Life and Lessons of Elijah (eBook)
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EPUB
2021
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1. Auflage
152 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9055-6 (ISBN)
152 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9055-6 (ISBN)
The stories of the life of the great prophet Elijah, as found in the Bible, come to life in this book and help us to understand and apply the life lessons that these stories teach us.
The stories of the life of the great prophet Elijah, as found in the Bible, come to life in this book and help us to understand and apply the life lessons that these stories teach us. Each chapter contains a different story, showing the humanity of Elijah through his fears, struggles, and accomplishments, and revealing the work of God in Elijah's life and the nation he leads as a prophet.
The stories of the life of the great prophet Elijah, as found in the Bible, come to life in this book and help us to understand and apply the life lessons that these stories teach us. Each chapter contains a different story, showing the humanity of Elijah through his fears, struggles, and accomplishments, and revealing the work of God in Elijah's life and the nation he leads as a prophet.
Chapter 1
Elijah, Ahab, and Jezebel
The life and lessons of Elijah are some of the most favorite and well-known stories in the Bible. These are stories of Elijah standing up to powerful kings, taking on false prophets, bringing about a three and one half-year drought, eluding a nation-wide arrest warrant, and raising a boy from the dead, just to name a few. Elijah was, perhaps, the most powerful man alive during his time. Yet, he was very human. He experienced fear, loneliness, depression, and even anger towards God.
It is good for us to see both these sides of Elijah. We need to know that he was not some sort of “Superman” that we can never be. He was, rather, very regular in his humanity, just like we are. In fact, the New Testament speaks of Elijah in this way. James, in the book that bears his name, writes, “Elijah was a human being, even as we are” (5:17a). Yet what made him powerful was his very deep relationship with God, his devoted willingness to do what God directed him to do, no matter what the cost was to him personally, and his amazing trust in God to lead, protect, and provide for him throughout his life. Elijah’s prayers were answered because Elijah’s heart was given over to God – to God’s words, will, and ways, rather than his own. This is why James continues in 5:17b-18,
He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
This was the kind of man Elijah was: a regular guy devoted to an amazing and powerful God.
So it is that we will look at the life of Elijah and draw out the lessons that his life can have for ours. And to do that effectively, we need to spend some time on the background, history, culture, and main players in the life of Elijah.
BACKGROUND
Elijah came upon the scene in the northern kingdom of Israel during the time when Ahab was King, somewhere around 870 B.C. The nation of Israel had become divided into northern and southern kingdoms approximately sixty years earlier. The northern kingdom came about after the death of King Solomon in 931 B.C. Solomon was king over all of the twelve tribes of the nation Israel which his father David had united. But Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, upon taking the throne, proved to be a rather poor leader. Rather than listen to the advice of his father Solomon’s counsellors, he took the advice of his own unwise friends which resulted in taking action that caused ten of the twelve tribes of Israel to rebel against his authority (1 Kings 12). The result was that ten tribes of Israel set up their own king (Jeroboam I), proclaiming their separation from Rehoboam and the two tribes that remained with him. The two tribes that stayed with Rehoboam were Judah and Benjamin which lived in the southern part of the nation Israel, while the ten tribes under the leadership of King Jeroboam I were all the tribes that lived north of the tribe of Judah: hence the northern and southern kingdoms.
What is important to our observations regarding the life of Elijah is that the divided kingdoms took very different paths when it came to following God. The southern kingdom, generally, tried to stay true to following and obeying God. But the northern kingdom was not so committed to following God. In fact, the northern kingdom, led by King Jeroboam I, set up their own places of worship with their accompanying idols for the purpose of keeping the people from travelling to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom and worshipping at the temple (1 Kings 12:25-33). After a while, the northern kingdom, for the most part, lost their relationship with God in trade for false gods and idols. In fact, only seven thousand people in the northern kingdom had stayed faithful to Jehovah: less than 1% of the population (1 Kings 19:18). By the time Elijah came on the scene, Baal worship was fully entrenched in the religious fabric of society. Elijah was on a long hard journey to revive their relationship to the true God, Jehovah.
