How Elijah prayed

The first notice we have of Elijah is in 1 Kings 17, when he appears as a herald of judgment to Ahab. But though his public career commenced here, it was by no means the beginning of his private exercises, for we learn from James 5:17 that the judgment here so confidently announced was granted in direct answer to his own prayer. "As the Lord liveth," says Elijah, "before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." And why had he prayed for this? Ahab's wickedness had, in the sight of the Lord, surpassed all who had preceded him. He had married Jezebel, the daughter of the King of the Zidonians, and had reared up an altar to Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. Elijah, "a man of like passions with us," but a righteous man, and one whose dependence was on God, could not witness these abominations in the midst of God's people with indifference; and he earnestly entreats that God would thus speak to the nation in judgment, and vindicate His own name. His trust was in God, and he looked to Him to correct His people, and lead them to understand that dependence which he himself had learnt. Suspension of usual mercies was the way of all others to effect this: the loss of dew and rain for three years and a half was fitted to make them feel and remember the source from which their blessings flowed. The deprivation of natural mercies by superhuman means has always the effect of impressing man with a sense that he must look to the Creator. The course of nature has been suspended by a power unknown to him; and though, while he enjoyed the usual blessings, he little thought of God, the moment they are suspended, he is made to feel that he has no remedy but in appealing to Him whom heretofore he had abandoned and disobeyed. Elijah, grieved and oppressed by the apostasy of Israel, finds relief for his heart in prayer, and thus obtains from God the remedy for recalling His people, and Ahab their king, to a sense of how they owed every mercy they had to the will of God. What a striking and interesting light is this in which his history opens to our view! Having prayed in secret, he comes forth for the first time to declare the result of it, and is thus a blessed and prepared witness for such evil and disastrous times, and a witness, too (as the Holy Ghost, ages afterwards, testified), that every soul thus disciplined to wait on God in any emergency will obtain the same result. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." What peculiar dignity and assured power does the man taught of God stand forth to testify against the corruption of his day! Witness his first meeting with Ahab. (1 Kings 17:1) How instructive to see a lone and hitherto obscure man rise up in the power of God, and tell the king of Israel, "Thus saith the Lord, There shall not be rain or dew these years, but according to my word!" Elijah takes the supreme place which Ahab had forfeited; for Israel's king ought to have been God's most distinguished servant; but having so grievously departed from God's way, the Lord now sends His own servant, disciplined in secret, to deliver a message and testimony which asserted His supreme control of everything. The rain, on which depended the fruits of the earth, should not fall but according to His servant's word.

We must think of Elijah exercised before God in the solitudes of Gilead about the appalling condition of His people. The prophet's words to Ahab, however unexpected and startling, were no mere spasmodic outburst. He had doubtless spent much time before God about the nation and its ways. He loved the people; he longed to see them right with God; but the grossest evils had become so deeply entrenched, that he felt something drastic was required in order to bring the people to their senses. So he turned to prayer. Acceptable prayer must be based upon the Word of God, and the prophet doubtless remembered Deut. 11:16-17: "Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods and worship them; and Jehovah's wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and ye perish quickly from off the good land which Jehovah gives you." With such words before him, the distressed prophet cried out of the depth of his heart, "O God, stop the rain!" Being fully assured that he had the mind of God about the matter he went into the presence of Ahab, and said, "There shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." God responded to His servant's faith, "and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months."

The first thing that we know of Elijah is that "he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months." (James 5: 17) As the fruit of this fervent, effectual prayer he boldly announced to Ahab, "As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." (1 Kings 17:1) Here in truth was a most genuine prayer of faith — a faith which expressed itself, just as James the Apostle demands, in works, in the form of a prophetic utterance. His faith in the completeness of God's answer was so clear and implicit that he announced not only no rain, but also no dew! He was sure that God would answer his request in the spirit and not only in the letter. God acted just as he requested.

How came it that he was able to pray with such clear-cut assurance? Do the Scriptures throw any light upon this? We believe that they do. The Lord had said through Moses, "Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; and then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit." (Deut. 11:16-17) Now they had turned aside under Ahab, and they were serving and worshipping other gods, and so Elijah expected God to do what He said He would do under those circumstances. He asked Him to do it; he expected Him to do it; he boldly announced that He would do it. That was faith.

Elijah was not praying for something which would entail pleasant consequences for himself. He shared in the miseries of the prolonged drought, and suffered along with the people, though God made special provision for him which preserved him from starvation. It was evidently true that, as he said. "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts." He hated the terrible apostasy of Israel towards Baal, his heart burned for the glory of Jehovah's name, and he felt the time had come for God to act in the judgment He had specified. Anything was better than that Israel should pursue their downward way unchecked. The rod of government was to be preferred to utter ruin; so he prayed for the stroke of chastisement, though it was to fall on his own back amongst the rest. That prayer was answered.

