Clough Manhood Series Lesson 38
Elijah: God’s Provision – 1 Kings 17-19
Tonight we continue with the doctrine of the Christian man and we have made certain points over and over again in this series. One of the things we want to recall before we go any further is the question that was raised by some, and that is, they say well, when you study the doctrine of the Christian woman in Scripture, so often the woman’s role is defined in terms of the man’s role, and so much of the doctrine of the Christian woman is basically learning the doctrine of the Christian man and his position. Why, then, it is asked, don’t we in the doctrine of the Christian man operate it conversely and deal with the doctrine of the Christian woman over against the doctrine of the Christian man.
That’s a good question. The answer is found in 1 Corinthians 11:3, so if you’re turn there for a moment. We will get into the man/woman relationship in the Song of Songs, if I can ever get time to study the Hebrew adequately for that and then also the book of Ruth. Those two books will give us plenty of material there, but the whole thrust of the doctrine of the Christian man is not using the woman as a foil. The reason for that is this, in 1 Corinthians 11:3 it says, “But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man,” so the man’s role isn’t defined over against the woman; the man’s role is defined over against Christ and his calling, and that’s why time and again in this manhood series you have watched, I have not stressed and I have not gone back to the doctrine of the Christian woman as an opposite. If you’ll also notice 1 Corinthians 11:7, “…forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.” And again the role is very clear, very distinct, written long before women’s rights. So with that in mind we continue our process through.
Last time we dealt with Ahab and to review a little bit because tonight we’re going to deal with Ahab’s contestant, Elijah. But Ahab was one of the great apostate leaders of the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom, you remember, broke off from the southern kingdom at 930 BC; this was due to a near civil war and on this chart the northern kingdom is colored in orange. It was that area over which Ahab had hegemony. Ahab and his rule took the apostasy of the northern kingdom further than it had ever been taken before. In the northern kingdom at first there was the sin of Jeroboam; the sin of Jeroboam consisted of making idols that would stand for Jehovah. These idols were in the shape of a bull, it says in the Bible “calf.” When I was in Israel I was able to pick up a replica of one of these idols that had been found in the basement or on the lower levels of a home of 1000 BC. This was kept as sort of a good luck charm in the home. Actually the bull was used because it is tied in with fertility.
But in addition to the sin of Jeroboam Ahab made an official state religion of Baalism; up to this time there had been three religions, basically. There had been Yahwehism, the pure religion we know in reading the prophets of the Bible. That was one religion. The opposite was Baalism, that had been building and building and building. And then in between was the majority of people in sort of a state religion. The thing about the Old Testament is that you never want to think that when you read Isaiah and Jeremiah and the prophets that you’re really reading the majority view. You’re reading a minority view. The majority of people did not believe the way we believe, even in ancient Israel. So always keep that in mind, the state religion of Israel was an amalgam of these two forces.
Well, along came Ahab and he had a lot of political problems; he was a man under tremendous pressure. And I’m not going to condone what he did but I want you to understand the pressure he was under so you can understand the temptation he was under. Ahab was faced with military affairs that were going badly, he had a problem with the Assyrians, we’re still having problems with the Syrians, not Assyrians, things have not changed over history and if some of our diplomats in the State Department would simply read 1 and 2 Kings they’d have a lot more perception about why the Syrians are always at the throats of the Jews. This has been going on for some thirty centuries. And it’s not going to be brought to a halt by some quickie negotiations. The forces are too deeply embedded in history to be just casually erased.
And then Ahab faced drought. And you know what drought does to an agrarian economy. You can’t live around here and not realize that. And so obviously he’s faced with a domestic internal crisis as well as external foreign pressure. And then to top it all off he never could get unity in his nation because of these three religions vying for one another. So Ahab, in addition to this, marrying the zealous daughter of one of the priests of Baal, decided he would solve the problems in one fell swoop by declaring the state religion to be Baalism. He thought that would do away with all the controversy, all the wasted energy, we could combine everything under one administration. He had a department of religion and it authorized Baalist worship.
Well, all of this was obviously due to Ahab’s lack of faith; he rejected the authority of the Word of God; Ahab wasn’t stupid, and he knew the Word of God, he had been taught the Word of God by the prophets, but he rejected it and went over to idolatry. And one of his idols was developed is this one, this is what one of the things that also has been dug up in Ugarit, north of where Israel is located. This is a statue of Baal, again found in a home. Baal is carrying in this particular stature a picturesque thing; he is carrying a club and he’s carrying something in his hand there that most men interpret to be fire from heaven, or a lightening strike; it’s not a spear, it looks like that on the bottom but most people who have studied it say it’s not a spear. So here is a picture of what they conceived Baal to be; Baal was nature forces. It was Baal that gave fertility; it was Baal that gave rain; it was Baal that gave, therefore the fruit, the wheat in the field; it was Baal who gave life and it was Baal who blasted with fire from heaven. Those were all of the things that happened that they ascribed to their idolatrous god.
