If you would turn back in your Bible to 1 Kings 19, we will be reading verses 1 through 8. This is a continuation of our preaching through the life of Elijah. 1 Kings 19. Elijah had just come off the Mount Carmel. He had ran all the way from Mount Carmel to Jezreel, about 20 miles, and now he's in Jezreel, the winter capital of the northern kingdom. And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 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. 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. 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 father's. And he laid down and he slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, arise and eat. And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones in a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. 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. And he arose and ate and drank. and went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the Mount of God. Now let's take a review of Elijah's life. in our mind's eye. And so let's say that we could be watching Elijah and just take just a brief review of what Elijah had gone through as we have read through the scriptures. And we would see in our mind that Elijah emerged out of nowhere, it seems like, and he confronted King Ahab. And he told King Ahab, because you've forsaken the God of Israel, there is going to be a drought in this land. And then we see that God prompted Elijah to go and hide by the brook Cherish, and Elijah being fed by the ravens by this brook. And when the water dried up, we see in our mind's eye that God came again, and he told Elijah, go. Go to Zarephath. I have appointed someone there, a widow, to take care of you." And so Elijah went to Zarephath, and there was a widow, and the widow said, I don't have any food. And God provided for Elijah again. The widow had this container of flour that never ran out. She had a jug of oil, never ran out. That's what you need to make a nice little cake to keep you going. Elijah stayed there for probably years. We see in her mind's eye that the widow's son died, and Elijah came to the widow and took this young boy, and he prayed to God, and this boy was resurrected. And then we see God coming to Elijah and saying, Elijah, go and confront Ahab again. And we see Elijah get up and follow the Lord's leading and come to Ahab. And he tells Ahab, bring all the people together by Mount Carmel. We're going to have a contest. And Elijah held a spectacle for the people, where Elijah had two altars made. One was to Baal. One was to God. He confronted the people. Who won that? The priests of Baal could not get any fire from God to ignite that altar, but God instantly sent fire from heaven and it burned up that altar with the sacrifice, the stones, the ground was scorched. And then Elijah with strength, took the people and slew the priests of Baal. And after that was done, he climbed to the top of Mount Carmel and he prayed to God for rain. And God sent rain. And here's where we start our story. He ran all the way to Jezreel in front of the chariot of King Ahab. And when he got there, Things changed rapidly. Queen Jezebel threatened Elijah. She pretty much sent him a notice that a squad was coming to execute him. And what was Elijah's response? Something snapped. He said, I got to get out of here. And he got out of there. And so Elijah is up here in the north country, in Israel, and he starts running. He must have been some marathon runner. And he runs south. He goes into the country of Judea. And he doesn't stop there. He says, I'm gonna keep going. And he went to the south of Judea. He went all the way to Beersheba. And the distance between Jezreel and Beersheba is almost 120 miles. And his servant must have been a runner too, because he said, you stay here in town. And he walked that extra day into the wilderness. And that's where it seems like he ran out of energy. He sat down. He saw this bush, a broom tree it's called. nice thick bush, said, you know what? There's a nice little spot inside, crawls in, out of sight. That's where he is. Went from a mountaintop to hiding in a bush. And in their mind's eye, we hear Elijah pray. Hear him say, it is enough now, O Lord. Take away my life, for I am no better than my father's. It is like he is saying, why should I remain any longer in this land of trouble? I am tired of fleeing. She's at my tail. My existence is useless. My efforts have been in vain. You gave me this huge spectacle on Mount Carmel and none of the people responded. It didn't change their name, their way. They still serve bail. When I went to Jezreel, no one stood up for me. It is enough. I don't want to live in a land that is going to decline into paganism where everyone has forgotten you. Lord, take my life. My soul is troubled. I didn't do any better than any previous prophet. In fact, my results are worse. I'm a failure. I'm not worthy to proclaim your name to this nation. Oh Lord, take my life. You can hear the anguish in Elijah's words. You can hear him. He is thoroughly demoralized. And if you were there and we'd been observing him in our mind's eye, we don't know what to say to somebody like that. How are you going to help someone when their mind is in that condition? And you might be tempted to say this. You say, Elijah, are you telling me that you ran 120 miles and you crawled under this bush and now you want to die? Queen Jezebel wanted you to die. Queen Jezebel would be very happy if she found out that you had died. It doesn't make sense, Elijah, that you want to die. But we're not there. Moses had a similar situation. Moses was in the wilderness with the Israelites. And if you think it was fun wandering around in the wilderness with the Israelites, it wasn't. The Israelites started to complain and to murmur. And it got worse and worse. And they said, we're not have any good food. We only are eating this manna. We haven't had meat for days. The water is scarce. And Moses, you let us out into this wilderness. And poor Moses finally said to God, I am not able to carry all these people alone. The burden is too heavy for me. Kill me, and this is what he said to God, at once, if I find favor in your sight. Moses was so frustrated with the people of