40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 18:40-19:8 (Episode 316)

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Elijah slaughters the prophets of Baal and tells Ahab that rain is coming. Jezebel is not pleased about what happened at Mount Carmel and tells Elijah his days are numbers. Elijah is on the run again and at his lowest moment God shows up. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS National Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there. Registration is open for the Here We Still Stand national event in sunny San Diego, California. It's in October. We haven't done it in a few years, but everything has opened up again. This includes registration for the conference. So you want to come hang out with Chad, me, and a ton of other people in October. It's going to be a blast. So you can go get all the information. I'll put a link in the show notes, or you can just go to 1517 and

go to the events page. Find that event, sign up. We'd love to see you there. Chad, we left with a little prophet showdown last episode. So the prophets of Baal versus Elijah. Elijah wins or God wins in this particular fight. You had Elijah stack the deck against himself by soaking his altar in water, an insane amount of water. He had trenches of water going on. And the prophets of veil. We're trying to get that fire to come down from heaven. Couldn't do it. Elijah engages in some mockery, which is amazing. Still, nothing happens. What Elijah does is one word, he calls out one time, God consumes everything. And at least temporarily, the people seem convinced that, you know what? I think Yahweh might be God. Yeah. After seeing that, you can kind of

understand their their their confessional outburst yahweh he is god yahweh he is god well it ought to be pretty obvious given what just happened that indeed yahweh is is god and doesn't take a lot of doesn't take a lot of faith does it no that just does not require any faith it's pretty pretty obvious who just won this uh this showdown so yeah we were talking before we started recording, that this definitely should be the end of Baal worship in the northern kingdom. I mean, never should anyone even think about building an altar to Baal again after this happened. But as we see quite frequently in the biblical narrative, both Old and New Testaments, when you see a miracle like this take place, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going

to foster fidelity in the people who witnessed that miracle. And if you want evidence of that, We'll just read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy sometimes. It happens to the Israelites repeatedly in the wilderness. And, you know, when you go to the New Testament, doesn't the same thing happen in the ministry of Jesus? There's obvious miracles taking place. In fact, the one that comes immediately to mind is when Jesus raises Lazarus back to life. That ought to have been the decisive moment for any of the antagonists of Jesus

to reconsider their antagonism. But what do they do? As soon as he raises Lazarus back to life, it's like they decide for sure that they're going to oppose him and that he needs to be taken out. So same thing's going to happen here. The people do make their good confession. And Ahab himself, the king himself, seems to be kind of following along and doing what the prophet tells him to do. But as we'll see in the next chapter, 1 Kings 19, all of that is going to be switched around as soon as he gets back home and talks to his wife, Jezebel. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's first of all take care of these

prophets, these prophets of Baal. So as soon as the people make their confession, Elijah turns and addresses them and says, seize the prophets of Baal. Don't let any one of them escape. So the people do. They take these prophets into custody, and then Elijah takes them down from Mount Carmel, to the brook Kishon, and there he shahats them, which the ESV properly translates as slaughter. Hebrew, just like English, has a lot of different words for the taking of life. You can talk about killing someone, you can talk about murdering someone, but here this particular word shahat is actually ordinarily used for a slaughter. So if you're killing an animal for for sacrifice or for consumption or whatever it means whatever you're going to do with it

typically you shahat you slaughter that animal same i mean we use that same language today a slaughterhouse or you slaughter beef well that's what he does to these prophets of baal so the image conjured up by this particular choice of verb is is a rather r-rated scene a lot of blood a lot of gore a lot of uh a lot of deaths taking place here by the brook by the brook kishon yeah this word this word is intentionally chosen to tell you how violent uh this was without telling you how without giving you all the details yeah i mean we kind of pick up on that i mean our word slaughter is a good word that kind of captures that i mean if i say uh somebody killed somebody else okay that gives me kind of the bare facts but if i say somebody slaughtered somebody else

