"Like Passions"?

by Phil Johnson



"Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are."

et's take a minute and dissect that expression from James 5:17. In a series of posts on Elijah a couple of years ago, I cited that verse and noted that James was stressing Elijah's ordinariness. He wasn't anything superhuman. He was unexceptional. The modern versions mostly say: "He was a man with a nature like ours." That's the main idea.

But it's more than that. The Greek term is homoiopathes—literally, "like passions." And indeed, Elijah's human passions are prominent throughout his life story. If anything, Elijah wore his passions on his sleeve. His affections and his zeal are more pronounced and more clearly visible than most of us. Even his famous ups and downs were driven to the highest of heights and the lowest of lows by his passions. He was not only a man of passions—he was a man of strong passions.

But James's central point is simply that Elijah was "a man"—and he was every bit a man. The ruggedness of his masculinity is one of the most prominent and endearing features of his character. He was a man of strong passions—but don't get the idea he was always emoting. His passions weren't the sniveling or effeminate kind. He wasn't a wimp. His manliness is always as evident as his emotions, even at the emotional low point in his life. That came at the end of a long fast, during which he had run nearly the full length of the nation of Israel from north to south. That one episode of discouragement was also the exception to a life and ministry distinguished by remarkable courage and stamina.

Elijah was a guy's guy. He seems to have been a bit crude. For months he ate food that was brought to him by ravens—scavenger birds. I don't know many people who wouldn't cringe at such a diet. It suited Elijah just fine.

And listen to the Bible's physical description of Elijah from 2 Kings 1:8: "He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins." So his physical appearance was dominated by hair and leather. I wonder how people would look at him if he walked into the typical evangelical church today.

And in that episode where he lapsed into discouragement, Scripture says he slept under a juniper tree. The Hebrew word signifies a kind of broom plant that flourishes in desert climates. They are scratchy. They grow low to the ground. And they don't make enough shade to shield a grown man. Underneath one of them would make a spectacularly uncomfortable sleeping place.

But Elijah was that sort of crude, earthy character whom the Lord delights to use. I find this refreshing. Time and time again, both in Scripture and in church history, God employs men who smash the stereotypical notions of piety. John the Baptist was exactly like Elijah, living in the desert and eating bugs and honey for his meals. Christ's closest disciples were fishermen instead of sanctimonious Pharisees. Christ himself grew up in a carpenter's home rather than the more sheltered environment of a scribe or cultured clergyman. Again and again, God uses that which is uncultured, unsophisticated, and contemptible in the eyes of refined society. I don't know about you, but I find that wonderfully liberating and encouraging.

Think about it, and you'll realize that the Bible's standard of true holiness is about as far as you can get from the cloistered existence most people imagine when they think of a life of devotion to God. But what good is the kind of righteousness that can only be lived out in behind the walls of a monastery or convent? What good is any kind of piety that cannot survive in the real world?

I'll take the robust, manly faith of Elijah any day over the weak and effeminate attitude of the typical professional clergyman (or woman) who thinks he (or she) is being devout because (s)he pretends (s)he has attained a higher level of social refinement than (s)he really has.



Elijah was the kind of person who tends to offend the sensibilities of cultured clergypeople. He was a passionate, plain-spoken man of decisive action. He could be harsh and even viciously sarcastic, especially when he was defending the truth against its enemies. He wasn't known for diplomacy. He was no friend of the enemies of God. He had a clear-cut sense of right and wrong, truth and error, and he had little patience with anyone who might want to blur or obscure the line between them.

He was not a man who would fit in well among modern evangelicals. The biggest fear of most evangelical pastors today is that they might offend people. They are convinced they will never win the world unless they are as subtle and indirect as possible with the truth—especially those truths that go against the spirit of our age. They think the only way to attract people to the truth is by accommodating worldly appetites as much as possible—especially in matters of style and form. Political correctness is their standard of truth.

Elijah was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He was abut as non-subtle and non-compromising and politically incorrect as it is possible to be. His style would not be warmly welcomed in the typical 20th-Century clergyperson's convention.

But he had a faith that was well-suited for the real world. His passion for truth was stronger than his love of comfort. His convictions were so unshakable that he never wavered, even when he thought he was literally the last man alive who believed the truth. Most people are tempted to decide truth by majority vote. Most of us would probably be tempted to adjust our world-view if we thought the entire world had abandoned the faith and we were the last Christians left. But not Elijah. It's true that he begged to be allowed to die, but he never once entertained the thought of abandoning the faith or softening the truth just to make his life easier.

Elijah's culture was remarkably like ours. The parallels between his time and ours are striking. Elijah's life is a textbook example of what real faith looks like when it's unleashed in a hostile world. If your prototype for Christian piety has always been the quiet ascetic who sits with his hands folded, reading devotional material, it's time to adjust your thinking—especially since we live in a culture where passion and plainspokenness are commonly deemed inappropriate modes of communication when we're proclaiming the truth of Scripture to a hostile culture.

I think if you seriously contemplate the example of Elijah, you'll come away with a different perspective on what real passion for the truth looks like. And I hope you'll be persuaded to pray for a double portion of Elijah's spirit.

