Reliance - Miracle, Cave, Revelation

[00:00:00] And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.

[00:00:17] And when he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree, and he prayed that he might die, and said, It is enough. Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my father's.

[00:00:40] Then, as he lay and slept under a broom tree, suddenly an angel touched him, and said to him, Arise, and eat. Then he looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again. Then the angel of the Lord came back the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise, and eat, because the journey is too great for you. So he arose, and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights as far as Horeb, the mountain of God.

[00:01:10] And there he went into a cave, and spent the night in that place. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? So he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life. Lord, we thank you for your word.

[00:01:35] We thank you for your mercy, for your protection, and for sustaining, God, us through your scripture, and by your Holy Spirit, that you would equip us to stand firm in the day in which you have called us to live. God, you have spoken over our lives that we are yours, that we have become members of your family, born again and saved by the precious blood of Jesus.

[00:02:05] Thank you, Jesus, for the cross. Thank you for your mercy, and your grace, and your love. We declare that you are holy, and worthy, and righteous, and true, and faithful, above all things, in all things, through all things, and for all things. God, we love you, and we bless your holy name.

[00:02:27] Holy Spirit, fill us, lead us, and yield our wills to yours, God, as we seek to accomplish what you would have us to do in this generation. Open our eyes, Lord, and show us, Holy Spirit, what we need to see.

[00:02:45] God, this is a pivotal time, a critical time, where your people must understand who they are, who they are in you, and what they are to do in every situation, in every circumstance. And Lord, I don't have the word for them specifically, but you do. God, you know exactly what they need to hear.

[00:03:10] You know exactly who needs to hear what we are speaking right now. So, God, I pray that you would arrange and architect things so that everyone who needs to hear this message is able to hear it. God, we declare that you are sovereign over all things, and at all times, and that there is nothing impossible for you.

[00:03:36] Lord, I pray that you would protect your people, that you would lift up your people, that you would continue to establish your people in your victorious ways, that love would be demonstrated, that life would be shown forth, and that your supernatural power would be evident in everything that we do. God, we bless you, and pray that you would help us to understand what you are speaking to us in this generation from this story.

[00:04:06] God, you are good. Help us to meditate on your word, and on your law, and on who you are in your mighty salvation, together and with you. We love you, Lord. We bless you. In Jesus' name, amen. The full context of this narrative that I read from 1 Kings chapter 19 goes back to Elijah overcoming the prophets of Baal.

[00:04:36] There is the whole imbroglio with all of these different kings in Israel and Judah and the back and forth and the war and the cycle of betrayal and rebellion and repentance and dynastical changes and words of prophecy being spoken that come to pass.

[00:05:01] And there's an endless field of study that could be deployed towards these topics. But there's a pattern here about this intermezzo, this moment where Elijah escapes, has doubts, is fed and nourished and then goes in strength,

[00:05:23] and then receives a mighty revelation from God about what is to come in the future and who is going to come after him and to follow his anointing. Of course, this is the prophet Elisha who asks for a double anointing and receives it in terms of the supernatural miracles that he is said to have performed in Scripture.

[00:05:48] But in the meantime, Elijah has this wild swing where he goes into a place where he's praying that the Lord would take his life and then he has to be spiritually nourished and physically nourished so that he would go to where he is going to encounter God next.

[00:06:13] Now, I want to zoom in here on what the angel of the Lord who was sent to minister to Elijah says. Now, what did Elijah say? And this is sort of the classic piece of sermon approach here when it comes to prayer. Elijah says, So, Elijah is praying here that he might die.

[00:06:43] Scripture is unambiguous about that in the middle of verse 4. And instead of answering that prayer, the Lord sends his angel to bring food. There is a cake baked on coals and a jar of water. So, we have some form of bread, some form of water. And so, God did not answer the prayer directly or literally.

[00:07:08] And as many of us would admit, it is probably a good thing that God does not answer every single prayer that we have in a literal way. It's the subject of many jokes. When people have wishes and they wish for things, there's a misinterpretation. It's not what they meant, etc., etc. Like, this isn't an input-output kind of machine.

[00:07:32] We're dealing with a genuine living being, the God of the universe who understands what we want and understands what we need even before we say it or acknowledge the needs ourselves. And lo and behold, he is well able to put us in the positions where our needs can be met. But in a season, before this comes through, Elijah isn't having his needs met.

[00:08:02] He has this depth of desire. And it's hard to read between the lines all the way in terms of what brings about this fear on the back of the mighty miracle that he had performed. And I can only imagine that we certainly wouldn't ourselves want to be arrogant and say, Well, if I were in that position, I wouldn't have run away. I wouldn't have been concerned. I would have looked around and said, God, you just won this victory.

