The Dullness After the Drama

Good morning, Burwood Church. It is good to be with you this morning. I don’t think I’ve spoken at Burwood since the lockdown days, when I had to record a video for you. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jeremy, and I also lead a church plant called Avenue. It’s good to be here with a lot of familiar faces, and I’m excited to share a word with you today.

Respected or loved?

I’ve realised that when it comes to life, there are two groups of people in this world: those who are respected and those who are loved.

I thought about this framework when I spent one semester at a small university in New South Wales, Avondale. It’s a very small, very intimate place, a different environment from your typical university. I was the fresh kid on the block, but I was also a fourth-year student. I was coming into a first-year environment with fourth-year energy, trying to make sense of the dynamics and find my place in it all. It felt like going back to school. When I was graduating, a few friends came up and asked me how things were going. I said, “I think I’m respected, but I’m not loved.”

You can use the same framework for your social settings. There are people who are respected. They’re admired and looked up to from a distance, but you don’t feel close to them. Then there are people who are loved. They’re okay with showing their flaws and being really authentic. The problem is that people who are warm but not respected might not be taken seriously, while people who are respected but not loved may not feel real. You don’t see the real version of them.

I thought I’d made this up until I started researching and came across a communication coach called Vanessa Van Edwards. She talks about the traits of charisma, and she says two things make a charismatic person. The first is that they’re highly competent. The second is that they’re highly warm. Warmth and competence together create charisma. Warmth means loved, and competence means respected.

It made me think about how God communicates with us. Does he lean towards competence, or towards warmth? Does he come with power, majesty and glory, so that we admire him? Or does he come near to us with gentleness and meekness? Highly competent people without warmth are respected but distant. Highly warm people without competence are loved but dismissed. I want to suggest that God holds the two in perfect tension.

Today we’re going to look at a passage about Elijah. Thank you for that amazing children’s story, which set the scene so perfectly. Elijah was probably the best-known prophet in the Bible, and through his life and ministry we learn the picture of God: the many-sided nature of God, sovereign and yet close.

The drama on Mount Carmel

For some context, Elijah has seen God work in miraculous ways. Just before this text, God has shown up dramatically for him. Elijah has gone through three years of famine with no rain, because he prophesied to King Ahab, a terrible king, that because of his wickedness there would be three years without rain. The famine ends when Elijah has a contest with the king on Mount Carmel, between the prophets of Baal and Elijah. Elijah says, “Whoever sends fire from heaven is the true God.” Fire falls from heaven and consumes the offering, something you can’t put down to science. It’s purely a miracle. And then rain begins to fall after three years of drought.

You’d think Elijah would feel on top of the world and extremely victorious. But what we see next is that Elijah hits a state of depression. He becomes extremely sad. This is where we pick up the story.

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 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.”

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 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.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” 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.

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.” 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. 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?”

— 1 Kings 19:1–9

What more does Elijah need?

I’ve read this story many times, and every time one question comes to mind: what is wrong with Elijah? What more does he need to know that God is real, and that God is for him and not against him? Elijah is experiencing the kind of miracles we dream of. He’s seen fire fall from heaven. He’s seen the clouds open after three years without rain. God has used him powerfully, and he’s seen God work firsthand.

But when Elijah doesn’t get the outcome he desires, he feels incredibly depressed. Even though he’s seen God work mightily, the outcome hasn’t been what he hoped for. Israel hasn’t turned back to Yahweh. Ahab and Jezebel haven’t repented. In fact they’re hunting him down. He hasn’t made the difference he hoped to make. God has done the impossible and shown himself sovereign over all things, and even then it hasn’t worked the way Elijah hoped. No wonder he’s depressed.

Many of us base our faith on signs and circumstances. We try to live from one high to the next. “That feeling I once had. If only I could get it back.” We do the same with our spiritual experience. We go from one church service to another, from one conference to another, trying to get the next spiritual kick. When you think about it, going about our spirituality that way is no different from what the world offers in terms of a dopamine fix. We’ve just tailored it in a spiritual way.

