Well, before I start, let me warn you.
Put on your mental running shoes.
We are going to be covering some ground, a lot of ground,
and we're going to be covering it quickly.
So get your minds ready to go.
Four men were walking down, making their way down steep mountainside.
In the distance they could hear the river.
I guess depending on where you're from, some of us would have called it a big creek.
It was also making its way down the mountain.
And these men, four men, quiet, thinking, and finally one of them spoke up.
Lord, how come the scribes say that Elijah must come first?
I'm quoting from Matthew 17.
They had just been at the top of the Mount of Transfiguration.
If that is indeed the mountain that people say it is over in the Middle East,
kind of flat on top and steep on the sides.
As they made their way down the steep trail, the disciples knew that they had just seen Moses
and the resurrected Moses and Elijah, who had never seen death.
They had seen them both and they'd never seen either one of them before.
Right? This was a new experience for them.
And yet they also knew that the scribes, the religious leaders of Israel,
had long been preaching that before the Messiah came, Elijah would come first.
And I might add that the scribes who taught this based their prophecy
on the last, very last words of the Old Testament.
If you turn to Malachi chapter 4, you will see these words, verses 5 and 6,
it's the very last words of the Old Testament.
Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the 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 the curse.
Now does that sound like Messiah was supposed to come for, or Elijah was supposed to come before the Messiah?
It does. And the Jews had developed a number of traditions.
How do you have traditions about something that hasn't happened yet?
But they had developed traditions about how this was going to happen.
One of them was that the Messiah, well, that Elijah would come down from heaven,
where he had been taken many hundreds of years before in a whirlwind.
He would come down on top of the Mount of Olives and he would cry out in a loud voice,
Behold he cometh. And his voice would go rolling around the world and everyone would hear it.
And then he would cry out again, Behold he cometh. And his voice would roll around the world, everybody would hear it.
And then a third time he would cry, Behold he cometh.
And his voice would go clear around the world and then the Messiah would appear
on the pinnacle of the temple and slowly descend into the courtyard of the temple.
By the way, if you know anything about the temptations of Jesus in Matthew 4 and in Luke,
that adds a little bit of substance to it. That's the kind of a Messiah that they were looking for.
And when Satan said, Cast yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple,
yeah, that's just what the people were looking for, right?
It hadn't happened. And now the disciples had just seen Elijah.
And Jesus responded to them. He said in Matthew 17 verse 12,
Oh, well, let's back up. Getting ahead of myself. In fact, way ahead.
We won't go there today. He said to his disciples,
I tell you truly, Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they wanted to.
And they knew at that point he was talking to them of John the Baptist. Why
did they not put that together that John the Baptist fulfilled that prophecy?
Actually, if you go to, well, Matthew 11, Jesus had told them in so many words
that if they would receive it, John the Baptist was Elijah who was to come.
He'd been very clear about that. But the disciples who were with Jesus at this point had first
been disciples of John the Baptist. And I don't doubt that if you will go with me to John chapter 1,
and you will find that a group of delegation we would call them today,
or maybe a select committee, we have different names for them.
Chapter 1 of John in the first verse 19. Now this is the testimony of John when the Jews
sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? He confessed and did not deny.
He confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, what then are you? Are you Elijah?
Are you Elijah? And he said, I am not. Now this gets kind of fun. I love it when I find something
that seems to be a discrepancy in scripture. Jesus said, John the Baptist fulfilled this prophecy
of Elijah coming first, right? John said, I am not Elijah. Now that's pretty clear, isn't it? Or
maybe it's very confusing. It doesn't have to be. If you go to Luke, we find, in fact, whenever I
find what appears to be a discrepancy in scripture, I find it's God's way of drawing us to some very
important truths of his word. And in Luke, you have the angel Gabriel appearing to Zechariah,
John the Baptist's father. And the angel answered him, Luke 1 verse 19, the angel answered and said
to him, I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God and was sent to speak to you and bring you
those glad tidings. Behold, you will be mute, not able to speak until the day these things take place
because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time. Now if you back up,
I mean, Gabriel comes from the throne of God and he had something very important to say.
