God Nurtures Us In Our Suffering
Part 2
God faithfully cared for Jonah in spite of his self-induced suffering and rebellion. Even more beautiful, I think, is God’s nurturing of the prophet Elijah who did everything God said, and yet still suffered.
Elijah, a suffering servant
Elijah was a messenger for God’s truth during the reign of King Ahab. King Ahab was the eighth king of Israel and was known as the most evil. King Ahab married a pagan woman, Queen Jezebel, and he allowed her to promote Baal or idol worship among the Israelites.
So that’s the climate of the culture Elijah was to prophesize. In some ways, it’s similar to our culture today — where selfishness and sin unchecked can lead to great evil. Similar to a postmodern world, Baal turned out to be a highly adaptable god. Different people worshiped him in different ways, as a fertility god, a rain god, basically whatever they needed of him to suit their desires.
Elijah was not popular because he was speaking the word of the LORD and it wasn’t what the people wanted to hear. Because…
