"The Days of Elijah: The Basics By the Brook"
(I Kings 17:1-7)
Today as we visit the days of Elijah were are going to talk about how God prepares us to used by him for his purpose and plans. We discovered last week how Elijah arrived on the scene at one of the darkest hours in Israel’s history. Up to this point over six decades of wickedness had prevailed—open idolatry, political corruption, and moral decay. Suddenly, without warning, Elijah the prophet stood before King Ahab and declared the word of the Lord with absolute boldness. His next instruction from God was a little more confusing because he told him to go and hide by a brook. The lessons Elijah learned beside that lonely and dried-up brook are bridges that connect to our lives now. While it seemed in theory that he was ready for God’s use God still had some very specific training he needed.
Does it seem like God has you in training right now? You thought you were past that point and now suddenly you are back in school, learning some "old school" lessons? Paul said in Romans that, "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us—they help us learn to endure. And endurance develops strength of character in us, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation. And this expectation will not disappoint us. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love." (Romans 5:3-5) Those words tell us that God uses every tool available to produce in us the person he needs for his service and purpose. He may use the very things we want to avoid and from which we want to escape in order to make and shape the person that he can use to accomplish his plan.
Those words remind us that persons of great spiritual ability are not punched out on an assembly line. There are no courses available to train a person for spiritual power and ability. The education comes by the providence of God shaping and cutting away the waste to produce a person he can really use. He will not force us. Yet, for those who are willing to yield to what he is teaching there is a wealth of effective living waiting to be experienced. However, the "basics by the brook" are always first.
As we said, I Kings 17 begins with Elijah pronouncing a drought upon the kingdom of Ahab. The drought was a sign of God’s divine judgment for the horrible sins that Ahab had led the nation to commit. (I Kings 17:1) Verse 1 says, "As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives—the God whom I worship and serve—there will be no dew or rain during the next few years unless I give the word!" Yet no sooner had Elijah spoken God’s message was he told to go and do the most unusual thing. He was commanded by God to, "Go to the east and hide by Kerith Brook at a place east of where it enters the Jordan River." (I Kings 17:3) The Kerith Brook is a deep gorge or ravine near the Jordan River valley. The Hebrew term for hide suggests "cut off, cut down or concealment." While you and I would have thought that God would have wanted Elijah to stay near Ahab to continue the fight he instead told him to go and hide. God’s command was in reality a provision for Elijah’s protection from Ahab. But more, it was God’s means of sending this key leader off for the training he needed for the next phase of God’s purpose for him.
I want you to notice something that is found in our text that I believe gives us a clue as to what God was doing by sending Elijah away. In verse 1 Elijah is a strong prophet of God. For many people that would be enough to be known as God’s spokesman. Yet God can use anyone to say words, there must be someone who can do more than say words. There needs to be a person who can have the character to stand by those words when the pressure comes to back down from obedience. Now look at verse 24 of 1 Kings 17. In this verse Elijah has been given a new or greater identity for he was told, "Now I know for sure that you are a man of God, and that the Lord truly speaks through you." By sending Elijah away God was preparing Elijah to be more than a spokesman. He was insuring that Elijah would be clearly known as a person that completely belonged to God!
Elijah, however, didn’t know that on the front end, and neither do we. It would be great if God could have shown me the reasons for all the lessons I have learned as your pastor over the last ten years when I started. But he didn’t. There are many things that I would like to have back and get what we call "do overs" but I can’t have them back. The same is true for you when you face the training God has for you. You just don’t know it on the front end because if we knew it from the start we wouldn’t need faith. We know that without faith it is impossible to please God. (Heb. 11:6)
How did God begin to do his work in Elijah? He did it first by telling him to "hide". Can you imagine the conflict that Elijah must have had with God over this command? Here he was a man hardened by the elements of his background. A man of absolute fearlessness and now he is told to go and hide from the very king that he has so boldly confronted! How embarrassing this was for him and you would think bringing shame upon God. Why was he told to do this? The reason is because God often chooses to do his deepest work in people when no one else can see or interfere.
