Hey, do you know that you get bonus points for coming to church when it is below freezing outside? So give yourself a round of applause. That’s not in the Bible, but that, I think that’s true. When, when I was in high school, I played basketball. That was my primary sport, the, the sport that I enjoyed. But my basketball coach believed that in the off season, if we weren’t doing something that we would get out of shape. And so he made everybody that was on the basketball team run track. Now when I say run track, we didn’t actually compete in track meets, but he made us go out every day and practice with the track team. And he thought that the most one to one track event to train someone for basketball was the hurdles. Anybody out there run run hurdles?

I, I hate hurdles by the way. I, I decided I hated them when I was forced to run them while I was on the track team. Here’s what I don’t get about hurdles. I, I wanna be there when the guy that invented the hurdle invented the hurdle. Because, because you, you, you had everybody else that was just running, Hey, we’re gonna run from here to that pole. I mean, everybody understands the race. Every kid that is five years old has raced another kid. Hey, let’s race to there or let, and then if you have younger kids and older kids, they like to do this when they’re younger, they’re like, Hey, let’s race to there. First place, boom. But somebody decided, you know what? Let’s race from here to there, but let’s also jump over stuff the entire way that we are going, and let’s make ’em painful to jump over so that if you hit it with your shin or your knee, it’s just gonna bam.

But, but the, the idea of a hurdle is that you’re running a race, you’re trying to get to a destination, but between you and the destination is going to be some type of an obstacle that makes it more challenging for you to get there. Now, here’s what I have found in life, that, that just like running hurdles, there are obstacles that in life that we are all running a race. That’s this analogy that the New Testament uses. Paul specifically uses this idea that we are running a race. But here’s the thing about the race, it’s not always easy that, that if you are running the race of life, that there are going to be moments where you and I face obstacles. And today what I wanna unpack is what do we do when we hit those hurdles? How do we overcome those obstacles? And so I wanna start with just a simple question and that, that is this, what types of hurdles exist in my life?

What type of hurdles right now, if you were to just take a step back and pause and reflect for just a few moments and say, okay, in my life right now, what are those hurdles? How would you define them? I think there’s really three different types of hurdles that we face that some of them are everyday hurdles. These are the challenges that show up daily. If you’ve got young kids, then you know that every day kids face little hurdles that they’ve gotta overcome. You got real young kids. The the hurdles can be really seemingly silly. The the color of cup that they got or they didn’t get that they wanted, that becomes a hurdle for them. That that nevermind the fact that the liquid inside the cup is what they wanted because the color wasn’t the right color. That becomes a hurdle that it is hard for them to move past.

It, it, it is a sticking point for them. But it happens to adults too. You ever had a moment in traffic that ruined the rest of your day? Maybe somebody cuts you off in traffic or maybe somebody is doing something that they are not supposed to do. If you don’t believe that, the God just wired us to have a sense of justice, of right and wrong. Just spend a few hours driving around town and there will be somebody that does something that just drives you crazy. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe that’s just a personal problem that I’ve got. But occasionally someone will be doing something. Actually, if you do carpool with kids, sometimes those people, because everybody’s supposed to go in a certain way, but occasionally somebody will just go to the front of the carpool line and like turn on their blinker and you’re like, Hey, I would rather you spend the next 45 minutes at the back of the line.

You, you better get out and prove to me that someone is dying. Otherwise, I’m not letting you in. Like, that’s just the way sometimes that I am wired and sometimes I can have a moment in traffic that ruins the rest of my day. It becomes a hurdle that, that an hour later, two hours later, when I look back and I realize how I’ve emotionally responded, how I’ve treated other people, that it all boils down to that moment where I responded in a different way. That there’s seasonal hurdles that we face, that these are bigger hurdles that come in seasons of life. That it’s not just a momentary thing that ruins my day. It might be something that feels like it’s ruining a few months at a time. It could be relationship problems that I’ve got. It could be something going on at work. It could be a promotion that I thought I was gonna receive that I didn’t receive.

