8/16/2015 Elijah-The First Prophet Like Moses Pastor Josh Sheldon

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8/16/2015 Elijah-The First Prophet Like Moses I Kings 17 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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9/20/2015 Elijah In Sidon – A Testament To God's Glory

9/20/2015 Elijah In Sidon – A Testament To God's Glory

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Well, we're in a series that we began last week on the prophets Elijah and Elisha.
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I'm sure you'll recall that we began last week with an introduction to the historical context in which these two prophets ministered.
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And then we were most concerned with the ascension of King Ahab. We sought from scripture to understand how it could be that such a wicked, such an evil, such a violent,
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God -hating, idol -loving man as he could come to rule the people who carried
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God's name. Today with God's blessing, I want to focus a little bit more on Elijah.
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And this sermon, I will tell you up front, is a bit of a review. We're going to take a look at a number of scriptures so we can understand the context in which
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Elijah came, what he fulfilled, what he pointed to. Joseph just read to you from Deuteronomy 18.
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And in there we had verse 15, the Lord your God will raise up for your prophet like me, meaning like Moses, from your midst, from your brethren, him you shall hear.
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The context of this is when you begin turning away. When the temptation to worship gods of the people around you, in this land of the peoples you're going to dispossess.
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When you cross over the Jordan and God gives you victory, gives you this land he had promised, you're going to need a prophet.
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Because you're going to turn away, as Moses tells them in other places of Deuteronomy.
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I will raise up for them a prophet like you, God is saying to Moses, from among the their brethren, and will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
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What does God do when his people turn away? He sends a prophet.
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What does God do when his people turn from him and go the wrong direction and worship other gods?
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Or no God at all? He sends his word to return them to him.
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Then, he sends the prophet. In the time of King Ahab and the others, he sent
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Elijah and his successor, Elisha. Very little is known about Elijah.
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Very little is known about him. There's no writings from him except for a letter that he wrote to a
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King Jehoram, that's recorded in 2 Chronicles 21 -12. Other than that, all we know is what was written about what he did.
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As we mentioned last week, he's a man of action. He did things, and that's how we know of him.
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Basically from the narrative of him. Comes from his actions, how God worked in him and through him.
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But his place in Scripture, his importance in the history of Israel, those aspects of God's plan of redemption that were revealed in him, at least give us a very fully orbed picture of the man
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Elijah. So who was this prophet who stood alone against Israel's ruthless king?
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Who defied his vicious wife Jezebel to the execution of her Baal -worshipping priests?
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Which Lord willing, we'll get to in just a few weeks. This prophet who directly challenged the
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God called Baal and his supposed sphere of influence which was nature. He's described to us only once in 2
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Kings 1 -8 as a hairy man wearing a leather belt around his waist.
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That's it. A hairy man with a leather belt around his waist. In our narrative, he just sort of drops in on us in 1
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Kings 17. He's sort of like the Melchizedek of prophets. We don't know who his father is.
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We don't know what school of prophets he came from. We'll see later that he founded a school of prophets.
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Think of his successor Elisha. We know so much more about him than we do Elijah. He was the son of a man named
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Shaphat. He was a farmer from a family of means enough to have 12 yoke of oxen.
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He had people. He had people. Presumably household servants, the ones who he fed with the oxen before he formally joined
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Elijah to become his servant. And with these very few facts on Elisha, we know mounds more about him than we do
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Elijah. But if we read the scriptures carefully about Elijah, we can have unfolded before us a wealth of information about him.
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You see the Holy Spirit, our ultimate author, the Holy Spirit knows the end from the beginning.
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The man he chooses to speak for him, the timing of that choice, the historical milieu in which he preaches, the types which he fulfills and then those which he prefigures for later, all of these are what we call the plenary inspiration scripture.
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The doctrine that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Elijah is one of the more important of all the prophets.