[00:08:31] That was nothing to you. It didn't deplete any of your power. So now I'm going to win a victory against the next set of people who are coming against not me but you like that to defame your name and to put down the glory of your great name. I would like to say that I would have done something like that in that situation.

[00:08:52] However, it would be extraordinarily lacking in humility to say, Oh, yes, for sure. I could have gone back there and behaved in a different way. And notice that just because something good has happened in the past or just because something has just happened that's good,

[00:09:17] it doesn't mean that that will have the kind of staying power that is going to keep us through all calamities or all challenges or all threats. Just because something went right yesterday, that doesn't necessarily allow us to stand firm today. And here I'm talking in more general terms about the day-to-day affairs of life.

[00:09:43] I mean, hopefully, prayerfully, God willing, most of us don't go around getting into violent confrontations with prophets and then receiving threats from the rulers of the nation on our own life. It's never a dull moment here for Elijah.

[00:10:00] But what we should understand is that that kind of pattern, that kind of threat, it is so real and so human. If the Bible were interested in portraying its prophets as superhuman or unnatural or over-the-top powerful in any kind of exaggerated or hyperbolic way,

[00:10:25] then what is this doing in there if this is just a human creation meant to propagandize in favor of the prophets? It's a very unusual piece of the text, but it shows how when you win a victory, when a victory is won for you, if we're being more precise, that doesn't mean that the strength of that victory is automatically going to last forever.

[00:10:51] You can imagine after that kind of defeat, the enemy is going to be looking for any possible way to throw Elijah off because such a mighty victory has been won and in a very direct kind of fashion. So we should all be advised in the broadest possible terms that if we have Christianity in our families

[00:11:15] and our parents and grandparents, other things like that, that does not automatically transfer to us. Our parents and our families, when we were children, had a responsibility from the Lord, provided they were believers, to raise us up in the way that we should go. And that can be more or less successful depending on who you are and where you come from

[00:11:41] and what that relationship is like, but we have the same kind of responsibility. And even when there's a win, I think we see this more clearly with kids in one way, shape, or form. There's a tendency that they have for bringing out deep truths in their own actions. And consider the following scenario. One of your children has just had an amazing day. They got an award at school.

[00:12:11] They came home super smiley. They ate their food well. They're feeling good. They're healthy. Big win. Big wins all around. They're smiling from ear to ear. They tell you, I love today. I had such a wonderful day. I wish every day could be like this day. And then the next day, it's not.

[00:12:30] And it almost seems like that good day vanished completely because of the demands of the day itself. And the same thing is happening here with Elijah. He wins a mighty battle. But to a certain extent, it's logical.

[00:12:50] In grand warfare, in physical battle, in conflicts between militaries, for instance, just because you win a battle doesn't mean that you can rest or take a break or let your guard down. Thinking here most specifically about World War I when people are fighting through the trenches. Taking the next trench doesn't mean, okay, this is going to be a permanent victory.

[00:13:18] Sometimes you get pushed out extremely soon after that. But in our lives, we don't typically face all these dramatic situations. And yet that pattern still continues. If your child has a bad day the next day and they're disobedient, they're talking back, they don't feel perfectly well, that original day might just sort of vanish into thin air.

[00:13:43] And so it's up to us to follow the instruction that we have in Scripture from God to recall and to remember the works of the Lord. To put ourselves back in that time of God's delivery of us and God's healing of us and God's just making a way where there wasn't a way.

[00:14:05] And we have to actively do this because we can see how easily the impact of those things can slip away. And if we have, as part of our spiritual disciplines, a prayer journal, a general journal, praise reports, other things like that, anything that we've kept down, it's wise to revisit that every so often, every couple of months or so.

[00:14:34] Because if you look back at the things that God has done, you'll see so many different things, especially if you practice gratitude and writing down these things on a regular basis as they come up. It's very important to do this for the purposes of, amongst other things, having an anchor in these kind of Elijah times when he flees to the cave. Wouldn't it be nice?

[00:15:01] Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Lord brought to his mind and encouraged him what had just happened, what had happened in prior weeks and months and years? And so when God is active on our behalf and we see it and we acknowledge it and we appreciate it and we worship him for it and we give him praise and honor and we continue to seek his guidance,

[00:15:25] let us, brothers and sisters, not let that immediately lead into a letting down of our guard so that any minor nuance or annoyance or frustration can get in our way and cause the entire positive impact of what God has done in a particular situation to evaporate into thin air and to be gone.

