Of Tractor Beams, Nets, and a Steady Hand

Chapter nineteen in the book of 1 Kings is one of the most fascinating stories you can read in the Bible.  The hero is Elijah.  He’s on the run.  Why?  Well, he’s just killed 450 of Queen Jezebel’s favorite priests and she has sworn to kill him in return.  So, he’s running away.   But wait, you say.  Isn’t this the guy who just called down fire from heaven to devour a soaking wet sacrifice to prove that God is God and that there is no other god who can match God’s power?   Well, yeah.  But now that the fireworks are over, Jezebel looks pretty upset… and Elijah really doesn’t want to deal with her. So, he turns tail and runs.   Downright cowardly, you say.  But then, you weren’t there.  He runs until he can’t run any more and then, totally discouraged, he asks God to go ahead and end it, because he is no better than his forefathers.    What does God do?   Feeds him.  Feeds him with bread from heaven.  Feeds him with bread that sustains him for a journey that takes forty days and forty nights.  And, when he gets to where he is going… Mount Horeb… there are more pyrotechnics… an earthquake… wind… and fire… “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”… until finally, he hears the voice of God out of the silence.   And, yes, I imagine, as he told his tale, he did feel like an idiot.  Wouldn’t you?

God had just demonstrated to the huge crowd gathered in Israel that he… God… was the only God worth worshipping… the only God who could deliver what was needed when it was needed. There wasn’t a witness to that event who doubted it after that fiery demonstration.  But, apparently, Elijah himself was not totally convinced.  Like Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness… you remember, the ones who received manna from heaven… and followed a pillar of fire at night… he still had doubts that God would be there when he needed God to be there.  How ironic that he would end up at the same mountain that Moses came to in his wanderings with the constantly doubting… and complaining… children of Israel.

“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus says.  It is the first of eight ego eimi statements that he makes in the gospel of John. “I am the bread of life.” “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” “I am the light of the world.“ “I am the gate for the sheep.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” “I am the true vine.”  Each statement designed to tell us a little more about God. But Jesus, too, is surrounded by a crowd of unbelievers… a crowd that is complaining… quarreling.  Apparently, through 5,000 years of history, the attitude of the hoi polloi hasn’t changed at all.  From the children of Israel in the wilderness with Moses… to the Israelites Elijah knew under King Ahab and Queen Jezebel… to the crowd that surrounded Jesus in his day… and maybe even today… the complaining goes on unabated.  The crowd demands that Jesus “give us this bread”… not realizing that they already have it… in the person of Jesus Christ himself… just as the children of Israel already had God with them in the wilderness… just as the Israelites also had God with them under King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.    What is amazing is not that the people doubted God’s existence and God’s power to save them… but that they doubted it after they had seen what God could do!    How often do we doubt God’s presence… and God’s power… even when we have seen what God can do?

“I am the bread of life”… and Jesus goes on to say, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.”  In a powerful statement that undergirds our own Presbyterian theology, Jesus makes it very clear that it is not we who decide to come to Jesus… it is God who draws us to him.  And the verb that is used here is used only five times in the gospel of John… twice to describe the action of Peter as he hauls a net full of fish into his boat.    We are the fish… aimlessly swimming in the sea… pulled by a holy net into God’s boat.  Oh, yes.  Like Elijah at Mount Horeb… and Jonah on a boat to Tarshish… “you can run, but you can’t hide”…to quote the famous Joe Louis. “You can run, but you can’t hide.”  If God has decided that you are his… you cannot escape the power that draws you to him.

Some of you, when you were growing up, learned the five foundational concepts of our faith through an acrostic that formed the word “tulip:” Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.  The doctrine of irresistible grace… also called "efficacious grace"… asserts that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom God has determined … whom God has chosen… to save… the ones whom we call “the elect.”   Only God knows who they are.  We, along with others who form the core of the Reformed Tradition within the Church… believe that God… with his great power and in his own time… overcomes any resistance that those individuals have to obeying the call of the gospel, thus bringing them to a saving faith.  When God, in his sovereignty, decides to save someone, that individual certainly will be saved… despite any obstacle that that individual… or anyone else, including Satan, can put in the way.   Stories like the one of Saul on the road to Damascus… or Elijah running into the desert… or Jonah taking a ship to Tarshish… demonstrate the stubbornness of humankind… and God’s power to overcome that stubbornness to change a person’s heart.   Another example can be found in the fictional story of Absalom Greer in the book, At Home in Mitford, that the women are reading for their discussion this month.

