1 Kings 19:1-18 | Resolved: Faith Under Pressure

Speaker: Probably one of the greatest challenges of your Christian life will

be when you're doing everything right.

At least as you understand it.

You're doing what God asks you to do.

You're serving, you're doing the right things with your wife and your marriage.

You're working hard at your job.

And yet still, even after those things, you find that things are not going right.

Uh, the consequences to your actions don't a add up.

Uh, you would think that A plus B equals C, but when you're putting in the good

inputs, the outputs that you're getting aren't matching to what you're expecting.

This concept is is often referred to as disillusionment.

You approach the life that God has given you trying to be faithful, doing all the

things you're serving, you're, you're loving, you're pouring yourself out.

Maybe you're giving and you're sacrificing your time and energy, and your reasonable

expectation is, well, God said he's gonna bless me when I do these things.

God will bless me and God's gonna take care of me.

And that's not an entirely unbiblical thought.

The problem is, is that oftentimes when we do those things.

We can still walk away feeling a lot like one of the characters

that we're gonna study today.

We can feel a lot like Elijah, who though he did all the right things, at least

as we understand it, he still walks away saying, God, what are you doing?

In fact, things are so bad for this guy that at one point what

we're gonna look at this morning, he asks God to take his life.

He's disillusioned by what he thought God was gonna do and what God actually did.

So what we're gonna look at today is how to wrestle with this as men, uh,

what we should expect in terms of how God interacts with us, but also what

it looks like to respond rightly.

And the reason I chose Elijah, because Elijah actually doesn't respond well at

this particular juncture in his life.

He responds.

The opposite of how we should respond, but I want you to see this because even

in his failure, God meets him there and dusts him off and sends him forward.

It's a really cool experience, uh, that he has.

But I want to give you some tools and equip you to help you,

uh, have faith under pressure.

I want you to know, uh, what to do when you're doing good

for God, but things get worse.

Or when you've been serving faithfully, but you still feel drained and

unable to serve God any longer.

When you feel discouraged, how do you deal with that pressure?

And what I want to help you see is that often what's happening here is your

faith crumbles under pressure because you believe something wrong about God.

You have a wrong story about how God works, and this is where the

rubber meets the road for us.

In our minds, we can so easily turn God into a formula where we expect him to do

certain things based on what we put in.

And again, that's not entirely unbiblical, but there are exceptions to the rule, and

that's what we're gonna look at today.

Turn your Bible to One Kings Chapter 19.

We're gonna look at this whole section where Elijah runs away.

Instead of running to the problem, he runs away from him.

I think a lot of us can.

Really relate to this feeling in chapter 18.

Uh, the chapter just before this, you might recall, Elijah meets.

Uh, the false prophets of Baal on Mar Mount Carmel.

He does this, uh, as a result of God's call to him to say, I want you to gather

together all the prophets, and I want you to make a demonstration of my power and

authority over the false gods of Israel.

Now, at this point in Israel's history, there's two kingdoms that make up the

whole Israel's divided into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.

The northern Kingdom is currently under the reign of King Ahab

and his malicious wife, Jezebel.

She might be worse than he is.

He's a weak leader.

She's a strong, a strong womanly type, but she's also quite evil.

That's the northern kingdom.

The southern kingdom is ruled by Jeh, Phat, and the southern

kingdom makes up Judah and Simeon.

It's a smaller part of the whole, but that's God's promised kingdom

that he's going to sustain.

The Northern Kingdom has been bad from the very beginning, from the getup.

And what we're gonna see here is in chapter 18, uh, Elijah meets Ahab's

prophets, or more specifically Jezebel's prophets on Mount Carmel.

And he says, let's do a demonstration here.

You guys call your God to act and call down fire from heaven,

and I'll call my God to act and I'll call down fire from Heaven.

And the God that responds is the one who's the true God.

Well, surprise, surprise.

BA's, God's Baal does nothing.

Uh, and so you see this mockery, uh, Elijah calls and out and says, oh,

maybe your God's using the bathroom and maybe something else is going on.

Maybe he needs to be awoken.

They go through their whole situation, but Elijah says, God, show them your power.

God sends down fire, licks up the flames, and showcases his power and strength.

That fire is an important motif.

We're gonna come back to that in a second.

After that demonstration, the people say, the Lord, Yahweh, he is God.

The Lord is gone.

And then Elijah says, take all of those prophets, the prophets

of Baal and slaughter them.

And that's exactly what the people do.

Immediately after this episode, we get to our passage here, first Kings Chapter 19.

1 Kings 19 · chapter mention

I want you to notice how it starts here.

Remember, king Ahab is the king of the Northern Kingdom.

Ahab, king Ahab tells Jezebel, it's like a son going to his mom

saying, oh mom, look at what he did.

Ahab tells Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he killed

all the prophets with a sword.

Now this is, by the way, this is violent, but this is a remarkably good situation.

God does not tolerate false prophets.

And so this is a right judge, uh, right, and just judgment of God.

And we see here this is a highlight of Elijah's life.

It's a difficult one.

No doubt.

But this is a highlight.

He tells Jezebel what Elijah has done, and then in verse two,

Jezebel sends a messenger to Elijah and she, she swears in oath saying,

so may the Gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as

a life of one of those prophets that you killed by this time tomorrow.

Jezebel swears by the gods that were just disproven in chapter 18.