God is calling us to a faith that runs deeper than chasing the fleeting spiritual highs of the moment. What we see in Elijah’s life is that he falls into resentment: towards life, towards ministry and towards God. You can imagine what he’s thinking. “God, I’ve served you faithfully, all alone, all by myself, and this is what I get? After everything I’ve done for you?” Pride is probably building. He’s saying, “God, I don’t deserve this.” Elijah had come to live in the realm of the spectacular, from one dramatic experience to the next, and living that way left him high and dry and unsatisfied.

I get that, because I resonate with Elijah. In my life right now I really believe I’m living in the answers to prayers I prayed long ago. Just a few weeks ago I was living off a bit of a spiritual high myself. I’ve seen God work in powerful, miraculous ways. I’ve seen people’s lives changed, going from not knowing God to being completely transformed by Jesus. One of my friends, Spencer, who’s here today, had an amazing experience where God completely turned his life around, and I got to be part of that. I get to be part of a church I had the opportunity to start. I prayed one day in 2015, and wrote it in my journal, “God, I pray you would use me one day to start a church,” and I get to live in that now. I prayed that I’d be part of a church that would write its own songs, and recently we had a showcase of original songs that was such a powerful experience. And then I got to hang out and record a podcast with my faith hero, who I think is the church-planting GOAT. I thought I’d be over the moon with God just showing up and answering prayers I’d prayed so long ago.

But if I’m honest, pretty much the next week I fell into a state of resentment, just like Elijah. Instead of being grateful for the adventure God was taking me on, I started thinking about the things I didn’t have. I got frustrated with people for not doing what I hoped they would, and frustrated with circumstances that weren’t going the way I hoped. When we start living off spiritual highs, normal life starts to feel like a let-down. We start expecting God to perform, rather than learning to abide with him and live with him. I think God had begun to show me a different way of faith, the same way he showed Elijah.

The cave

The text is extremely rich, and I want to draw out a few things. It says Elijah went into a cave. Get out a pen and your Bible, because I’m going to get you to cross out a word and change the Bible. That sounds really bad, but when you look at it in Hebrew, something interesting pops up.

In English we read “a cave,” the indefinite article. In the original language there’s a word just before “cave.” Can you turn to your neighbour and say “ha”? Ha. Sounds like you’re laughing. That word, ha, means “the.” It’s the definite article. So we shouldn’t read this as “a cave.” We should read it as the cave. It’s pointing to a specific cave.

Which cave? Elijah is on Mount Sinai, which was very significant for the Israelites. It was a sacred mountain, because on it God revealed himself to Moses and showed him his glory. On this same mountain, God says to Moses:

There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.

— Exodus 33:21–23

The cleft in the rock where God hid Moses is potentially the same cave Elijah is hiding in. Why is that significant? I believe Elijah is hoping for an experience like Moses’. He knew the story. He knew Moses got to see the glory of God. He’s probably thinking, “I’ve just had this awesome high, with fire from heaven, and now I’m depressed. Maybe if I get another experience, like Moses’, that would be enough.”

But God shows Elijah that he doesn’t always move in the realm of the extraordinary and dramatic.

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. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 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?” 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.”

— 1 Kings 19:11–14 (selected)

Elijah is probably thinking, “Finally, this is it. I’m going to get the Moses experience again.” Notice that God says the same thing twice: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He was trying to speak to Elijah in the cave with that voice, but Elijah didn’t think that was enough. He wanted something supernatural. So God says, in effect, “Let me show you how you’re to live out your faith and have relationship with me.” Winds, earthquakes and fires were known precursors of God’s coming. It’s like Avatar: The Last Airbender. Winds, earthquakes, fire. You can imagine Elijah gripping his seat: finally, I get to experience what Moses experienced. Then something very anticlimactic happens. The same voice he heard before speaks again, with the same words: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

A God who whispers

Let me link this back to what I said at the start. God is a charismatic God who displays competence, power and majesty. But he is also a God of warmth. He comes near. He makes himself vulnerable to us, and he whispers to us. The only way you can hear someone whisper is if you’re up close to them. That’s why God speaks to Elijah in a tender whisper. He’s showing Elijah, “Yes, I can do all these majestic, powerful things, but I care more about being close to you. I care more about being alongside you, being intimate with you.”

