God Sends Fire

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Campbell Chapel FWBC of Ironton Ohio - Pastor Bob Bradley

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Elijah Prays and God Sends Fire

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Bob Bradley

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I Kings 18:30-39

30 And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down.

31 And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the LORD came, saying, Israel shall be thy name:

32 And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.

33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.

34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, 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.

37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.

38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

39 And when all the people saw it , they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.

There are a couple of things that I want to talk about. One is that the Bible says God told Elijah to go hide himself and the Second is that God told him to go show himself. Those two things are contrary to one another. If He would have told him these two things at the same time then we know that he could not have done that.

If you look and study the land of Israel at this time, it was a horrible time because of sin. The nation was in a horrible shape. Ahab was the king and Jezebel was his wife. There were horrible things going on and it was a wicked time. It was a time where some horrible things were going on.

In every generation, God always has a man that He can speak unto to warn people to change their ways. God always has somebody. It may not be who we think it may be or should be, or who we would like it to be; but God always has a man. In every generation, and everywhere we look, God has always had somebody that would step up and listen to His voice and tell the people what they were doing was wrong and that they needed to repent. In every generation God has done that. What I read to you is part of a contest as we call it about what happened on Mount Carmel.

As sin was abounding and things were out of control, when you look at the spirituality of the nation and what was going on. The Bible says that God raises up a fellow by the name of Elijah. Elijah is going to do some great things. The Bible says in verse I Kings 17:1:

1 And Elijah the Tishbite, who was 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.

We know that things were drying up. If I read things and understand things correctly, this is probably and when you look at things it is probably October when the Lord has spoke unto Elijah and tells him to tell Ahab that it is not going to rain.

It is great that we [saved people] do have power with Almighty God. I can’t pray that it don’t rain. No, we cannot do that, but we have an agent or avenue called prayer and through prayer there is great power there for you and me.

The Bible says that Elijah told Ahab that it is not going to rain for the next three years. When you look at that and when you look at drought and not sending rain was a direct judgment of their sin. God has a way to get people’s attention.

When the food stops growing, the prices start going up and famine set in it puts people on their faces before Almighty God and they begin to pray.

The Bible says that Elijah said, Ahab, it is not going to rain for three more years. The Bible says that He tells Elijah you go down and get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hid thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. That is exactly what Elijah did. He comes on the scene quickly and tells them that it is not going to rain. He goes right before wicked Ahab who could have killed him, and had the power to kill him. However, Elijah was not afraid because he knew since God is the one that told him to tell Ahab that it was not going to rain then Elijah that the same God that was going to stop the rain was going to take care of him.

Isn’t it great today that God takes care of His people? The Bible says, that the Lord said, you get out of here, you get thee hence, and go down and dwell by a brook. That is just exactly what Elijah did. It does not make much sense to you and I; it’s not going to rain and if it is not going to rain then the creek is going to dry up. Elijah was not worried about that. He just wanted to listen and he was listening to the voice of God. The Lord said you go down and you dwell by the creek. He said I am going to take care of you. I am going to send you some bread and flesh in the morning and some bread and flesh in the evening. You will be able to just sit under the tree here and have a good time. That is exactly what happened. The Bible says that Elijah drank from the brook and God spoke to some birds that brought him something to eat everyday. The Bible says that He spoke unto a raven. The raven was the one that brought him food to eat. A raven was an unclean bird.

If you will look back a few chapters you will find out that it was a bird that they were not allowed to eat. Do you know what God can do? God can do whatever He wants to. He’s God. God was the one who provided the food but the ravens were just transportation. God will supply for you and I if we will just get to where we need to be at.

The problem is not with God. The problems that I have run into in life have never been with God, it has been with me. It has always been with me.

The Bible says that he is down there. Think about this a minute. Everybody like the story and everybody would like to go and be on Mount Carmel and everybody would like to pray and see the fire. We like the fire and we want to see things like that happen and there is nothing wrong with that if God is in it. Here he is down by the brook. He is eating. The birds are bringing him something everyday. He is drinking of the brook. I thought of Elijah many times; as everyday he went out and he would drink from the brook and everyday the brook got a little bit less water in it everyday. He may have been thinking where I am going to go to and what am I going to do, but he did not do that. Elijah knew that God was going to take care of him. He knew that it was not going to rain for three years. He knew that this brook was going to dry up. However there is no doubt in my mind that Elijah knew that God was going to take care of him.

Sometimes in our lives, we lose jobs. Sometimes in our lives things dry up. Sometimes money dries up. Sometimes help dries up. One thing—if we are a Christian—we don’t have to worry about what we are going to eat or what we are going to wear because if we will be faithful to God then God will take care of us.

