Hebrews 11 has been called God’s “Hall of Faith.” Like the Hall of Fame in sports or other arenas of life, Hebrews 11 gives us the names and tells us, if ever so briefly, what God’s people accomplished “by faith.” We hear such profound accomplishments like:
• “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice.”
• “By faith Noah…prepared an ark.”
• “By faith Abraham…obeyed.”
• “By faith Moses…refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.”
• “By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish…”
I find it interesting that in the long list of people mentioned in God’s Hall of Faith, Elijah, whose life was characterized by one act of faith after another is never mentioned—at least not by name. Hebrews 11:35 makes the startling statement, “Women received their loved ones back again from death.” I am convinced the Lord had Elijah’s faith in mind, because that’s exactly what happened in our text today. And the women was not even a woman of great faith, but today’s encounter reveals the power of faith in life to transform even the most impossible situations.
With “The Elijah Chronicles,” we take a look at the life of the greatest of God’s prophets. Though forgotten in the Hall of Faith, Elijah was the greatest miracle worker of the Bible outside Moses and Jesus. Those miracles come as a result of his faith. It was the prophet Elijah who appeared with Moses on Mount Tabor as Jesus was transfigured. Remember, Peter wanted to build three tabernacles—one for each of them. We want to take the next four weeks to reflect on this Old Testament prophet, and learn lessons for our own lives that will make a difference in our world.
First, I need to set the historical context without which we can’t grasp the depth of the lessons. The nation of Israel had enjoyed great fruitfulness under King David and his son, Solomon. When Solomon died, civil war broke out and the nation became divided into a northern kingdom (which retained the name Israel, and was governed from Samaria) and a southern kingdom (referred to as Judah, and was governed from Jerusalem). That division remained until both kingdoms fell to foreign invaders, and they were led away into captivity.
From the time civil war broke out until they were led away into captivity (about 200 years), the northern kingdom (Israel) had nineteen kings, and all of them, as the Bible recounts, were wicked. Over and over, we read the refrain, “and he did evil in the Lord’s sight.” Imagine that! Nineteen national leaders and every one of them evil. Go back and read 1 Kings 12 – 16, and you’ll read a litany of bloodshed and assassinations, murder, intrigue, immorality, conspiracy, hatred, deception and idolatry. Evil began in the heart of the person on the throne, and it trickled down into the core of the people. Enter the last of these kings, Ahab, and we read in 1 Kings 16:30 that Ahab “did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, even more than any of the kings before him.” To make matters worse, Ahab marries Jezebel, the daughter of the King of Sidon, which is the heartland of worship to the god, Baal. She brings Baal worship to Israel with her. So, this is the time when the worst of the worst kings is on the throne of the northern nation of Israel. If ever a nation needed to hear a word from God, this was the time. Enter our hero, the prophet Elijah.
We’re introduced to Elijah in 1 Kings 17:1—“Now Elijah, who was from Tishbe in Gilead…” Elijah appears out of nowhere, and he’s literally from nowhere. Many of you know I’m from the small town of Chatham, LA. Well, I say I’m from Chatham. I actually spent many of my growing up years sixteen miles from Chatham in the woods of Jackson Parish. Literally, we had to go towards town to hunt! You can find Chatham on the map, but you really can’t find that little corner where I spent so much of my time on the map. That’s the way it was for Elijah, too. Gilead we can find on the map, but look for Tishbeh, and well, you simply can’t find it. It was an obscure community somewhere east of the Jordan River.
Yet, out of nowhere, God showed up. Elijah’s name means “The Lord is my God.” Ahab and Jezebel controlled Israel, and Baal was the god they worshiped. Even when the spiritual chasm between God and His people was at its widest, God was there. Here’s the first lesson I learn from the chronicles of Elijah—though we drift far away, God never abandons us. God is never far away, my friends. God has not abandoned us. Individually, we may have drifted from God, bound in some sin we can’t overcome, but God is sending someone to remind us that He’s not abandoned us. As a nation, it may seem we’ve turned out back on God, but God has not abandoned us. Who is the prophet sent to remind us that God is God and we’re not?
Elijah showed up before King Ahab and announced, “It’s not going to rain until I say so!” It’s important to understand what Elijah was saying. Israel was worshipping Baal, who was supposedly the god of rain and fertility. Elijah was saying, “You’ll see who the real God is, Ahab.” That’s all Elijah says, and then God tells him to run out into the wilderness. It’s from the wilderness that we pick up today’s passage. After a period in the wilderness, when God provided for his physical needs, God tells Elijah to go to Zarephath in Sidon, and find a widow that God has prepared to care for his needs. It so happens that Zarephath is over 100 miles in the other direction, right back across the territory from which he fled. Think about this for a moment—God asks Elijah to go into enemy territory (Sidon is the capital of Baal worship), to find a widow (widows are the least of all society) with a son (widows can’t take care of themselves, much less children). This is as far out of Elijah’s comfort zone as it can get, but what does he do? He goes. He lives in obedience. That’s the second lesson I learn from the chronicles of Elijah—living a life of faith requires obedience.