Now any time you have Christians in rebellion against the Word of God, and if you have a society in general rebellion against its God-consciousness, you create a spiritual vacuum and into this spiritual vacuum comes demonic forces. And therefore, when we come to this point in Israel’s history we are undoubtedly face to face with deeply embedded demonic forces. Every time you have overt idolatry you can bet your last dollar that you’ve got an infestation of vast hordes of demonic powers. The early church believed this so much that when it came to apologetics against the idols in the 1st and 2nd century of the church’s history against the Romans, many of the church fathers argued against the idols this way: the pagan worshipers of the idols said say, you can’t argue against us, listen, I had a dream, this god spoke to me and he showed me picture and so I just simply took my knife and I started carving my little block of wood and look what came out, exactly the picture I saw in my dream. Well, the church father’s answer to that was very simple; yeah, we’re not saying you didn’t have revelation but from what? We’re just simply saying the demon manifested himself to you in your dream; you saw him, and now you’re worshiping him. Not that the wood is something, but the demonic power has forced you to create an overt image to itself. So whenever you have idolatry you have strong demonic powers and when that happens, generally God has only one way of dealing with it in history and that is through severe physical suffering.
This is the lesson at this point in the history of Israel, and thus we say in our framework, when we get to this point, having looked at the rise and reign of David, we come down to the kingdom’s decline. The kingdom began to decline precisely because of this idolatry, and it was during the period of decline there arose the man, Elijah. Elijah was a loner. Elijah is a picture of the lonely, solitary, but very tough male. Now the solitary male in Scripture, without his helper, is an anomaly. This is not an all time model. Paul is an exception; the Elijah’s are exceptions, if indeed he wasn’t married, we don’t know, there’s no visibility here if he was married. Paul’s another example, and John the Baptist may have been one. But these men all exceptions in the sense that they all had ministries during critical times of battle and Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 9 that he could lawfully take a Christian woman for a wife but because of the danger of his mission, because of the tremendous hustling around, he didn’t feel like he subject a woman to that kind of stress. And so the men, like Elijah and like Paul, and perhaps John the Baptist, are men who in history require a lot of prayer; they are men who are the solitary and magnificently lonely people.
Elijah is cast in the Bible as a second Moses. There are numerous parallels between this mysterious man and Moses, but one thing, both in the end of their life, come to the same spot on the face of the earth, Mount Sinai. Both come, one for the covenant to be established, and the other looking for the covenant to be continued; one comes to found the nation, the other comes to secure the remnant. And they both anchor it at Mount Sinai at the giving place of the covenant. Both men appear on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus Christ. And both men are intimately interested in Christ’s personal ministry. So as Moses is to the nation as a whole Elijah is to the faithful remnant within that nation, and together they are a team.
Elijah, for us, in our own generation, particularly for Christian men, ought to act as an example of encouragement. What this man did he did without a helpmate; what this man did he did without the assets that you have. This man stood literally alone against the pressure of his own generation and he did magnificently. He stumbled but he did magnificently. He wasn’t infallible; only Jesus was infallible, but Elijah is an excellent, excellent example of a man alone and because of his faith in God is extremely tough.
Turn to 1 Kings 17, let’s look at some episodes in his life. Elijah constitutes one of the pictures of men in Scripture. God uses all kinds of men and this is the first thing you want to understand about Elijah. There’s no stereotype male in the Scripture. There is no stereotype male! Some men show their masculinity more in a physical way, as a warrior, say David, in his early days. Some men show their masculinity in their intellectual toughness, like the apostle Paul. Some men show their tenacity by their tremendous spiritual life, such as Elijah and John the Baptist. And so we have the masculinity conveyed in one of three ways or some combination of those three ways. In our own generation, of course, the non-Christian man always thinks in terms of the physical; he never thinks of himself as a man intellectually, he never thinks of himself as a man spiritually. But the Christian can’t be trapped that way; the Christian’s got to go back and let the Word of God inform his soul.
So first we meet the Elijah, the man. Personality wise he probably was an outcast. Like John the Baptist, it seemed like he relished in offending people. And this may be one thing why he was alone so often, very much alone. At those times, even when he talks over things with Elisha, his disciple, it’s gruff, it’s short, very short, man of few words. Sort of like John the Baptist. And so these two men give one picture of a male personality, the solitary loner type. Now it’s true that in most cases it’s God’s will, of course, that we fellowship one with another, and this by no means should serve as an exalted model for everyone. But also we must acknowledge that men have different kinds of personalities. Some are gregarious, some are loners. And if the church is going to minister the Word of God we can’t set up a program that immediately favors a certain kind of man, because if we do then we make all the other men feel inferior. Some men would love to get up and parade up and down an aisle, and this is great if that’s the kind of invitations you have, but other men would die of a heart attack before they’d come frothing at the mouth and down an aisle and I would be one of them. And so this is why certain forms of invitations are bad, they discriminate against certain kinds of personalities. Most of you know Mike{?}, he didn’t believe me about these stories that I tell from the pulpit about churches in various parts of the country. Some of you are so skeptical… a prophet is without honor in his own country. And so these people have to go and actually experience it for themselves so he and Barbara went up to this church in New England and sure enough, he got in the end of it, and there it was, Just As I Am, sung three or four times, the guy said this’ll be the last time and he sang it five more times… well, about the fifth time Mike decided this is and he went down the aisle, he and Barbara and just walked up the aisle, out the back door, and so that was his response to the whole situation.
