But the Lord was not there

He is a man of God, and he is running for his life.
Just three years before, the man of God had told the King, “As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives-- the God whom I worship and serve-- there will be no dew or rain during the next few years unless I give the word!” And he spoke true . . . no rain fell from heaven, no dew moistened the dry, cracked earth. The land, parched and aching for rain, lay under the hot sun for three years with nothing to quench its horrible, neverending thirst . . . until the man of God prayed, and at his word the rains came again to water the scorched earth. The man of God was given great power by the God whom he served . . . and yet he is running for his life.
Just months before, the man of God had a divine showdown with the prophets of the god Baal. Prophet against prophet, God against god, the contest was to prove once and for all who was God and who was not. The prophets of Baal cried aloud, dancing themselves into a blood-mad frenzy, howling and writhing as wild animals, but there was no answer to their increasingly strident cries . . . until the man of God prayed to his God, and at his word the fire came, falling as from Heaven itself, its greedy and holy flames consuming the offering, the wood, even the very stones the man of God had used to build the altar. The prayers of the man of God were mighty and effective . . . and yet he is running for his life.
He runs day and night, neither heat nor heart slowing the relentless, never ending cadence that his sandals beat upon the sandy earth. But he does not run on the strength of his fear, but on the very food of God. Just days before an angel of the Lord had visited the man of God, offering him life-giving bread and a cup of cool water, and it is on the strength of that food that the man of God runs for forty days and forty nights until he comes to a cave into which he can crawl. He has come face to face with a Divine Messenger, he has eaten the food of God himself, His God is with Him at every turn . . . and yet he is hiding for his life.

