Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You might remember that we were with Adam and Eve in the garden and we had to think about our purpose.
Then we joined Abraham on his journey of hearing the promises of God and trusting and obeying.
We were with Moses on the mountain where he came up close and personal as the Lord revealed his personal name of Yahweh.
And then last time we were with David in his palace as he wanted to not have the Lord living in a tent, but living in a palace. And the Lord said, I don't need buildings to be living in. And we had an understanding of how the Lord builds posterity.
A son of David who would come and be the Messiah of the world.
So today we're joining Elijah in the desert and you might notice the same background as the Moses week.
This is Mount Sinai and both Moses and Elijah met with the Lord on Mount Sinai. In a few weeks time we'll be looking at the last one in the series, Isaiah in the temple.
Now today we'll look at 1 Kings 19. Lurleen will read it a little later.
But in this story we see Elijah at the lowest point in his life.
He is overwhelmed, abandoned and alone.
He is about to give up questioning his faith and questioning his place in the world.
So who is Elijah and what does he do when everything is taken away?
And who is the Lord?
And what does he do when his precious child is at the point of despair?
Elijah's story will challenge us with the same questions.
Who are you and who am I?
And what do we do when our life is stripped away and we are discouraged and alone and at the point of despair?
Now, today's story has a lot of good news.
It tells us that we can meet the Lord up close and personal, even in those desert seasons of our lives.
And Elijah's story will also help us to see the Lord Jesus.
Because the Bible is a unified story and every part of it points to the Lord Jesus.
So what we see of him this morning will be the real encouragement for us.
I'll pray and then we'll give a little bit of background.
Let's pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you invite us to come into your presence and that through faith in Jesus we can cry out to you as your children.
We want to honour you as our Father. This morning, would you please speak to us?
Speak words of life and direction and correction and guidance.
And would you do that? Work within us that we cannot do for ourselves, that we would hear and believe and obey and walk in your good way of life.
Amen.
So we want to get oriented.
If you go and see Dr. Lucas or Dr. Clay this week, they will see if you are oriented to person, time and place.
So who is Elijah?
Where is he and when is he and what is he doing?
Now, Elijah has a special name. It comes from two Hebrew words put together, El and Yah.
El means God and Yah is short for Yahweh, the personal name of the Lord.
So the name Elijah can be a statement of truth, Yahweh is God, or it can be a statement of faith.
Yahweh is my God.
Now, these are the Old Testament parallels of Jesus is Lord, a proclamation of truth, or Jesus is my Lord, a statement of personal faith.
So Elijah's name actually embodied both his message and his mission.
He has a unique ministry as a prophet of Yahweh to call out the idolatry of his day.
His message and his mission put a target on his back.
So when did Elijah live? He was 150 years after King David that we learned about. Last time he served as a prophet in Samaria in the Northern Kingdom, when he was under the control of a particularly bad king called Ahab and his particularly nasty wife called Jezebel.
Listen how they're described. In 1 Kings 16, it says, Ahab, son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those kings before him.
And he also married Jezebel, a foreign wife, and began to serve her bowels and worship those idols.
Now, King Ahab and his wife Jezebel had consciously given themselves over to the dark and evil practices of the Baals and the false God Asherah.
Now, these idols had shaped their society.
Imagine what it would have been like for faithful believers to live under this evil for 22 years.
You might complain of a government, we get to change them every three or four years.
You don't get to change kings.
Now, there was a time when we were living as a family in South Sudan and the war came to our town.
And I remember a fear in my heart that I had never experienced before.
I was seeing what unrestrained, sinful humanity was capable of.
And I realized that in my life to that point, I'd taken for granted the many restraints that the Lord puts in place to restrain human sin.
But in that context, I was seeing those restraints removed, and it was terrifying.
Now, perhaps as you look at our world today, you have a similar unsettledness about the powers at play.
You turn on the news and you see Trump and Putin and Modi and Xi Jinping and you hear about AI.
