The Prophet Elijah: When Your Faith is Tested

the little town of Glen Rose Texas is about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth and its only claim to fame is that many years ago it was a swamp and a dinosaur went through that area walk through the mud apparently looking for food and the ground hardened over the years and those footprints are still there you can go to Glen Rose Texas and see the footprints of a dinosaur still there marking the earth and there are certain people that come into our lives that mark our lives and it's like they lay out footsteps for us that that we can follow for you maybe it was a parent or a grandparent it could have been a teacher or a coach it could have been a mentor some co-worker and employ a spouse but chances are you can think of someone who so marked your life that when things happen and you find yourself thinking I wonder how she would handle this I wonder what he would say in a situation like this last week Jason hommes our family pastor launched a brand new series on the life of Elijah and we had just blown in from 14 hours from Jakarta Indonesia and Tokyo where we were there doing discipleship training Ruthie and I had just come back so we came the church we're a little bit jet-lagged we're a whole lot J lag at that time and Jason preached on Elijah and it was like salt to me it made me thirsty for more of the reality of God in my life and forgot to use me in a greater way so we're gonna look at Elijah and how it all started with him last week we talked about the prophets of bale 400 of them and 450 prophets of another God and this God contest on top of Mount Carmel but where did it start and why Elijah Elijah was one of the only two people in all of history who never died and we'll get to that in the land sermon of this series he's one of the only two people who appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration Moses was there representing the law and Elijah was there representing the prophets the Old Testament in it by the way he's mentioned more in the New Testament than any other Old Testament prophet and at the end of the Old Testament almost the last verses it says someone is going to come in the spirit and the power of Elijah and they're going to usher in the Messiah and so Jesus said John the Baptist's actually fulfilled that role and he was like Elijah and one day Jesus said to his disciples who do people think I am and they said well you're Elijah so what was it this about this man that so marked people in Bible days and continues to mark people today James 5:17 says Elijah was a man with the nature like ours he put his pants on the same way we do and sometimes when we read the Bible we kind of think of Bible characters is kind of otherworldly' unreal kinda like figures in a wax museum they're just kind of cardboard figures they don't deal with the kind of things that we deal with and you don't get that idea or that impression when you study the life of Elijah it's just a man like us and he dealt with the same kinds of disappointments and tragedies and frustrations and dreams that we have you know when you read the scriptures you find that scriptures are full of stories they're full of biblical accounts of people's lives you ever wonder why why are there so many biographies in the in the Word of God I think it's because the Holy Spirit loves to teach truth in terms of real life and if you see someone living a godly life or a different kind of life it's kind of an incentive for you to live that kind of life if you need courage read the story of Esther if you need faith build your faith read the story of Abraham if you've had a dream and it was crashed and that dream is dead read the story of Joseph God put these stories of people's lives in the Bible so that they might be like footprints and we can we can follow them I think a lot of us identify with Simon Peter who had the amazing ability to open his mouth put both feet in it and wonder why couldn't walk he had hoof-and-mouth disease in fact there's a there's a passage in mark that says Peter not knowing what to say spoke it's time of it so like that we're gonna identify with that just just such a such a mess yet in the book of Acts the enemies of the church said about Peter and his buddies they changed the world now they've come here and all of that is to say you read these stories in the Bible and you go if God could use him if God could do something in his life he can do something in my life because they're no different than that I am and so these stories tend to really not only inspire us they rebuke us sometimes they encourage us they they give us an incentive and the first time you meet Elijah he it's like a bolt out of the blue like a lightning most striking out of a clear blue sky he walks up the steps of the palace gets right in the face of the king and says it is not going to rain for years until I say so and then he's gone back look at first Kings 17 1 now Elijah the Tishbite of tisp ax in Gilead said to Ahab the king as the Lord the God of Israel lives before whom I stand there shall be neither do nor reign these years except by my word and you can almost hear a couple of Secret Service guys here at the Kings side saying where did he come from who is this guy about a hundred discussing it he's gone he disappears so what do we know about this man well it says in verse 1 he's he's from kispa he's a tisp aight i had really doesn't help us we don't know where that was apparently it was such a little insignificant town that we can't even find it on a map or even a bible map George's guest does say was in Gilead and Gilead is some of the roughest country and all of the holy land or near the hole in it's just desert and rocks and woods and mountainous and people who were from Gilead where as tough as leather they were direct they were rough they were not sophisticated at all and they dressed weird and so Elijah if you saw him you would not be attracted to him he was not the kind of guy who won friends and made made lots of close friends prophets were not like that he was he was a different kind of a person and yet all of a sudden just like out of nowhere he shows up and then he disappears and you'll never appreciate what this man did what happened with his life unless you understand the time when he lived when he lived and fortunately the Spirit of God has given us a