M-G: 6.26.14 // What are you doing here, 1 Kings 19:9, Part 10 of 17

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I think by now it’s engrained in our head that Elijah was so obsessed with the subjective content of his reasons that he failed to understand the objective truth behind the question – your presence serves no purpose here, Elijah. He attempted to give Yahweh a why answer to a what question. The LORD had to ask Elijah the same question twice, and both times the fearful and depressed prophet’s answer was the same in a cave on Mt Horeb, the mountain of God,

“I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life” (1 Kgs 19:10, 14).

And forty days prior to that while sitting under a broom tree a day’s journey from Beersheba,

“It is enough! Now, LORD, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers” (1 Kgs 19:4b)!

These are the only words of Elijah in the flight narrative. Since there are no explicit words indicating the actual root cause, and that is exactly what we are looking for here in this story, we have to try and determine what was directly responsible for why Elijah took his eyes off the LORD and wound up in a place he didn’t belong. When we read this story we cannot dismiss or forget the spiritual forces behind all of what was going on there – spiritual warfare manifesting on the physical terrain. A spiritual battle was raging in Jezreel.

Let’s be clear here; it wasn’t the death threat that made him fly; it never was the real reason behind the flight. This situation only tapped into a spiritual condition that brought Elijah’s heart out in the open! He was not into this anymore; he was already throwing in the towel, and the further the distance he put between the Northern Kingdom and himself, the more convinced he was that it was over – “It is enough! Now, LORD, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”

It’s not the physical conditions that move us to a decision, but the spiritual condition of the soul making a decision in light of the circumstances. How else could a young man by the name of David take on Goliath when Saul’s troops were vegetating over the situation, for example?  I am going to suggest as purely a metaphysical theory that Elijah had already taken his eyes off the LORD before the death threat arrived! When it is all said and done, only God knows the absolute truth in the matter, but it doesn’t mean we missed it altogether. I guess we’ll find out in glory among many other things. 

This is important for us to probe into because if we can uncover what contributed to Elijah taking his eyes off the LORD, which we are prone to do, we can identify what is taking place in our hearts and nip it in the bud before it blooms and takes us to a place where faith wilts and the LORD is not magnified, and it is all out in the open for the whole wide world to see. Unfortunately today, there is such a desensitization to sin. Being in the will of God is not a priority for some believers; they are numb as to whether they are in or out of God’s will with the inability to articulate why! This work is for the faithful who loves the will of God and desires to remain in it.

We can take a self-righteous stick to our dear brother Elijah and whip him like a dead horse and treat him like a dog. We often do that with not only Bible characters but those around us, don’t we? Elijah is hurting! Often the “How could you?” shellacs our nerve endings from feeling the hurting soul who is in a place they don’t belong, “You should know better!” I felt his fear in the pit of my gut stemming from Jezebel’s message. My heart goes out to him in his fear and trepidation heading south. 

It touches the heart to see him so distraught under the broom tree that he felt he was no longer good enough to serve Yahweh; he failed and bailed, but we know God gave him another chance, don’t we! He’ll do the same for us. We have to be so careful in being such a Billy or Betty Bible rather than be like Jesus to the hurting. What is done is done, but boy, he sure is fighting this thing and in some kind of denial in his conversation with Yahweh. Oh, how tender we are on the run and tough in the reasons. Just keep an eye on Yahweh, His approach should be ours in salvaging something out of this – forgiveness, restoration, reassigned! Thank you, Jesus; I thank you for doing that for me.

In addition to Elijah’s words, could there be anything outside the flight zone that contributed to leaving Dodge? We will investigate to see if there are any precursors we can detect and extrapolate from the words or actions of others or his words that would reveal to us the volatile spiritual material that would ignite under certain conditions? We are looking for an explanation as to why Elijah took his eyes off the LORD. What motivated him to do so, and caused him to flee rather than fight the circumstances in the will of God and for the will of God?

It is certain we cannot be in the will of God in our own strength; it takes Divine power. Jesus made it abundantly clear we cannot do anything in the will of God without Him (Jn 15:5), and Paul gives us a wonderful promise that we can do all things in the will of God through Christ (Php 4:13). Moving away from spiritual help, like prayer, leads me to believe that we lose sight of the nature of the battle; it’s nothing physical we can lay our hands on and that is unsettling to the five senses. The death threat merely triggered something already latent within his heart and mind, and the conditions were at just the right temperature to bring it to the surface like dross. As soon as he left Jezreel for the desert, he was spiritually and physically in the wrong place.

Consider this if you will. Elijah was a wanted man after the famine heated up in Samaria (1 Kgs 18:10). Did Elijah run? Well, he went into hiding at the wadi Cherith where the ravens fed him. Then when the wadi dried up, he went to Zarephath and stayed there until the famine was coming to an end with a widow and her son, and the flour and oil miraculously never stopped. The major difference between Elijah going into hiding for 3.5 years and running from Jezebel from a spiritual standpoint was that “hiding” was in the will of God whereas running from Jezy was not (1 Kgs 17:3-4). Nowhere do we read where the word of the LORD came to Elijah saying, “Run quickly into the southern desert!” If God didn’t tell him to run after telling him to hide before, the argument from silence would be to pray and stay, yes?

As the pressure mounted the universal law of common sense becomes more attractive, “Run, duh!” The older I get the more I realize common sense isn’t even remotely common or reliable. It is nothing more than self-counseling over Divine guidance in determining the will of God as believers. I think we do it more than we are willing to admit. This is because relying on common sense doesn’t require any reading, studying, and meditation; that’s too much like work and time-consuming. We would rather flip the toggle on auto-pilot and kick back.

It’s a scary way to fly in the will of God; it’s like flying under VFR (visual flight rules) but blacking out the windows on the cockpit, too! Scarier still is the number of believers who think that just hearing a preacher speak whenever they attend church and merging good old horse sense with what was picked up at church is sufficient in knowing God’s will and living in the great expanse according to that limited understanding. “I got this far by my homespun wisdom; why bother with all that reading and studying stuff? I ain’t got the time, too busy!” So we go about our rat killing, not in willful ignorance but in willful stupidity; it’s called willful disobedience or just being plain dumb and unloving (cf. Jn 14:15). 

Elijah bolted; it was not a smart move though common sense, dictated by the circumstances, cried out, “You are going to get yourself killed if you don’t run, now!” God’s sovereignty protected Elijah as a wanted man and on Mt Carmel; why would He fail to protect Elijah now? Enter a bit of data from the past, God allowed Jezebel to kill the prophets of Yahweh (1 Kgs 18:13). Did Elijah ruminate, “I’m a prophet of Yahweh! Is God now going to allow Jezebel to have her way with me, too?” Mistrust in Yahweh became a serious issue with Elijah. 

You may not agree with me here but stay with me over the next two parts in particular because it may surprise you. This is not directly stated in Scripture, but his behavior bears this out. It is probably the major reason our obedience to the will of God is substantially undermined to the extent that it is, and we’re clueless, like Elijah, and have a serious confidence issue with Yahweh! “No way,” you say! “Way!” I say, and the demons are having a field day at our expense. Without trust what good is our relationship with God; how can we know the path apart from it (cf. Prov 3:5-6)? Elijah didn’t possess the mindset of Job (Job 13:15). “Well, I hadn’t heard anything from Yahweh. So common sense patched through a line to Elijah, “Get out of Jezreel quick, Elijah! Don’t expect any help from God!” Why else would he run? <>< 

To Part 11