And you see our Western society seems to be coming more anti Christian week by week.
And you see many false idols on the rise.
And you might think, how do we live faithfully when power seems to be unrestrained and evil seems to be spreading?
That was when and where Elijah was living.
And into this spiritual darkness the Lord sends Elijah on a mission to confront the king with his idolatry.
Remember Elijah's name.
This was his message.
Yahweh is God.
He appears suddenly on the scene in chapter 17, verse 1. And he preaches a one sentence sermon to King Ahab.
As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.
Sermon over a single sentence. Sermon Ahab.
Idolatry has its consequences.
And you as king are now being called to account.
Now that sort of sermon will get you killed.
The name and presence of Elijah, Yahweh is God is an irritation to an idol worshipping king.
So the Lord protects his prophets by telling Elijah to leave Ahab's kingdom.
But as he leaves, the word of the Lord leaves with him.
Now let's pause for a moment.
We know in Australia that drought is bad and famine is devastating.
But what is worse than both is a famine of the word of the Lord.
A people cannot survive without the life giving word of the Lord.
You and I cannot survive without the life giving words of the Bible.
We must not take them for granted and we must take them to heart and live by them.
But let's fast forward to chapter 18.
It begins like this.
After a long time in the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah and go and present yourself again to Ahab and I will send rain on the land.
So Elijah went to Ahab.
And what follows is that famous dramatic showdown on Mount Carmel.
One lone faithful prophet of the Lord standing firm against 800 false prophets.
Take some time this afternoon to read chapter 18.
It's a ripper of a story, but a spoiler alert.
The Lord answers Elijah's prayer and exposes the powerlessness of idolatry.
The false prophets are killed, their altars are smashed.
And then Elijah looks to the horizon and sees a wisp of a cloud.
And then the rains come tumbling down.
Now that's chapter 18 to prepare us now for Lurleen to come up and read chapter 19.
And that will be our text for today.
Thanks, Lurleen.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. And so Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, may the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.
Elijah was afraid and he ran for his life.
When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there while he himself went a day's journey into the desert.
He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die.
I've had enough, Lord, he said, take my life. I'm no better than my ancestors.
Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, get up and eat.
He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water.
He ate and drank and then lay down again.
The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.
So he got up and ate and drank.
Strengthened by that food, he travelled 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.
There he went into a cave and spent the night.
And the word of the Lord came to him.
What are you doing here, Elijah?
He replied, I've been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars and put your prophets to death with the sword.
I'm the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me.
2 the Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord.
But the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake.
But the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire.
But the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah?
He replied, I've been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars and put your prophets to death with the sword.
I'm the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.
The Lord said to him, go back the way you came and go to the desert of Damascus.
When you get there, anoint Hazael, king over Aram.
Also anoint Jehu, son of Nimshi, king over Israel and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat, from Abel Maholah to succeed you as prophet.
Jehu will be put to death.
Sorry. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael. And Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu.
Yet I reserve 7,000 in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed down to BAAL, and all whose mouths have not kissed him.
So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was ploughing with 12 yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the 12th pair.
Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him.
Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah.
Let me kiss my father and mother goodbye, he said. And then I'll come with you.
Go back. Elijah replied, what have I done to you?
So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them.
He burned the ploughing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate.
Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his attendant.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: So we'll explore this story using six headings.
Remember this map. See Mount Carmel at the top of the map, and you see Mount Horeb right at the bottom.
Okay, so the first heading, Jezebel rages.
So the rains have come and the famine will ease. And you would think everyone would receive this as good news, but the hearts of Ahab and Jezebel are so hard.
When Jezebel hears what happens, she goes nuts.
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done.
And so Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, may the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not take your life like one of them.
You see, this was payback religion.
Jezebel's idolatry had been exposed, and her world had come crashing down.
And the bowels that she was trusting in for power and position and influence had been publicly mocked as weak and powerless.
But instead of taking the opportunity to humble herself before the Lord, Jezebel hardens her heart even more.
