Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.
Now when the LORD
was about to take Elijah up to heaven
by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha
were on their way from Gilgal 2 Kings 2:1
The prophetic ministry of Elijah provides one of the most entertaining stories in all the Bible. When it comes to phenomenal miracles, Elijah’s only rival would be Moses. His spiritual stature as a man of God is equal to the greatest heroes in scripture, and yet St. James wrote, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours” (Jas. 5:17). Like us, Elijah could be frightened, discouraged, and ready to give up.
Elijah would have been a fun person to know– if you like surprises. For instance, this final episode begins with a surprise. It seems we were supposed to already know he was going to be swept up to heaven by a whirlwind. He certainly knew that his work was done and something significant was about to happen, but it’s not likely he was aware he would take a ride unlike any other in the entire history of humankind. As we walk the last leg of his journey with him, it’s as if he already has one foot out the door.
As spectacular as his final moments on earth turn out to be, the other character in this scene has the greater challenge. Elijah’s servant and star pupil, Elisha, who will follow his mentor on their final road trip together. However, his motive for tagging along with Elijah is not merely see him off.
Gilgal was located in the desert and not far from the Jordan River, still within Israel’s border. As Elijah was getting read to leave, he turned to Elisha and said, “You don’t need to go with me. Please, stay here in Gilgal. As for me, Yehovah has sent me on to Bethel.” Elisha’s reaction was instant and adamant, “As Yehovah lives,” he swore (coincidentally quoting the first recorded words of Elijah), “As Yehovah lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave your side!” Elijah simply gave him a slight nod, and off they went, taking the road that led to Bethel.
Bethel had long been recognized as a sacred site–perhaps since the days of Jacob, when he fled from his brother who was threatening to kill him. Jacob stumbled onto a place where he would spend the night. God appeared to him in a dream, and extended to him the covenant he had made with his grandfather, Abraham. Overwhelmed by God’s presence there, Jacob named it Bethel, “the house of God.” In more recent years, Israel had established their own homegrown cult in Bethel. But there was a separate community of prophets faithful to Yehovah who lived in or near Bethel.
For many years, at least as early as the days of Samuel, there had been people who longed to experience the inspiration of God’s Spirit. We do not know all of the ways they opened themselves to God’s immediate presence, but we do know that music sometimes played a role. By the time of Elijah’s arrived, these communities were known as “the sons of the prophets.” That there was some real activity of God going on in their community is evident in the few times they appear in scripture. For instance, on more than one occasion, King Saul came into contact with one of these groups, and both times he was overwhelmed by the Spirit of God.
As Elijah and Elisha neared the gates of Bethel, members of the sons of the prophets approached Elisha and took him aside. They told him, “You know, don’t you, that Yehovah is about to take your master from over your head?” Elisha’s voice was low, but stern, “Yes, of course I know! Don’t say another word.”
They had been in Bethel only a short while, when Elijah was on his feet again. Immediately, Elisha was at his side. Turning to him, Elijah gave him the same instructions as he did in Gilgal, only this time he spoke his name. “Elisha,” he began, “you can stay here with these men in Bethel, but I have to keep moving. Yehovah has now sent me on my way again; this time to Jericho.” Elisha would not back down, “As Yehovah lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave your side!” So once again they were on the road.
Jericho was in the same general region as Gilgal and Bethel. It seems that the sons of the prophets were drawn to those isolated desert locations to seek God. Away from the larger villages and all their distractions, they focused their attention on intense spiritual development. Hundreds of years later, another similar spiritual community would settle a little further south, near the Dead Sea. Ruins of that community and the Scriptures they stored in caves there, still exist today.
The sons of the prophets in Jericho circled Elisha, and said to him, “You know, don’t you, that Yehovah is about to take your master from over your head?” Elisha answered them with the same harsh tone as before, “Yes, I know. Say nothing about it!”
If by this time you don’t recognize the pattern, then you haven’t been paying attention. In the previous chapter, three captains accompanied by fifty soldiers, came to apprehend Elijah. Each of them approached him, addressing him,“O man of God.” It did not go well with the first two captains, so the third captain changed his tone.
The pattern of threes is repeated here in the travelogue, in which the sons of the prophets replace the soldiers. The first two groups deliver the same message to Elisha word-for-word, as the first two captains had with Elijah. The third group doesn’t approach Elisha, but observes him and Elijah from a distance. Setting these two stories side-by-side, and repeating the same pattern of threes, secures the close identity of the two prophets. We cannot help but notice their names are almost the same. Now we are discovering there’s a reason for that. Elijah is about to be removed from the ongoing story of Israel, but Elisha is going to carry forward his work and ministry.
Leaving Jericho, Elijah’s destination was not another city, but this time it was the Jordan River. Again, he told Elisha that he did not have to go with him, and again Elisha said, “As Yehovah lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave your side!” As they reached the water’s edge, fifty of the sons of the prophets, were watching them from a nearby hillside. Standing on the riverbank, Elijah removed the mantle from his shoulders–the same mantle he had draped over Elisha when he ordained him to be a prophet. Elijah wrapped it around his arm, and then slapped it on the surface of the water. Immediately, the water upstream was separated from the water down stream, creating a path of dry ground that the two of them took to reach the other side.
For anyone familiar with Israel’s history, this calls to mind Israel’s crossing through the Red Sea with Moses, and then crossing through the Jordan River with Joshua. Moses’ staff was the symbolic instrument God used in parting the waters of the Red Sea. The ark of the covenant was the symbolic instrument he used when Joshua led Israel through the Jordan River. Now, this time, it is Elijah’s cloak (or mantle) that symbolizes God’s means of working the miracle.
Why the miracle? Why is it so important for people to get from one shore to the other, that God would provide a supernatural passage? The answer may have to do with inevitable stages of human life, and moving from one into the next. Whether the process of moving from one stage to the next occurs over time or happens in an instant, we pass through necessary transitions as we journey through time. What we may not do well, is mark those transitions. Or worse yet, we may not even realize we have made the transition. We may be pouring all our attention and energy into clinging to a past we will never again possess or experience.
The tragedy of not marking transitions is not that we remain stuck in the same rut that brought us to this point in our lives, but that refusing to recognize life is different now, our mental, emotional, and spiritual growth is stunted. We cannot stop our bodies from aging, but we can stop learning, maturing, developing, and drawing ever closer to God. To refuse to step across the next threshold, to stubbornly hang onto a past that no longer serves the demands of today, prevents us from appreciating the fullness of where we are now or doing our best work in this stage of our lives.
Elijah had to make the transition from active service to retirement. Elisha had to make the transition from neophyte to full-fledged prophet. Both of them had to transition into the next thing God had for them. The beauty of their stories, is that they both were ready for this. I would say that Elisha, at least, was eager to reach the next pinnacle. It was time.
On the other side of the river, Elijah stopped and turned to Elisha. He was no longer playing games, as if he wanted to lose Elisha and go on by himself. He had never been more serious than in this final moment with his disciple. Looking into his eyes, he said, “Elisha, what can I give you, what can I do for you before I’m carried away from you?” Without skipping a beat, Elisha answered, “Please, let there rest upon me a double portion of your spirit.”
Elijah took that request seriously. He explained to Elisha, “You have asked for something that does not come easily, is difficult, and could be painful. But, if you’re there to see me the moment I’m taken from you, that double portion will be yours. If you aren’t there, then you won’t get it.”
If we’re not familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures, it could sound like Elisha is asking for twice as much of God’s Spirit than had rested on Elijah. The double portion referred to something extra. The closest parallel to what Elisha wanted to receive from Elijah, was the guaranteed inheritance an eldest son received from his father (Deut. 21:17). We don’t know precisely what that would entail. There’s no doubt it referred to material possessions, but it may have had to do with other immaterial roles of authority, responsibility, and influence as well. At any rate, it was the normal inheritance given to the oldest son, and not a surplus of what the father had owned. Elisha wanted to serve God’s people with the same dynamic gifts and abilities that typified Elijah’s ministry.
After that dramatic moment, they continued walking together, carrying on a conversation that would have been reported to us if it included something we needed to learn. Still, one can’t help but wonder whether this was an ethereal conversation regarding mysteries normally hidden from human minds.
The force that threw them apart was sudden. Chariots of fire, drawn by horses of fire flew between them. Elijah was swept up off the ground by a whirlwind that carried him into the sky. Elisha cried out, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” What else could he say?
Then it was over. Elijah was gone.
Whether in grief or the passion of a new spirit, Elisha literally ripped off the cloak he was wearing. Elijah’s mantle having fallen from him when swept away, was lying on the ground. Elisha picked it up and returned to the bank of the river. He rolled the mantle around his arm as he had seen Elijah do, and slapping it on the surface of the water, he shouted, “Where is Yehovah, the God of Elijah?” With that, the water parted as it had before, and he returned through it to Israel’s side of the river.
Having witnessed the entire spectacle, the sons of the prophets realized what had happened.“The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha,” they exclaimed. Hurrying off to meet Elisha, they bowed before him as a sign of respect.
Now, at last, we have come to the end of the story of Elijah.
No, I was wrong. Instead, I should have asked, “Have we now come to the end of Elijah’s story?” He did not die, so this was not the end of his life. Have we heard the last of him? Apparently not.
The Hebrew Scriptures end with Malachi, and Malachi’s prophecies end with this prediction:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a [curse].” (Mal. 4:6)
Then later, the angel who announced to Zechariah the birth of his son, predicted that John the Baptist would minister “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” (Lk. 1:17)
So we are not ready just yet to write the words: “The End.”
As I said at the beginning of this episode, Elisha’s challenge through this ordeal was greater than Elijah’s. Why did I draw this conclusion? The answer is simple. As we move through the story, what questions naturally come to mind? For instance, I would want to know why Elijah kept telling Elisha he did not need to go with him from place to place. I think the answer to that question comes when Elijah explained what Elisha had to do to receive the double portion he requested. He had to be there to see Elijah go. That means that every step of the way had been a challenge for Elisha. Would he continue on to the reward, or would he hang back?
Another question I would like answered, it why did Elisha insist on staying with Elijah in his final journey? Was it simply out of loyalty to his mentor? Or did Elisha inherently know that if he was going to receive the double portion from Elijah, he had to stick with him? Well, Elisha was a prophet, after all. It is possible he knew that if he did not stay close by Elijah’s side, he would not get the gift he desired and needed.
Later on, when Elisha was nearing the end of his life, the king of Israel came to visit him. Elisha gave King Joash a couple of tasks to complete. Both tasks had prophetic significance. In the second challenge, Elisha told the king to take a handful of arrows and then said, “Strike the ground with them.” So the king took the arrows and hit them on the ground three times. Of course, he had no idea why the old prophet told him to do this, and he may have felt silly hitting the ground with the arrows. But when he stopped, it angered Elisha, who asked, “Why did you stop? You should have struck five times, or even six times; then you would have defeated the army of Syria until you wiped them out completely. But now you will have only three victories, and that will not be enough to prevent Syria from returning and conquering Israel.”
I have always felt sympathy for the king. How could he have known he was enacting a ritual that would have serious consequences later on? Of course, he would have struck the ground more times–if he had known. Perhaps the moral of the story, is if God tells you to do something, you should keep doing it until he tells you to stop. However, I think there’s another lesson to be learned here.
It turns out, that each time Elisha was told he could stay behind, it was a test. Elijah knew that if Elisha was not there to see him taken away, there was nothing else he do for him. Elisha had to pass the test in order to get what he desired. Maybe the three tests were meant to reveal whether Elisha was really suited for the work that lay ahead. How committed was he? Would he give himself the luxury of taking time to relax if he had not finished a project? Would he continue through the hardships and setbacks of God’s work, even when it seemed like he wasn’t accomplishing anything significant?
My concern today is for myself and for you. I feel like I’m old enough that God has to know by now I belong to him. I don’t need any more tests. But I have heard the stories of other people who gave out before they reached the finish line, and I don’t want to be included in those statistics. That means I’m going to be tested.
You are going to be tested. In a moment I will elaborate on that statement. How can we know when we are being tested? Well, if we’re prophets, we’ll just know. Sadly, we aren’t prophets–or, at least I don’t think we are. And that means we cannot know when we’re being tested. So if we don’t know we’re being tested, how can we keep from failing the test?
Here’s my elaboration: Everything is a test!
You are being tested today. I have no idea what that test is, or what it’s going to prove, or how you’re going to rate on it, but you are being tested.
