Elijah – First Among Seven Thousand (Part B)

Many Christians cannot deliver their message because they have compromised their testimony in the workplace, not their religious testimony. They just have a poor work ethic and nobody respects them. Nobody even likes them. They're grumpy. They're moody. They're undependable.

They change the rules as they go along. They're just like everybody else. Then they want to come to you. Jesus loves you.

I don't want to hear it from you. You are a top gun in your profession. If you're a ditch digger or a surgeon, whatever you may be, God will send people to you. The name began to grow on the man, like his beard, like his garment. He gave life to the name. Others could have been named Elijah, lived nothing like Elijah. Others could have had that name, but burning incense to bow.

Not this man. Others go around with Christian names and nothing about them is Christ-like. So from false worship of Baal to true worship of Jehovah, the living God, wherever he went, he spent his life upholding the truth, holding next to the false worship the true worship. And of the 7,000, he alone called on God in the face of those who rejected God. Obadiah, when he was saving the 50 prophets to one cave, the 50 prophets to another cave, he did it quietly. It was better that he did it at all, of course, but Elijah did it right out. You say, yes, but Elijah also ran. He ran at command. And the time that he did not run at command, but he ran anyway, he was rebuked for it. And so we have a fireball that has scorching and radical methods because that's what it took at this time in his life.

Understand this. Elijah, his student, will fill the shoes of Elijah, the teacher. When Elijah is taken home in the chariot of fire, essentially translated, you can even say raptured, his student will take his place. Elijah was more soft-spoken. He was more graceful.

This is intended. His times allowed it. His times allowed it because of what his teacher had accomplished for him. Elijah, he could not be soft-spoken to Ahab and Jezebel. He could not be a mild-mannered clergy. He never would have won in the face of flagrant sin, impudent wrongdoing.

That's what he was up against. And so God raised this man again with liquid fire in his blood who came against, who met them head on. His head was made stronger than the head of Ahab and Jezebel.

I believe by the time his ministry was over, there were more than 7,000 people in Israel who no longer bowed to Baal. I believe that many of the children who were being raised up would come under the influence of his student, Elisha, and this is because of what God had done in Elijah, this man of God. And so now we turn to our text in 1 Kings chapter 17, 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 nor rain these years except at my word. And so our text begins the story of the life and times of the prophet Elijah.

We have not heard of him before. This is how he shows up in the scripture and it shows up with a conjunction. Again, verse 1 of chapter 17, and. That's the conjunction. That links it with everything that was just said in what we call chapter 16.

Though when they put together the book of Kings, there were no chapter divisions. And so you would go right from verse 34 into what we call 17.1 without verses and without chapter distinctions. And that is on purpose. And that conjunction is therefore an addition of God. And it says, what has gone before this is directly linked to what I am about to say right now.

And again, the time demanded a red hot man. And his first recorded words are words of punishment. They're words of judgment. How many of you are afraid to talk about hell to a lost soul? How many of you, I don't want to tell him he's going to hell. But he's going to hell. You believe that. But you don't want to tell him that.

Why? Well, I'm afraid he won't like me anymore. That's dangerous ground. We should not preach about hell until we're led to preach about hell. But again, if we are led and we don't do it because we are afraid, we are wrong.

There's no power in this. What are you doing for the unbeliever if you're holding back the truth? That's not seeker friendly. That's self friendly.

We don't want the friction. And thus the appropriate message of a man like Elijah who stands up and says, drought is here. Listen again. Look at his words in verse one. As Jehovah God of Israel lives.

Now that, of course, is a smack in the face of the king's fake God vow. And he then makes this distinction. Before whom I stand.

Not you. I stand before him. And then he pronounces the sentence. There shall not be dew nor rain. That's pretty severe.

There's not even going to be enough for a bug to lick. It's out of here. And then what does the king say? Nothing. What can he say? The man's name alone intimidated him. You know, you'd love to have a picture of Elijah. He was probably a frightening character. Or maybe he was actually a pretty scrawny, puny guy. But the power of God was on him so mightily that he was awesome. It's like, man, I didn't say anything to that guy. And you know, when they came to arrest him, they sent a company of men.

A platoon. Three times. We'll get to that. And so the punishment for the evil doing. This was the right field for the prophet. For this kind of man.

