Word of Salvation – Vol. 22 No.47 – August 1976

 

Under The Shade Of The Broom Tree

 

Sermon by Rev. Dirk J. van Garderen on 1Kings 19:4

Scripture Readings: 1KIngs 18:36-19:8; Phil.2:1-13

Psalter Hymnal: 43:1,2,6; 430:1,3,4; 452; 303:1,4,6; 280

 

Dear congregation,

It seems absolutely incredible that a man of Elijah’s spiritual calibre, with the events that took place on Mt. Carmel only hours behind him, should suddenly find himself in a remote desert spot, under the shade of a broom tree wishing he were dead!

Yet that is precisely where we do find him.  That wish for death indeed rose from his lips.  That overwhelming sense of failure overpowered him and offered only death as a way of escape.

Incredible?  Well, within the context of the exploits of Elijah it most certainly is.  In the previous chapter of the book of Kings we met Elijah basking in his moment of greatest glory.  Ah!  Mt. Carmel.

The sudden appearance of the prophet to Ahab after 3½ years of hiding.  The gathering of the nation at Mt. Carmel.  The call to the people to stop limping between two gods: Jehovah and Baal.  The challenge: The God who answers by fire, He is God!  The result which had shown the prophets of Baal and Baal himself for what they really were…. idol worshippers, a big send up.  The religious frenzy of the people as the 450 prophets of Baal had been put to the sword.  The rain after that long and disastrous drought.  O my, how those brief hours had been packed with all the excitement that anyone could wish for.

In every possible sense the stage had been set for a thorough going revival.  A reformation loomed larger than life.  The people were as ready as could be imagined for a return from the worship of Baal.  Elijah could have had the crowd absolutely sewn up.  His call was their command.

Elijah, the servant of the Lord, the conqueror of Baal came down from Mt.  Carmel…. and then it happens.

Suddenly, ruthlessly the situation changes beyond recognition.

On reading the next chapter of the Book of Kings one might almost suppose that we are dealing with a completely different subject.  Mt. Carmel fades… is completely blacked out in fact, by the fury of a woman.  The reformation was nipped in the bud or could better be described as having been pulled up by the roots.  Not a trace of the triumph of yesterday remains.

It all began when King Ahab reported to his wife, Jezebel, all that Elijah had done on Mt. Carmel.

Did you notice that?  “Ahab told Jezebel all that ELIJAH had done.”  A misleading report!  Ahab, in common with so many of the enemies of God, overlooked that the fire and the rain on Mt. Carmel was God’s work.  If you cannot fault the message, by all means have a bash at its messenger!  Ahab did.  Jezebel took the cue and in her fury fumed: “I swear by the gods that I’ll kill you Elijah!”

“So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them (of the prophets put to the sword on Mt. Carmel) by this time tomorrow.”

24 hours to get out of town Elijah….. so run man, run!

And he ran.

He ran from the northern kingdom of Israel into another, the land of Judah.  He ran to a southernmost city of Judah called Beersheba.

Run Elijah, run….. and every footstep of your weary feet shall jarringly remind you of what was, of what could have been, of what, but for your cowardice, should have been.

Elijah ran, and even Beersheba in the south was too close for comfort.  Into the wilderness beyond…!

Finally, in the scorching heat of the desert sun, Elijah virtually collapsed beneath the shade of a desert tree.  A broom tree…… and beneath its shade, he cried.

“It is enough; now O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.”

What a dismal, heart breaking scene.

I.  THE DEPTHS OF DEPRESSION

The proverb has it that the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  Elijah, the erstwhile man of the moment, is shown to be no exception to the rule.  How this mighty crusader, this amazing prophet, has fallen!  And, being at the bottom of the ladder, biting the dust as it were, was an extremely bitter pill to swallow.  A whole life of preparation had, in the prophet’s own opinion, come to nothing.

It’s too bitter, too big and unbearable….. “It is enough!”  Stop Lord!  My patience, my prayers, my perseverance, my ministry, my exile, it was all in vain.  Mt. Carmel, with all its glory, failed.  It is all in vain…… it is enough.  Physically and spiritually spent, at the end of his tether, Elijah the prophet surrenders.  It is enough.

More than surrender, for hear him ask for death.  The sense of failure is so severe that the thought of death is a welcome one.  “O Lord, take away my life,” he groans.

Elijah, the man who had run from the presence of Jezebel in order to save his life, in the state of severe depression of which he is the victim, now wishes for nothing better than to curl up and die.  Poor Elijah.  How easily it becomes possible for us to identify with him, to share his feelings, to cry out: “I understand you Elijah!”

