1 Kings 19:1-9
The Need to Persevere in God’s Appointed Work
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Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in Southeast Iowa. We want to thank you for listening today and we pray that you’ll be blessed by both hearing God's Word as well as having it applied to your life and your heart.
First Kings 19:1-9. And this is the account of Elijah after the famous encounter on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal. And let's hear them. First Kings 19:1-9, “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” And he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. He asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” He lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” He looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came upon him a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he rose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of the food 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the mount of God.”
Let’s pray. “Gracious Father, we pray now that as we look at Your Word that we would take encouragement from what it tells us here. That even as the prophet Elijah faced discouragement and fear, we pray that we would learn that just as he was Your messenger for that time, so in the tasks that You put us in, You will give us the strength that we need for those tasks, Lord. In Jesus’s name, amen.”
Every one of us has had those times in our life when we felt like giving up on something. I think, in particular, when I was writing my doctoral thesis, there were times that I just felt like throwing it out the window. In fact, apparently, when I was finishing it up, and there was a program that the university gave me, that was supposed to work to center the title page, because they needed to be slightly off-centered because they had to bind the thing and it wasn't working. And my daughter reminded me one time that I said I was going to throw the computer out the window because it was not doing the way it was supposed to! Or the time that, in the same thing, when I had gone to my thesis defense, and I passed it, but as I was walking out, my advisor, who was noted for spending all day looking at it, at a computer screen over one sentence in a book he was writing. He did. That's what he told me he would do. He would look at a computer screen all day to get one sentence right. He told me, “I wish you would have had time to revise it. It was good,” he said, “revise it once more.” And I felt like throwing it at him and saying, “how many times are we going to revise this stupid thing?!” I didn’t say that. You don’t say that to your advisor, of course, but you feel like it!
We have those times when you just feel really discouraged. We are faced with the temptation, when those kind of temptations come, what resources do we have? This account of Elijah is one of those accounts in which we see Elijah face with those very things. Because this account is after, we're going to develop this a little bit more, so I'm not going to do it right at this moment develop this, but let's just remember the setting. Elijah has just been used mightily by the Lord. The confrontation with the prophets of Baal. You have to remember that setting. Elijah had challenged the prophets of Baal. 400 of them. There’s lonely Elijah. These are the prophets that are running around cutting themselves, crying out, “Baal! Hear us!” And Elijah taunts them, “Maybe he’s gone! Maybe he went away on a journey.” He literally says, “Maybe he’s in the bathroom!” Elijah is taunting them. And Elijah ups the ante, has water poured all over the stones, calls upon God, the fire comes down from heaven. He tells the people, “Slaughter, kill, execute the prophets of Baal!” The 400 prophets of Baal. And they do. Man, talk about a marvelous picture of triumph.
This is not a picture of triumph. This is a picture of a discouraged man. Immediately after this! In the immediate aftermath of the encounter, we're going to find a couple of important truths when we deal with this whole question of discouragement.
First of all, even people mightily used by God will sometimes feel like giving up. It says, the immediate context was Elijah had spearheaded a direct assault of Jezebel's fondness for Baal and Ahab's attempt at synchronism. Remember Jezebel, she was the great devotee of Baal. Jezebel’s an interesting character in the Bible. She's the picture, the high epitome of a wicked woman. There's one name that nobody ever names their daughters and that's Jezebel. I dare you, find anybody that's ever named their daughter Jezebel. Nobody names their daughter Jezebel because she is the picture postcard of a wicked woman. And she's also a vain woman. Before she dies she puts her makeup on. That's true! You read it! She's about ready to be thrown out the window, and she says, “I have to put my eyeshadow on first. When I'm going down, I'm looking good.” Talk about a vain woman! Not only is she evil she's vain. If I'm going down, I'm going to look good when I go down. She was a devotee of Baal. Now, her husband Ahab was the Syncretist. What does that mean, you say? He's the guy that likes to mix it up. He thought you could have Baal worship and we can have worship of Yahweh the Lord. We can just have a little bit of each. Both of them have been judged on Mount Carmel. Elijah had said, “Okay, you either worship the Lord or you worship Baal. Don't waver! It's either God or Baal.” And Elijah made it very clear who the Lord demonstrated through the power of Elijah who was really the true God. It was the Lord. Great success.