I have been tested this week. The tests are always more intense when we’re sick or not up to par; and that’s how it’s been for me. I’ve been hit with the realization that I am unprepared for the increasing demands coming my way. I thought that when we got old, everything would be easier, that we would be less responsible for anything other than surviving another day. Instead, I’ve been tempted to entertain a host of worries, to fixate on my inadequacies and sink into despair. Only, now I realize that I am being tested.
And what is it God is testing? That’s simple. My trust in him. If I allow myself to drown in the fear of failure, of uncertainty and insecurity, then I have failed the test, regardless of what happens next, whether good or bad. If good, well then I will give thanks and rejoice. If bad, well then, I will trust God, rejoice and give thanks. The only way to pass this test is to let go of anxiety and despair.
If you pay attention, you will be able to discern in what way you are being tested today and what it is in your relationship with God that he is testing. And if you determine to stay close to him, like Elisha did with Elijah, you will pass the test and get your double portion. And then this excursion into Elijah’s story over the last three months will have done us some good.
Welcome, Prayer, and Morning Talk: Jim Calhoun
Heavenly Father Help us to live in the world as it is.
Just this, just now
Help us when we are ill or injured and bring us to rights
The deep pain of losing loved ones when it comes all at once or slowly over time
The sorrow of seeing others in pain or disappointed or grieving
The anxiety of what the future may bring us and the fears that we may not be up to the challenge
Help us to live in the world as it is
With every blade of grass shimmering
Every leaf trembling
Every cloud floating by
Every burst of laughter
Every shared moment
Every hope
Every dream
Every joy
Every love
Knowing every grace is your grace
Just this, just now
Help us to hold it all at once
Help us to hold it all together
Lord, please, hold us together
In the world as it is
Amen
Lectio Divina
Today we are going to have a group Lectio Divina session. This is a spiritual exercise in which we listen to God’s Spirit speaking to us through the Scriptures. Our application of it this morning will be similar to what we do during the week but adjusted a little for our situation this morning.
Lectio is an amazing practice that helps us better listen to God
It helps us hear God, the still and quiet voice, that is calling to us with tenderness, comfort, direction, correction, instruction and affection.
It helps us hear God and not just repeat our anxieties or shame to ourselves.
It helps us hear God and break out from all of the messages, good and hurtful, that we carry from our families and friends.
It helps us hear God and point us to a liberation from the demands, concerns, expectations of our society.
You know, how we look, what we drive, our status, our wealth, our place in comparison with others.
Slowly, over time we grow past all of these things and find new ground, fresh territory in the Kingdom Of God.
We find new life.
This, today is a workshop and we will be practicing spiritual listening.
For more than a dozen years we have been doing these groups in homes and also online.
Combined with quiet sitting this has been our focus.
We have wanted to know God in some way that is personal, meaningful, relational instead of simply know about God from the perspective of one tradition or another.
By the way, I have no bone to pick with the traditions of the Church.
The major traditions are important.
The Orthodox Church of Greece and later Russia.
The Church of Rome which we most often call the Catholic Church
The English Church
The Church of Europe either from Luther or Calvin
The Church of America which grew out of The English Church and took on a distinctive American turn with the teachings of John Wesley and his followers.
Of course there are others, Baptists, Anabaptists, And more.
All this to say each of these churches have a beauty in them.
A sanctity, a holiness.
There are members full of the Spirit and love with great generosity and sacrifice in each and every one.
And there is ugliness as well.
Self serving, moral double dealing, pride and all that goes with it.
And this is the risk of following a tradition, we can be blind to our foibles.
We may not see at all what everyone else sees plain as day.
We may justify the impossible because it is our tradition.
Then we get lost all over again and never quite understand it.
Lectio can awaken us.
From our families, from our spiritual traditions and habits and from our society.
We can awaken and take another step into freedom.
So today we are workshopping, practicing, listening.
The process is simple in that there aren’t many steps and the steps are easy to understand and implement.
I’ll give you clear instructions along the way.
The process is demanding and transformative because it takes our whole selves to engage.
We encounter God in the reading of the passage both aloud and quietly.
We encounter God in the silence between the readings.
We encounter God in our brothers and sisters as they share.
Not everything is that you hear is needed today.
That is okay.
Hold it loosely and let it go.
This is a devotional practice.
It is rooted in affection.
Recognizing how God has come to us in one way or another and our gratitude in response.
It isn’t about the one right answer.
Your response maybe very different from mine.
Even opposite. Why?
God remains the same and the Scriptures hold true.
That isn’t the issue.
The differences are found in us.
We are each solving a different problem in a different context.
God is guiding us through.
I may need to learn appropriate boundaries in this moment and you may need to develop your depth of generosity and we may find the same phrase in the same passage is teaching us these two very different things.
This isn’t troubling.
It is a gift.
So in this way we don’t monitor or correct what another person is working out.
We let them do their work and trust God to lead them from this place to the next.
If what another says stirs us up we need to decide if we will let it go or if we need to hold it close.
Is it an example of iron sharpening iron?
Is it for someone else?
These sorts of questions are the heart of discernment.
We ask God in real time what we might do with what we read and hear.
If you find any of this overwhelming just step back a little and take a breath or two.
Allow yourself just to observe if you like.
There are no demands or expectations for you in this.
All may share if you like and none are required.
Now let’s turn to Matthew
Matthew is written in pairs of story and teaching, narrative and discourse.
There are five pairs.
Our section today is toward the end of the second discourse or group of teachings.
The stories just before this in chapters 8 and 9 show Jesus doing the work of the messiah.
He is healing, casting out demons and all sorts of signs and wonders.
He is making his declaration of who he is by being who he is.
At the end of chapter 9, Jesus seems to be concerned for so many people who need his help.
They are spread all about and he doesn’t have time or physical energy to reach them all.
But he declares that the harvest is ready, but the workers are few.
At the beginning of chapter 10 Jesus calls together his disciples, the twelve, and sets about to address the problem of too few workers.
This chapter is sometimes called the little commission in contrast to the great commission at the end of the gospel, “Go into all the world . . . ” (Mt. 28:19-20).
But here the mission is to go into the local area and continue my work among the people of Israel.
And then he gives a lot of thought concerning the difficulties connected with the task.
We pick up his message at the next to last section of this chapter.
It was what we covered in Lectio two weeks ago.
There are hard sayings here.
We will work our way into it with gentleness for each other and for ourselves.
An act of devotion and affection, hoping to hear a little something for the day that is nourishing.
(These instructions were followed by a time of practice with those of our Reflexion community who were present this morning)
Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun
Come Lord join us this morning.
In a world full of bickering and hate,
let us be peace
In a world of lies let us be truth
In a world that is ever striving let us be contentment.
In a world that makes endless demands on others
let us be generosity
In a world that worships money let us be contentment
In a world that seeks endless power let us be surrender
In a world that destroys souls let us be sacrifice
Move us Lord
No longer content to talk about the thing
No longer gratified to judge others because they are not the thing
Teach us to be the thing
Transform us to be the thing
By your loving hand
Amen
Morning Talk: Guest speaker, Guy Gray
Psalm 3 is the most loved, most quoted, and best known of all Psalms
There are lots of reasons for this.
It’s short – just six verses. But though it’s so short it’s incredibly deep.
It’s simple – easy to understand. The Lord, the shepherd is God. I am the sheep. I get it!
And there is something uniquely encouraging, comforting, and empowering about this Psalm.
So, this morning, I’d like to give you Psalm 23 as a “fixed focal point” for your faith – through all the different seasons and experiences of your life.
When I was a boy I used to go deep sea fishing with my father. Often the sea would be rough and I would get sick. He used to say to me, “If you can find a fixed focal point on the horizon, keep your eyes on that, and that’ when you will find your balance once again.”
That’s good advice for a storm at sea.
But what if we could apply that idea to our life of faith in God?
That is how I have come to see Psalm 23 in my life experience.
It has become a fixed focal point for my faith – through all the ups and downs of life.
So now, let’s think through Psalm 23, with a special focus on Vs. 4.
First, we need to get a feel for how this Psalm unfolds.
It has a beautiful beginning, a hope filled ending, and a valley of deep darkness in the middle.
THE BEAUTIFUL BEGINNING Vss. 1-3
These verses give us this incredible portrait of: peace, nurture, movement forward, and purpose.
This is a life “fully alive” and “flourishing”.
I love this. I want to be in this scene!
A HOPE FILLED ENDING Vs. 6
This verse gives us the most profound picture of hope you can imagine. It’s a hope that seems to transcend even the grave itself.
In Psalm23, hope gets the final word!
I love this. I’m trying to learn to live in this perspective more an more in my life.
Illustration: The blank book gift and not knowing what to write. Then I wrote “I choose to live in faith.” (I was so excited about it that the next Sunday I preached a sermon on this.)
THE DARK VALLEY IN THE MIDDLE Vs. 4
I think of this as the unexpected and uninvited intrusion into the perfect picture
But this is also why we love Psalm 23 – because it meets us where we live, in our broken lives and our broken world.
Here are 3 key ideas from Vs. 4:
1. The darkness described in Psalm 23 is darkness in the extreme
There are lots of words for darkness in the OT, but this is a rare word that is the most extreme of them all. Two other passages help us get a feel for this: Psalm 107:10 uses the image of being chained in prison to describe this darkness. Job 10:20-22 describes this as a darkness so deep that it swallows all light – like a black hole.
But we know this deep darkness is a metaphor for the most painful and difficult experiences of our lives.
In 2 Cor 7:5-6 the Apostle Paul describes deep distress in his life that has two sources – external circumstances and internal anxiety. He describes himself as “downcast”. Even the amazing apostle Paul had times when he needed a strength beyond his own to keep going.
2. The comfort that God brings into our lives might be different than at first we would think
The modern definition of “comfort” is something like this:
“The state of feeling better after felling sad or worried; something that makes your life easy or pleasant.”
This is primarily about feeling better. This is why we talk about needing “comfort food!”
But the biblical definition of “comfort” is different: gaining the courage you need to face the adversities of your life because you know you are not alone.” This is much like the “antiquated definition of “comfort” found in the dictionary: Comfort (obsolete meaning, from the Latin comfortare) “To aid, support, encourage, strengthen.”
The purpose of God’s comfort in our lives is to give us the strength to go on, through the darkness, not just to make us feel better.
3. In Psalm 23 it is the promise that God is with us in and through the Darkness that makes all the difference. It brings the comfort of God’s presence to us; it brings the strength of God to us.
Vs. 4 – “for you are with me.”
“God with us is the great gospel promise of the Christian faith. In the Gospel of Matthew Ch. 1 we are told that his name shall be called Emmanuel – God with us. In Matthew 28, in the very last phrase in the gospel, Jesus says, “and I will be with you to the very end of the age.”
This is the core message of the Gospel. God is with us in Jesus Christ. In his incarnation; in his life; in his death on the cross for our sins; in his resurrection victory over death; and in the giving of the Holy Spirit to be with us in our lives.
Jesus said, in John 14, I will ask the Father and he will give you another “comforter” to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.” Comforter is the Greek word “paraclete” that word means “one who comes alongside to help. Sometimes it is translated as “comforter”, but other times as, advocate, or counselor, or helper. And God is with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit in all of those ways, through all the seasons and experiences of our lives.
It’s amazing to know that we can bring this comfort to other people. Like Titus did for Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:5-6. And God can use other people to bring his comfort into our lives as well.
This is what God did for me when, at a very dark day in my life, God sent a man I had not seen in several years to encourage me. It was a “random” encounter in passing at an airport. He said, “Do you remember that sermon you gave years ago on hope?” I want you to know that I was listening. And he rolled up his sleeve and showed me his arm where he had tattooed the words “I chose to live in hope.” That encounter was a strong affirmation to my life that, indeed, God is with me. What comfort!
These are the themes from Psalm 23 that have become a fixed focal point for my faith in my life journey. When I fix my eyes on Psalm 23 in this way, it helps me find my balance again through the different seasons and even the dark storms of life.
Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun
Come Lord join us this morning.
Grant us the gift of having large hearts
Tender and gracious
With affection and attention
To the people we know
The people we meet
And all those we encounter.
