Just Like Elijah [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Do not disqualify yourself by saying, God uses those more spiritual people. God uses those more morally upright people. God's going to use somebody else, but He can never use me in that way.

What God is saying through James here is that God can use your prayers every bit as much as He did Elijah, in every bit as much remarkable ways. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Miracle Man, as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I'd like to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here's Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? There's a sound of the rushing of rain. May your ears be blessed to hear it. There is a miraculous outpouring on the horizon. May your eyes be blessed to see it.

If you're in a season of drought, take heart. A small cloud rises from the sea of God's grace. If you're in a season of plenty, praise Him. God's grace knows no bounds.

Elijah was just as human as you are. And God changed the whole atmosphere through his prayers. Likewise, your prayers are unspeakably powerful and effective.

Because when you're in Christ, you're clothed with His righteousness. So may the heavens open and miracles rain down this year to the glory of God and the blessing of many. That's the blessing the Lord has led me to speak over your life this year. And it is rooted in a powerful text in James 5. James 5 where I'll read starting at verse 14.

Is anyone cheerful? Let them sing praise. Verse 14, is anyone among you sick? Let them call for the elders of the church and let them pray over Him, anointing Him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, He'll be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it's working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. And he prayed fervently that it might not rain. And for three years and six months did not rain on the earth.

Then he prayed again and the heaven gave rain and the earth bore its fruit. I was amused by a popular poster that's out there. Now it says, always be yourself unless you can be Batman. In which case, always be Batman.

The reason that I'll chuckle at that is because I was like every other little boy that I ever knew. I wanted to be Batman. Well, I would have been fine being Superman. I had the cape, the utility belt. But I kind of wanted to be Batman. And a close third was Spiderman. Our little boy, Bennett, most of his boyhood, he lived in some sort of costume. Batman, Superman, if he wasn't the caped crusader, he was Mr.

Incredible. Or certainly, he was David defeating Goliath. Or at the very least, Peter Pan, who can at least fly and never grows old. We lived with that and grew up with all these and the fantasies of our childhood. When I was a kid, not only did I want to be a superhero, but I also fantasized about being a super athlete.

Turned out that was just as fantastic of a vision as the other. I couldn't barely stand it. I'd watch some guys playing tennis at Wimbledon and Bjorn Borg or something and I just couldn't even watch the whole match. I'd start calling up my buddy and say, let's go play some tennis. I want to be that person. Somewhere on the pathway to adulthood though, we come to our senses. And we realize we're not going to be Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or maybe even the princess at the ball. And you start saying things that are healthy to say like it is what it is. I am who I am. I am what will be will be. And it is important, the counselors tell us, to accept reality lest you be in denial and live in a fantasy world.

And so there is something healthy about accepting the limitations on your life. You are not Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman. And then you come to the scripture where now as a mature adult and you've let go of such fantasies, you come to the scriptures and you read about superheroes in the Bible. Abraham who was the father of a nation. Or Moses who parted a Red Sea. Or Joshua who brought down walls of Jericho. Or David that defeated the Philistine giant. Or even you come to the New Testament and read stories like Peter, the apostle who the Lord used so much in healing that sometimes just his shadow would land upon someone and they would be healed. And so in the same way that you go, I could never be Batman or never be Superman, you tend to read those stories and say I could never be like that.

Those are the superheroes. Interestingly in the mindset of the Hebrew people there was one figure who stood out as maybe the superhero of all superheroes. His name was Elijah. His name means Yahweh is my God.

Jehovah is my God. He confronted the wicked king Ahab. He was once miraculously fed by ravens. He was used by God to defeat 450 prophets of the pagan god Baal.

He twice called down fire. In one instance was used by the Lord to bring back to life the dead son of a widow. And when it came time to leave this earth he went out in a whirlwind accompanied by chariots of fire. He is legendary in the mindset of Israel, Elijah. The ancient rabbis considered Elijah to be in some mysterious way available to them as an arbiter of important matters that required special wisdom.

The most prominent example of this is in the Seder meal, the Passover feast practiced by every Orthodox Jewish family. Because Malachi chapter three prophesied that there would be a return of Elijah there's an expectation that Elijah would precede the Messiah. And Elijah, because he could help arbitrate difficult matters that the rabbis couldn't figure out, they suppose would be the one to answer a puzzling question. Should there be four or five cups of wine at the Seder meal?

