Lessons from Elijah

2/19/23

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Sermon Transcript

Good morning. Please open your Bibles to 1 Kings 16-17. Who is your favorite person in the Bible? I guess I should say excluding Jesus to keep us all from having the same answer. So other than Jesus, who is your favorite person in the Bible? You know, if you ask me that question, I think I would give two answers, one for the New Testament, one for the Old. For the New Testament, it would be Apostle Paul. And for the Old, I think I would pick Elijah. I think I would pick Elijah. Why Elijah, you say? Well, one reason might be that I was not asked to preach until a couple of days ago, and I already had a sermon ready for Elijah, So that’s one reason I like him, but there are a lot of other reasons. Faithful and steadfast prophet and soldier, God. Fearless and courageous reformer. One who boldly spoke great truth to great power. One who lived in the desert and yet counseled kings. One who fought false gods and false worship. A great miracle worker. One who was always seemingly outnumbered. One who was both rough and yet tender. One who was sometimes lonely and discouraged. An accused troublemaker. Someone who was often afraid for his life. Someone who mysteriously appeared at just the right moment in Israel’s history. And who mysteriously departed into heaven in a chariot of fire. One who returned in figure as John the Baptist. One who returned in fact with Moses to speak with Christ. One known for what he did rather than for what he wrote. So many reasons to like Elijah.

I want us We’re going to look today at some lessons from the life of Elijah. But if you think we’re going to look at Elijah without a history lesson, you don’t know me very well, do you? We need to look at the history to see why Elijah did what he did and why he appeared when he appeared. What was going on when Elijah arrived? You know, for over 100 years, the Israelites had lived under the reign of three kings - but after the death of Solomon, as we know, there was a civil war and it resulted in a division of the kingdom into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. Northern kingdom called Israel, southern kingdom called Judah. That northern kingdom lasted for about 200 years until the Assyrians showed up and destroyed it, carried them off into captivity, never to return. During that 200 year period of the northern kingdom they had 19 kings every single one of which was evil all 19 of them our introduction to Elijah comes during the reign of King Ahab who is the seventh of those 19 kings of Israel well how did Ahab come to be king well the first king of the northern kingdom was Jeroboam Jeroboam. And what was the very first thing that Jeroboam did after the division of the kingdom? Well 1 Kings 12 tells us he set up two calves of gold, one in Bethel and one in Dan, for the people to worship. So he got off to a very bad start and it did not get any better after Jeroboam. From that point on in fact the wicked life of Jeroboam was used as a yardstick to measure the of every king that followed him. In fact, as I said, the northern kingdom was destroyed 200 years later. And the reason for that judgment, 200 years after Jeroboam, is given in 2 Kings 17:22-23. Not first Kings, but second Kings 17:22-23. The people of Israel walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did. That’s 200 years after Jeroboam. They’re still doing it. They did not depart from them sight as he had spoken to his servants the prophets so Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day but Jeroboam was evil and his evil continued and all the kings that followed Jeroboam’s son was Nadab he was the last the king after Jeroboam and his reign lasted two years until he was assassinated by Basha who then became king and what was Basha’s first act as the as king of Israel he killed everybody else in the household of Jeroboam and then he reigned for 24 years Elah was his son the next king Elah reigned for only two years and only two verses and then Zimri became the next king and well how does Zimri become king he killed Elah and everybody in the household of Elah Zimri ended up killing himself though by burning the palace down on top of his head. Following the death of Zimri there was once again a civil war, had a big choice to make, will our next king be Tidney or Omri? Well Omri eventually prevailed, became the next king. And what sort of king was Omri? Well 1 Kings 16:25: “Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did more evil than all who were before him.” Okay, think about just a moment about all the people before him we just looked at. How evil must Omri have been to win the prize for the most evil king of Israel up until that time? Well, when Omri died, his son became king. And who was the son of Omri? Someone we’ve all heard about, King Ahab, King Ahab. Omri and Ahab, Omri and Ahab, son and father and son, Omri and Ahab. They are presented in the Bible as the antithesis of David and Solomon. In fact, under Ahab, Israel reached the zenith of its power that it was ever going to enjoy as an independent state. But under King Ahab, it also plumbed the depths of corruption and depravity and evil. We’re told in 1 Kings 16:31 that Ahab treated the sin of Jeroboam as a light thing, as a trivial thing. Things had gotten so bad by the time of King Ahab that those horrible departures by King Jeroboam were hardly seen as departures at all. Just a light trivial thing. That’s nothing, Ahab would think. These kings remind us of those in 2 Timothy 3:13 the evil men and seducers who wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived well the divine estimation of Ahab’s character in 1 Kings 21:25 I think stands as a tragic epitaph of his whole life his whole wasted life the Bible says there was never a man like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord these kings are getting worse and worse and worse and worse.

