Signposts | September 19 | Elijah
5 Minute Bible Study
Signposts | September 19 | Elijah
Psalm 55 verses 1 through 3, "Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea, hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble me, and I am distraught at the voice of the enemy, at the stairs of the wicked, for they bring down suffering upon me and revile me in their anger." We were talking yesterday, Eric, about all the things that children experience, and nightmares, and all kinds of things coming at them. It's really what we're saying is all, that's all of us. Children just first discover it when they're going through those early years, but it's stuff that we still live with even as adults. There's a couple of phrases here that are standing out to me. It says, "I am distraught at the voice of the enemy." Boy, that is, that's haunting, isn't it? The voice of the enemy of our souls, evil, is actually lurking. It's out there. Satan is real according to the Bible, and according to our own experience, and then it says, "At the stairs of the wicked, for they bring down suffering upon me." So you've got Satan prowling, you've got wicked people. I mean, there's a lot coming against us, but sometimes, though, it's easy to overlook the phrase that precedes those two phrases, where the psalmist says, "My thoughts trouble me. My thoughts trouble me." That, to me, is a little bit harder to accept, and I noticed that in my pastoral conversations as well. Sometimes it's easier to say, "Ah, the enemies against me are bad people are out there. Look at those wicked people." And it's harder to say, "You know what? My own thoughts betray me sometimes. My own sinful thought patterns. My plain cravings of my own heart actually got me into this mess. I'm not going to blame the enemy right now. I need to blame my own thoughts." So I'm grateful for this song where the psalmist lists all of it. My thoughts, the enemy, and the wicked, are all manifestations of sin and evil in this world. And I need God's grace and power over all of these factors. So I called this day Elijah because in the course of the 365 days in the year, I became quite fascinated by some of the giant or towering figures in the Bible, Elijah being certainly one of them, who actually opened up for us a single example of what life can bring anybody. So Elijah is a prophet, and over him is a king called Ahab. And there's this enormous conflict that goes on. Ahab wants Elijah dead. And the reason I think these characters like Samson, Elijah, on and on, who represent kind of, you know, they're kind of stepping stone to Jesus Christ in a funny kind of way. They are confronted with things that all of us, you know, pray and wish in our hearts will not come anywhere near us. But they're kind of illustrations or they're models of what all of us are the potentialities of what this world can bring. So I write about this, the man of God lives under a constant threat of danger and strife. I think that in America, we don't believe that. We don't believe that at all. But actually, I think it's very real. Elijah, one of the great prophets of ancient Israel is a true man of God. But Ahab, the king, calls him a troubleer of Israel. What's going on there? Why is Ahab, the king who has all this power worry about Elijah? Well, because what Ahab really cares about is power and money. Right. It's a wife to support that. And Elijah is preaching that Ahab is off, you know, is off the reservation totally. So Ahab was corrupted by power and ambition. And that corruption seeped out from from his throne to pollute the entire nation. In spite of this, Elijah stood up to both Ahab and his perfidious wife Jezebel and spoke the truth even in the face of persecution. Right. And that is something that is part of the church history from the beginning and from the beginning of the Bible all the way through it. We live in a fallen world. We live in power, hungry leaders. I'm not naming them, but who are much more interested in the power they have because it's to them it's making them godlike. Masters of the universe. And if somebody stands in their way, look at Stalin. If somebody stood in his way, he was put up against the wall and shot. So unbridled power, unmodified by Christ, is dark. And the whole country is darkened when these things do happen in history.