Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Days of Elijah

Doug Batchelor

Part 1 - Barren Brooks

Somebody asked Bill Gaither, the famous lyricist and songwriter, did he have any opinions on what were the best lyrics ever written?

And he actually said it was a line from that song, The Love of God.

The skies of parchment made in every stalk on earth a quill.

And so that is a beautiful, beautiful song.

It isn't often we've been able to travel to some of the camp meetings together, because for many moons we had kids in tow.

And now the youngest of the bachelor litter is doing counseling work in 1 of the Christian camps and so we're just so thankful that we could join you here.

This week we're going to be talking about a Bible hero and a subject that I think is very relevant to the times in which we're living, and that would be the person, that enigmatic character of Elijah.

If you look in your Bible, go to the last book in the Old Testament, that's the book of Malachi chapter 4.

You find the last prophecy in the Bible, last prophecy in the Old Testament I should say.

Remember the law of Moses my servant which I commanded him and Horab for all Israel with the statutes and judgments.

Behold I send you Elijah the prophet for the coming of the great and the dreadful day of the Lord.

And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse." Now it's interesting that it would say, remember the law of Moses, behold I send you Elijah, and then you turn to the next book in the Bible and you can read in Matthew where Jesus is up on this mountain and Moses and Elijah appear to him.

So in 1 sense it was literally fulfilled.

But if you go to Matthew chapter 17, the disciples enter into a dialogue with Jesus about Elijah.

Elijah's name is mentioned about a hundred times if my computer's right, it's exactly 100 times in the Bible.

And so he's an important character to study.

And the disciples asked him, saying, "'Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?

And Jesus answered and said to them, indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things.

Now notice this, it's very important, the wording.

Now this statement is made several months after John the Baptist has been executed.

And yet Jesus said, indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things.

You notice it said in Malachi, that he will restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers.

And then he says in verse 12, But I say to you that Elijah has come already.

And they did not know him, but they did whatever they wished.

Likewise, the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands.

Then the disciples understood that he spoke to them of John the Baptist." So at least 1 fulfillment of Elijah was John the Baptist.

Who's the first 1 who came in the spirit and the power of Elijah?

But then it would be Elisha who asked for a double portion of his spirit, and then you have John the Baptist, and yet the Bible says, before the great and terrible day of the Lord.

That's clearly a reference to other scriptures and prophecies about the day of the Lord, the day of judgment, the day of the Lord's coming, which is future from the time when Christ said it.

I believe we're living in the times where we need the ministry of Elijah.

Some have wondered is this the work that the 144, 000 are going to do?

And in the same way that God raised up John the Baptist to prepare the way for his first coming, that God will raise up an army of John the Baptists that will come in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare the world for the second coming.

And the way Elijah brought revival, this group will bring revival.

But before I go too deep, because I've got several days to unpack that.

And so if you have your Bibles, turn with me to 1 Kings, 1 Kings 17.

And maybe just as a transition, I should give a little bit of background.

Elijah comes on the scene at a time of great apostasy.

In fact, If you read 1 Kings 16, it tells us in verse 29, 1 Kings 16, 29, in the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah, Ahab, the son of Amri, became king over Israel.

And Ahab, the son of Amri, reigned over Israel in Samaria 22 years.

Now Ahab the son of Amri did more evil in the sight of the Lord than all who were before him.

And it came to pass as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

He also took as a wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians.

And he went and served Baal and worshipped him.

And they set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.

And Ahab made a wooden image in Ashareth.

And Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him." So the northern kingdom entered a time of great apostasy.

Now, Will you bear with me for just a minute as I give you a little history?

Because this comes in later in the story and it makes for an important background.

The son of Solomon, his name was Rehoboam.

When Solomon died, 1 of the leaders who had been in Solomon's court that Solomon had some trouble with was a man named Jeroboam.

Now I know Rehoboam, Jeroboam sounds similar.

Jeroboam was 1 of the other tribes of Israel.

And he gathered Israel and they met with Rehoboam when they were about to coronate him and they said, look before we go through this coronation ceremony and recognize you as our king we need to ask you, your father we admit you know those were times of peace and prosperity but he taxed us very heavily for all of his building projects, and he worked us very hard, and we're looking for a break now.

Are you going to be as hard as your father was?" And Rehoboam said, give me a few days to answer.

And he went and he talked to his young friends and they said, you show them who's boss.

You tell them my father chastised you with whips, but I'm going to chastise you with scorpions.

And the old counselors who counseled Solomon, They said, oh no, no, no.

If you serve them and you humble yourself, they will serve you forever.

Now I would think if you're smart at all, if Solomon's the wisest man who ever lived, you'd listen to Solomon's counselors.

I mean, how do you get to be a counselor for Solomon?

Rehoboam didn't listen and when he gave them a harsh answer, the 10 tribes said, well David, see to your own house.

Those who are from the tribe of Judah, from the tribe of David, if you want to serve Rehoboam, help yourself.

And they took and they made Jeroboam king, and 10 of the tribes broke away, and that civil war was never really healed.

So from then on, you hear about Israel in 2 different sets.

You hear of Judah, the southern kingdom, really had 3 tribes, which is Benjamin, Levi, the Levites all stayed down there in the south, and Judah.

Then you had what they called the 10 tribes of the north, sometimes referred to as Ephraim, because Ephraim was the biggest of them and their capital was Samaria.

Ahab ended up being a king in the northern kingdom.

Now what Jeroboam did when he took the northern kingdom north, he took leadership of those kingdoms, he said to himself, you know, the Jewish feasts are going to start coming around and the people are all trained and were commanded to go down to the temple that Solomon built, offer sacrifice on their holy days, and the priests are the ones who have been specifically chosen by God, the Levites and the sons of Aaron, of Aaron to lead out there in the ministry, and I'm gonna lose control, because their hearts are gonna start going after where the temple is.