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Sufficient.

by Phil Johnson

Today, Lord willing, I will finish a project I have been working on for several months. (I can't wait to have the stress of it lifted from my shoulders.) This weekend will be extremely busy, and then Monday I am leaving for a week-long trip that will take me to Bradenton, Atlanta, and Durham. So I don't have a lot of time to write this morning. Hence this short bagatelle. If you want something meatier, be sure to listen to Dan's sermon (below).

ast year I did a lengthy series on the life of Elijah, including a study of his ministry to the widow of Zarephath.

While meditating on Luke 4:26 recently, I was thinking about that passage again, and it prompted an additional thought:

When Elijah arrived, that woman and her little boy were on the verge of starvation. She was gathering a few sticks for fuel for what she was convinced would be the last meal she and her son would have before they died. But God graciously provided for the needs of that widow, her son, and Elijah for many weeks after that—not by giving them an overflow of abundance, but by miraculously providing a new handful of flour and a small portion of oil each day, so that their supplies, while never in surplus, were always sufficient for their daily needs.

That is a perfect picture of how God normally dispenses His grace. He gives us sufficient grace without giving us a surplus of grace. "His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is [His] faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23). "He giveth more grace" (James 4:6)—but He dispenses His grace in accord with our present needs—often in handfuls and small measures, and rarely in superabundant portions. But the grace He gives is always sufficient.

Furthermore, sometimes, when God does want to lavish grace upon us in superabundant measure, the prelude to that is a dark and difficult turn of providence. Suffering is the pathway to glory. Hardship is the container into which God pours His grace. The larger the vessel, the greater the measure of grace.

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Pray without ceasing

by Frank Turk

While we're on the topic of doing things with our churches besides complain, we have a bevy of readers in Atlanta who are about to run out of water, and we have a significant contingent in SoCal who are getting smoked out like bees.

Take lunch today to pray for the city of Atlanta and for Southern California that God will have mercy, and that the rain will fall on both the just and the unjust.

As you were.

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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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There's No God like YHWH

by Frank Turk

My friend Phil ended his last post in the "Elijah" series by saying this:

It's always interesting (isn't it?) to look back on an episode like this and marvel at the wisdom and goodness of God, who can bring so much eternal good out of a moment of tragedy. But real faith is to be able to trust Him in the midst of the tragedy—before we see the final outcome—and rest in the assurance that He does all things well.

And so be it -- amen. I would agree with Phil, and add the encouragement of James the brother of Jesus that we should count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

It's true, and I have no qualms with that -- this is how true faith, saving faith, acts out. This is what it does.

But as we consider the contemporary church, there is a greater danger to faith which is manifest every single day on the blogosphere and in our culture which God also warns us about, and ironically, it's that we have it pretty good.

Just to change things up a little, in order to explain that, I'm going to use the Message (don't faint):

When God, your God, ushers you into the land he promised through your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you, you're going to walk into large, bustling cities you didn't build, well-furnished houses you didn't buy, come upon wells you didn't dig, vineyards and olive orchards you didn't plant. When you take it all in and settle down, pleased and content, make sure you don't forget how you got there—God brought you out of slavery in Egypt.[Deu 6:10-12]

This is from the part of Deuteronomy where God, Moses and Israel are having a sort of one-time event -- you have read me go on about it before, I am sure. Moses was on the mountain receiving the 10 commandments, and when he came down the people were afraid of him and of God because of what they saw going on up there. So they say to Moses, [this is a paraphrase] "Dude, don't make us go up the mountain to God, because we won't make it. If God wants to say something to us, you go find out what it is, and whatever it is, we'll do it."

And when Moses delivers that message to God, God is actually pleased with Israel -- He tells Moses, [again, paraphrase] "If they'd always think like that they'd stay out of trouble, because this is one time they have a right-minded fear of YHWH." And in that, God gives Moses the Sh'ma and what follows.

Listen: God doesn't ever miss a beat when it comes to knowing who we are and upon what we usually hang our hopes. Here He's telling Moses to tell Israel that it's pretty easy to remember that God loves you when He's a cloud of fire and lightning on the mountain who's delivering bread every morning and squab every night, and that's all you got. But think about His warning here: "you're going to walk into large, bustling cities you didn't build, well-furnished houses you didn't buy, come upon wells you didn't dig, vineyards and olive orchards you didn't plant. When you take it all in and settle down, pleased and content, make sure you don't forget how you got there". That is, when you need Me, you're pretty quick to treat me like I'm God, but when I give you all the blessings I want to give you, you're going to like the blessings more than you like Me.

I'm pretty sure that there's not another verse of the Bible more specifically useful to most American Christians than this one -- and it's not because this verse promises us prosperity.

It seems to me that this relates directly to why we are worried about becoming "too God-centered" when a bridge falls down. Haven't we forgotten who God is because we have it so good in the first place? We're spoiled, really -- we think (each one of us) that we're the king of the world and we should have a really sweet existence where the part of "me" is played by Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, and we each get to tell all the good jokes and hook-lines, and gas for our Sports Utility pleasure barge is free, and our jobs should not intrude outside of Monday thru Thursday 8-4 (well, Friday if you must) (and I need to catch up on my blogs before break [!] on Monday), and so on. We have a nation we didn't build, in cities we didn't toil for, and we get food we didn't plant, and we have homes that frankly pop up out of nowhere -- we didn't have to frame one wall or float any sheet rock.