Well, different kinds of pressures can be brought against different kinds of personalities. So understand, when you read Elijah you’ll see some eccentricities in this man. Don’t take these as absolute models; they’re just one man and his way of doing things. The balancing passage is found in Matthew’s Gospel, if you want references, I can’t think of the exact passage but it’s somewhere around Matthew 11 or 12, somewhere in there, where Jesus deals with His personality difference from John the Baptist. People always love to do this, they say well I don’t like so and so because of this, and they pull out all this stuff that they don’t like in the person’s personality. Well, that’s nice, they were doing it in Jesus’ day—I don’t like John the Baptist. Why? Well, he’s gruff and he’s not loving, and he stays all by himself out in the sand dunes and I have to walk 30 miles out there to hear him and I don’t like that. And Jesus said that’s interesting because the same people that said that about John the Baptist and his personality are saying it about Me, and I go to all the parties in town. And what happens when I go to all the parties in town? Then they accuse me of being a winebibber.
So either way, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Now this is always the criticism and it’s based on personalities. So men, somewhere in your Christian life learn to tune out criticism that’s directed toward personality quirks. Now morally accused on the basis of Scripture, listen to the criticism but as far as natural features of personality disregard it; they don’t know what they’re talking about and you’ll be far better off learning how to just let it pass off like water off a ducks back and just go right on being your same personality.
All right, 1 Kings 17:1, where it all starts. It starts out with a big bang. “Elijah, the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there is not going to be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” Now this is always the Dale Carnegie approach on How to Win Friends and Influence People; notice how much of a salesman, the positive approach the man uses here. Okay, that’s his personality, he is that kind of… kind of a stinker. And he’s being that for the Lord at this point and telling off Ahab, when everybody else refused to tell off Ahab. But before verse 1 occurred something else happened in this man’s life and want to get some background on him. We’re going to go to two passages, one in the Old Testament and one in the New.
Turn to Deuteronomy 11:16, back here there’s a little verse that talks about this business of drought. It says: “Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them.” In other words, carnality has proceeded to the extreme of idolatry. And God says when you start seeing idolatry, then verse 17, “then the LORD’s wrath will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly,” and ye shall perish quickly, “from off the good land which the LORD gives you.” All right, there is a promise of what God is going to do. Now if we were to believe like some hyper Calvinists believe that oh, that’s God’s sovereignty at work there, well I’ll say “yes Sir,” and let’s sit back and let’s watch God’s sovereignty at work. Is that the way Elijah works? No.
Now the New Testament passage that answers to Deuteronomy 11. Turn to James 5, this is the same kind of balance between sovereignty and human responsibility that you see in the book of Daniel. There you remember Daniel knew it was the 70th year and he didn’t just fatalistically lie back and say well, folks, it’s all here, I can just faith-rest the thing. It’s a perversion. Faith-rest isn’t a perversion, that’s a perversion of what it means to rest in faith. And here we have… and remember what Daniel did; he prayed, he prayed three weeks until he got an answer. Well now in James 5:17 we have Elijah praying, “Elijah was a man subject to like passions a we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; [and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months].” Now, put that together with the promise we just read; is it true that God said when idolatry would happen I would send drought? Yea, sovereignty. But sovereignty is not fatalism; in fatalism what’s going to happen is going to happen. But in sovereignty what’s going to happen is going to be by means of something. And there’s means that trigger God’s sovereignty. Or we should more appropriately say that God’s sovereignty includes the triggers. And the triggers in this case were the prayers of this man who personally went before God and prayed for drought upon his country.
Now you figure out, just figure out for yourself a moment what kind of a person
could do that kind of thing? Can you
imagine sitting here and praying drought upon the high plains, so that the
crops would fail and the economy would go down.
When your family lived on the high plains, when your friends made money
on the crops on the high plains, and when your town depended on that money,
that’s the position Elijah was in. God
said go ahead and pray damnation on them.
What? Go ahead and pray damnation
on them. And so Elijah obviously must
have worried, as you would, as I would, if we prayed that prayer, hey Lord, you
know… He might answer the prayer, then what do we do? So Elijah’s first lesson after announcing the
drought was a lesson in God’s provision.
So let’s turn back to 1 Kings 17:2-7; here’s how this fiery prophet began his ministry. “And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, [3] Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook, Cherith, which is before the Jordan. [4] And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the raves to feed thee there. [5] And so he went and he did according to the Word of the Lord; for he went and he dwelt by the brook, Cherith, that is before Jordan. [6] And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook. [7] And it came to pass after awhile, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.”
