The life and ministry of the prophet Elijah demonstrate the power of relying on God's strength in the face of overwhelming opposition and personal doubt. The sermon traces Elijah's abrupt appearance, his bold confrontation with Ahab and Jezebel, and his subsequent despair, highlighting that even in his lowest moments, Elijah was a man of "like passions as we are." The core lesson emphasizes that Elijah's authority and effectiveness stemmed not from his own might, but from his deep reliance on God's Word and fervent prayer, as exemplified by his pronouncements on rain and his prayer on Mount Carmel. Ultimately, Elijah serves as a powerful testament to the reality of a living God who empowers ordinary individuals to accomplish extraordinary feats.
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Whenever I think of prayer, I think of Park of the Palms. That should be pleasing to you to have such a testimony. Whenever someone has a need in our meeting or someone that we know has a need, I say, be sure to tell them at the Park of the Palms. Notify them so that they can pray for us. Because I know there are many people here who pray and seek the face of the Lord for the needs of those around the world. and those in our country as well. I'm very grateful for that. I know that there have been some of you, I believe, who have been praying for a young man in our meeting named Mike Perry.
And Mike is the brother-in-law of Hurley Dixon. Hurley is married to Mike's sister. And Mike has been in our meeting for some time now. And a number of years ago, he was diagnosed as having Hodgkin's disease. and had been in remission for about five, six years, I guess, started to have some problems again and went to the doctor and the cancer had come back into his back. And so we, of course, went to the Lord in prayer. And upon last report, the therapy that it has been taking is not only stopping the cancer, but it seems to be reversing.
And so we believe this is a direct answer to prayer. We believe that it's God moving in answer to the prayers of his people. We're thankful for this. And I would ask you to continue to pray for Mike. He's a young man, still in his thirties, the wife and a young daughter named Jennifer. And through it all, his attitude has been absolutely tremendous, real positive, glowing testimony to the sustaining grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of trials. I would ask you to continue to pray for Mike. And then secondly, I would like to mention that beginning, as began in the first week of September, we started a Bible study in the San Augustine area, and we had several people out at the first meeting.
There were nine of us there at the first meeting, and then three new people at the next meeting, and then five new ones. at the next meeting after that. So we have about sixteen people now that are at this Bible study, and these are largely there through the efforts of Mrs. Eleanor Schultz, who for many years has been a missionary to Hong Kong, and her daughter, Susan Neely, and whose home we are meeting at the present time. And the people that are coming are hungry for the Word of God, and we're trusting God to perhaps see something raised up there, meeting unto His glory.
And so this is something I would appreciate your prayers concerning. So every Tuesday night we have that Bible study. And then within the next few weeks in the Orange Park area, we have about twenty people who are going to begin meeting on Sunday night in Orange Park. And we are trusting God to see something take place there as well. We're going to meet together and study the Word of God and break bread and remember the Lord Jesus Christ. We're excited about this. So there's plenty to do. I've never found that there's been a lack of things to do in the Lord's work. There's always plenty to do as we make ourselves available unto Him.
Now with that in mind, let's just bow our heads for a moment in a word of prayer. Our Father, we're thankful that we can come this morning to thee, the living God. We pray now that thou would use the word of God and speak to our hearts, and we give you thanks in our Lord Jesus' name. Amen. Recently, I was listening to a message, a series of messages by Howard Hendricks, professor at Dallas Seminary, and he said that there are four reasons to study the biographies of the Word of God. And as you know, the Word of God is filled with biographies of different men and women.
And he gave four reasons, and these are so good that I thought that I would pass them on. The first reason that he said was to create a spiritual thirst. As we read the biographies, as we study the biographies of these men, there is a thirst created in our lives. There's an admiration for the lives of these men who were men and yet who trusted in the living God. And as he said, you can lead a horse to water. You can't make him drink, but you can feed him salt and you can make him thirsty. And that's the way these biographies are. I have been greatly encouraged lately in reading some of the biographies of the Old Testament especially and seeing God at work in the lives of these individuals.
