God is Alive!
I Kings 17:1
 
We have been taking a look at the God of Easter. We first looked in on God in the Garden as Jesus prayer there the night of His betrayal and arrest. 
 
Then we saw God on a Cross. Jesus Christ, the very God-Man, God in the flesh is beaten, scourged and crucified. 
 
Then the Bible says they took the body off the tree and laid it in a borrowed tomb. And there we saw God in the Grave. 
 
But today is Easter, and contained in that one little word is the greatest announcement human ears could ever hear: God is Alive. 
 
Several years ago there was a professor at Emery University in Atlanta, Georgia, named Thomas Alheiser who announced that God was dead.  
 
In fact, the “God is dead” movement was born in this country. There were a lot of people who bought into it and they believed that God indeed was dead. As it turns out the God is dead movement died and God continues to live on. 
 
Most all of us are familiar with the events of the resurrection. And like all other truths you either accept them by faith or you deny them. But the events of the resurrection stand, recorded by God Himself. That declaration stands: God is alive!
 
 
But how do we know? How can we be sure that our God, the God of Easter, is alive?
 
Well, to answer that, I want to take you to some Old Testament experiences of a man named Elijah who saw by inarguable evidences that God was alive. 
 
Now Elijah was a prophet of God. He lived in a very tense time, and proclaimed a very direct message to the people. 
 
On the throne of Israel sat a king named Ahab. Ahab was a Jew, but his heart was far from God. In fact, the Bible says that of all the kings of Israel who were before him, he did more evil in the sight of God, and more to provoke God to anger than any of them. 
 
He was married to a woman named Jezebel. She was the daughter of Eth-baal, who was a Sidonian king. They formed an extremely unholy alliance. The Bible says that Ahab built a temple for Baal worship in Samaria, and built an altar in the temple. We are told he made a wooden image of Baal.
 
For all intents and purposes, Ahab is living his life as though the God of Easter is dead. And into that situation walks the prophet Elijah one day and says,
 
TEXT
 
 
And as suddenly as he came, he walks out again, but the words are ringing in their ears and burning in their heart that God is very, very much alive!
 
 
 
It is the announcement of this great prophet
Elijah on this occasion that God is very much alive. 
 
Now against that backdrop, I want to ask the question: How did he know God was alive? What convinced him?
 
There are two very interesting phrases in the life of Elijah which really in some ways summarize the life of this man Elijah. 
 
The first phrase is in the third verse of 1 Kings 17 where the Lord said to Elijah, "hide” yourself". 
 
The other is found in the 18th chapter and the first verse where the Lord said to Elijah there, "Present yourself". 
 
In those two ways I believe Elijah demonstrates that that God is very much alive and it's how you can find out that God is alive also.
 
First of all, you can know, just as Elijah did, that God is alive -
 
I.           Personally.
 
God said: “Hide”
 
In the secrecy of your own soul, in the closet of your own consciousness, you can come to the understanding and the reality that God is very much alive. You can know God is alive personally through your
 
devotional life. 
 
There is a verse of Scripture in the book of James 5:17 that references Elijah that I want you to hear. 
 
“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.”
 
Interesting statement, isn't it? It tells us a great deal about Elijah himself. Elijah was a man just like us. Even though Elijah casts a big shadow in Scripture, there was also weakness in the man. He's like all of us. There is greatness in us in what God has done in our lives, but there is also weakness in us. 
 
We get awfully judgmental sometimes. “How in the world can God bless those individuals over there who are living like they are? Doesn’t God know what they done and said?”
 
I want to tell you something: The older I become and the longer I am in the ministry, I no longer wonder as much how God can bless other people as I wonder how God can bless me when I see my own inconsistencies and weaknesses.
 
Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. There were times when Elijah was up on the mountain shouting the victory. There were other times when Elijah was down in the valley and he was praying that he might die. There were times when Elijah got up just like you and I did. Some days he got up and he was feeling great and everything was fine. There were other days when he got up on the wrong side of the bed and felt like kicking the cat. 
 
 
There was greatness, but there was also weakness in the man.
 
He was like us, but the verse goes on to give us the key to his life. He was a man of prayer. 
 
He learned to pray with passion and fervor. This is a man who could pray down fire or water whichever one was needed the most. This is a man who could cut off the faucets of heaven and no rain came except according to his word. He was a man of prayer. In fact, the Bible says he prayed earnestly. Literally you could translate that "he prayed in his prayers."
 