well that's a whole of course whole different scene that you imagine in your mind and that's what this Hebrew verb conjures up as well. So the prophets are not only defeated but they are they're dead they're slaughtered there by the brook Kishon which we read about back in the book of Judges that's the same place where Deborah and Barak defeated their adversaries in the same the same general area so that defeat is then followed by this defeat of the prophets of Baal. Now what kind of leading up to this has been the the drought that's been going on for these past three years. And so now, after God has demonstrated that he is the true God and that Baal, the Canaanite weather deity, is not the true God, now that God has demonstrated his

truthfulness, then it's time for him actually to also demonstrate by the gift of rain that he is the one who has control of the weather. So picking up with verse 41, Elijah said to Ahab, go up eat and drink for there is a sound of the rushing of rain now Elijah is the only one who can hear this no one else is able to hear this kind of with his I guess you could say his prophetic imagination or his prophetic gift he is able to hear this sound of the rushing of rain but nobody else does in fact we'll see his servant in a minute only sees a very tiny cloud on the horizon another thing here that that i find interesting is that throughout this chapter everybody is obeying the prophet so when uh when he tells the people to do this or that they do it even when he

tells the prophets of baal to you know cry out cry louder they do that and now he's going to speak to the king and the king is also going to actually do what do what he says i think it's the narrator's way of pointing out that the one who has the authority here, the one who is speaking on God's behalf is Elijah. And so everyone, even this impotent king who can't seem to really do anything, he is also then obeying the prophet. Yeah, I think typically if somebody just called down fire from heaven and it consumed a whole bunch of stuff, if that person then turns to you and tells you, hey, you need to go do this, you're like, okay. Yeah, if you told me to stand on my head for the next 24 hours,

I would attempt to do it. Whatever you say, Elijah, that's definitely what I'm going to do. It's kind of a cool parallel here structurally too with what we see happening at another mountain much earlier, Mount Sinai, which we're going to actually be at Mount Sinai with Elijah in the next chapter. But think back to what happens at the foot of Mount Sinai when Israel is camped there. They build an altar and you have an accent upon the 12 tribes connected with that altar. And then what happens right after that? There is a feast. So Moses and Aaron and

Nadab and Abihu and these elders of Israel, they go up onto the side of Mount Sinai and it says they eat and drink. And this is when they have that vision of God. So kind of the same thing is happening here. You had this demonstration of God's power and might via fire. Same thing happens back in the book of Exodus. And you had, of course, the accent on the 12 happening here with the altar and Elijah. And then it's going to be followed by this feast. So the feast is basically the eating and drinking. The feast is a celebration of God's soon-to-be gift of rain. So there's a lot of echoes of Exodus that are taking place in this. Elijah is another Moses. this mountain parallels what happened to mount sinai you've got fire that also happened to

mount sinai and now you're going to have the feasting uh following the the the theophany following this appearance of god so and we'll pick up on that again in chapter 19 when elijah actually flees all the way runs all the way to to horab or to sinai so he says to ahab do this ahab does it he got up and he goes to eat and to drink and the elijah goes to the top of mount Carmel. And he's, he's, he's kind of got this strange bodily position. He bows himself to the ground. Okay. We're kind of used to that. That's a typical posture before a King or certainly before God, you bow yourself all the way down to the ground. But he also says he put his face between his knees, which I don't think is actually referenced anywhere else in the scriptures.

So I'm trying to picture what this looked like. Maybe he's like, he's down on his knees and he's bent all the way forward, head to the ground, head between his knees. I'm not sure, but for me, it pictures kind of this posture of complete and humble obedience before God, prayerfulness before God. But that's the posture that he's in. And he maintains this, and he says to his servant, go up and look toward the sea. So Mount Carmel is very close to the Mediterranean. You can you can easily see it from from the from the mountaintop and he says okay look toward the east look toward the sea and the servant does he goes up he looks and says comes back says there's nothing and he says go again and he went seven times no surprise there you know kind of typical

