1 Kings 18:2

At the beginning of the years of drought the Lord had said to Elijah, "Depart from here and hide yourself;" now the word is, "Go, show yourself." There is a time to hide ourselves and a time to show ourselves; a time to proclaim the word of the Lord from the housetops, and a time to go "apart into a desert place and rest a while." A time to pass through the land "as unknown," and a time to mingle with the crowd "as well known" (2 Cor. 6:9). Such changes are the common lot of all true servants of the Lord.

A third time the word of the Lord comes to Elijah (v. 1; 1 Kings 17:2, 8); a third time Elijah obeys. Obedience marks the career of this man of God. May it mark us too! Only one time does Elijah go where his own heart directs him (1 Kings 19:3), and the thread of his career is interrupted.

Elijah obeys without arguing. His obedience comes from complete confidence in God, His authority, His power, and His goodness. Every disobedient act of a Christian shows a lack of appreciation of what God is.

In the eyes of the king, Elijah was an outlaw and a troubler of Israel. By human reason, showing himself to the king would be plain madness. Could not God bring rain upon the earth without exposing His servant to the anger of the king? No doubt He could, but this would not at all meet the circumstances of the case. God held the rain back at the word of Elijah in the presence of the king. So the coming of the rain must also depend on God's prophet acting in the presence of the king. Suppose the rain had returned without Elijah's public testimony. People would at once have written him off as a false prophet and a boaster. Worse still, the prophets of Baal would have credited the deliverance to their idol.

A parenthesis interrupts the narrative, running from the middle of verse 2 to the end of verse 6. Its object is to bring Obadiah and his position to our notice. The curtain is lifted, so to speak. It shows us first the sufferings of Samaria through the famine, and then the steps Ahab took to save some of his cattle if he could.

Israel had sinned, and Israel had to feel the rod of the Lord's righteous anger. What a humbling picture of God's ancient people, to see their king going out to look for grass! What a contrast between all this and the rich abundance and glory of Solomon's day! But God had been grossly dishonoured, and His truth rejected... Baal's altar had replaced the altar of God. So the heaven above was iron, and the earth beneath brass. The physical state of things was simply the expression of Israel's hardness of heart and low moral condition.

For three and a half years neither rain nor dew has fallen, and the famine is severe in the land. King and people are proving that it is "an evil thing and bitter" to forsake the Lord God and worship idols. But what of the king? Has this severe calamity softened his heart and brought him to repentance before the Lord? His thoughts are taken up with his horses and mules rather than his starving people; and far from seeking God he is merely seeking grass.