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| Upon My Life (1 Kings 19:1-8) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Grace, Mercy and Peace to you … Sometimes things … are not as they appear. And sometimes things… are not as you have always been told. And sometimes we need to look at things with eyes of faith … instead of eyes of sight. We have some things like that that we need to look at, and talk about, in our reading from the Old Testament for this morning … the words that describe what’s going on with Elijah, the prophet… One of the things our Reading says about Elijah, and we quote from … verse 3 from chapter 19 of 1 Kings … “And he (Elijah) was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life…” That’s something we need to look at. That phrase: “and he ran for his life”… Knowing Elijah… and the situation that he was in … Something just doesn’t seem altogether right with that statement. What’s going on here? Well, let’s back up. We heard in verses one and two of this Chapter that the King of Israel at that time, the wicked King Ahab, had told his non-Israelite wife, Jezebel, all that had happened. We’ll get to “all that had happened” in just a minute. But who was this Jezebel? Jezebel was the daughter of the Ethbaal, the king of the Sidonians … and as such, she was an avid worshipper of the Canaanite fertility god, Baal … And as she was wed to Ahab, King of Israel, she’d led her husband into the worship of Baal, and the setting up shrines to Baal all over the land of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. So imagine her anger when Ahab informed her of “all that had happened.” And that was that Elijah had just had a show-down with 450 priests of Baal, and He had put them all to shame by calling down fire from heaven, when her priests had failed. It had been a duel before the people of Israel to see who truly was the God of heaven and earth. And worse than that … after their defeat, Elijah had had all 450 of the priests of Baal put to the sword. As you can imagine, Jezebel was more than a little put out, even though she herself had been methodically putting the prophets of the God of Israel to the sword all along. Now we also have to remember what went on before this. Elijah had been fed for an entire year in the wilderness as God had brought a three-year drought upon the land to humble the King and the people. And when the brook that Elijah was using as his source of water finally dried up, God sent him to a widow. And taking Elijah under her roof, her oil and flour never gave out. And when her son got ill and died, Elijah brought him back to life. And then came the show-down with the prophets of Baal… Elijah even taunted them, asking them if their god might be asleep and not hearing them. And after that show-down, at Elijah’s prayer … and in Ahab’s face… the three-year drought was ended. Proof of which God was really in charge, as if the fire from heaven was not enough of a sign. Poor Ahab. So He cries to his wife. And she puts a curse on Elijah, “so may the gods do to me like those dead prophets of Baal, if you aren’t like them by tomorrow.” Now what sort of empty curse, is that? “May the gods do to her”? What gods other than Elijah’s God have the power to do anything? And also, look at this from Elijah’s point of view. God had kept him alive for a year by having the birds bring him food. And God had protected him, a widow and her son from sure starvation … And through Elijah, God had even restored her son to life. Through Elijah, God rained down fire from heaven. And through Elijah, God had brought and end to a three-year drought. But in anger, Jezebel put a contract out on Elijah’s life. Should he have been afraid of that? Could she really do anything to him, given how God had protected him all along up to this point? Besides, what would it say to the people of Israel if God’s Hero, the one who had just defeated the Prophets of Baal, was then killed by Ms. Jezebel, the queen of Baal worshippers? Wouldn’t look too good for God’s side, would it? But then we do have verse 3. It reads: And He (Elijah) was afraid … and he ran for his life … Well let’s really look at verse 3 … Get out the magnifying glass … and look at what the words really say. Now first of all, the word rendered “afraid” here also can be understood as “saw.” The New International Version of the English text has a note to that regard. So, instead of reading this … as Elijah was “afraid,” it could very well be read as Elijah saw … saw what? The state of affairs. He may have won-over Ahab … a little … but Jezebel, no. The royal family was not about to repent and worship the true God of Israel. And if so, then … Elijah was seeing with his physical eyes… that all that God had accomplished through him had been in vain. Now, if Elijah had been truly afraid for his life … all he’d had to do is go south over the border into the Land of Judah … under the kingship of Jehosephat. There he would have been safe … he would have been under the King of Judah’s protection, out of Jezebel’s reach. But we see from the account that Elijah doesn’t just go to Judah to seek refuge … he goes all to Beersheba… the very southern border of Judah … and then, leaving his servant there … he goes off further south, into the desert, alone. Now the word for “life” in Hebrew, as in flee for his “life,” is also the word for soul. So if you’ll bear with us … we can see that maybe