Is it wrong to want to die?

He went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree, and he requested for himself that he might die. It is not but what we see the man of God, but still the man who was tired of life. That was not a feeling of faith. There is very often much more faith in being willing to live than in wishing to die. Wishing to die is not the proof of faith at all. I grant you that no man that knows what death is, that knows what judgment is, that knows what sin is, that knows what God is, could wish to die unless he knew the Saviour. But having known the Saviour we may wince under the trial to which we are exposed in this world. Elijah did, and he wished to die, wished to get out of the trial — certainly a most unbelieving wish. The Lord never did. And there was the perfection of it. If the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane had wished to die it would have been the same failure. It could not be, and God forbid such a thought, but on the contrary the perfection of the Lord Jesus was that He did not wish to die — "Not my will, but thine be done." On the contrary, He felt death, and He felt the gravity. I grant you, there was all the difference between the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and that of any other. In any other case death is a gain. Death to a believer is gain, but still we ought not to wish to gain till the Lord's time comes for it. We ought to wish to do His will, the only right wish for a saint. He said, "It is enough; now, O Jehovah, take away my life." He was impatient. "Take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers." Yet he was running away from Jezebel. He was vexed; he was unhappy. He now fails after his testimony. He, was miserable now, but after all he wanted not to die when Jezebel wanted to take his life, and now that he is here he wants to die.

In these verses Job comes closer to facing facts as they actually were. He was in misery and bitterness of soul, and he questions why life should be given to one in such a state, though he longs for death and it does not come. It is good, however, that he does not even consider suicide, as many would do today who are in such a condition. Satan had been told to spare Job's life while being allowed to make him suffer so grievously, and God knew Job's sufferings were necessary to accomplish results of great blessing. So that Job's wish for death was not according to the will of God. Job would not die until God ordained it so.

The first thought, and the most bitter one, after awaking to a full sense of one's misery, is to curse one's day; a terrible impression, and the one which leads to suicide, when God is not known. But when God is known, as in Job's case, it is the beginning of healthy action; not in the discontent and wretchedness which it discloses, but because the sense of death, utter extermination from everything, is known and felt. I may give way to rebellion and discontent in learning the utter wretchedness of man on earth, but the sense of this is necessary to full self-renunciation. I ought not to blame God for it, but I need to realize it as man's true place. Death, because of such present misery, is preferred. To live in it has no attraction for the heart. This Job feels. He knows not that God seeks to make him a witness of dependence on Himself against Satan. But this is God's way. Discipline may have the effect of making us feel that death is preferable to life, but it is working out God's purpose.

Many a saint tried with much sorrow longs to be away. It is a blessed thing to long to be with Christ. It is far better to depart and be with Christ. But that is the question; is it to be with Christ or away from the world? If only the latter it is different from the prayer of the Lord on our behalf, "I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil." To long to he out of the world merely because we are weary is not submission to His will. It was weariness that made Moses wretched and say, "kill me, I pray Thee, out of hand," and that made Elijah say, "It is enough, take my life, I am not better than my fathers." That is, notwithstanding his mission as a prophet, he was in no better condition than those who went before him.

Let us look further at Jonah's prayer. He continues: "And now, Jehovah, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." This is the only request in Jonah's prayer, a request that he might die. Why? Because he could not have his own way. Self-will and disappointment made him long to give up his honorable position as prophet and servant of Jehovah, a witness to Him, even in a foreign land; and escape all his troubles in death. It was very wrong and very cowardly — just the kind of thing we do. When things go all wrong, and we do not get our own way, and are disappointed and discouraged; then we sigh, and hope that the Lord may soon come and take us away to heaven. The writer has to confess that he has done just the same thing as Jonah, and very possibly the reader is little better. If we allow it, how the sword of the Spirit cuts us, and how truly it is "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)