[00:15:53] We need to be actively recalling these things. It's much easier to begin to recall points of failure and challenges and difficulties and everything else of that nature. And prayerfully, for brothers and sisters in Christ, I would hope and pray that you are on your way to the point, or perhaps have arrived, that when those things get called to mind,

[00:16:20] that now you're on the other side of them by the grace of God. And you can point back and say, well, here's what happened, but here's how God worked through it. That my faith was refined. I was honed. I was made more passionate, more fruitful, more compassionate, more loving. I was equipped and given skill sets. I've seen God now do things that I never thought I could see before. And so when we reflect on those negatives,

[00:16:50] I pray that they would be turned into a testimony of glory and God's deliverance. And that is ultimately what happens when Elijah is visited by the angel of the Lord and receives nourishment and then supernaturally goes to Mount Horeb. And then he receives this mighty revelation. He gets that kind of direction.

[00:17:15] And all of a sudden, this cloud, this fog, this spirit over him lifts and is broken. And he is back where he should have been in the first place. So why the intermezzo? Why is it important for us to know this? Another second point. Rather than the macro, we're going to zoom in. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that as we read verses 5 through 8 again,

[00:17:44] see if you pick up what the common criticism of Elijah is here and why that might not be accurate. I'll give you a hint. It has to do with the fact that he gets fed twice. So let's read the passage again. Then as he lay, he here is Elijah, and slept under a broom tree. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, Arise and eat. Then he looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water.

[00:18:14] So he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came back the second time and touched him and said, Arise and eat because the journey is too great for you. So he arose and ate and drank, and he went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights as far as Horeb, the mountain of God. Now, it might appear to us that we could say something like,

[00:18:36] well, why on earth would Elijah need to eat and drink multiple times? Was he just that hungry that he needed another portion? He went back for seconds here, so to speak. And from my perspective, we know what happens in the end, but it's a bit of a curious thing. Like, is Elijah being lazy? Is he still fearful?

[00:19:05] Is he taking his time to work his courage back up after abandoning the mission field that he had been put in and succumbing to fear? It could very well be that he continued to be out of sorts and not ready for this. But I think the charge of laziness against Elijah is also unwarranted. Just like I think the charge of us being stupefied that he would end up in this cave in the first place

[00:19:35] is unwarranted because we might very well end up in the same place ourselves. We should be appropriately humble. Think about the miracles that Elijah performed. We shouldn't just immediately jump to the conclusion that he's being unfaithful or all over the place or lazy in this particular case. So I don't think that's what's going on, but ask yourself, was Elijah obedient to the call of the angel of the Lord?

[00:20:04] Well, what does the angel say to him in verse 5? This is the first angel. Arise and eat. Did he do that? He did. The first angel didn't say, arise and eat and go find this person and recruit them. Like go to Horeb where you're going to receive a mighty word from God. That's not what he got at first. He got the command to arise and eat.

[00:20:30] Now, I suppose we could then get into a more technical linguistic discussion of to what extent hermeneutically as we interpret the Bible, as we look at it, how much can we say that there may be other commands or other instructions given by the angel that simply aren't recorded because they're individualized, not part of the narrative.

[00:20:58] Again, this goes to how the books of the Bible are constructed, how they are preserved, the ultimate narrative source of these things, etc., etc. So I am perfectly willing, more subjective and functional and technologically savvy and other approaches aside from a hermeneutic perspective. I'm perfectly content to simply say that the command that Elijah was given started and stopped at arise and eat.

[00:21:28] So he was being obedient. I think it's legitimate for us to say he's not being lazy. The command that he was given was arise and eat, and he arose and ate and drank. And then he laid down again. So it can appear like, oh, he's having some snacks and then he's going to take another nap. But I don't think that's what's going on. I would like to imagine if the angel of the Lord touched him and said, arise and eat and

[00:21:57] be strengthened and go, then that's what would have happened. But there wasn't that follow-up command. And so the angel of the Lord came back the second time. This is the second visit, touched him again and amended the instruction, amended the command. The second time, this is in verse 7, the angel of the Lord says, arise and eat because the journey is too great for you.