Let us feel and know their joys and fears
Grant us the courage to be this sort of person
Save us from being overwhelmed
Allow us to see the world through their eyes
If only for a moment
To better understand how it is for them
The problems they are struggling to solve
The battles they are desperate to win
Their joy for every success
Helping us to love the difficult person
The belligerent
The angry
The hateful
The needy
The broken
Allow us to be safe for them
Without fear of condemnation from us
Fellow pilgrims
Fellow mortals just making our way
Uncertain
Sometimes afraid
Sometimes overwhelmed
Save us Lord from being overwhelmed
Grant us the gift of listening
To hear and receive and respect
What is revealed through word and deed
To listen with curiosity and interest
To listen without planning our response
To listen without correction
Ease our anxiety as we listen
Ease our need to fix things
Ease our need to manage them
Ease our need control those things that make us anxious
Ease our need to judge
Help us to discern
To keep our own inner world in order
So we might help
And serve
And even sacrifice when needed
Lord, grant to us big hearts
To love like you
Because you have loved us
Day in and day out
Through it all
Even through our worse moments
The ones we rather forget
With your very big heart
Amen
Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.
After the death of Ahab,
Moab rebelled against Israel 2 Kings 1:1
This first sentence of 2 Kings is an odd way to begin a new chapter. The transition from the previous book to this one could have been much smoother. For instance, the last lines of 1 Kings provide all the explanation we need for this new episode:
Ahaziah the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria . . . and he reigned for two years. He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother . . . . He served Baal and worshiped him and provoked Yehovah, the God of Israel, to anger in every way that his father had done (1 Ki. 22:51-53)
Instead of this clear statement regarding the throne of Israel passing from the deceased father to the firstborn prince, we have an odd report of Moab’s rebellion. Why?
Moab was located in what is Jordan today. The mention of Moab breaking free from Israel’s domination reminds us that tensions in that area of the world go back for millennia. But what is the significance of this event, that plays no part in any of the action that follows?
The answer is that we learn soon after Ahab died, Israel suffered a substantial loss. A piece of its control in that region was taken from them, and there was nothing they could do about it. This is an important insight into the beginning of Ahaziah’s reign. Israel was beginning to deteriorate from within, and right away the nation suffered a loss of strength and influence.
When Ahab died, his son Ahaziah became king–however, his reign did not last for long. The palace in Samaria had been his home since childhood, and it now belonged to him. Unfortunately, he was unaware that the design of ornamental features in the upper chambers was made to be decorative and not sturdy. So when he leaned against the lattice enclosure of a large window, it gave way and he fell to the ground. He remained bedridden for several days, but his injuries were not improving and his health was worsening.
Ahaziah summoned messengers to his bedside. He told them, “I have heard from others about a reliable source for divining the future and learning one’s fate. Go now, and inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to learn whether or not I’m going to recover from my injuries.” It seems that people in every nation have always sought out sacred places where they could receive oracles from the gods. To “inquire” was the technical term for consulting the deities at those sites. It seems that human mind has always had a special fascination for knowledge of the future, and by various mystical methods tried to pry into things to come. Oracles, soothsayers, prognosticators, astrologers, psychics, and others have been sought out by people who want to penetrate the veil God has placed between the natural world and the supernatural, between the present and the future.
Israel was unique among the nations, in this regard. They were forbidden to resort to occult agents or practices to explore regions of the unknown. God had it written into their law and later he reaffirmed it by one of his prophets, through whom he said, “And when they say to you, ‘Inquire of the mediums and necromancers who chirp and mutter,’ should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no [light of the] dawn” (Isa. 8:19-20)
The God of Israel could be consulted–and he would answer, but giving only as much information as served his purpose. Ahaziah’s quest must have been especially offensive to Yehovah, because Ekron was one of the capitol cities of the Philistines, who had been hostile to Israel from the time they entered the land.
While Ahaziah’s messengers were on their way, another messenger was dispatched. The same Hebrew word that translates into English as “messenger” is also translated “angel.” So it was that the angel of Yehovah found Elijah and reactivated him for service. “Get up,” the angel told him, “go up and confront the messengers of the king of Samaria and tell them to take this word back to him: ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Now listen to what Yehovah has to say, for he has the answer to your inquiry. You will not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you will die for certain.’”
Elijah carried that message to Ahaziah’s servants. When they arrived at the palace, the king was baffled that they had returned so soon. “What happened?” he asked them, “Why have you come back? What have you learned?”
They explained, “A man came and stopped us. He told us to come back here and tell you, “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Now listen to what Yehovah has to say, for he has the answer to your inquiry. You will not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you will die for certain.”
If Ahaziah was upset by this news, he controlled himself. He was curious about the person who intercepted his messengers and sent them back with that message. How did he know about their mission? Who told him the king would die? Was he reliable? “Tell me,” the king said to his messengers, “what sort of person was he who stopped you on the road and sent you back to me with this news?” If the king was asking them for their opinion of the stranger, and whether he seemed credible, what they gave him was a description. They asked themselves, “What kind of man was he?” then told the king, “He was the kind of man who is hairy and wears a leather belt.”
Instantly, Ahaziah recognized him by their description. “It is Elijah,” he said–and a flood of memories rushed into his head of Elijah and the drought, Elijah and Mount Carmel, Elijah and how his mother hated that prophet of Yehovah.
The king dismissed his messengers and changed his agenda. For the next mission he needed soldiers, not emissaries. So he summoned one of his captains with a detachment of fifty soldiers. Why soldiers? Was he expecting trouble? Ahaziah commanded the captain, “Take your men and hunt for Elijah the prophet. When you find him, bring him to me.”
When the soldiers found Elijah, he was sitting on the top of a hill. There he was, out in the open, unprotected, defenseless. If a sheriff came to your door, not in uniform but in fatigues and riot gear, you would no doubt feel apprehensive. We have no idea what Elijah felt as he saw those soldiers approaching the hill where he sat.
“O man of God,” the captain called to him, “the king says for you to come down. You must go with us to the palace in Samaria.”
Elijah tilted his head to one side, squinted his eyes at the captain and said, “If I am a ‘man of God,’ then fire is going to come down from heaven and consume you and your soldiers.” Something like a sonic boom jolted the ground as if lightning were ripping the sky apart. A ball of fire fell and instantly the captain and his fifty men were ashes.
If Ahaziah had his wits about him, he would have perceived the significance of this miraculous event–that is, obvious proof had been given that there was, indeed, a God in Israel. But no sooner did Ahaziah receive word of what happened to his soldiers, than he ordered another detachment to go and apprehend Elijah. The prophet had not moved, so he was easy to locate.
This captain resembles a specific person type in the military or law enforcement; someone who asks for cooperation but if they do not get it, they assume they must be rougher, more aggressive, and use force if necessary. It would never occur to them that sometimes the wise approach to dealing with others is to avoid violence.
When this captain approached Elijah, his words were not like the first captain whose words were, “The king says, ‘Come down.’” The second captain said,“this is the king’s order, ‘Come down’” and he added, “quickly!”
Elijah tilted his head to one side, squinted his eyes at the captain and said, “If I am a ‘man of God,’ then fire is going to come down from heaven and consume you and your soldiers.”
Here Elijah was at the end of his ministry, and only one other person ever called him a “man of God.” He met that other person at the beginning of his ministry. She was a widow who lived up north in the nation of Sidon. She addressed him as a man of God, but it was only when he resuscitated her dead son that she actually believed it. She told Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”
These two captains with their men learned the hard way that Elijah was indeed a man of God.
Predictably, the king sent a third captain and his fifty soldiers with him.
The first two captains had called Elijah from the base of the hill, but this third captain hiked up the hill, and when he reached Elijah he immediately went down–on his knees, not telling Elijah “The king says” or “The king commands,” but begging the prophet, “O man of God, please, let my life and the lives of these fifty servants [yes, he referred to them as servants, not soldiers; they were only doing what they were told to do], let my life and their lives mean something to you. Value our lives. Look, the two captains who came before me did not honor you, and they were devoured by fire from heaven. But I’m here now, begging you to value our lives and spare us.” This captain had figured out that words “man of God,” were not just a formal title.
Right then, the angel of Yehovah spoke to Elijah, and told him, “Go down with him,” and perhaps anticipating Elijah’s reaction, he added, “There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Elijah tilted his head to one side, squinted his eyes at the captain, and said, “Okay.”
The remainder of the story is anticlimactic. Not many details are given regarding Elijah’s encounter with King Ahaziah. The king remained silent as Elijah repeated what he had already said, only this time it is not a question, but an indictment, “This is what Yehovah has to say to you, ‘Because you sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron–as if there were no God in Israel to inquire for his word–you won’t come down from that bed to which you have gone up, you will die for certain.”
Now, at last, King Ahaziah had his answer and knew his future. And soon the word Yehovah had given to Elijah was fulfilled. Once Ahaziah was gone, his brother Jehoram took his place and became Israel’s next king.
Take a moment. Breathe. Relax.
There is a reality that is larger than our universe, and the source of our universe. That reality is eternal, and therefore encompasses the past, present, and future of our universe at the same time. In that added dimension, God is not hidden as he is from our world of experience. God reaches to us from that dimension and calls us to himself. Jesus our Lord referred to that dimension as “the kingdom of God.”
The invitation of the Scriptures is not to come and inquire about the future, or learn the secrets of the transcendent realm, or tap into spiritual powers. The invitation is to know God in and through his Son. For this purpose, God has given us the potential for spiritual development, so that we can interact with him Spirit to spirit.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption . . ., by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Ro. 8:15-16)
Here is the challenging part of this arrangement: Our physical selves are not equipped with the ability to perceive God with our senses or know him with our rational minds. We can learn lots of information about God, but that still falls short of knowing God in his actual beingness. To know him, our spirits need to be enlightened. That is why St. Paul prayed for the Ephesians, that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him (Ep. 1:17)
When Jesus taught, his primary tools for enlightening his hearers were, in the synoptic gospels, parables, and in the gospel of John hard sayings (analogies and metaphors that were difficult to digest). Why are the methods for enlightening his disciples useful and effective? Because they do not attempt to explain what we cannot understand, but instead lead us to an experience of truth and of the larger reality. In stories, truth is caught rather than taught. Jesus explained to his disciples, that his parables reveal the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Not all mysteries, but those that benefit us when we are enlightened by them.
We are not aware of everything a story does in us and for us.
In the stories that Jesus told, there are specific patterns. We hear the parable and our brains naturally find the pattern. We do not have to be conscious of the pattern, but our brains will discern and remember it. Later, in the daily grind of our lived experience, something will happen that fits the pattern, and that will take us back to the spiritual truth Jesus has revealed to us. Our spirit is awakened in those moments to God’s presence or his obvious work in us and in our world.
Today’s story of Elijah may speak to us in ways we are not yet aware. In fact, we may find details of the narrative offensive, such as the catastrophic deaths of one hundred men. However, there are subtleties in the patterns embedded in the story that may prove useful to us.
First, we return to the beginning, when Moab rebelled against Israel. This footnote was necessary because the people who lived through it may not have recognized the significance of this loss. This is something that is always a concern to me. Is there something important to my relationship with God that I have lost? One of the saddest moments in scripture is when Samson went to battle with the Philistines, confident of his victory, “But he did not know that the LORD had left him” (Jdg. 16:20) I need all the resources God has ever given me. Sometimes I let an important gift lapse. In those times, I am not doing my best work, or I’m not being my best self.
And it is not only myself that concerns me. A great many people in the Evangelical subculture have lost their way and the central message of Jesus, but they don’t seem to realize the loss or where that leaves them.
A second pattern in the story is one that is common in folk stories and fairytales; namely the way people or events are arranged in “threes.” Three times, the question is raised, “Is it because there is no God in Israel . . .?” Three times captains with the soldiers came for Elijah.
The pattern of three can help us sift out our failures. One captain was polite. One captain was a bully. The third captain learned from the mistakes of the first two. You might recognize the testing of threes in Goldilocks and the Three Bears–one porridge too hot, another too cold, and the third just right. Or the Three Little Pigs.
In scripture,
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And thought a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him–a threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecc. 4:9-12).
There is, of course, the ultimate “threefold cord. As my friend, Fr. Romuald, said, “The fundamental revelation of the Trinity is relationship.”
A third pattern is repeated through the chapter, and is very easy to see in the English Standard Version because of its literalness. Ahaziah went up into his bed, and he was not coming down from it. Then the first captain to approach Elijah, went up and told him to come down, and that is when Elijah called fire to come down. The third captain went up to Elijah, but then fell on his knees. Elijah was then told to go down with him to Samaria. This theme will continue into the next chapter, perhaps because it signifies the ups and downs of Elijah’s ministry, until his final move upward.