In chapter 18, the Gods that Jezebel serves were humiliated.

But in chapter 19, she swears by those same gods and says, Elijah, I

saw what you did through my husband.

I'm gonna kill you.

You killed my people.

I'm going after you.

This woman threatens him and to, to your shock and surprise.

I hope you see here in verse three.

Then Elijah was afraid and he arose and ran for his life.

This bold prophet suddenly cowers under the fierce threats of a woman

whose Gods were previously humiliated.

What's happening here?

Elijah's afraid.

He arose and ran for his life, and then he came to Beersheba.

Uh, Beersheba is the southern most border, not of the northern kingdom,

but of the southern kingdoms.

He is far south as he can go.

It would be like you running to Tijuana and then saying, all right, I'm gonna go

even further still, or going to San Diego.

You stop in San Diego, you drop off your kids and say, I'm

going to tj, don't follow me.

Stay here.

I'll be back at some point.

Well, that's what he does.

He goes to San Diego Beersheba, and then he goes even further south and

goes to, to tj, uh, in the wilderness and leaves his servant there.

So he's fleeing as far as he can go.

He's afraid.

It's flights not fights.

Uh, this bold servant of God suddenly changes.

And I wanna show you something that's especially important here.

I want you to see how his faith responds to this impetus this, uh, situation.

And what it is at first is, is fleeing.

At first he fought, he fought the, the prophets of bail.

But it, secondly, he flees.

Something's happening, something's shifted in him.

And I wanna suggest to you that what's happening is that

Elijah's expectations of what God.

Should have done were violated.

Elijah expected something to happen after Mount Carmel that didn't happen.

And consequently he says, oh no, everything I thought

about God must be wrong.

I've got a skedaddle.

Let me make a one quick observation here.

The very reason Elijah's experiencing what he experiences

is because he's doing God's will.

The threats and the violence should not be new to him.

They should be an expected part of what it looks like to follow God.

So let's just start with number one here.

As you do good before God, one of the things that you should expect from God is

that there will be increasing opposition.

And I should say it's not from God.

It's natural.

It's part of being with God.

There will be opposition.

So expect increasing opposition when doing increasing.

Good.

As you relate to God and you do more good on his behalf

you start reading your Bible.

You start going to church more frequently.

You attend a men's Bible study skipping out your normal sleep.

In day on, on a Saturday.

You start serving.

You show up early on a Sunday.

You stay late after the service.

All these things you should expect opposition.

This is not an anomaly.

This is normal Christian life.

This is normative.

And it's because Elijah's doing great good that he's greatly opposed.

If Elijah had not called out the prophets of Baal, well, Jezebel would have no

need to threaten him, but it's because he did good that the threat comes his way.

Really what's happening here is so clearly it, it clearly, it happens

in our Christian life all the time.

When you sit down to watch Hulu or Netflix and maybe you're, you finish

watching Beast Game season two, where he is given out insane amounts of money.

You never feel resistance to do that.

No one's ever saying to you, oh, maybe some people are, but no one's ever

saying, you should feel guilty that you're sitting here on the couch watching Beast

Games or watching Hulu or what have you.

There's so little resistance to doing things like that.

There's little spiritual opposition to you to sit, sit down and just

hang out, uh, watching Bluey with the kids or watching the Super Bowl.

All these low or no power mode activities are not spiritually opposition to you.

What is opposed is when you do anything good for God's sake, when

you begin to say, I don't wanna just sit here on the sidelines.

I wanna do good for God's sake, I should expect there will be opposition.

And there's at least three that were always working against you.

And you know these ones, right?

You have the world.

The world does not create a system where it's easy to be a Christian.

The world creates structures that make it abnormal to be a Christian.

And so the opposition that you'll feel is things like when you're watching

Netflix or Hulu or Apple tv, you'll notice that there are themes and there

are depictions that are offensive to you.

They're sinful things.

There are things that God says are evil and you should hate, and when you see

them, you should feel at least a tension or conscience to say, this is not right.

The world does not cater to the Christian worldview.

It works to the contrary.

That's part of what the world does, and that should not be an ex, uh,

that should not be news to us.

We, that should be an expectation.

The world wants to normalize sin.

So you have the first enemy of the world, the second one, you have the flesh.

Your flesh, even though it is redeemed by God, it is still subject to

sinful tendencies, and that will be the case for the rest of your life.

Your flesh makes it desirable to sin.

Your flesh will capitalize on opportunities to see something evil

and sinful and say, oh, there's something in there that draws me to it.

And then finally, you have a devil that makes it attractive to sin.

There is a enemy that works against you and me all the time

to oppose your good desires.

So let's just say you say in your heart, I wanna wake up

early and start reading my Bible.

You should expect the world, the flesh, and the devil to work against you.

You'll see, oh man, that TV show that I was watching.

Now I'm hooked.

And that little, that little wheel that says it's gonna automatically

play next episode, let me just click that so I can watch the next episode.

And now suddenly you've been up three hours later than you expected because

you, you started watching this show that got you hooked your flesh.

When you wake up early, we'll say, but we need more sleep.

I'd like to sleep in a little longer, if you don't mind.

And of course, the devil says, wouldn't it just be awesome to just lay here

because you don't need to read your Bible.

You already, what are the genealogy gonna teach you anyway?

The world, the flesh and the devil constantly operate against you.

You should expect increasing opposition when doing increasing.

Good.

