[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
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We have had six lessons so far on the Mountain of God. We've talked about just mountains in general. We've talked about Mountain of Creation. We've talked about the Mountain of Eden. We've talked about Sinai. We've talked about quite a few different mountains so far. We did Psalms right before the break, so if you missed that one, I enjoyed that class. I appreciated everyone participating.
Tonight is our last night in the Old Testament, so we have three classes left to go after this class. So that means we get approximately the proportionality of time in the class as there is to books in the Bible.
In terms of what we're going to be doing for the rest of the class we've got on next week, we're going to be spending some time talking about mountains that Jesus finds himself on and the Book of Matthew. Then we'll talk about mountains that Jesus finds himself on in the second half of the Book of Matthew. And in the last week, we're going to spend some time in the Book of Hebrews and the Book of Revelation and we will wrap this class up. So I appreciate y' all taking this journey with me. It's been a lot of fun so far. Without further ado, if you want to go ahead and open up in your Bibles to First Kings, chapter 16, we are ready to dive in. We're going to be talking about Elijah tonight. So Elijah and Prophet of God, one of the more famous prophets. In fact, Elijah is so prominent that he's kind of seen as a secondary Moses figure in a lot of Jewish culture. If you ever participate in a Jewish Seder, that is a Passover meal, they still and a lot of seders will save a seat for Elijah. So that way, in case he decides to come back in the spirit of Elijah, they have a seat reserved for him. So Elijah's pretty prominent. I think one of the reasons is likely the story that we're going to dive into tonight.
So in First Kings, chapter 16, I'm going to go ahead and turn there, but I enjoy this. This passage here just a little bit. It feels like the biblical author might be a little. I don't know. This is just me giving my own.
My own interpretation, my modern interpretation. But if you're familiar with the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah, the kings of Judah, there kind of a toss up as to whether that'd be a good king or a bad king. But the kings of Israel, of which Ahab is one of them, the kings of Israel are all bad. And the. The father of Ahab, Omri was the worst king that had ever been since the kings had started in Israel. And then Ahab comes along and basically it feels like what we're saying in First Kings, chapter 16, picking up in verse 30 is, Omri was bad, but Ahab is even worse. And so you've got starting first Kings 16, verse 30.
And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all those who were before him. So the modern translation might say he's just the absolute worst.
And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, and so he could have just been as bad as Jeroboam, he chose to take it to the next level. And he married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal. Ethbaal means. I don't think I wrote that one down. It means blessed by baal, I think is what it is, King of the Sidonians, and went to serve BAAL and worshiped him. He erected an altar to BAAL in the house of BAAL which is built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah, that is an Asherah pole or a shrine to the goddess Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. So the author is just setting this up to say Ahab is a really, really bad guy, but we're going to have someone to come along to be the antithesis to Ahab, in a sense. And what's interesting, too, you know, we've been spending a lot of this class focusing on motifs. If you follow the lineage of kings in Israel, Ahab is the seventh king. And I don't know if there's any significance to that, but it is kind of interesting with how Important, the number seven tends to show up in the Bible that Ahab is the seventh, and he's just the worst.
And he does all the things that the fathers before him did, but he also worships BAAL and Asherah. BAAL was a rain God, a storm God, depending on which part of the subculture you looked at and you had. Asherah was a fertility goddess. So he's just given himself to these two different gods, goddesses, and is not even listening to Yahweh at all. And so Elijah comes along in chapter 17, Elijah the Tishbite.
As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years. And except by my word. So now we have already.
I mean, we barely even met Ahab, but we have Elijah, the writer of the Book of Kings, here is setting up to say Yahweh is pitting himself against baal.
BAAL is the rain God. He is the storm God. And we talked about Yebel Akra. Yebel Akra is the mountain of baal. The Hebrews called it Mount Zephone up on the north side of Israel. And so you would have these storms roll up off the Mediterranean and get caught on the mountain, and that's where you'd see the thunder and lightning, and that's baal.
But Yahweh has power over that and says the power that he has, the rain that he brings, especially there was a rainy season. And so that was a time of prominence for him.
We've got. The rain will not come. And he has no power before me. Almost as if to say, going back to the Ten Commandments, you shall have no other gods before me. Since you fail to recognize that, I'm here to show you that there are no other gods before me, absolutely none. And so we've got. The drought has been predicted.