But you know what? King Ahab was not alone. There was someone with him, his wife Jezebel, one of the most infamous people in the Bible, Queen Jezebel. F.B. Myers calls Jezebel the Lady Macbeth of the Old Testament. Another refers to her as Satan’s woman of the hour. We know We know immediately from her appearance in 1 Kings 16:31 that Jezebel is going to be significant in some way. Well, how do we know that? Because she’s the first wife of a northern king who’s named. We know her name, Jezebel. Well, why is she significant? Well, first, she was very clearly the dominant partner in this marriage. For all practical purposes, it appears that Jezebel was the actual ruler of this kingdom and not her husband, Ahab. But second, it was Jezebel who placed the worship of Baal front and center in Israel. Her father, Jezebel’s father, Eth-Baal, meaning with Baal, was the king of the Sidonians, and she brought that worship of Baal into Israel. Now the worship of Baal, it had originated with the Canaanites long before, and it had long existed in the area of Sidon. Baal was the god of rain, god of fertility and so Baal was thought to be very important to an agricultural community. The people believed that Baal was the storm god and that Baal controlled the seasons and the crops and the rain. Well you know what it didn’t always rain so how did they explain that? Well they had an explanation for that. They just created two other false gods to explain that. Mot and Enet. Baal, they submitted to Moth the God of death and that caused a drought but then Anab would show up and put Moth in its place and free Baal and then we’d have a rain. They had a very elaborate explanation for all that. Well you know what Ahab and Jezebel were very soon going to learn who it was who controlled rain and it was not Baal. And you know what? Elijah, Elijah would soon know with absolute certainty who controlled death.

Now when Ahab married Jezebel, she was allowed to continue her worship of Baal, allowed to, as if Ahab was allowing Jezebel to do anything, but we’ll say she was allowed to do that as she had done in her homeland. But you know what? Jezebel was not content with Baal being second place at all. She wanted Baal to be front and center and her weak husband Ahab obliged her. 1 Kings 16:32-33: “And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.” That is not an award that you want to win. So where are we at the end of 1 Kings 16? Where we are is at a very, very dark time in the history of Israel. Evil King Ahab and his evil wife Jezebel have pushed their evil and their wickedness and their false god Baal to center stage. What do the people need at the end of 1 Kings 16? What they need is an Elijah. And with his sudden unannounced arrival in 1 Kings 17, Elijah plunges full force into the midst of this gross evil and wickedness. I like how one writer described it. Elijah appeared at zero hour in Israel’s history, Like a meteor, he flashed across the inky blackness of Israel’s spiritual night. At the time of King Ahab, the chasm between God and his people was perhaps at its widest point. Elijah stood alone in that gap. And with his first recorded words, Elijah drives a stake through the heart of Baal. He tells Ahab in 1 Kings 17:1, “There will be no dew or rain these years until God says otherwise.” But I thought Baal was the God of rain. No. No. The most important word in verse 1 is the word years. Years. A drought of years would mean death. This was very clearly threatening pronouncement against King Ahab and against Queen Jezebel and against their kingdom.

