Morning Service, 21 June 2009
As we left chapter 17 we did so with the wonderful testimony of faith of the nameless widow who benefited from Elijah’s ministry (v.24), which reminded us of the importance of confessing with the mouth as well as believing with the heart.
Turning to chapter 18 we see that this testimony was not just necessary for the woman, but also for Elijah as the opening verses of Chapter 18 make clear. This Gentile woman may have come to faith, but this is not the picture of what was happening in Israel during this time.
God comes and brings a word to Elijah that He is to go back into Israel, but it is clear that it was not going to be easy. Indeed things were worse, as it will when sin is given its freedom, when all divine restraints are both removed by God and cast off by people.
Elijah faces then the temptation that faces any soldier who has enjoyed ‘R&R’ in the relative peace and comfort away from the battle zone. They find it hard to go back into the dangers of battle. This will take great courage and faith by Elijah.
Christians know the same today – you’ve stood for Christ, been scarred perhaps in the battle, Christ has given you a little respite. Will you go back again? Will you fight again? How often ministry leaders face this when they complete their involvement in a particular ministry that has been demanding on them. Will they after a rest put themselves forward in another area? Or will they just slide into the background, ever retreating from the front-lines? That is a searching question for every believer!
The great need of serving the Lord in this rebellious, seductive and often hostile world is robust Christian character. We must develop those qualities of character that not only shield us from withdrawal or hesitancy in serving the Lord, but which free us and propel us into that service in response to His call.
In these opening two verses we see 3 such qualities essential for on-going ministry, spiritual qualities we are all to cultivate for effective serving of the Lord
1. Submissiveness
The first thing that strikes us is that Elijah is a man under orders. He is not in Zarephath at God’s order; and he doesn’t leave Zarephath until God’s order.
Now you might think, Well God’s order to go to Zarephath was an easy one to obey after all his present means of support had literally dried up, and Zarephath was outside of Israel and so away from the reach of trouble at the hand of King Ahab. But we saw that it was very much a call to faith, for Zarephath was in the very heartland of Baal and in the kingdom of Jezebel’s father. Further the promise was that he would be cared for by a gentile widow. While thankful for God’s provision it hardly would’ve been an encouraging picture to a godly Israelite, barely a step up from the Ravens. No, at first glance that call was to an unwelcome Zarephath. Yet he was submissive to go.
It is also made clear to us here that it would not have been an easy for Elijah to stay long. Why? Because “there was a severe famine in Samaria”. His whole motivation had been the glory of God and the good of God’s people, but what does he see with the passing of time? No change. This is the way it has been for “many days”, we read that it was now in the 3rd year of his stay in Zarephath (which understanding meshes in naturally with the comment of Jesus and James relating to 3½ years – Luke 4:25, James 5:17). Elijah we have seen and will continue to see is a man of action, and it must have pulled at his heart strings to get involved. Yet he was submissive to stay.
So why does he go now? Elijah only ventured back into his prophetic ministry to Israel at God’s direct command, and to which there is no arguing, no objecting. There was no hesitancy, no uncertainty. His going showed willing submission.
Notice also that he doesn’t ask God how he is going to be provided for – though God on the two previous occasions supported his faith with that information. Now he needs no such support, but simply went forward waiting on the Lord. As we read in Psa 55:22 “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.” Which Peter echoes in 1 Peter 5:7 as he supports the call to humble ourselves under God’s hand, “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.“
Submission is not hard when you know the one who directs your steps loves you, cares for you, will sustain you.
This is why in Ephesians 5 as Paul calls for wives to submit to their husbands as to the Lord, he reminds them of Christ’s undertaking the responsibility to be the Saviour of the Church, His body. And we know that cost Him His life. And then he stresses the practical implication of this for husbands, thus encouraging the wife in her submission, by the call to husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. It is amazing and indeed illogical how in Christian circles that we find such resistance to the biblical call of submission and headship. Men are you evidencing Christ-like headship such that the only glory you seek for yourself is found in the safety and blessing of your wife? Women do you welcome with joy the blessing of such leadership with submission, knowing that He cares for you?
Will Jesus ever ask anything of us that is not for our good and that of the Kingdom? Does He not continue as He always has, laboured with our best interests at heart, even though it has cost him greatly?
Christian, how can we not give ourselves wholeheartedly to submission to the Lord? His wisdom is impeccable; His power to provide and protect unassailable; His love and care unquestionable. Surely our posture must be that of a servant longing to hear any direction from the Master that we might serve him both immediately and enthusiastically, with our whole being, without reserve. God’s glory and grace demands it.
Indeed it is what we see in the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, “The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do.” (John 5:19).
As F B Meyer observes, ‘So utterly had He emptied Himself that He had abandoned even His own schemes and plans. He lived a planless life, accepting each moment the plan which His Father unfolded before Him. He was confident that that plan would lead Him on to greater and ever greater works, until the world should marvel at the splendour of the results – rising from Gethsemane and Calvary through the broken grave, to the Ascension Mount and the glory of His second Advent. Oh, mystery of humiliation, that He who planned all things should will to live a life of such absolute dependence! And, yet, if He lived such a life, how much more will it become us; how much anxiety it will save us; and to what lengths of usefulness and heights of glory will it bring us! Would that we were content to wait for God to unveil His plan, so that our life might be simply the working out of His thought, the exemplification of His ideal! Let this be the cry of our hearts, “Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths! (Psalm 21:4).’
