Being a "Lesser-Known" in a Fame-Frenzied World

Living beside a brook while being fed from the ravens' mouths, challenging the prophets of Baal to see whose god would light the altar of sacrifice with heavenly fire, running at super-human speed ahead of Ahab's chariot down Mt. Carmel to beat the coming rain--these are the stories of Elijah that I cut my teeth on.  Next week, I'll begin passing down these same stories to my four-year-old Sunday School class as I've done for over a decade.

Yet, somehow, in all those times of listening, reading, and teaching the books of 1 & 2 Kings, I've continuously skipped over an almost invisible character named Obadiah.  The problem is that Elijah's character has such a commanding stage presence, the supporting "cast" members, like Obadiah, just aren't memorable.

Even the prophet Elijah discounted Obadiah's dedication and service to the Lord as not being worth remembering.  He complained, "I am the only one of the Lord’s prophets left" (1 Kin. 18:22).

Last week, we examined Obadiah's position within Ahab's palace and how he remained silent about his commitment to the Lord, all while placing his life in danger as he hid/fed/watered 100 prophets from the evil king and his equally wicked bride.

There's something more, though, that we can learn from Obadiah, and it has everything to do with our passing right over him, with our not remembering his name or even that he even participated in the storyline.

Obadiah is an example of the many lesser-known persons in Scripture.  He shows up in only six verses of one chapter and only then as the reluctant liaison between Elijah and King Ahab. 

At first, he is introduced as: "a devout believer in the Lord. While Jezebel was killing off the Lord’s prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, fifty in each, and had supplied them with food and water" (1 Kin. 18:3-4).

Then, he plays his part in the plot.  As Obadiah and King Ahab are out looking for grass for their livestock, "Elijah met him. Obadiah recognized him, bowed down to the ground, and said, 'Is it really you, my lord Elijah?'” (1 Kin. 18:7).  Here he is, just walking along the hillside, and there he meets Israel's most wanted fugitive who calmly asks him to go announce his presence to Ahab.

Knowing Elijah's supernatural ability to elude King Ahab's troops for several years, Obadiah is more than a little reluctant.  In fact, he accuses Elijah of sending him on a suicide mission before adding, " I your servant have worshiped the Lord since my youth. Haven’t you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord? I hid a hundred of the Lord’s prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water" (1 Kin. 18:12-13).

In the end, Obadiah goes, finds, and tells Ahab who then comes to Elijah.

These few verses provide everything we know of Obadiah's character and activities.  

First, he is a "devout believer."  Verse 12 defines this characteristic further, explaining that Obadiah's devotion to the Lord was life-long, "since his youth."  This devotion was obviously tested and found to be true, as twice we are told Obadiah valued his life less than that of the hundred prophets he was protecting in caves. 

Next, verse 7 shows that Obadiah bowed when he met Elijah, an action that shows his reverence for a man of God, which, in turn, demonstrates his own true reverence for God.  


And that's it.  If you're a journalist, you're probably disappointed at this point.  That's all!?

Well, of course not.  Obadiah's life was surely full of more acts of service to the Lord...just maybe nothing big enough to be front page news like "Obadiah Brings In Troubler of Israel!" or "Hiding a Hundred in the Hills."

But I think that's the point of including him and other equally obscure characters in scripture.  No, it's not to make games like Bible Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy a challenge.  It's to show us how even the lesser-known persons are important to God's kingdom....how God knows even us lesser-known persons by name.

Perhaps you once had a vision of all the magnificent things you could do for the Lord.  Maybe you envisioned yourself as a famous missionary living life halfway around the globe; as an oft-published Christian author whose words brought many to saving faith in Jesus; or an uber-successful speaker teaching standing-room-only Bible studies.  

As the years have passed, none of those dreams has become reality.  Instead, you're still living on obscurity, devoutly serving Jesus.  Perhaps you're the silent partner working in the shadows of some larger than life personality...and no one knows your name.

I understand the feeling.  Yet, I also know HE knows our names and that when we feel we're not making a big difference, we must reconcile in our hearts the truth of our significance in the kingdom of God.   

Big to God might only look like little to us. 