It is more than the concept of a moth being drawn to a flame.  Yes, the flame attracts the moth… and it seems to be an irresistible attraction.  But in the example of the moth and the flame, it is the moth that does all the work to fly to the flame and bask in its glow.  The irresistible grace of God is not like that.  The irresistible grace of God is more like a tractor beam engaged by the Starship Enterprise.  Once an object is caught in its beam, that object is drawn to the Starship without exerting any effort of its own.  As surely as the fish that were caught in the Apostle Peter’s net were hauled into his boat, so the depraved persons chosen by God are saved totally by God’s grace through no effort of their own.  It is, after all, unmerited grace.

The important aspect of this doctrine is that, without the power that draws us, we ourselves are nothing.  The disabled ship in the tractor beam pulled by the Starship Enterprise can go nowhere without the power of that tractor beam.  The farm implement that is pulled by a tractor into the field can do nothing in that field without the power of the tractor that pulls it.  The trailer of an 18-wheeler has no power to move on its own.  It needs the power of the Peterbilt truck that hauls it along the Interstate.  So it is with us.  We can be drawn to the One who redeems us by the power of God, but if we then turn away from that God, we lose the power we once had to accomplish the work that God sets before us.

This concept of being powerless without the power of God is one that is difficult for many to accept.  Our American souls are steeped in the tradition that we are independent, free-thinking, and self-sufficient individuals.  Submitting to the will of another… believing that we are powerless to act without the power given to us by another… these things are antithetical to our nature… and, yes, we rebel.   Isn’t it wonderful, then, to know that God’s grace is irresistible… and that, once chosen by God, God’s power will find a way to overcome all our objections… and our rebellion… to draw us to Christ.

I vividly remember a conversation that I had with a pastor in Illinois when I was struggling with my own faith.  “Should I join a church because my parents belonged to that church?”  “Is this something that I should do to honor them, whether or not I believe?”   John smiled at me and said, “No, Sharon.  Fight it tooth and nail.  For if God wants you, he will drag you kicking and screaming to the altar and there will be nothing that you can do to prevent it.”  And he was right.  I never did join that church, but God did drag me, kicking and screaming to the altar several years later. John is gone now, but I have used his words several times in conversations with those who have come to me with the same question. What I know now…that I did not know then…is this: If you are even asking that question, God is already at work within you.  You are in the tractor beam.  You just haven’t felt its power yet.

Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  Here’s what I want you to see in our text today: Even when Elijah was running as fast as he could away from Israel… away from his task as a prophet to God’s children in that land… away from all that God had called him to do, who was it that strengthened him on his journey?  Who was it that provided the bread from heaven… not once, but twice?  Who gave him enough food to sustain him as he went forty days in the wrong direction?  God.   If that doesn’t give you goose bumps, I don’t know what will!  You are running away from God as fast as you can.  You stop to rest… and angel of God taps you on the shoulder.  So much for your great escape!   As Psalm 139 says, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”  There is a strong hand on the net… a steady hand on the controls of that tractor beam.

Why would God aid and abet Elijah in his disobedience… in his rebellion… in his effort to escape God’s will for his life?”   Ah, the perseverance of the saints.  Elijah was never out of the tractor beam.  The net still held around him as he swam in the water among the other fish.   You see, God knew that Elijah would have to confront the man in the mirror… that he would eventually answer to the voice that spoke to him out of the sheer silence at Mount Horeb.   You and I… who think we are free… think again.   If you are within the sound of my voice today, God is already at work within you.  The tractor beam has locked on its target.  The ends of the net are closed.  In God’s own time, we will feel his power at work in our lives.  And we… like Elijah…will be forced to answer the question, “What are you doing here?”    Until then, we are fed with the Bread that comes from heaven… by angels we sometimes never see…as we are drawn slowly, but in exorably to our Savior by our sovereign God… even as we run away.  Amen.                    1 Kings 19:4-8