We need to remember something before we start thinking about how God provides in the bad times: we need to remember -- we who are sitting in our homes reading this post via the internet -- how good God is to us almost all of the time.

I was in church on Sunday (weren't you?) listening to my Pastor close up week 20 of a 15-week series (seriously) on the core convictions of our faith, and we wound things up with the doctrine of the eternal state -- the doctrine of Heaven, and the doctrine of Hell. And as the Tad-meister was really swinging for the parking lot, I got a little stirred up and frankly I wept over the beauty of God's plan and the exquisitely-generous provision He has made for us in Christ -- and to be honest, the provision He has made for me, because I am certain it is a larger provision than average -- because my need is so much greater than average.

And my kids were sitting with me (weren't your's?), and they both put their arms around me when I was weeping.

After church, as we were driving home, my boy asked me, "Dad, why were you crying in church?" And we pulled the vehicle over so we could talk about why I was crying in church. It wasn't exactly like this, but here's mostly what I said:

The next time your child asks you, "What do these requirements and regulations and rules that God, our God, has commanded mean?" tell your child, "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God powerfully intervened and got us out of that country. We stood there and watched as God delivered miracle-signs, great wonders, and evil-visitations on Egypt, on Pharaoh and his household. He pulled us out of there so he could bring us here and give us the land he so solemnly promised to our ancestors."

That is, "Son, it's because God has done something for me which I did not deserve and which I couldn't do for myself. I deserved to be sent to hell, and instead God sent Jesus to take the punishment for me." We talked about Leviticus (which we are reading), and how only blood pays for sins, and how God didn't take my life, but took Jesus' life in my place -- canceling the record of debt that stood against me with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.

This is when it matters -- our theology and who we say we think God is. It matters when we are in the midst of plenty, and we still can see that what God has done is the most valuable thing, the most beautiful thing, and that it is worth proclaiming and telling-forth.

Here's the challenge, folks: if faith is built up under trial, how do we build up our own faith when we are full up to the chin with blessings which 98% of all people who will ever live never have? And what do we make of our faith when it is tested so infrequently?

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One last last look at Elijah in Zarephath

by Phil Johnson

ast week I promised to draw out some practical lessons and underscore a few other things to remember from Elijah's experiences in Zarephath. Here are some lessons that stood out to me as I read over that episode:

1. Providence is characterized by many unexpected twists and turns. This reminds us that God's ways are mysterious and beyond human scrutiny—so that all we can know for sure about God's sovereign dealings with us is that His purposes are always righteous.
        Often He intervenes in our lives in ways that don't instantly appear good to us. Elijah was a prophet, but even he did not see the death of the widow's son coming. When the boy died, Elijah was clearly as shocked and dismayed as anyone about it.
        Those are the times when we need to remind ourselves that God's thoughts higher than ours, and His ways are not like ours (Isaiah 55:8). But He is still working all things together for our good. His purposes and His strategies are better than the way we would do things. And He hasn't lost control—even if at the moment our whole world might seem to be in complete disarray.
   
2. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away—and we should praise Him in either case. This woman had benefitted from God's generous provision in the time of drought, but she had no right to interpret that as a guarantee that her life would be free from calamity from then on. God has as much right to afflict us as He does to bless us. And we should glorify Him in either case.
        In John 6:49, Jesus says, "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead." The manna was a temporal blessing to sustain life for a season. But the time came when those Israelites died anyway. All of them.
        The same is true of this woman and her son. God graciously kept their oil and flour from running out—but that didn't mean they would never die.
        God doesn't promise that all His dealings with us will always be pleasant and easy. On the contrary, He assures us that trials and afflictions will be our lot and our portion. But He promises grace to endure, and He commands us to trust that His purpose for us is ultimately good. We must learn to trust in the dark times as well as in the times of good fortune.
   
3. Temporal blessings are nothing compared to Spiritual blessings. Consider this: the time eventually came when that boy died again. He may have lived to adulthood. Tradition says he became a lifelong servant of Elijah. One ancient rabbinical tradition even held that he became the prophet we know as Jonah. (It's pretty hard to see how that's possible, because Jonah was Jewish, and this boy was the son of a Phoenician woman. Also, Jonah is identified as the son of Amittai [2 Kings 14:25; Jonah 1:1]; nothing suggests he was an orphan like this boy.)
        In any case, it is safe to assume that this boy died at the end of his life, just like everyone in Scripture except Enoch and Elijah. It is appointed unto men to die once (Hebrews 9:27). In this boy's case, he was appointed to die twice.
        And so the one enduring aspect of this miracle is seen in the faith of the widow. That was the greatest miracle of all—not that the boy was given his life back. (That was merely a temporal blessing.) But that a heart once dead to the things of God could be established in unshakable faith, with a rock-solid pre-modern conviction that the Word of God is absolute truth.
        That is the aspect of this miracle that bore eternal fruit. It was also vital to the real purpose of God when he brought this tragedy about in the first place.

