These are reflections from my morning quiet time with God today.
Look “And the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.’” (1 Kings 17:24) In this passage, a widow from Zarephath speaks to Elijah the prophet. Sometime before, he had come to her at God’s direction, because the brook from which he’d been drinking water during the drought dried up. God had told Elijah that this widow would prepare a meal for him. When Elijah approached her, the widow had only a small amount of flour and oil. Elijah assured her that this supply would never run out and that if she prepared cakes for him, she, her son, and Elijah himself would live. That’s what happened for a long time. Then, one day, the widow’s son died. She was certain that, despite God’s provision, God had sent Elijah to remind her of her sin and to kill her son (1 Kings 17:18). Elijah then appealed to God and God brought the boy back to life. It’s at this moment that the widow affirmed her belief that Elijah was a man of God who spoke the Word of God. Listen It seems strange that only here does the widow make this affirmation. For three years, she acted on Elijah’s assurance that, because he was God’s prophet, “the handful of flour and..little oil in a jug” (1 Kings 17:12) would sustain the three of them. She’d acted as though she believed. When there was just enough for her and her son to fix one final paltry meal, then die, she could have told Elijah to go packing. But she hadn’t done that. She fixed a cake for the prophet and found enough flour and oil to make one for her son and herself, too. This had gone on for maybe three years (1 Kings 18:1). Everyday, the widow went to the same nearly empty bag of flour and nearly empty jug of oil and found enough to feed the three of them. It appears that she acted on faith and had done so for some time. Yet when her son dies, we see her doubts. She doubts Elijah’s office as God’s prophet, doubts her own worthiness of God’s forgiveness, and doubts, it seems, that God has had anything to do with the provision He’s made for her all this time. It’s only after God answers Elijah’s prayers for her son to be given life again that she tells Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” What I find remarkable and laudable about this woman is that she acts in faith even when she’s not feeling it. Faith, like love, isn’t something you always feel. It’s something you act on, living out of trust in God, even when you’re not feeling so trusting. Jesus’ death and resurrection affirm Him to be the same God that Elijah served and that He has power to set all who believe in Him free from sin, death, and futility. Jesus’ death and resurrection vindicate our faith in God. The changed and changing lives of those we know who dare to follow Jesus also vindicate such faith. That’s true even when, like the widow, I’m not feeling it. My call is to keep following the God I meet in Jesus no matter how I’m feeling. And I’m called to keep sharing Him in times of drought and surfeit, joy and sorrow, hope and despair. No matter what, the God we meet in Jesus Christ is still God. I can trust in Him. Response Father, forgive my despair. Forgive me for taking You for granted or not thinking of You at all. Forgive too, my reliance on my feelings and thoughts rather than on Your truth. Christ is crucified, risen, and ascended even when I’m not feeling it, even when I can’t understand it. Help me today to trust in You. Help me to act on a faith already vindicated by my Savior Jesus. In His name I pray. Amen
[The painting is by Bernardo Strozzi [1581-1644] and is called Prophet Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta.]
Pastor H. Beecher Hicks, Jr. calls our life’s crises, storms. Like storms, crises can toss us around, make us lose our bearings, challenge our stability, make us wonder whether we’re going to go under or stand upright. Hicks says that in this life, we are either about to go into a storm, are in a storm, or have just emerged from a storm. I think he’s right.
Some of our storms--or crises--are self-inflicted through our own sin or carelessness.
Others come from the devil.
Others God allows in order to help us grow in our faith and character.
Others can be caused by those in our families or churches.
But whatever their source, crises are an inevitable part of life in this fallen and imperfect world. The real question for the Christian disciple in the midst of a crisis is not, “How can I avoid having crises in my life?”
The question should be, “How will I handle the next crisis to come my way?”
Elijah was the greatest prophet of Old Testament times. A prophet is one who speaks God’s Word fearlessly.
When people have wandered from God, the prophet’s job is to confront people with God’s commands.