number of a biblical completeness so he goes seven times and after he goes the seventh time he comes back and he says here's what i saw he said i i saw a little cloud like a man's hand that's rising from the sea so you know never considered this before but i guess you're like we we we as little kids we play the game you know you look up in the clouds oh that one looks like a bunny rabbit or that one's like something else i guess same thing was happening back then oh yeah i saw a little cloud in fact it was shaped like a man's hand it's rising from the sea so you can see the the servants like looking looking into the horizon looking all the way as far as he can and sees one tiny little cloud. And then at his saying that, then he says, go up and say to Ahab,

prepare your chariot and go down lest the rain stop you. So this little cloud is a signal that big things are about to happen. And sure enough, that's what happened to verse 45. In a little while, while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. So Ahab gets in his chariot and he goes ahead to jezreel and the hand of the lord was on elijah we're told and he gathered up his garment literally he girded his loins so he's pulling up these pulling up the long robes that would uh be in the way when he's running he's pulling those up he's tucking them into his belt and then he takes off he sprints in front of ahab and beats him to the entrance of entrance of jezreel so they get ahead of the get ahead of the storm and at this point

you kind of get the feeling that maybe ahab himself is convinced that everything's going to be okay because after all god obviously won this theological showdown on mount carmel ahab is doing what he tells him to do he's going up to feast to eat to drink he's preparing his chariot he's going ahead of him. Elijah doesn't go the opposite direction. He goes with him. So he's tagging along with the king, running at full sprint, actually somehow out-distancing the chariot, and they both then arrive at Jezreel. And if that was all we knew of the story, we might assume that kind of everything began to work itself out, as we'll find out in chapter 19. That was not the case. Yeah, I mean, well, if you're the king, the idea that it's going to rain finally is

pretty great news huge yeah i mean you really you really need this yeah just early in the chapter he uh you know he sent his servant uh with some of the animals basically looking for anything any green grass any water because uh the situation was so dire they thought they were going to lose their livestock so you go from that to this great rainstorm that's going to turn everything around so you got two great gifts you have you have god demonstrating that that he is the true god and not veil. That's a gift. You have the people also confessing that Yahweh is God. Yahweh is God. That's a gift. But now you have also this material gift of the rain. So everything is turning around. It's like sort of the covenant has been renewed. People have been brought back

to Yahweh. The king is obeying the prophet. Rain is falling. Pretty soon, grass is going to begin in sprouting. Everything is going to be just the way that it should be. At least that's the way it seems until, of course, we step from chapter 18 into chapter 19. So doing that, verse 1 of chapter 19 says this, Ahab, so he gets home and he tells his wife, He tells the Phoenician princess Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Now, the ESV, there's three occurrences of the Hebrew word for all in this verse. Two of them you can see in the ESV. So all that Elijah had done and all the prophets.

There's another one that's not translated. It'd be something like this. Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and all about how he had killed all the prophets by the sword. So obviously the totality of the prophet's actions are being relayed to the queen. It's like he's given her every single detail. Yeah, so we were in the mountain and this happened, and then this happened, God appeared, and then Elijah took all the prophets and then this happened to them. He slaughtered them by the brook. So he's summarizing basically everything that that had happened now you're jezebel what's going to be your reaction to this

well of course you got more than one option she could have the reaction that ahab himself had had he did what the prophet had said he uh he went up to eat and to drink he got his chariot ready he went ahead of he went ahead the prophet to to jezreel he was actually finally doing what the prophet told him to do so that's one reaction jezebel could have said wow i guess i was wrong this whole time i guess that yahweh is is the true god he certainly demonstrated this at mount carmel or or even even if you're uh just a complete unbeliever or you're just like full of desire for power there's a pragmatic thing that you can do here where you say oh seems like there's some theological unity among the people after this whole thing we should take advantage

of that we should probably lean into that uh it probably was not a good idea to go the opposite direction and say actually i know the thing you just saw but bail's still legit and we're going to kill this prophet that doesn't just seem like an insane thing to do based on and obviously she wasn't there maybe it's different if she had been there witness it but it seems like an insane thing to do for sure because you're like well you should know like not again not faith but know that this so but even if you still thought that he was playing someone a trick or whatever pragmatically it doesn't make that much sense to do what she's about to do yeah it's uh it's a demonstration of her her stubborn commitment to to bail worship like she

