TD Jakes - Surviving in a Dry Place
I want to lay out a few characters in context so that you can understand them. One of them is Ahab, and you’ve heard Ahab’s name before, I’m sure. If you have not heard of Ahab, you have definitely heard of his wife. His wife is named Jezebel, and you don’t have to be a church person to be familiar with Jezebel. Jezebel’s name has become synonymous with treachery, promiscuity, and betrayal. Her name has become interchangeable; you don’t even need a Bible at all to know what Jezebel means. If you’re not careful, your grandmother would have called you, «You look like a Jezebel; you ain’t going out of this house looking like Jezebel with a mouth full of snuff!» She would tell you, «You look like Jezebel; that’s too tight! You know you ain’t worn ten since Vietnam!»
You know how they talk to you? Well, they got that name from this woman who was married to Ahab. So you’re going to run into these two people, Ahab and Jezebel; they are husband and wife, and they are king and queen of the northern province. Then you’re going to run into this name, Elijah, because God sends Elijah to challenge what is going on between Ahab and Jezebel. Occasionally, you’ll run into Obadiah, whose name you may remember from having written a book of the Bible. You will come to understand that Obadiah is now serving under King Ahab as his CEO, his administrator; he gets everything done, he handles everything, and he runs everything. Then there is this nameless character who is Elijah’s servant that we will see later in the text, and he is important.
Now that we have the characters, let me explain some things to you. I want you to understand that Jezebel is not a part of the family. Jezebel is a result of an alliance that occurred when the two families got together and made an agreement that she was not a part of. Her marriage to Ahab is more political than it is romantic. They made a deal; since she was the princess of another country, Phoenicia, she was the princess of that country. If she married Ahab, who was the king over the northern province of Israel, they would come together as a conglomerate. It was how they negotiated the deal with Jezebel’s life.
I am not trying to paint Jezebel to be this amazingly wonderful person, but the more I studied her, the more I understood what made her evil. You have to understand someone’s story before you start judging them, because we have a tendency to put people in compartments: this one is good, this one is bad, this one is right, this one is wrong, this one is a man of God, this one is Satan’s child. We love to put them in cubicles, but in reality, you can’t really judge what I did if you don’t understand why I did it.
Jezebel never asked for Ahab; she never asked to leave her country and her kin and be connected. Her parents and the countries worked out a deal with her life; they prostituted her through this marriage before it ever began. She left Phoenicia, which is known for its ability to build ships and to trade. Phoenicia was a progressive, metropolitan, liberal city that did business with people all over the world. She was used to living and growing up as a princess in a city with affluent people and people of means. They had diverse religions and diverse ideas, and merchants traveled from afar. They built ships that we still study today; Phoenician ships are famous all over the world. Some have even suggested that they came to America on Phoenician ships before Columbus ever set sail.
Phoenicia was progressive and mobile, and she was the princess of that city until they snatched her away from it and sent her out into this dry desert place with these Hebrew people singing songs and dancing on dirt. She was frustrated; they were nomadic, always moving, and they didn’t get along with each other. They were always having internal disputes.
Have you ever married into a messy family? Let me bring it home for you: now you have to deal with all that drama, and you didn’t ask for it. She married into a messy nation and a messy family, and she missed home really badly. She missed the shifts, the interesting conversations, the way they did things, the open-mindedness, and the liberal ideologies that come from being from Phoenicia. All they were talking about over here was Yahweh. She was homesick, and she said, «Since I’ve got to be here, I might as well bring some of the prophets from back home so that I can expose them to different ways of thinking.» So she summoned 800 prophets of Baal to come over into the Hebrew territory so that she could show them that there are other ways of worshiping God other than how they do it over here.
I want you to understand the backdrop; I want you to see the topography. I want you to understand that she hated having to give up what she was used to, so she was trying to bring what she knew into her new life. The 800 prophets of Baal emerged among the Hebrew people, and she began to influence Ahab until Ahab was worshiping Baal like the prophets, and sometimes worshiping God.
