By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
June 22, 2025
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1 Kings 19:1–15 (ESV)
1 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” 3 Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. 4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” 5 And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” 6 And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. 7 And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” 8 And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. 9 There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” 11 And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. 13 And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14 He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” 15 And the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria.
The past month or so has been rough. I want to thank Pastor Mwenitanda and Bilengana for their help as well as Tony and Stacey. I also want to express my family’s appreciation to everyone in this Meeting.
It has been hard to focus the past few days. But for some reason my attention was drawn to today’s passage. I was drawn to it because of the humanity of Elijah. When most of us think of this father of the prophets we are drawn to certain stories. Most of us think of him calling fire down from the heavens to prove the might of Yahweh over Baal. Some of us might fixate on his exit from this earth in the fiery chariot. For me this passage is where I really meet Elijah.
Elijah was the father of the prophets. When all the world seemed to be turning away from the one true God, Elijah remained faithful. He inspired, encouraged, and taught many. Yet often he did not see the massive influence he had within the community.
Let us look back at the history. Elijah lived in the northern kingdom, know as Israel or Samaria, which was its capital. The people of this northern kingdom, scripture often regard as apostate. They were apostate in many ways, but I think we often judge them a bit unfairly. These were the descendants ten of the tribes of Israel that broke away from the other two. Benjamin and Judah formed the southern kingdom, and they remained under the rule of David. The ten other tribes were smaller. Most of these tribes were descendants of the sons Jacob had with the servants of his wives. So it may have been that they always felt as if they were not fully part of the family.
Benjamin was the son of the favorite wife Rachel, we can understand his place. But there is something else, Judah was not a son of Rachel but the son of Leah. He was not the oldest of the sons, in fact he was the fourth son. The oldest Reuben lost his birthright because he forced himself on one of Jacob’s concubines. Then Simeon and Levi, Jacob deemed unworthy of the birthright because of the violent tendencies. So the birthright went to the fourth son of Leah, Judah. Benjamin and Judah were sons of Jacob’s wives. The other ten tribes were descendants of the rejected sons, the sons of the servants, or the sons of Joseph.
When David became king, he was called a man after God’s heart. He was from the tribe of Judah, he was from the tribe the had the birthright. David was a righteous man in many ways, but he was also a man. He was known too take advantage of his position, but he over all he sought only to please his God. This is where things became a bit twisted. He wanted to move the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, he wanted to build a house for God that was as great as his own palace. We see this a a great things, we often assume that this was done according to some decree from God himself, because David was a man after God’s own heart. But scripture does not ever say that God commanded that David do this. Scripture even states that God did not want David to build a temple. Yet David did it anyway.
David moved the Ark of the Lord away from the tent. He moved it away from the tribes into the capital of Judah. Why did he do this? Some might say it was to bring all people into one centralized form of worship, other have argued that he did this for political power. He was righteous, yes, but he was a man. In his religious zeal he opened a door that would eventually divide the kingdom. The tabernacle was set up among the tribes. It moved with them as they traveled through the wilderness. It was a sign that God was with the people of Israel. When David moved the Ark from among the people some saw that as God turning his back on them. He was no longer with them, instead he was the God of Judah.
I think it is important for us to recognize this, because it can give us a glimpse into our own culture. In our righteous zeal, in our desires to be good and upright people of God, we can at times become a hindrance. We can turn people away from the truth, with our misplaced zeal.
The northern tribes felt rejected. They were the descendants of the lesser sons, the sons of the concubines. They were the descendants of Joseph’s sons born to an Egyptian. They were the descendants of the tribes that had lost their birthright. And now the God they once followed is not with them, but is in Jerusalem. They felt as if God had left them, so they began to seek others.
This is the culture Elijah was born into. A culture where a people felt rejected and taken advantage of. I am not saying that they were right, I just want us to understand who they were. These were the people Elijah encouraged, and he understood something the rest of his culture did not quite get. God is not controlled by mankind.
