The Fiery Servant Of The Lord

Well, I want to ask you a couple of questions here to begin with.

I think all of us are familiar with, in general, the writing that we see in the Old Testament about the nation of Israel, ultimately coming down to the nation where Saul and then David and Solomon were kings over Israel. That actually covered a 120-year period of time, 40 years each.

But after that, there was a division, and you have a succession of the lines of the kings in Israel that lasted 200 years, and you have a succession, a longer succession, of the line of the kings of Judah that lasted 350 years.

So, whenever you read those, and sometimes when you do read them in Kings and Chronicles, Samuel, Kings, and later a kind of a repeating in Chronicles, sometimes it's hard to kind of keep it straight.

But I want to ask you, I want you to think about a prophet.

Now, if we think of prophets, we often think of major prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Those are books that are clearly larger. They were called major prophets, and minor prophets being Daniel and Jose and Joel, Amos and Obadiah, all the way to Zachariah.

And yet, I certainly wouldn't just say Daniel is a minor prophet because he's a major prophet in many ways.

But I'd like for you to think, who would you say would be a primary or major prophet that God would send to Israel and Judah following the time of Solomon? Who would be one of the earlier major prophets? I'm going to call it a major prophet today because I didn't do it up in Fulton, and I was shown that I was wrong.

And so I'm going to try to edge a little bit on my question.

Who would you think would be one of the earliest of the major prophets to begin to address the kings of Israel or Judah, again after the time of Solomon?

Another key or question that you might answer, who would be of all the prophets of God that we read about in the Old Testament, who would be one who did not write a book of the Bible? One who did not, and in a sense a major one, who did not write a book of the Bible?

And I guess another question to think about, who could we say would be called a fiery prophet of the Lord?

Now, I want us to look in 2 Kings chapter 1, because it gives it away as far as who we're going to talk about today.

But in 2 Kings chapter 1, we see a king in Israel who was having a real problem. He was sick. 2 Kings chapter 1, this king's name was Ahaziah, and he was having a sickness.

He was sick and he really was not doing well at all. And he wasn't crying out to the God of Israel for help. He was actually thinking about going to the neighboring country and crying out to their false god, their prophet of Baal, to see if he could help him. And whenever he did this, he sent a band of people, this king Ahaziah sent a band of people to go check on this. And yet, it says in verse 3, the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, of course we're talking about, or I am talking about, Elijah today. The angel of the Lord said to Elijah, the Tishbite, get up, go meet the messengers from the king, say to them, is it because there is no God in Israel that you're going to inquire of bells above, the God of Ekron? And now therefore that says, Lord, you shall not leave the bed to which you have gone, you are going to surely die there. And so Elijah went to meet this band of men who were sent by the king. And in verse 5, the messengers returned to the king and they said, why have you returned? And they answered, well, you know, there came this man to us and he said, go back to the king who sent you and say to him, thus says the Lord, is it because there's no God in Israel that you're sending us to inquire of bells above, the God of Ekron? Therefore you shall not leave the bed to which you have gone, you shall surely die. And see, the king got very suspicious whenever he heard what had happened, what had transpired. And so he started questioning them. He said in verse 7, what sort of man was this that came to meet you and told you these things?

And they said, well, he was a hairy man and he had a leather belt around his waist. And immediately the king realized, this is Elijah the Tishbite. Apparently Elijah was not the average run-of-the-mill prophet. He was not the average man of God. He was actually a major prophet and he was one of the earlier. He was not the only one. There were several others, but most of them were their names we would maybe not come up with. I surely would not come up with. But when you get to Elijah, you start seeing some incredible things. And you have an incredible study that we can go through here about this man that is in many ways an extremely powerful servant of God. And yet, like I said, you know, he does some unusual things. He's dressed kind of funny. He's got a mantle. I'm not going to read that, but in chapter 2 you see his mantle actually being used as a tool to divide this River Jordan. You know, that was a miracle that he was involved in. God did for him. And so I want us to just think about this incredible prophet of God named Elijah.

