Text:\u00a0 1Kings 19:3-8<\/p>\n
This is the season of garage sales.\u00a0 Well the story is told that the devil decided to have one.\u00a0 On the day of his sale is tools were all marked with the sale price.\u00a0 It was an ugly lot:\u00a0 hatred, envy, jealousy, deceit, greed and so on.<\/p>\n
Off on its own was a harmless looking tool.\u00a0 It was very old and very worn from much use.\u00a0 Yet its price was very high.<\/p>\n
What is the name of that tool, one customer inquired.\u00a0 That is discouragement Satan answered.\u00a0 Why such a high price?\u00a0 Sir, that tool us more useful than all these others.\u00a0 When all those tools don\u2019t work, this one I can usually count on to get inside someone\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n
This morning, we meet a man sifted by discouragement.\u00a0 He is the Lord\u2019s own prophet, Elijah.\u00a0 Yet the Lord lifted his prophet from that deep pit of discouragement.\u00a0 He gave him the strength he needed to go on and serve.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not hard to see ourselves here.\u00a0 For as James wrote; Elijah was a man just like us. (5:17) He wasn\u2019t immune to discouragement.\u00a0 But the likeness does not end there.\u00a0 We have the same Lord who as the psalmist says:\u00a0 rescues me from the slimy pit<\/u>.\u00a0 He lifts us up so we can say:<\/p>\n
THE LORD IS MY STRENGTH<\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Think about this journey we call life.\u00a0 You might compare it to a ride through the country side or a long hike.\u00a0 There are hills and valleys, joys and sorrows.\u00a0 And those sorrows can get to us.\u00a0 They can pull us down when everything seemed to be going just fine.<\/p>\n Look at Elijah.\u00a0 Just before this Elijah had been the point man for God\u2019s amazing victory on Mount Carmel.\u00a0 He had stood toe to toe with 450 prophets of Baal and watched the Lord show them to be false and their god to be a dumb worthless statue.\u00a0 As fire from heaven came down with Elijah\u2019s prayer, there could be no doubt.\u00a0 The Lord is God.<\/p>\n Just imagine how Elijah must have felt.\u00a0 The hope he must have had that now things would turn around.\u00a0 Wait till people hear about this day.\u00a0 There would be a great revival.\u00a0 Imagine how he must have felt.\u00a0 Elijah was standing on more than a mountain called Carmel.\u00a0 He was standing on a mountaintop of faith.<\/p>\n But Elijah hardly had time to smell the roses when word came.\u00a0 Queen Jezebel, a wicked woman and queen, wanted his head.\u00a0 And now Elijah is truck with something he had not recently known.\u00a0 Fear, fear for his life.\u00a0 So he fled.\u00a0 He fled south, left his land of Israel and traveled about 75 miles, all the way to the southern end of Judah.\u00a0 There he left his servant behind and fled even further, another 20 miles into the desert.<\/p>\n But now something more than fear had gripped him.\u00a0 Dog tired from the journey, he sits down under a broom tree that rarely gave much shade.\u00a0 And here we meet a man terribly discouraged.\u00a0 He\u2019s discouraged that the damning religion of Baal is still stealing his people\u2019s souls.\u00a0 He\u2019s discouraged that he, the Lord\u2019s prophet ran away like a coward. Down in that pit of discouragement Elijah prays to the Lord.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had enough.\u00a0 Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors<\/u>.<\/p>\n Pastors can and do experience such times. There can be great joy in seeing the victories of God\u2019s Word in people\u2019s lives.\u00a0 To hear surprising words of faith come from a heart that did not know or care about Jesus.\u00a0 To hear about works of Christian love and kindness.\u00a0 To listen as two Christian young people promise their love to one another in the Lord. But then like Elijah there are those discouraging times.\u00a0 When someone who has tasted the goodness of the gospel, turns away from the Lord and refuses to come back.<\/p>\n But the pastor is not alone.\u00a0 Each of us can find ourselves in a pit of discouragement. The journey of life can be hard and long for us all. Some of us struggle with crippling pain in backs or knees or hips.\u00a0 Some of us struggle with mental pain that can be even harder on us. And now we think about our congregation where so many efforts have been expended over the years with so little to show for it.\u00a0 What will the future bring?<\/p>\n Sometimes it\u2019s not hard to feel like Elijah.\u00a0 We are tempted to despair, to give up, to throw in the towel.