Pleading the Promises

Context Introduction

As we come to the remaining verses of 1 Kings 18, we want to recall the course of events that unfolded in the life of Elijah and Israel. In chapter 17:1, God tells Elijah to prophesy to King Ahab that it will not rain except by my his (Elijah’s) word. God, of course was true to His promise and there was a 3.5 year drought. We come to 18:1, and God instructs Elijah to appear to Ahab and he will send rain. Another promise. Rain. But it didn’t come immediately. Obadiah, who was in charge of Ahab’s house, was on a search for grass to feed to the kings horses and mules to prevent their death. While out on this search, he met Elijah. Elijah tells Obadiah to inform Ahab that he (Elijah) wants to see him. When Ahab finally sees Elijah after this 3.5 year drought he says to him:

1 Kings 18:17 ESV

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?”

To which Elijah makes clear that it is not him who is troubling Israel. It was Ahab. Ahab was the most wicked king Israel had up to this point. He rejected God and lead the people of Israel to do the same.

Shortly after this, the showdown on Mt. Carmel took place. Baal was shown to be a fake, and the prophets of Baal were put to death.

But Elijah’s day was not through. It still had not rained. God’s promise had not yet been fulfilled. How does Elijah respond to all that happened? That’s what we’ll consider today.

1 Kings 18:41–46 ESV

And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of the rushing of rain.” So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel. And he bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” And he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” And he said, “Go again,” seven times. And at the seventh time he said, “Behold, a little cloud like a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” And he said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you.’ ” And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel. And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.

Introduction

2 Samuel 7:25–29 ESV

And now, O Lord God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, and do as you have spoken. And your name will be magnified forever, saying, ‘The Lord of hosts is God over Israel,’ and the house of your servant David will be established before you. For you, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, ‘I will build you a house.’ Therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. For you, O Lord God, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever.”

David is praying to God, and repeated to God what God had told him, namely that I will build you a house. God promised David this already, and now David is praying that promise back to God. In fact, David has summoned the courage to pray this prayer to God based upon this promise that God made to him. Your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. And on this basis, David prays God would bless his house.

David was promised a house and so he prayed for a house. Why pray for that which God promises? Why not just expect that God will do what He says He will do?

Matthew 9:37–38 ESV

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Jesus told His disciples that He would make them fishers of men.

He would declare that He would build His church.

Why pray for laborers? It seems to me that God had already promised that He would provide the resources necessary to reap the harvest.

And then we have the promise of rain. And Elijah praying for that rain. Why? God promised that there would be rain. Why pray for what God promised? Presumptuous. If someone is presumptuous it means they have failed to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate. And if we conclude that there is no need to pray for what God has promised, we are being presumptuous. As we have already seen, often God intends for His promises to be answers to prayer. And this is the problem:

FCF

Some presume upon instead of plead the promises of God.

God’s promises are our source of hope. They are the substance of our trust in God, but they are meant to be pleaded back to God. Not because we do not believe them to be true, or that we think it is possibleGod will not fulfill them, but because the fulfillment of God’s promises are often answers to prayer. And pleading His promises display the substance of our confidence in God. Not our experience or logic. But the promises and that God made those promises.

Main Idea

God often brings His purposes to pass in response to His people’s pleading of His promises.

Main Question

What does God accomplish in us through our pleading of His promises?

He liberates our faith (41)

Very quickly I want to explain what I mean by liberate. I am attempting to address the struggle that you and I experience as we strive to trust in the promises we find in Scripture. What promise of God was Elijah trusting in v. 41. Note what it says again:

1 Kings 18:41 ESV

And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of the rushing of rain.”

But just 2 verses later, after going up to look out over the sea as God instructed him, Elijah said, there is nothing. Only after going up 7 more times did a little cloud appear in the sky, and then a little while after the appearing of that cloud did the sky become black and the winds pick up. The point here is that Elijah’s instructions to King Ahab in v. 41 was predicated on his belief that the promise of God that God announced back in v. 1:

1 Kings 18:1 ESV

After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, “Go, show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth.”

that rain was going to come that day after a 3.5 year drought, was true. And because Elijah believed this promise, his faith was liberated to the extent that he could tell King Ahab that rain was coming despite the fact that at that moment there was no sign of rain. Not a cloud in the sky when he said this to Ahab.

God’s sovereignty certainly impacts the souls of people but it also affects the material world. Like rain, for example. We could go to several places in Scripture where God determines when it will rain, how much it will rain…

Psalm 147:8 ESV

He covers the heavens with clouds; he prepares rain for the earth; he makes grass grow on the hills.

