"Now Elijah said to Ahab,
"Go up, eat and drink; for there is the sound of the
roar of a heavy shower." So Ahab went up to eat and
drink. But Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he
crouched down on the earth, and put his face between his
knees. And he said to his servant, "Go up now, look
toward the sea." So he went up and looked and said,
"There is nothing." And he said, "Go
back" seven times. And it came about at the seventh
time, that he said, "Behold, a cloud as small as a
man's hand is coming up from the sea." And he said,
"Go up, say to Ahab, 'Prepare your chariot and go
down, so that the heavy shower does not stop
you.'"" (1 Kings 18:41-44)
Two of the major
elements in the spiritual life and experience of God's
people are the seemingly slow and hidden ways of God and
the demand for persistent faith in His servants. As to
the former, you will know quite well how much there is in
the Bible about it. Again and again you will find the
psalmist crying out because of God's seeming delay or
indifference. Whole psalms are given up to this very
problem, and also in other parts of Scripture we
encounter the same phenomenon.
In our own spiritual
experience we often find that not least of our trials is
the fact that God seems so slow to respond, so
inexplicable in His ways; sometimes it would appear that
He is careless or indifferent. This is a common
experience, even among the greatest and most devoted of
God's servants. It is not an experience confined to
novices; in fact perhaps they know little of it, but
throughout the centuries even the most outstanding of
God's servants have been confronted by this problem of
the slow response of the Lord. It sometimes looks to His
people as though He were unhurried to the point of being
tardy, and that just when their needs were most acute.
Faith's
Importance
In this short passage
our attention is also drawn to the second point, namely
the demand for persistent faith. It might be thought that
the most critical moment on Mount Carmel was when the
prophets of Baal had exhausted themselves in vain prayers
and had to give way to Elijah with his water-saturated
altar and his simple, dignified appeal to Israel's God.
This was indeed, a breathless moment and the high point
of the story the great miracle when fire fell from
heaven; but supposing that had been the end! For we must
remember that the country had been suffering from three
years of intense drought, and if life were to be
sustained it was not fire that they wanted but water.
What they needed was rain, and plenty of it. Wonderful
and emotional as the burning sacrifice must have been,
there could be no new hope if the rain did not come.
Now the Lord knew how
critical their condition was and might have been expected
to act, now that the people had repudiated Baal and
committed their case to Him. When the crowd shouted,
"The Lord, he is God" the reformation seemed to
be complete, and the natural sequel should surely have
been clouds, rain clouds, and water pouring down on a
thirsty land.
Yet no rain came. Elijah
was quite assured in his own heart, and he unhesitatingly
told Ahab that it was coming. Nevertheless he did not
relax at all but went higher up on this mountain of
crisis, put his head between his knees, and set himself
to pray the issue through. The reference in James' letter
tells us that "he prayed earnestly" or 'he
prayed with prayer,' implying that something more than
ordinary prayer was needed on such an occasion; it seemed
to call for concentration and persistency. There was no
sign of rain. God seemed so slow at this time of crisis.
How can we explain His apparent lack of response?
For my part I think that
this has a close connection with the anonymous servant,
giving us all a lesson concerning service. This man not
only is given no name but there is no mention of where he
came from. Until this experience on Mount Carmel it seems
from the narrative that Elijah was alone. After this he
was dismissed at Beer-sheba, and later it was Elisha who
served Elijah as a servant. The anonymous servant is just
mentioned in this episode and then passes off the scene,
but not before he had helped to illustrate to us one of
the principle features of service to God, which is
persistency. The battle had been fought through: it
seemed that a mighty victory had been obtained; and yet -
still no rain!
Faith's
Disappointments
This provides a very
serious warning against anything in the nature of
complacency. Even after we have poured ourselves out and
been assured that we have succeeded, we must beware of
letting go too soon. The principle or spirit of service
surely demands a real persistence of faith. You will not
find any servant of God of account or true value in the
Bible who did not have developed in him this persistence
of faith. We can see it in the case of this man, and
strangely enough this was the very test put to the next
servant, Elisha, whose real life's work started the day
when Elijah was taken up to heaven. That was the time
when Elijah said to Elisha, "Tarry here...the Lord
hath sent me as far as Bethel" (2 Kings 2:2). The
same suggestion was repeated stage by stage, "Tarry
here...Tarry here...," but Elisha would not agree to
do so, his response being. "As the Lord liveth, and
as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee." At last
the whole matter was gathered up into this one issue, so
that Elijah promised Elisha "If thou see me when I
am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee" - a
double portion of the Spirit for service was consequent
upon this exercise of persistency.
