MESSAGE BY PASTOR ROB INRIG
FROM BETHANY BAPTIST IN RICHMOND, BC
I invite you to pray with me, Father God hear our prayer, and we humbly cry before you as it's written, "Whatever you ask for in prayer, believing, you will receive" (Matt: 21 -22) and yes! we believe in you, we trust in you, and we believe you are the maker of miracles. we are asking for healing for our dear members of our family and also dear friends who are suffering from illnesses in their lives fighting and suffering under a lot of pain, You know them by their names; (Gaby, Vicky, Nancy, Tere, Liz, Gloria, Stevie, Les, Miguel, Socrates, Kate, Sara's mom, ) as your precious children, strengthen them their faith in you with a miracle in their lives oh! Father God hear our prayer, and we also pray for all the people around the world especially the children, who are suffering from wars, devastation, hunger, pain, hate and disbelieve in you, we ask beloved Father God to strengthen their faith in you we know that you love them so much oh Father God hear our prayer, we ask you in the name of Our Lord of Lords and King of Kings you beloved son Jesus Christ. AMEN!
One of the stranger battles in WW2 took place early in the war when the Soviets decided to invade Finland. Russia’s military was extremely powerful on paper but as events soon proved, it was staggeringly inept for the winter battle ahead. Stalin’s purge of those thought to be opposed to his rule, had seen to that as he gutted the Army’s leadership – removing colonels and generals leaving bureaucrats and ‘yes’ men in their place. These were the ones who sent Soviet forces ½ million strong, many from warmer areas of Russia, to trudge over the icy Finnish landscape. Though strong in numbers, they were abysmally weak in how they were equipped - dressed in ill-fitting, weather deficient uniforms, provisions of food woefully insufficient. After marching over Finland’s icy ground for days, the Soviets finally managed to encircle Finland but by now her soldiers were freezing, fatigued and starved. This was especially true for the troops who’d marched 5 straight days to launch a surprise attack at the rear of Finnish forces. Despite that, they caught the Finns off guard forcing them to flee, leaving supplies behind, chief among them, field kitchens with pots full of steaming sausage soup. This soup proved to be weaponry more powerful than bullets - the irresistible smell of sausage soup, causing the Soviets to abandon their pursuit of the fleeing Finns, choosing instead to fill their empty stomachs in what became known as the Sausage war.
Un-pursued, the Finns regrouped and with an army of soldiers, medics and cooks, they launched a fierce counter attack, using bayonets and bullets to rout the Soviet battalion.
A shortly celebrated victory and then crushing defeat. That defeat and ones of similar ineptitude said to be what emboldened Hitler to target the Soviet Union for attack, an attack that ultimately led to events leading to Hitler’s defeat.
Victories and should have been victories turning into crushing, unexpected defeat which is what we are looking at today.
Central to our story this morning are 2 people we’re told are the personification of evil – King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, whose evil surpassed all others who had ruled Israel. Their attempts to overthrow God not from foreign invasion but from within. The plan offering worship of success - Baal putting an end to anything God by demonstrating his supremacy by fire showing his mastery over the heavens and rain showing his blessings upon the earth. And Asherah offering worship of sex. Sex, success and power the perfect weapons to steal Israel’s hearts and displace worship of God. Worship solidified by slaughtering God’s prophets. The result - a battlefield soaked in blood and a surround characterized by fear. So there’s the background, the situation a mess but Elijah’s spectacular victory on Mt Carmel seeming to clean it up, only to see mess rear its ugly head once more.
You would think that victory had Elijah planted rock solid. But it didn’t because as we soon see, moments after witnessing the overwhelming power of almighty God, Elijah was filled with fear having received a message from Jezebel. Her threat was that he was a marked man, her promise to do to him what he’d done to the prophets of Baal 1 Kings 19:2. Hearing that, fear locked on. Focus no longer on God but on the corpses of the prophets Jezebel had killed, his soon to be added. Fearing this, Elijah ran for his life until he was exhausted. Exhausted as we often get.