Embedded in this chapter is an outline of Israel’s history with the Lord their God, which was up and down. The most condensed version of it is found in the Book of Judges, where we see an ongoing cycle of Israel turning to God, then turning away, turning back, then turning away again. The other books of Israel’s history present a longer version, but it’s the same pattern. We also see this cycle in the lives of individuals.
Israel’s upward movement began on Mount Sinai and reached its climax on Mount Zion.
I, too, have had my ups and downs with the Lord. It never hurts to ask where I am in the cycle–and then answer that question as honestly as possible.
Perhaps for us, the central purpose of this story is to get us to ask ourselves, “Is there no God in South Orange County, that we would chase after what everyone is striving to attain?”
A few years ago a famous Christian author wrote a philosophical argument for God’s existence, and even more, for the fact that God continues to speak to people who will listen for him. The title of his book was, He Is There and He Is Not Silent.
This morning we’re going to cross out one letter: He Is Here and He Is Not Silent.
That’s a good enough truth for us to take home and live with this week.
Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun
Come Lord, join us today,
Most all the hard things will come to us in time
For many of us it is always on our minds
Never forgotten
It seems more difficult to remember that
Most all the good things will come as well
Many here already
And we miss them
Take them for granted
Dismiss them.
This morning allow us to give thanks for all the good we have
Today we come as creatures in creation because that is who we are
And you our creator, maker of heaven and earth, and all that means
Thank you Lord for those moments of creaturely comforts of just being alive
Let us hold each one for a moment with reverence and gratitude.
For the warm sun on our faces
The cool breeze on our skin
We thank You
For the clouds and the fog, and the sun that streaks through them and the changing color of the sun in the evening as autumn approaches
We thank you
For the flowers we see, in every color, on our walks, or in our garden, or in a vase at home
We thank You
For the sound of the ocean with waves crashing and spray blowing, or the gentle quiet lapping at the pebbles on a beach, permeated with the smell of salt and sea
We thank you
For the song of birds everywhere, their flitting from place to place, their grace, their freedom
We thank you
For the howling of coyotes, the barking of seals, the cooing of owls and the lowing of cows
We thank you
For our pets who greet us, play with us, tease us, play with us, need us, and love us
We thank you
For our neighbors and their greetings and smiles and good words and unexpected kindness and welcomed affection
We thank you
And for the opportunity to be all that and more to our neighbors and build lasting bonds and grow as people and to journey further
We thank you
For our families and our friends, the strong ones, the ones who are sick and who are suffering, the bright ones, the ones who are making their way barely able to look up, the fortunate, the needy, and the difficult, and the ones filled with joy
We thank you
And for our place with our families and with our friends, every struggle, every laugh, every tear, every long talk, every story told, every confidence given, every smile, every hug, every kiss we thank you
For all of this and more, so much more
We thank you
We thank you
Amen
Morning talk: chuck smith, jr.
Now Naboth the Jezreelite
had a vineyard in Jezreel,
beside the palace of Ahab
king of Samaria 1 Kings 21:1
King Ahab left the battlefield, victorious over the Syrians, but he arrived home moody and sullen. In theory, there’s no reason for kings to be “moody and sullen.” If they are troubled, they have counselors. If they feel sad, they have jesters. If they need comfort, the priest is always on call. Having the luxuries afforded them by wealth and power, one imagines they could avoid ever being moody and sullen.
Ahab may have assumed he did a good thing, releasing the enemy king who had attacked Israel, and sending him back to Syria with a slap on the wrist. But as he was riding through his troops with them congratulating him, there was suddenly that miserable prophet standing in his way, telling him God did not want King Ben-hadad to go free, and Ahab would pay for that wrong he did in releasing him. That spoiled everything.
Soon after this discouraging episode, Ahab took his queen and together they went to their palace in Jezreel for rest and entertainment. One evening, strolling the palace grounds, the king paused at the section of his wall that bordered the property of his closest neighbor. He stood there a good awhile, looking over the vineyard that thrived in the luxuriant field. This had always been the favorite part of his walk. Gradually, a picture formed in his mind, followed by an idea, and then a plan. He had work to do, and that pleased him.
Rising early the next morning, Ahab’s brain was racing through the steps he had to take. In truth, his imagination was already far beyond the first steps–way past the negotiation and purchase stage. He was mentally dividing and redesigning the entire field, and deciding what he would plant in every square foot. The king was walking so fast, his attendants were having difficulty keeping up with him. He knocked, perhaps too loudly, on the door of Naboth his neighbor. The door had barely opened when Ahab asked Naboth’s wife, “Where’s your husband, now?” Controlling the shock she felt seeing the king up close, she managed to say, “Out there–somewhere,” pointing to the vineyard.
Ahab turned and began scanning the vineyard as he was already rushing into it. He finally discovered Naboth, crouching by a vine, pulling at weeds near its roots. “Naboth,” the king startled him. “Naboth, let’s strike a deal. I want your vineyard–after all, it’s right next to my home. I will trade you an even better vineyard for it; or if you prefer, I’ll buy it outright–top dollar. The decision is yours,” Ahab said, and then asked again, “Which do you want, a better vineyard or the money?” He was not really giving Naboth much of a choice.
Naboth had to restrain the anger from seeping into his voice. “God forbid!” he blurted out. “Yehovah will never allow me to give up or sell the inheritance of my fathers.” Ahab took a step back. He was not prepared for this response. In all of his dreaming and planning, the possibility Naboth could refuse him had not entered his mind. And even though Ahab was king, Naboth had the winning hand.
When Israel entered the land of Canaan, a great deal of care was given to locating where each of the twelve tribes would settle. The leaders of each tribe gathered in Shiloh at the entrance of God’s sacred Tent. There, Joshua divined God’s will for the division of the land and assigned each tribe their portion, which they then allowed each clan and family to claim their possession. Hundreds of years had passed from that time to the present, and still the portion of each family, with its defined boundary lines, was considered sacred. Ahab could not argue Naboth’s right to his property.
His spirit crushed, Ahab dragged himself away from the vineyard. Describing what happened next, we can hear the same exact phrase that we heard before, Ahab arrived home moody and sullen.
We could make a long list of pious individuals who believe it’s their job to discover and condemn the sins of everyone in the Bible–and everyone outside the Bible as well. Some of them have interpreted Ahab’s dejection as a moral failure. In their eyes, he was a sissy king who could not handle setbacks, but instantly fell into whiney self-pity in the face of disappointment. His morose feeling was “a lack of faith,” or “the sin of self-love,” or “the misery of the person who turns away from God.”
Perhaps they are right to find fault with Ahab’s grousing every time his path leads straight into a wall. But then again, there have been others who were righteous, yet also became moody and sullen at times.
“How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” says the poet of Psalm 13.
“How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day? . . .
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death . . . .” (Ps. 13:1-3)
Some of God’s favorites resisted taking on the role he assigned them, or they felt oppressed by his will, or they accepted their task, but later wanted to resign. Others, like Ahab, went around moody and sullen, because they carried a great burden, had grown up in an insane home, or suffered unrelenting persecution.
King Ahab certainly had his faults, and reacting poorly to setbacks may have been one of them, but, even though God was clear regarding Ahab’s actual sins, he said nothing about his pathetic moods.
While Ahab made his way back to the palace, his conversation with Naboth was playing over and over in his head, “Naboth said, ‘I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers.’” Once home, he went straight into his room and tossed himself on his bed. When his servants entered and asked what were his wishes, he turned his face away without answering them. He wanted nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing to do but lie there and sulk.
Concerned for his unhappiness, Queen Jezebel came to check on him. “Why haven’t you come to dinner? What makes you so miserable you won’t join us?” He looked up at her and told the story of his offer to Naboth, and how it was rejected. However, Ahab edited some of the details. He left out the part where Naboth mentioned the inheritance of his fathers. So it’s possible that Ahab’s version of the story caused Jezebel to assume that Naboth was just being peevish. It’s also possible, that being a foreigner in Israel, she was not aware of the sacredness of maintaining ownership of the land of one’s family.
“Is that all?” she asked, as if it were nothing. “You’re the king of Israel! Now start acting like a king. Get up. Go feast on something. Call for entertainment. I’ll get you Naboth’s vineyard. Cheer up; it is practically yours already.”
Jezebel hurried off to the chamber where the king’s official documents were written and stored. She called for a scribe, and with his help, she forged a legal decree in the name of her husband and then secured it with his personal seal. Jezebel had the document delivered to the leaders of Jezreel; all of them, of course, men who knew Naboth. Here is what was written in the letter they assumed came from the king:
“By royal decree, you are to proclaim a public fast. Make this announcement, ‘We must seek the will of God and learn why he has withheld his blessings from our land. If we do not discover the guilty party and rid ourselves of his sin, God will continue his punishment.’ Once the city has gathered, set Naboth in front of crowd. Hire two lowlifes to come forward and accuse Naboth of blasphemy, saying, ‘We have heard you curse both God and our king!’ Then drag Naboth outside the gate of the city, and stone him to death.”
Upon receiving these orders, that is what the leaders, the elders, and the men of the city did. They proclaimed a fast, brought Naboth forward, and two scum bags stepped forward and accused him of cursing God and the king. So the people took him outside the city gates, and there they executed him. Afterward, the leaders sent word back to the palace that Naboth had been stoned and was dead.
As soon as Jezebel received this message, she hurried back to Ahab. “Get up!” she said. “You can go now, and take possession of the vineyard you offered to buy, but that Naboth refused to sell to you. He’s no longer alive, so he can’t stand in your way. The vineyard is yours.”
Once the king learned that Naboth was dead, he immediately hurried back to the vineyard.
Around the same time that Ahab received word of Naboth’s death, someone else was receiving a word regarding the King and Queen. The word of Yehovah came to the prophet Elijah. “Get up,” God told him, “and go down to confront Ahab king of Israel. You will see him standing in the vineyard of Naboth, that he has entered and taken over its ownership. When you reach him, say to him, “Hear the word of Yehovah! In the same place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will lick up your blood as well.” The meaning of this message was obvious. Like Naboth, Ahab was going to die a miserable and dishonorable death.
When Elijah entered the vineyard, Ahab looked up and recognizing the prophet, he asked, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” The question dripped with irony. If Elijah were Ahab’s enemy, it was the king’s doing, not the prophet’s. Besides, Elijah was not the one Ahab had to fear, it was Yehovah who opposed him.
Elijah answered him, “I have found you, and the reason is because you’ve sold out–sold out to do nothing but evil in the sight of Yehovah. God tells you to look away from this vineyard to the disaster that coming for you, to consume you and cut off your posterity from every person in Israel. Yehovah says, ‘I am going to erase your house and dynasty the way I erased Jeroboam’s, the first king of Israel; and the way I erased the dynasty of Baasha, who was king prior to your father Omri. I will do this because you have sinned and spread your sin throughout Israel. Regarding Jezebel, your wife, dogs will eat her body, not outside the gates of the city, but within the walls of Jezreel. Anyone in your family that dies within a city, dogs will eat, and anyone who dies in the open countryside, the birds of the sky will eat.’”
If we are stunned by this message from God, then we are feeling the terror it was meant to provoke. Until now, Ahab had not taken his or his wife’s offenses against Yehovah seriously enough to turn from the other gods and their idols, and begin walking in the ways of the God of Israel. Now, without a shred of compassion, they had murdered one of their own subjects in order to take ownership of his land.
Ahab’s final brief biography reads like this:
“There had never been someone who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of Yehovah like Ahab, whose wrongdoing was incited by his wife Jezebel. His actions were heinous in devotion to pagan deities and their idols. He became as evil as the people who had lived in the land previously, and whom God had removed before Israel arrived.”
When King Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes from his body and wrapped himself in sackcloth. He fasted from all foods, and went about his life in a deep depression.
Once again, the word of Yehovah came to Elijah, and it is impossible to hear what God had to say without being amazed. God asked Elijah, “Have you see this? Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me, and how he has shown respect for my word? Because he has taken my word to heart and humbled himself before me, I will delay my punishment, so that he will not see the worst of it. I will not bring the complete disaster during his lifetime, but will unleash it on his heirs after he is gone.”
Although Ahab failed at being a decent king, it is Jezebel’s name that is remembered for its wicked connotations. For better or worse, the name of Jezebel has been so overused and subjected to so many different forms of insidious behavior, that it is currently more useful in comedy than tragedy. A few years ago, a group of Christian leaders began warning believers that some women could be possessed by the spirit of Jezebel. That sort of teaching is embarrassing for its complete silliness (although I know a few husbands who wanted to believe it could be true). Nonsense like this may shield us from the real danger that lurks in this story, and therefore it could fail to provide the serious warning that we need for such a time as this present hour.
