10/18/2015 The Word Of God Departs Again Pastor Josh Sheldon

Well our text for the preaching this morning is, well it was just read to you from 1 Kings chapter 19 verses 1 -18 and if you're visiting with us, you're sort of in the middle of a series that we started a few weeks back on Elijah and Elisha, Lord willing in a few weeks we will get to Elisha, we've been working our way through the record we have of Elijah beginning in verse 1 of 1

Kings 17. So you're sort of in the middle of it with us, I welcome you to this scripture and the message this morning, doesn't depend too much on what came before so I think you'll be able to follow along with us, it's a bit of a stand alone message though it is about the same prophet we've been looking at all this time.

And what we have before us in 1 Kings 19 is this wonderful picture of the working of our sovereign

God. I mean 1 Kings 19 it confronts us with the violence with which the gospel and the gospel heralds is met and the extent that enemies of the gospel will go in order to squash

God's word and in that we're also confronted just as much with the grace of God that will not allow his word to fall down uselessly to the ground but it returns to him and accomplishes the purposes for which it is sent.

For the moment though in 1 Kings 19 after this great confrontation that Baal's prophets had with Elijah, you remember where Elijah stood against the 450 and their ministrations to their false

God were useless to the point of being ridiculous and Elijah then stood and made that one simple prayer and the fire fell from heaven and consumed not just the sacrifice but the wood that the sacrifice was upon and not just that but also the water that Elijah had the people douse it all with and not only that but the 12 stones that Elijah had set up as an alt as part of the altar and not only that but the dust and the people cried out the

Lord he is God the Lord he is God and prophet and King stayed on the mountaintop and as the prophet prayed for an end of the drought the king ate in peace and for this this short moment this

Camelot period if you will prophet and priest are again fused together if only for that moment and then as you just heard when

Ahab returns home sees his wife he tells her all that Elijah had done and she immediately sends a death threat against Elijah and it appears for the moment with Elijah running and a new threat against his life that Baal has recovered from this loss seems like the gospel if you will has met with defeat that God's Word is not going to take hold in Israel well one of my goals in the message this morning is to defend the prophet

Elijah it seems to me that he is often maligned here in this chapter by commentators and by preachers

I'm not trying to try and convince you I'm right though in all integrity

I think I'm right and what I'm going to preach this morning I'm going to try and show you through Scripture just what the

Scripture itself presents about this prophet and as we go through this remember that Elijah is the greatest of the prophets now is that my assessment it is why do

I have this assessment because that's what Jesus Christ said quite clearly he said of all the sons of men there's been none greater than John the

Baptist who came in the spirit of Elijah and the disciples had to understand in Jesus discourse with them that when he was talking about John the

Baptist or the Elijah coming that's what he meant was John the Baptist I'm afraid when we misunderstand the scriptures as I think chapter 19 of 1st

Kings is often misunderstood that we're bound to misapply it we're not going to take away the right lessons and that's what happens here

I think far too often which we'll explain as we go the very people who with one voice had cried out just shortly before the incident that was just read to you by Jesus they cried out the

Lord he is God they're now trying to kill the prophet who had incited their joyous confession they're trying to kill the very one who brought that about and they're acting here just like the people centuries later who called out

Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord and then crucified the very

Lord who came in the Lord's name how quickly they turned the king the one

I'm talking about Ahab the king who had seen the works of God with his own eyes he was there on karma when all this happened he heard with his own ears

Elijah's prayer for the rain to return and he goes and tells

Jezebel what happened where's the emphasis of course is on the killing of the false prophets not on the fire falling from heaven and taking up the entire sacrifice not on God God by his grace showing himself in a way that brought repentance in this great confession from the people the emphasis is on oh and by the way he killed your pet prophets so she

Jezebel this wicked Queen the one whose name comes up in the book of Revelation as this model of immorality and wickedness she does what enemies to the gospel always do when confronted with God's grace their answer is the same always it is death she will have

Elijah killed and there's no apparent objection from Ahab her husband she puts out this death warrant against him so given the state of affairs

