The Story of Elijah, chapter 6 – 08/25/2024

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Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come Lord
We are waiting for you.
Our neighbors are full of strife.
They are overwhelmed in concern
Drowning in fear
They grouse and complain
Fret and blame, yell and scream,
Call out names and make up stories
Lost in their lives

And in truth we are tired of our own thoughts, Lord
Of our worry and fear and anxieties
Of rehearsing everything that can go wrong
We are worn down by our resentments
Our inclinations to keep score
Our needs to be ever vigilant of all the wrongs perpetrated, real or imagined.
In truth, we too have little peace.

Grant us peace Deep and abiding
Knowing in fresh ways who you are, your great love and your tender care
Help us turn to you for that,
Over and over and over,
Just like breathing

And in this let us become peace
Not just more talk about peace
Not another theory or proclamation
but the very embodiment.
Help us be the actual thing
So we might be a part of your great love and tender care for our neighbor
Amen

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

And Ahab told Jezebel
all that Elijah had done,
and all about how he had killed
all the prophets with a sword 1 Kings 19:1

Elijah was excited–an energetic excited–an excited he had not allowed himself to indulge until now. The tide was turning. The entire crowd witnessed God’s answer from heaven. They had been won over. They had chanted, “Yehovah, he is God! Yehovah, he is God!” The king was there too. He saw it for himself. Now he also knew who was the real God.
Running off to Jezreel was a bold move for Elijah. King Ahab had a palace there, and the royal family used it to retreat from the demanding affairs of state in the capital city. But the contest had been huge, the miracle breathtaking, and the response of the crowd overwhelming. This was the beginning. God was brining Israel out of their idolatry and back to himself. Elijah was confident of it–maybe overconfident. He may have missed one detail.
What happened on Mount Carmel was a substantial breakthrough, and one could imagine that a spiritual revival was underway. However, Elijah may have overlooked one potential fly in the ointment: Queen Jezebel.
Did Elijah assume Ahab’s report to his wife would have a life-changing effect on her? That, like the others who had seen fire fall from the sky, she would instantly abandon her gods and embrace Yehovah? If so, he had underestimated her devotion to Baal. He failed to anticipate her intense and vengeful reaction or consider the power she exercised, or her capacity for brutal retaliation.

When King Ahab returned to Jezreel, he did not leave out a single detail of the day’s event. He told Jezebel of all that Elijah did, and all about how he killed all her prophets. He left nothing out of his report. And the more he went on, the greater the rage grew within her. When Ahab finished, Jezebel asked, “Is that all of it?” “Yes,” Ahab answered, “That’s everything.” She said nothing else, but turned and stormed off to the palace guard. There she chose an elite soldier to carry a message to Elijah, immediately. “Tell that horrid prophet, Queen Jezebel says, ‘May the gods do the same to me as you did to my prophets, and even worse, if by this time tomorrow I have not made your life like one of theirs!’”
This was the common form a person would use to swear an oath. “May the gods do even worse to me if . . . .” They would call upon God–or gods–to be witness to their vow, and unleash a supernatural backlash on them if they failed to fulfill it. No one swore an oath like this unless they meant with every bone in their body to follow through on it.

This was the development Elijah had not foreseen. If he had an inkling Jezebel would come after him, he would have never entered her current lair in Jezreel. When he received her threat, he panicked. To stay in Jezreel would be suicide. To stay anywhere within Jezebel’s reach would be suicide. He fled the city and raced south, running for his life. He crossed the border into Judah, but he did not stop there. He kept rushing through the southern kingdom to the edge of the Negev. Leaving his servant in Beersheba, he continued into the vast desert that stretched for many miles in every direction.
At the end of his first day hiking through the rough and arid terrain, Elijah found refuge in the shade of a broom tree. With their leafy branches that spread out like an umbrella, broom trees were a welcome relief. Elijah collapsed underneath it, and after all this way, he once again called on Yehovah.
His prayer was not a petition for safety. He didn’t pray, “O, Yehovah, don’t let Jezebel’s assassins come after me or find me!” He didn’t ask God for travel mercies. His request was that God would let him die. He knew that life and death were God’s to give and take. Perhaps Elijah figured it would be better to die by God’s hand than by Jezebel’s. Still, at the same time, his fear of the queen was not what troubled him most.
Elijah was no longer running from Jezebel–he was running from himself.