There's no rain. And it says that passing, going along to verse 2 and 3, the word of the Lord came to him. Elijah, leave here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook of Cherith, which is east of Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the Word, and he lived by the brook of Cherish that is east of the Jordan. The word in Hebrew for brook specifically says. I didn't even recognize the word in English when they translated it. It's not brook, but it is a specific word for a mountain stream that is only wet during the rainy season. So this is where he is. But God is going to provide him food and water, just like the Israelites in the wilderness as they were trying to pass through the Exodus after Sinai. I'm going to give you bread, and I'm going to give you water, even though things are bad.
So during the drought, Elijah is then told by the Lord, arise and go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.
So he went and arose, went to Zarephath, and he came to the gate of the city. And behold, a widow was there gathering sticks and called to her and said, bring me a little water in the vessel that I may drink.
Which is a really crazy thing to ask for a woman who is a widow. And likely, if she's a widow in this day and age, has very little opportunity to make income for herself. She also has a son that she's taking care of. There's very little food, there's very little water. And he says, give me something to drink. Which, if you're following motifs of the Bible, there are oftentimes a man arrives at a well or something else and sees someone there, says, give me a drink, like Jesus at the well with the Sumerian woman. So give me a drink. Bring me a little water that I may drink. And she was going to bring it. He called to her and said, hey, how about a little bit of bread? And she said, as the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and only a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple sticks that I may go in to prepare it myself for my son and that we may eat and die.
Elijah goes on to say, listen, if you trust me, because I trust the Lord, there will be no day that you run out of oil and flour to make bread. You will be taken care of as you're taking care of me. The Lord will take care of us.
And so it's interesting just to unpack what's going on here in the sense that this woman and we talked about with the Israelites back in Egypt, how you have Pharaoh say, hey, listen, I want you to kill all of the Hebrew boys.
Didn't say anything about the Hebrew girls, but the women are the ones who end up defying Pharaoh. And one thing that I did not pick up on until I started this study is Jezebel is the daughter of ethbaal.
That's in 1631, king of the Sidonians, which means that Ahab has aligned himself with the land of Sidon. With the Sidonians. And here we have Zarephath, which is in Sidon. So we have a woman here who is shown as the foil against Ahab, as someone who is willing to trust the prophet of God and by extension, willing to trust the prophet, even though the king of Israel is unwilling to do so.
That faith belongs to even the least of these in one sense or another.
So after some time, we're not told how long the boy became ill. This is 1717. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.
And according to what I read, the Hebrew is a little bit unclear as to whether that means that he died or he was at the point of death. But the point is, she blames Elijah. Why did you bring this death into my house?
This is your fault. I trusted you.
So Elijah said, give me your son. And he took him in his arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged and laid him on his own bed. And he cried out to the Lord, O Lord, my God, you have brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn by killing her son.
Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, o Lord, my God, let this child's life come into him again. And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.
If you look at my course notes for tonight's lesson, you'll see one of my sources, Pam Manasco, wrote a paper on these chapters of the Bible here for one of the classes that she's been taking. And one of the things that had never occurred to me before, that we will see later, is the motif of threes. Things come in threes, they come in repetitions is one of the things she put in her paper. And if things come in threes, one of the things we'll see on Mount Carmel is three times the jugs of water poured onto the altar. And so one of the. One of the sources she cited just through out there without much. We can't prove it. But it is interesting to say that maybe what is supposed to be indicated by those three is the revival of life of faith in the Israelites. But we haven't quite gotten there yet. It's hard not to jump around here.
So after the woman's son dies, he's brought back to life. And what's most interesting here, as if to complete the foil against Ahab, you have the woman, after seeing her son is living. She says in verse 24 to Elijah, now I know that you are a man of God, and the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.
You have this woman who is considered probably one of the lower ends of the societal structure, and she is willing to make proclamations. She's not even an Israelite. The Israelites are supposed to be the people of God, bringing people into the fold of God.
But she is the one who is more or less evangelizing, more or less proselytizing, speaking the words of God, or at least prays to him through Elijah.
