JOHNSON CITY - As we continue our new Acts series, we will be unpacking one of the key moments in human history: the day God gave us the Holy Spirit, the Church was birthed, and the Kingdom has been multiplying ever since then with power.

Dale and Angela Marthick are on the NCMI team based in Sydney, Australia. We call this “apostolic input” as Dale and Angela are not “itinerant ministers” but friends we are connected to who have come for two weeks to spend time with us, give us their perspective, encourage us, and sharpen us as a church for the ministry and call God has for us. This is what we see Paul and Peter do with local churches in scripture and is part of what we mean when we talk about being “apostolic” (being sent), which is what the word means in the original Greek).

We launch our new series on Acts in Johnson City, and speak about the Kingdom of God.

In Rome, you worshipped your gods and Caesar, and in fact, this worship was inseparable from Rome’s official deities. It was seen as a treasonous action if you didn’t partake in the Imperial Cult. It was essential to Roman living and the continual prosperity of the Empire. There was even a formal saying that you were often “encouraged” to say: “Caesar is Lord”! Did the Imperial Cult die in 476 AD when the German warlord Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor of the West, and Rome crumbled? Evidence shows that actually, no, it didn’t. And it is alive and well today!

1 KINGS 21:25-29 - We all know Ahab and his wife Jezebel were absolute spiritual train-wrecks (or chariot wrecks)! Is it possible for someone as lost as Ahab and facing the wrath of God for sin to experience transformation?

This Sunday will were encouraged by the unexpected humility and repentance of Ahab and find hope for the Ahab’s in our lives.

As we’ve unpacked this series, we’ve seen how supernatural forces undoubtedly influence our world beyond our limited understanding as human beings. When Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12 that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” it would only be natural to ask: who or what are these “principalities”?

After exposing Baal and Asherah as two “gods” who seem to appear on the scene again and again in human history, we now look at “Mammon” - often seen as the “devil of covetousness” or being “possessed” by a lust for power, influence, and wealth.

JOHNSON CITY - After the many despicable things Ahab and Jezebel had done, it seems the taking of someone else’s inheritance (Naboth’s vineyard) is the “last straw” that stirs God in finally pronouncing a judgement on this evil couple. What does this say about God’s justice and the final end? We shall see.

Text: 1 KINGS 21:17-24