BEHIND THE SCENES

1 Kings 18

Last time we thought about Elijah’s faithful obedience even in the hard and trying times God put him through.  He was stranded in a ravine being fed bits of bread by ravens. After the stream in the ravine dried up he was sent to a widow woman in Zarephath in a foreign country where he lived for a long time eating bread cakes from a jar of flour and a jug of oil that God caused to be constantly replenished.  By the way, did you ever notice that God’s provision for his servant employed unclean birds and an unclean, Gentile woman?  God promises to provide but I guess we can’t complain about the way he provides!

We observed how hard all of this had to be on Elijah.  If it had been me in that ravine I would have been very unhappy!  “Why do I have to be here all alone?”  If I had been sent to the far north, to a foreign country, I would have been complaining in my spirit, “Why do I have to be so far from the people I love?  God, couldn’t you have sent me to a widow closer to home?  This is just so unfair!”

Finally, the word of the LORD came to Elijah and told him to go and present himself to Ahab and tell him it was going to rain (18:1).  Elijah returned to his country and as he walked along he ran into Ahab’s overseer, Obadiah.  Obadiah was a devout believer in the LORD who had hidden God’s prophets from Jezebel while she was murdering as many as she could find.  Anyway, when Elijah met Obadiah he asked Obadiah to go tell Ahab that he wanted to meet with him.  As old Paul Harvey used to say, now we’re going to discover “the rest of the story!”  Obadiah’s response to Elijah makes it all clear to us!

⁹ “What have I done wrong,” asked Obadiah, “that you are handing your servant over to Ahab to be put to death? ¹⁰ As surely as the LORD your God lives, there is not a nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to look for you. And whenever a nation or kingdom claimed you were not there, he made them swear they could not find you. ¹¹ But now you tell me to go to my master and say, ‘Elijah is here.’ ¹² I don’t know where the Spirit of the LORD may carry you when I leave you. If I go and tell Ahab and he doesn’t find you, he will kill me. Yet I your servant have worshiped the LORD since my youth. ¹³ Haven’t you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the LORD? I hid a hundred of the LORD’s prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water. ¹⁴ And now you tell me to go to my master and say, ‘Elijah is here.’ He will kill me!” (1 Kings 18:9-14)

Did you see it?  Ahab had been hunting everywhere for Elijah to put him to death.  But Elijah didn’t know that while he was alone hidden in a ravine where no one could find him.  Elijah wasn’t aware of Ahab’s hunt while he was stranded far from home in Zarephath where he went undiscovered.  Through all of Elijah’s hardships and trials God was protecting him!

What are our hardships and trials?  Why are they happening to us?  We don’t know?  Can’t figure it out?  God doesn’t seem to be explaining himself to us?  We may never know!  Or perhaps someday it will all be revealed to us just as it was to Elijah.  God is at work behind the scenes and he is always good and always faithful!  Whatever it is he puts us through is always for our good whether we can see it or not!

TRUSTING THROUGH HARD TIMES

            In 1 Kings 17 we find the account of the drought that God brought upon the nation of Israel.  God sent Elijah to King Ahab to tell him, “…there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word” (v. 1).  Immediately God sent Elijah to hide in a ravine where there was a stream and God told him, “I have ordered the ravens to feed you there” (v. 4).  So Elijah hid in the ravine for some time and the ravens brought him bread and he drank from the stream.

            But after awhile the stream dried up and God sent him out of Israel to Zarephath in the land of the Sidonians on the Mediterranean Sea.  God was again providing for Elijah.  He had commanded a widow there to take care of him.  Upon his arrival in Zarephath, Elijah found the woman and asked her for water and a little bread.  She was at the end of her resources. She only had enough to feed herself and her son one more meal before they would starve to death. 

            Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid.  Go home and do as you have said.  But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.  For this is what the LORD,  the God of Israel, says, ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD gives rain on the land’”(1 Kings17:13, 14).

