Beating the Blues; There's No Profit in
a Pity Party. 1 Kings 19
We see in the Bible that
these great men that were used by God not only have tremendous spiritual
victories but they also have tremendous spiritual failures. Their flaws are the
same flaws that we have. We all have sin natures; we all have failures
spiritually, and sometimes our failures are fairly large. In the Scriptures
these are recorded for us so that we can see that these great men of God are
just like we are. This is why James reminds us that Elijah was a man of like
nature. The only thing that made him special was that at key times he was
completely dependent upon God and obedient to His Word. Therefore God was able
to use him in magnificent ways. But just like us Elijah took his attention off
of God and when he did there was tremendous failure. In those failures in our
life we often learn more than we do in those times of spiritual success and
spiritual victory.
What we see when we come to 1
Kings 19 is that the prophet that is so triumphant and victorious in the
eighteenth chapter becomes in just two short verses disillusioned, downcast,
depressed and despairing of his whole life. So coming to this situation we
should address a couple of questions. What are the dynamics of despair? What
goes on in our mind and our thinking that takes us from a position where
everything is wonderful and moving forward to five seconds later wallowing in
self-pity? How does that happen and what is God’s solution? What are the divine
solving-problem devices that we use in order to recover? These are some of the
questions we can answer as we look at what happens with Elijah in 1 Kings 19.
We see Elijah at the top of his game. We don’t know what Elijah was like before
he bursts on the scene in chapter seventeen but from the very beginning he has
the spiritual courage to confront those who are standing against God in the
northern kingdom of
The
just as quickly as he appeared on the scene he disappears. We have seen what
went on in his life during the three and a half years as God takes him on a
training procedure. This is similar to the training procedure that He does for
all of us. He takes us through various circumstances and situations in life
where we are forced to trust Him; and in trusting Him and enduring in those
circumstances spiritual growth and maturity takes place and our confidence in
God builds. In each of the situations in Elijah’s preparations God is not only
preparing Elijah for what is going to happen on Mount Carmel but in each of
these miracles and provisions He is specifically dealing with the
confrontational points that Elijah is going to face in dealing with Baal, the
theology of Baalism and the whole false belief system that had so infected and
corrupted the northern kingdom. For each of the miracles there is a
counterpoint to what the claim was that Baal could do. All of this culminated
in the great confrontation that occurred on
At
the end of that event the priests of Baal and the Asherah are defeated, the
forces of evil and tyranny seem to be on the ropes. Ahab is present through the
whole situation. When Elijah commands that the priests of Baal and the Asherah
are taken down and executed Ahab is obviously present and obviously concurs; he
does not resist or contradict Elijah. He has been there, front seat, watching
God vaporize the altar that Elijah had built, and this must have made a
remarkable impression upon Ahab. He has seen profound empirical evidence of the
reality of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and of the inadequacy and
failure of the false religious system that he has promoted as he has been
influenced by his domineering wife Jezebel. We can almost see Ahab teetering on
the verge of perhaps turning to Yahweh.
He just goes along with Elijah, there is no longer any resistance
whatsoever.
What
was going on in their minds? Ahab is headed back to Jezebel. He is wondering
what in the world he is going to tell her. He knows how she hates Elijah. The
bitterness, anger, the dedication that she has to Baalism, is at the highest
level and she has not been there to witness this display of God’s power on
What
is going on in Elijah’s mind? He has just seen this tremendous display of God.
There were thousands of northern Israelites present on
What
is going on in the soul of Elijah is the same thing that often goes on in our
own soul. We often have our hopes and dreams; we often have our expectations of
what God is going to do in our lives. Elijah had an expectation that God would
bring about a revival in the northern kingdom. This is a good thing to hope
for, it is not a wrong goal; it is not an erroneous objective to hope that
people in the land will turn back to God, be obedient to Him and then God will
bring the nation back to a position of blessing. We often have valid hopes and
dreams in our lives and in the course of our lives we often set these goals and
objectives. We have biblically correct God honoring goals and objectives in our
lives that we hope to achieve. In order to achieve those goals or objectives we
know that as Bible believing Christians it is not just choosing the right end
but how we get there. We know that in order to get there we have to study the
Word, we have to grow spiritually, that as husbands, wife, parents, we have to
fulfill what the Scripture teaches in order to be effective, godly parents, husbands,
wives. In careers and pursuit of financial goals we know that there are certain
principles that we need to apply. So we not only choose goals or objectives
that are valid and are honoring to God but we choose a way to get there that we
know also honors God. If we do it God’s way then we know that the end result is
going to be one of blessing.
