Eat, for the Journey is Too Great for You

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

John, chapter 6 verses 35 through 51. Then Jesus declared,

I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the

Father gives me will come to me. Whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me.

And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me but raise them up at the last day.

For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.

Now at this the Jews began to grumble about Him because He said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.

They said, is this not Jesus the son of Joseph whose father and mother we know? How can he now say

I came down from heaven? Stop grumbling among yourselves, Jesus answered.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day.

It is written in the prophets, they will all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the

Father and learns from Him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God.

Only He has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.

I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert yet they died.

But here is the bread that comes down from heaven which a man may eat and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever and this bread is my flesh which

I will give for the life of the world. In the name of Jesus. All right, now please tell me that everybody here has seen the

Rocky movies, at least the original ones, right? Because I'm finding out as I'm getting older that a lot of the movies

I watched as a kid you can't assume that everybody has seen them. It's the weirdest thing. But we all know what happens in the

Rocky movies. The first one, Rocky 1, you know, you have Rocky Balboa, the southpaw from Philadelphia, you know, this nobody, kind of a loser who gets this bizarre chance, you know, to actually fight the world champion.

And he doesn't win but he actually puts up quite a fight, you know, they end up going the distance. And then in Rocky 2 he wins, right?

And now we know what happens in Rocky 3. In Rocky 3, well, he's got endorsement deals, he's on the cover of Time magazine,

GQ, Sports Illustrated, he's making commercials for, you know, name the product, and everybody knows

Rocky's name, right? Well, you're going to notice something here that in our Old Testament text,

Elijah had just defeated the prophets of Baal and Asherah at Mount Carmel, and rather than going on a speaking tour, writing a book, and getting endorsement deals, we find him fleeing for his life.

This is quite the opposite of what we would expect. And in this text from our Old Testament we hear the words of Jesus, and yes, it is

Jesus, and I'll explain this in a little bit. Jesus says to Elijah, rise and eat for the journey is too great for you.

It's too great for you. This is one of the things I love about Scripture, is that it doesn't teach a theology of glory, it teaches a theology of suffering.

And it teaches that God is really the one who's in control of things, and he's the one winning the victories, not us.

And when you understand that, you understand just how weak you are, and how dependent upon God you are.

In fact, what we find happening after Mount Carmel is the exact opposite of what we would expect to happen, especially in our society.

And so with that, I would like you to open up your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 18. I want to walk us through what leads up to our

Old Testament today, and I'm going to then tie that in with our New Testament text.

Now, if you're not familiar with the story, it's one of the more famous stories in the Bible, the showdown at Mount Carmel.

In case you're not familiar with what was happening at the time in the northern kingdom, well, the people of Israel, they had abandoned worship of God, and they were worshiping idols.

And the king of Israel, Ahab, had married a woman whose name literally is pronounced

Jezebel, which means she's the princess of Baal. Her father apparently was a high priest when it comes to the religion of Baal.

And if you're not familiar with Baal worship, well, Baal is the lord of the air, the sky.

He is supposedly the God who brings us the rain, right? And that makes the crops grow.

He's super important in the pantheon of false gods. And, well,

Jezebel, she's all about him. And part of the practice of worshiping Baal involves child sacrifice.

You think abortion is bad? Try sacrificing a living infant to a false god.

This is all part of the religion of Baal. And, of course, the people of Israel have abandoned the worship of the one true

God, the one true God who brought them out of slavery, put them in the land of promise, and they've completely abandoned worship of him to the point where many prophets are being killed.

God is sending prophets and they're killing them, having nothing to do with them. And so God calls the prophet

Elijah, and he basically tells Elijah, you let everybody know that it's not going to rain in Israel until you say so.

You let everybody know. So there's a showdown now between Yahweh, the one true God, and Baal, this false deity.

And the way this is all going to go down, you think Baal brings the rain? You're wrong. Yahweh is the one who brings the rain, not

Baal, and that's what's going on here. This is to show and expose the false deity for what it is, a false deity, a false

God. And so Elijah no sooner makes the announcement that it's not going to rain until he says so, and then he disappears.