And what becomes the focus of her rage?
The one named Eliyah Yahweh is God.
His mere presence proclaimed his message, and she could not stand it.
So what did Elijah do?
Look at verse three.
Elijah was afraid, and he ran for his life.
The boldness of this great man of God in chapter 18 turns to fear.
In chapter 19, this great man of God flees in fear of his life.
In fact, Elijah runs from the northernmost point of the kingdom, to the southernmost point of the Southern Kingdom, and then takes another day's journey into the Negev Desert.
And he sat under a bush and he prayed that he would die.
I've had enough. Lord, take my life.
I'm no better than my ancestors.
And he lay down under the bush and he fell asleep and he did not want to wake up.
He was done.
It was all too much.
He wanted his life to end.
Now, many of you know that during the week I work as a local gp, and every week I see people who experience symptoms like this.
They may even arise from circumstances like Elijah's.
Threats of violence, fear for one's life, feeling overwhelmed by life's circumstances.
And I respect and recognise that some of us are here today carrying some of those things and we're touching on sensitive areas.
We live in a broken world.
Fear and worry, sadness and despair, trauma and violence.
Sadly, these are all too common experiences of life, and each one of them can devastate the human soul.
Now, one of the reasons for including Elijah's story in this series is to give us the opportunity to see what the Lord does with someone like Elijah and with people like us when we are afraid and overwhelmed by the brokenness of our world or the brokenness that we see inside of us.
What does the Lord do with people like you and me?
When life is all too much, I want us to notice three wonderful things from the Lord.
Firstly, the Lord provides.
Look at verse five.
As Elijah was sleeping, an angel touched him and said, get up and eat.
And he looked around and there by his head was some bread already baked over hot coals and a jar of water.
So he ate and he drank and he went back to bed.
The Lord is so gentle as he cares. For Elijah, life is simplified to the basics.
Bread and water, safety and sleep.
An angel is sent to serve him, to keep him safe as he restores his strength.
Now, this is a master class in caring for a traumatised person.
You are not alone.
I'm with you.
You are seen, you are safe, you can rest.
Food, sleep, safety, presence, all so important that they're emphasised again. In verse seven, the angel of the Lord came and touched him a second time and said, get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.
So he got up and he ate and he drank.
I want to share a story with you to see how this might look like today.
I'm a big Hamish Blake fan.
I often tune into his podcast called How Other Dads dad.
And at the end of each Interview.
He highlights an example of Gold star, a top shelf dadding.
Listen to this example.
A boy was having a rough time at school due to some nasty bullies and lunchtime was the worst.
He was pretty cut up about it.
So the next day, just before lunchtime, his dad parked near the school, his son snuck out and they sat in the car and they ate sandwiches together till the end of lunch. And then the boy went back to his classes.
The dad came every day for the next six weeks.
And then the boy said, dad, I think I'm okay now.
You don't need to come tomorrow, but thanks for being there when I needed you.
Now this dad is top class.
His son didn't need Mr. Fixit.
He simply needed his dad to be there and to be present, providing a safe place for him to restore his strengths and his confidence.
That's what the Lord does as a perfect heavenly father.
Back to our story. Elijah. His body restores its strength, but the Lord knows that a deeper work is needed inside of him.
The healing of his soul would require a direct encounter with the Lord himself.
Elijah needed to meet the Lord up close and personal.
So verse 8 strengthened by that food, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Mount Horeb, Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.
And there he went into a cave and he spent the night.
Now this should remind you of week three of our series Exodus 34 Moses on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. The mountain of God.
A conversation with the Lord.
The Lord's presence passing by.
Elijah is on that very same mountain where Moses met with the Lord.
So let's see how it unfolds. In 1 Kings 19 Elijah asks or the Lord asks Elijah a question, what are you doing here, Elijah?
Now, Yahweh often asks questions like this.
But when he does, he's not asking for information because he knows all things.
