Profiles in Courage

In 1957, President John F. Kennedy, although he was a senator at that time, wrote a book which would want to pull its surprise. The book was entitled Profiles in Courage. And the book really focused upon eight senators throughout the history of the United States, who had taken very courageous but unpopular stands that cost them a lot, but they did so out of their personal convictions and out of what they believed was the right thing to do. This book about these eight senators that had taken these kinds of stands very courageously. Well this evening in 1 Kings chapter 18, we're going to look at some profiles in character. Three very different men from different walks of life are brought onto the pages of Scripture side by side and we are caused to see character, either good or evil, kinds of character in these three men. You will open your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 18. We resume our looking at the life of Elijah after finding him being well provided for and protected by God's grace and mercy in Carreith and also in Zeraphath. Now God has something different for him to do. Let's begin reading 1 Kings 18, verse 1. For a long time in the third year the Word of the Lord came to Elijah. Go and present yourself to Ahab and I will send rain on the land so Elijah went to present himself to Ahab. Now the famine was severe in Samaria and Ahab had summoned Obadiah who was in charge of his palace. And notice the aside the description of Obadiah and the parenthesis here, Obadiah was a devout believer in the Lord while Jezebel was killing off the Lord's prophets. Obadiah had taken 100 prophets and hidden them in two caves, 50 in each and had supplied them with food and water. Ahab had said to Obadiah, go throughout the land, all the springs and valleys, maybe we can find some grass to keep the horses and mules alive so we will not have to kill any of our animals. So they divided the land, they were to cover Ahab going in one direction and Obadiah in another. As Obadiah was walking along Elijah met him. Obadiah recognized him, bowed down to the ground and said, is it really you, my Lord Elijah? Yes he replied, go tell your master Elijah is here. What have I done wrong? Asked Obadiah that you are handing your servant over to Ahab to be put to death. As surely as the Lord your God lives there is not a nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to look for you. And whenever a nation or kingdom claimed you were not there, he made them swear they could not find you. But now you tell me to go to my master and say, Elijah is here. I don't know where the Spirit of the Lord may carry you. When I leave you, if I go and tell Ahab and he doesn't find you, he will kill me. Yet I your servant have worshipped the Lord since my youth. Haven't you heard my Lord what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord? I hid a hundred of the Lord's prophets in two caves, fifty in each and supplied them with food and water. And now you tell me to go to my master and say, Elijah is here. He will kill me. Elijah said, as the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him and Ahab went to meet Elijah. And he saw Elijah, he said to him, is that you, you trebber of Israel? I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied, but you and your father's family have. You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the bails. You can see on the screen the representative of these three men. Elijah on your left being fed by the Ravens, you can tell the prophet of God in a prophet's garb and then Ahab on the far right, the king, the wicked king, but powerful, rich king of Israel and his servant, his chief of staff, if you will, Obadiah, ministering to him. These three men are brought out to us in this same story. It is as though the Holy Spirit has brought them all three together so that we can consider them carefully and we can see the differences in their character. They are three very different men from very different walks of life. We have one man who is a preacher, a prophet who ruffs it out in the wilderness, kind of a John the Baptist type figure, but a man who preaches God's word, called if you will to vocational ministry, and then we have a man who is a wicked ruler, the most powerful man in Israel, but a man who obviously does not know God and cares nothing for the true God of Israel, through his wife, Jezebel, he has brought and introduced to Israel the worship of Bale, the false God of the Phoenicians, in a very ungodly and wicked kind of worship it was. So there's a preacher, a prophet, a man of God, a wicked ruler who cares nothing for God and then you've got this third man named Obadiah, a man who was a dedicated servant of God, but a man who was not a prophet, a man who served God faithfully, not called to vocational ministry, but a man who was in what we might term secular work, a man with whom most of you in this room tonight would identify closely, one who goes to the office every day or to the classroom or to the shop or to the job site or to the store, a person who's serving God faithfully in the workforce, in the place that God has placed you. That's Obadiah. And so these three