So now this is a hurdle that it’s struggling for me to get past it. And then there’s also these moments that are defining hurdles in our life, that these are life changing moments that shape who we are. If you’ve had a loved one that has died, a child of yours that’s died, a spouse of yours that’s died, a really close personal friend or parent that has died, that can be a defining moment in your life. It’s a hurdle. And then we can get stuck at that hurdle, and it’s hard to move past it. If you’ve ever been divorced, that can be a life defining moment. And it’s a defining hurdle. And it becomes this question of, okay, how do I move past this thing in my life? An addiction can be a defining hurdle, the addiction that, that we know people that we say their life, they had so much potential.

They, they, they just could. The sky was the limit for them. But they faced this hurdle in their life that they could never move past. And as a result of it, it defined who they were. Hey, here’s what I want us to, to understand that our life is often defined either by our hurdles or by how we overcome them. So it’s not saying that every hurdle we ever face is going to define our life, but sometimes there are some really big life defining hurdles. And either that hurdle becomes a thing that defines us. Think of someone that has an addiction that they can never get past at the end of their life. When someone is really looking back and thinking on their life, they say, well, that hurdle ended up defining them. But also there can be defining moments that it’s about getting past the hurdle.

Yes, it was challenging. Yes, it, it shook me to my core, but me moving past that hurdle was actually the defining thing in my life. Victory, triumph. That instead of it defining who I am, it was simply a defining moment of who God led it for me to become. Now, now here’s what I also want us to understand. That, that when we have these hurdles in our life, sometimes it’s our fault. Like sometimes those hurdles are because we’ve sinned. Sometimes it’s because we’ve been a knucklehead. Sometimes it’s just because we’ve messed up. But oftentimes the hurdles that we face in life are not our fault, had nothing to do with us, and yet it doesn’t change the fact that it is our responsibility to choose to move past that hurdle. What does it look like? If you’ve got a Bible turn with me to first Kings.

We’re gonna be the first Kings chapter 16, then chapter 17, then aft then chapter 18, and then chapter 19. So we’re gonna do a real quick view of a defining hurdle in the life of a prophet named Elijah. Now, interestingly, a year ago about roughly we looked at the same story, but we looked at the end of the story, at the end of the stories, this really cool famous story where Elijah hears from God. And so Elijah is sent by God to the cleft of a mountain and he’s on this mountain and, and all of a sudden there’s a fire, and then there’s an earthquake, and then there’s a big wind. And scripture says that God is not in those things. Instead, God is in this still quiet whisper. And so it’s this picture at the end of all of this where God meets us. Sometimes we think that God’s gonna meet us in the big fire and the big wind and the big earthquake. And instead oftentimes where we experience God is in stillness, it’s in rest. It’s in quiet. But this, that moment comes after what we’re gonna look into today. If you’ve got a Bible one Kings chapter 16, we’re gonna start in verse 19. It says this,

In the 38th year of

Asa, king of Judah,

Ahab,

The son of Oy began to reign over

Israel. And Ahab,

The son of Oy, reigned over Israel and Samaria 22

Years.

And Ahab, the son of Oy, did

Evil in the sight of the Lord

More

Than all who were

Before him. Now, pause for a second and realize that means that Ahab is not a good guy. That, that in the Old Testament, you, you kinda have this pattern in the nation of Israel, that they’d

Have a

Righteous king, and then they’d have an evil king. They’d have a righteous king. They had an evil king. And now you have Ahab. And not only is he an evil king, but he’s actually more

Evil than all

The kings that came before him. And

As if it

Had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of je Boem, the son of Abba. Now pause. ’cause In the Hebrews kind of this

Beautiful picture where it says as if it

Had been a light thing for him to walk in sin.

It’s, it’s this idea, it’s this word

Picture that’s trying to convey to us that most of the time when someone’s walking in sin, it’s a heavy thing. Like,

Like they wear it, it’s

A bad thing. It’s ruining their life. And yet Ahab

Is so evil

That walking in sin was a light thing for him. It

Was an easy

Thing for him.

