Where is the God of Elijah? Part 2
Elijah, Home Made Bread and Social Security - 1 Kings 17:8-24
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- August 13, 2006
Elijah is a man of faith. I think we have to understand that his going to Ahab was due to the leading of the Lord. We just don’t have chapter and verse in which he was given his instructions or in which a word from the Lord came to him to go and with it the challenge to tell him what he did.
He declared that it would not rain and it did not. In the middle of his discomfort at having the brook dry up, he could have simply called down the rain. But he did not.
As a man of faith, he had some idea of what God was trying to accomplish in
Elijah’s faith is grounded in the faithfulness of God. Is our’s? Would you declare God to have been, to currently be faithful in regards to you and your life?
Elijah was a man obedient to the clear leading of God and one who clearly understood when the Word of the Lord came to him. God could speak to him and he was able to discern the voice of God. Can we? Should we be able to?
James tells us that Elijah was a man just like us. Let’s reverse that thought so that we can attempt to understand what that means to us. We are people just like Elijah!
What he believed we can believe. What he did we can do. We can pray like he did and have the same kind of results. We can have the same kind of faith he had.
What would it require of us for this to be true in our own lives?
Fred Craddock, in an address to ministers, caught the practical implications
of consecration. "To give my life for Christ appears glorious," he
said. "To pour myself out for others. . . to pay the ultimate price of
martyrdom -- I'll do it. I'm ready, Lord, to go out in a blaze of glory.
"We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking $l,000 bill and laying
it on the table-- 'Here's my life, Lord. I'm giving it all.' But the reality
for most of us is that he sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $l,000
for quarters. We go through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there.
Listen to the neighbor kid's troubles instead of saying, 'Get lost.' Go to a
committee meeting. Give a cup of water to a shaky old man in a nursing home.
Usually giving our life to Christ isn't glorious. It's done in all those little
acts of love, 25 cents at a time. It would be easy to go out in a flash of
glory; it's harder to live the Christian life little by little over the long
haul."
The question that has prompted our series in Elijah is simply “Where is the God of Elijah?”
God is acting in and through Elijah with power to accomplish his will at a very decadent and sinful period of time in the life of His people. They are captives of sin and that sin is leading them to death. Elijah is there to set them free. Though it appears as if God has absented himself, he is very near to Elijah all the time.
In verse 8 of the 17th chapter of 1 Kings the Lord comes to
Elijah and tells him to go to Zerepath,
a little village just outside
Before we get too excited for Elijah, we must understand that
But sometimes hiding something in plain sight works. I read this week that Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who had been kidnapped and held for a number of weeks was probably held for some time in a house just across from an allied base in Fallujah about 50 miles from Baghdad. It was just an ordinary house that American Marines passed by every day, never suspecting that she was being held there.
So Elijah went to Zerepath. Zarepath is a name that means “place of refining”. It is in Zarepath that Elijah is going to be tested and toughened for what God intends him to do one day. Will Elijah really depend on the faithfulness of God? Will he act in faith while he is there in the middle of his enemies? Will he know what he is to do in the face great anguish and need? Time of course will tell.
As he arrives at the city gate, he sees a widow out gathering sticks for firewood. He knows that this is the woman he is to meet there. He asks her for a drink of water. She responded by going to get some water for him. He then throws out the impossible request to bring him some bread to eat too.
She knows who Elijah is too. Because her answer tips us off that she has received God’s instructions to feed Elijah. She says, “I swear by the Lord your God that I don’t have a single piece of bread in the house. And I only have a small handful of flour and just a drop of oil…left, and I was gathering a few sticks to cook this last meal and then my son and I will die.”
God has instructed her to feed this man. And she has no resources to do it. What she is really saying to Elijah is this: what God has told me to do, I can’t do. I have just enough for me and my son to have one little bit as a last meal. I am sorry. I just can’t do it.
She is destitute. Her husband is dead. He could not provide for her and her son any longer. What ever resources she has had have been used up. The fact that she is gathering sticks for her fire means that she does not have enough money to buy firewood from the vendors in the village. This is poverty at the extreme. At the end of her resources, she is going to make a little home made bread and then lay down and die.
She does not know God very well. In fact, I am sure that she has real reservations about taking in this man of God.
But Elijah does not hesitate. He tells her to go ahead and make that home made bread last meal. But give me some of it first and then you and the boy can eat.
I declare to you, Elijah says, that the flour and the oil will always be enough there in the jars until there is an end to the drought and crops are harvested once again. God says, “There will always be plenty of flour and oil left in your containers.” God is your source. The flour and oil will never fail you as long as needed because God says so. Do you want social security? Well, God is your security.
