1Kings 19:1-10,18

I want to tell you a little about John Audobon, who is famous for his drawings of birds. The Audobon Society is named after him. What isn’t famous about John Audobon is his bankruptcy before his success. Audobon started a steam sawmill in Henderson, Kentucky in 1815. He was fascinated by how much lumber and grain the new industrial tool could handle. Actually, I have been to Henderson Kentucky because the United Methodist Church has the Henderson Settlement there. It is ministry to poor rural folk in the mountains of Kentucky. There may be a lot of trees but there are not a lot of people.

The steam sawmill was able to work so well that it was idle most of the time. There simply was not enough grain and lumber demand in Henderson for such a company. Audobon was captivated by the industrial age nature of the machine and what it could produce and failed to see that there were not enough people there to need it. He declared bankruptcy in 1819.

We’re looking today at unexpected failure in life. There are four kinds of failure in life. There is the failure because you don’t know your gifts. We’re going to look at this during the Olympic series. There are the failures of your 20s and 30s where you refine your gifts. No successful leader ever emerges that didn’t deal successfully with refining failure. There is character failure where you just aren’t morally ready for your potential. And there is unexpected failure when your gifts suddenly throw you into a calamity.

We are going to look at the life of Elijah today who was betrayed by his gifts. This is an incredible story of someone who was doing just what God wanted and suddenly there was a violent twist to the ending and he flees for his life. If you wish you had more tools to deal with failure in life, God has a blessing for you in the hour to come. Let’s worship

Elijah had one of the most spectacular of public ministries. This is a crystal cathedral kind of guy. He was terrific. And I am sure that this was all part of Elijah’s gifts. He was a star performer. Israel was in a drought but was divided between two religions. Elijah proposes a public test of the two religions. 400 prophets of Baal try their best to start a fire by prayer for a burnt offering. They work on it for half a day. Then Elijah by himself prepares a second burnt offering, covers the whole area with water three times, and finally prays and the whole place goes nuclear. The offering and even the water is consumed.

This is Elijah’s gift, the Stephen Spielberg of the Old Testament. And some of you are fortunate enough to know your gifts and after some trials, you have finally gotten into a job that uses your gifts. And some of you have had a defining moment like this one where your gift came front and center.

Perhaps you are an accountant and you got chosen to carefully figure out a particularly complex and messy set of books. Perhaps you like to succeed where others fail and you got a medical case that other doctors had failed to diagnose and you got it right. Whatever the situation, when we use our gifts under optimal circumstances, we often feel elated afterwards. Elijah must have had this reaction.

What Elijah had not considered was Queen Jezebel. She had the spiritual gift of moving forward without considering the evidence. Being persistent is a spiritual gift. There are times when you have to keep going when you don’t feel that way and we need people with that gift. But she was overusing her gift. God has destroyed her prophets, accepted Elijah’s offerings, and used his public prayers to bring rain where there had been drought. This should be a clear sign to Jezebel that she should change.

Elijah had every expectation that Jezebel would change after such a display. Instead Jezebel stuck with her gift of obstinacy. Sometimes you meet people who keep going on a course of destruction even when every road sign along the way says U turn required now. Perhaps you have met someone like that. If you are raising a child with the gift of obstinacy, you have to be careful because they will not respond to discipline like other children.

Jezebel decides to kill Elijah publicly and sets off this Keystone Cops chase after Elijah until he gets to Beersheba, which is outside her control. But Elijah is ready to die in his feelings. He has met unexpected failure.

I wish this passage were not in the Bible. The other kinds of failure are much easier to accept than this one. But almost all failure of people over 40 years old who are self aware comes from an unexpected reaction to their gift or in Jezebel’s case, an abuse of their gift.

And when you find grace, it comes not through your gift, but thru your weak side. Elijah is in the cave when the Lord passes by. There is fire, but the Lord is not in the fire. There is wind, but the Lord is not in the wind. Finally, there is silence and God is in the small still voice. Now you have probably heard some silly sermons on the still small voice. Since I’m sure I’m right, I’m going to tell you to forget all that. This is not a lesson to teach us that God is always a still small voice. For Elijah, grace came through the still small voice, because that was his weak side. Elijah liked the public theatrics and display. I doubt that Elijah had an easy time spending time in prayer and Bible study. So now he finds the comforting word of God to try again through the still small voice.

I’m like Elijah. I love it when the band and choir are in a rousing song that gets you feeling like a chariot could run down from heaven any minute. And so for me, grace has come not through a still small voice, but through plain surroundings. When we take the Cambodia journey, it restores my faith every time. You say, how could God speak when you can’t even understand the language? When I see how people are being faithful and joyful in the midst of struggle, it is like a new fire in me to come back with more faith here.

For you, the word of God may come in the fire. It may come in the wind. Grace always comes through our weak side.

John Audobon was frustrated by failure in a cutting edge business. And so he kept on with his hobby of drawing birds and finally had enough to show to people. Some people in London saw the collection and an original printing of his first book now sells for 5 million dollars.

Failure is mostly our feelings. As soon as Elijah can accept new grace, God says, go anoint the next king of Israel. Elijah hadn’t lost his position at all. He just couldn’t see what was next. And that is the same for you. Our feelings tell us that the adventure is over and in God’s book, the adventure is never over if we accept new grace.