And as I read these biographies, as I study them, I get thirsty. I get thirsty for the faith that these men had. And I get thirsty to see God at work in the way that these men saw God at work. And then he said the second reason to study these great biographies of the Word of God was for reproof, to see the poverty of our own lives in comparison to their lives. Now, I don't suppose there's one of us who hasn't read the life of Abraham or the life of David or the life of Moses and seen our own poverty in the light of their lives as they trusted God and lived their lives for God.
And then third, he said, the third reason is that we find ourselves without excuse. Because if they did it, then we can do it. If God can take a man like Peter, if God can take a man like Moses, if God can take a man like Jacob and use him in a mighty way, then we can do it as well. And then the fourth reason, which I touched on and what I just mentioned, was hope. It can be done. They did it. It can be done. They did it. And when we see what God did in their lives, when we see God using them with what they had, we realize that God is the same and it can be done because these men did it as well.
With that in mind, I'd like to look this morning at Elijah, the prophet of the living God. We're going to be turning to First Kings and chapters We'll begin reading in the twenty-ninth verse. First Kings chapter sixteen and verse twenty-nine. Think about Elijah for a moment. He appears abruptly on the scene in the pages of the Word of God. He performs mighty miracles as a prophet of God, and then he leaves in a whirlwind, in a chariot of fire.
The last verse in the Old Testament Scripture mentions Elijah. He appears with Christ again on the scene, at the scene of the Mount of the Transfiguration. And then once again, it seems like he can't get rid of him, he appears again, I believe, in the time of the tribulation. in Revelation in chapter eleven to be raptured from the earth there from the city of Jerusalem. What a life. We think of that life of the man Elijah, that fiery prophet of God. We think of the spiritual victories that he saw in his life.
And yet we realize that his lows were as low as his highs were high. There wasn't any middle of the road to the man. There was no gray area. And he did have many lows. When he is threatened by Jezebel, he requests of the Lord that the Lord would take his life. And then he flees, after going to Bersheba, he flees over two hundred miles to the Mount of Horeb, Mount Sinai. And there he sits down and, as has been titled, he has what is known as the Elijah syndrome.
Lord, I'm the only one left. Nobody else, Lord, just me. James puts it in capsule form in the New Testament when he says he was a man of like passions as we are. A man of like passions as we are. And I think that is what has been invigorating to me as I have studied the life of Elijah and been encouraged because here once again on the pages of the Word of God is a man of like passions as we are. and yet he was Elijah, the prophet of the living God.
Now the reason I want to turn to First Kings chapter sixteen is to sort of get the background before we see Elijah appear on the scene. Now only sixty-two years had passed since the time of the glorious reign of Solomon. Solomon reigned in all his glory and all the splendor of the heyday of the nation of Israel, only sixty-two years had passed since then. Six kings had followed, and as Dr. McGee often says, he says, if you ever take a test on the kings and the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and you want to describe their range, just go down and mark them all bad, and you'll get a pretty high score.
You won't get a hundred, but you'll get a passing rate, because just about every one of them was a bad reign. Six of them had reign since the time of Solomon, and Ahab was the seventh to follow. It says in I Kings chapter sixteen in verse twenty-nine, and in the thirty-and-eighth year of Asa, king of Judah, began Ahab, the son of Amrith, to reign over Israel. In Ahab, the son of Amri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years. And Ahab, the son of Amri, did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him.
So as bad as all of the other kings were, Ahab took the cake. He topped them all. And it says that that he did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. It says in verse thirty-one, and it came to pass as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ephraim, king of the Zydonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him.
And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove. And Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. Now that's pretty bad. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before them. And Ahab takes to wife Jezebel. Jezebel, the daughter of Esbael, king of the Zidonians.