Now just don’t read that so fast and just stop and think a minute; put yourself in Elijah’s place. How’d you like that, some grubby raven dropping this stuff in front of you all the time. You know, these are scavenger things, you don’t know what the guy’s been eating before he picked up your piece of bread, and so you talk about trusting God for grace, I imagine he said grace before every meal, grace to purify it from whatever that raven must have had in his mouth before. But this happened day after day, and each day the waters got less. Well, to give you an idea of what the Jordan looks like at that point, [shows slides] the map of the area first, this is the Jordan valley. Most of the action of this book will occur… starts occurring right here; Ahab’s palace is right there, there’s Jezreel, he also has a place up here in Samaria. This is the whole northern kingdom, of course; this place is Carmel, we’ll come back to that a little bit later on; the valley of Jezreel, and then the Jordan valley. Elijah has gone away from the Ahab area, he’s walked over here into this valley and this is what it looks like. And it’s nothing more, really, than a brook; that’s the Jordan River. Now true, it’s somewhat less today because of climate and because the Israelis have damned it up under the south end of the Sea of Galilee, but nevertheless you see it’s not that big a thing, and it wouldn’t have taken it too long to dry up, especially the little brook that Elijah is near. So there you have at least something of the terrain features to visualize the story.
Now let’s go on; he watched this daily as the water goes down. The food comes but the water goes down. Now a question here: what is God trying to teach? Elijah is a micro picture of every believer in the northern kingdom. You see, when God brings judgment down upon the nation everyone is hurt. So the question arises, how, when God damns the whole nation, does He save the individual believers in the nation? Elijah has to learn that theological lesson in his personal life and so he has to experience the results of his own prayer—drought! And he has to sit there and be fed, supernaturally like this, to get the message, that no matter what judgment God brings down upon the nation He preserves His spiritual remnant. They are going to be preserved, miraculously if necessary but they will be preserved. And so this contributes to Elijah’s outlook on life, and particularly his idea of the remnant.
Well, finally in I Kings 17:8 as you can see, “And the word of the LORD came to him, saying, [9] Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there; behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. [10] So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering sticks. And he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink. [11] And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring me … a morsel of bread. [12] And she said, as the LORD, thy God lives, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruise; and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and prepare it for me and my son, that we may eat it and die.” She too is in the drought area. [13] “And Elijah said unto her, Stop fearing; go and do as you said. But make me of it a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and afterwards make for thee and for thy son. [14] For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not be used up, neither shall the cruise of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sends rain upon the earth. [15] And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, and he, and her house, did eat may days. [16] And the barrel of meal was not used up, neither did the cruise of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, [which He spoke by Elijah].”
Now these miracles that are happening in Elijah are all part of a very carefully arranged plan by God. God, at this point is leading Elijah into an effective assault on Baalism. Remember what I said before; remember what I said about Baal, this clown here. This guy had the attributes of: (1) giving rain. Now why do you suppose the very miracle that Elijah is involved with is rain? What’s the struggle? The struggle is to show by whose word does it rain. And Elijah says by my word under Jehovah it doesn’t rain, and you can sit there and you can pray to your Baal, go ahead and pray to him, see if he gives you rain. And so it was an attempt to discredit Baalist doctrine. That’s the secret of all the miracle stories of 1 and 2 Kings. Oftentimes believers are confused, why these queer stories in here. All you have to do is list them on a piece of paper and every one of them is an attack on a doctrine of Baal. For example, Baal is the grain god; he gives fertility in the land. So, what happens to the widows barrel of food? It’s blessed. Where did the widow live, in verse 9? In Baal’s home base of Sidon of all places, that’s where Ahab’s wife came from. Jezebel came from Sidon. Well, if, then, God, Jehovah of Israel is able to give grain and food in Baal’s backyard, how much more can He give grain in His own yard. And so the argument over grain, like the argument over rain is a struggle between Baalism and Yahwehism, struggling together.
And then, later on in 1 Kings 17:17 and following, we won’t have time to look at it, but in verse 17 and following, remember the story, that the woman’s son suddenly fell sick, and Elijah resuscitated him, verse 23, he “took the child, and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother: [and Elijah said, See, thy son lives]. [24] And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth.” And so who was to give life in Baalist doctrine? Baal. But who gives life to the widow’s son? Jehovah. So all the stories are cast, first they take a claim of Baal, then they take a claim of Jehovah.
But of course, every one knows the most famous confrontation of all, the confrontation on the top of Mount Carmel, and this is the story of chapter 18 beginning at verse 17. Baal, as I showed in the drawing, was known in history, and apparently for giving fire from heaven. Now there’s a confrontation on Mount Carmel, assume significance, does it tie together for you, why it was fire from heaven that was the thing that Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to do? Because that was Baal’s specialty; I’ll take you on in your own field of specialty, Baalists, come on, let’s get out on the hills and get with it. And so that’s what he’s going to do. So again, the lonely prophet of God, see, he probably had the same thing that you see today, a lot of believers behind him, fifty miles, have to have a pair of binoculars to see them. But nobody was out there actively challenging Baalism; no one! Elijah alone, so if anybody gets killed, you know, it’s kind of safe for the believers.