You know we can learn two things about Elijah right from the start. We can learn something about him from his name. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim, often abbreviated El. The word Jah is the word for Jehovah. Between El and Jah and Elijah’s name is a small personal pronoun meaning my or mine Elijah’s name means my God is Jehovah. That name alone would have been seen as an attack on Jezebel and on Baal. Remember Jezebel’s own father was named after Baal, Eth Baal, with Baal. And here comes Elijah, my God is Jehovah and you will not have rain for years until God says otherwise. We can also learn something from Elijah’s style. His style. Right from the get-go, Elijah was in the king’s face without any hesitation, with no parent fear or reluctance. Elijah stands before King Ahab and gets right to the point. Why is that surprising? Because for over 60 years the kingdom of Israel had been known for one thing and that is its murderers cutthroat rulers and Ahab was the worst of the lot. Elijah was not afraid to stand alone in the face of evil was he? God is always looking for such people always God is looking for people who are willing to to stand alone in the gap. People who are willing to make a difference in a world full of corruption and indifference. And God found such a man in the prophet Elijah. What does God find today when he looks at our own world of tolerance, of evil and compromise? Are we willing to stand up against evil? Are we willing to speak truth to power? Can we be an Elijah? No one. will ever be in Elijah by keeping his mouth shut. No one will ever be in Elijah by just blending into the scenery. No one will ever be in Elijah by keeping his seat. God wants people who are willing to stand up, step forward, and open their mouths when confronted with evil and compromise. We let God down when we do anything less, we should pray to God every day for opportunities to be in Elijah, to confront the Ahab’s and the Jezebel’s that are all around us in the world today.

Now 1 Kings 17 has been called Elijah’s boot camp experience. Well why is that? Because I think it’s in 1 Kings 17 where Elijah was trained to trust in God. Elijah is first told to go hide by the brook Cherith which is east of the Jordan. Well why is he hiding? You know I think I’d be hiding too if I just said to Ahab and Jezebel what he just said to him. God had some future plans for Elijah and God wanted Elijah to be around a while longer so Elijah told to go hide. He does. The name of the brook Cherith is derived from the Hebrew word meaning to cut off or cut down and I think both accurately describe why Elijah’s there. First he’s cut off from the people. He’s hiding to escape from Ahab. But second, Elijah I think was there to be cut down, taught to trust in God and to rely on God for all things. Not long before Elijah was standing before the king." Now he’s at this river chariot hiding. I think God had two purposes in sending Elijah to chariot. One is protection, but I think the other was training. Training. We don’t know if there was any pride in Elijah at this time, but if there was, then perhaps this experience, like Paul’s own thorn in the flesh, may have been God’s way of removing that pride. You know, God cannot use us if we’re filled with pride and our own self-importance. Verse 5 tells us two important things about Elijah’s trip to Cherith. First, it tells us he went to live there. He’s not on vacation. This isn’t a day trip. He has gone to live there and he will live there for about three years. Second, Elijah obeyed God without any hesitation. God told Elijah to go out into the wilderness and live and Elijah went. He did it. We don’t see any hesitation here. You know, one thing you notice when you study the life of Elijah is that God never told Elijah what the second step would be until after Elijah had done the first step. And I think there’s a lesson there for us. You know, we so often want to look down the road of our life and and and and look and unravel the entirety of God’s plan for our life and kind of know in the future all that we’re going to do for God and what we’re going to be that’s really not the way it works and I think our past will tell us that we may wish that’s the way it works but that’s very often not the way it works it’s certainly not the way it worked for Elijah God wants us to walk with him day by day one day at a time obeying him trusting him, relying on him. And if we take each step with God, then we don’t need to worry about where we’re headed. We don’t need to worry about what’s going to happen to us. We know where we’re going to end up. We know what’s going to happen to us. We know where we’re take I know that he will guide me to higher ground he ever leads me on until someday the last step will be taken each step I take just leads me closer home." That’s what we see with Elijah. That’s how God wants his people to be day by day, step by step, walking with God. In verse 7, the brook dries up. This looks bad at first, but as we’re soon going to see, this dried-up brook opens up some new doors for Elijah. You know, Elijah was neither the first nor the last child of God to experience a dried-up brook, and Elijah was not the first nor the last in that dried up brook and opened door. You know, it’s interesting to note that this dried up brook came as a result, a direct result of Elijah’s own prayer. James 5:17-18 told us, “Elijah prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.” Elijah was living in the results of his own prayer. Now God tells, what is that open door? Well God tells Elijah to arise and go to the city of Zarephath. Well the name Zarephath also has an interesting meaning in this context, it means crucible, crucible. And I think as we’re about to see that’s exactly what Elijah finds in Zarephath. Well, Zarephath was located in Phoenicia, which is the very heart of Baalism, the very heart of it. It’s about a hundred miles from Chera, so that’s a long walk for the Prophet. And what does Elijah do? He immediately gets up and goes. Of course, Elijah may have been glad to leave his own country because Ahab was trying to kill him, but Elijah is also in danger in Zarephath. Why is that? Because that’s where Jezebel’s father is in charge. And I’m sure he wants him dead, too.

