Naboth's Vineyard

1 Kings
Written By Steve Estes

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 1 Kings 21:1-29
July 14, 2024

Sermon Outline

1. The exchange between Ahab and Naboth

  • Ahab’s offer

  • Naboth’s refusal

2. Back at the palace

  • Ahab sulks in his room

  • Jezebel promises a solution

3. Jezebel’s murderous scheme

  • The letters

  • Who was blasphemed: Jehovah or Baal?

  • The trial and the verdict

  • Ahab takes possession

4. The exchange between Elijah and Ahab

  • Elijah confronts Ahab in the vineyard

  • Jehovah’s verdict on Ahab and Jezebel

5. God’s amazing grace

  • Ahab’s change

6. Lessons

  • Naboth is a picture of the lot of God’s people

  • Such injustice is often inflicted by the government

  • God’s servants must be prepared to pay a price for standing for justice

  • God will intervene to bring justice to His wronged people

  • God delights to exercise mercy while imposing his justice

Steve Estes

Steve Estes has been senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Elverson, Pennsylvania, for over thirty-five years. 

Steve’s books and other writings began with his longtime friendship with Joni Eareckson Tada. As teenagers, they grappled with why God allowed Joni’s paralysis in a swimming accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Steve left for college . . . they kept in touch . . . she liked the style of his letters. When her 1976 autobiography Joni spawned thousands of reader responses, she asked Steve to join her in crafting a follow-up. The result was A Step Further in 1978.

Later, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned Steve to write the biography of former college friend Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe linguist who was kidnapped and murdered by political terrorists in Colombia in 1981. Other books and articles followed, including When God Weeps (with Joni) and A Better December (a giveaway book for non-Christian friends at Christmas.)

Steve was educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, Columbia Bible College and Jerusalem University College in Israel. He has taught homiletics at Westminster and is a board member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.

But Steve would say his most significant life achievement was persuading college classmate Verna Stoltzfus to marry him in 1974.  They now have eight children and more grandchildren than can fit in a van.

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The Death of Ahab
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Ahab Versus Ben-Hadad