Ahab knew better than that, but for the love of a woman—oh yeah, this is as old as Adam and Eve—for the love of a woman, whoever you allow to influence you impacts your decisions and choices. You wouldn’t think that someone you know in the flesh would impact how you see someone you know in the spirit, but she had that kind of grip on him like Eve did over Adam. Little by little, she was pulling him further away from God. Ahab was becoming more decadent, more cruel, and more mean. When she decided to start killing some of God’s prophets, he went along with it because once you open yourself up to something, you never know how far it’s going to go.
Oh, y’all didn’t hear what I’m saying. Once you open yourself up to something, you can never be sure how far it will go. Suddenly, they found themselves in a situation where they were killing the prophets. Obadiah, who is the CEO and running things under King Ahab, knows that it is wrong, but he is scared to say anything because they will kill him too. He did manage to sneak off a few prophets and hide them in a cave, leaving them with some bread and some water to survive. But in front of King Ahab, he confessed loyalty and committed himself to him because he did not want to die. Many of the Bible stories we read about the widows and their husbands being killed stem from the fact that Jezebel had turned that place into a bloodbath, and God became sick of it.
Now, when God gets sick of something, it changes everything because we serve a God that knows how to deal with you. God’s displeasure with Jezebel and how she expressed her displeasure led to a drought in the land. God sent a drought that was so strong, so mighty, and so debilitating that He said, «I’m going to get your attention now.»
The Bible talks about a drought and a famine; these are root causes of the problem. I want you to understand that when you start dealing with a drought, inevitably you’re going to have a famine because one problem creates another problem. It’s like the pandemic and the economy; you can’t fix the economy if you don’t fix the pandemic because one thing feeds the other. You need to understand that if you don’t get to the root of the problem and only clip the leaves, it will keep growing back again. Anytime you have a pandemic, it’s going to affect the economy and the emotions and well-being of the country—it’s a domino effect. So when God sent a drought, He didn’t have to send a famine because if you send a drought, the drought will lead to a famine.
The drought is the problem, but the famine is killing people. Good God of mercy! I said the drought is the problem, but the famine is killing people. God said, «I’m going to send a drought into the land until I get their attention because they think they’re strong and mighty. They brought these two nations together and think they’re in control, but I’m going to bring them to their knees until they have to seek My face. I’ll dry up everything; I’ll dry up the brooks, the lakes, and the streams. I’ll dry up everything until everything starts dying because I will get your attention.»
When I was in Africa, there was one place I went where they told me it got so dry that in the areas where we were building wells, a woman gave birth looking for water. Can you imagine giving birth in a dry place looking for water? She finally pushed her baby out, and the bees came and stung the baby and the mother to death because they saw the afterbirth as liquid. That’s dry—a very dry situation.
A woman stung to death by desperate bees trying to survive a dry place. Have you ever had to try to survive a dry place? Have you ever gone into a situation of such destitution that people didn’t even know you were in a dry place? Your hair was done, your nails were done, you smelled good and walked around, but nobody knew you were in a dry place. You had on your shirt and tie, your name-brand stuff, but down in your soul, you were in a dry place. Have you ever been stung in a dry place? Something that you could normally escape, or something that wouldn’t even be interested in you, suddenly starts to happen when you’re in a dry place. Oh, y’all don’t hear what I’m saying.
The drought had become so severe that King Ahab and Obadiah were searching for water to keep the livestock alive. This all precedes the text. They are searching for water, and Ahab says to Obadiah, «You go this way, and I’ll go that way so that we can keep the cattle and livestock alive.» They are in a dry place. Have you ever been preoccupied not with success, just survival? Just trying to hold it together? «I’m just trying to hold it together.» Someone right now, you’re not worried about a yacht, a Bentley, a Mercedes, a private jet, or a penthouse suite. You’re saying, «Lord, I’ll stay right here; I’m just trying to hold down what I have right now. Which way do I need to go? Which way do I need to look? I’m trying to hold it down.» I’m trying to hold it down because I am in a dry place.