So we've got someone who's supposed to be doing it, right? Ahab, he's the king. He's supposed to be the model, but the woman is the one who is making this. There were two commentaries. The first one on First Kings 17, 9.
They're the ones in the new Bible commentary.
They're the ones who pointed out it's ironic that Elijah, fleeing the promoter of the Phoenician gods, finds refuge in Phoenicia. And then it's also in a different commentary, the Evangelical Bible commentary, the widow's exclamation in verse 24 contains exquisite irony. A Phoenician woman realized that Elijah spoke the word of Yahweh while the Israelite king worshipping the Phoenician gods had refused to see it.
So this is the setup when in chapter 18, the Lord tells Elijah time to go back to Ahab in the third year of the drought, presumably saying, go show yourself to Ahab. I will send rain upon the earth. I'm ready to make this happen. So Elijah went to show himself to Ahab, but there was famine that was severe in Samaria. He ends up talking to Obadiah, who is still faithful to the Lord. And Obadiah has hidden some other believers in caves and has fed them in groups of 50 and jumping down to 18 17. This is where we see the rising action really starting to take off here. When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said, is that you, troubler of Israel?
And Elijah answers, I haven't troubled Israel, but you have and your Father's house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord. That is to say, no other gods before me do not make any graven images, and followed the Baals.
Now, therefore, send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah and who eat at Jezebel's table.
I mean, we have here that essentially he's drawing the battle lines. And we'll see that Even more prominently when they get to Mount Carmel. The thing that I want to pause and take note of is an interesting thing that I researched only after it was pointed out in the Bible Project podcast is Carmel is the word for garden.
And so here again, we have Eden imagery and mountain imagery all colliding in one place. That Mount Carmel. We are essentially saying that we are trying to see what it is like to be back in God's garden. And I have a little video here. I don't know if you'll appreciate it or not, but I thought it was interesting in terms of the Mount Carmel. But the first thing I want you to note, if it plays, because the Internet is crummy when everybody's here, so maybe it will play, maybe it won't. Anyway, even with just this picture here, you can see why it's called Mount Garden, right? Like, this is a very lush area of Israel. This is in the northwest corner of Israel, right before you get to the Mediterranean Sea. So you've got a really beautiful area. In fact, there are groves of trees here. If we can get the video to play, and not too loudly, Mount Carmel, or in Hebrew, Har Ha Carmel literally means God's vineyard.
And one visit to this mountain reveals why.
And, oh, man, I missed it. Let me go back a little bit just to give you some setting here as to where all of this is happening as well. This is looking south, as far as I can tell, and this is looking southeast. To the southeast is a plain.
The plain is kind of bookended with another mountain on the other end by Har Megiddo, the fortress mountain, where after the temple was destroyed in AD 70, the Zealots fled to Har Megiddo, which when translated to Greek, is more pronounced Armageddon. And so you have the Field of Armageddon here at the base of Mount Carmel. You've got Mount Megiddo way over here in the distance. But this is where this is taking place, on this beautiful mountain where there are olive groves, where there are. Where there are other trees. But this is where it's going to take place. And one of my friends, Riley Pate, got to travel in the Holy Lands. I've not been yet. I hope to someday. But when he was there, they said, if you look at this, I mean, the haze from modern Israel is very strong. But imagine back in the day when there was a lot less smog and haze and other things, that what is about to take place on the mountain. And if you've read the Bible before and seen this scene before, when the pillar of fire comes down to consume the altar, most of the northern kingdom is going to see that big fiery thing that happens on that hill way over there.
So not to say all of them, but a good chunk of Israel, because this sits on a ginormous plain here, people are going to take notice of what's about to happen here. Verse 20. Ahab said to all the people of Israel, gather and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel.
Elijah came near to the people and said, how long will you go on limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if it is baal, then follow him.
This is immigration. My understanding, a direct callback to the end of the book of Deuteronomy and the end of the book of Joshua, both of which end saying, I leave before you two choices.
The choice of the tree of life or the choice of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
You can choose the way of the Lord and you'll have none of these diseases, and all of these blessings will come upon you. Or you can choose to walk in the way of the foreign gods, in which case you will not receive those blessings.
Elijah's giving the same choice again, following in the footsteps of Moses.
Follow God or don't, but don't try to walk the fence between the two.
