Elijah At Cherith Series

ELIJAH AT CHERITH

I Kings 17:1-7

Intro: Elijah is one of the greatest characters to study in the Word of the Lord. He is the man who embodies the office of the Old Testament prophet more than any other. He is the foreshadowing of John the Baptist. He was not an Israelite Aristocrat, but he was a man of the Gilead hill country, likely a shepherd, not educated in schools of higher learning, and he has no pedigree in the ministry. He, like Amos, was not a prophet or priest nor the son of a prophet, but God calls him out of the sheep country to knock on the door of the king with a strong message of judgment. From this entrance onto the Scriptural stage until the day he goes into heaven in a chariot of fire, we see a prophet who came in with a whirlwind of judgment and went out in a whirlwind of glory.

He healed the sick. He multiplied oil with the Word of the Lord. He commanded at God’s Word for the barren womb to be opened. He saw the dead raised as life came into a corpse. He called for the heavens to close up and to open again. He may have had more power and more victories over the powers of darkness than any other man who ever lived outside of the Lord Jesus. Ironically, he has never died, but he was carried off in a chariot of fire. Later, he would light down on the mount of transfiguration with Moses to discuss the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross with the Lord Jesus himself. Elijah will come back to earth in the last time, and he will stand with one other witness in Jerusalem and minister with miracle working power and hold the violence of hell at bay until he is finally slain as a martyr at the close of the tribulation. He has been often imitated, but never duplicated.

This experience of his life is probably the most ignored or overlooked mountain of his experience with God, but it is an essential one. Elijah has prophesied to King Ahab that it would not rain again in the land until he gave the Word. Elijah came on the scene with a bang and after a one-verse ministry God has hidden him out for about a year at the Brook Cherith.

Cherith Means: a gorge or trench. It is a wadi, a dry river bed, except in the rainy season, but there was water in it for the whole year while Elijah was there. The root of the word comes from a term meaning: to cut, slice open, to cut off or cut asunder. By implication it means to consume, destroy, and “to covenant.” It is also translated to be “chewed up,” cut down, to fell, to perish, utterly, and to lose. It is a strange place to send your newly anointed evangelist! But it is appointed of God. Notice three things about this portion of Elijah’s life at Cherith.

I. PLACE OF DIVISION: he was cut off, divided, separated away from the world. Elijah may have felt isolated, but he never was alone. God sends us to Cherith to separate us, but not to leave us alone. He was separated from men to God. This place of division:

A. Divided Him From Fellowship: from the fellowship of people to the fellowship of God. We do not read of one human visitor who attended to Elijah at Cherith, but God did not forget him. Nobody else ever saw Elijah at that brook, but God’s eye was always on him.

B. Divided Him From Food: from the food of people, but God fed him. What a faith building exercise! Every day, the ravens showed up! Every day, the water flowed in a dry river bed in the middle of a drought!

C. Divided Him From Faith: from the faith system of people, unto God. He had no priest, no altar, no temple, but God kept talking, nonetheless! There will be times in your Christian walk that you will even attend church, but there just seems not to be a word for you there. It is not time to leave church, but it is time to attend the brook! When I cannot get a Word from the church, the preacher, the Sunday School, the camp meeting, the revival service, the good hymns of God, I know I need some time at the brook!

D. Divided Him From Favor: from the favor of people to the favor of God. Elijah was hidden by God because he was public enemy number 1! When Elijah came out of hiding in chapter 18 and Obadiah the servant brought him to Ahab the king, the king called him a trouble-maker! All those days in isolation, Elijah was despised! It was his fault the people were thirsty. But while men cursed the name of Elijah and despised his existence, God favored him highly!