Up Next: facing obstacles

1 Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” 3 Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. 7 The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” 11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14 He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” 15 The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. 16 Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. 17 Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. 18 Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”

What it is that the Swiss are known for? Among other things, Switzerland is known for being neutral in twentieth Century world wars. They are known for their international banking industry. Perhaps the Swiss are known for a delicious cheese that is perfect on a ham sandwich or with a glass of wine. Or maybe they are known for making tiny pocket knives. Maybe you didn't know that my favorite theologian, John Calvin, spent the better part of his pastoring life in the city of Geneva, Switzerland.

But the Swiss are also known for clocks. As it turns out, the dispersed population in the mountainous country of Switzerland meant clockmaking was a bit of a cottage industry of various skilled craftsmen, and the Swiss became very good at it. For many years, clockmaking was an elite trade. This is primarily because the craftsmanship required to make clocks that actually kept accurate time was very precise. So there developed in Switzerland a rather elite industry of making watches and clocks using a very precise technology of gears and resistors to ensure the most accurate products.

Then came along Max Hetzel. Max Hetzel was a Swiss Engineer who worked for a watchmaking company in Neuchatel Switzerland. In 1954, Hetzel discovered quartz technology. This enabled Hetzel to develop an entirely new internal mechanism for timekeeping. Hetzel replaced the old system of intricate gears and resistors with a single miniature tuning fork that resonated an exact frequency of 360hz. By 1960, Hetzel honed this device to power the gears of a wristwatch that kept accurate time within a margin of 12 seconds per year. The watch was easier to make, required less battery power, and was infinitely more accurate than any timekeeping device ever invented (except maybe the sundial). Max Hetzel discovered something that would forever change clockmaking.

By the twentieth century, global competition for watches and clocks was becoming tight. Max had found a solution to an obstacle that was becoming more persistent for Swiss clockmakers. With Max’s discovery of quartz technology to power clocks and watches, the longstanding tradition of Swiss clockmaking had found a path to competitive dominance. The Swiss could preserve their place as the best clockmakers in the world and continue to produce far superior timepieces than anybody else. And now they could keep doing this in a way that would ensure they could also be competitive in a global market. An obstacle of global competition produced a new way forward. Max gave the Swiss clockmaking industry and ‘up next’ moment.

Sometimes obstacles do that. Barriers can interrupt the regular routine of our daily lives and force our attention to find and ‘up next’ moment. But, barriers and obstacles can also be frustrating. Life would be so much easier if we didn’t have to keep bumping up into obstacles in our path. It is both an opportunity and an obstruction to our way forward.

Detours and Dead Ends

Let’s deal with that. I started this series a few weeks ago with the challenge to start thinking about whatever it is that God is placing right in front of you as a next step forward in your walk of faith. And you don’t get too far down that track until some kind of obstacle gets in the way and you have to start asking yourself some questions. Is this really the next step that God wants me to take? Is God placing this barrier in front of me to tell me I’m doing the wrong thing? Or is this barrier a work of Satan’s demons trying to dissuade me because I AM in fact doing the right thing? Is this a detour that needs a corrective run-around to stay on course? Or is this a dead end telling me to turn back? How do you know?

I’ve asked you to start thinking about what your ‘up next’ moment might be. How do you know if the next step you see in front of you is the right thing? Or to put the question into something a little more precise, what happens when some kind of obstacles start getting in the way?

What does my ‘up next’ moment look like?

What are the obstacles and barriers keeping me from it?

Bring it back to the story from 1 Kings. Elijah is coming off a huge win. God has just demonstrated a show of force on Mount Carmel that annihilates all the false prophets of the false god Baal. God showed up in his iconic fashion with fire and power. God showed up in a way that made it certain to all the Israelites there on Mount Carmel that YAHWEH alone is supreme in all the universe. This showdown of the gods was a complete one-sided victory. This is the scene that Elijah has just walked away from.

And now, only a few short verses later, he is running for his life. What happened? God had won the contest on Mount Carmel. God was now sending rains back on the farmlands after years of drought. This ought to be the victory lap moment, not the run and hide moment. So what happened? How did Elijah get so turned around? What got in his way?

I suppose the preacher answer is that he stopped trusting God for a moment. But that’s moralizing an answer in a way that takes away from the story. So let’s stick with what the story tells us because this is where God reveals something of his message for our lives as well. Wicked queen Jezebel hears about what has happened on Mount Carmel. She hears about the way in which her god, Baal, did not even show up for the fight. She hears about the way that YAHWEH, the God of the Israelites undeniably shows who is ruler of the universe. She hears about the way that Elijah commands the Israelites to put all of Baal’s prophets to the sword.

You would think that Jezebel might come to repentance in this moment and realize that Baal is a phony. But no. Instead she comes down twice as hard of Elijah with an imminent death threat. She wants Elijah dead by the next day. Does that count as an obstacle? Someone with royal authority is trying to kill me. Is this a detour or is this a dead end? Is God giving me a course correction or is this a sign that I should abandon ship and a get out of town?

The threat from Jezebel is not really the obstacle here. She is not the barrier getting in the way of Elijah taking the next step forward. The actual obstacle is in verse three. The author of 1 Kings lays out the barrier between Elijah and his next steps from God with three words.

Elijah was afraid.

