Psalm 27, 1 Kings 19:9-18, 2 Peter 1:16-21, Mark 9:2-9
When you feel like quitting
On July 4, 1952, a young woman named Florence Chadwick waded into the water off Catalina Island. She was setting out to swim the channel from the island to the California coast. This was no novice undertaking. Florence Chadwick had already been the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.
The day, however, was very foggy. And, the water was numbingly cold on that day. In fact, the fog was so thick she could hardly see the boats moving slowly alongside her. In addition to the coldness, and the blindness caused by the fog, Chadwick knew that she was attracting sharks. Several times during the swim, people in boats alongside her were firing at the sharks with rifles to drive them off. Nevertheless she swam for more than 15 hours before she asked to be taken out of the water. Her trainer tried to encourage her to swim on because they were so close to the land. But when Florence looked, all she saw was fog. So she quit. When they pulled her from the water, she was only one-mile from her goal, a goal she did not reach. [hat tip: sermon central illustration bank]
This is a dramatic and heart-breaking sort of failure when it happens. I imagine all of us can remember something similar that we have seen in our own lives, in the lives of family members or friends – when we quit, when they quit, so close to the goal, but they quit because they had lost all hope that they would ever get to the finish line.
The Old Testament and Gospel lessons for today show us something about discouragement, why it happens, and what God provides for us to overcome it.
Let’s consider, first of all, Elisha, for the situation in which we find him in 1 Kings 19 has many parallels with Florence Chadwick’s failure to swim the Catalina channel back in 1952. Like Chadwick’s victory over the English Channel, Elisha had a stunning victory – he had recently bested 400 prophets of Baal in a mighty contest, and he had slain all of them. And, like Chadwick who was threatened by sharks, Elisha was threatened by something far worse than sharks – the Queen Jezebel, who had sent him a message that she was going to do to him what he had done to her prophets. And, like Chadwick, who could see only fog, Elisha could see nothing either.
After Elisha had fled Jezebel’s murderous agents and had come to a distant mountain in the wilderness and hidden himself in a cave, God asked him, “What are you doing here?”
And, this is what Elisha told him: “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”
As far as Elisha was concerned, that recent victory over the prophets of Baal amounted to nothing. Why? Because even after that, what could he see as far as Israel was concerned? Nothing good. The people of Israel had torn down God’s altars, they had killed God’s prophets with the sword, Elisha was now the very last who showed any faithfulness of the God of Israel, and everyone – not just Jezebel – was seeking to kill him.
God gave him a rather spectacular object lesson which has generated untold numbers of sentimental sermons about the small still voice. First the Lord paraded before Elisha great and mighty tumults – winds so powerful that they ripped apart the mountain in which Elisha was hiding. Then an earth quake, and then a roaring fire that swept the countryside. And, after the fire had passed, Elijah heard a small still voice, so faint he couldn’t understand it. He went out of his cave, and then he could understand. It was the Lord’s voice, of course, and it told him two things: it told him some things to do, and it assured him that in spite of his feeling utterly alone, God had preserved a remnant in Israel who had not worshiped the false god Baal.
Now, let us go several centuries after Elisha to the events recorded in Mark 9, today’s gospel lesson. What has this got to do with Elisha and his discouragement? Well, parallels are simply this: Elisha was profoundly depressed and discouraged in his service to the Lord. That service was difficult, demanding, tedious, dangerous, and it looked very much to Elisha that there was no point to any of it. In the final analysis, nothing good was going to come out of it.
Now, the disciples of the Lord have not faced anything like what Elisha had faced when Jesus takes them up to the top of the mountain. But, Jesus knows something the disciples do not know – that their lot is going to ever so much more difficult that Elisha’s! Jesus recently begun telling his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and that when he gets there he will be arrested, and crucified, and that he will die. Moreover, Jesus knows what his disciples are going to face after his resurrection – it will not be a boisterous, triumphant bringing in of the kingdom. No sirree! It will be more of what Jesus got – rejection, persecution, crucifixion. Every one of them was going to die a martyrs death. And, the most powerful testimony to the truth of the gospel among Christians for several centuries afterwards would be the martyrs deaths that many of them would face.
So, what does Jesus do? He does not give them an object lesson, such as he gave Elisha. But, he shows them something: a vision of the goal. Jesus is transfigured before them, in light so powerful and blindingly bright that they are stunned. And there with Jesus is Moses and Elijah, and Luke tells us that Peter heard them speaking about Jesus’ death that would soon happen in Jerusalem. Peter is so stupefied he begins to mumble stuff and building tents for everybody, as if he can somehow preserve what’s going on if everybody has a place to stay. And if that were not enough, the very voice of God the Father speaks and says, “This is my beloved son. Hear Him!”
And at that point, it all vanishes. There they are – Peter, James, John, and Jesus, just as he appeared before. And, they all go back down the mountain, and continue their journey toward Jerusalem.
What is the point of all this? Why did these three get this vision of the future majesty and glory of Jesus Christ? Well, Peter tells us what the point is in the New Testament lesson appointed for today.