In Haley's Bible handbook, they report in a statement or note about 1 Kings chapter 17. That's where we will be eventually focused here today. But this Bible handbook says, you know, many of the kings of Israel or Judah are, you know, they're covered in a paragraph. They're covered in a half a chapter or a third of a chapter. They go through quite a few in a similar way. But they write six chapters are given to the reign of Ahab. Ahab is who Elijah is going to interact with. Now, this deal with Ahaziah was a little bit later. But Ahab is the one that is, he's actually, you know, he has a very bad record. He's done very poorly. He's not directed people to the God of Israel, to the true God. He has polluted just about everything. And on top of all that, he's married Jezebel, who has done even worse because, you know, she's from the outside. She, you know, was brought in as a follower of Baal already. And so she was perpetuating her wrong ideas upon the people of Israel. But in this handbook, it states, six chapters are given to Ahab's reign, while most of the kings only have about one or a part of one chapter. Why is that? Well, the reason is that it is largely the story of Elijah. Elijah's rare, sudden, and brief appearances, his undaunted courage, and his fiery zeal, the brilliance of his triumphs, and the pathos of his despondency, the glory of his departure, and the calm beauty of his reappearance and a vision on the Mount of Transfiguration, and making one of the grandest characters Israel ever produced.

And so to answer, in answer to my questions, who was one of the earlier prophets, major prophets, it would have to be Elijah. Who among all the prophets didn't write a book? Well, that would be Elijah. And who could we call the fiery sermon of the Lord? That would be the title of what I want to cover today. I want to point out several things about Elijah. Things that we can learn from, because, you know, we want to learn to have some of the same characteristics, some of the same qualities. We're not going to do exactly the type of a job that Elijah had, and it appears that Elijah kind of had a kind of a strange life. He would come and go. He would have a revelation from God. An angel would tell him what to do or what to say, and it appears that he was somewhat of a loner. He wasn't seemingly close to a lot of people. They find him sitting on the top of the hill, you know, when they go look for him. He's all alone, and he says kind of unusual things sometimes.

But I think we could certainly say that Elijah would be described as a fiery servant of the Lord. And I think it's important for us as we read the Bible, as we study it, we get information, we get instruction, but we also should be inspired. We should be inspired by the prophet Elijah, because he is an incredible servant of God. The first thing I want to point out—now, I'm going to, again, try to number stuff. It may or may not work, but this first thing is something that we read about in our Topeka Bible study the other night. We read about Elijah in James chapter 5.

So let's take a look there. In James 5, as you probably know, we have a reference, as James gives, we have a reference to being sick, and what should you do? Well, you should be anointed. He talks about anointing in verse 14. Verse 15 says, the prayer of faith shall save the sick, the Lord will raise them up, and if anyone has committed sins, they'll be forgiven. And in the latter part of verse 16, it says the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. And so it points out how that being anointed, if we're sick, is not necessarily just a formula to be healed.

It is a process of growing in reliance and in faith in God. But it says, verse 16, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. And then in verse 17, it says Elijah was a human being like us, and yet he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three and a half years it didn't rain on the earth. And then he prayed again in verse 18, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth yielded its harvest. And so he uses this man that was very close to Jesus Christ. He grew up in his household. He was a younger brother to Jesus. He was familiar with many of the things Jesus said and a lot of things that he did. And yet he points out how that Elijah was a man that you could say has incredibly powerful and effective prayers. And so that clearly would be one thing that we could emulate. We could want to have fervent and effective prayers.

