1 Kings 17:8-16
1-18-15
I want to begin this morning in Romans 10:17 because there are two words in that verse that the Lord spoke to me this week concerning this church, concerning you and me and our future. Romans 10:17 “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” The KJV says “So then faith cometh…” The two words are “faith cometh.” I’m not completely sure what God is saying with those two words, but I think He intends to bring us into a level of believing beyond where we have been. “Faith cometh….”
When the Holy Spirit comes, faith comes with Him. The Bible says that Stephen was full of faith and the Holy Spirit. Acts 11 says the same thing about Barnabas. When God gives a group of people faith to do something, how many know, it’s going to get done. God gave to Israel faith to march around Jericho one time every day for six days and seven times on the seventh day. He gave them faith to shout at the end of their 14 trips around the city and when they shouted the walls fell down! Faith can move mountains. Faith can tear down walls and barriers. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.”
Faith is both a gift of God and a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Faith gives us access to the provisions of God for His children. The Bible says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Faith is evidence according to Hebrews 11:1. Somehow, I know. I don’t know exactly how I know, but I know. I know things I can’t know through my five senses—things I can’t see with my natural eyes. The eyes of my understanding are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
Why should I be restricted to knowledge that comes only through my natural senses when God has made me spirit, soul, and body? I am designed by my Maker to receive spiritual revelation as well as natural reasoning. Heb. 11:3 says “By faith we understand….” There are things we understand simply because God has given us the faith to receive the revelation from Him.
How do you know that you’re saved?
His Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you are a child of God. No amount of human reasoning could ever substitute for that. “By grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourself it is a gift from God”—God gave you the faith to receive eternal life. You believed in your heart and acted upon that faith by confessing with your mouth Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
How do you operate in faith? How do you receive from God? I’ll answer that question with a question. How did you receive Christ as your savior? You heard the promise—you embraced the promise as true—and you reached out and received the gift. Rom 10:8-11 “But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
Notice the physical act associated with salvation: “…if you confess with your mouth….” Faith is something that proceeds from the heart by the grace of God; but it only comes to full fruition through a physical act of the body. That physical act may involve a vocal acknowledgement of what God is doing, it may include a song of praise, it may involve taking a perceived risk that is based on our confidence in God’s faithfulness.
Come with me to 1 Kings 17 and I want to show you an example of faith. In this story you will see Elijah operating in faith and you will see a widow woman operating in faith. King Ahab and Jezebel are ruling in Israel and they have led the whole nation into idolatry. Elijah has challenged them by declaring a draught in the land. During the first part of that draught he is living out in the country side at the Brook Cherith which flows into the Jordan River. He is being supernaturally fed by ravens. But because of the draught the brook dried up and he runs out of food and water. That’s where our text begins in 1 Kings 17:8-16 (read).
So Elijah arrives at the gate of the city and here is this woman gathering a few sticks to make a fire. She is in a desperate situation, greatly in need of help. Then a stranger shows up and asks for her help. “Please bring me a little cup of water.” Well that doesn’t sound too unreasonable since Elijah has just arrived in the city and is probably very thirsty. But the man’s request doesn’t stop there. Just as she is going to get him a drink of water, he adds, and by the way bring me a piece of bread while you’re at it. That’s when she lost it. Listen to her reply in verse 12, Mister, I don’t have bread for you. I don’t even have bread for myself or my son. All I’ve got (I mean the only thing I have) is one handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a jar. Elijah’s reply is almost humorous to me, “Ok says Elijah, just bring me that.” I want to scream out to the man, “Look this is all she has, one handful of flour and a little oil; and you’re going to take that from her. The woman is starving.”
But with that request Elijah speaks a word of faith to her, “afterward make some for yourself and for your son.” And with what? “Verse 14 “For thus says the LORD God of Israel: The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the LORD sends rain on the earth.”
The profound thing in this story to me is the fact that she embraced that word as gospel and did exactly what Elijah asked her to do. Look at her state of mind when she first encounters Elijah. She’s gathering these sticks to cook her last meal for her and her son with full expectation that it would be her last—gathering sticks and preparing to die. That is a sad state of mind; but it is the mentality that can develop after enough hardships and disappointments, a kind of active hopelessness. Yes, I’m busy doing something; I’m scrambling around gathering sticks as a last-ditch effort of survival. But I don’t think it will really do any good. It’s not hard to understand the victim mentality she may have developed. But Elijah challenged that defeatist position with a word from the Lord: No, this is not the end. This is a new beginning. Now you will see what God can do with your little handful of flour and oil.
“Do not fear” was Elijah’s preface to her. Fear is the enemy of faith. When we are in fear we lose perspective. We no longer see God in the situation. His involvement is overshadowed by our focus on the negative possibilities. When problems come, the devil sits on our shoulder and tells us how bad our future looks, just gather sticks, eat a last meal, and die. But Elijah says, “Put the fears aside, be anxious for nothing, put your faith in God and watch Him work.” Doubt your fears instead of doubting God. God will do a lot more than help you gather sticks. He’ll supernaturally supply your every need.
