab had married one of them, and to please her he decided you could just add worshipping Baal to worshipping the LORD. But whenever people add to the God of the Bible, they’re actually always subtracting: making the God of the Bible less than he really is, swapping belief in him for belief in an unreal god of their own making. So in this case, Ahab was basically saying: ‘The LORD can’t do agriculture. He can do spiritual stuff – like forgiveness. But he can’t do practical stuff like rain.’ So Ahab led people to pray to Baal for rain – and to thank Baal when it came. And last time we saw what the LORD did to show that he, not Baal, was the real God. So look on to 1 Kings 17.1 for another bit of revision:

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”

So the LORD simply turned off the rain for three years, during which they kept praying to Baal for rain and nothing happened. And that was partly the LORD’s way of showing them that Baal wasn’t real, and that everything, including rain, is actually in his control. But it was also the LORD’s way of showing that we can’t reject him, the real Giver of everything, and still expect to enjoy his gifts. So if we say to him, ‘I don’t want you in my life, but I still want your gifts – like relationships and sex and health and possessions and satisfying work and so on – then he may withdraw some of those gifts, or allow them to become disappointing or dissatisfying, to show us that we can’t reject the Giver and still expect to enjoy his gifts. OK, now skip to 1 Kings 18.1:

After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, “Go, show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth.”

And by the way, if you’re wondering, ‘Did this stuff really even happen?’ you need to know that this is one of many Old Testament events quoted by Jesus. So in Luke 4.25 he spoke about:

“…the days of Elijah when the heavens were shut up three years and six months and a great famine came over the land…”

So if Jesus is God the Son, so that what he teaches is true, I can trust him that this is real history. And three and a half years is a long famine. Which shows how God, in his love, is willing to use hard experiences to bring people back to him. Many of us could testify to that. And maybe, in his love, that’s what he’s doing with you right now. So 1 Kings 18.1-2 again:

After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, “Go, show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth.” So Elijah went to show himself to Ahab.

And you could skip to 1 Kings 18.17, which says:

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him…

and think you hadn’t missed anything important. But you’d have missed Obadiah (who fills 1 Kings 18.3-16), and in the whole Elijah story; that’s a lot of space. Which should make us ask: Why’s he given all that space? What’s so significant about him? What does the Lord want to teach us through him? And the answer is: the Lord wants to teach us that he uses different kinds of servants in different ways. So next time we’ll see Elijah confronting Ahab and the prophets of Baal in the most high profile way, in that famous showdown on Mount Carmel. And as we read that, we’ll say to ourselves ‘I can’t identify with Elijah – I couldn’t ‘do an Elijah’ today.’ And that’s right because Elijah was a prophet of the LORD – which you and I are not. But you and I can be Obadiahs because in the battle against Baal-worship, this ordinary believer Obadiah did what he could – which was much lower profile, but just as faithful and vital. So if Elijah was more like the Allied forces landing on D-day, Obadiah was more like the French resistance – doing smaller stuff, like blowing up bridges, which was just as vital for the cause. So there are two things for us to copy from Obadiah. And the first is that:

1. He used his position to resist the Baal agenda

Look down to the end of 1 Kings 18.2-3:

Now the famine was severe in Samaria. And Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the [royal] household 

And later in Kings that phrase - over the household is used of the Prime Minister. And then in brackets you get a quick bio of Obadiah (1 Kings 18.3-4):

…(Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly [so he’s a believer: he fears – that is, respects and submits to – the LORD], and when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord [in other words, tried to kill them all] Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water.)

Which is the first glimpse of what a vicious woman Jezebel was. But sticking with Obadiah, isn’t that remarkable? In our terms, he was in the thick of this anti-Christian Government; and yet he was a Christian. And the Lord had given him that unique position – so he could use it at this crunch moment. And that’s the point. The Lord gives each of us unique positions in life – from formal things like being a headteacher or a CEO or in local government, to informal things like being a leading influence in a circle of friends. But he gives them to us to use. So you sometimes hear Christians say ‘Isn’t it great that we’ve got however many Christians in Parliament?’ To which the answer is: ‘That depends on whether they actually use their position to do anything Christian.’ Which we should pray for them to. After all, if Obadiah had done nothing as Jezebel’s murder squad went out with their orders, it would hardly have encouraged the 100 prophets of the LORD to think, ‘Isn’t it great that we have a believing Prime Minister?’

Anne Atkins is the wife of a church minister I know. And you may remember her doing Thought For The Day on Radio 4’s Today program. And when she was first asked, she told herself, ‘I must use this to say something clearly Christian – even if they never invite me back. Because what’s the point of being on as a Christian, and saying nothing Christian, so that they invite you back to say nothing Christian again?’ So she saw it as clearly as Obadiah: it’s that God gives us each our unique positions to use for him, to resist whatever Baal agenda is running. And for each of us, there will be particular crunch moments when we can say ‘No’ to something, we can stop something bad happening, we can blow the whistle, we can change things. But Obadiah didn’t change Ahab or Jezebel or the whole dire situation. He was limited in what he could do, just like we are – for example, in what you can now say openly in the NHS as a Christian, with your patients. But he did what he could, and so can we. Which also goes for us as a church.

