1 Kings16 17 v8-16 2010
Metro Calvary – Roseville CA Richard Cimino February 15, 2010
1 Kings 17:8-16 Related Topics: Ahab; Jezebel; Elijah; One Sentence Ministry; The Brook keriyth; The Place of Preparation; The Place of Cutting; Whittled On By God; Absent Yourself; Obedience; God’s Word; God’s Provision; Zarephath; The Place of Refining; Widow of Zarephath; Creative Power of God;
CHAPTER 17 REVIEW Elijah, the greatest prophet of Scripture, stepped on to the pages of Scripture in the first verse of Chapter 17. In the New Testament Elijah is mentioned by name more than any of the other Old Testament Prophets. This is extraordinary because he’s not predictive like Daniel (think of Daniel 9 and the panoramic view of God’s dealings with Israel up to the second coming of Jesus), like Isaiah (the 5th Gospel), or Ezekiel (37 the rebirth of Israel, 38-39 the invasion of Jerusalem by Russia and a confederacy of Muslim nations). By contrast, Elijah is a prophet that speaks to his own generation and brings about a dramatic change in his own generation. And he steps on to the pages of Scripture with ZERO introduction, ZERO background. That’s the thing that I hope stirs each of our hearts! We look at OUR generation and think — What difference can I make? What chance do I have to bring about any change? I live in obscurity. Well, that’s Elijah. We don’t know how old he was. Was he 80? Was he 18? We don’t know anything about his parentage. He was a man who lived in obscurity in the area of Gilead and all we know about him is that He gets on his knees and prays. EVERYTHING began there and he changed an entire generation. 1
God finally sends him — He walks in before Ahab and says — “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” THEN the Lord says to Elijah in Verse 3 — Depart from here. He has a one sentence ministry! God says, 3…. hide yourself. This means much more than to go someplace where people can’t find you. It literally means “absent yourself”. The prerequisite for being used by God is that you “absent yourself”. John the Baptist would say — I must decrease and He must increase.
…. hide yourself by the brook Keriyth — Keriyth means to CUT or to WHITTLE. Elijah was going to discover that no man stands on Mount Carmel until he goes to Keriyth. No man can call fire down from heaven until they’ve been CUT away, WHITTLED on by God. And that is the hard bit about serving the Lord! The man or woman who loves Jesus wants to serve him, wants to be used by Jesus and for the glory of Jesus. But we don’t like the time of CUTTING and REFINING! 3
God has a Keriyth for each of us. God reserves the right to take us to a place that. Not just one time and one place, but He has those places where He teaches us to “absent ourselves” so that the world might see Jesus in us — Where He can WHITTLE away on our hearts.
You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 4
Elijah learned that every drop of water and every bite of food was a heavenly provision. Here’s the deal, we love Jesus. We get up, we go to work or school everyday. We have food in our refrigerator. We’re in good health. And complacency sets in, a sense of spiritual apathy sets in. Until one day a doctor’s report comes — Your wife has cancer / you have cancer. Suddenly, you find yourself waking up saying — Lord, thank you for my wife. Lord, forgive me for not thanking you for my wife / my health. You find yourself waking up saying — Lord, I have food today. Lord, I have antibiotics if I need them for my children. Lord, I have sustenance, I have a home. I have a roof…
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Keriyth was the place where God began to cut away from Elijah any sense of self reliance or complacency. In Keriyth, all of the sudden we’re looking to heaven every day.
And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. 7And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. 7
The drying brook caused Elijah to put his ear to heaven. God said he was going to sustain me here by the brook. If the brook is drying up, he must be preparing to move me. When our brooks dry, it sharpens our hearing a little doesn’t it?
Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there 8
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God said — Arise, go to Sidon. That doesn’t make sense. That defies logic. that is enemy territory. God is sending Elijah sending to the very place where Ba-al worship originated! God is sending Elijah to the very place where Jezebel came from — where her father was still king. The very person and practice that caused God to bring judgment on Samaria — and stop the heavens from giving rain for 3 ½ years —originated in the very place God is now sending Elijah 9
“Arise, go to Zarephath
Today this town is called Sarafand — in Lebanon. QUOTE: John Ross Macduff The Prophet of Fire: Or The Life and Times of Elijah, With Their Lessons p. 56
Zarephath got its name because it was a place where metals were mined; melted down and refined. I wonder if Elijah was thinking — Wait a minute — First God said —Go to a place called CUT or WHITTLE. And that’s exactly what He did to me there! Now He wants me to go somewhere that means the refining place. If I were in Elijah’s sandals, I wouldn’t have a peace about this. This was like going from the frying pan into the fire. But you see, the Lord was NOT finished with Elijah. He had done some cutting on Elijah, now He needed to do some refining. And Elijah is a different man. He knows that God has spoken. He’s learned at Keriyth that God can sustain. HERE’S OUR PROBLEM — When we visit our personal Keriyth and come out the other side, we think that we are a finished product! The truth is that we will not be a finished product on this side of heaven. Jesus has begun a work in us and He will be faithful to complete that work. But it won’t be done until we see Him face to face.