nothing is going to nothing is going to make her change nothing is going to bring her to repentance she is steadfastly going to cling to the lie no matter what evidence is presented before her well in this case before her ears but see it seems to me that there's two well two things one there's nothing in here that tells me that the king is relaying this in a hey we have to do something about this kind of way or i have horrible news this is more a relaying of information and he seems like he's willing to do sort of the things i was just saying which is i think uh new gods in town theological unity among the people we got a rainstorm coming this is how this day played out It also seems like, and we don't know this, but it does seem, based on this response, the prophets of Baal, I think it's unlikely that they were not servants of Jezebel, essentially.

So Jezebel is the puppet master controlling the prophets of this false deity. I don't know that Jezebel is some kind of believer. You ever get that feeling that a cult leader doesn't believe in anything except for power? They love the power and control. Yeah, I get this impression of Jezebel. Like, this is not some kind of devout Baal worshiper. This is someone who has a religious system in place that she controls the leaders of. Yeah, she gets all the benefits from that.

Yeah, and now, like, this person has come in and disrupted this. So the religion that was controlling the people, well, she was controlling the dictators of that religion. And now this prophet has disrupted all this, and this is making her very angry. it's hard to say that is for certain but that is not an uncommon thing no and we see the same thing happening in the new testament right it wasn't the the opposition to jesus was not simply based upon them having a different theology than he had i mean we're told more than once that the major impetus was jealousy they didn't like the attention that jesus was getting they didn't like the fact that people were following after him and they did not like the fact of course that

they were losing control of the very system which was advantageous in more than one way to them it was an advantageous financially it was advantageous with regard to the the esteem in which the people held them so there were i mean a lot of different motivations here so the opposition to the prophet elijah is not simply from one motivation the opposite opposition to jesus was not just from one motivation. There's a lot of pretty base motivations that are leading people to oppose the truth. So Jezebel, certainly no different there. So how does she react? Verse 2 tells us that she acts swiftly and she acts quite bluntly. She commissions a messenger. I want to talk more about that word in a second. Commissions a messenger to Elijah with this message that

doesn't really need much interpretation so may the gods do to me and more also if i do not make your life as the life of one of them that is one of the one of the prophets of baal by this time tomorrow i think it's pretty clear pretty clear her uh what what she's going to do so this is a an oath that she swears swears by the gods i was about to say the most interesting thing about this is the made the gods i mean so there's a there's this pagan confession she's swearing an oath by not the god who just won the the showdown but she is doing this sort of she swears by a plurality of gods yeah yeah the elohim so may so may the elohim do to me and more also so not just what happened but you know may i'm not just be slaughtered but whatever's worse than slaughter

may that happen to me if by this time tomorrow i don't have you elijah slaughtered so no repentance uh instead she in fact is brazenly going to remain an adherent of the lie and she's going to make sure that she kills slaughters elijah just like he slaughtered her her servants so a word about this uh hebrew word for messenger just want to point out as i've we've talked about this multiple times, but it's a good occasion here to remind folks that the Hebrew word for messenger is malak. And that's the word, we're going to actually see it in verse five, because a malak is going to visit Elijah when he's in the wilderness. Except this is where our English translations sometimes drive me crazy, because there's not a consistency here. And if you're

just reading in English, you can't pick up on this. But Jezebel sent a malak to Elijah with that message, a messenger. And then God is going to send a malak to Elijah, except the ESV in most translations will translate the first one as messenger and the second one as angel, even though both of these are the exact same Hebrew noun. So in other words, even though it says angel, it means messenger. So she sends a messenger. And then in a few more verses, we're going to see that God is going to send his own messenger with a very different kind of message to Elijah. But back to verse 3, after Jezebel sends this messenger with a message to Elijah, what's his response going to be? Well, not what we would expect.

