P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

RUNNING FROM THE QUEEN

It’s got to be one of the most unusual marriages in the world, and it illustrates beyond my comprehension the old phrase “strange bedfellows.” A political couple, James Carville and Mary Matalin — who sit for sure in opposite corners on CNN’s Crossfire — are actually married to each other. Back in 1992, Carville helped put an Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton in the White House, while his soon-to-be-wife was working right across the fence as the political director for the George Bush, Senior, reelection campaign. They had to pretty much put the romantic relationship on hold for most of the year, and it was obvious from the start that one of the two was really going to get their feelings hurt on Election Night.

As it turned out, that was Mary. After days and weeks and months of traveling with the President, working with him, being up at three in the morning on a cold tarmac waiting to get a seat on Air Force One, courting votes, counting votes, spinning for votes . . . Mary Matalin and her Republican cause came crashing down to defeat. Her side lost. On every TV in the hotel ballroom, there was President-elect Bill Clinton shaking hands, celebrating, having fun, popping champagne corks. In the background, she could see her stupid idiot boyfriend/enemy, Mr. James Carville, also known as “Serpenthead,” also enjoying this deliriously happy moment.

And Mary Matalin just absolutely crashed and burned. She went back to her hotel room, which was a total mess, and fell into bed, her heart breaking. The phone rang, James Carville was on the other end, and she exploded with every mean, nasty word she could think of to call him. She had worked so hard, she had given her very best effort, a thousand percent, and to have come away with nothing but a bitter defeat . . . it was more than she could bear. One year later, she stunned the world by marrying the Serpenthead, and became Mrs. James Carville, but that was one agonizing November night, 1992.

It must be so painful to work that hard, to pour your very life into a cause, and then — after coming within an eyelash of triumph — end up with absolutely nothing. And I guess, as he was lying underneath a broom tree, out in the desert beyond the city of Beersheba, the prophet Elijah felt like that. He had come so incredibly close to bringing all of Israel back to God. But after a brutal, exhausting political campaign that ran longer than some of our U.S. races for the White House, one wicked, scheming woman had ruined everything. Ahab had almost made a recommitment to God. The worship of Baal had almost been wiped out. But with one stroke of the pen Queen Jezebel had reignited the controversy. Baal was dead, but Baal-worship was alive and well. Heaven’s God had triumphed on Mount Carmel, but it looked like Jezebel’s kingdom was still firmly in control.

That must have been so discouraging to Elijah, sitting out in the middle of nowhere. We were reading this account in I Kings chapter 18, and the scholars who write the text notes for the New International Version make this point:

“In spite of Elijah’s great triumph in the trial on Mount Carmel and the dramatic demonstration that Elijah’s God is the Lord of heaven and earth and the source of Israel’s blessings, Jezebel is undaunted. Hers is no empty threat” — remember, she sent Elijah a note promising to kill him — “and Ahab has shown that he is either unwilling or unable to restrain her. So Elijah knows that one of the main sources of Jezebel’s present apostasy is still spewing out its poison and that his own life is in danger.”

After running a hundred miles through the sand to save himself, poor Elijah had to be thinking to himself: “What does a guy have to do?” And perhaps that was his problem: he thought the saving of Israel WAS his problem . . . and not God’s problem.

On the other side of the desert, you really have to wonder about this woman named Jezebel. What in the world is driving her? She hadn’t personally gone to the top of Mount Carmel, but she had certainly heard all the details. And not only had she heard about her 450 Baal prophets being executed, but she had to also have heard how Baal had failed to deliver that day. Her hand-chosen men had prayed and shouted for nine or ten hours in the hot blazing sun, and no answer. They had screamed themselves hoarse, and not a peep from her beloved Baal. Didn’t that get through her thick skull? Did nothing penetrate the mind of this woman?

Listen, friend, it’s sobering just how blind we become when we’re loyal to a false god, whether it’s made out of stone or made out of VISA card plastic. We saw a line in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, which talks about the mountain of evidence — no pun intended — that was presented to Jezebel from the peak of Carmel. She had to know that Baal-worship was an evil shame, an false, empty shell of a religion. It was so obvious. But the Bible commentators are accurate when they tell us this:

“A hearing of truth simply hardens where it does not save.”

The victory of Jehovah should have melted her heart; instead it hardened it. It should have opened her mind; instead she resolutely closed her eyes to the evidence and to the truth. It was a case of “Don’t bother me with the facts, Elijah; my mind’s made up.”

And I guess what Elijah faced right now was his own overwhelming mountain of discouragement. Yes, he was tired and wet and hungry and exhausted. He was afraid for his life. But most of all, he must have sensed that Israel was just in a hopeless situation. If the Mount Carmel victory couldn’t carry the day, what could possible make a difference now? If Jezebel still held influence over Israel after all God had done up on the mountaintop, there just wasn’t any hope left. The last card had been played, he thought. Those same commentary writers add this:

[Elijah] had hoped that the glorious victory on Carmel would break the spell of Jezebel upon the king. When the prophet was informed of the queen’s stubborn resistance to the new appeal for reformation, it was more than he could bear. He was unprepared for the cool, calculated, determined hatred of this wicked queen.”

And so we have this former champion of God huddled under a tree, sobbing and sighing: “I give up. God, get someone else to run your mission trips; I’m a failure at it.”

Well, friend, what can we say about this sad little tale? Should it have happened this way? No. We mentioned yesterday that Elijah was sitting on his own veritable mountain of evidence that his God was able! God was able! God was a mighty defender, a sender of rain and fire. He was a triumphant King. Elijah should just have crumpled up Queen Jezebel’s pathetic little threatening note and tossed it in the sewer. Instead, he forgot the fire of God, and the rain of God, and the power of God and he ran like a scared Energizer bunny.

Here’s a bit more from the Adventist commentary:

“Elijah did not do right in forsaking his post of duty. His work was not yet over. The battle had only begun. Had he stayed courageously by, and had he sent back a message to the queen reminding her that the God who had given him victory over the prophets of Baal would not forsake him now, he would have found angels ready to protect his life.” That’s true, isn’t it? “God’s judgments in signal fashion would have fallen upon Jezebel, a tremendous impression would have been made, and a mighty reformation would have swept over the land.” And this tag line really hurts: “By fleeing for his life Elijah played into the hands of the enemy. The flight to Beersheba went far toward nullifying the victory on Carmel.”

Well, listening friend, there but for the grace of God . . . And you know, I really think this Bible story is included to give me hope and you hope. I mean, this is Elijah the great prophet! And he ran in abject fear. He got discouraged and turned away from the job God wanted him to do. He left a task halfway finished and found a tree to hide behind. And yet God wasn’t done with him yet. God sent him an angel to bring the comfort of food and an encouraging word.

The great classic book, Prophets and Kings, has a bit to say about what this lesson means for us:

“If, under trying circumstances,” the author writes, “men of spiritual power, pressed beyond measure, become discouraged and desponding; if at times they see nothing desirable in life, that they should choose it, this is nothing strange or new. Let all such remember that one of the mightiest of the prophets fled for his life before the rage of an infuriated woman. . . . But it was when hope was gone, and his lifework seemed threatened with defeat, that he learned one of the most precious lessons of his life. In the hour of his greatest weakness he learned the need and the possibility of trusting God under circumstances the most forbidding.”

It’s good to know that even when you turn tail and run a hundred miles out into the desolate desert, you find a friendly, forgiving God behind the nearest sand dune.