When people suffer or are tempted by sin or feel convicted for the sins they’ve already committed, or when they feel discouraged or overwhelmed or empty, the prophet is to speak God’s seemingly impossible Word of hope and grace and forgiveness to them.
The prophet’s message, whether it brings comfort to those the self-righteous consider unworthy or confrontation to those who deem themselves righteous, is often viewed with skepticism or hostility.
That means that prophets have to be confident in God, not in people.
Prophets must be unafraid of human opposition, willing to stand with God no matter what.
Elijah spoke God’s Word with boldness, conviction, and faith.
Yet today’s first lesson, 1 Kings 19:1-8, finds Elijah in a crisis under which he nearly crumbles. Just a short time earlier, at God’s direction, Elijah had engaged in a contest on Mount Carmel with the prophets of the false Canaanite deity, Baal. Through Elijah, God showed His people once again that there is only one God and King of all creation, the God Who, today, through faith in His Son Jesus saves us from sin and death.
The contest at Mount Carmel was the greatest triumph of Elijah’s career as a prophet, God’s proof that the words proclaimed by Elijah had, all along, been God’s Word. Elijah was vindicated and victorious!
It was exactly at that moment that Elijah’s crisis began. Through Elijah and his experience in today’s first lesson, God can teach us how to cope with the crises in our lives.
Look at verse 1: “Now Ahab [Ahab was the seventh king of Israel, the breakaway northern kingdom that came into being after the reign of King Solomon] told Jezebel [Ahab’s wife] everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets [of Baal] with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, ‘May the gods [notice she doesn’t acknowledge the one God of the world, as God’s people had been taught by God Himself; she worships the false idol, Baal] deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” Jezebel vowed that within twenty-four hours, she would be sure that Elijah was dead.
So, how did Elijah, this great prophet, so recently victorious and vindicated, react?
Our lesson tells us. “Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said.”
Do you know the first thing that often happens to Christians when we confront a crisis?
Our memory goes.
Faced with temptation, we sometimes forget how destructive sin is, how it can destroy our relationship with God and harm others.
Faced with unwelcome news or a challenging problem, we forget how God has helped us face past unwelcome news and challenging problems; we think we’re on our own.
Faced with the reality of a sin we’ve committed, we either forget how God’s Law teaches us the seriousness of our sin or we forget that the God we know in Jesus Christ died and rose so that sinners like us can experience God’s forgiveness and live new lives.
In his moment of crisis, Elijah forgot the power of God Who had just given him victory at Mount Carmel.
Crises may be inevitable in this life, but we always make them worse when we focus on the crisis instead of focusing on God!
Elijah focused on Jezebel when he should have focused on God.
Elijah does turn to God. But his prayer doesn’t, at this moment anyway, mark him as a profile in courage. He prays to God: “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Elijah prayed for the easy way out. Rather than confront his crisis, Elijah wants to be dead.
I know that feeling. When the denomination of which many of us were part fully affirmed in 2009 that it was rejecting the authority of God's Word and the truth of the Lutheran confessions, I remember telling Ann that I had been born too late; I preferred being dead to living and facing the reality that the Christian denomination in which I had so believed--so believed--had now turned from God. I could easily have been persuaded to pray a prayer like Elijah's. And, less dramatically, I have often prayed for the easy way out in my life as a Christian.
Even Jesus, God in human flesh, did this as He confronted the prospect of the cross. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed that if it were possible, God the Father would remove the cup of suffering and death from Him that He had come into the world to bear. But then Jesus prayed in Luke 22:42 “yet not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus knew that the only way to the resurrection is through the cross.
The only way to make it through a crisis is to go through a crisis with the God we know in Christ and trust Him to get us to the other side.
Jesus' resurrection is the certain proof for those who believe in Him that He can do this, take us through the crisis to the other side.
The next thing that Elijah did after running away from Jezebel, was sleep. Sleep can be a way of avoiding a crisis, you know, especially those crises associated with sustained depression.