Do you pray in your prayers? Do you really pray when you pray? Or do you just SAY prayers?
 
Here was a man who knew what it was in his own personal devotional life to talk to a God who was alive. And you can know God is alive as you develop a devotional life.
 
You can also know God is alive in your
 
daily life. 
 
Look at chapter 17, verses 3-6, what the Lord does in the life of Elijah. 
 
What is he going to learn here? God takes him and sits him down beside a brook. He is going to learn that God is alive in
 
the common place experiences of life.
 
 
God takes him down to a brook. Somebody says, "Oh, man, that would really be nice. I'd like to do that. Just take off tomorrow instead of going to work and go down to a little creek. Just catch a fish or two. Read a book.  Have a little picnic. Not go to school. I'd love to just have a little day off down by a brook."
 
It wasn't quite as picturesque as it may seem to have been. In fact, if I figure correctly he spent about 3 years down by that brook. Nobody to come around. Nobody to talk to. Nothing to do. No paper to read. No football on TV to watch. Just everyday the humdrum, ordinary affairs of his life. 
 
But it was in the ordinary that he discovered that God can be real in providing for him in extraordinary ways. The Lord told him to go down by the brook and God commanded the ravens to feed him.
 
Every morning, I can see Elijah as he goes down to the brook and washes his face for the day. Then he looks up to heaven and says, "Oh, Lord, I want to thank you for that which I'm about to receive." About that time a flock of ravens would come from the butcher shop and bring him his meal for the day.
 
Before the day was over he would thank the Lord again and in the evening God would send something for him. He is learning here that God, in the common places of life, can provide for you in extraordinary, unusual, amazing ways.
 
Have you proved God alive in the ordinary experiences of your life? 
 
 
Listen to this quote I came across: "Life can get mighty daily." You know, life does get mighty daily. But in these ordinary, daily experiences of your life you can know that God is real.
 
Notice that he is told that he is to go to the brook and the ravens will feed him there. Notice that word "there" in verse 4. 
 
Here is an instance in the Bible of a person who is doing nothing and yet he is in the will of God. Sometimes we think we have to be doing something. Sometimes we think we have to be busy. But here is a man who is just waiting on the Lord, alone with the Lord. He is there. “There” is the place of God's will.   He is there. “There” is the place where God provides for him. The most important thing in all of your life is to be where God wants you to be, doing what God wants you to do.
 
So down by a brook he learns that God is alive in the common place experiences of life. Then God moves him on. The brook dries up in verse 7. Verse 8 the word of the Lord comes to Elijah the second time and says
 
verse 9
 
Old Elijah says, "Um, a widow woman. I hope she's rich."
 
So he makes his way to Zarephath. He comes to the gate of the city and out of the gate comes a poor old soul and a ragtag boy holding on to her skirts. 
Elijah says, "Excuse me, ma'am, are there any rich widows around here?" 
 
The Lord says to him, "She’s the one, dummy."   He says, "Ma'am, would you mind going back into town and getting me a drink of water?"  
 
She turns to go and do that in verse 10 we are told. 
As she goes, in verse 11, the King Terry Paraphrase,
he says, "By the way, when you come back would you bring me a bagel or a muffin?" She looks at him and says in
 
verse 12
 
What's Elijah fixing to learn about God here? God put him down by a brook and proved that he's alive in the common place experiences of life. 
 
Now, he is going to put him down beside a barrel and let him come to know that that God is alive in the
 
crisis experiences of life. 
 
verse 14-16
 
Every morning that widow and Elijah had their head down in that barrel singing, "Praise God from whom al blessings flow."
 
Any of you got crisis today? God is alive in the crisis experiences of your life. "But, preacher, you don't know what I'm going through." I don't know what you're going through, but God does. Do you think what has been happening to you took God by surprise? 
 
 
 
Read the book of Job and look at all of the crisis that Job went through. Now Job didn't have the privilege of knowing at the time what we know know.
He knows it now, but at the time he didn’t know that everything that came into the life of Job had already been the subject of a council meeting in heaven. 
 