He literally disappears. He goes and hides in a valley where there's a brook, and the

Lord sends ravens with meat to feed him, and he's drinking from the brook, and then eventually the brook dries out because there's no rain.

And so he goes and he lives with the widow of Zarephath. And while all this is going on, every weekend in Israel, on Israel's most wanted, they have

Elijah's face. Have you seen this man? If you have, please call

King Ahab. They didn't really watch TV, but you kind of get the idea, right? So Elijah has gone for three years.

No rain in Israel for three years. And so we pick up at 1 Kings chapter 18, verse 1, is what it says, after many days the word of Yahweh came to Elijah.

In the third year, so it's three years, saying, go show yourself to Ahab, and then

I will send rain upon the earth. God has had enough. He's made his point. So Elijah went to show himself to Ahab.

Now the famine was severe in Samaria, and Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the household.

Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly, and when Jezebel cut off the prophets of Yahweh, Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.

So much for living the victorious Christian life, right? These men of God who served and prophesied the true words of Yahweh, they were cut off by Jezebel, and had to be hidden in a cave, and basically fed meager portions out of Obadiah's own pocket, if you would.

So Ahab said to Obadiah, go through the land to all the springs of water, to all the valleys.

Perhaps we may find grass and save the horses and the mules alive, and not lose some of the animals.

So they divided the land between them to pass through it. Ahab went in one direction by himself, Obadiah went another direction by himself, and as Obadiah was on the way, behold,

Elijah met him, and Obadiah recognized him and fell on his face and said, is it you my

Lord Elijah? And he answered, it is I. Go tell your Lord, behold,

Elijah's here. And then, watch this response, and he said, how have I sinned that you would give your servant into the hand of Ahab to kill me?

Obadiah is afraid that God's gonna whisk Elijah away. He's been gone for three years, and so he's afraid that if he goes and reports to Ahab, hey,

I found Elijah, and Elijah doesn't turn out to be there, it's off with his head, right?

So he said, how have I sinned that you would give your servant into the hand of Ahab to kill me? The Lord your God, as the

Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my Lord has not sent to seek you.

And when they would say he is not here, he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation that they had not found you.

And now you say, go tell your master, behold, Elijah's here, and as soon as I have gone from you, the

Spirit of the Lord will carry you off I don't know where. And so when I come and tell Ahab that he cannot find you, he'll kill me, although I, your servant, have feared the

Lord from my youth. Has it not been told to my Lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of Yahweh, how

I hid a hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water?

And now you say, go tell your Lord, behold, Elijah is here, and he will kill me.

And Elijah said, as Yahweh of hosts lives before whom I stand,

I will surely show myself to him today. So Obadiah went to meet

Ahab, and he told him, and then Ahab went to meet Elijah. Pause here for a second.

I want you to note what sin does to a human being. Sin causes us human beings to believe that evil is good and that good is evil.

It causes us to think that black is white and up is down and down is up.

It totally discombobulates in an evil way. And so we all know

Ahab is evil. We all know his wife, uber evil, all right?

This is, I mean, Disney characters like Maleficent have nothing on Jezebel. I mean that.

And yet watch what happens when Ahab finally sees the man he's been looking for for three years.

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, is it you, you troubler of Israel?

Really? Elijah's the problem? He's the troubler of Israel? The reason why it hasn't rained is because you guys are worshiping a false god that doesn't even exist.

You're thinking that that false god, Baal, is the one who brings the rain. Oh, and you're sacrificing small children to him in the process.

I'm the troubler of Israel? That's kind of what's the subtext here. So Elijah answered, I have not troubled

Israel, but you have, and your father's house, because you have abandoned the commandments of Yahweh and have followed the

Baals. In other words, Elijah wasn't one of these guys that had a coexist bumper sticker on his

Prius, right? So now therefore send and gather all of Israel to me at Mount Carmel and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table.

We're gonna have a showdown. So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel, gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel, and Elijah came near and all the people said, and he said, how long will you go limping between two different opinions?

And notice, I mean, Israel's there. They're all at Mount Carmel. CNN is there. Fox News is there.

