Sometimes, life just seems to blow up right before us. Several years ago, an amazingly effective church developer was sent by his bishop to a recently planted church in a Midwestern state that was struggling. This young pastor had developed quite a reputation for being able to help newly established churches that were struggling. He had planted and successfully nurtured a number of congregations. This pastor was not only well trained and richly gifted by God, but he also had a winsome, attractive personality. He welcomed the opportunity once again to help a struggling congregation turn the corner and move into a chapter of its young life where it would flourish.
When he arrived at the church field, he immediately went to work. He visited each family in the church and began to reach out to unchurched families in the neighborhood. He worked tirelessly using every method he had been taught. Still, the church did not grow. Weeks turned into months and not much changed about this congregation. The pastor became increasingly discouraged, even angry, and finally he began to battle depression. He had always been able to help churches become unstuck, but somehow the renewal of this congregation eluded him. His sense of defeat and despair became worse and worse until he asked the bishop to relieve him of his duties. His mental and emotional condition became dire. He could not get over the worst defeat of his life. Eventually, he turned to professional counselling and finally dropped out of pastoral ministry altogether.
Later, he wrote about this experience in his life and entitled the piece “When All the Bridges Are Down.” The phrase seems to reflect a military situation where a company of troops in battle is pinned down on an island, is being fiercely attacked by the enemy soldiers, and is trapped because all the bridges off the island have been blown up. Have you ever been in such a situation in life? Sometimes, despite all our efforts, life does not go the way we had planned.
This is a common experience of people in the Bible, but there is probably no one who is trapped on an island with no bridge off any more than Elijah in our Scripture passage. Elijah was God’s fearless prophet who was sent to the people of Israel at one of the most difficult and confusing times in their lives. A prophet in the Old Testament is primarily a preacher whom God has sent to Israel to warn them of God’s coming judgment upon them unless they repent of their sins. As we read about the Israelites in this part of 1 Kings, we discover that they were struggling with whether to worship Baal along with God. You see, they now occupied the land of Canaan, and they had to learn a new way of life. Prior to their entrance into the land, they had been wanderers who grazed their sheep on the open lands. They never had to worry about planting grass for their sheep to eat. They just moved them to the next meadow of grass. When they entered Canaan and settled there, they now had to farm the same piece of land year after year. Their Canaanite neighbors believed that Baal controlled the fertility of the soil. Therefore, to survive at farming, one had to worship Baal.
The Israelites thus were tempted by Baal worship. At this time, Israel was ruled by a weak king named Ahab who was married to Jezebel. Jezebel really was the power behind the throne, and she was a zealous worshipper of Baal and thus she promoted Baal worship in Israel. God sends Elijah to warn the Israelites that God will not tolerate a divided allegiance in His people.
This scene in 1 Kings 19 is preceded by one of the most dramatic stories in the Old Testament in 1 Kings 18. The showdown between Baal and God had come to a head. Elijah gathers on top of Mount Carmel for a contest which will decide finally which God Israel will follow—Baal or God. An altar is built of stones, a sacrifice is placed on it, and then the people would see which God consumed the sacrifice—Baal or God—and the people would follow and worship him.
Jezebel has her own “seminary” of 450 prophets of Baal. After the sacrifice is placed on the altar, they march around it praying to Baal, calling upon him to consume the sacrifice and show that he is lord. Baal is as silent as a tomb. The prophets get louder in their cries and then they begin to wail and weep, begging Baal to show his power, but Baal is as silent. Finally, in desperation, some of them cut themselves with swords as they cry out to Baal, hoping that the flow of their own blood will spark him to speak or act, but Baal is as silent. The 450 prophets of Baal are unable to get him to act.
Now, it is Elijah’s turn. He orders that the altar and the sacrifice on it be flooded with water to show that there is no trickery. Then, he prays to God to show Himself, and a bolt of lightning thunders from heaven and consumes the sacrifice, the altar, and even the water that had spilled on the ground. God has spoken! He alone is Lord! He alone is to be worshipped and served by His people. Elijah then orders the 450 prophets to be taken down to the river and killed.
This is the greatest victory; the greatest display of God’s power that Elijah has ever seen! All the days of fear and discouragement that he obviously had experienced were now pale in comparison to the feelings he must have had at that moment. God had spoken to Israel in a fearful and dramatic way, and he had helped bring it about. This day was one of victory for the prophet. Life was going the way it was supposed to.