We understand Elijah's Elijah's response.

Elijah expected God to do something in Mount Carmel that he

didn't do, and so now he flees.

The temptation for all of us will always be, I want to flee.

When things get hard, I'm going to just drop out.

It's easier not to fight and that's always gonna be true.

But expecting opposition means being prepared to push through it.

Let me just give you a small illustration here.

The fish that goes downstream doesn't have to work at it.

He just goes with the current.

It's when that fish turns around and decides to go upstream.

That very active, turning around and going upstream is what produces

the opposition that he feels.

In a similar fashion, you are a Christian who's not going downstream with the world.

You are trying to go upstream against the current of the

world, the flesh and the devil.

And that automatically invites you into a whole realm where life is harder and this

is what it is to be a follower of Christ.

This is what it looks like to be faithful expecting oppositions means

that you're preparing to push through it.

Um, uh, suppose you signed up for an adventure club.

You sign up for Adventure Club and, and you, you finally decide I'm gonna step up.

But then something happens on Wednesday nights, you begin to realize that man

work is really picking up on Wednesdays.

And so you're busier than you've been in a long time.

And then you so start suddenly having these health issues.

Your back's starting to hurt and you know, you, you got outta bed one day

and your neck hurts for some reason.

You don't understand what's going on.

So now you're, you're trying to show up to Adventure Club and you got this

crick in your neck and you're tired because you've had a long day at work.

And then you notice that your spouse has been a little more

irritable with you than normal.

And you're kind of wondering, well, what's happening here?

I'm doing all the right things.

And then you find yourself at a loss of saying, Lord, I'm doing, I'm doing

what I thought you wanted me to do, and yet, life is harder for me now.

What's going on?

A world, the flesh and the devil constantly at work against you.

The opposition should be expected.

I expect the devil to go after your marriages.

I expect the devil to go after your relationships.

I expect your flesh to be suspicious of your brothers and your wives.

I expect your flesh to be irritated with your kids when you had a long day of work.

And then you go to serve afterward, and then you go home and you're like,

oh, kick the dog and you hit the cat.

You're mad because you've had a long day.

Your flesh, the world, and the devil all conspiring to work against you.

When you do good, you need to expect that there's going to be increasing opposition.

God does not promise to take it away.

In fact, to the contrary, Jesus promises that it will be hard, and

that's a feature and not a bug.

You're going upstream that's gonna cost you something.

When committing to do good for Christ's sake.

You need to expect your commitment to be tested.

When Elijah stood there on the mountain after they

slaughtered the prophets of Baal.

I, I suspect he was thinking, great.

We're about to experience revival in Israel.

Things are gonna change.

God's gonna do great things.

And yet that didn't happen.

At least not, not immediately, and not the way he thought he ran

because he was threatened by Jezebel.

And yet what we're gonna see is that the Lord sends him back.

Your temptation to flee might feel similar.

I'd rather leave and go to tj, start a new life.

Then have to face what I'm facing here.

But one of the things that we have to be okay with gentlemen is that

we let the Lord tell us when we're done, not our emotions, not our flesh.

In fact, pastor Peter is gonna preach, I think this weekend, one Peter four 12.

Peter says, beloved, do not be surprised.

Brothers, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon

you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.

Christians are not cynics.

We're not jaded.

People who are saying life is awful and hard, but we, we are not surprised when

there's difficulty in opposition to our faith, to our love for the Lord, to our,

our service, to our wives and our kids.

We're not surprised at the fiery trial.

This is part of what it is to serve the Lord and our job is to say, Lord, I'm

committed to you even when things don't go my way, and perhaps especially so

God wants us to learn to be resilient.

But he's not ignorant of our nature.

And this is what's so beautiful here.

I love what we're about to see.

This is probably one of the coolest parts of the book of First Kings,

and there's lots of cool parts, but God's not ignorant of our nature.

Psalm 1 0 3, verse 14 says, he knows our frame.

He remembers that we are dust, and I want you to see how God

cares for Elijah, Elijah fleas.

He's doing the wrong thing, he's going the wrong direction, but I

want you to see how God pursues him.

Starting at verse four, one Kings 19.

Go to verse four with me.

We just saw that he's on the run.

He's gone south, and then he went further south, verse four.

He himself, Elijah, went a day's journey into the wilderness and came

and sat down under a broom tree and he asked the Lord that he might die.

Saying It is enough now.

Oh Lord, take away my life.

Now let's just camp on that for just a brief second here.

I don't know if you've ever felt a desire to leave this life, but if you have,

I want you to see Scripture doesn't endorse it, but it does recognize it.

You might have such a hard time even after serving the Lord in great ways.

You might feel so low and so down that you might like Elijah, say, Lord, I'm done.

Stick a fork in me.

Get me outta here.

I'm tired of this.

I'm tired of fighting.

I'm tired of working.

I'm tired of running.

I'm tired of the threats.

And so Elijah with other Godly men, felt such deep despair that he was

willing to say, Lord, just take me.

He's not alone.

Moses, his predecessor, also asked the Lord, please just take my

life Job after being one of the most righteous men of his time.

He's afflicted by the devil.

God allows him to suffer and then he asks the Lord, Lord, I

wish is better than I not live.

I wish I were dead.

Jeremiah also wanted to die.

Jonah, a prophet of God, not the best prophet, but a prophet

of God also wanted to die.

It's not a good place to be, and I'm not saying that this is okay.