All right, let’s look at what happened. 1 Kings 18:17, “And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Are you he that troubles Israel?” Troublemaker, that’s the reputation he had around the country. If there had been CBS news reports they would have a story on Elijah every week; it wouldn’t have been Burt Lance, it would have been Elijah. [18] “And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house,” so again you can see there’s no spirit of grace between Elijah and Ahab; “…in that you have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and you have followed Baal. [19] Now, therefore, gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal, four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the grove [idols], four hundred, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”
Now to set this scene, I didn’t appreciate it, reading in the Scriptures until I’d actually been there, and I think looking at some slides of Mount Carmel will cast it in your mind’s eye a little bit better, so that you’ll appreciate the setting for some of the things that happened in this chapter. Now this is the enlarged chart, there’s the Sea of Galilee, this Mount Carmel. Notice first of all, it’s not a mountain, it is a range of mountains. That’s the first mistake we make; we think of one high mountain, it isn’t. It’s a whole long area and here, you may be able to distinguish, there’s kind of a triangle of green; now that’s the valley of Jezreel, an extremely fruitful area of farmland, and right there is Jezreel, still called by the same name today; it’s where that red road cuts across. Let’s go in and look at it closer. Somewhere here in these mountains Elijah had his contest.
Now later on in the chapter it will amaze you to learn that Elijah is up here and he sees rain clouds coming in from the Mediterranean. What he does is run before a chariot, so he’s not just jogging, he’s running, all the way here, down this area, all the way over to Jezreel. That distance, if you take all the bends in the road, amounts to some 25-30 miles, and he ran the whole thing at the speed of a chariot. So this will automatically give you some idea of the physical stamina of Elijah, which then will serve as an interpretation aid for what happens to the man in 1 Kings 19; an extremely strong man physically. Here is a shot taken from the top of the ridge line. Off in the distance you can see the Mediterranean; this city with all the smoke near it is Haifa, and we’re standing here on the ridge line, looking down the river Kishon, into which he pours the blood of these priests in a few verses in the story; it runs down here and out into the Mediterranean. That shot is looking north/northwest from the ridge line. Here looking northeast and you can see the river Kishon, right there. There it is curling around, just nothing more than a brook. Of course in the flood season, in the rains it’s more of a river but even then it’s not that big. So there’s the scene, that’s where it happened, and that’s what you want to get in your mind’s eye as you read 1 Kings 18 and 19.
Again, looking further down, walking down the ridge line and looking down into the valley of Jezreel, there’s another shot. Here is the river Kishon today, not much of a river. And it wasn’t that much bigger in that time because you can tell by the erosion patterns of that brook, it’s nothing more than an oversized brook. But it also gives you an idea of the fertility of the fields.
Now let’s back up a minute, see if you can connect something up with this story. You are on top of Mount Carmel, right there, when 1 Kings 18 occurs. As you look down the valley of Jezreel what are you going to see? Are you going to see green field like that after a three year drought? No, you’re going to see the result of God’s judgment. Now let’s tie a few more things in that picture together. Where does Elijah finally dispense with the prophets of Baal? Where does he sacrifice them? The scene of the devastation of the drought, their blood paid for it. See, it’s that valley that is flushed clean by the blood of the prophets of Baal. All right, here’s looking from the river Kishon, just crossing it here, over at the Carmel range. This gives you an idea what it looks like from that perspective. And this is Jezreel, and the ruins still up on this sort of mound, this tel. Don’t worry, Jezebel is not there any more, but that’ll give you some idea of the terrain.
Let’s continue the story and see what he does. I Kings 18:22, “Then Elijah said, I, even I only remain a prophet of the LORD; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. [23] Let them, therefore, give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under it. [24] And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of Yahweh; and the God who answers by fire, let him be God.” Now this test must be viewed in the light of the doctrine of Baal; you see, Baal was the one who gave fire fro heaven. That being the case, then this test is certainly fair.
And so this thing goes on, and verse 26, the priests are calling upon Baal, “there is no voice,” and they begin to get desperate at the end of verse 26 and they started leaping on the altar. This is where they waved hands and carried on. Now in verse 27, the classic rendition of Elijah. Now this is a man, the solitary male, with sarcasm. Sometimes in Christian circles this sort of language is looked upon as non pious; sorry, I didn’t write verse 27 so don’t blame me for this one. “And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry out [aloud]; for he is a god.” The emphasis there is that god should be able to hear. We would say today, have his batteries failed in his hearing aid, call a little louder, what’s wrong with your god? And then it says, “maybe he’s talking,” in the King James, but that’s not it means, maybe he’s meditating, maybe he’s having his quiet time; maybe he’s out some where. And of course, the central part of the passage is, literally in the Hebrew, “maybe he has a bowel movement coming on and he stepped out.” Now how’s that for a good pious devotion? Wouldn’t you like to memorize that for BMA?