It's always interesting (isn't it?) to look back on an episode like this and marvel at the wisdom and goodness of God, who can bring so much eternal good out of a moment of tragedy. But real faith is to be able to trust Him in the midst of the tragedy—before we see the final outcome—and rest in the assurance that He does all things well.

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Raising the Dead

by Phil Johnson

arlier in the week, we began observing a series of surprising plot-turns in 1 Kings 17:17-24. Elijah's presence in a widow's home had resulted in life-saving daily provisions for her. But then, unexpectedly, her little boy died. In response, she angrily and uncharacteristically lashed out at Elijah. In the process made a stunning confession of her own guilt.

Elijah's response is also surprising. Verse 19: "And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed."

Elijah was by nature a man of strong passion. He was on occasion a hot-tempered man. In 1 Kings 18, we read about Elijah taking vengeance against the wicked prophets of Baal by killing 850 of Jezebel's favorite Baal-priests. In 2 Kings 1, he calls down fire from heaven twice, and each time he destroyed a company of fifty men. Elijah had little patience with sinful unbelief. He was not generally known for gentleness when he responded to the taunts and challenges of unbelievers.

But his answer to this grieving widow's angry outburst was the very model of a soft answer that turns away wrath. He took no notice whatsoever of her insulting and unkind words. His entire reply to her is only two words in the Hebrew. "Give me your son."

And with that, he took the boy's corpse and retired to his room in the attic of the woman's house, where he would pour out his deepest passions alone before God.

We might have expected a fiery prophet like Elijah to answer the widow firmly and possibly harshly. But instead, his response was tender and compassionate and gentle.

Elijah's own grief in this situation is obviously profound. And in fact, his prayer to God is yet another surprise:

"And he cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again" (1 Kings 17:20-21).

The prayer is surprising for several reasons—most notably the boldness of Elijah's request. No one in the history of the world had ever before died, and then been resuscitated from the dead. This is the first incident in scripture where a dead person came back to life.

So it took an extraordinarily bold faith for Elijah to ask for such a thing. But I also want you to notice the surprising way he sought this miracle from God.

First, he did his praying entirely in private. He didn't exploit this incident for publicity. He didn't make any public display of raising the boy from the dead. Even after the miracle occurred, he didn't parade the boy in public as an example of his miracle powers. Instead, he went through this whole ordeal in the privacy of his own loft, which was the most private venue he knew.

In fact, Elijah seems to have deliberately prayed in complete solitude for this miracle. He didn't even invite the widow to join him in prayer. He took the matter to God alone. Remember, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." (James 5:16). It's not necessary to enlist everybody you know to pray in order to get answers to your prayers—as if God could be persuaded by popular opinion. Jesus expressly taught that being wordy or ostentatious will not help our prayers be heard. Neither will dragging private matters into a public venue. Matthew 6:6: "Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." That was exactly Elijah's approach in this situation.

What is even more remarkable here is the way Elijah took that dead child from his mother into his own heart. Remember that in Old Testament Israel, the bodies of the dead were ceremonially defiling. Because this was such a defiling thing, the law expressly prohibited priests from ever touching any dead bodies. Here's Leviticus 21:1-4:

And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them, There shall none be defiled for the dead among his people: But for his kin, that is near unto him, that is, for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother, And for his sister a virgin, that is nigh unto him, which hath had no husband; for her may he be defiled. But he shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people, to profane himself.

Even among non-priests, no one would normally touch a dead body except for the family members who were responsible to prepare the body for burial.

So by clasping this little boy's body to his heart, Elijah was breaking Jewish convention. But he was in effect accepting this widow and her son as his own family—even though the woman was a Gentile from a pagan background. He was bearing her burden. He was sharing in her grief. And the threat of ceremonial defilement would not deter him from this gesture of identification with that woman and her son.

So Elijah carried the lifeless boy up into his loft and laid him on his own bed. And there, it says, "He stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD." Here was total identification with the dead child.

A generation later, in similar circumstances, Elijah's successor, Elisha, had occasion to pray for the life of another little boy who died. Second Kings 4 describes that incident. And it says Elisha "went in . . . and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the LORD. And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child [became] warm."

That's the same picture we get of Elijah here—stretched out over the child, mouth to mouth, hands to hands, as if he himself wanted to breathe into the corpse the breath of life again, and as if the warmth of his body could be transferred back to the cold corpse and revive the boy.

And Elijah passionately besought God, "O LORD my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again."
May I point out what a perfect illustration this boy is of the plight of unbelievers? Scripture says they are dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). Here is the very picture of death. This boy was no longer capable of responding to any stimulus. Despite the intensity of his passions, regardless of how many times Elijah stretched out on him or tried to restore warmth to his cold body, that corpse had no ability whatsoever to respond. Only God could restore life to the dead boy. And until God did restore the soul to the body, all Elijah's techniques were utterly powerless to elicit a response.

