Sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Lance Moore on Sunday, April
20, 2008
1st Kings 19:9-12: “There he [Elijah] went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too." The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.”
2nd Kings 2:5, 9: “The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha and asked him, "Do you know that the LORD is going to take your master from you today?" "Yes, I know," he replied, "but do not speak of it."
As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.”
~~~
In 1981, the movie, “Chariots of Fire,” won the Academy Award for Best Picture. But you may not know that the title is a phrase from an English hymn sung in the background near the beginning of the movie, and the hymn in turn took the phrase from the story of Elijah and Elisha. And you may remember how the movie “Chariots of Fire” tells the true story of Eric Liddell, a Scottish runner who placed God before an Olympic gold medal. But what you may not know is that Liddell later died on the mission field in China. Despite his many sacrifices, Eric Liddell had no regrets—he had lived a most exciting and victorious life because he knew that Jesus Christ conquered death! As we look back on the story of Elijah, we find a man with the same kind of courage as the Christian martyr, Eric Liddell, and we find a prophet who knew God first in a quiet whisper before he later met God on a chariot of fire.
The story starts with Elijah’s adversary, King Ahab. The Bible states that Ahab “did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him.” His wife was even worse. Jezebel had persuaded her husband, Ahab, to worship the devil [specifically, the pagan god, Baal, a demon whose name is etymologically related to the demon Beelzebub, also another name for Satan.] Ahab and Jezebel despised the prophet Elijah. His first prophecy was one of judgement and impending trouble: a drought and a great famine were on the way. Ahab tried to silence Elijah’s “doomsday” talk, so Elijah had to flee into the wilderness to hide. God miraculously sustained and rescued Elijah from his time in exile.
We are in the season of Eastertide. What has the life of Elijah got to do with Easter and Resurrection? Well, the events that followed were symbols, archetypes that foreshadowed the miracles of the Messiah, even the miracle of Resurrection. First, when God rescued Elijah from the desert, he was taken in by a poor but kindly widow. The widow did not even have enough food to feed her own family, much less this haggard prophet who emerged from the desert. So Elijah instructed her to make bread from a jar that would miraculously never become empty of flour.
Here we see a parallel or foretaste of the miracle when Jesus would feed the five thousand from a small basket of bread which never ran empty.
Next came an even greater miracle: when the widow’s son died, Elijah threw himself upon the boy three times, and he was resuscitated, brought back from the dead. Jesus would, of course, be resurrected after three days in a tomb. The number 3 is a key symbol for the resurrection and the Trinity... notice how many times it is found in the story of Elijah!
After three years, God sent Elijah back to Ahab, along with a promise that the drought would end. So he challenged the King to a duel, a kind of “show-down at the OK Corral” between all the evil priests of Baal, the demon-god, versus, Elijah, the priest and prophet of the true God. They constructed two altar-offerings on piles of wood, and the contest was to see whether Baal’s pile of wood could be ignited before God’s pile of wood could. It was something like that TV show “Survivor,” which is always trying to see which team can start a fire the quickest—without matches. So the followers of the demon Baal shouted and danced and carried on from morning till noon, but not a spark or a smolder emerged from their wood pile.
Elijah began to make fun of the devil worshipers.... saying sarcastically, “Shout louder! Surely [Baal] is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” (I Kings 18:27) I love that line about how their god might be traveling. Don’t ever think the Bible is devoid of humor! A modern equivalent would be to say, “Perhaps your god can’t help you right now because he is on vacation.” It is said that the Devil doesn’t mind being ignored, and takes delight in being called obscene names, but that he cannot stand to be mocked or laughed at! Elijah took pleasure in poking fun at the devil.
After many more hours of frantic efforts by the priests of Baal, they gave up, and it was Elijah’s turn. He took twelve stones, one for each of the Jewish tribes, gathered his people together and said, “Your name shall be Israel.” He then had them douse the wood pile with water—not once, not twice, but three times! Again: you will do well to read the book of “Kings” with some understanding of Hebrew numerology. The numbers three, seven, twelve and forty have important religious significance... Jesus chose twelve disciples, Jesus arose after three days, Jesus challenged Peter three times, Jesus said to forgive seven times seventy, spent 40 days in the wilderness, and so on. And these same significant holy numbers—3, 7, 12 and 40—surround Elijah and Elisha.
Anyway, Elijah prayed, and God brought fire down upon the altar, so hot it burned up not only the wood and the sacrifice, but also the water and even the stones! After the fire came a heavy rain, ending the drought. Next in the story is the number 7, one of those important holy numbers we mentioned. Seven is a Hebrew number for God, it stands for perfection and holiness. So we are not surprised to later learn that Elijah discovered seven thousand men who had remained faithful to God.
