July 11, 2004 — Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Christ Lutheran Church, Columbia, MD
Pastor Jeff Samelson
1 Kings 19:14-21
Never Invite God to a Pity Party
I. He Won’t Agree with You
II. He Won’t Let You Wallow
III. He Won’t Leave You Alone
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Word of God for our study this Sunday is our first lesson, 1 Kings 19:14-21:
He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken 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."
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. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. 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. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel — all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."
So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah. "Let me kiss my father and mother good-by," he said, "and then I will come with you."
"Go back," Elijah replied. "What have I done to you?"
So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his attendant. (NIV)
This is the Word of our Lord
Dear Sons and Daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus:
If you ever went to high school or college — maybe even just middle school — you have probably had to make some choices about which parties to go to. Now maybe the only parties you were ever invited to were safe ones — the wildest things ever got was someone mixing too much sugar and caffeine or playing their music too loud. Or maybe you really did have the option of attending parties your parents would never approve of. And maybe as adults long out of school some of you still have to make those choices.
But — whether you listened or not — your parents probably tried to give you some advice about how to figure out which parties you should be at and which you should avoid. And rather than give their children a checklist — “If this, this, and this are happening, go home immediately; if that thing or those others things are going on, it’s OK so long as you stay out of it”, etc. — many Christian parents over the years have instead asked their children to make a more subjective judgment. “Ask yourself,” they tell their kids, “if Jesus would be happy at the party with what was going on there. And then ask yourself if God would be happy to see you there.”
Not a bad suggestion, but it’s not very specific. And, not surprisingly, for that reason children have been known to come up with all sorts of reasons why Jesus would be happy to attend all sorts of parties with them.
But you know, there’s one type of party that lots of people — perhaps even more than a few of us here this morning — another type of party that people like to throw that I can tell you, based on this and other Scripture passages, God has absolutely no interest in. Elijah learned that lesson there in the wilderness as he struggled with discouragement and fear — he wanted God to join him in his lonely little get-together, but God would have nothing to do with it. Elijah learned: Never invite God to a pity party.
I. Now, someone holds a pity party for only one reason — to talk about how bad one’s life and circumstances are. One doesn’t want to hear, “Oh, don’t worry, things aren’t so bad,” or “Cheer up — it’s just a temporary setback” at a pity party. No, the most appreciated gifts you can bring to someone’s pity party are things like, “Oh, you poor thing! How could they do this to you?” or “I don’t know how you can do it! No one’s ever suffered like you’re suffering now.” It’s a perverse kind of pride and pleasure — to feel better because you’re feeling worse than everyone else.
And we’ve all been there at one time or another, haven’t we? Times when we just wanted to have someone affirm what we were feeling — that all the world really was against us, that it was all terribly unfair, and that we had every right and good reason to feel miserable.
That’s pretty much what Elijah seemed to want from God — he wanted the Lord to say something like, “My poor, poor boy. I’m sorry you’ve had to suffer so much because of me and my Word. You’re right — it’s not fair, and I’ll have to do something to make it up to you.”
But God wouldn’t go along. He didn’t commiserate with Elijah — he corrected him.
Now the Lord did not tell Elijah that there was nothing wrong in his life or the world, because that wouldn’t have been true either. Things were very messed up in the kingdom of Israel where God had called Elijah to serve as his prophet, and there were people out there trying to kill him. But Elijah wasn’t seeing things right — he couldn’t see past his own problems. His perspective wasn’t what it should have been, because he wasn’t looking at things with the eyes of faith.
That’s usually the situation when we’re tempted to throw ourselves a pity party. It’s not that we don’t have real problems; it’s that our perspective on life is all wrong, because we’ve taken our eyes off Christ — we’re focused so much on what’s wrong in our lives we’ve lost sight of the one thing — the one person that makes everything right. I imagine if I gave you just 30 seconds right now you could come up with an example from your own life of when that has been exactly the situation.
And that’s why if you invite God to your pity party he won’t agree with you. He’ll listen — he loves to listen — but then he’ll tell you you’re wrong. He’ll correct your perspective.
He won’t do that by telling you everything’s all right. Quite the opposite, actually — God wants all people to understand that their lives and our whole world are fundamentally messed up. He wants us to take an honest look at sin and realize that it pervades and perverts everything.
So sometimes what’s wrong in our lives is the result of sin in the world around us — we contract a disease, someone we love disappoints us; someone close to us betrays us; someone else’s ethical lapses end up costing us a raise, a promotion, or even our job; the dog really does eat your homework, whatever. But more often than not, our own sin plays a big role — the biggest role — in our problems, and God wants us to own up to it — you know, to recognize that it’s your temper that’s driving your friends away; your breaking the speed limit by 30 mph everyday that got you the ticket, not just a particularly bad day; your lustful preoccupation with other people or pictures that has poisoned your relationship with your spouse; and so on.
But God never wants to leave things there. He wants us to see our sin only so that we can better see and appreciate our Savior. Sin is the absolute biggest problem in our lives — it leads to death and hell, and it poisons everything here on earth — but God has already solved that problem in his Son, Jesus Christ. He wiped out — washed away — all of our offenses against God. Jesus defeated Satan, sin’s biggest sponsor, took away every reason for doubt or guilt, and gave us the victory over death and hell. He did this all through his suffering and death on the cross, and his Easter morning resurrection. And if that weren’t enough, Jesus also gave us his perfection — his perfect obedience to all of God’s laws, something we could never achieve on our own. In our place, he remained pure, was always responsible, always said the right thing, and always thought good thoughts. Jesus even avoided the temptation to ever throw himself a “poor me” pity party, even though as he approached the cross he was the one person in all of history of whom it can legitimately be said that everything in the world was going against him.