It may be with a pair of jeans that we get down at the city mission. I praise God for that. It may be an old shirt that some farmer wore out, but it will cover up our nakedness. If that is what we have to wear then we need to praise God. If it is an old roll of KY border bologna with a little mustard on it then we need to praise God. God takes care of His people.

The brook starts drying up. Sometimes on our life things start drying up. Sometimes they do. Sometimes that happens. That did not bother Elijah any because he knew that God was going to take care of him. Do you know what happens? Everybody wants to show themselves, but nobody wants to hide themselves. Before I will ever be able to show myself and you too; you are going to have to do some hiding of yourself. Before you ever get to Mount Carmel and do some great things for god and win some great victories for God, you are going to have to spend some time down by the brook. You are going to have to spend some time in hiding. You are going to have to spend some time alone with Almighty God. I don’t know what all Elijah did while he was down there, but He spent a whole lot of time praying and he had a lot of time to be alone with God. That is exactly what he did. The brook dries up, but that did not stop the plan of Almighty God.

The Bible says that God came down and spoke unto Elijah. He said, hey, Elijah I want to you move towards the northeast. I want you to go to a place called Zarephath. I want you to go up there. It is in Zidon. It is up there along the coastline there. When you look where He was sending him; He was sending him to the northeastern part of the land of Israel right on the Mediterranean Sea. He was sending him to a widow’s house. I know that may not make much sense to you and me; it probably did not to Elijah because most widow women were poor. It does not matter because wherever God sends us, God will take care of us. Not only that, this place, this Zarephath; it was in Gentile country.

God is no respecter person. Do you know who God can use to take care of you and me? God can use whomever He chooses to take care of you and me. This little old widow woman, the Bible says to Elijah when he comes into the city, she is out here gathering some sticks. The Bible says that Elijah hollered at her and says hey what is going on, or brings me some water to drink. The Bible says that while she was going to get him some water to drink he said hey, brink a little cake along with the water. The Bible says that she turns around and talks to him and says I don’t have anything. All I have is just a handful of meal in a barrel and just a little bit of oil in a cruse. I’m getting out here and gathering up some stove wood and I’m going to build a fire to cook it up and eat it then we are going to die. That is all that we have.

When God is in the arrangements, the barrel will never get dry. When God is in the arrangements there will always be some oil. The Bible says that widow did what Elijah said. She goes and she bakes the bread. She brings Elijah some of it as Elijah had said, before her and her son ever ate. That is the Book. Isn’t it great that God has a way of doing things and Gods ways are always right ways? God is going to not only teach Elijah some things but He is going but He was going to teach a heathen woman some things about who He was. This woman—I don’t think that we could in our farthest imagination to stretch it to make a believer to think that this woman knew anything about the God of heaven; I don’t think we can do that. God has a way to show us who He is and that is exactly what He is going to do. The Bible says that she goes in and cooks the cake and brings it back out and gives it unto Elijah and we know that after that her and her son ate. For the next several months God is going to provide for them from a barrel that only had a handful in it and little bit of oil in cruse.

We don’t need what we think we need. We think sometimes that if we don’t have a big bank account then we don’t think that we have anything. We are eating today. We have clothes on our backs today. We have shelter today. What more do we need? If you have all that you can eat then that’s all you can eat. If you have one bed then that’s all you need. We worry about what we don’t have sometimes instead of being thankful for what we do have sometimes. We need to be thankful.

Everybody wants to show themselves, but nobody wants to hide themselves. Elijah moves from the brook a hundred miles to the north, into a Gentile country. Something about this place, Zarephath, where he went to; it is just up the road from Jezreel. Jezreel is a place where Ahab and Jezebel are at just up the road. He was going right into enemy territory, right into the midst of where that Elijah had been a hunted man. Ahab had been looking for him because of the drought and because everything was just drying up. The Bible says that Obadiah said that he had went everywhere all over every nation in the world looking for this guy. Do you know what is going to happen? Things are going fine. Elijah is eating. The widow woman is eating and there came a day that the widow’s son fell sick. I don’t have any idea but the Bible says that he fell sick and he died. The Bible tells us that the spirit left him. He was dead. He just did not faint. He died. The widow woman came in and began to talk to Elijah about who he was and maybe some things that she had done. She began to talk to him and tell him that her son was dead. The Bible says that Elijah says just give me the boy. He takes him unto a loft or upon the roof and he gets down, stretches himself out over him and three times he prayed. He prayed and asked the God of heaven to revive his spirit to bring him back to life. The Bible says that God heard the prayers of Elijah.

No, I cannot raise the dead, but I can ask God to do some things that is just as great as raising the dead. I have seen God raise some that are spiritually dead. That is the greatest thing anyway. If He raises you physically, you are going to have to die again. I am glad that when He raised me spiritually, He gave me eternal life and I will never die again. Glory to His Name.

