B (4:52)
And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening. And he drank from the brook. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. All right, before we get to the brook and the ravens and the feeding and all that sort of stuff, let's remind ourselves just a little bit more about Elijah. Because he's introduced sort of out of the blue. There's no preface that tells all about his biography. But for our purposes, let's try to remember a little bit about Elijah. If you were to talk to Jews over the past 2,000 years, they would say that Elijah is their favorite prophet. Elijah is the man. He's the dominant prophet from the Old Testament. And to this day, if you were to go to, say, Jewish circumcision, there's a chair set aside for Elijah. If you're to go to the Passover meal, there's a cup that is set aside for Elijah in case he comes in to drink of it. And not only is there a cup set aside for Elijah, the Passover, but you know what else they do? They open a door for Elijah in case he shows up at the Passover meals. Why do they do that? Well, if you were to go to the last book in the Old Testament. Which is what? Malachi. Right. What's the last, last verse in all of Malachi? Well, the last verse in all of Malachi is about Elijah. The last verse in the Old Testament says this. Behold, I will send you Elijah. I'll send you Elijah the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of children to their fathers. So as you look to the very end of the Old Testament, what you see is that there was a promise that Elijah would return before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. Elijah's coming back. And that's the reason why there's a chair. That's the reason why there's a cup. That's the reason why the door is open. Because there's an anticipation that Elijah would Return. Now, as New Testament believers, as Christians, we have a somewhat different interpretation of the Elijah who was to return. We do not believe that Elijah himself is coming back. We believe that Elijah was a type of someone else, but who would come in the first century. And his name was who? John the Baptist. And we know that because Jesus Christ identifies him. He says, if you have ears to hear it. If you have ears to hear it. The Elijah that Malachi was talking about was John, was John the Baptist. With that said, modern Jews hold Elijah in very high esteem, exceptionally high esteem. And yet at the time he lived, guess what? He was the most hated guy around. We talked about this with regard to Moses. The same thing was true. The people that we tend to revere and hold up and say they're awesome, that even modern Christians and modern Jews would both say were amazing in their age, when they lived. In their age, they were despised by those that they lived with. Now, why would anyone despise Elijah if he was such a great prophet? Well, what did we just read there in verses one and two, he goes to the king and he declares what he calls as the Lord lives, there is going to be a drought, and it will not cease until I give word. Elijah was the mouthpiece by which a drought would come and affect Israel, had probably already started at this point, but would affect Israel and steal the health and the wealth of its inhabitants and the lives of many of its inhabitants. When people in Israel at that time wondered why all this was happening, many of them blamed who? Elijah. Because he had said, at my word this is occurring, and at my word it will stop. Now, it was of course, not based on his strength or volition. It was God's strength or volition. Nevertheless, he was God's man. He was God's prophet. Now, this was a particular affront to a guy like Ahab. And the reason why is this. We read earlier that Ahab and Jezebel had instituted in the northern kingdom of Israel, they had instituted the worship of a pagan God. And his name was what starts with a B? Baal. Right. BAAL worship had begun at this time. Now, what kind of God was baal? Well, BAAL was known as a fertility God. So consider this. God sends Elijah to Ahab, to Jezebel, who are bowing down and worshiping and installing temples and altars through a fertility God. Theoretically, fertility God's blessed not just wombs, but the entire environment. Fertility God is who he'd pray to. If you wanted the rains, if you wanted the fields, if you wanted the crops and the like. So you got all these pagans bowing down to a fertility God. And God, Yahweh himself sends Elijah in with a message. It says, in order to prove to you that you are worshiping a false God, a God of your own imaginations, a God you think is going to bring the rains. Well, here's what's going to happen. The rains are going to stop. You will experience famine and drought to prove to you that the very thing you're bowing down before is of no consequence. Can't hear you, and will not respond. And there will not be rain again until my prophet speaks. At that point, it will return, which would take three and a half years. With that said, it's no wonder that Elijah was the least popular man in Israel because others saw him as the cause for all their troubles. In fact, you remember when Ahab would see Elijah, one chapter later, Ab would see Elijah. Do you know what the very first words out of his mouth would be? He would say, oh, it's you, the troubler of Israel. The whole population viewed him in that way. He was hated. He was despised. And he was despised because he was doing what God would have him do. But they hated him. They despised him. And he had to wonder, what's going to happen to me if I'm faithful? Well, God had a plan. And we see in verses 1 through 7 that God's plan involved sending them to the east after he went to Ahab. We see