But sleep can also be part of the rest and restoration we need to face our crises. This is especially true when, like Elijah, we’ve prayed for God’s help.
It’s true that God didn’t give the help that Elijah asked for; God didn’t bring death to Elijah. (In fact, Elijah is one of two Old Testament people who never died, but were simply transferred to heaven. In Elijah's case, I think this shows that God has a great sense of humor.)
But when we pray for God’s help with our crises, even when we have suggestions on the type of help God may offer us, we’re really inviting God in to do what He thinks best. To reach up in helplessness and need to the God we know in Jesus Christ is to give him total access to our lives.
It was good that Elijah did just that, because God had more for the prophet to do on this earth, just as I’ve learned, much to my joy and happiness, that God has had more for me to do as a pastor since those dark days nine years ago when I thought I’d be better off dead than facing the greatest crisis of my pastoral career.
Twice in the midst of Elijah’s long nap, God sent an angel to feed Elijah bread and water. The reason was simple. Verse 7: [The angel touched Elijah and said;] “‘Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.’ So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.”
God was sending Elijah to Mount Horeb, which is another name for Mount Sinai, the place where God gave His Law to Moses. It was 200 miles from where Elijah was at that moment. He needed strength from God!
When you’re going through a crisis, know that God has not forgotten you, even though you may sometimes forget God. Psalm 121:8 promises all who trust in God: “the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” Even when we confront crises.
Through Jesus and our faith in Him, as Jesus reminds us in today’s gospel lesson, we already have--long before our own deaths and resurrections--life with God! That life belongs to us in times of crisis and times of calm, as we live, as we die. As was true of Elijah, God has plans for us...as individuals, as a congregation. Never forget that! We all have either just come through a crisis, are going through a crisis, or are headed for a crisis. But we can weather our crises faithfully if we learn the lessons today’s incident from Elijah’s life teaches us:
focus on God, instead of the fear induced by the crisis;
commit to going through the crisis with God, rather than sidestepping it or running from it;
trust that God will respond to our prayers, usually in ways we couldn’t have imagined;
trust that God will give us what we need for the next step in our journeys--just as God strengthened Elijah with bread and water; and
finally, trust that God has plans for us, plans that no crisis can derail.
Crises come in this world. Some may even rob of us our earthly lives. But in Christ, we have a God Who can take us through every single of them...even beyond death. His grace can give us peace and hope no matter what! Amen
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
1 Kings 19:9-18
In his fantastic book, The Power of a Whisper, Pastor Bill Hybels, tells what happened to him one day after he prayed this prayer: “God, if there is something you would like me to do…then please say so. It doesn’t matter what it is; I’ll do it.”
He had no idea how God might answer that prayer. But in a few days, Hybels and his wife Lynne were leaving the funeral of his aunt and getting into their car when he “spotted a frail, elderly woman pulling into [a] nearby apartment complex.” He saw the woman park her car, then “slowly and laboriously pull grocery bags out of her trunk.” Hybels sensed God’s Holy Spirit telling him, “How about helping that woman with her groceries?”
Initially, Hybels says, he tried to brush past this holy whisper. It seemed so mundane. But he remembered his prayer.
He approached the elderly woman, asking if he could help her. Relieved, she said, “Oh, yes! Thank you!”
As Hybels tells it: “The driveway leading back to her apartment recently had been seal-coated and was roped off, meaning residents had to walk a few hundred yards just to get from their cars to their homes.” Hybels knew he was helping to fill a real need, especially when the woman handed him a thirty-pound bag of peaches even he found a little hard to handle.
As Hybels tells it, the woman led him “through backyards that had become swamps due to recent rains…” She was “extremely arthritic and slow-moving.” It took thirty minutes for them just to make their way to the woman’s apartment!
After he had helped her to empty the sacks, she reached her hand out to Hybels and said, “I will believe to my dying day that God sent you to help me just now.” As inglorious as it all seemed, Hybels was sure she was right.