A complicated question for a variety of reasons. And so the rabbis in ancient times decided that this would be left for Elijah to decide when he returns. So at the Seder meal there are four cups that are drunk and there's a fifth cup that's empty and there's an empty chair that's Elijah's chair. I say all this to try to describe how big and wondrous a superhero Elijah is in the mindset of the Jewish people. Interestingly when Jesus has come and his ministry is at its apex there is this moment that might be the most dramatic moment of glory in Jesus's earthly ministry that is called the transfiguration where he is suddenly brilliantly illuminated and there are two figures that appear on either side of him. Moses and the other is Elijah.

I say all this to lead to this question. If Elijah is such a superhero in the Bible to the Jewish people and to the early believers isn't it shocking that James singles out Elijah Elijah is the example to compare you and me and our prayer life to him. To say Elijah's just as human as you are, to say Elijah had nothing on you, to say Elijah wasn't used by God because he was so much more special than you, to say all of this is like saying that person that you think you could never be, you can be. It may be that you're not gonna be Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman but what James is saying is you are like Elijah and he then goes on to explain the context of a healing community where God moves wondrously through the prayers of the people in the local body of Christ.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. It's a great idea to start each day with a dose of good news and we'd like to help. Elijah, the man whose prayer called down fire on a water-drenched altar, defeating 450 wicked prophets and whose intercession revived a widow's deceased son was just like us, an ordinary man who was used by God for the extraordinary. God's word is clear. If the Lord could use Elijah miraculously, he can also do wonders in and through you. If you yearn to see more of God's power in your life, you'll love Pastor Alan's devotional journal, Everyday Miracles. It's a one-month journey through the stories of Elijah and his successor, Elisha, that include daily devotionals from Pastor Alan, questions for reflection, space for journaling, and a daily prayer of faith.

This beautiful spiral-bound book is the perfect tool to get you into the word and to build your faith day by day. When you make a gift this month, we'll send you Alan Wright's new devotional journal, Everyday Miracles, as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Also, free digital access to all the Elijah messages currently airing, so please make your gift today and start looking for miracles all around you. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastoralan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. I want to highlight this for you today to let you know something of the essence of the kind of environment where a lot of healing takes place. And what I think James is saying about the power of your own prayer life, it is a text that is very clear saying to each of us, do not disqualify yourself by saying God uses those more spiritual people. God uses those more morally upright people.

God's gonna use somebody else, but He can never use me in that way. What God is saying through James here is that God can use your prayers every bit as much as He did Elijah in every bit as much remarkable ways. And that is clearly astounding, but it's what the gospel teaches. In showing you what the Lord I think has been revealing to me in studying afresh James chapter five, especially verses 14 through 17, I want to highlight for you three words or concepts that are linked to healing in this text that I think are often misunderstood.

And I want to lift these up for some moments of reflection. First in verse 14, this admonition to call upon the elders of the church to let them pray over the sick. And in verse 16, two different concepts there that are very important and are linked in the text to the healing ministry and one is confession of sin and the other is that the righteous person is one who has great power in prayer. So three concepts that are in some way inspired by the Holy Spirit linked in James' mind here to the ministry of healing and the outpouring of the miraculous intervention of God through the prayers of the people. There's something about the calling upon the elders, there's something about confession of sin and there's something about the righteous person.

I think all three of these are often misunderstood and I want to talk about them. Let's talk first about this text that says call upon the elders of the church. Some people have, I think, taught and proposed and perhaps there have been a time in my life where I tended to believe more in this direction, I do not now, that what James is saying is that God has set apart certain more anointed people and He'll use their prayers more than others and so therefore if you're in a predicament or you're sick you need to get these certain really special people, specially anointed, specially gifted to be the ones that will pray for you. The reason that I think that can't be what James means by calling upon the elders is that the whole meaning of verses 13 through 18 in which every verse includes the word prayer in James 5 verses 13 through 18.

Prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer. His whole point, as I have been suggesting to you, is that God uses the prayers of any Christian as much as He could Elijah. So it would fly in the face of that if James were saying but there are these few special people and they really have more powerful prayers than you do.

Those two things can't go together. When you're interpreting scripture, one of the most important interpretive principles is simple. Take the more plain meaning of the context of a passage and understand the individual verses in terms of that plain meaning. If you ever have a time where you're a little confused by a scripture because it seems to fly in the face of something that is more basically understood, then you start out with the framework of that which you know is basic and simple to understand. For example, if there's a text in Malachi that says Esau I have hated and Jacob I have loved, you can't come to the conclusion that God is a God of hate because you know this about God. God is love and that everywhere in His word it's love. So you begin from that framework and you say God is speaking about some other mystery that I must understand here. James is saying God uses the prayers of every saint and don't ever diminish yourself or ever compare yourself to someone else thinking that I'm not spiritual enough and I'm not good enough. So I don't think that what he's saying is that you need to just get these specially anointed leaders to pray for you. Instead, at the very onset of hearing the statement call upon the elders. This is letting us know that even in its infancy the early church had a governing structure to it and that he's speaking about a connected local body. In the western culture, in the United States, we are fiercely individualistic in our thinking.

