1 & 2 Kings: The King of Redemption History
Pastor Matt Pierson
1 Kings 18
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”
Exodus 20: 2-3
- Who is the real God?
“God is the one who satisfies the passion for justice, the longing for spirituality, the hunger for relationship, the yearning for beauty. And God, the true God, is the God we see in Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s Messiah, the world’s true Lord.”
N.T. Wright
- Who is the real God?
- Who is your God?
“If we believe that God wants us happy above all else, rather than acknowledging that our role is to serve God, we wrongly believe that God exists to serve us. God becomes a means to our end: happiness.”
Craig Groeschel, The Christian Atheist: Believing in God but Living As If He Doesn’t Exist
“If you’re falling off a cliff, strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch. Salvation is not finally based on the strength of your faith, but on the object of your faith.”
Tim Keller
- Who is the real God?
- Who is your God?
- What does faithful waiting and serving look like?
“The Bible never tells us that there is only one kind of faithful servant. Elijah’s ministry is more public and confrontational; Obadiah works quietly in a behind-the-scenes fashion and yet is faithful in the sphere where God placed him. Faithfulness is not so dull that it only comes in one flavor.”
Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Kings: The Wisdom and the Folly
Discussion Questions
- Who is the real God?
- Who is your God?
- How does your belief in God affect the way in which you live?
- Is there an area of drought in your life, where you have been or are being called to wait on God’s timing?
- What does faithful waiting and serving look like?
“Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.”
1 Kings 18:37
“My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, HE is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am or shall be or feel or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. Hallelujah!”
Charles Spurgeon, Morning by Morning