And the interesting part here at the end of verse 21 is the people did not answer him a word. They were silent.
I don't know that there's anything especially significant to be read in there other than you ever had those moments, right, where you get called out and that's the best thing you can do is just to say nothing.
That's my understanding here. I'm not exactly sure if that's how we're meant to read it, but in verse 22, Elijah says to the people, I, even I only. Which we just learned in with talking with Obadiah, that there are other believers. But I, even I only am left a prophet of the Lord. But baal's prophet are 450 men. Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it to pieces and lay it on the wood and put it on the fire. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you call upon the name of your God, and I will call upon the name of the Lord and the God who answers by fire, he is God.
So one of the things we talked about as early back as when we were talking about Abraham at Mount Moriah is that mountains tend to be a place of testing. And so what is happening here is a test.
I mean, Elijah is testing the BAAL to say if you really are who you say you are, show up. He's testing the prophets of BAAL to say if you are and if your God is who you say you are, do it. He is already laid across the dividing line, the battle lines with the people of Israel to say this is a test for you too. You're going to see the power of God. Are you going to choose to listen? And there's debate amongst the scholars. And if you talk to Pam about her paper, this shows up a little bit too in the sense of is Elijah testing God? And we're told that we're not supposed to test the Lord our God, but I mean, he's kind of saying God's going to show up, so is it a test of him?
Now, to be fair, he does, it does say explicitly throughout this chapter several times of I'm doing this by the word of the Lord, I've been told to do this. And so trusting Elijah's word, he's not putting God to the test. He is saying, God has already told me what's going to happen, this is what's going to happen. Let's have at it. So the prophets of BAAL start calling out to him and then they start limping to get his attention. And, and then Elijah starts picking on them, for lack of a better term, saying that they should, let's see here. Picking up in verse 27, at noon, Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal saying cry aloud, for he is a God. He must be musing or relieving himself, for he's on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened. And they cried even louder and cut themselves according to their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out upon them. And again, pulling from Pam's paper, there's some sources that say that some of this ritualistic cutting that's happening here is a part of the BAAL cycle. BAAL cycle in the sense of BAAL dies and this is reenacting his death before. And that's where I've forgotten how to revive him to bring him back. Okay, the ceremony. So he's dead for part of the year and that's when it's famine season. And when he's revived, it's the rainy season again. So to bring him back we have to do these ritual, I guess, with a lot of self naming. Yeah, yeah. So it's not a pretty sight, right? You've got 450 people there. The blood is flowing. If all of them are cutting themselves, but nothing happens.
So Elijah tells the people, well, come watch this. And all the people came near to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. He took 12 stones according to the number of tribes of Jacob, and to whom the word of the Lord came saying, israel shall be your name. And with these stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. And he made a trench about the altar as great as it would contain two seahs of seed. And he put the wood in order and cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. And then here is the part that even raises the stake more. This has been a drought for three years. He says, get four jugs of water, not little jars, not like my Nalgene bottle, wherever it is, but large jugs of water, and pour four of those on the altar. Now do it again.
Now do it a third time. We've just wasted 12 jugs of precious water on this altar.
Or maybe it's not wasted because at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and I am your servant, and I've done all these things according to your word. Answer me, O Lord. Answer me that these people may know you, O Lord, you are God, and that you have turned their hearts back. And that you have turned their hearts back.
Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and stones and dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. And. And all the people saw it. So that phrase, all the people saw it. What the guide in Israel was trying to say that when all the people saw it. Yes, that does imply the people there. But maybe that meant that all these.
This is the grove side of Mount Carmel. This is the plain of Megiddo. Right here again. So maybe everybody in the northern kingdom, or at least a good chunk of them, saw it enough that word would spread very, very quickly. To say something happened over there.
We need to figure out what it was.
When the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said what the king of Israel was unwilling to say. The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. So twice it is repeated, which only raises the level of vernacular in the Hebrew language.
So this is a really awesome moment, right? There have been years of, as some of the major and minor Prophets put it years of Israel prostituting themselves to other foreign gods.
And they're like, yeah, that was amazing.
Clearly the Lord is God and BAAL is not.
And after the prophets of BAAL are defeated, he seizes the prophets and they're slaughtered at the brook of Kishon.