Elijah surmises that his part in the campaign against Baal is over that's his frame of mind it's over the campaign is done this battle is ended he's failed and it's now time to take the matter out of human hands entirely and to depend on God's direct intervention and so he flees south and he's running for his life and right here is where I start to take some exception to what the commentators say he's running for his life why is he going south why is he running for his life

I'm gonna give you the quick reason and hopefully we'll support this as we go through this message and support it from the scripture he's running for his life because his life is not

Jezebel's to take his life is not simply be handed over to her he's going to Horeb he's going to the mountain of God in verses 1 & 2 of what it was just read to you

I want to read these again and Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword then

Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying so that the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life as one of them by tomorrow at about this time so the emphasis as I said is on the execution of these prophets you know he couldn't just tell her that he stood back and watched as as her favored prophets were massacred even though it's exactly what he did and he reminds me here of some of the mighty excuses that we have in the

Bible though he doesn't give an excuse explicitly but he reminds me anyway of Aaron when

Moses comes down from Sinai and says what are you doing with this calf and do you remember what

Aaron says he says well I took the jewelry and I put it in this cauldron and they applied some heat and out came this calf sorry

Moses it just sort of happened or Saul after his battle with the Amalekites and Samuel comes to him and says why didn't you do what the

Lord sent you to do and he says I did we killed everybody says no I hear the bleeding of the sheep says oh well to make a long story short the men made me do it the men didn't want to kill him

I tried really hard but just great excuses he told her

Ahab told Jezebel what Elijah had done what

Elijah had done all the things Elijah did on Mount Carmel was it Elijah who blocked

Baal from answering his prophets when they begged him to answer hear us O Baal and yet no one answered not a word came was it

Elijah who blocked them from doing that was it Elijah who sent fire from heaven it came down it didn't come up from Elijah it came down from heaven was it

Elijah who consumed everything as I described a moment ago no of course not of course not but but sin searches for blame not responsibility the woman you gave me the people who are supposed to be following me out came this calf you know these people they're set on evil

Ahab says look what the prophet that God sent did look at look what he did so Jezebel's death culture if you will shines forth immediately she threatens

Elijah's life in fact she makes the solemn oath before the gods that she will do it or have it done now an important detail here is that she sent a messenger she sent a messenger to tell him if all she wanted was him dead that she ought to have sent sent an assassin or some soldiers and just killed him we'll learn in chapter 21 in this incident with Naboth when

Ahab wants the vineyard and Naboth won't give it up and Jezebel just has him killed she's capable of this she has the the operators in the area to do it but she sends a messenger and tells him what she's going to do there's some who think it might have been superstition that slowed her down and kept her from doing it right away but the threat itself tells why she didn't do that the threat itself tells us what she had in mind she said she'd make his life as one of theirs one of the prophets her prophets died publicly and so would

Elijah her prophets died by the hands of the people and so would he you see she wants more than just a dead prophet she wants revenge she wants to make an example of him to show him to show the people that her

God reigns that her will reigns in the land and so she's going to do to him as close to what happened to her prophets as she possibly can so when he saw that verse 3 he saw that he arose and ran for his life and went to Beersheba which belongs to Judah and left a servant there now here we begin to have some controversy some differences of opinion and how to interpret this and how to take it and depending on how you understand this and the way you understand it the way you interpret it it's gonna make a huge difference in how you apply it what lessons do we take from this the

ESV the English Standard Version the NET Bible both say he feared I think one of them says he feared greatly now there's some textual variation that might support the original word having been feared but there's also reasonable evidence that it's just as we have in our

New King James he saw when he saw that he ran for his life the two words in Hebrew sound very similar they're only off by a letter

I don't want to go into a lecture on textual criticism but I'm satisfied that he saw is correct and aside from the technical reasons for it and we don't want to go into it textual criticism is as dry but important a subject as there can be but aside from that it just doesn't fit his character in scripture to say he was afraid and he ran out of terror scared if you will in order to have him being timorous and afraid we need to make the case that the prophet who stood before the powerful and murderous king that's chapter 17 verse 1 the same who returned to that king immediately at God's command without any answers back to God like Ananias when he was told to go to Paul or to Saul at the time