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He was prefigured long before Deuteronomy 18 .15,
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the prophet like Moses. Elijah was the first manifestation, the first fulfillment of that type that Moses was talking about, that promise of God to send a prophet to return the people back to himself.
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But as well as that, Elijah also looked ahead to things that were yet to come, some of which were fulfilled by type and others fulfilled in actual people.
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He acted as it were as a hinge, fulfilling some of the old, at the same time pointing to the new, speaking there of the two testaments.
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He looked back as far as Moses and looked forward, really as far as Jesus.
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Of course there were prophets before Elijah. There were men who stood before God's people and spoke for God to them.
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But Elijah represented a different mold than them. You read in Judges 6 .8
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where the man stood and told them about their captivity to the
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Moabites and how it was because of them turning to the other gods. This was a prophet who made that one statement.
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We might think in 1 Kings 13 of that prophet who made that one statement against the altar that Jeroboam set up.
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Elijah was different. He wasn't commissioned for a single message and a discreet purpose like those others.
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Elijah was sent for the long haul. As much as did the apostasy he stood against, he defined the times in which he lived and prophesied.
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He stayed. Man of action as we said. He's a man of action.
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If you read the scriptures that cover his momentous life, the whole of it is contained in seven chapters.
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Elijah's whole ministry is in seven chapters. First Kings 17 through 2 Kings 2.
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And even in those chapters, well chapter 20 of 1 Kings he's not even mentioned.
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As a matter of fact, there through the first half of 21 and not at all in 2
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Kings 1. The point is, the record of his life is very brief, is densely packed with action and with drama.
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His impact on Israel and on the revelation of God's redemptive purpose is though far exceeds the volume of text devoted to him.
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He rises to a prominence few if any other prophets have. This morning
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I want to present to you Elijah in this broader context of redemptive history.
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You see in him there were a great many parallels with another prophet. We spoke of him already.
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Israel's lawgiver. I speak of Moses. There are too many parallels there to have been other than intended, excuse me, by the spirit of Christ who was moving the mind and the pen of our author here of 1
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Kings. Just too many parallels. Too many things that were fulfilled in Elijah to have not been specifically intended by God the
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Spirit. In Deuteronomy 18 15, the Lord will raise up for your prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren.
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You must listen to him. I mean in Jesus' day, do you remember this?
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The people wondered if that could be him. Do you think he's the prophet?
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Capital T, capital P. Is he the prophet? Of course it was. It was
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Jesus. And of course it is Jesus. He is that prophet. But before him, the hinge between Moses who spoke of it and Jesus who is the one prophesied between the two is
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Elijah. All the prophets spoke for God, but they were not all like Moses.
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They all spoke for God, but they weren't like Moses, at least not in the way it meant here. See, Moses gave the law.
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Elijah reestablished it. Moses had the people turn to worshiping
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Yahweh, and Elijah had them return to him.
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Number of similarities between Moses and Elijah. I want to note these, and then we'll look forward to how he looks ahead.
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Moses founded Israel, as I said, on the worship of Yahweh, the one true living God. And Elijah restored
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Israel to that same foundation. Both of these men, if you think of it, both of them worked in a sort of vacuum compared to other prophets.
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Think of Isaiah. Think of Isaiah as an example. He worked amongst people who, unfaithful as they were, they believed that Yahweh is
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Lord. Now they mixed up his worship with wrongful things, but he didn't have to establish that this is
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God. Moses and Elijah had to build that foundation.
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Moses laid the bedrock, Elijah had to rebuild it. Now how did they do this?
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Well the preached word, of course. God gave his word to Moses, and Moses came down from Sinai and gave
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God's word to the people. And God, of course, spoke through Elijah, and Elijah faithfully went and proclaimed what
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God had said. So through his word. Also through signs and wonders. There are many signs and wonders on both parts.
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Moses with his staff becoming the snake which devoured the infantile tricks of Pharaoh's magicians.