Expecting God To Repeat Himself

I like patterns.  It's my way of making sense of the chaos that is life.  There is the simple understanding of cause and effect, inductive reasoning that makes life smoother, such as knowing that if my children go to bed after 8 pm, there will be an afternoon meltdown the next day or that if I skip a single day of my daughter reading to me, the day after will be like pulling teeth with her sounding out words she flew through the day before.

Then, there are those patterns that require more observation, a stepping back and seeing the whole picture, mysteries that can leave me scratching my head for months until I finally crack the code. 

When attempting to understand the Word of God, I've learned how much can be understood simply by looking for patterns, which can only be accomplished fully by knowing the whole story.  Sometimes, that involves tracking a word's usage throughout the pages of the entire Old Testament, looking at historical context, taking the original audience's understanding into consideration, or simply looking at other parts of the specific book of the Bible. 

It's all part of allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture.

Yet, too often, when I read a passage that reminds me of another similar passage I've read before, I make the mistake of automatically reading it with the same interpretation in mind.  While God often repeats Himself, sometimes, He also often does the unexpected, reminding us that even when we're at the top of our game, God is still a mystery at His core.

The prophet Elijah learned this lesson when running from Jezebel.  At the lowest point in his career, the Lord told him, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by" (1 Kin. 19:11).

Scripture records, "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. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave" (1 Kings 19:11-13).

Most Sunday School children know this part of the story.  God was not in the wind.  He was not in the earthquake.  He was not in the fire.  God was merely in a still, small voice.

Elijah would have known Israel's history quite well, a history in which the children of Israel had seen God in the wind, in the earthquake, and in fire.  In fact, a simple glimpse at the Israelites' escape from Egypt showed God in all three.

When the Israelites were trapped at the edge of the Red Sea, Pharaoh's army nipping at their heels, God was in the wind that held back the waters so an entire nation could cross on dry land: "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left" (Ex. 14:21-22).  

As they wandered into the desert and camped at the base of Mt. Sinai, the children of Israel beheld God in both earthquake and fire: "Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently" (Ex. 19:18).  That fire would go on to light up every night sky as they wandered in the desert for forty years until crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, a trek that all started with God appearing to Moses within a bush aflame.  And then, later, as Solomon dedicated the temple, fire would fall from heaven once more to light up the altar of sacrifice.

There was Biblical precedence for God being in all of the above.  What's more, Elijah, himself, had witnessed God in the wind and fire quite recently as he defeated the prophets of Baal atop Mt. Carmel (Ex. 18:38,45).

Yes, Elijah heard the wind and probably expected it to be the Lord.  He felt the earthquake and thought, surely this is the Lord.  And when the fire blazed, he must have expected this to be the Lord.

Yet, the Lord did not do the expected.

He came as He had never come before--in a still, small voice.  He came not in a display of power but in gentleness.

What's interesting is that Elijah, this man who loved and followed God with his whole heart--Elijah did not come out to meet God in the expected.  He waited and knew this was not the Lord.  Yet, He knew the Lord in this small voice even though there was not really precedence for the Lord appearing in such a manner.  Somehow, Elijah knew the Lord.

Pastor R. T. Kendall says, "When God repeats Himself it is easier to accept Him.  We love the familiar...The thing is, when something is repeated that was previously clearly the Lord's manifestation, most people assume hastily and uncritically, 'This is God showing up again.'...Jonathan Edwards taught us that the task of every generation is to discover the direction in which the Sovereign Redeemer is moving, then move in that direction.  It is easy to look for what has happened before" (Kendall 144).

Consider this statement and Elijah's experience in light of our Savior.  When Jesus came to earth in the wrappings of flesh, He did not come in the power of the wind, the earthquake, or fire.  He came in the gentleness of a sacrificial lamb.  Because of that, many missed His coming, for they were looking for God to appear in strength and power and refused to reevaluate their understanding of God and Scripture.

From these passages, we can take away two things. 

First, we must be cautious of boxing God in, expecting for Him to work or speak in always the same way He has done before.  God can and does do the unexpected. 

Secondly, we can be comforted.  Those who truly seek the Lord as did Elijah will know Him, even when He shows up in the most unexpected of ways. 

