Sometimes we feel alone. We feel alone when we are all by ourselves. We feel alone when we are surrounded by people. Isolation isn’t a function of the proximity of other people. It’s more often first a mental state. When our circumstances get hard, or when we get into sin of some kind, we start to feel disconnected from the people around us, the people who love us. When this happens, our anxiety starts to grow. Then we start to feel disconnected from God. We struggle to see His help in our situation, and things just get worse. Elijah understood this feeling. He felt isolated and alone and terribly anxious because of it. Today as we continue our series, we are going to look at God’s encouragement to him and what that means for us. Let’s dive right in.

More Than Meets the Eye

I finally finished watching the Cobra Kai series on Netflix recently. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically a modern continuation of the Karate Kid story from the trio of excellent movies in the 1980s and early 1990s. To say the whole thing is a remarkable story of redemption and restoration is an understatement. It was fantastic. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch—very little out of Hollywood is these days—but it got Gospel redemption right in some really profound ways. There’s something else it got right as well. 

The closing drama features Johnny Lawrence—the bad guy kid from the first movie, whose story comes full circle in a truly beautiful way over the course of the series—in the fight of his life. The key to his victory is overcoming a feeling that has been dogging him for 40 years—that he is worthless and all alone. Have you ever felt like that? Maybe you’re the kind of person who was born with a sufficiently high degree of self-confidence that you’ve never doubted yourself at all, but that’s a pretty rare breed, all things considered. Most of us have at one point or another felt both of those things rather poignantly. For some folks, it is a near constant temptation. We long to be recognized and known, but fear that both of those things not only aren’t true, but will never be true. This, in turn, causes that anxiety that hangs around at the back of our minds to start to creep its way around toward the front, and we can find ourselves slipping into that crazy cycle far more easily than we’d like. 

Well, this week we are in the second part of our new teaching series, When I Am Afraid. The whole idea for this series is that anxiety and fear sometimes feel like they are constant companions in our lives, and we want to know how to deal with them. Most of us would be content just to know how to keep them from getting totally out of control, but if we’re being totally honest, we’d really like them gone entirely. Of course, life in a world broken by sin means they’re probably not ever going to be gone entirely, but we can learn some ways to both keep them at bay as well as to drive them out when they start to take hold of our hearts. 

Last week, we started with what is the foundation for all courage and faithfulness: trust in God. We saw this on display through David’s reflections in Psalm 56. He was in a pretty desperate situation, but instead of letting the fear and anxiety take the reins of his life and dictate how he would respond to the circumstances he was facing, he defiantly chose to trust in the Lord. When fear threatens to take hold of our hearts, just like David resolved to do, our first and best trust needs to be in the Lord. When we are afraid, we can put our trust in God. It is important to know, though, that this trust doesn’t first come from us. We gain and grow this trust by rooting ourselves in God’s word. Without that particular foundation point—one that is supplemented by a commitment to prayer and engagement with the body of Christ, our trust will fail us. 

Well, speaking of rooting ourselves in God’s word, when we do that, we will encounter stories like the one we are going to take a look at together this morning. You see, one of the things about fear and anxiety is that they are naturally isolating. Tell me if you’ve experienced this one before. We start to feel anxious about something, but then we look at everyone around us who appears to have everything all together, and try to just swallow the anxiety so we look as put together as they do. Meanwhile, they are all eaten up with anxiety too, but are so impressed with how we seem to be keeping it all together that they are just swallowing their anxiety, putting on a brave face, and pushing through it. 

When we are in this kind of a place, we can’t let anyone really get close to us because they’ll learn our terrible secret: that we’re not as put together as we look on the outside. The result of this is that while we may be surrounded by people, we isolate ourselves from them to protect the thing we feel like we need to hide. The tragic deceit here is that the more alone we feel, the more confident we become that we are never going to be able to get the help and support we need to get through whatever it is. And the stronger that ugly confidence gets, the more anxious we tend to feel. Like I said: it’s a crazy cycle. 

One of the things about the Scriptures that is so good—if sometimes also so hard—is that it presents people just as they are. Even the greatest heroes in the Bible don’t get airbrushed presentations with all their flaws carefully hidden so that we can look up to them. If anything, they are presented in all their brokenness and ugliness precisely so that we won’t look up to them. Many of them may offer powerful and profound examples of faith and faithfulness, but they also struggle with all of the same things we do—including fear and anxiety. 