Now, to return to
Carmel, there was no doubt that Elijah's faith had
produced a remarkable answer from God. The fire had
fallen. We might think that he would have been perfectly
justified in telling himself that all he now had to do
was to see God working the whole matter out. He could
have folded his arms, or taken his ease, while God did
the rest. If you had gone successfully through an ordeal
like Elijah's, seen such a tremendous victory and had an
inner assurance that the end was reached, would you not
have been inclined to sit back a bit and just watch
events? Elijah, however, did nothing of the sort; he went
higher up into the mountain to get closer to God.
"Ahab went up to eat and drink. And Elijah went up
to the top of Carmel" - to pray. He knew that his
business was not finished yet, and was determined to see
the matter right through.
At this point, our
attention is drawn to the servant. He, too, must go up
still higher, for there was something more to be done if
the rain were to come. He was told to look toward the
sea, the direction from which it would come. He looked
and saw nothing, so he came back again to his master and
reported, "There is nothing!" After all that
spiritual battle, after all that prayer, that exhausting
ordeal of laying hold of God and seeing the fire fall,
was it possible that, after all, the skies were as closed
as ever? "There is nothing!" Many of us have
had to pass through similar experiences - we may be doing
so just now - and we find it to be a most painful
anticlimax. This is a moment of great peril for our
faith, to have battled so far and expected so much, only
to be disappointed to find a complete lack of any
evidence of God's working.
What can you do? Well,
one of two things. The first is to conclude that after
all the whole thing has been an illusion, and to give way
to the paralysis of despair because of the seeming
unresponsiveness of God. The alternative is to keep going
- if necessary seven times. There was nothing the first
time, so the servant must go and look again. There is
nothing! And yet a third time, but still a third time
"There is nothing!" The man had to go a fourth
time, but there was still no vestige of an answer. I try
to imagine the tone of his voice as he returned the fifth
and the sixth time, and think that he may even have added
a few comments. 'What is the good of it all?' he might
have questioned - 'there is nothing!' It would have been
natural enough if he had remonstrated, "I do not see
the use of going right up there again; I am tired of
continually coming back to report just nothing.' In any
case he was sent a seventh time, just once more; this
time he was able to report a tiny cloud. That was little
enough in all conscience, to find that all there was to
be seen in the expanse of the sky was just one little
cloud the size of a man's hand. It is surprising that God
went so far in pressing this matter of faith's
persistency. Whether there is any significance in the
number seven is of little importance, but certainly there
had to be the full continuance in faith until at last the
situation broke. The little cloud was only a token, but
it was enough to Elijah who immediately warned Ahab to
prepare for a deluge. Faith is the title deeds of things
unseen, and accepts the token for the whole. It was right
to do so, for soon the heavens were full of clouds.
Faith's
Victory
I think that this makes
the message plain. It is so easy to make a big start,
with a good deal of noise and activity and high
expectations of something big which we think God is going
to do, and then to lose heart because of disappointments
and delays. Our prayers are apt to wane and our energy
and enthusiasms to decline just because God seems to be
unresponsive. What is He doing? He is making a servant;
to Him this is more important than the actual service
which is being done. Such a servant has to learn that the
Lord is more concerned about His own name than we are,
and knows best how to vindicate it.
"The Lord, He is
God." The Lord had to make that clear a second time,
not only in the fire, but in the water, in the rain; not
only in the judgment but in the mercy; not only in the
death but in the resurrection life. His delays, His
hiddenness, His seeming indifference, are all the testing
means by which He develops true faith in His servants,
and works something of His own Spirit into their very
constitution. It was easy for Him to send the rain; what
was more difficult but infinitely more worthwhile was to
enable His servant to go on watching and praying for the
full seven times, never despairing, never doubting, never
giving up. In the end there was no lack of rain. But it
came as the result of a second battle. First there was
the battle with Baal, and then the battle with unbelief;
the outside battle and the battle inside. It is on the
last inward battle that the whole issue depends. Full
victory comes as a result of faith's persistency.
First published in "Toward the Mark" magazine, May-Jun 1972, Volume 1-3.