I mean, New York Times, all of the big newspapers are there. This is a big deal.

This is the showdown. Yahweh versus Baal. This is what this is.

So he says, how long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him.

But if Baal, well then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word. Stone -hearted people.

They didn't answer a word. So then Elijah said to the people, I, even I only am left a prophet of Yahweh, but Baal's prophets are 450 men.

So let two bowls be given to us. Let them choose one bowl for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it.

I will prepare the other bowl, lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you call upon the name of your

God and I will call upon the name of Yahweh and the God who answers by fire.

He is God. And all the people answered, it is well -spoken. Yeah, we like this.

Ooh, there's going to be fireworks. So then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose for yourselves one bowl, prepare it first for you are many.

Call upon the name of your God, put no fire to it. And so they took the bowl that was given to them and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon saying,

Oh Baal, answer us. But there was no voice. No one answered.

Of course there wasn't. We've all heard this, the saying, the lights are on, but no one's home.

In this particular case, there isn't even a home, let alone lights.

Baal is the figment of somebody's imagination, human imagination, or maybe a demonic one, right?

There is no Baal. Oh Baal, answer us. But there was no voice, no one answered.

So they limped around the altar that they had made. And here's the best part.

At noon, Elijah mocked them saying, yes, it does say that by the way, the prophet of God was not into coexisting.

He was not going to give professional courtesy to Baal. He mocked the prophets of Baal, mocked them.

Oh, and his mockings are great. You want to talk some trash talk? There's some good trash talk right here. Here's what it says.

Cry louder. He is a God, right? Maybe he's musing or perhaps he's relieving himself.

And if you're thinking, does that mean what I think it means? Oh yeah. Elijah mocked them and said, where is your

God? Oh, maybe he's busy in the bathroom taking a dump. That's not very holy.

That's not very nice. That's not politically incorrect. He's hurting their feelings. Get over it.

They're about ready to enter hell and God is judging them. That's what's going on here.

Cry louder. Maybe he's relieving himself or maybe he's on a journey. Forgot to bring his

GPS. Maybe he's asleep and has to be wakened up. Oh, Baal, Baal, wake up.

So they cried aloud. They cried louder and they cut themselves after they're accustomed with swords and lances until the blood gushed out upon them.

And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation.

So about three in the afternoon, there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention.

Do you think the scriptures teach that all religions lead to God? No, they don't.

What is the first commandment? You will have no other gods before me. So the person who is telling you as a

Christian, oh, I believe in a loving God and that all roads lead to God.

Eventually, Muslims are going to get to heaven. Buddhists, people who worship the sky and the moon, people who worship

Baal, no. These are idolaters.

They are breaking the first commandment. You will have no other gods before me. None. Because there are no other gods.

And if you don't believe and trust in the one true God, there is no hope for you. None. Because your

God, the God of your own making, he can't save you. If you say to yourself, well, the

God I believe in would never do X, Y, or Z. And X, Y, or Z has something to do with, you know, things like, oh, he would never send anybody to hell.

He would never condemn somebody for same -sex marriage. You know, the God I believe in is, well, name the thing, right?

The God you believe in is an idol and is deaf and blind and busy on the toilet as Baal is.

And he can't save you at all. The scripture here confronts us regarding our idolatries.

You will either believe and trust in the one true God or the God you believe in will have to be the one who saves you.

Good luck on that one because no one answers when the prophets of Baal call on him.

So then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. And the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of Yahweh that had been thrown down.

You know why it had been thrown down? Because they were all too busy worshiping that newfangled God Baal. So he repaired the altar of Yahweh.

Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the

Lord came, saying, Israel shall be your name. And with the stones he built an altar in the name of Yahweh.

And he made a trench about the altar as great as would hold two seers of seed.

He put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, laid it on the wood. And he said, fill four jars with water, pour it on the burnt offering on the wood.

And he said, do it a second time. And they did it a second time. He said, do it a third time.

They did it a third time. So this offering has now been baptized three times in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, drenched to the core. The water ran down around the altar, filled the trench with water.

And at that time, at the time of the offering of oblation, three in the afternoon, the time when Jesus cries out, my

God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is finished. And he gives up his spirit at that time.