2. Readiness (or preparedness)
Elijah was not only subject to the will of God, he was ready. There was no need for delay. It was what he was waiting for. His retirement from public ministry these past 3 years had not weakened his readiness, but strengthened it.
There is in retirement from public ministry at times a hard lesson for us to learn, whether pastor or people. There seems so much to do, and we feel we are wasting time by not being at the coal front, taking up every opportunity that appears to us. But for 3 years God had placed Elijah into a sphere of inactivity from the main scene. But it was by means an idle time, nor was it meant to be. That’s the hard lesson, and one which we often squander in embracing comforts and needed refreshment, so much so that we forget that this remains a time for continued service, and he need to cultivate a readiness for whatever the Lord calls us next to do.
Elijah was finding his faith challenged and sharpened, to see that faith resides ultimately not in the promises but the God who promises.
Elijah was learning the not only the joy of seeing someone brought to faith but learning about how God operates to that end, that it is all of faith, and that where grace is extended to save then no obstacle is too hard.
Elijah also learnt the wonder of fellowship with God at the Brook which underpins all ministry if it is to be effective, but also of fellowship with the Lord’s people at Zarephath through which God both blesses His servant and gives him an opportunity to be a blessing to other servants. Elijah was not seduced but proved himself ready for the Lord’s call.
To be ready for some kind of service is the state in which we should always find ourselves. We see it in Paul who in Romans 1:15 writes “as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the Gospel in Rome also”. In the previous verses he explains what made him so ready: his sense of gospel-indebtedness. The more he considered the gospel, and its need in the lives of all people, the more he was ready to be used to bring it to them. Again in Acts 21:13 Luke records his comment in the face of concerns of believers about the dangers of him returning to Jerusalem, “I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus”.
Are we ready for whatever the Lord calls us to be engaged in? What are we doing to make ourselves ready? Are we filling our hearts with the Word of God, are we learning from what we see/read of the lives of other Christians and churches both in this nation and around the world? What is it that we have stored up for the Lord to use?
3. Self-Denial
But it is not always easy to go when the Lord calls, is it? What arguments we can mount that feed not only hesitation but even temptation to rebel.
Now while no doubt going to Zarephath at God’s order was for Elijah going to an ‘unwelcome Zarephath’, it had clearly become a most hospitable and warm Zarephath. Under this private ministry God’s grace had come and burgeoned in this home. It was now a haven of godly fellowship, marked by comforts, though maybe small to others, yet very real to God’s prophet.
If ever there was a time to want to stay, it was now. But Elijah not only obeyed God’s call, we see that he did so in a spirit of self-denial. He was to leave a place of comfort and provision and above all believing fellowship, and he was going back into a land that was bereft of human comforts due to the prolonged drought and resulting severe famine, and to a very large if not almost total measure of spiritual comfort as well.
But he did not think of his own interests. He thought of the interests of God, even though this meant acute self-denial.
What moved him to leave all these blessings? It was devotion to God that drove him on, and even when it means self-denial of earthly and even spiritual comforts, relinquishing the things dearest to him and most blessed to him, he does so for the Lord’ God’s sake.
Of course we remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:25 to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” He had just identified that He was the Promised Divine King, accepting the designation of Peter “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (v.18), that His purpose was to build his church (v.18), and He would do so through His death and resurrection. If we are to follow Him into this kingdom, then we must like Him “deny ourselves”. Jesus demands total commitment from us – even unto physical death; and He is stressing that this call to full surrender is to be a part of the message we proclaim to others.
That too is the character of the true servant of God.
True faith is self-denying. It is not an option but an increasing natural reality. You cannot serve if you are constantly thinking ‘What am I going to lose? How am I going to manage?’ The hardest person in the world to deny is yourself. To deny myself is to put self out of the picture and to put Christ in the place of self. As John Calvin wrote: ‘the chief part of self-denial … looks to God’ (III.7.8), yet he also reminds us that we cannot look to God apart from Christ whose ‘whole life was nothing but a sort of perpetual cross’ (III.8.1). The goal of self-denial is not merely self-forgetfulness, but Christlikeness.
Sinclair Ferguson comments: ‘Self-denial is not a shapeless, amorphous, notion. It involves being patterned after the likeness of Christ… This is muscular Christianity indeed. But is it not all too bleak (as some have thought)? Not if we consider (i) the depravity of our hearts that requires the strongest of medicines to eradicate our self intoxication, and (ii) the wonder of the goal the Lord has in view – that we should become like Jesus. In the goal lies the comfort. The implication? Do not underestimate the radical nature of the work that needs to be done in you if you are to become like Christ! Surely you didn’t think that would be a small thing accomplished without pain?’
This then is how a robust and rounded godly character is developed. It is the very answer given to us in 18:15, which in turn echoes 17:1 – “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand…” He said this at the start of his public ministry, and again now as he resumes it. Nothing has changed. What we learn from this is that the word from God to resume that public ministry came not after a time without communication from God, but in the flow of relationship. And it was this same flow of relationship that developed the faith of Elijah which in turned overflowed into the development and maintenance of godly character. God was near to Him during that season, showing His love to him, encouraging him, developing and maturing his character. It will be so for us too. But then we are to manifest it.