The man of God is Elijah, one of the most powerful figures in all of the Old Testament, and he is running and hiding for his life because he believes God is no longer hearing his prayers. He doesn’t understand where God is or what He has been doing, Elijah’s life is in shambles, and he can’t see God doing a single thing that he felt should be happening. And so it is when God comes to him and says, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”, Elijah doesn’t even give Him an answer, but launches into a tirade against God. “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. But 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.”
Yeah! Elijah figures he’s got something to tell God, he figures that God hasn’t been there for him, he figures that God hasn’t been listening, and he figures God hasn’t been answering. So when Elijah gets his chance, he gives it to God with both barrels, just tells Him off. You can just see Elijah’s face fuming, you can see him sitting back and waiting for God to give him an answer.
But does God give him one? God just kind of blows Elijah off . . . instead of answering Elijah in his anger or, better yet, blasting Elijah off the face of earth, what’s He say? “Go out and stand on the mountain.” Now what is up with that? In talking directly with God, in this prayer Elijah no doubt figured he deserved an answer from God . . . but he didn’t even get a reply.
Now maybe sometimes you feel like that, that God just isn’t even listening to you. You pray and pray and pray and your prayers just seem to bounce back off the ceiling . . . it seems like the Lord is not there.
If God isn’t answering your prayers, it’s possible that your prayer priorities are not in order. To help keep them in order, there’s a list of three things I’d like for you to consider:
If God isn’t answering your prayers, it’s possible you’re not asking with faith. James 1:5-8 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”
If the problem in your prayers is a lack of faith, the solution is having faith. You need to be able to trust that God can far above and beyond anything you may ask. But mesaying “have faith!” when you don’t have faith is just plain pointless. So instead, if your lack of faith is hindering your prayers, be like the father in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 9, who brought his son to Jesus to be healed. He said to Jesus, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” And Jesus says, “If?” “If? Everything is possible for him who believes.” And what did the father say” The father instantly replied, “I do believe, but help me not to doubt!” If the problem in your prayers is a lack of faith, then you first need to pray for a lack of doubt.”
But say that’s not your problem. Say you believe that God can do anything you might ask . . . your faith is a rock. Strong. Hard. And still you don’t have the things you need. What’s the problem?
Well, this one is pretty obvious, but if God isn’t answering your prayers, it might be because you haven’t asked. James 4:2 says, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” Maybe you haven’t asked because you think it’s too small of a thing to bother God with, or maybe you haven’t asked because you’re not sure even what you need . . . but you still haven’t asked!
If the problem in your prayers is that you haven’t asked, the solution is . . . Ask! Ask! Philippians 4:6 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Matthew 7:7-8 says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” If the problem in your prayers is that you don’t have, then your first prayer is to ask.
But say you have faith, say that you have asked . . . and still God is not answering your prayers. What could be the problem then? It’s possible that you have unconfessed sin in your life. It’s possible you’ve been trying to hide something from God . . . it’s possible you’ve even been trying to hide something from yourself. 1 Peter 3:12 says, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
If the problem in your prayers is unconfessed sin, then the solution is to see it in yourself and then to say it before God and before the one against whom you have sinned. This can be a tricky one, because in order to get past this problem we often have to do quite a bit of soul-searching, of taking stock in our lives, of looking deep inside and realizing that there is some pretty ugly stuff in there that we didn’t even want to deal with. But once you see it, once your heart is broken over it, confess it to God like King David does in Psalm 86:1 where he says, “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.” When you approach God and you know that you are a mighty sinner and you’re broken up inside over it, God will hear you. Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” If the problem in your prayers is unconfessed sin, then your first prayer to approach God, repentant and broken.
In the book of James, chapter five verses sixteen through eighteen, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.”
Hey . . . there’s Elijah again. Remember where we left him? Elijah had just told God off to His face . . . Elijah is in distress—they—that would be King Ahab and Queen Jezebel—they have killed off all of God’s prophets and now Elijah's running for his life, too Why is he getting treated this way, he wants to know. He's been more than faithful to God (and what an example of faithfulness he is!), and yet THIS is the way his life is turning out??
Elijah wants to see things get shaken up, he wants to see God in a mighty way, he wants to see a demonstration of God’s power. The trouble is, what he needs to see he can’t, and what he can’t see he needs to.
Elijah gets his powerful demonstration--a wind so strong that the Hebrew literally reads, “tearing the mountain to pieces.” Just imagine you are Elijah, standing out on the side of the mountain, and you hear a faint rushing in the distance, growing louder and louder into a deafening roar. As the wind tears over the mountaintop behind you you feel the pull of it and are almost lifted off your feet before it roars past you like a lion after it's prey, and you watch in utter disbelief and horror as the mountains around you crash down as this wind hungrily tears into them. Tons upon tons of rock and earth split from the mountainside and are hurtled down below, ravaged by that savage wind. But the Lord was not there. And after the wind the ground trembles from an earthquake, the mountains skipping like lambs and the earth moving beneath your very feet . . . But the Lord is not there.
Where is God? Looking for God to give a visible demonstration of a mighty act, Elijah can see the power of God, but still misses the presence of God.
And so now Elijah steps out. He has no doubt of God’s power now . . . he has seen that God can indeed do anything. He’s learned that he can’t tell God, but that he needs to ask, and I’m sure that after seeing the awesome power of God Elijah is approaching him humbly, with a broken and contrite heart.
And again God asks him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And this time Elijah answers quietly, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. But 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.” Even though he says the exact same words, Elijah’s prayer priorities are now in order.
But still . . . God doesn’t exactly answer him, does he? The first time, when Elijah had chewed God out, God said, “Go out and stand on the mountain.” Now that Elijah has his prayer priorities in order, God says, “Go back the way you came.” It has to be very confusing for Elijah, which brings us to the fourth reason why it may seem that God isn’t answering your prayers.
In verse sixteen God—the God whom Elijah had thought wasn’t paying attention—this same God instructs Elijah to Elijah to anoint three men. Through this anointing, through this process of God choosing a man and Elijah literally pouring oil over the man as a sign that God had chosen him, God will make two men into a king and one man into a prophet.
The first king is Hazael, the king who’s armies would later kill the wicked King Ahab (I Kings 22:31, 37). The second king is Jehu, the king who’s descendants would replace the line of Ahab as king over Israel (2 Kings 9:2). And the third man is the prophet whom God would choose to replace Elijah. (1 Kings 19:21)
Do you understand what just happened? The wicked king Ahab, who was solely responsible for the spiritual destruction of Israel, the king who was after Elijah’s very life, the king who was the cause of all of Elijah’s frantic prayers . . . that king was being taken down by God Himself. Not only that, but God had already chosen the next great prophet who would counsel the future kings of Israel and help them to walk in the ways of the Lord. When Elijah had thought God was no longer listening to him, when it seemed that God was not there, God was working His plan the whole time. God was lining all this up, unbeknownst to Elijah, who simply sat there and acted like God wasn’t doing anything . God had a plan and He was working it, even though Elijah couldn’t see.
That’s the fourth reason why it may seem that your prayers are not being answered . . . they are, but you can’t see it! You may never see it! But all the while God is there, working behind the scenes.
This, then, is the reason why we call it “faith” and not “sight” Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” We trust in the promises of God, He helps us to keep our prayer priorities straight, and we don’t have to be bothered anymore by what we don’t see.
In a conversation at the garage sale yesterday, I told a man that I could talk about the Bible and faith all day . . . but that if I never got around to the main thing, if I never got around to talking about Jesus Christ . . . then it wasn’t a sermon.
That kind of tripped me up as I finished this sermon, because I had gotten to the end of what I had to say and realized I hadn’t yet pointed out where Jesus fits into all of this! So, where does Jesus fit in?

1 Peter 1:1-9 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, 2 who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance. 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade-- kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.