None of us wants to stay there, but you're not alone.

The Lord can redeem your situation.

Even at the moments of your deepest and darkest despair, my encouragement

to you is not to stay there to invite other men into this, especially.

Of course you're gonna go to the Lord, but don't do this alone.

Elijah wants to die.

He's run.

He's on the lamb.

He runs away.

He says, it is enough now, Lord, take away my life for

I'm no better than my father's.

Now that little phrase tells us something about his thinking,

I'm no better than my father's.

I wonder if.

He might have thought himself better than his ancestors prior to this moment.

He, he's making a comparison.

I'm no better than my father's, which tells me he's, in his

mind, he's reasoning out.

I thought I would have different circumstances.

I thought I might be more successful.

And yet he's dealing with the fact that he's now disillusioned

by what ended up being something contrary to what he was hoping for.

Maybe he was building his identity off of his ministry success.

You know, I'm faithful when I, like the Lord fed me with ravens.

Uh, good Lord has clearly shown his power through Elijah.

And maybe he got used to that thinking, this is the way

God's always going to treat me.

I'm always going to live in the sunshine and never in the darkness.

And yet God directly confronts those expectations.

And verse five.

Verse five, he laid down and slept under a broom tree.

God does to Elijah What?

What parents do to their fussy toddlers take a nap and eat some food.

It's exactly what happens here.

Look at, look.

Look what he does here.

He slept under a broom tree.

And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, arise and eat.

Notice there's no correction in this.

This is just God using an angelic messenger to feed him

a rise and eat and behold.

There was at his head a cake baked on hot stones.

That sounds really good.

A cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water, and he ate

and drank and laid down again.

This guy is exhausted.

He sleeps.

He gets up only to eat.

He goes back to bed, verse seven, and the angel of the Lord came again a second

time and touched him and said, arise and eat for the journey Is too great for you.

Now remember, his journey is away from the Lord.

At this point.

He's running away from the ministry post God and given him, and yet God

is graciously supplying his need.

He feeds him twice.

He lets him sleep, and then the angel says, I need you to eat one more time

because the the journey that you're going to take Now, you might be running

from the Lord, but I'm gonna use this journey to teach you something buddy.

So he's running from the Lord and the angel says, I want to eat some more.

And then verse eight.

He arose and ate and drank, and then notice this.

He went in the strength of that food for 40 days and 40 nights

to Horri the Mount of God.

Mount Horri is also probably Mount Sinai.

That's a safe bet.

Mount Sinai, if you're familiar, is the mountain where God

revealed himself to Moses.

To give them the, the law.

And so we see a lot of parallels between Elijah and Moses.

In fact, this is, you know, the same Elijah and the same Moses

who are gonna meet Jesus on a, on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Remember, Moses and Elijah visit Jesus and they both collectively

represent the law and the prophets.

So there's a lot of parallels between Moses and Elijah here.

But I want you to see that how God treats him is fascinating.

God personally feeds.

Personally feeds Elijah.

Uh, in chapter 17, Elijah experienced God's provision by sending ravens.

But here God sends a messenger to say, I'm, I'm going to feed you myself.

Where'd the food come from?

I don't know.

God made it.

And here God tops him off.

But notice he feeds him.

He gives him rest.

And then he says, I want you to fast for 40 days, which is exactly what happens.

He tops him off and then sends him 40 days and 40 nights into the wilderness.

Now just think 40 wilderness.

Mount Sinai, is this sounding familiar at all?

There should be some connections that are being connected in your

brain that draw the parallel between Elijah and Moses who led the people

of Israel through the wilderness when they were being tested by God.

Moses is on the lamb away from the ministry post God gave him, and now he's

on the lamb, and God's gonna send him through the wilderness to test him and

to meet him, and this is fascinating.

I love the way that God responds to him.

Now what we see here is God does a few things that we need to see,

but let me just put it like this under a point number two here.

We should expect God to meet our real needs and not our felt needs, our

real needs and not our felt needs.

Uh, it seems like Elijah expected God to meet certain needs, that he had

expectations about God provoking, revival, and doing all sorts of things, but God

instead says, hold on, slow down, Elijah.

I'm gonna meet your needs in a way that you don't even expect me to do this.

Have you ever seen those cups or those memes that say, I, I'm sorry

for what I said when I was hungry or when I was hungry or when I was tired.

I understand the sentiment.

When our flesh is weak, we, we get a lot more irritable.

And so it's fascinating to me that here, the first thing God does

is meet Elijah's physical means.

A lot of us would, would do well to see how God does this

and to do this for ourselves.

Uh, sleep and food and taking care of your body is not unspiritual.

In fact, we see the opposite.

This is the first thing God does to minister to Elijah.

It's very spiritual to care for the body that God has given you.

But I want us to notice the gap between our felt needs and our real needs.

And for that, I'm gonna take you outta First Kings for just

a moment before we go back.

Turn to Philippians chapter four.

We're gonna take a brief look at the Apostle Paul and notice

what he says about needs.

This is so critical.

This unlocked something for me as I study for this, and I

think it'll be helpful to you.

Philippians chapter four at verse 19.

We need to think carefully about how God wants us to think about our needs

so that we can have a right expectation.

My thesis here is that our faith will often struggle because we have

wrong expectations, sub biblical or even unbiblical expectations.

And part of this then is how God deals with our needs.