Elijah, the prophet, came near and said, O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are

God in Israel, that I am your servant and that I have done all these things at your word.

Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people might know that you, O Lord, are

God and that you have turned their hearts back. Then the fire of Yahweh fell and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and looked up all the water that was in the trench.

All of that's to let you know, yeah, this offering wasn't supposed to burn. Not only did it burn, the wood burned, the stones burned, the dust burned, everything burned.

This was as hot as it gets. And which, by the way, that's what a sacrifice is all about.

A sacrifice is a sin offering. The burning of the sin offering, well, that involves typology that points you to the fires of hell.

You want to know what the fires of hell are like? It's like that fire that fell. So when all the people saw this fire, they fell on their faces and they said,

Yahweh, He is God. Yahweh, He is

God. Now, the Mosaic Covenant, which the people of Israel were required to be keeping at this time, regarding false prophets, do you know what the penalty is for a false prophet?

Death. You prophesy falsely. You prophesy in the name of another

God. According to the civil law of the Mosaic Covenant, the penalty for this is death.

And so now the prophets of Baal have been shown to be what they are, false prophets.

And so Elijah enacts the, well, the punishments of the

Mosaic Covenant upon the 450 false prophets of Baal.

And he says, seize the prophets of Baal. Let not one of them escape. They seized them.

Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and slaughtered them there. You think, gosh, that seems so cruel and unusual, so unfair.

Really? These prophets who are sending people to an eternal hell, it's unfair for God to execute justice?

And so he did. And by the way, this is what all of us deserve for our idolatries.

But God is merciful to us, and he's kind. So now the story continues.

Remember, it's all about the rain. The Lord told Elijah to let everybody know it's not going to rain until you say so.

It hasn't rained for three years. And now Elijah said to Ahab, go up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of the rushing of rain.

So Ahab went to eat and to drink, and Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel, and he bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees.

Interesting way to pray. Kind of in the fetal position, if you would. He said to his servants, go up and look toward the sea.

He went up and looked and said, there is nothing. And he said, go again. All right.

So he went again, seven times. And at the seventh time, he said, behold, a little cloud, like a man's hand, is rising from the sea.

He said, go up and say to Ahab, prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you. And in a little while, the heavens grew black and the clouds and the wind, and there was a great rain.

And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel. And the hand of Yahweh was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.

It's a great story. If it ends there, you know, you can say, and he lived happily ever after. We all know what happens with like a victory like this.

You get to do a victory lap. They put your face on a post, on a stamp. You go into towns and they throw parades for you and give you the keys to the city.

You get a book deal and you basically make a gazillion dollars and you retire rich.

And a hero of heroes. This is how this happens. And they make statues and put the statue of you in the center of town.

Is this not what should happen here? Right? But who really won the victory there that day?

Was it Elijah? No, it was God. You see,

Elijah was only doing what God told him to do. Elijah had learned as a prophet, you say only what

God tells you to say. You do only what God tells you to do. And if God doesn't give you a sure word, you don't act presumptuously.

Now, I wish the story continued with the repentance of Jezebel.

That would seem to be the thing that would make sense, right? Because chapter 19 begins with this.

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with a sword.

The next verse should read, then Jezebel was cut to the heart and realized that Baal was a false god.

And she put on sackcloth and ashes and asked God to have mercy on her for worshiping such a demonic deity.

It's not what happens, is it? Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.

You killed them, I'm going to kill you. Now, commentators note this important little fact here, is that Jezebel, if she really wanted to, she could have just sent a detachment of soldiers and had

Elijah killed on the spot. Why send messengers? It's a good question.

Well, had she sent soldiers to take off his head, he would have died a heroic martyr.

But by breathing out the murderous threats that she did, it's clear that her goal was in some way to discredit the power of Yahweh.

Where's the power of Yahweh now to save you, prophet? I'm coming after you. And if he runs for his life, he looks like he has no power and Yahweh is discredited.

Now, had the Lord given a clear word to Elijah that he would save him from her?