That is precisely how it is with unbelievers. They are spiritually dead, and nothing but the sovereign work of God in their hearts can awaken them from that state. All our tender pleading and evangelistic appeals are fruitless unless God sovereignly regenerates that person. We were not born again in response to our faith. Rather, it was the regenerating work of God in our hearts that elicited the response of faith.

Someone will inevitably ask, "Then what's the point of evangelism? What's the point of pleading with the lost to believe? Why should we expend any effort at all witnessing to people who have no capacity to respond unless God first awakens them to faith?

You might as well ask why Elijah went through the motions of stretching himself out over this child. Could God have raised the child without Elijah's body heat? Of course. But these were the means through which God chose to work. He allowed Elijah to participate in the miracle. That does not diminish the fact that the regenerating work that took place was the work of God and God alone.

So it is with our salvation. God uses external means. He employs His word and the gospel message to reason with sinners, to plead with them, and to beseech them to be reconciled to God. But apart from a miracle of regeneration, not one sinner would ever respond to the gospel plea. Remember that when you're sharing the gospel, and be sure to do what Elijah did here: take the case to God, and ask Him to work that miracle of regeneration and open the unbeliever's heart to receive the truth. Otherwise you are merely pleading with a spiritual corpse.

Elijah's prayer of faith was answered. Here's the final surprise in this chapter:

And the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother: and Elijah said, See, thy son liveth. 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 (vv. 22-24).

The child comes back to life. I'll confess to you that if I had been standing there watching this scene, I would have been thinking it was utterly hopeless.

After all, why did God allow the boy to die in the first place, if His purpose was only to bring him to life again?

And by the way, for any skeptics inclined to think this was merely a near-death experience, and Elijah raised the boy with a kind of rudimentary CPR treatment, the language of Scripture is clear. The boy was dead. His soul had departed from his body.

Remember, this was the first-ever case of anyone returning from the dead. Yet Elijah's faith staggered not at the magnitude of the miracle he was seeking from God.

He knew God to be gracious, compassionate, and righteous. And so he pleaded with God on the basis of those attributes. He could not fathom that it would be God's ultimate purpose to kill this widow's only son after she had shown hospitality to God's prophet. So he was emboldened to pray that God would return the boy's life.

God granted the miracle.

Notice the woman's testimony: "Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth."

Whether she was a genuine believer prior to this incident is not clear. Some commentators say no; others say yes. It may be that she had already come to saving faith, but her faith was weak and immature. Or this may be the first genuine expression of genuine faith in her heart. Either way, this miracle had the effect of strengthening her faith and deepening her assurance.

So what began as a dark providence and a painful tragedy ends with this woman glorifying God and celebrating His bountiful goodness.

And I especially like Elijah's response. He just hands her the boy and says, "Look. Your son is alive." Always a man of few words. But you can bet that inside, he was as deliriously happy and as grateful as the widow.

Next week, I'll post a series of short practical applications drawn from this passage.

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A Story Full of Surprises

by Phil Johnson

couple of weeks ago, we left Elijah in Zarephath, living incognito in a widow's attic, with the wrath of Ahab on his head and all Israel searching for him at Ahab's command. God was sustaining Elijah through the widow's hospitality, and He was providing their food in very meager amounts, a day at a time by miraculous means: "The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry" (1 Kings 17:16).

Then suddenly, a surprising and tragic thing brought unimaginable sorrow to that little household: "It came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him" (1 Kings 17:17).

Apparently this was a very sudden and very serious illness that fell on the child and quickly proved fatal. He fell sick, and evidently before this woman even had time to summon Elijah's assistance or prayers, the little boy was dead. "There was no breath left in him."

Elijah had probably been living in this widow's home for many weeks or month when this incident happened. It's quite obvious from the text that some time had elapsed since Elijah had sought shelter here, because the phrase "after these things" in verse 17 suggests the passage of time. In the NIV, it's translated "some time later," and that is the true sense of it. An undisclosed amount of time passed, and the fact that the passage of time is mentioned at all suggests it was certainly something more than a day or two—and probably more than just a few weeks.

In other words, this woman and her son had tasted the Lord's goodness for a long enough period of time that she knew it was Jehovah, the God of Elijah, who was sustaining them. She seems to have had a rudimentary kind of faith at this point. Scripture doesn't say whether she was genuinely converted yet or not, but at least on an intellectual level, she knew Elijah's God had graciously spared hers and her son's life.

Remember that when she met Elijah, she had essentially given up her son for dead. She was resigned to the fact that she and the boy were going to die from starvation. She was already emotionally spent and yet still grieving over what she knew lay ahead.

But Elijah's coming had changed all that. The threat of starvation was over. By God's miraculous provision, her supplies had never run out, and Elijah assured her that the drought itself would end before God's faithful, daily provision dried up. She had her son back, as it were, from the dead. If anything, that little boy's life became even more precious to her than ever, because of the knowledge that he had come so close to starvation.

And I think it is safe to speculate that she was rejoicing, and glad for the Lord's goodness to her, and grateful for Elijah's coming to her household. Perhaps she had reached the point where she had even gotten over the emotional trauma of their close brush with starvation. God was now meeting their daily needs, and she was no doubt learning about God and his goodness from this prophet who had sought shelter under her roof. And for once in her life, she had every reason to feel blessed and fortunate and happy.

