One think I like about this job is that I get to take a closer look at Bible stories I remember from when I was a kid in Sunday school. The stories always seem a little different than I remember. The passage that we are looking at today is one of those great stories that I remember from when I was a kid. The story always seems a little more exotic in my memory. The characters are larger than life in a child’s mind. Some of the details may be a little different than I remember, but the truth is still the same.
Our passage today is about the widow who fed Elijah the prophet. She had only a little flour and oil with which to bake bread, but it lasted until the drought ended because she was faithful.
To fully appreciate what is happening in this passage, let’s backtrack a little. In the first seven verses of 1 Kings 17, Elijah announces that there is going to be a severe drought in the land, without rain or dew. Elijah then heads out to a little stream. God commanded ravens to feed Elijah. With the food that the ravens brought and the water in the stream, Elijah was taken care of. Then the stream dried up, and Elijah had no water to drink. That’s where we pick up the passage.
Turn with me to 1 Kings 17.
Read 1 Kings 17:8-16.
Do you remember the show “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack? They investigated mysterious happenings. They investigated missing persons, unsolved crimes, and generally strange happenings. I can picture Robert Stack investigating this scene. He’s standing outside the widow’s house with his trademark trench coat on. He says, “I am standing outside a small house in the city of Zarephath where some unusual things have been happening. A poor widow, and I mean poor widow lives in this small house behind be. As you have heard, there is a severe drought in this area. Food is in short supply, and rationing has begun, but this widow has reportedly had an unending supply of food to feed her family, and a prophet named Elijah. She hasn’t been to the market to buy flour, oil or other goods for months. Tonight, on “Unsolved Mysteries” we will investigate this matter. Is it a case of the widow having a secret supplier, or is this a miracle from God? Stay tuned as we dig deeper.”
When we dig into this mystery, the first thing we find is…
I. Poverty.
Poverty was a real issue in that day and age. This was heightened by the plight of most widows. Compounding the problem was the fact that there was a severe drought and famine. These things all worked together to intensify the problem of poverty. Life was a day-to-day struggle for food for most people. The only people who didn’t really have to worry were the wealthy land owners and the royalty. Everyone else lived pretty much day-to-day. The routine was to get up and go to work. Then when you got paid, you stopped at the market to buy food, just enough for the day. Widows were in more desperate conditions than that, but we’ll get to that a little later.
We see the poverty of both Elijah and the widow. First is…
A. Elijah’s poverty.
As we noted earlier just before out passage, Elijah was living by a stream, and ravens brought food to him. I don’t know about you, but I’m not so sure I would feel terribly comfortable to have ravens bring me food. Ravens are noted as scavengers. They are not the birds one would think to be the food delivery service.
We can see from this that Elijah has nothing. He has no system of support other than what God provides for him. Here is a guy relying on ravens for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and perhaps even a midnight snack. This is a definite sign that he has nothing.
Then the stream dried up. The water is gone because of the drought. This guy is in big time trouble. His source of water is gone. Where does he turn now?
God tells him to go the town of Zarephath, which is on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. God then informs him that a widow will give him food. What? A widow? How can that be?
If it wasn’t bad enough that he had to be fed by ravens, now he has to rely on a widow. This shows the desperate situation for Elijah. He had to rely on a widow for food. There’s nothing wrong with widows, but the fact is in that day they were among the poorest of the poor. That brings us to…
B. The widow’s poverty.
Some so-called scholars speculate that the widow was really holding out on Elijah when she told him that she had nothing. They speculate that she really had a stash of baking supplies hidden way in a corner of the house.
That is preposterous. Widows of that day didn’t hoard stuff. They didn’t because they couldn’t afford it. They lived hand-to-mouth. It was not easy to be a widow. There were no savings accounts or life insurance policies to take care of her after her husband died. On top of that, she had a son. We all know what boys are like as they grow up. They eat, and eat, and eat, and eat.
When I married Tammy and left home, my parents’ grocery bill dropped dramatically. Growing boys consume large amounts of food. My parents didn’t have a lot of spare food just sitting around the house when I was a teenager. If there was spare food, I probably ate it.
To say that the widow had food stashed away is a ridiculous statement. It’s utter nonsense. She was destitute. She was poorer than poor. She tells Elijah, “I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” Here’s a woman who had given up.
She believed in God. She admitted that to Elijah, but she had given up hope of surviving. When we think of this we may think of the old nursery rhyme:
Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard,
To get her poor dog a bone.
But when she got there, the cupboard was bare;
And so the poor dog had none.
This was a widow with bare cupboards. She had nothing. Which makes it all the more amazing that God would send Elijah to her to feed him.
It’s at those times and in those places that we least expect it that God throws opens the windows of heaven to pour our blessings upon his people.
If God had sent Elijah to a wealthy home, what happened next wouldn’t have been a miracle. That’s where trusting God comes into play. Elijah trusted God, by going to find the widow. He could have said, “No thanks, I’ll stay her in the valley by the stream. I’m not going to find a poor widow to feed me.”
We also have here the despair of the widow. She tells Elijah that she believes that God lives, but then she says that she has given up all hope. She plans to go home and eat the rest of her food with her son and then die. She believes in God, but doesn’t have the will to go on.
Mere belief in God isn’t enough to get us by. We have to act on that belief, as we shall see later.
As we continue to dig deeper into this mystery, we find a…
II. Promise.
In verses 13 and 14, we find a beautiful promise given by God. The widow had lost all hope of surviving, but she is comforted and given a promise from God. It always seems that when we are at the end our rope that God gives us a promise to hold on to. To say that widow was at the end of her rope would be an incredible understatement. She had given up and was planning on dying. This was the end for her. She couldn’t take it anymore. It was too difficult to find food any longer. She was tired and wore out from the stresses of life.
