Where is the God of Elijah? – part 1
Elijah, Obedience and Roadkill 1 Kings 17:1-7
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- August 6, 2006
How we admire the obedience a dog shows to its master! Archibald Rutledge wrote that one day he met a man whose dog had just been killed in a forest fire. Heartbroken, the man explained to Rutledge how it happened. Because he worked out-of-doors, he often took his dog with him. That morning, he left the animal in a clearing and gave him a command to stay and watch his lunch bucket while he went into the forest. His faithful friend understood, for that's exactly what he did. Then a fire started in the woods, and soon the blaze spread to the spot where the dog had been left. But he didn't move. He stayed right where he was, in perfect obedience to his master's word. With tearful eyes, the dog's owner said, "I always had to be careful what I told him to do, because I knew he would do it."
Our Daily Bread.
When God calls us and leads us; things are not always rosey. We often quote the “I never promised you a rose garden.” to each other.
Imagine if you will the situation during the reign of King Ahab of
The problem was Ahab. We are told that he did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any man before him. He did not consider it trivial to commit the sins of King Jereboam and then he really messed up. He married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, King of the Sidonians and as if that was not bad enough, he began worshipping Baal. Ahab’s problems could be summed up with this: a life of gross sin, a bad wife and false worship.
He has made some really bad choices. And he appeared to have simply ignored God, as he made his life choices of how to live his life, marriage and worship.
But God is never one to ignore our bad choices. He has a way of dealing with us when we are wrong. He does not hesitate to confront us or challenge us with the reality of our sin.
So it was that God called out his prophet, Elijah, from a little town called Tishbe in
Only 50 years have passed since the glory of the Kingdoms of David and Solomon in which
Succeeding kings failed to walk with God and became involved in greater and greater sinfulness. It was so bad that Ahab is said to done more evil in the sight of God than any king before him in our text. That is pretty bad. This is sinfulness in the extreme. Not only has Ahab sinned, but he married Jezebel the daughter of the priest of Baal. Her father was Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians. She has been systematically destroying the religious leaders of
Basic to the confrontation we are going to witness in these chapters of 1 Kings is the fact that Baal was believed to be the god of nature. He was a fertility god. He was supposedly responsible for providing the rain and sun required for crops to grow. And as is quite typical of how God works, God strikes directly at the issue at hand…the idolatry and the false belief that Baal is responsible for providing what is needed for those crops to grow.
Israel has been repeatedly warned not to worship the gods and goddesses of the nations around them. To worship them was to invite God’s judgment and total destruction. But the warnings
You can see some parallels in our own society. This nation was founded upon the principles of the Scriptures by godly people. His righteousness has been rejected and repudiated time and again. And now God is not even allowed to be part of the very fabric of our society anymore. His laws are ignored. His Word is rejected. God is no longer welcome in the
What is important to us is our plans and programs. We act as if God does not exist. God is crowded out as irrelevant to the pursuits and pastimes of our “modern” age. God is simply irrelevant today.
Like many of us, Ahab and Jezebel assumed that they could do anything they liked without any outside interference from the Lord. In that they were wrong.
One day Elijah presents himself to the King and tells Ahab that there will be no more rain until he says so. And then he disappears.
Notice what Elijah declares to Ahab in this confrontation:
“The Lord God of
The second announcement to Ahab is this: “It is before him that I stand and whom I serve” Elijah is God’s representative and he has thrown down the challenge. Ahab and Jezebel will take notice of it when the rains fail. They will begin to see and understand that Baal cannot bring the rain at anytime, much less now that the crisis is upon them.
Elijah has come into the presence of this evil, heartless king and thrown down the gauntlet. The spokesman for the LORD has come and spoken and what he has said will be. The proof of it all will be in the failure of the rain and dew to come and provide the moisture needed for crops to grow. Year will follow year without rain or dew. Under the burning skies, searing sun and desert heat grass, plants, crops, birds and other animals will suffer and die of thirst.
With that simple statement Elijah left the presence of the king of
Elijah disappears. He is nowhere to be found. And you can bet Ahab and Jezebel were looking for him. But it was as if he vanished from the face of the earth.
You see, the word of the Lord came to Elijah. God told him to leave and to go to the brook Cherith. Now nobody knows for sure exactly where the brook Cherith was, but it was a stream that ran into the
It was a place where Elijah would be safe from Ahab and Jezebel. Remember, Jezebel has been killing the prophets of God in
God’s provision for food and water would be right there for Elijah. If he was obedient, God would take care of him there. He could drink from the water of the brook. Think of the clear, sparkling water that ran from the rocks down to the
God told him that he had ordered ravens to feed him there by the brook. To take advantage of all of this, Elijah had to be obedient and leave
The ravens would bring him bread and meat to eat twice a day. And he would drink from the brook.
Bread, water and meat was his fare day after day.
Bread, water and meat.
Bread, water and meat.
Ok, let’s vary that menu just a bit:
Meat, bread and water.
Water, bread and meat.
