Ever since Satan was cast out of heaven, he’s been trying to populate hell with God’s children. God’s promised plan was to bring a Redeemer to the world through the bloodline of Abraham, the father of the Jews. By destroying the Jews, Satan hoped to derail God’s plan.
By the time Elijah appears on the scene, God’s plan seems in jeopardy. Israel was six decades and four kings deep in a cesspool of death and decadence. Ungodly idol worship. Unholy clergy. Unbridled evil. Untold sordid scandals. The nation has turned from the living God to the lying messages of Baal and Asherah.
Jehovah Reveals Satan as the Sissy He Truly Is
Elijah was unafraid of Ahab because he was conscious of a greater king. The prophet proclaimed a drought, a drought that would end only at his command. The drought lingered. The crops suffered. The livestock perished. All the while the king and queen fumed. There was nothing they could do.
Elijah called for a showdown. Gather the prophets and priests of Baal and Asherah, and we will have a good old-fashioned cage fight. “So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel” (1 Kings 18:20 NASB).
He laid the ground rules for the event.
- Your team has 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. My team has me.
- You pick a bull. I’ll pick a bull.
- Place both animals on a wood-burning yet fireless altar.
- You ask Baal for fire, and I’ll ask Jehovah for fire.
This appears to be a contest of prophets: Elijah on one side and the soothsayers on the other. But it is so much more. This is a cosmic courtroom drama: God calling out Satan. This is Jehovah revealing for all to see how much of a sissy Satan truly is.
Satan Is Impotent Against God’s Sovereignty
The disciples of Satan prayed all morning. Such frenzied, frantic hysteria. Shrieking. Piteous pleadings. Think circus animals thrashing about. Soon the false prophets were covered with their own crimson. But the mutilation led only to exasperation and humiliation.
But Baal was silent as death. Satan is impotent to defy the plans of God. He is bound by the ropes of God’s sovereignty. Handcuffed by God’s providence. Gagged by God’s righteous plan. He thinks he is “all that,” but on Mt. Carmel, all his strut was shown for what it is: nothing but fluff.
Elijah didn’t shout. He didn’t cut himself. He didn’t dance himself into a frenzy. “He repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down” (1 Kings 18:30 NIV). They saturated the altar three times so Elijah could make sure that everything was soaked: the wood, the bull, the platform. Elijah didn’t even request fire. But the Lord sent it. Heaven opened, and a blaze from heaven fell. It consumed the water, the rocks, the wood, even the dust. All that was left was a charcoal-colored oval on the ground.
The people responded with repentance. Voices echoed off the rugged cliffs and rocky slopes. For the first time in three generations, the nation of Israel cried out to Jehovah. “The Lord he is God!”
When Victory Doesn’t Feel Victorious
Ahab and Elijah returned to Jezreel in the midst of a blinding rainstorm. As to where Elijah went, we aren’t told. But Ahab? He went directly to his queen bee, Jezebel. Her world was caving in about her. She needed to act, and do so in a hurry and a fury.
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” (1 Kings 19:2 NIV).
We’d expect our prophet to take a stand against her implacability. But, no, Elijah was so scared he made a run for it. He re-entered the driving storm and trudged his way a hundred miles across the hills of Samaria. He collapsed, with blistered feet and weary limbs, beneath a juniper tree. In what he thought would be his final request, the once triumphant but now truant prophet prayed, “‘Enough of this, God! Take my life — I’m ready to join my ancestors in the grave!’ Exhausted, he fell asleep under the lone broom bush” (1 Kings 19:4–5 MSG).
We should stop and thank God for telling us this story. Have we not been gripped by fear and exhaustion? And have we not felt guilty for feeling so faint? So feeble? So frail? Have we not found ourselves under that juniper tree? Yet, we find that we are in the company of Scripture’s greatest saints.
You Are Not Alone
Look to our side and whom do we see? Elijah beneath the adjacent tree! Or we look beyond and see Moses, so weary of his assignment that he told God, “If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me” (Num. 11:15 NIV). Or we look further and see Job, so overcome with sorrow that he confessed, “Depression haunts my days. At night my bones are filled with pain” (Job 30:16–17 NLT). And David. What about the king who said, “I am worn out from sobbing. All night I flood my bed with weeping” (Ps. 6:6 NLT)?
Or Paul the apostle, whose epistles we cherish. He took day trips into heaven. He was often caught up in the Spirit. Yet he knew the valley of defeat. He wrote: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death” (2 Cor. 1:8–9 NIV).
Seasons of sadness come to the most courageous saints. Did they not come to Christ? “While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death” (Heb. 5:7 NLT).
If tears streaked the cheeks of Jesus, dare we feel shame when tears leave a trail on ours? Tough times happen to God’s people. A sagging spirit is not a sign of a fragile faith. Let these examples convey the truth: God has not given up on you. God has not abandoned you. You may be hard on yourself. But God? He responds to you in the way he responded to despondent Elijah.
Exhausted? Be Refreshed.