Let's take a look at Philippians four, verse 19.

This is worth memorizing here.

Paul says to the Philippian Church, after thanking them for their gift, he says,

my God will supply every need of yours.

According to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Wow.

Talk about a blank check.

My God will give you every need that you have.

He will supply your needs every which need.

Every need.

How is he gonna do that?

Well, according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus, that is a blank check.

And for most Christians, I think we see that and we say,

man, that is so encouraging.

The Lord's gonna provide.

And indeed he does, and he will.

So important.

Staying in chapter four though, I want you to scoop back just a few verses.

We'll go back to verse 11, Philippians four, verse 11.

Paul says, as he thanks them for the gift that they sent to him, the Philippian

church blessed him with some resources.

He's thanking them for this, and then he says in verse 11, not that

I'm speaking of being in need.

Keep an eye on that word there for I have learned in whatever

situation I am to be content.

And then he describes the situations that he's been in.

Verse 12, I know how to be brought low, isn't been in a low situation

and I know how to about in any and every circumstance, I have

learned the secret of facing plenty.

And look at this hunger, abundance, and here's our word, need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me Well, which is it Paul?

Does he supply every need or should we expect to have moments of need?

Should we call on God to fulfill his promise, to supply every need of ours

according to his riches in Christ Jesus?

Or should we, like Paul, expect to be naked and hungry?

Hunger's a need, isn't it?

It's a physical.

If I don't eat, I die.

And yet Paul says, here, I know how to be in both areas and I'm gonna be okay.

I, he says here in verse 11, I, I'm not speaking of being in need guys.

I have no needs.

I'm well provided for.

And yet he's also saying, I've also know what it is to be naked.

I know how to have a lot, I know how to have a little, how do we

put these two things together?

And I think the important part for you to see here is that God meets your needs

through both abundance and deprivation.

Because your needs are often not the temporal ones that we're focused on.

The needs are the permanent and the spiritual ones that God cares more about.

This is not to say that he doesn't want you to care for your physical body.

Obviously he does.

But our greatest need is faithfulness to Christ and life and in death.

Our greatest need is to trust that God knows our needs and will meet

them as he sees fits, and that will mean as you see here in Paul seasons

of deprivation, where your belt has to be tightened a notch or two.

Or where you're having to make cuts that you didn't expect to make or where

you're having to sacrifice sleep that you weren't expecting to sacrifice.

There are seasons where this is the case.

Paul makes it clear, and yet he says, even in those seasons, it

is possible and even expected that God will meet your real needs.

God will be faithful and your hard marriage, God will meet your real need,

which is not necessarily peace in the marriage, although you might pursue that.

The need is that you learn Christ's patience.

That you learn how to love someone who makes it hard to love

God will meet your real needs.

Your felt needs are helpful indicators, but they can't be the

thing that governs your responses.

God will sometimes hold, rather, God will sometimes withhold lesser

needs to meet your greater needs.

We're not often good at.

Ranking these in our minds, which is why we have to let God lead us in

this and be willing to say, God, I, I'm trying, I'm, I'm trying to save.

I'm trying to serve my wife.

I'm trying to serve my church, and I, I'm struggling with

some of my needs not being met.

Lord, is this a season where you're wanting me to learn how to be

content even when you withhold this?

Or do I need to change the circumstance?

Both are a possibility, but I just need to expose you to the fact that God might want

you there in that season of deprivation.

It's very possible.

Okay.

Philippians four is a really helpful place for us to camp.

I, I would love to spend more time here, but I'd love for you to just

study Paul's life and put these pieces together for yourselves.

Let's give you a little hint of it, but let's turn back to One Kings

19 as we look at the facts and just make two quick observations here.

God met physical needs first, rest, and food.

And I wanna point out to your attention here, something you

know, you are a body and a soul.

You are both of these things in one, and because of that, it is not

unspiritual to care for your body and you should, you should care for your body.

Both of these things are important to God.

We're not we're not the kind of people who think that only your soul matters.

We do believe that you should take care of your physical body, and

that means trusting that God wants you to use food to care for it.

In fact, Jesus asks you to pray in the Sermon on the Mount.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Give us this day our daily bread.

God provides sleep.

Uh, in Psalm 1 27, 2, it says that he gives to his beloved sleep.

God makes it easier for us to fight when we are physically replenished.

In fact, do you remember what Jesus says in the garden, uh, as his disciples fall

asleep at his hour of greatest need?

What does he say?

The flesh is weak.

Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot by weakening our flesh over

and over again through patterns and habits that don't serve our body.

God feeds and sleeps.

Elijah, before he says anything to him, before he addresses the issue, he just

says, I need you to take a nap, buddy.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is taking a nap and eating a good meal.

No amens on that.

Yeah.

Okay.

I said amen to my heart.

I was all about that.

I don't need an excuse to take a nap, but that one helped.

Some people focus on one thing to the exclusion of the other, and I

know that's a danger for a lot of us, but I just need you to see being

a physical being means that we have to take care of our physical bodies.

If you don't do that, you end up being sick, which will not help you

as you seek to love your spouse.

Uh, if you eat poor food on a regular basis, it's not gonna

help you endure ministry.

It's not gonna add to your energy.

It's not gonna give you the ability to serve in, in

moments where people need you.

I remember I was telling my kids, look, I, I, I exercised so I could be helpful

to the church and my, my greatest hero story of all time, I know I should, you're

never supposed to share hero stories.

