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I fear that Christianity often becomes a pursuit of style at the expense of substance. So I decided to write a “Meat and Potatoes” blog, digging into Scripture with as few frills as possible. Since God has provided the meat—His Word—I’m calling the blog “. . . And Potatoes,” in the hope that these mini-sermons can help enhance the flavor of the main dish. You hungry? Let’s dig in!

When We Walk Through the Valley

3/18/2017

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I was drawn to examine I Kings 19 about four years ago when I was going through a particularly rough patch in my life and when I, like Elijah, prayed, “I have had enough, Lord.”[1] I turned to study Elijah’s experience in the hopes that I would be able to find some encouraging examples of how God worked in his life. As I mentioned in my previous post on Elijah, I’m not proposing a formula for how to get God to act on our behalf or some magic sequence to solve our problems. That being said, we can look to these passages to learn something about God’s character and methods.
 
Before we dive into I Kings 19, let’s remember what we just saw in the previous chapter. Elijah scored a huge victory over the prophets of Baal. God showed up in a miraculous way. People’s hearts were turned back to God. Justice was meted out against those hostile to God. Rain fell on a parched land as God had promised. And all this took place as Elijah walked in faith with God. This actually leads to our first observation:  When we walk through the valley, it is often after a mountaintop experience. Logic tells us that you can only go down from a mountaintop, so it is natural to expect something of a “letdown.” But often, the valley in which we find ourselves is not a mere alpine meadow, but a deep ravine with slopes so high and steep the sun can’t penetrate. Having just been on the mountaintop, literally and figuratively, that’s where Elijah finds himself as chapter 19 begins:
 
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods 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.” 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.[2]
 
Elijah is so distraught that he pleads with God to take his life, to let him die, and then he lies down and falls asleep. Ever been there, so tired, so worn out from life, that the only escape is sleep? It may serve as a small measure of comfort to know that what you are experiencing is not atypical, whether in backcountry trekking, the everyday ebb and flow of life, or your spiritual walk. It may also serve as something of a reminder when you are on the mountaintop—not to sully the moment or create fear about what lies ahead—but to keep a sense of perspective and an honest recognition that you probably aren’t on a never-ending mesa.
 
While you may be able to relate to Elijah’s despair, I’m guessing you cannot relate—at least not in methodology—to what happens next. Our second observation is that when we walk through the valley, God sustains us. I’m not talking spiritual sustainment here. Look at verses 5-7. An angel came, provided food and drink for Elijah (similar to God’s provision in I Kings 17:2-6), and told him to rest again. This isn’t to say Christ followers never struggle to put food on the table or pay the rent. But I have heard numerous stories of Christians who didn’t know where their next meal or that rent check were coming from and, somehow, God provided. Furthermore, and this is the point I really want to hit on, when your valley is spiritual, don’t overlook the fact that God sustains you physically. That shows us that God has not forsaken us, even if He isn’t responding as quickly or in the way we’d like to our particular problem. 
 
Now, this third observation is where things get a little unpleasant. Because we’d like to see that after providing for Elijah’s pressing physical needs, God makes all his problems go away. Instead, the angel tells him, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.”[3] In the next verse, we’re told that journey lasts 40 days and 40 nights. We’ll see the relevance of that number a little later on, but for now our observation is that when we walk through the valley, sometimes God calls us to keep walking. He doesn’t fix our problems; He doesn’t ease our suffering; He doesn’t necessarily even address our need. This is where it becomes essential to remember God’s provision and trust in His character and His word and His past examples, lest we lose faith. The old saying is that “it always gets darkest just before the dawn.” But Elijah—and oft times you and I—can better relate to the adaption made by “Hannibal” on The A-Team: “It's always darkest just before it goes totally black.”[4] But the story isn’t over.
 
We’re told that Elijah spent the night in a cave in Horeb, the mountain of God. Then “the word of Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”[5] Our fourth observation is that when we walk through the valley, God lets us speak. Read through the Psalms. David cries out to God, pouring out his soul. Here we see Elijah doing the same thing. Often times, I think Christians feel we dare not show emotion in front of God, dare not be honest with Him. We shouldn’t take it to the extreme and lose respect or reverence for God, either. But He already knows us intimately and infinitely.[6] Scripture tells us He is our “Abba”[7] or Daddy. One of the great privileges of sonship is that, through Jesus, we can “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”[8] Sometimes that includes a confession of absolute exhaustion, of being at our wit’s end, as is Elijah: “The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”[9]
 
As is often the case, biblical authors tell us what happens next with the barest of details (whereas other authors—ahem, ahem—might be a little more descriptive): Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.[10] The fifth observation is this: When we walk through the valley, God doesn’t always show up the way we want or expect. We think He should be the conquering hero, but He is the lowly servant. We sometimes want Him to come riding in on a white stallion but he plods in on a donkey. We expect special effects of, well, biblical proportion, but we get a “still small voice.” We want dramatic resolution, but get something of a process.
 
