So, if you’ll look at verses 33-35 you’ll see that, on the one hand, certain people of faith trusted in the Lord and conquered kingdoms. By faith they established and enforced God’s system of justice in the lands they conquered, and that wasn’t such an easy thing to do. By faith they obtained certain promises that God had made to them along the way. By faith they shut the mouths of lions, not by their own prowess but by the grace and strength of the Lord. By faith they surrendered themselves to the fires of persecution and overcame those fires by the miraculous power of God. By faith they escaped the edge of the sword when at times they were vastly outnumbered by their enemies and had no earthly hope. They really should have died but God was for them and no one could stand against them. By faith they were made strong when every bone in their body felt so incredibly weak. By faith they became mighty in war. By faith they put foreign armies to flight, not by their strength or strategies but by the power and presence of God.
All of these people looked to the Lord and listened to him and trusted in him and obeyed his commands and believed his promises, and God won the victory for them. As King David wrote, “Some trust in chariots and some trust in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7). King David was a king; he had chariots and horses and all the accoutrements of war at his fingertips, and yet he knew that his hope was in the Lord and not in these things. This is why he wrote again, “With God we shall do valiantly, it is he who will tread down our foes” (Psalm 60:12, emphasis mine). King David knew as well as anyone has ever known that it is the power and presence of God rather than the techniques of war that conquer the day. As the prophet Zechariah later wrote, “This is the word of the Lord...Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). Indeed, Beloved, some conquered by faith to the glory of God. They did it by trusting in God’s specific words, and along the way they found him to be faithful.
In fact, the author tells us that even before Jesus Christ walked this earth and lived and died and rose again, some of the women of old received back their dead by resurrection. For example, once there was a widow who had a child by way of a miracle. When that child had grown up, he was out working in the field one day and became sick. His sickness was strange, no one really knew what was going on, so they sent him home and there he died. In her grief, his mother cried out to God and then did the only thing she could think to do, namely, she called for the prophet Elijah to come and pray for him.
When Elijah arrived, he spent some time with the Lord and then prayed for the child in a most unusual way. The text is so graphic. It says that he laid his body upon the child’s body, and his eyes upon the child’s eyes, and his lips upon the child’s lips, and his hands upon the child’s hands. When he had finished praying, he arose and walked about the house, returning a second time to pray over the child in the exact same way. As he prayed the second time, the child’s body began to warm and he suddenly sneezed not once but seven times; oh how glorious those sneezes must have been! Beloved, every person in and around that house knew that the child had been dead. He wasn’t simply passed out or otherwise comatose: he was dead. And by faith, by the grace and power of God Almighty, that child rose up and came back to life, glory be to God!
This is such a powerful story, but we must understand that Elijah didn’t create this technique on his own or learn it at a prayer seminar. Instead, we read in 2 Kings 4 that Elijah did what he did because first he prayed and then he obeyed. Now there’s a principle we can live by—Elijah first prayed and then he obeyed. Elijah sought the Lord and asked what he should do, and in his good time the Lord instructed him to lay his body on the child’s body and witness the power of God.
Now, it was great news that this child was raised from death to life and for this we should still give glory to God. However, I believe that the Lord was up to greater things than this. In fact, I think that this story might be the most graphic prophecy of resurrection in the entire Old Testament. One day, in the far distant future, the Lord Jesus Christ would come to this earth and live and die and be raised again from death, and then he would ascend to the right hand of the Father where he would become the resurrection and the life for all who believe in him.
Like Elijah, Jesus would place his body on their bodies, and his eyes on their eyes, and his lips on their lips, and his hands on their hands, and his mind on their minds, and his heart on their hearts, and his soul on their souls. Indeed, Jesus would wrap his being around their being and become their resurrection. He would become their life. Jesus does not give resurrection to those who believe in him, rather, he is resurrection for those who believe in him. Jesus does not give life to those who believe in him, rather, he is life for those who believe in him.
Elijah may or may not have been aware of the greater things God was doing in and through him as he prayed for that child, but one way or the other he did what he did by faith and God gained much glory for himself. Elijah prayed and then obeyed. He sought instruction from the Lord, he believed the specific words of the Lord, and he acted accordingly. Some received their children back from death by faith to the glory of God. Beloved, all of the great victories of verses 33-35 came to pass by faith, not by the wisdom or might or prowess of men and women. These things came to pass as real people like you and me put their hope in the words of God and found him to be faithful. Some conquered by faith to the glory of Christ but others had a different experience. More on that next week!
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