But then the chapter opens up with, “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he killed the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.”” Do you see what Jezebel was doing here? She says, “Okay, you think you've won a great victory, Mr. Elijah. Not so quick! I am going threaten your life.” She apparently had seen that the tide had turned. And you can imagine if Elijah had been used by the Lord with this kind of success, the very fact that he got them to execute/kill, I mean Elijah couldn’t have done that by himself. He used all the other people who followed him to execute these prophets of Baal. The tide had swung, not only Baal worship but the wobbly worship that Ahab wanted, to now, at least it looked like, the worship of the Lord was going to be reinstituted. And Jezebel basically is pointing her finger at Elijah and saying, “You are the ringleader. You are the one I am going to get.” Because, remember, Ahab had called him the troubler in Israel. “You're the troubler in Israel. You're the root of all of this problem.” Her vow here was sort of like a covenant of sorts. But she conveniently left out what would happen to her. Because most of those vows would have what would happen to me. No. It's, “Elijah, I'm going to get you.”
Then the text says Elijah left. Now here's where I had read the ESV, but I have to read here out of the New King James, which you have in here, because we have a slight variation on translation that can have some impact on how we can translate this. Normally I'm a big fan of the ESV, but in this case, I think the New King James actually gets it more correct. The New King James in chapter 19 verse 3 says, ESV says, “Then he was afraid…” The New King James says, “When he saw that he arose and ran.” No mention of being afraid. You might say, “How do you get those two different translations? What you get is that the Hebrew word for “when he saw” or “that he was afraid”, the root, the consonants are the same consonants, the vowels are different. The vowels in Hebrew are little dots and dashes and circles that get put above and below the Hebrew word. And we have manuscripts with both. It looks like the manuscript evidence is stronger for what the New King James translates it. In other words, “when he saw that he ran”.
So what did he see? He saw that Jezebel was after him. Most people argue, from the context, this is where they get, the even though it's not as well attested, they will say, “He must have been afraid.” But I don't think that's really accurately getting at what his problem was. Think about this: Elijah had just confronted the 400 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Does that look like an afraid man to you? No. Would he be afraid of a boisterous woman as opposed to 400 prophets of Baal? If it is, it would be a strange phenomenon, that he'd be afraid of one woman as opposed to 400 prophets of Baal. It's more likely, I think, that it was a combination of fear but also discouragement. I'm not saying there was no fear there, but to just say it's all fear I think is to miss what's really happening here.
The larger context, I think, shows that what Elijah was operating with was a combination of discouragement and fear. This whole ministry had been an attack on the religion of Baal. Baalism, let's call it. He thought he was having success. I think he really did. I think Elijah thought, “Okay, we've had real success there. Look it. I've rallied the people around me. They put the prophets to death.” And then he gets this message from Jezebel saying, “You're a goner.” And he knew that in the quarters of power, there was opposition. And that opposition from the quarters of power may very well, as he understood, be the real problem that he was going to run into. Because while he may have rallied some common people to him, the common people very well may have said, “You know, if she's going to threaten Elijah, what's she going to do to us?” It wasn't going as smoothly as he thought. He had stood up against the prophets, but now he was facing the opposition of Jezebel.
There's a lot of severe disappointment here. He had just witnessed the great victory on Mount Carmel. But rather than Ahab and Jezebel repenting, they’d just driven further into opposition. The struggles between the forces of the Lord and the forces of Baal. The forces of darkness, shall we say, forces of Satan, to go back to the ultimate root, have been dealt a severe blow, but they were still fighting. They had been knocked down but they were still fighting. Maybe he had become too much to expect that if I had just done this spectacular. If there's anything that’s spectacular the Bible, that was. I mean, pouring all the water, and then having the fire come down from heaven, that’s spectacular. Maybe he's thinking, I don't know, I'm just reading in between the lines here, maybe he's thinking what more spectacular can the Lord do?