It says that he took for his wife, Jezebel, the daughter of Ebel, king of

The Ians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. So Jezebel’s,

Who we get introduced to

Jezebel becomes this

Wicked evil

Queen. You see the negative influence that she has on a king that’s already an evil king Ahab, that now as a

Result

Of this marriage, he

Starts to worship Baal, a false God. So Elijah is the prophet

At the time of this. Now. Now it’s interesting the Old Testament because you have

Prophets that are

Prophets during the reigns of good and righteous kings. And then you have prophets

That are the prophets

During reigns of evil and bad kings. Now, it

Doesn’t take

A rocket sciences

To

Figure out which one of those is easier.

Elijah drew the shortz straw. He’s a

Prophets speaking on behalf of God in a time when the king over the entire nation is evil. And as a result of that, really the entire nation starts going that direction.

As

The king goes, so goes the nation. And so as the king starts to worship

Baal, guess what happens

To the entire nation?

They start to worship Baal. They start to walk

Down a road that

Is evil.

So then in one Kings chapter 17,

Elijah prophesies about a drought that would come.

Now here’s, here’s something that’s unrelated to the sermon, but it, but it’s just kind of a cool way that the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together. We know that

Elijah prays for and talks about a drought

At the beginning of One Kings 17, but there’s not a whole lot of detail

About it. It just talks about

A drought. And we know it’s an extended amount of time. But in the New Testament, two different times, it talks

About this drought, it talks about, Jesus

Talks about it in Luke chapter four. And then James, the brother of Jesus writes about it at the end of his epistle in James chapter five. Here’s what James says in James chapter five, verse 17. He says, Elijah was a man with a nature just like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain. And for three years and six months, it did not rain on the earth. So the reason we know that the drought was three years and six months is because of Jesus and because of James, not because of what it tells us in the Old Testament. So I want as a pause to just point out something that I think is really cool in our culture. There’s oftentimes nowadays this idea that, well, the Old Testament is full of really cool stories, but they’re really more fables. They’re not really real.

Maybe those people existed, maybe not. The New Testament never talks about the Old Testament in that way. That Jesus, when he talks about people, characters in the Old Testament, he talks about them like they were real people, that this really did happen and it really did exist. And so you have this kind of other detail that we got about Elijah in the New Testament where it doesn’t tell us that the drought was three and a half years, but the New Testament, because it was real, it really did happen, says not only did Elijah pray for this drought, that the drought lasted three years, six months. So, so imagine now you’re Ahab, you’re the king over Israel, and you hear about this prophet that has caused a drought to happen for the last three and a half years. Like, like Ahab not a big fan of Elijah.

Let’s just put it Eli late by saying that they’re not, not besties with each other. And so the story continues in First Kings chapter 18, son of verse 17. It says, when Ahab saw Elijah Ahab said to him, is it you, you Troubler of Israel? Not a great title if you’re the prophet of Israel. No, he, he’s not trying to trouble Israel. He’s trying to save Israel. And that’s how he responds, he says, and he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but you have and your father’s house because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. Now therefore sin and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of ura who eat at Jezebel’s table. So now you have this kinda really cool showdown that’s about to happen if you grew up in Sunday school at church, this is one of those stories that we talk about with kids because it’s just a cool story that they, you have the good guys and the bad guys.

You have the prophets of Baal, and you have Elijah. And, and the idea is that we’re gonna have a showdown. And, and they set up a, an altar and they say, whoever can pray and their God calls down fire, they win the contest. That’s a crazy contest. And so all day long, the prophets of Baal, there’s hundreds of them are praying for fire to come down, prayer for fire to come down, praying for fire to come down, and nothing happens. And actually Elijah is like making fun of him. He’s like joking with him the whole time. He actually it’s, it’s more crude than how it gets translated to English. But in, in Hebrew, he, he basically says, maybe your God is on the toilet. Maybe they’re having to use the restroom. Maybe that’s why they’re not out here calling down fire. So, so Elijah is just joking with him.

