God ordained droughts
 |
| English: Jezabel and Ahab Meeting Elijah in Naboth's Vineyard Giclee. Print by Sir Frank Dicksee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Elijah comes upon the stage of Israel’s history like a crash of thunder. He disappears from it in a whirlwind. From beginning to end, whenever he appears, the lightning flashes, the thunder crashes, the fire flames, and there is a sound of a mighty wind.
So wrote one commentator of this man in whom judgment and mercy were mingled, and whose words were capable of calling down fire from heaven.
Elijah is thrust upon the stage of world history to announce before the king that for the next three years there would be neither dew nor rain in an already drought-stricken land. Only repentance from the epidemic spread of Baal worship would cause the heavens to part. Clearly the message of Elijah was that of judgment upon the land and the people for Israel’s unfaithfulness.
As horrible as the drought was, it was worse than is usually understood. The absence of rain was not the most severe judgment, nor was it the real drought. As warned by Amos, a more severe drought was possible: “ ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD’ ” (Amos 8:11; see also 1 Kings 8:35; Deut. 11:16–17; Isaiah 30:20).
Ahab and Jezebel had already killed many true men of God; those that remained were hiding in caves. Now Elijah, the only other man appointed by God to speak the Word to Israel, was divinely removed. When Elijah fled from Israel, the heavens were effectively shut up as brass. There was neither rain nor word to descend upon the people; instead, death—both physical and spiritual—stalked the land.
The divinely appointed drought. A sovereign God actively brought this to bear upon His disobedient people. We must ask the question: If it is consistent with His character to do it once, what would prevent Him from doing it again? Nothing would, and nothing has prevented this from now occurring. What is different now is the irony of a self-imposed drought. How many people intentionally forsake the hearing of the Word by sitting under preaching that has only the form of godliness but not the power thereof? How many abandon the vigorous pursuit of the knowledge of the Word of God only to discover (if at all) that they have created a parched wasteland of their souls? How desperate is that nation, that person, who does not have the word of God welling up within him like springs of living water. Pray that God would rain upon His people a consuming thirst for that Living Word.