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Elijah with the drought. Elijah with the fire that came down from heaven to consume the sacrifice.
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In 2 Kings, when the fire came down twice, it consumed the army, the platoons of 50 men who came to arrest him and bring him to the king.
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And these were only the beginnings. When Moses spoke for God, he, God, acted.
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When Elijah spoke, there was the same divine concurrence. Not because either man was inherently righteous or especially smart or anything like that, but because they were true prophets who spoke accurately and faithfully for God.
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Another similarity. Another fulfillment. After Moses' first confrontation with Pharaoh, which was the slaying of that abusive
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Egyptian slave driver, and recall that in Exodus 2, when
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Moses saw one of his brethren, a Hebrew, being abused by the Egyptian, he looked this way and that, and he slew the
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Egyptian. What was that but a direct confrontation to Pharaoh?
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And after that, he fled to Midian. Elijah, after his confrontation with his king of the day, which was
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Ahab, he fled. He fled to the book, Brook Cherith, and later to a place called
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Zarephath. You see, Moses' and Elijah's ministries were launched with direct confrontations of the reigning kings.
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And this is just what Moses did when he killed that man. Killing a representative pharaoh was a challenge to Pharaoh's very person.
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They thought he was a god, and therefore he could protect his people and punish anyone who insults him by contending against his sovereignty.
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And we often think of Moses as having done that impetuously, being hot -tempered.
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I won't argue that point here and now. But another way to look at that, another way to consider that, is for him to have gone to Pharaoh through this slave driver and directly challenged his power and his sovereignty.
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Elijah, when he proclaimed the drought, he hit Baal, the god of Ahab.
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He hit Baal at his supposed strong point, he being the god of thunder and nature. If he is all that, let him overrule the decree of God through the prophet and bring rain and fertility to the land, which
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God had said was going to cease. Direct challenge to him.
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And he also challenged with that, he also challenged Ahab's judgment. If his favored god could be swept aside, what kind of king was he?
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Why couldn't he choose for himself or for his people a god that could actually do something? We have 1st
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Kings 17. As I said, Lord willing, we'll get to that next week and we'll take that apart in some detail.
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You need to think of it this way. Not just there's going to be a drought, which there was, but God through the prophet is moving directly against this god, this supposed god, who's not a god at all, who the people are worshiping.
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In this, Elijah and Moses are very, very similar. I would say
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Elijah was the prophet like Moses. Think of their exiles. These times away after these challenges against the ruling sovereign.
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Moses, when he was in exile in Midian, he was sustained by Jethro. Well, so what?
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What's the significance of that? Well, Jethro was the pagan priest of the pagan cult in Midian.
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Elijah, when he was hiding at the brook and later in Zarephath, he's sustained by ravens, then by a widow of a
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Gentile nation. You see, they both fled after their challenge.
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Moses, presumably by common sense, Exodus 2 .15, when Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill
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Moses. Elijah went east right after his first meeting with Ahab at God's express command.
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Now, it's often proposed that Moses' time in Midian was a time of tempering his temper, no pun intended.
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The idea is that for 40 years he learned to control himself, that by this exile he learned self -control and patience.
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We need to be careful here because Scripture nowhere supports that. He was there for 40 years, and then he saw the burning bush.
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God never says or implies anything like this. He never says, okay, Moses, you seem ready for what
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I have for you. You've matured. You've got that temper under control. You're less impetuous now.
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Let's get you redeeming Israel. Nothing like that is said or implied. God says he's heard the people's groaning and seen their misery, and he's ready to act on their behalf through Moses.
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In fact, Exodus 4 .19, God says to Moses, Go, return to Egypt, for all the men who sought your life are dead.
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Elijah, for his part, when he went to the brook Cherith, he was as far removed from Israel as Moses was when he was in Midian.
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While there, he was cared for in a manner no less extraordinary than was Moses. If Moses was sustained by a pagan priest, and that's what his future father -in -law
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Jethro was, Elijah's sustenance by the work of the ravens is just as incredible.