men converge in this one story in Scripture and their lives stand out to us in bold relief as they describe for us three different kinds of men with three different kinds of character. It is as though the Holy Spirit would give us a good look at these three so that we might learn some valuable lessons from them. I want to briefly consider the character of Elijah and Ahab in this story, but I want to spend a little more time on Obadiah because I think he is the most interesting and maybe the featured character in this part of the Elijah's story. Elijah, who is a profile in courage, he might have made President Kennedy's book if he had been alive during the time that Kennedy wrote about because here's a man who is very courageous. I would have you note, first of all, his self denial. As we look again at verses one and two, we find that it's been three years into this drought. Remember, Elijah burst on the scene in chapter 17 by proclaiming that there would be no rain, not even any dew unless it would come at his word. God was withholding the rain that would bring the crops to Israel as a form of his judgment on Israel because of Ahab turning the nation away from God. So that's how Elijah came on the scene and what we find here is it's been about three years and the famine is now very severe. There's been no rain. There's not even been any dew on the ground for three years. There's very little left of green grass or any kind of growth in the country as you saw as we read through the story. But Elijah has been well taken care of. God hid him by the brick careeth and fed him by the Ravens and had the brick of water there until it dried up and then he sent him to Gentile country to Zarafah to live with a widow and her family. And God miraculously provided enough meal and enough oil to fix food a day at a time and provided for them in marvelous ways so that Elijah could be provided for. Elijah in the midst of all this drought and famine is well cared for. He's in a place of peace and security and provision. So it is a sense of self denial that he must obey the Lord and leave that place of security where he's been hidden from Elijah or from Ahab and now must appear before Ahab. But I see not only self denial there. I see also his courage. His courage. It sounds so simple in verses one and two. The word of the Lord came to Elijah. Go present yourself to Ahab. I will send rain on the land. He'll I'd you went to present himself to Ahab. That sounds very simple. A simple command. A simple obedience. But let's put ourselves back in Elijah's shoes and remember that he was just like us. In fact, the book of James says that Elijah was a man of like passions as we are. He had the same kind of feelings, same kind of questions, same kind of doubts that we might have. And in a case like this, certainly we would have some questions. You want me to go meet Ahab? He is the man who has been searching for me for three years. He's wandered all along. He's hands on me because he feels I am responsible along with other prophets for this famine. He would love to get a hold of me and kill me, make an example out of me. And you want me to appear before Ahab? This took some courage. My reaction would be, Lord, you've hidden me for three years. Surely you want me to go somewhere else to be hidden from Ahab. Not to stride right into his presence. My reaction would probably be, does this announcement of the end of the drought really need a personal appearance? Couldn't I send a messenger to the king and let him deliver it? Is it really required that I show up in the presence of the king? I probably would have had a lot of questions for the Lord. I probably would have argued, well, you know, Lord, we've got this really good Bible study going on on Zarephath now. It just got started and it's growing. You know, people are coming to know you and I really feel like this is the right time to leave Zarephath and go present myself to Ahab. It took a lot of courage to do that. But this is a messenger of God. This is a messenger of God who, if he had any of those fears and anxieties, does not let them be known and God does not record them for us. Here is a man who will not bow before the most wicked but most powerful man in Israel at this time, King Ahab. I wonder what kind of courage we might have in similar circumstances. After how quickly we might bow, do we have the courage to speak the truth when we know it will hurt someone? Do we have the courage to share the gospel with someone that God's been laying up on our hearts but we're a little fearful not knowing what to say or not knowing what the response or reaction to us will be, where is our courage? Do we have the courage to take a stand against that which is wrong even when that stand might be very unpopular? In John F. Kennedy's book, I mentioned he profiled eight different senators. Among them was Daniel Webster from Massachusetts. He was profiled for speaking in favor of the compromise of 1850 which basically was a compromise before the Congress to pass some laws that eased tensions about slavery and also about territorial problems after the Mexican-American war. There were all kinds of controversies about those things in the