This quote has always stuck with me:

Perhaps the problem with such displays of power, and the reason God patently refrains from speaking in such ways most of the time, is that they belie the fundamental gentleness and intimacy of his heart. Dramatic revelations impress for sure, but they can also intimidate, dominate and alienate those on the receiving end. And so the potentate of time, creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime, chooses to whisper in our ear way more than he shouts from the skies. If we are ever to feel truly safe in the warmth of God, then we must learn to listen to the voice of God in the anticlimax of life’s events, in the ordinary, in the mundane.

Boring beats brilliance

About a year ago I was at the end of a conference, and a mentor came up to me and asked, “What’s going on in your life, and how can I pray for you?” I replied, “I’m kind of bored with my faith and my ministry. I’m doing what I love, but it’s not exciting me the way it used to.” I expected him to pray against that boredom and help me feel excited again, to renew the youthful passion I once had, even though I’m still pretty young. Instead, he prayed into the boring. He prayed that I would become more bored. It didn’t make sense at the time, but I think I get it now.

A boring faith is not necessarily a bad faith, just as a boring kind of love is not necessarily a bad kind of love. It’s in the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday, that any relationship is won and lost. Tyler Staton writes:

Love is easy at the first and at the last. It’s effortless in the honeymoon stage, when you’re infatuated with each other, touchy, talkative and smitten. And love is like breathing for the old couple with decades into a mature love, aged to perfection like a fine wine. But all those years in between, love in the midst of building a career, raising kids, establishing a life and facing trials: those are the long years when love has to be worked at and fought for. These are the years when early infatuation is matured into the old couple’s effortless union. Those are the years when love is won and lost.

Like love, prayer comes easy at the first and at the last, for sinners and saints. But all those years in between, those are the important ones. Prayer is about relationship, and that means fidelity is the only container within which it can truly flourish.

Boring beats brilliance every single time. Boring isn’t always exciting, fancy or exhilarating, and for someone like me who loves adrenaline, risk and highs, it doesn’t have that. But boring is consistent, and consistency builds any kind of relationship. Consistency is how we learn the heart of God and become captivated by his wonder all over again. It’s how we build a relationship with God that’s meaningful, lasting and fruitful, and that will endure: a boring kind of faith, a humble obedience to what God is calling you to do, listening to those small promptings, those little whispers, and showing up and obeying.

The whisper on the cross

Jesus could have revealed his glory to us in many ways. He could have shown himself in a pillar of cloud, as he has done. He could have split open the rocks, as he has done. He could have shown himself through great winds, as he has done, or sent fire from heaven, as he has done. Instead, he does it on a cross. He reveals himself in the humblest, meekest way known to man. On a cross, Jesus made himself completely vulnerable and completely exposed, showing that he isn’t only a God who is powerful and competent and can do anything we could imagine. He’s also a God who wants to be close to us, a God who isn’t afraid to make himself vulnerable to us and to show us who he truly is.

The greatest display of God’s glory wasn’t found in dramatic, supernatural phenomena. It was found on a criminal’s cross. Through that cross, we now know who God is. He can show himself in majestic, splendorous ways, but I think he prefers to whisper to our hearts. He doesn’t simply want to intimidate us with crazy signs and wonders. He wants to be intimate.

Perhaps God is whispering to your heart today. He’s saying, “What are you doing here?” He’s not showing up in supernatural, miraculous ways. He’s trying to teach you a simple heart and a simple faith, the faith of listening to the little promptings he puts on your heart. And the question for you is, will you respond? Or will you chase the next fix, the next spiritual high? Are you basing your faith on the moment, or walking with Jesus every single day? Are you being faithful? Are you listening to the whisper of God?