Last Sunday, I preached a message from 1 Kings 19 sharing my conviction that the real cause for Elijah’s fear was not so much Queen Jezebel’s threat against his life, but the gut-wrenching failure of his own misplaced peace.

Rather than finding his peace in God alone, Elijah sought peace in his own performance and accomplishments.  Inevitably, when his efforts alone began to crumble beneath the weight of his circumstances, his peace began crumbling and fear invaded his heart.  If you want to hear more, you can find that message here.

In the messaged, I pointed out multiple symptoms, signs if you will, of Elijah’s misplaced peace, but of the four mentioned Sunday, I want to take one of them a bit further in today’s blog.

One of the signs we see in Elijah’s life that he’d gone ISO peace in a place other than God is the deception in his perception that ultimately distorts his experience of reality.  We looked at how even though Elijah is convinced he’s alone, he is not.  God makes this abundantly clear saying that he’s, “reserved 7000 in Israel” who have not bowed their knees to idols and false Gods (1 Kings 19:18).

Elijah is convinced he’s all alone, that he’s the only one left, that everything rests on his shoulders and yet, God says there are thousands of men and women just like you.  You, Elijah, are not alone.  The work is not yours to shoulder singlehandedly.  You, Elijah, are not alone.

Talk about a deception in one’s perception.  There were thousands and not just him.  Elijah couldn’t have been more wrong!

But there’s another place I think this deception of perception gets the best of Elijah.  It takes place right after Jezebel levels her threats against Elijah and his heart is overcome with fear.  It says:

Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness.  He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die.  “I have had enough, Lord,” he said.  “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” ~ 1 Kings 19:4 (NIV)

“Take my life,” Elijah despairs.  “I am no better than my ancestors.”  I want to focus on those words right there.

“I am no better than my ancestors.”  I’m no better than my fathers before me.  I’m no better, no different, than those who have come before me.

Those words only make sense if before this moment, Elijah believed he was better than his ancestors.

Long before this fear rocked his false sense of peace, it appears that Elijah had given himself over to an unhealthy sense of pride.

To be fair, Elijah was an incredible man of faith.  So much so, that when the prophets who came later whispered and longed for the coming Messiah, they prophesied that Elijah himself would prepare the way for the messiah (Malachi 3:1, 4:5; Matthew 11:14).

However, as faithful as Elijah clearly was, the scriptures are clear that all of us, every single one of us, even Elijah, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  Elijah was right – he was no better than his ancestors.  Neither am I.  Neither are you.  All of us have come up short and are in need of God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

When his false sense of peace began to crumble, Elijah’s pride went with it and honestly, as discomforting as that can be, I think that was the start of Elijah’s healing.  It’s never a happy realization to discover that we’re not better than anyone else, but it’s only when we realize this, that our sin, no matter how boring or trivial it may seem, separates us from God just as seriously as even the most heinous of crimes.

When we finally realize we’re no better, when our pride is finally beset by our own sense of sin, then our hearts can finally beset by the grace of God.  Yes, we’re no better than anyone else, but that’s precisely what qualifies us as people in need of the saving work of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So, what does pride sound like when it’s rooted in a deception of our perception?  How might we come to see that we’ve got some false sense of peace producing pride in our lives?  It might sound something like this:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.   I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’  “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” ~ Luke 18:9-14 (NIV)

Whenever we start

…Seeing ourselves

…Thinking ourselves

…Believing ourselves to be better than anyone else,

whenever we elevate ourselves above others because of their sin our sense of self-righteousness, this pride is a symptom of a false sense of peace at work in our lives.  We’ve trusted in our good works, rather than God’s good grace.  Our peace in our own puffed-up sense of piety and performance, not God’s promises, purposes, and power.

And if we don’t wake up and see this for the sin that it is, it’s only a matter of time before the frailty of our false peace cracks beneath the weight of reality.

When Elijah realized he wasn’t better than His ancestors before him, he wasn’t wrong.  Where he went wrong was the conclusions he drew from this revelation.  Elijah wanted to give up totally.  “It would be better for me to die,” he lamented.

God, however, didn’t want that for Elijah.  He doesn’t want that for you either.

Instead, God calls us to die to ourselves, to our pride, to our own sense of self-sufficiency, and to confront the deceptions in our perception and reject the false sources of peace we so often go in search of, and discover that Christ alone is our peace (Ephesians 2:14).

So may the peace of God surpass all your thinking, blow wide the limits of your expectations, and give you rest.