David moved the Ark to Jerusalem. David’s son Solomon built the temple of God in Jerusalem. The tribe of Judah wanted to control the civil and religious lives of Israel, and the tribes in the north rejected their zeal. Elijah the father of the prophets lived in the north. This man of God live among people that did not worship God properly and scripture does not say one time that Elijah ever went to worship God in Jerusalem.
God is not controlled by mankind. Everyone was to worship in Jerusalem, yet the father of the prophets had not been there, and we have his story in scripture. I find this fascinating.
Elijah lives in this kingdom rejected by God, rejected by the religious elites, and yet he knows who God is. How did he learn? He participated in, in my opinion the most dramatic event in the Old Testament, when he challenges the prophets and priest of Baal to a spiritual dual. Then after he proves that God is the true God, he runs away.
Elijah is real, he is raw and authentic. When I read scripture, I understand David, I get why he wrote his psalms and I know he faced challenges, but to me David’s challenges seemed like what we might call first world problems today. Elijah is different. He saw and experienced things we could not imagine. David was hunted by the Saul, but David had an army with him. Elijah was hunted by the queen of Israel because she sought revenge for the killing of the priest of Baal, and Elijah was alone.
We often feel alone. We often feel as if we are the only one that knows the struggle. And often we run. Elijah ran from his home country, he ran for his life to foreign land. He ran to Beersheba in Judah. He ran from Mount Carmel, which was in the northern region of Israel to Beersheba on the southern boarder of Judah. He was a refugee, an immigrant. He ran to Beersheba left his servant and he went off by himself walking for another day. He walked and collapsed by a broom tree, and he prayed, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
Elijah had witnessed, no he had been in the center of one of the most spectacular signs of God to this point in history, and he cries out to God I have had enough. I cannot take it any more. I am no better than my ancestors who we buried in the desert sands of the exodus. Elijah feels as if he is a man without a nation and a man without a God. He is wondering in the wilderness alone.
As he is siting under a broom tree, or curled up under a desert shrub, an angel comes to him and touches him saying, “Arise and eat.” He opens his eyes and sees before him bread and a jar of water so he eats and drinks, and he then goes back to sleep in his shrubby refuge. And the angel of the Lord comes again a second time and touches him saying, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” This second visitation is a bit different than the first. It says, “the angel of the Lord” instead of a mere angel. This statement is used often in the Old Testament, and many Christian scholars argue that when this specific term it is used it is not only an angel, but a manifestation of Jesus prior to his incarnation. Oddly though in this instance the commentators do not make too much about this second visit, only that Elijah recognizes that it is a messenger or angel sent from the true God, and not just some random spiritual being. He listens to this messenger, and after he eats he gets out from under the tree, and goes on a journey for forty days and nights to Horeb.
Early in the history of Israel there is a mountain that has great significance. A place called Sinai. It is on this mountain that God gave Israel the commandments, the teachings, or Torah through Moses. In the book of Exodus the mountain is called Sinai, but is in other places when they talk about the mountain it is called Horeb. Some think that there were different mountains, while others think one was speaking of a region or mountain range where the other is speaking of one particular mountain. But both speak of a similar event. The law was given on Horeb or Sinai. The angel of the Lord encourages Elijah to continue his journey further south. And after Elijah eats bread and drinks water from heaven, walks forty days and nights to the place everything began.
Elijah arrives to the mountain, finds a cave, and he goes inside. He is exhausted, and just as he gets his camp set up, and he hears the word of the Lord saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
What are you doing here?
This is why this passage struck me this week. What am I doing here? Why are we here at this time and place? What are we experiencing the things we are experiencing?
Elijah answers. He rants actually. “I have been very jealous for the Lord. For the people have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets, and I, even I only, am left.”
Notice his words. I have been. I, even I only am left.
I have done all of this, I called fire down from heaven, I killed the false prophets, and what have I received? My life is threatened, and I am alone.
God tells him to go out and stand on the mountain. A wind comes, a wind that tears at the mountain and breaks pieces of rock away. But as Elijah stands in the wind he knows that God is not in the wind. Then there is an earthquake. The ground beneath his feet, the foundation of all he knows to be true is shaken, and Elijah knows that God is not in the earthquake. Then a fire rushes through the land around him. Each of these things were signs, or were thought to have been signs from God. Even today we call these things acts of God. But in each of these three events Elijah does not sense the Lord within them.
