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Nazareth Hospital Chapel Devotion from 7 March 2010

8Mar '10
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Welcome

We would like to welcome everyone again to our weekly devotion, as we welcomed our new group from Mercer University, Georgia! The group are here to help with maintenance work in the hospital and we had the privilege to have them lead the service in the chapel too!

Devotion

1 Kings 19: 1 - 9

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the 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."

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

When we experience difficulties in our lives, we may often feel alone and discouraged. This can lead to a feeling that God is distant in difficulty and we can react with a sense of helplessness in the midst of our pain.

In this passage we see Elijah feeling the same way. However, the angel of the Lord came to him, a possible theophany of the pre-incarnate Christ. So what should we do in difficulty?

Recognise God’s hand behind our circumstances

God’s hand is guiding everything in our lives. Our recognition of this begins by recognizing the present work of God’s hand.

The context of this event is Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal. Elijah’s career was to prophesy God’s word to the nation. The test for him and the prophets of Baal was simple, to set some wood on fire. After a whole day of asking, pleading and shedding of their own blood, the prophets of Baal failed.

Elijah then had the altar and wood soaked in water and prayed. Fire fell from heaven and burned up everything, including the water. This is a great moment for Elijah, the culmination of years of prophesy and service.

However, what Elijah probably expects to happen, repentance on a national scale, fails to materialize and instead he is made the subject of a death threat. He is so discouraged. God did not act as he expected and like us, he is blinded by his expectations. This illustrates how we also often worship the God of our imagination, not of revelation.

So God sends Elijah the angel who gives him bread and water, the essentials for life. He takes Elijah back and reminds him of past provision, where he was fed miraculously by ravens and then by a widow without resources. God had provided for him before and the angel’s actions urge him to remember what God has done for him.

For us also, our past with God gives us strength for the present and future. Remembering God‘s provision for us in the past gives us hope for the future.

The angel not only brings food, but also a message for Elijah, as we see in the passage, “The journey is too much for you”. He may well have thought “What journey?” but the angel gives him a window into the future and takes him to the mountain of God. The Gospel also gives us a great hope for the future, of being involved in something of eternal significance.

Recognise not only His hand, but remember His heart behind it

God’s heart is never absent in difficulty. Here the angel of the Lord comes to visit a lonely and discouraged man. That man requests that God takes his life. God’s compassion is shown not only in the prayers he answers but also in the ones he doesn’t. Here we see God’s compassion not only does He refuse to take Elijah’s life, but in an amazing miracle, Elijah is one of only two people in the Bible who never dies.

We see so much compassion in God’s reaction to Elijah, in what He does and what He doesn’t do. God meets Elijah in a place of weakness and there is no rebuke for him. He understands weakness and that we cannot follow Him on our own, just as Jesus also made the way for us to reach God.

Elijah was afraid and isolated but God does not abandon him. He tells him that although he feels alone, there is a remnant of 7,000. He is not really alone. Only one person was fully forsaken by God and that was Jesus on the cross. We know that betrayal hurts more the closer the person is to us. Jesus was forsaken by His Father and took all that hurt on himself, for us. He is faithful and will never leave us.

So when we encounter difficulties, however large or small, we can remember these things – to recognize the hand behind them, the heart behind that hand and the faithfulness of that heart to us.

Speaker: Michael Gordon

comments

"Awesome devotion" Darrell, USA

"Thank you for the bulletin. I thought the sermon very thought provoking especially,"We often worship the God of our imagination, not of revelation." Alison, UK