And then he goes and prays over likely on the other side of this mountain that faces the Mediterranean Sea, and prays that it rains. And he tells his servant, go look towards the sea.
Seven times he tells the servant, go look at the sea. After praying. And on the seventh time, time.
Then he says, hey, there's a cloud out there. It's about the size of my hand.
And it says at the end of this section that he, the servant, should go and tell Ahab, prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you. And while the heavens grew black and the clouds and winds, and there was great rain, Ahab rode and went to Jezreel, which is in the tribe of Issachar, which, by the way, is about 50 kilometers, 30 miles away, past Har Megiddo on the other side of the Plain of Armageddon.
Thirty miles away, the hand of the Lord was on Elijah. And you can hear the Chariots of Fire music playing in the background. He gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. Thirty miles, like, greater than. I can't hardly run 30ft sometimes. So 30 miles, by the Spirit of God, he is able to run to Jezreel and beats Ahab there. Ahab in his chariots.
I mean, this is about as great of a moment as the Northern Kingdom has gotten in a long, long time.
And so the mountain of God being a test for Israel, at least in this moment, it's looking okay.
And what's interesting is that this chapter is coupled with the next chapter as things that are sequential tend to do.
In chapter 19, Jezebel hears about this and she says, elijah, I'm coming for you.
I am going to.
Let's see. Jezebel sent a messenger saying, so may the gods do to me. And more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of these BAAL prophets by this time tomorrow. So Elijah was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.
So the guy who was just on the mountaintop, as it were, is now running with his tail between his legs. I mean, just like that.
So while the test is good, and Elijah has passed the test, so Far if God is testing him by sending him to go before the people of Israel, go before the big, scary seventh king, Ahab.
Now all of a sudden, we have a complete 180.
And so Elijah himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. And you could do a whole study on the wilderness. In fact, the Bible Project spent almost nine months talking just about the wilderness over this last year. He came and sat down under a broom tree, which kind of calls back to Hagar, and he asked that he might die, just like Hagar asked that her son Ishmael would die. It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life. I am no better than my fathers. I mean, the guy who is just in an adrenaline rush has slaughtered the prophets of baal, is now saying, just take me to.
I can't do this anymore.
And what's interesting about this story is after he laid down and he awoke, an angel touched him. This is 19 5. An angel touched him and said, arise and eat. And he looked, and look, there was a cake baked on hot stones in a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.
So once again he finds himself in the wilderness. And once again he finds himself just like the children of Israel, being fed and watered by God's own hand.
The angel of the Lord came a second time and touched him and said, arise and eat. The journey is too great for you. So he arose and ate and drank, and he went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights, which there's another biblical motif to Horeb, the mountain of God.
So we have him up in the northern tribe of Israel. And I forgot to put in the slide with my map of the of Israel in the Sinai Peninsula. But you've got him up here in Jezreel, way back over in this corner. And now he's traveling all the way south, way, way, way back, south of Judah, even the tribes of Judah, and down through the wilderness and back at Horeb, which is synonymous in most biblical texts with Sinai.
And so he's back at the mountain of God, and he comes to in verse nine, a cave, and lodged in it. And some biblical scholars make the claim that the article here in Hebrew is ambiguous, that it could be a cave, it could be the cave. And the ones who say it's the cave say, well, if it's the cave, this is the cave that Moses must have waited in when he was receiving the tablets, when he was waiting for God to reveal just, I just want to see you. You're fucking. And God said, I'll put you in the cleft of the rock in a cave, and I'll pass by you, but you can't see my face, or you'll die.
So we've got Moses here again at Mount Sinai just now. It's Elijah.
And the word of the Lord came to Elijah and said, what are you doing here, Elijah?
He said, I've been very jealous for the Lord. The God of hosts, for the people of Israel, have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, killed the prophets with the sword. And I, even I alone, am left. And they seek my life to take it away. Don't you see how bad this has gotten?
I'm. I'm at the end of my rope.
I can't do this anymore.
So God said, go out and stand on the mount before the Lord. Behold, I'm about to pass by, just like I did for Moses back however many hundreds of years ago.
I'm going to pass by.
And if you've ever read this part of the Bible before, you might be familiar with this story. Behold, the Lord passed by, and a great wind tore the mountains, broke it to pieces before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind was an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake.