Remember - James’ description, Elijah was a man with like passions like us. Like us in the things to which we aspire – the courageous and strong, but also like us in our doubts, our fears, our inclination to run. He like us, flesh and blood human, who also mess up when our focus is off. Fear familiar to us when the wrong situation hits and we get knocked off our feet. Where courage melts away. Where we get wiped out and depressed like Elijah - defeated in mind and body, as he lay under a bush, begging God to end his life. Physical and spiritual exhaustion coming after great victory. His exhaustion planting wrong understandings, allowing fear to root deep. Fear rushing in after guards are let down, thinking the battle is over. Fear coming to a no doubt adrenalized and triumphant Elijah, until a voice is heard – that the things God has done are for things past, not for things to come.
Ever been there? When you experienced a strong God, a faithful God, a loving God and then all of a sudden, the wheels come off. When prayers seemingly go unanswered, when in a time you never saw coming, things you believed were put to the test. Answers you thought firm, not holding as strongly as you thought. And now you are running on empty. Truth is, it’s not that uncommon after experiencing great victories to experience great attack. The disciples did. After witnessing a glorified Jesus and the transfiguration with Moses and Elijah, they immediately encounter a demon possessed man before whom they stand as inadequate failures. And Jesus did - at the Jordan hearing the voice of God, watching the Holy Spirit descending on Him then immediately taken into the desert to be tempted by Satan. Great victories and then great attack.
In his fear, Elijah’s main problem wasn’t doubting the power of the Lord. He’d just witnessed that. No, what Elijah is doubting is the presence of the Lord in the right now. Sure he believes His presence in the theological but His presence in the ‘here and now’ practical - with danger all around? Grave markers undeniable evidence that Jezebel wasn’t making idle threats shouting, ‘You are alone’. No one to stand with you. No one to encourage or hide you away. No one to position you back to God. In his exhaustion he was convinced - he was forgotten and alone and in places like that, lies and fears shout loud. And it was in that emotional space, he ran. Running to a place he likely thought to be safe – to Judah where most still worshipped Almighty God.
But his problem? his lies and fears ran with him. He may have run to a difference place but he still held the same beliefs. From the moment he looked down and read what Jezebel had written he lost sight of the power he’d just seen and the truth he’d long known. Looking down, he could only see the power of words written accepting these as more powerful than the God believed
In those moments, I think his understanding of God shifted from the personal to the global. That the God who intimately provided by the brook - caring for the 1, became the God whose concern was for the many not the one. And he believed himself to be the unseen, forgotten one.
Just like you and I can sometimes feel like – remember Elijah, his passions just like us.
In essence he re-interpreting God’s previous actions as something God wanted to do for Israel, less interested in intimately caring for him. Sound familiar? That you know God is in this for the big stuff but in it for the things I’m battling? Like God so loving the world but not so convinced of God ‘so loving me?’ But God’s assurance that He finds the 1, even if it means leaving the 99. SO loving the one, that He will do whatever has to be done to make it possible for the 1 to find his way home. Like the widow he travelled miles to see, believing God had taken him on some momentous mission to change a nation, only to discover that his mission was to reach out to one. Yet in the years to come, that seemingly small intervention to one, speaking to multitudes.
But when Elijah looked down and forgot God’s loving, intimate care – he made room for the slow, ever present drip, drip of fear. God not present. God not acting causing Elijah to believe he was forgotten, the only one of the Lord’s prophets left. However, in a gentle whisper, God telling him that what he was believing was wrong. He wasn’t alone, not alone from God and not alone from 7,000 others who remained.
God not condemning his fear nor ours but re-orienting him and us to truth, that His involvement in our lives is not a drop in event where God visits then goes, instead His assurance is that what He promised is true - He is always with us. The words to Elijah, You are not alone are God’s words to us. Time and again Scripture encourages us, Do not fear. I am with you Ps 27:10, Heb 13:5. In Ephesians 1, When you believed in Christ, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance 1:13,14. Believers in Christ, possessed by His very spirit.
There’s so much great in this story that takes us from crippling fear to great victory. Take a look,
Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. Suddenly, an angel touched him. The angel told him, “Get up and eat.” Then he looked, and there at his head was a loaf of bread baked over hot stones, and a jug of water. 1 Kings 19:5,6.
I love it that God begins by giving Elijah time to sleep and then prepares something for him to eat. Elijah’s senses awakened from his depression and fear by the smell of fresh bread and physical and emotional distance from the place of immediate threat. God providing the physical before dealing with where Elijah’s gone off track in the spiritual – the 2 not disconnected because when our physical and emotional get worn down, we’re ill equipped to hear and embrace truth. Often we need the same – to rest and replenish. Needing a night out, a good meal, a good friend, a good sleep. To rest and step back instead of soldiering through. Sleep, then a meal, more sleep, then another meal.