If you are not alive, you need to tap into the source of life and that is Jesus Christ. It is not the Baptist church; most of them are deader than a hammer. I don’t make any apologies saying that because that is truth. Most of the preachers that are Baptist are deader than a hammer. Not all of them but a lot of them are. We cannot impart to your life, but Jesus Christ can. I can pray and ask God to impart your life. He has done that to a lot of us.

The boy is raised from the dead. Down in the last verse of that chapter (17):

24 And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth.

Isn’t that great! Isn’t that great that he had to spend some time down by the brook? Isn’t it great that he had to spend some time up in this part of the world up here with the widow woman? Isn’t it great? We don’t ever know what life is going to bring. As I talked this morning, I mean this sincerely, if we are not willing to do some things that are very insignificant then we will never be able to do anything that is significant. If we are not willing to humble ourselves and allow God to take us down by the brook and teach us some things for a year or two then we will never get to Mount Carmel where we can pray till the fire comes down. I want to get there. Do you?

We don’t like the Word being taught a lot of times—I know that some of do—but to get to be a leader then we have to be able to listen to instruction. That is good for all of us. If you will never listen to instruction then you will never be a leader. If you never follow a leader, then you never will be a leader.

Someone mentioned Moses a while ago, and he is the greatest example of that. Moses spent 40 years in Egypt and learned all the wisdom of Egypt that was there. Then one day he left but he spent 40 years on the back side of the desert and he was in training while he was there. God was teaching him some things while he was there. He was gong to bring Moses back to Egypt and not only that but he was gong to lead the children of Israel for 40 years. Forty years of training for forty years of service.

If pastors, Sunday workers, teachers, deacons, preachers would spend as much time reading, studying, praying and seeking the face of God for what we teach as we watch TV—you talk about some giants, we would have some. If people sitting in the pews would do the same thing, I wouldn’t need near as many pacifiers if people sitting in the seats a third of the time or a tenth of the time that they do watching TV and playing video games or reading the newspaper. There is nothing wrong with all that but there needs to be a balance there.

Here he is—he has left the brook and he has come to Zarephath, he has spent some time there. Three years have passed from the time he went to the brook until the time he raised widow’s son from the dead, three years passes.

The Bible says in chapter 18:

1 And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.

Now it has not rained for almost three years and six months, when you what James says in James 5. In the beginning he told Ahab that it was not going to rain for three years. That tells me that it probably had not rained for six months prior to the time that he had told him that it was not gong to rain for three years—to make the three years and six months work out, it had to be that way. The Lord says, you go and show yourself unto Ahab and I will send rain upon the earth. As I said earlier Elijah knew that Ahab had the ability and could do whatever he wanted to because he was the king. He had a very wicked wife. The Bible tells us that her name was Jezebel. When you read about Ahab and Jezebel they probably have never been two more wicked people that ever lived than what Ahab and Jezebel were. The Bible also says that the person of Ahab was someone that was real weak. He had allowed his wife Jezebel to introduce bring idolatrous worship into the land of Israel. Instead of Ahab standing up and saying that we are not going to do that, we are going to worship Jehovah God; he allowed his wife to bring in the idolatrous worship of Baal. They built temples all over that country unto the worship Baal.

We need husbands and wives that will stand together for the God of heaven. We need men and women today that will understand the most important thing in our lives is binding our hearts together in the love of Almighty God and standing for Him. When we will do that then things will do much better. If I would have had a wife like Jezebel was I would have got rid of her a long time ago. I don’t care how pretty she may have been. I don’t care what kind of pie she might have been able to bake. She was teaching a whole nation to depart from the living God and they were dying in their sins. It is high time that we examine ourselves to see how that we are living.

The Bible says: the Lord told Elijah go show yourself unto Ahab because I am going to send the rain. We know that he starts looking around and he starts walking around. He runs into a fellow that his name is Obadiah. Obadiah was a man that feared the Lord greatly. Obadiah had a little problem with “I’. He had little problem with bragging on what he has done. He began to tell Elijah, don’t you know what I did. I have kept some prophets over here. I have been feeding them with bread and water.

That is what we do. We don’t have to get up and blow our own horn. When I do something because God has directed me to do it and you have done the same thing; let’s leave the blessing unto God. Let’s give the glory unto God. We don’t need to brag about what we have done or what we are going to do. If God is in it, let’s give Him the glory and move on.

The prophet says I need to see Ahab. You go tell Ahab I am going to see him today. After some discussion, Obadiah finally agrees to go and get Ahab and bring him to where Elijah was. It is quite remarkable when they saw each other, do you know what the first thing that Ahab said. When he looked and saw Elijah, he said you are the one that is causing all the problem. That is what Ahab told Elijah.