James also informs us that, "He prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit." We might have deduced that he was praying from the account in 1 Kings, 18, of how on the top of Carmel "he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees." But James sets the point at rest by telling us that it was so. He prayed, and sent his servant to look, even seven times, for the answer. The answer came in no stinted measure. There was a great rain.

Furthermore, in the New Testament we learn another truth concerning Elijah. James brings the prophet forward as an illustration of the mighty things that can be accomplished by the earnest prayer of one righteous man. Prayer in private was another great secret of his power in public. He could stand before the wicked king because he had knelt before the living God. And his was no mere formal prayer that avails nothing, but an earnest prayer that avails much. A prayer that had the glory of God in view as well as the blessing of the people, and therefore, "he prayed earnestly that it might not rain." A terrible prayer to have to put up to the living God about the people of God! And yet as Elijah surveyed the condition of the people, and could see no recognition of God throughout the breadth and length of the land, he realized it was better for them to suffer the years of drought, if this would turn them to God, than to enjoy prosperity in defiance of God and pass on to a worse judgment. Zeal for God and love for the people were behind this solemn prayer.

The New Testament tells us precisely what had taken place prior to the moment of Elijah's public appearance. "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months" (James 5:17). That man knew God, and had gone to him earnestly in prayer. He realised the awful state of Israel. He saw how the Lord had been dishonoured; His temple slighted, and His worship set aside; for later on he says, "The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword" (1 Kings 19:10). This is what the apostle Paul calls his intercession against Israel.

Nothing could be worse than the state of Israel in that day. A person who was not really in nearness to God, and in the sense of His power, which alone could meet so serious a state of affairs, would have given all up as hopeless. But what is so exceedingly charming to learn is this, that before this man appears in public, he has been alone with God. If we are going to have much blessing, there will have to be more prayer. The men who have been really used of God, the mighty men in the field, have been always mighty men in the closet. They have been men of prayer. I find that Elijah prayed "earnestly." He was a wonderful man, but he was "a man subject to like passions as we are." He was exactly like you and me. What does he do? He goes to God in prayer, feeling that the only way in which Israel's declension could be arrested was by the intervention of God's hand. Then in answer to his prayer, God in His sovereignty is pleased to shut up the heavens for three years and a half. You know what terrible effects a drought of that nature would produce.

The time when the prophet drew near should be remarked. It was the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice; and this fact proclaimed that Elijah rested, not in his own services or prayers, but in the value of the burnt-offering (significant of the sacrifice of Christ) for the token which he craved. Observe, moreover, his pleas. He addresses Jehovah as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel; and his desire is that it might be known that day that Jehovah, spite of His people's apostasy, was God in Israel, and that he was His servant and had done these things at Jehovah's word; and in one last petition he poured out his zeal for the Lord, and his yearning for the people's restoration. The Lord heard and answered the supplication of His servant, and "the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench."

"And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water. And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near "not merely the people to him, but the prophet to the Lord. He drew near to that which was to be the witness of His power, of His testimony, of His own name and glory — "and said, Jehovah God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word." How blessed! It was a secret between God and His prophet, but it was a secret divulged now before there was any answer — that all the profit of the answer might belong to the people and that the word of the Lord might be enhanced and glorified in their eyes.

The altar erected, the victim laid thereon, all being thrice drenched with water, and the time of the evening sacrifice being come, the prophet turns to God in prayer. In his prayer, Elijah makes nothing of himself but everything of God. He seeks no place for himself; he has no desire to exalt himself before the people; he would be known only as a servant carrying out the commands of the Lord. His one desire is that God may be glorified. To this end he would have all the people know that Jehovah is God; that Jehovah is doing "all these things"; that Jehovah is speaking to their heart to turn the people back to himself.

The prayer of Elijah receives an immediate answer: "The fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice." How wonderful is this scene. A holy God who must deal with all evil by the consuming fire of judgment, and a guilty nation steeped in the evil which the holy God must judge. Surely the fire of the Lord must fall, and equally surely, the nation must be consumed. How can they escape? How are their hearts to be turned back to the Lord? Here is an issue that no fervent prayer of a righteous man can meet. If the guilty nation is to be spared, then the altar must be built, and a sacrifice provided that will represent the guilty nation under the eye of God and on which the judgment they have merited can fall. And thus it came to pass, for we read, "The fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice." The judgment falls upon the victim, the nation goes free.

This is intelligent prayer. The prophet is engaged solely about God and His people. He does not say, "Hear me, that this people may know that I am a true prophet." No; his only object was to bring the people back to the God of their fathers, and to have the claims of God established in their consciences, in opposition to the claims of Baal. And God harkened and heard; for no sooner had he concluded his prayer than "the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, He is the God; the Lord, He is the God."

Elijah had given the prophets of Baal all day to plead with their idol. Now at the time of the evening sacrifice, Elijah prayed simply to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel to let it be known that He is God in Israel and that Elijah had acted as directed by the word of God. His prayer was brief, ending with the words, "Hear me, 0 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" (v.36-37).