I also find it interesting that God whispers. A whisper has two purposes. One is secrecy. Elijah and God are, by all accounts, alone on the mountain. There is no need to whisper and no need for secrecy. The second purpose of a whisper is tenderness, an expression of love. God has clearly shown His power to Elijah, both in previous chapters and in the “special effects” on the mountain, but now He wraps his arms around the prophet. Note too that Elijah does not recoil from the whisper, but rather approaches the mouth of the cave—albeit with the cloak over his face, recognizing that “no one may see [God’s face] and live.”[11] This tender expression from God has drawn Elijah to Him, and now we see the resolution begin to take shape.
 
God repeats His earlier question, verbatim, and Elijah repeats his answer, verbatim. This leads to our final two observations. First, when we walk through the valley, sometimes God assigns us more work. “Go back the way you came,” God tells Elijah by way of answer, “and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Mehola to succeed you as prophet.”[12] Once again, this is not the answer we might expect or want. It at first appears that God is somewhat callous, responding to Elijah’s concerns with a taskmaster’s “get back to work” sort of response. But see what God says next: “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.”[13] And we see one particular aspect of this judgment play out in II Kings 9:30-37, where Jehu has Jezebel thrown down from a window and killed. Remember her, the woman who drove Elijah to his despair? We also see a bit earlier in Scripture that the word of God came to Elijah about her fate.[14] So we see that God is not being dismissive in sending Elijah back to work, but is orchestrating His divine judgment and deliverance. And this segues to our last observation, which is this: Even when we walk through the valley, God is in control. Note how this section ends, in verse 18: “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” This is a direct response to Elijah’s assertion that he was the only one left loyal to God. And God gives him the reassurance—perhaps just enough reassurance—that He is still sovereign and that there is a remnant—a remarkably common theme of Scripture—“chosen by grace.”[15]
 
Before we conclude, I want briefly to note a couple parallels to this story. I’ve said that God isn’t bound by formulas, but He does often employ patterns. Consider the Israelites, whom God delivered from centuries of bondage in Egypt, passing them through the Red Sea in miraculous fashion (a mountaintop experience). When hard times beset them, they grumbled and turned away from God and found themselves wandering in the wilderness for 40 years (a real valley). Or look at Jesus. After His baptism, a “mountaintop” act of surrender that prompted the Father to say, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased,”[16] Scripture tells us that Jesus was led into the desert where he was tempted by the devil for 40 days. We won’t take the time to examine specific consistencies in great detail, but we do see that with the Israelites, with Elijah, and with Jesus Himself, a valley follows a mountaintop, but also that God is faithful to bring deliverance. In the case of the Israelites, God was faithful to fulfil His promise and brought them to a “land flowing with milk and honey.”[17] In Jesus’ case, after He had resisted the devil, angels came and attended Him and He continued on with his Father-honoring mission. And we see that Elijah was, to some extent, an instrument of his own deliverance from the problem of Jezebel, and that God provided a successor in his ministry so that Elijah might eventually have rest.
 
To quickly summarize, when we walk through the valley: It is not uncommon but actually a typical part of life; we find that God sustains us; we see that God often calls us to keep walking; God allows us to express our feelings to Him; He doesn’t always show up as we expect or want; He often assigns us more work; and He is faithful to ultimately deliver us because He is in control.


[1] I Kings 19:4
[2] I Kings 19:1-4
[3] I Kings 19:7
[4] The A-Team. “The Rabbit Who Ate Last Vegas.” Season 1, Episode 6. Directed by Bruce Kessler. Written by Frank Lupo. National Broadcasting Company, March 1, 1983.
[5] I Kings 19:9
[6] See Psalm 139:1-5; Hebrews 4:13
[7] See Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6
[8] Hebrews 4:16
[9] I Kings 19:10
[10] I Kings 19:11-12
[11] Exodus 33:20
[12] I Kings 19:15-16
[13] I Kings 19:17
[14] See I Kings 21:23
[15] Romans 11:5 (and see verses 1-4)
[16] Matthew 3:17
[17] Exodus 3:8, et al
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When God Shows Up

3/8/2017

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As a kid, one of my favorite Bible stories was that of Elijah racing Ahab’s chariot after spotting a cloud the size of “a man’s hand” in the distant sky. Now that I’m an adult, that story—coupled with Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel that preceded it—is still among my favorites. So I want to dive into it a little deeper and draw some observations related to God “showing up,” as He does here in remarkable fashion. With my next post, I want to build on and follow up those observations by scrutinizing Elijah under far different circumstances.
 
