Intro: When I was about 5 or 6 years old I went through a mid childhood crises. I was the youngest of 4 children and by the time I was 5 years old I was tired of being referred to as the baby. One of my favorite things was to go to the grocery store with my mother. My two main stops at the grocery store where the cereal isle and the candy isle. It was there at the candy isle that I decided I could prove to my mother that was and independent young man at the ripe old age of 5. My thinking was that if I could take a bag of candy out of the store with out paying for it I was smarter than the store manager, stock boys, and cashers. So when the cost was clear I put the bag of candy into my pocket and played it cool until my mother and me where safely in the car on our way out of the parking lot and then with swelling pride I pulled the candy out of my pocket. I remember smiling with pride and scanning my mother’s face anticipating an outburst of joy and pride in her boy genius. To my surprise I found a look of total horror and shock as my mother began to explain to me that what I had done was dishonest, that I had stolen, I was a thief. In my own little 5-year-old way I tried to take matters into my own hands and prove my independence and it backfired on me. Don’t we as adults do the same thing sometimes? We take matters out of God’s hands and try and manipulate circumstances out to meet our fleshly desires and it backfires on us.
In our text today God has already taken Elijah and cut away much of his self-dependence, but now He’s going to melt away all Elijah’s pride and prepare him to deliver one of the greatest revivals of all time.
BEFORE GOD CAN MOLD US INTO WHAT HE HAS CREATED US TO BE HE MUST FIRST MELT US.
v. 8-11 A NEW PATH
Don’t Get Too Comfortable!
When the Kerith ravine dried up on Elijah this must have been a terrible feeling for the man of God who was in the perfect will of God. One of the worst feelings in life is the feeling that we’ve been forgotten. It must have seemed to Elijah that God had forgotten him, there by the ravine for about two years, depending on God for survival and protection then the brook dries up. God allows our brooks to dry up in life to move us along in His will because we get too comfortable sometimes. I realize the Kerith ravine wasn’t Elijah’s home and food brought by ravens wasn’t exactly home cooking but for two years this was all Elijah knew. It’s like the alcoholic who tries to get help through Alcoholics Anonymous and finally starts making some headway only to come home and discover his wife has bought him a six-pack of beer. She doesn’t want him to get better because it will change the dynamics of their relationship, and even though her marriage isn’t the best it’s all she knows and she’s comfortable in the co-dependant relationship. We must be willing to leave our comfort zone and depend fully on God before He can mold us into the people He has created us to be.
Be Willing To Face Your Fears!
The fact that God sent Elijah to Zarephath is very significant. First because it was Jezebel’s hometown. Elijah was in hiding from Ahab and Jezebel for his life. To be sent to Jezebel’s back yard seems to be a dangerous path. It is a wicked place filled with wicked people. Yet, that is exactly where the Lord sends His prophet!
To top it off, to get to Zarephath from Cherith will force Elijah to march over 100 miles through territory ruled over by king Ahab, who is looking for Elijah everywhere. I have often wondered what that 100 mile track must have been like for Elijah. I would assume he saw more funerals than weddings because of the great drought brought about “at his word”. I wonder if he saw them burring babies and families that had starved to death because of the lack of rain. It seems like this command of the Lord makes no sense at all! Of course, one of the reasons for sending Elijah to Zarephath was to vividly illustrate the impotence of Jezebel’s wrath and power!
Often, the life of faith will lead through difficult pathways. God never promised that this way would be an easy way. In fact, just the opposite is true! God has promised us that life will be filled with trials and troubles, Job 14:1; Job 5:7; John 16:33. Yet, that is the path of faith! Yet, even when the command of God makes no sense, faith simply obeys God without regard for the consequences, v. 10! You can see this truth displayed throughout the Bible.
§ •Noah and the ark - Gen. 6
§ •Abraham and Isaac - Gen. 22
§ •Daniel and the 3 Hebrews - Dan. 1
There are times when the commands of God seems harsh and strange. However, faith recognizes the voice of the Good Shepherd and follows obediently wherever He may lead!)
ACCEPT THE UNEXPECTED v9 “I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food”
We would expect God to send Elijah to a widow and command Elijah to take care of her, but this is a pride swallowing command from God. Widows in this day didn’t depend on the government to supply them with money, and they had no nursing homes to go for help. All they had where their families, and if a widow had no family she was just out of luck. This must have been a strange command for Elijah to accept.
NOTHING TO LEAN ON BUT GOD V12 "As surely as the LORD your God lives," she replied, "I don’t have any bread-only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it-and die."
God’s will is not only to save Elijah physically through this drought, but to save this widow and her son not only physically but spiritually as well.
I believe to say that this widow was depressed would be an understatement. I believe she was already dead, not physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. You’ve heard the say when you get to the end of your rope just tie a knot in it and hold on, well her rope had broke and she was free falling. One last meal and then they starve…no hope of help from anyone, anywhere.
If God where to tell me to go to Dallas and stay there, and that He has prepared a widow to feed me, and provide shelter, the first place I would go would be to North Dallas to the Highland Park area and start looking for the widows driving the Mercedes and Lexus’. I would expect God to send me to a rich widow with a large pantry full of food, and plenty of extra room. But God didn’t send Elijah to a widow with plenty He sent him to a widow with nothing.
