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.
Elijah makes it to Kerith and we see that God was faithful to His word and provided water from the brook and the ravens fed Elijah bread and meat each morning and each evening. God provided for His servant in the midst of drought and famine. God was faithful to His word to His servant. By this God protected Elijah from Ahab and Jezebel but Elijah had his part to play also. He had to go to Kerith and he had to take the food from unclean birds that God had commanded to feed him. Each morning and each evening was another test of his obedience.
No doubt he was getting comfortable and used to the schedule each day. Days spent in solitude before the Lord God and each day God provided for his needs. No doubt over time it all became very familiar to him, maybe even predictable and then one morning he notices the brook is not running as fast as it did the morning before and over the next few days as he watches the brook drys up. Perplexed again. This is approximately a year later and the command of God comes to Elijah a second time.
Another command to get up and go. This time it is not to a brook where unclean birds will provide his daily bread but to a foreign land, in fact the home of those seeking his life, where a gentile widow, in his eyes and unclean person, will provide his daily bread.
God commands Elijah to leave Kerith, where the water has dried up and the ravens have ceased to come, and to go to Zarephath in Sidonia, modern day Lebanon, beside the Mediterranean, 75 miles away. A 75 mile trek in the heat to a city whose name means “smelter’s crucible.” Literally, out of the fire and in to the frying pan for Elijah.
Zarephtah the home area of Jezebel who wants Elijah dead. Can this really be the command of God? Is this a wise place for Elijah to go hide? To make it even more incredible God tells Elijah that He has commanded a widow women to provide Elijah’s daily bread.
Once again we read that Elijah obeyed immediately. The pattern is repeated. God commands and Elijah obeys. The command is challenging Elijah’s core understanding of unclean birds and now unclean people but he obeys. Here is another lesson for Elijah in learning to trust God’s provision.
There is always the danger, isn’t there, that the brook and the ravens feeding him each morning and evening has become commonplace and expected. There is the danger that the miraculous provision of God in this situation has become expected, ordinary and familiar. There is the danger that the daily provision of water and sustenance has become and everyday occurrence for Elijah. Are we any different? How often do we fail to see the miracles of God each in the every day ordinariness of life. The everyday occurrences of our life that no longer fill us with a sense of the wonder of God, of His love, His grace, His mercy and His provision for us. It is not until the ordinariness of life is interrupted that our eyes and our hearts are lifted from ourselves, from what we count as our rights to certain things, that we turn afresh to Almighty God utterly dependent on Him for our daily bread.
Well, Elijah obeys. Up from Kerith and off to Zarephath he goes. As he enters the town he encounters a widow woman. Look again at verses 10-13. This little encounter is full of tension, expectation, despair, hope and assurance at the end.
Elijah asks this widow women for some water to quench his thirst. In a land of drought this is quite a request and as she goes to fetch some water for him he also asks for some bread to eat. Her reply in verse 12 reveals a dire situation. She is going home not cook a last meal for her and her son. Elijah’s response in verse 13 comes across as selfish save for the fact we know what God has spoken about this situation.
Now we see faith in action where Elijah would not have expected it to be exercised - by a gentile widow woman. Elijah has assured her that the Lord God of Israel, not Baal, will provide each day for her, for her son and for His servant. This is quite a challenge for her and for Elijah.
Elijah is having to swallow some of his male pride in asking a widow woman for help. Elijah is having to set aside what he understands about the Law and his prejudices against gentiles in firstly going to Zarephath and then asking this gentile woman for bread. Again he will have to set aside his understanding of the Law and eat “unclean food” because it has been made by a gentile woman and given to him by her hands.
This woman has to exercise faith in God, whom she may have heard of but we are given no indication that she is a believer. Yet here faith is exercised and she goes in 15 and makes a small loaf of bread for Elijah and brings it to him.
The scene is set for the next morning. Will the jar of flour be replenished as Elijah has said and will the jug of oil be full? Verse 16 tells us that this widow woman had flour each day and oil each day to provide for her, her son and Elijah just as the Lord God had said.
Think about this for a moment. Elijah is sent not to a rich merchant who could well provide for his daily needs bit to a poor widow woman down to her last bite. He is made dependent on a gentile widow in a heathen country. The commands of God in this passage demanded unquestioning obedience to what seemed to be strange, bizarre and nonsensical instructions. Elijah had to humble himself to receive charity from ravens and from a gentile widow, who was herself destitute.
The path of obedience each time was the same: Submission to God; Surrender to the will of God; subjection to the commands of God. That path is still the same if we are to live by faith and follow the path of god in our daily lives.
These are two stories that challenge us to have faith in god to provide our daily bread. We may pray “give us this day our daily bread…” but let us be honest we don’t give it another thought because our cupboards are full and fridges are full. Yet, let me ask you this - have we learned to be content with enough? Elijah had to learn to be content with ravens feeding him and with this widow woman feeding him each day. There were not luxuries just the basic necessities of his daily bread. Have we learned that contentment, and not just with our daily bread? Or, are we opening the fridge which is full and saying “there is nothing to eat?”
I am sure the lack of variety each day tested Elijah’s faith but he remained faithful and I believe these two incidents provided important lessons in trusting God to provide that wee will see come to the fore in greater situations later in his life.
Elijah learned to trust God in everything and for everything. I am sure you have dinner planned. I am sure you are not going home today wondering if there will be food in the cupboard to eat. Elijah had to pray in earnest “give us this day our daily bread.” He trusted God to provide and God did. You see the test of faith every morning is what shall we eat in a land of famine?
Just like Elijah the times of extremities in our lives shows us the daily provision of God. There is no doubt that it often tests our faith and sorely tests it at that. We may ask what good purpose can this serve? When the book dries up another trial is sent to Elijah, and to us at times?
Extremities induce in us a spirit of obedience. Elijah could have argued with God why go to Zarephath are there not widows enough in Israel who could provide for me? In Luke 4:25-26 Jesus actually states this to the people of Nazareth who will not believe in Him.
Extremities encourage faith in God amidst the most trying and unfavourable of circumstances and conditions of life. To depend on a trickling brook and ravens, upon a destitute widow for your daily bread requires faith that God is in control and God has commanded you to be there. Elijah could say with Psalm 23 God “provided a table in the midst of mine enemies.” God’s daily provisions never fail. He did not fail nor abandon Elijah in the midst of the drought and famine and He will not fail us. Elijah still had to live in the midst of this drought and famine, and so will we, but God provided salvation for him in the midst of it. He does the same for you and for me.
Amen.