When the word of the Lord came to this woman, she was faced with a decision. Would she believe that word and act accordingly, or would she believe the circumstances and act out of her natural thinking? At stake was not just her own well-being but also her son’s life. She had to lay everything on the line. She had to give Elijah everything she had left. Only one thing enabled her to do that, faith in the word of the LORD that he gave her. You cook this meal for me and the flour will multiply as you take it from the bin, the oil will reproduce as you pour it from the jar. “The just shall live by faith.” It was not just the first time this woman dipped into the flour bin that she had to exercise faith. I think it became her lifestyle.
Every time she took the flour out of the bin, she had to trust God to replenish it. It wasn’t that she took that last bit out and then God dumped a truckload of flour on her. It’s not so much that you’re going to hit the lottery and live happily ever after. No, it is that you will find God faithful day after day after day. That life of faith will keep you dependent on Him and, in the end, will prove more beneficial to you than a multimillion dollar lottery ticket. By faith she made the right choice.
There were plenty of widows in both Israel and Sidon who would have liked to experience that miracle. But God found one that would trust Him right to the end. God found one widow that would obey His command even when it seemed to make no sense at all. Jesus talked about this widow in Luke 4:25. There were many needy widows in Israel during this draught in Elijah’s day. In some ways, this woman would seem to be an unlikely candidate. She’s living in an idolatrous country. On his way to her Elijah must have passed many, many needy people along the way. You have to wonder about how Elijah must have felt when God told him how He was going to take care of him. Think about God’s plan for Elijah—a widow? Those were the poorest people in the land. Isn’t it amazing how God uses the most unlikely people to meet our needs? Elderly people on low fixed incomes giving to the church and others with affluent incomes making token contributions. I’ve stopped trying to figure where God’s provision will come from because it seldom comes from the sources you expect. So, God sends Elijah 100 miles north across the mountains of Israel into Phoenicia to a starving widow to meet his needs. Isn’t that something? But here she is coming through with an amazing faith. Here she is putting it all on the line in obedience to God and trusting Him with the results.
How about you? Would you have given up that last handful of flour and oil? Would you have exchanged the certainty of one last meal for the uncertain possibility of a miracle? Faith obeys. James says in his epistle, “I’ll show you my faith by my works.” “Faith without works is dead.” The kind of faith that is alive will step out on the word of the Lord, obey Him, and trust Him with the results. That’s exactly what this woman did.
“Faith cometh….” By hearing and hearing by the word of God. It’s not just that she heard that word with her natural ear alone; she heard it in her heart as it truly was a word from God. By faith she understood God was speaking and Elijah was simply the vessel God was speaking through.
Turn with me to Hebrews 11:24-26 (Read)
By faith we see treasures the world does not see. Can you imagine the privileges and advantages Moses enjoyed as the son of Pharaoh? He wasn’t a young, naive teenager when he made that decision. He was 40 years old. He knew what he was doing. He knew the esteem and power of having that position. He had a pretty good idea of the price he would pay to “take up his cross and follow Jesus” Be careful of an Americanized gospel that simply uses God to get worldly privilege. Sometimes God does bring us into places of wealth and influence for His purposes. He did that with Joseph. He did that with Daniel. He did that with David and others. But the goal of Christianity is not a life of ease and it is not equivalent to the American Dream. The goal of my life and your life is to do the will of the Father, whatever that may be for each one of us. For one person, it may include a lot of resources. For another it may not. We need to believe God for the resources to accomplish His purposes. And He will give us the faith to do that. And the prayer of faith will bring in the resources.
Moses saw something that other people in Pharaoh’s palace could not see: “esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt for he looked to the reward.” Do you see the reward
that God has set before you? Can you anticipate the welcome of the Father when you step into Heaven? Can you imagine the joy of hearing Him say over your life, “Well done good and faithful servant….”? Take this whole world and give me Jesus! I need material things to accomplish the will of God in this life, but they are just things I use to get His will done. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done”-right here, right now, on this piece of real estate where I stand.
What do you esteem highly? That is where you will invest your life. In fact, for everyone in this room you are investing your life in what you esteem as worth the investment. No investor does otherwise. If I esteem Apple stock as more favorable than IBM, then I will invest in Apple. Moses esteemed following the Lord more valuable, more rewarding, even though it included reproach and hardship rather than the wealth and pleasures of Egypt.
There are people in this room who have made similar choices and are making similar choices. Why do we do that? Why do we make choices that make no sense to the world around us? Why did Moses do that?
Heb. 11:27 “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” If you can get your eyes on Jesus; if you can see Him who is invisible (isn’t that an interesting phrase, something of an oxymoron, seeing that which cannot be seen because it is invisible to the natural eyes—if you see by the eye of faith Him who is invisible, then you can discern what is really valuable and worth investing your life in. Your life consists of time, energy, and money. Money is just the other two in capsule form. You get money by investing time and energy into something. So, I know what I esteem by analyzing where I invest my time, energy, and money. It’s not a matter of just having good feelings toward God; all that has to translate into the right choices and the right action.
Moses, Elijah, and even the unnamed widow all believed God and made the right choices. You and I want to join their ranks. We want to be people who act in faith and obedience to God when it comes right down to it. No doubt there are people here today who are having to trust God in hard circumstances. You are taking God at His word and standing on His promises. You are refusing to live in fear; instead, each day you will reach in and take the cup of flour knowing in your heart God will provide the next meal. You know it by faith, you act upon His word, and He proves Himself true to His promises.
Pray
