In the Spirit and Power of Elijah

A few months before Jesus was born, another baby was born up in the hills of Judah, or Judea as they called it then. There were no shepherds, no wise men, no angels announcing it to the world. And yet the birth of this baby was directly connected with the birth of the Messiah.

It wasn't a virgin birth, but it was supernatural. Reading from the book of Luke, chapter 1, starting at verse 5. In the days of Herod the king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.

And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. Now, while he was serving as priest before God, when Zechariah's division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

The whole multitude of people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him.

But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard. And your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth.

For he will be great before the Lord, and he shall drink no wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.

And so John was born six months before Jesus. On the eighth day he was circumcised. And then we hear nothing more about him until he's a man of thirty.

When he's thirty, suddenly there's word all over Jerusalem, all over Judea, and all over Galilee that there's a weird man down by the wilderness of the Jordan announcing that the Messiah is about to appear, that the kingdom of God is here. And people flock down to the Jordan wilderness by the thousands to listen to him. Now there have been lots of crazies before, announcing the kingdom of God and the Messiah.

But this man has such authority. He looks like Elijah must have looked. He sounds like Elijah must have sounded.

And people are so shaken by him that many begin to consider whether perhaps this man John himself is not the Messiah. And so they asked him. He says, Nope, I'm not the Messiah.

Who are you, they asked. He confessed. He did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Messiah.

And they asked him, What then? Are you Elijah? I am not. Are you that prophet? No. Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us.

What do you say about yourself? I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees, and they asked him, Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor the Elijah, nor the prophet? I baptize with water.

But among you stands one whom you do not know, even he who comes after me, the father of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. Clearly, he understood it and he expressed it. The purpose of John the Baptist's ministry was to announce the Messiah, to prepare the way for his coming.

And he does. The very next day after these men from Jerusalem had grilled him, John looks up and he sees Jesus coming and he says, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Now Jesus said that of men born of women, there is none greater than John the Baptist.

What did he mean? He meant that this man, John, tore the door of the kingdom of heaven open with his bare hands, so to speak, and said, there it is, look, there's the Messiah. He wasn't the Messiah, he wasn't that prophet, he wasn't Elijah, but he was the one to prepare the way. And he did it.

He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. After John fulfilled his purpose, he stepped back. That very thing we find so hard to do.

He stepped back and allowed Jesus to have center stage and do what he was called to do. Shortly after this, John was arrested, put in prison, beheaded, and forgotten by most everybody. But was the work of John the Baptist finished? The work of being the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.

The work of announcing the Messiah, the work of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. No, that work has barely begun even now. And so we read in the last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, chapter 3, verse 1, Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me.

And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Ah, but who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? And skipping to the very last two verses of the entire Old Testament, we read, Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.

And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse. And so, John the Baptist became the Elijah minister, the Elijah servant. And his purpose was to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus, and he did it.

Now just as John the Baptist was raised up to be this Elijah servant, so there is now, today, also, an Elijah servant being raised up on the earth to prepare the way for the glorified Messiah. And this Elijah servant is no longer a solitary individual. The Elijah servant now is corporate.

It's an army of men and women gathered from every nation under heaven. And the recruiting for this army is going on at this moment. And it comes to us now.

We are at a time when we are being called to come into it, if we will. To be part of that voice, crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, to be that voice, to get in this army, you don't have to pass the physical, and you don't have to take an IQ test. All you have to do is respond, say yes.

It's like walking through a door, and you're in. It's like letting go of your past and everything you've been holding on to and walking into the kingdom. But you don't walk through that door lightly.

It's not a revolving door. You don't go in and out and in and out. You're either in or you're out.

Now the thing which distinguishes these Elijah servants of the Lord, who are already alive and working on the earth right now, from the nominal Christian subculture of our land, if you could call it a subculture, it's almost a culture of its own now, the thing that distinguishes these Elijah servants from Christendom over here can be divided into four aspects or four statements, four descriptions. First, the purpose of their lives is to be a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. The law of their lives is Jesus must increase, I must decrease.

The joy of their lives is that their names are written in heaven and nothing else. And the issue of their lives is that they are getting kingdom results. And before we say, okay, Lord, I'll join your army, here I am.

We need to ask ourselves whether we are prepared to conform ourselves to these four things. If we are part of this Elijah army, the one purpose of our life becomes to be a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, and that's all, that's our only purpose for being here anymore. They said to him, who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us.

What do you say about yourself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. The question is, are we willing that our lives should be narrowed down to just that, that our lives should be cut down, simplified to the point where that is our purpose and only that, to be a voice. A voice is heard, it's not seen.

We see Jesus, but we hear, you know, when we hear this voice, what we are seeing is Jesus. And to be such a voice that we become less and less visible, so that only he can be heard. And to lift up our voice in this wilderness in which you and I are now living, and shout if we have to, prepare the way of the Lord, even if the whole world rises up against us in anger.

If we are part of this Elijah army, the law of our life is, he must increase, I must decrease. Now a discussion arose between John's disciples and a Jew over purifying. They came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who is with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, here he is baptizing and all are going to him.