This isn't over. That evil woman Jezebel and her cronies are still fighting us tooth and nail. Do you see what he says here? He says, “I am no better than my fathers.” That's a telltale sign. He's saying, “Oh boy. They couldn't defeat the forces of evil. Look at all the struggles we’ve had. I'm not doing any better.” I don't think that symbolizes just fear. I think that shows real discouragement and even depression. In other words: it's time to give up. What are you seeing here? He lies down under a tree and he says, “I just need to die. I just need to die. What good is it? What have I done that's anything better than any of my forefathers? I'm a failure just like they were failures.” You can have a stupendous victory. It doesn't matter. The Jezebels of this world are still out there. What in the world can we do?
He didn't want to just die at Jezebel's hands, but he said, “Lord, maybe you should take me. Maybe you should take me, Lord. I'm worthless. What good did I do here?” He fled to Beersheba, which is the farthest south point in the original boundaries of Israel. Did you notice that he went further than that? He's out in the wilderness where the children of Israel wandered around for all those years. So apparently, he felt, “Well, if I’m not going to die, at least I can get out of the country.” That's what it seems like. He literally gets out of the country; puts himself into exile.
This is important for us, because when we are struggling in this world as God's instruments, against the forces of evil, and we are. We've prayed the Lord's prayer: Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray also keep us from the evil one. We are in spiritual battle. Look at Ephesians chapter 6. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. And there are times though, let's be honest, aren't there those times you feel like saying, “What's the use? What's the use? Why should I keep doing this? The forces of evil look like they just keep winning.” Elijah, if anybody had a reason to say that it's Elijah. Great victory on Mount Carmel. Immediately Jezebel is saying, “I'm going to get you and those associated with you. You think this is over? It's not over, Mr. Elijah. It's just started.” That's really what she's saying, “It's not over. The battle is just started.” He thought maybe it was over. It's not.
He was God's specially appointed bearer of God's word for that time. The Lord had vindicated His word through mighty signs. Yet, he seems to have been almost totally devastated by the fact that it didn't change that many minds. Think about that. He was God's appointed bearer of the Word. God had collaborated it with mighty signs. And not everybody's mind was changed. Elijah, just like us, needed to recognize the struggle may be long and hard and the effect of God's Word can be two-fold: it can be blessing, but the effect of God's Word can also be curse. Now what do you mean by that? It can be words of judgment. What do you think about the response of Jezebel? I'm going to get you and those like you. I'm going to get you guys, basically is what she's saying. What does that deserve but the judgment and curse of God. That didn't make Elijah's ministry any less valuable. He was still the faithful bearer of God's Word. He was still needed there. The Lord didn't say to him, “I don't need you anymore.” But Elijah felt like his ministry was useless at that time.
So too, we need to recognize that the results of anything we do in this world to serve our Lord, are in God's hands and in His timing. Our response, of course, is to be faithful in the work to which He has called us to do, wherever that may be. There was a German reformed minister about 150 years ago by the name of Chromacher who wrote a wonderful devotional commentary on the life of Elijah. He said these words that are really wise words. Let me read those to you, “Who is warrented in saying, “It is enough?” It is only when the Lord says it is enough.” Let me read that again. These are really wise words. “Who is warranted in saying, “It is enough.”” That is what Elijah said. “It's enough. I'm done. I'm done. It's enough.” Mr. Chromacher says, “No.” That's words we really don't have the right to say, I'm paraphrasing of course, “It's enough.” Only when the Lord says it's enough, then we give up.