United States at that time and Daniel Webster led a charge to bring the states together and some kind of compromise that would keep the union from being split at that time. He was a very unpopular man for doing that. Both sides kind of hated him but he probably postponed the Civil War for another ten years. Among those men that President Kennedy profiled was Sam Houston from Texas. He had been a senator and he had taken a very courageous stand about a particular act that was passed in Congress in 1854 but the thing that President Kennedy really wrote about him for was his opposition against Texas secession from the union when the Civil War started. He was the governor of Texas and he refused to support the secession for that stand which he based on principle. He was run out of office. He was actually deposed from being the governor of Texas for that stand. It was a courageous stand that he took. President Kennedy profiled Edmund G. Ross from Kansas who voted for the acquittal in the Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. And as a result of his vote along with six other Republicans who joined with him, Johnson's presidency was saved and the stature of the presidential office in that very tumultuous time in American history was preserved. He took a courageous stand. Another one is Lucius Lamar from Mississippi who after the Civil War when all the problems with reconstruction were going on, North and South really still hated each other. Here's a man who from the South from Mississippi praised his northern colleagues in the Senate and worked together with them to oppose acts that would have damaged the union of the states. He was hated by the people in Mississippi for it but he took a stand for what he knew was right, what he felt was best for the country as a whole. It's fascinating book profiles encourage and I wonder if we would have the same kind of courage to stand for what we know is right even when other people may oppose us and say it's wrong but to stand for what we know is right, to stand for God's word, God's truth, to stand for the Lord Jesus in the marketplace, in the workplace where it may not be popular to do so. Elijah was a man who would not bow before the king. We need to be the kind of people with kind, the kind of courage that will not bow before anyone or anything but what God tells us is what we should be doing. Profile in courage, that's Elijah. But then Ahab, let's consider Ahab. Ahab is a profile in sinfulness and he at least in this story indicates and illustrates two main features of sinfulness and what sinfulness, a life of sinfulness, will do to a person. First if you would notice in the story he illustrates the blindness of sin, the blindness of sin. Ahab cannot see that he is the cause of the famine and the lack of rain in Israel. On the 1st of November 17, when Elijah went to see Ahab, Ahab says to him, is that you, you, you, the traveler of Israel, what he's saying is you're the one that's brawled all this trouble on Israel. And of course Elijah's response is, I haven't brought the trouble on Israel. You and your father have made trouble for Israel because you abandoned the Lord for false gods. But you see sinfulness blinds a person from seeing that God's judgment comes because of turning away from the Lord. And oftentimes those who are serving God get blamed. Back earlier in the story, in verse 4, mention is made of Jezebel killing off the Lord's prophets. There's another mention of it later by Obediah. But evidently Ahab and Jezebel blamed the prophets of God for this famine and started a systematic killing off of all of God's prophets in Israel. It's another reason why God had Elijah hidden. But he liked or Ahab is blaming the wrong people. He should have been blaming himself because of his sinfulness. He cannot see that he himself is responsible for God's judgment on Israel. You know all he's concerned about? All he is concerned about is maintaining his military might. And that's what verses 5 and 6 are all about, where he says to Obediah, go throughout the land, to all the springs and valleys, maybe we can find some grass to keep the horses and mules alive so we will not have to kill any of our animals. Even secular records of the time, the records of the Assyrians tell us that Ahab had over 2,000 chariots. He had a mighty war machine, which obviously required a great number of horses and that war machine obviously required a great deal of mules to transport goods for the army. Now are you going to feed all those animals when there hadn't been any rain for three years? And all the grass is drying up. The only concern for Ahab is taking care of his own stuff and sin will blind you that way. Whether it's in an unbeliever or a believer's life, sin will blind you to think that the only thing that's important is what I'm doing, what I've got that I don't want to lose. But I have as my security around me, my stuff, my possessions, whatever it may be, to be concerned about those things alone. You see a sinful heart and mindset will blind us into seeing that the only thing that's important or into thinking, that the only thing that's important is really what my stuff is, Ahab had forgotten that