We
go through that process and then one day everything crashes. We lose our life’s
savings and our retirement doesn’t look so secure. Our health gets wrecked and
we find that the end of our life is going to be very different from what we
thought it was going to be. We are married and our spouse goes negative to
doctrine, negative to us, and one day we wake up and are alone. Or we have
children that have been raised according to biblical principles and then in
their late teens it is like we don’t know them anymore. So what do we do? How
do we handle this? This is the situation that Elijah faced. Everything that he
had thought would happen, everything that he had dreamed of for the northern
kingdom was not going to happen, and this is what sets him up for failure. And
the same thing that sets him up for failure is the same thing that sets us up
for failure. It has to do with two things: mental attitude and mental focus.
When we get our eyes off of the Lord and on to circumstances, no matter what
those circumstances are, blessing or adversity, then we can encounter a
tremendous failure in our own spiritual life. When everything goes wrong
counter to what we expected, when we have done everything to honor and glorify
God, have done everything God’s way, and suddenly we lose everything we begin
to question ourselves, question God, and swim around in self-absorption and
despair, depression, fear, worry and anxiety. We often just throw ourselves one
enormous pity party and as a result of that we sometimes begin to blame God. We
want to give up and die—“Even so Lord Jesus, Come now!” Why doesn’t the Rapture
happen this week? Etc.
One
thing we ought to look at is Elijah’s frame of mind. This is one aspect of the
spiritual life that is brought out in this passage but is not brought out very
much. We often think of things just exclusively within a sort of mental
attitude, mental focus, doctrinal position. But the reality is for most of us
is that we also have certain physical factors that impinge upon our mental
attitude, factors related to rest, to health, nutrition, the stress that comes
our way because we are expected to work maybe twelve hours a day, and when we
come home we still have work to do, and it piles up on us. We become physically
exhausted. That is one of the factors we see here with Elijah. Think of what is
going on with him physically. He has had a long, long day; he has been the
focal point of tension, of opposition, and he has weathered all of that quite
magnificently. At the end of the day there was the execution of the prophets,
followed by the time of prayer where he is praying seven times. All of this
takes time and so it is getting late in the day. Then he has this fifteen-mile
run to Jezreel. He would have been physically exhausted at the end of the day.
That physical reality often affects us in terms of our own mental attitude. We
all know that when we are tired and have been facing one thing after another
then we are much more vulnerable to spiritual failure than when we are alert
and refreshed. That is part of the dynamic that is going on with Elijah. We
have seen that Elijah has been engaged in this warfare for all of this day and
that can be wearying.
We
have to keep our focus on the Lord. In Ephesians 6:10ff is a great passage
dealing with spiritual warfare. “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the
strength of His might.” Elijah has understood that his fight must be in the
power of God. He has rested and trusted in the Lord and he understands as well
as any of us what the apostle Paul states in Ephesians 6:12 NASB
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the
spiritual {forces} of wickedness in the heavenly {places.}” The battle is not
against human beings ultimately. It is not against people who are in places of
power where we work, it is not against people in positions of power in the
government, it is not against people who are in positions power in education;
it is ultimately a spiritual battle. The causation of this lies behind the
physical in the realm of the angelic conflict: in the realm of Satan and in the
realm of demons. That is why our weapons are not physical weapons and why the
issue isn’t rationalism and empiricism.
There
has just been this phenomenal display of God’s power on
So
Elijah is going to go into another test. When we look at Scripture like this
and we see somebody go through this we have to think categorically about what
is going on so we can learn the lessons that are there. James tells us we are
to count it all joy when we fall into various trials because we know that the
testing of our faith produces endurance. Elijah has endured to a point but now
he is going to grow weary and is going to fail. He hits this one test. He has
had test after test after test and now he is going to fail, just like we do. We
have to learn from that and have to apply that to our own failures. We have to
be reminded that there are promises, such as 1 Corinthians 10:13 NASB
“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is
faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but
with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be
able to endure it.” All the categories of testing that we go through are common
areas of testing that are common to everyone else. The Lord Jesus Christ went
through those same categories of testing, yet without sin. And God always makes
a way to escape, according to 1 Corinthians 10:13, which doesn’t mean to get
out from under the pressure, the circumstances, but to stay there. That Greek
word for endurance is hupomone [u(pomonh] which means to remain under—“that you may endure
it.” God provides a way so that you can stay in the test and in the adversity
and yet still have victory, still grow and advance spiritually by staying
there. That is where we learn the principle of endurance.
The
Lord Jesus Christ understood this. When he went to the cross He had to face the
fact that He was going to receive the judicial imputation of all of our sins.
