“Elijah (1) The Story of Elijah”
(1 Kings 16:28-22:51)
Bob Marcaurelle, Meadowbrook Baptist Church See: (homeorchurch biblestudy.com)
One Old Testament historian has well said that the history of the divided Kingdoms is the study of the struggle between the men of God and the gods of men.
Nowhere is this more vividly portrayed than in the Ninth Century B.C. when Elijah the prophet met Ahab the King and Jezebel the Queen and all their idolatry head on.
For forty-six years (922-876), Israel was governed by one weak king after another and it was not until Omri took the throne in 876 that she had any resemblance to the mighty kingdom under Solomon.
In only six short years of leadership, Omri stabilized the government, built the capital city of Samaria, conquered Moab and made an alliance with Phoenicia by marrying his son Ahab to the Phoenician princess, Jezebel.
The last action proved to be disastrous because Jezebel the pagan princess was a devoted follower and passionate missionary of the god, Baal. And when she came, she brought Baal worship into Israel.
This devilish woman and her husband, when he assumed the throne, did more evil in the sight of God than all before them (I Kings 16:30). She launched a program to wipe the worship of the true God from the land.
The worship of Baal, the god of nature, involved the most hideous immorality imaginable. The morals of the entire kingdom were lowered.
Many of God’s prophets were persecuted and even killed. Many escaped by hiding in caves.
The worship of the true God was destined to be exterminated. The people were faltering between God and Baal and with the pressure of the crown combined with the pull of immorality Baal was certain to win.
What did God do to stem the tide?
We read it in I Kings 17:1:
“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’.”
What did God do? He sent an Elijah. This rugged mountain man towers above the men of this era like some giant mountain peak.
He cut through history like a comet. Single-handedly, he conquered the idol Baal and all its followers. Before his work was done, the dogs licked up the blood of Ahab in the plains of Jezreel as he predicted. And not long after he had gone to heaven, the dogs ate Jezebel in the streets as he had predicted.
We turn now to this remarkable prophet of prophets and we shall study his life as it divides itself into four chapters.
I. THE POWER OF PRAYER (I Kings 17:1)
Chapter one of Elijah’s stormy life can only be called the “power of prayer.” Into this degraded, idolatrous, apparently hopeless situation stepped one man.
The Book of James (5:17) says that he was subject to the same passions as you and I. What on earth could he do?
What weapon could one man wield to bring a rotten empire to its knees and a backsliding nation back to its God?
The weapon he wielded was prayer! The seventeenth chapter of First Kings simply introduces Elijah full grown. There is not a word about his mother. There is not a word about his childhood.
There is not a word about his conversion or his call. The Bible just turns him loose like this, “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.’”
He hit the nation with the suddenness and the severity of a bolt of lightning. Baal was the god of nature so he attacked Baal by closing the heavens with his prayer.
Ahab was the cancer in the heart of Israel so he started with him and worked down. This stern promise was followed by three solid years of desolation, dust, and death.
From the top of Mount Carmel to the flatlands of the Jordan valley, the land of Israel withered and turned to dust. Man and animals dropped in their tracks with tongues swollen by thirst. Mothers watched their babies die because there was no milk and no food.
I am sure that the land was bathed in brutality and bloodshed as men fought for food and water upon which to live.
God had come! God was putting a stop to the moral and spiritual plunge of His people.
In the dust and devastation and death, we see how terrible it is when God lowers His hand to chastise a backsliding people.
In connection with this scene you should read James 5:17, “...he (Elijah) prayed fervently that it might not rain and for three years and six months it did not rain.”
Before Elijah stepped into the presence of Ahab, he had knelt over and over in the presence of God. Yonder in the wild, rugged land of Gilead he had seen what this diabolical woman and her immoral gods were doing to his nation.
And since Baal was the god of the harvest, the Lord put it on Elijah’s heart to stop the very rains of heaven so that the harvest would fail and Baal would be revealed as a worthless idol. Elijah went in the power of prayer.
Here is where we preachers fail. We face up to Ahabs and Jezebels before we get the word from God, before we are endued with power from on high, and we go down to dismal defeat.
What does all this have to do with us? What does it say? It says that no problem is too pressing, no situation is too sinful and no day is too dark, for God to help if he has a man or woman who can shake His throne in prayer.
Oh, my friends, it doesn’t take many. One will do! One will do! Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees. I wonder what he does when he sees an Elijah.
When a church gets on fire for God and wakes up the hounds of hell and disturbs the devil and starts finding itself engrossed in little squabbles that don’t mean one thing to the ongoing of God’s kingdom, that church needs only one or two Elijahs to turn Satan out like a whipped dog.
II. THE ANVIL OF ADVERSITY (I Kings17:2-24)
My, how God must have loved this man of prayer and boldness. I guess he tucked him away in some beautiful, protected garden spot during these three terrible years of dust and death.
No, my friends, God left Elijah in the land and used these three years to draw him even closer to Himself. And He did this in the strange way He has so often done it - on the anvil of adversity.
First, God sent him to a little creek that gave him water. Then God commanded the ravens of the air to bring him his food.
And then God let the creek dry up. Then God told him to go hundreds of miles on foot through land patrolled by the soldiers of Ahab to a heathen woman in Zarephath.
When he finally got there the poor, starving woman was gathering sticks for her last meal. She and her son were planning to eat the tiny supper and lie down to die of starvation.
This woman shared her final supper with the prophet of God and like all who give sacrificially to God, she learned that it is impossible to outgive God. The little meal and oil that she had, never gave out until the day that God sent the rains.
How wonderful God is! Yet how strange. The next thing that happens is that the woman’s son dies. Elijah took the boy upstairs, laid him on his own bed, stretched himself over the boy three times and asked God to restore his life.
