Never give up - Elijah

Elijah

Never Give up on Yourself - God does not give up on You

Background context 1 Kings 18

1 Kings 19

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It’s good to be with you guys again. Did you all have a good mother’s day weekend?

Your moms are important and every day you should treat your moms like it's mother’s day.

In this series, we have been talking about certain things we should not be giving up on. We talked about not giving up on ourselves by learning about resilience when we looked a bit at the life of Paul and we also talked about not giving up on others through the story of Ruth and her relationship with Naomi.

Today's bottom line is, Never give up on yourself because God does not give up on you.

To start just as we did the last few times we are going to get into our small groups, and I’m going to put up a prompt and you’ll tell me whether or not you agree or disagree with it and explain yourself.

I feel like I have a lot of pressure on me from other people to be something or do something.

I feel like a failure when I don’t live up to my expectations or someone else's.

I feel like I’m not good enough to do what God wants me to do.

Again I will give you a place in small groups to talk more about these things. But for now, let's get into the meat of our conversation.

We are going to look at a story of a man in the Bible who has to be one of my favorite Bible Characters named Elijah

(Slide)

Talk through the slide and Baal Worship including Elijah’s defeat of Baal by proving God’s authority and reality 1 kings 18:20-45

Jezebel was the King’s wife and because of Elijah doing this, she wanted to kill him. Jezebel was the reason why Baal worship came back into Israel.

But Elijah ran away look with me here in 1 Kings 19:3-5

Then Elijah became afraid and immediately ran for his life. When he came to Beer-sheba that belonged to Judah, he left his servant there, but he went on a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. He said, “I have had enough! Lord, take my life, for I’m no better than my fathers.” Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree.

Here’s the thing Elijah just did this bold thing by standing before 400 Baal priests and killing all of them. He could have died there. But When Jezebel desired to Kill Elijah something changed. And after studying this passage a bit, we see that Elijah wasn’t afraid for losing his life by Jezebel. He feared God. His job was to help the kingdom turn back to worshipping God again, but Jezebel was so committed to Baal worship that even though Elijah did this awesome thing to prove God was real, she didn’t want to stop Baal worship.

Elijah ran away feeling like a failure since Jezebel didn’t change her heart.

Elijah was ready to give up and prayed to God to kill him. Kill me, I’m not better than my fathers. Basically saying that the same prophets before him failed too because everyone is still straying away from following you.

And he fell asleep.

I think sometimes we might feel this way too. When we don’t achieve what people want us to achieve. We feel like failures because our lives don’t like the lives of people on social media. We feel like we are not good enough because we keep falling back into sin over and over and over again after we promise never to do it again.

We might think that death is way better than life sometimes.

But the story does not end there.

1 Kings 19:5b-9

Suddenly an angel touched him. The angel told him, “Get up and eat.” Then he looked over, and there he saw a loaf of bread baked over hot stones, and a jug of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again. Then the angel of the Lord returned for a second time and touched him. He said, “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.” So he got up, ate, and drank. Then on the strength from that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God. He entered a cave there and spent the night.

What Happened?

Elijah felt like a failure and ran away. He wanted to die because he wasn’t able to help turn the nation of Israel back to worshipping God.

What’s True No Matter What?

God did not see Elijah as a failure and still had a purpose for him.

How Did Elijah Respond

Elijah ate the food that God provided for him miraculously and went to where God called him next.

Right when Elijah was in a moment of crisis and giving up on himself for feeling like a failure, God sends him an angel. And you wanna hear something cool. In the Old Testament, when we see the term angel of the LORD, you know who that is? It’s actually Jesus. In the old testament, Jesus wasn’t given a name yet so the old testament authors couldn’t label him with this name. But parallels to the new testament actually show us that this angel of the Lord was actually Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. So not only did God not give up on Elijah, He personally came to help him and give him a new assignment.

Listen to me when I say this, God has not given up on you even when you’ve given up on yourself. He sent His Son Jesus to pay for your sins by dying on a cross, resurrecting from the dead, and then he ascended into heaven so that he could send God the Holy Spirit to dwell in you.

If you have believed in Jesus Christ, no mistake you have made is big enough that God can’t take care of.

You are no failure to God. You are worth saving and helping to Him. And guess what, He gives you a great purpose. Your purpose is not in living up to people’s expectations and trying to please people. Your purpose is rooted in living a life of gratitude for what God has done for you.

For time’s sake, I can’t go through the whole story of Elijah but would suggest reading His story from 1 Kings 17- 2 Kings 2. It’s amazing.

God had such a great purpose for Elijah that Elijah actually never experienced death. He was taken up to heaven by a chariot of fire. Because Elijah also will have a purpose in the apocalypse of the world. And just like Elijah, when you trust in Jesus, you will also never experience death. You will live forever with God. You might suffer and experience physical death one day, but your spirit will live on with God forever.

Don’t give up on yourself because God will not give up on you.