Odd Provisions: Ravens' Mouths & Foreign Widows

Imagine you're Elijah.  One moment, you're on the mountain top, receiving and delivering a message from the Lord to evil King Ahab, saying, "there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word" (1 Kin. 17:1).  

As time passes, though, you become the victim of your own prophecy.

When Elijah spoke those words declaring a moratorium on rain, he might as well have painted a bright red target on his back.  His words did not bring the desired repentance in the King.  Instead, they so angered King Ahab that Elijah became the most wanted man in all Israel.

God, though, would provide for Elijah and protect him.  Yet, it wouldn't be easy for Elijah.

First, the Lord sent Elijah to the Kerith Ravine and told him, "You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there" (1 Kin. 17:4).  Each morning and evening, the ravens brought bread and meat, and the brook provided sufficient water to drink.

While this may not sound too terrible to us, as an Israelite, Elijah must have wondered why God chose to provide for him in this manner, especially considering Scripture referred to such birds as unclean and detestable: "These are the birds you are to regard as unclean and not eat because they are unclean: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven"  (Lev. 11:13-14). 

As time passed, even this provision from unclean birds seemed insufficient, especially when Elijah's prophesy began to come true.  The rains stopped.  The land began to suffer.  Elijah's brook even dried up.

I wonder if Elijah thought his one corner of the country would be spared the drought and subsequent famine?  Or maybe that God would continually supply living water to this brook even when the water had dried up at its source.  Whether or not Elijah had anticipated going to sleep with a severely parched mouth and waking from dreams of water, we don't know.  What we do know is what Elijah did next--he waited on God to provide.  

Many of us would have prayed and asked God to spare us from the judgment passed on an entire nation when we, ourselves, were not guilty of X, Y, or Z.  But, Elijah didn't do that.  As Dr. R. T. Kendall says, "Elijah could not make himself the exception to the rule.  He would live under God's judgment along with the rest of the people of Israel. So rather than pray for rain, he waited on God to see what would be--yet again--the next step forward" (p. 46).

Again, God provided for Elijah.  And again, it was in a way that surely caused Elijah to scratch his head in wonder.  Scripture records the Lord telling Elijah, "Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food" (1 Kin. 17:9).

Zarephath was not a city in Israel.  Instead, this was in the territory of the Gentiles a hundred miles away from his present location.  What's worse, Zarephath was also suffering from the drought and famine such that the widow at first rejected Elijah's call for help, telling him she and her son were about to eat their last supper and then wait for death.

These details tell us that God's judgment can be far-reaching, that the righteous are sometimes called to suffer along with the unrighteous and that even when God is specifically passing judgment on one country, other countries may suffer as well.

But why Zarephath?  If it, too, were suffering from drought, why not send Elijah elsewhere where there was no drought?  Or, instead, if Elijah were required to be under the same judgment as the rest of his people, why ask him to make the harrowing trek across 100 miles of barren land?  Couldn't Elijah have done just as well with a closer, Jewish widow to help him?

Jesus spoke to these exact questions.  He explained, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon" (Luke 4:24-26).  

Jesus' Jewish audience was furious at His implication that God would offer salvation to the Gentile because the Jew had rejected it.  They even ran Him out of town.

Yet, this passage illuminates why God used the unclean raven and of the Gentile woman to provide for Elijah.  Both uncommon methods of provision were foreshadowings of things to come in God's kingdom, when He would make a way for both Jew and Gentile to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through the sacrifice of His beloved son on the cross.

In Christ, Paul said of unclean food (as was the raven), " I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean....For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 14:14,17).

Concerning Gentiles and their place in the Kingdom of God, Paul said, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile" (Rom 1:16).

To see this far back in history God's plan for me and you to be adopted into the Kingdom just goes to show there is no shadow of turning with our God.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. 
 

Kendall, R. T.  These are the Days of Elijah.  Bloomington: Chosen P, 2013.

When You Feel Like the Only One Left

We have never met and likely never will this side of eternity.  Still, Dr. R. T. Kendall has held a special place in my heart ever since a friend gave me a copy of his book analyzing the Biblical character Joseph, entitled God Meant It For Good: A Fresh Look At the Life of Joseph. 