[00:22:22] Now, here is where we might say, well, how does Elijah know which way to go? And I think, brothers and sisters, we should be content to say there is an angel of the Lord who's appeared to him. There is supernatural efficacy all over this man's life and all over this situation. And so even if we say the angel may be needing to specify what the journey is, that knowledge

[00:22:52] could also be imparted to Elijah directly. Just similarly as the revelation that is going to come is. It comes from God. It's given to Elijah. So he may have this information in a means and through which we don't have access to. So, again, leaving aside all of the different components of the parsing and this, that, and the

[00:23:17] other thing and the precision, note that I think it's reasonable as a read to say that Elijah wasn't being lazy. He was just following the instruction to arise and eat. And then there's a follow-up instruction, more arising, more eating because the journey is too great for you. So why does he need that? Why does he need to arise and eat? Well, because he's receiving physical sustenance but also spiritual sustenance. He's learning to rely on the Lord.

[00:23:46] And he's learning that even in this dark place where he is praying for his life to be ended, that the Lord will answer him and that the Lord will guide him concretely. That the Lord will be faithful to fulfill his promises because we don't have to make the journey in our own strength. If you look at what is ahead, if you look at where you've been, maybe you feel like Elijah. In the past, there have been some wonderful things.

[00:24:15] Maybe you've even won some major victories in your life and for the sake of the Lord and for the sake of his kingdom. And you knew, proved positive, that the Holy Spirit was pleased with these things, that this is pleasing to God. And then all of a sudden, a word comes about the Middle East, about the economy, about your job, about your family's health, about your health, about any number of different things. And we run to the cave.

[00:24:40] And when God finds us and sees us in that condition, God himself ministers to us. Notice that the Lord didn't send a different prophet to come get him. The Lord went right there and dispatched an angel to bring about communication and to bring about a message. Arise and eat. Now, maybe if Elijah had the opportunity, and he wasn't so tired apparently, he could have

[00:25:09] asked, well, what is this for? Like, what's going on? He could have gathered some additional information that might have been helpful. But we don't have that in our text, so we don't want to superimpose it. We don't want to run an isogetic process where we're reading things into the text. But we should be reading what actually is in the text because the angel of the Lord comes back and says, arise and eat. So same command as at first. So we're going to repeat that.

[00:25:37] And it's because the journey is too great for you. Now, again, this doesn't seem like a perfectly clear, direct A to Z type of plan. But that is the way that life works. It's a little bit more messy than we might imagine. Things devolve into greater and greater entropy and disorder.

[00:26:03] And we have to work really hard to inoculate ourselves against that downward inertia. And we need to understand that the journey is too great for us. Because if not, we're going to embark on it with insufficient tools, insufficient expertise, insufficient ability to make an impact. And that should be our focus. How can I make an impact?

[00:26:29] Elijah did turn inward and recognize that he was in a fearful state. But he also has his ministry to think about. He has the victory that he just won to recollect. And even in light of that, he is being obedient, but he's stuck in the cave. And now he has the call. There's a journey for him, just as there's a journey for us.

[00:26:56] And I dare say, brothers and sisters, we would be misrepresenting ourselves and the real world if we said that, no, the journey isn't too great for us. Then we haven't fully accomplished a perspective where we understand more of what God's journey for us actually is. Because if we had a bigger picture there and we understood what the journey actually consisted

[00:27:23] of, then it would be very easy for us to say that the journey is too great for us. Because we would see the full measure of the dependence on God that we are going to need in order to walk these things out. But the good news is, at the end of this, whether you think that Elijah was just being obedient or was being stubborn and lazy or maybe just overwhelmed by the fact that there's an angel of the Lord there,

[00:27:46] whether you look at him sort of sideways because he went from this mighty victory into this place of weakness and asking to be removed. But in any event, when he received that nourishment, when he obeyed that word to arise and eat, and he received the motivation and the understanding as to why he needed to do these things, verse 8 says,

[00:28:10] And to me, that's amazing and incredible that the Lord is so merciful and so righteous and so true and had called Elijah for this time and needed him for this purpose that the Lord simply equipped him,

[00:28:35] moved on, allowed him to be in this cave, met him where he was, pulled him out, reminded him of the impossibility of the journey in his own strength, and gave him exactly what he needed to supernaturally conduct this journey. And Elijah says, I alone am left. He has been very zealous. So his heart is not healed just because he received physical nourishment.

[00:29:05] His fear is not totally gone, even though he just went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights. He goes as far to that as to answer the question, what are you doing here, Elijah? Hearing directly from God, he launches into a complaint. He says, I have done all of these great things, but now I am afraid. I alone am left and they seek to take my life.

[00:29:33] Now, again, are we really going to go in for saying Elijah here has the wrong attitude because he's taking credit for these things as opposed to giving glory to God? I mean, I'm not going to parse that. It's certainly not my place to exegete and pass judgment one way or the other on Elijah, famous, wonderful, man of faith, mighty prophet of God.

