As the Sunday School class that I help teach wrapped up a series of lessons earlier this year, I was left with an opportunity to select something new. Around that time, I realized that I didn’t remember ever studying the lives of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Sure, we hear sermons or lessons about individual accounts from their lives, but I thought that it might be good to go through the Bible, identify where these two are mentioned, and follow along with their ministries as they are recorded in the books of 1 & 2 Kings.
This ended up being a 9-week series (although another class member taught one of them when I was out of town one week, so I don’t have my own material for the second-to-last one). If you’re interested in what’s coming, though, here is the overall outline:
Elijah: 1 Kings 17-2 Kings 2
- 1 Kings 17:1-24 – Elijah and the widow of Zarephath
- 1 Kings 18:1-46 – Elijah and the prophets of Baal
- 1 Kings 19:1-21 – Elijah on the run; God appears to Elijah
- 1 Kings 21:1-29 – Elijah rebukes Ahab for what he did to Naboth
- 2 Kings 2:1-18 – Elijah taken to Heaven
Elisha: 1 Kings 19-2 Kings 13
- (1 Kings 19: The calling of Elisha – covered earlier, so not a separate lesson)
- 2 Kings 2:19-3:27; 6:1-23 – Elisha and miracles
- 2 Kings 4:1-7 – The miracle of the widow’s oil
- 2 Kings 4:8-37, 8:1-6 – The miracles for a Shunammite woman
- 2 Kings 5:1-27 – The miracle of healing Naaman’s leprosy
I’d rather not leave you today with just a “table of contents”, though, for how the next few months’ worth of articles is expected to pan out (although the future is always subject to God’s intervention: while we’ve gotten through this series in our Sunday School class, I haven’t converted all of them into articles yet, so things could change). For today, let’s look at a couple of passages from the New Testament that refer to these two prophets.
The first passage is from when Jesus shared good news about Himself with people in His boyhood home of Nazareth.
“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
Luke 4:24-27 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/luk.4.24-27.NIV
And, the second passage is from the epistle of James, as he shares how powerful the results of prayer can be when offered by the righteous.
Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
James 5:17-18 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jas.5.17-18.NIV
I realize that not everyone reads these articles in order, but if you do, I hope that you will consider two particular things as we look at the lives of these 2 men from the Bible.
- God works great things through His people (which I hope includes you – if not, His invitation is open to you). However, God’s blessings and amazing works aren’t limited to a narrow slice of humanity. People from every region, every language, and every background can receive the goodness of God, poured out from His never-empty storehouse of love.
- In addition, God works through “regular” people. Elijah and Elisha didn’t have superpowers, nor were they trained in some sort of “magical gift”. No, they were human beings, with their own challenges, just like us. The only way that they were able to achieve greater things (compared to what their own abilities would allow) was through God’s choice to exert His message and His power in, through, and around them.
It is good news that the God who changed people’s lives through the service of Elijah and Elisha is still the same God who we can call upon today. He is still powerful, wise, and loving. And, He is still present and willing for us to follow Him. I hope that you’ll join Him in this great adventure of His, both vicariously through the account of ancient prophets, and through the daily joy that He provides to His people each day.
References:
- Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Those Who Sin Differently 