Today as we celebrate together ten years of ministry here with you, I can’t help but be reminded of a phrase that Kathy and I have used when we have reached such significant places in our lives. The phrase is, "Well, this is a long way from Wheeling Springs!" Wheeling Springs was the first place I was ever called to serve as pastor. I was a student at Ouachita and president of the student Ministerial Alliance. I had the foolish idea that because I was president of the Ministerial Alliance that I needed to pastor a church. So when Bethlehem Baptist Church--way, way, way, way, back in the woods outside of Wheeling Springs (a suburb of Gurdon, AR)--called and wanted us to not only be their pastor but to move there I said, "Yes." And Kathy said, "Why me?" Six months later I was told, "The people are dissatisfied with your ministry." We both said, "Thank you Jesus!" but being terminated by your first church was still a hurt that I will never forget.
Why did God do that? Because he knew that there were things in me that needed correcting in ways that no one else could see and where no one else could interfere. I was a person who was pretty full of himself and God knew I needed to be full of nothing else but him so he hid me literally in the woods to do what he couldn’t do any other way. Your time of being hidden may or may not come with a physical removing of contact with others. It may come through something that is an experience that you must face alone. It could be a job loss or career change. It could be an illness that threatens your life or the life of someone you love. It could be a broken relationship that has become painful and hurtful. It might be a disappointment that has shattered your confidence. It may even be a time of feeling unappreciated by God and others. There are an unlimited number of ways that God might "hide" you to get you all to himself but it is there that he will do his deepest and most lasting work
After God told him where to go and what to do he told him how he was going to survive (v. 4). "Drink from the brook and eat what the ravens bring you, for I have commanded them to bring you food." God said that Elijah was to drink the water of the brook and eat the food brought to him by the ravens. I think I could handle the water but food brought by birds would have been tough. Elijah was about to see God’s hand in his life in a most extraordinary way. I am sure that there are other analogies that we can draw from this but the main thing that I see is that God was providing for Elijah in the place where God had hidden him. In other words Elijah wasn’t being forgotten or neglected by God even though no one else knew what was really going on in his life.
Earlier I read from Romans 5:3-5 and if you recall the last part of that passage says in light of all the hardship, "For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love." (Romans 5:3-5) What does that say? It says that even though all of these seemingly negative circumstances that are exhausting our resources that God will provide for us the inexhaustible power of his Holy Spirit to carry us and provide for us. But notice what he supplies: his love! It will be his love that overflows our hearts and lives that will be to us life giving nourishment and will enable us to go through the time of shaping and developing.
During these last ten years of service your love and support for me has been a constant source of strength. Your cards, calls, notes, e-mails, lunches and conversations have been life to me. Just know however that I am not the easiest person to live with. If there is anyone who has stood by me in the best of times and the most challenging it has been my wife Kathy. Her love has been a constant resource of strength without which I could not survive. Yet multiply that by an unlimited number and that is the way that God assures us of his loving provision for us in the days of our testing and challenge. He tells us over and over, "I love you and while what is happening doesn’t at all resemble love know that nothing would come into your life without the seal of my love marked on it. My love will provide for you what you cannot get anywhere else."
What was Elijah’s response to the Lord’s command? Simply put, it was obedience. (I Kings 17:5-6)
"So Elijah did as the Lord had told him and camped beside Kerith Brook. The ravens brought him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he drank from the brook." How long was Elijah in this place of isolation and removal from the attention of people? We don’t really know. Our translation says he "camped" there. Others say he "lived" there so it could have been several months or more than a year. He did his part by doing exactly what God asked of him and God did what he said he would do by providing what Elijah needed.
In his new book called, "The Few and the Proud: Marine Corps Drill Instructors in their Own Words" author Larry Smith describes the essential factors that the Marines use to shape new recruits to be fighting men and women. "The very first thing a Marine learns is immediate obedience to orders. In a war you haven’t got time to debate the issue. You have to give them instant willingness to obey orders." (Parade Magazine, June 4, 2006, p.5) Just as a Marine is taught instant obedience through their training so God desires that his work in us do the same. Never sell short the work of God to teach us obedience for it will be our obedience that will be the key to our effectiveness and usefulness in God’s kingdom.