When Jezebel told Ahab to “act like a king,” her concept of what that meant was foreign to the role of the kings of Israel according to God’s specifications. In fact, Jezebel’s model king was what could be applied to all the worst leaders of history and the world today.
When David–Israel’s model king–was chosen, the characteristic that qualified him was he was a man after God’s own heart. The devotion he showed his sheep as a shepherd–willing to risk his life for the runt of the flock–mirrored God’s heart for his people.
There have been many people who have either been thrown into leadership positions or finagled their way into leadership, who don’t belong there. Some of them are simply inept. They have no vision, or no integrity, or no skill in motivating or guiding followers. Others have talents that are useful in other departments, but not in the leader’s role. For example, it is a disaster for followers when their leader is a bean-counter. That is because the focus of the accountant is on money and math and analysis down to the fractions of a penny, rather than on human persons, who will always be the chief concern of every true and decent leader. Among the worst leaders, are not those who fail to serve people, but those who actually damage their followers. These are frequently the men and women who want to lead for what they get for themselves from it–perhaps wealth, attention, or the power of control.
God has provided plenty of instructions for leaders, and you don’t need to attend a conference to learn them. For instance, God told the prophet Ezekiel,
“Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them” (Eze. 34:2-4)
We cannot always find a job working under the perfect boss or manager. In fact, I hear more terrible stories about bad managers than I do wise and helpful managers. However, we do have the freedom to choose our spiritual leaders and we can at least cast a vote for political leaders. I look for the most compassionate and understanding leader. I look for people who do care for the strays and the lost; those who fall through the cracks of society. But that’s just me.
If I were to give you any advice this morning, based on this chapter of Elijah’s story, it would be this: The one who brings us the truth is not our enemy. Ahab assumed Elijah was his enemy, because he brought him information he did not want to hear or believe. Of course, truth can be delivered in an unloving and criticizing way, but it is still better than being told lies. So . . .
Don’t follow the person who always asks for more from you
Follow the one who inspires you to be more
Don’t follow the person who says they love you
Follow the person who shows you they love you.
Follow the person who follows Jesus.
Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun
Come Lord and join us today
We are full of gratitude for all the good in our lives
For our friends and family
For our good fortune and happy memories.
Still we fret and worry
We strive and scramble
We hustle and grind
To fix what isn’t working
To patch up the holes in our lives and in our hearts
Often things go well,
our crisis averted
and we are on to our next thing,
not exactly at peace,
maybe wondering when the next shoe will drop.
Other times things don’t go as planned
We don’t seem able to satisfy our needs or expectations
We are confused by it all
We become frustrated,
We become isolated
We suffer, we suffer quietly and alone
(Or not so quietly and alone)
And we put our heads down and push forward
Day after day
Sometimes the suffering of a person bubbles up and boils over
When that happens suffering multiplies and spreads.
This happened this week in Georgia when the suffering of one family, one child,
burst the seams and cut through a school, a community and a nation.
Show us our part
Show us what we can do
How we can contribute
Show us how we are currently increasing our own suffering and the suffering of others
And give us practical ways to overcome those patterns and choices
Bring us the help we need.
Give us the ways to bring peace into our own lives
And show us, in ways that are timely and tangible how we can offer peace to others
To ease their pain and loneliness
To assist in their joy and hope
So their lives,
And our lives too,
against all we may have ever known will be filled with gratitude for all you do
Your rock solid love
Your tender considerations
Your gentle presence
And lead us
another step forward
Into our surrender to you
Amen
Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.
Ben-hadad the king of Syria,
gathered all his army together.
Thirty-two kings were with him,
and horses and chariots.
And he went up and closed in on Samaria
and fought against it 1 Kings 20:1
Today’s episode requires an explanation, because my plan was to skip this chapter. For the past seven weeks we’ve been immersed in the story of Elijah, but for some reason he does not appear here; not even his name is mentioned. But that is one of the curiosities in this episode that interests me. There are still gifted seers through whom God delivers messages to King Ahab, and these three fill the void that Elijah leaves. However, not even one of the three is named, but each one is identified by a title: the first is simply “a prophet,” the second is “a man of God,” and the third is “a certain man of the sons of the prophets,”
I have two reasons for including this chapter in the story of Elijah, even though we lose sight of him. First, there is a strong connection between the end of this episode and a moment in the next episode where an unusual phrase is repeated using the exact same words. The link is strong enough to suggest a theme that deserves attention.
The second reason I’m including this chapter is because I-love-this-story! The first time I discovered a truth revealed in this chapter, it was something I desperately needed to learn. So, here we go.
Ben-hadad, the king of Syria, was a bully.
He commanded one of the most impressive armies east of the Mediterranean Sea. He increased his dominance and control by conquering smaller kingdoms in the region of Aram, and then replacing their kings with his own governors. The powerful nations in the ancient world found it easier and more profitable to force weaker nations to pay them for protection rather than increase the burden of taxation on one’s own people. In his current campaign, Ben-hadad brought thirty-two governors of his vassal kingdoms with him along with their armed troops to assist in attacking Israel. When Syria’s soldiers were on the march, nations trembled.
In his current campaign, he had his eyes on Samaria, the capital city of Israel.
The Syrian strategy was classic. The simplest way to conquer a city was to form a blockade around it. If no one was able to escape, and all supplies of food and water were cut off, then starvation and disease would eventually force the helpless city to open its gates. All a general needed was enough provisions for his own troops to be able to wait out the people in the city.
Ben-hadad’s certainty of victory was absolute. An idea entered his cruel mind, to harass the king and people of Samaria, the way a cat plays with a mouse before crushing it. That the city would fall was obvious, so why not humiliate Israel and at the same time plunder them without having to shoot an arrow or break down the gates? With that intention, he sent a delegation from his camp to King Ahab to deliver his message: “This word comes straight from the lips of King Ben-hadad. You are to hand over to me your silver and your gold. Also, your wives and their children are mine.”
Without expressing a word of complaint, Ahab told the messengers: “Give my answer to your master, ‘O king, I am yours, and so is all that I have. I accept your terms.’”
Did Israel’s king actually find his situation so hopeless that he sent this shocking reply? Was he going to hand over his wealth to Ben-hadad, as well as his royal family and harem just like that?! The Syrian king’s assessment of Samaria’s desperation was correct. They were terrified of the suffering that would follow in the wake of his invasion.
This was almost too easy. Ben-hadad decided he would press for even more.
In a very short time, the Syrian delegation was back at the gates of Samaria. They brought a new message addressed to King Ahab, that went like this, “From his royal majesty, King Ben-hadad. Previously I sent word to you, demanding that you surrender to me your silver and gold, and your wives and children. But now I am changing my terms. Besides what I set forth at first, I hereby order you to show my representatives every room in your palace and all the quarters of your servants and officials. They will watch you closely, and whenever they notice something that is precious in your eyes, they will lay hands on that, and bring it to me in my camp.”
Unlike Ben-hadad’s first demand, Ahab did not respond immediately. Instead, he summoned the chief leaders of the people, and presented to them Ben-hadad’s message. Then he said, “Please take note, and see for yourselves how this man is up to no good. When he sent me his demand for my family and my treasures, I did not resist him. But now he’s telling us he wants more. What should we do?” Among all of Ahab’s advisers, the answer was unanimous. “Don’t listen to that tyrant,” they said, “and don’t give into his ridiculous requirements!”
Ahab needed this support. When he received Ben-hadad’s first message, he could make his decision without consulting with anyone else. That was because, the extortion required him to give only what was his own to give. But now the families and belongings of others in his kingdom were at stake. Of course, as king, he could have consented to the Syrian king without the permission of his subjects. But the throne of Israel was always unsteady, and to surrender the property of his people could be his last official act. He was replaceable.
The next message that went from Ahab to Ben-hadad was simple, without any disrespect or defiance. “From King Ahab” it read, “To my lord the king, I am still willing to give you everything you required in your first message, but what your are asking now, I cannot do.” Of course, this did not go over well, and soon Ahab received Ben-hadad’s furious response. “May the gods do so to me and more also,” he swore, “if when I am finished with you, there will be enough of Samaria left for each soldier who follows me to take away even a handful of its dust!”
No doubt, Ben-hadad meant to terrify the king of Israel with that response. With a flare of brave repartee, Ahab’s answer came in a proverb, “The one who is strapping his armor on should not brag as one who is taking his armor off.” I suppose we could compare that to the more simple advice, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” The Syrian king was enraged, and told his soldiers to prepare to move out. Nevertheless, Ben-hadad remained in his bivouac with his governors, drinking wine. He was that confident that Samaria would soon fall into his hands.
Look now! A prophet approaches King Ahab and delivers a message to him from Yehovah. He said, “Listen to the word of Yehovah, ‘Have you viewed this massive army preparing to take the city? Watch carefully, because I am going to hand all of them over to you, and then you will know that I am Yehovah, Israel’s one and only God.’” Ahab asked the prophet, “Who among our troops is God going to use to win this victory?” The prophet answered, “Yehovah says that it will be by those who serve the chief leaders of the people.” Again, Ahab asked, “And who will lead the charge?” The prophet’s one-word answer, “You.”
King Ahab quickly ordered the chief leaders to fall in behind him–232 men–and after them, the army of Israel numbered, that numbered seven thousand. At noon, they set out for the Syrian camp. By then, Ben-hadad and his crew had been drinking themselves drunk. When he received word that a contingent of soldiers had come out of Samaria and was approaching their camp, Ben-hadad ordered his scouts to go out and meet them. “If they have come to make peace,” he told his scouts, “take them alive. Or, if they have come to make war with us, take them alive.” Naturally, he did not consider them a serious threat.
As Syria’s scouts reached Ahab and his soldiers, and immediately Israel’s troops attacked them. The initial onslaught was aggressive enough, and successful enough, to create a panic in the Syrian camp, and all of Ben-hadad’s army took flight. With their backs to Israel, they became easy targets, and Syria’s army suffered great losses of men, chariots and horses. With help from his commanders, Ben-hadad managed to mount a horse and flee to safety.
The same prophet who predicted this outcome showed up again, on the heels of Israel’s victory. He advised King Ahab, “Prepare yourself, strengthen your forces and give serious thought to what you need to do next, because when spring comes, so will the king of Syria, and he will launch another attack against you.”
Time passed. King Ben-hadad sobered up. Still licking his wounds from their humiliating defeat, his military advisers came to him with a new war plan. They had an explanation for Israel’s victory. “Their gods are gods of the hills, and that is why they were able to overpower us. But if we engage them on a valley’s level ground, we will have the advantage. What we must do, is get rid of the governors you placed in charge of the troops and put veteran commanders in those positions. Then build an army like we had before; soldier for soldier, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot. Then, when we draw them onto the level plain, our forces will be so much greater than theirs, that they won’t stand a chance of defending themselves.”
The adaptations that they recommended were straight out of the strategic military thinking of that period of history. Whenever armies fought in mountainous terrain, those at a higher elevation had the advantage. Stones thrown or slung from a slingshot, arrows shot from a bow, or spears thrown at specific targets had the advantage of both gravity and vantage point. Then, when it came to having a large, level battlefield, the advantage went to the army that could deploy a greater number of chariots and horses, leaving little foot soldiers could do to protect themselves. A third tactic was to wait until spring before their next engagement. The wet, inclement weather could make guiding a chariot through a muddy fields difficult, if not impossible.
Spring arrived, and Syria, with its massive army descended on Israel. The small force that Israel was able to muster looked pitiful compared to the Syrian camp. The picture that comes to mind is that the Israelite troops looked like two small flocks of goats in a large open space, while Syrian troops filled the entire landscape.
As before the previous battle, someone approached the king of Israel, only this time he’s not described as a prophet, but as a “man of God,” which is probably another way of saying the same thing. “Listen to the word of Yehovah,” he told Ahab, “The Syrians have said that ‘Yehovah is a god of the hills, but he is not a god of the valleys,’ and for that reason I am going to hand you the victory. Then you will know that I am Yehovah, Israel’s one and only God.”
The two armies spent a week observing and spying on each other. Then, on the seventh day, the battle began. The fighting went as the prophet predicted. Israel killed thousands of Syrian soldiers while thousands more. Thousands of others took refuge in a nearby city, but were killed when a large wall collapsed on them. Again, Ben-hadad fled, but he didn’t get far. He was holed up in one of the villages of Israel. When his servants found him, they suggested a plan.
