Hills + Valleys | Depressed, Alone and Running | 1 Kings 19:9-18 | Week 4

What do you do after you've been miraculously fed by ravens; they've brought you little cakes in the desert?  In a middle of a drought, you had a brook that gave you enough to drink.  You saw oil and flour not run out; miraculously multiplied over and over and over again; God's provision that's unmistakable.  You saw somebody raised from the dead, because you prayed and laid down on this young boy and he came back to life.  Then you stand on Mount Carmel and you call down fire from heaven and it comes down.  {Quick survey---How many of you have down ANY of those things?}  What do you do after that?  After that scorched earth is still breathing up the remnant of that fire, where you see these prophets that are slaughtered in this valley.  I mean, this is when, if you're Elijah, you have people hoist you up on their shoulders and carry you down the mountain, right?  This is where you cue the confetti for the Super Bowl parade.  This is where there's high fives and there's no going back.  This is where you beat your chest and go, "That's my God!"  Only that's not what happened!  As high as Elijah was on that hill, he drops almost immediately to the valley.

1 Kings 19.  We're going to see more of the human, frail side of Elijah this morning.  I think maybe we can relate to that side of him a little bit better than we can relate to the side that calls fire from heaven and sees it happen.  I don't know.  Just me.  Verse 1 ---  Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. {You'll remember, if you've been here over the last few weeks, Jezebel is Ahab's wicked wife.  She's a worshipper of Baal.  She's brought that worship to Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  She's killed many of the prophets of Yahweh.  She's a blood-thirsty, vindictive, violent woman.} So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods {Those gods that were silent, those gods that weren't able to produce fire, those gods that Yahweh was more powerful than....those gods.} deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."  Then Elijah said, "Well, MY God raised the dead!  And MY God called down fire from heaven.  And MY God is with me.  And MY God is for me and you're not going to tell me what to do because....[Ryan sings] my God is greater//My God is stronger//My God is higher than any other...   Right?  That's what I expect and that's what I hope for from one of the ancient prophets of Israel, one of these guys we still name kids after.  That's what I expect...