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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, the text is from the Old Testament as well as the Gospel. You may be seated.
When I was a young boy, or I should really say it’s the same for you, when you were a young boy or a young girl, you and I were all carefree for the most part. Unaware of all the things that we could be concerned about, but had no clue about, and thank God we didn’t. Because all of our needs and wants were extremely basic and fulfilled in a very simplistic way in the family in which we grew up. But because of this limited amount of life upon which to reflect, our perspective was somewhat stunted. Meaning, we were wonderfully and blissfully unfulfilled. Ignorant because of our youth. And remember, ignorant means uninformed, as Paul mentioned in the epistle reading.
But then, ah, then you and I grew up. The very thing we had been looking forward to, striving toward, because we wanted and waited to be filled with more knowledge, more wisdom, more experience. Yes. Now that we’re on the other side of that, we’re very aware of all of those things to be concerned about. Sometimes more than we should, but we’re very aware of them, are we not? And we’ve convinced ourselves that these are the things that we have need of, and these are the things that we want, and we think that we can keep the two separate. And we consider ourselves extremely capable and extremely gifted to reflect upon our existence because we have life now to do so. No longer youthfully ignorant. In fact, we consider ourselves enlightened compared to youth.
As the youngest of four kids, trust me, I heard it always, “Oh, you’re the littlest, you don’t understand.” And yet, you and I are supposed to become more like children. Right? Not childish, but more like children, childlike.
Enter our dear prophet Elijah, one of the great ones. In fact, the poster child of prophecy and being a prophet in a world that despised what came out of his mouth. And I’m sure he went to bed many times thinking, “Are you sure you want me to say that? Because if I say that, that’s going to torque some people’s noses.”
Now, the text that we have this morning is after the fact, so we’ve got to kind of keep things in context to understand how this text came upon Elijah’s ears. Prior to this text, Elijah had been used by God. This was the whole Mount Carmel sacrifice to Baal. Then the next to it was the sacrifice to the true God, and Elijah had all that water poured on it and soaked it up and made it so wet and unable to be lit up or consumed by fire. And he said, “Pray, pray to the prophets of Baal.” And the prophets of Baal prayed and nothing happened. And then he prayed and zap! One prayer, one shot, one kill, and that sacrifice was consumed.
So, he had known he was used by God. Then, then he gets the glory. This is glory. You may not think so, but by golly, he gets to be the very ender of these prophets of Baal’s life. Finally, he gets to stick it to the man in killing every one of those prophets there with God’s gift to do so. Now, at this point in his life, you and I can be very assured that he got it. I have been used by God. And you can be very sure that he could see what God had done through him. Look at what God had done.
After such a monumental, literally, mountaintop experience, how could the words of a crotchety woman named Jezebel drive him to such fear and surrender? You don’t have to look beyond your nose to see that in your life. For the times that God, you have seen God use you, and you have been used by God and seen His hand, and then the things that trip you and I up, that cause us to think, “Oh, Lord, why do you even put up with me? I am no better than my fathers,” as Elijah said. All it took was Jezebel’s threat that what would happen to those prophets would happen to you. Who allowed him to kill all of those prophets? Who allowed him to witness the miracle at his hands? And now he shudders in terror at this woman Jezebel’s threat.
Well, let’s look at the text because not only does Elijah shut down, Elijah pulls a Jonah and runs away. Runs away off into the wilderness. Leaves the Mount Carmel, leaves the great victory feast that he got to witness and be a part of, and goes to Nowhereville. As another author said, there’s nothing more alone than a sinner alone with his sin. Elijah was struggling with himself. Elijah was fixated upon himself. Elijah was like you, a narcissist. Yes, that is what we all are by nature. Elijah is just showing us a picture of ourselves because you and I have seen God work in our lives and then we have also seen ourselves shut down and run away, filled with fear.
You’ve got to think your Father in Heaven, as my Father in Heaven, looks upon us and thinks, “Did you miss something here?” But of course, it was not a surprise. Yes. Who allowed Jezebel’s threat to be given to Elijah? And who knew full well what would happen to Elijah upon the threat coming? So it is in your life. Who knew how you would accept that challenge or that difficulty, but God who did it to you? And who better who did it to you to pull you back out of it but the same God who did it?
So when Elijah shuts down and basically says, “Woe is me,” the text preceding it says he went there to die, wanting to die, and he said, in other words, “Lord, why do you put up with me and my fears? Why do you put up with me and my upness and my downness? Why do you put up with me being used by you as such a great tool and now being as useless?” You can fill in the blanks with that. Because Elijah had seen God’s power and been very, very, very convinced of it. And now he completely denies God’s power by his fears and shutting down.
But God did a great work in Elijah’s life. The work that God did at this point in Elijah’s life is to get Elijah to be emptied of himself. “Get over yourself,” God is doing in Elijah’s life. You know in your life when God has done that to you because it doesn’t feel good. When God brings us to that precipice and says, “Get over it, it’s not about you.” It hurts deeply. And then our first response is a sinful response to shut down and close up and feel sorry for ourselves, as Elijah did here. Kind of hard to use a blind donkey. And God has to open up the donkey’s eyes, yours and mine, and He does so.
Because no sooner had Elijah shut down, no sooner had he dealt with the fact that he is without anything within himself, he is emptied, “I got nothing, God.” Did God say something to Elijah through the angel? Now you and I, we would have lectured Elijah, because you know, we’ve got to impart our wisdom to someone else so that they have our wisdom. My goodness, they can’t go to their grave without my wisdom. He doesn’t. His words to Elijah through the angel are just three words in English: “Arise and eat.” “Arise and eat.” That’s it. No lecture