in verse three that he was. Go to the east, hide by the brook, cherith. And God says, you're going to go by the brook. It's a small tributary, not much water, and it's not on any maps. You'll go there. There will be some water, and I will send the birds of the air. The least likely means and tool that you can imagine, scavenger birds are going to come and scavenge you bread and meat, and they're going to do it twice a day. I'm not going to leave you hanging. You have been faithful, Elijah. I'm not going to leave you hanging. In fact, I'm going to put you in a place they're never going to look for you, because they will look for you. Elijah spent most of his life running, hiding from those who desired his death, the assassins of Jezebel and others. God says, I'm going to keep you safe and I'm going to keep you protected, and I'm going to nourish you. God had a plan. Just as an aside note, before we look on to the next Verses. There's a couple principles we can see from this. Number one, God will resource his purposes. If God has a purpose for Israel, if God had a purpose for lives, if God has a purpose for a church, if God has an objective for you and I in our own family lives, if he would call you to do something, he will provide you the means to do it. If God calls you to do something, he will give you the means to accomplish his will. That's one principle we can see from this. But the second principle goes hand in hand with it. The second principle is this. When he provides the means, it might come from the least likely source. When he provides the means for you to do the will that God would have you do in your world, in your life, in your job, in your vocation with your neighbors, what have you. When he gives you a purpose, an objective, and a goal to shoot for, he will resource it, but he will resource it. Oftentimes in ways where you go, what? How did God do this? How is he gonna do this? The means are gonna be surprising and he loves to do that. Consider when he sent them out into the wilderness, the Israelites, they got in the wilderness. They're running from Pharaoh. They don't know where their next meal is gonna come from. They don't know how they're gonna be provided for. And they freak out and they wanna return, they wanna go back. And God says, I got this, but I'm gonna provide for you using means you would never think of. Never. Imagine. I'm going to provide you bread from heaven. I guarantee you on their bingo card, bread from heaven was not on it. And in case it was, they were still thirsty, right? Well, where's the water going to come from? There's got to be an oasis here somewhere, right? Where's the water going to come from? God says, I got this. The water is going to come from the least likely source in your entire field of vision. It's going to come from a rock. God loves to provide using means you would not expect, you would not be prepared for. All right, let's look at our next verses. Let's look at verses 8 through 12. Then the word, verse 8. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah saying, arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I've commanded a widow there to provide for you. Let me stop briefly. The water's gone. Elijah has sat there and watched the waters go. So God's provided for him. God said, I'll set you apart. And for some Period of time either for six months up to about a year. And Elijah was sitting there by the brook, Cherith, eating the food that was provided from him by the ravens and the like. But at the same time, he was looking at the water nearby and he was going, huh, there's less. There's less in the brook than there was yesterday, which is a function of living during a time of drought. But the water kept decreasing and decreasing and decreasing. And if you're Elijah in your own world, what happens when your sense of provision seems to be running dry, when your own strength seems to be running out, when things that you're relying upon seem to be decreasing? What is your own inclination to do? Well, you're anxious. You're anxious because, dear heavens, what is going on here? Well, what we see is that Elijah was faithful. He stayed where he's at until God said, all right, it's time to move on. So there in verse eight, the Word then came to him. The water's gone, the water's dry. Then the word of the Lord came to him, not before, not giving him all the answers ahead of time, telling him, here's what I'm going to do for you. But he waits and he tests his faithfulness. And when the water's gone and Elijah has no other means to, God says, all right, here's the plan. Verse 8. Then the word Lord came, was saying, arise, go to Zarephath, the last place you would have expected to go, which belongs to Sidon. This was the seat of BAAL worship. You know, sometimes we read these names in the Bible and we go, well, that sounds foreign. You know, Sidon. Zarephath. Well, I wonder where that is. Well, I'll tell you where that is. That was the heart of idolatry. Sidon is where Jezebel was from. In order to go to this place, he had to go through the valley of Jezreel. This is where the palace of Ahab and Jezebel were. God says, you're going to go through this valley and you're going to go to the last place. You're going to go up to where the pagans are. You're going to go up to Zarephath, which belongs to the Sidonians, which, by the way, is Jezebel's hometown, her home region, Sidon. He says, go to Zarephath, verse 9, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Go to the very last place you would expect I would send. You see, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you. The Last person he would ever expect to be a source of provision. And so verse 10, what does he