His prayer went like this, “Enough! O, Yehovah, I’ve had enough. Take my life from me, now. I failed my mission. I’m no better than my father nor my father’s father, nor my fathers before them. I’m nothing. It’s over. I give up.” He prayed out of his despair–or was this maybe a full-blown depression? If prophets, priests, and other servants of God never see a positive outcome from their efforts, it is easy for them to feel that their lives are worthless and meaningless. Giving up has always been a temptation for people who gave their lives to God’s work, hoping he would use them to influence their world and the lives of others for his sake. When that sort of success eludes them, hopelessness can crush the soul. The classic example of this emotional state was the prophet Jeremiah, who complained that he had ever been born and threatened to quit more than once. After decades of loyal service to God in Judah, nothing changed.

A philosopher once put forward the idea that sleep is “a slice of death.” Elijah fell asleep beneath the broom tree and maybe for a moment found a restful escape from his unhappiness. Perhaps he hoped God would end his life while he slept.
But look at what happened to him. Someone touched him. He stirred and squinted into the face of a stranger–a very strange, stranger. An angel. “Get up and eat,” the angel said. Looking around, Elijah saw near his head a cake baked on hot stones the way Bedouins have baked their flat bread for hundreds of years. There was also a jar of water nearby. He ate and drank and laid down and fell asleep again.
Later, the angel returned with more food. Again, he touched–or shook, or poked Elijah with a stick–and woke him up. Again he was told to get up and eat and drink, only this time the angel added a reason for him to take nourishment, “The journey ahead is too much for you.” That may sound like a cryptic statement to us, but apparently Elijah understood what he was supposed to do. When he finished his meal, he got on his feet and began hiking deeper into the desert. He walked forty days, until he arrived at Horeb, the mount of God. The same mountain that Moses had climbed and where he had stayed for forty days. The same mountain where Moses encountered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God allowed Elijah to expend all the effort and discomfort necessary to travel this far way so that he could ask his prophet a question. Elijah had taken up shelter in a cave on the mountainside, and look what happened: the word of Yehovah came to him, “What are you doing here Elijah?” This is one of those fascinating instances when you can change the emphasis of the question depending on what word you stress.

“what?” This question has to do with activity. There was purpose in everything Elijah had done–up until now. In fact, prior to this he had been following God’s instructions.
“are?” This is a question of timing, his past and his future. A few days ago he was demanding that Israel choose between Baal and Yehovah. What does he want going forward? Does he want to be still hiding here in the cave ten years from now? It could be that if he did nothing else now. “It’s up to you.”
“you?” This question is personal. God addresses him by name. Eventually, everyone finds themselves before God in an I-Thou encounter. God made Elijah and called him to serve a purpose. This is between the two of them.
“doing?” This is a question of productivity and effectiveness. “What are you accomplishing here in this cave?”
“here?” The question has to do with place. Is this where you’re supposed to be? Is this where your best gifts are being used? Is this the best place for you right now?
Any answer Elijah gave would be acceptable, because God sincerely asked a genuine question. God was not looking for a right answer, but for an honest answer. God did not ask the question for his own benefit, but for Elijah’s. You see, God was not interrogating Elijah or forcing him to defend himself.
When confronting the people of Israel with a choice, Baal or Yehovah, Elijah was not responsible for the outcome, he was only responsible to do his part that day. Whatever happened after that was up to God and the people. So now that they are alone in this cave, God is probing Elijah in order to get him to look inside himself. What is he doing here, now? What is the meaning of his life? Is he doing what he was made to do? Is he fulfilling an important purpose? Sometimes dealing with the questions brings us to big things and other times they take us to small things. Either way, they contribute to our spiritual and mental health and development.

