The Elijahs of God (2 of 10)
Through the Bible
Roger Thomas
1 Kings 17:1-2; James 5:13-18
5/26/02
Introduction: Someone has said there are three kinds of people in the world. There are those who make things happen. There are those who watch things happen. And there are those who are always wondering what happened!
Too many of us are in the last category. Tonight I want us to look at the life of Elijah, a man who made things happen. As we look at his life, we will be challenged, like it or not, to be become people who also make things happen. Elijah will leave little room for those who are satisfied to simply watch or wonder!
Before we get to Elijah, let's eliminate one hurdle at the very outset. We are too often prone to read the Bible as if that was then, this is now. We assume that some where along the line God changed. Once he worked powerfully and supernaturally through his people to alter the course of human events. Now we are on our own. Once he answered prayer. Now we answer our own.
A study of Elijah will not allow the luxury of such false thinking. One verse of Scripture shatters that notion to pieces. "Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years" (James 5:17). James says, "Don't tell me that was then and this is now when it comes to prayer. Don't tell me God doesn't make believers the way he used to. Don't excuse ineffectiveness in prayer with the whimper, "But they were different then." Elijah was a man just like us! James sites Elijah as the role model for spiritually powerful people. People who make things happen!
Tonight we continue our book by book Through the Bible Series with a look at First Kings. This twenty-two-chapter record of the history of Israel and Judah tells the stories of many prominent men, a few prominent women, and one eccentric nobody from a small town east of the Jordan. 1 Kings begins with the de ...
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