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I don't think Elijah learned during this time necessarily to trust God. His showdown with Ahab is proof enough that he already trusted and obeyed
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God. You see, for both these men, Moses and the first prophet like me that he spoke of,
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Elijah, for both of them, their exile was a time, it was a harbinger of what was to come.
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You see, if Moses would have the people believe that the Lord could sustain them on an unknown and dangerous journey, if Elijah would have
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Israel know that Yahweh, not Baal, rules over creation, then both men could speak with authority.
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An authority not just from being inspired directly by God, that first, but their words, because of their time in exile, being cared for by the pagan priests, being cared for by the ravens, it buttresses what they're saying, their words, with personal experience.
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You know, we all know and believe certain things about God. When we say God can and does heal, we speak with a truth that's backed by the authority of his word, because there, in his word, these things are written.
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But how much more force do these words have if they're backed up with experience? How much more force do they have?
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You know, when you're talking to a family member, a friend or a loved one, a co -worker, telling them about Jesus, do you just say, well,
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Jesus forgives sins? And they say, really? How do you know that? Well, because it says in John 3 .16
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or something like that. Here, read it. Well, we do that. We do point them to the word of God. We have nothing to say if we don't point to the word of God.
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But don't we also say, and I know this because I know my sins were forgiven?
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Don't we also say that I know God because Jesus Christ lives and I have his spirit?
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Don't we add testimony to this? Of course we do. We're told to in his word, to tell our experiences of the word.
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As much of what was happening, I believe, with Elijah and Moses, the way he came back and restarted their ministries, began preaching, began prophesying again, their experiences coincided with and backed up the words.
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We in this church, many of you will remember this, we in this church prayed for a man, the unbelieving husband of one of our members, who had been told that he was going to die of glioblastoma.
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The word to him from his doctor, a Stanford doctor, one of the nation's leading experts in this particular disease, told him, get your affairs in order, be sure you have insurance for your family, take time off and be with them because there's nothing we can do about this, and your time is coming soon.
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He was told that directly. We prayed for him in this place. We fell down before God and we prayed for him in this place, and he didn't die.
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A week or so, I don't remember exactly how long it was, but a week or so after we prayed, it was gone.
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Do you guys recall this? It was gone. Poof. No explanation but this, the mercy and power of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. A brother and sister here today will testify of a miraculous healing of their father, one's father to the other's father -in -law, the one who was going to die.
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He had, as we say, a foot in the grave, but God sustained him from certain death until he was overcome, not by mortality, but by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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This man did not die in God's sovereignty, in his providence, in his mercy, until he had heard and believed in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Our experience as we have them buttresses the word.
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We know this, and I think this is what was happening with Moses and Elijah. When Moses said, we're going to go on this path, we're going to go north to this land, it's going to take a while, but God will care for us.
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How can you say that, Moses? Because God cared for me. When Elijah came back and said,
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Yahweh, not Baal, is the God of nature. God's not just the
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God of nature, that's too small. Nature is barely a subset of God's sovereignty, so you take my meaning.
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I say, how do you know that, Elijah? Because he commanded birds to take care of me.
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We can all testify to things like this. For these two men, we speak, think especially of Elijah because he's the subject of this series.
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Get that credibility with those that they ministered to because life experience was proof of the words that they would speak and the trust that they wanted those people to have in the
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God that they worshipped. One point before we move on, and I'm going to cover this here, and when we get to this in 1
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Kings 17, I will not cover it again. I'll just say this. Do not concern yourself that the birds that fed
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Elijah were unclean animals. They were unclean, and I have yet to read a commentator who doesn't point this out.
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And so the idea is that Elijah was learning like Peter in Acts 10 that God is concerned for Gentiles.
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Even his stay in Gentile Zarephath, which we'll get to later, doesn't have this lesson.