I have sat contemplating these words. I sit with them often because I love Elijah. I have thought about the amazing fire from heaven that consumed the sacrifice. What amazing power and how could anyone deny God after that? And I then thought about these three natural events. A mighty wind so strong it can rip a mountain apart. I have been in storms I know the power. I have sat in a combine during harvest in wind that felt as if it blow that massive machine over. I have watched fires sweep across the prairies, and have been terrified and in awe of the destruction and new life that emerges in their wake. I have not been in an earthquake, but the thought of it terrifies me.
I think about these things. And I have come to realize that they represent every struggle we have in life. They are the things that are out of our control. They can devastate us and yet there is little we can do except maybe minimize risk. But where is God? Where is God when we suffer? Where is God when things do not go our way and why after we have done so much does God seem to disappear?
Elijah sees all of this before him, and then shortly after the fire passes by there is the sound of a low whisper. Or more accurately a calm or a sound of silence.
It is at this point that Elijah wrapped his face in his cloak and stands at the entrance of the cave. What they are describing here is the act of prayer, in ancient times and still practice in Hebrew culture when one begins to pray they cover their head with their cloak so that they are free from distraction. Jesus, in the gospels would describe it as entering the prayer closet. It was not a room set aside for prayer, although that is not a bad thing, it was a posture or discipline where one would physically prepare themselves to pray.
Elijah enters this prayer closet. And as he enters this time of prayer in the silence, God asks him again, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah again rants about his accomplishments and how they have come back to nothing.
What are you doing here?
Elijah rants, about all the things he has done. He laments about the lack of return. He does this as he stand in the very spot where Israel began. In that very spot Israel became a people, a nation. Nation not in a political sense, but culturally. They became God’s people, and he become their God. And why were they there? Why did God bring Israel out of Egypt? Why did God call Israel, Isaac and Abraham? It was so they would become a light to the nations calling all people back to God.
God took Elijah out of Israel to a land foreign to him so that He could remind Elijah of the whole point. God wants to be with his people. God took Elijah to the mountain it all started and he asks him, “What are you doing here?
Are we here because we want something from God? Are we here because we expect God to do amazing things for us because we are such good people? No. We are just like Elijah no better than our fathers, our ancestors, if not worse. But that is not the point. We are not here because we are supposed to be righteous and perfect. That is good do not get me wrong. But that is not the point. We are here because God wants to be with us.
After Elijah’s rant, God gives him a command. He says, “Go, return.” But he does not send him right back to Israel, he sends him to Damascus and tells Elijah to anoint Hazael to be king over Syria, and then to go to Israel and to the prophets. He sends Elijah, the father of the prophets to Syria. Not to Jerusalem, but Syria. He sent Elijah to the heart of Baal worship.
What does that mean?
We are not here for ourselves, we are hear so that we can go out to the world around us. We are here so that we can anoint the world with the love of Christ. We are here to Love God, Embrace the Holy Spirit, and to Live the Love of Christ with others.
We are here in this place at this time for God’s glory. We endure amazing spiritual highs, where it seems as if the world is going to turn and God is praised. Followed by times of traumatic suffering. Where is God? What are we doing here? We are here so we can go. We are here because there is hope, there is a calming whisper that will carry us through the strongest winds and the most ferocious fires. And that whisper is urging us to take the teachings of God to the world, to show them that God is with us. Winds will rage, fires will consume, and the earth will shake, and when the dust settles God is right there with us, encouraging us to go, return, anoint, and hope in the new life that is in Christ.
Previous Messages:
The Mind of Christ
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church March 29, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Query 3: Do you attend regularly the services of your church and participate in them actively? Do you prayerfully endeavor to minister, under the guidance of the Holy…
Walk as Children of Light
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church March 15, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Ephesians 5:8–14 (ESV) 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit…
Your Kingdom Come
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church February 22, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Romans 5:12–19 (ESV) 12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all…
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