No, he hadn't. So, when she breathes out her murderous threats, the thing we would have expected him to do would basically, so may the gods do to me and also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow,

I wish it then said, well, you let Jezebel know that it's on like Donkey Kong.

I'm going to be here and the God who just caused the fire to come down from heaven, he's going to eat you up too.

But he had no word from the Lord selling him that, did he? And Elijah had heard and seen many of Yahweh's prophets killed by Jezebel, good men who preached the truth.

And he had no sure promise from God that he would be protected from her.

So, he's thinking rightfully so, I better not presume that God's going to save me.

So, this explains why he does what he does. So, he was afraid.

Without a word from God to comfort him, without a promise that he can hang on, he's afraid. So, he rose and ran for his life and he came to Beersheba which belongs to Judah and he left his servant there.

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree, not too much shade there.

And he asked that he might die saying, it is enough. Now, oh

Lord, take away my life for I am no better than my father's. Notice that even

Elijah is humbled by everything that's going on. He doesn't presume, oh, I'm the man of God.

You know, God's going to come to my rescue. No, he recognizes his own sinfulness. He even sees his own stubborn heart in the stubborn actions of the people of Israel and Jezebel.

I'm no better than my father's. I'm the same as them and he's speaking the truth. He was afraid and he wants to die.

So, he lay down, he slept under the broom tree and behold, an angel.

And by the way, this is Jesus. I know this from the next verse. An angel touched him and said, arise and eat.

And he looked and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.

And he ate and drank and then he lay down again. And the angel of the

Lord, that's Jesus, came again a second time and touched him and said, arise and eat for the journey is too great for you.

Truer words have never been spoken. Now, I want you to think about this.

All the little victories that you have in your life, or at least you seem to have, is really

God who wrought those. And every week you go by and you live your life, you're beat up.

And I mean this, you're beat up by the world, you're beat up by the devil and his temptations, you're beat up by your own sinful flesh.

And if you're really honest with yourself, you'll recognize that there's an ache and a creak and a tiredness to the fight.

How many of you are just tired fighting the devil, the world, and your own sinful flesh?

How many of you, like me, have thought, I don't know if I can keep going on like this.

Death seems like a better bargain than going through this. The Christian life is hard. Paul, in describing the

Christian life in Romans 7, says the things I don't want to do, I do. The things

I want to do, I don't do. Who will rescue me from this body of death?

You see, folks, the journey is too great for you too. It's too great for me.

None of us can do this. And this is why Jesus gives us bread from heaven.

And that bread from heaven is his own body and his own blood to sustain us on the journey.

And we learn from Elijah. Elijah, when Jesus said, arise and eat for the journey is too great for you.

He rose, ate, and drank, and then he went in the strength of that food for 40 days and for 40 nights to Mount Horeb.

That's Mount Sinai. Whatever was in that food, it sustained him for 40 days and 40 nights.

40 is kind of a big number in scripture, but I'm not going to unpack that now. But I want you to think of this from our text.

Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died.

This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

So Christ in our wilderness journeys, this journey that is too great for us, we do not have the strength needed to fight the devil, the world, or even our own sinful flesh.

And whereas Elijah was given bread from heaven that sustained him for 40 days, Christ feeds us with the bread from heaven, the true bread, which is his body and blood, to sustain us not for 40 days, but to sustain us all the way to eternal life.

For the journey is too great for us. It was too great for Elijah who knew that he was just like his fathers.

It's too great for you who are just like your fathers. It's too great for me because I am just like mine.

All of us, dead in trespasses and sins, that's how we're born into this world, all of us now alive in Christ, but still have our sinful nature in old

Adam to wrestle with. The journey is difficult, it's hard, and it's too much for us.

And so Christ knows this, and so he loves you, he feeds you, and he sustains you, sustains you all the way to eternal life.

So trust and believe in this Jesus. Because we read in our pericope today that the

Jews, in hearing what Jesus had to say, they did not believe him. They were scandalized by what he said.

We know where his parents are. Isn't this the son of Joseph? Don't be like that.

Believe. Receive. Trust. He will sustain you because the journey is truly too great for you.

In the name of Jesus. Amen. 470th

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