And the Bible says, “And the Lord hearkened unto the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came into him again and he lived” (I Kings 17:23).
In these three years, upon the anvils of adversity, with trouble for his teacher, Elijah was learning that he would never face a problem that he and God together couldn’t solve.
You may laugh at the Old Testament miracle if you wish, but many a man and woman in modern times has been fed from the hands of their heavenly Father.
III. THE DEPTHS OF DISCOURAGEMENT(I Kings 18:1-19:18)
1 The Showdown on Carmel
After three years and six months of devastating drought, the rains still did not come. Finally, Elijah let it be known that he would meet Ahab face to face.
He set a meeting on top of Mount Carmel and invited all the people of Israel plus the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah who ate at Jezebel’s table.
This was a head-on clash between the idols of Ahab and Jezebel and the Lord God of Israel.
Elijah called for a contest by fire. An oxen was killed, placed on Baal’s altar and Elijah challenged the 450 prophets to bring fire down from heaven and consume the sacrifice.
They cried to heaven and leaped and danced around the altar. They slashed their bodies with swords and lances but no answer came. This went on all day.
Elijah finally stepped forward, built the Lord’s altar, prepared the sacrifice, and then poured twelve barrels of WATER all over it.
Why did he do this? "Because a God that cannot make fire from wet wood is no good" (Adrian Rogers).
He prayed to his God and the fire fell. The people cried, “The Lord, He is God!”
Elijah ordered the people to seize the 450 prophets of Baal and kill them. God’s people did so and not one escaped.
And then the rains came and drenched the parched and thirsty land.
2. The Savage Response of a Fierce Woman
When Jezebel heard about the death of her prophets, she flew into a rage.
She sent Elijah a message promising him that by that time tomorrow she would take his life even as he had taken the lives of her prophets.
3. The Sad Response of a Frightened Preacher
1) The Defeated Preacher
Then one of the strangest scenes in the Word of God took place. Elijah, the courageous prophet of prophets, the man fed by the ravens, the man who brought a boy back from the grave, the man whose prayers could open and shut heaven, started running.
He ran into the desert and sat down under a juniper tree and prayed to die. God gave him some food and Elijah ran once again.
He ran all the way to Mount Sinai (Horeb) and hid in a cave
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2). The Depressed Preacher
There he wallowed in self-pity and told the Lord that he was the only follower left in the land of Israel. It is a sorry sight indeed to see a great man turn coward and wallow in self-pity.
But the men of the Bible were real men and subject to the same sins that we are. And here in a tiny cave, we see a sight worth seeing. We see our great God of love still loving a child of His.
There in the same mountain where He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, God gave Elijah the strength and courage to go on living (I Kings 19:11-18).
3) The Dynamic Preacher
(1). The Presence of God (19:11-14)
The first thing God did for His discouraged preacher was to assure him that He (his God) still stood by him. He came to Elijah in the form of a still, small voice, a light whisper.
No belief is more powerful and inspiring than the belief that God is still with us. With Him we can face anything. With Him no situation is hopeless.
And our great and merciful God is with us not only in our victories on Mount Carmel, but also in our defeats under the juniper tree. We may leave Him, but He never leaves us.
(2). The Priority of Work (19:15-16) - God’s antidote for discouragement is work. The second thing he told Elijah was that He had more work for him to do.
He had two kings to anoint and later on a new prophet, Elisha, his successor, to anoint (I Kings 19:19-21).
Many a defeated, discouraged prophet or laymen could rekindle the blaze of hope, if they would let God handle the big problems and just busy themselves in doing what God called them to do.
(3) The Promise of Retribution (19:17-18)
- It is a hard and frightening thing to say, but God also encouraged his discouraged preacher with the promise of retribution.
Payday for Ahab
He promised Elijah that the empire of Ahab and Jezebel would drown in its own blood. God told Elijah to anoint Hazael as the new king of Syria and Jehu as the new king of Israel.
Hazael was God’s answer to the backsliding people of Israel. He was a fierce bloodthirsty warrior who swept through the land like a plague, burning cities, killing warriors, murdering children and ripping open pregnant women.
It was in battle against the brutal Syrians that King Ahab was killed and the dogs licked his blood as his men washed the chariot in which he died.
Payday for Jezebel
Elijah was also told to anoint Jehu as king of Israel. This meant that the days of Jezebel were numbered - and they were.
Jehu later rode through the land like a tornado and when he finally came face to face with Jezebel, he had her cast into the street for the wild dogs to eat.
See the dogs licking the blood of ex-king Ahab and eating the body of ex-queen Jezebel and you get an idea of what happens when God has had enough of something.
Brother, you can’t kick God’s people and God’s prophets and God’s purposes forever.
Ahabs and Jezebels flaunt their fists in God’s face for a while and it seems that God is deaf and dumb and blind, but this is not so.
The time will eventually come when God Himself has had enough and He will use terrible instruments of punishment. Oh my friends, it is terrible when God intervenes.
IV. THE GATES OF GLORY
(I Kings 19:19 - II Kings 2:12)
For about ten years, Elijah and his young partner Elisha labored together in the service of their Lord.
And then Elijah left the land as suddenly and as strangely as he had entered.
He just walked down the Jordan River with Elisha at his side and many prophets following nearby and waited for God to come and pick him up and take him to heaven as He had done Enoch hundreds of years before.
Elisha, standing by, asked for a double portion of his spirit. Then suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire came between the two friends and Elijah went to heaven in a whirlwind.
The prophet of prophets was gone! The gates of glory opened wide. God buries the workman, said Wesley, and then carries on the work. Elisha takes up the torch because the God of Elijah never dies.