Mentioned next is the number twelve again: “So Elijah went from there and found Elisha... plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair.”
Elisha became a symbol of the 12 disciples who would later come to follow Jesus. Elisha even acts like one of the Twelve, unsure at times, even doubting a bit, seeking power and the mantle of blessing from Elijah just as the disciples would seek power and blessing from Jesus.
Centuries later, on the Mount of Transfiguration, when the glory and splendor of Jesus was first revealed to his disciples, it would be the figures of Moses and Elijah which they saw standing with Jesus. There is a strange connection or commonality shared by Moses, Elijah, Elisha and Jesus: ALL of them controlled water in a supernatural way. With God’s help, Moses held back the Red Sea, and in 2nd Kings 2, both Elijah and Elisha split the Jordan River on separate occasions. Remembering that Jesus calmed the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee, we begin to understand how each of the ancient prophets presaged, as archetypes, the coming of the Christ, the ultimate Messiah. God was preparing the way for Jesus, in subtle ways, through each of the great stories and characters of the Old Testament.
The prophet Malachi, in predicting the coming of a future Messiah, prophesied that a type of “Elijah” would come and prepare the way of the Christ (Malachi 4). In Matthew 11:14, Jesus explained that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of that prophecy. An angel had told Zechariah that his son, John the Baptist, would, quote, “...go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17) Jesus himself was called Elijah by some, but the truth is, Elijah and John the Baptist were both only signposts pointing to Jesus, the only one who is truly “the way, the truth and the life.”
And Elijah is, I believe, the only person in history who never died! With Elisha watching, a flaming horse and chariot came down from the sky and swooped up the aging prophet. Thus we find another parallel between Elijah and Jesus: they both “flew First Class.” Elijah was carried to heaven on a flaming chariot, and Jesus was carried to heaven on the clouds. Just before each miracle, Elijah had said to Elisha these words, three times, “I will not leave you,” (2nd Kings 2), just as Jesus on the eve of his death, “I will not leave you comfortless.” (John 14:18)
So the life, death and resurrection of Jesus was in many ways foretold by the life of Elijah. The rich symbolism of the prophet’s story was meant in part to prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Christ Jesus. But the most powerful prediction in Elijah’s story about the manner of the Messiah, the way that Christ would come, is found in today’s opening Scripture lesson: “Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.”
You see, as great as all the miracles Jesus performed were, as great as were his resurrection and heavenly ascension, the most important, awesome, surprising and yet reassuring action by God was not in those dramatics, but began in the quiet gentle whisper that went something like this: “Mary, Mary....” Mary was sleeping. It was an angel speaking gently to the young woman alone in her room. “Do not be afraid, Mary; God loves you dearly. You are going to be the mother of a son, and you will call him Jesus.… He will be great... holy, the Son of God... and his reign shall never end.” (from Luke 1, Phillips translation) The greatness of God finally came to us, as to Elijah, not in the earthquake, not the fire, but in a soft and quiet prophecy, and finally, in the still, small shape of a little child in a manger. And the message which came to Mary before the Messiah was born, and the message which came to the Shepherds after he was born, was the same: fear not.
And we have that same message in the epilogue to Elijah’s life. After Elijah rode off in his flaming chariot, the king of Syria embarked on a bitter war against Israel. But the king’s evil designs were continually frustrated by the Elijah’s disciple, Elisha. At last the king sent his army to the prophet’s own hilltop city in order to take Elisha captive. We read, “He sent thither horses and chariots and a great host; and they came by night and compassed the city about. This was the seen thing. And the servant of the prophet, whose eyes had not yet been opened to see the unseen things, was alarmed.… And his servant said unto [Elisha], ‘Alas, my master, what shall we do?’ But his master could see the unseen things, and he replied, ‘Fear not; for they are with us are more than they that are with them.’ And then he prayed, saying, ‘Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see.’ And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw: the mountain was [defended by a heavenly army] of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”
And thus the hymnist Clara Scott wrote, “Open my eyes, that I may see, Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me.”
As the world shakes beneath your feet... Whenever you feel outnumbered or surrounded by trouble... Open your eyes and see that your mountain is indeed surrounded by angels and chariots of fire. Remember that God is with us, Immanuel has not left us comfortless. Open your ears and hear the small, quiet whisper of God saying, “Fear not.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Foley, Alabama