He said, you will have joy and gladness for verse 14 and many will rejoice at his birth,
for he will be great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.
He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb and he will turn many of
the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before him in the spirit and power
of Elijah. What did he say? The spirit and the power of Elijah. To him, the hearts,
to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.
He's quoting Malachi and for the Jews who were waiting for Elijah to personally and literally
appear, they missed the whole point and that was God was going to pour out his spirit on a man,
on someone who would do the work of Elijah that Elijah had done so long ago.
Is that important to understand? It certainly was. Now I'd like us to look back at Malachi and look
at that prophecy because there is something very important about it. Elijah was a very important
man in the Old Testament. Notice this prophecy in Malachi says, Behold I send you Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. When Jesus came the first time
was his coming great and dreadful. Thank you, you're right.
He came as a little baby, didn't he? Is that great and dreadful? No, not really.
We all like to see little babies although Herod the Great wasn't so happy about it but
when Jesus came the first time he was born in a barn really. Stop and think about it.
Even his ministry he went about teaching and preaching and healing the sick and raising the
dead and was any of that great and dreadful? I don't think so. Does the Bible tell us about
a coming of Jesus that will be great and dreadful? Revelation 1-7, Behold he cometh with clouds and
every eye shall see him. They also which pierced him and all the nations of the earth will wail
because of him. Does that sound great and dreadful? Yes, Jesus in Matthew 24 said it will be as the
lightning shines from the east to the west. We could go on.
Is Elijah going to come just before the great and dreadful day of the Lord? Are you looking
forward to seeing Elijah personally? Will he stand on top of Mount Carmel and shout?
Maybe we ought to see him.
And shout? Maybe we ought to see what the work of Elijah actually was. If you go with me to 1 Kings
18 we've spent some time here in recent weeks talking about the work of Elijah and I'd like us
to look at it a little more just now. Elijah had called for a famine on Israel for three years.
For three and a half years there was neither dew nor rain. How long can we go without dew or rain
before we start saying we need a little rain? Two weeks? Yeah, a couple weeks. They had gone for
three and a half years without rain. We know from archaeology that the Palestine was fairly heavily
forested up till this time. From this time on it was not. We know from archaeology that it was a
very verdant country up until that time. Today it is not. They get plenty of rain over there. They
get in Jerusalem they get 37 inches a year give or take. But they had been through a tremendous
drought. The nation had been turned into a desert. And Elijah called for a confrontation
between himself and the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Carmel. Now we're going to spend a little
bit of time with this but I want us to look at this confrontation. The whole nation was
supposed to gather up there and of course the king was there and all the prophets of Baal and
400 prophets of Baal, 450 something like that. Just a bunch of them. And Elijah stood up
before the people and he said to them, well he said several things. He said all the children of Israel
listening, he said how long will you falter between two opinions? King James version puts
it very clearly. It says how long will you halt between two opinions? If the Lord is God,
follow him. But if Baal, follow him. But the people answered him not a word. Now
we need to get a little background to understand what's happening here. We're not going to read
it all because we don't have time to read it all. I'd love to. But if you go to 1 Kings chapter 12,
you will find that at one point Israel had been one nation. There were 12 tribes.
We won't name them all. But two of the tribes had remained loyal to the house of David. They were
Judah and Benjamin. The other 10 tribes had rebelled under a man named Jeroboam.
Now the interesting part of this little bit of history is Jeroboam had been living in Egypt
because he was afraid of Solomon, the king of all of Israel. When Solomon died, he came up and
led the rebellion. He had actually been ordained or anointed of God to do this
because of idolatry in the nation. Well after the rebellion, he got worried. He said, okay,
my people are going to go down to Jerusalem to worship. They will see the beauty of that temple.