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The point is that the God who brought the drought can overrule the drought even if for only one man,
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Elijah, wherever he might be, even if it is with a
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Gentile widow in a pagan land. That's the point. Not that the birds were unclean, not where did they get the meat that they brought him or the cakes or anything like that.
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It's that God can and does care for his people. There's another similarity between Moses and this first prophet like him.
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Moses was on Mount Horeb or Sinai. He was there when
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God passed by and declared his name and showed him his glory. Elijah was on the same mountain that's going forward to 1
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Kings 19, a few weeks ahead in the preaching. He was on that same mountain though when
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God passed by as a great and strong wind that tore the rocks in pieces, then as an earthquake and then as a fire and finally as a still small voice.
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Think of this. Only Moses and Elijah received this kind of revelation of God.
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This is rare. This is very rare. Think of Isaiah's vision. This magnificent, this dramatic vision in Isaiah chapter 6.
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The Apostle John looks back on that even and he says in John 12 that when
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Isaiah saw the glory of God he was seeing the glory of Jesus Christ. He was seeing Jesus Christ.
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Isaiah 6 is a big moment. Yet as true and as literal as his vision was, he wasn't there.
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It was a vision. Moses and Elijah saw and heard from God, not an angel, not in a vision or in a dream, but in a literal then and there manifestation of God's glorious purpose, speaking to them in an audible voice.
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This is amazing. This is incredible. And we need to think about this.
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At Jesus Christ's baptism, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
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When Jesus was transfigured, the same voice said virtually the same thing. In John 12, 28, when
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Jesus prayed, Father, glorify your name, a voice from heaven replied, I both glorified it and will glorify it again.
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I can think of no others. But did you notice something? At the
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Lord's baptism, there was in attendance John the Baptist. What did
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Jesus say about the Baptist? He said it was Elijah. In Matthew 17, 12, which
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Joseph read to you, the Lord says Elijah has already come. The next verse has the disciples understanding that he meant he'd come in the person of who?
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John the Baptist. So in that sense, Elijah was there when God spoke in this way, the transfiguration.
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When God speaks in this rare and dramatic way about his son Jesus Christ, who is there?
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Moses and Elijah. There's more, but that's enough for now.
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As I said, Elijah is a hinge of sorts. In literary terms, he's a
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Janus. He's a figure looking, he's a figure with two faces looking in opposite directions at the same time.
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So to the past and the future at once. That's enough of the rearward gaze, how he looks back towards Moses, or Moses looked ahead towards him as that first fulfillment of the prophet like me sent to Israel to turn them back.
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We'll develop this more as we go through the rest of this series on Elijah, somewhat when we get to Elisha.
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But I want to consider now his forward gaze.
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His gaze to the New Testament. To the Testament that doesn't reveal the coming of our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but the incarnation. Elijah with Moses plays such a large part in the scripture.
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And before we can actually turn that one page and get to the New Testament, let's remember the last words of the
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Old Testament. Malachi chapter four verses four through six.
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Remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all
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Israel with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the
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Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.
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Do we see the importance of these two men? Where they stand in this redemptive, this flow of redemptive history?
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Moses, the lawgiver. Elijah, returning the people to the Lord. Moses, establishing the worship of Yahweh as Israel's God.
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And Elijah, returning them to him. And here, at the very end of what we call the
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Old Testament, the last words before we have the four centuries of silence or so -called silence.
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And then Matthew, of course, being that start up again of hearing the word of God and it being written for us.
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The last words in the Old Testament. Moses and Elijah. I just want to do a quick summary for us of Moses and Elijah and their part in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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In his actual incarnation. And we have time for barely a thumbnail sketch.
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Much more here, and as I said, Lord willing, we'll keep going through this as we go through this series. Just enough to whet our appetites.
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But think of this, the greatest conflicts that Jesus had in his ministry were with the
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Pharisees, and they were over what? They were over the law of Moses. Usually the Sabbath.