All right, the last part, “maybe he sleeps.” And this was used in the ancient world a lot. You see this sleeping in Psalm 121 with God; remember what it says there? “He neither slumbers nor sleeps.” This was their very concrete way of saying that god’s just out of commission; see, what he’s asking here is hey guys, yell a little louder, maybe your god overdosed on Sominex last night; you’ve got a problem. So he is using sarcasm here, and perfectly legitimate, filled with the Spirit and doing it. 1 Kings 18:28, “And they cried aloud, [and cut themselves after their manner],” in verse 28 they really got in a frenzy and they started cutting themselves, “until the blood came out.” And finally, Elijah, of course you know the story, he ditched the whole thing with water, verse 35, “And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water” and so on. Every once in a while some liberal will come up and say aha, there’s an error in the story, because this is the middle of drought; there was no water on Mount Carmel. True, but if you looked on the slide there’s about a billion gallons just a few miles down the road, called the Mediterranean Sea. So he went out and he got some sea water, and they doused the whole thing. This was so that they could say there’s no tricks to it.
That’s why you notice, after verse 30, after he’s invalidated the Baalists, he says “Come near unto me.” I want you to look at this pile of wood here, I haven’t put boy scout water underneath it or something, I have got it all set up, ready to go, and so therefore all we have to do is call upon Jehovah. I’ve got it all soaked, there’s no danger of some sort of gimmick on this thing. God answered, and notice how he addresses God in verse 36, “And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah, the prophet, came near, and said, LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel,” or of Jacob, “let it be known, [this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at Thy word],” what’s that a title of every time you see it? The God of the election covenant of Israel. And so on what basis does he pray? The basis of the election covenant of Israel. And so on, and you know the story.
Finally, he slaughters them in verse 40, “…And Elijah brought them down to the brook, Kishon, and slew them there.” You just saw the brook Kishon, that is where the slaughter took place; precisely in the place amidst the drought, sun baked field that had suffered under this judgment of God.
All right, there’s one example of Elijah; we want to look at the other side of Elijah’s character. That is a day of victory for Elijah; it demonstrates the male by himself, with God alone to give him definition, honest, faithful, being led into a ministry, being aggressive in that ministry and winning out in that ministry. But then Elijah 19:1, Ahab comes home. And you can just set the scene; Ahab comes tiptoeing back to the palace hoping that Jezebel is asleep, because he surely doesn’t want to admit to this daughter of one of the great priests of Baal that he just wiped out 850 of her friends. And she awakes and says to Ahab, what happened. And Ahab tells her. And so Jezebel, being the sweet woman she is sends a messenger to Elijah. Remember, he’s standing outside the gate of that little town we showed you on the tel. [19:1, “And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. [2] Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying,] So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow at this time.” She has to give it some thought how she’s going to pull it off but in twenty-four hours she can pull off an assassination. [3] And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.” He fled almost a hundred miles because a woman sent a nasty note to the gate.
Now what was going on here. There’s no real key to this in the text, we have to assume certain things but I think we can mentally project ourselves back, understand what happened. I think when we do we can support it, some of it, in Scripture, and we get an idea as where a male like this is very vulnerable. The first thing, remember when I said he had run, in chapter 18, twenty-six miles. Now he may have been in hot shape but that’s the Boston Marathon, you know, and you don’t recover from that, and he’s [he breathes hard] like this outside the gate and she drops this cute note. So the first situation is that physically this guy has had it. He has allowed himself to get physically down, physically run down and she hits him at that weak point. That’s the first little observation, and I think we can substantiate that very well because in 1 Kings 19:4-7 what happens. [5] And as he lay he slept under a juniper tree, behold, an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat, [6] And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baked on the coals, and a cruse of water. [And he did eat and drink, and lay down again.] [7] And the angel of the LORD came again the second time,” hat’s bread, not some cake, that’s not where we got angel food cake, “and touched him, and said, arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee. [8] And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights [unto Horeb, the mount of God].”
So obviously the man’s tired; later on it goes on … verse 6, you see, he did eat and drink and then he laid down again, he is physically exhausted. So there is one very interesting lesson, when you are physically run down and exhausted Satan will pull his glories off; he waits until you are physically run down to work you over royally. So if you care for your temple, and fundies are always going around, I don’t drink and I don’t smoke because my body’s the temple of the Spirit, and they never exercise, and they never do anything else to take care of their bodies, so somehow this temple of the Spirit bit is arbitrarily use at the point of smoking. But then for anything else it doesn’t matter. You can cram your gut full of every piece of crud food there is imaginable and that’s not desecrating the temple. Well, I suggest it’s desecrating the temple just as much as a Camel or a Lucky or whatever it is. You see, that’s the point; physical deprivation opens you up to spiritual suffering. So a word to the wise; don’t try to pull off great things when you’re physically run down. Protect yourself during those times. And Elijah was just a bit off balance.
There’s a second reason I suggest why he was off balance here. Elijah was a lone man, and all of his life he had dealt with men. And now comes a woman; Elijah was enough of a gentleman to treat women as ladies and when he was faced with a woman of Jezebel’s nature, he did not know how to respond. And just for a fleeting short time there may have been a hesitation on his part, what do I do? If it had been a man he would have known what to have done, but not when a woman approached him this way. And so there again watch the Jezebels.
