1 Kings 19:8

In the solitude of Sinai, God appeared to instruct him. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" was a searching question addressed to one who had been called to so arduous and urgent a mission as his.

[An Exposition of the greater part of the chapter from which the text is taken is given with Sermon #2828, Volume 49.] I. My first observation upon this passage is that THE GREATEST BELIEVERS ARE SOMETIMES SUBJECT TO FAINTING FITS. The Apostle James tells us that "Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are." And this fact was very clearly manifest on the occasion to which our text refers. Otherwise he seemed, in most things, to be superior to the ordinary run of men, a sort of iron Prophet—what if I call him THE PROPHET OF FIRE—the man whose whole life seemed to be a flash of flame—a mighty, burning, ecstatic love and zeal towards the cause of God? But Elijah had his flaws, even as the sun has its spots. Strong man though he was, he was sometimes obliged to faint, even as the sun sometimes suffers an eclipse. His fainting, too, took a form which is very common among the saints of God. He cried, "O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers." [See Sermon #2725, Volume 46—ELIJAH FAINTING] A desire to depart, when it arises from wisdom and knowledge, and from a general survey of things below, is very proper. But when a wish to die is merely the result of passion, a sort of quarreling with God as a child sometimes quarrels with its parents, it has more of folly in it than of wisdom and much more of petulance than of piety! It was a remarkable thing that the man who was never to die, for whom God had ordained an infinitely better lot, the man who was to be carried to Heaven by a whirlwind in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire—the man who, like Enoch, was "translated that he should not see death"—should thus pray to die! We have here a memorable proof that God does not always literally answer prayer, though He always does in effect. He gave Elijah something better than that for which he asked, so He really did hear and answer his prayer.

[An Exposition of the greater part of the chapter from which the text is taken is given with Sermon #2828, Volume 49.] I. My first observation upon this passage is that THE GREATEST BELIEVERS ARE SOMETIMES SUBJECT TO FAINTING FITS. The Apostle James tells us that "Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are." And this fact was very clearly manifest on the occasion to which our text refers.

The old commentators generally understood this to mean that Elijah had no other food at all, and compared this long fast with that of Moses and that of our Lord (marginal references). But the words do not exclude the notion of the prophet’s having obtained such nourishment from roots and fruits as the desert offers to a wanderer, though these alone would not have sustained him.