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But many particulars. Divorce and such like that. The Pharisees had this habit of parsing it out, parsing the law out to the point of irrelevance.
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Their misunderstanding, their lack of faith, really. It led them to sort out individual cumin seeds so that they get the tithe just right, all the while ignoring justice and mercy and faith.
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That's Matthew 23, verse 23. They thought to earn salvation by a law they could neither understand or keep.
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And they appealed to Moses. How many conflicts did Jesus have with these men appealing to Moses who they didn't really know or understand at all?
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Jesus said to them, John 5, verse 45 and 46. Do not think that I shall accuse you to the
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Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believe
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Moses, you will believe me, for he wrote about me. 719, did not
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Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me? And just one more,
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Matthew 23, beginning of verse 2. The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.
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Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do. But do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do.
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For they bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
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That's Moses. We know John the Baptist came in the spirit of this other man, our subject,
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Elijah. And that's exactly as prophesied in Malachi, which
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I read to you a moment ago. He is the one, Elijah is that one who finished the line of prophets that, in a manner of speaking, he began.
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I don't think I made that clear. Excuse me, let me restate that. John the Baptist is the one who finished the line of prophets that, in that sense, was begun by Elijah.
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If Elijah was like Moses in the ways we spoke of, think now of the Baptist, who stood directly in that prophetic line.
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He was like Elijah in far more important ways than his dress and his diet. Because he had on that camel hair and that leather belt and ate locusts and very much like that short description we had of Elijah.
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But that was perhaps the least important of the similarities. See, they both preached that men should repent and turn to God.
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Joseph read to you about John's baptism. It was a baptism of repentance. That's all it was about.
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Repent of your sins. Come into the river and have your sins washed away. Repent. What else was that from Elijah?
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When on Mount Carmel, he said to Israel, how long will you falter between two opinions?
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Is that not a call to repent and come to the right of the two opinions, the correct one?
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God? Well, the Baptist's whole ministry was his baptism of repentance.
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And I would argue that's directly in line with Elijah's ministry. John the
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Baptist and Elijah, his pre -type, they both confronted the current rulers.
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Elijah's introduction of 1 Kings 17 is that direct challenge we spoke of to Ahab's chosen
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God, the one that he wanted Israel to have as their God. The drought was a direct challenge to this
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God of nature, and so a direct assault on the king. And we should remember too that this
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God, this Baal, was a favorite deity of Ahab's wife
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Jezebel, and so it was an assault on her as well. As we'll see when we get to that chapter, she took it that way.
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She took it personally. John the Baptist stands directly in this line.
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He's the ultimate fulfillment of what Elijah was prefiguring. He was imprisoned.
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He was later beheaded because he did what? He confronted Herod. It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.
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Like Elijah, his spiritual forerunner, he held the law of Moses in high regard. In Matthew 16, 14, the disciples report to Jesus that many people think that he is
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Elijah. After executing John in Luke 9, verse 9,
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Herod worries that Jesus is what? He worries that he's Elijah returned.
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It is Elijah the disciples wanted to mimic when they asked Jesus if they should call down fire on those who rejected him.
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Shall we call down fire on them like Elijah did? Jesus says, you don't know what manner of spirit you are of. Basically, no.
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Don't even try. Consider how important Elijah was and is in Jewish thought.
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When Jesus Christ was on the cross, where he suffered and died as an atonement for our sins.
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When Jesus Christ was there, this apex in not just redemptive history but human history.
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When sin was resolved there at the cross. Do you remember Jesus Christ, Matthew 27, verse 46, what does he cry out?
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He cries out, Eli, Eli, lama soxtani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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Continuing in Matthew, some of those who stood there when they heard that said, this man is calling for Elijah.
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Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to him to drink.
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The rest said, let him alone. Let us see if Elijah will come to save him.
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I hope you're getting a feel for how important this prophet is to this whole flow of God's redemption of sinners.