A second thing that I will point out about Elijah is that God performed many miracles for him or through him. And why would I mention that? Well, I think it's important for us to think about the fact that miracles are possible. Miracles can happen, and often they do happen if we are drawing close to God, if we are asking for God's help, if we're asking for his blessing, or maybe for his healing, or for his comfort, or for his encouragement. God, we may not always know exactly how he brings those things about, but he does. And yet you have to say that some of the things that happened to Elijah were just amazing. I'm sure every one of you could write down at least a major one about fire being called down from heaven to consume the altar and the sacrifice that he had built on Mount Carmel. That would be one way reason I would term him a fiery servant of God. I'm going to read that in a second, but that's the one that we primarily focus on when we think about the miracles that were done during the time of Elijah. But I want to go back here again in 1 Corinthians—or excuse me, first—let's get in the right part of the Bible here. 1 Kings 17. 1 Kings 17. What are all of the different—this is Elijah interacting with Ahab, a king of Israel, a bad king, as I said. But Elijah was directed by God to pray, as we read there in James, pray that it won't rain. And it didn't for three and a half years.

And then, of course, later he prayed and it started to rain. God brought the rain at his request. But I want to just see what are some of the miracles here in verse 1. Elijah the Tishbite said, Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dune nor rain these years except at my word. And so, you know, that was the fact that he had prayed to God, as we read in James. He prayed that it wouldn't rain. He later is going to pray that it will, but there's going to be a three and a half year drought. Now, the word of the Lord also came to him and said, I want you to go. This is in verse 3. Go from here and go to the east and hide yourself by the wadi, Cherith, which is east of the Jordan, and you can drink from the spring there, the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, and he went and lived by that wadi, that spring, which is east of Jordan. And in verse 6, the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the wadi. But after a while, that spring dried up because there was no rain in the land. And so God was taking care of him. God was helping him, but it was going to be a period of time. I'm not sure that he knew. We know from reading later that it was going to be for three and a half years, but maybe he didn't know how long it might be that there would be no rain, as he had predicted. But we see in verse 8, the word of the Lord came to him and said, I want you to go to Zarephath, and I want you to come to a widow who will feed you. And yet he goes to Zarephath, and he talks to the widow, and she says, you're out of luck. You're out of luck because all I have is a little bit of oil and a little bit of flour, and I can only make a little bit of bread here, and my son and I are going to eat it, and that's it. We don't have anything else, and so we're going to die.

So if we drop down to verse 13, Elijah said, don't be afraid. Go and do as you have said, the first, but first, make me a little cake and bring it to me. He says, oh, I want to eat the last bite of food you've got, and then afterwards, I want you to make something for yourself and for yourself. And she probably thought, well, that's crazy. That makes no sense at all. It's going to all be gone, but of course in verse 14, thus says the Lord God of Israel, the jar of meal will not be emptied, the jug of oil will not fail until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.

She's going to continue to have food, apparently miraculously having bread or having flour and oil to be able to make bread and to be able to live. And so in verse 15, she went and did as Elijah said, so that is, she as well as Elijah and her household, they all ate for many days, and the jar of meal did not empty, neither did the jug of oil fail according to the word of the Lord.

And so that again is another miracle that Elijah was involved in. Now, did he perform that miracle? Well, he asked God for help, or he asked God to know what to do, and God, of course, performed the miracle. In verse 17, you see another problem. Verse 17, after this, the son of the woman became ill, and that illness was so severe that he had no breath left in him. His life was gone. He died. And she said to Elijah, what have you done to me, O man of God? You've come here to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son. So here he's getting blame for this young boy who dies, or this son at least who dies. And he said to her, give me your son. And he took him and carried him upstairs, and he cried out to the Lord, O Lord, my God, have you brought calamity upon this widow where I'm staying by killing her son? And so he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried out to the Lord, O Lord, my God, let this child's life come into him again, and the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. See, I kind of want that. I want God to listen to my voice when it's an appeal, when it's a need, when it's a desire. I would like for that to be the case.

And yet certainly Elijah had faith in God. He believed that God could even raise the dead.

And so it says, he stretched out himself upon the child and cried out, O Lord, let this child's life come into him again. In verse 22, the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. And he took the child back to his mother. And of course, you know, they were amazed. But Elijah, the woman said to Elijah in verse 24, now I know that you're a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is true.