I pray with him he said Lord this man's murderous this man's gonna kill me Obadiah who

Elijah had just met in the chapter before who said Elijah you can't send me to Ahab he will kill me no such answer or retort to God Elijah just goes back to the king now this king knowing that he was directly responsible through his prayers for the drought that was ruining his land he goes directly to him this prophet

Elijah who boldly ordered Baal's execution with Ahab sitting right there in chapter 21 after Naboth's murder this prophet goes right back to Ahab and pronounces

God's judgment against him in the very city where Jezebel still is all this evidence with all this scripture

I would suggest to you that anyone who holds that Elijah ran from Jezebel because he was scared of her the burden of proof is on you

I would suggest that the scripture simply does not support it this prophet was not afraid of death certainly not afraid of Jezebel and I think your burden of proof if you take otherwise is pretty difficult read chapter 17 and 18 then read chapter 20 and 21 read in the gospels what

Jesus Christ says about Elijah and then go back and read chapter 19 in first kings let's continue with the scripture with the text of it he saw when he saw this he ran for his life it means he perceived something he understood the implications in verses 10 and 14 you heard read to you that he said to God that they wanted to take his life they a plural he's speaking there of the nation itself

I've been very zealous for the Lord God of Israel Israel the nation and now they that nation want to take my life he saw that they had turned very quickly against God after just before saying the

Lord he is God now they want to kill his prophet again as I said just like the one the ones who saw

Jesus come into Jerusalem his triumphal entry blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord now let's kill him now he didn't fear he saw he correctly analyzed he assessed the situation and the second thing

I want to notice here is where it says he ran for his life and again it's easy to see him running scared if we just take it on the surface if we don't look at the rest of the scripture it's as though he had totally lost his faith for a moment and he's depending on his feet rather than God depending on his feet rather than God this prophet who was fed by ravens at the book

Cherith this prophet who by faith went back across the territory where he was now an enemy and by faith found the widow this prophet who by faith found the widow and then declared

God's statement that the the flower and the oil would not run out and by faith every day went and was fed by it who by faith went back to Israel and all of a sudden he's depending on the flesh if we take this wrong all of a sudden his whole character has changed but then in chapter 20 and 21 it's all recovered he ran for his life

I suggest something different here I suggest to that his life I said this a moment ago was not

Jezebel's for the taking Elijah alone was God's prophet he said

I alone am left the hundred prophets hidden by Obadiah they're nowhere in the picture it's only

Elijah those hundred prophets are securely hidden in caves and in any case they're most likely members of a school of prophets they they were more like disciples of a prophet than actual prophets and I'm not trying to say they're apprentice of prophets and learning to become that that's not what we're saying but we get to second kings we get to Elisha we're going to find that he was the head of a school of prophets not every one of them was a prophet in this sense of a prophet sent by God and speaking his words but disciples of a prophet

John the Baptist had his own disciples who followed him in exactly the same way you see

Elijah was truly the only prophet in Israel and his life was not to be surrendered lightly we'll come back to this the third thing

I want to notice is that where Elijah goes the word of God goes where Elijah goes the word of God goes with him all the commentators agree that when he went to the brook

Cherith and then to Zarephath that this removal of the word of God was judgment on the nation of Israel the famine that they were experiencing of food because of the lack of rain was not nearly so severe a famine as was the famine of the word of God then removed from them it was judgment on that nation but too often we hear it

Elijah was said preached Elijah was terrified I suggest to you that that's not right he was not scared at all he ran for his life because his life was precious he ran for his life because it was not

Jezebel's to take he ran for his life he left Israel because God was again judging that nation by taking his word from them

I'll stay on this point just a bit longer because too many wrong applications are made from a wrong view here

Elijah's flight from Jezebel is a theme that's recapitulated over and over in scripture we see it again and again

Exodus chapter 2 when Moses finds that Pharaoh wanted to kill him what does he do he flees to Midian Paul when he's still called

Saul in Acts chapter 9 verse 25 he's let down out of the city in a basket so he could flee from the

