As we come to the passage that is set before us, I want to look at Elijah's life in chapter 17 of 1 Kings.
Yes, Richard?
Incidentally, any of these sermons can be obtained from the website, so I hate hearing myself.
I don't know how you endure me.
But apparently it's better for other people.
So, there we are.
Now we've had this passage read to us and we know it quite well probably.
It's a passage that is often referred to and it's been referred to in the New Testament.
And it's an example of Elijah, the prophet, who is one that establishes the testimony of God again
in the place where the testimony of God should preside, in the very church of God.
And the church of God in those days was the people of Israel as they came to worship God.
And they were beginning to worship God, not only beginning but they had gone wholesale into Baal worship.
And Baal worship was that kind of worship that was a syncretistic sort of blending of niceties
between that that was revealed to them in the Mosaic law and that which was revealed to them in their culture.
And the prevailing culture was paganism.
And there was many niceties that were found in this pagan religion and they blended together and they called it Baal worship.
And this was like a stench in the nose of the living God.
He was a jealous God. He prescribed how he was to be worshipped.
And the people of God had put it in their own mind how they were going to worship God.
They thought this was good and fuzzy and nice and feeling orientated type of worship
that was somehow going to be accepted of God because they thought it to be a good idea at the time.
They didn't worship God exclusively and strictly according to the word of God.
They had overtones of the word of God in their worship
but they did not exclusively give their whole heart to the word of God as they should have been called to do so.
Now this happened very quickly in the life of Israel.
That in the days of David and his son, King Solomon, there was a great zenith of blessing from God
despite many imperfections in the national life of God's people.
And at the end of Solomon's reign, there was fractures beginning to be observed
because Solomon had allowed himself to move away from the wisdom that he'd been given of God.
He'd been given a double portion of the wisdom of God, it was said.
And they moved away from that and he'd taken many wives to himself.
And many of those wives were from foreign situations.
And there was a fracture beginning to develop.
Although he'd been greatly moved of God and greatly used of God to establish the temple
and all the worship that goes with that temple according to the prescriptions of God.
And then at the death of Moses, the whole nation had become a testimony to all the other nations.
This little nation had become a testimony of the wisdom of God in the midst of the nations.
They'd become a light set on a hill to the nations.
Now, it didn't say that the nations were converted or anything like that,
but they were a testimony that there was a living God in Israel, a powerful God,
a God that made the heavens and the earth, a God that had revealed himself
and had covenanted with this special nation, Israel.
And that they were a God, a blessed people.
And this was the envy of all the nations around them that knew of this great and glorious nation
that was small, yes, but was greatly blessed of the true and living God.
It was only 78 years since the death of Solomon until the appearance of Elijah.
And in that period, in the northern states and the northern tribes of Israel,
there had been a complete collapse of God's testimony, a complete collapse,
where some seven kings had gradually, really rapidly,
had brought disrepute upon the testimony that had been so wonderfully preserved
in David's life and in Solomon's life.
Seven of these kings, Jeroboam, who've made calves of gold, it says,
and that the people of God apostatised, left the faith.
And the priesthood had become corrupted because of these golden calves.
Nabat was also in the same attitudes.
Bashir had murdered Nabat.
And Elah, who had become a drunkard and turned out to be a murderer.
And Zimri, who was guilty of treason.
Then Omri, who was just merely a military adventurer.
And Ahab, which is almost the personification of religious evil,
and who had married Jezebel.
I can't think of anybody who's ever been called Jezebel in my living history.
If anybody's been called Jezebel, such is the disgrace among women.
To be called Jezebel would be a tantamount saying
that you are called a woman of great disrepute.
And here we find that he had married Jezebel.
And she was a committed Baal worshipper.
And she was even known as the priestess of one of Baal's worships.
She had completely corrupted.
And probably the thing that was particularly so,
without reading the scriptures on this point,
is that this man had begun to rebuild Jericho
that had been so resoundingly destroyed by God's powerful hand.
And it was said that if anybody rebuilt Jericho,
that would be the sign of total apostasy.
And that would be a sign that the covenant had been completely and utterly broken.
Now it's in this spiritual darkness
that we see this degradation of the testimony of God
in the nation that should have borne the testimony and the glory of the grace of God.
There appears on the stage this extraordinary figure
that God's sovereignty raises up.
He's a solitary figure. He's an uncommonly figure.
He's a figure of rugged means.
And he did not have all the niceties of court about him.
He was a prophet of the God of the Most High.
He was a prophet that knew the living God.
His name was Elijah.
And he was found in the history of God's people
to be only equal to Moses.
And at the transfiguration of Jesus Christ,
Elijah and Moses was found there in their post-existence,
on their earthly existence with the Lord Jesus Christ
in his transfiguration, conversing with the Son of God.
