Where is the God of Elijah, part 4

“The call to flight or the lure of the barnyard.”    1 Kings 18: 1-2  

Sermon by  Pastor Dennis Gleason -- August 27, 2006

Now it came about after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year saying, “Go show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the face of the earth.” So Elijah went to show himself to Ahab….

    After years of silence the word of the Lord finally comes to Elijah again.
He has been waiting for this day for a long time. How often is that the way God works? Every door seems to be closed. Every way we try to go seems to be blocked. There are even times when it appears as if God has forsaken us. Has He? Of course not!

    So for three long years Elijah has been waiting to hear from God again. We know that the scriptures tell us “Be still and know that I am God.” Do we really know what that means? Remember, Ahab and Jezebel have unleashed the “hounds of hell” seeking to find him. Frantically, they have been searching for him. He holds the key to stopping the drought and the resulting famine.

    And God is in no hurry. God is no different in our lives today. In his love for us and his wisdom God takes pains and long periods of time to work out his plan. And all the time we wait, it is character that God seeks to develop in his people. Character only comes out of the trials and difficulties of life. It is when we are challenged that real character is produced as we cooperate with God.

    If we do not cooperate with God the results are lack of character and ultimately we are of little or no value to Christ and His Kingdom.

    Ronald Meredith, in his book Hurryin' Big For Little Reasons, describes one quiet night in early spring: Suddenly out of the night came the sound of wild geese flying. I ran to the house and breathlessly announced the excitement I felt. What is to compare with wild geese across the moon? It might have ended there except for the sight of our tame mallards on the pond. They heard the wild call they had once known. The honking out of the night sent little arrows of prompting deep into their wild yesterdays. Their wings fluttered a feeble response. The urge to fly--to take their place in the sky for which God made them-- was sounding in their feathered breasts, but they never raised from the water. The matter had been settled long ago. The corn of the barnyard was too tempting! Now their desire to fly only made them uncomfortable. Temptation is always enjoyed at the price of losing the capacity for flight. 

    In our passage for this week, we find a similar situation in Samaria. It is generally accepted that Jeremiah was the author of 1 and 2 Kings some where around 550 BC. He tells us that about the time that God is telling Elijah to go see Ahab, King Ahab and his top assistant in all of Samaria, Obadiah, were out looking for grass for their animals. The famine was severe and they were trying to find enough food to keep a few horses and mules alive. We know from our text that Ahab was a wicked king over Israel. He worshiped Baal, and he was an evil man.

    But his number one overlord, Obadiah, was a man who feared God greatly. In fact we read that he had secreted 100 prophets away; hiding them in caves and feeding them at a time when Jezebel was killing as many as she could find.

    How do you put these two men together?
   
    How could Obadiah, a man who feared God greatly, have such respect for King Ahab that he would serve in the position of overseeing his household? It is obvious that he had to make some kind of compromise to do it. Perhaps, he figured that the King would kill him if he did not. If so, then he chose to live and to compromise his faith rather than die. It could be that he figured that he could do more good in a position of prominence and power than he could otherwise. A few minor compromises would in that case have been a fair price to pay for the good he could have done.

    Is Obadiah a “secret believer” like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea? Their declaration of any faith or caring for Jesus was not evident until Jesus had been crucified and they prepared his body to be buried and then placed it in the tomb.
Is Obadiah a “back slider’? Might we call him a carnal Christian today?
I
    f so, how did Obadiah who feared God greatly get into the spot he found himself in when Elijah came on the scene? Probably by one little compromise at a time. What is a compromise?  Compromise is simply changing the question to fit the answer.

    The corn of the barnyard is pretty tempting. It is tempting enough that one day the call to flight warrants merely a little flap of the wings that hardly disturbs the duck at all.
To put it another way…

    When Ralph Houk was manager of the New York Yankees, baseball schedules were even more exacting than they are now, with double-headers almost every week. Occasionally a player would get sick of the grind and approach Houk, asking for permission to sit out a game. "I know how you feel," the manager would say genially. "Sure, take the day off, But do me a favor. You're in the starting lineup. Just play one inning. Then skip the rest of the game." The player would honor Houk's request--and almost invariably get caught up in the spirit of the game and play it out to the end. Phil Rizzuto, WPIX, New York    
   
    The picture you have of Elijah is quite different. When he got the call to go to Ahab the first time, he went and confronted the King of Israel without fear. He stood before him and gave him the bad news about the consequences of his sin. There would be no rain until Elijah said so and then he left, again without fear. He was strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

    I think the jury is still out on Obadiah. He is an interesting fellow. I have suggested that he has compromised himself out of usefulness to God and God’s people. And that may well be correct.

    Having said that, I am reminded of Harvey Jackson, a Lutheran Minister I became friends with when we served in a rural area of Minnesota years ago. He was in a quite liberal Lutheran denomination and I was in the Evangelical Free Church – which had its origins in the Lutheran churches of Scandanavia. One day I had the temerity to ask Harvey how he could remain in that Lutheran denomination as a born again believer.
Harvey’s answer was along these lines:  I see myself as a missionary to the people in my churches. If they are ever going to hear the gospel message, I will have to share it with them. That is my calling and why I am staying where I am.