All right, so he goes on this long journey, for forty days and forty nights, he goes to Sinai. I said before that this guy was in pretty good shape. Let’s look at the journey he takes now, to give you an idea of just what’s going on. Remember, he’s got to go all the way back to where the covenant was given. [shows slides] Here is the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, and this thing down here, the big triangle, the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt’s over here. Elijah starts right up there; there’s Jezreel; he comes down the Jordan Valley through the Dead Sea area, down the Arabah, down the east side of Sinai until he gets down here to the classic side of Mount Sinai. Again, let’s trace that a moment; notice the green terrain, the lush vegetation, every mile a winner. He goes to the south end of the Dead Sea, there’s a little statue that, it’s not real but people call it Lot’s wife, because it’s down there where Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.
Finally he comes to water, this is around the Gulf of Aqaba, the gulf of Eilat, that’s that little body of water between Saudi Arabia over there and Sinai over here. Notice, however, how much vegetation grows around it; it’s a lush spot. That’s Edom, or Saudi Arabia now, looking across, and here is Sinai, the peninsula of the Sinai, and he wanders for a particular number of days. Does that number ring a bell? Forty days; the same number of the wilderness wanderings as Israel, the same number of the days of the Lord Jesus Christ, wanders and wanders through here. He really wandered because even walking you can make it in forty days. But he goes through here, quietly by himself. He was a lonely man, a solitary male warrior for the faith. And now he goes and wanders all by himself through this land until he comes to the foot of Sinai. This is Horeb, this little place in here was apparently where Aaron, the tradition goes, established the worship of the golden calf. Mount Horeb itself, and to the rear of Mount Horeb, Mount Sinai. So that’s he talks to God; that’s where he hides in the cave, the scene that you’re about to witness. This is the top of Mount Sinai. So as you can see at least one thing, he got away from the telephone.
What happens? How does God speak to Elijah, the picture of a depressed man. He’s tired, he’s been knocked off balance. 1 Kings 19:9, “And he came to a cave, and he lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What are you doing here, Elijah?” Do you know what his name means? Elijah’s name? El, this is the personal pronoun in Hebrew, my El “is” understood, jah, which is short for Jehovah: my God is Jehovah. That’s his title. What are you going here my God is Jehovah? See, it’s a little sarcasm; you name is my God is Jehovah, why are you bombed out? And coming back, crawling back to start back at the basics, where it all began. And I suspect there’s one godly reason for this. When a man is off balance like this, he’s got to rethink; men have to do this. Sometimes their wives won’t understand, sometimes their friends won’t understand, but a man can get himself in a position where he’s so confused that he has to go back; it may be a test like Elijah, to go back to where the thing all started and get his stuff back together again. And that’s what Elijah is doing, all the way back to where the covenant in the nation Israel began. He wants to think this thing through, we’ve got to put the pieces back together again.
And so in 1 Kings 19:10 he gives his complaint, “And he said, I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts.” And the gist of verse 10 is that a lot of good it did me. It’s a complaint, it’s not just a bragimony in verse 10, it’s more of a complaint. And he’s hacked off, you know, what rewards do I get for being faithful. So the voice of the Lord comes in verse 11, “And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.” That mountain you just saw, great amphitheater for all sorts of effects. “… And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains,” can you imagine that strong wind coming through and pieces of rock flying all over that thing you saw there; it “broke in pieces the rocks before Jehovah; but Jehovah as not in the wind. And after the wind, there’s a giant earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake. “And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire.” But then, “After the fire a still, small voice. [13] And it was so when Elijah heard that still small voice, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice unto him, and said,” repeated again, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Now what is the significance of this. First, there’s the wind; then there’s the earthquake, and then there’s a fire. Some have suggested that it’s tied in with the coming judgment that you’ll see here in a few passages, but there’s also another reason for it. When Moses came back to this place, this Mount Sinai, do you remember how God gave the Ten Commandments; it was with wind, and with a quake and with fire. With those powerful nature forces God established the covenant of the nation. But now it says to Elijah, God isn’t in that. God isn’t in the things that established the nation; God speaks with a still small voice. Just as Moses, then, established the nation, Elijah has a ministry to the remnant.
Here’s the scene. Moses – Elijah. What did Moses do to establish the nation? What did Elijah do? He worked with the believing remnant in the nation. When Moses worked at Mount Sinai we had the nature forces demonstrated, that the national God was the God of nature. When Elijah comes the God that ministers to the remnant is not the God who judges for this was… remember we said, we use this expression still in our language, you know the expression, boy, we put the fear of God in them. Where’d that come from ? Mount Sinai, where God put the fear of God in His people. How did He do it? Threatening them with judgment, with catastrophe. But Elijah is working to establish the remnant, and the remnant aren’t going to be judged, they’re going to be the recipients of God in a still small voice who speaks with grace. And so that’s the demonstration that he gets, that God’s answer to why the suffering goes on and on and on and on and on, why Elijah says, does this Ahab have a right to pollute the land with his ungodly administration. God says to him a still small voice is because Elijah, I’m not going to judge just yet, I want to save the remnant first. And so the Lord isn’t in those nature forces. The nature forces that Elijah would love to call down from heaven, we know his personality by now, he’d love to see that: Blast ‘em! You know. But God isn’t in it because God is a God toward the remnant as the God who is gracious.