We desire days like that, don’t we? As one teacher put it: one of the great joys of being a teacher is to have one of those days when we think we have been clear in our teaching, we have connected to the students, and they seem to have learned something significant in class. It is icing on the cake when one or more of them express his or her thanks to us. On those days, discouragement and defeat seem such a distant memory. We are on top of the world. We are at the center of God’s will and everything is good! That is how Elijah must have felt! Some of us grew up watching Captain Kangaroo on TV. There was a song that was often used on that show: “Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day. I get a beautiful feeling; everything is going my way.” That is what we desire in our life with God and sometimes He gives us days like that, doesn’t He?
But then, there’s Jezebel. In 19:1-2, we see that spineless Ahab tells his wife what had happened, and she sends a message to Elijah: “May the gods strike me dead if by this time tomorrow I don’t do the same thing to you that you did to the prophets.”
There is always a Jezebel in life, waiting to strike us when we are least expecting it. Verse 3 says: “Elijah was afraid and fled for his life.” He took a servant and went to Beersheba and then decided that he could not even trust his servant so he leaves him behind and goes a deep and far into the wilderness as he can. Notice how his whole perspective on life is now twisted and sour. He prays to God to let him die.
Isn’t that the rhythm of our lives? We have those rare moments of great victory and clarity about life, but they are rare. Many people are glued to their televisions during football season, soaking up every game they can. Some football fans become so involved in the game that they suffer heart attacks while watching. For some, football season is a time of the year when nothing else matters except football. Yet, a football team spends most of its time not playing a game that may last 3 or 4 hours. Most of the week before that game is spent running, exercising, lifting weights, watching game films, and practicing on the field. I doubt that many players get a thrill from any of these activities. I suspect that most of this activity is drudgery.
Some Christians expect the Christian life to be one victory after another. There has always been a version of the gospel often called “the health and wealth” or “the prosperity” gospel which says that following Jesus brings about health, prosperity, and success in life. The truth is most of the Christian life is ordinary, non- dramatic, and often painful with few visible rewards. Most of it is lived in the trenches where we find many Jezebels.
When that happens, we often react the same way that Elijah did. We become fearful and angry and our whole perspective on life becomes warped, twisted, and bitter. We want to give up and go somewhere else and do something else. Notice in his cries to God how many times Elijah uses “I,” “me,” or “my.” A sure sign that we have become twisted and warped in our lives is when everything revolves around us. Focusing on ourselves is a sure path to misery and despair.
Elijah makes it all the way to a cave on Mt. Sinai where perhaps he finally feels safe from Jezebel’s reach. In the cave, according to verse nine of our text, God asks Elijah a second time: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Again, Elijah spews out his hurt and bitterness to God in verse ten. We can feel his anger and self-pity, can’t we? How many times have we struggled and done our best to do the right thing only to be utterly defeated and to conclude that we are alone?
Note as the story continues in verse eleven that God orders His prophet to go to the top of the mountain. Elijah senses that God has finally heard His cries and is now going to do something. We can almost sense a rebirth of hope in Elijah as he feels that God is going to show Himself in the same kind of dramatic way that He did at Mount Carmel in chapter 18. Sure enough, on top of the mountain God passes by and sends a furious wind that shakes the hills and splits the rocks—but God is not in the wind! Then, there is a terrible earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake! Then, there is a fire, but God is not in the fire!
Verse 12 says: “And after the fire, there was the soft whisper of a voice.” God responds to the cries of His prophet not with earth-shaking drama but with the soft whisper of a voice. Again, He asks Elijah: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” and again, Elijah repeats His complaints. Note in the rest of our passage (verses 15-18) God sends him back to the wicked world of Jezebel, gives him specific commands to follow as he takes back up his calling as God’s prophet, and reminds him that he’s not the only one who is faithful—there are 7000 in Israel who have not worshipped Baal.
This morning, you and I live in Jezebel’s world. It has not changed very much. As we live out our Christian calling in this world, it is inevitable that we will be hurt, misunderstood, opposed, and sometimes will experience defeat no matter how hard we work and how sincere we are in our motives. We will become discouraged, and our world will become bitter and twisted. We may want to withdraw to the safety of a cave in the wilderness somewhere. The hope of this passage is that God will never let us go; He will never leave us stranded on an island of despair with no bridges off. He will come to us usually not in the earth-shaking, dramatic ways that we long for, but more often with the soft whisper of a voice, and He will send us back into Jezebel’s world to continue living the life that He has given us in Jesus Christ. He has not called us to succeed in our efforts—only to be faithful to the very end! This life of struggle will one day lead us home!