only God could protect him. No army can protect him, only God can protect him. God can wipe out his army and seems to be doing that with this famine. But the Bible says in the book of Psalms that it is unwise to trust in horses and chariots, but we should trust in the arm of the Lord to save us. Ahab couldn't see that. Why? Because his sinfulness had blinded him. Satan always blinds us. Blinds us. It blinds the minds of unsaved people. Paul said in 2 Corinthians that Satan had blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest they should see the glorious gospel that Christ has to give them. So Satan blinds minds through their sinfulness to see that the real need is for Jesus Christ and a Savior. Satan blinds believers minds by being enticed with sin to the point that they cannot see what God is wanting them to do. Here's a profile in sinfulness and the blindedness that comes because of sinfulness. But I would have you to note also the hardening of sin that is illustrated in Ahab's life. Not only is he blinded, he's hardened because of his sinfulness, because of his rebellion against God. His heart is hardened. In verses 16 to 18, when Elijah appears before him, his immediate response is, is that you, you, trebler of Israel. Now what you would like to see the way the story should turn out is that after three years, Ahab is humbled before God. He is a beaten man. He realizes that God is in control and he submits himself to God's authority and he bows the knee and recognizes Elijah as the prophet of God, delivering the message of God. And he recognizes that God is in control and submits himself, his heart, his life to the Lord. But he doesn't do that. He's like all of God's arrows that have been fired at the heart of Ahab have simply bounded off with no ability to feel what God is doing. You know, God's judgment, someone has said, is like the sun. It will melt the wax, but it will harden the clay. You see, it depends on the consistency of a person's heart as to how they will respond to God's judgment. A person whose heart is tender toward God who will recognize that God is in control. God's judgments, God's chastening will always soften and melt that person's heart. But a person who rebels against God, a person who obstinately refuses to let God have his way in his or her life, will find their heart only hardened further by God's judgments, God's chastening. How many times have you found yourself thinking, surely, surely, this will make that person think? Surely this terrible tragedy, surely this reversal in their fortune, surely whatever, surely this will make them think and they'll come to grips with their need. Some people it does. And some people who have determined to harden their hearts against God, God's judgments harden them even further. It was that way with Pharaoh. Pharaoh, several times the Bible says, God hardened his heart several times, it said, Pharaoh hardened his heart. Both were true. Both were true. Pharaoh did not respond to the judgments that God sent upon the land of Egypt, so those judgments sent by God further in God's sovereignty further hardened Pharaoh's heart. And God carried out his judgment against that land. You remember the story that Jesus told in Luke 16, the story of Lazarus and the rich man, they both died, and Lazarus went into the presence of the Lord and the rich man went into hell where he was suffering in the flames. And he could see across the great chasm, he could see Lazarus with Abraham. And he pleaded with Abraham, sinned Lazarus back to my five brothers because they don't know the Lord. They need to hear. You remember Abraham's response? They have Moses and the prophets. And the rich man in hell said, oh, but if they see one come back from the dead, they will listen to him. And Abraham's response was, no, if they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they listen even if someone comes back from the dead. You see people who harden their hearts against God's word, further evidences of God's working in their lives will not produce the softness of heart that we might expect. It will only produce further hardening because God speaks to us through His word, circumstances, life's reversals, trials and tragedies, only indicate or confirm what God is doing. God speaks to us through His word. In the first church I pastured, I will never forget getting a call in the middle of the night about a car accident that involved a 19-year-old boy in our church. Ronnie Garner was his name. Ronnie was kind of wild and I had witnessed a Ronnie a number of times and had been unsuccessful in winning him to Christ. In this particular night, Ronnie was again running with the wrong crowd. He was drunk driving at a high speed. They estimated over 100 miles an hour lost control of his car and it flipped several times through a field close to where we lived. And instantly he was in eternity. One of the first young men on that scene, one who was following him in his car, was a 17-year-old boy named Greg Needham. Greg was shaken by what he saw when he went out into the field. And he was shaken by his friend's death. But he never saw from his own heart. Greg was another one of those young men that was running