Elijah: Faith and FireSample

These Are the Days of Elijah

In 1 Kings 17, as Elijah first comes into view, the sense we get from Scripture is that God had released the nation to the consequences of their duplicitous choices. Progressively over a number of decades, they’d refused a posture of surrender toward His divine care and guidance. Even worse, they’d turned their backs on Him, had refused His loving advances, and had chased the wicked lifestyles and allegiances encouraged by their rebellious, godless leaders.

It was now somewhere around 870 BC—significant because it had been no more than a hundred years since King Solomon had led the people in a national dedication of their newly completed temple. The contrast between the two time periods—which was a conceivable human lifetime— could not be more striking. 

Read 2 Chronicles 7:1-3.

There were likely people still alive in Elijah’s day who’d been present at Solomon’s grand dedication of the temple, even if just as little kids. 

But over the course of eight decades in Israel, spanning the reigns of six different kings, the God-honoring families who once esteemed Him had incrementally relaxed their commitments. They’d departed from the singular worship of Yahweh. They’d welcomed idolatrous activity into their lives as an accepted practice.

Now we come to Ahab, who was the king of Israel when Elijah emerged onto the scene. Ahab “did evil in the sight of the LORD more than all who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). 

The spiritual indifference and negligence of all the kings of Israel since Solomon had been offensive to God. But the sharpness of Ahab’s departure from the worship of the one true God grieved the Lord even more. And at this low ebb of the declining arc, God did what fathers sometimes have to do. He let go. And like it or not, God does so even now. The sad reality is that our current culture is experiencing some of the same effects of this divine relinquishing.

Read Romans 1:18-32.

As children of God—saved, redeemed, and forgiven—the status of our relationship with Him never changes. But it doesn’t mean our experience with Him won’t change if we persist in refusing to honor Him. He will sometimes choose tough, letting-go love as the best option for reminding us that the ingredients we’re mixing into our lives are a recipe for disaster. 

These were the days of Elijah. Days of experiencing God’s letting go. But just when Israel was spiraling downward, God was stirring up a representative in the rugged mountains of Gilead who would call His people back. 

Elijah was coming.