Jews who are plotting to kill him then there's Jesus himself in Matthew chapter 12 verses 14 and 15 we read then the

Pharisees went out and plotted against him how they might destroy him but when Jesus knew it he withdrew from there all of these took themselves out of danger the only one of the ones

I just read to you who hadn't yet received his commissioning from God when he did so was

Moses but then again even in Moses's case how are we to understand it well the

New Testament is the key to the old we're talking about that a little bit after Sunday school a few of the men and I we don't hold the

New Testament to be interpreted by the old it's quite the other way around which is what Jesus said you understand the old because we have the new the new is the key to the old so with that in mind in Acts chapter 7 of verse 25 what does

Stephen say of Moses he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand he's speaking of the incident where Moses killed the

Egyptian and when Pharaoh found out about it he tried to kill him and therefore Moses fled when Moses killed that Egyptian he supposed that his brethren would understand that God would have them deliver him them by his hand you see these men didn't give up their lives easily

Moses Paul Saul Jesus it would be almost impossible to think of Paul as being afraid yet down the wall he went most especially this is true of our

Lord Jesus Christ who never for a moment was subject to the will of men now we have to look at this and say you know if Elijah was a coward if Elijah was afraid then so were these men which they distinctly were not now let's press on Elijah goes south he goes away from Ahab and Jezebel and the borders they control and after a day's journey he stops he camps out under a broom tree and there he prays to God it is enough it is enough now

Lord take my life for I'm no better than my father's and again there's some very sharp differences here in how this prayer is to be understood and we need to take care because if we misconstrue what's behind this prayer we come up with what

I think are some nutty applications and they truly can be nutty I listened to one man's sermon on this passage a man that I know pretty well and in his introduction he promised not to apply psychoanalytical terms to the text or those kind of ideas to the text and then he proceeded to explain how

Elijah was so discouraged and depressed that he was nearly suicidal one commentary with no less a scholar than Tremper Longman as the general editor has this as a chapter heading for 1st

Kings 19. I'm sorry if I'm turning this into a bit of a lecture I'm a little impassioned about defending

Elijah here this commentary says in this famous chapter we see

Elijah go from the high point of winning at Mount Carmel to the low point of post -traumatic depression that after promising not to apply 20th century psychological terms to this ancient event and we understand it this way we make what comes next the meeting with God at Horeb which is the climax of the chapter we make it almost incomprehensible when we impose modern psychology which is a soft science if ever there was one we come up with applications like this you may like Elijah have just had a mountaintop experience with God so when you've had victory over sin or a great victory in seeing someone converted who you've been ministering to for a long time beware it's a dangerous time because you're about to collapse into the valley where you'll find the slough of despond or something like this

I'm not being in the least bit sarcastic we do have spiritual highs and we can fall into spiritual lows or valleys if you wish to call them that and God does have pity on us when we're in that situation and God will lift us up by his spirit but that's the teaching of for example psalm 42

Hebrews 4 16 14 through 16 psalm 73 all would teach that it's true that when we fall into that despondency when we feel that depression and we know how easily it can come after we've been on that mountaintop if you will these are truths and we could take that application that that's the time to be wary the time to be most on our knees before God especially if we do fall into that valley those are scriptural truths but they're not in first kings 19 they don't come from the prophet

Elijah the angel of the lord is that the pre -incarnate

Jesus the angel the angel of the lord he doesn't seem to have any such opinion of Elijah like that in fact the miraculous strengthening that he's given and the reference to the journey as the journey all indicate that he was on exactly the route that God had in mind for him now again if you take it to mean that Elijah was going the wrong way he's at the wrong place at the wrong time you have to prove from chapter 17 of this book chapter 18 chapter 21 22 and the words of the lord

Jesus Christ that this prophet who followed God and followed God and followed God at all risk at all hazard all of a sudden didn't the burden of proof is on those people who would hold that how do we take his prayer it is enough lord take my life for i am no better than my father's how do i understand that if we get that wrong then we're going to get wrong the meeting with God at Horeb which is

Mount Sinai we need to understand his prayer here in its own context and we need to reconcile our conclusions with all the rest of scripture especially about this prophet