Elijah didn’t run for his life out of fear… But given the situation which he saw, Elijah went into the desert for the sake of His soul … for the sake of his relationship with God. Much as we see Jesus do Himself … after His baptism … being led by the Spirit into the desert. And there in the desert, we see Elijah once again being fed by God with bread from heaven … strengthening him for the journey that Elijah has determined for himself to go on … going another 200 miles to the south to Mt. Horeb … also known as Mt. Sinai. Why that journey? Remember that his years of work, culminating in the show-down with priests of Baal, have not brought Ahab and Jezebel to their knees. They are as defiant of God as ever. How can Israel, then, ever be saved? How many worshippers of the true God can be left? The answers to those questions Elijah will receive from God on Mt Sinai …But before that, here, before His trek through the Sinai desert. We find him in spiritual anguish. Elijah admits feeling that all he could do has been done … He deserves no longer life than those who have gone before him. And in that spiritual malaise… God gives him the bread of life, bread from heaven … to strengthen him in body and soul. So, that He would be able to come and meet with God in true faith and there also receive the assurance that God’s power was still at work, his purposes were still being accomplished … even though these things were things Elijah’s physical eyes could not see. And all this makes Elijah that much more real to us. Like, how many of us have gone out and slain 450 priests of a pagan god and then been threatened for doing so? None of us. But how many of us have faithfully fought the good fight of faith and yet, it appears that nothing has come of it …? How many of us … have looked at what’s going on in our own lives, in our own families, in our own congregation, our own national church, even our own nation and want to say … “It is enough. I don’t know what else I can do.”? We’re tired. We’ve had our moments of seeing the glory of the Lord manifested in various ways … but what has changed, really? I’m still a sinner, much as I’ve always been. My relationships with others are far from perfect. I look at the paths things seem to be going down … and I get depressed , worn down, and even discouraged. Our Text for today doesn’t include that part where God speaks to Elijah on Mt. Sinai in the still small whisper … but look at what precedes that … The desert. This is where all the prophets … the very early monks … even Jesus himself would go … off into a desolate place to pray! There are some pastors who regularly take a day-long or even longer silent retreat. No phone, no books, no Cd’s, nothing but what? A Bible and a pad of paper. Why … for the sake of their souls. Fear doesn’t drive them into their desert. They go to be strengthened by the bread of life. That’s why, we’ll submit, that we see Elijah go into the desert and on to Mt. Sinai … not to escape a pagan Queen … but to renew his relationship with God for the sake of his soul … To go out and seek God upon his life, the life of his soul. Notice, though … this really is not about doing something. Doing things for God or for others. This is about God doing something very necessary for Elijah. And Elijah removing himself from the fight, if you will, for the moment, to let God re-set his bearings. You may have noticed something else going on here as well. God used Jezebel’s curse as a blessing for Elijah. First of all, it was a motivator for Elijah to go and seek God’s strength … but more than that, perhaps, it kept Elijah humble… Talk about a spiritual high: calling down fire from heaven … and then running ahead on foot ahead of Ahab all the way down Mt. Carmel to Jezreel as the three-year drought had been brought to an end … Elijah had every reason to be puffed up by what God had done through Him … But Jezebel’s death threat becomes like St. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, and Elijah sees that apart from God’s Grace … he can do nothing. So… maybe those down-times in our lives … those times when God is seeming calling us into our desert … those times when we get depressed or disillusioned are really times when God is truly caring for our souls … by helping us keep Him in His rightful place relative to our own egos. Just maybe?? Or Maybe not. In any case … the bread of life is God’s means to pick us up, dust us off, and set us back on our feet. The Bread of life is His way to nourish the relationship He wants to have, that intimate loving relationship, with each one of us. Who is the bread of life? We heard it in our Gospel reading… Jesus Himself. And in this we may recall Jesus’ own words to Satan in the desert … that man was not intended to live on physical bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. That’s why WE ARE HERE. To hear God’s Word, the words of the Bread of Life … and also to partake of His Sacrament … the very bread that has come down from Heaven … Jesus Christ Himself. There may be those times in our lives when a desert experience is really called for. Jesus, we know, would seek those times out on His own … but our daily bread … that which sustains us from day to day is to be found here … in His Presence … in His word and in His Body and blood … He tells us this morning … look around in faith … see the situation … and come … for I am here to give you rest. In Him. Amen. |