They will see all the gorgeousness of Jerusalem, the palaces, the temple, all the other things.
They'll end up deciding they want to go back and join Judah. Then they'll kill me and my family.
He decided he would set up a religion very similar to what they did in Jerusalem.
A different calendar. He followed an Egyptian calendar and he cast two golden calves. Big ones,
a lot of gold there. I don't know, maybe they were just coated in gold. I don't know, but that was a
lot of gold. He put one in Dan, way up in the north part of the country, and the other one in Bethel,
which was only, it wasn't very far from the border with Judah. He told the people of Israel,
here, oh Israel, are your gods which brought you out of Egypt.
It's very interesting. He told them they could come and worship those golden calves from that point on.
They found a tax receipt. They had to pay taxes back then, too.
A tax receipt from, actually, after the time of Elijah, made out to a man. I don't remember. He
paid so many barrels of oil and so much of this and that and the other thing for taxes.
The interesting part about the receipt is the man's name. Translated, it means Jehovah or Yahweh,
is a calf. Now, what is your picture of God in your mind? Do you think of God as being a cow,
a calf, a bull? Well, bulls were looked upon back then as being a symbol of strength.
And, of course, if God is a calf, stop and think about it. He would be a very good God for those
who are cattlemen, right? If you have cattle and sheep, if you're a herdsman, Jehovah is just the
right God for you. But, of course, they had become more broad-minded. And so, there was another,
well, the God of the Canaanites, who was in charge of sending rain, and he's pictured in ancient
images of holding lightning bolts in one hand and a hammer in the other because he sent the lightning
and the thunder, that was his hammer, and they called him Baal. He was the storm god. Now, these
gods were somewhat fluid in the things they could do. Sometimes he was running around in the rain,
in the things they could do. Sometimes he was referred to as the sun god. And he had a mistress,
and her name was Ashteroth. And she could be represented at times by the moon, but also
she was noted for being able to make your wives fruitful, and you could have lots of children to
help you farm your farm. Wouldn't that be a good idea? It was good to have big families. And so,
these people had a pantheon. Now, there were other gods, and I won't go into all of them,
but Baal was the top of the list, and Ashteroth right there next to him. And Elijah gets up,
and he says, if the Lord is God, follow him. If Baal, follow him. And they said not a word,
what do you say to a narrow-minded old coot like Elijah? They were broad-minded. They had learned
a much broader religion. Now, you know the story, most of you. It's very interesting.
He proposes a contest. He says, let the prophets of Baal build an altar. Let them
sacrifice a calf on it. Let them pray and ask their God. After all, he had lightning bolts, right?
Have him send fire to burn that altar, or the sacrifice. And so, starting in the morning,
I don't know how many hours it was exactly. That's exactly what the prophets of Baal did,
and Elijah had to watch them very carefully. These guys were slick customers. He didn't want them
building a fire under it. So, he watched them. He actually made fun of them, mocked them a little
bit. Hey, he's a God. Maybe he's on a journey. Shout louder. These guys were dancing and shouting
and making a big noise. And finally, at the time of the evening sacrifice, three o'clock in the
afternoon, Elijah said, okay, you guys have had your chance. And you know the story. He repaired
the altar to the true God. He sacrificed a bull, cut him in pieces, put him on top of the wood on
the altar. And then he had them bring water, 12 barrels full, dug a ditch around the altar,
poured the water on there. And he had a very simple little prayer. Now, I'm back in John. It
just doesn't read the same. First Kings 18. He had such a simple little prayer. And it's amazing.
Some like to have a lot of noise. Certainly, the prophets of Baal, they'd cut themselves.
