Elijah: Faith and FirePrøve

The Process of Preparation Let’s dig into 1 Kings 17. This is the first mention of the prophet in Scripture. Read 1 Kings 17:1. The exact location of Tishbe, despite being home to one of the greatest figures in all the Bible, cannot really be identified. Geologists and archaeologists have never been able to pinpoint it with any degree of accuracy. But Gilead comes with a bit more documentation. Read Genesis 31:17-21; Genesis 37:23-25; and Deuteronomy 34:1-4. Gilead was hill country, covered with dense forests and wild undergrowth. It was remote and uncivilized. Even its name— Gilead — means “rocky” or “rugged.” That’s where Elijah was from. And that’s who Elijah was. A mountain man. A tough, adventurous, free-ranging spirit. Elijah came from a hard place. A rough place. An obscure place. The right place to be prepared for what God had in store for him. For Elijah, the fact that he was raised in an uncouth environment; the fact that he wasn’t brought up around more urbane, cultured tastes and people; the fact that he grew up at a distance from mass civilization; the fact that he had no lineage or pedigree even worth mentioning in the Bible. There was a reason for it. God used it to give Elijah a clear, objective view of the duplicity that existed in the seat of Israel’s power. By virtue of his outback upbringing, Elijah had not been tainted by living up close to the idolatrous influences of the city, nor dulled into spiritual apathy by its pious religious activity. Instead he was able to nurse a growing indignation about the declined moral state because he hadn’t been absorbed into its fabric. Being from lowly regarded Gilead, Elijah was naturally unencumbered by the need to impress and please others, which made him an ideal mouthpiece for delivering the righteous message God wanted him to convey. During Elijah’s unrecorded years in Gilead, he somehow came to know, to really know, Yahweh. One way or another, while doing his tedious, mundane, lonesome work, while facing hardships we’ll never know, Elijah had been exposed to influences that convinced him Jehovah wasn’t just one deity among many other options. He’d developed a deep knowledge, reverence, and understanding for Yahweh’s covenant with His people, a holy perspective that would form the basis for his first prophetic declaration in Scripture. This God, Israel’s God, was a jealous God who had no intention of sharing His glory with man-made idols. That’s what Elijah learned in Gilead.