In the verses just before the lesson we heard read, Peter wrote this [2 Pet. 2:13-15] “Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, 14 knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. 15 Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.”
Peter is about to die, and for that reason he wishes to commit something to them in writing, so that it will not be lost after he dies. And what he wishes them to remember is this:
16 For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 17 For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” 18 And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
Peter reminds them that what they saw on that mountain was Jesus as he would be when he comes in power and great glory at the end of the age. Peter insists that he was an eyewitness of that majesty, and a first-hand listener to the voice of God the Father who said about Jesus “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
And, why did that happen? Peter says it happened – at least in part – for this reason: “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
Just as Jesus knew the hardships, the darkness of persecution that his disciples would face, so Peter also knows this about his own disciples and what they will face when he departs. And, so Peter leaves them this testimony – one which undoubtedly strengthened Peter and all the other disciples who did not see that vision – as they carried out their mission of planting the church in an environment which was just as hostile to them as it had been to Jesus when he was on the earth.
Does God ever do anything like that today? I don’t think so. The closest thing I can think of that even resembles what Peter is reminding us about is the visions of the other side of death that are sometimes reported by those who beginning the very last stages of dying. I have heard several of these visions of the other side of death reported to me by reputable, sane people who heard them from dying Christians. These reports, both from the dying Christians and those who were with them and heard their reports – these reports, as Peter would say, were not craftily designed fables, but rather came from people who were entirely credible and reasonable people, never given to flights of fancy or extravagant tales.
It think it is significant that such reports are all near the point of death – surely traumatic event – and it would seem that such glimpses of the other side have the obvious purpose of comforting and encouraging the one who is about to experience first hand the judgment rendered on the entire human race when God judged our father Adam. Not everyone is favored with these – or, at least, not every Christian who is dying reports such a vision. Many do, but most do not.
And, in any event, death itself – while it looms out there for all of us – is only the last hurdle to cross. Before that there are many, many others. What is our hope in those times of tedious, depressing, trial?
It is the one that Peter offers to us, and the one which God offered to his servant Elisha – not a vision of howling chaos, or quaking earth, or burning fire here in this world, but the small quiet voice of the Lord. And, where will we find that? Peter tells us it is in God’s Word which the Prophets and Apostles have left for us. And, what do we find in that word? A sure testimony, an eyewitness report of the power and the glory and the majesty of return of our Lord to the earth.
THAT is what sustains us during trials and temptations. THAT is what gives us the power to endure hard things. THAT is what keeps us pressing toward the prize, because it is, indeed, a prize so glorious that those who saw it on the mount of transfiguration were stupefied by it.
And, it is not unseemly to keep such a prize in mind as we face temptations or trials or persecutions. This is what sustained the Lord himself as he was going through his sufferings at the end of Passion Week. The author of Hebrews tells us [12:2] that Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, … for the JOY that was set before Him ENDURED THE CROSS, DESPISING THE SHAME, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. If a hope for the glory to come is what sustained our Savior in the worst of his trials, why is it any surprise that a hope for the glory to come is what Jesus sets before his disciples, to strengthen them when they are tempted to doubt, or to despair, or to give up.
After Florence Chadwick had recovered from her disappointing attempt to swim the Catalina channel, she said this to reporters: “I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen the land I might have made it.” It’s a fascinating and revealing confession. Chadwick did not link her failure to the cold or to the fear of being eaten by sharks. In the final analysis, it wasn’t the hardships and dangers that caused her to give up in failure. It was the fog. And, not because fog is so terrible. No, it was the fog that kept OUT OF HER VIEW what WOULD have sustained her as she grew tired or as she faced dangers such as sharks. These she could overcome if she ALSO had a conviction that the goal was near.
Two months after her failure, Florence Chadwick walked off the same beach into the same channel and swam the complete distance. And not only that, she set a new speed record for that achievement, because she could see the land toward which she was headed.
We, too, can see the land toward which we are headed. We don’t see it with our eyes of flesh, though that too will come one day. We see it now with Peter’s eyes, with the eyes of James and John, who saw with their own eyes the glory of the Christ in his return to judge the earth and to establish his everlasting kingdom. We see that with their eyes because they have left a record of what they saw on that mountain on that day. Paul, too, saw where we are all headed, so we have his eyes to add to those of Peter, James, and John. And those eyes are freely and abundantly available to us by the same small, quiet voice of the Holy Spirit, which he has preserved for us in the pages of the Holy Scriptures.
Many times we too fail, not because we are suffering such hardship, not because we are threatened by terrible dangers, but because we lose sight of where we are headed. Jesus knew that we would face that danger, and he provided an encouragement for us on that mountain when he showed his disciples the glory that was to come. “We beheld his glory,” John writes at the beginning of his gospel [John 1:14], “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
May the God who provided us this encouragement, so enable us to remember it, to believe it, and to be strengthened by it, to the end that we persevere to the end and attain the glory which Jesus displayed to his disciples on the mountain. May we join the Apostle Paul in his determination to press on “toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