They'd done all kinds of things. And Elijah says, to all the people, come near. So, all the people
came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. We've already
talked about the sacrifice, the water. And then he had a few words to say, only a few. He said,
Lord, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac in Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel,
and I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord,
hear me that the Lord is with me. And I will do all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord,
hear me that this people may know that you are the Lord God, and that you have turned their hearts
back to you again. Sounds like Malachi, doesn't it? Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed
the burnt sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the
ditch. Now, when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, the Lord,
he is God, the Lord, he is God. Is there going to be some kind of an experience like that
before Jesus comes? Well, let me ask you, is our world somewhat similar to ancient Israel?
Let me illustrate. The story goes that once upon a time, millions of years ago, the world was
covered with what's called a primordial soup. It was full of all kinds of chemicals. The atmosphere
was full of carbon and bolts of lightning flashing all around. The world was covered with
all kinds of chemicals and bolts of lightning flashing all around. In that primordial soup,
there was, there were a lot of amino acids. And somewhere along the line, a bolt of lightning
struck, hit a couple of amino acids, and they formed proteins, and life began. That's the story.
You had a one-celled creature, and that one-celled creature began to multiply, and multiply till the
earth was full of them. And along the line somewhere, one of them decided, I'd rather be
a two-celled creature. And sure enough, it did that. And they continued to grow. Some of them
developed flagella, where they could drive themselves through the water. And they developed
into more and more complex creatures until you had vertebrates, fish, and sea mammals. And some of
them started to crawl out on the land, and they decided they needed legs. Or somehow, they developed
legs. And all kinds of creatures developed, and they got more and more complex until,
voila, you have our great-grandfather, the monkey.
Now I hear some of you laughing. If you're not laughing, just make it, let me make it very clear.
If you don't believe that tale, most of the world will laugh at you.
I'm serious. Now I want to make it clear, there are scientists who don't believe that tale.
There are scientists who believe in the creator God. There are scientists, actually,
I've been excited in recent times. I just read his book, Trace, Nathaniel Jeanson, who is a PhD
biologist, graduate of Harvard University, has come out with a book tracing the genetic history
of the human race through the Y chromosome of the man. And he says, we all came from a single
ancestor about 45 hundred years ago. Would that be Noah? Very possibly. Very interesting.
But if you don't believe that tale, you don't need to have observed science. All you need is
a world of unbelief and a broad understanding of lots of ways that things could have happened.
Now, is the message in the last days, the Elijah message, appropriate? And I would say there's a
lot of people that would respond and say, well, they wouldn't say anything. What do you say to
people who are stuck in the mud of old traditions clinging to their Bibles?
I'd like you to look at the message for the last days, Revelation 14, verses 6 through 12.
You see, we do not look for the literal Elijah. We look for the message and the work. Then I saw
another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those
who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people. The work of the final Elijah
is not a work of one man. It goes to the whole world. It's represented by an angel in heaven,
saying with a loud voice, listen to this, fear God, give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment
has come. And now listen to this, worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea, and the springs of water.
Here we see the angel quoting the fourth commandment as it's found in the Septuagint,
an ancient Greek translation of the Bible. He's calling people to worship the Creator.
Nothing could be more appropriate in this world where people want to forget the Creator
than to worship the Creator. And he quotes the Sabbath commandment. And he goes on.
The revelator goes on. Another angel followed saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen,
that great city because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
Babylon has not existed as a nation or a city since the 1200s A.D. Did you know that?
There is no ancient city in existence today. I've got to mention Saddam Hussein tried to rebuild
Babylon. You can see where he rebuilt parts of it. He wanted to be the new Nebuchadnezzar.
Guess what? Had a big problem, no water. The Euphrates has changed its course and it's
some distance away from the ancient city of Babylon. Anyway, we see the angels presenting
the situation in the last days. The great religious confederation that we see in Revelation
chapter 13. You have this three-part confederation, spiritualism, apostate Protestantism, and
Catholicism. Full of traditions, broad-minded in a world where we actually see the pope
pandering and making overtures to Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam saying, let's just all get together.