HISTORY
It is interesting and important to note that the northern kingdom of Israel never once had a king that sought to know and follow God. In fact, up to the point of Elijah’s arrival, the Bible records that every one of the northern kings “did evil in the eyes of the LORD” (1 Kings 15:26, 34; 16:25, 30). The southern kingdom however, during the same period of time, had two kings who did evil in the eyes of the LORD, Rehoboam and his son Abijah, but one king, Asa, who did what was right in the eyes of the LORD (1 Kings 15:11). Asa ruled the southern kingdom for forty-one years and was in power when Ahab became king of the north. It is also very important to note that the Bible tells us in 1 Kings 16:30 that,
Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him.
Of the six evil kings before Ahab, including Jeroboam I, who turned Israel away from the true God, Ahab was the most evil of the kings. Ahab certainly wasn’t doing anything to help Israel come back to a relationship with the true and living God. It is correct to say that the northern kingdom was not following God, nor being encouraged in any way to follow God by any of the kings that were leading them. The kings of Israel were evil and wicked.
NORTHERN KINGS UP TO AHAB
| KING | REIGN | CHARACTER | FAMILY |
| Jeroboam I | 22 years | evil | - |
| Nadab | 2 years | evil | Son of Jeroboam |
| Bashaa | 24 years | evil | New family |
| Elah | 2 years | evil | Son of Baasha |
| Zimri | 7 days | evil | New family |
| Omri | 12 years | evil | New family |
| Ahab | 22 years | evil | Son of Omri |
CULTURE
The northern kingdom of Israel from its very beginnings moved away from God and continued to move farther away as each king took over. The kings were wicked, and so was the culture of leadership itself. Jeroboam was the seventh king of a very chaotic northern kingdom. A kingdom which began as a rebellion continued in the culture of rebellion. The northern kingdom had a chaotic and murderous history of leadership succession. Whereas the southern kingdom, or Judah, followed the succession of kings down through the one family line of David, the northern kingdom’s succession of kings was one of power and treachery, chaos and murder.
As the chart illustrates, Jeroboam’s son Nadab succeeded to the throne from his father, but the next king to reign, Bashaa became king by assassinating Nadab and killing all the rest of Nadab’s family (1 Kings 15:27-34). Bashaa’s son, Elah, succeeded to the throne but was then assassinated after only two years of reign by Zimri who was one of Elah’s officials. Zimri then killed off Elah’s family and began to reign. But Zimri himself only lasted seven days! When the army heard of Zimri’s treachery against Elah, they proclaimed Omri as king. Omri was the commander of the army and had the force of the army in support of him. Upon hearing that the army had proclaimed Omri as king, Zimri then set the palace on fire and died in the fire (1 Kings 16:18). Before Omri could take the throne, however, a strong faction of people supported Tibni for king over Omri. As a result, a type of civil war took place wherein Omri and his forces prevailed against Tibni and his forces. Tibni was killed, and Omri took over as the sole claimant to the throne of Israel. He reigned for twelve years, giving some stability to the nation and rebuilding the palace in the capital city of Samaria. Ahab, Omni’s son, then ascended to the throne to reign for the next twenty-two years. Clearly, the northern kingdom was not a stable kingdom.
But it wasn’t only the leadership succession that was in chaos; so too was the religious system, which can best be described as a religion of rebellion. King Jeroboam I rebelled against King Rehoboam and rebelled against God and the religious system that He had set up for the nation. According to 1 Kings 12, Jeroboam set up two golden calves, one in Dan, and one in Bethel (the top and bottom of the northern kingdom). These places of worship were designed to replace going to Jerusalem to worship God at Solomon’s temple. Further, Jeroboam appointed his own priests to replace the Levites who were God’s appointed priests for the nation. Jeroboam even went as far as replacing the Passover festival with his own festival which he appointed to take place in Bethel (1 Kings 12:31-33). So, the Israelites began their descent into idol worship sixty years before Elijah arrived. Their very first king began the process of taking the people away from God, and each successive king did his part to walk them even farther away, doing what was evil in the eyes of the LORD.
During all of this time of chaos, power struggles, war, and religious apostasy, the people of Israel continued to descend into moral and spiritual decay, having no...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 9.8.2021 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum |
| ISBN-10 | 1-0983-9055-5 / 1098390555 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-0983-9055-6 / 9781098390556 |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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