hard and fast, as hard and as fast as he could away from God. His family was in our church. She had been witness to a number of times without any response whatsoever. Two months later, almost to the day I get another call in the middle of the night. It's another horrible accident. Greg Needham has been drinking, wraps his car around a telephone pole, 17 years old, and he is in eternity, dies instantly. What happened? What happened? A young man who had the opportunity to see a stroke of God's intervention and it wake up his heart and open his eyes and soften his heart. But because he was resistant to the Word of God, it did nothing but harden him further. And so he continued in his own rebellion against God. How many times have we seen that happen? Here's a profile in sinfulness and what sinfulness will do to your heart, A. Hab. But I want you to look at Obadiah. Obadiah is a refreshing character, I believe, in this story. Now I will admit that Obadiah gets a lot of bad ink. You read the commentaries. And about half of them will tell you, Obadiah is a compromiser. I have a scoffield Bible in my office and I was using it in Pennsylvania this week and when I was studying for this message, I was looking at some of the notes in that scoffield Bible. In the center reference it says that the place to be in Elijah's day or in A. Hab's day was by Elijah's side and it pictures Obadiah as a man who was trying to hang onto the world while he was still trying to claim to be a believer. And a lot of folks treat Obadiah that way. A lot of folks see Obadiah that way. I don't see that at all. The only thing God says about him is in that little aside in verses 3 and 4 in the parenthesis where Obadiah is called a devout believer in the Lord. A man who risked his own life when Jezebel was killing the prophets, he risked his own life. He's in a high profile position, chief of staff of A. Hab. And he risks his own life if he's discovered, he's a dead man. But he risks his own life to hide 100 prophets, 50 in one of two caves, in each of two caves. And he feeds them and brings them water at his own expense. What I think we see here is a dedicated profile in faithfulness. Isaiah was a faithful man, a man who was in a strategic place and able to use the place God had put him in to great effect and blessing for God's people. I think there's some great lessons to learn from Obadiah in this story. Let me quickly give you four of them. The first one, God uses different people in different ways. God uses different people in different ways. Now I don't think anybody could be any more different than Obadiah and Elijah. Elijah is a prophet, a man preaching the word of God, Obadiah is working in what we would call a secular job. He is pretty much the chief of staff for A. Hab, being the in charge of the palace as verse three says means that he would be in charge of all of the food, all of the clothing, all of the housing, everything that was done to take care of the royal court and entertain anyone who might come there. This was the man in charge. He had a very high and responsible position. Great contrast between Elijah and Obadiah. You can imagine they dressed very differently. I'm sure Elijah dressed in the typical garb of a prophet, a rough, very poorly made outfit. And yet here is a man who is high up in the government, probably very well provided for, well dressed, probably pretty well off, very contrasting lives. Their lifestyles would be very different, but God uses different people in different ways. God used Elijah to be an outspoken prophet to denounce the King. God used Obadiah behind the scenes right under the nose of the King to be able to do a great work for God that Obadiah or that Elijah would not have been able to accomplish in hiding those prophets by every indication, this man who ran the palace for Ahab was true to the Lord. Now sometimes that's easier to do in God's work than it is in the work of the minds or the work of the classroom or the work of the shop that you may work in or wherever you may work in your daily job. Sometimes it's easier to stand in this pulpit and proclaim with confidence and boldness the Word of God to people whom the majority of which you know share that same burden and concern and art, it can be a lot tougher sometimes to be the Obadiah in the secular workplace and to stand faithfully for the Lord. Sometimes in the midst of wickedness, sometimes in the midst of great evil, but Obadiah was used of God there. God uses different people in different ways. I think less than I think we can learn from this man is that God wants faithful people in secular positions and I put secular in quotation marks because I really struggle with even using that word. It's kind of a necessary evil to communicate what we're talking about, but really into believers life there is nothing that is secular. Wherever God has placed you is His place of ministry for you. That's His place of divine appointment. Sometimes I fear that in the ministry we give the impression that unless you are in vocational ministry, if you're a pastor or a professor or a missionary unless you're something like that, that you're really not quite on the upper echelon of God's