You Will Go Far with This Food
1 Kings 19:3-18
G
IVE ME A SANDWICH, and I’ll get through the afternoon. Get me a big steak dinner with
mashed potatoes, green beans, and homemade rolls and you’ll get me through the
whole day. Give me bread from heaven, and I’ll go all the way through life. Jesus
said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he
will live forever.” Lord, give us this bread.
Today, we have yet another miraculous feeding. It’s a single meal of simple bread.
But this bread will take Elijah quite far. And by now we don’t need to pretend that we don’t
know the connection we’ll be making to a different kind of bread. Jesus continues the
narrative that He is the bread of life who comes down from heaven. But how, then does He
come to us? Is it always with great displays of power and might? Sometimes the bread
seems so unassuming. But rest assured, you will go far with this food. It might not seem like
much, but this food gives strength beyond compare.
Maybe you’ve had one of those days that was so thrilling, so awesome, that the very
memory of it seemed like it could carry you for days. You can’t stop thinking about it or
stop talking about it. Elijah had just had one of those days. This prophet of God had
challenged the 450 false prophets of the idol Baal to a showdown on Mt. Carmel. They built
altars, but would not bring fire. Whichever God brought fire, that would be the real God. Of
course Baal’s altar just sat there while the false prophets cried and begged. But in
spectacular fashion, God blazed down and completely consumed sopping wet wood, soggy
soil, yes, even the stones on which Elijah had put his offering. After being silent earlier in
the day about whom they would serve, now the people were shouting, “The L ORD, He is
God! The LORD, He is God!” The false prophets were all slaughtered, and by his say-so, rain
would return to the land after a 3 ½ year drought. Pretty spectacular day, right?
But that’s not doing it for Elijah. He was down. He was depressed. He was ready to
die. Why? This should have been the turn around. This should have shaken every
unbeliever in the nation out of their spiritual stupor. This should have swayed everybody,
that there was only one God, and He is the LORD. But instead the evil queen Jezebel vows
that she is going to slaughter Elijah, to make him as one of her prophets that had just been
slain. This miracle did not carry Elijah through all of the days of his ministry. No, it carried
him to a desert outside the land of Judah, leaving all company behind, to sit down under a
tree and wish that he were dead. And if you were to tell me that you’ve been there, I would
believe you.
What is the solution? God comes to Elijah with bread. Now, I know your mom or
your grandma might have convinced you that the solution to any problem is a little home
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cooking. But don’t you want a little be more? Give me the plan. Give me direction. A
checklist of things to do. Give me hope. Why are you giving me bread? But there was
something about this bread. It would give him the strength to get through the next forty
days. Doesn’t this seem too small a thing? It’s just a loaf of bread. Yet it was all he needed to
get him through for a while. God, give me something more!
Jesus seemed that way to the people, too. The Bread from Heaven didn’t look like
much. He was just a guy. But he was telling them that they had to believe in Him, this flesh
and blood man standing in front of them, if they wanted salvation. They wanted something
more, something bigger, something more spectacular. But Jesus wasn’t going to give it to
them. All they could have was Him. They had to believe in Him.
That is exactly the lesson that God would then teach Elijah when he reached the
cave. Feb by that bread, he was able to survive for forty days. Finally he came to a cave at
Mt. Horeb, the mountain of God. This was the same mountain called Sinai. This is where
Moses met with the LORD. This is where the Ten Commandments were given. And God
announces that He is going to appear to Elijah.
How would you expect God to reveal Himself? What if it were you who had run
there, what would you hope for? How about a mighty fire? A mighty fire wasn’t enough, one
that lapped up the water in the ditch around the altar at that showdown on Mt. Carmel.
Maybe God needs to bring a bigger fire, maybe something like that chemical explosion in
China yesterday. God flung fire and brimstone upon the wicked cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah. Fire like that would do it! The LORD was not in the fire. What about an
earthquake? An earthquake hit Nepal in April, killing 9,000. It leveled one of the villages
where we have a mission. The LORD was not in the earthquake. What about a mighty wind?
A month ago, winds tore trees apart in Cochrane and Buffalo City. Someone said a tornado
touched down in Minnesota City. Listen to what this wind did. “Then a great and
powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but
the LORD was not in the wind.” How did He come? Does it seem like much? “After the fire
came a gentle whisper.” Elijah knew that the LORD was there.
Have you prayed that God would uproot all the things that cause you grief and pain?
Do you pray that He would whisk away all of your problems with some mighty wind, some
tornado? Have you prayed that some great fire would consume those who oppose God and
His people, or that the earth would swallow up the wicked? Elijah had hoped that a bigger
sign of power might do it, might lift him back up after his spectacular day. Instead, God
chooses to work through the whisper of a Word. We might be hesitant to share that Word.
We might convince ourselves that it will never do anything. Well then sit with Elijah in this
cave. For this gentle Word, though it doesn’t seem like much, will take you far.
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S
O WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS BREAD? It is to give you a certain king of strength. It’s
definitely a unique miracle when it says, “So he got up and ate and drank.
Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he
reached Horeb, the mountain of God.” I wish I could have that one meal that would last
me for over a month. As for whether there was something special about the food or if God
made Elijah metabolize it a different way, or some other way of carrying out that miracle,
I’ll let others discuss that. What I want to talk about is the strength that God gives to you.
Jesus is the bread of life. What does that bread do? When you trust in Him, you will
live forever. In this life you’ll need breakfast, lunch, and dinner even still. One day the body
will shut down, and you will die. But Jesus says that if we believe in Him and trust in Him,
we will rise to an eternity where we will never hunger again. It’s not so much a strength
that He gives us to make us powerful to come back to life. Rather He is our strength. He is
the one who makes it all happen. Elijah put before the LORD all the things he had down, how
zealous he had been. But it was not the strength of Elijah that would accomplish everything.
He, too, had to trust in the Messiah to come, Jesus. By His blood, His strength, His sacrifice,
His forgiveness, we live. Though we doubt, though we despair, though we see God
obviously working in our lives, and yet we sit down and give up, He is still our strength.
Jesus, the bread from heaven, will do this.
And how He comes to us should not shame us. Yes, in this simple word. The Word of
God is powerful and active, God says. It crushes and it heals. Jesus asks the Father that He
would sanctify us by that Word, make us holy. And yes, God does speak in judgment. That
does not disappear. The LORD appointed Elijah to anoint certain men to certain positions,
and they would carry out a ruthless campaign against the wicked king of Israel’s family. But
He speaks primarily through the gentle whisper of grace. He is the God who forgives. He is
the God who is gracious. He is the God who reserved 7,000 believers and kept them safe. He
is the God who appoints prophets because He still wants to add even more.
If you have been negligent in spending time with the Word of God, do not despite it
because it seems so small, like it’s nothing. It has the power to give you strength to face
life’s challenges, the strength to stomp on your sin and change for the better. It gives you
the strength to rely on God’s strength, to forgive those sins, to save you from them. With
this bread from heaven, you will go far, through this life, and to the great feast in heaven.
Come and eat.
Amen.
First preached by Pastor Jansen on August 13, 2015.
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