Israel, he wanted to die. So what did God do for Moses? Because obviously Moses lived on longer. God said, bring out 70 people, elders, leaders of the nation. And I will take some of your spirit and I will give some of your spirit to these 70 people so that you don't have to bear the complaining and the murmuring of these people all by yourself. God helped Moses in this dire situation and we think about Jonah. Jonah, who fled God, who got swallowed up by a fish, who got spit out on dry land, he went and he preached the gospel. He preached God's condemnation on Nineveh. And he was expecting that the Ninevites would not repent, and they did. But he thought maybe they would still be destroyed. And so he went up on a hill and was waiting for God to destroy the town of Nineveh. And God didn't. And he said to God, he said, oh Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And if you know the story of Jonah, God very graciously taught Jonah a lesson in grace by giving him that gourd that grew up and then died. and saying, look, you were so grateful for this gourd that shaded you during the hot sun. How much more should I have mercy on those people of Nineveh? And so what is God going to do for Elijah? How is God going to help Elijah recover from his state of mind? God is going to handle it differently. than he did for Moses. He's going to handle this situation differently than he did for Jonah. Every person who falls in this particular state needs to be handled individually. And our God is a personal God. He knows what we need. And so he's going to deal with Elijah in a very particular way, in a way that we can learn. And so what did God do? First of all, God did not grant Elijah his wish. God heard Elijah's cry, but God did not take his life. Instead, God graciously restored Elijah, and he protected him. God had other plans for Elijah. Elijah didn't know that. God was gonna answer all of Elijah's questions. But Elijah didn't know that. And sometimes we get in this wilderness and we think that God has abandoned us. People are not supporting me. I am just here under this bush. No one is even gonna find me. I'm in the wilderness of life. And we forget up here. God knows where you are in the wilderness. He can look down on you. And if you cry out to God, he's gonna take you by the hand. And he's gonna lead you out of that wilderness because God knows the way out of the wilderness. We need to cry out, we need to say, Lord, do not be far off. Oh, you, my help, come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion. The psalmist in Psalm 22 has a very different prayer from the prayer of Elijah. The psalmist is crying out for God's help. Get me out of here. He's not praying. Take my life. We can be reminded that the apostle Paul had a similar prayer, but a very different prayer that we could pray as well. He was writing to the Philippians and it seems like he was just thinking. It says, for to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. That wasn't a call to God to take his life. Paul is thinking about what his next life was going to be like. We can pray that. We can say, God, I can't really wait to be in your glory. But Paul said, I live in the flesh, that means I can serve you. And so that's what we are doing here today. That was what Paul had to say. But secondly, God gave Elijah sleep. Up to this point, Elijah had been driven he had been driven ever since he had confronted ahab that second time he had put together this spectacle he was the one who stood around and encouraged those priests of baal to do what they did he is the one who called upon god he had built this altar he had been there when god sent fire down from heaven he had been there to help all the israelites kill all those priests he had run back up to the mount Mountaintop and Carmel to pray. He had been doing all these things. He had been running for 120 miles trying to escape the evil clutches of Queen Jezebel. And so he was frantic. He was agitated. He was troubled. And God gave him refreshing rest and sleep. God reminds us in the Psalms, it is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest. And we need to think about these things for ourselves. It's vain to eat the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep. Have you ever thought about sleep and rest as a gift of God? In fact, sleep and rest are gifts of goodness from God. It's a gift of grace from God. We don't often understand that a refreshed night of sleep is really God's provision for us. When you've had a hard night sleeping due to illness, pain, worry, anxiousness, heartache, we need to pray to God to restore our soul and our body. We read in the scriptures, Psalm 23, which is such a comfort to everybody. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. When you've had those nights of agitation, those nights of worry, those nights of restless sleep, Psalm 23 is one to turn to. Oh Lord, lay me down in a green pasture. Let me rest in you. That's the kind of rest that Elijah was given. A rest in a green pasture under a broom tree in the wilderness. So thirdly, God sent a messenger. to Elijah. Before, God had provided for Elijah by sending ravens to feed him, the widow, Zarephath, to care for him. This time God sent his personal messenger, an angel of the Lord, And this angel of the Lord had a camp kit with the angel and got to Elijah and cooked a cake and had a jar of water for Elijah. And when everything was ready, that angel tapped Elijah on the shoulder, Elijah, wake up, take and eat. And Elijah woke up. ate a nice hot cake, not one that had been carried around, a nice hot cake, freshly cooked, the stones were still hot, a hot cake, drank. Elijah was still exhausted, went back to sleep. The angel cooked up some more cakes, tapped Elijah on the shoulder again, wake up, eat, drink, and provided for Elijah's physical needs. Elijah must have learned something right then and there. Elijah had been provided for by God. This is the third time. Elijah must have thought to himself, if God is sending his personal messenger to me, to feed me, How much more would he have protected me from Jezebel back in Jezreel up near Queen Jezebel? This was like almost telling Elijah, God would have provided for you despite Jezebel's threats. Elijah hadn't even given God a chance to protect him. Elijah heard the words from Jezebel and something snapped and he ran. He didn't even know that God would have protected him. He didn't wait on the Lord, just as he had waited at the brook Cherish and that he had lived with that widow in Zarephath. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up. with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. If God had given him the word, he would have run. And he wouldn't have been weary like he was now. They shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40 verse 31. But Elijah hadn't given God the chance. Elijah just did and ran. And so God didn't allow Elijah to die. God gave him sleep. God provided him with an angel of mercy. And then we read something amazing. God gave Elijah what I would call superfood Because we read that based on what he drank and what he ate, he was able to live on for 40 days and 40 nights. Now, I don't know of any energy bar that would do that for you or for me. But God gave Elijah some super food. And then Elijah went on a walk. He went on a walk in the wilderness. It was almost like he was reenacting the 40 years of wandering in the desert that the Israelites had done before they came to Canaan. He walked for these 40 days and nights. And where did he go? The Bible says Mount Horeb, which is another name for Mount Sinai. Now God did not tell Elijah to go to Mount Horeb. We don't read that he was prompted to go there. But Elijah went there and he took these 40 days and 40 nights. Elijah has an agenda. We don't know why he wanted to go there. Maybe he thought that this is the place where Moses got a lot of revelations from God. That's where Moses wrote all his books. Maybe I can go there and God will meet with me and God will give me a message for me to write down and I can write further books from God. Well, that didn't happen because there's no book of Elijah in our Bible. But maybe he just wanted to see God, be in a place near God. We don't know why he went there, but he wasn't going there because God told him to go there. And so why would God provide for Elijah to live and be sustained by the food that he had for 40 days to go to Mount Sinai, which was no small trip, maybe over 200 more miles to the south in a wilderness through the rugged terrain. Sometimes God allows us to go places which are not in God's will. but God was going to use this for some very particular lessons for Elijah. Sometimes we learn that God through his providence is going to allow us to go through experiences that could have been prevented if we had been obedient to God. We might say, in God's providence, his secret providence, these things happen to us. We read in Proverbs, the heart of a man plans his way, so you may plan your whole way, but the Lord establishes his steps. So our plans might be the Lord's plans, except we didn't know it. We read in another passage in Proverbs 21, 20, And let me just change the wording a little bit. I'll show you. The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. I'm going to change it. The king's heart is a fire hose in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. So we're saying that the king may have thought he was going to do this or that, but the Lord had really taken his thought and pointed it where he would, just like that hose, that water. God is gonna direct where that thing is aimed. Elijah went to Mount Horeb. He was gonna learn some things there. we don't know what God has in store for us but God allows us to go through life's experiences with trials and tribulations so that he can prepare us for service and in some instances God redirects us dramatically in areas of service just think about the Apostle Paul at that time he called himself Saul and he was on a trip to go and persecute some more Christians, and God struck him down and redirected him. But all of those experiences that Paul had before he was struck down, and his studies and all his abilities were taken and directed to proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. intended to harm Christians and was redirected to train and teach Christians. We need to remember that God will care for us. We don't know what is before us. But we can be assured that God will furnish and prepare us for trials and for service. Furthermore, God provides sufficient grace for us to serve him through the trials that we have. We read in James, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that testing of your faith produces steadfastness. But there is one other thing that we can learn about this super food that Elijah was given that energized him for those 40 days and 40 nights, is that when we encounter a trial, God is going to help us in one of two ways, or maybe some of each. First of all, God may determine to lighten the load. like he did with Moses. Moses said, the burden of these grumbling people, these complaining people, is too much for me. And God said, appoint 70 elders, and I'll give them some of your service. So that the load was distributed for Moses. But God sometimes gives increased strength. He fortifies you. And that's what he did with Elijah. He fortified Elijah. The food was this superfood that gave him the strength to get to Mount Horeb. And Elijah is going to learn some really interesting things there. If you're a child of God and you fall into despair like Elijah did, you can expect God to restore you. I don't know how God is gonna use his providence to restore you, because in each of these instances that I've pointed out, God used different ways, but God is going to restore you, and I don't know how long it's gonna take to restore you, because for Elijah, it took a long time for him to be restored, whereas with Moses, it was much more instant. God took care of the problem almost immediately for Moses. And with Jonah, I think it took quite a while to sink in and then he wrote his book. But God will restore you. God doesn't desert his servants in their times of need. And when we fall into despondency, we need to cry out to God and we read in Hebrews, we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? Because God has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.