It’s interesting to note that Elijah is not told in 1 Kings 17:9, to go to Zarephath so he can provide for some poor widow. Elijah is told to go there so the widow can provide for him. You know, I think we’re again, we’re seeing part of Elijah’s training. He’s being taught to rely totally on God, to obey God without question, and to rely totally on God. And that’s what he’s doing. And isn’t there a lesson for us on that? Upon whom or upon what do we rely? ourselves, our money, our country, our wisdom, our technology. I like how one writer noted it. He said, "On the Christian journey from faith to maturity, all roads pass through Zarephath. It is there that we learn to rely on the arm of God and not the arm of man. Well, Elijah walks 100 miles through the wilderness and he arrives in Zarephath. And what does he finally meet when he arrives there? This Who’s supposed to provide for him? And what does she say look at verse 12? So she said, as The Lord your God lives I do not have bread only a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a jar and see I’m gathering a couple Of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son that we may eat it and die. Welcome to Zarephath. This was the person who’s gonna provide for him if it’d been a day late she would have been dead. But again God miraculously provides for Elijah in fact He provides for them all this widow was asked to take a great step of faith herself in verse 13 Against all parental instincts. She’s told to feed Elijah first with the last of her food Before she feeds her own son. Well, she does so and she is blessed along with her son with an unending supply Unending supply of flour and oil You know, it makes us stop and think and ask ourselves the question How many jars of Unending blessings sit unopened on our shelf because we have not asked in faith You know, we can learn two important lessons from Elijah’s meeting with this widow. First, we can learn that we should not become discouraged when God’s plan for our life does not match our own plan for our life, which is so often the case. I doubt there was one point on that 100 mile walk where Elijah pictured in his mind the situation he actually found when he arrived there. God’s plan for our own life may be quite different from the plan we’ve all worked out for ourselves. But again, we just need to walk day by day in obedience and faith, trust in God. The second thing I think we learn here is that as children of God we need to work very hard at getting the word “impossible” out of our vocabulary. Even today, in which the age of miracles has ended, the impossible still has a way of becoming possible when the obedience of man meets the faithfulness and the power of God? How many times would these events have been brought to a crashing halt with someone thinking or saying, “Well, that’s just impossible. That’s never gonna happen. God’s never gonna do that. There’s no way that’s gonna happen. You might as well ask for something else.” Really? Is that what the Bible says. Jeremiah 32:17: “behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for you.” Luke 1:37: “for with God, nothing will be impossible.” Luke 18:27: “the things which are impossible with with men are possible with God.” Our God is the God of the possible. You should never forget that.