Through faith, all of Christ’s obedience, the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and his victory over sin, death, and Satan are ours. Yours. As Paul said in our second lesson today, “You are all sons” — and daughters — “of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” God has taken care of everything for you, because he loves you, and because you were powerless to take care of things yourself.
That was part of God’s answer to Elijah’s complaint — “Don’t worry, Elijah, I have it covered. You may not see it, but I have taken care of everything already because I love you and love all my people. I have a plan to take care of those who want you dead, and I have strengthened and kept in the one true faith over 7000 more like you. You see, Elijah, things aren’t spinning out of control — it’s all under my control.”
II. That’s not to say, of course, that God tells Elijah, or any of us to just sit on our hands and wait for God to act. The Lord, in his grace and love, won’t let that happen, either. He doesn’t give anyone the opportunity to wallow in self-pity.
“Wallow” is a good word for that, isn’t it? It makes you think of pigs wallowing in the mud on a hot summer day. It makes them comfortable for the short term, but they can’t stay there forever, and when they come up out of the muck, they bring the muck with them, messing up everything they come into contact with.
But God won’t let us do that with self-pity. He doesn’t leave us time for it really, because when we come to him with our complaints, he puts us to work to help fix what’s wrong. He’s still in charge, but he makes you a part of the solution to your problems.
Notice how he did that with Elijah. “Go back!” he said. It was King Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, who wanted to find Elijah and kill him — so God told Elijah he would be the one to anoint a new king of Aram, Israel’s big enemy, to put the pressure on them. And then Elijah would also anoint Jehu, who would actually be the one to put an end, not just to the rule of Ahab and Jezebel, but to their entire family. And as for the prophets Elijah was worried about? Elijah was also told to anoint his successor, so that his ministry of preaching the Word would continue no matter what happened to him.
Jesus did the same kind of thing with his disciples. Remember the feeding of the 5000? The disciples came to him with their problem — all those people and nothing for them to eat — and he said, “Now you give them something to eat.” He wasn’t telling them it was all up to them, but he was telling them he wanted them involved through prayer and the exercise of their faith. An even more striking example was when they saw the crowds of people, lost in sin and unbelief — Jesus referred to them as a harvest that was ripe — and he told them to ask the Lord of the harvest for workers to bring the gospel to the lost — and then he sent his disciples out as those workers.
But this idea of not being allowed to just sit and complain isn’t really new to you. Anyone who’s ever been, say, 12, knows how this works. You learned it the first time, didn’t you, when you said, “Mom, I’m bored! There’s nothing to do!” She found you something to do, didn’t she? She didn’t let you wallow — she put you to work.
And God does the same with you and me. Sure, we have plenty we can complain about — some very legitimate complaints — and there are quite a few things that just aren’t going right in our lives, in our families, in our congregation. God wants us to bring our problems to him, but he’s not likely to let us just leave it at that. He’ll tell you to quit waiting for the “magic bullet” that will solve your personal problems and just do something — “get going, go back the way you came.” He’ll want you to work on fixing your broken relationships with love, patience, forgiveness, and good communication. He’ll expect us to quit waiting for someone else to deal with problems that affect and belong to each of us. And the Lord of all grace will certainly not let us just sit around and moan about how bad things are — that’s not his way, and that’s not how his children behave.
Elisha gives us a good example of how God’s children by faith do behave. Though he had an occupation already, when God called him to service, he left everything to serve. Though he was a rich man — 12 yoke of oxen was a sign of considerable wealth — Elisha didn’t think that just giving money was enough to solve his people’s problems — he gave his time, gave his skills, gave himself in order to serve in the kingdom of God. Now we’re not all called to be public ministers of the Word, but every child of God is called to service, and Elisha shows us what that means.
III. Elisha also illustrates another thing that God does when you invite him to your pity party — he won’t leave you alone. You know, Elijah really shouldn’t have been feeling so discouraged at this point in his ministry — just a short time earlier God had used him gloriously in the showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel — a huge victory for the servants of God — and all the people had been led to acknowledge that the Lord was the true God, and Baal was nothing. By all respects, Elijah should have been on a spiritual and emotional high — but he wasn’t.
We can guess that one of the reasons for that was the fact that he was alone. There was no godly companion to help him see the good over the bad or encourage him in the face of the opposition he was experiencing. No one even just to say, “Cheer up! God’s in control.” And so the Lord gave Elijah a companion — an apprentice of sorts, a prophet-in-training — to help put an end to any lonely pity party Elijah might be tempted to have.
And that is why God gives us … us. He won’t leave you alone when things are bad — he’s given us each other — the fellowship of Christian believers. We don’t always appreciate what a blessing and encouragement these “ties that bind” us together are, but God wants us to appreciate them. He’s told us to love each other, as Christ loved us, and that’s what Christians do. We listen to each other; we share the comfort of God’s Word; we support each other when one of us is weak, sick, or down; we meet each other’s needs; we give together; and we work side by side in service to God and to our brothers and sisters. He hasn’t left us alone — so there’s no need to go looking for some other kind of “party” when things don’t seem to be going our way.
And after all, who really wants to have pity party, especially when we remember that we have an infinitely better party — a feast! — that God has invited us to and made reservations for us for. We have a foretaste of it here today — the Lord’s Supper — but the greater and ultimate reality is the eternal celebration we will all be a part of with our Lord in heaven. With that to look forward to — with confidence, because it’s our inheritance as God’s children — with that in mind and in focus, we can maintain a proper and positive perspective, and keep our focus off our problems, and our eyes on Christ, and his party.
So I guess what God would say to us, with that heavenward perspective, would not be “Party down”, but “Party up!” Amen.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