“Look, your highness. Word on the street is that the kings of Israel are known for the mercy they show their enemies. With your permission, we’ll disguise ourselves as if we were prisoners of war, present ourselves to the king of Israel, and test him to see if he is willing to negotiate. If this works, we may be able to get him to spare your life.”
Their ploy worked. When they appeared before Ahab, they told him, “We’ve come from your servant, Ben-hadad. He is begging you to spare his life.” King Ahab responded, “What’s this? Is he still alive? He’s like a brother to me.” These connivers immediately saw the opening they were hoping would come, and picked up on Ahab’s words. “Yes,” they said, “Your brother, Ben-hadad, is begging you for mercy.” Ahab commanded them to go fetch him, which they did, and when the humbled Syrian king came to Ahab, they treated each other like old friends and swore a covenant together. Then Ahab released Ben-hadad to return to Syria.
This could be considered a pleasant end of the story, except for the epilogue that follows. A certain man, who will remain anonymous though he was a member of the school of the prophets, approached a fellow soldier and, at the word of Yehovah, asked him, “Please, draw your sword and wound me.” But the soldier, for whatever reason, refused to do as he asked. So the man said to him, “You have disobeyed the word of Yehovah, and for that, look what will happen to you; when you walk away a lion will attack and wound you.” And that is exactly what happened. Then the man from the school of the prophets turned to another soldier and said, “Please, wound me.” And he did.
Next, the wounded man pulled a similar ruse on Ahab like the servants of Ben-hadad. He disguised himself by wrapping the upper part of his face with a large cloth bandage. When King Ahab passed that way, the man cried out to him, “Have mercy, O King!” He then explained that during the battle another soldier of superior rank brought him an enemy prisoner and told him, “Guard this man with your life. If you let him escape, it will be your life for his life. Otherwise you will be charged a sum of money greater than you can afford to pay.”
The man continued, “But, your majesty, I had other responsibilities and obligations, so while I was distracted, running around here and there, the prisoner escaped.”
The king answered him sternly, “You have pronounced your own sentence. You made your decision and now you will suffer the consequences.”
Quickly, the man unwrapped the bandage from around his face and Ahab recognized him as one of the prophets. The man then prophesied, “Listen to the word Yehovah has for you! Now it is you who has pronounced your own sentence, for Yehovah put a man into your hand whom Yehovah intended to punish. By releasing Ben-hadad, you have forfeited your life and jeopardized the lives of the people.”
Ahab did not return home in the triumphant mood that would normally follow a great victory. Instead, he entered his house miserable and sullen. This unhappiness is what links today’s episode with what we will encounter next week.
Ben-hadad’s advisers realized they would have an advantage over Israel if they drew their forces down into a valley where their own horses and chariots far outnumbered those of King Ahab. We identified their military strategy, however, the way they presented it to their king was as a spiritual strategy, pitting the gods of the mountains against their gods of the valleys. We need to give consideration to the spiritual aspect and advantages of warfare whether we face them on the mountains or in the valleys.
In the Scriptures, lots of wonderful experiences occurred on mountains. Moses, and much later Elijah, encountered God on Mount Horeb. God revealed to David that he was to build the temple on Mount Zion. Jesus’ most famous message is his Sermon On the Mount. He also resorted to mountains to pray in solitude. Jesus met with Moses and Elijah on a high mountain, and there he was transfigured in the presence of three of his disciples. Jesus spent his last free hours on the Mount of Olives, and was crucified on Mount Calvary.
Have you ever considered how many Christian camps and retreat sites are located on mountains? Even recently, a young man I had not seen in years, described to me the impact that retreats on Mount Palomar had on his life in Jesus. I could go on. God has done many wonderful things for people on mountains. He is definitely God of the mountains.
But in this story, it is not the mountains that grab our attention. The emphasis here is that Yahweh declares that he is the God of the valleys as well. I am sure that most Christians believe this is true “technically.” We have met God in the mountain forests, where our souls have been refreshed in his presence. But are we rejoicing in him as much when we travel through the lower levels of our life’s circumstances? Do we expect to find that the One we trust remains the one and only also God in our valleys–our poverty, our diagnoses, our visits to a graveside? Everyone’s life journey takes them through dark valleys. Have we learned that our Lord is God of those places?
If, when our circumstances turn against us, we immediately start complaining; if we ask, “Where were You, O God?” Or say, “Prayer doesn’t work,” then we’re believing the lie, that he is only God of the good times.
Like many others, I lived with depression from the time I was a teenager into my sixties. During the most intense seasons of despair, I was convinced that death was the only way that I would ever be free from negative, repetitive and self-deprecating thoughts that constantly raced through my brain. But there have also been moments–and not just a few–when Jesus met me in my deepest depression. I cannot say that God’s superiority of God over all circumstances was always clear to me. But now, after many years, I am fully confident that the Lord is God of the valleys.
After his moment of the glory of his transfiguration, when Jesus descended the mountain, he was met by a few of his disciples who had suffered defeat by an evil spirit, whom they could not drive away. Jesus, however, could not be defeated, but with a word he drove out the demon. He proved himself to be Lord of the valleys.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me . . . (Ps. 23:4)
Twice in today’s episode, King Ahab was told that through God’s intervention he would “know that I am the LORD” (1 Ki. 20:13 & 28). I’m certain God wants us to trust this word today.
If there were any truth I wish God would brand into our brains, it would be this: Our divine Lord is God of the valleys!
Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun
Come Lord and join us here today
Our lives are funny things.
Fragile, flawed and finite we make our way
There are turns of fortune, both welcomed and unwelcomed, unannounced
Then our plans shift or evaporate
as we try to adjust to the new situation
and then, so often, need to adjust again
For many of us our lives aren’t how we imagined they might be.
Disappointments linger
Betrayals fester
Regrets cloud our minds
But our lives aren’t all sadness
There are joys unexpected
Successes to remember
Friends to cherish
Still, beyond the tally sheet of wins and loses there is you Lord
With us at every step
Making meaning and sense of our lives.
Through every turn you hold us close
You take every event, large or small, happy or sad,
Or completely mundane and ordinary
And give us just what we need
You bring us along a little further
You redeem us
You make us whole
You make us more able to love and be loved
Lord grant us the ability to see you in our everyday moments
To await your touch
To abide in your presence
To cooperate in your will
To be whole, loving, kind and gentle
To love what is good
To be full of mercy for others and ourselves,
To be full of joy,
To be full of gratitude for all you have done are doing now and will do in the days to come
Amen
Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.
So [Elijah] departed from there
and found Elisha
the son of Shaphat,
who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen in front of him,
and he was with the twelfth 1 Kings 19:19
The Elijah with whom we spent time in the previous chapter is hardly recognizable in this episode. He is no longer the prophet who lost heart and had been wallowing in defeat, sulking in a cave. He was transformed. Once again he is on the move, and you would have had to jog to keep pace with his long, rapid strides. Every time his foot hit the ground, it raised a small, meaningful dust cloud. He was on assignment for Yehovah–nothing could stand in his way. The wild and fearless prophet was back.
God had given him three tasks to perform involving three men: Hazael, who would become king of Syria; Jehu, would become king of Israel; and Elisha, who would become his replacement. Elijah began with the third task; and as the Lord would have it, Elisha, his protégé would complete the other two assignments after he was gone. So at least he could cross the Elisha task off his “to do” list.
Elijah received specific instructions for where he would find Elisha. First, Elisha was the son of Shaphat. Second, they lived in the village of Abel-mehola. Elijah was familiar with this area, because it wasn’t far from wadi-Cherith, where God first sent him to hide from King Ahab. Elijah may have even known of Shaphat, because he was apparently a wealthy landowner.
Making his way through the low hills west of the Jordan River, Elijah came to a valley of rich farmland. He first caught sight of Elisha behind a plough pulled by two oxen, etching lines in a wide field. Behind Elisha there were eleven other ploughmen also working the field. Twelve in all. That must have seemed fitting to Elijah. Twelve teams of oxen, twelve tribes of Israel. There was, in fact, at that time a large, decorative bowl-shaped pool of water in the temple that rested on the backs of twelve oxen statues.
Marching across the field, Elijah began removing his wide cloak, then coming up behind Elisha, he threw it over his shoulders without saying a word. The prophet did not stop. He passed by Elisha just as Yehovah had passed before himself outside the cave a few days back. It was Elisha’s moment, and Elijah was not going to spoil it with some long-winded recruitment pitch.
Elisha’s surprise lasted no longer than a deep breath. Shockwaves of sheer excitement tremored through his body. He had been waiting for this! He knew someday the call would come. How could he have known it would be today? Right now? Out here in his father’s field, behind the plough.
Elisha sprinted over the furrows of broken earth until he caught up to Elijah. Between breaths he said, “Let me – go home, please, – and kiss my parents – before I go. I want them to know I’m leaving. Then I’ll come back and follow you to–wherever the Spirit takes you.” He was not asking if he could run home and give each of his parents a smooch on the cheek, but to give them a proper good-by. It is quite possible they, too, knew a day would come when their boy would leave home for another life.
Turning to look him in the eye, Elijah told him, “Go back home. What do you think I’ve done to you? What do you think just happened? I’m not placing you under any obligation. You’re free to choose what you do next. You’re free to return to your parents and celebrate this rite-of-passage with them. All I did was throw my cloak on you. I haven’t strapped a yoke on your shoulders.”
Returning to the field, Elisha removed the yoke from the oxen, slaughtered them, stacked the wooden plough and yoke, and set them on fire. He cooked the meat of the oxen over the fire, and hosted a feast to celebrate his departure with his family; who most likely included aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends and neighbors from their town.
Before sunset, Elisha was on the road that brought him to Elijah. Together they headed into the next adventure. During the coming months, Elisha would follow the prophet, attending to his personal needs, and receiving an education in how to listen to the Spirit of Yehovah, and pray miracles into the lives of others.
This is our brief introduction to Elisha–only three verses in the Bible. And after this he disappears until 2 Kings chapter 2–and there he is already a mature prophet, no longer in need of Elijah’s tutelage and ready to go out on his own. Naturally, we would like a few more details of Elisha’s calling and his private education. But there is none of that here.
Maybe we should be thankful that at least we do have this little bit of information. Or, maybe, in instances like this, where the Bible leaves empty spaces, we are allowed to fill in the blank lines with our imagination. Of course, our imaginations cannot bring us to the truth of these circumstances, but still they can lead us to a truth we may not have considered. So, with your permission–or without it, because I’m going to do this anyway–I’ll take us on a brief excursion to a place you’ve never been before.
A week after Elisha left the farm, his mother stood in the doorway of their home, looking out at the fields where servants and day-workers were carrying jars of water from the cistern and pouring them into the furrows where the seed had been planted. Her husband came toward her, all-business like and was about to say something. But noticing that her eyes were blurred with tears that had not yet spilled over onto her cheeks, he said nothing. Instead, he came close and stood next to her. After a quiet moment, being as gentle as was possible for him, he said, “You know he’ll come back. Once he’s been out in the real world for awhile, he’ll get this nonsense out of his system, realize how good he has it here, and he’ll return home where he belongs.”
She turned her head slightly, left-right-left-right. “No,” she whispered, “he won’t be back. You know, he’s always been a dreamer; always seen things we could not see; heard a voice we could not hear. No, God has him now.
“We lost our son,
because he found himself.”
If we can imagine a conversation like that, then it could help us get a better understanding of Elisha’s actions before he left. So when we return to what the Bible does say, we get what’s going on here.
That Elisha would throw himself a going-away party fits the occasion, even though it was spontaneous, sudden, and the guests were not given advanced notice. However, what is less clear is why he would make provisions for the instant feast by slaughtering his oxen and burning his farm equipment. Certainly his family must have had other ways to feed their guests. And it is not likely that firewood was in short supply.
Elisha was making a statement.
He did not only set fire to his farming tools, he was burning bridges. He was eliminating the devices that had him grounded in the soil of his father’s fields. Elisha made it so that he could not return–he could not go back to doing what he had done before. He could not resume the life he had lived or again become the person he had been. He was primed for the moment that Elijah’s mantle fell on his shoulders. In that instant his life became something else.
Elisha had visions of other fields besides his father’s. In his minds eye he saw men, women, and children; kings and commanders; perhaps even one day a school of prophets that needed a leader and mentor.