context the prior chapter chapter 16 of first Corinthians describes how an explosion of idolatry took place in the land of Israel and how the worship of the one true God of Jehovah was being eradicated the country was being gutted by spiritual idolatry in fact look at chapter 16 verse 30 it says an Ahab the son of Omri was the king did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him you might just underline or highlight in your Bible 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 prior king he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of F Bale the king of the sidonians and went and served bail and worshipped him so Ahab is linked up with a vampire named Jezebel and when you study the life of Ahab it's not so much that he's evil he just weak he has to run every little decision by this vicious crew a woman who is the one who introduces bail worship into Israel bail is the God of Thunder he's the God of the storm he's the god of fertility and she begins to eradicate the worship of the true God and they're locking up and they're killing people who worship Jehovah and a half can't figure out a way to kill people faster Jezebel is really creative she's got lots of ways look at verse 32 he erected an altar for bail in the house of bail which he built in Samaria and they have made an Asscher a--the Astra's was it was a statue of the consort or the the prostitute wife of a bail and that in that religion that mythology they have did more to provoke the Lord the God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him so it's the lowest hour in Israel's history economically mitts boom time prosperous politically seemed to be stable but spiritually it's a disaster prophets are hiding the morale the moral fabric morality is in a free fall worship was banned of the true God it was not a time conducive to godly living it was not convenient or comfortable to be a believer it never is if you're looking for a religion of comfort and convenience then you need to strike Christianity off the list and if you ever find a Christianity that's comfortable and convenient it is illegitimate it is not true it has always cost to be a believer in any age and Christianity just doesn't seem to flourish in prosperous times in fact if you study church history there are two things that have had the greatest negative impact on Christianity peace and prosperity and we've had a lot of both of those Christianity has survived heresy it has survived persecution in fact persecutors only actually get to the point of saying the more we try to stamp the thing out the more it grows go to Iran today there are more it is one of the greatest stories of the spread of Christianity in all of modern history it's Christianity is growing like wildfire in Iran go to Cuba where the church is exploding in growth and house churches all over the island a few years ago I said in a group of pastors and and mission leaders in Curtis Sargent who at that time worked for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention told us that he had just come back from China and he met with the three leaders of the house church movement in China each of these leaders was like a bishop and he had like a hundred thousand house churches under his supervision and leadership and Curtis is meeting with the three top leaders of all in China and the house church movement and one of the guys got a phone call and one of his workers up in the mountains had been killed and so this leader said well I've got to go and Curtis Sargent said I can only be here today my visa runs out today I've got to can't you send someone else up in the mountains to take care of it and this house church leader looked at him and said you don't understand I have to see I have to go up there and see if God wants me to raise him from the dead Curtis said that never would have occurred to me I mean I was trained to go take care of the body and get the body out and get counseling for the survivors he said that never would have occurred to me and he said I have met entire families who's been raised from the dead single adults who have been raised from the dead and then he looked us right in the eye and what he said pin me to my chair he said why would God bless spiritual mediocrity so Christianity is not flourished real well when it's when there's peace and prosperity sometimes people say it's easy today to be a Christian and I beg to differ in many respects it is harder to live for Jesus Christ today than when the winds are blowing against you because we tend to accommodate to the culture we tend to compromise our faiths back in Elijah's day there were seven thousand prophets noted Elijah who were hiding in a cave prophets of the true God who had the motto of American Christians let's not get involved and there's one man one lone figure who stands up and says enough is enough walks into the presence of the most powerful man of the time and says it will not rain bail is the god of rain and thunder I'm telling you there is a God who lives and it will not rain until I say so and people blew it off now we've heard that stuff before the day's became weeks weeks became months and months became years and at a time of spiritual decline one man stood to be God's leverage in his generation and I'm looking at a room full of people and with all in my heart I believe that God is calling you to be his leverage his representative where you are in this generation and it's in your office maybe it's it on your campus maybe it's in your neighborhood so what is it that made Elisha the man that he was years ago I heard professor Howard Hendricks from Dallas seminary talked about Elijah and he said there were three things I just want to take his his three points I can't do better than than he does and share them with you and here's the first one what's the secret of his boldness number one he had an unshakable belief in the reality of a living supernatural God twice he says the Lord God of Israel lives he was absolutely convinced that God rules over all things are you people of his day believed they had successfully eradicated and bombed Jehovah you know I just said not so and God does not leave himself without a witness in fact it's really interesting to look this man's name Elijah L is the Hebrew abbreviation of the Hebrew word for God which is Elohim and the yah refers to shorthand for Yahweh or Jehovah so