\u00a0 But dear friends, the Lord knows what we are up against.\u00a0 He knows our hearts. And he knows what lies ahead.\u00a0 And as he told Elijah, he knows this: \u00a0the journey is too much for you.<\/u><\/p>\n For Elijah that journey meant traveling another 200 miles across the hot, dry barren desert to Mount Horeb.\u00a0 Most of us know it as Mount Sinai where the Lord gave the covenant to Moses.\u00a0 That journey was too much for Elijah. \u00a0But not just the trip across the desert.\u00a0 Also his journey as God\u2019s prophet.\u00a0 It was too much to go it alone, depending on his own strength.\u00a0 And it\u2019s too much for us.\u00a0 It\u2019s too much for us to make this journey through life as his people on our own.\u00a0 And the Lord knows that.\u00a0 He knows the journey can be hard and long<\/strong>.<\/p>\n But notice something here.\u00a0 The Lord allowed Elijah to stumble.\u00a0 He allowed him to trip and fall into that pit of discouragement.\u00a0 And sometimes he allows us as well.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 So we can see.\u00a0 We can see that our own strength will not carry us through.\u00a0 We need the Lord to strengthen us.\u00a0 And he does.\u00a0 He feeds us with the Bread we need to go on.<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Old Testament, when something remarkable happened, a certain Hebrew word was used.\u00a0 The word is Hineh<\/em> Our version translates it:\u00a0 All at once.<\/em>\u00a0 I like the King James better here.\u00a0 Behold.\u00a0 Elijah was asleep.\u00a0 He was sleeping the sleep of a beaten, depressed man and behold!<\/p>\n Behold an angel of the Lord touched Elijah to wake him.\u00a0 Get up and eat, he told him.\u00a0 Elijah found a meal set before him.\u00a0 Nothing fancy.\u00a0 Just a bread cake and a jar of water.\u00a0 But read on.\u00a0 The Lord endowed that simple meal with supernatural power.\u00a0 This bread would empower Elijah to walk 40 days and 40 nights until he reached the mountain of God.\u00a0 Talk about power bars!\u00a0 But the best was yet to come.\u00a0 For there on that mountain the Lord would speak to him and give him the strength and courage he needed to go on as his prophet.<\/p>\n What about us?\u00a0 Elijah ate this bread served up by an angel and was able to go on for 40 days.\u00a0 The Israelites ate the Manna God gave from heaven which kept them alive for 40 years.\u00a0 What about us?\u00a0 Behold- God sets a meal before us today.<\/p>\n But this Bread is so much more.\u00a0 Do you remember Jesus\u2019 words today?\u00a0 Here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die<\/u>.\u00a0 For Jesus is that bread.\u00a0 51 <\/sup>I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.<\/u><\/p>\n This is the bread we need to carry us through-Jesus Christ, God\u2019s own Son.\u00a0 He is the bread we need for our journey to another Mountain of God, the Holy City, God\u2019s heaven.\u00a0 To eat this bread is nothing more than to put our trust in Him who lived and died for us. It\u2019s to look at his cross and see God\u2019s Son die for you.\u00a0 It\u2019s to look at his empty Easter tomb and recognize his victory over our death.\u00a0 \u00a0For then we partake of something we need so much.\u00a0 Forgiveness for our many sins.\u00a0 Peace with God and the blessed assurance of God\u2019s enduring love every day of our lives until he takes us home.<\/p>\n So our Lord comes to us today like his angel came to Elijah.\u00a0 Get up and eat, he says.\u00a0 Get up from that bed of discouragement.\u00a0 Get out from under that pathetic broom tree.\u00a0 Come find in me what you need to go on.\u00a0 To not give up but to go forward with hope.\u00a0 For I am the living bread that came down from heaven.<\/u><\/p>\n So here today in his Church, Jesus sets before us a marvelous meal.\u00a0 In His Word, in his Sacrament, Jesus, the Bread of Life comes to us and feeds us with that bread we need to go on. So that we can go out from here and say to whatever comes:\u00a0 The Lord is my strength<\/strong>.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text:\u00a0 1Kings 19:3-8 This is the season of garage sales.\u00a0 Well the story is told that the devil decided to have one.\u00a0 On the day of his sale is tools were all marked with the sale price.\u00a0 It was an ugly lot:\u00a0 hatred, envy, jealousy, deceit, greed and so on. Off on its own was a harmless looking tool.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI.\u00a0 He knows the journey can be hard and long
\nII.\u00a0 He feeds me with the Bread I need to go on.<\/p>\n