Elijah: Man of Death and Resurrection APPLIED

Just a note: if you haven't read my previous post, then read that one first!

I wanted to provide some application for my previous post "Elijah: Man of Death and Resurrection". I should have said PROPHET of Death and Resurrection, because he was most definitely a prophet, not just a man. And that is important. Because in that he was a prophet, he represented Israel. He is a picture on legs of what God was doing with the nation of Israel as a whole. I think that maybe all the prophets in Scripture are pictures of Israel, or of Israel's king. (Ezekiel really demonstrated this relationship). So since Elijah was a picture of Israel's deadness because of their sins and idolatry, he was also a living testimony of God's recreating and resurrecting them. So how does this apply to us?

Well, it's important to know what Scripture is trying to teach us, and not just try to come up with little morals that we can apply to our day-to-day lives. The point of 1 Kings 17 when Elijah is fed by the ravens is not just that if we are ever in dire straights, God will provide for us. God has indeed promised to provide for us, and 1 Kings is a good reminder of that, but there is a bigger picture going on too. And in order to see the bigger picture, we must know how to read our Bibles. For example, learning what certain numbers mean in Scripture (like I mentioned below), offer us hints as to the big picture. And it is from these hints that we can accurately apply God's word to our lives.

Since Elijah is so obviously a shadow of Jesus Christ, we can look to Elijah's role, and to Jesus Christ's role as prophet, for one of our applications. (I'm sure there are others, but this is the one I can see). As our Prophet, Jesus Christ represents us (the new Israel) in our sins and idolatry. And He becomes THE picture of death and resurrection, just like Elijah demonstrated for the nation of Israel. Furthermore, being in Christ and in His death and resurrection, I know that He takes each and every one of my daily deaths, and will bring them to fruitful resurrection. So we die daily...in hope...of resurrection and recreation! Now that is GOOD NEWS that I can hang my hat on TODAY!