And after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire.
These are the same things that happened in Exodus, chapter 19, when they arrived at the mountain of God. Earth, wind, and fire, right? Like there were storms, there was lightning, there was fire. There were all these major things where God was present.
And God is doing that again. But after the fire came the sound of a low whisper is what my ESV translation says. My net Bible says a soft whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in a cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came to him a voice saying again, what are you doing here?
He said the exact same thing he said previously. I've been jealous for the Lord. The people of Israel aren't getting it, and they're trying to kill me.
And the Lord says, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you arrive, you shall go and anoint Hael to be king over Syria, Jehu, the son of Nimshi, to be king over Israel, Elisha, the son of Shaphat, of Abel, Meholah. And you shall anoint him to be the prophet in your place.
And so, if you've heard this story before. I've heard it a hundred times. A lot of sermons come from The RSV translation, which translates this soft whisperer as the still, Small voice.
And I don't know, I have for a year now gone through these passages and tried to understand them and looked at them. But you've got two different takes here. The take that I have always heard my whole life is that, look, God knows what he needs, feeds him by an angel. He doesn't ask him until day 40 when what's wrong?
He waits that long to say, take some time, recuperate.
It's going to be all right.
And Riley, my friend who was telling me about being at Mount Carmel, said he's a counselor. And when he teaches this in Bible classes, he says, especially when he's teaching ministers, because people like to fix people. He said, this is good biblical counseling here. Sometimes when someone experiences great trauma, like a queen trying to kill them, it's not important to say, it's going to be all right, or let me fix that for you, or don't worry about it. Sometimes it's just, eat, rest, the journey's too great.
You've got the still, small voice comes, God wasn't in the fire. God wasn't in the earthquake. God wasn't in the wind like he was previously when he was at Sinai with Moses.
But he's in this gentle whisper as one even says he gives Elijah a job. Okay, I know you're tired, but one of the best ways I know to help you get going again is just to give you something to do. Here's something to do. Go back.
Anoint the king of Syria, anoint the king of Israel, anoint the new prophet.
And the interesting thing here, you might see these last two. If you read through the book of Jonah from start to finish, you'll see kind of this chiral, chiastic structure again, just like we saw around Psalm 19.
But you've got. At the end of Jonah, Jonah is asked, what are you doing here? Sitting under a tree that God put for him in the wilderness. And Jonah says, ah, these people of Nineveh, I wish you'd just kill them.
And God takes away the tree. And God says, what are you doing here, Jonah? And he's like, well, you just killed the Ninevites already. You don't get it. They're the bad guys. And so the idea is that Jonah is being pitted as the antithesis of Elijah here in this story. But then I was listening to bibleproject podcast, and they introduced me to a completely different take on it. Instead of this gentle recommissioning with the still, small voice that You've got Elijah is doing the Exodus in reverse. You were in the Holy Land and you left it to go back to the wilderness. You've got it all backwards.
What are you doing here, Elijah?
And instead, those two words that are translated in most Bibles as the still, small voice, the gentle whisper, are translated in other parts of the Bible as thin and silent. So it is.
I remember being out on base one time and got to go in one of the six Dof anechoic chambers. Like one of those silences that's so silent you can feel it, is how some people understand that.
And instead of this being a recommissioning, it's like, you got to go hire your replacements. I can't depend on you to do your job anymore.
And so you've got Carmel is the mountain of passing the test, and Horeb is the mountain of failing the test.
And instead of Jonah being the antithesis, it's just that we're telling the same story over again, that both these guys are failing their jobs as prophets.
And I've wrestled with this for, like, a year now, and I have zero idea as to where I fall on this. Basically, I toss a coin and I can see it both ways. My favorite show is Psych. Like, I've heard it both ways, right?
I will say if you actually start digging into the literature, like, 95% of the things that I read were over here in this left category, and very few people were over here. But it was enough that it was. It couldn't be ignored to say that maybe especially with the motif of test being present. Oh, man.
That Elijah passed the test once, but then he failed it the very next segment of Scripture, and I don't know, I want to leave here that I do think it's important that God can be both of these things. He can be gentle and recommissioning in a sense, but he can also be disappointed and frustrated when his people don't follow his Word. Juan, two things we know in the New Testament, with the apostles, they were great, but they always failed, too. You know, at the Crucifixion, they all scattered.