See, it wasn't so much about Elijah, but it was about God, and what God was able to do, because he was clearly able not only to feed them, but he was able to cause them to rise from the dead, if need be. And so this was a miracle that God had involved himself in in the life of Elijah. Now, as you read through the chapter 18, which I'm not going to take a long time to do, but for the most part, I think you're familiar with this contest that Elijah sets up. And he's talking to Ahab and Jezebel, and he's saying, well, I want to have a contest up here in Mount Carmel. I want the prophets of Baal to come up here, and I want to be able to determine whether Baal is God or whether the true God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Israel is God.

And we're going to have a contest. And so he said, I want you all to the prophets of Baal. I want you to build an altar and get some wood and put a sacrifice up there and ask your God to consume that offering. And so in verse 19 of—I think I'm on the wrong chapter here—verse 20, Ahab—this is in chapter 18—Ahab sent to the Israelites, he assembled the prophets of Mount Carmel. He came near to all the people and said, how long will you be limping between two different opinions if the Lord is God? Follow him, but if Baal follows him. And the people didn't know what to say. And so he said, I, even I alone, am left to the prophets of God, but Baal's prophets are number 450. Let two bulls be given to us. Let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire in it, and I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood.

And then you call in the name of your God, and I'll call in the name of the true God, the God of Israel, and the God who answers by fire is indeed God. So that was obviously going to be a, you know, a monumental test. One that was going to show the power of the true God in an incredibly miraculous way. Now, the priests of Baal, they went ahead and prepared their offering, and then they started whining and wailing and appealing to Baal, who clearly wasn't going to answer. And they said in verse 26, O Baal, answer us, but there was no voice. There was no answer.

They jumped around the altar. At noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, cry louder! And so, Elijah, I guess, was having some fun here. He said, why don't, you know, why don't you try jumping a little higher? Why don't you try yelling a little louder? Cry louder, surely he is a God, isn't he? Either he might be meditating, or he maybe wandered off, or maybe he's on a trip. Maybe he's on a journey, or perhaps he's asleep, and you need to wake him up. You know, he was laying it on pretty thick here. And so, they cried louder, as was their custom. They cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out. It was a part of their custom that blood had something to do with how it was, or God would answer. And in the midday past, they raved on until the time of the evening offering, and still there was no voice, no answer, no response.

And so, Elijah said, I want you all to come down, watch, come closer. All the people came closer. In verse 30, he repaired the altar. He took 12 stones. In verse 31, according to the number of the tribes of sons of Jacob, number to whom the word of the Lord came. And with the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. He made a trench around the altar large enough to contain two measures of seed. Next, he put the wood in order, and he cut the bull in pieces, and he laid it on the wood. And then he said, well, fill four jugs of water, and pour it on the burnt offering, and on the wood. And then he said, do that again. Do it the second time. And so, they did it the second time. And again, he said, do it a third time. And they did it that third time. So, the water ran all over the altar, and filled the trench around the water. So, he had made an impossible situation even worse. You know, one that, you know, he had developed in a pretty meticulous way, but then he just drenched it with water. In verse 36, at the time of the offering of the oblation, the evening offering, the prophet Elijah came near and said, oh Lord, verse 36, God of Abraham and Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I'm your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding.

Answer me, O God, answer me so that the people may know that you, you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back. See, his whole desire was to see the people turn back to God. Instead of being draped off to follow Baal and pagan worship, he said, I want you to worship the true God. I want your hearts to come back.

And of course, in verse 38, fire from the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, and it consumed the wood, and it consumed the stones and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. And so when all the people saw that, of course, they fell on their face and said, the Lord indeed is God. The Lord is God. And so Elijah seized the prophet of Baal and slew all of them. Now, that's an account that, you know, many people would be familiar with. They're kind of aware of, but what was it about? Well, it was about the difference between being a true prophet and servant of God and serving a true God or following pagan practices.

And this, of course, is what was being promoted as people were being encouraged to follow Baal.

And that, of course, you know, God would continually condemn throughout the history of Israel and of Judah.

But you also find other miracles, other miracles. So if we drop on down, after this happened, of course, in verse 42, Ahab was told, well, you know, go eat and drink something.