This is something that we cannot forget. We live in a world that, yes, is fallen. Illness, crime, corruption and catastrophe are familiar to us. Yet, in what seems like chaos to us, the rule of God in and over the world remains in tact. To the extent that He is in control of the rain. Our lives are not random. They are not out of control. They are not without purpose. Of course, we are finite and we cannot always see or understand the purposes of God as clearly as we would prefer. And the fact the the purposes of God include our suffering is difficult for us to accept. But let us embrace the promises of God

Colossians 1:16–17 ESV

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And as we believe the promises of God, if we regard the promises of God as the ultimate reality, even above what we can discern through our experience in this world, our faith in God will be liberated. It won’t be tied down with what may appear to us to be obstacles to the promises of God. We may not know the timing or the precise sequence of events of when and how God’s promises will come to pass in our experience, but that’s not the point. We begin with the truth. The word of God. God’s promises are true because God is God. God is true. Seeing God this way. Seeing life this way liberates our faith in Him.

And what helps us connect our experience to reality is pleading the promises of God. That’s what Elijah does. After Ahab goes off to feed His body, Elijah goes up to the top of Mt. Carmel to feed his soul.

And this brings us to something else God accomplishes in us as we plead His promises to Him

He preserves our faith (42-45a)

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that true faith in God can be lost. But God does preserve His people. He strengthens the faith of His people. And this strengthening often comes as we pray the promises of God. But how does this preservation work?

How does God preserve us?

He increases our awareness of our dependence on Him (42)

So again, notice the contrast between Ahab and Elijah. Ahab tends to his physical needs and Elijah tends to his spiritual needs. Elijah does what Jesus often did. He withdrew from the crowds to pray. Getting away to pray… an invaluable discipline for us. Communion with God is precious and essential, and the primary pathway to have it and increase it is prayer. Many of us here would say that our prayer lives are challenging. Coming by focused, uninterrupted time in prayer can be difficult. Possessing the discipline to pray regularly is difficult as well. The challenges that mothers of young kids face in this area… especially having focused, uninterrupted time with God are more on my radar that it has been in a while because we are in a church with a lot of kids! The camping trip! But my own daughter is a mom now. No easy answer to this, but finding what works for you to have those few, wonderful precious moments in your day to commune with God is a worth-while effort. For all of us of course. Among the many blessings that come as a result of communing with God is seeing more clearly how much we need our heavenly Father.

This is what the Apostle Paul was proclaiming to the people of Athens who had, among many idols and altars, an altar with the inscription that said, to the unknown God. This is what Paul proclaimed to them:

Acts 17:24–28 ESV

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

God, the creator and sustainer of the world, needs nothing, but all who are in it need him. I read it put like this, practicing the presence of God. One way we can live as if we need the God who needs nothing from us is to cling to His promises. And we do this through prayer. We practice the presence of God by declaring our dependence upon Him, and pleading His promises to Him is that declaration.

And we see this dependence in Elijah’s posture. He’s on his knees with his head bowed down between them… and we know he prayed for rain. We’re not told here what Elijah prayed, but James tells us.

James 5:17–18 ESV

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

Elijah pleaded the promise of God. God told him it would rain, Elijah prayed that promise. He expressed his trust in God’s promise by praying the promise. All this is an expression of Elijah’s dependence upon God.

God also preserves us

By strengthening our trust in His promises during times of frustration and discouragement (43-44)

In verse 43, God instructs Elijah to go and look toward the sea. We are told Elijah went, looked out at the sea and then said, there is nothing. Now, we are not told about Elijah’s demeanor here. I don’t want to speculate too much, but after everything that had happened, the 6 hours of enduring the senseless worship of the prophets of Baal, the spectacular display of God’s power and judgement in the consuming fire that came from heaven, the slaughtering of the 450 prophets of Baal … Elijah was waiting for God’s promise to come through. He does what God tells Him to do. Looks out at the sea, and he says, there is nothing.

Nothing in the sky to suggest that a storm was about to break. Perhaps Elijah was unshaken by this, perhaps he was concerned. But you and I know what it is to wait for the Lord to act and not see any sign that He is or will.

As Arthur Pink puts it:

We have sought the Lord, and then hopefully looked for His intervention, but instead of any token from Him that He has heard, there is nothing.

But our response to this frustration and this discouragement is crucial.

Some respond with unbelief

With fear

with bitterness

with cynicism

But after telling God that there was nothing, God did not assure Elijah right away that the rain was coming. God told Elijah to go up and look out at the sea 7 times. How are we to remain resolute in our conviction that God’s promises are true when the answers to our prayers are not promptly answered? I think it’s a legitimate question.

Psalm 13:1–5 ESV

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

Yes, we ask how long, but let us ask that question in our pleading of God’s promises. It’s what the Psalmist does. He asks how long, but also prays that he has trusted in God’s steadfast love. As much fervency as he uses to express His struggle to God he also uses to claim God’s promise that His love for him is steadfast… that God has provided him salvation.

This is what takes place in the life of God’s people as God preserves them. As we plead the promises of God in prayer, God strengthens our conviction that His promises are true even when we cannot see how or when they will be fulfilled in our lives.

Do you think of prayer as laborious? Maybe you recall how King Hezekiah responded to a threatening letter from the King of Assyria:

Isaiah 37:14–21 (ESV)

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: “O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. .... So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.”