But in the case of Elijah, Elijah shows up later on, God takes him in a chariot of fire. That's why I made that reference.
The other one is, of course, at the Mount of Transfiguration. I know you're going to get there eventually, but Elijah shows back up. So Elijah, even if he has this moment in his life where he just, like, stopped doing it, God accepts his life as a whole.
And I Think that's an important takeaway. And I'm glad you bring that up. In the sense that if this is Carmel being passing the test and Horah being failing the test, it is nice that God doesn't pluck us off in those worst moments. Right. In the sense that he. Yes. Still takes Elijah and works with him even through the depression that he is feeling here on this mountain. Right. That he's able to work with that. I mean, he worked with Samson. Right. Samson wasn't exactly the most upstanding figure that we paint in vacation Bible school. Right.
He can work with Samson. He can certainly work with Elijah, who's just tired and worn out.
So yeah, I'm curious. Juan beat me to the punch. But this is where I was going to open it up and say, like on this or anything else we've talked about up until this point in this class, which I know I've taken up the whole time talking, I want to hear Yalls thoughts and understandings as to what has transpired over these four chapters, especially in this last one.
In my mind I think, why can't it be like the little girl from the old El Paso commercial? Why not that? Why is it? Why can't it both be recommissioning and frustration?
Because he has to go do it in order to get back and do God's will ultimately. So it's almost like a moment of he needed for himself and his human need. Right.
Obviously God's with him, but he's still human. He's got to go figure it out himself.
When you put it himself, right? Yeah. When you put it that way, it reminds me of, I think It's Matthew, chapter 18. Jesus tells a parable of two sons who are told by their father, go work in the vineyard. And one son says, yeah, I'll go. And doesn't go. And one says, I'm not going to do it. And then he ends up going.
That almost the way you put it feels like that, which is a lot like parenting sometimes. Right. Like you're both trying to be gentle and in a sense recommissioning, but you're also frustrated to your wits end sometimes.
But I think it can be both.
Other thoughts Sometimes we have our biggest failing after such a big high.
He was so owning it there on there with the prophets of baal. But then, you know, he hears a little bit of some smack talk from Jezebel and you know, he quivers.
Yeah. The term that my students use currently is crashing out. You know, he's just, he's Reached that high adrenaline rush. And now he's crashing out right here. And then here.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: He's been working towards this or waiting for this for three years at this point. And then at the very moment when it's all right, you know, people have come back, like they're all. They're all in on this. And he's thinking, this is the moment, like, God is redeeming his people.
And then reality comes back with Jezebel saying, no, I'm gonna kill you. You're done. I've had it with you.
And now he's. Takes, you know, however many weeks or, you know, over a month to get to where he's at there. And it's like he's had all this time to think about it.
Hey, God, what. What happened? I thought we had something. I thought there was a different plan here. Like, there's a disappointment that he probably has.
And to me, there's kind of a parallel to what Jonah, he had this idea in mind of what was going to happen, how he thought things should go, and he ends up disappointed because he's not thinking like God wants him to think.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: It reminds me kind of. I mean, a few examples of this kind of, you're doing really well, and then you fall right away.
We're about to go into, like, Noah in Genesis. I mean, it's another good example. You escape the flood. You're the chosen family, and then right afterwards, they have that whole shenanigans with his sons. And it's like just showing after a great triumph, you fall right back into sin, struggle.
And then kind of in the reverse of this, we see Jesus go out into the wilderness for 40 days and really, really struggle.
That's next week. That's next week.
No, no, no. It's good. So next week, where we're gonna be is in the wilderness. He's taken up to a high place and put to the test by the accuser, the tempter. So, yeah, good segue for next week, but also, if you want to take a picture of something to read in the meantime, we didn't get to this this week, so I'd like to at least spend a little bit of time on it next week. Maybe the first 10 minutes.
Mountains that show up in the major and minor prophets. So if you want to take a look at these before we come back next week, these are the calling card that you're talking about, too, in the sense of all of these guys who write here are waiting for what Jesus accomplishes. At least as Matthew paints it in his gospel. So y' all have a great week. We'll be back here in Matthew starting next week.