This was perfect. Again, Daniel, his character from what he knows, what we know of him, was not the right tool for this job. Daniel was the, you couldn't put Elijah in the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar. They would have killed him. Or he would have killed them. But it would not have been very king's court like with Elijah there.

Elijah, you can't do that to the grapes. Or, you know, he wouldn't care anything about etiquette. He'd be telling you like it is. You're a pagan and that's that.

What do you want me to say? So here we have a mighty God that fits the man for the job and the times that he lives in and he raises up this one character that actually all of us might have been a little bit uncomfortable with. But this is what was needed. This is why he was so different.

And his arrival and his ministry is as sudden as the lightning that often accompanied his ministry. I want to be a guy like that too. But am I ready to not see the rewards? You know what we want to do? We want to preach Christ. We want to see the person crumble before us. Yes, I repent. I want to give it to you right now. That's what we want to see. And we don't want any other Christian around to scoop it away from us.

You can't get him credit for that. I'm sorry. That's my quota. I've been preaching to this, this is my child. You're not going to walk in here and save my child.

Either I do it or, or what? And so one man plants in other waters. God causes the growth and none of us get the credit. He gets all of the credit because all of the credit is due him and the prophets, like Elijah, knew this full well and they lived that way and they never let it get away from him.

And God inserts a critical footnote right before that. And Elijah, look with me at verse 34. And here it says, In his days Ahab, Hiel of Bethel, built Jericho. He laid his foundation with Abiram, his firstborn, and with his youngest son, Segeb. He set up its gates according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken through Joshua, the son of Nun.

Well, wait a minute. We've just gone from, okay, Omri being evil more than all the kings of the north before him and then his son Ahab being worst in him and then marrying Jezebel and then bringing in Baal worship and then all of a sudden there's this little footnote. Oh, Hiel, by the way, he went and rebuilt Jericho, but he paid for it with his two sons.

What is that doing there? Ahab knew the story. He knew that Joshua pronounced a curse on the man who would rebuild Jericho. This is the fulfillment of the curse because Hiel defied the scripture. Please tell me there's a curse on building Jericho.

People are building buildings everywhere. And so he goes and he builds and he finds out that God enforces his word. And so when it says, And Elijah, there's a connection between those who defy God's word and those who don't.

Ahab is receiving the message. It might have been at that moment that God calls Elijah to public ministry. It might have been at that moment that Elijah said, Tell me again. He went to build in Bethel, which is in the territory of the northern kingdom under Ahab, and the prophecy of Joshua was fulfilled. He's off to Samaria.

He confronts the king. He tells him that there's going to be a drought, not even dew. Listen to this from Deuteronomy chapter 11, which no doubt Elijah used as the foundation of his sermon in connection to scripture. He didn't need this because he had God's word. Deuteronomy 11, 16, 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 up the heavens so that there be no rain and the land yield no produce. And you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you. Hundreds of years ago this was spoken. You see, Elijah said, Look, my word is real. God's word is true.

And I will preach God's word. We Christians, do we do that? Or have we made alliances with people who really don't like Jesus too much?

They're a little bit uncomfortable when you talk about him. And we've made such alliances with them, be it in business, be it in the neighborhood, be it wherever it is, however it is, and now we've lost our edge. We've lost that zeal. There's not fire going through our blood anymore.

It's oatmeal. And messages like this come from the Holy Spirit saying to the guilty, I still love you and I still want to use you, but I need you to get back to where you were and I need you to come back with joy. And I need you to come back as though you've been educated on the battlefield. You've been seduced a little bit.

Guard against that this time with me. In this punishment of announcing no rain, there was a certain justice. The punishment fit the crime because heathen Baal was held up as the god of fertility, of reproduction, of the productive processes of nature. And so God is saying, Is that right? He's the one that brings you the harvest.

He's the one that brings you the fish from the sea. How about I stop the rain? Let's see if Baal can turn that around.

In fact, how about I do it for three years? I want to give you a lesson you won't forget. And that is, I think, what is going on. The prophet will see how hard this is upon the people as he travels throughout the land during the drought. It was a hardship even on the righteous. He ends up at the house of the woman of Zarephath, the widow. He sees the hardship on her that the drought he was sent to introduce has put on her. And he could only be at one widow's house at a time. And there was hardship there, too.

