Hillcrest
UMC, June 20, 2010
1 Kings
19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
The Still
Small Voice
In this scripture reading, God speaks to the prophet Elijah in a “still small voice,” a “still small voice. That was the older, King James Version translation of what the New Revised Standard Version calls “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kgs. 19:12).
Elijah, the prophet is in the right place to hear the LORD’s voice. He is on Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, where the Ten Commandments and other laws were given to Moses. You remember Elijah’s earlier confrontation with the 400 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. He taunted the prophets of Baal, who could not call down fire to consume their sacrifices. He then drenched his own sacrifices, including the altar, and called down fire from the God of heaven to consume the sacrifices. And he led the people in slaughtering the priests of Baal. Then he outran Ahab’s chariot in the return from Mount Carmel to Jezreel (1 Kgs., chap. 18)—and that without a Lambourgini, or even a Toyota!
But when “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah and done, and how he had killed all the prophets [of Baal] with the sword” (1 Kgs. 19:1)—with the help of the people, of course (1 Kgs. 18:40)—Jezebel swore to kill him as well (1 Kgs. 19:2). In fear for his life Elijah ran again. We next find him at Beer-sheba, some fifty miles further south (1 Kgs. 19:3). That, of course, put him well out of Jezebel’s reach. But we soon find Elijah in a very depressed condition. It’s tempting to suggest the highs and lows of a manic depressive disorder. But of course it’s not in order to attempt to psychoanalyze him from a distance of some 28 or 29 hundred years. And I’m certainly not qualified to psychoanalyze him, or any one else, anyway. But listen to him. Elijah “went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep” (1 Kgs. 19:4-5a).
But the LORD didn’t leave Elijah in this depressed condition. He sent an angel who “touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat’ ” (1 Kgs. 19:5b). So Elijah ate and drank from what the angel had prepared, “a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water,” and he “lay down again” (1 Kgs. 19:6). This was repeated. “Get up and eat,” says the angel, “otherwise the journey will be too much for you” (1 Kgs. 19:7). So Elijah did as he was told. “He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God” (1 Kgs. 19:8). His pace slowed down considerably, taking forty days and forty nights to travel the nearly 200 miles or so from Beersheba in the south of Judah on to Mt. Horeb/Sinai. But that’s where we meet him next.
When God confronts him, Elijah describes his present situation. He has been very strong as the Lord’s advocate, but now he fears for his life. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” asks the LORD (1 Kgs. 19:9b). Elijah answers, “I have been very zealous for the LORD the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away” (1 Kgs. 19:10).
We shouldn’t play down the seriousness of Elijah’s situation. The threat to his life was certainly very real. On the other hand, we should remind ourselves that Elijah was on the Lord’s side in a major religious conflict. Was Israel to worship their God, the creator who made heaven and earth? Or would they fall into the worship of the gods of their Canaanite neighbors? Sometimes, in our own lives, it is in extreme situations, when we face problems and don’t know which way to turn, that in a moment of silence and reflection, we hear the voice of God most clearly.
In response to Elijah’s complaint, God says, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by” (1 Kgs. 19:11a). This is a promise of a word from the Lord, a word that Elijah needs. But this word from the Lord does not come in the manner that Elijah must have expected. “Now there was a great wind,” says the narrator, “so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD” (1 Kgs. 19:11b). Baal was a storm god. And sometimes, according to Robert R. Wilson, wind, earthquake and fire were “associated with God (Ex. 19:16; 20:18; Deut. 4:11; 5:22-24 . . .), but . . . God is not to be identified with these natural phenomena” (the HarperCollins Study Bible, rev. ed., 2006, on 1 Kgs. 19:11-12). The narrator here is emphatic: “the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire” (1 Kgs. 19:11c-12a).
How often do we expect, or even ask for, something dramatic as a sign of the Lord’s presence and leading in our lives? “Lord, if you would just do this, or that, for me, then I would know that you are with me, and I would serve you.” Do we say things like that sometimes? Sometimes we need to trust God in spite of the circumstances, so to speak.
For Elijah, the Lord was not in the wind; he was not in the earthquake; and he was not in the fire. Instead, says our narrator, “and after the fire, a sound of sheer silence,” or, in the familiar King James Version translation, “a still small voice.” (1 Kgs. 19:12b). The Hebrew phrase is qôl demāmāh daqqāh. According to William L. Holladay, the word daqqāh can mean “thin,” or “fine,” but here means “soft (quiet)” (A ConciseHebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1971, 1988, s.v. daq). He defines demāmā as “calm (of wind), cessation of any strong air movement” (ibid., s.v. demāmā), so he translates the phrase as a “humming stillness” (ibid.).