And that’s why, after the voice, he says back to God, 1 Kings 19:14, the complaint, [“And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts, because the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”] Verse 15, “And the LORD said to him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you come anoint Hazael king over Syria. [16] And Jehu, the son of Nimshi, shall you anoint to be king over Israel. And Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall thou anoint to be a prophet in your place. [17] And it shall come to pass, that him that escapes the sword of Hazael, shall Jehu slay; and him that escapes from the sword of Jehu, shall Elisha slay.” In other words, God is going to answer, three forms of judgment. And some exegetes believe that the three forms of wind, quake and fire are also tied with these three particular men and their ministries.
But God is going to judge, but before He finishes His judgment sentence he ends with verse 18, “Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him.” What’s the lesson for Elijah? You’re not alone; God’s sovereign plan does not depend on you as a lone solitary figure. It’s a hard lesson for a man like Elijah because he was that naturally, he was a lonely type of person, a solitary type of person. And that very personality had to be told something before his private sanctification could go on.
He learned a lesson because he taught it to his disciple follower, Elisha. You can always remember the two, Elijah and Elisha, and who came first by remembering the “j” and the “s”, j comes before s in the alphabet, Elijah comes before Elisha. Elisha was the one who followed in his steps. And he learned well the lesson that Elijah learned. Turn to 1 Kings 6:15 when he faced almost exactly the same situation. This is one of the most comforting passages of Scripture when you’re faced with a total catastrophe, that is, unless you believe that man is an atoms way of knowing itself. You see, Elisha encounters the same thing, he’s going to be assassinated; he’s going to be knocked off by political people who he has offended.
So in verse 15, “And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth,” and he looked up, and “behold, an host compassed the city, both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! What shall we do?” We are totally surrounded, we’re going to be wiped out. Now, does Elisha react the way Elijah did? No. [16] “And he answered and he said, Stop fearing; for they that be with us are more than they who which be with them.” That’s one of the great promises of Scripture and I’ll show you why. Look at the next verse. [17] “And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha. [18] And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the LORD, and said, Smite this people, I pray Thee, with blindness. And He smote them with blindness….” The picture is this kid, young guy, looks out the window, hey, we got problems dad. And so Elisha prays and these reappear in the book of Zechariah, they’re guardian angels that gather around; they can’t be normally seen, they’re standing there because you notice the prayer in verse 17 doesn’t say send the angels; it says just open his eyes so he can see the angels that are already there protecting us. Isn’t it amazing; in the middle of catastrophe, when all human means fail, what does God have posted around a 360 degree perimeter? An angelic force, total protection. That’s what Elisha knew. Guess where he learned it?
Let’s in conclusion turn to the New Testament to watch how this whole motif of Elijah is applied in our own generation, in our own Christian age. Romans 11. We said earlier in this manhood series that one quality of men that men need, actually they need two qualities, and we always, all of us have trouble balancing the two qualities. Every Christian man has problems here, but the two qualities that are so hard for the Christian man to balance that are very needed are the dual themes of one on the one hand, the toughness to endure, it doesn’t mean they’re being a goon like Samson. Toughness in the Scripture means perseverance, persisting, persisting, persisting, persisting towards God’s goal. But then on the other hand, if that’s left by itself it becomes a callousness, and the man turns into a steam roller that rolls over everybody in his path, and so he needs the dual Christian quality of tenderness of orientation to grace, so he can be like Joshua, when Joshua went up to Achan and said son, why have you done this? Even though Joshua, as commander, had to execute him by capital punishment, nevertheless, Joshua exercised the grace attitude.
Well, we said when we dealt with those twin characteristics in the male, the toughness and the tenderness, that the toughness was born of a sense of God’s sovereignty, and the tenderness was born of a sense of God’s grace. Watch what Paul does with the Elijah story in Romans 11:1-6. “I say, then, Has God cast away His people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2] God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Do you now know what the Scripture saith of Elijah? How he made intercession to God against Israel, saying, [3] Lord, they have killed Thy prophets…. [4] But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to Myself seven thousand [men who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.” What does Paul say? [5] Even so, then, at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. [6] And if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.”
Notice in verse 2, you’ve got the picture, we won’t go into the details of the exact application of Romans 11; right now we’re just looking at the major qualities, the basic qualities. In verse 2 you’ve got the sovereignty of God; God has a plan and that’s what gives you the toughness to keep on, to keep on, to keep on. And there God also administers His plan by grace, verses 5-6, and so it doesn’t, in the final analysis, have to depend on everything we do. Everything the Christian man does, even if we added it all up in the Christian life, would amount to something like this: what we do to cause this much result and that’s the story of the Christian life, this much input, this much output. That can only happen by God’s grace; He amplifies our efforts when we do things that please Him. You see, faith-rest and faith-doing are two sides of the coin. We do what we can do in obedience to Scripture. God picks up the slack and does what we can’t do. And that gives you the balanced approach. Elijah was the solitary man who learned this lesson very well. Next week we’ll deal with another illustration of men in the Scriptures.