We welcome you to Stone's Hill today!

A typical Stone's Hill service has:

* music (so feel free to sing out);

* some announcements (things that are upcoming that you can be a part of);

* a message out of the Bible (God speaks to us through his Word);

* and an opportunity for you to respond to the message (either immediately in the case of a decision that needs to be made OR in the future as you live out the message in your daily life.)

So relax and enjoy your morning! We're so glad you are here!

MESSAGE TEXT
2 Kings 1:1-18
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INTRODUCTION
Everything is unraveling in King Ahaziah’s life and kingdom. His parents have betrayed God. He lost his dad. His life is hanging by a thread due to an accident. HIs nation is being threatened.
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Just like that, King Ahaziah’s life comes unraveled. Is your life, your marriage, your family, your mental stability hanging by a thread? When a major life change takes place, when a medical emergency interrupts life as we know it, when loss leaves us wondering how to go on, we feel like we’re dangling in midair. All that is familiar, safe, and steady has been abruptly taken. When the rope gets frayed and we’re hanging by a thread: will we make the necessary changes to salvage it?
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King Ahaziah had all the same questions we have when we’re hanging by a thread: “Why did this have to happen now?” “Can I recover from this?” “Is there something I could be doing to help myself get better?” “What if this is the thing that ends up taking my life?” King Ahaziah had all those same questions.
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When you’re a king, you start demanding answers. So he sent for his messengers and gave them orders to go seek out the answers he needed. It’s evidently a secret mission that only the messengers would know about. If another nation learned of the king’s predicament, it would jeopardize security. And so King Ahaziah does the unthinkable while hanging by a thread.
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PROPOSITION
Our passage invites us to wear several HATS as we process all the TAKE-AWAYS that God has for us in this dramatic passage. On one hand, God holds people accountable with a fiery judgment. On the other hand, he himself absorbs that fiery judgment so we can be saved. So this rugged, dramatic passage in 2 Kings 1 sets us up for the Gospel in Luke.
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CONCLUSION
Jesus is greater than Elijah. When the soldiers came for Elijah, they got the fire. When the soldiers come for Jesus, there’s no fire that comes down. All he does is heal one of their ears. Soldiers come after Jesus. They come after him to kill him in the garden. What does he do? He heals one of the ears that was cut during a skirmish. Here they come. “Man of God, come down.” What does Jesus do? “I see one of you is hurt. Let me heal you.”
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When the soldiers actually begin to nail him to the cross and start to pound the nails through his hands and feet, there’s no fire. He just says, “Father, forgive them.” “Hey, Jesus, where’s the fire of God?” It’s falling on Him rather than them.
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In Luke 12, as Jesus is setting his face to go up to Jerusalem to die, he says, “I’ve come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. I’ve come to undergo a baptism, and how crushed I am until it is completed.” (Luke 12:49-50) You have to realize, when you put two sentences together in the Bible, the second is a restatement of the first. Do you know what he’s saying? “I have come to bring the fire of God’s judgment, his jealous anger against evil. I have brought that fire, and how I am constrained till it’s kindled. I’m about to be baptized, and how crushed I am until it’s over.”
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“Wait a minute. Jesus was already baptized in the Jordan … with water … by John the Baptist.” That’s not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about another kind of immersion. By putting those two things together, we see what he’s saying.
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Let me tell you what happened to the fire of God on the cross. It fell into Jesus’ heart. Jesus did not bring the fire of God down on the village. He did not bring the fire of God down on the soldiers, and we are not consumed when we believe in Jesus Christ because the fire of God against evil fell into his heart. He was thrown into the fiery furnace. He absorbed the fire. We can be brought out of the fiery furnace of judgment in spite of our betrayals, in spite of our idolatry because he was thrown into the fiery furnace and actually took the judgment we deserved.
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Do you know why the fire didn’t come down on the Samaritans? Do you know why the fire didn’t come down on the soldiers? Because the fire came down on Him. He was baptized; he was immersed with the judgment of God. He got what we deserved. That is the Gospel.