Our first Bible lesson for today recounts a conversation between God and the prophet Elijah. It raises an important question: Does God still speak to believers in 2011, the way He spoke to his prophet in the ninth-century BC or was Hybels’ direct message from God a figment of an overly spiritual imagination? What does the Bible say?
Pull out the pew Bibles for a moment, please, and turn to 1 Samuel 3:1, on page 158. The verse tells about when God called a young boy named Samuel to be a priest, judge, and prophet. It says: “Now the boy Samuel ministered to the LORD before Eli. [And this is the part to which I want to call particular attention:] And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no widespread revelation.” That last sentence has always interested me because of is its unspoken assumption that, throughout much of ancient Israel’s history, God commonly spoke to His especially called people, like prophets. The era before Samuel’s call apparently, was a rare time when the connection between God and His people grew spotty.
Centuries after Samuel, after God came into the world in the person of Jesus and after Jesus died and rose and sent the Holy Spirit to believers in the Church, it wasn’t just to prophets and priests that God spoke. It was to all believers. In the pew Bibles, take a look at Acts, chapter 2, starting at verse 17, on page 627. On Pentecost, Peter is explaining how ordinary people who believed in Jesus were telling others about God’s mighty works. He explained how such a thing was possible by remembering the ancient words of the prophet Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh…”
In fact, throughout the book of Acts, which tells the story of the early Church, we’re told how God’s people prayed and God directed them. The Bible assumes that it’s normal for God to speak to believers who are dialed into God.
But how does God speak to us?
Please pull out the Celebrate inserts and look at the first lesson, 2 Kings 19:9-18.
Let’s set the stage: It’s the ninth century BC. About fifty years earlier, the nation of Israel had split in two. The southern kingdom, known as Judah, retained its worship life in Jerusalem and struggled to retain its faith in the God of the Bible, Who they knew as Yahweh, the LORD. The northern kingdom, with its capital of Samaria, called itself Israel.
According to the Bible, the northern kingdom never had a king who was faithful to Yahweh or just in his actions. The worst of its rulers was Ahab, who worshiped Baal, a false deity of rain, fertility, and agriculture.
Despite the LORD’s first commandment that no other god should be worshiped, Ahab and his wife Jezebel encouraged the people to turn their back on God.
God made Elijah a prophet in order to call the king and the nation to repent for their sins and to trust in God alone.
At Mount Carmel, God was shown to be faithful and powerful, while Baal was shown to be a man-made fiction.
Right after this contest, it seemed that the northern kingdom would return to God. King Ahab got rid of the prophets of Baal as God, through Elijah, directed him.
Later though, Ahab told his wife Jezebel about all that happened and she sent a message to Elijah, telling him that within a day’s time, she would see that Elijah was a dead man. First Kings, chapter 19, verse 3, says that when Elijah received that message, “he was afraid” and he ran. Like Peter, in our Gospel lesson, Elijah allowed his fears to veto his faith in God. He panicked.
Our lesson finds Elijah at Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, the place where, six centuries before Elijah’s time, God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. Twice in our lesson, God asks Elijah why he has run. Twice, Elijah says, as he does in verse 10, you see: “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant [the covenant God had made with Israel on that very mountain], thrown down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
Have you ever known fear like that, a fear that leaves you feeling alone and without hope? The doctor tells you about a poor prognosis or a loved one dies and you wonder how you can possibly function. The stock market moves further into negative territory and you fear that you’ll have no retirement income.
It’s at times like these that God wants to tell us, in the words of Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.”
God wants to tell all who believe in Jesus Christ, as 1 John 4:4 puts it: “Little children…the one who is in you [the Bible teaches that Christ lives in His people] is greater than the one who is in the world.”
God is bigger than anything we may fear and, as Romans 8 reminds us, those who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, live in the certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God given to us through Christ!
Sometimes though, we may need special guidance or assurance. Elijah did.
Look at verse 11 of our first lesson. God told Elijah to stand on the mountain, “for the LORD is about to pass by.” Then, we’re told, “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind, an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire, and after the fire the sound of sheer silence.”