Someone as serious about their calling as Elisha was, does not make “slight adjustments” to their lifestyle or tweak their daily routine. Hundreds of years later, the Lord Jesus would explain, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is well-placed for work in the kingdom of God” [Lk. 9:62] That makes sense. How can a person plow a straight furrow while looking backwards? Somewhere it is written that people of faith “make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” [Heb. 11:14-16]
If there are people whose entire lives flow as smooth as oil, we have yet to meet them. For the majority of humankind, passing through a single day entails interruptions and a series of starts and stops. Still, it rarely happens that we see a person’s life turn on a dime, and generally if it does, it results from a crisis or unexpected hardship. So for us, to see the sudden and radical change of Elisha’s life, we realize that something unique has happened. What could motivate Elisha to completely abandon his stable life for an uncertain future with a impulsive prophet? The answer has to do with a phenomenon known as “hearing the call.”
Although the timing of Elijah’s arrival may have caught Elisha off guard, he was not surprised that it happened. He had been waiting for this moment. Elisha knew that he was meant to dedicate himself to a specific adventure; that God had singled him out for more than an average life. He was not supposed to settle for a life of success, but commit to a life of significance. When the call came, he was ready. He had his bags packed and set to go.
Did he know how the call would come to him? Did he know exactly what he would be doing? Did it ever occur to him that he would only know the day and the hour when a cloak was thrown over him? Probably not, and it’s possible that none of those things mattered. He eagerly anticipated the day that he would be pulled into a life worth living. He did not need a written document to arrive, a special messenger to bring the big announcement. He was pleased if the only indication of his call was when skilled journeyman walked by and handed him a tool belt.
In theaters that host live action plays, a few of the actors on stage have important roles. Other actors have less important roles, and some are merely “extras” to create the illusion of a busy street or a crowded restaurant.
God does not create or use “extras.” God does not give life to any human person just for them to take up space, to accomplish nothing, to be nothing. Everyone’s existence is meant to have as much significance as Elisha’s. Everyone has a calling.
And we need a calling. We have to know that passing through this life we are doing something significant, something helpful for others, something good for the world. We need to know our calling, and to know that it is so big that it causes everything in our lives to make sense.
Some of us know our calling–we know it so well we can try to avoid it, refuse it, run from it. Others of us are not certain of our calling. We think it might be this or that. And some of us doubt that our lives mean anything, either to ourselves or anyone else.
To know our calling, we need to understand that along the way, even though something is accomplished, we are not called to accomplishments. We are not called to an artistic creation, or to build a business, or lead a community. We are not called to a duty or a task. To get to the heart of it, we have to ask, “Who is doing the calling?” Whose voice invites us to come and follow them?
When Jesus called the fishermen from their boats and their nets and the lake, he told them he would make them fishers of men and women. That was what they would eventually be doing, but their calling was to follow him. He could have made them become something else. Since then he has needed carpenters and cooks, teachers and tailors, janitors and generals. He has made many people to become many things, but he began with all of them by calling them to himself. If when your calling becomes clear, your immediate reaction is, “But I’m not qualified for that! I haven’t the education, or creativity, or whatever, to do that!” know this, Jesus will “make you” for whatever he wants you to be.
There is a moment when a voice comes to everyone, saying,
“Your destiny is upon you!”
“Your name has come up, you’ve been chosen and called.”
It’s never too late to wake up to your calling.
Never too late to answer the call.
Never too late to follow Jesus.
I wish we all were as aware of God’s desire for us as Elisha was.
I wish we all were as excited about what the Lord has planned for us.
How wonderful if we were as convinced,
as certain,
as eager about receiving and having this call as Elisha.
I leave that to you and to your temperament.
Just know that you have not been overlooked.
Look at what has given to you.
Listen to the effect you have on others.
Pay attention to life around you and the life within.
Notice all these things and see if like an arrow
they point in the direction of your calling.
And when you receive the call–or when you realize you have already received it–
jump up, leave everything, and follow Jesus.
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?
Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun
Come Lord, come
Pull us out of our overworked minds
Set us free from our expectations
Walk us into the life you have promised us
Grant us the presence of your love
and the grace to receive it
To hold it close.
Let us not fight it
Argue it down
Preempt it
Defend ourselves against it
Let us not return to our substitutes
Or our counterfeits
Or our workarounds
Compel us with your love
Your gentleness
Your kindness
Your patience
Remind us of your everlasting care
Your regard for our well-being
You desire for our restoration
Today we ask that you break through
our despair and distraction
And even to shake us a little if you must
So we can be with you
Aware of your presence
And enveloped in your great good love
Amen
Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.
And Elijah said to Ahab,
“Go up, eat and drink,
for there is a sound of the rushing of rain” 1 Kings 18:41
Elijah found King Ahab sitting off by himself still as a statue, staring into nothing, and his face coated in confusion. Ahab wondered, “What just happened? How could it have happened?” His feud with Elijah had ended suddenly in a phenomenon of fire and blood. His army of prophets failed to rouse their Bah-al god, while from the sky Yehovah answered Elijah with a spectacle never before seen. The king was defeated, but it was a strange loss that left him groping for his next move. Elijah had proved himself to be the real deal, and Yehovah proved himself to be the true God. Would Ahab now have to switch gods? Reform his rule over Israel? Defy his wife Jezebel?
Elijah’s voice broke his trance. “Ahab,” he called to him, “Go up higher, get something to eat and drink. There’s a sound of thundershowers coming our way.”
Ahab couldn’t hear anything that sounded like the rumble of thunder or spatter of rain. No one else heard sounds of an advancing storm. What did Elijah see that no one else could see? What could Elijah hear that no one else could hear.
“This is where it all began,” the King said to himself. Elijah had shown up out of nowhere, prophesying, “No rain will fall on Israel until at my word.” Then came the drought, and for those three years Elijah had disappeared. A few days ago he reappeared, which meant the land would finally receive the water it needed to come alive again. Ahab looked up; there was not a cloud in the sky. But still he stood up and did as Elijah told him. He hiked up the next slope, and ordered his attendants to bring him a meal. He thought to himself, “Well, this is one thing I can do–I can eat.”
Elijah told King Ahab to go up, and Ahab went up. Then Elijah, headed up the mountain too. The direction they moved was “up,” toward the sky–perhaps because the fire of God had fallen from the sky, and now if there rain was on the way, it too would come from up in the sky. So Elijah hiked upward, all the way to the top of Mount Carmel, and once he reached the summit he went down. He bent his body over until his head was between his knees and his face on the ground. From that humble desperate posture, he spoke to his servant.
Wait! When did Elijah acquire a servant? Was this someone in the crowd who had witnessed the miracle and then volunteered to become his assistant? Here is one of the missing pieces in the story. Another missing piece is the sound of “rushing rain” that apparently only Elijah was able to hear. Then another oddity, that when bowing on the ground, we expect Elijah to start praying to God, but instead, he spoke to his servant. It’s obvious that we do not have the whole story, but what we have instead is a story with holes in it. Maybe there’s a rational way to fill in the holes. Or maybe we’re to use our imagination to traverse the gaps. Or maybe we’re supposed to live with the mystery.
Elijah told his servant, “Go over to the bluff that looks out over the ocean, then come back and tell me what you see.” From the top of Mount Carmel a panorama of the Mediterranean Sea is visible all the way to the horizon on a clear day. When the servant returned, he gave Elijah a brief report, “There’s nothing.” Elijah told him, go back and look again.
The story at this point becomes a little fuzzy. All we read is that Elijah told his servant, “‘Go again,’ seven times.” That can mean one of two things: either each time the servant went to look out at the sea, he came back with the same answer, and each time Elijah told him to go again. Otherwise, Elijah’s instruction was to go and come back seven times without Elijah repeating his order each time. If this were the case, seven would be the magic number serving as a catalyst for the miracle. How could this make sense? It’s a credible possibility, because Elijah’s successor, Elisha would later on tell a Syrian commander that if he wanted to be healed of his leprosy, he would have to go immerse himself in the Jordan River seven times. If so, we would have to figure out the importance of the number seven on our own. The stories of the two prophets give us no clue.
The seventh time that the servant returned to Elijah, he had a different report. “Well, finally I saw something. It was the wisp of a cloud about the size of a human hand rising from the sea.” Immediately Elijah was on his feet. “Go up,” Elijah ordered his servant, “and tell Ahab to get to his chariot and ride down into the valley all the way to Jezreel before the rain makes travel impossible.”
Within a few minutes, dark clouds driven by a fierce winds filled the sky and shadowed the earth. A sudden cloudburst unleashed a torrent of rain that would soon fill the Kishon River, and every stream and cistern to overflowing.
Ahab whipped the reins of his chariot and sped off into the darkness and downpour. Elijah quickly gathered his robe, securing it around his waist with his sash, and began running. He sprinted down the mountain and into the valley with an agility and speed that had to be supernatural. Indeed, the hand of Yehovah was on Elijah, so that he reached the gates of Jezreel ahead of Ahab.
That’s enough excitement for today.
I have often wondered why the Scriptures do not say that Elijah bowed with his face to the ground and prayed. It feels like his action is incomplete or unfinished. A prayer would be the perfect touch. Here he was, on the ground, reaching for the sky. Prayer would make the connection between heaven and earth.
But, then again, we are not told Elijah did not pray. In fact, there were so many times when people kneeled to pray, that maybe we’re supposed to assume that is what he was doing. I have come to believe that Elijah was praying with his body. There is such a thing as wordless prayer. And now that I think about it, prayers in the Scriptures were frequently offered with body parts.
“Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
and the lifting of my hands as the evening sacrifice” (Ps. 141:2)
“O LORD, open my lips
and my mouth will declare your praise” (Ps. 51:15)
“Then I turned my face toward the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy” (Dan. 9:3)
I remember also the woman who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet, and the other woman whose prayer consisted mostly of tears and kissing Jesus’ feet.
In his book, Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality, Thomas Ryan wrote, “When we pray, we should do so as a whole person and with those gestures and postures that seem most natural to us and are most meaningful for us.”
If we’re going to put our whole self into prayer, then we must pray with our bodies. What we do physically gives expression of what is going on in us spiritually. Sometimes, the position or actions of our bodies can make us more awake in prayer and more aware of our intention, our purpose, and the words we use in conversations with God.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote, “by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Ro. 12:1)
If prayer is more than making requests, or confession, or expressing our anxieties, or praise–if it is also a conversation, then it includes listening to God. There are many things that go on within us that our bodies try to tell us. Much of it we choose to ignore. If it is not painful enough, or the itch is not annoying enough, or our movements aren’t restricted enough, we go on doing what we want without paying attention to our bodies. Too frequently, it seems there are other things going on that are more important than these bodies.
But what if one of the ways God speaks to us is through our bodies? What if he gives us warnings through what we sometimes call “gut feelings”? What if he wants to alert us to a gift that is nearby, and we need to look around in order to see it? Our bodies give us clues to situations that don’t register in our conscious minds, and it might be beneficial to develop a greater sensitivity to the subtle way that God may use our bodies to get through to us when our minds are too busy to pay attention to his voice.
A few years ago, someone I considered a friend destroyed our relationship by an intentional breach of trust. God worked patiently with me for a long time before I could honestly feel, that with a pure heart, I was able to forgive this person. Eventually, I got to a place that I could pray for him and even ask God to bless his life. However, one day I ran into him in person, and my instant response was revulsion. My insides felt like they were being shredded and I had to strain to speak a coherent sentence. I wanted to turn and bolt in the opposite direction.
Afterward, I was miserable, like all that time and effort I spent in prayer to reach forgiveness was lost. That either my forgiveness wasn’t real or else I relapsed and had to start all over again. But later on, after learning more about myself and gaining insight from much study, I came to a realization. My forgiveness for that person was real. In all honestly, I no longer harbored ill will toward him. What happened to me when I saw him was not related to any conscious thought or emotion, but was an automatic visceral response set off by my nervous system–and more specifically, my autonomic nervous system. My body remembered the painful ordeal of the past and immediately sensed danger.
That reaction, in itself, was not God speaking to me. However, as I worked through the entire ordeal, God did speak to me, bringing me to a better understanding, a greater sense of wholeness, and peace.
It’s not that my body can’t get it wrong sometimes, or never overreact, or is always a reliable indicator of safety or danger, but that regardless of what it tells me, I need to take time to listen. Being aware of what my body is saying to me, gives me the opportunity to evaluate it rationally and discern whether or not God is speaking to me. Then I have the option of taking it seriously or discarding it. Either way, I’m no longer unconscious of it nor ignoring it.
