When Hope Seems Lost - 1 Kings 17:17-24 - October 5, 2010 - Hospital Service
Today I want to share with you a bit of a story from the life of a man by the name of Elijah. Elijah was what is called a prophet. And a prophet is a man, or a woman, to whom God has spoken in a special way and to whom He has given a message to share with others. So God speaks to the prophet and the prophet speaks to the people. But the people don’t always like to hear what a prophet has to say because the prophet speaks God’s truth and that often makes people uncomfortable because God calls us to holiness and righteousness and out of the sin that we so often immerse ourselves in.
Now Elijah lived in a time that was in some ways vastly different than ours. There were no cars, no electricity, no televisions or phones – nothing like that. But he also lived in a time that was very similar to ours in some ways as well. He lived in a time, and among a people, that knew what it meant to hurt. They knew what it felt like to grieve and to sorrow and to mourn and to worry about the future. And the truth is, that just like theirs, the hurts of our lives come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes as well, don’t they? We have physical hurts that are caused by injury, or illness, or accident. But there are other types of hurts we experience as well and many of them are not as easy to see. There is the hurt of a grieving heart, there is a hurt that is caused by the words that others have spoken to us, there is a hurt that is caused by the disappointments or struggles we face in life, there is an emotional, or even a mental hurt, that we can experience in this world as well. And those hurts can sometimes, especially if left untreated, or unhealed, define the people that we are becoming. And in the midst of our hurts, we can lose hope.
The people of Elijah’s day were losing hope. You see, there was a great drought that had come upon the land that they lived in. For three years it did not rain and even the dew did not form upon the ground. The crops withered in the field, the streams and rivers became barren flats of dirt and sand, the wells that people depended on for drinking water ran dry too. There was great suffering amongst people and animals alike. No one was a stranger to hurt and suffering in those days. And as they watched everything that was once green and full of life, turn brown, and wither, and then crumble to dust and blow away on the wind, it became a symbol of what was happening to their hope for the future as well. They lost heart as their hope faded, and day by day their dreams turned to ashes.
In the midst of all this hopelessness Elijah seems to stand alone. God has provided for him. The word of the Lord came to Elijah and told him to go and hide himself beside a brook way back in the hills where no one would think to look for him and God would take care of him there. And God was as good as His word. Elijah found the brook right where God said it would be and twice a day God provided food for Elijah to eat and he was able to drink his water from the brook. In comparison to many in that time, Elijah had plenty. But he didn’t have it easy because he had a price on his head. The authorities were out to kill him because of the message God had given him to speak and so God had sent him to hide, for a time, at the brook. But after many months had passed the brook finally dried up. And it must have been hard on Elijah watching that brook, day by day, slowly drying up and wondering what would happen to him when it did. Would he die just like so many others were dying? He didn’t know. He only knew that God had never let him down in the past but had always taken care of him before.
And though he didn’t know it at the time, God was going to take care of him this time too – but he was going to do it in an unexpected way. And sometimes that seems to be how God works in our lives as well – in unexpected ways. Like Elijah we always want to know where the next meal is going to come from. We want to know how our needs are going to be met before things get really bad. And we think to ourselves that if we only knew how things in our lives were going to turn out that we would be able to handle so much more. If we only knew it was all going to be alright then we would never lose hope. Now I don’t know what hurt has brought you here to the hospital this day. I do not know what it is that you might be struggling with in your life. But I do know this. We all have struggles at one time or another. And I know it seems too that some have greater burden to bear in this life than others. And I also know that there are a lot of things that come into our lives that just don’t seem to make sense, times when we want to cry out, “Why me?” And maybe that’s where you find yourself in these days. And if you’re like me, when those moments of trial, or struggle come, there’s a part of you that just wants to know, “Is it going to be, o.k.? Am I going to make it through this? Am I going to be able to handle what comes my way?” And sometimes, deep in our hearts, we find ourselves wondering things like this, “Does God know what’s going on in my life? Does He really care about me at all? Is He able, or willing to help me, in the days to come?”