And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel and he bowed himself down upon the earth and he put his face between his knees and he said to his servant to go up now and look toward the sea.

And he went up and looked. See, Carmel is close to the Mediterranean Sea. That's why they had plenty of water to douse the offering. It was close to the Mediterranean Sea. And so he said, go and look and see if there's a cloud coming yet that's going to douse this land of Israel. And so he came back and he said, no, there's nothing. And he said, well, do it again. Do it seven times. And at seven times, he came back and said, look, a little cloud no bigger than a person's hand is rising out of the sea. And so Elijah said, say to Ahab, harness your chariot and go down before the rain stops you. Get ready or you're not going to be able to get out of here. See, they were up on the mount. He says, if you don't get ready, if you don't prepare, you're going to be, you know, in a mudslide, sliding off the hill and closed with the heavy rain. And so in a little while, verse 45, the heavens grew black with clouds and wind and there was a heavy rain. Ahab rode and went off to Jezreel. But the hand of the Lord was on Elijah and he girded up his loins and ran front of Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. And so even though Ahab was driving his chariots, apparently, you know, Elijah became a super marathon runner. He could run faster than Hanzo could bike. I know he can bike fast. But he was able to stay ahead of the chariot to go back to Jezreel. Again, those several miracles that were occurring, you know, God caused it to rain, of course, at his request. And then he told him it was going to rain a lot. And then he was able to miraculously then run, run and get ahead and be there. Actually, I want to jump ahead in the story here a little bit to 2 Kings chapter 2. 2 Kings chapter 2, you see a little while later, this was at a time when Elijah is going to be transported.

He says he was taken up into heaven, but of course, that means he was taken up into the first heaven. He wasn't taken to the third heaven, according to Jesus, because Jesus said, no man has ascended to heaven in John 3 13. And yet Elijah was moved. He was moved to some other part of the area. And even after this happens, let's see if I can, it's in verse 11. Elijah and Elisha, who was going to follow him as a servant of God, they were together and they continued talking. In verse 11 of chapter 2 of 2 Kings, they continued walking and talking in the chariot of fire, of horses of fire, separated the two of them and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.

And Elisha kept watching and crying out, father, father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen.

And when he could see him no longer, he simply picked up his clothes and tore him into, or he grasped his clothes and tore him into, he picked up the mantle in verse 13 of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood by the back of the Jordan. He didn't know quite what to think.

But of course, this was simply him being transported, because actually you see later, in a little later in the writings in the chronicles, you see Elijah sending letters to some of the kings. And so it wasn't that he was dead. And actually, these guys had the right idea because it says here in verse 17, or excuse me, verse 16, the men who were then with Elisha, they said to him, see now, you know, we have 50 strong men among your servants.

Let's go out and look around. Let's seek your master. It may be that the Spirit of the Lord has caught him up and thrown him down on some mountain or into some valley. See, that undoubtedly surely was what happened, but when they will look for him, they couldn't find him.

In the same way, you see an account in Acts chapter 8 of Philip being moved after he had baptized the Ethiopian eunuch. You see Philip transported somewhere, but he was not dead, and certainly he was not ascending to heaven as far as the throne of God. But what I wanted to point out is here in 2 Kings chapter 2, you see two different instances. In verse 8, Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up and struck the water.

This is the water of the Jordan River, and the water was parted to one side and then the other until the two of them crossed on dry ground. And you actually, you know, you see that happening and another miracle taking place. You know, we're familiar with the Red Sea parting. We're familiar with Joshua leading Israel into the Promised Land and the Jordan parting. There's another parting of the Jordan that Elisha was involved in. And actually, to back up a page here to 2 Kings chapter 1, you know, when Ahaziah was sending men to talk to Elijah, you know, that didn't go well.

Verse 9, the king sent a captain of 50 and 50 men. They went to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of the hill, and said to him, O man of God, the king says he wants you down here. Come down. Elijah answered and said, If I'm a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty, and the fire came down from heaven and consumed them. So another miracle. This king had to be kind of slow because in verse 11, again, the king sent to him another captain of 50, and he went up and said, O man of God, this is the king's order.

