1 King’s 16:29-17:6
“What Are You Waiting For?”
May 25, 2008
Associate Pastor Doug Forsberg
“What are you waiting for?” This is not an innocent question is it? It’s the kind of question that older brothers and sisters ask their younger siblings to annoy them, and parents have a special ability to ask this question at just the wrong time, like when you’re supposed to wash your hands before dinner or brush your teeth before bed or do a big school project, or when a big dance is coming and you haven’t asked anyone or when you return the car to the garage with the gas needle on E. “What are you waiting for?”
One day I stood at the top of a 250 foot cliff with a harness on, holding on to a rope that couldn’t have been more than an inch thick. I was facing the cliff and my feet were on the very edge. I stood there for a long time. Finally, one of my friends asked, “What are you waiting for?” I looked at him and thought of all the words I wanted to say to him but probably shouldn’t. Then I told him I was wondering why I had never gotten supplemental insurance. With that, I stepped back from the top of the cliff and discovered the joy of repelling. What had I been waiting for?
This text before us in 1st Kings is about waiting; it reveals to us how Elijah waited on the Lord in his time of need. Truth be told, faith and waiting go hand in hand, for “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb 11:1). When we can’t see yet have hope, we are waiting, waiting for something we cannot bring about through our own strength or resources. Indeed, when you are a person of faith, a follower of Jesus, you will experience moments of waiting for the Lord, and you will wait because as a believer you’ve submitted to following Jesus, knowing that his way for you is better than the one you would choose for yourself. So it is that faith and waiting are bound together.
Truth be told, we don’t do a lot of waiting. If the lines are long at one place, we go somewhere else. If the person we want to talk to isn’t answering their home phone, we call their cell phone. If we want to know something about Hannah Montana, we Google her name and come up with 22 million hits in .15 seconds. Above almost all else, our culture values speed, efficiency, and self-reliance.
While our culture places a high value on speed, efficiency and self-reliance, those who follow Jesus know that there is a more basic and important factor in the living of our lives: faithfulness. Since faith and waiting are bound together, we know that there will be times in our lives and in our life together when we must wait for the Lord. Such waiting goes against the grain, but when we seek to be faithful, the only way forward is to wait.
Today’s text tells us that Ahab rebelled against the Lord and refused to wait in a faithful way. At some point during Ahab’s reign, the prophet Elijah came before Ahab with a message from the Lord, proclaiming “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word.” These words that Elijah speaks to Ahab are fighting words; words used to draw a line in the sand to show who really controlled the rain.
You see, Ahab thought a Phoenician god named Baal controlled the rain. Ahab had embraced a religion centered around Baal, believing Baal to be the god of storm and fertility. Through Elijah, the Lord issues a challenge, claiming that he will dry up the rain for years. Obviously, if rain does come, the Lord is not as powerful as Baal. So begins a period of waiting and watching for the rain. We’re told in James 5:17 that the wait for rain lasted three and a half years. Imagine how devastating such a drought would be, the land hard as rock, the animals frail and weak, the vegetation burned by the sun, and the people parched and anxious. No doubt everyone was waiting and watching for rain.
Certainly Ahab was watching for rain. As a devoted follower of Baal, he had forsaken the Lord and cast his lot in with a god his fathers had not known. In verses 31-33, we’re told that he did three things to provoke the Lord to anger. He married Jezebel a foreigner, set up an alter and temple for Baal, and made an Asherah pole. Why would these things make the Lord angry? In each case the Lord had commanded his people not to do these things, not to marry foreign wives, and not to worship idols (Numbers 25 and Exodus 20:3-4). God’s instruction on these matters was clear, but Ahab thinks he knows a better, more efficient way to manage his life. Ahab wanted control over his world and his life; he didn’t want to acknowledge the Lord’s reign over creation.
In this way, Ahab provides us with a great example of how not to wait. When Ahab wanted something to happen he didn’t wait on the Lord; instead, he turned to an idol, believing that speed, efficiency and self-reliance were more important than faithfulness. When faced with the difficult period of waiting, Ahab focuses on himself and what his needs are and making sure to find ways to fulfill those needs. He had embraced Baalism before this defining moment and so had trained himself not to seek the Lord but to rely on what he could see, touch and feel. This is an easy trap to fall into and that is why it is so important to be a part of worship which is shaped by a focus on the God who has revealed himself to us in scripture as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, inviting his people to freely follow him as the One who is the center of all creation.