One of the characters we meet in the Scriptures who was well acquainted with feeling anxious and alone and afraid is not one we typically associate with those characteristics at first thought. We tend to picture him as a model of faith and courage and prayerfulness—a model that James, Jesus’ half-brother, himself holds out for us to follow. In the historical period that falls between the completion of the Old Testament documents and the beginning of the New Testament documents, this character grew to have an enormous role in Jewish thought and belief. He was second only to Moses in terms of his presumed importance in the eventual outworking of God’s plans for His people. But sometimes, the ones who look the strongest and most put together are the ones who are hiding the biggest anxieties. If you have your copy of the Scriptures handy, join me in 1 Kings 19, and let’s take a look at how the great prophet, Elijah, handled one of his lowest points. 

If you’ve been around the church for very long, you’ve probably heard the name Elijah at some point along the way. You know he was a prophet. You may remember that he once successfully called down fire from heaven, but you probably don’t remember much more than that about him. Elijah was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel some years after the nation split into two parts during the reign of Solomon’s idiot son, Rehoboam. Solomon with all of his building projects had pushed the people to their breaking point. Rehoboam, when asked for some mercy, rather crudely declared that he was going to be even tougher on the people than his father had been, so they rebelled. Ten of the twelve tribes split. The only two that remained under his control were his own tribe, Judah, and Benjamin which was to the south of Judah and thus militarily isolated from the other ten. 

The northern kingdom, which would eventually be called “Israel,” while the southern kingdom became known as “Judah,” headed off the reservation of faithfulness right out of the gate, and never really looked back for long. God sent prophets like Elijah to try to call them back to covenant faithfulness, but His efforts were largely in vain. Still, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Elijah certainly made quite a splash. He appeared on the prophetic scene in dramatic fashion by walking out of the wilderness and announcing a three-year drought as judgment for all of Israel’s unfaithfulness, which begins promptly, plunging the nation into a terrible famine. At the end of this time, the prophet sets up a divine contest between Yahweh God and Baal, the god the king of Israel, Ahab, along with his evil wife, Jezebel, were leading the people in worshiping. This all played out on the top of Mount Carmel in Israel, and it’s a wild and dramatic story. It ends with that fire from heaven you might remember along with a massive slaughter of corrupt and idolatrous priests that you might not remember. 

Well, after an event like that, you would think Elijah would be absolutely on top of the world. You would think his confidence in the Lord as well as in his power and position as a prophet would be unshakeable. You would think that fear and anxiety would be the furthest things from his mind. You would be wrong. All it took was one threat from Jezebel, and the whole structure of his faith crumbled. It proved to be little more stable than a house of cards. Maybe you’ve been somewhere like that before. Let’s take a look at how this all unfolded. 

First Kings 19 picks up right where 1 Kings 18 leaves off. Elijah has had his big victory, and now King Ahab has gone back home to Jezebel, his wife, to lick his wounds. “Ahab told Jezebel everything that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ‘May the gods punish me and do so severely if I don’t make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.’” 

Now, sure, this was a clear and compelling death threat from the most powerful woman in the land (and given how weak of a king Ahab was, and how strong Jezebel proved to be, this is really a death threat from the most powerful person in the land period), but that’s not really going to bother Elijah, is it? I mean, think about what he had just done and experienced. He had seen God’s power and been an instrument for His power. Like David wrote in Psalm 56, what could mere mortals do to him? Well, apparently Elijah’s answer to David’s question was that they could kill him, because he was terrified and ran for his life. “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 broomtree 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.” 

This is not a very good look for one of God’s major prophets, is it? Again, he just scored an incredible victory over the forces of darkness and evil, and just because they threatened him back for it he’s ready to die? Where’s his faith? Where’s his courage? Where is his trust in the Lord? 