I mean, we've spent a couple of chapters now with Elijah, and we're kind of getting a feel for him as to his personality. Everything that we've learned about him so far, from the moment he just kind of steps onto the stage, fully grown. He's an adult man speaking with great authority and great confidence the word of God. So that's how we're introduced to him. We see him taken care of in the desert. We see him speaking words of hope and promise to the widow. We see him praying to God and raising the widow's son. Of course, everything that just happened on Mount Carmel.

He's not only bold on Mount Carmel. I mean, he is like, he's kind of audaciously bold, right? I mean, there's like, there seems to be zero lack of coward. I mean, there seems to be no cowardice, like no hesitation whatsoever. So knowing all that and knowing what was just relayed to him by Jezebel's messenger, we might expect Elijah to say something like, well, I'll just be waiting here for her. or God will take care of me, or talk all you want, but your gods by whom you're swearing are not entities, so your words have absolutely no power, no sway, no effect on me. That's what, at least

from my perspective, it seems like you would expect Elijah to do. Yeah, some David responding to the Goliath kind of stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, all of that chutzpah that David exhibited and that he has exhibited, Elijah has exhibited so far, but that's not what happens. Verse three tells us, then, so having received this message, then he was afraid and he arose and ran for his life and came all the way to Beersheba, which is on the very southern edge of not the northern kingdom, but the southern kingdom. So it belongs to Judah and he left his servant there. Now, I will say this, even though it's pretty obvious by his actions that he is afraid, depending on which translation you're looking at, that opening phrase can be translated

a couple different ways. The ESV has, then he was afraid. That can also be translated because of some ambiguity in the Hebrew, as then he saw. So basically what you're looking at is the consonants for either translation, then he saw or then he was afraid, are exactly the same. But if you are aware of kind of how this works in the Hebrew, you know that the original was just in the consonants, just the consonants were written down. Later, the vowels were added, and these consonants can be vocalized one of two ways. It can be vocalized as he was afraid or then he saw. That being said, the actions of Elijah indicate that he was prompted by fear, not to mention the fact of everything that's that's happening after this so whether he saw or whether

he was afraid he acted out of fear for his life because that's what it says afterward he gets up and he ran for his life and goes all the way from the northern kingdom up in jezreel not just to the southern edge of the northern kingdom but all the way to the very southern edge of the southern kingdom, so like at the southernmost point of Judea to Beersheba, leaves a servant there. And verse 4 says that he himself then goes on a day's journey into the wilderness. So he's now down even farther south than Beersheba is. He's in the desert wasteland, basically. he finds a broom tree he sits underneath it and he asked that he might die and here's a speech he says it is enough oh lord take away my life for i am no better than my father's

so it's a very different side of uh that's an understatement extremely different side of elijah than we've seen so far. So we go from the bold, audacious, faithful prophet who's not afraid to stand before the king who seeks his life and hundreds of false prophets, no fear whatsoever. He stands before them and speaks the truth,

calls down the fire of God. And now we meet the other side of Elijah, which of course is what we would say is kind of the more human side. It's probably the side that more of us can identify with actually than the other side of Elijah, where he's scared, no doubt he's exhausted. Some people might say he's depressed. Whatever the situation is, he basically is at the point where he feels like

he's at the end of his life. He can't go on. And so in kind of a Jonah sort of way, he prays that God would just go ahead and take his life. I think what is happening here is because, I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense, right, to have someone threaten your life, have you run, and then you ask God to take your life. That doesn't make sense because if you want to die or you're ready to die, I'm not sure what difference it makes. Well, unless you are not going to be killed by the hand of Jezebel because of the sort of statement that that makes. It seems to me that Elijah is frustrated that things did not play out the way that he would hope they would. I don't think this is so much about him wanting to die because he's suffering all this stuff is when he

says like i'm no better than my father's i i think in this moment you get the real sense that he feels that he has failed that hey i did this showdown he was bold and courageous and like i slaughtered these prophets and then i thought i had the king was you know i thought i had the king convinced it turns out like none of that stuff's gonna happen israel's probably gonna slide right back into idolatry i got a psychotic queen on my uh heels i failed i'm not any better than my father you can go ahead and take me now and i think that that's that's how i read it is that this is a man who was confident uh bold he's not a man full of fear but feels that for whatever reason like this it did it did not work yeah that does seem to be the overall impression that you have here because