When Elijah bowed down on Mount Carmel, he prayed with his body. We bring our whole person to God. Paul talked about praying with his mind and with his spirit. So I’m okay with the Scriptures not specifically saying Elijah prayed using words. However, I cannot say that I’m clear on every detail in this story.
Is it possible that being confused at how God works is oftentimes a normal human response? That doesn’t change what is expected of us. We can still follow as God leads, and do what he wills. We can keep on going seven times to look at the sky and see if there’s a rain cloud in sight. And we can learn to be at peace with not knowing. Good grief! I don’t even know how my cell phone works, how its technology allows it to communicate with satellites, How am I going to understand God’s ways? When he doesn’t explain things to me, I will trust him.
You see, three years was a long time to go without rain, to watch the food supply dwindle, to swelter under a relentless sun. But, the drought finally broke! At first the sign did not look like much–a cloud no bigger than a human hand. That would be like earning the first two dollars to pay off a ten-thousand dollar debt. Nevertheless, once the sign appeared, the entire storm came rapidly, and relief came to the parched earth.
Can we remind ourselves this week, “The Lord has not forgotten me”? Our drought, however that comes into your life and my life, will break at last. Then life–wonderful, free, joyful, abundant life.
Morning Talk: chuck smith jr.
And Elijah came near to all the people and said,
“How long will you go limping
between two different opinions?
If the LORD is God, follow him;
but if Baal is God, follow him.”
And the people
did not answer him a word 1 Kings 18:21
There must have been court officials who wished they could restrain King Ahab’s poor decisions and thoughtless actions. But those with enough skill in diplomacy to hold a position in the royal court also had enough sense to value their lives. Ahab was too full of himself to take advise from anyone else, let alone, take orders.
However, there was that one exception.
From the time Elijah first set foot in Israel, the king willingly listened to him and did as he was told. Perhaps Ahab believed there was more that a slight possibility Elijah’s words came straight from the God of Israel. Perhaps he respected Elijah for this reason. Or, maybe Ahab was afraid of Elijah. Anyway, when the prophet told him to assemble all the people of Israel, and summon the 450 prophets of Baal, the king obeyed him.
What was Elijah planning and preparing to do? There was a critical controversy to be settled for the sake of the nation. According to Elijah, King Ahab had abandoned the ways of Yehovah to devote himself and the nation to the religion of Baal. So Yehovah’s prophet proposed a contest between himself and the Baal prophets. Now, right off, those don’t look like good odds–450 to one! However, if someone were to point that out to Elijah, he would have either sneered or smiled, depending on his mood.“I’m not just one,” he’d say. “I’m not alone.” That changes the odds. Now it’s two against hundreds. But Elijah saw the odds through a different lens; One against zero. Yehovah was the one true God, while Baal was a product of pagan imagination.
Gradually the vast crowd gathered at the foot of Mount Carmel or on one of its slopes. It was either Elijah’s brilliance or the hand of God leading him, to choose Mount Carmel as the staging area for the contest. Gently rising from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the coastal range reaches a height of approximately 1700 feet, and continues southwest for fifteen miles. Other than the steep cliffs on its northeast face, Mount Carmel has always been luxuriant with vegetation. The Kishon River flowed at its base, and up above was a well-known spring. In fact, centuries later King Herod would construct a Roman Aqueduct to carry water from Mount Carmel to the port he created ten miles south in Caesarea.
One other feature of Carmel that deserves attention, is that it had always been considered a sacred site, even long before Israel arrived in the land. At some unknown time, an altar to Yehovah had been constructed there.
Elijah climbed one of the higher slopes to a flat area, where the large crowd could easily see him from below. Once the 450 prophets of Baal were in place opposite Elijah, he faced the people and projecting his voice so all could hear, he asked them, “How long will you go hopping back and forth between two notions? Two different beliefs? If Yehovah is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” There it was; he laid the challenge out before them. For a moment, Elijah’s question lingered in the air. Then silence. There was no response from the people.
There may have been some folks among the crowd who had been asking the same question. But if that were so, they lived in a time when speaking out about religious controversies was dangerous. Queen Jezebel’s determination to violently eradicate the religion of Yehovah and replace it with her own gods, was common knowledge. Another possible reason for their silence, is they may not have realized they had been jumping from one god to the other. Or maybe it had not occurred to them that they could not have more than one god–every other nation around them had several gods. Then there was the philosophical problem, that they had no criteria for evaluating the authenticity of the gods. Perhaps to them it made sense to choose a deity whose reward for their service was to give them what they wanted.
At any rate, their silence was not empty. Many thoughts and images came to mind. Foremost was their curiosity. What was Elijah’s message? What would he propose?
Raising his voice again, Elijah announced, “I am the last of Yehovah’s prophets, but Baal’s prophets number in the hundreds. So here is what we’ll do. Provide us with two bulls, and I will give them first choice. They will take their bull, cut it in pieces and place it on their altar, but–they cannot set fire to the wood. I’ll take the other bull and do the same, and not set fire to it. Then all of you and your prophets can call on your god, and I will call on the name of Yehovah, and the God that answers by fire–well then, that is the true God.”
This time, the people broke their silence. It was unanimous. They all shouted, “That’s a good plan!”
Elijah gave the other team two advantages: they had first choice of the bull they would use (perhaps one looked more flammable than the other), and, because there were so many of them, they could go first. “Set up your sacrifice,” he told them, “and call on the name of your god, but don’t put your offering on fire!”
It was still morning when the 450 prophets began crying out to Baal, begging him to answer. But by noon, there was not so much as a whisper in response to their prayers.
Previously, when Elijah asked why the people were “hopping” from one belief to another, he used the word metaphorically. But it was not a metaphor, when by noon the Baal prophets were getting desperate and they began hopping–not back and forth, but round and round, and up and down on their altar.
At this point, it is tempting to think Elijah was enjoying himself, watching the others getting more desperate by the hour. He may have had a mean sense of humor too. But then again, these prophets were enemies of God and brought great harm to God’s people. At any rate, Elijah began to taunt them.
“You need to cry louder,” he teased. “Baal is a god and you must get his attention. Maybe he’s deep in thought, or occupied with something else, or on an epic journey, or maybe he’s just taking a nap. You need to wake him up!”
The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with anthropomorphisms–that is, they frequently refer to God with images that suggest a human form. For instance, they speak of God’s hands, his eyes, or him being seated on a throne. These are ways in which we try to understand something about God using terms that make sense to us. It is understood that God transcends all of these descriptions, but we are only human and human language is the best we have to say anything meaningful about God.
However, Elijah’s jesting at Baal’s prophets goes beyond any human conception that Israel would ever use of their God; suggestions that could be construed as blasphemy. In other words, he could make fun of Baal in ways he would never refer to Yehovah. This is not mere disrespect of their religion, he was making a point. Baal was the invention of religious minds, Yehovah was known by his self-revelation to Israel.
Elijah’s joking triggered them into a frenzy. They cried louder, and resorted to more serious rituals, cutting themselves with weapons until they were covered in blood. They continued into the afternoon, but for all their ranting and raving . . . nothing. No voice from the sky, no response, no one paid any attention.
Their religious frenzy appears bizarre to us, but it was common practice among the pagan religions of that time. Priests and prophets would engage in all sorts of odd rituals to evoke a special state of consciousness. Thousands of years later, a Hebrew scholar would explain, “There are two fundamental types of ecstasy: the wild and fervid type, which is a state of frenzy arising from overstimulation and emotional tension; and the sober or contemplative type, which is a rapture of the soul in a state of complete calmness, enabling a person to rise beyond the confines of consciousness. The motivation for ecstasy lies in the desire for communion with higher being which transcends the grasp of man in his normal condition. It seems that the type of ecstasy one strives for is determined by one’s conception of the character of such a being. If the god is thought of as a sensuous being, fervid ecstasy would be a way of communion.” [Abraham Heschel]
Evening was approaching, and Baal’s prophets had their chance. Now it was Elijah’s turn. He called to the people, “Come closer to me,” and while they were moving toward him, he began repairing the altar of Yehovah that had been vandalized. He rebuilt it with twelve stones–one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. This was emblematic of returning to Israel’s roots, which were deep in Yehovah their God. It recalled a time when the word of Yehovah came to Jacob and changed his name to “Israel.” So as he repaired the altar, he did it thoughtfully in the name of Yehovah.
The altar was complete, but Elijah wasn’t finished. He dug a small trench around it, then sacrificed the bull, arranging its parts on the wood of the altar. Then he told several bystanders, “Fill four jars with water and bring it here. Now I want you to pour it over the offering, making sure it covers the wood as well.” After they did this, he told them, “Do it again.” He had them pour water over the sacrifice three times in all, so that it ran down the altar and filled the trench. Remember, water was in short supply throughout Israel. Elijah was making a point.
There have been many reports of God working miracles in answer to prayer, which is, of course, wonderful. However, in some of those stories it sounds like those praying for a miracle made it rather easy for God. For instance, the miracle took place at night, so no one was certain about what they saw. Or a group of twenty Christians ordered a box of chicken that usually comes with only ten pieces, but fed the entire group. Only a few years ago, an Israeli tour guide made Elijah’s miracle incredibly easy. He pointed out that much of Mount Carmel consists of limestone. So, clever as Elijah was, when he poured water on the altar, it raised a cloud of limestone dust, which the people mistook for smoke. I suppose the miracle was finding a lot of people dumb enough they couldn’t distinguish smoke from dust.
God doesn’t need us covering for him. When Paul gave testimony at his trial, he outlined the message he had delivered in many different cities. When he came to Jesus’ resurrection, one of the judges interrupted him, and told him that he was out of his mind, that all of his study and research had driven him mad. Paul answered him, “I am not out of my mind, what I’m saying is true and rational. King Agrippa can confirm this, for I’m certain that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner”. What a wonderful line! No honest Christian service for God has to be hidden in some corner where it cannot be observed and proven true or false.
Elijah didn’t make this miracle “easy”–although, for God nothing is difficult. But there was no need for Elijah to make the miracle more complicated either. He felt it necessary to demonstrate Yahweh’s superiority over all counterfeits.
Standing in the sacred space around the altar, approaching a sacred time of day, when the evening offering was to be made, Elijah prayed.
“O Yehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove now that you are the God of Israel and that I am your servant and have done all this at your command. Answer me, Yehovah, answer me, so that this people will know that you, Yehovah, are God and that you are bringing them back to yourself.”
And then, fire fell from the sky. The heat was so intense it consumed the offering, the wood, the stones–even the dust–, and vaporized the water in the trench. Immediately the people went to their knees chanting, “Yehovah, he is God! Yehovah, he is God!” Elijah then commanded the people, “Don’t let these false prophets escape!” So the crowd chased them down, and by the Kishon brook they were executed.
What do we hear, when Elijah asks,
“How long will you put off making your most important decision regarding God?”
– Do we realize we are given a responsibility,
• and at the same time, a powerful gift?
• the gift of choice
– We’ve made many choices in our lives,
• but not always with the awareness that we were making a choice,
• or the awareness that we’re now living with the results of the choices we’ve made
– We only experience the power of choosing–rather than acting out of habit–
• when we’re conscious of making a choice
• and that the choice we make will affect what happens next or later on
We always have a choice
– that doesn’t mean we choose everything that happens to us
• but when unexpected and unwanted things come our way,
◦ we can choose our response to them
• I’m learning, I can choose what kind of attitude I’ll have whenever,
◦ I must do chores I don’t want to do, or fix things I don’t feel like fixing
There will always be a variety of gods competing for our service
– like Israel, we can get stuck jumping from one god to another
• so the call comes repeatedly:
◦ Moses, “I’ve set before you life and death, blessing . . . . Therefore choose life . . . (De. 30:19-20)
◦ Joshua, “. . . choose today whom you will serve . . .” (Jos. 24:14-16)
• wanting to spare us from wrong choices,
◦ Jesus warned us,
“No one can serve two master, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Mt. 6:24)
– near the end of our lives, as we approach death
• is the wrong time, to realize that we have made the wrong choice
I put off a lot of things, thinking, “Well, there’s always tomorrow”
– but some decisions are too big to put off
• and a day comes when there isn’t a tomorrow
◦ and then it’s too late to choose
◦ then I can only regret the choices I didn’t make when I had the chance
This story reports the miracle that made Elijah famous
The heart of it is not that Yahweh proved himself to be Israel’s true God,
that’s the plot
The heart of the story, is the people of Israel had to make a choice
And where they went from there, and where they would finally wind up,
depended on the choices they made
That’s the central message – and it is our lesson for today
Daily Meditations From the Scriptures