“Then Elijah lay down under the bush 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 some 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.'” (1 Kings 19:5–7 NIV)
What does this story tell us about how God responds to a dejected saint? What does he say to the sad and weary?
Be refreshed.
God told Elijah to eat and sleep. (Sometimes the godliest act is to take a nap.) The man was exhausted. The drama on Mt. Carmel. The intensity of his prayer. Jezebel’s threat on his life and the need to flee her wrath. He had reason to be depleted.
As do we. You and I live in a culture without margins, every second of our attention sold to the highest bidder. The internet world promises community, connection, and contentment, but mostly it leaves us all just tired. If you are depressed and feel like giving up, his word to you is “get refreshed.” That’s exactly what Elijah did. He rested, ate, and drank.
How Does God Respond to Seasons of Sadness?
“Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God (1 Kings 19:8 NIV). For six long weeks he had walked across the wilderness of Sinai, the very land where Moses and the Israelites had wandered for almost two decades. The sun had baked him by day. The desert had chilled him at night.
And “the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.’” (1 Kings 19:9–10 NKJV)
Elijah answered with a complaint. I’ve been slugging it out for you, Lord. I did everything you told me to do, but your people have rejected your covenants and killed your prophets. I’m the only one left in the country, and now they want to kill me, too. We know better than to be too hard on the prophet, right? We’ve said the very same thing. If not the words, we’ve expressed the sentiment.
What does God do when we dig a hole and climb in? (You are going to like this.)
“The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain’ ”(1 Kings 19:11 NIV). God called Elijah out of the cave. Such practical instruction for us. Dark moods feed on isolation. Despair flourishes in solitude. Don’t leave yourself alone with your thoughts.
When darkness descends, flee solitude. Climb out of the shadows. Quit staring at your phone. No more hiding in your room. God’s remedy includes community. Engagement, not estrangement. Turn your back on the dark cave and stand before your great God!
Elijah obeyed and beheld a display of power. The roar of tempests bounced off the canyon walls. Rocks tumbled. Sand stung the prophet’s skin. “But the Lord was not in the wind” (1 Kings 19:11 NIV).
An earthquake sent tremors through the desert floor. Elijah fell to his knees and covered his head. “But the Lord was not in the earthquake” (v. 11).
Next came fire, tongues of fire that leapt to the height of the trees. The air was a furnace. Elijah didn’t know whether to run or hide. “But the Lord was not in the fire” (v. 12).
Then the “sound of a gentle blowing” (1 Kings 19:12 NASB).
“The sound of a low whisper” (ESV).
“A quiet, gentle voice” (ERV).
“Thin. Quiet” (CEB).
The Balm Needed for the Wounded Soul
No lecture. No critique. No sermon. No finger-pointing or tongue-lashing. God comes kindly in the shadows. Soft as a flute solo. Tender as a mother’s touch on the cheek of a tear-streaked child.
The strong fist of God was needed at Carmel. But the soothing touch of God was needed for Elijah’s season of sadness.
Is God whispering to you? We look for God to come in the dramatic rolls of thunder. And he does, but he also comes as a Bethlehem babe, a descending dove, and a kind shepherd.
When Elijah heard the quiet voice, he muffled his face with his great cloak, went to the mouth of the cave, and stood there. A quiet voice asked,
“So Elijah, now tell me, what are you doing here?” Elijah said it again, “I’ve been working my heart out for God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, because the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed your places of worship, and murdered your prophets. I’m the only one left, and now they’re trying to kill me.” (1 Kings 19:13–14 MSG)
Get Rest and Get Back in the Game
Elijah’s body may have been out of the cave, but his thoughts remained in the pits, so the Good Physician applied one more treatment. “Go back the way you came through the desert to Damascus. When you get there anoint Hazael. … Then anoint Jehu. … Finally, anoint Elisha … to succeed you as prophet. … Meanwhile, I’m preserving for myself seven thousand souls: the knees that haven’t bowed to the god Baal, the mouths that haven’t kissed his image” (1 Kings 19:15–18 MSG).
God’s message to the prophet was, “You may think you are done, Elijah; you’re not. I still have work for you. You may think you’re alone, Elijah; you’re not. I still have thousands who will stand with you. It’s time for you to get back in the game.”
The God who made you knows you, and he cares. Are you tired? Get some rest and refreshment. Are you holed up in a cave? It’s time to get moving and serve others.
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If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, exhausted, or ready to give up, this is the Bible study for you! In Max Lucado’s newest book & Bible study, Unbreakable Courage, we’ll discover how God replaces fear with faith, steadies anxious hearts, and gives us the courage to face whatever comes next. Join the Online Bible Study and get FREE access to all 6 teaching videos with Max, plus bonus resources and a vibrant online community to support you along the way!
Since entering the ministry in 1978, Max Lucado has served churches in Miami, Florida; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and San Antonio, Texas. He currently serves as the teaching minister of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio. He is the recipient of the 2021 ECPA Pinnacle Award for his outstanding contribution to the publishing industry and society at large. He is America's bestselling inspirational author with more than 150 million products in print. Visit his website at MaxLucado.com.