We can’t change the direction of the leaders of the Church of England, as they walk away from the Bible’s teaching – that sex is for marriage only; and that marriage is between one man and one woman for life. But we can do what we can. We can be faithful. We can resist all theological compromise to solve our problems. And we can hold on to the legacy and assets bequeathed to us by our founders. And we can wait and see what God will do for us. So the first thing to copy from Obadiah is that he used his position to resist the Baal agenda. The other thing is that:

2. He overcame his fear to serve the LORD

Look on to 1 Kings 18.7. Ahab has just sent Obadiah to look for food for his famine-struck animals. 1 Kings 18.7-9:

And as Obadiah was on the way, behold, Elijah met him. And Obadiah recognized him and fell on his face and said, “Is it you, my lord Elijah?” And he answered him, “It is I. Go, tell your lord [Ahab], ‘Behold, Elijah is here.’”And [Obadiah] said, “How have I sinned, that you would give your servant into the hand of Ahab, to kill me?”

Which is fear speaking. And at this point, some commentators call Obadiah a coward. But Dale Ralph Davis, in his excellent commentary, rightly says:

[They’ve] misjudged Obadiah. [They] see [him]…as a compromiser, a boss-serving, career-protecting, life-preserving fence straddler. Now clearly he is afraid that Ahab will execute him if he heralds Elijah’s return…But imagine that! A servant of the LORD who prefers not to be killed. Is that really so strange?[The Wisdom and the Folly, Dale Ralph Davis]

Well no it’s not, is it? Like many of our fears it’s natural and understandable. And there’s nothing to suggest that the Bible criticises Obadiah for it. Read on, 1 Kings 18.10-12 – Obadiah says to Elijah:

As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my lord [Ahab] has not sent to seek you. And when they would say, ‘He is not here’, he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation, that they had not found you. And now you say, ‘Go, tell your lord, “Behold, Elijah is here.”’ And as soon as I have gone from you, the Spirit of the Lord will carry you I know not where. And so, when I come and tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me…”

So Obadiah knows Elijah was spirited away in 1 Kings 17, and he’s afraid that’ll happen again – so that: he’ll tell Ahab that Elijah’s outside; Ahab will go; Elijah will be gone; Ahab will have a sense of humour failure; and Obadiah will be the next of the LORD’s servants in the cemetery in Samaria. And Obadiah says to Elijah, ‘Is that really what you’d do to me…’, end of 1 Kings 18.12-14:

“…although I your servant have feared the Lord from my youth. Has it not been told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how I hid a hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water? And now you say, ‘Go, tell your lord, “Behold, Elijah is here”’; and he will kill me.”

And if there is anything wrong to see in Obadiah, maybe it’s that he seems to think that the more faithful you are, the more the Lord will protect you from opposition. But that’s not true. Which we should know even more clearly. Because what did Jesus say, just after he’d first explained that he must suffer and die on the cross to pay for our forgiveness? Mark 8:34:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross…”

In other words, deny yourself the right to a comfortable ride, and take up a willingness to suffer rejection for him. Maybe Obadiah didn’t get that. But the point is: he overcame his fear to serve the LORD. Read on, 1 Kings 18.15-16:

And Elijah said, “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself to him today.” So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him.

And he must have been afraid that even his association with Elijah might put his life in danger, but he overcame his fear. Because the issue with fear is not whether or not you have it (normal people do) but how you respond to it: whether you listen to it and act on it; or whether you listen to the Lord and overcome it. So not to be outdone by Jonathan, who quoted Taylor Swift the other day, here’s another Swifty saying I came across just this week:

Fearless isn't that you're not afraid of anything. Fearless is having a lot of fears, but you jump anyway.

And Obadiah exemplifies that. So I find that many of us are down on ourselves because we do things with such fear. So people here have told me how fearful they’ve felt about inviting someone to a church event, or how fearful they’ve felt about taking a moral stand at work, or how fearful they’ve felt about even letting on to others that they’re a Christian. And Obadiah’s question would be: ‘But did you? Did you invite them? Did you take that stand? Did you let on that you’re a Christian? Because if you did, that’s what matters. Being faithful to the Lord is what matters, not how fearless you were feeling.’ So, ‘What can I do?’ ‘What can we do as a church?’ Well, Obadiah’s example says: You don’t have to be an Elijah – the Lord uses different kinds of servants in different ways. We just have to be faithful, ordinary believers who do what we can – using our position to resist the Baal agenda and overcoming our fear to serve the LORD. Next time, we’ll do Elijah’s showdown on Mount Carmel – so here’s a ‘trailer’ for that from the end of today’s passage. Look at 1 Kings 18.16-17:

So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him. And Ahab went to meet Elijah.When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?”

And it’s classic that those who walk away from the truth about God in the Bible brand those who stay faithful as the troublemakers and unity-threateners. So a statement just last week from a Church of England bishop branded churches like ours as the troublemakers and unity-threateners – whereas it’s those who walk away from Biblical truth who deserve those labels. And 1 Kings 18.17 is threatening talk:

“Is it you, you troubler of Israel?”

In other words, ‘If only I could get my hands on you. If only I could get rid of you.’ It’s Ahab using what he thinks ultimately drives people – namely, fear. But what ultimately drives Elijah is truth – the truth that the LORD is the one, real God in this universe. And so what he does next is to set up a confrontation to show who the real God is. 1 Kings 18.18-19:

And [Elijah] answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father's house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table.”

And next time, we’ll join them to see what happened.