Easy to identify with Elijah isn’t it?  Maybe it is true that the broom tree isn’t such a remote place after all.  Maybe that broom tree is a very, very regularly frequented spot.  Think for example of Moses, the greatest of the OT prophets.  This great servant of the Lord was driven to utter despair as the children of Israel kept up their continual murmurings in the wilderness.  The cry, “wish we had stayed by the fleshpots of Egypt” finally became too much.  Water had been provided, deliverance from the Egyptian army, manna, and then another cry for meat!  “O Lord, kill me at once!” cried Moses (Numbers 11).  He too had a breaking point.

Then there was the prophet Jonah.  He too, in utter despair because Nineveh, Israel’s greatest enemy, would be spared cried out: “O Lord, take my life from me……. it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4).

What drives these men to this despair and depression?

Why does this kind of transformation from a hero of faith into a spiritually spent wreck take place?  Why do we ourselves feel it so easy to identify with Elijah by virtue of the fact that we too land in similar straits?

II.  THE CAUSE OF ELIJAH’S SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION

Elijah’s depression, according to his own diagnosis, lay in his own feeling of failure.

A great big red “F” for failure dominated and blurred his mind.  “F”, because he had allowed the threat of one woman to overpower him and cause him to run like a startled rabbit clear out of the country.

“F” for failure, because Israel, on the brink of a great revival, had suddenly been left leaderless owing to his own desertion.

He felt HIMSELF to be a failure.

It is as it were as if Elijah’s entire mind is exclusively wrapped up and totally preoccupied with himself, with the “I” who failed, the “I” who ran.

Therefore, his mind totally clouded with himself and the “F” that dominated his own outlook on life, he cries:
“I am no better than my fathers.”

“I am just as prone to stumble, to fail as my fathers did, to limp between faith in God and faith in other things, as are my people.  Basically I, like the king, like Ahab, limp too.  What difference between me and the worshippers of Baal?  I too care more about myself than about God.

“It is enough; now O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.”

The cause of Elijah’s depression lay in his total sense of failure, in the fact that success, a successful revival which dangled before him like a piece of fruit ready to pluck, had been missed.  Everything, his whole existence was thoroughly clouded, blacked out as it were, by this sense of failure.

I suppose that, in common with most of us when we reach this state of depression, it becomes tempting to start listing reasons for Elijah’s downfall.  It is all too tempting to blame what happens on that proverbial hang-up called “circumstances beyond our control”.

Many comment on this text by doing precisely this.  Emphasis is placed on the strain under which Elijah had lived during the past 31⁄2 years, the stress involved in the eventual confrontation with King Ahab and the prophets of Baal.  Then there is attention drawn to the spiritual strain involved in the prayers of Elijah for both fire and rain on Mt. Carmel.  The excitement and perhaps the secret feelings of guilt that Elijah may have endured at the murder of the 450 prophets.  In a similar vein many more imposing sounding arguments can be added to the list.

What they share in common is that in one way or another they try to lighten the blame that Elijah felt by turning to a description of “circumstances beyond our control.”

What this all boils down to is the question that confronts us with the ways and working of God.  For such circumstances ARE NOT beyond the control of God are they?  So God ends up liable to catch the blame either directly or indirectly.

One may then even ask:

“Has not the Lord God placed too much upon the shoulders of this one poor overworked and overwrought prophet?  Has God forgotten that his creatures are frail and have a breaking point no matter how strong they may appear to be?”

III.  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS SCENE.

The significance of this situation is that Elijah, in crying that he has had enough, is so surrounded by his own sense of failure that he is totally blind to God’s plans.

The darkness of despair that encompasses him blots out everything and even threatens to turn God into an incompetent, unfeeling and remote being.

But what is being revealed to us in this scene?

What is the significance of this cry that issues from the lips of the prophet?

CONSIDER ELIJAH HIMSELF.

The despair, the sense of failure voiced from underneath that broom tree is by no means unusual as far as human experience is concerned.

Elijah, in a moment of weakness, had failed, and by virtue of his failure, everything, all that he had anticipated in terms of a spiritual revival in Israel, seemed to have come to nothing.

All his experiences, right from the moment he had boldly walked into the court of King Ahab to announce the drought, till his triumphal descent from the victory of Mt. Carmel, seemed to have been an utter waste of time.

Elijah therefore felt several things:

a)  He was utterly convinced that he had disappointed God and frustrated the purposes and plan of God for Israel. Maybe, in Elijah’s own estimation of the way things ought to have gone, this was indeed the case.  Maybe, in terms of what Elijah would term a “successful mission”, the whole exercise had indeed ended up a total disaster.

But that is MAN’S estimation of the situation, not God’s – God’s unfolding plan of redemption did not begin and end with Elijah.  One man sows and another reaps – to say the very least.  What Elijah had begun Elisha was to continue.  The preparation and unfolding of God’s divine plan of redemption included many prophets all of whom stood in that great line leading right up to the Son of God Himself, to Jesus Christ.

You see Elijah, in feeling that he had failed God forgot that God’s way is not Elijah’s way, that God does indeed work everything in accordance to HIS will and in HIS time.