It was there in the silence, that somewhere in his own spirit, Elijah heard God speak to him. (The older translations says that God spoke to Elijah in “a still, small voice,” but even that may suggest something too noisy.)
God then ordered Elijah to move past his fears, giving him three specific tasks.
Listen! When you’re afraid or lonely or need guidance or you simply want to offer yourself to the God Who offered Himself for you on the cross, you can hear from God.
The most reliable place to hear God is on the pages of the Bible. That’s where God’s Word can always be found.
I got to know a Pentecostal pastor named Howard back in Cincinnati. Loved that man! We were having a heart to heart one night when he said, “You know, so many Pentecostals want to hear ‘a special word from God.’ But all they really need to do is look at the Bible to find God’s Word for their lives.” I smiled and said, "Howard, you sound like a Lutheran!"
Howard was right! We’ve all read about people who have done horrible things because, they claimed, some voice had told them to do so. If you feel prompted to do something, look in the Book. Find out what God’s Word says. Talk to a trusted Christian friend who knows God’s Book. God will never tell us to do anything that runs contrary to His revealed will in the Bible. Never.
But when, in the silence of your soul, you sense God prompting you, go for it!
Jim and Sheila, from our congregation, went to Bob Evans for lunch on Friday. Across the way from them sat an older man eating by himself. Sheila observed his conversation with the waitress, indicating he might be a “regular” there. She thought she heard him use the word, “radiation.”
That’s when I think God spoke to Sheila. “I felt,” she wrote to me in an email on Friday, “like I wanted to make this man’s day.”
In order to not be heard by the man, she wrote a note asking the waitress to bring the man’s check to Jim and her. She handed one of our “The Meal’s on Us!” cards to the waitress to give to the man. Later, the waitress brought a box to the man as he’d requested and told him that his meal had been taken care of. “Who?” he asked. The waitress shrugged. The man teared up, read the card twice, then tucked it into his pocket. Sheila says, “My heart felt warm all over.”
[The front of one of our "This meal's on us!" card.]
[The back side of our "This meal's on us!" card.]
Does God still speak to His people today? Yes, most reliably in His Word, the Bible.
On Wednesday night, during one of our weekly Read the Bible in a Year discussion groups, a great question was asked about the prophets Elijah and Elisha, whose stories are told in the Old Testament books of 1 and 2 Kings.*
God empowered both of them to perform miracles, including bringing several dead persons back to life. The question raised was why neither Elijah or Elisha were hailed as the Savior of the world the way Jesus would be by some people about nine centuries later.
Here are a few possible answers that cross my mind.
First: Both Elijah and Elisha lived before anyone really considered the possibility of a Messiah. The two prophets lived in the northern kingdom of an Israel that had fractured in two after the death of King Solomon. The north, which took for itself the name of Israel, was mired in idolatry and arrogance while enjoying relative prosperity and stability. They weren't looking for redemption from Israel's God.
Second: Even if the people of the northern kingdom had had hopes for a Messiah, chances are that they would have been just as wary to see Elijah or Elisha in that role as the people of Judea (and their Roman overlords) were to see Jesus as Messiah eight centuries later. A Messiah/Savior rightly demands on our lives that we, as self-centered people, prefer not to meet. That's one big reason that many people spurn Jesus to this day.
Third: Neither Elijah nor Elisha ever made the same claims for themselves that Jesus made for Himself.
In John 10:30, for example, Jesus flat out says, "The Father and I are one."
Jesus claims to be God in human flesh. From any other person, even miracle workers like Elijah and Elisha, this claim would be blasphemous. And it was on the charge of being a blasphemer that the Jewish religious leaders of His day sought Jesus' execution.
But Elijah and Elisha claimed simply to be prophets, people who go before others to tell them (and show them) the Word of God.
*Go here and type in 1 Kings, chapter 1 [1 Kings 1], if you want to see what we've been reading lately. Then, keep following the arrows leading you to the next chapters.