service, that you're kind of on a lower shelf, nothing could be further from the truth. You see, God has places that He wants people in ministry and certainly we would throw out that challenge for everyone here to consider how God might use you as a missionary or invocational ministry in some way, but it's not God's purpose for everybody to do that. God has faithful people here tonight in many different vocations and walks of life and God wants faithful people. He strategically places faithful people in what we might think of as secular positions. Here's a man who's over the household of King Ahead. Here's a man who day in and day out is thinking about how to make sure the food is provided for the palace and the right clothing is available for the King for this appointment or this trip he must make and all the provisions are made for the chariots and everybody that must travel with the King, he's in charge of everything around the palace. So his day is consumed with doing that kind of work, but he's doing it to the glory of God and no matter what you do, if you're working a sawmill, if you're working a classroom, if you're working a store, if you're working a funeral home, wherever you may work, God has strategically placed you in that business, in that company, in that place, in that school to be his light in your neighborhood, in your home as a mother who's rearing children for the glory of God. God has placed you there. He wants faithful people in every position. He does not want us to be isolated from the world. So God has placed you in the place where He's put you so that you can be his light, his salt, his testimony, his witness where you are. God uses faithful people, wants faithful people in secular positions. The third lesson we can learn from this man is that God has special ministries for such faithful people. There are some things that Obadiah could do that Elijah could not do because of his resources, because of what he had in his disposal, because of his income, he was able to hide and supply food and water for one hundred prophets. Now God was taking care of Elijah, one prophet, but God used Obadiah to take care of a hundred prophets. Elijah could not have done that work just because of where he was, what his limitations were of being able to be out where other people were, but God used Obadiah to do that great work, possibly at the risk of his own life. Wasn't easy. Took a great risk, but he was willing to do the work God had laid on his heart. I think of so many men in the Bible like that, so many men that God used in these kinds of positions, Nehemiah. Back to the King of Persia, at least the cup bearer, the one who is in charge of security in the palace, really, in that day, that's what that meant. And God uses him to be the wall builder in Jerusalem because he had the right contacts. You see, the King gave him every provision he would need to do that work, gave him all the letters that were necessary to travel through the countries to get back to Jerusalem, gave him the authorization from the top man in the kingdom to be able to do that work. Nobody else could have done that. God had placed Nehemiah where he was. God did the same thing with Joseph, placing him through a whole series of misadventures we might call them in Joseph's life, trials and difficulties to the point that eventually he is second in command of Pharaoh in Egypt. God uses him from that position to save his brothers and his father and their families so that that little fledgling nation of Israel would have a secure place to grow and develop and mature outside the harsh land of Canaan. God used that man in a high government position, I think of Daniel, and how God used Daniel to influence kings of Babylon and kings of Medo-Persia to recognize who the true God was. Maybe no one else could have done that but a Daniel. God had him in that position because he had some work for him to do. God has you where you are so that you can do something for him to influence people that no preacher will ever be able to walk into their office and introduce but you see them every day. Maybe no pastor would ever be able to reach that person that you work with but you see them communicate with them. Live your life in front of them every day. God has put you there to do some work for him. God has special ministries for such faithful people. And then one other lesson we can learn from Obediah. These faithful people will encounter special tests of faithfulness. There will be some special tests that come along. Some difficulties, some tests that will test the faithfulness, your faithfulness, where you are that even Elijah might not face. Now when we get down to the story, we won't read the verses again, we've already read them, but when Obediah meets Elijah, there's this whole series of interesting comments and questions on the part of Obediah. It's one of the reasons why people think poorly of Obediah. He seems to be scared here. What would be quite honest with you? I would have been too. And I think you would have been too. You see Elijah just suddenly appears and suddenly leaves. That's his pattern. And when Obediah says, how do I know if the Spirit of the Lord is not going