There, in that episode, we won't spend much time with it. We see the gentle side of the prophet as he scoops the child up, as he lays the top of him in praise, as he defiles himself ceremonially by touching the dead in the interests of the living and brings the boy back to life. And the lesson there is that God's grace is stronger than law. I'm a pastor, hopefully, that believes in God's grace because I am the recipient of it every day. When Jeremiah says his mercies are new every morning, do you know you cannot have God's mercy without God's grace?

It's not possible. The New Testament word for mercy, mercy still exists. There's a division of, not a division, but a distinction between the two. And yet, they do not function one without the other.

You have to have them both. It's kind of a brain and heart kind of a thing. They're vital organs. But I am the recipient of God's grace. And any time I find a Christian that has put grace in the back seat of their Christian life, I find a Christian that is lopsided, that is imbalanced, and that by definition, if you are lopsided, you do not have grace in the form of illustration. If you see a ballerina, and if she's lopsided, she's not graceful. But if she is graceful, everything is defined, everything is perfect, everything is balanced.

The symmetry is correct. I'm using that to illustrate it. And it's unfortunate that we get tied up in special parts of the Scripture, and throw all the others out, and we become specialists. That's good in the medical profession. That may be good in the automotive profession.

Transmission specialists versus, you know, body and fender man. But when it comes to the word of God, we are supposed to be under grace. We're supposed to be fully balanced.

We're supposed to have it all. So the idolatry became the culture of Israel, and it would remain a long time. How long? Until the kingdom was taken away.

Listen to this. When Jehu becomes king under the prophet Elijah, the student of Elijah, here in 2 Kings chapter 10, we read, Then Jehu sent throughout all Israel and all the worshipers of Baal, so that there was not a man left who did not come. So they came into the temple of Baal, and the temple of Baal was full from one end to the other. Now he's going to slaughter them in this power grab, but he's not really looking to serve Jehovah.

He's looking to just get away, get the competition out of the way which the Baal worship has brought. Now when God says to Elijah in 1 Kings chapter 19, Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth has not kissed him. That was good for them, but it wasn't enough. And so when a pastor steps in the pulpit and says, Listen, it's not enough to be saved.

You've got to serve too. It's enough to be saved to get into heaven, but it's still not enough. God wants more from us.

And this is the same thing. It's one thing not to bow down to Baal, but what are you doing in the midst of these things? This is like a reverse sermon.

I didn't see it coming. Usually when we preach about the seven thousand, we're preaching about Christian elitism. When Elijah says, I'm the only one.

And then we say, Oh no you're not. There's seven thousand others that have not bowed to Baal, and that is appropriate. But also in that lesson is, yes, there are seven thousand others. However, there is one that God has filled with fire. And I want to know the secret of that man. And the fact that he backs down and whimpers from time to time only tells me that he has a nature like mine. And if he has a nature like mine, and my God at the same time, and he's accomplished so much for the Lord, I'm in. I can be like Elijah too. I may not be as fiery as Elijah, but I can be as effective as Elijah.

And that's what I want in the lives of those who are around me. And this is why he is first among seven thousand. Many Christians cannot deliver their message because they have compromised their testimony in the workplace. Not their religious testimony. They just have a poor work ethic. And nobody respects them. Nobody even likes them. They're grumpy. They're moody. They're undependable.

They change the rules as they go along. They're just like everybody else. Then they want to come to you. Jesus loves you.

I don't want to hear it from you. But in you, when you are a top gun in your profession, I don't care if you're a ditch digger or a surgeon, whatever you may be, God will send people to you. You won't have to look for them.

They will come to you. This is why sometimes it's hard to witness in the family because the family only remembers things that they perceive as wrong done long ago and they can't get past it. So God has to oftentimes raise up a prophet outside the home to win them. And that's fine as long as they get saved.

But don't be that Christian who's not a good worker. And therefore not respected enough to hear the words of life. Israel then, as today with many churches, forsook her altars. Today in many churches they have forsaken the places of sacrifice. 1 Kings chapter 18. Then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. So all the people came near to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. Somebody put an altar on Mount Carmel because they couldn't get to Jerusalem. But it no longer was functioning. It had been broken down.