He's inviting us to share with him the deep rumblings of our souls.
And we see Jesus doing similar things when he asks people, what would you like me to do for you?
In some ways, whenever we come to the Lord in prayer, he asks us the same question.
What are you doing here?
What would you like me to do for you?
Elijah's response reveals that he's still carrying some raw wounds in his heart.
I've been zealous for you.
The people have scattered, my fellow prophets are dead, and I'm the only one left. And now they want to kill me too.
I've been faithful, but it seems to be worth nothing to you.
Have you ever prayed like that to the Lord, Elijah's body may have restored its strength, but his heart is still raw and his soul is still restless.
But in the presence of the Lord, he knows he can be real and authentic and pray unfiltered prayers.
For deep healing to happen, we need to be fully present.
Good and bad and ugly, fully present in the presence of the Lord.
There's no point hiding the mess and the muddle of our hearts.
So look at what happens Next. In verse 11, the Lord says, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for I am about to pass by.
And then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks.
But the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire.
But the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came a gentleman whisper.
Sometimes the Lord gets our attention by speaking very quietly.
First comes a strong wind powerful enough to shatter rocks. And then the earthquake, and then a fire.
But it was the gentle whisper
[00:30:23] Speaker B: that
[00:30:23] Speaker A: coaxed Elijah out of his cave.
Here is the kind and compassionate voice of the Lord inviting Elijah in the midst of his discouragement to come closer to him.
Now, I mentioned before, as I work as a gp, sometimes a patient might come in who has laryngitis and has lost their voice.
And as they whisper their words, it changes what I do.
I put away distractions.
I tune into their face.
I lean in. I give them my full attention.
Their gentle whisper draws me in.
I saw a tweet the other day.
Lies are loud, but the truth is simply spoken.
The noise of our world or the noise of our soul can be so loud that we do not hear Yahweh's whisper.
Sometimes the Lord must get our attention by speaking very quietly, because then we're ready to listen.
So let's look quickly at what the Lord says.
He speaks of his Providence.
Now, this word talks about his compassionate oversight of all the circumstances of our world.
And did you Notice that verse 14 is identical to verse 10?
Elijah makes exactly the same complaint to the Lord.
What are we to make of this?
Despite the Lord's provision, despite the presence of the Lord, Elijah's heart is still overwhelmed.
And so in verses 15 to 18, Yahweh encourages him with this third dimension, the details of his Providence.
He says, elijah, remember what your name means.
Yahweh is God.
I'm in control of all of history.
My purposes and my plans will not be thwarted.
I will raise up Hazael a foreign king.
I will raise up Jehu as king over Israel.
And I will raise up Elisha, a prophet, a successor for you.
And through these three leaders, I will deal with the authority, with the idolatry in the land.
And by the way, Elijah, you are not the last man standing.
I have 7,000 others in Israel who remain faithful to me.
The sheer Number of 7,000 other believers would have been an encouragement for Elijah.
But for a Hebrew mind, there was even more meaning in what those numbers symbolized in the Bible. Seven and 1,000 each carry a sense of completeness and wholeness.
And if the Lord wants to multiply them together, he's saying, complete, completeness.
I have my people.
I know them each by name.
You are not alone, Elijah.
You are a member of a family of faithful believers.
And each one has an important part to play.
So heading number six, Elijah trusts.
Elijah's six weeks in the desert are over.
He is met with the Lord experiencing his provision and his presence, and privileged to hear some details of his provenance.
The heaviness in his heart is starting to lift.
His faith is strengthening.
He can speak his name again with conviction. Yahweh is my God.
Elijah is ready for his next steps of obedience.
And the first thing he does is to go and find Elisha, Hazael and Jehu. They can come later.
What an encouragement it would have been for this old man of God to see this young man respond to the call with such passion and devotion.
Elijah closes a chapter on his former life and then begins a new life as Elijah's apprentice.
Elisha says goodbye to his father and mother.
He says goodbye to his former work.