to catch you up and take you off somewhere else, that's how people thought Elijah came and went. Of course, at the end of his life, God did miraculously remove him from planet earth. So Obediah is thinking, remember, he is a very careful manager. He knows how to run a very complex enterprise in the palace. So he's going to ask all the questions. He's going to think things through. He's going to try to pick holes in everything that's happening here to make sure this is the right thing to do. He's a good manager. And so he says, now wait a second, Elijah, you're asking me to go tell A-hab that you're going to appear to him. What happens if I tell him that and the Spirit of the Lord catches you up, takes you off somewhere? We never know when that's going to happen. What if that happens? And then here I am, left holding the bag. A-hab will kill me. First of all, he knows I've had contact with a prophet. He's tried to put all the prophets to death. I mean, you're putting me in a difficult position, Elijah. You can see what he's thinking. You can see how difficult this is for him. But the real test is this. Even though that's a difficult test, the real test is this. When Elijah finally says, I will appear. I give you my word. I will appear to A-hab today. Then Obediah is obedient to God and goes and delivers the message. There are special tests of faithfulness that you face, that I will never face. There are special tests placed before you each day to compromise your stand for Christ in the secular workplace to cut a shady deal, to get the business. There are special tests that you face, that I might never face. There are special tests that Obediah faced, that Elijah might never face. And what we all need is the strength and the courage of God as we investigate what God wants us to do to be able to say, okay, Lord, I will be obedient to you. Even if it costs me my job, even if it costs me my reputation with people who don't know you and don't love you, even if it means ridicule or misunderstanding, I will be faithful to you. Special tests of faithfulness for people like Obediah. God has you exactly where He wants you for a special purpose. You may face some special tests that others in the ministry may not face. But you have a ministry where you are. Don't ever forget it. One preacher enjoyed telling the story of a cobbler who lived back in the 1800s in Edinburgh, Scotland. One day, the new pastor of his church showed up at his shoemakers shop to kind of get to know him and see where he worked. And as the pastor talked, he used some pretty lofty theological vocabulary and the cobbler replied with a great understanding and conversed on a level with the pastor that showed he too had a very deep theological awareness. The pastor was kind of surprised and he said to him, you should not be cobbling shoes. The man with such thoughts and such a manner of expressing those thoughts shouldn't be doing secular work. And the cobbler said, take that back. The pastor was kind of shocked. He said, what do you mean, take that back? And he said, the statement that I am doing secular work, take that back. He said, do you see these shoes right here, this pair of shoes I am working on? They belong to Widow Smith's son. Their husband died last summer. She is supported by her boy who keeps a roof over their heads by working outdoors every day. Cold weather is coming and God has told me you fix a good pair of shoes for that boy so he can provide for his family. God tells you to preach sermons from the Word of God every week and I hope you do it faithfully. God tells me to fix and repair shoes for people so that they can do what God wants them to do and I hope I do that faithfully. And someday when we both stand before God we may well hear the same thing. Well done. Good and faithful servant. You see it's not just preachers and missionaries and Bible teachers that are going to hear that. It's going to be people like you and you, you that are going to hear that. If you've been faithful, wherever God has placed you to be His salt and light to have a firm and solid and faithful testimony for Him to be an obidiah in a difficult place. If you're faithful at that to represent God well there, you too will hear well done. Good and faithful servant. Let's pray together. Father, we are so aware after reading a passage like this of how much we need faithful obidiahs. I pray Father that you would help us here tonight. Those who will get up tomorrow morning and go to an office to accompany to a classroom, to a mine, to a shop, to a store. I pray Father that you would help them to see that is your place of ministry and divine appointment for them. I pray for those who will shop in the stores and who will fix meals for their family, keep a household for their family. I pray that you would help them to see this is your place of divine appointment, your obidiah ministry for them. And I pray that they will be faithful and even when there are tests challenges to those faithfulness, Lord help them to be solidly faithful to you so that day in and day out, the places where they are will be able to see your light. You have a testimony of your grace every day. You pray in Jesus' name. Amen.