Day after day Elijah stayed hidden and obeyed God. He drank from the brook when he was thirsty and ate the bread and meat that God miraculously provided for him. Then one day he began to notice that the water level in the brook was lower than it had been. He noticed that gradually the level became lower and lower each day. Then one morning Elijah went to get a drink and there was nothing but mud and with the heat of the sun the mud soon became a cracked and broken creek bed. The Bible says, "But after a while the brook dried up, for there was no rainfall anywhere in the land." (I Kings 17:7)
Think about that phrase "the brook dried up". What God had been providing suddenly was gone. The way God had been sustaining Elijah had been exhausted: "the brook dried up"! This causes us to ask: Has your brook dried up? Does it seem that the supply of God’s provision has now evaporated? Did you once know the satisfaction of a meaningful career only to have that taken away? Have you experienced the thrill of romantic love in your marriage to only now be faced with the reality of a dry co-existence in the same house? Did you once have the pleasure of never needing even an aspirin to now having medical bills that challenge your survival? Did you once have the thrill of knowing God’s purpose and plan and now you are not sure he even knows where you are? Did you once feel that this place of worship was a place you never wanted to leave now you can’t wait to get out? Did you once have a deep faith in God but now you wonder if anything makes sense? Has the brook dried up?
During the last twenty years of ministry there have been two distinct times when I felt like the brook dried up. One was in 1994 and the other in 2002. The causes still today are truly a mystery to me. I am not sure how or why the brook dried up; I just know that it did. It seemed that no matter what I did the provision of spiritual life I had known was exhausted and my prayers for a cup of relief were met with a bucket of dust. I was forced in those times to learn more deeply the meaning of Paul’s words when God spoke to him when his brook dried up, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." (II Cor. 12:9) What I learned and what God wants us to remember is: The pain of dried up brooks never cancels out God’s purpose and plan. In fact they are part of it!
John Ortberg says, "While God hates pain, he can also redeem it. It does not mean he is absent…I don’t believe God is the kind of person who delights in inflicting painful little moral object lessons on helpless mortals. But in my own life, at least, there is a strange duality about pain. It can cause me to wonder where God is as nothing else can. And it can open me up to my dependence on his presence as nothing else can." (Ortberg, God Is Closer Than You Think, p.159, 160)
Elijah was forced to learn some things that he would never forget. One was that the same God who gave the water and the food had the ability to take it back. Our human inclination is to feel that once God provides for us in some manner that he can’t take it back. But that’s not always the case. The prophet had to understand that God still loved him and cared for him even when the water was gone. Another lesson was that the dried-up brook was a direct result of his prayer. James 5:17 tells us that Elijah prayed earnestly that it might not rain. The result was no rain for three and a half years. He suffered during the drought, but his suffering resulted in effective training. We may have told God at some point that we wanted to be fully and completely his, what we didn’t count on was what it was going to cost us to get there. The pain by the brook is his answer to our prayer.
Let’s tie this up with some lessons that this story has for us. What are the bridges from Elijah’s world to ours? First, God may require us to step back before we can step up. You may think you are ready for the main event when God knows you still need a lot of practice. Another lesson is that, God’s directions to us will include his provisions for us. It may be nothing but his grace but that he says, is enough. A third instruction is trusting God must be done one day at a time. Elijah never knew when the food and water would stop coming. You can’t see the end from the beginning so we do what God wants most and that is to believe. Finally, a dried-up brook is often a sign of God’s love, not his judgment. It makes no sense to us but it means everything to God. Don’t think he has withdrawn his love or presence; he is just letting you learn that he is truly sufficient.
Never forget that Jesus was the one who cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" John Ortberg says that the cross is the ultimate paradox: "God experiencing the absence of God so that he can draw close to us in our loss and pain and even in our God- forsakenness." (Closer, p. 165)
Today are you in a place where God seems to really be working on just you? Does it seem that all that once made life good has been removed? Has your brook dried up? The whole process is designed to make us persons God can use. He wants to use us, is anxious to use us. Only remember the "basics by the brook" will be necessary to make us ready!
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor
First Baptist Church
Jonesboro, Arkansas
Resources: Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility by Charles Swindoll
God is Closer than You Think by John Ortberg