Normally, I hone in on a specific, fairly small passage, but in this post I’m going to be covering an entire chapter, so I’ll encourage you to pull up and read I Kings 18 for context. I also want to point out that I don’t mean to imply from these two posts that God always acts according to a set outline or follows 1-2-3 formulas. However, we will see some patterns, and we will get insights into God’s nature that can guide us, encourage us, and give us hope.[1]
 
To begin, let’s back up to chapter 17, where we are first introduced to Elijah the Tishbite. There we read the following decree he issued to Ahab, the evil king of Israel: “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”[2] Chapter 18 picks up this story by telling us, “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.’”[3] In between those two verses, in chapter 17, we see Elijah hearing, speaking, and acting on the word of God as he ministers to a widow in Zarephath. When her son died, Elijah cried out to God to restore his life, and we’re told, “The Lord heard Elijah’s cry.”[4] Our first observation then, is of Elijah closely following God and carrying out God’s will. God is not a magic genie whom we can summon to perform a particular action simply by obeying Him. However, I think Scripture is clear that God often moves in response to obedient faith. James, in a passage about prayer and faith, writes, “Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.”[5] Jesus often healed in response to faith, and “did not do many miracles [in his hometown] because of their lack of faith.”[6] There is, then, a correlation between faith-filled living and the working of God.
 
The second thing we see, and it corresponds to the first, is that when God shows up, He does so according to His own will. I’ve often marveled at the account of Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal and wondered if I could do such a thing—could I challenge those who believe in false gods and expect God to give a miraculous demonstration of His power and authority? And the answer is an emphatic yes!—if it was God’s will for me to do so. After the false prophets spend an entire day in futility, seeking to summon their god, Elijah has them douse his offering in water three times. Then he prays: “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.”[7] Several times earlier in the chapter (verses 15, 22) Elijah referenced his service to God, and we’ve just looked at examples of that from chapter 17 as well. But the second observation is that Elijah has done “all these things” at God’s command. He did not wake up one morning and decide to poke the bear. God called him to this showdown. Can you or I expect God to do what He did for Elijah, or move in a similarly remarkable way? Are we walking in faith? Has He directed us accordingly? If so, the biblical model gives a resounding yes. But those are two significant caveats to consider.
 
Third, when God shows up, His people are emboldened. In the first part of chapter 18, we see that Ahab was hunting Elijah to the point that Obadiah, Ahab’s palace administrator, feared for his life if he misled the king as to Elijah’s whereabouts. When Elijah finally presents himself to the king, Ahab calls him a “troubler of Israel.”[8] It does not take a lot of reading between the lines to infer that Ahab blamed Elijah for the drought and famine. Yet what does Elijah do? Does he cower or back down or promise rain to appease the king? Did he run from God’s command to present himself to Ahab in the first place? No, he challenges Ahab to bring the prophets of Baal to Mount Carmel, and more than that, to invite people from all over Israel to witness what is about to take place. Again, as I’ve put myself in Elijah’s shoes, I’ve realized I’d be terrified of trying this, for fear that God wouldn’t show up and we’d have wasted a day and some good beef—and that I’d get sacrificed by the false prophets. But Elijah shows no such fear, because God is moving in him.
 
Elijah issues his challenge: prepare two sacrifices, one for Baal and one for the Lord. “The god who answers by fire—he is God.”[9] The people agree, and the prophets of Baal spend the morning calling out to Baal, with no result. At noon, we’re told, Elijah began to taunt them, suggesting that Baal was busy or asleep. (This is, if I’m not mistaken, the first recorded example of trash talk, and Larry Bird has nothing on Elijah.) Throughout the afternoon, the false prophets plead with their god to answer, even cutting themselves with swords and spears in an effort to summon him. No dice. Elijah then calls the people to him, rebuilds the altar of the Lord—note the reverence and respect, even in the heat of the moment—and digs a trench around it. He then has the people pour water on the sacrifice, the wood, the altar, and in the trench. Three times. Elijah ups the ante. He is going for style points here, but not for his own glory, but for Jehovah’s. You don’t do that if you aren’t emboldened.
 