Do you think when a crisis comes in your life that the Lord is up there, walking the streets of gold and wringing his hands and saying, "My, my, my, one of my children has a crisis. What am I going to do about it?" God knows all about it. God knows just exactly what He's going to do and God can provide and God can help you in your time of crisis. Jesus Christ is the Christ of every crisis.
 
He's alive! He'll put you down by a brook so you can know Him in the common, every-day experiences of life. He'll put you down by a barrel and prove himself alive in the crisis experiences of life.
 
Now God is going to put him down by a boy. 
 
Verse 17
 
That means the boy died. Now we are going to find out that God is alive in
 
the calamity experiences of life. 
 
Can there be anything more heartrending than to have a problem with a child? Some of you are having great heartaches with a child. Your heart is torn breaking. You are going through a real calamity in the life of your son or daughter.
 
 
Here's a woman and her boy has died and she comes to Elijah and tells him about it. 
 
Verse 19-22
 
I was thinking about our church and what a responsibility is ours. Can you imagine what a tremendous responsibility that is to us as a church? We have been given the responsibility of boys and girls and young people who have been placed in our hands. 
 
God help us to give them more than a pizza and a video game. That would be a good time for an "amen." 
 
We're trying to teach them to love Christ and we're trying to teach them about the Bible and we're trying to build strong convictions in their lives to send them out into the far corners of this earth to tell the good news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
"Give me your son." That's what Elijah said. The
Bible says that he stretched himself on the child in verse 21. That tells us a lot about soul winning. If you want to win people to Christ you have to get personally involved in them. You have to lay your life on their life. You have to hurt when they hurt.
You have to pray for them. You have to love them. You have to walk with them through their crisis experiences of life. God is alive in the calamity experiences of life. That boy came back to life. 
 
Some of you, your child is dead. Why don't you turn that child over to God? Why don't you let God go to work on them? Get your child in church. Get your child in Sunday School. 
Get your child on the prayer list and just trust God to raise that boy or girl back from the dead. 
 
Now notice: Elijah experienced a dry brook, a depleted barrel, and a dead boy. And out of those three experiences Elijah comes out with the reality that God is alive. 
 
He knew God was alive personally.
 
Now go to the 18th chapter, 1st verse, the Lord says to Elijah, "Present yourself." 
 
Now Elijah is going to prove that God is alive -
 
II.   Publically.
 
After you have come to know God personally, in the privacy of your own heart, you are now ready to prove that God is alive publicly.
 
Fast forward to verse 19 of chapter 18.
 
He is saying now we are going to have a contest. We are going to find out whose God is alive after all. This is one of the most dramatic scenes in all the Bible. 
 
It is a very intense scene. Elijah calls all the people together and the king and his court are there. On one side are 850 prophets of Baal dressed in their purple robes, trimmed in gold. 
 
On the other side is one solitary prophet, a man named Elijah, who is standing over there singing, "Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how I proved Him o’er and o’er." 
He says, "Why don't we have a contest and see whose God is really God and whose God is alive? The test he proposes is the test of fire. He actually weights the contest in favor of his opponents, because Baal was the God fire. It was to Baal that they would burn their children in the fire. So Baal ought to be able to throw a little fire down.
 
Elijah is even more generous, and a gentlemen, when he says in verse 24 and 25, you go first. 
 
All the people answered and said, "It is well spoken." 
 
Verse 26
 
He gives them the prime time of the day. 
 
The Bible says that they began calling on the name of their God. The last of verse 26 says "and the leaped upon the altar which was made."   Probably they did in sync, don' you guess? They are leaping and dancing and calling and yelling. 
 
What is Elijah doing? He is challenging the false gods of his day. He is challenging Baal who is a dead god. It is time for those of us who name the name of Christ, who know that God is real, who know that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead and He is alive forever more, to challenge the false gods of this day. 
 
We need to challenge the materialism of this day. The humanism of this day. We need to challenge the mysticisms of this day. We need to out think them, out pray them, out live them. Our God is real. He'll stand the test.
 
They are calling on their God - Baal. 
 
Elijah gets a little sarcastic here in verse 27. I can see him now over there leaning up against a tree. He says in verse 27 that at noon time Elijah mocked them
 
Verse 27
 
He says, maybe your God is talking on his cell phone to somebody and he didn't know you were calling. Or maybe he's chasing a rat. Or maybe he's gone to the mountains. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom. Maybe he's asleep, why don't you holler a little bit louder.
 
