In the next picture you see the picture of Elijah who is one of our greatest heroes of faith. Let us look at his life to see why, shall we?
Elijah means my God is Jehovah. Elijah's family is not told to us in the Bible, so it is a mystery where he came from, which may be why he has been viewed with awe.But we do know that he was a Tis'bite who lived in Gilead. He was also a man who was dressed very much like John the baptist was (2 Kings 1:8; Mark 1:6). he was also a great man of faith. Let us look at his life.
After King Ahab did not follow Jehovah, but worshiped the god Baal instead. God called Elijah to deliver a message from Jehovah to King Ahab that there would be a drought in the land (I Kings 17:1). That takes courage to do, & I believe that a man would not have this courage if he did not have great faith in God.
After delivering this message to King Ahab, God took care of Elijah. But it took great faith to obey all that God told him to do since none of it would make sense to more people. Let us look at all the ways God did that.
First, God told him to hide next to a brook and have ravens bring him food (I Kings 17:2-6).Here we see Elijah living next to a small body of water right after prophesying that a drought was coming out of obedience to God. That takes faith. Second, we see that God told him that birds that were considered "unclean" to his people was going to bring him food to eat. This goes against so many things that they had been taught in the temple, like do not eat or touch unclean things. Yet God told him that he was to eat food that these "unclean" birds would bring to him.That means that he would be putting food in his mouth that they had touched. That goes against the temple law. But because of his faith in God he went against temple law and obeyed God in this.
In time, the brook did dry up. That is when God told Elijah to go to Zarephath to a widow's house to be taken care of (I Kings 17:9). Zarephath was on a small plain near the shore, so water would have been available to him. But times were hard and the widow that God sent him to was very poor. In fact, she only had enough left to make her son one more meal. This should not be surprising, as women in her time depended on a man to support them. Women of that time & place was not allowed to own land & there were not many jobs that they could work at. Yet, Elijah had faith that God would keep his word and supply for them all. So he instructed her to take a leap of faith and make him something to eat with what was the last of her food, and then trust that God would supply the rest (I Kings 17:10-14). Now Elijah's faith has gone from being inside of him to speaking it to someone else who needed to have faith in God. She took that leap of faith and made a meal for Elijah first and then for her & her son. God honored that faith each time she made a meal until the end of the drought (I Kings 17:14-16).
But then there was another great test of faith for both Elijah & the widow when he son died. The Widow cried to the man of God, and Elijah cried out to God asking why & pleaded for his life. God heard Elijah's plead of faith & brought him back to life (I Kings 17:17-24). I believe that this only strengthened their faith in God.
Sometime later, God told Elijah to go back to King Ahab to send rain on the earth again. But this was not going to be as easy as it sounds for he was going to confront King Ahab & his prophets of the false god Baal (I Kings 18). Now let us remember that after Elijah declared that there would be a drought King Ahab's wife Jezebel had as many prophets of the Lord as she could find killed. So it took faith in God to go back to King Ahab's kingdom and do as God asked him. But he had faith in God and went and did as God told him to do. God showed that he was pleased by performing many great miracles that gave Elijah victory over the prophets of Baal. Then Elijah told God's people to kill the prophets of Baal (I Kings 18:1-40). After the prophets were killed, God sent the rain (I Kings 18:1-45).
When Jezebel heard that her prophets were kills, she was very mad, and ordered to have Elijah killed. This shock Elijah's faith in God's protection. So he ran for his life & hid under a juniper tree.God sent an angel to Elijah to feed him food two times. The last meal gave him strength for forty days & nights. During those forty days and nights, Elijah hid in a cave at Mt. Horeb. God personally sent and talked with Elijah. This helped restore Elijah's faith( I Kings 19).
This is when he handed his mantle to Elisha & they ministered together for a time. We see that a man of God went to see King Ahab to deliver messages to him from time to time. This could have been one of them (I Kings 20). We also see him going to the King after his wife had a man killed and stole his family's land and prophesying to him of his & his wife & of King Ahaziah death (I Kings 2:1-17).
Elijah's faith grew as he was going through all of this and he obeyed God. Because of his obedience, God allowed him to do some miracles before he left this earth (2 Kings 1 & 2).
Elijah's last act of ministry was to throw his mantle down to Elisha as the God he so faithfully took him up to heaven on a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:13). In doing this he was handing his ministry over to Elisha.
Next week, we will look at the man who picked up his mantle and carried on the ministry, Elisha.
No comments:
Post a Comment