Elijah - Unrealistic Expectations Series

If you’re not already there, go ahead and turn with me to 1 Kings 19 and follow along as I read beginning in verse 1;

{Read 1 Kings 19:1-8]

I get the feeling that Elijah thought that once King Ahab had seen what God did on Mt. Carmel that he would go back and set his wife Jezebel straight and that he and the people of Israel would turn back to God. But those proved to be unrealistic expectations and he was in for a rude awakening. Instead of turning to the Lord, Jezebel told Elijah that if he didn’t get out of town by the next morning, he was a dead man.

What is just as important as what is in this passage is what is missing. So far, we’ve seen that Elijah acted in response to the word of the Lord, but this time the word of the Lord isn’t even mentioned. So Elijah, who had earlier stood up to King Ahab and 450 prophets of Baal all by himself is now afraid of one queen, albeit a very wicked one. So without consulting God, he flees.

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He leaves Israel and head south into Judah, where he figures he will be safe from Jezebel. But just to make sure, he heads to Beersheba, which is about 100 miles away near the southern border of Judah. And then he leaves his servant there and heads another day’s journey to the south into the wilderness. And there he sits down under a tree and asks God to let him die. Just think about how ridiculous that request is. If Elijah really wanted to die, he could have spared himself that long journey and just let Jezebel kill him in Jezreel.

But in his disappoint and depression, God is about to teach Elijah a lesson that we need to heed as well when those times of discouragement inevitably come into our lives:

God’s grace is spectacular…

even when it isn’t

Hopefully, you can start to see that already, but we’ll develop that idea further as we proceed this morning.

Elijah falls asleep and he is literally touched by an angel who tells him to get up and eat. And once again, as he has done twice before, God sustains Elijah with bread and water. But this time it’s not just any only bread it’s angel food cake right out of the oven. Elijah fills his belly and goes back to sleep.

The angel touches him for the second time and this time we learn this is not just any angel – it is “the angel of the Lord”. As we’ve talked about before, when that phrase is used, it is almost always what is known as a Christophany, which is just a fancy word that means this is a physical appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament.

Jesus tells him that he needs to eat again so that he will have strength for the 40 day journey ahead of him. It’s not really clear here if God directs Elijah to go to Mount Horeb or whether Elijah decided to do that on his own. What we do know is that even on foot that journey would normally take no more than 8 to 10 days. So the implication is that for some reason unknown to us, Elijah was in no great hurry to get there.

Let’s continue…

[Read 1 Kings 19:9-18]

Earlier Elijah had sought shelter under a broom tree. Now he seeks shelter in a cave. And God asks Elijah a question: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” As we’ve seen before, when God asks a question, it’s not to get information. He does that to help Elijah learn something important about himself and about God.