That’s’ the obstacle getting in the way of Elijah moving on to his ‘up next’ moment. Fear is what is keeping Elijah from taking the next step forward. Fear is what pushed Elijah to turn completely around and run clear out of the country. It’s actually a pretty common obstacle. Of all the commands that God gives in the Bible, the most repeated command from God is to not be afraid; to be bold; to be strong; to have courage. Fear is still a pretty common obstacle. Chances are that at some point in your walk of faith there has been an opportunity of some kind to take a step forward into an ‘up next’ moment that has passed you by because we find ourselves too afraid to take that step.

It can be a fear of the unknown, a fear of what I might lose along the way, a fear of failure in my efforts to take a step forward. Narrow the list for a moment. Let’s think about the opportunities to take a next step right here at this church. Maybe it’s an opportunity to sign up to be a mentor, maybe you know that you are ready to make public profession of faith, maybe you are a regular visitor who has never made the move to join and become a member, maybe you stay away from joining a small group or a Bible study, maybe you have never signed up to participate in our choir or some other volunteer service. In any of those examples right here at this church, what is it that is holding you back? Is there a fear of some kind that is getting in the way? Is there an obstacle to that next step which—in all honesty—is a barrier of your own making?

We cannot confront and work around the barriers in front of us if we will not first of all be honest to identify and admit what those obstacles are and where they come from. I can say over and over again, God I am just not sure it is the right time for me to join a small group or for me to make public profession of faith. But I cannot fool God when the thing that holds me back is not a question of timing, but that I am simply afraid to do it.

Removing Barriers

What do we do about that? How do we go about removing those obstacles that get in the way of our ‘up next’ moments? Or to put the question a little more accurately, how does God help us move around barriers?

Look what happens for Elijah. Right at the moment when Elijah gives up all hope, God shows up. Elijah lays down and falls asleep under a bush in the desert. And it is an angel of God who awakens Elijah to be nourished with just enough strength to make it to the next step of the journey. It takes Elijah forty days to cross the desert to Mount Horeb. The number forty in the Bible is always symbolic of completion. Elijah is given enough strength to complete the journey in front of him.

Mount Horeb is a familiar place in scripture. It also goes by the name Mount Sinai. It is the same Mountain on which God met with Moses. This is the mountain upon with Moses received the ten commandments from God. It was on this very same mountain that God came down in fire and thunder and smoke and revealed himself to Moses and all the people.

Elijah was no stranger to this either. Because he was there on mount Carmel when God revealed himself again to all the people in that exact same way. It was also on Mount Carmel that God came down in fire and smoke for all the people to see. Elijah was there. He knew this moment.

How is God showing up when I face obstacles?

But look at what happens. There is wind and there is earthquake and there is fire. This is the expected condition for God to make himself known. This is the exact way in which Elijah figures God to be there. Except this time God is not there. God is not in the storm and the fire and the smoke. This time God shows up in the silent calm. God backs off from his majestic show of power for a moment and gets in close enough for a whispered conversation.

In this whispered conversation, God gives Elijah a chance to revise his answer. The first time, while Elijah was still in the cave, God asks him, What are you doing here? Elijah answers God by not just blaming Jezebel, but pinning the blame on all of God’s people for killing all of God’s prophets. Elijah spills out a ‘woe-is-me’ excuse blaming everyone else but himself. Then God asks him the exact same question again. No Elijah; tell me why you are really here. But he won’t admit it. Elijah still insists on blaming everyone else and feeling sorry for himself.

What obstacles are of my own making?

I have to admit, if I were God I think this would have been the moment to scold Elijah for his pity-party excuse and his lack of faith lost in his own fears. But I am not God and this is not what God does. God reminds Elijah that there are yet thousands in Israel who worship the LORD. The number 7000 is again symbolic as a combination of 7 and 1000 (the number of God’s activity within creation X the number of a great multitude beyond counting).

God comes and gives Elijah exactly what he needs right then: an ‘up next’ moment to help getting past his fears. Anoint two new kings and a new prophet as his successor. Be assured that those who mean to kill you will not escape these three. Let go of your fear and get back up again and take that next step forward.

Rerouting

Elijah was rerouted by God in just the right way to step beyond his own fears and shortcomings. And Elijah goes on from this story to complete those tasks. He takes those steps forward. He does what God puts in front of him as a new and altered route to keep moving.

Is God rerouting my 'up next' moment so I can overcome my obstacles?

Rerouting isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. Sometimes rerouting in a direction we didn’t foresee can turn out to be the very best thing. Obstacles and barriers don’t always have to be dead ends. Excuses for why I cannot or will not take that next step in faith is always met by a God who responds with that gentle whisper to reassure us it will be okay as long as we continue to follow Jesus.

Max Hetzel saw an obstacle in the face of his skilled craft of quality clock making. As it turns out, the guild of professional Swiss clockmakers rejected Hetzel’s improvements. As far as they were concerned, there would only ever be one way to make watches and clocks according to the same traditional standards of their fathers and grandfathers. They couldn’t imagine continuing in their beloved trade in any other way than the way they had always known before.

Skilled Swiss clockmakers of the mid-twentieth century could not see past the obstacles in front of them. They would not allow themselves to be rerouted in a path forward that would get them ahead. In the end, the barriers blocking their way forward were obstacles they put in place because they simply would not make room to accept anything other than what they had always known before.

Max Hetzel ended up selling his quartz watch technology to a Japanese company, Seiko. In less than ten years, Japanese watch companies like Seiko and Casio took over and dominated the timepiece industry. Swiss clockmakers went out of business. They had the answer right in front of them. But they just could not get past their own reluctance to take that next step forward.

When God reroutes a way for the next step in front of you, what are you going to do? Hold onto the barriers that keep you stuck, or hold onto Jesus who opens a way forward?

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