1 Kings 19 Devotional
By Pastor Lawrence

If we know anything about the weakness of the flesh, it is not so hard to believe that this is the same prophet Elijah who just a few days prior stood up to the king of Israel and took on 450 prophets singlehandedly that is now asking the Lord to take his life. Surely, the man is tired and hungry after running for hundreds of miles. He is also alone and afraid, and he feels as if the whole world has fallen on his shoulders. He states a few times that he is the only prophet left in Israel and the only man who has not bowed down to worship Baal. In some sense, he has a god-complex, or at least a messiah-complex. With his many previous successes, Elijah seemed to believe that he was the messiah that Israel had been waiting for. After all, even many generations later, the disciples of Christ were wondering if Jesus himself were Elijah reincarnate. So, clearly, he was a godly man and a unique individual, but in v.4, he’s beginning to see that he is not as great as he originally thought. Recognizing his own fearfulness and the sinful desire to preserve his own life rather than to stand his ground in the Lord, he pleads with the Lord to take his life, admitting that he is no better than his fathers. In other words, he’s admitting he is not the messiah after all.

One would think that Elijah would be relieved by that realization, but instead he is angry and depressed. He may not be perfect, but he’s certainly more faithful than the rest of Israel, at least in his own estimation, and certainly in the eyes of many others as well. But he is not the messiah, and he is not a super-apostle that the Lord is lucky to have. There are many others the Lord could use instead of him, and there would be, seven thousand to be exact. But at this moment, Elijah’s world seems out of control, and he has no power to change his circumstances or to manipulate his environment, and that makes him angry too. But in a moment the Lord would raise up new leadership in Israel and in Syria who would shake things up and usher in a time of judgment that Elijah did not foresee. Of course, Elijah is a prophet of the Lord. He is a seer who can see into the future, but he cannot foresee everything—only that which the Lord reveals to him. Like the rest of us, he is still human and thus still dependent upon the Lord’s wisdom and strength.

And like the rest of us, Elijah expects God to immediately rain down fire from the sky or to cause the earth to quake throwing rocks down upon all our enemies, but ordinarily the Lord carries out his will in a much more subtle way as in a whisper rather than a shout. Of course, that bothers us at times because the Lord doesn’t explain to us what He is doing, but we must remember that we are the Lord’s servants, not his advisors. Thankfully, the Lord is gracious to us when we act out in anger and pride after coming to the realization that we are not the main character in this great story. He also is merciful to us in our weakness giving us time to rest from our labor and nourishing our bodies and souls with His lovingkindness. And once we have recovered from our temporary insanity and our physical exhaustion, the Lord graciously corrects our bad theology as well, reminding us not only that we are not the savior, but that we need a savior, Jesus the Lord.