everything leading up to the end of chapter 18 made it appear as if Elijah's plan basically came to its fulfillment and that everything was going to work out. The people had confessed Yahweh as God. Ahab, the king, had obeyed what he commanded him to do. He goes on to Jezreel with Ahab. So obviously he thinks everything's going to work out because that's where Jezebel is. And so he's not even afraid to go to where, to where she is. And then having done everything that God wanted him to do, he expected the outcome to also continue. Like everything was going to be okay. He was, he would have fulfilled his prophetic vocation and all of Israel would have, would have been with him. And when that doesn't happen, then yeah, he did kind of gets, he

despairs because things did not turn out the way that he envisioned them to have turned out, which I mean, it's a reminder that to be a prophet does not necessarily mean that you see how everything is going to be in the end. I mean, you might clearly see what God wants you to do, and sometimes he might give you very specific insight into what's coming in the future. But it's not like all of a sudden, if you're a prophet, you're omniscient. You don't know all things, so things will catch you by surprise. And sometimes you might even think A is the right thing to do, and then God comes along and says, no, it's going to be B. or you might think that you know because you did such and such that a is going to happen but then the result comes along and it's b well that's exactly what's happening here with with elijah

even though he did god's bidding yeah and you see it in these words i mean he says it is enough so he tells god like it's enough in other words i've done everything i can do and it turns out that i couldn't really do anything more than any of my fathers did so i'm not the guy you you you're gonna have to pick somebody else it almost seems like apologetic in a way like i'm sorry i couldn't do it yeah you know find somebody else i'm not i'm i obviously am not the i'm not the guy yeah he's sort of a he's uh one of these overachievers who things didn't go his way and so now he basically just wants to he basically wants to give up he really i mean he's uh you got to feel for him i mean he is kind of he's caught in the throes of despair and

And anyone who's ever been in that situation, you can't help but feel empathy for him. Now, we're reading, of course, this, and we know the end of the story. We know a lot more than he did at this time. So it's always easier for us as readers of the story to be able to say, yeah, but this and this are going to happen. Of course, Elijah doesn't know that. all he knows is everything that he is now experiencing uh rejection the threat of death the feeling of failure things did not turn out the way that that he wanted them to so that's kind of where he's at uh it's a pretty big roller coaster by the way to go from being

hunted to winning an epic showdown to being hunted in a short span of time it's pretty that's to be you're being tossed around pretty violently there yeah yeah i mean and there is there's kind of there's there's a universal human experience uh which i say it's universal i think almost everyone has gone through this where you think i mean you're you're at the point where you're convinced that everything really is going to work out well and all of a sudden it doesn't in fact it not only does it not work out well but uh you go from uh the bright shining light of noonday into the blackened state of midnight like just like that well that happens to you that roller coaster ride is extremely unpleasant. It leads you to question yourself, question,

question everything. So he had his hopes basically dashed. He had hoped this was going to be the massive conversion of Israel. The Northern Kingdom was going to get back on the right theological track. That doesn't happen. And so now he's in a state of shock and despair and basically wanting his own life to end. So what happens? After he says this, he lays down and he goes to sleep under this broom tree. So he's physically exhausted as well.

And we're told that a messenger, this is our word malak, same word that was used above, Jezebel sent a malak to Elijah, so a human messenger. Now God is going to send another messenger. We'll learn more about who this messenger is in just a second.