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Maybe Elijah will come to save him. I mentioned earlier this morning,
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I don't remember who was here, it was a little earlier, when I was a young Jewish boy, we had a tradition, so all
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Jews would still do this, or most of them I should say, is when you have the Passover table, there's an empty chair.
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It's for Elijah. Should Elijah come that day, should he return and usher in the kingdom?
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We had a chair if he should come to our home, he could have the Seder first. Why were they expecting
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Elijah to come? Why were they even wondering if Elijah would come and save Jesus from the cross?
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Why did they even think he would come back at all? Why didn't they say he's coming in the spirit of Isaiah, or Nahum, or Ezekiel, or any of the others?
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But Elijah, this man with only seven chapters, some of which don't even mention him in the whole scripture.
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Well one reason for this tradition is the last similarity that I'll mention between Moses and Elijah.
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They both died in a manner that denied them burial. They both died so that they couldn't be buried.
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In other words, there's no body. Now it's not that there's no body the way
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Jesus was coming out of the tomb. That's not what we're saying. But Deuteronomy 34, starting at verse 5, says,
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So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord, and he buried him, he being
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God, and God buried him in a valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor, but no one knows his grave to this day.
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There's no body. Jude 9 adds this, Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said,
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The Lord rebuke you. Elijah, in this sense, is just the same.
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In 1 Kings 2, he's famously taken up to heaven in that chariot of fire. These two,
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Elijah and Moses, they represent paradigms in the unfolding of God's redemptive plan. They were heralds of the gospel which had not yet been revealed.
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Because Romans 16 .25 tells us it was during their times still wrapped in mystery.
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Elijah and Moses were both equally concerned for Israel to worship
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Yahweh as the one true, the only true and living
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God. Moses by initiation, Elijah by restoration. Where Moses called on Israel to worship their founder, which is
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God, Elijah demanded the return. Moses and Elijah, they represent what?
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It's the law and the prophets. In Moses, the legal dye was cast. In Elijah, the prophetic mold was made.
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There's another reason though their bodies were never found. Their purposes in life fulfilled.
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They had yet, after their life on this earth, they had another testimony to give.
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God had more purpose in and for them. They had one more appearance to make.
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They had one more part to play, a very important part to play in the unveiling of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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I would say more important than any that they had in life. These two,
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Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets, these are the two who were where? They're at the transfiguration of Jesus Christ.
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All the gospels except John, and all the synoptic gospels report this. That when
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Jesus was transfigured before James, John, and Peter, they saw standing next to Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, the law and the prophets.
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The symbolism is pretty clear, isn't it? That all of this, the law and the prophets, all this is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
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The prophetic hope for a redeemer is in him, in Jesus Christ. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, said
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Jesus in Matthew 11, 13. And there ends that line of prophecy because it has a point.
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It has a summation. It has a fulfillment that's in Jesus Christ.
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The law began with Moses, and in a manner of speaking, prophecy began with Elijah.
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They certainly ended with Elijah and the Baptist. These two are bookends with Christ and he alone in the center.
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Two of the greatest figures we have in biblical history, Elijah and Moses. If we added in Abraham, we'd have sort of a triumvirate.
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But our subject is Elijah, this morning pairing him with Moses, his typological forerunner, and then with John the
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Baptist, his final spiritual successor. With all the similarities we've cited, with all their importance in what
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I keep calling the unveiling of the redemptive plans of God, this flow of redemptive history, with their profound significance in that, there's something else these two men,
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Moses and Elijah, something else they share. They just weren't enough.
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Neither of them were. Neither of them could be. You see, Moses could reveal the law, but he couldn't do it.
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He could obey the law no better than could the children of Israel, whose constant rebellion so frustrated him.
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The disobedience left the first generation banned from the promised land. Why was
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Moses barred from the promised land? The same cause. Disobedience.