And this is where Elijah is allowing this discouragement mixed with fear to overcoming. He is saying, “Okay, that woman, I can't stand up against her. Prophets of Baal, yeah, we can deal with those, but that woman, not that woman. She is more difficult than anybody. I thought I won the battle.” No. And as Mr. Chromacher said, he says, “It’s enough. I got to die now. I’m done.” And that's something that's in the Lord's hands.
Elijah wasn't done. God wasn't done with Elijah. He needed to have this discouragement dealt with, of course, but he was still God's messenger. Christ, of course, bore the whole brunt of Satan's attack and was triumphant. Elijah needed a reminder that his sufficiency was of God and ultimately due to Christ's victory. He was overcome momentary by unbelief here, that's really what this is. Unbelief, lack of trust, in the sufficiency of God's work here. Think about this, someone who has faced prophets of Baal, couldn't he trust the Lord to say I can face that evil woman and all that she stands for? Yes, he of course he should have been able to. I stood up against 400+ prophets of Baal, I can stand up against that evil woman as well. But she frightened him. She discouraged him. He needed to trust in the Lord.
And it leads us to our second lesson we're going to learn is that God's grace alone can restore and prepare us for future services. The Lord intervenes here, He does through an angel. It says an angel comes to him a couple of times. This is the same means, interestingly enough, that the Lord used to minister to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Maybe the Lord brings angels to minister to us. I don't know. The Lord says there are angels unawares that we don't know about. I don't know how the Lord works through angels. There's not a lot of material in Scripture about that other than here it says as an angel ministered to him.
Now, the Lord is obviously answering Elijah's prayer, but not quite in the way he thought. Elijah thought he was alone. The Lord is going to show him he's not. And a significant portion of this restoration here, you notice is a simple physical restoration. He eats and sleeps. Think about that. This is fascinating. You’d think he would have gotten a big pep talk from the angels right? “Come on Elijah! You're not going to be a wimp are ya and let that evil woman drive you crazy like this?!” No. He gets fed and he rests. He needed physical restoration because it took a toll on him physically as well. It seems to have been a very simple meal, some have said like a typical Bedouin meal cooked on the rocks. We don't know exactly what it was, but it was a simple meal. We don't know if there was any miracle in this. We’re not told. The Lord provided for him.
But then interestingly enough, instead of going back, and I think this is the Lord directing him, he went 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the Mount of God. You might say, “What's going on here? Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai. The giving of the Law. There are things that should all of a sudden jump out at you: 40 days, the number 40. Elijah seemed to instinctively known that this was beneficial for him to go to Mount Sinai. No direct mention of the Lord telling him. He just seems to instinctively know this. You might say, “Why 40 days and 40 nights?” People who’ve clocked this said it's about 200 miles. Even if you walked slowly, you could have gotten there in a couple of days, easily. Even if it was rough terrain. Why 40 days and 40 nights? This is symbolic in the fact of this number. How long did the Israelites wander in the very same area? 40 years. 40 seems to be always a number that's used of spiritual purification in Scripture. He also rests in a cave, look at the beginning of verse 9. He came to a cave and lodged there. This is the very same area that Moses was lodged in the cave when God's glory passed by. And we aren't going to look at this text, but if you go on, he has an actual encounter. The famous still small voice where he gets encouragement from the Lord. The Lord wasn't in the whirlwind, the Lord was not in the earthquake or fire, but He was in the still small voice. A soft voice of encouragement. “Elijah, go on.”
Well, this strengthening that Elijah received was a gift of divine grace because he was ready to give up. But the Lord still had more for him to do and providentially prepares him for it. He was to be thrown upon the Lord's providential enablement for 40 days. Now, this is not a place where it's easy to find food. Remember what the Lord had to do for the children of Israel there. Mana had to show up. How the Lord fed Elijah I have no idea. Previously the Lord had fed him with ravens bringing him food. How the Lord took care of him we don't know. Apparently, this simple meal had showed up. Did these continue? We don't know, but the Lord was refreshing him. Not only physically though, because wandering around 40 days in the Sinai desert, that's not always the most refreshing place. If you’ve ever seen pictures of Sinai Desert, it's barren. It's not a pleasant place. It doesn't have grape and blackberries and everything hanging out so you can just pick them off and pop them in and little brooks everywhere. It's rough territory without much to eat. The Lord was taking care of him and the Lord was reminding him, “Elijah, I'm not done with you yet. Think about Me.”