But something terrible happens in verse 17. Something terrible happens. We read of a death in the widow’s family. Her son has fallen sick and died. Well, the widow’s first reaction in verse 18 I think is a natural one. She looks around for someone to blame. And that someone is Elijah. Just by being in her house, she suspects Elijah has somehow focused God’s attention in her household in an unhelpful way and somehow this is Elijah’s fault. And how does Elijah respond to that? Well, he just holds out his hands, said, "Give him to me. Give him to me. You know the widow I think solved it the death of the child is the end of the matter. It’s not how Elijah is looking at it. It’s not how Elijah is looking at it. We can learn a great deal here from what Elijah does. First I think we can learn a lot from the silence of Elijah. There’s a lot Elijah could have said here and we know from elsewhere Elijah is not shy he is not shy Elijah trusted in God Elijah had obeyed God provided for this widow when the widow is supposed to be providing for him Elijah done everything exactly he was commanded by God to do and yet here he is being blamed for something that he didn’t do Elijah could have reminded this widow that by her own admission and verse 12, she would have already been dead along with her son had Elijah not arrived. But Elijah doesn’t say any of that to her. Elijah doesn’t stand up and defend himself. You know, sometimes the very best thing to say is to say nothing at all. Instead, to put the situation in God’s hands. Isn’t that the example we have been given by our perfect example Isaiah 53:7: “he was oppressed he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth he’s brought as a land of the slaughter as a sheep before shears it’s dumb so he opened not his mouth.” Silence. Silence. That’s a hard lesson to learn in our age of dueling anti-social media. We can also learn a great deal here from the gentleness of Elijah. Gentleness. You know, gentleness is not something I think we would automatically associate with Elijah. But don’t we see it here? Gentleness has been called the mint mark of heaven. Elijah had been living in incredibly harsh conditions for years. And no doubt he looked very rugged and weathered, but his response here to these accusations is to gently hold out his hands and to accept the body of that young boy. And she gives him the body. And what does Elijah do next? In verse 19, Elijah takes the boy’s body to the upper room where he had been living. he do that? Why did he move the body to that upper room? I think that upper room had been the place where Elijah had been taking his petitions to God all along. And what better place to go when Elijah now had the biggest petition of them all. And it was there in that small upper room where Elijah faced the ultimate question. You know it’s one thing to rescue people from the jaws of death by providing food and oil, but can God do anything when the jaws of death have clamped down on its victim. It’s one thing for God to act across the border from Israel into Sidon. But is there a border that ultimately not even God can cross? When faced with Mott, the God of death, must even the God of Israel bend the knee? Elijah knows the answers to those questions, but I suspect this widow did not. Well, in verse 20, Elijah goes to God in prayer for the widow’s dead son. And while Elijah was silent before the woman, he is not silent before God. To paraphrase Elijah’s prayer, what he asked God is, “What in the world are you doing? Why have you done this?” Elijah is very candid with God in prayer. You know, are we afraid of offending God in prayer? You know, I think God is much more offended by our empty prayers than He is by our candid, honest, and heartfelt prayers. Job also asked God the tough questions, and at the end of Job, he is commended by God. we can go to God and ask the tough questions. Elijah does.