And here we have an alliance. And it's an alliance that... finds its full fruition in the future, not just in the past. A great political, economic, religious alliance that will come to fruition as found in the book of the Revelation in chapter seventeen, in the alliance that is called Babylon, Mystery Babylon, the Great, Mother of Harlots. Babylon, the great whore, is found in the book of Revelation.
In I Kings chapter eighteen and verse four, it says that it was so that when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in a cave and fed them with bread and water. Jezebel set about to have the prophets of God exterminated and to eliminate the worship of the true and the living Jehovah God. And in the book of Revelation in chapter two, as John there records the letter to the seven churches, in Revelation chapter two, in verse eighteen, we read these words.
To the church, To the angel of the church in Thyatira write, These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass. I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works, and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed and them that commit adultery wither into great tribulation except they repent of their deeds. And Jezebel in the Old Testament comes to a bloody end. Elijah stands one day and says that the dog shall lick the blood of Jezebel in the streets of Jezreel. And we find this was graphically fulfilled as Her body was cast into the street, trampled upon by the horse of Jehu, and finally her body eaten by the dogs until nothing but the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands were left.
And yet there were those in the days of Elijah, just like there will be in the future, who had not, as John records, who had not known this doctrine or held not this doctrine and who had not known the depths of Satan. There was a remnant in the days of Elijah. We read that there were seven thousand in number. Seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal in that day. A part of these were prophets Obadiah had taken and hidden them in a cave and fed them with bread and water.
And yet, where were they? Where were they? It wasn't that there weren't believers in that day. It's just that none of them were acting. None of them were doing anything. And it's into such a scene as this, steps Elijah. And as bad as the scene is, as dark as it is, God has prepared a man that is equal to the task. When the scene gets bad enough, God raises up a man who is equal to the task.
And someone told me something once a number of years ago, and I didn't think much of it at the time. But as I think upon the statement that they made, I believe there was a measure of truth in it. They told me, they said, remember in your life, in your service for God, that God doesn't bless ministries. God blesses men. God blesses men. If you think about that, Elijah comes upon the scene. In I Kings chapter seventeen in verse one it says, and Elijah the Tishbite, and I want you to notice one little word, the word and.
The word and. That's divinely placed there. Because you see, if you were to read chapter sixteen of the dark days of Ahab and Jezebel, you didn't have that little word and there. But that's the divine connection. God is about to do something. And it says that Elijah, the Tishbite, who is of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. I love the drama of the word of God. And you can just imagine this splendid court, this Oriental court, this Eastern court, with all of the luxuries and all of the excessiveness that probably existed in that day and all of the corruption that would have went along with it.
And into this scene steps Elijah. The scripture describes him as a hairy man with a leather girdle about his waist, a wild man, a man of the desert. And he steps onto the scene and he tells Ahab, he said, As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be do nor reign these years, but according to my word. Elijah's appearance. Now, the name Elijah means Jehovah is my strength.
Jehovah is my strength. And this, I believe, is the key to the man and the key to his ministry. Jehovah is my strength. Think about those four little words for a moment. Jehovah is my strength. And like I like to do in the Word of God when I find a statement such as that, I like to just shift the emphasis. Because no matter where you place the emphasis, A powerful truth is brought out. Put the emphasis on the first word. Jehovah is my strength.
And the one who is revealed in the scripture, Jehovah God, that's the one who is my strength. Or if you shift the emphasis to the second word, Jehovah is my strength. It's something that is present. He's not the God of the past. He's the living God who at this moment, present tense, is my strength. And then if you shift the emphasis to the third word, Jehovah is my strength. It was something that was real in the life of Elijah. It wasn't just that he was the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
He was Elijah's God. He's my strength. strength. And then if we place the emphasis on the fourth word, Jehovah is my strength. How was Elijah able to accomplish what he did? Not in his own power, not in his own might, but in the power of the Lord God Almighty. That's the way that he was able to affect his generation. In Psalm twenty-seven and verse one, those familiar words that come to us, the Lord is my light and my salvation.
Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? And then in the same Psalm at the end it says, wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. And those two verses also provide us the key to the life of Elijah. The Lord is my strength. The Lord is my salvation. Who am I going to be afraid of? Who do I need to fear? And then that other verse, wait on the Lord.
The presence of the Lord. Elijah spent much time there. As a matter of fact, he spends more time in obscurity in the presence of the Lord than he spends in public. Obscure, lonely, but with the Lord. And then we find that Jehovah is my strength. Here was the character of the message of Elijah. And we see in Elijah's light exhibited the authority of truth, the authority of truth. I like a man that speaks with authority.
I think of some of the men down through the years who have spoken with authority. When we played messages at the radio station by old Dr. Hahn, what did they say? A voice of authority from out of the past. And you still listen to his messages. And that still rings true. A voice of authority from out of the past. You might not always agree with him, but you always know where he stands on an issue. He speaks with authority. And that's the ministry of Elijah. It was clear cut. When Elijah comes into the court of Ahab, he says, it's not going to rain.
There's not going to be any dew. for these years, but according to my word. And when he left, nobody was left wondering. They didn't leave and say, I wonder what he was talking about. It was clear cut where he was coming from, authority. And you see it through the life of this man, Elijah, in First Kings, in the contest on Carmel. He says in verse twenty-one to the people who are vacillating, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him.
But if bail, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. We see it in his prayer on Carmel. After about six hours of nonsense by the prophets of Baal and about six hours of fanaticism and jumping up and down and hooting and hollering and cutting themselves and everything else and nothing happening and Elijah very sarcastically says, call a little louder. Maybe he's asleep. He can't hear you. And then it comes time for Elijah to pray.
Sixty-five words, I counted them in our English Bible. Sixty-five words beginning in verse thirty-six. He says, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, 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. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God. that thou hast turned their heart back again, and the fire of the Lord fell. A simple, authoritative prayer. Again, we see the authority in the life of the man as he confronts Ahab in chapter eighteen.
Ahab comes to meet him in verse seventeen. He says, Aren't thou he that troubleth Israel? And Elijah says, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam. Authority. And he pictures the Lord Jesus Christ in his ministry here on earth as prophets. He pictures that aspect of the Lord Jesus that sometimes we forget. We sometimes forget those words of the Lord Jesus that say, for judgment I am coming to this world.
And we sometimes tend to forget those words that say, I came not to bring peace, but a sword. To set the father against the son, the mother against the daughter. The Lord Jesus is a real divider. And even the people of his day, when the Lord Jesus spake, they said, here's a man. Never have we heard words like this. He speaks with authority. He's not like the scribes. He speaks with authority. How was Elijah able to do this?
His announcement in First King's Seventeen is simply this. There shall not be due nor reign these years. And for three and a half years, There was no rain. One sermon in three and a half years. How could he say that? How could he make such a statement? Turn with me back to Deuteronomy chapter eleven. Deuteronomy chapter eleven and verse ten.
Deuteronomy eleven ten. The Lord says, The land whither thou goest in to possess it is not of the land of Egypt from whence you came out, where thou sowest thy seed and waterest it with thy foot as a garden of herbs. But the land where the ego to possess it is a land of hills and valleys and bringeth water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord thy God careth for, the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year.
Now the Lord tells the children of Israel, he said, when you go over into the land, the promised land, the land that you get there, it's going to be different than the land of Egypt out of which you just came. The land of Egypt was a land that overflowed, the banks of the Nile would overflow yearly, and the Nile River was a god to the Egyptian people. And that's why so many of the judgments or several of the judgments that take place in the land of Egypt by the hand of Moses were directed against that, directed against all of the pagan idolatry and gods of the land of Egypt. But they depended upon that Nile River for their sustenance and for their life.