From this “humming stillness” or “sheer silence”—paradoxical terms?—or the still small voice, the LORD speaks to Elijah. “When Elijah heard it [i.e., heard this still small voice], he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave” (1 Kgs. 19:13a). The Lord, it seems, has gotten his attention. “Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ ” (1 Kgs. 19:13b). And Elijah repeats his earlier answer. “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of Hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away” (1 Kgs. 19:14, cf. v. 10). The Lord directs Elijah to go back, to retrace his steps and resume his work as a prophet to Israel. Later in the book as we saw earlier this month, he will confront Ahab about Naboth’s vineyard. But our present reading concludes with the Lord’s command that Elijah return.
You and I are not prophets like Elijah. But the question for us today is, Can the Lord speak to us as he spoke to Elijah? If he speaks, will we hear? And if we hear, will we obey?
I can’t say that I have heard the Lord speak to me in an audible voice. But there have been times when I had a very strong impression that I believe was from the Lord. The Friends, that is, the Quakers, have a tradition that in worship one who is moved speaks out of the silence, as they say. A few years ago I attended a national meeting of Friends ministers and leaders. Richard Foster, the author of Celebration of Discipline, was scheduled to speak. It was a large auditorium, full of several hundred people. Richard Foster came out and sat down in silence, silence that lasted perhaps five or six minutes. Then he began to speak. I believe he was following the Quaker tradition of speaking out of the silence.
Robert Barclay, an early Friends theologian, wrote about how God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. “Seeing ‘no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son revealeth him’; and seeing the ‘revelation of the Son is in and by the Spirit’ (Matt. 11:27); therefore the testimony of the Spirit is that alone by which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can be only revealed . . . these divine inward revelations, which we make absolutely necessary for the building up of true faith, neither do nor can ever contradict the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or of the natural reason of man. There is perhaps a hint here of the Methodist quadrilateral basis of truth for Christians: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.
In a sermon on “The Witness of Our Own Spirit,” John Wesley quotes scripture “This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world” (2 Cor. 1:12). Wesley explains “the nature and ground of a Christian’s joy. We know, in general, it is that happy peace, that calm satisfaction of spirit, which arises from such a testimony of his conscience, as is here described by the Apostle” (Sermon Twelve, The Witness of Our Own Spirit,” on the Internet Web Site, Wesley Center Online, http://wesley.nnu.edu/john_wesley/sermons/012.htm, accessed June 20, 2010).
Tom Stewart presents an example of someone who thought he hand heard God’s “still small voice,” but was clearly mistaken.
Today, we have multitudes of people that claim to be hearing the Voice of God. And, to many, the LORD repeats that they have heard a word, "but not of Me" (Isaiah 30:1). Recently, I encountered an older gentleman, a retired military officer, who explained the concept of his Christianity with expletives. Though I pointed out to him that the New Testament was clear that our speech was not to be profane, i.e., "But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by Heaven, neither by the Earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation" (James 5:12), he proceeded unscathed to elaborate a prophetic scheme that would culminate in the return of Jesus Christ in 2003 to 2005 AD. Astonished that this seemingly irreligious man would have that much of an opinion about prophecy, I enquired how he arrived at this conclusion. "And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?" (Isaiah 8:19). He then informed me that he heard a voice speaking to him in the morning hours, and that he felt himself transported through time and space at immense speeds. I, then, referred him to the Scripture that guards us from communing with demons. "To the Law and to the Testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no Light in them" (8:20). Even the demons are aware that the time is short. (From the Internet web site, What Saith the Scripture? at http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Fellowship/Edit_Small.Voice.html, accessed June 20, 2010)
But just as the existence of counterfeit twenty dollar bills does not cancel the value of real twenty dollar bills, neither does the mistaken claim to hearing the voice of God cancel the real thing. But it is necessary as scripture says, to “test the spirits whether they are from God” (1 Jn. 4:1). Does what I believe the Lord is telling me square with scripture, tradition, reason, and experience? We Christians need to listen to the voice of the Spirit within our hearts. "Teach me to do Thy will; for Thou art my God: Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness" (Psalm 143:10). "With my whole heart have I sought Thee: O let me not wander from Thy Commandments" (Psalm 119:10).
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