He’s mocking the, and all of a sudden Elijah comes up and he prays to God to bring down fire. And guess what happens? Fi literal fire comes down from the sky and burns the thing up, and then right after that, they round up all the prophets of Baal and they kill him. That part we don’t really emphasize when we’re telling the story to kids <laugh>, but it’s part of the story. That is what happens. Evil meets its day. So, so now imagine Elijah, okay, Elijah, for three and a half years has been working towards this thing. For three and a half years there’s been drought. And imagine if you’re the prophet that has caused drought that doesn’t just punish the evil that, that everybody is affected as a result of that drought. And so, so surely there’s some heaviness that weighs on his heart and his life because he’s dealing with other people that, that are righteous people, but there’s struggling because there’s not enough water.

And, and look what happens right after this. You’d think, man, this is, he’s just one, he’s the, the hero. He’s gotta be on cloud nine. It says, Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them, those prophets that had been killed by this time tomorrow, then talking about Elijah, he was afraid. And now, now pause for a second because just a side note, I, what kind of a backbone does Jezebel have? Like the dude literally just called down fire from the sky and killed all of her prophets. And, and so probably most people, your response to that is, oh, we need to worship this God.

Clearly we were in the wrong and he was in the right, but that’s not how she responds. Like she just doubles down and she says, I don’t care that that he called down fire, that he killed all these other people. I am going to kill him. And now probably that’s not the outcome that Elijah expected, probably outcome that Elijah assume was gonna happen is Elijah was like, I won. It’s over. It’s been a long three and a half years, but we won the contest, the fire, and woo. And now Jezebel says, I’m gonna come kill you. And what’s his response? It says, then he was afraid and he arose and he ran for his life, and it came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree.

And he asked that he might die saying, it is enough now, oh Lord, take away my life for I’m no better than my father’s. And now here’s why. I want you to understand that Elijah faces a hurdle in his life that his expectations of how things were supposed to go have not gone those that way. He, he would’ve assumed, Hey, it’s done, it’s over. I’ve won, probably in his best case, most optimistic scenarios, like, I’m gonna call down fire. And then, then everybody’s, there’s gonna be revival. Everybody’s gonna say, we’re gonna turn to God, they’re gonna stop to an evil. They’re gonna, they’re gonna maybe think I’m awesome too. It’s gonna be great, it’s gonna be fantastic. And then that’s his expectation. But his reality is not that. His reality is that Jezebel says, I am going to kill you.

And you gotta imagine that what is factoring into his response is not just some expectations that he had that were unmet, but also just a weight and a burden and a tiredness that, that he’s exhausted. It’s been a long few years and it doesn’t go the way that he thinks it’s gonna go. And so now he just quits. He runs away from the challenge and the danger and the hurdle in his life, and he lays down under a tree and he says, God, let me die. You ever had a hurdle like that in your life? You ever had a moment in your life where you just run up against something and you just can’t get past it? Instead of trying to move past the hurdle, you just camp out. You just lay down and you say, that hurdle is too big for me to overcome.

That’s what we see Elijah doing. That’s what we see Elijah facing. Here’s what I want us to understand. Elijah’s fear distorted his perspective, that he was so focused on the hurdle that he felt like all his work was meaningless, his fear distorted his perspective. And now, have you ever known someone that was stuck at a hurdle? What tends to be our natural human reaction when someone’s stuck at a hurdle? We do it with kids all the time. Kid gets stuck at a, at a hurdle. There’s a frustration, there’s a sticking point. They can’t move past it. And we turn to ’em and we say, Hey, get over it. Hey, stop it. Hey, suck it up. Put on your big boy or your big girl pants. Let’s go right now. We treat kids sometimes the way that we would never treat our spouse, or at least can I just tell you.

