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!