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Disobedience to the express word of God. He failed to hallow
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God before the people. Now, most of you know what I'm referring to.
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You can ask yourself, well, what kind of a man stands before hundreds of thousands of people, looks at a rock, and then asks it to pour out water?
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What kind of a man would do such a thing? A faithful man.
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An obedient man. The man who God said, speak to the rock.
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What did Moses do? He struck the rock. Now, God gave forth the water, but because of that disobedience, he was banned, just as the generation that worshiped the golden calf.
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Just as that generation that refused God's goodness was banned for their disobedience.
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Now, Moses just wasn't enough. We need someone better.
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We need someone better than Moses. Elijah, for his part, he could perform incredible miracles, as Lord willing, we will get to.
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He could stand alone before the 450 prophets of Baal, and with a simple prayer, demonstrate unequivocally that Yahweh is
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God. And then he can run from a woman, from Jezebel, whose chosen
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God he had just shown to be impotent and weak and unavailable. Baal was shown by Elijah to not exist at all.
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Yet he ran from his adherent, Jezebel. And then on the mountain, he says,
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Lord, take my life. I'm no better than my father's. Just take me away from all this. There's none left but me.
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I'm the only one. Speaking as though God hadn't done anything. Speaking as though God hadn't defeated this
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God that Elijah was standing against. Speaking as though God hadn't called the drought at Elijah's word. Speaking as though ravens hadn't fed him.
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He says, just take me. Even John the
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Baptist, the one who brought biblical prophecy to a summation and pinnacle when he pointed out
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Jesus, even he failed. He stood off Pharisees like a scholar.
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He contested Herod like a warrior. But when he heard of specific prophecy being fulfilled in the one whose sandal straps he was unworthy to untie, he sent to him and said, are you the coming one or do
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I have to wait for another? He had seen him. He had touched him. He saw the spirit light on him.
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He heard the heavenly voice attesting that he is the one not coming but sent and there.
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But flesh covered his eyes and covered his mouth. He said, are you he? None of these men could ultimately fulfill what they were pointing to for us.
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None of these men could. Moses with the law. The law is good and holy but it brought with it no power to do it.
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That's why Moses and Elijah are not enough. Moses brought just law. Elijah restored it.
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Read the histories of Israel and see how short -lived compliance was. Really no different for us.
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Jesus, the end of the law for everyone who believes brings these two things, these two paradigmatic men together and gives us what they couldn't.
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See Jesus, he fulfilled in his life, in his person, in his work, all the law's righteous requirements.
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Everything demanded of us, he fulfilled. He fulfilled for you if by faith.
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Moses couldn't do it. None could but Jesus. Jesus fulfilled in his life all that.
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Not a speck of God's word fell to the ground or was left undone. Not the smallest detail of his will, of God's will, failed to be by Jesus completed.
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Elijah was the mold for the prophets. And what Elijah said about the coming one, what he said about the need to repent and to come, by faith to God.
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It all points ahead to the one who could actually do it and could actually save, which is
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Jesus Christ. If you will but repent, if you will repent of your sins and believe that Jesus Christ on the cross answered to God all the punishment due you, you could be saved.
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This is what Elijah pointed to. This is what Elijah stood for. This is one of the reasons
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Elijah was at the transfiguration because of what he represented. But all he represented, all the types that he made you think of, they only become a reality in the one who stood before him on that mount.
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That's Jesus Christ and him only. Amen? Heavenly Father, we do thank you again for the day that you've given us, time together in your word.
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Let's pray, Lord, that we would all heed the things that your scripture gives us. We do thank you,
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Lord, that we can drink of Jesus in sips as it were, see him in men like Moses and men like Elijah.
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We do thank you, Lord, that your revelation does not end there, but it goes ahead to its completion and we see
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Jesus Christ as the end of all things. Let's thank you for the time that you've given us.
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Thank you for the word that you've granted us. Let's pray. Continue to watch over us and bless us all.