Why I Keep Coming Back to Elijah

by Phil Johnson

y fascination with Elijah goes back to my college years. My freshman year at Moody Bible Institute, Moody Press released a very thin but potent book by Howard Hendricks on Elijah, drawn from Hendricks's messages at Founders Week the year before. I loved Hendricks and loved his book.

Then a year or two after that, the Moody Church Choir did a performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah, and that blew me away. Believe it or not, Mendelssohn made me notice several things about Elijah I never thought about before. I became captivated with the prophet's life and ministry.

So I've decided to add several more posts to the series I already did about Elijah at Cherith and Zarephath. I think Elijah would have made a wonderful PyroManiac, by the way—and I'm not referring to the times he called fire out of heaven. I'm talking about his passion and his willingness to stand against religious fads.

But we'll get to that. This time, let's back up a little bit and take note of Elijah's first appearance on the pages of the Old Testament text.

He just shows up suddenly in 1 Kings 17 without any prelude or introduction. He appears out of nowhere like Melchizedek, without any lineage, without any explanation of his background, and without any account of how he was called or what qualified him for the task he was given.

His appearance is as unexpected as it is abrupt. He arrives on the scene at a time when we might least expect to see a great prophet in Israel— during a time that was arguably Israel's worst apostasy ever.

It was as if the divine Author of Scripture deliberately wanted to surprise us with the appearance of this man. Without any warning or prologue whatsoever, Elijah stands dead center in the narrative, and dead center in Ahab's court, delivering an ultimatum. Matthew Henry says it is as if Elijah dropped from the sky like an angel. But he is no angel. He is every bit a man—and in some ways he might even seem like the most unlikely man for the task God gave him to do.

Elijah was both an ordinary and an extraordinary man. The apostle James stresses his ordinariness in James 5:17: "Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are." He was a first of all a fallen man, with the same sinful passions you and I struggle with daily. He was also a common man, without any unusual credentials or special status. And he was a zealous man, living in a decadent culture (with many similarities to our so-called postmodern culture), and hating the spiritual apathy, false religion, and outright contempt for the truth that so dominated that society.

In fact, I suppose one of the reasons I like Elijah is that he is so easy to identify with. His character flaws are not obscured or papered over in the biblical account of his life. (Scripture never does that. The Holy Spirit always paints people warts and all. Elijah is no exception.) We see him panicky, and angry, and frustrated with God. All of that makes his outstanding courage all the more remarkable. Elijah was a fallible human being, just like you and me.

He was ordinary in other ways, too. He had no special lineage. The fact that his genealogy is omitted in Scripture suggests that he was from an ordinary family rather than a prominent one. Everything we know about his heritage is recorded in verse 1 of 1 Kings 17:1: "And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead. . ."

That's all the genealogical information Scripture ever gives us about Elijah, and frankly, what it says is not all that informative. Commentators are not quite sure what the word "Tishbite" means. Most assume it means Elijah was born in a town called Tishbe, or something similar. But there is no reliable record of precisely where Elijah's hometown was. The word Tishbite appears only 6 times in all of Scripture, and always in connection with Elijah. It is found three times in 1 Kings and three times in 2 Kings. Other than Elijah, no one else in Scripture is ever identified as a Tishbite.

It is also commonly assumed that Tishbe was a small village somewhere near Gilead, on the east side of the Jordan, about halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. But no one really knows for sure. What is clear is that Elijah was a man of humble origins from a region of little significance and a town of no reputation. He was ordinary in every way.



But he did not remain ordinary. By God's transforming grace, Elijah became one of the most extraordinary men of the Old Testament. It is significant, I think, that of all the great men of God we meet in the Old Testament, only two make a personal appearance in the New Testament: Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:3). That's pretty elite company.

Elijah was the first and in most ways the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets. His life makes a remarkable contrast to virtually everyone else of his era. In one of the most dismal and stubbornly dark periods of Israel's history, when it really did seemed as if no one else was left still faithful to God, Elijah stands out like a shining beacon. He surpasses everyone else in his era for courage, power, and sheer love of the truth.

His successor was Elisha, on whom Elijah's mantle fell. Elisha prayed for a double portion of Elijah's spirit. And it may be significant that if you count the miracles recorded in Scripture, Elisha performed exactly twice as many miracles as Elijah.

But even that does not diminish Elijah's stature. We still remember him as the greater of the two, because he came out of nowhere to be the first in a long line of prophets, all of whom must have looked to him as their role model.

And at the end of his life, as if to signify how truly remarkable this man was, God took him alive to heaven in a flaming chariot. No one in all the Old Testament supersedes him in greatness. In fact, Elijah was so extraordinary that liberal commentators like to treat him as a mythical figure.

But—and this is James's point—there was nothing mythical about Elijah. He was a man subject to like passions as we are. In fact, we could use a whole lot more of his passion.

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