Such was the position of these two men that were anointed of God.
And we see here this person in verse 1.
And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead,
said to Ahab,
As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand,
there shall not be dew or nor rain these years except by my word.
What boldness.
And then the word of the Lord came to him, saying,
Get away from here and turn eastward and hide at the brook cherith,
which flows into the Jordan.
It is upon this background of utter apostasy in the ten northern tribes.
Now, it's not to say that the two southern tribes of Israel
are centered around Jerusalem and the temple.
They had not apostasized in the way
that the northern tribes of Israel had apostasized.
There was a schism,
and then apostasy took place in a section of God's testimony,
and the others remained remarkably faithful
because they did not resort to worship practices
and the worship of God in a manner that was conjured up by human ideas.
Now, here Elijah was placed not in the southern tribe,
but in the northern tribes.
And he was placed in the heat of the battle.
He was placed in the most unspiritual condition of God's people.
And he was put right at the front line of the battle, as it were.
And he couldn't have had it more difficult.
And this shining light, this testimony, was a solitary figure.
He was on his own in human terms.
But, of course, he was on God's side in spiritual terms.
He was in the majority in spiritual terms.
And he understood this as we see the foundations of faith
welded within his own soul.
And we find that he is the most extraordinary character.
We see that God had raised him up
with a high hand above all the rest of the situation.
He had raised him up for God's own purpose.
And really the purpose was very short,
very momentary in the course of the purposes of God in Israel.
And yet it was the decisive thing that was needed
to bring about reversal and blessing again
in the northern tribes of Israel.
We find that we do not know anything about his history.
All we know about him is he was in the region of Gilead.
And now Gilead is probably the remotest area in Israel.
It is an area that was regarded as a semi-desert area of Israel.
And we do not know anything of his parentage,
of his personal background at all.
And we do not know how he came to saving revelation of God.
It is as it were that he was the Melchizedek of old.
He was almost a personification of a type in Israel
that he comes from God directly
and he presents himself before God to his people
as a sole messenger from God.
He was a man under the eyelid of God himself.
And he spoke the words of God himself.
He was a striking figure to encounter.
Not in his own personal personage
but in terms of the whole presence of God with him.
And Elijah's spiritual calibre is left in no doubt.
We find him saying here, Elijah, the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead.
And he says boldly and straightforwardly to Ahab
who was the very, he's speaking to the nest of vipers themselves.
And he said boldly, he says,
as the Lord God of Israel lives, behold, before whom I stand,
there shall be no rain and no dew nor rain
until I say that it's going to be dew or rain on this land.
He says in chapter 19 and verse 10, he says,
when he was completely bowled over in many ways
and he lost his footing of faith,
so he's a man of similar passage to us
and even he fell in many ways.
But he says, I have been jealous for the Lord God of hosts.
In other words, his biblical orientation,
clearly formulated by the character of his faith,
everything that was in the Bible,
everything that had been revealed thus far to God's people
had become personally his own possession.
It was something that he was no theory about his life.
It was something that was a living expression of true life in him.
He was somebody that knew that God had revealed himself.
He was somebody that understood that he,
along with all God's people, were in covenant with him.
I will be your God and you shall be my people,
says God unilaterally to his people.
And we find that this was an absolute in his life.
God had promised.
God would be with his people.
There would be, if we failed to keep this covenant,
there would be the curses enacted upon us to discipline us
or we would find the blessings of God
that would be immeasurably glorious to us.
There is no in between.
God always keeps his covenant.
We sometimes break his covenant,
but he will keep his covenant and he will keep it
either in terms of his blessings
or he will keep it in terms of his curses.
But he always keeps his covenant.
That's why when believers move away from God,
his rod and his staff has to be brought out
and to bring us back into the paths of God
so that we follow the good shepherd of God
who lives and moves and establishes us
so that we might know his blessings rather than his wrath.
The wrath of God is also a grace of God
that leads us back to his blessings again.
He will never leave us nor forsake us,
but sometimes he will come out with his hand of discipline,
his rod of discipline,
so that we are able to come into his blessings again
and when we come into his blessings,
we will say, it was good that his rod and his staff
guided me in those days of trial and difficulty.
We will say, blessed be the name of the God
because now we have received his blessings again.
We've been brought back into the ways of righteousness.
Now, Elijah understood that principle
and not only for himself,
but also for the whole of God's people.
He did not rest until that blessing
was going to be restored again
because he realized that this nation
had been led astray into a lie in terms of worship
and the degradation that had in turn overwhelmed the nation.
And they have received rulers
that have only been accursed to them
and therefore we see that it was used as a rod
and a staff against them.
He knew that this was the formulation of his own faith.
He also knew how to pray.
It is said that he prayed earnestly in James 5 and verse 17.
