In Elijah's conduct, after the triumph on Mount Carmel, is seen the manifestation of human weakness. He who had boldly faced an apostate nation, the wrath of the king and the malice of the priests of Baal, now flees for his life before the anger of Jezebel.
God had vindicated His own name in sending fire from heaven, and Elijah, as His faithful servant, had shared the glory which thereby came upon the worship of Jehovah. Israel, at his command, had risen against their false prophets and slain them all; yet to Elijah it seems that the cause is lost, evil had, triumphed, and death would be a welcome end.
In past lessons we have traced slightly the parallel between Elijah's times and these. Today a message is due, given in the spirit and power of Elijah, calling men to forsake Baal and return to the worship of the true God. Still, as then, God uses men as His instruments, and now, as ever, men are but dust. Circumstances are before us which will try us to the utmost, and will, unless we profit by the Scriptures which are written for our learning, desolate our souls and wring from us Elijah's cry, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life." (1 Kings 19:4)
How then shall those who fear God, and serve Him, declare His message fearlessly as did Elijah, and yet escape the bitterness of his despair?
A Source of Failure
Does not his self-accusing plaint, "for I am not better than my fathers," (1 Kings 19:4) suggest the cause of his sudden weakness? It seems so difficult for men to allow God to work through them without taking to themselves some credit for the power manifested. Those who feel their utter need of all things, and in whose weakness the strength of God is made perfect, are yet tempted, when a great work is done, to forget that all they have contributed to it was nothing and less than nothing; for: "Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity." (Psalm 39:5)
So they flatter themselves that they must be better than their fathers. The awakening from this delusion is a painful experience, but an absolutely necessary one. Together with the "spirit and power of Elijah" (Luke 1:17) must go the spirit displayed in John the Baptist, to whom was committed the same work, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30)
So shall we be saved from painful and humiliating falls, and our continued usefulness be secured.
The food given to Elijah, by which he was sustained for forty days and forty nights on his journey to Horeb, showed that the strength in which he was to go was in no wise dependent upon himself, and its apparent insufficiency for so long a period might have prepared him for the lesson given at Horeb, that the power of God is not qualified or limited by outward appearances.
The Still, Small Voice
At last Elijah reached the mount of God, "And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him, What are you doing here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and slain your prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away." (1 Kings 19:9-10)
Surely it was a doleful state of things, and Elijah's words seem to imply that God might have bettered it if He would. Elijah had been very jealous for God, yet God had allowed Elijah's life to be threatened and endangered in His service. When he was gone the last worshiper of God would have perished; so far had matters drifted.
Then Elijah was told to stand on the mount before the Lord. He did so, and as a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces, he fully expected to hear the message of Jehovah, delivered in tones of rolling thunder. "But the Lord was not in the wind." (1 Kings 19:11)
And now followed the crashing of an earthquake, and again, the hot fierce blast of a devouring fire, but in neither of these was the Lord revealed. Then in the quietness and calm that followed the passing of the fire was heard a still, small voice. And Elijah wrapped his face in his mantle and listened.
Again the same question as before was asked, and again he made the same reply. After telling Elijah to anoint fresh kings over Israel and Syria, and Elisha to be prophet in his own room, the still, small voice went on to say, "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him." (1 Kings 19:18)
Strength Made Perfect
What a glorious word was that; well worth coming the long journey to hear. Seven thousand faithful souls! And Elijah thought there was but one discouraged witness, and they sought his life. So God had been working after all, and had not left the whole burden on Elijah's shoulders. Who would have thought it? No one had talked of great demonstrations of Divine power, creating excitement and swaying multitudes with mysterious, force. What had done the work? The still, small voice. Yet what infinite power there had been in the voice.
The message of the everlasting Gospel is to go to the world in these days with a loud cry, and those who hear it are to lift up the voice with strength; but it will not always be with the outward demonstration that suggests earthquake and roaring fire. When the Saviour of the world lay, wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a manger, when He toiled at the carpenter's bench, and above all, when He was nailed to the cross between thieves, forsaken of all men, "His visage marred more than any man," (Isaiah 52:14) so far from being the Power and Wisdom of God, He seemed "a worm and no man; a reproach of men; and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn." (Psalm 22:6-7)
Yet in it all, He was declared to be the Son of God with power, "Because...the weakness of God is stronger than men." (1 Corinthians 1:25)
Just as Christ prayed, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) so the people of God in the last days mourn and lament that "the Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me." (Isaiah 49:14)
But since Christ, for us, passed through that experience, we need never feel forsaken. He says to us, "Behold I have graven you upon the palms of my hands." (Isaiah 49:16)
Another Parallel
When the message of the Gospel, given in the power of Elijah, brings the messengers face to face with the wrath of the dragon, and the powers of this world, the temptation of Elijah will come to us to make us feel that evil has triumphed, we alone are left to serve God, and they seek our lives to take them away. "Like as a woman with child, so have we been in your sight, O Lord. We have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen." (Isaiah 26:17-18)
Then will the Lord comfort us, as He did Elijah with the news of the seven thousand. "Lift up your eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together and come to you. ... Behold, these shall come from far: and lo these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim. ... Then shall you say in your heart, Who has begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who has brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been?" (Isaiah 26:18,12,21)
The Lord answers this question by telling of His own working, and adds, "And you shall know that I am the Lord: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me." (Isaiah 26:23) "His strength is made perfect in weakness," (2 Corinthians 12:9) but we so soon get tired of weakness. Christ was always dependent upon His Father for words and works, and even for will.
Power in Gentleness
He spoke with a still, small voice, but the power of God was in the voice. The power of God is very gentle. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that: "Our Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance." (1 Thessalonians 1:5)
Yet he says, "We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children." (1 Thessalonians 2:7)
The remembrance of the gentleness of God's power will keep us from discouragement if we do not see the kind of power manifested that seems to our minds necessary for the furtherance of the Gospel, and the lament of Elijah, that we are no better than our fathers, and that it can profit the world nothing for us to live on any longer, will never rise to the lips of those who remember that God has chosen "the base things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence." (1 Corinthians 1:28)--Present Truth, July 14, 1898--Notes on the International Sunday-School Lessons--1 Kings 19:1-6
E.J. Waggoner