1 Kings 19:3-18 And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.… I. THE PROPHET'S DESPONDENCY. 1. Its intensity. For the time his depression seems almost overwhelming. Why this: that we must not expect that the sincerest piety, or the highest service for God, will preclude the possibility of our being bowed down beneath the burden of depression and discouragement. It may consist with genuine religiousness to be so circumstanced. Those children of God, in old time, whose faith rose to the loftiest altitudes, and whose courage paled not before the extremest perils, knew well the painfulness of such experience. It is well for us to bear in mind that the ground of spiritual security is distinct and separate from any state of mere feeling. Frames are uncertain, fluctuating, affected by innumerable causes over which our control is but limited, and must not, therefore, be made to determine character, standing, safety before God. The heart may sink when the soul's grasp is the strongest. 2. The causes of the prophet's despondency. People forget the closeness of the connection that subsists between their material and their spiritual part, and often connect with an imagined wrong condition of the latter, what more properly belongs to a morbid or deranged state of the former. They send for the minister, when they ought to send for the physician. They charge upon the mind a fault that really attaches to the body. Not even religion can cure some persons of melancholy; they are gloomy or pensive by natural temperament, and must await the resurrection-morn to be made otherwise, 3. Its effects upon his conduct. It had led him from the scene of actual service, bold and faithful testimony, earnest confronting of Jehovah's foes, to hide himself in wilderness solitudes. II. GOD'S METHOD OF RELIEF. 1. God recruits his exhausted strength by a timely supply of sustenance. 2. But observe, again, in God's method of relief, that He rouses His servant to exertion. Having afforded Him needful refreshment and repose, He gives him work to do; He bids him journey to the distant Mount of Horeb. 3. God's method of relief includes a manifestation of Himself in glory and grace. The journey to Horeb was not its own end. Elijah was brought thither that he might commune with Deity. 4. In God's method of relief there was a correction of the prophet's misjudgment, as to the effects of his own labours, and the cause of truth. He had thought that he had "laboured in vain, and spent his strength for nought, and in vain." (C. M. Merry) Parallel Verses KJV: And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. |
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