And then he has this encounter with God in the cave. What this is telling us is, Elijah, a period of time for you to refresh and refocus yourself and be reminded I am not done with you yet. Thinking about the fact that next week you're celebrating the Lord's supper, this is a time of course for you to spiritually refresh and be fed again. It's one of the best times, bringing God's presence into our experience. We can be refreshed. But even apart from those times when we're celebrating the Lord's supper, we come to see that we trust in the Lord. We recognize that He will give us both the physical and the spiritual refreshment for us to carry on the task that He's called us to do. As we seek His face, we can be assured that whatever task He's called us to do, His strength is what we need. The 23rd Psalm: “He prepared a table for me in the presence of my enemies. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, You are there.”
We might need time of R&R, as we say. This is a time of R&R here. Nothing wrong with that. Christ did too. I still remember, when I grew up, where I did in Northwest Indiana there was a Cedar Lake Bible conference. I think it's still there on a small lake about 20 miles away from where I grew up and they always had Bible conferences there and church meetings would be held there. And when you go there, they had the tabernacle and they had various preachers there. And on the back they had in King James in English of course, this is back when I was a boy that said, “Come ye apart and rest awhile.” And that was the big words at the Cedar Lake Bible conference, “Come ye apart and rest awhile.” Just a reminder. In other words, it's good for you to come to the Bible conference on the shore. It wasn't a very pretty lake, it was actually a pretty dirty lake because it was too close to Chicago area and boats ran over it all the time. But the point is that it was a pretty place on a conference ground on the shore of a lake. You could come apart and rest and become refreshed. Sometimes we need that. But above all we need the refreshment, not come apart like Elijah was tempted to do, and stew upon all his problems and lie down and say, “Okay, I'm done. Take me Lord I got to die.” But instead received God's refreshment, both physical and spiritual. And say, “Okay Lord, You’ve refreshed me to get back into battle. Whatever task you’ve called me to do. Christ has won the victory. I'm out here in the trenches. You have a task for me to do. And to do it.”
Even the greatest and most used of God's servants. And if you don't think Elijah's one of the greatest and most used of God's servants, you're missing something here. Because after all, for example, on the Mount of transfiguration, who was one of the two figures that shows up to meet Jesus? Elijah! Moses and Elijah. Elijah then is the representative symbol of the prophets. The most mightily used of God's prophets.
This doesn't show a man who thinks he's mightily used. This shows a man who says, “I'm going to die. Everything is done.” He almost says, “This was a waste.” I can just almost see him saying, “This is a waste.” Take me Lord. No, it wasn't a waste. It's been recorded in Scripture. The encounter is one of the great examples of the Lord challenging and defeating the forces of evil. And Elijah, “Get up. Let Me refresh you. Go down to Mount Sinai. Remember what I've done for the people of Israel in the past. When you say you're no better than the fathers, remember what the Lord did with the fathers in the past. Let me retrace you down there. Spend some time down there. 40 days. I will refresh you physically but also refresh you spiritually.”
God has blessings for us. His blessings are new every day. And Elijah needed to be reminded of that.
Let's pray, “Father, we thank you for Your Word. Thank you for this message from Your Word. We pray that we would learn from it and seek our refreshment from You as well in those times of discouragement and wanting to give up. We thank you for being taught this from Your Word today Lord. In Jesus’s name, amen.”
Thank you for listening to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP church in Morning Sun, Iowa. We pray that you would be blessed as you grow in your love for God, your love for His Word, as well as your love for His people. Until next week, God bless you.