If you’re gonna have a healthy relationship, you shouldn’t treat your spouse like that. Like if your spouse comes in and they’re crying and they’ve had a hard day, probably good advice is not to say, Hey, suck it up. Get over it. Put on your big boy pants or your big girl pants, move on. And you know, that’s not what God does. God doesn’t look down at Elijah and say, Elijah, get up. Suck it up. Get over it. You are being so lame right now, Elijah. Like, that’s, that’s not God’s response to him. So, so let’s, let’s pause and say, what is his hurdle? Here’s what Elijah’s hurdle is. It’s fear and it’s burnout that Elijah went from a bold confrontation with the prophets of Baal to running for his life after Jezebel’s threat. That’s what happens. He is stuck in this moment. And now how does God respond?

It picks up in verse five. And this is what it says. It says, and he Elijah lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, arise and eat. And he looked and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water, and he ate and drank and laid down again. And he goes on to say, and the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, arise and eat for the journey is too great for you. Now. Now pause, because this is in my Bible. I I underlined this phrase, the journey is too great for you. I think sometimes what we would have a hard time ever admitting that a journey is too great for us. We’d have a hard time ever admitting that I have an obstacle, I have a hurdle in my life that is too great for me because it kind of goes against everything that our culture likes to tell us.

Our culture likes to tell us just, Hey, you can do it. Suck it up, figure it out on your own, get past it, work harder. But the Bible would say, sometimes there are journeys, sometimes there are hurdles. Sometimes there are obstacles that are too great for us to handle alone. And if we really understand that and wrap our arms around that, can I just tell you that’s the most freeing thing in the world? ’cause It means it’s not on me that, that there is a help outside of me to overcome that obstacle. Then it goes and says, and he arose and ate and drank and went in the strength of that food, 40 days and 40 nights to reib the Mount of God. Now, here’s what I was to, to understand. That happens that, that Elijah is distraught. He’s tired, he’s in front of his hurdle, he’s laid down.

He thinks he’s gonna die. But, but here’s what God does that before giving Elijah instructions or addressing his feelings, God provided for his physical needs, he gave him food and water and rest. That, that, that seems kind of counterintuitive. It’s probably not what I respond with most of the time. When I see someone stuck at a hurdle, most of the time I respond with instruction advice. Hey, this is what you need to do. This is what you need to change. This is what you need to fix. Let me help you get past it. But that’s not what God does. God gives him rest. Last week I was six, so I didn’t preach. Gary stepped in, I kind of at the last minute and, and preached on Sabbath, that word Sabbath in Hebrew, Shabbat just means to stop to rest. What’s interesting in the Old Testament, when you look at the 10 Commandments, most of them are, are, are just straight out, Hey, don’t kill someone. Hey, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery. But then the 10 commitment about the Sabbath is different. It says, remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.

It’s interesting that it doesn’t say that about anything else. It never asks us to remember. It says, it doesn’t say, Hey, you need to remember not to murder people remember that like, like you’re just gonna be going about your day and you’re, I forgot I was about to murder this person. I need to remember not to like, you don’t need to remember not to steal. Like, that’s, that’s you know, you shouldn’t steal there. There’s never a part where you’re like, I’m about to steal this. Wait, remember, I’m not supposed to do that. And yet the Bible tells us to remember the Sabbath. Why? It’s because it’s the one that’s so easy to forget. It’s because we naturally don’t stop. We naturally don’t rest. We naturally go and go and go and go. And so God gives us a commandment that says, remember, don’t forget to stop and rest.

And Jesus picks up on the, this idea in the New Testament when Jesus says, I, he is the one that will give us rest to help us stop, to help us slow down. And that so often is the first step in dealing with our hurdles. It’s to slow down, it’s to pause, it’s to reflect, it’s to rest. I want just in a moment of reflection, each one of us ask this question, what are your hurdles right now in your life? What are your hurdles? What are my hurdles? What are those things that stand in the way of the path that you are running? Here’s what we have to do when we’ve got hurdles in our life. It’s really four specific steps. At first. We gotta recognize the hurdle. You gotta be aware of the fact that there is a hurdle there. Sometimes if we don’t recognize it, we just keep running into it over and over and over and over again.