Uh, but I showed this, shared this with my kids.

'cause this was such a great example.

I was serving in Leisure World, which is now called Laguna Woods.

Laguna Woods.

Thank you.

Pastor Peach and I were doing ministry before we came here, and

I came early to set up and do my thing, and I saw a man on the floor.

And I saw another older gentleman, two of these older gentlemen were

struggling to, to help each other out.

The one older gentleman was trying to push the other guy up, and the

other guy was just not making it.

So I walked over there, I said, can I help?

And the other guy said, yeah, he fell.

And so I said, great.

I got this.

So I stood behind the guy, I put my arms underneath his

armpits and I just did squat.

It was so cool.

It was the only time I've ever been able to use that in a

really practical situation.

But I put my arms underneath that, pulled them right up.

It was a piece of cake.

He was very thankful and I thought, man, that's.

That's why I exercise.

That's it.

That was it.

I mean, obviously I use it now because we're setting up and tearing down all the

time, but I exercised so I could do that.

And then I, I, I rode my bike before I came because I wanna have a fresh mind.

That's all I did.

I just rode the bike and I wanted to think about how I can best serve you guys.

God wants you to use your physical body to serve the church, to serve your family,

to serve your employer, to serve the people that God has given you, and the

more physical, physically fit you're able.

To be the more capable you're able to be.

Of course there's a, there's a way to emphasize that in a, in an unhelpful way.

So God met physical needs first.

Second, God prioritized spiritual needs.

Ultimately, I need you to see that too.

God pr, God met the physical needs first, but he prioritized the spiritual needs.

That gets the emphasis, and this is where I need you to land.

Uh, I can't give you a percentage, like, Hey, 60%.

Spiritual, 40% physical, but I can show you this is what God prioritized and all

we have to do is look at the fact that God makes him fast for 40 days and 40 nights.

He ate and he slept and he says, by the way, I hope you enjoyed that meal.

'cause you're now not gonna eat for 40.

You're gonna be on a, on a, on a, an elimination diet for the next 40 days.

He does this in order to help Elijah commune with God.

And that's actually what fasting is supposed to help us do.

Fasting, withholding yourself from food allows us to connect with God

in ways that we otherwise would not, and so he makes him fast.

I also wanted to show, I wanna show you First Corinthians

chapter five, verse five.

Just write that down.

First Corinthians five, verse five.

Paul says to the church at Corinth, I want you to send this man outta the church.

And here's what he says, you are to deliver this man to Satan for

the destruction of the flesh.

Why?

So that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Do you see how God prioritizes?

The spirit over the flesh.

So if there is gonna be one to suffer, let it be your flesh.

If there is gonna be one to sacrifice, let it be your flesh.

But ordinarily, as a regular pattern of your life, God does want you to care for

your physical body while still focusing and prioritizing your spiritual needs.

What Elijah needed was a reframed view of God.

That was his expectation.

The expectation should be, I need to expect God to meet my real

needs and not just my felt needs.

In this last section, and man, this is so rich, we're not gonna have all the time

that I want to discuss it, but I want to take you through the last section where

God now meets Elijah face to face, as it were to deal with his issue, and we'll see

how God reframes Elijah's expectations.

This is awesome.

Okay, verse nine.

I'm gonna read it all the way through with minimal commentary and we'll, we'll

make our third and final point here.

Then Elijah came to a cave and lodged in it, and behold the word of the

Lord came to him and said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah?

Just notice that this is a subtle and gentle way for God to tell Elijah

you're not in the right place, but he doesn't do it by pointing his finger,

said, Elijah, stop being an idiot.

Get back to work.

He starts with the question, what are you doing here, Elijah?

What an incredible God.

How gracious is he?

Verse 10.

Notice how Elijah responds.

Pay close attention.

He says, I've been very jealous for the Lord.

The God of hosts for e for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant.

They've thrown down your altars.

They've killed your prophets with the sword.

And I even, I, only I alone him left, and they seek my life to take it away.

Okay, keep that one fixed in your mind.

Notice his response.

I'm alone.

I'm, I'm the only prophet of God.

Left.

If you have time later, chapter 18 in verse seven, actually

starting at chapter 18 verse three.

Obadiah is the household manager for King Ahab.

He's the one who meets Elijah and says, guys, Elijah, I've got 50 guys,

50 prophets that I have protected and hidden, or a hundred actually, but in

fifties, I protected and hidden these guys, they're faithful to Yahweh.

He had this meeting with Obediah, and yet Elijah seems to have

forgotten that conversation entirely.

I'm alone.

Verse 11.

God said to Elijah, go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.

This is also critical because I don't think Elijah responds.

He doesn't do this, at least not immediately.

Here's what the Lord says.

Here's what.

Here's what the Bible says here.

And behold, the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind tore the mountains in

broken pieces, the rocks 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 of fire, remember the fire motif, God stands down.

Fire from heaven.

There's a fire.

But the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire, the sound of a low whisper notice here, and when

Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and

stood at the entrance of the cave.

I just need to pause real quick here.

All this spectacular events that God showcases to Elijah, these are ways

that Elijah would've been familiar.

God operates in spectacular ways.

Elijah has seen this, and yes, the Bible repeatedly says the

Lord was not in these things.

It's only until you get this still small voice, the low whisper, a thin

silence that finally Elijah recognizes, okay, that's where the Lord is.