            Of course the jar of flour and the jug of oil lasted throughout the drought.  Apparently Elijah stayed with the widow and her son because the first verse of chapter 18 says, “After a long time, in the third year, the word of the LORD came to Elijah: ‘Go and present yourself to Ahab and I will send rain on the land.’  So Elijah went…”

            Here’s what I see here.  Elijah had been suffering in very trying circumstances while he was hidden in the ravine.  Yes, God had been faithful to him and had provided for him but he was still alone and it couldn’t have been all that pleasant to eat bread brought by ravens!  Then the brook dried up!  Imagine how Elijah must have felt about that!  It was then that God gave Elijah the directions to go to the widow in a foreign country.  Elijah went.  Do you see what happens here?  Elijah continued to obey God and trust God even though he had been through so much.

            Then he ends up stranded with a widow and her son far to the north in Sidon for a couple of years.  What lessons can we see here?  First, Elijah suffered greatly and his suffering was not the result of his sin.  Neither were the hardships suffered by the land directed at him.  He was suffering due to collateral damage.  How do we feel when we go through really hard times and can’t figure out why?  Is there anger?  Frustration?  Does our faith begin to fade?  Still, in the midst of his suffering Elijah believed God and trusted him.  How do we know this?  He obeyed!

            Simply, this is the lesson that comes to me through this passage.  To put it in more modern language, when I’m going through very difficult trials it’s not always all about me!  It may very well have to do with what God is doing around me and I’m in the middle of it.  The real test of faith is obedience.  Will I continue to demonstrate my faith and trust in God by pressing on in obedience even when I can’t see what he is doing in my life?

WHEN GOD SURPRISES US

            God had warned Solomon that because of his unfaithfulness he was going to tear the kingdom away from his son (1 Kings 11:9-13).  Jeroboam, one of Solomon’s officials was the one to begin the rebellion.  When Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, refused to lighten the burden his father had placed upon the people, Jeroboam led the tribes of Israel away and the people made him king (1 Kings 12:20).  Then we read this in 1 Kings 12:21-24:

When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he mustered the whole house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin—a hundred and eighty thousand fighting men—to make war against the house of Israel and to regain the kingdom for Rehoboam son of Solomon.  But this word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God: “Say to Rehoboam son of Solomon king of Judah, to the whole house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, ‘This is what the LORD says: Do not go up to fight against your brothers, the Israelites.  Go home, every one of you for this is my doing.’” So they obeyed the word of the LORD and went home again, as the LORD had ordered.

            I was thinking about this passage from the perspective of the army, the officers and the soldiers, who were gathered to go to war against their brothers from the northern tribes.  They all knew Rehoboam was the rightful heir to the throne in Jerusalem.  He was the son of King Solomon who was the son of the great king, David.  Solomon had built the temple of Jehovah in Jerusalem.  God had richly blessed him with wisdom and wealth.  Their armies had conquered vast territories while defeating all their enemies.  From the perspective of the army of Judah, their northern brothers had no right to rebel against their king and break up the kingdom that had been established by God!  They must have been absolutely confident in the righteousness of their cause!  They marched in the name of Jehovah and in the names of David and Solomon and their heir, Rehoboam.  There could be no doubt that they were doing the right thing.

            So imagine their surprise when Shemaiah, the prophet, came to them with the word of God and commanded them to go home and abandon this fight!  Imagine how shocked they were to hear God say that this split of the kingdom was his doing!  It made no sense!  The men of Judah had made a mistake.  Even though all the evidence of the situation showed that they were doing the right thing, they were going against God!  What they had failed to do was to seek the guidance of God before they acted!

            It’s almost frightening to think about how often something like this can happen to us.  How many times have I marched off to do something “for God” without first seeking his guidance and direction?  How many times have I made a mistake and done the wrong thing because I have acted on what the preponderance of the evidence indicates?  What this passage says to me is that I need to be in very close communication with the Lord all the time.  That’s the only way to ensure that I don’t do what I think is the right thing only to find out that I’ve acted against something God is doing.

            God’s message to me is that I need to slow down and wait upon him to show me what he is doing before I rush off to do what seems to be the best thing in my own eyes.  If I don’t take the time to listen to his voice I will surely cause more damage than that which I’m trying to correct!