And then suddenly, inexplicably, the little boy succumbed to a sudden sickness and died in her arms. It was probably (by then) the last thing she expected. That only multiplied her pain and sorrow. From a human standpoint this was an immense tragedy, striking at the worst possible time, just when the woman's fragile faith was desperately in need of strengthening. It must have seemed impossible to make sense of at the moment, and from where the poor woman stood, there was simply no way to see how God might ever wring any good out of such a dark turn of providence.

Her reaction reflects all those emotions in a few words: "She said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?"

There's a flash of temper contained in those words that is totally uncharacteristic of everything we know about this woman. When Elijah first met her, she had far more reason to scorn him this way. She was on the very brink of starvation, preparing to make one last morsel for her son before her supplies were totally gone, and Elijah came along asking her for food and water. You'd think that if she had a hot temper, it would have expressed itself there.

Yet at that point, despite the fact that Elijah was virtually asking her to take food from her starving child to give to him, she complied with his request meekly and quietly.

But now, having had her hopes restored for the little boy's life, only to watch him die with this sudden affliction, she could not contain the outpouring of passion that welled up in her.

Her words sound like an accusation against Elijah. "What do I have to do with you, O man of God?" It's an expression of contempt, revulsion, and disdain. She was looking for someone to blame for the calamity that had befallen her son, and Elijah happened to be there. "Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to kill my son?"

There is an almost irrational mixture of faith and unbelief, humility and rebellion in her words. She refers to Elijah as a "man of God," but then she shows contempt for him. She more or less acknowledges a sense of her own sinfulness, but her words to Elijah are laden with blame and devoid of remorse.

It is interesting that she suggested the reason for this calamity was to bring her sin to remembrance. She said that with a tone of resentment. But it is a fact that God sometimes afflicts us to bring certain sins to remembrance so that we may properly and adequately repent of them. Hebrews 12:10-11: He chastens us "for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

Suffering and affliction have a way of awakening the conscience like nothing else. But we need to realize that it is God's mercy to afflict us this way. Otherwise our consciences would be seared and we become so hardened by sin we would fall away completely.

This affliction seems to have called to mind a specific sin that this woman had buried in her past. We're given no clue about the nature of that sin, but it loomed large in her heart as she tried to come to grips with why she was being made to suffer so painfully.

And it's interesting that she didn't think the way many people think when they suffer severe misfortune. She didn't insist that she didn't deserve such harsh adversity. She didn't say, "Why me?" And she didn't protest that it was unjust for her to suffer. She seemed to be confessing freely that she was sinful and completely deserving of God's wrath. She was just resentful of Elijah for living in her house so that God would focus his wrath so personally on her.

But it is worth noting that in blaming Elijah, she did not seek to exonerate herself from the guilt and responsibility of her own sin. In that, she's a good model for us all.

We'll leave it there for today and pick up this account at that same point sometime later in the week, Lord willing. But get ready: there are more surprises yet to come.

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"Something in Her"? I Think Not.

od was sovereign in His choice of the widow of Zarephath to host Elijah. Jesus made that point emphatically at the beginning of His public ministry, in His own home synagogue in Nazareth. Luke 4:24-26:

Verily, I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.

Think about this: God could have sent Elijah to any number of widows in Jerusalem, but he bypassed them all and chose this foreign widow instead.

God's sovereignty over the human heart is a theme that runs through 1 Kings 17. He chose this woman to show grace to. He moved her to respond. The Lord Himself makes this idea explicit. In verse 9, He tells Elijah: "Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee." It was God who moved her heart to extend hospitality to Elijah, despite her own extremity. It was God who opened her heart to have enough faith to make him a small cake before she prepared her final handful of meal for herself and her son.

In other words, her kindness to Elijah was not the reason she was shown grace. Rather, it is proof that God's sovereign grace was at work in her heart.

One famous commentator says this:

There must have been something in her which could not be found in the many widows of Israel (Luke 4:25, 26). It was for no arbitrary reason that God passed them over, and went so far afield. She must have possessed qualities of character, germs of better things, sparks of heroism and faith, which distinguished her from all her sorrowing sisterhood, and made her the befitting hostess of the prophet, and the glad sharer with him in his Father's bounty. [F.B. Meyer, p. 31].

But that entirely misses the point. In fact, it misses the most basic truth Scripture teaches us about the grace of God. There was nothing in this woman's character that made her more deserving of God's grace than anyone else. Grace, by definition, is something that is entirely undeserved.

The reason this widow was shown a special mercy simply cannot be explained by "something in her." It was entirely owing to the sovereign will of God, who has mercy on whomever He chooses. She was sovereignly singled out by God to be a living object lesson of the truth that God would pour out His mercy on the Gentiles. Israel would fall because of unbelief, and God would therefore show grace to the Gentiles. Jesus used this incident to illustrate that point when the people in his own home town turned against Him.

So the point is not that this woman had hidden virtues that somehow merited God's favor more than any of the widows in Israel. The point is that God's grace cannot be taken for granted. He bestows His grace on whomever He chooses, and when it pleases Him, he may bypass all the widows in Israel in order to show mercy on a pagan widow.