But notice that Elijah wraps his face.

Is this, this might seem to you at least at first glance, oh, he's

being humble, he's being pious.

He doesn't want to behold the glory of God.

He doesn't want to, uh, look at something he should not look at.

But I would su suggest to you that what's happening here is

actually Elijah, avoiding the Lord.

Hiding your face from somebody is not a positive thing in scripture.

In fact, several passages ask the Lord, please don't hide your face from me.

Moses, you might think hides his face too.

But not when he is with the Lord.

Moses hides his face when after he meets the Lord, so that the people don't

see the glory fading from his noggin.

But when he is with the Lord, he's with the Lord face to face.

Paul says later on, we all with unveiled face, behold the glory of the Lord are

being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

I don't think this is a good thing I see in Elijah resistance.

I don't wanna see what you're showing me.

God.

And that would explain to me why he doesn't exit the cave until after the

Lord puts on this firework show for him.

I think Elijah is still very much in a resistance and rebellious state.

The still small voice, this is the crescendo of the whole thing.

Chapter 19 really wants us to see this still small voice.

What, what is God showing us?

Why is God not in the wind, the earthquake and the fire?

And I, I wanna suggest to you that what God is showing us

here is that he's not a formula.

And God doesn't operate according to a fixed calculation where he says, I always

do A, B, C, and D when you expect me to.

We can talk about God's promises, especially those where he

promises to meet our needs.

But God is not a formula.

He's a person.

He acts according to his personhood.

And I wonder if you've ever expected God to act in your life in a certain

way, like He's gonna save this person, he's gonna do this thing or that thing.

Not that he's unwilling.

But I wonder if you might miss the ordinary ways that God works, the

ordinary the quiets, the unobtrusive ways.

There's a million things that God is doing and we're, we're really

never all that aware of all of them, but we can understand how people

would see God in this spectacular.

But I think God is showing Elijah, I don't need spectacular.

I can work in thin silence.

I can work through a donkey, I can work through a normal everyday conversation.

I can work in things that you're not expecting the ordinary,

everyday, and the quiet.

Let us not be like Elijah and miss that.

God works in the ordinary ways.

Elijah approaches.

God hides his face.

And then notice notice here in

verse 14.

Yeah, actually the, the last part of verse 13, notice again what God does.

He asks Elijah the same question.

There came a voice to him and said, what are you doing here, Elijah?

Now, God's not stupid.

He's asking a question that's the same question, and what do you think God

would expect after the display of his glory, his majesty, and the thin voice?

What do you think God's expecting after this?

Hopefully a different answer.

Notice Elijah's response.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

He said, and you could just read verse 10 because it's the same exact thing.

I've been very jealous for the Lord that the God of hosts for the

people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, throw down your altars, and

killed your prophets with the sword.

And I even, I only am left and they seek my life to take it away.

Same response.

And yet the Lord still.

Still does not smite him.

He doesn't slap him.

He doesn't throw him off of the, the mountain face.

He just, he stays with him.

Verse 16, the Lord said to him, go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.

And when you arrive, you shall anoint zeel to be king over Syria.

And Je who?

The son, the son of Nims, she you shall anoint to be king over Israel.

Uh, and Elisha, your predecessor.

Uh, your successor, rather, the son of she of Abel, Mela, you shall anoint

to be prophet in your place and the one who escapes from the sword of hael

shall jehu put to death and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu,

shall Eisha put to death verse 18.

Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel.

All the knees that I have that have not bound to bail in every mount that has not

kissed him, he ends by saying two things.

Elijah, I've got work for you to do, buddy.

I need you to go back.

And then two, by the way, you're not alone.

There are still 7,000.

God meets Elijah's real needs by saying, buddy, let me reframe the way

that you're seeing this whole thing.

And even this, God is gracious.

I, I just see God's grace written all over this point.

Number three here, I need you to expect your perspective

to be limited and incomplete.

God sees it the way it is.

Elijah does not, he does this for us all the time.

If our eyes are open, you need to recognize that anytime something

doesn't make sense to you, things that God says or does, you have to

remember your perspective is limited and incomplete because you're a

man, because you're a creature.

If you're going to endure in your faith, you need to be strengthened

by biblical expectations, and your biblical expectation is, I don't

know everything and what I do know, I barely know what I know.

What I know about the Bible and about God makes me feel I need to

know a lot more that drives me.

I don't know everything.

I wanna know more, but I'll never have the knowledge that God has.

No matter if I study every day for the rest of my life, I will

still be limited and incomplete.

That's all of us.

We're all by default, limited and incomplete.

You're limited by time, space, knowledge, and wisdom, and you're incomplete.

You'll only ever see a part of the picture.

How part of the picture will you see?

Uh, uh, uh, there's a tweet years ago from John Piper.

I'm just gonna read to you.

Here's what he said.

God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you

may be aware of three of them.

And of course, this, this is not a, this is not a formula, but I treat it that way.

If there are 8.3

billion people on the planet and God is doing 10,000

things in each of their lives.

That would be 83 trillion things.

God is controlling 83, 80 3 trillion things at once.

And to put that in perspective, if you tried to count to 83 trillion

at one number per second without stopping to eat, sleep, drink, or

anything else, it would take you 2.6

million years to count to that number.

We're talking about absurd numerical data here.

And I think the point is that God is doing all of that at once.