Here we see the angels saying, it's fallen, don't go there. Then a third angel followed them.
We could spend days on these three messages, but the third angel contrasts this last day religious
alliance. He says in a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast in his image and receives
the mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of
God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation. He shall be tormented with
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and the presence of the lamb and the smoke
of their torment ascends forever and ever. Quoting what happened to Edomia, Isaiah 34 10.
And they have no rest day or night who worship the beast in his image and whoever receives the mark
of his name. Here is the patience of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God
in the faith of Jesus. We could spend a lot of time talking about the
terrible punishment that comes upon Babylon. Yeah, we could. Revelation has a lot to say about it.
You've got Revelation 13, you've got Revelation 15 and 16 and 17. But contrasted with the fallen
world, the fallen religious systems, the broad mindedness where religion has been mixed with
science so called. You have chapter 12, or verse 12, I'm sorry, verse 12. Here is the patience,
the patient endurance, if you please, of the saints. Here are they that do what? Keep the
commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. I'd like to suggest that it's not possible to keep
the commandments of God. I'm not going to say that it's not possible to keep the commandments of God.
Jesus, I'd like to suggest that it's not possible to keep the commandments of God.
Unless you have the faith of Jesus. That makes all the difference. What does it mean? By the way,
that can be translated faith in Jesus. We'll get to that in a minute. But what is the faith of Jesus?
I would like you to go in your mind with me to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is prostrate
on the ground and sweating drops of blood. Have you ever been in that much distress? I have not.
I've been in my share of distress, but nothing like that. Carrying the sins of the world on his
shoulders. Bearing a weight that for you and me would be intolerable. My own sins, which I'm
grateful to say he's forgiven. The devil tries to remind me of them every once in a while.
I just, they quit embarrassing me. I've been forgiven. The blood of Jesus is sufficient.
But imagine him lying there, prostrate, praying, father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.
And Jesus then added, nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. That's the faith of Jesus.
Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. That's the faith of Jesus.
That's how much you and me, that's how much we mean to him. Is that pretty interesting?
You bet. And he calls on his people to take up your cross and follow me. Now my cross isn't
anything like his. It doesn't mean carrying the weight of the sins of the world. But it's the same
kind of faith that calls me to step out. When God calls, Lord, I'd rather be comfortable. Lord, I'd
rather just, I'd live in a great neighborhood. I have a wonderful church. I have a wonderful
church. I just, life is so wonderful. What cross does he call you to bear? I don't know.
But the faith of Jesus can give you the power to carry it. That's true.
How about faith in Jesus? Oh yes. He can come and give me the power to carry the cross.
He can give me the power to keep his commandments. When it would be much easier to tell a partial
truth. What's a partial truth? A lie. When it would be much easier
to do some other things. Faith in Jesus gives me the power to follow him. And I don't say this to say that I have a right, but he has.
And I can continue having faith in Jesus. How about you? There is a God. He had the power to create this earth.
He had the power to make our first parents from the dust. And he had the power to go to the cross
and put to an open shame, make a spectacle of the powers of evil. Colossians chapter one.
And two. You see Elijah's message had power because he had a demonstration.
God has a demonstration for the final Elijah message. Colossians 1.27. It is Christ in you, the Lord, who is the Lord.
Colossians 1.27. It is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And when you look at the context of that verse in Colossians, it is
Christ in you, the hope of glory, is the spectacle that catches the attention of the heathen who need
that Elijah message. Don't ever forget it. We have a God and he's calling everyone in this room
to be part of his message and his
proof, his spectacle. Now that's interesting. Doesn't mean everybody will do it, but he's calling us.
And I would like to point out he gives us the power. That's what that first angel's message is about.
He created the heavens, the earth, the fountains of water, and he can recreate you and me.
Father, you are our God and Savior. You have given your only begotten Son that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.
We thank you and praise you. And now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.
To God our Savior who alone is wise be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and forever. Amen.