They are jumping up and down. They're boogying now. they are getting down and dirty now. They are jumping up and down on that altar. They are cutting themselves. 
 
Isn't it a shame to see the way people wreck their lives following after the pagan gods that they follow? You become like the God you worship. If you worship the God of sexual immorality. That's what
you become. If you worship the God of alcohol, that's what you become. 
 
That's why it's so important to know Christ as your Savior. Christ does not lower you to the level of the animals. Christ lifts you to the level of the Lord himself.
 
The Bible says there was nothing. 
 
Verse 29
 
Can you imagine how empty that moment was when they realized their god didn’t answer? Some of you can imagine that all too well. 
 
You’ve had those morning when you wake up to an empty life. Nothing is there. All the hope and anticipation is long gone. Listen: False, dead gods give no answers. 
 
If you don't know the real Lord, when you get in a time of trouble, there's not going to be any
answer for you. No help.
 
But notice what happens. Elijah is fixing to put the God that he has come to know and experience in his personal life on public display. 
 
He does it first of all, by  
 
the burning of the fire. 
 
Verse 30
 
Isn't it time some of God's people repaired some broken down altars? For some of you the altar of Easter is the only time of worship you ever have. You need to repair that old altar of faithful attendance to God’s house. 
 
For others, you may be here every time the doors are opened, but the altar of daily devotions has been torn down. There was a time when you read the Bible and prayed and had an altar of prayer in your life, but you've been neglecting it. 
 
 
 
Some need to repair that altar of faithfulness to tell others about Christ. There was a time when you were seeking daily to tell others about the Lord. Isn't it time you rebuilt that altar?
 
You notice as you read verses 31 and following, as he reconstructs and rebuilds this altar, it was a place of sacrifice. 
 
In verse 33 he puts the wood, cuts the pieces of the animal and lays it on there. It's going to be a burnt sacrifice. The significance of the fire is not lost on Jehovah God either. 
 
Travel with Moses to the burning bush. Meet with the Israelites as they followed a pillar of fire by night. Go to the temple and see the fire on the altar as sacrifices are offered to Holy God. Every sacrifice was a picture of the coming of Christ and what Christ would do on the cross. 
 
The burnt sacrifice was a picture of what Christ did for us on Calvary when he endured the wrath of God and the fires of God's holy wrath fell upon him. So between a holy God and sinful people, Elijah built an altar and he pictures Calvary.
 
When you and I understand who Jesus is and what He did for us on the cross and begin to lift high the Lord Jesus Christ again and talk about the cross and lift up the cross of the Lord Jesus, God will prove himself real. 
 
That's why I expect God to do something every time we come together. We sing about the blood. We sing about the cross of the Lord Jesus. We preach the Word of God. 
That's why I believe God will manifest himself every time we come together.
 
He puts the cross in there and he gets the people around and begins to pray. 
 
verse 37
 
The sky crackles and fire comes from heaven's stockpiles and embraces the altar. The fire falls upon it. That's what we need in America. Not the false fire. Not the wild fire. We need the real fire out of heaven to fall and God began to work and bless again and they fall on their faces and say "the Lord He is God; the Lord he is God."  
 
From the top of Mount Carmel it rings like a silver bell, down through the valleys. God is alive. The earth shakes. God is alive. The Lord God lives. You can prove God is alive by the burning of the fire.
 
But Elijah isn’t through yet. Now he is going to prove God is alive by
 
the blessing of the rain. 
 
verse 41-44
 
That means to me that Elijah prayed with such fervor that his uplifted hand stamped itself upon the clouds of glory. What prayer! 
 
"There shall be showers of blessing. Oh, that today they might fall. Mercy drops 'round us are falling, but for the showers we pray."
 
 
God wants to send the showers of blessing. Elijah comes running off that mountain singing, "I've seen fire and I've seen rain."
 
There was another contest on a mountain top 2,000 years ago when the Son of God died in your place. There the fire of God’s wrath fell on Jesus because of your sin and mine. But praise the Lord, He didn’t stay dead! And today, I can boldly and confidently, say to you, The God of Easter is Alive!
 
And if you will come to Him and acknowledge Him as Savior and Lord of your life, He will pour out of heaven into your life the showers of blessing. And dear friend, you can know today, just like Elijah did, personally that God is alive.
 
And you can demonstrate it publically: Stand and come