Elijah having gone a day's journey into the wilderness sat down under a juniper tree and spoke to God — probably his first word of prayer since he left Jezreel. "He requested for himself that he might die." Unbelief is always unreasonable and inconsistent. If the prophet really wished to die, why did he flee from Jezebel? Why not die a martyr's death in the midst of the people of God! Jehovah was no longer uppermost in his thoughts. The divine glory was not before his mind, but some fancied advantage for himself. Life was now a disappointment! His work in Israel had gone all wrong! How gracious of our God not to take His poor perverse servants always at their word! It was His intention that Elijah should not die at all; that he should have an exit from the world such as no-one ever had before, or has had since! Paul in Phil. 1 took a totally different line from Elijah. His work also had gone wrong (as men would judge), and he was in prison, with martyrdom threatening. Calmly in the presence of God he considered the situation. He was in a great "strait." If he put his own interest first, he would desire to depart and be with Christ, which would be happier for him than the happiest experiences here. But he thought of the need of the saints; therefore he desired to remain on earth a little longer: but in any case his one ambition was that Christ should be magnified in his body, whether by life or by death.

Elijah's prayer was brief and pointed as his manner was. "It is enough; now, O Jehovah, take away my life: for I am not better than my fathers." In the concluding words perhaps is contained the secret of his failure. Who ever said that he was better than his fathers? Possibly his success on Mount Carmel had inflated him. All alone he had accomplished great things for God. Did this really make him feel somewhat important and even indispensable? This is a condition of mind which can easily develop in any of us; but it is fatal to our usefulness. Many years ago, the writer called to say farewell to an aged servant of Christ just passing into the presence of his Lord. As we clasped hands at parting he said: "Goodbye, beloved brother; remember, few men are important, and none are necessary." Wholesome words, not to be lightly forgotten! It is an unspeakable honour for the great God to make use of any of us in His work; but let us never imagine that He cannot do without us.

But while attempting to trace the path of God's patience in all these moral processes with man, there are also to be noticed the instances of faith in connection with His dealings. Elijah's faith is marked by great power, but not less marked is, in one instance, the absence of it. Ahab grieves over his dead priests, Jezebel swears by her gods to do the same to Elijah. His faith falters on hearing of this and he flees. After the glory of the scene upon mount Carmel, he did not expect to have to flee for his life, and to hide himself from a woman's fury. A murmuring feeling rises, and he asks God to take his life, saying, "I am not better than my fathers." This is not humility, but saying that he ought to have been better treated; since he was not, better to die: he had had enough of trial. "It is enough, now, O Jehovah, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers." A saint in intimate and peaceful communion with God never says, "It is enough," but, following in the steps of the Perfect One, says, Thy will, not mine, be done. But a merciful God meets him, and satisfies his hunger. Food, miraculously provided, and in the strength of that meat miraculously sustained forty days and forty nights. We think of One who had no meat miraculously given, but endured for forty days and forty nights; not that He would not be subject to the feeling of hunger, He was a perfect Man, and was willingly subject to its need. "Afterwards he hungered." But He was the mighty God — Elijah a weak servant. This goodness of God to a wearied and persecuted servant does not set aside discipline, and at last the solemn question is put, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" God strengthened him to go to Horeb, but did not send him there. He had run to Jezreel in the power of the Spirit, and no sooner there than he ran away, but not in the power of the Spirit. He left his post: hence the solemn question, What doest thou here? God, who had sent down the fire, and consumed the sacrifice, altar, water — who had strengthened his arm against all the idolatrous prophets — was not He able to curb the fury of an enraged woman? Elijah's faith, which was equal to the great occasion on mount Cannel, was not equal to the quiet, patient dependence upon God for his life. The passive power of faith needs for its sustenance closer communion with God than its active energy. Action, as it were, nerves us to the conflict; but quiet endurance of wrong, or snaring of any kind, which neither friend nor foe sees, but only God, this indeed needs divine power, and without God's support none would bear the strain. Many a saint has shown the courage of faith before his enemies, as Elijah when he faced Ahab, but who, like him, quails and flees, when there is nothing to do, but quietly trust in God.