1 John 3:2-3 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 4
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“…. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”
In Elijah’s day and culture, and to the natural mind, it would have made more sense to wait beside a dry brook. Widows were notorious for their poverty in the ancient world. In that culture a widow with a son was the worst possible situation. In the day of Elijah if a widow was without a son had a hope of a reasonable life because it was the customary for a brother of the deceased husband to marry his brother’s wife so that she could bear a son to carry on the family name. But if you were widowed and already had a son, you were on your own. She’s in bad shape. Again, were it not for Keriyth it would have been absolutely reasonable for Elijah to think, “HOW is a WIDOW going to sustain me?”
I have commanded How He did that, we don’t know. Some suggest that the verb commanded is best understood as “I have ordained that . . .” We will see the influence of God on her life because she will go against every parental instinct in giving Elijah something to eat before feeding herself and her son. QUOTE: Spurgeon — Yet this woman seemed unaware of the command. This shows how God's unseen hand often works. "She does not appear to have been at all aware that she was to feed a prophet. She went out that morning to gather sticks, not to meet a guest. She was thinking about feeding her son and herself upon the last cake; certainly she had no idea of sustaining a man of God out of that all but empty barrel of meal. Yet the Lord, who never lieth, spoke a solemn truth when he said, 'I have commanded a widow woman there.' He had so operated upon her mind that he had prepared her to obey the command when it did come by the lip of his servant the prophet." (Spurgeon) 10
So he arose and went to Zarephath.
Last week we noted in Verse 5 concerning Keriyth — So he went!
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This was a very dangerous journey. Elijah’s one sentence ministry didn’t resonate well with Ahab and Jezebel. Take a quick look over 1 Kings 18:10 As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my lord has not sent to seek you. And when they would say, ‘He is not here,’ he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation, that they had not found you. 10
As Elijah is making this 80-100 mile journey, his life is at stake. People had to take an oath that they had never seen him. The topography parched. It’s burnt. Everything is dead. There’s nothing green. There’s no life. Every step of Elijah’s journey he saw the consequence of sin, of Ba-al worship. The destructive nature of sin and idolatry was being impressed on his mind — impressed on his heart — every step of the way. Even the very threat against his life was the result of man rejecting the True and living God.
….And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. 10
QUOTE: Spurgeon — "You learn this from the fact that she had not even firewood. Now, there was no reason why she should not have had that even in time of famine of bread, for there was no famine of wood, unless she had been extremely poor."
And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” 11And as she was going to bring it, Elijah comes to the gate of the city and there she is, the widow God had chosen and commanded / ordained to provide for His servant. From verse 12, we can safely say that she was emaciated, eyes sunken in her head, her skin sagging on her bones, moving slowly. Her son is too weak to even leave the house. In the midst of a devastating draught Elijah says — Give me a drink of water. Remarkably — she begins to move, to get it. DON’T MISS THIS — In the time of her trouble and HER difficulty, she re-focused herself on somebody else that was hurting and gave out. She did not have much water, but she shared that which she did have. 6
HUGE POINT FOR US — Look across the property of YOUR life and look for someone with parched lips. QUOTE: Spurgeon — God indeed chose this woman, but He chose her for more than a miracle. He chose her for service. "The choice of this woman, while it brought such blessedness to her, involved service. She was not elected merely to be saved in the famine, but to feed the prophet. She must be a woman of faith; she must make the little cake first, and afterwards she shall have the multiplication of the meal and of the oil. So the grace of God does not choose men to sleep and wake up in heaven, nor choose them to live in sin and find themselves absolved at the last; nor choose them to be idle and go about their own worldly business, and yet to win a reward at the last for which they never toiled. Ah, no! the sovereign electing grace of God chooses us to repentance, to faith, and afterwards to holiness of living, to Christian service, to zeal, to devotion."
he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” “Wait a minute, I’m giving you water and I have precious little of that and now you’re asking for more” Isn’t that just like life? You give out and the person you are giving to wants more. MORE time — MORE attention — MORE of whatever they are seeking.
And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now 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.”
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Elijah discovered that the woman commanded by God to feed him was not only poor, but desperately poor.
And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. 14 For thus says the Lord the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour 13
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shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” We don’t know all of the dynamics involved in this moment, but there is something so impressive about her that 1,000 years later, in Luke 4, Jesus mentions this woman.