When Elijah understood God’s presence and care, it was the beginning of the end of his fear in the same way it was end of the fear story when the disciples understand that the resurrected presence of Jesus was with them wherever they went. That their power to live, their power to face the difficulties ahead was because God’s Spirit was with them. It’s interesting to note that God doesn’t force His revelation upon us. With Elijah, restoration didn’t come immediately with God’s intervention of care. He didn’t eat, sleep and then everything was well. It’s also important to note, that sometimes our depression and fear can require medical or psychological intervention to help us get the emotional rest and re-set needed.
Okay, let’s stop to look at how we got here: God sending Elijah to Ahab to deliver a message; then God sending Elijah to the safety and provision of a brook. Then God sending him to Zarephath to find a widow and change a life. Then God sending Elijah to Mt Carmel to tear down beliefs that have destroyed a nation. Then Elijah arriving in Beersheba and Mt Horeb Mt Sinai places God has not sent. Here, God asking, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, ELIJAH? :9
‘Elijah you’ve got your bearings all messed up’. Elijah: tired, needy, depressed, fearful. And in this God, not condemning but caring, coming to him wanting him to know, You’ve lost sight of who you are. More importantly, you’ve lost sight of who I am.
In your fatigue and in your fear, you’ve allowed what you believe to get muddied up in what you are choosing to see, which has determined how you are choosing to act. To this God asks His, What are you doing here, Elijah? :9 question which seems at first to be a question of geography, Don’t miss that Elijah answers a What? question with Why? answers - I’ve been zealous, they’re not – they even wanting to kill me 10. Why? answers given to justify. To excuse. To explain away. Why? questions that almost always are answered in ways that try to lessen or escape blame. The problem is God didn’t ask Why?, He asked What? ie) Don’t excuse – evaluate.
But at this point, God doesn’t respond to Elijah’s Why? rather He tells Elijah to stand before the LORD where He then demonstrates His awesome power with a mighty wind that breaks rocks and tears apart the mountain; an earthquake that must have terrified; then a fire destroying in its intense heat – all of these, we are told that God is not in but the message of His great power is. What is Jezebel and her threats to Me? What power does anything have that rises up in opposition to Me? But the message to Elijah needs to hear is spoken in the sound of a low whisper or as the New Revised Standard renders it, the sound of sheer silence :12. That everything and everyone stands silent before Almighty God. The whisper to Elijah is a message not of His power but of His close and present love. Personal. Caring.
It's with this demonstration, God repeats, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, ELIJAH? :13 Yes, you are in a physical place I did not send you but far more importantly, what are you doing in your place of unbelief? In your place of believing the lies meant to destroy? Of listening to voices different than Mine? Those places that will only bring fear, only bring pain?
So what are the lessons God wants us to know when worry and fear shout loud?
STOP CLAIMING OWNERSHIP OF ANXIETY! When worry and fear occupy our life, they are out of place. These things may come to visit, but don’t let them set up house which means we need to recognize that a spirit of worry and fear is an uninvited guest that wants to invade and wreak havoc in the rooms it tries to occupy. So evict him before he settles in. Never forget that the question Satan asked in the Garden, is the same question he still asks today, Did God say? His intent, to distant us from God’s truth. Does life bring things that will cause us to worry and fear? – it does but don’t allow these things to hang around and grow.
How? First by recognizing the lies that Satan wants you to believe. Recognizing the lie means acknowledging the kernel of truth around which the lies wrap and then disentangle the lies that distort and cause you to believe conclusions that are wrong. Recognize then evict.
Note - Elijah’s anxiety and depression was built on some justifiable fear. Jezebel had murdered. She was dangerous but those truths caused Elijah to look away from a far greater truth. In God’s power he had just stood against all that was evil and come away victorious. Not just victorious but heavenly power victorious against which, nothing could stand.
Hours away from that victory, Elijah looked away and as he did, fear took hold. The truth, Jezebel has killed God’s prophets but it’s not true, this is what is awaiting you. The truth, they are still present but it’s not true, that their days will continue as they have been. Elijah, did I not tell you to anoint a new king in Ahab’s place. His day and her day are done.