There’s a great scene from the old sitcom, Family Matters, where the dad, Carl Winslow, has built a storage area in his garage and filled it absolutely to capacity. The nerdy neighbor and main character of the show, Steve Urkel walks in and sees a beach ball sitting on the ground. He starts to throw it up onto the storage area, but Carl quickly stops him with the exhortation that he has loaded it as full as it can possibly be. Nothing else can go up there or the whole thing is coming down. Urkel looks at him patronizingly and says, “This is a beachball. It’s mostly air. This won’t have any impact on the weight limit at all.” Then he tosses it up on the top of the pile of stuff suspended over their heads, and, when nothing happens just as Urkel predicted, both of them walk out of the garage. No sooner do they close the door, though, than they hear the gigantic crash of the whole thing coming down…just as Carl had predicted. The beach ball really was the thing that finally pushed the weight limit over the edge. 

Elijah had built this incredible structure of faith, but it was still fragile. Experiencing the kind of spiritual victory he had just won had absolutely maxed out all of his reserves. No one could see it, but he was poised on the edge of a knife. Have you ever been there, where one more thing was more than you were going to be able to handle, and you felt totally alone while you were facing it? Elijah understands. Regardless of the victory he had just won, Jezebel’s threat pushed him over the edge, and instead of facing her down the way he had just faced down the hundreds of pagan prophets Ahab brought to the God-off on top of Mount Carmel, he breaks and runs for his life. In the end, he is left feeling terrified, anxious beyond word, and terribly, terribly alone. 

After he collapses from exhaustion, an angel wakes him up a little while later and gives him something to eat. This happens a couple more times, and then Elijah is sent on a journey to Mount Horeb, the same mountain that Moses had encountered God on in the form of a burning bush centuries before. And, just like Moses did, here Elijah encounters the Lord. 

A great deal of attention is often given to the story of Elijah’s encounter with God when this passage is preached, and that’s not without good reason. It’s a powerful affirmation of the importance of waiting on the Lord when we are seeking Him. It’s a strong exhortation to make sure that we are listening carefully to the silence to hear from our God and not just looking for big displays of power. But I want to shift our focus in a slightly different direction here to something that often gets overlooked. 

When God shows up and engages with Elijah on Mount Horeb, the first thing He does is to try to draw Elijah out to face reality. “Suddenly the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” Why have you run from Jezebel instead of confronting her? Why are you so afraid? Why are you so desperate? What makes you think she could get to you when the hundreds of prophets of Baal couldn’t? What are you doing here? 

Isn’t that a question we so often need to answer in our own lives? What are we doing here? How did we get to this place of fear and anxiety and loneliness? What choices have we made along the way that have contributed to our path? What choices have we not made that have kept us from getting where perhaps we intended to go? What are we doing here? If you don’t know why you are in a particular place, you’re going to have a much harder time figuring out how to get yourself somewhere else. 

For Elijah’s part, he can’t bring himself to look beyond his anxiety and perceived isolation. “He replied, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord God of Armies, but the Israelites had abandoned your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are looking for me to take my life.’” What a pity party he’s having! It’s hard to believe this is the same prophet who just weeks before had boldly stared down the forces of darkness in Israel and came away from the experience with all of them worshiping the Lord with fear and trembling. Now he’s a whiney mess who can’t see beyond the end of his belly button for all the navel-gazing he is doing. How pathetic, right? It might be but for the fact that we have occupied similarly faithless territory more times than we’d care to count so we had better not judge too harshly. 

In what follows, God manifests His power and might for Elijah in an effort to encourage him—this is the famous still, small voice part—and then asks him the same question again, perhaps hoping to get a different answer now that He has boosted Elijah’s confidence some. “Suddenly, a voice came to him and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” Yet if we were expecting Elijah to have snapped out of it, he dashes our hopes pretty thoroughly by giving the exact same answer, word-for-word. God’s display of power didn’t move the needle a bit. Elijah just can’t see beyond his own misery and perceived isolation. 

What Elijah needs is something to focus on other than himself and his problems, so God gives him just that. But He also gives him something else as well. He gives Elijah a reminder that he is not nearly as alone as he feels. Look at this at the tail end of our passage in v. 18: “But I will leave seven thousand in Israel—every knee that has not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him.” 

Now, this is subtle, but don’t miss what God is saying here. He’s saying, “Listen, Elijah, I know you are scared. I know you are feeling alone. I know you feel like you’ve done your best, and your best just hasn’t been good enough. I know all of that. But you are not alone. And you’ve got nothing to fear. In fact, I have seven thousand individuals who are still faithful to me in this dark and pagan land. You can’t always see the ways that I’m with you, but I’m still here.” 

