Elijah Perplexed: God Provides

1 Kings 17:2-16

We left Elijah last Sunday having given a weather report and then promptly disappearing. You could be left thinking is that it? An appearance, a disappearance and we sit back for the next three and half years and wonder if it is going to rain today? Well, the next three and half years are spent in verses 2-24 of chapter 17. this morning we are going to look at verses 2-16. the flow of these verses can be set out as:

Elijah perplexed

God gives a command

Elijah obeys in faith

God provides daily bread

Elijah is perplexed.

Elijah has prophesied no rain until he says so again, which will be three and half years hence. The land is about to face a severe famine in that period. Will Elijah be exempt that famine because he follows and worships God? Of course not. Elijah will not be exempt. He is going to be sharing in the experience of hunger and thirst just like the rest of the people of Israel and the nations around them. Elijah is not exempt from this judgement of God but as we shall see God provides for him in the midst of the judgement. Here is the first lesson for us this morning. As christians we are not exempt from the sufferings, trials and tribulations of this world. God does not promise to take us out of this world but to provide redemption, comfort and renewal in this world for those who know and love Christ.

God has not removed us from His judgement but provided salvation for us in Christ Jesus in the face of that judgement. Please remember that this morning. There is nothing as deceitful as christians who make out that they are exempt the sufferings of everyday life in this world.

Elijah I am sure is perplexed with the situation now before him. No rain for three and half years means drought and famine. I am sure he asked himself why did I prophesy such? Is today the day I announce rain? I am sure he is perplexed by the consequences of having spoken God’s word. Is that not our experience sometimes? Are we not sometimes perplexed when we see the outcome of having spoken God’s word in to a situation or in to someone’s life? I am sure each morning and each evening Elijah was perplexed by this situation that was now developing before his eyes. Each day the same, endless sunshine and an endless longing for the quenching of his thirst and the feeding of his hunger.

God gives a command.

God now speaks again in to Elijah’s situation and what a strange word it is. God hide yourself in the Kerith ravine and because I have commanded the ravens to feed you. Let me read a verse to you from Leviticus 11:15. Ravens were unclean birds and therefore no jewish person would touch them or anything they had touched, no mind eat what they dropped from their beaks. What seems on the surface a small command, if somewhat miraculous, is in fact quite a test of faith and obedience to the command of God.

The first thing I notice from this is that the Word of the Lord came to Elijah. He did not have to go seeking it out. God spoke to him. God had not forgotten nor abandoned his servant in the midst of the drought and the famine but was here providing for him.

Elijah would have to exercise faith and obedience in order for this command to be fulfilled. If he wanted food and water he had to leave where he was hiding, exposing himself to capture, and go to Kerith where god would provide for him. It enlarges his vision and understanding of God. A simple but profound lesson. God’s work is not stopped because of the lack of people. God is the God of all creation and twice a day He has commanded the ravens to feed Elijah bread and meat. Echoes again of the wilderness wanderings of the Exodus when God provided morning and evening for His people’s needs.

Elijah obeys in faith

We read that Elijah immediately left where he was hiding and made his way to Kerith at the command of God. Kerith would have been a familiar area to him because Tishbe, his home, is on the Kerith. Yet he still needed to exercise faith and obey this strange command. Here he now will not only be provided for in the midst of the drought and the famine but he will be safe from Ahab and Jezebel. It is a long journey on foot back to Kerith back along a path that he had already come to get to Samaria to prophecy there would be no rain.