    One man takes a stand without fear. Another man, compromises and stands with the king who was among the most evil men who had ever ruled over God’s people. Very interesting!
Some time ago, I was in a situation in which I had to make a choice. I would either do things God’s way or compromise. Well, compromise was out of the question. I was truly more afraid of God than I was of the people offering me the compromise. I had to essentially stand alone in that situation and ultimately, I was invited to leave that church.

    A number of years later, I found myself in another place where I had to take a stand for what was right. A member of a larger church board, I challenged the members of the board and the Sr. Pastor to do what was right. They were entertaining an unethical choice and I told them quite clearly that they would be unethical to make the decision they were considering. In that group was a man whom I had great respect as a man of God and leader in the church. When I was challenging the board to make the right choice, he was silent.
After the meeting, he came up to me and expressed admiration for my willingness to take the stand I had taken in the meeting. He said, “I hope when the day comes that I have to take a stand like that I will be able to do it like you did tonight.” What he didn’t see was this: his time to take that stand was that night and he missed the opportunity. He needed to stand with me then, but for some reason didn’t. The corn of the barnyard is pretty tempting.

    Now, think back to Elijah and the situation almost three and a half years into the drought. The prophets of God have been silenced. Those who have not been killed have been hidden away by Obadiah. They are not dead, but they have no voice to challenge the sin of Israel. They might as well be dead for all that they are not doing to help change the course of the nation. For the word of the Lord has been silenced. The sacrifices have been stopped. True worship of God is gone. And disaster upon disaster have come upon God’s people.
And God says, “Go show yourself to Ahab.”

    Elijah leaves Zarepath. His first encounter is with Obadiah, Ahab’s administrator. Obadiah’s name is interesting. It means “Servant of God”. Here he is; a man who is serving the wicked king and yet one who fears God.

    And lo and behold, Elijah bumps into Obadiah.
   
    Obadiah can’t really believe his eyes and yet he knows that it is Elijah. They have searched everywhere for him and have never been able to find him. And now there he is. Elijah tells Obadiah that he is to go to Ahab and tell him that Elijah is here.
Imagine his predicament. He thinks that he will go the King and then Elijah will disappear again and he will have to pay the price for it with his life.

    Obadiah has at the very least attempted to serve God and king Ahab at the same time. He has up to this time balanced these two things fairly well. But now Elijah is going to ruin even that by asking him to go to Ahab. Making the best of both worlds is always difficult at best. This is the moment of truth for Obadiah. And he cannot avoid it. The time for playacting is over. He must now do God’s will. He now has to commit himself to acting bravely on God’s behalf.

    Elijah declares: “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him today.” (1 Kings 18:15)

    At first Obadiah objects. Don’t you know that I have feared Jehovah from my youth?
Don’t you know that Ahab has been looking for you everywhere in the world?
I am afraid that if I do as you say, the Spirit of the Lord will carry you somewhere and then I will be killed. Don’t you know that when Jezebel was killing the prophets I hid out 100 of them and I have been feeding them myself.

    He does not trust Elijah or Elijah’s God.

    Obadiah may well be afraid that if he does as Elijah has commanded, Ahab might assume that he has known where Elijah has been all the time? Ahab may well know that he has been hiding those minor prophets and has never let on like he knows. But he may make the connection and it might cost Obadiah his life if he goes to Ahab.

    But then on that day something happens to vacillating Obadiah. He begins to exercise faith. It is seen in his positive response the Elijah’s reassurance of his own reliability in God.
Then Obadiah obeys. He goes to Ahab and tells him that he has seen.

    Where is the God of Elijah?  He is always right here with us.

    And God is always seeking and surveying the souls of men and women to find someone who might be open and available to his plans and purposes for them. The problem of course is this, people who take a stand for what is right are the ones who often get mowed down. We have all seen it happen.

    For some the corn of the barnyard is too tempting. And when the call to flight comes, they just wiggle their wings a bit and quickly settle back into the routine of the barnyard.

    Others hear the call to flight and fly away - fulfilling the purpose for which God always intended.  Like a pebble dropped into the water, the ripples moving outward in ever widening circles begin touching the lives of others with the love and mercy of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

    Let me close with this thought from Ezekiel 22:30  “I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.” God is still looking for men and women who will stand in the gap for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom and for others just like us.

    If we will forsake the lure of the barnyard and heed the call to flight, we will find that we are squarely in the will of God for us.

    It begins with the stand taken to be God’s man or woman where He has planted us. Believe that he will use you right where you are. Be willing to be like Elijah and take the stand God calls you to make.

    When you take that first step of obedience to the call of God, the call to flight, you will find that God will give you everything you need at that moment to stand without fear right where he wants you.

--Dennis Gleason