So don't squander the grace He shows you. Don't harden your heart when you hear His voice. Don't take His grace for granted.

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Same Lesson, Reinforced

So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, "Please bring me a little water in a cup, that I may drink" (1 Kings 17:10).

y God's providence, just as Elijah arrived at Zarephath, this poor woman was going out to perform the sad task of collecting sticks for fuel to make what she was convinced would be her last meal. The same providence that led Elijah to Zarephath moved the widow to be out gathering sticks for her last meal. So she was the first person he saw. God's sovereignty is written all over this passage.

Notice also that even though this woman was in a hopeless situation, her despair had not yet caused her to lie down and give up. She remained occupied and busy, gathering fuel even for one last meal. A lot of people would have given up to depression and dejection and simply lay down to die. But this woman would continue to cook for her son until she had nothing left to cook. And it was her devotion to that duty that brought her across Elijah's path, and into the pathway of God's blessing.

Try to imagine the heaviness of her heart, as she gathered sticks with the full expectation that she would soon see the grim spectacle of her little boy starving to death. Assuming she had enough strength left, she was probably weeping while she gathered those sticks. Her countenance was somber. Her energy was almost gone.

And yet notice how Elijah approaches her. He asks for water. What a bold thing to ask!

And yet she immediately complied with his request. So when she turns to get the water, he adds a request for some bread. Only then did she tell him of her desperate situation.

Elijah's response at first might seem a bit calloused and presumptuous, but look again and you will realize that everything he told this woman was meant to encourage faith in her. "Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain upon the earth."

Elijah didn't ask for all of her final measure of flour—only enough to make a very small cake—a token that would demonstrate a spark of faith in her. And God graciously moved her heart to obey. "She went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah" (vv. 15-16).

In other words, there was a daily miracle of multiplication, exactly like the miracle Christ performed on a larger scale when He fed the five thousand. Each day the oil and meal were multiplied, so that they never ran dry.

Incidentally, this woman reminds me of another poor widow in Scripture: "[Jesus] looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, 'Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had'" (Luke 21:1-4). Little is much, when God is in it.

Why did God multiply the flour a handful at a time, rather than giving them a bushel at once? Why not fill the cruse of oil to the brim, rather than merely keeping the last bit from running dry?

You know why: It's the same reason God parked Elijah beside a drying brook, rather than giving him a spring-fed reservoir. This was one more object lesson about the sufficiency of divine grace. James 4:6 says "he giveth more grace." But he gives it when needed, and not ahead of time. That is the very lesson Jesus was teaching in Matthew 6:34, where He says, "Take . . . no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." God gives grace that is sufficient for today's trials today. Tomorrow we can trust Him to provide sufficient grace for that day's troubles, too.

That's what the life of faith is supposed to be like. If you succumb to the temptation to worry, what you are really doing is borrowing tomorrow's troubles without access to tomorrow's grace. Each day's supply is sufficient for that day. And if we learn to live that way, we will discover that God's grace truly is sufficient.

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Why Did God Let that Brook Go Dry in the First Place?

by Phil Johnson

"Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you" (1 Kings 17:9).

hy did God send Elijah to the home of a Gentile widow?

There's much in these circumstances that is surprising and unexpected. In the first place, this woman was a Sidonian, a Gentile—not even a member of the covenant nation. In the second place, she was in dire straits herself. She was on the verge of starvation. When Elijah met her, she was preparing a meal with the expectation that this would be the last morsel of food she would ever taste before she and her little boy starved to death.

Now, in normal circumstances, it would have been quite wrong and unreasonable for Elijah to seek refuge in this woman's home. She was a widow living in poverty, on the very brink of starvation. She was more a candidate for Elijah's help than he was for hers. If the Word of the Lord had not expressly come to Elijah telling him to seek food and shelter from this woman, it would have been a violation of principles set forth in Old Testament law for him to show up at her doorstep demanding food.

Exodus 22:22-24 says, "You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any way, and they cry at all to Me, I will surely hear their cry; and My wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless."

Remember that most widows and orphans without means in that society were dependent on food they gleaned from other people's fields after harvest-time. There was no government-sponsored welfare in Sidon. Under normal circumstances, it would have been considered heartless and merciless for a foreign beggar to seek food and shelter from a widow—especially a woman facing such formidable needs in her own household.

But I'm convinced Elijah knew God's design was to show this woman mercy as well as him.

When we understand this, lots of things that were mysterious suddenly make sense. Here is why God uprooted Elijah from his safe haven by the brook and directed him into the heart of enemy territory in the midst of such famine: It was God's sovereign purpose to show grace and mercy to this one widow and her son (Luke 4:25-26).

In other words, when Elijah's provision at Cherith dried up, that did not signify that God's grace had dried up. Rather, it meant God was ready to multiply His grace for the sake of this woman and her son. Elijah's want led to the supply of their need.

