... then the word of the Lord came...

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah… 1 Kings 17:2

Then the word of the Lord came to him… 1 Kings 17:8

After a long time, in the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah… 1 Kings 18:1

The Bible introduces us to the prophet Elijah out of nowhere in 1 Kings 17:1: “Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab (that’s the evil king of Israel), ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word’”.

We know virtually nothing about Elijah’s “back-story” – just that his home town was “Tishbe in Gilead”, which doesn’t mean a lot to us. But he was, it seems, a bringer mainly of bad news, news of the judgment of God. He dominates the next few chapters in a sequence of highly dramatic events, and then is “taken up to heaven in a whirlwind”, leaving his servant Elisha to succeed him (2 Kings 2).

An enigmatic figure! He was (still is, I think) revered by the people of Israel, and his status as a major figure in their history is confirmed by the story of the “transfiguration” of Jesus told in Matthew 17, where he appears alongside Jesus with no less a person than Moses.

Listening recently to a sermon on Elijah I was particularly struck not so much by any of the dramatic events which are to come but by that little phrase “the word of the Lord came to Elijah” (three times in this first episode). It made me want to ask the simple question, “How? How exactly did this happen? In what form did the word of the Lord come to Elijah?”

In the many years I have been a Christian I have often wondered vaguely what the answer to that question might be. But the key word there is “vaguely”; it’s not something I’ve ever seriously got to grips with. One might say, of course, that since the Bible doesn’t tell us we should be content not to know. But the minds God has given us often run to curiosity, and, unless we have some sense of trespassing on sacred ground, allowing that curiosity to probe a little is surely not wrong.

As Christians we believe that God is a God who speaks, and our chief means of hearing his word is Scripture, the inspired books of the Old and New Testaments. But thinking of the people we meet in scripture, whether an Old Testament figure like Elijah or a New Testament figure like Paul and the Gospel-writers, that of course cannot apply, for the very simple reason that while they were active “the Bible” as a complete book didn’t yet exist! Most of us today probably have a variety of different versions of the Bible on our shelves; but for Elijah there was no such thing as “the Old Testament” (never mind the New!) for him to read a passage of day by day.

So, going back to where we started, the question arises: How did Elijah know about the coming drought? Did he hear an audible voice, perhaps coming to him in his own times of prayer or in a dream or some kind of trance-like state? Or did he know a fellow-prophet who passed on the message to him? Did he simply survey the disastrous twenty-two-year reign of King Ahab, who ruled over Israel roughly 874-852 before Jesus (summed up at the end of 1Kings 16) and feel a grim sense of foreboding which hardened into a conviction that the judgment of God was going to fall in the form of drought?

There is no way we can be sure. But it prompts various questions about how we as Christians can receive “the word of the Lord”.

As I’ve said, our regular interaction with the Bible is the obvious, and most important, starting-point. We read it day by day; we receive it through sermons, Bible-studies, commentaries and other kinds of literature; we may use some daily “thought for the day” on-line or even in an old-fashioned calendar. But how can we know for sure that some truth we are reminded of is particularly for us personally?

Of course, we are not an Elijah, or a Moses, or a Matthew, or a Paul. These were people with a special calling from God, people he dealt with in a special way. But God speaks to all his people, whether great or small, and that includes us. There are questions which I find myself wanting to ask – please join me next time as I try to explore some of the possibilities and to challenge us as to our hunger for God’s word…

Father in heaven, if you are indeed a God who speaks to his people, how can I possibly afford not to listen! Indeed, how dare I not listen? Please forgive my deaf ears and my hard heart, and teach me to listen better to your voice. Amen.