On a similar vein, we see here (as throughout Scripture) that when God shows up, He almost always uses people. God didn’t need Elijah. His voice could have thundered from heaven to draw people and He could have issued the challenge Himself. But he used a man of God as His instrument. Similarly, the Holy Spirit doesn’t need our help to share the gospel or minister to others, but it is His chosen method, I dare say more often than not. Along those lines, He gives His people the tools they need to accomplish their task. Sometimes that is in the form of issuing drastic decrees about the weather or the ability to outrun a chariot. (Seriously, how cool was that?) Sometimes it is merely the right words to say.[10]
 
The fifth thing we notice is that when God moves it is not always restorative; sometimes, His movement is punitive. In a recent review of William P. Young’s The Shack, I noted that Young presented God as being only about love and mercy, even going so far as to have his “God” character state, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”[11] Young also writes, “Judgment is not about destruction, but about setting things right.”[12] However, this is not the picture we see in I Kings 18, nor in the rest of Scripture[13] (and is one of the many reasons I consider The Shack to be heretical). Check out verse 40: “Then Elijah commanded them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Don’t let anyone get away!” They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.” God moved, and his servant Elijah brought about swift judgment on those who had worshiped false gods. This serves as a warning to Christians that although we are forgiven our sins in Christ Jesus, that doesn’t mean God will tolerate sin, and there are consequences in this life: “A man reaps what he sows.”[14] But this is also a warning to unbelievers in that a day of repentance isn’t guaranteed. At any moment, God could exercise His judgment upon them for their sin and that judgment could result in death. Scripture tells us that God “is patient . . . not wanting anyone to perish”[15] but also that He will not remain patient forever.[16]
 
The last observation I want to draw from this incredible story is that when God moves, people are transformed. We aren’t given insight into their state of mind, but when Elijah proposes the challenge, the people agree to his terms. Were they humoring him? Were they honestly expectant that the true God would be revealed? We don’t know, but they at least were willing to be present, which is a sign of God moving. And do you remember Elijah’s challenge? “The god who answers by fire—he is God.” After no one answered the false prophets of Baal, we’re told “the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.”[17] Note what happens next: “When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord--he is God! The Lord--he is God!”[18] Let me ask you as I ask myself, when was the last time you fell prostrate before God? Scripture informs us that Ahab had led the people of Israel to prostitute themselves by the worship of idols,[19] and Jesus, when speaking of prophets not being honored or welcomed in their country, seemed to imply that at least part of the reason Elijah went to minister to the widow in Zarephath (as seen in I Kings 17) was because he wasn’t welcomed by the people of Israel.[20] So for them to fall down in adoration and declare that Jehovah was indeed God represents a dramatic change of heart. So dramatic, in fact, that they served as Elijah’s agents in bringing the false prophets to justice.
 
Once again, I want to be clear that I’m not proposing step-by-step instructions for getting God to act as we desire. But we can draw from Scripture some reflections of God’s character: When God moves, it often is in response to faith, He does so at His own behest, He uses people (and emboldens them and equips them for the task), He brings forth judgment as well as mercy, and He changes people’s hearts. Oh, and at the risk of stating the obvious, when God moves, sometimes He does some pretty incredible and fascinating things!


[1] See Romans 15:4
[2] I Kings 17:1
[3] I Kings 18:1
[4] I Kings 17:22
[5] James 5:17-18
[6] Matthew 13:58
[7] I Kings 18:36
[8] I Kings 18:17
[9] I Kings 18:24
[10] See Mark 13:11
[11] William P. Young, “Breakfast of Champions,” in The Shack, (Newbury Park: Windblown Media, 2007), 119.
[12] Young, “Here Come Da Judge,” 170.
[13] See Hebrews 9:27; Revelation 20:12,15; Matthew 25:46; Luke 21:22; and II Thessalonians 1:8-9
[14] Galatians 6:7
[15] II Peter 3:9
[16] See Romans 2:4-5
[17] I Kings 18:38
[18] I Kings 18:39, emphasis added
[19] See II Chronicles 21:13
[20] See Luke 4:23-27
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    I'm an author and the son of a preacher, with a passion for writing and examining the Scriptures. Thus this blog. (Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the NIV)

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