Bread, water and meat.
Meat, water and bread. Ok…you get the picture.
What kind of birds are ravens? – big, and black and they are scavengers
What do ravens eat? - Carrion, road kill. What is Elijah going to have to eat?
Most of us have a picture of those ravens swooping down at the butcher shop or the bakery and flying off with choice pieces of meat and freshly baked bread. And that may well be what they did actually do.
However, with the problem that develops with the brook…I wonder.
I wonder about what they brought him. I am not sure that it was all kosher. I am sure that at first blush, Elijah wasn’t too thrilled for ravens to be the messengers of God’s catering service.
The reason that I wonder about this is the fact that there are many times when obedience to God’s commands become costly to us. Obedience can be expensive, challenging and downright frustrating.
It can also mean the end of all our dreams, even our lives.
Walking with God demands death to your self. It usually requires that you be willing to let your plans and your ideas about how you want to live your life die. Scripture clearly tells us that God will give us the desires of our heart. But many times that means that our own desires must be put aside so that God’s desires have a place to grow and mature in me and in my experience. It can cost a lot to follow Christ.
And then some time later…note verse 7; “some time later…” he was there a long time. We are not sure how many weeks or months he was there, but he was there long enough for the drought that was caused by his own words to begin to affect him…”there will be neither rain nor dew in the next few years except at my word.” Rain is not coming until he says so. His obedience to the Lord is now affecting him personally. He has had bread, meat and water from the brook day after day. God has provided for him day after day. Praise God! But now his righteous obedience is affecting him.
The brook begins drying up. I am sure that it was a gradual thing that he didn’t even notice at first. One day he noted that the water running out of the rocks had slowed a bit. And then one day, it was just a trickle. And then he did not see any at all. And then the brook began to shrink in size and depth of water.
Things are beginning to get tricky for Elijah about this time. I read this past week that in
God…you said I would drink from the brook.
Yohoo! God…are you there?
Have You noticed the problem here?
It is pretty plain to me…are you paying attention? What am I going to do? He must wonder about that.
How many times in your life have you been there because God put you there or sent you there and things just got worse?
Why is it that we are so surprised when things don’t go very well for us as Christians or when the practical consequences of man’s sin begin to affect us too?
How many churches were destroyed by Katrina? I don’t know but I am sure it was hundreds, perhaps thousands.
I mean, we have trusted the Lord. We belong to Him. Out of all the people in the world, we are among those who have said “Yes, we believe. We will accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Things should go right for us. We shouldn’t have problems, right?
On
Bingham returned to
It is not the multitude of hard duties, it is not constraint and contention that advance us in our Christian course. On the contrary, it is the yielding of our wills without restriction and without choice, to tread cheerfully every day in the path in which Providence leads us, to seek nothing, to be discouraged by nothing, to seek out duty in the present moment, to trust all else without reserve to the will and power of God. Source Unknown.
"It is the impassioned pleading of a quiet little Scottish lady that linked my life with the Soudan," wrote Rowland Bingham (a founder of S.I.M.). "In the quietness of her parlor she told how God had called a daughter to
"She spread out before me the vast extent of those thousands of miles and filled in the teeming masses of people. Ere I closed the interview she had place upon me the burden of the Soudan."
A year and a half later Bingham returned to
"Then she said these words: 'Well, Mr. Bingham, I would rather have had Walter go out to the Soudan and die there, all alone, that have him home today, disobeying his Lord.'"
Our success in this venture means nothing less than the opening of the country for the gospel; our failure, at most, nothing more than the death of two or three deluded fanatics. Still, even death is not failure. His purposes are accomplished. He uses deaths as well as lives in the furtherance of His cause.
Rowland Bingham, a founder of S[udan]I[nterior] M[ission].
Where is the power of a righteous, committed life seen in our world, even the church today?
Where is the God of Elijah? We wonder about that sometimes.
God sends us on our way…the way of obedience. It matters not what that step of obedience is about. He demands it and we offer it. And then many times God seems to absent himself from the situation.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but have no fear, for I have over come the world.”
Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
He never really leaves us. He is there all the time, even when we don’t sense his presence.
He is always there to encourage us and sustain us. How do I know that? Because that is what he has promised us. Period.
Case in point: just as the brook dries up the word of the Lord comes to Elijah.
This was God’s best for his life. We think…Surely, this was a waste of a good man’s life. Surely, this didn’t have to happen. There must have been a better way…but…
It was God who had sent him to Cherith.
It was God who had supported him while he was at Cherith.
It was God who would take him out of Cherith.
I is as if God says, “It is now time to move on to your next stop. I’ll show you where you are to go.”
Experience shows us that God is never late. He is usually not real early, but he is always there with his provision for us just in time.
Where is the God of Elijah? He is just one step of obedience away. It is always just one step. If we have been obedient there will be another step to take. If we have been disobedient, it is just one step back
Where is the God of Elijah? He is just a prayer away. His power can be tapped through our obedience.
--Dennis Gleason