What a height of success had Elijah now reached through his faith and labour! Could anything, we might ask, henceforth move him after such signal honour and power being vouchsafed to him by God? One who knows little of the human heart might say, it could not but, alas! it is no rare page in the history of God's servants for discouragement and withering to set in, from the very point of their greatest success. So was it with David. After a marked deliverance from Saul, he exclaims, "I shall one day perish at the hands of Saul," and he retreats to Achish. So was it with Jonah. When his preaching produced such an effect that God's judgment was averted, he was so angry that he would do nothing more. So is it with Elijah. After the signal instances and proofs he had known of that God's power and present help, when he heard of Jezebel's intentions against him, "he went for his life, and came to Beersheba, and left his servant there, but he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper-tree, and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers." (1 Kings 19:4.) What a contrast between a man of faith and a man of unbelief! Who would have thought that Elijah under the juniper-tree was the Elijah of Carmel but a day or two before! How feeble and weak is the most notable of God's servants without faith! But such reverses and hours of darkness are necessary* for such a servant; aye, as necessary in God's discipline as are his brightest moments, for then it is that he learns for himself the power of the Invisible. This was the secret of Moses' strength. He endured as seeing Him who is invisible. And when a soul has been much engaged with the external marks and evidences of God's workings, it needs all the more that education which will establish it in that which faith pre-eminently seeks and rests on, even the peculiar, private, unseen education of God to itself.

After the total destruction of the prophets of Baal and the account Ahab gives Jezebel of this, she swears by her false gods to take her revenge upon Elijah within twenty-four hours, and she lets him know this. "And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life" (vv. 1-3). He flees before a woman, he who had met with Ahab and had resisted the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal! This attitude, so contrary to his attitude before, came from Elijah's at this moment forgetting the source of his strength. He could no longer say, "The Lord before whom I stand." He felt himself to be before Jezebel, not before the Lord. And the thing was so true that he was going to have to walk for forty days and forty nights in order to stand before God again. From the moment a believer lets any object whatsoever come between his soul and God, the distance immediately takes on incalculable proportions. The result of this estrangement necessarily is that the prophet loses all his strength, for one does not find this anywhere but before God. "Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled." Elijah, a quite remarkable instrument of the Lord's power, had not realized in the same measure that in himself there was neither goodness, nor light, nor strength. It was needful for him to make this experience, and God would bring him to this in leaving him to his own resources before the enemy's power. He who had sent the message, "Behold Elijah," to Ahab flees for his life at a mere threat from Jezebel. From Jizreel he passes into the territory of Judah where the queen could no longer reach him, continues his flight to Beer-sheba, the farthest border of Judah toward the wilderness, leaves his servant there, and not satisfied with his flight, goes into the wilderness itself a day's journey. There he "sat down under a certain broom-bush, and requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough: now, Jehovah, take my life; for I am not better than my fathers" (v. 4). He is so completely discouraged that he wishes for an end to his life. Why this? "For I am not better than my fathers!" The prophet thus had thought, even if only for a moment, that he was better than his fathers and that God had supported him in the conflict because of this excellence! Poor prophet! — powerless before Jezebel, absolutely discouraged in his own sight, he who had believed that he could build something upon this foundation of sand.

Now, in all this we perceive the workings of impatience and unbelief. Elijah said nothing about longing to depart when he stood on mount Carmel. No; there all was triumph; there he seemed to be achieving something — he seemed to be of some use, and therefore he thought not of his departure. But the Lord would show His servant not only what he "must do," but also what he "must suffer." The former we like well enough, the latter we are not so well prepared for. And yet the Lord is as much glorified in a patient sufferer as in an active servant. The graces that are developed by one who is enabled to endure protracted suffering are as fragrant in their perfume as all the fruits of active service. This our prophet should have borne in mind. But ah, the heart can well understand and sympathise with him in his gloom and despondency.

There are few of the Lord's servants who have not, at some time or other, eagerly desired to put off their harness and cease from the toils of conflict, particularly at times when all their labour and testimony would seem to be in vain, and when they are disposed to look upon themselves as mere cumberers of the ground. Yet we must wait God's time, and until then seek to pursue our way in patient, uncomplaining service. There is a vast difference between longing to get away from trial and sorrow, and longing to be at home in our Father's house.