Pleading the promises of God in the face of adversity or even disappointment is what is right but it is demanding. I’m reading a biography on John Wesley, and among the many things he was know for, prayer was one of them. He would spend hours in prayer in the morning, and it was noted by some that when he emerged from his prayer closet, he was soaked with perspiration. Fervency. We don’t necessarily have to sweat, but we should expect that much of our prayer life will be characterized by effort and even toil. Pleading.

We may not see the rain right away, but we trust in God until we do because He is true to His word.

The 7th time he goes up, Elijah sees a little cloud. God then instructs Elijah to go to Ahab and tell him to get on the road so that he doesn’t get caught in the rain on his chariot. Just one tiny cloud like a man’s hand rising from the sea and Elijah is to tell King Ahab that he better get going because it’s about to storm.

As you and I labor and toil in our prayer life, God sustains us. He preserves us. Our confidence will not be based upon our experience, or our logic or what we may be able to see in a given moment, but on the promises of God. Elijah believed it was going to rain because God promised it would.

Sure enough, a short time after this exchange between Elijah and Ahab

the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.

God often brings His purposes to pass in response to His people’s pleading of His promises.

Something else God accomplishes in His people as they plead His promises

He strengthens our faith (45b-46)

Once the storm clouds arrived, it was clear that this was no small storm. Ahab gets in his chariot and heads to what was probably his summer home in Jezreel before the ground would get too muddy.

Now, what I want us to focus on is a phrase in verse 46: the hand of the Lord was on Elijah. This phrase, the hand of the Lord, is often used to describe the power and blessing of God, and there is no doubt that God’s blessing and power was upon Elijah.

We are told in verse 46 that Elijah gathered up his garments or gathered up his loins and ran before Ahab to Jezreel. In other words, Elijah ran on foot in front of Ahab who was on his chariot all the way to Jezreel, which was probably about 17 miles. Was this a demonstration of a supernatural enablement? Perhaps, but what is most important for us to see here is that God provided Elijah the strength, the energy, the endurance necessary to lead the way to Jezreel.

The hand of the Lord is seen throughout Scripture to convey this idea

Joshua 4:23–24 ESV

For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”

Isaiah 41:19–20 ESV

I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive. I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, that they may see and know, may consider and understand together, that the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.

What I want to suggest here is what we see in these two passages is not only does the hand of the Lord connected to the power of God, but it was also used to demonstrate the power of God to those who were witness to the demonstration of His power. And when it comes to King Ahab, he was witness to the power of God through Elijah. The cessation of rain, the fire from heaven, the return of the rain, Elijah leading the way to Jezreel.

There are some who suggest imagery here in the prophet of the Lord leading the King. I’m not really sure how much we should make of this, but I will note that Kings in this day did have footmen who would accompany them while traveling on their chariots. Servants who would run alongside the chariot as the king rode in his chariot.

Arthur Pink again, this would have shown the monarch that his (Elijah’s) zeal against idolatry was not prompted by any disrespect for himself, but actuated only by jealousy for God. Jealousy for God will be a phrase that we will see in the next chapter, so I won’t go into that here.

But as you and I plead the promises of God in our prayer lives, we come into sweet and intimate fellowship with God, that equips us with the enabling we need to serve God. And as we do this, others will see, so that they may praise our Father in heaven.

It will become clear that Ahab may have been convinced that YAHWEH was God, but he was not converted. But this is the world in which you and I live. We pursue closeness with God on the basis on His promises. Not on our experience or because of how people or the world will respond.

Conclusion

So when we suggest that pleading the promises of God to Him in prayer is a means through which God works in us for our good and His glory, it is not to suggest that His promises are hanging in the balance. That somehow, unless we plead them, they may not come to pass. But as was suggested, there are times that God fulfills His promises in response to the prayers of His people. There are times that God’s provision comes despite the fact that we failed to pray. Or we prayed and God acts quickly. And there are times that we are meant to labor in our prayers. Seek the Lord, plead with the Lord. What we must remember is that

No matter the outcome or how God’s will unfolds in our lives, we seek God on the basis of His promises

Pleading His promises can involve struggle. Prayer, in other words can be demanding work. But the intimacy with God that comes through our pleading is priceless

It is this pleading of His promises through which God accomplishes His purposes in us.

Psalm 48:14 ESV

that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.

God, be my guide as I seek your will and strive to please you

Psalm 119:90 ESV

Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast.

Father, I know that you are faithful to your people so help me trust in this truth as I face...

May we all the more, approach God, by pleading His promises. Perhaps we can help one another do this. A reminder that we have people available after the service today that are ready to seek the Lord with you in prayer. I encourage you to take advantage of this wonderful ministry.

Benediction

For those who hold fast to the Lord Most High in love, may He deliver you. When you call to Him, may he answer you, be with you, rescue you, and honor you; may He satisfy you and show you His salvation.