Elijah’s first answer is superficial, one he assumes will justify his running away. All of us are prone to respond to God in this way. We either deflect the question or we give an answer we hope God will accept from us. What Elijah said was, “I have been very passionate for Yehovah, the God of heaven’s armies. For Your people have abandoned their covenant with You, they’ve destroyed your altars, put Your prophets to the sword, and I, by myself, am the only prophet who has survived, and now they’re after me to end my life.”
God replied to him, “Go outside the cave and stand there, prepared to encounter God’s presence.” So Elijah went and stood at the entrance of the cave, looking out over the barren landscape. Then, in the same way God caused his presence to pass before Moses, and on the same mountain where Moses stood hundreds of years before, Yehovah passed before Elijah.
It happened like this: a blustering wind swept around the mountain, so powerful that it moved rocks, but not in the wind was Yehovah. After the wind, the mountain was shaken by an earthquake, but not in the earthquake was Yehovah. After the earthquake, the mountainside was suddenly on fire, but not in the fire was Yehovah. And after the fire, there was only a sound, like a quiet whisper. It was that silent voice that drew Elijah all the way out of the cave. As he made his exit, he wrapped his mantel around his face. He had not been afraid to look when the wind was howling, or the mountain was trembling, or the fire was raging. But Elijah did not dare look up when he heard the whisper of Yehovah’s approach.
Then, a voice, and again the question, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah gave the same anser as before, word for word, “I have been very passionate for Yehovah, the God of heaven’s armies. For Your people have abandoned their covenant with . . . . Wait! I told you this already! All of Your prophets are dead! I’m the last one and they want to kill me. Why do You have to hear it again?”
There is an obvious reason why God would ask the same question a second time. It was because God wanted something else from Elijah–or more to the point, he wanted something more for Elijah. So, rather that respond to Elijah’s answer, God simply gave him a command.
“Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.” Now if Elijah traveled to Damascus, that would not be a “return trip” to a place where he had been before. So when God said, “on your way” he did not mean “on the road,” but back to your way of life, your way of service, your way of walking with Me in My ways.
God’s answer to Elijah’s despair and request to die, his answer to Elijah’s story of being the last of his prophets, his answer to Elijah was, “It’s time for you to get back to work. You’re not finished yet.” First Elijah would anoint a Hazael, a Syrian general, to become king of Syria. Then he was to anoint Jehu, an Israelite general, to become king of Israel. Then he was to anoint Elisha to be his protégé and take over Elijah’s role when his work was done. King Hazael would attack Israel and begin its decimation. In the meantime, Jehu would wipe out the family and dynasty of Ahab and Jezebel. Any other Israelite survivors would have to face Elisha. There were many great events yet to come, and God would use Elijah to get all of them rolling.
This exciting episode does not end here. God has one parting word for Elijah. “After all of this has been said and done, I will leave seven thousand people in Israel alive. All of these are mine, for none of them have bowed their knees to Baal, nor kissed him with their lips.” So this is how true believers demonstrate their loyalty to God; it is with their knees and with their lips. Whichever deity receives their humble allegiance and their kisses is the one to whom they belong.

God did not give up on Elijah
God never gave up on Israel,
even when they were not receptive to him,
when they killed the prophets he sent to them,
God never stopped trying
That is God’s faithfulness in action
He is always true to himself

God does not give up on us
He gives us time to heal, when we need it
He comes close,
he asks questions – questions he wants us to ask ourselves
If we don’t know the answers, he supplies those too
So that we can find ourselves when lost and confused

God doesn’t always come with fireworks
He trains us to be sensitive to the quiet whisper
Eventually he gives us the energy to go back to work

God never gives up on us
Why would we ever give up on him?