Other parts of the country, eastern and in the global south. People don't think as much this way. But we have this idea that Christianity is about me and Jesus. That is not the picture in the Bible at all. The picture in the Bible of what it means to be a Christian is something much greater than that.

It is not so much about me and Jesus and I just have made my personal profession and I'm private about this. Instead, there is a beautiful mystery that is wondrous and glorious called the church. And God has connected us as the body of Christ so much that Paul teaches that we are the body of Christ on earth. And each one is a member of it so vitally connected that we could no more say to one another, I don't need you, than your own head could say to your hand, I don't need you or vice versa. That we are that connected. The theory is a mysterious connection of the unity of the spirit by which we have been, I want to say, mystically, organically connected. Beloved, I have more in common with you because you are a Christian than I do anybody else on the face of the earth.

We might have different interests, we might have different teams, you might not even like Carolina basketball. But if you are in the body of Christ, we are mystically connected and I really believe, beloved, this is something that we have missed in the West because we're so individualistic. To say call upon the elders is to say that if you are so infirmed that you can't even get to the assembly, you need to know that you have elders you can call upon. It is to say that you're living in a submitted relationship to spiritual oversight.

There are some churches that emphasize church membership, some don't. I think the important thing is this, we are not individuals who are trying to go it alone, we are the body of Christ who we live in harmony, unity, love, peace, not always unanimous, not always agreeing on every point, but together submitted with people that we have elected to office as elders and we value that and it is in other words saying James is talking here about healing takes place in the context of committed Christian community. It's a beautiful thing, it's a powerful thing.

See we're struggling, you know we struggle because we've seen abuses of power in the secular world and we resist that and notions of leaders that have not been good shepherds and we're appalled by that. But you see the way God designed his world by his own choosing was he made us in his own image and part of that image is that God is one God but he exists in three persons. Do you understand that God within his own being is triune and therefore he is one but he is within himself relational. And he was the one who said it's not good for man to be alone, he made us for this type of intimate connection, this is who we are.

It's human beings, we need each other desperately. And so what happens is he puts us into families and he designed a family. He designed a family for a mother and a father and he designed for there to be nurture and love and encouragement and blessing and instruction that flows from parents who though they may not be perfect love their children and believe for their children to have a wonderful destiny. So if you grew up in a family and you had a wonderful healthy home and you had parents who were able to look at your life and recognize gifts in you and call them out and say you're gifted in this way and look at you, you've got a wonderful destiny and a wonderful future in front of you and they blessed that into you. It had an unspeakable power in your life and you don't have any idea how great the extent is of that blessing that's flowing in your life. Anything healthy that's going in your life. All of that that came out of this parental structure where there are these people that are your authorities that believe wonderful things for your life.

It's very, very powerful. Alan Bright and that's today's teaching just like Elijah from the series Miracle Man. We're starting it up today and Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word, stick with us.

It's a great idea to start each day with a dose of good news and we'd like to help. Elijah, the man whose prayer called down fire on a water-drenched altar, defeating 450 wicked prophets and whose intercession revived a widow's deceased son was just like us, an ordinary man who was used by God for the extraordinary. God's word is clear. If the Lord could use Elijah miraculously, he could also do wonders in and through you. If you yearn to see more of God's power in your life, you'll love Pastor Alan's devotional journal, Every Day Miracles. It's a one month journey through the stories of Elijah and his successor, Elisha that include daily devotionals from Pastor Alan, questions for reflection, space for journaling and a daily prayer of faith. This beautiful spiral bound book is the perfect tool to get you into the word and to build your faith day by day. When you make a gift this month, we'll send you Alan Wright's new devotional journal, Every Day Miracles as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Also free digital access to all the Elijah messages currently airing. So please make your gift today and start looking for miracles all around you. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastoralan.org. Alan, we're welcoming friends to a brand new series. We've heard just part one of the first part of this series. A lot of ground to cover on Miracle Man to come. Well, we're really excited to launch this new series focusing in on Elijah and Elisha. And Daniel, I would just like to say right up front, let your heart be open to the miracles of God. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.