Get down here quickly. Elijah said, If I'm a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty, and of course, it happened the second time. And then the king was having a hard time recruiting the new captain to bring the 50 more back to Elijah. Again, verse 13, the king sent the captain of a third 50 with his 50, so the third captain cautiously came up to Elijah and fell to his knees and entreated him, O man of God, please let me live.

And the life of these 50 people with me, be precious in your sight. Look, fire came down from heaven and consumed the two former captains of 50. But now let my life be precious in your sight. And the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, Go down with him. Go back and see the king. Don't be afraid of him. And so he sent out and went down with him to the king. And it didn't change what Elijah's message was. But he said thus says, the Lord, verse 16, because you have sent messengers to inquire of bales above the God of the Ekron. It is because or is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word.

Therefore you shall not leave the bed to which you have gone and you shall surely die. In the next couple of verses, say yes, a Hiziah would die. So I go through those somewhat quickly here. Many, many miracles, some of which involve fire, some of which were really incredible. But I ask us, we saw that Elijah was a praying man. He also was a man who believed in miracles.

Do we truly believe in the power of God to perform miracles that are clearly impossible for men?

You know, this man, this prophet, Elijah, was, you know, he believed that God could do miraculous things. And as we read them, you know, we need to realize, so clearly God is able to do that.

Now does God always do what we say? No, he doesn't. But we want to believe, we want to have faith in God's ability to do that should he need to. Should there be purpose to do that? The third thing I want to point out is simply that even though Elijah went through these amazing, incredible things, there was a point even after he had called down the fire from God to consume the altar and then the priest of Baal were slaughtered and it started to rain. There was a time here in 1 Kings 19, this is following the sequence, when Elijah shows quite a human failing.

Quite a, see what we read in James chapter 5 was that Elijah was a human being like us. That's what James records. He says he was a human, he was just, he was not Superman.

He had a certain amount of feelings. He, he at times would get discouraged, at times would be depressed. He would even get to the point, I don't even want to live, I want to die.

Here in chapter 19, 1 Kings 19, let's read part of this.

After he had clearly won the battle of Mount Carmel, unlike the chiefs the other night, nonetheless Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. These were her guys.

Her guys that she had brought in from Samaria and from the area around. And so Jezebel sent a messenger and said, so, so may the gods do to you and more also if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow. You're dead, Elijah, tomorrow. And so it says in verse 3, being a human like us, Elijah got scared. He was afraid and he got up and fled for his life. He fled all the way to Beersheba. This was quite a ways. Carmel was up to the north.

If you say Jerusalem is kind of in the middle of the area of Israel, Carmel was up to the north. Jerusalem's in the middle. In the very south part of that would be Beersheba and later on to other areas.

So he went a long ways. He came to Beersheba that belongs to Judah. And he left his servant there in Beersheba. But he himself, in verse 4, went a day's journey into the wilderness.

He came and sat down under a solitary broom tree and he asked that he would die.

It's enough, Lord. Please take away my life. I'm no better than my father's. He lay down under the broom tree and he fell asleep and suddenly an angel touched him and he said to him, Get up and eat. And so he did. And so obviously Elijah was able to be discouraged.

We're discouraged sometimes. If we don't get or have exactly what we need or want, sometimes we're depressed and discouraged. Sometimes things just don't work out. Maybe God's going to work it out some other way. But see, Elijah was, he was subject to human failings.

And we see that quite clear here. After he ate and drank, the angel actually continued to feed him because he was quite famished at the time.

Verse 9, at that place he came to a cave and he spent the night there. And there the word of the Lord came to him. He says, What in the world are you doing, Elijah? See, in a sense, God was imploring him. He was asking him, What are you doing? Now think about yesterday. You know, that was a great victory. How about today? Well, Jezebel says he's going to kill me and I'm afraid and I ran away. Of course, that may have taken several days to do that. He says, What are you doing? And then he answered in verse 10, Look, I've been very zealous for God, for the God of hosts, and for the Israelite. But the Israelites have forsaken their your covenant. They have thrown down your altar. They've killed your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left and they're seeking my life to take it away. He was pleading with God. Well, look, you know, my job is over.