It wasn't that he threw up a few words,
Lord help me at this point,
but he got down his knees and he gave himself to prayer
and sorted out the matter before God in prayer
so that his heart was rested in the truth of God again
and realized that God was the only solution to this.
Now, it's a time the church should not be turning
to worldly means to try and boost their numbers
to achieve only worldly results in their churches.
And the church is still following after a kind of worship
that is man-fashioned and man-made
and we call that will worship.
It is the most disgraceful thing within the Church of Jesus Christ
if he had to bring about God's people in those days
in such violent and stern manner.
How much more should he do it to the Church of God
that has received greater blessings
and greater measures of God's grace in our own day.
The Church is under the rod of God these days
and that's why we see that the only solution to that
is if God raises up anointed men of God
to preach the Word of God.
In our day, the Word of God is rare in our nation.
Why? Because we are no longer worshipping the true and living God.
And therefore, we need to be absolutely and utterly committed in prayer.
God is the only one that can help us,
not self-help gospels, not liberal gospels,
not social gospels.
It's the God, the gospel of the redeemer that can only help us.
And therefore, we need to wrestle with God.
We should understand our insufficiency
to meet the challenge that is before the Church of Jesus Christ.
We could only see the sufficiency of God that will ever meet it.
And no matter how many techniques we might put in place.
...and see on the horror stretch of our news programs every night.
My friends, Elijah understood that principle.
And finally, when he says, and saw in Deuteronomy chapter 11,
and no doubt he was studying the scriptures as he was praying
because prayer is always scriptural.
And he says, and he saw his eyes light on this passage
in Deuteronomy chapter 11 and verse 16 to 17.
Take heed to yourselves lest your heart be deceived
and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them.
Lest the Lord's anger be aroused against you
and He shut the heavens so that they do not reign
and the land yield no produce
and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.
He saw that and it must have jumped out in front of him like a beacon.
This people, the cause of God's wrath is false worship.
And he says, the covenant tells you quite clearly
if you follow other gods then the rains will be shut up like brass
and it will not even yield its rain and its dew
and you will suffer.
Many of you will die under the discipline of God
and it is better that way so that you understand the truth of God
than if I remain silent and inactive.
That would be the judgment of God, not the wrath of God.
And so we see that there would be no rain.
This gripped his soul.
And there we learn once more what truth prayer is.
It is faith laying hold of the word of God
and pleading it before Him who says,
Do as thou hast said.
That's what prayer is.
Do as thou hast said.
And God answers that prayer.
Once we are yielded because the base meaning of prayer is yieldness.
And as we are yielded and so in the way of providence
He came across Ahab, the very viper in the nest
and he proclaimed the very word of God
and as they say in sport these days he sleged him with words.
He sleged him with words.
And Ahab said quite clearly, he says,
As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand,
as bold as brass and the authority of the living God Himself,
he says, There shall be no dew nor rain these years
except by my word.
In other words, we find Ahab, the great contradictor of God,
the one who sought it better and more wise to follow loosely
the things of God, who had become the contradictor of God,
now had been bluntly contradicted by faith.
And it would be utterly insulting to see this rude, unattractive,
probably wearing a long beard, in camel's hair
and he would have been rugged and emaciated in many ways
in terms of his bodily appearance.
He boldly comes in from Gilead
and tells this man of the court what is going to happen to him.
Elijah saw that Ahab before him on this occasion was God's appointment
and so a divine ultimatum was delivered.
Whether Ahab actually understood the import of this
or whether he thought the whole thing was just a radical
telling him a radical thing,
but in the course of the time he immediately realised
after months went by no rain had fallen,
no dew had fallen and the place had died.
Not only had the leaves and the grass had died,
the animals were beginning to die.
And in the third year they would see that this land
that lived on subsistence living,
many human beings were dying around him as well.
And then he would have recalled that ghastly figure before him.
Elijah said this and it is so.
In other words, when the enemy comes in like a flood,
the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against it.
And here we find, as Isaiah said later on,
a standard is lifted up against him.
Elijah addresses Israel, the Lord God of Israel.
In other words he says, the God of the Covenant.
Elijah is actually a play on the words,
the meaning of Elijah is the God of Jehovah,
the God of Yahweh,
the God who has established the Covenant amongst God's people,
the God that is personal to God's people.
And he says, I come not in political expediency,
not according to the multicultural gods that is amongst you now.
I come according to the exclusive God of the Scriptures,
who brooks no rival.
And so therefore we see that the power of this faith
in his prayers he had come to understand
that he stood before God and God was going to be the one
who would back him up in the midst of this work.
He came to his understanding of God,
that the knowledge of God was the thing that persuaded him
and he feared God and not man.
And he was fully persuaded, as Job was fully persuaded,
I know that my Redeemer liveth.
And he was able to say in all his consciousness
that the divine presence was the thing that he stood with.
