When The Brook Runs Dry: 1 Kings 17 Series

Supplies: Fake Vine, Scissors

Series Drought: Moving from parched to passionate

(1 Kings 17-19)

Week One: When the brook runs dry

Go ahead and be turning to 1 Kings 17, fill in blanks

I want to start out today with a question: What do Passover, an extra cup of wine, leaving the door of your house open and an empty chair all have in common?

No this is not some cheesy joke, ALL these things had to do with Jewish customs that revolve around one man: ELIJAH.

Elijah stood up boldly for God. Get this down in your notes Elijah's name E-LI-JAH when you break it down means "My God is the Lord. And he proved that through his obedience.

He proved that God is the one who owns and his in charge of everyone and everything! We are going to see God perform some pretty amazing miracles through the life of Elijah but that is not the reason we are going to study his life over the next three weeks. We are going to look at the life of Elijah because like James 5:17 reminds us Elijah was a human just like ALL of us in this room. God can use us in amazing ways as well, if we learn to move from being parched or dried up and withering to passionate flowing full of life followers of God and hopefully by the end of this series we will all have a better picture in our minds of what that looks like.

When we first meet Elijah he appeared before the King of Israel, King Ahab. King Ahab was a really bad king and just a bad person in general and God tells Elijah to go and announce that God is going to bring a curse on Israel. Look 1 Kings 17:1 with me (READ): Elijah said there was going to be a drought in the land, there wouldn't be any rain or even dew in the.

What do you need more than anything else in a drought?--Water! You guys are so smart! In the passage we are looking at today God lead a man named Elijah to a body of water during a drought in his land.

In 1 Kings 17:2-5 we read that...

I. The Drought Begins (Look at those verses with me)

Cherith = Separation. God was calling Elijah to separate himself from everyone and everything else to this body of water. This doesn't mean that we have to physically move if we find ourselves in a drought of life. There are over 6 billion brooks for us to draw from because the Brook symbolizes this book--The Word of God.

Hang with me here for a minute and let me show you what I mean,

Eph 5:25-26 says: Christ (also) loved the church and gave Himself for her that He might sanctify or separate and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.

As we go about our everyday lives ALL of us get our lives dirty with sin. You may get into a different kind of dirt or mud than me but we've all sinned on a daily basis--we all have our different daily struggles and that is why it is so important to separate ourselves to the brook of the Word every day like Elijah did!

One of my favorite passages in the whole Bible is John 15:1-3. Listen to what it says (READ)

Let’s start by discussing the phrase “taketh" or "takes away” or some translation might even say "cut off" in vs. 2 because this is the most misunderstood phrase of the passage.

A clearer translation of that phrase is “take or lift up.” We find the Greek word used this way in Matt 14:20 when the disciples “took up” 12 baskets of food after feeding the 5,000. We also find it used when Simon was forced to “bear” or “take up” the cross of Christ as He walked to Golgatha (Matt 27:32). In fact no where in the Bible or any other Greek literature for that matter do we find this particular Greek word used to mean, “cut off.”

Let me paraphrase for you how a vineyard owner described this passage:

This vineyard owner said, “New branches (show branches) have a natural tendency to trail down and grow along the ground. But they don’t bear fruit down there. When branches grow along the ground, the leaves get coated in dust and dirt (coat them in both kinds of dirt.)

It doesn't matter what kind of dirt it is, dirt is dirt and sin is sin, when it rains they get muddy and mildewed.” My first response was, well I guess they just cut those branches off and throw them away. The vineyard owner has a completley different take. He says, “The [branches] are much too valuable [to cut off and throw away]. We go through the vineyard with a bucket of water looking for those branches”, he said and,”We lift them up and wash them off and pretty soon they are thriving.”