In the beginning of the reading Elijah tells his servant to
go up and look for clouds and signs of rain seven times before he sees any sign
at all on the horizon and then only a little cloud. It is a bit like the opposite of the Noah
story where Noah sends out the birds to see if the waters have receded from the
face of the earth. Strangely, Elijah is
bold with Ahab but has great fear of Jezebel.
We see Ahab as a cowardly, weak leader who allowed his wife to control
him and she was clearly a very strong woman but why is Elijah fearful? She promises that she will end his life but
has he not seen more than enough evidence that the Lord is sovereign and more
powerful than anything or anyone else? I
believe that he is simply depressed. He has
fought the good fight for so long and most of the time without any to help him
and now he has had enough of the battle.
I know how he feels, I have felt many times like going to the wilderness
and saying, I quit, it's too hard and it isn't worth it at the end of the
day. Poor Elijah.
The Noah motif is also found here. The sign the Lord has given John to identify
Messiah is that the dove will descend and remain on the one whom the Lord has
anointed. John knows who Jesus is, He is
his cousin after all and surely his parents have told him all the stories about
the births and Mary's visit to Elizabeth and that John leapt in his mother's
womb at that visit. Apparently, however,
it wasn't completely understood that Jesus was Messiah. Perhaps it was because He was thirty years
old and nothing had happened so doubt had come into the picture. John, however, is hesitant to baptize Jesus,
that makes no sense to him, but Jesus prevails on him that this will
"fulfill all righteousness." In
other words, God's will is being done, that Jesus is fully identifying with
sinners right here at the outset (only sinners were baptized) and this would be
complete at the cross when He was condemned as the worst of sinners, He became
sin.
If we have fully identified with Him, we have a new
citizenship, a heavenly one. How would
anyone know that about you? Paul says
that our lives should reveal that we have a different set of values from those
who do not know Jesus. Our desires
should not be the same, we should not have the same fears, we should honestly
look different. Elijah and John the
Baptist literally looked different, they were set apart and so are we to be set
apart not necessarily by our dress or our diet but by our values and goals. We should have one goal, the same goal Jesus
had, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, just like the Westminster Shorter
Catechism says. The good news is that we
are not alone in this thing like Elijah was and John appears to have been in
some ways, we have been given the great gift of fellowship with others.
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