This goes directly against the prosperity gospel. How long can you go without going to the grocery store without starving? Most of us could probably go for a long time. Because we here in America (the land of plenty) have a surplus, we have pantries, and freezers to store our food. We have drive thru restaurants, so the family can eat in the car on the way to little league practice like God intended. We consider storing up to be a blessing, but the only problem with storing up is we don’t learn to depend on God. We just simply depend on self and our surplus and hardly consider God to be our provider and guide in life. This is like when the nation of Israel was in their wilderness wandering and God provided them with manna for everyday. Just enough for that day they were not to keep any over for the next day or it would ruin. God was teaching them to depend on them for that day’s provision.
Ex 16:17-20
17The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.
19Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning."
20However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
God was teaching them eat at God’s command.
Ex 13:20-21
21By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.
Through the cloud and fire God was also teaching them to move only at His command.
Elijah ate at God’s command and moved at God’s command.
We must ask ourselves a question. Do we only eat and move at God’s command? For the nation of Israel God wanted them to think of Him with everything they did physically and spiritually. When they ate to think of Him and His provisions, where they lived, with their employment, their families, their health with everything they were to consider God’s will. To eat and move at God’s command means that with everything we do we consider God’s will and we lean on nothing but Him.
BE WILLING TO TRUTST GOD WITH THE UNHEARD OF. V.13-16
1 Kings 17:13-16
13Elijah said to her, "Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: `The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD gives rain on the land.’" 15She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.
When Elijah hears the widow’s sob story, he makes what appears to be the coldest demand in the Bible. He tells her to go ahead and fix her last supper, but to feed him first! On the surface this appears harsh and cruel, but it was, in fact, a plea for faith and surrender to the will of God.
When this widow heard the word of God, she went and did as Elijah had commanded her. it must have took great faith to use the last little bit of meal she had to prepare bread for a total stranger. Yet she did it by faith!
Because this widow took God at His Word and prepared bread for Elijah, God allowed the widow, the widow’s son and Elijah to enjoy plenty while all around them hundreds starved to death. That is grace! The difference in the widow’s home was that she learned to live by faith and she was supplied by the hand of God. God honors faith because faith honors God!
For years, until it rained, every mealtime was a miracle. God worked a miracle in that barrel and in that jar every single day. He took nothing and made it last until it was no longer needed. Friends, we serve a God Who specializes in doing the impossible! It may look hopeless to us, but we must never count God out! He can take the little that is dedicated to Him by faith and multiply it to enormous proportions!
Illustration: Corrie Ten Boom tells of a time when in the German death camp Ravensbruk during WWII. She had smuggled her Bible and a small bottle of liquid vitamins into her barracks. Her sister Betsie was sick and growing sicker but she demanded that Corrie first give a dose of vitamins to all the other sick in their barracks before she would accept any. Corrie tells that a strange thing was happening. The Davitamon bottle was continuing to produce drops. It scarcely seemed possible, so small a bottle, so many doses a day. Now in addition to Betsie, a dozen others on our pier were taking it. My instinct was always to hoard it – Betsie was growing so very weak! But the others where ill as well. It was hard to say no to eyes that burned with fever, hands that shook with chill. I tried to save it for the very weakest – but even these soon numbered fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five…. And still, every time I tilted the little bottle, a drop appeared at the tip of the glass stopper. It just couldn’t be! I held it up to the light, trying to see how much was left, but the dark brown glass was too thick to see through. “There was a woman in the Bible,” Betsie said, “whose oil jar was never empty.” She turned tot it in the Book of Kings, the story of the poor widow of Zarephath who gave Elijah a room in her home: “The jar of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the works of Jehovah which he spoke by Elijah.” Well – but – wonderful things happen all through the Bible. It was one thing to believe that such things were possible thousands of years ago, another to have it happen now, to us, this very day. And yet it happened this day, and the next, and the next, until an awed little group of spectators stood around watching the drops fall onto the daily rations of bread. Many nights I lay awake in the shower of straw dust from the mattress above, trying to fathom the marvel of supply lavished upon us. “Maybe,” I whispered to Betsie, “only a molecule or two really gets through that little pinhole – and then in the air it expands!” I herd her soft laughter in the dark. “Don’t try too hard to explain it, Corrie, Just accept it as a surprise from a Father who loves you.” “The Hiding Place” (Corrie Ten Boom) pg. 202-203
“God’s work, done God’s way, will receive God’s supply.” Hudson Taylor
Application:
If you have no hope this morning if your rope has broken and your free falling know this, that God is able in impossible times to turn your hopeless situation around and give you hope, to take your death and give you life, to take your faithlessness and give you faith if you will simply lend what you have to him.
God has only promised enough grace to face today. We have no promise of tomorrow; God wants us to look to him for strength to get through today, and not to worry about tomorrow. If you have plenty today, there is no guarantee you will have it tomorrow.
Take a step of faith today for God, put action to your faith, take your hands off and give your life to God and see what He can do with it.