Of all the places Elijah might choose to go, Zarephath is not on top of the list. It’s probably not even ON the list. Zarephath means “smelting-shop,” or a workshop for the refining and smelting of metals. Zarephath was noted for the furnaces where skilled craftsmen worked with metals. It was a smoky, smelly place. God sending him to Zarephath was like putting your hand in a snake pit and wondering if you’re going to get bit! God was sending him from Cherith, which means “to cut, to break or separate.” Literally, he was moving, “Out of the frying pan, and into the fire!” Yet, faith is no faith until there is obedience. Elijah chose to go where God was sending—even to an unlikely place. Even to an unlikely person.
Imagine stumbling into Zarephath. You’re a foreigner who just walked 100 miles of desert and you’re thirsty and hungry. You sit down and notice a widow gathering sticks. “Hmmm, I wonder if this is the widow God told me about!”
“Uhhh, excuse me, Ma’am, but could you spare a glass of water? Oh, and while you’re at it, maybe get me a biscuit, too?” Elijah really didn’t know what he was getting himself into, because when he added on that phrase, “get me a biscuit, too,” something snapped and she came unglued. The pressure and frustration of trying to make ends meet as a single mom in the middle of a drought came pouring out. “Seriously? I don’t have any bread! In fact, all I’ve got for my son and me is a handful of flour in a jar and a little bit of oil. And the reason I’m out here gathering sticks is so I can go home, make a fire and prepare our last meal. Then, I guess we’ll just die!” I would have said, “Whoa, sorry I asked, lady!”
It sounds almost selfish, doesn’t it? Here is Elijah asking this poor widow to go make a cake for himself first, and then one for her and her son. But, Elijah wasn’t intimidated. He knew enough about God that this must be the woman God sent him to. So, he acts in faith, and in so doing becomes a blessing to her. And that’s a third lesson I learn about the life of faith—I can’t get a blessing without being a blessing!
The very person who was supposed to be providing for Elijah, and now God is asking Him to provide for her! Don’t you think that’s going to take a little humility on his part? But, that’s the way it works in God’s economy! God makes sure that both the giver and the receiver eventually switch positions! The receiver becomes the giver and the giver becomes the receiver! See, you can’t be a receiver unless you’re willing to be a giver. In the same way, you can’t be a giver, unless at some point you’re willing to put your pride aside and become a receiver! Somehow (and I haven’t got this all figured out yet), God puts people together who need each other’s different gifts, and they help each other find a solution to one another’s personal droughts! Elijah and this widow needed each other! Elijah needed food, and this woman needed faith. This woman had food, but it wouldn’t last very long without Elijah’s faith. They became a blessing to each other, and God did great things for them both.
Again, it required obedience to see the blessing of faith. If we want to see God’s blessing in our lives, we have to take that step of faith, the risk of faith. In miracle after miracle in the bible, God expected individuals and groups to take a step of faith, to take some kind of risk, to take some action before the need was met. In the story of the parting of the Red Sea, Moses had to stretch out His hand over the ocean before it parted. Before the walls of Jericho fell, people had to walk around the city for 7 days. Jesus required a blind man to wash out the mud he put on his eyes in the Pool of Siloam before he could see again.
God doesn’t expect action to embarrass us, or to make us feel silly. God doesn’t do it to get a good laugh at our expense. No! God desires to use us to transform His creation, and that takes a commitment of faith. We think of what the widow had to give, but we forget that Elijah had to give too! Remember, he was in the same boat as this woman, (out of food and water), but he gave this woman hope and faith! Listen, if instead of despairing, we can learn to give out of our need. If we’ll learn to give help when we’re helpless, give hope when we’re hopeless, and give faith when we’re faithless, then God will give us an inexhaustible supply of all three. Because this widow gave out of her need, she met God in the kitchen three times a day! Three times a day she looked in the flour barrel and found flour. Three times a day she looked in the jar and found oil. Can’t you hear her singing, “Praise God from whom all biscuits flow?”
Elijah’s faith brought this pagan woman to faith. He gave what he had, and she gave what she had, and both of their lives were changed. All over this world, around us every day, are people who are looking for the truth to be lived out in the lives of those who claim it. Just like the widow watched Elijah, there are people watching us. They hear what we say we believe, but mainly they are watching to see what we do.
Three lessons I learn from this chronicle of faith—God has not abandoned us, the life of faith requires obedience, and to get a blessing I must be a blessing. If we live those lessons, we might just see the miracle of death being transformed into life. And, I remind us that a little faith goes a long way. But, it’s not the amount of faith we have that matters, it’s the measure of the God in which our faith resides. Elijah’s faith was in the God who could give the rain or stop the rain, in the God who could dry up a brook or give a continuing supply of oil, in the God who could overcome death with life, and He would do so, not only in this widow’s son, but in His own son, on the cross of Calvary. It’s not until we stand in the face of death that the power of faith is made fully known, and it is THAT faith which changes the world and changes us.