My job is just kaput. And so in verse 11, he was told, Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. And there was a great wind and an earthquake and a fire.

And God was not in any of them. But after the fire, a sound of sheer silence, a still small voice, as it usually is recorded there in the King James.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle, and he went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. There came a voice to him. He said again, What are you doing here, Elijah? And so he gave the same answer. And he was wallowing in a pity party for, you know, how bad things had turned out for him. Now they're seeking his life. He thinks he's the only one. And of course, God's going to tell him in verse 18, Yet I'm going to leave 7000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal in every mouth that has not kissed him. See, I have others that I'm going to continue to work with. But in this account, you read something about how human Elijah was and how much he needed to be encouraged. He needed to be uplifted. And I think that's what we want to pray. We want to be praying people. We want to have faith and believe in miracles. We want to realize that at times we might get discouraged, but we don't want to stay there. You know, we want to rise out of that and ask God to help us, to help us realize that he has been working with us.

He's been working with many of us for many, many years. But regardless of that, he's working with us to cause us to grow and to draw closer and closer to him. Another thing that I will point out, this would be number four, is that Elijah had a zeal for the true God that was clearly commendable.

You know, he was to be a type of future servants that the Bible would later record as individuals that would function in the spirit and in the power of Elijah.

See, one of these individuals is mentioned in Luke chapter one. It's when Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, was awaiting the fact that he was going to have a son. He was told by an angel, this son, this son that's going to be named John and would be John the Baptist, this individual is going to do great things. And in verse 17 of Luke one, he's going to be within the spirit and power of Elijah. It's going to go before him to turn the hearts of the parents, the children, the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. See, John the Baptist was an individual that would, in a sense, perform. His job was to prepare the way for Christ to come the first time.

And he was going to do that with a zeal that would be like Elijah's.

We also, and of course Jesus, would confirm that John the Baptist had fulfilled that role.

Maybe I should look at that with you in Matthew chapter 17. This is regarding a vision that Jesus and some of his disciples saw. And in that vision, in that vision, Moses and Elijah were there. See how they knew, I don't know whether Moses was carrying a couple of tablets and Elijah had fire coming out of his hair. I don't know how they knew who he was or what he who it was, but it's obvious that they could tell that, well, this is Moses and Elijah in this vision. And of course, God was simply verifying in that vision to the disciples who were with him, Peter and James and John. God was signifying this as my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. I want you to listen to him in verse 5.

See, that was what the intent of the vision was.

And yet, in verse 9, Jesus would tell them as they were coming down the mountain, don't tell anybody about this vision, until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

And the disciples asked him, well, why do the scribes say that Elijah must first come? See, they had Elijah in their thoughts, in their thinking, in their awareness of the teaching from the Old Testament. And why is it that in Malachi it says, Elijah will be? And it's in Malachi 4, verse 5 and 6, that Elijah will come, or God will send another servant that will function in the Spirit and the power of Elijah. Jesus says, don't tell anybody about this vision, but after the disciples ask about Elijah coming, he replies, verse 11, Elijah is indeed coming. And he will restore all things, but I tell you, Elijah has already come. And they didn't recognize him, and they did to him what they were pleased to do. So the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands. And the disciples understood he was talking about John the Baptist. See, Jesus was talking about an Elijah that had already come, but then he said, yes, there's still an Elijah that is yet to come, someone who's going to come in the Spirit and in the power of Elijah at the very end of the age. And we can think of that as perhaps something that the work of God is doing today. You know, we have thought doing the proclaiming of the gospel of the kingdom of God, we certainly can't do that on our own. We need God's help. We need his power. But see, there's even going to be more powerful agents of God that are going to come on the scene here before Christ intervenes.

We read about this in Revelation 11. See, this appears to have some of the characteristics that we see about the great prophet, the fiery prophet Elijah.

