(Editor's Note: This article was published first in the April 2023 print edition of The Stand.)
Sometimes it is difficult to remember that the heroes of Scripture are only too human. Names like Moses, Joshua, and David can seem more like superheroes than ordinary people called to serve an extraordinary God.
Those called to be servants of the Lord God of Israel were often ordinary people summoned during extraordinary times, when it seemed as if the days were overflowing with darkness.
Elijah was just such a man. In 1 Kings 18, we saw the confrontation between the mighty prophet of God and the evil prophets of Baal. The false religion planted in Israel by Ahab and Jezebel, the twin towers of wicked royalty, was uprooted and overthrown. The false prophets were killed. God’s people returned to Him. (Click HERE for the previous blog)
Evil regroups
Then something remarkable happens in 1 Kings 19. When it appears that darkness has been driven from the battlefield, we see what we always see in human history: Evil regroups, reorganizes, and returns with a vengeance.
In the movie The Dark Knight, the second film in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, there is a perfect illustration of the mindless hatred of evil. Talking about the arch criminal, the Joker, Bruce Wayne (who at night becomes the crime-fighting alter-ego, Batman) is struggling to understand the wanton destruction unleashed by his enemy.
Alfred, his confidant, explains why some wicked men seem impervious to any and all attempts to get them to reform. “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
This is the nature of Satan. It is why the metaphor of a thief is often applied to the devil from Jesus’ words: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10, NASB). The devil doesn’t take his defeats passively – he always responds with rage (Revelation 12:12).
Therefore, we should not be surprised by what happens after Elijah’s great victory. Jezebel sends a messenger to the prophet with a blood-chilling threat: “So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of [the dead prophets of Baal] by tomorrow about this time” (1 Kings 19:2).
Grace abounds
Elijah shrinks back from the threat. We see his faith collapsing and the utter rout of a man of God.
He is afraid and runs for his life. Despair grips Elijah, and he asks God to take his life, because he’d rather have God do it than the wicked Jezebel. In his weakness, the prophet focuses on his own failures and sin, as he complains, “I am not better than my fathers” (vv. 3-4).
Elijah’s emotional disintegration leads to a physical breakdown as well. He is exhausted and hungry; an angel has to feed him not once but twice.
Here we see the care of God for His servant and the grace of heaven being extended. When we are at our lowest point, the Lord always gives aid to His people. It might not be an angel that helps you – although it might be – but God will send help in some form to keep you moving along.
While Elijah continues his retreat from Jezebel, at least he knows to move in the direction of his Lord. He heads for “Horeb, the mountain of God” (v. 8). There, he finds a cave in which he can safely dwell.
God probes
Many times, when our lives are shaken and we are overwhelmed, we seek isolation too. Discouragement and despair can cause us to clam up, to lock the doors and shutter the windows.
But we cannot hide from God; He always knows where we are, even when people do not. In that cave where Elijah was staying, the Bible says, “And behold, the Word of the Lord came to him” (v. 9).
God will send forth His Word for many reasons. Sometimes it is to encourage, heal, and strengthen. Sometimes it is to probe and reveal in order to correct. That is what we see here. God asks His prophet, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (v. 9).
Of course, by this question God is revealing, not discovering. He knew why Elijah was there. God knew the facts, but He wanted His servant to know the facts too. Our tendency toward isolation when we are hurting and discouraged sometimes causes us to be blind to our own hearts. So God probes for our own good.
We begin to see what’s at the core of Elijah’s defeat. There is self-righteousness and self-pity. There is a focus on the failures of his nation and God’s people.
There is a recognition of the threat of his own extinction and, in Elijah’s mind, the extinction of God’s work on earth: “I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away” (v. 10). It is no wonder that Elijah despairs.
As we’re all prone to do, in the midst of his turmoil, Elijah has forgotten God. What utter blindness to believe that the Lord will forget about His people and abandon them in their hour of need. What foolishness to think that the work of God in the earth can be extinguished by wicked men – or even by all the demons of hell.
So the Lord reorients the vision of His servant. It does not come by demonstrations of God’s power – wind, earthquake, and fire. Instead, God was heard in the “sound of a gentle blowing” (v. 12) – that is, in the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is in peace and tranquility that we find our rest in God.
Victory prevails
It is too easy to focus only on Elijah’s defeat in 1 Kings 19. The rout of a man of God is troubling to us. We tend to elevate our heroes to a pedestal, and when they crash to the ground, it shakes us. Carrying the superhero motif just a bit further, it would be like watching a movie in which Superman or Captain America turns tail and runs from the bad guys.
But if this is what we think of Elijah in this passage, it is most likely because we have absorbed humanistic ideas from the wider culture.
When it comes to spiritual warfare, no human being is a superhero. The apostle Paul says we are to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might” (Ephesians 6:10). The armor we put on is the “armor of God.”
Strength, protection, provision – such things belong to God, and they are His to give. In spiritual warfare, such grace has no human origins. His armor certainly doesn’t include a cape and spandex costume.
God is the One who uses us for His glory and His purposes on earth, and it is God who saves us when we find our strength gone and our hope shattered. God is the One who knows when we sit forlornly in a cave, asking to die. It is God who speaks to us in the gently blowing breeze.
That is ultimately the story of Elijah. It is our story too.
