Go with me over to First Kings and let me dive into some things tonight that I don't know if I'll finish or not, but it's about 9 o'clock, so that's early for me.

I hope it is for you.

And if you would have worship during the first hour and a half, it wouldn't have taken nearly this long.

But some of you were full of enough compromise that you are not allowed to go through

that gate. So we're going to help you not have that problem in the morning when you get here.

All right. A lot of preachers don't like the first night because it's inevitable that you're going to

have to confront issues of people's compromise. But I don't know what I would be doing for a living if I didn't confront issues of people's compromise. So the first night's kind of right up my alley. So I'm just going to jump right in here and start kicking like a mad mule. And we'll see where we end up. Amen? First Kings, beginning in chapter 16, and this is not really where I want to hang my hat tonight

but I do want to touch some of this on my way to where I think I'm going.

First King 16 beginning in verse 29 says in the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah,

Ahab the son of Omri became king over Israel and Ahab the son of Omri re king over Israel. And Ahab, the son of Omri, reigned over Israel in Samaria, 22 years.

Now Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.

Now, just for sports sometime, go see the evil that the people did who were before him, and

then hear that God hangs a tag on this man that says this man did evil more than all who were

before him.

Verse 31 is pivotal, and it came to pass as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam,

the son of Nebat, that he took as a wife, Jezebel.

Let me read verse 31 again.

It came to pass as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jerobo, the son of Nebat,

that he took as a wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbel, king of the Sedonians, and he went and

served bail and worshipped him. Then he set up an altar for bail in the temple of bail, which he

had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a wooden image.

Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were

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