And so this man took it upon himself to repair it. Now here's what we're up against today. We live in a culture where there's a warmth towards Islam and a rejection of Christ. We live in a culture where there's advocacy of sexual perversion but rejection of Christ. We live in a society where there are demonic altars of and for abortion and rejection of Christ.

And again, that you in a hospital, in one wing you are dedicating yourself to saving lives, in the next wing you're dedicating yourselves to killing a life. It is insanity. This is where we live. This is how it was in the days of Elijah, but our worship involved child sacrifice. We live in a culture where there is a voodoo love for sham science of evolution and psychology and more sham science, which is religion, the man-made global warming, the earth is, you know, our God, nature, Mother Nature and all this other junk.

Who's standing up against this stuff? Again, the church is often so wacky, so kooky, no sane heathen wants any part of it. To our shame, we live in a society where the pleasure of church without Jesus of the Bible is something to be sought after. Sometimes someone will tell me, oh yeah, I go to a Bible teaching church and they will then tell me the name of that church and I know what that church is about. And I just, what can you say? How can you undo that? In just two or three minutes of conversation. You can't unless God opens the doors. I was telling my wife, we were at a place once at a church and I said I had to use restraint from going up there and breaking things up in front of everybody. I just wanted to go up on their platform and I just wanted to throw things around up there, break things, tip over their pulpit because it was just so, what is this? But, who am I to do that?

I can tell you, I'm the guy who almost did it. The Lord says, no it's not for you, you got your own problems. But anyway, we live in a society, now here we're going to get some of our friends, we live in a society that upholds the constitution people in our society. There are those in our society who uphold the constitution, who are conservative politically and reject Christ.

What are we doing with this? Well I'm a Christian and I am a Mormon and I'm also a Mason and I'm also, I mean you can't be all that stuff and be a Christian. Here was a prophet, a man of God who confronted kings, who came from nowhere, who went anywhere that he wanted, who was a slayer of false notions about God wherever he met with them, who developed his students. He did not just make students, he developed them. For example, in the beginning of Elijah's ministry here in 17-1, he says right out, as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand. And then we find his student, Elisha, saying to yet another king, Ahab's son as a matter of fact, as the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand.

He is carrying on the message but there's more. This was a prophet whose steps were ordered by the Lord. Psalm 37 verse 23, the steps of a good man are ordered by Jehovah and Jehovah delights in his ways. In verse 3 of 1 Kings chapter 17, God says get away from here. In 1 Kings 17 verse 9, God says arise, go to Zarephath. In 1 Kings chapter 18 verse 1, God says to Elijah, and it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year saying go present yourself to Ahab. In 2 Kings chapter 1 verse 3, there we read again God saying, the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the tishbite arise, go up and meet the messengers of the king. And then in 2 Kings chapter 2 verse 15, chapter 1 verse 15, and the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, go down with him, do not be afraid of him. And so what we find is here is this man of God who can call fire from heaven and yet he is led by the Lord. He is told to go here, he is told to stay there. God protected, provided, and directed him. And every time Elijah got out of that being led by the Lord, he got into trouble. He ran away from a defeated army because he did not wait for what God had to say.

We're not criticizing him. We're noticing the lessons from all of this. And in the end he gets carried away and his student is heartbroken. 2 Kings chapter 2 verse 11, and as it happened, as they continued and talked. Here's a picture of the old prophet and the new prophet, and suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire and separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven and Elisha, that's his student, saw it and cried out, my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen. So he saw him no more and he took hold of his own clothes, now listen to this, and tore them into two pieces. The first one was not enough.

The second one is heartbroken. May we be like that. May when we're not around, people miss us. May the thought of us bring good thoughts to other people. May when we mess up, other people know enough about us to make it easy for them to forgive us. Yeah, I know he goofed that one up, but I know his heart. I know him.

And he's a righteous man or she's a righteous sister, and that's okay with me. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Pastor Rick is teaching from God's word each time you tune in.

As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, this teaching is available free of charge at our website. Just visit crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can do so at crossreferenceradio.com or search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app store. That's all for today. Join Pastor Rick next time for more character studies right here on Cross Reference Radio.