He would have to endure that without failure, without giving up, without
getting down off of the cross. He had to endure the fact that he who knew no
sin would be made sin for us. The key to handling any test, any trial, whatever
it is, is humility. What happened to Elijah is the same thing that happens to
us. We get arrogant. It just seeps in and we start becoming over-confident
thinking that somehow we really are in control and we will get what we thought
we would get. The key that is demonstrated by the Lord on the cross is
expressed by Paul in Philippians 2:8 NASB “Being found in appearance
as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross.” He never failed. Every means that he chose to get to the
goal was right. Everything He said was right. He didn’t do anything wrong. What
happened? Everybody turned against Him; even His disciples deserted Him at the
end. He never did anything to deserve the death that He died and He was hung on
a cross. If that happened to the Lord Jesus Christ by doing everything right,
we can really expect the same kind of thing to happen in our life because we
live in the devil’s world. We often become our own worst enemies by creating a
world of unrealistic expectations and we forget that God is in control and we
need to be completely devoted to Him. Just because we do everything the right
way doesn’t mean it is going to end up the way that we think it will.
1
Kings 19:1 NASB “Now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and
how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.” We see Ahab arriving at his
summer palace in Jezreel and we can just imagine that he must have faced
Jezebel with, at the very least, mixed emotions—fear, anxiety, what is she
going to say? He tells her everything that Elijah had done. Perhaps he was even
trying to convince her that Elijah was right. Jezebel responds immediately by
sending a messenger to Elijah. [2] “Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah,
saying, ‘So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as
the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time’.” This is the typical form
of an oath that would be taken in the ancient world. What she is swearing is an
oath of revenge. She is threatening that she is going to catch Elijah and that
she is going to execute him and Elijah has less than 24 hours to live.
There
is a real irony here because he is going to run away, and as he dives into the
pool of self-pity what is he saying? Lord, take my life. Why not just stay
there in Jezreel where Jezebel would have taken his life? When we get into
carnality and stop trusting God we become so irrational and illogical and
everything just turns upside down in our souls. We are not any better than
Elijah. We have moments when we have tremendous spiritual victory. We trust
God, we claim those promises and we have everything right on the mark, and then
two seconds later you’d never think we have never learned a bit of Bible
doctrine, that we had never learned any truth, and we are as out of fellowship
and as pagan as anybody we can think of in our society. It can happen just like
that because we let the circumstances suddenly dominate our focus and take our
eyes off of the Lord. That is exactly what happens with Elijah.
1
Kings 19:3 NASB “And he was afraid and arose and ran for his life
and came to
What
has happened? We know that he failed. Otherwise that is known as sin. He fails
to trust God. He is relying on his own strength and resources, he is now out of
fellowship trying to handle the circumstances of life on the basis of his own
sin nature—human stress management. God gives us problem-solving devices but
all the world can give is a way to sort of manage the stress, but we can’t get
rid of it. When we follow the Word we can completely relax and rest in God’s
provision.
What is God doing? Elijah
is out of fellowship and not trusting God. He is not where God would ideally
want him to be but he is running away. But God meets us where we are. Psalm
103:13, 14 NASB “Just as a father has compassion on {his} children,
So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
1 Kings 19:6 NASB
“Then he looked and behold, there was at his head a bread cake {baked on} hot
stones, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again.” One of the
things that has to happen even in the midst of going through spiritual failure
is we have to take care of ourselves physically. While we are focused on
claiming promises, confession of sin and these other things we forget other
factors and enter in. When we are exhausted we have to get rested. It has an impact
on our frame of mind, on our thinking. God is going to deal with Elijah at both
a spiritual level and a physical level. He provides food and water and an
opportunity for Elijah to rest. This is only the beginning, it goes on for
another forty plus days, and then when we come to the end of this section we
will see that Elijah still, after forty days in the desert where he has
wrestled with his own failure and the spiritual principles, wallows in
self-pity and still wants God to just take him home. This is a complex
situation. The reason for pointing this out is that when people teach about
principles of recovery in the Christian life it sounds as if all we need to do
is turn on a dime, get back in fellowship and we can just go tearing forward in
spiritual growth. But that is not always the case. Here is a great believer, a
great prophet of God, and he has all of this empirical data and God is
providing for him in grace in sustenance and rest; yet after six weeks he is
still mired in self-pity and failure. He just can’t quite get to that point of
recovery.
1 Kings 19:7 NASB
“The angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said,
‘Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you’.” God’s continuing grace
even when we are out of fellowship. God continues to move us along and deal
with us in grace. He is not in a hurry to lower the boom and discipline us in a
harsh way. God takes care of Elijah’s physical nourishment. God isn’t ignoring
the physical life and just focusing on the spiritual. He is going to take care
of both and provide everything we need to fulfill our spiritual destiny and His
will for our lives. Elijah is going to go another 100 miles. [8] “So he arose
and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty
nights to Horeb, the