this man's name has both God and Jehovah in it and the little I in the middle is the personal pronoun my or mine so his name literally means the Lord is my god or my god is is Jehovah so even in his name he is he's bearing witness I've been an admirer of Martin Luther and Martin Luther King jr. for many years for a lot of different reasons both of them stood up against systemic racism and false teaching and it cost both of them a great deal in their stands Martin Luther who was born and lived five hundred years before Martin Luther King was the one who said people are put right with God people are forgiven by God not because of anything they do but solely by faith in what God has done in Jesus Christ and so he resurrected the gospel and his writing spread throughout all of Europe and one point he was asked are these your writings because if they are you're gonna be burned at the stake and Luther looked at the writings and said unless I can be convinced my scripture and plain reason that I'm wrong here I stand I can do no other he said there was a day when the Reformation was not going well things were things were not moving ahead and Luther was so discouraged he was almost depressed he's sitting there in a chair kind of feeling sad sorry for himself and his wife Katherine Bond Bora I called her Kate or Katie who was the greatest influence of his life came down the stairs dressed all in black and she's got the kids with her and they're all dressed in black and Luther looked up and said who died where's the funeral and she said well apparently God has died because my husband doesn't believe he's able to do anything anymore and the story goes that Luther laughed heartily it's a Kate you're the best thing that ever happened to me I've been sitting here so there is a God who is alive and if you study the Bible of Martin Luther from that moment on it was a new day and he went it was a new departure in his leadership and I know nobody here would ever say I doubt anybody here would ever say God is dead we just lived that way we live as practical atheist as either God is dead or he doesn't matter and Elijah had this deep conviction that God was alive in control and active here's the second thing he was convinced he was God's representative who do you represent so I represent that X I represent International Paper I represent my firm I represent ServiceMaster well we were flying back from Indonesia were sitting there on Japan Airlines and they people are so Jeff knees are so kind so so very polite and I'm watching these flight attendants walking up and down the island serving people and it I recalled an instance that I've shared here before when I was on a flight somewhere and a flight attendant walked by and she looked down and I'm reading it and she said what are you reading it was a Christian book and she stopped for a moment smiled looked me at me and she said I am a follower of Jesus Christ cleverly disguised as a flight attendant and she said this is my day job to make a living what's your day job has it ever occurred to you that you have been commissioned if you're a Christian you have been commissioned by Almighty God to be his personal representative where you work or where you live that God wants to use you in that and sometimes I get kind of discouraged to be honest because I think many of us find more security and other Christians than we do in Jesus someone comes up and says Tim great news I got a job at a company and everybody in the company as a Christian yeah I typically don't say anything what's wrong what a tragedy what what you could be working in a company where nobody is a Christian and you represent Jesus Christ there and he puts you there for the sake of influencing other people toward him sometimes I think we draw more security from other Christians and than from Jesus alone and this man stood in the presence of the most powerful man at that time the most powerful woman and he said as the Lord the God of Israel lives before whom I stand someone's took it in his sleeve and going hey hey Elisha don't you know who you're in the presence of this King Ahab you're standing before King Ahab and a and Elijah was not impressed how could you be impressed by standing in front of a king when you stand in the presence of the God who is so great that demons flee from him and million angels cannot walk by the throne without bowing and crying holy holy holy so he was convinced of the reality of God and he was convinced he was God's personal representative there's a third thing that explains his life he based his life on the resources of God he said there should be neither do nor rain except by my word in case you think that's just natural in case you think this is temporary it's gonna be years before it rains it won't rain until I say so how did he know that where did he come to that conclusion well the account we have here in first Kings is fragmentary and you have to look at a couple of other places to understand how he knew that for example Deuteronomy 11 16 and 17 says this this was spoken hundreds of years before by Moses take care lest your heart be deceived and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the land will yield no fruit and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord your God is giving you so God had promised he would withhold rain if his people fell into massive idolatry and disobeyed him and I think Elijah had that verse memorized God made a promise God would keep his promise so what does he do well James 5:17 says Elijah was a man with a nature like ours he pray firmly that it might not rain and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth so he knew God's will from Scripture and he went before God just like our children come to us and say he said you promised you promised that if we disobeyed there would not be rain you promised I do what you promised and it says here he prayed fervently literally the Greek says he prayed with prayer in other words one of the most important things about prayer is just persevering in prayer just keeping on so he knew what God had promised and he went before God and he prayed about that how do you learn to pray I'll tell you one thing you don't do you don't learn from other Christians you don't learn from how other Christians pray I mean isn't it refreshing to hear a brand new Christian pray hey God I don't know if you remember