God, however, in his perfect timing brings these two people together. Elijah needs food. The widow needs food, but she also, more importantly, needs hope.
That’s what we all need, even more than food is hope. Without hope, we have nothing. That’s why people with money sometimes commit suicide. They have no hope.
As this widow receives hope, first we see that…
A. Elijah offers comfort.
Elijah doesn’t start off by blasting her for that kind of thinking. He doesn’t condemn her attitude. He simply says, “Do not fear.” Three simple yet comforting words uttered by God’s prophet. “Do not fear.” How simple yet profound. The psalmist, in Psalm 37, says, “Fret not yourself.”
At this point the widow probably wasn’t worrying, because she had decided that it was all over anyway. At some point along the way, she probably was worrying and fretting about where the next meal was coming from. She probably worried about her son getting something to eat. She may have lain awake at night thinking and worrying about it.
Worry does not do us one bit of good. Jesus said, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” Worry does us no good. Worry isn’t going to add a minute to our life. If anything, it will shorten our life.
Elijah offers comfort to the widow. He is telling her not to be afraid or scared, not to worry or fret. He then tells her to go and do what she said she would do, but to first make him a cake of bread to eat.
Didn’t he listen to what she just said? She said that she only had enough for her and her son, and then they would die. This is an audacious instruction from Elijah. In effect he is asking to eat the last bit of food that she has. He has some kind of nerve. Then he delivers…
B. God’s promise.
This audacious instruction is followed up by a word from God. It is comforting to hear the words, “Thus says the Lord.” The promise of God is, “The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.”
Wow! What a promise. The despair is gone. The worry is gone. The promise of God is comforting.
God’s promises are comforting throughout the Bible. We think of God’s promise to Abraham to have a son in his old age. We think of the commandment that says, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land.” The apostle Paul identified that as the first commandment with a promise. We think of the prophet Malachi’s statement that when we are faithful with our tithe, God will open the windows of heaven and pour blessings out on his people. We think Jesus telling his disciples, as he went back to heaven, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” These are just a few of the comforting promises of God found throughout his Word.
Here is the promise of a miracle. God promises to provide food for the widow and her son, and Elijah. God promise is for…
III. Provision.
God promised that the jar of flour and the jug of oil wouldn’t run out, and it didn’t. Isn’t cool that God keeps his promises. Verse 16 says, “The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.”
God’s promise was fulfilled in the manner in which he promised it. He promised that ingredients wouldn’t run out and they didn’t. He promised nothing more and nothing less, and he delivered nothing more or nothing less. God didn’t promise that she would eat filet mignon, and he didn’t give her filet mignon. He promised oil and flour, and he delivered oil and flour.
So often we want God to give us more than he has promised us. He gives us what he promised us, nothing more or nothing less.
We see also that this promise of provision to combat poverty was conditioned on…
A. Obedience.
The promise was conditional on the widow’s response. Elijah told the widow to go bake bread with the last of her ingredients for her and her son, but to first make him a cake of bread. Now, she could have said, “Okay, I’ll bring you bread, but me and the boy are going to eat first.” I don’t believe that she would have seen the miracle with that response. Verse 15 says, “She went and did as Elijah said.”
God wants us to trust him, completely. We are to give God the first of our lives. When we tithe, it is the first 10%, not the last. When we give God our time to minister to others, it is to be our best time. To give God our first and best is what it means to completely trust him.
The provision of God was conditional on obedience. When we look at some of the promises of God that were mentioned earlier, they are also conditional on our obedience.
The commandment about honoring our father and mother must be obeyed for the promise to be fulfilled. The promise that God gave through the prophet Malachi to open the windows of heaven with blessing is conditional on us bringing our full tithe into the church. Jesus’ promise to be with his disciples to the end of the age was conditional on them going into the entire world to preach and teach the Good News.
God doesn’t blindly promise us something without obedience. The promise of salvation is conditioned on us receiving by faith. God offers all humanity salvation, but in order to receive it, we must exercise our faith in Jesus.
Likewise, the widow didn’t receive the provision of God until she was faithfully obedient to him.
When we are obedient to God, he demonstrates his…
B. Generosity.
The result of the widow’s obedience was a heaping helping of God’s generosity. Verse 15 tells us, “And she and he [that is Elijah] and her household ate for many days.” God poured out his blessing on this widow and her house because of her obedience to God.
It is believed that the drought lasted upwards of two years. For an extended period of time, and I don’t want to be dogmatic on how long it was, they ate and had their fill. It doesn’t matter if it was two years, two months or two weeks, the point is that it was a miracle. The widow started with just enough oil and flour to make enough for her and her son, and she wound up eating for “many days.”
The point is not to get hung up on semantics or how long was this and how much did she have, but to focus on the provision of God.
Conclusion
We have seen the poverty of the widow and Elijah. We have seen the promise of God delivered through his servant Elijah. We have seen the provision of God to Elijah and the widow and her household. We see that God is faithful in providing for his people, but we must be obedient to his call.
It may seem that we struggle and fight and toil and make no headway. Life gets frustrating sometimes. We are tempted to give, like the widow had done. I’m here to tell you this morning that God has great things in store for you. He has great things in store for each of us, individually. He has great things in store for us as a church. The second verse of the song we sang this morning, Little Is Much When God Is in It, says, “Does the place you’re called to labor seem so small and little known? It is great if God is in it, and He’ll not forget his own.”
When we feel like we can’t go on. When we feel that God has forgotten us. When the crush of life is too much to bear, we have to remember that God is with us. All we have to do is listen and obey him.
Be encouraged this morning, because when we have God on our side that is when little is much.