At that time in 2005, my husband's life had turned into a real-life adaptation of Joseph's story.  Our family was horrified, in shock, and in mourning over the life that had been so suddenly stripped from us because of another's sinful choice.  Yet, there in black and white, Kendall began to comfort us, explaining the why behind Joseph's plight.

God had a plan when Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery; God had a plan when Joseph was imprisoned based on the lying words of the lustful Potipher's wife.  These were words I needed to hear when I could not comprehend how God could possibly have a plan in allowing the unrighteous to trample upon a household devoted to serving Him.

Recently, Dr. Kendall published a new book, These Are the Days of Elijah: How God Uses Ordinary People to Do Extraordinary Things.  In it, he breaks down Elijah's life into twenty-one "sermons" from a series he preached at Westminster Chapel in London.

While the individual chapters do each have the ring of a sermon, that's actually not a bad thing.  The format makes for chapters that can easily stand alone as well as build upon each other and that always provide a timely application for the reader's own life.

Kendall's overall point is that Elijah "was both extraordinary and ordinary.  He was spectacular--stating boldly, for example, that it would not rain until he gave the word; and there was not a drop of rain for three and a half years.  Yet James noted that Elijah was a man 'just like us' because he was so very, very human (James 5:17)."

Extraordinary and ordinary--a holy prophet who heard the voice of the Lord and yet a man with all his faults and fears.

One of Elijah's flaws that Kendall points out is one I see in myself and other Christians at times.  This is the flaw of discounting others' relationships with God as "less serious" because their relationship doesn't look like ours, doesn't prioritize what we consider most important in serving the Lord.

Consider when Elijah was atop Mount Carmel in the famous scene where he challenged the 400 prophets of Baal to have their god light the altar of sacrifice with heavenly fire.  There, he speaks to the people, saying, "I am the only one of the Lord’s prophets left" (1 Kin. 18:22).

The problem with that statement?  It wasn't true.

Before heading up Mount Carmel to meet with King Ahab and the prophets of Baal, Elijah had met another who Scripture describes as "devout believer in the Lord"--Obadiah, a man otherwise known as evil King Ahab's palace administrator (1. Kin. 18:3).

In the conversation between Elijah and Obadiah, Obadiah had expressed how committed he was to the Lord, saying, "Yet I your servant have worshiped the Lord since my youth. Haven’t you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord? I hid a hundred of the Lord’s prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water." (1 Kin. 18:12-13).

Talk about living in the lion's mouth!  Elijah was hidden away in the countryside, fed by ravens and a Gentile widow.  But here was Obadiah, living with the enemy, likely in fear for his own life each day as he served King Ahab.

Yet, Elijah discounted Obadiah's service to the Lord because his service was different than Elijah's.  And those other 100 prophets in hiding?  Elijah seems to just ignore this bit of information.

Later, when Ahab's wife, Jezebel, threatens to kill Elijah and he runs off to the countryside to hide, God asks him twice, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" (1 Kin. 19:9,13).  Both times, Elijah responds the same way: "I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too" (1 Kin. 19:10,14)

As we know from his interaction with Obadiah, there were at least 101 men in Israel still committed to the Lord, one hundred of whom were prophets hiding much like Elijah. 

After allowing Elijah to make this statement three separate times, the Lord finally corrects him, saying, "Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram.  Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet...Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him" (1 Kin. 19:15-16, 18).

Here, God gives names of men still committed to the Lord--Hazael, Jehu, Elisha...oh, and 7,000 others.

SEVEN THOUSAND.  

Elijah wasn't the only one left in devout service to the Lord.  He wasn't the only prophet left either.  Soon, one was coming who would have double his anointing.     

It's easy to criticize Elijah for being so full of himself that he couldn't see past the end of his own nose.  But, we modern-day Christians are also guilty of prioritizing our brand of quiet time, our style of Bible study, our definition of worship, our commitment to this or that particular ministry.

Without even giving it a second thought, we look at the person down the pew at church or across the street in our neighborhoods and unintentionally critique his or her relationship with God based on what we have determined true commitment must look like.

The result?  We look around our nation and say the equivalent of Elijah's "I am the only one left."

Don't be self-deceived--God is still at work in our nation and around the world. He still has many devout believers serving in many different ways for His kingdom.

You and I are not the only ones left.