do? Well, verse 10 says this. And so he arose. Then he went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed, there was a widow there gathering sticks. God is faithful. And he called her, and he said, please bring me a little water and a cup that I may drink. And as she was going to get it, he called her again and he said, please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. This was not a lot he was requesting. And she said, as the Lord your God lives. I do not have bread. I only have a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil, little oil in a jar. And see, I'm going to gather a couple of sticks. The verbiage is always tiny. Here I'm gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare this tiny flower with this tiny oil that I'm going to prepare it for myself and for my son, that we may eat of it and then die. All right, in verse three, which we read a little bit ago, God told Elijah to go by the brook, cherith, which would give him water. And as we've said, in due time the water dried up. That had to be an unwelcome development when it did so. And as we questioned before, there's probably times in your own life where something's dried up that you believed was given to you to sustain you. And when it dried up, you had to wonder, what's God going to do next? Well, in verse eight, we see that God's provision for Elijah was not over just because the means of that provision had dried up. His provision in the abstract is a greater thing had not dried up, even though the specific means he had previously used had dried up. So in verse 8, we see his provision had not ended. It simply changed location. So God told Elijah, go to Zarephath. Which again, Elijah, he was a human just like you and I. He had to go, oh, Zarephath. Oh, my stars. That's not where I would have expected God. But God says, go to Zarephath and go Zarephath and dwell. Therefore, I've commanded a widow to provide for you. God will resource his missions and his servants. You can take it to the bank. But he does allow crease to dry up. He does allow droughts to hit before he does so. Why? Well, at the very least, in this particular case, because it tests faith. But just when that faith has been tested to the utmost, God Provides. And that's when you get the man from heaven. That's when you get water from rock birds bringing food or widows providing. Now, what do we know about this widow? What do we know about the widow of ZARephath? Well, verses 10 through 12 that we just read, they paint just a tragic picture, just absolutely tragic. You have a widow which just by using the phrase widow, we know something's gone haywire in her life before. Just the fact she's identified as a widow tells us tragedy has been part and parcel to her walk for some period of time. She is a widow. She has no husband. She has lost her husband. She is a widow. And there, verses 10 through 12, we see that this widow is going out to pick up a couple of sticks for one last meal, anticipating that after she and her son consume this last meal, utilizing the last resource that she has, that all that awaits for her and her child is death. And she tells him that, she tells us that's what's going on there now. Of all the people in a thousand square mile radius that God could have sent Elijah to, this woman had to be the least obvious option around. She was from a pagan nation. She was a widow. She had no tools, she had no resources. She had no means. Of all the options, literally in a thousand square miles from where Elijah was, this had to be the least likely option around the least equipped individual to provide for his needs. She had virtually no water, no food, no hope, and no future. And yet, interestingly, in the eyes of God, that meant she was the perfect candidate. It was her lack, it was her dire circumstances, it was the fact that her faith would have to be tested as well. It was all manner of different things that made her the perfect candidate to help Elijah. Beyond this, there's another reason she was the perfect candidate to help Elijah. And that is because she was willing to. When you have nothing to live with or for when your life is over and you just want to provide for your son at the least, and some stranger wanders in looking to eat your last bit of flour and oil and the like to nurse you and your child, I'll have some of that too. What would the response of you and I be? Well, here we see that she's willing to. And that makes her a candidate to be used by God because she was willing. You know, it's one thing when people give out of their abundance. There's a lot of rich people in this world who give greatly to the kingdom. There's a lot of rich people in this world. Who do not give to the kingdom. Well, she didn't fall into those camps because she was very, very poor. And yet she was willing to give even out of her poverty. You know, that's not the only time that happens in the Bible. Do you remember the story of Jesus? And he's sitting there in the temple courts and he's watching people as they give. And some people are giving out of their abundance. You know, they got the full wallet, the full sack with coins, and they brings some coins out, some gold, silver, what have you, and they drop them in the tent there and they move along and they want everyone to see them with how much they gave. Well, remember that Jesus watches. He watches and he sees who he sees an old widow woman. She shows up and she doesn't have anything. She has two coins, the equivalent of two pennies, two hay pennies, and she takes the last two coins that she has, as small and tiny as they are, and she gave them all in Luke 21 to the temple treasury for the use of of those hurting the world around her. Luke 21:4 says this. Jesus observing this, and he calls his disciples over and he says, I want you to learn something from this widow. And I think in his mind he also knew something about the widow of Zarephath at this time, because he refers to her in a different text. But he says, I want you to learn something from the mentality of this widow. Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest for all these other abundance have put in offerings for God. But she, out of her poverty, put in all the livelihood that she had. Why did God choose the widow of Zarephath to help Elijah? Because like the widow in Luke 21, she was willing. Secondly, I think this woman was also the perfect candidate. Because just as when God brought water from a rock, if God were to use this widow, who had no means and who had no tools and who had no resources, if God was to use her as the means to feed Elijah and take care of him, who would get the glory? Her? No, him. Why? Because just like when God brings manna from heaven or water from a rock, God likes to use tools. You would not expect to accomplish great things. And out of that no one can take credit for having done it. You have to look at God as the sole provider and give him the glory. So let's look at the remaining verses to see that in verses 13 through 16, verse 13. And so Elijah said to her, do not fear. She could have feared. Do not fear. Go and do as you have said. You're gonna prepare this fire. You're gonna cook stuff up, all right? Go and prepare. Do as you have said. But. But make me, Elijah, the guy you just met, make me a small cake from it first and bring it to me. And afterward, after you've done that and you fed me the stranger who just walked into your house, afterward, make some for yourself and for your son. 4. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, the bin of flour shall not be used up. You're worried about that widow of Zarephath. You're worried it's going to be gone. God has said, the bin of flour shall not be used up. The jar of oil shall not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth. You are going to have flour and you're going to have oil from now until the rains come and restore the otherwise means of your provision. So, verse 15. So she went away, and she did, according to the word of Elijah, she did what he told her. And she and her household ate for many days. And the bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken by Elijah. All right. As we wrap up this morning, let's go back once again to think about the widow that Jesus saw in the temple in order to understand the widow of Zarephath a little bit better as well. Now, when Jesus saw this widow give her last two coins, her entire livelihood, such as it was, to the temple treasury, what do you think happened to that lady? You read about the passage. You've seen Christ's amazement, astonishment, how pleased he was at what she did. What do you think happened to her? We don't know. But what do you think happened? Do you think that Jesus calls his disciples around to watch this lady give her last two coins, all that she had to live? That she gave it in faith that God would not let her die, that God would provide? Do you think that she gave those last two coins all that she had to God? And. And that God let her hang? That God let her perish? God let her starve? Do you think that lady, that woman, that widow, died, that she expired, that she terminated as a result of her generosity? Do you think it was a stupid thing for her to give that money? Of course not. Now, why do we draw that conclusion? We draw that conclusion because we know something about the heart of God. And we know that God won't let you hang if you do that which is good, righteous and faithful God rewards and blesses that. He did it with Elijah. He says, elijah, go talk to Ahab. You know he's the most dangerous man in the land, and he's married to the most dangerous woman in the land. You go and tell him the last news he's going to want to hear, and he's going to send assassins out for you. Your life is going to be in danger. But I will provide for you. I will not let you hang. You do what's right. I will take care of you. The widow who gave her coins to the temple treasury, undoubtedly, assuredly God did not let her hang. Why? Because, again, it's not in his character. Do you think that the God who feeds sparrows, do you think that the God who clothes lilies, that he would not take care of that child that is highlighted in Luke 21, who was so faithful? Do you think he would not take care of Elijah? Or of the widow of Zarephath who did what God told her, even though in her mind it seemed counterintuitive, because this is all she had? Of course not. But God will put people at points of decision. He will test our faith to see if our faith holds water. He will do that. He has done it. He will do it again. And then he will get the glory when he comes through and validates every last ounce of that faith. God took care of the widowed Zarephath. In verse 13, God promised this widow he would not leave her hanging. He promised her that he would provide. He promised her that the flour would not run out. He promised her the oil would not dry up. And she believed him. She believed Him. And in response, God did exactly what he told her he would do. He provided verse 16. The bed of flour was not used up. The jar of oil did not run dry according to the word of God. Let me conclude with this thought. God loved Elijah. He loved the widow Zarephath. And yet throughout this text, their faith was tested in order that might be validated and in order that he might be glorified through its expression. Let the same be true of us. Let's pray.