Let’s look at Elijah’s spiritual logic;
“God sent me to Zarepath.”
“God has instructed her to feed me there.”
“God is faithful. That is my unshakable confidence in God.”
“Therefore, whatever she has will be enough for her family and me.”
Do you see the spiritual logic and implication of all of this.
God is our source. God is faithful. He will keep his word and fulfill all his promises and work out his will in the lives of his people.
So, Elijah makes the connection: “Therefore, there will be enough for all of us in what this woman has for us to eat until the new crops grow and are harvested.”
Remember, no matter how hungry people become, they never eat their seed for their next crops. And the rains will come one day.
How did Elijah make this connection? It is a faith connection that Elijah makes in spite of the drought. James tells us that the drought lasted 3 ½ years. It did not rain for 3 ½ years! And in a desert climate that is a recipe for disaster of monumental proportions.
Well, God is leading him. God sent him to the brook and he drank out of the brook and at the bread and meat brought in by the ravens. God has been faithful. And now God has told him to go to Zarepath and said that the widow would feed him there. Faith in action leads Elijah to Zarepath and to the widow. We need to remember that James also tells us that Elijah was a man just like us. Flip that thought around and see that we are people just like him. We can simply take God at his word and have the same kinds of results. Why? Because God is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. God does not change. He functions just like he did back then. The major difference is that Jesus has come as Lord and Savior and the Holy Spirit has come to dwell within us, to empower us to serve God.
The question, of course, for us is this: Are we prepared to exercise that kind of faith? Do we have that kind of confidence in God?
Lets think of some practical ways to see how this works. We believe that God put us in our apartment. He provided it. It is just the right one with just the right neighbors. He promises to provide for us here so we can stay in this apartment until he moves us. Do you think I have to worry about having rent money for next month? Can I trust God with this like Elijah did?
Elijah was a man with faith without fear. His faith prevailed when he confronted Ahab. He prayed that it would not rain and the rains stopped. He said it would not rain again until he said so. And to date in our text he has not yet said so. The righteous man prayed and God acted. His faith is grounded in the faithfulness of God.
How about our faith? Is it grounded in God’s faithfulness?
We would like to think so. We would like for each other to think so. But so often in the world around us and even in the church we tend to focus on the possibility of failure\. We don’t really have enough to share. Our resources are limited. And that is how we see things. We only see the limitations of what we have on hand.
All Elijah had was the connection he made that God would provide. God had to provide for them if he was going to be faithful. Therefore, whatever the widow had would be enough. God would supply food for Elijah and her son and herself. I don’t think Elijah knew what God was going to do before he came to Zarepath. He simply obeyed God as he led the way. Elijah was obedient to the declared word and will of God. That was the key to his power.
So this little widow gets a drink of water for Elijah and then begins preparing the little japati for Elijah. She took the flour and began making the bread. She took the oil to use as she baked or fried the bread. Lo and behold, she noticed that there was a little flour and oil in the containers. So she took a little flour and a little oil and made home made bread for her son. A real mother would do that. Elijah and the son have japati, home made peasant bread. And guess what! She saw that there was a little flour left in the jar and a little oil in the other container. So she made one for herself.
Of course, you know that she noticed that there was still a little of each in the containers for the next meall too. Elijah’s god was being faithful to provide for them.
The Bible does not tell us this, but I don’t believe that there was ever more than that little flour and oil that the woman started with in those jars. God works that way many times. For months on end those two jars provided food for this prophet and her little family as a living testimony to the faithfulness of God and the practical faith of Elijah and this little widow.
Where is the God of Elijah who replenished that flour and oil time and again so their needs might be met?
He is there wherever people exercise faith in Him and in His word and in His Son and Holy Spirit.
Would you like to see Elijah’s God work like this in your life and in you r
family? If so, Matthew
God is faithful. If we are willing to put him first then he will provide. It becomes a matter of God’s faithfulness that is on the line.
Try God and see.
Try God and find out if he is faithful.
Put God first. Then watch out!
Open wide those tightly clutching fingers that are holding onto your life, to what you possess. Give it away gladly. Hold lightly in your hand whatever you have.
Little is much when god has control of it. Just ask the little boy with the few loaves and fishes that fed 5000 men and others.
All God is waiting for is our response.
He is our source. God is your social security.
He is faithful. He will provide for us, because he said he would and he is always faithful to do what he says.
Give him what you have and he will multiply it for the sake of His Kingdom.
