There are a few exceptions to each of the kings of Israel and Judah getting just a paragraph or two of an assessment of how well they did or didn’t follow God. One is Ahab, the corrupt king of Israel, whose story begins in 1 Kings 16.29. Here’s the introduction/assessment:

In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. (1 Kings 16.29 – 33, ESV)

One of the reasons Ahab gets a lot of press (his story goes through 1 Kings 22) is that the prophet Elijah makes his appearance during the reign of Ahab:

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” (1 Kings 17.1, ESV)

Let’s spend a few days observing some lessons from the life of Elijah. Here’s the first one:

No matter how bad things are, no matter how corrupt the government is, God has people advancing his cause.

These people are sometimes very public like Elijah, sometimes they serve in private like Ahab’s servant Obadiah (see 1 Kings 18.1 – 16).

I your servant have feared the LORD from my youth. Has it not been told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the LORD, how I hid a hundred men of the LORD’s prophets by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water? (1 Kings 18.12, 13, ESV)

Sometimes they serve in anonimity:

[Elijah said, ] “I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”… [God replied, ] “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” (Conversation between God and Elijah, 1 Kings 19.14 – 18, ESV)

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. (Luke 3.1, 2, ESV)