Revelation 11 talks about, in the end time, there are going to be two witnesses. It doesn't say who it is, and I'm not going to tell you either, because I don't know who it is either.

But it says, in verse 3, I'll grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for three and a half years. So there's a little bit of a connection there. It didn't rain for three and a half years on Elijah's day. It says in verse 4, these will be two olive trees and two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. So he gives some references here to the things we read about back in the book of Zechariah.

And amazingly, about these two witnesses, if anyone wants to harm them, fire comes out of their mouth and consumes the foes. Anyone who wants to harm them must be killed in this manner, and these witnesses will have authority to shut the sky so that no rain fall during the days of their three and a half year prophecy. Now, that's kind of again similar to what Elijah did, and they have authority over the water to turn it into blood and to strike the earth with all kinds of plagues as often as they desire. And yet, of course, as you read through the rest of this, it says, well, these servants of mine are going to be killed, and they're going to be dead in the streets of Jerusalem for three and a half days, and then they're going to rise from the dead. You know, God is with them. He is working through them, and yet again, I think another reason why we could call Elijah the fiery prophet is because some of the connections that we have, some of the connections that we have with what God says He's going to do here toward the very end of the age. Now, the last thing that I want to mention, which I guess will be number five, is something we read back here in 1 Kings 19. See, I dropped off here to go on and talking a little bit about the zeal that Elijah had for God, for the true God, in opposition to the false gods who ruled this world and who caused people to be confused and deceived. And yet, here in 1 Kings 19, as God had come again to Elijah, as He had instructed him or asked him, what are you doing in this cave? What are you doing running away? He says, I have work for you to do. I have a mission for you. And here, it says in verse 15 of 1 Kings 19, the Lord said to him, go, and I want you to return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and you, when you arrive, you need to anoint His ill as king over Iran. And then after that, I want you to anoint Jehu.

As king over Israel.

And finally, I want you to anoint Elisha as a prophet in your place.

To hear God was giving Elijah additional work. He had already done a good amount of work. He had taught at least Ahab that Baal was not the true God. Paganism was not the way to go.

You needed to go and worship the true God. But here you see God giving Elijah, excuse me, Elijah, a mission. He gave them, and he gave him another job. And see, I think that's what we keep in mind as we think about this fiery prophet of the Lord, as we think about even some of His limitations, some of His human, should I say human-ness, Cleo? His humanity, His failings. He was a human like us, and yet he had a contact with God in prayer. He had faith in God's ability to do miracles, and He was, you know, a fiery prophet. And yet, we see here that God would give Him a mission, and He would later carry through on this. He would achieve those tasks, and He would live out His life having fulfilled the role that God had given Him to do. And yet, you know, I think we should think, as Jesus tells us here in Matthew 24. Matthew 24, of course, is Jesus explaining what's going to happen leading up to His return, and He tells us about those things that are going to happen, and then He gives us reminders. Matthew 24, verse 42, He says, Keep awake.

Keep awake, therefore, for you don't know in what day the Lord is coming.

And down in verse 45, in talking about His servants, as all of us should be in this age, Matthew 24, verse 45, Who then is a faithful and wise servant whom His master has put in charge of His work, His household, to give the servants the allowance of food at the proper time. You know, He's the one, God is the one who has given us a mission. And in verse 46, Blessed is that servant whom His master will find at work when He returns.

See, brethren, that's the job that we want to be doing, that we want to continue to be doing. It doesn't matter how long it takes. You know, we can get tired. We can get weary in well-doing.

But it doesn't matter how long it takes. It's simply the rest of my life, and it's the rest of your life that we want to be doing the work of God.

So, I hope that going over this information about the fiery prophet of God can be of encouragement to us. I hope it can be beneficial, and I hope that all of us will grow in our understanding of how the Word of God has been amazingly put together in a way to give us encouragement, to give us help, to give us the power. And perhaps we need the power that Elijah had, the power to be able to withstand evil and to point everyone to the one true God that we serve.