[00:30:00] I think this is just the way that we talk. I think this is just the way that we talk to God in these situations. When we are fearful, when we are complaining, when we're upset in many ways, we are not necessarily the most careful with our words. And, you know, when pressed, if properly structured in terms of a conversation,

[00:30:25] we might make some concessions here for the sake of actual technical literal accuracy. And, you know, Elijah may feel like he alone is left, but he may have a probabilistic sense that that's not true. So either way, we have this tendency ourselves. And so Elijah goes from miracle to cave to revelation,

[00:30:51] all the while complaining and seeking to be separated, basically doing everything that he can to give up. But God won't let him. And God nourishes him and reminds him that the journey that he is on is more involved, more powerful, more great, more difficult than he is able to sustain. But do you know what?

[00:31:19] That is a good thing because that means that the journey is too important for us to take into our own hands. We must, whether it's raising our families, making key decisions for our households, trying to be breadwinners, making precautionary provisions for future contingencies. Anything that we do, anything that we do,

[00:31:45] we have to do it in confidence and in obedience to the call of God. And so many get swept up and caught up in headlines and different emotions that we will even forget the many mighty victories that happened recently, even on our behalf. You know, what would it say about us if we encountered a situation where, praise God, someone gets healed of cancer,

[00:32:14] it gets put into remission by the power of the Holy Spirit stupefying the doctors. The very next day, that doesn't prevent fear from reentering. It doesn't prevent bitterness from continuing this well. In fact, you can make an argument that once one of those blockages is removed, spiritually, unless we are very diligent about our prayer and about our devotion and about our focus on spiritual warfare, that these other things may use it as an opportunity to try and poke through,

[00:32:44] to try and undermine us. I wonder what was whispering in Elijah's ear when he prayed that he wants to die. Why? Because that prayer was not fully inspired by the Lord. It wasn't the right apprehension of the situation. Elijah was a wonderful man of God. And again, I'm not making any of these comments about this passage to cast aspersions on him.

[00:33:13] What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to call out that this mighty man of God, who we rightfully look up to as an incredible prophet, went through a period where in between a miracle and a revelation, in between a victory and just a powerful pronouncement over his life, from God directly, in between these two points, he went into a cave and wanted everything to be done with.

[00:33:42] He was over it, to put it mildly. And so we have to understand that this is something that can happen in ourselves. We have to learn how to celebrate the victories better. We have to remember the good things. We have to think on things that are pure and holy and righteous. We have to remind ourselves to avoid falling into this fear and intimidation and anxiety and everything else like that.

[00:34:12] And we have to understand that it's the Lord who's going to nourish us. So let's be obedient. Let's receive that nourishment from the Lord. If you figure that you are right now in a cave season, maybe you're in the initial victory season. Watch out for the tendency that would shove you into going into a cave. Maybe you're in the cave right now. Arise and eat. The journey is too great for you. Strengthen yourself. Allow the Lord to lift you up and encourage you.

[00:34:42] And maybe you're at that place of the next revelation. Well, cherish it with all your heart. Cherish that guidance, that leading, and the incredible boost it can give you to know that the Holy Spirit is leading you, is leading your family. There's nothing more secure than being in his will, even if that takes you to places that are extremely challenging in terms of your faith.

[00:35:10] So Lord, we thank you for this time. We thank you for this example of your mighty servant, Elijah. He is so wonderful and such an example to us about the triumph of faith, the battles that go on, how to understand them, how to see victories in this time.

[00:35:35] And I pray, Lord, that you would bless our hands, bless the work of our hands, God. Help us as we go forth and seek your will and earnestly desire to follow you and to be obedient. Help our hearts to do that, Lord. Only you. Only you have the power, the grace, the authority, and the love to establish us the way that we are intended to be established.

[00:36:02] God, you are good and your mercy endures forever. And I pray that you would particularly bless each and every person listening, that you would guide them, that you would lead them, that you would nourish them, that you would show them what the call is on their lives at this time, that you would lead them step by step, moment by moment. Holy Spirit, that nothing would slip through the cracks, that nothing would ever prosper against your people.

[00:36:30] God, raise us up so that we can go from miracle to revelation. Help us to stay out of those caves. And if we find ourselves in one, and maybe someone is right now, Lord, help us. Call us to arise and to eat and to go forth. Send us back into a place where we can be effective for you again or for the first time.

[00:36:58] Use our lives to bear fruit in this generation, Jesus. We honor you. We praise you. And we declare that you are worthy of it all. All power, all glory, all honor, forever and ever. In Jesus' name, amen.