Ahab thought that Baal could help him control the fertility of his people, plants, and animals. He also thought that Baal would bring the rains whenever Ahab wanted them to come. For Ahab, waiting meant taking things into his own hands and refusing to submit to the One who is Lord of all creation, the One with the power to control the rain, the One who doesn’t answer to the King of Israel, Baal or anyone else.
Elijah also waits in this account, but he does so in a very different way than Ahab. One of the interesting things we discover in this text is that just because Elijah was a prophet and a faithful follower of the Lord does not mean that he was immune to the drought. The absence of rain affected all of the inhabitants of Israel. Elijah needed rain water to survive just like anyone else, but whatever anxiousness he felt didn’t drive him to follow an idol. It drove him to the Lord. Fittingly, Elijah’s name means His God is Yahweh. Elijah’s name and mission are one as he lives in faithful service to the Lord. We should notice that the Lord works as Elijah waits. While the way the Lord works is surprising, the fact that he does work should not surprise us.
In verse 3 we find that the Lord works for good in Elijah’s life by providing protection for him. Imagine going before a president or a king and proclaiming a message of drought that would end by your word alone. Leaders of nations don’t like to be told what to do; they also don’t like having their nation destroyed; and they really don’t like messengers who announce such things. The phrase “shoot the messenger” is all too real, and Ahab was just the kind of leader to do such a thing to Elijah.
The Lord won’t let that happen though. Instead of leaving Elijah exposed to wait for the rain in fear, the Lord speaks to Elijah and tells him to go and hide by the brook Cherith on the eastern side of the Jordan River. In the midst of waiting, fear can overcome even the most faithful of the Lord’s servants. No doubt, Elijah had reason to fear Ahab, but the Lord goes out of his way to fashion a hiding place for Elijah, and he provides not an abstract notion of protection but a personal, particular place of safety for the prophet that hides him from the angry king and provides water in a thirsty land.
This is not the only way that the Lord works for good in Elijah’s life as he waits, for the Lord also commands the ravens to feed Elijah while he is at the brook. Ravens: what a strange and wonderful provision is made for Elijah! Birds will bring him meals two times a day; and Elijah will have bread and meat to eat in the midst of this horrible drought. Talk about speed and efficiency. The Lord isn’t messing around here; it is clear that this is the Lord’s provision in Elijah’s life. Elijah did nothing but wait, trusting that what was needed would be provided.
When Elijah confronted Ahab in verse one, he noted that the Lord was the Living God. Elijah speaks of God in this way because he has met and followed the living God and is in relationship with the Lord. Elijah knows that the Lord is the Living God because the Lord has responded to Elijah and interacted with him personally and in the particularity of Elijah’s life. As Elijah waits, speed, efficiency and self-reliance are not his priority. Instead, faithfulness is his priority and Elijah’s needs are met in ways he could not have hoped for or predicted. Hearing of this provision reminds us of the way the Lord provided for his people as they wandered in the desert for 40 years, for all along the way they had manna to eat, their clothing never wore out, and their feet did not swell (Deut 8:3-4).
So this question comes to each of us, how do you wait for the Lord? As a congregation we have affirmed our commitment to wait on the Lord this morning as we have baptized John Yeaw. In our waiting over the coming years, we will do all we that can so that John and every other child baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will be able to take hold of their faith when they reach the maturity to do so. Two weeks ago we saw 11 teens come before us, proclaiming their faith in Jesus Christ and desire to be a part of Jesus’ Church. For eight of those teens who had been baptized as infants that day marked the fulfillment of promises made long ago, the end of a period of waiting.
Of course, waiting is a part of our personal lives too. When we are forced to wait, how do we respond? Remember that faith and waiting are bound together, and many of us gathered this morning know what its like to wait for something we aren’t sure will come. Some wait for children to be born or to come home. Some wait for a loved one to turn their life around. Some wait for physical healing for themselves or for someone they love. Some wait for those they love to come to know Jesus and the wholeness that is found through life lived in service to him. Our waiting in all of these experiences is given shape and form by our waiting for Jesus to come again, for his coming again brings fullness to our emptiness, courage to our fear, and hope to our despair so that we can begin “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep” the love of Jesus is.
As Elijah waited for the Lord in that dangerous and dry land, he could have easily joined with David in speaking Psalm 40: “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.”
May it be that we wait patiently for the Lord too. May it be.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.