In many respects Elijah had indeed fallen and failed, but as surely as God knows our frame and remembers that we are dust, Elijah had to learn that God’s purposes and plan did not stand or fall in total dependence on the strength of one of His servants, be it Moses, Elijah, Jonah, or any of us who strive to serve God.  How often do we not feel the same as Elijah did when a great “F” for failure dominates our serving of God?  When our plans for our children fail, or when our dearest plans in a church activity, a revival, a special service, a special project or whatever it is that disappoints us, fails.

We make things depend on ourselves, feel that unless we succeed the whole thing is a failure.  Elijah, there is also Elisha.  Servant of today…. one man sows, another nurtures and another reaps…… but God gives the GROWTH and LIFE….. and God’s way will not be brought to nothing.

b)  A second thing that Elijah felt so keenly under that broom tree, was that his pride, his own estimation of himself and his ability as a servant of the Lord, had been smashed.

Yes, Elijah fell in terms of his own pride as a servant of the Lord.  This experience of running for his life from the wrath of a godless woman to save his own life, was most damaging to his spiritual ego.  Suddenly, crushingly, Elijah had been forced to admit that he wasn’t quite the spiritual giant that he had thought himself to be.  That was a galling experience.

It was Elijah’s pride, and not God’s plan of redemption that had taken the plunge.

Little wonder therefore that the testimony of Scripture is so unanimous about the need for total humility.  The first being last and the last being first, the greatest being the least and the least being the greatest.  These and similar sayings are most painfully true.

That greatest of all passages on humility, Philippians 2, speaks of the extent of Christ’s humility.  In presenting Christ’s work Paul speaks of Our Lord having emptied Himself, of being found in the form of a servant/slave as a man, he even humiliated himself by being despised and rejected, counted less than man.

Have THIS mind among yourselves urges Paul!

And Elijah?  Well, THE MIND OF CHRIST, the humility of total, unselfish, God-centred service, was something that he, in this humiliating way, had to learn to grasp.  Learning it would indeed be for his good wouldn’t it?

How come we are just as slow, if not more so than Elijah was?  If that broom tree is really a familiar place for us (and it is, isn’t it?) then perhaps that pride, spiritual pride especially, profits under these circumstances.

c)  The third thing that Elijah must have felt under the broom tree was a sense of disappointment in God Himself. Could not God have become much more directly involved by either gagging Queen Jezebel, rendering her powerless, or alternatively by forcibly stopping Elijah from taking to his heels?  Couldn’t God have done just a little more after already having done so much on Mt. Carmel?  It would only have taken a minimum of effort on God’s part…. and if only God had acted, then plans for the revival and return to the worship of the Lord would have become a reality.

God, why didn’t You…?

This was the lesson that Elijah was still to learn about forty days later as he stood at the mouth of a cave on the slopes of Mt. Horeb.  There he would see the Lord passing by, not in a mighty wind, not in an earthquake, not in a great fire, but rather in the form of a “still small voice”.  There he would learn that although God commands all the power of a great wind, or an earthquake or fire, His way is nevertheless that of a still small voice, of small, seemingly insignificant ways.

Indeed, how true the words of the prophet Isaiah:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are my ways your ways, says the Lord.” (Isa.55:8).

CONSIDER THE LORD GOD

In all the seeming calamity, the apparent failure of which Elijah felt himself a victim, God remains.

Elijah, in his moment of misery, forgot God’s presence, God’s unchanging purpose, plan and love, that God’s grace would continue to abound as grace.  Elijah’s depression blocked this out, in the same sense as the Lord God and His love is often blocked out in our lives as servants of God.

But Elijah, please remember the great assurance of God’s presence and power that had only just taken place on Mt. Carmel.  Do you, a servant of the Lord, forget your Lord’s ways so easily?

And each one of us, when the great “F” for failure threatens to overwhelm us, do we forget the greatest and most glorious of all of God’s signs and seals of His love and presence?  Do we forget the cross all too easily?

Mt. Carmel, for all its glory, was but a pale foreshadowing of the greatest sacrifice of the ages, of the greatest sign of God’s acceptance of that sacrifice which we witness at Calvary and three days later at the empty tomb.

Do we forget Jesus Christ himself?

Elijah, in his misery and despair, lost sight of Mt. Carmel.  Today; we who have inherited Elijah’s mantle, we forget Calvary all so easily and then, as that feeling of failure overwhelms we suddenly feel that everything depends on ourselves.  It depended on God’s grace… on the coming of His Son, on the cross, and on the promise of Christ’s return to make all things new.

Therefore, get up Elijah the problem lies not with God.  Get up believer…… the problem, the victory, the future, lies not in you, but with God who WILL overcome, who WILL make all things new.

Remember…. God’s plan…. and that nothing, absolutely nothing, not even satan himself, can thwart it.

That is our reason for rising from despair, our hope and our blessed assurance.

Get up from that broom tree and meet God!

Amen.