And God says, when you come to the promised land, it's not going to be like that. It's going to be a land that drinks water of the rain of heaven. And the Lord tells him furthermore in verse thirteen, it'll come to pass if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments, which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain that thou mayest gather in thy corn and thy wine and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle that thou mayest eat and be full.
Take heed to yourselves. If your heart be not deceived and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, and then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit, and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you. Now here the Lord gives instructions. It was very simple. As long as the people under the law continue to follow him and to seek him diligently with a whole heart, their crops would flourish. But If they turned apart from the true and the living God to serve other gods, then God would cut off the faucet.
Just that simple. And you notice the words that follow in verse eighteen. Immediately following that, therefore, in light of this fact, here's what they were to do. You will lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul and bind them for a sign upon your hand. that they may be as frontless between your eyes, and ye shall teach them your children. When? Once a week? No. Speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. But that's not all. Thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thine house and upon thy gate.
Now immediately following that section, the Lord says, you're to take these my words and you're to lay them up in your heart, in your soul, to bind them for a sign upon your hands. They're to be as frontlets before your eyes. You're to teach them to your children when you're sitting in your house, when you're walking by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You're to put them on the doorpost of your house and upon your gates. Literally, they couldn't go anywhere without the Word of God being there confronting them. And in each and every aspect of their life, whether they were getting up, rising, lying down, whatever it was, they were to teach their children the words of the living God.
And they were to lay these words up in their heart. That was the first thing. And that is a good application for us today. And yet I believe that Elijah could go to Ahab, first of all, because he had laid the word of God up in his heart. And what he said was based upon the word of God. That's our authority. We have no authority outside of the word of God. And this book is our authority. And that's the way that Elijah could go to Ahab. Because what he said was based upon the word of God. That's the first thing. The second thing is found in the New Testament in James chapter five.
It says in James chapter five and verse seventeen that Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are. And he prayed earnestly that it might not rain. And what does it say? And it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again. And the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. And here is a mighty example of prayer. Elijah prayed, and the heavens were shut up from rain.
And Elijah prayed again, and the heavens were open to rain. Based on the word of God, based on prayer, these were the two things that allowed Elijah to make such an announcement. Elijah, the living proof of a living God. I think of David. You know those words that David spoke as he went forth to kill Goliath with absolute faith and absolute confidence. He said, this day, all of Israel, all the earth, shall know that there is a God in Israel.
And Elijah went forth to show that there was a living God. God was not dead. He hadn't been exterminated. He hadn't been buried. He was alive. And I believe that people today are tired of of phonies. People today are tired of religiosity. People today are tired of the shams and the rip-off artists who come in the name of the Lord. People today, just like in the day of Elijah, need to see men and women, young people, old people with the living reality of the living God at work in their life.
And if you're here today and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and you haven't made contact with the living God, you can only do so through the Lord Jesus Christ. Your church membership won't help you. Your doing good won't help you. All of the works that you can ever do. are of no avail if you don't have a living relationship with Jesus Christ and base that relationship on his finished work on the cross and the fact that he is raised from the dead.
Why do we leave that out? Why do we leave that out? Paul said, when I came to you, I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. that he was buried and what? That he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. The disciples in the book of Acts went everywhere preaching the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was alive and he was real in their lives. And that's the one that people need to see today. Men and women who are in touch with a living God. We might say in the words of Elijah, the Lord is my strength.
The Lord is my strength. May it be true in our lives. Let's look to the Lord in a word of prayer. Our Father, we're thankful today that we come to you as a living God. We serve a risen Savior. And oh God, how we pray. that in and through our lives might be seen the great reality of the fact that you're alive today and active today, still the same mighty, powerful, miracle-working God of the days of Elijah.
Oh, as men, as women, may we get hold of this great truth and let it get hold of our lives. May we lay up the Word of God in our hearts so that we might, like Elijah, pray earnestly, realizing that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In our God, we pray that if there is one here today and they don't know you as Savior,