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Jun 12, 2022

The Way Out of the Hole

The Way Out of the Hole

Passage: 1 Kings 19:1-18

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Easter Egg, the hidden figure of Elijah in the life of Jesus

We’ve seen Elijah bold, courageous, prayerful. Here we see him utterly depressed. Everything for which he has labored has, in his mind, failed to pan out. And now despite being a witness to the power of God he is being hunted by a vengeful queen. The bottom has dropped out for him. How will God assist to get him out from under? This isn’t a passage about psychology, but it does offer insight into what takes us out of the spiritual depression to which we are all prone and which we will likely all suffer.

PREPARATION: Psalm 42:1-2, 5-6
LEADER: As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?

ALL: Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation
and my God.

CENTRAL TEXT: 1 Kings 19:1-18
1Kings 19:1 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” 3 Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

1Kings 19:4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” 5 And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” 6 And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. 7 And the angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” 8 And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.

1Kings 19:9 There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” 11 And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. 13 And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14 He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” 15 And the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. 16 And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. 17 And the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death. 18 Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER: Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1
LEADER: What is your only comfort–in life and in death?

ALL: That I am not my own,
but belong with body and soul,
both in life and in death,
to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins
with his precious blood,
and has set me free
from all the power of the devil.
He also preserves me in such a way
that without the will of my heavenly Father
not a hair can fall from my head;
indeed, all things must work together
for my salvation.
Therefore, by his Holy Spirit
he also assures me
of eternal life
and makes me heartily willing and ready
from now on to live for him.

BENEDICTION: Habakkuk 4:17-18
LEADER: Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,

ALL: yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Genesis 3:9
  • Genesis 21:14-19
  • Exodus 3:1-10
  • Exodus 33:13-23
  • Psalm 42
  • Jonah 4:3
  • Matthew 4:2
  • Mark 14:34
  • John 3:19

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Care to share whether you’ve ever had experience with depression–clinical or otherwise? Care to share what the experience was like or what may have been behind it? Care to share what if anything was of assistance to you?
  2. Even from the little we’ve learned about Elijah thus far in the account of his ministry, what is somewhat surprising of comment,“Then he was afraid,” in verse 3? 
  3. Why in Elijah’s profound spiritual distress would the Lord begin with the material help?
  4. Students of scripture have wondered for millennia what difference was being made for Elijah between the dramatic shows of power and the presence of God in the “low whisper.” What do you think the point might’ve been? How is the quieting of the heart–becoming still and at ease in the stillness–essential to prayer, to being reminded of God’s reality? Why do you think we’ve become so poor at being still?
  5. Look at the promise–odd as it may be–in vv. 17-18. How would those promises be a source of encouragement to Elijah in that moment? As we asked in the sermon, what would be for you a deep word of reassurance in this moment?
  6. Jesus demonstrated a similar experience of coming to his wits end (cf. Mark 14:34). What was his “therapy” in that extreme moment?
  7. We all experience kinds of depression differently–in different forms, to different degrees. How is the gospel meant to be an answer, if not a complete cure, to it? How do we apply the gospel that it might be an anchor for us in experience?

ILLUSTRATIONS:

QUOTES:

  • Heaven have mercy on us all— Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending. - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
  • You cannot isolate the spiritual from the physical for we are body, mind and spirit. The greatest and the best Christians when they are physically weak are more prone to an attack of spiritual depression than at any other time and there are great illustrations of this in the Scriptures. - David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression
  • Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. - Annie Dillard
  • I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as the one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result when you go away from the debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands.... - C.S. Lewis
  • From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
    From all the victories that I seemed to score;
    From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
    At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
    From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
    Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

    Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
    Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
    From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
    O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
    Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
    Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

    No voice divine the storm allay'd,
    No light propitious shone;
    When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
    We perish'd, each alone:
    But I beneath a rougher sea,
    And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he. “The Castaway,” William Cowper
  • Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
    But trust him for his grace;
    Behind a frowning providence
    He hides a smiling face. . . . “Light Shining in the Darkness,” William Cowper
  • If we strive to be happy by filling the silence of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty. - Thomas Merton
  • Everything in her demeanor towards them — the way she spoke to them, her facial expressions, the inflexions of her body — …. revealed that even such patients were … the equals of those who wanted to help them;. . . .[the love of this saint was able] to reveal the full humanity of those whose affliction had made their humanity invisible. - Raimond Gaita
  • I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. . . .The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: 'Why art thou cast down'-what business have you to be disquieted ? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: 'Hope thou in God'-instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: 'I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God'. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression
  • The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even God can love them. - Thomas Merton

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