This prayer in verse 21 is one of the most remarkable prayers in the entire Bible. Why? Why? Because there had never been an example in scripture prior to this time of anyone being raised from the dead. Talk about asking God to do the impossible. Wouldn’t we have expected Elijah to tell that widow, “That’s too bad. What do you expect me to do about it?” Or perhaps, “That’s too bad. What do you expect God to do about it?” How would these events have ended if Elijah had just turned to her and said, “You’re asking the impossible!” There was no precedent for his request to God. Elijah was not able to say, “God, raise up this young boy as you’ve raised people up in the days of Abraham, as you’ve raised people up in the days of Moses.” He could not say that. In fact, God had not raised Abraham or Moses. Elijah was asking God to do something that had never been done before. What an incredible prayer of faith! And if God was going to start raising people from the dead, why would God start with this boy? Why would God start with the son of this Sidonian widow? After all, as Jesus would later say in Luke 4:25-26: “There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land. And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, and the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.” Why her? Why her son? Why would God raise this insignificant and unknown child? Why? Because this child was not unknown. Because this child was not insignificant. This child was known to God. This child was significant to God. And to his mother. There were many famous people in history who might have been the first person raised from the dead, but God chose none. Instead, God chose this young boy from a foreign land. In verse 21, Elijah stretches himself over the child three times and prays that God will return his life to him. And then Elijah waited for God to act. And God acted. 1 Kings 17:22: “And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.” Can you imagine the scene in that upper room when the life returned to the body of that lifeless child? Can you imagine the reaction of that boy’s mother when Elijah carried him down and once again placed him in her arms, but this time alive and well. Without doubt, this is one of the most beautiful and remarkable scenes in scripture. In that small dusty room, in that small dusty house, in that small dusty village, the hand of God moved in a way that it had never done before, all as a result of one man’s prayer of faith. And notice Elijah’s reaction he takes no credit for himself he doesn’t upgrade the woman for her earlier accusations or for her lack of faith instead he says simply and gently look your son is alive and her reaction verse 24 and the woman said to Elijah: “now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord is in your mouth is true.” When the woman saw her son alive, she did not see Elijah, she saw God.

There’s a Jewish tradition that this young child was none other than the prophet Jonah. Now we have no inspired evidence for that tradition but we do know that Jonah was a successor of Elijah and Elisha. We know they may have been acquainted with him and we know he was a link between Elijah and Elisha and the later prophets that followed, Isaiah, Amos, Isaiah. So maybe if this young child really was Jonah and isn’t it interesting to think that later in his life he would experience another resurrection of sorts when he came out of the belly of that fish and isn’t it interesting to think that it’s that very event that Jesus referred to in Matthew 12 as prefiguring his own resurrection. Maybe this young boy wasn’t as unknown as we sometimes like to think.

What are the lessons for us today from the raising of this young boy? There are so many, so many. But the one I will leave us with today is this. God of Elijah is your God and he is still the God of impossible situations. James 5:16: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” That was true in the days of Elijah, true in the day of James, it is true today. Perhaps is to see this great event as a reminder that the real fabric of history is not determined by the great interplay of earthly kingdoms and rulers, by the march of great armies. It is determined by us, by the prayers of God’s faithful people, God acting through His people and through our prayers to Him, by our own upper rooms, where we ask in faith for God to do the impossible. Yes, the age of miracles is over, it has ended. But the age of God loving his people, the age of God providing for his people, the age of God moving mountains in response to the prayers of his people, that is not over and will never be over. Romans 8:32: “He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” This son of the widow of Sidon was the first person we know who was ever raised from the dead, but he was not the last. God’s own son was raised from the dead, And we too will someday be raised from the dead by the power of God. 2 Corinthians 4:14: “knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus and shall present us with you.” The resurrection of Christ, the basis of our hope and the promises of God. But if you’re not in Christ today, you are without hope and without God in this world. Ephesians 2:12: “that at that time you were without Christ being alien from the Commonwealth of Israel and Strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope and without God in this world.” That is the state of anybody outside of Christ. Well hearing that The obvious question for someone outside of Christ is to ask what must I do? What must I do? What must I do? That’s the very question that was asked in Acts 2:37 at the end of the very first gospel sermon that was ever preached: “what must we do?” And 2,000 years later the answer in Acts 2:38 has not changed one bit: “Repent and be baptized for remission of your sins. You shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” And if you’re a child of God who is no longer faithful in your service to God, now, now is the time for you to return to Christ and to His Church. Elijah’s example of faithfulness and courage is an example for us all today. If we can help in any way, please come while we stand and while we sing.