He took counsel with some of his advisors and they said, look, you just need to have an alternate for people.

So he put up a golden calf in Dan and he put 1 up in Bethel.

Dan is the furthest north and 1 in Bethel.

Now you would think that Israelites should know, don't make another golden calf.

But they went right back in the old pattern and they got involved in idolatry.

But at least they called the golden calf worshipping Jehovah.

And he said, look, I'm going to make priests of anybody.

And so they started to ordain and commission priests of all the people.

It didn't matter whether or not you were a Levite or a child of Aaron.

You know, history has a way of repeating itself.

You know, this sort of happened with the church in the Dark Ages.

Kind of got a split between Protestants and Catholics and 1 leaned more towards idolatry than the other and history could repeat itself again.

Part 2 - The Widow with Wonder Bread

Welcome, if this is your first evening with us.

We're, in my part of the program, doing a series on Elijah.

And what I mean by that is the same issues that created a catalyst for Elijah to come and for Jesus to come.

I believe those things are going to precipitate the second coming of Jesus and we are in that time now.

God is looking for the message of Elijah to call his people back to the Lord once again.

And so if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to the second book, I'm sorry, 1 Kings, 1 Kings chapter 17, we'll briefly review where we are.

Elijah's name is mentioned about a hundred times in the Bible.

Like Melchizedek, he seems to sort of drop out of the sky.

It just says 1 day he marches into the presence of the king and pronounces a curse because of the sins of the people and their spiritual harlotry they were going after other gods being in encouraged by jezebel to do so or instigated you read in chapter 17 verse 1 second first kings and Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there will not be dew nor rain these years, except in my word.

You know, Joseph also predicted a famine, didn't he?

Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, get away from here and turn eastward and hide by the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan.

And it will be that you will drink from the brook and I've commanded the ravens to feed you there.

So he went and did according to the word of the Lord.

Notice first, the word of the Lord came from him, then the word of the Lord came from him, then the word of the Lord came to him, and then he obeys the word of the Lord.

And he went and he stayed by the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan.

And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook." We don't know how long he was there exactly, but you read in the next verses, it happened after a while, the brook dried up.

We've had a few famines, or I should say droughts, in Northern California since I lived there.

Our family's had a home in the hills for 40 years and there are certain springs that are year-round springs.

Even in the summer you can find water, but during the years of drought, some of them went dry.

And there are a few dependable springs that you could count on that seem to have water even in the times of drought.

Well, in these pools where Elijah was staying, gradually he noticed the water level was going down.

He noticed instead of it being a little waterfall, it turned into a stream and then a little trickle.

And he was wondering what was gonna happen because even if the breads were bringing him food, he didn't expect the ravens to bring him water.

And I don't suppose he was very worried because he thought, you know, that same God that's been giving me a miracle from heaven every day is not gonna let me perish.

But you know, God sometimes, God sometimes brings his miracles just at the last minute.

When we were in Russia, they had a proverb there, it says, God is never late, but he's seldom early.

And it seems like he sometimes waits until your water has run out and your food has run out before you strike the rock and before you collect the manna.

Because Elijah didn't disobey the Lord, why is he suffering because of the sins of the people?

Did the righteous also suffer along with the wicked?

Didn't Jesus say that God sends the sunshine on the just and the unjust alike?

And Paul said the whole creation groans and travails, waiting to be delivered.

The whole world right now is suffering because of the results of sin.

It's like a garment that is waxing old and it travails to be delivered.

We know Jesus is going to come soon because if he didn't, Jesus said, there'd be no flesh that would survive.

And so even the righteous, they suffer because of the sins of the wicked.

And at that point, God then gave him the next instructions.

And the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Arise and go to Zarephath, which belongs to Zidon.

And there I have commanded a widow to provide for you.

As you read on, you'll find that she hadn't gotten the word yet.

But God had prepared a person in advance.

And so he arose, not knowing exactly where he went.

He knew he was going to Zarephath, which is about 90 miles, but he didn't know where he was staying.

As we traveled, Karen and I made some hotel arrangements along the way and we get confirmation and you got the address saved and you got a GPS to get you there, but in Bible times, God just said, go west.

You know, God still leads in divine ways.

We have an evangelist with Amazing Facts.

He was a Pentecostal pastor, and he began to watch Amazing Facts programs and study the material, and he became convicted about the Sabbath, but he, you know, was an associate pastor of 1 of the largest Pentecostal churches in Sacramento.

And really struggled and finally 1 day he just was so overwhelmed with conviction that this was the Sabbath.

He woke up 1 Saturday morning And he thought, this is the Sabbath.

So while he's under this conviction, he gets up and he gets dressed and he puts on a suit and he walks out his front door and he thinks, what am I doing?

And right when he's in standing in his front yard, he sees up the street a family steps out of the house, a father and mother, 2 or 3 kids, and they get in the car and God says, follow them.

He's wondering if he really had that impression.

And he pulls out and he starts following them.

He thoughts, well, at least I'll get towards the freeway, because I don't know exactly where I'm going anyway.

He's racing them through lights and stuff to not get stuck where it turns yellow and he doesn't make it in time.

And then they get out on the freeway, Interstate 80, and they're just heading west.

And he's saying, he's arguing with himself all along the way.

He says, this is the craziest thing I've ever done.

He said, I don't know who these people are.

They lived a few houses down, but I've never met them.

I'm trying to follow them." Well, this kept them for a while.

Pretty soon, they turned off the freeway.

That's a long time to argue with yourself about whether or not you're sane.

But he couldn't shake the impression that God told him to follow that family.

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The Days of Elijah

Part 1 - Barren Brooks

Transcript

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