Yet caught in a cycle of distortions and lies, fears get amplified deafening us to God’s truth. Fears and lies leading to conclusions: ‘I’ll always’, ‘I’ll never’, ‘I can’t’, ‘It’s going to’. The power of the past too powerful, its grip too strong. Yet God saying, God didn't give you a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind 2 Tim 1:7. In this, God telling us, in the power of His Spirit that He’s placed within us, we’ve been transformed to live free from our lies and our fears.
Timothy telling us, we aren’t just given a covering of us His love, we are given the indwelling presence of His love – not loved in the abstract or in some day loved but loved unconditionally now and in a love that will last forever. Timothy also assures we’ve been given one more thing – a sound mind, which is to say, that we have been given the ability to not let our fears run amuck. We can take hold of the things trying to gain a hearing in our lives and speak into them a different truth. Does this mean that things won’t come to us that may cause us some fear – nope, doesn’t say that, but it does mean we can, in God’s power allow God’s truth to overcome those fears. This isn’t robotically living by a different self-talk. It’s exposing the darkness of the lies we have been listening to and taking them into the light of God’s truth.
God’s powerful assurance - HIS POWERFUL PRESENCE guaranteed by His NEVER failing love – I will not leave you or forsake you. Heb 13:5 His presence giving power to overcome. His presence committed to someone He deeply loves. For His lovingkindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord is everlasting. Ps 117:2
Christ Jesus, who died, and more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress of persecution or famine or nakedness danger or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:34-39.
Don’t miss that Elijah added accelerant to his fears when he ran into isolation. Tho he goes with his servant, likely for his safety, he then goes into the wilderness. He’s not there seeking God as much as he’s there to complain to God about the hard place he’s in. Rehearsing the calamity he believes is his. Alone with no one to reframe. No one to contest what’s believed. No one to support. Just alone in Satan’s playground where his mind can fall prey to voices of deceit.
He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. I have had enough, LORD, he said, Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors. 1 Kings 19:4.
Listen to the talk, I’m no better than my fathers, than my ancestors. So the truth? His ancestors had failed God, had run from God, had abandoned God. So is this true of him? Well yes, he has failed God being where he should not be. And yes, his fear had caused him to run. But has he abandoned God? Not in any way.
Which brings me to one last observation, when you are in the same place Elijah found himself, fearful and depressed, God tells Elijah what to do - ACT: 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 Meholah to succeed you as prophet. 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. 1 Kings 19:15-17
Elijah given 3 tasks – 1st QUIT RUNNING AND GO BACK. Go back and meet what you are running from head on. Your safety is in Me not a place. True, going back means going back to where Baal has ruled but have you forgotten, those days are gone. Do you no longer believe what was seen? Do you no longer believe what was said?
GO BACK to your place of lies, and meet them by speaking God’s truth into your lies.
If it’s a place of sin, GO BACK, confess it and move on, knowing the truth of God’s word, For as far as the east is from the west, that’s how far God has removed our transgressions from us Ps 103:12 He will cast our sins into the sea of His forgetfulness Mic 7:19 I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more Heb 8:12.
If it’s a place of not being enough, doing enough, feeling enough GO BACK and listen to God’s word, Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland Is 43:18,19. Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus Phil 3:13,14. First forget or perhaps better, ‘let go off’ then press forward. How? By focusing forward.
2ND APPOINT A NEW KING Elijah, Ahab is done which also means Jezebel is done.
3RD APPOINT A NEW PROPHET – a successor. Elijah my work isn’t completed in you. My work is always alive and new in what I am wanting to do. You’re now, find you’re next. Pour into them.
In all of these, God wanting Elijah to know that He was doing a new thing and in that giving Elijah tasks to do so he would take hold of God’s new. It’s a mandate to move from fear and depression to action. Getting up to go, used of God to do His next. Again, focused ahead, beyond yourself.
God giving Elijah tasks to fulfill, which re-engaged him from isolation to transformation, renewed by seeing God’s purpose. Will I understand everything about that? Every question answered? Every route marked out? I won’t but His love has shown you everything you need to know about Him. And in what you don’t know - Never let what you don’t know or don’t understand about God limit your trust in Him.
Could it be this morning that God is saying the very same to you? So you hear God’s word much louder than man’s - living free, forgiven and loved in Jesus.
SERIES FINAL FROM THE BOOK OF 1KINGS ELIJAH THE PROPHET OF GOD
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