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The Sufficiency of God's Grace

by Phil Johnson

lijah's experience illustrates how God can give abundant grace without necessarily bestowing abundant wealth. Sometimes He chooses to show grace through the most extreme kind of poverty. And that is why when Elijah's brook dried up, God moved Elijah to a widow's home in Zarephath, where by most standards, things were even worse for him. He was living in a hostile, pagan land; he was utterly dependent on the hospitality of one poverty-stricken widow; and there were never enough provisions on hand for more than one meal. At Cherith he at least had regular delivery of food by the ravens—here it was just the paltry remnants of a poor widow's dwindling supply of oil and flour.

The very name of the town, Zarephath, gives a hint about what kind of experience this was for Elijah. "Zarephath" means "smelting furnace" or "cauldron"—the place where precious metal is heated to a white-hot temperature in order to remove impurities. This was part of the painful sanctifying process that would make Elijah fit for his future days of ministry.

To the human eye, it seemed things were getting worse for him, not better. But God gives sufficient grace, just enough to keep us dependent on Him. And the grace that keeps us trusting on a daily basis is a greater grace than an outpouring of material things that might make us forget how dependent we are on God's provision. As we noted in one of those previous posts about Elijah, that's why our Lord teaches us to trust Him for daily bread—not for a surplus of comforts and commodities.

Proverbs 30:8-9 says, "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain."

Don't ever get the idea that wealth and material prosperity are signs of the Lord's blessing. The truth is sometimes just the opposite.

Addenda: Thanks to Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost for the honor (we think) of being listed in his top ten blogs. Pecadillo tells me he thinks the cat theme isn't working. He wants all cats banned permanently from the blog. (He's been telling me this for days. It's a mantra I've heard so often, I've given it a name: "The Prayer of Jpeg.") Pecadillo's already got Wrigley on his side. I'm ambivalent. We've got a LOT more cat images already in the pipeline. But I'll get rid of them all without compunction if a majority of Pyro Regulars share Pecadillo's strong distaste for the feline imagery. I was going to post something on Postmodernism and the Emerging Church today. But after the past week's run of posts, I figured the blog could use something that would generate less heat and fewer comments. So I'll post the bit about the Emerging Furore on Monday or thereabouts. Meanwhile, let me remind our Emerging lurkers: While postmodernism's rejection of certainty may be true for you, it isn't true for everyone.

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The Security of God's Will

by Phil Johnson

n Monday we looked in on Elijah beside Cherith as the brook slowly went dry. It is a tribute to Elijah's faith that he stayed and waited for the Lord's instructions until that stream was completely dried up. The stream turned to a trickle, and the trickle turned to little puddles, and the puddles turned to mud. Finally, "the brook dried up" (1 Kings 17:7). Verse 8 says, "then the word of the LORD came unto him."

Most of us would have begun to make alternative plans of our own about the time the stream showed signs of drying up. Obedience to the Lord might be our "Plan A," but the minute "Plan A" starts to get difficult, we start thinking about "Plan B." Not Elijah. I mentioned on Monday that Elijah obeyed the Lord one step at a time, even when all he could see was danger ahead, and he did not know what God would call him to do next. He was walking completely by faith, and he did not take one presumptuous step on his own.

When the Word of the Lord did finally come to him (v. 8), these were the instructions: "Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there." Zarephath was a town on the coast near Sidon, which was the home town of Jezebel herself. And in order to get there, Elijah's route would take him directly through the valley of Jezreel—where Jezebel and Ahab's palace was. He was walking right into the lion's den.

The carnal mind might observe Elijah's circumstances and conclude that the will of God is not a very secure place to be. What Elijah knew is that the will of God is the only secure place. He saw that by faith.

God had appointed a widow to care for Elijah in Zarephath, and therefore He would see him safely through the valley of Jezreel on his way there. Although that journey would take Elijah through the valley of death, he would fear no evil, because God was with him. In fact what looked like the valley of death was actually a corridor of safety for Elijah, because God was the one directing his steps.

That lesson is incredibly hard for most of us to learn. Second Corinthians 5:7: "we walk by faith, not by sight." Our natural tendency is to seek our security in things we can see. So walking by faith never feels very secure. We're tempted to abandon the walk of faith and seek our security in tangible things. But the truth is that real security is found only in the grace of God. And those who walk by faith are the only ones who have any kind of true security.

Contrast Ahab with Elijah in these circumstances. Ahab felt secure in his palace. He had servants to bring him food and water, even in the worst of the drought. He had bounty-hunters scouring the land for Elijah, whom he was determined to destroy. In earthly terms, it looked like Ahab was the secure one and Elijah was the one in serious jeopardy.



But the truth is that God's grace and favor rested on Elijah, and therefore there was nothing Ahab could ultimately do against him. In the words of Isaiah 54:17, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD."

Meanwhile, God was determined to destroy Ahab, and therefore nothing could ultimately save him. God's patience is measureless, but His justice is ultimately sure, and Ahab, who loved wickedness and set himself against the Lord, would finally reap what he sowed.

Nothing in the world could shield him against that inevitability. Whatever security he enjoyed because of his wealth and political power was only a false security, because "Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain" (Psalm 127:1).

No earthly fortress can ever provide a security equal to the security of divine grace.

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