His Resignation of the Prophetic Office (1 Kings 19:1-16)
They were troublous times in Israel. The prophetic office was honourable, but it was hazardous. If it carried high honour with God, it had little respect from men. If the prophet’s mantle were evidence of God’s favour, it received the hatred of those in high places. They were indeed dark days in Israel.
And Elijah’s spirit was giving way under the combined pressure of many things. He had been sustained through the long conflict which ended in the triumph over the prophets of Baal, and also in his intercession for Israel that the long-continued drought should be broken up, but now his strenuous spirit began to quail before the murderous hatred of Jezebel, Ahab’s wicked queen, and this last bit of pressure brought him to despair. Taking a day’s journey into the wilderness—its solitude and silence answering to the despondency of his soul—he threw himself under the shade of a juniper tree, and prayed to be relieved of life itself.
How tenderly God rebuked the faintness of His servant’s soul! Awaking from his sleep he found a table prepared for him in the wilderness—“he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head.”
And shall we faint? The present outlook is dark. The apostasy has set in. The flood-tide of evil is sweeping apparently all before it. Politically, commercially, religiously, the seriousness of the outlook cannot be exaggerated. Are we in spirit a day’s journey in the wilderness under the juniper tree? Are we faint, and dispirited, and ready to be relieved of the weariness of the way, and the strenuousness of the conflict? Are the odds overwhelmingly against us?
The incident we are considering is full of cheer for us. There is plenty of encouragement, if only we look in the right direction, The odds are not against us. If things were a thousand-fold worse the odds are with us—over-whelmingly so. God is for us. God is with us. “More than conquerors” may be our motto. The secret of that lies with the rest of the sentence, “through Him that loved us.”
Refreshed by his double meal, taken at the command of the angel of the Lord, Elijah went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.
So with ourselves, we may have little Christian fellowship, we may be in a veritable spiritual wilderness, our path may be very isolated, those who once walked with us may do so no longer, yet God is able to feed us and give us strength to carry us long and far. We are not dependent on man. Our resources are unlimited.
To return to Elijah. At Mount Horeb God revives the drooping spirit of His beloved servant by giving him an example of His power. “A great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind.” He could have acted thus in His public dealings with men, but it was not His way just then.
The earthquake followed. The ground reeled. The earth shook. He could have acted thus, but it was not His way just then. God was not in the earthquake. It might have suited the mood of the prophet, but it was not God’s way.
The fire followed. But God was not in the devouring flame.
He might have rent Jezebel as the mighty wind rent the mountains before the Lord; He might have hurled her from the throne she disgraced as the earthquake shook the foundations of the earth; He might utterly have consumed her, as the fire consumed all that had stood in its path: we repeat He might have done all this, but it was not God’s way just then. He allowed Jezebel, but only so far. “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further,” is sufficient for the proud waves. “Thou couldest have no power at all against ME, except it were given thee from above,” showed how really impotent Pilate was in his day. And who was Jezebel, and what was her power? God is omnipotent. We need only fear Him. It was said of the late Lord Lawrence, one time Governor-General of India, that he feared the face of man so little, because he feared the face of God so much.
And so God could stay the awful tide of apostasy, if it were His way. He could dispel the deepening darkness with a word. He could gather in one all the broken fragments of His church, but it is not His way thus publicly to intervene just now. “Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known” (Ps. 77:19). The day will come when He shall gather His church into one: the day will come when winds, earthquakes, and fires shall do His bidding, and the highest opposition against Him shall be brought to naught. This is foretold in the Book of Revelation. But it is not His way just now.
After the wind, and earthquake, and fire, “a still small voice” was heard, And this impressed the prophet’s soul far more than the terrifying convulsions of nature. He was in God’s presence. In fear and reverence he wrapped his face in his mantle and stood in the entering in of the cave. God’s power is not to be measured by what He does, but by what He is. He is beyond all His acts.
But note here how grace and government go hand in hand, for this is the great lesson we need to learn at this solemn point in Elijah’s history. Grace would strengthen the prophet. Government accepted the resignation that Elijah handed in to God. Grace would take the prophet, who feared death at the hands of a wicked woman, to heaven in a whirlwind—chariot and horsemen of fire—without dying at all; and is not that an encouragement to us in days of darkness, and apostasy, and danger, to expect the Lord to come for His bride? Government directed Elijah to anoint Elisha in his room and stead.
And see the moral fitness of this. If we quail today, how can we be trusted tomorrow? Tomorrow will be worse than today. “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse” (2 Tim. 3:13). “If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses?” (Jer. 12:5).
Let us see to it that we do not quail before the stress and storm. Let us not hand in our resignation. God will relieve us at the right moment. What a privilege to stand for Him!
In warfare posts of danger are coveted, and there is no lack of volunteers for forlorn hopes. The story is told of the colonel of a regiment calling for volunteers for some dangerous task. Turning his back for a moment to speak to one of his staff he turned round again to view an unbroken line. He chided them that none had volunteered. The fact was that to a man they had volunteered by each going forward one step, and so the line was unbroken.
Would that the saints of God acted thus! Oh, for moral backbone, spiritual fibre, divine boldness. How many, alas! have turned aside. How many have gone weakly with the crowd, professing to be in the testimony when in reality they have lost their chance of standing for God, for truth, for principle, for righteousness, for the true help of His own. To stand alone from conviction is better than to choose company for convenience, for, we repeat, if we cannot stand today, we shall assuredly not stand tomorrow, for tomorrow will be worse than today.
We are apt to over-estimate the forces against us, because we under-estimate the forces that are with us. We must not think lightly of the enemy’s power, but we want rather to grow in the sense of God’s, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Pile up the list of opposing forces, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword! They form only the background for the display of God’s power. “More than conquerors” is the response to that!
And further, we are apt to overlook how much God has for Himself. Elijah wailed, “I, even I only, am left,” yet there were seven thousand whose knees had not bowed before the hideous Baal, who had not kissed the idol, representative of demoniacal power and craft. God has His hand over everything, be it His own gracious work in souls or the opposing power of the enemy.
Let us be encouraged. God is the “God of all encouragement” still!