He says goodbye to his people.
And in verse 21, he sets out to follow Elijah and became his servant.
The Lord restores Elijah's faith, but also gives him hope for the future.
A new generation of disciples is being raised up, beginning with this young apprentice called Elisha.
Now, you might already be thinking, I wonder what Elisha's name means.
El and Yasha.
My God saves.
You see, the Lord is always at work, even when we do not see it.
He is the God who saves, and nothing will stop his purposes.
Now, a little analogy to bring these things together.
I live at Riverside, and I woke up this morning and looked out the window, and my wife says, it's a foggy day.
It's not like yesterday.
I was looking forward to the sun shining, but look at the fog now. We used to live up at Grindelwald.
We used to drive down Atkinson's Road and pity all These people living in the valley, in riverside, up under the fog line, you see up on Grindelwald's Hill, you're above the fog, you know the sun is shining so that when you enter the fog, you are not lost, you are not in despair, because you know that as foggy as life might seem to be, the sun has already risen and it's shining brightly.
And soon the fog will lift and light will break through and we'll see clearly again.
So let's bring these things together.
I mentioned before about the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.
So have we seen some glimpses of the Lord Jesus in this small little story of Elijah in the desert?
I want to share three glimpses that I had, and I'd love to hear if you had some more.
Firstly, I see Jesus in the desert.
Mark 1:13 talks about how Jesus had his own 40 day experience, the desert.
And that verse tells us how angels ministered to him too.
But there's a difference for Jesus, his time in the desert was not to meet with the Lord.
His time in the desert was to meet the enemy who had come to distract the Lord Jesus off the path of obedience.
The enemy put up all these idols for Jesus to worship.
And the Lord Jesus says, no, I will not worship idols.
I will remain faithful to my Father.
I see Jesus in gethsemane.
In Luke 22, we see Jesus abandoned and alone, truly the only faithful one left, overwhelmed as he faced the reality of the crucifixion that was to come.
He wept as he prayed and sweated drops of blood.
He was the only true faithful one left, and he was pleading with his Father, if possible, could we find another way?
But in the end, he humbly obeyed and said yes to his Father's will.
And because of that, yes, you and I are here today.
He died to take what you and I deserve so that we could receive life.
And because of that, we gather here to worship Him.
A third little glimpse.
I see Jesus always near.
And he is wise and willing and experienced and able to help.
He has lived as one of us.
He's experienced the struggle in the desert.
He's felt the abandonment in Gethsemane.
And so he is able to be present with us and help us in our time of need.
Now, during his time on earth, he said these words in Matthew 11, Come to me, any of you who are weary and burdened and overwhelmed, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you.
Learn from me.
Walk with me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.
And you will find rest for your souls.
The writer of Hebrews later on describes Jesus like this, how he now is Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith that we profess.
We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who's been tempted in every way, but is without sin.
Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we might receive mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.
Now let's bring things to a conclusion.
Elijah's story in 1 Kings 19 helps us when we are facing opposition, when we are grieving, when we are feeling deep discouragements, perhaps when faithfulness to Jesus feels very lonely and very costly.
This story reminds us that even in the desert seasons of our life, the Lord is always present with his people and always up to something good.
So what has the Lord said to you through this story?
What is his gentle whisper to you today?
Perhaps you are weary and burdened and you may have simply heard the kindness of get up and eat and go back to bed.
The journey is too much for you.
Perhaps you are living with noise in your soul.
The Lord invites you to switch off that noise to come to him and to hear his gentle whisper.
Perhaps you are lost in the fog of your circumstances.
Well, the Lord is present in the midst of that fog and he knows the way.
So stay close to him as the fog starts to lift.
Perhaps you are just simply a Amazed at the Lord and amazed at the Lord Jesus, amazed at his goodness and his greatness and his kindness towards his people.
Well, if that's you know that Yahweh is God, Jesus is Lord.
So be wholehearted in your love and devotion of Him.