Everybody's leaving us and they're going over there with Jesus. John answered, no one can receive anything except it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness that I said I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent before him.

He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom stands and hears him and rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now full.

He must increase, I must decrease. He must increase, I must decrease. Sounds great.

We can all say amen. Yeah, that's great. But it's quite a different thing to live it.

You know, to in fact rejoice when it starts to happen. Even for John it was not that good. It became much more difficult to put that into practice when John was now sitting in prison and Jesus is out there running around healing the sick and casting out demons and having a good square meal at the house of some Pharisee.

And here I sit. Now to say he must increase, I must decrease. What if Jesus increases through some other believer while we have to do the fasting and the praying? What if some other Christian is going around there and he belongs to the wrong church too? Healing the sick and casting out demons and we do the suffering.

I remember a long time ago reading this little mimeographed book by a man named Smith. And he was describing, it was kind of an autobiography, and he mentioned when he first came to know the Lord he was down in Florida working in fruit picking. And on weekends he would go off into the Everglades someplace with his old beat up car and fast and pray for the church he belonged to.

And the first weekend when he came back after doing this he found out there had been a revival break out. And he was just full of joy. Did it the next weekend.

Came back, went to his church to find out and nothing happened. But then he found out that there was a revival that broke out this week, this Sunday, in a Methodist church of all things. And he didn't belong to the Methodist church.

Or could have been the Lutheran or the Baptist, doesn't make any difference. But it was another church. And he began then to learn that he must increase, I must decrease.

And it doesn't make any difference to Jesus. And many, many times we have to learn. And so, when we are prepared to in fact live that, that he increases as we decrease, when that becomes something we accept and seize upon and rejoice in, tremendous power begins to flow.

But it flows in such a way that while lives are transformed and revival comes to the body of Christ, no mileage accrues to us. Are we ready for that? And are we ready to commit ourselves to that? If we are part of this Elijah army, our joy is that our names are written in heaven. Not that we have power.

Not that spirits are subject to us. But simply that our names are written in heaven. Reading from Luke chapter 10, verse 17.

The 70 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. He said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.

And nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that spirits are subject to you. But rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Rejoice that you know me, that you're walking with me, that you belong to me. And that your names are written in the palms of my hands.

Not our achievements. Not our possessions. Not what we've accumulated.

Not our successes. Not our reputation. None of that.

But simply that all my treasure is there. My name is written with him and I can then go through fire without getting discouraged. Discouraged and I can go through successes without getting my head turned.

Because my name is written in heaven and that's all that matters. If we are part of this Elijah army, the issue of our lives is that we are getting kingdom results. I mean, things really happen.

Lives change. People repent. Every once in a while it's like the Lord draws back the veil and allows us to see it.

We had a time like this on Wednesday night. Just one after another popped up. Miracles.

Lives that are just really undergoing awesome changes. And if we are in this army and doing what we're to be doing, people really will respond. There will be changes.

They will be brought from darkness to light. They will be drawn. People who hunger and thirst for righteousness absolutely will be drawn into the kingdom.

Again from Luke chapter 10 verse 3. Jesus says, Go your way. Behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.

Salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him.

If not, it will return to you. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, The kingdom of God has come near you.

But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, Even the dust of your town, which clings to our feet, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you. I tell you, we shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Sodom than for that town.

We won't win a popularity contest. We will be persecuted and we will be hated, just as they hated and persecuted our Lord. But in the midst of all that, we will get results.

People will absolutely bend and respond and heal and come into the kingdom as we lift up our voice and cry, Prepare the way of the Lord. And so, the birth of Jesus was preceded by the birth of John, the Elijah child. The ministry of Jesus was preceded by the preaching of John, the Elijah prophet.

The crucifixion of Jesus was preceded by the beheading of John, the Elijah servant. After Jesus rose from the dead, the Elijah servant was no more one man. Immediately, it became an army of men and women, an army which has been doing its work for 20 centuries now.

But as midnight strikes and the cry is raised, Behold, the bridegroom is near, this army now is stirring itself. It's shaking, it's awakening, it's expanding, it's growing, it's moving, it's acting. And it will do its work, this army, with us or without us.

We are given the privilege of being part of it if we will. And there are four questions that each of us has to answer for himself or herself. Are you willing that the purpose of your life, the one purpose of your life, should be to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.

Are you willing that the law of your life should be, He must increase, I must decrease. Are you willing that the joy of your life should be that your name is written in heaven, and that the issue of your life should be that no matter what it looks like to everybody else, that you are getting kingdom results. If you are willing, then the Lord invites you and me and all the rest of us to draw near and to receive from him today afresh the spirit of Elijah and the power of Elijah.

And then he places us in this army and sends us out. And when we lift up our voice and cry, In the wilderness, out there and in here and everywhere else, Make straight the way of the Lord, people will respond. Let's just take a few minutes in silence and let the Lord speak to us directly.