But a messenger touched him. and said to him, arise and eat. And he looks, so presumably he was asleep when this happened, the messenger touches him, he wakes up, he hears the voice, and he looks. And there right beside his head is a cake baked on hot stones, and there was a jar of water, jar of water nearby. So the first action that God takes toward Elijah is, it's just, it's based compassion. right now here you are you're you're exhausted you're you're hungry you're thirsty you're in this you're in you're at the end of your rope here's something to eat here's something to drink here's a kind touch it's not it's not uh it's not much of a rebuke is it no no it's not it's just

like the messenger comes along and and just wants to express some care and concern and love quite tangible kind of love for for the prophet there's no there's no review going on look you're hungry you're thirsty you're tired you feel all alone i'm gonna touch you i'm gonna feed you i'm gonna give you something to drink and then basically get some more sleep after that so it's a it really is it's a it's a window into into the heart of god it's a window into the heart of how he's going to deal with this prophet so he gets up and he eats this uh this flat bread which is probably what this was. So he eats this cake or this bread, and then he drinks the water, and then he goes to sleep again. And then verse seven tells us that the messenger came back, except the first time

he was just called a messenger, but this time he's called the messenger of Yahweh. So the messenger of Yahweh, the Malak Yahweh, came again a second time and touched him once more and said, arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you. So he arose, and he ate, and he drank, and we're told that he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God. This messenger of Yahweh, as we've talked about many times, was the one we first encounter in Genesis 16, in the case of Hagar running away, also, interestingly, in the wilderness. That's where the messenger visited her. Same messenger that comes up in Exodus chapter 3 and multiple other places. And we've talked about this multiple times, that this messenger is none other than

the Son of God. So here we have Christ going to Elijah and visiting him in the wilderness. He's the Father's messenger. And so he bears not only the message of the Father, but also he bears the food and drink that are given to given to this prophet and then also a very fascinating parallel here with the 40 days and 40 nights with the case of moses so 40 days and 40 nights that phrase occurs a few times in both old and new testament first time it occurs is in the flood narrative in genesis when it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and then the second time it occurs and this is there are multiple occurrences in exodus and deuteronomy where it refers to moses being on Mount Horeb, on Mount Sinai, for 40 days and 40 nights. So this is more of kind of the Moses

typology that's going on in this whole part of Kings, where Moses sets the pattern, he's the type, as it were, and then Elijah comes as a Moses kind of figure. You can call him a second Moses or a Mosaic kind of prophet. So the life of Moses is setting the pattern or the structure that the life of Elijah is going to be following as well. So he goes all the way. This is a long journey, by the way. He goes all the way from Jezreel and Mount Carmel. He goes all the way from there through the northern kingdom, all the way through the southern kingdom to Beersheba, and then into the wilderness, and then all the way down into the Sinai Peninsula and goes to this famous mountain to Mount Horeb. Horeb, Sinai, same place, the mountain of God.

Well, I mean, what's interesting about this, too, is that, I mean, you have Jesus show up in the wilderness. And Jesus is also familiar with 40 days in the wilderness. Yeah, he fasted 40 days and 40 nights. Yeah, so Jesus is showing up in the wilderness, and Moses struggled in the wilderness. Elijah's struggling in the wilderness. Israel. Israel struggled in the wilderness for 40 years. It wasn't 40 days and 40 nights, but it was 40 years. Yeah, so Jesus shows up, and he says, look, because I love this line, that Jesus is going to tell him, hey, you're going to have to arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.

Yes. I think just baked into that statement is, I understand that you're saying I'm just like my father and stuff, and you're not the Messiah. the actual victory that you're wanting to see won is gonna have to be won by someone else namely me this wilderness is too great for you you're gonna need food for this i'm not when i when i come to do 40 days in the wilderness there ain't gonna be nobody coming to give me bread in fact the only person that's gonna come and talk to me is gonna be the devil and he's gonna try to tempt me to eat something or have something provided for me but I'm going to reject that.

This sort of wilderness victory, this victory over the idolatry of the people, all of this, the salvation of the people, that's all too great for you. And so the one who is going to have to ultimately do all those things is the one who comes in the wilderness and comforts the prophets. So you have the Son of God coming and comforting the prophet of God, which is pretty awesome.

Yeah, and that's a great way to end. That's a good note to wrap up the 40 minutes with. Yeah, we'll leave it right there, and God's going to speak to Elijah again, and he's going to have a little more stuff to do, but we'll get into that next week. Chad, I'll see you then. All right, see you then.