And some of those things might have crossed Elijah’s mind as well because God did not show him the next step until that brook was bone dry. He did not show him the path to take until Elijah’s need was urgent and pressing and desperate. And then, and only then, did God speak into his life again. Now God could have spoken to Elijah when there was still water in the brook, and He could have said, “Elijah, this is how it’s going to happen: This brook is going to dry up. You’re going to need water and this is how I’m going to provide for you.” And from there God could have laid out all of His plans for Elijah to peruse. But that’s not how God works. God is looking for a people who will walk through this life in faith placing their trust and their hope and their futures in His hands. The Bible even goes so far as to say that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” And those words are just as true for us today as well. “Without faith it IS impossible to please God.”
What is faith? Faith is trusting God when it doesn’t seem to make sense. Faith means we take that first step forward, when God calls us to go, trusting Him to show us the way even when we don’t know what the destination is. Faith means we live according to the Word of God rather than the ways of the world. Faith is calling out to God for help and believing He will answer. The Bible tells us that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)
And Elijah is certain that God can provide for him though he does not know how He will do it. And so when God calls him to leave the brook which has all dried up, and to go a hundred miles north through a land that is barren and dry, to a distant city where God has told him he would find a widow who would provide him with food and water, Elijah goes. It’s a step of faith. And when he finds that widow his faith is put to the test again because when he finds her she is down to her last little bit of flour and her last little bit of oil In fact when Elijah finds her and asks her for food and water she tells him the truth. She says, “I’ve got nothing left. I have just enough to make a little bread – one last meal for my son and myself – and then we will die.” This is a woman who is at the end of her rope. Hope is gone. All she can see in the days ahead is a slow and painful death for herself and her son.
But you know what? God’s grace, and His provision, and His love, are seen most clearly in the most desperate situations of our lives. And so it will be for this widow if she can only trust God and take a step of faith herself. And the step of faith that she is called to take is to walk in obedience to God who has asked her to give her last little bit of food to this man, Elijah. And a long story short – she does it! She takes what little she has and gives it to the prophet. And God honors that in a wonderful way. For the next couple of years, until the rains began to fall again, her little jar of flour and her little jug of oil, do not run dry. They are scraping the bottom every day, and yet it never runs out. Why? Because she walked in faith and trusted in God, and her act of faith was pleasing to Him. But let me read for you what happens in the months that lie ahead.
Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?” “Give me your son,” Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?”
Neither Elijah nor the widow could make sense out of what was happening to the boy. Why on earth would God allow him to die after proving Himself so faithful in so many other things in their lives? Why take this child from his mother? Why bring this tragedy on someone who had done just what the Lord had asked of them?
I think perhaps there are times in our lives when we are tempted to trust in the gift rather than the giver of the gift. We trust in the work of our hands to provide for our needs when really we should be trusting in Him who has given us hands to work with. We trust in our health rather than the One from whom all health flows. And so when our health is gone – by sickness, disease, or accident, we often find that our world is rocked. We struggle to make sense of life at those times. We lose our peace and we lose our hope when we lose sight of God whom the Bible teaches us is able to do infinitely more than we could ever ask or imagine. And the widow lost sight of God. She forgets that God has so wondrously provided for her over the past months and in her hurt and pain she turns her heart against God in bitterness and anger and rails against His prophet.
Elijah is just as bewildered as she is but he doesn’t lose hope. Instead he turns to the one from whom all life flows – he turns to God. And this is what happens as he seeks the face of God in that upper room …
Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this boy’s life return to him!” The LORD heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!” Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth.” (1 Kings 17:17-24)
God answered Elijah’s prayer in a very gracious way. I mean, this is the very first time in the pages of the Bible that we find someone being raised back to life. And with that resurrection came great hope and great blessing. The widow discovered a God that she could trust in, that she could hope in, and that she could walk in faith with and trust with the very deepest things of her life. And that’s the same God that we come to today. You, in the midst of your hurt, or your pain, or your questions, or your anxiety, or whatever your need is, you come to a God who is able to bring life from death and hope from despair. You come to a God who is able, in any and all circumstances of your life, to do more than you could ever ask or imagine. But He’s going to ask you to trust in Him and to walk by faith rather than by sight. He’s going to ask you to believe and to depend on Him for all things.
Here is the testimony of another man who had nothing by the standards of this world but who had all things in Jesus Christ. He says this of God’s love … And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? (Romans 8:31-35)
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)
And so it is …
Let’s pray.