He's not forgetting somebody.

He's doing 10,000 things in each of our lives all at the same time.

All with complete awareness of who we are.

And we're only aware of a few things at the best.

Psalm 1 0 3 says the word we're to count up our blessings, to

be aware of what God is doing.

And so often we're just not.

You need to expect your perspective to be limited and incomplete.

Like Elijah, we get disillusioned.

We get discouraged if we're only focusing on what's in front of us.

God, if you really love my family, if you really love me, if you really, if you

really cared, wouldn't you, A, B, C, and D, fill in the blank of all the things

that you want God to do in your life.

Those things may not be bad.

I suspect that what Elijah wanted was not bad.

He wanted God's glory in Israel, but he wanted it on his timetable.

I want it when I want it.

God, aren't you gonna do it now?

Why won't you do what I want right now?

Expect your perspective to be limited and incomplete.

I think another mistake that Elijah makes is that he looks at all that

God is doing from his own perspective.

Now, granted he's a major player in biblical history, but how easy would

it be to look at your own life and say, well, God, you clearly need me.

So you're gonna use me to accomplish your purposes, and maybe God's saying,

look, I'm gonna use you for a season, but I'm gonna sideline you when you

think you ought to be center stage.

I'm gonna, I'm, I'm not gonna give you the spotlight for your whole life, Elijah.

In fact, one of your jobs, Elijah, is when you go back, I'm gonna

make you a point of successor.

We need to expect God to do things that will defy our expectations.

They'll confuse us.

God will do, and say things to us that will cause us to be

flummoxed at what he's doing.

And that's part of the point.

You're not gonna know.

God's ways are inscrutable and they're good Biblical expectation we should

have is that we can trust him in those things You see, God's gonna force you.

He's gonna force you to trust him.

This is your expectation.

When you're interacting with the living God, the God who made heaven

and earth, he will force you to trust him because your mind, no matter how

smart you are, will never be able to fully comprehend all that he's doing.

He will force you to trust him.

Interesting.

In the New Testament, the man who is called the new Elijah, John the Baptist,

also came to a moment with God where he said to Jesus, are you the one who

is to come or shall we expect another?

Now, you might remember, John says this from prison.

He has to send his it, his entourage and say, Hey, go talk to Jesus

and say, are you really the guy?

Jesus ends that short conversation with them, with Blessed is the

one who is not offended by me.

Have you been offended by God?

Has he defied your expectations as he let you down?

Blessed is the one who's not offended by me.

You need to place your focus on who God is and what he's done.

You see, Elijah was bold as long as his mind was centered on God, but not when he

began to focus his attention upon himself.

That's j Adams in the Christian Counselor's manual.

Well, God, what's your plan?

Whatcha gonna do what?

What are you doing?

Show me.

Just, if you just told me what the plan was, God, I would trust you.

That's false.

That's false.

We, we never will.

We're never happy with that.

But here's what we do have.

You should write this one down.

Romans 8 31 and 32.

Paul talks about a life of suffering of persecution, and he says, what

then shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also

with him graciously give us all things?

If God has given you Jesus, his son, you can trust him with

everything else below that.

That is the most expensive thing he could possibly give.

Will he not withhold anything from you?

Of course not.

He will not withhold what you really need.

Sometimes we forget that the Gospel, as Tim Keller said, is

not just the ABCs of Christianity but the A two Zs of Christianity.

When your heart begins to grow, faint and doubtful, you need to remember

what God has done for you in Christ.

Elijah didn't have this.

And I feel for Elijah, 'cause I probably would be in the same spot, but I can say,

I can think about what Christ has done on my behalf and say, I can trust you.

If I can trust you to give me Christ to die from my sin.

I can trust you with everything else that I'm concerned about.

And my expectations are gonna be held with an open hand.

I don't need to know the whole plan.

If I know the planner, if I can trust the planner, I can just say, God, you

be God and I'll follow you wherever you lead, even when, and especially

when it defies what I expect you to do.

Gentlemen, you're not alone in the struggle.

And there's so much more to say about Elijah.

But what I want you to see here is that our job is to

cultivate biblical expectations.

It's when we have, uh, biblical expectations that our faith can endure.

Those expectations are open-handed, trust and responsiveness to the Lord.

When you have your dark seasons, your moments of loneliness and

doubt and frustration, know that people have gone before you and

God has carried them through that.

My encouragement to you is take it to the Lord and take it to your brothers.

Trust that God will get you through it.

Don't lose heart, don't lose hope, because God is the one who sustains you.

He upholds you with his righteous right hand.

Because Christ is rejected, because he was condemned on the cross.

You'll never be rejected.

The things that you experience are not God saying no to you.

I don't like you.

You're not my son.

It's God shaping you and growing you.

Your greatest need is christlikeness.

God's purposes.

Therefore, cannot be thwarted and will not be thwarted.

We can trust him.

That's why we should be resolved.

Let's pray.

God, help us this morning as we now go to our small groups to learn

about how to put this into practice.

Give us boldness to talk openly, give us vulnerability, give us trust.

Let us cultivate relationships that help us to know you better, to love

you more faithfully, and to know how to navigate life when things let us down.

And if we're honest, Lord, when you let us down, when you don't do

things according to our expectations.

Help us to still navigate with trust, with confidence, even when those moments arise.

Give us great conversations in our small groups.

We ask in Jesus name, amen.