The number 7000 here could be literal, as in there were exactly that many faithful individuals still left in Israel. It could also be more figurative either as a round number, or as symbolic. The number seven often represented completeness and wholeness, and one thousand was often symbolic for an exceedingly large number. In this case, the number of the faithful would be large and complete without needing to be exactly 7000. Either way, the point is clear: Elijah is not alone. Even when he couldn’t see it, God was still with him. Friends, the same thing is still true for us today: Even when we can’t see it, God is still with us. 

This is actually an idea we see popping up more than once in the Scriptures. Way back in Joshua 5, just before the people were going to march on Jericho and officially begin their quest to take the land God had promised them through Abraham, on the eve of the battle, the great leader went out “and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua approached him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘I have now come as commander of the Lord’s army.’” The battle before Joshua and the people of Israel loomed large and terrifying, and it was not at all clear how they were going to win it. But there was help for them at hand even if they couldn’t see it. Even when we can’t see it, God is still with us. 

Closer to our home today in 2 Kings 6, we read of Elisha, Elijah’s prophetic successor in Israel, faced with the threat of an army from an enemy king coming to take his life. Elisha’s faith never wavered in the face of this incredible opposition, but his servant was having a much harder time not feeling isolated and alone. From 2 Kings 6:15: “When the servant of the man of God got up early and went out, he discovered an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city. So he asked Elisha, ‘Oh, my master, what are we to do?’” Perhaps you can identify with his feeling anxious and alone and abandoned by God. 

Yet look at what Elisha says to him. “Elisha said, ‘Don’t be afraid, for those who are with us outnumber those who are with them.’” From a practical standpoint, this sounded insane. The servant could see very clearly with his own eyes that an enemy army was there in front of them, and it was just him and Elisha on their side. He couldn’t see God’s help, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Look at v. 17: “Then Elisha prayed, ‘Lord, please open his eyes and let him see.’ So the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he saw that the mountain was covered with horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” They were not alone. 

Not being alone, and not feeling alone, however are not the same thing. I daresay there have probably been times in your life when you felt alone even when you weren’t. That’s what sin does. It isolates. It convinces us that we are the only ones struggling with whatever it is, that no one else would understand, and that if anyone else even found out about it, they would hate and reject us for it, leaving us actually alone instead of just emotionally and spiritually alone. And God certainly doesn’t want anything to do with us in this state. So the anxiety grows. 

Here’s the thing, though: Feelings can be disconnected from reality. They can fail to reflect reality as it actually is. All cultural lies to the side, our feelings are not a good barometer for what is true. Case in point: Elijah thought he was alone; Joshua thought he was alone; Elisha’s servant thought they were alone. But they weren’t. Just because they couldn’t see God’s help, didn’t mean it wasn’t still there, waiting for them to receive it and operate in light of it. Even when we can’t see it, God is still with us. 

When you are facing a season of fear and anxiety, and those are leading you to feel isolated and alone, your feelings are not right. Don’t listen to them. You are not alone. You are never alone. Even when we can’t see it, God is still with us. We serve the God who promised to never leave us or forsake us, and He always keeps His promises. It doesn’t matter what is going on around you. It doesn’t matter how the people near you are reacting to you. It doesn’t matter what kind of sin you have gotten yourself into. You are never alone. And sometimes, that assurance is enough all by itself to calm our storms of anxiety and fear. 

Even when we can’t see it, God is still with us. This means that we can serve Him with confidence no matter what else seems to be the nature of our circumstances. We can love others freely. We can obey Him courageously. We can share the good news boldly. We can pray fervently. We can engage with the Scriptures committedly. We can do all of this and more because we are not alone. Even when we can’t see it, God is still with us. His help may not take the shape we expect, and like a child learning to walk is allowed to fall down some, we may experience some bumps and bruises because we live in a world broken by sin. But we are never alone. Even when we can’t see it, God is still with us. Even when you can’t see it, God is still with you. He’s still with you because that’s the kind of God He is. Come back next week as we wrap up our little series, and we’ll talk more about that very thing.