I Kings 17: 1-7
“The brook dried up”
While the long drought we have experienced this summer has been difficult to endure, it actually saved the life of eighteen year old college student Julian McCormick.
On the morning of September 1, Julian left his Bowie State University campus to pick up his girlfriend, but he never arrived. As the days began to pass, his family feared the worst, but hoped for the best.
As Julian McCormick recalls it, he lay in and out of consciousness for eight days and seven nights, hot, sticky and bloody with not a clue as to what day it was or how he ended up trapped in his overturned car at theGod has not forgotten Elijah. God knows exactly what he is going through. Isaiah 49:15 ask, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget the
The brook dried up not because God was FORSAKING Elijah. Something goes wrong and we say, “I knew it. God doesn’t love me.”
The Bible says that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. God will never stop loving you.
The brook dried up not because was God was FINISHED with Elijah. Elijah had not sinned. Often we think, “I know. It’s because I’ve sinned that God has allowed this to happen to me.”
We go through an endless series of mental gymnastics, torturing ourselves, saying, ’I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have done that.” Like Job, Elijah had done nothing wrong.
The brook dried up not because Elijah was out of the will of God.
A lot of times when you start having difficulties in your life, you begin to question the will of God. Was Elijah in the will of God? Yes, he was but his brook dried up nonetheless.
How could God do this to His faithful prophet Elijah? Water was a basic need, essential for Elijah’s survival.
Why would God let this happen to Elijah or to us?
Why would God allow the brook to dry up?
Let me suggest three reasons!
I. The brook dried up to PROVE HIS FAITH.
The last word Elijah had from God was to go the brook (2-5). I believe the brook dried up to test Elijah. Is he going to take things into his own hands now or is he going to wait on God?
Elijah was where God told him to be and doing what he was told to do, and the brook dried up. How can you explain it? Could it be that Elijah’s heart was being tested to see if his trust was in the Brook Cherith or the living God?
What brook dried up? The very one God promised as a source of water.
The words “dried up” refers to a process. Elijah did not just wake up one morning and suddenly find the brook dry. Day after day he observed the little brook dwindling in its water supply, and he knew what was coming.
What must he have thought? What do you suppose he did? Did he measuring the depth of the brook each day?
Did he have his eyes on the problem? I wonder if he attempted to tell God what He needed do?
What would you have done as the brook dried up? Sit there quietly claiming the promises of God.
I have the highest regard for Elijah. I wouldn’t have been able to sit there and watch the brook dry up. I would have gotten out my road map and been looking for every water hole in the area.
Why sit here; do something is what most of us would have done.
Notice that Elijah didn’t do anything until the word of the Lord came to him again in verse 8. We must keep doing what the Lord last commanded us to do until new instructions come, regardless of our circumstances.
Circumstances may have caused Elijah to look for an answer, but he didn’t move until the word of the Lord came to him.
Finally, note 1 Kings 17:8. “Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying.” God was not unconcerned about Elijah. He had a plan. He came to Elijah’s rescue. Granted, sometimes He cuts it a little close in our thinking, but He is always on time.
God’s timing is usually not our timing. This is one of the reasons we are told numerous times in Scripture to wait on the Lord. Rather than turn to our own devices and run ahead of the Lord, we are to take it to Him and wait by faith on His timing and directions.
God had a specific plan that included divine provision by the brook for a specific number of days. This plan was unknown to Elijah, but it was known to God from all eternity and calculated by Him to be a test, a learning place for Elijah.
The Lord does that which He pleases, and He pleases to test us in order to prove our faith.
From Daniel 3 we should understand that God doesn’t always take His children around the fire--sometimes He meets them in the middle of the furnace.
Likewise, God left the prophet by the brook until it was dry as a bone. Then, having worked in the heart of the prophet, He came to him in his need and sent him to his next place of provision.
Elijah illustrates what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.
Sometimes, what looks like failure is actually God’s way of insuring that we are walking by faith and not by sight.
By allowing the brook to dry up, God was asking Elijah, "Is your faith in Me, or in the water hole I provided?"
No trial is approved unless God knows it to be a necessary part in developing our faith or convincing an unbelieving spectator.
You can not prove faith in a sermon. It can only be proven when it is tested in the laboratory of life.
II. The brook dried up to PURIFY HIS FOCUS .
For a period of one year, the Lord had concealed the whereabouts of Elijah from the entire world. During that time, Elijah’s friends were birds, his food was bread, and his fondness was a brook.
How easy it is to get into the everyday routine of life and only see the birds, the bread, and the brook, but lose focus on the God who gave them to you.
Because of man’s tendency to look at the gift instead of the giver, God often changes His means of supply to keep our eyes fixed on the HIM.
When Job lost everything that gave him worldly success, he discovered he still had the Lord.
Maybe Elijah was getting too dependent on the brook or too dependent on the ravens who fed him; maybe he was all of a sudden focusing on the gifts instead of the giver.
Also every morning looking at a brook provided for the prophet by God may lead to pride. Elijah may have got to thinking that this brook shows how special I am. God’s provided the brook and the ravens for me. What other prophets ever got this kind of treatment? Let the brook dry up to humble him and get his focus back on God.
If the brook had kept on flowing, Elijah might have counted on it and forgotten the God who gave it. The blessings of God for our shelter and sustenance can sometimes become the very barriers that keep us from God - and God will not allow that.
The brook did not prove equal to the need of Elijah. It dried up; God knew it would; He allowed it to fail. "The brook dried up."
God is fully aware that there are heavenly whispers that men cannot hear till the drought of trouble and perhaps weariness has silenced the babbling brooks of joy.
He is not satisfied until we have learned to depend, not upon His gifts, but upon Himself.
III. The brook dried up to PREPARE HIS FUTURE
God is developing Elijah’s faith in Him that He might use him before others. Soon he is to stand on Mount Carmel and challenge the prophets of Baal. He was learning that God would come through if he only followed Him. See I Kings 18:36. He had learned to do things at God’s Word. It all started at brook! He had learned to hearken to directions from above.
The Lord put Elijah in circumstances that were designed to increase his faith in God’s Word. Difficult circumstances are designed by God to increase our faith.
As was the case with Elijah, when the Lord has something He wanted him to do, He first equipped him and prepares him for the task.
From the brook, he was ordered “to Zarephath,” and there he would see even greater miracles that would deepen his trust in the Word of the Lord.
God prepared Elijah for what he was preparing for him
Mount Carmel was soon to come.
Conclusion
I find it interesting that 1 Kings 17 begins with an introduction of “Elijah the Tishbite,” but it closes “Elijah...a man of God.”
It would have appeared that the dry brook was the last time we would hear of Elijah, but in reality it was the making of Elijah.
Any circumstance that leads us closer to the Lord is worth the price to get to Him. It is a necessity in the Christian life that, on occasion, the Lord must dry our brook.