but I was talking to you last week about Jerry and it's just so refreshing how do you learn to pray you find the promises of God and you claim them and you base your life upon them you go to God's Word and see what his will is and trying to get right instead of trying to get your will done here you find out what God's will is and prayer brings God's will into this world into this time so Hebrews 11:6 says without faith it's impossible to please God he whoever comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards people who seek Him and that was Elijah he believed God existed he saw God and God rewarded him and by the way folks prayer can be very dangerous fact look at verses 2 through 7 of chapter 17 just the next couple of verses after he stands before the king has said the word of the Lord came to him depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith which is east of the Jordan you shall drink from the brook and I've come in the Ravens to feed you there so he went dead according to the word of the Lord and it went and any and he went and lived by the brook Kara which is east of the Jordan and the brave the Ravens brought him bread and in the morning so I got sandwiches and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook imagine what that would have been like if this clean running water and kind of birds bringing food and God just takes care of him and then it says verse 7 after a while the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land you ever sit beside a drying brook there was a time when your bank account was full and life was good and things begin to happen and through a series of circumstances your bank account is not full now that's a drying broke there was a time when you loved to sing God's praises and you had a nice voice and then a tumor was found on your vocal cords and they removed it and you can't sing anymore like your heart longs to that's a drying brook there was a time when your marriage was flourishing and it was exciting and thrilling and the best thing that ever happened to you but now your spouse is talking about divorce that's a drying brook there was a time when you physically felt strong you could do whatever you wanted to but the doctor found some things and now you can't that's a drying brook there was a time when your kids were the greatest thing in your life and you were so proud of them and you lived through the life of your kids and now you've got a child who does not want to talk to you at all that's a drying brook and you go what happened why has this happened in my life and a lie just sits besides this watches the water is gushing one day and the next day there's a little trickle in a couple more days it just wet-sanding what happened I'm here because you told me to come here now what happened is God is answering his prayer there's no rain and we find ourselves kind of lightened beside of drying brook we go what happened and God says don't you remember you pray for faith you pray for patience you asked me to make you like Jesus I'm just answering your prayer I'm just putting all kinds of stuff in your life so you have to trust me I am chiseling off to everything that doesn't look like geez I'm just answering your prayer Elijah was as much in the center of God's will beside a drying brook as he was when he was standing in the presence of the king he was standing or sitting in the presence of God as much by a drying brook as he was when he was in front of a king so prayer can be dangerous he he was convinced of the reality of God he was conscious of being God's representative and he relied on the resources of God the Word of God and in prayer when I was 17 when I was 14 years old my dad's company moved him to California Santa Maria California right there in the kind of the middle of the state in the valley 17 miles from Pismo Beach and we spent a year there and then the company moved him back my dad was setting up an office there and while we were in Santa Maria California I heard a story about a group of young adults Christians who went down to Pismo Beach and felt led by God to start a halfway house for drug addicts drug users so they did they raised the money they bought a house they they began to refurbish the house repurpose it to be a halfway house and one day that's an area where at that time motorcycle gangs were everywhere the Hells Angels other groups one day they heard the sound of motorcycles and a gang of Hell's Angels pulled up at the little house they were the leader got off the gang leader got off he had a chain around his fist walked in and found this the leader of this small group of Christian young adults a short guy kind of thin with thick glasses they told him to get out of there this area belongs to us and the young man said you can beat us up beat us to a pulp but God told us to do this and we're gonna do it and the gang leader again I guess had never had been defied like that so he turn around and walked away they got back on their bikes revved him up and and rode out the very next day here they came again rolling in and they they went up to the group of young people who are working in this house and they said we had a meeting last night we've changed our mind you can stay in fact we're going to be your protection and if anybody messes with you call us we'll take care of them Christian guy said thanks a lot but we've got a God who protects us but you're welcome to stay and help us clean it up and as I recall the story as I heard it from the young man they don't call the story over the next several months that gang leader and several other members of their motorcycle gang came to faith in Jesus Christ you know the most powerful evidence for Christianity people can blow off our arguments they can blow off our talk of success and big churches and all they you know the greatest evidence for Christianity changed lives the power of God to change a person's life so I end with this question what is there about your life that cannot be explained apart from the supernatural if you really knew God was with you and he is all-powerful and you were doing as he instructs what would change what would change

Channel: The Orchard Church

Views: 65,280

Keywords: leadership, belief, faith, God's representative, prophet, Elijah, boldness

Id: _KK-bb3lM0o

Length: 30min 22sec (1822 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019