And that's the basis by which he came before this cultured man of the court.
And so faith had its assurances.
It might very well be at that point that he would have been
at a point where now what will I do?
And it would be he might have been as the apostles
when they said that they were proclaiming the gospel.
They were put in prison and the angel of the Lord shook the prison
and opened the gates and the apostles came out.
Where'd they go?
Right back into the temple preaching the word of God,
only to be put into prison again possibly.
But that wasn't the province of this time.
The providence with Elijah was get thee out from here,
stay in his place called the Brook Cherith.
And this place, the Brook Cherith,
only had a trickle of water coming down out of the mountain into the Jordan.
Only a trickle.
It wouldn't be a place that you'd think there'd be any sustaining water there
for any length of time.
It was only a small place for him.
And there was no human agency to feed him.
Although, with a hundred other prophets,
Obadiah had kept in a cave and fed them in another place
according to the providences of God.
But Elijah for himself had to live by faith personally in his God.
And as a result, the ravens, those blackbirds,
those terrible birds, came and fed him.
No human agency.
And when they looked around for places where they could feed their,
water their donkeys and their animals,
the Brook Cherith wasn't even considered
because there was not enough water to even feed an animal there
and drink an animal there, but it was enough to keep Elijah alive.
And so he was to remain there.
And the Lord fed him by the ravens
and watered him by the Brook Cherith.
Now it's often in the very small places that we find
the blessings that are suited for us at the time.
In a small congregation like this, maybe.
Just the blessings of God are sufficient for our time
to hold us to for the next step of faith.
And so he was led to another step of faith
and he saw the sustaining hand of God.
It was establishing him for the purposes of God.
And he blessed God in all the provisions and the purposes of God.
And then he was led to a place outside Israel.
He had to go amongst the uncircumcised into a place called Zarephath.
It was a little place that was on the Mediterranean coast
between Sidon and Tyre, outside the people of God.
And he was going to get a blessing from God outside the people of God.
This was probably unthinkable for a prophet of Israel.
And there the works of the faith and its works came together
for this righteous man, a man that was right with God
and practiced righteousness.
A man who conducted himself in a pleasing way to God
because he was walking according to faith
and establishing his life according to the word of God
as far as he knew it that day.
And he kept his garments unspotted from the world
and so he separated himself from any religious evil.
And so we find that as one who had an ear to heaven
because there was no moral barrier between his soul and the sin-hating God.
And so it says in Hebrews,
And let us therefore come boldly before the throne of grace,
that he may obtain mercy and find grace and help in time of need.
And the promise came to him as true.
And then we find that God comes to us in prayer
with God's timely provinces.
We saw his protection.
The protection that God was not going to let the hunting Ahab
come anywhere near his servant
and would never destroy one hair of his head.
And the ungodly are bent on one thing to destroy God's testimony,
but faith and its works are practical
and we find him hiding in the place of God.
And sometimes we've got to just do that.
Hide in the place of God and see the purposes of God work out.
Sometimes we've got to be active.
But in this case, in the providence of God,
he had to hide and wait upon the Lord.
And waiting upon the Lord is not inactivity.
He would have been at prayer,
he would have been establishing himself strong for the next step.
He saw the provision of God,
the flowing water that was not too much to attract the enemies of God.
But the other prophets, they were held in another place by Obadiah.
He saw the preservation of this water drying out
and then he was taken to Zarephith
and he was being looked after by the widow of Zarephith.
And she was about to make her last meal before she died.
He and her son, her and her son.
And then the word of the Lord came and said,
this Pharaoh will not be exhausted and you make me a meal.
She trusted in the prophet's word and did it anyway.
Well, you're going to die anyway,
so I might as well do that as doing anything else.
And so they were preserved.
And more than that, and I'll just finish with that,
to see this work of faith,
actually see the salvation of the son of Zarephith.
And there is a lot of conjecture about who this son was.
Some even say it was Jonah.
Later on, we don't know.
I think that's just probably Jewish tradition saying that.
But nonetheless, they lived in the same time.
That's the reason why they believe it.
So here we find that salvation, without going into the story,
we'll come back to this next week,
that salvation came.
But it wasn't a salvation that was a mere reformation
of a person's life.
This salvation was life from dead.
And this is what God does.
He brings us eternal life.
He brings us not a set of moral do's and don'ts.
He brings us life.
And that life does what is righteous.
And that life is eternal.
It goes beyond the grave
and establishes itself with the eternal God himself.
It's the very life of God.
That is what we have our faith in.
The God who is a life-giving God,
who saves us from our sin, yes,
but grants us eternal life even greater.
And that is what the purpose of this is,
that we might understand,
that faith in its zenith
establishes the ground in the prophet's life for chapter 18.
And that's for next week.
Thank you very much.