I’ve Had Enough, Lord.

1 Kings 19:4-7

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I’ll give you a little bit of context here. You might be familiar with the account in the Old Testament when Elijah had that big contest with the prophets of Baal up on Mount Carmel, where he versus the 400 prophets of Baal each were going to build an altar and put their sacrifice up on top, but they weren’t going to set fire to it. Instead, they’d pray to their gods, the prophets of Baal, to Baal and Elijah to the Lord, to see which God would send fire. And whichever God sent the fire well he would be the true God.

And you’re familiar with the story how Elijah even went so far as to douse his sacrifice with so much water that he was drenched in a trench around the altar, was filled with that water, and he prayed to God after the prophets of Baal had failed all day to get Baal to answer, Elijah prayed once to God, and fire consumed everything that he had built there. And the people of Israel praise the Lord. He is God, the Lord. He is God. What a resounding victory that they had at that time. And then after that, God sent rain onto the earth that he had withheld for three and a half years. And Elijah is just so full of emotion as a result of all of this, all that time. Now, finally, God is coming through and showing his truth and his proof to all these people.

But there was a holdout. Elijah was expecting perhaps this great reformation to happen, that all the hearts of Israel would turn back to the Lord. He’d seen an example of that up on Mount Carmel, but then he heard a message from Jezebel, the king’s wife, the Queen Jezebel, that he she was going to have Elijah killed. And now Elijah runs for his life and he flees out into the wilderness. And there we read this passage from First Kings chapter 19, verses four through seven.

But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die and said, It is enough now Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers. Then as he lay and slept under a broom tree, suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, Arise and eat. Then he looked and there by his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and laid down again. And the angel of the Lord came back the second time and touched him and said, Arise and eat because the journey is too great for you. (1 Kings 19:4-7)

Now that sadness that Elijah felt, that utter despair, people have examined this and seen that perhaps he was even feeling a clinical depression as a result of all of this because he was willing and ready to die. He wanted his life to be taken away from him. But I want to pay attention to some of the verbiage here, some of the words that he uses. He says “it is enough” there at the beginning when the angel comes and talks to Elijah and tells him to eat and to prepare for this journey, he says “it is too great for you.” And in Hebrew, the words for enough and too great are in fact the same word. So God’s Angel is here is confirming for Elijah and telling him, You’re right, it is too much for you. You can’t take it. You are not enough.

But just like God told Paul in the New Testament, my Grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. Elijah was ready for God to come out and bring about this perfect plan that he had in his own head to bring everything back to perfect renewal. But God had his own plan that He was working on. God was working in the background shortly after this, Elijah in that great journey that was too great for him, he made his way to Mount Horeb, a different mountain now from Mount Carmel, and there he encountered God again. There was a great wind that shattered the rocks. God wasn’t in the wind. There was a great fire that burned all around. God wasn’t in the fire. There was a great earthquake. God wasn’t in the earthquake, but God was in, as you might be familiar with the term, the still small voice. That’s where God came to comfort Elijah when it was too much for him. God didn’t come in this great glorious presence, but he came and showed that his plan was still working, even in the face of what looked like a complete and utter defeat.

And ultimately, we see how God worked that same exact plan when he sent his son Jesus, and how many expected a great and glorious fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation here. But instead he came in this humble and humiliating death of his son. But by that very thing, we can trust what was too much for us. What was too much, our own sin, what we could not handle, Jesus took. Jesus won the victory for us. He won that salvation for us. And so now, even now, in whatever difficulties you are facing, God’s plan is still working in that still small voice. He is still keeping his promises in his word. He still provides you his forgiveness in Jesus, his glorious life that is hidden now, but is assuredly yours. And you can rest on his promise. Amen.