So first I’ve got to recognize that the hurdle exists. Then I, I have to make a choice to overcome it. Because sometimes in life, here’s what we do. Sometimes in life, we say, I’m gonna just camp out in front of the hurdle. It’s too big for me to ever get past. And so I’m just gonna get my sleeping bag and my pillow and I’m just gonna be here. Those are those hurdles that then define that person’s life for the rest of their life. They’re defined by the hurdle. We have to make a choice to say, no, I’m not going to let this hurdle define my life. I am going to move past it. I’m going to overcome it. Then we’ve gotta prepare. We don’t just, can I just tell you, if you are running hurdles, you don’t accidentally jump over a hurdle that you have to prepare and you have to train and you have to have a strategy of what does it look like to get past this thing?

How do I get past this thing? And then ultimately, we have to take action. I have to do something to move past it. One of the most beautiful things that, that scripture teaches over and over and over again is, is that while our culture would say, Hey, you just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and you and your own power move past it. The New Testament, the teachings of Jesus, and really the whole narrative of scripture is that we don’t have to do it by ourself. That’s why God through the angel says to Elijah, Hey, this burden is too great for you. So then there’s rest and there’s restoration that this idea that God wants us to understand that, that Jesus says in the New Testament that in this life we will have trouble. He’s saying that we will face hurdles. And maybe you have a, a hurdle right now that you are facing.

And if you don’t have one right now, I promise you at some point in the next year, you’re gonna face a hurdle. Somewhere in the next few years, you’re gonna face some really big life-altering hurdles. And either it defines you or moving past it. And how you move past, it defines you. But the hope of the gospel is that you don’t have to move past it on your own. You know, it’s interesting that happens right after this. So, so he goes and he hears from God and you have this cool mountain experience where you have the fire and the earthquake. And then right after that, Eisha, it’s very confusing. ’cause There’s Elijah and Elisha, two different people. Eli Shah becomes the assistant in training to Elijah that God recognizes, Hey, you can’t do this alone. You need community. That God is empowering him and helping him, but also he’s sending people to walk alongside him to overcome that hurdle.

I don’t know where you are today. I don’t know what hurdles or what baggage that you’re facing, what challenges that you’re facing. But, but here’s what I do know is that sometimes there are hurdles that we face that are, are too much for us, but they’re not too much for him. And, and I’m not saying that as this trite thing of, oh, I just, just pray a prayer and you get just right over the hurdle. I I’m saying that sometimes it’s hard to get past the hurdle. Sometimes it takes work and it takes effort and it’s challenging. And yet there is this, this promise that we see in scripture that, that we are not meant to do it by ourselves. That God wants to empower through the power of His Holy Spirit to help us get past it. That we don’t have to do it alone.

And so my encouragement to you today is first is to be able to say, Hey, what is the hurdle in my life? How do I name it? How do I stop and reflect instead of just trying to move past it, move past it, move past it with busyness and busyness and busyness. Stop and name it and say, okay, this is a real thing that I’ve gotta challenge. And how through the power of God do you start coming up with that strategy to choose to move past it? One last thing. Once you move past a hurdle, there’s a temptation to look back and be focused on the hurdle that’s behind us. But you know the challenge of that? If you’re running real hurdles and you look back at the hurdle behind you, what are you gonna do, man? You’re gonna smack the hurdle in front of you that, that hurdle, it was a defining moment to move past it. But I need you to hear this, that challenge, that obstacle, that hardship, that heartache, that does not define you.

Don’t let it ruin the future that God has for you. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, I just thank you so much that you, that you give us stories in scripture like Elijah, that are just so relatable that, that Elijah had a burden that was too great, an obstacle, a hurdle that he could not overcome by himself. And so, Lord, I just pray for anyone in this room that is facing an obstacle like that God, that, that that step is this reliance on you of, Hey, I can’t do it. God, I pray that today the decision can be made by so many people in this room to move past the hurdle, to move beyond it, to to get past it, to figure out what is next. Gotta pray for anyone in this room that does not know you, that today can be a day that they say, man, I gotta stop trying to do these hurdles on my own. Put my faith and my trust in Jesus. Pray all these things, the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.