If you turn on the TV today and listen to the democrat and republicans, do you know what you will hear? You hear a whole lot the same. The Fundamental Christians; we are a big problem to these folks. The Evangelicals, the Fundamental Bible believing Christians; they want our vote. They will get on TV and they will talk about wanting us to vote for them, but most of these guys are wolves in sheep’s clothing. When you start looking at what they do and what they say,

The Bible says that the prophet looked at Ahab and said that I am not the one troubling Israel, but you and your family because of what you have done. You have departed from God, worshiped idols, and living in sin. You’re the one that is troubling Israel. You’re the one that brought the drought. You’re the one that brought the judgment; not me.

On down through there, Elijah says get them together. Get your prophets of Baal together. Baal was the rain god. He was the god of fertility. He wasn’t anything but a piece of stone. He was just a god that they had manufactured and they said this is a god of rain, a fertility god.

Elijah said bring them to Mount Carmel. Bring 450 of the prophets and come on up to Mount Carmel and we will just see who God really is. They come up there and Elijah tells the crowd, each one of us is going to choose a bullock today. You can even go first. Choose a bullock, and we are going to put it on the altar, we are going to prepare it, then get down and call upon our god and the god that answers by fire; let him be God.

These people didn’t have a whole lot of sense because if they have been praying to something that is dead; I know that it hadn’t answered them. I don’t know what they were thinking. That is what they did.

Elijah said you guys take your bullock and cut it up and go ahead, put it upon the altar. That’s what they did. The prophets of Baal were there. They cut the bullock up and they put it on the altar and they began pray, holler, scream, hoop and holler. Nothing happened because they were praying to somebody that does not exist. Somebody that doesn’t exist cannot do anything.

Many of the gods that we call on today can’t do anything either but there is One God that can do something. They screamed and hollered until about noon and Elijah began to mock them saying that he may be asleep, or he may be on a journey.

About three o’ clock in the afternoon Elijah said that’s enough. He rebuilt the altar. He took 12 stones representing each one of the twelve sons of Jacob, each one of the twelve tribes of Israel; each one has a stone. God is a God of unity. The Kingdom had been split with ten tribes to the north and ten to the south but God was still yet the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was still yet God.

He takes the stones. He builds and altar. He takes the bullock; he puts it on there with the wood. He pours twelve barrels of water on it and he begins to pray. He doesn’t pray a big elaborate prayer. He doesn’t have a lot of hallelujahs in it. He says Lord; I’m praying let these people know that you are really God. Let these people know that what I am doing, you have sent me and you have instructed me. Lord, let these people know that.

I thought about this many times, when Elijah prayed this prayer and God answered this prayer; I don’t know whether there was an explosion or not. I don’t know what happened, but I know that the altar was gone, the bullock was gone, the water was gone and the dust in the ditch was gone. I don’t know what happened, but I know it was gone. It was because the God of heaven; He is God. He proved on this day that He is God.

We know that God is going to send rain. I thought about where the prophet was at and where Mount Carmel was at. I don’t know for sure if they could see the Mediterranean Sea or not, but I have often thought that looking that way—and that’s the way that they looked, towards the Mediterranean Sea—the Bible says that’s where they went and Elijah prays and sent the servant out to look towards the sea to see what you see. He does this six times and nothing happens. He continues to pray and he continues to send a servant back, but on the seventh time do you know what happens? He says I see something out there like a cloud rising out of the sea like the hand of the man. Elijah knew that God was about to send rain.

Elijah goes back and tells Ahab, you had better get on your chariot and get to Jezreel because it is about to storm. The Bible says that Ahab gets on his chariot and they take off towards Jezreel, 17, 18, or 19 miles away. Here was an old man Elijah; I don’t know how old he was but he was well up in years. When you read the rest of the story do you know what happens? He gets to Jezreel before Ahab gets to Jezreel. When the power of God is upon someone you can do some things that you could never do. He out run horses and chariots to get there before Ahab did.

In this whole course of things, keep something in mind. He had to spend some time alone before he could show himself. We know that he did some great things. He had to learn obedience and he had to learn to trust God. When it came time to show himself, he was able to do that. When it come time to put up or shut up, he was able to do that.

We can do the same thing if we will just spend some time alone with God and allow Him to teach us some things. He built an altar, he prayed, the fire came down. God proved who He was. God told him to kill the 450 prophets of Baal. You kill every one of them.

It is great to build altars and we need to. It is great for the fire to come down and bless out lives. Sometimes I feel like I’m on fire. I know you do too.

We have to get rid of the wickedness if God is going to bless us, use us, or take us on a journey that we can’t go by ourselves; we have to get rid of that which is false and wicked.

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