Luke 4:25-26 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. I think she knows he’s Elijah. FIRST — There’s nobody that hairy anywhere. And besides that, we know from 1 Kings 18:10 that messengers had been sent through her territory looking for him. She somehow knows that the drought is associated with his one sentence ministry in the presence of Ahab. When she says — Well, as your God lives — she’s essentially saying — It’s because of your God that I don’t have any bread. And, Elijah says — Well, as the Lord, God of Israel does live, 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
And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16The 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. 15
THIS IS HUGE — It doesn’t say that God gave her enough barrels to last a year. Elijah didn’t give her an address and when she showed up there it was a warehouse full of flour and oil. God didn’t give her a month’s worth — He didn’t give her a week’s worth — He didn’t give her a full day’s worth. Each time she went to the jar of flour — she scraped out the last speck. Every time she went to the jug of oil she poured out the last drop. Yet somehow — at lunch she returned to the jar she had emptied and the jug she had emptied — and there was enough flour and oil for lunch.
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Keriyth was miraculous, but this was CREATION. She has literally scraped out the bottom of the barrel and yet every time she goes back there’ enough for one more meal. I think this woman met Yahweh in her kitchen. I think that after a day or so of watching that, she fell on her knees and said – Ba-al isn’t God — You are God. I think she walked around there singing – Praise God from whom all blessings! God is SO INFINITELY WISE in His ways. QUOTE: Spurgeon — "Why did not God give her a granary full of meal at once, and a vat full of oil instantly? I will tell you. It was not merely because of God’s intent to try her, but there was wisdom here. Suppose he had given her a granary full of meal, how much of it would have been left by the next day? I question whether any would have remained, for in days of famine men are sharp of scent, and it would soon have been noised about the city, 'The old widow woman who lives in such-and-such a street, has a great store of food.' Why, they would have caused a riot, and robbed the house, and perhaps, have killed the woman and her son. She would have been despoiled of her treasure, and in four and twenty hours the barrel of meal would have been as empty as it was at first, and the cruse of oil would have been spilled upon the ground."
according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. She only had one verse. She lived by it! The word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah determined her life and future and the life and future of her son in one verse. We have the WHOLE BIBLE — How do we relate to the Word of the Lord? Do we allow the Word of God to determine our lives, our futures, and the future of our families? As we look at Elijah and we look at this woman, we need to ask the question, “What do You want me to learn from them Lord?” FIRST — God knows where we are and he knows where we’re going. He knows when our brooks begin to dry. He hears us screaming when our brooks begin to dry. Lord, you don’t love me anymore. Lord, are you getting
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even with me? Lord, why are you doing this? Lord, why is this going on? Lord, you’ve forgotten about me.
Isaiah 49:14-16 But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” 15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. 16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. The Lord says that He will never forget me. The nail prints in His hands remind Him of me always! When we are at our Keriyths, when our brooks begin to dry, when everything is running out on me, He hasn’t forgotten me. All that he’s doing is sharpening our hearing. He wants us to turn our ears towards heaven. If things are drying up here, we’re preparing to move. There’s somewhere to go. And when God speaks, His direction might not seem logical as man measures logical. Elijah… go to Zarephath, and Sidon. I’ve commanded a widow. That can’t be the Lord. That’s enemy territory. Widows can’t take care of themselves when there’s rainfall — and you want a widow to care for ME in a draught! LISTEN GUYS — There are no percentage clauses in the contract when we asked Jesus to become LORD of our lives. He is not Lord of our lives except for Keriyth or Zarephath — cutting and refining. When we get to CHAPTER 18 and the great showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Ba-al we will read
1 Kings 18:21 And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Elijah doesn’t say that out of the theory. He’s done the lab work. He says that it’s a reality in his life. The generation that we live in is going to hell and what we need to say to them is how long are you going to limp between two opinions? There’s life and there’s death. And, if you follow Jesus, you’ll live. 10
That’s where God’s taking us — to Carmel. But — the way there is through Keriyth and through Zarephath. The scenery along that journey may speak to us. We may see the consequences of sin all around us; the destruction, the drought on humanity. But, we have to understand this, Keriyth and Zarephath are not designed to destroy us. Zarephath is intended to REFINE us and FREE us. Remember Shadrach, Mishach and Abednego. When they were thrown into the fiery furnace there was only one thing that was burned! The cords that BOUND them. The fire freed them and when Nebuchadnezzer looked into that furnace he saw a FOURTH person with them, one like the son of God. God never takes us to a Zarephath to destroy. It is always to REFINE and FREE. Peter talks about our faith being tried like gold in the fire.
1 Peter 1:6-7 6In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The refiner would put the precious metal in the crucible, heat it until it became molten. The dross would come to the surface, and he would continue to scrape off the dross, the impurities until he could look down in the gold and see the reflection of his face. Then, he knew it was pure. That’s what God is doing. SECONDLY — We don’t like that daily dependence. It’s always been that way for God’s people; going back to the Israelites in the wilderness. God provided them with manna. Every morning it was gathered. Enough provision fell, but it was only provision for that day. They couldn’t store it up for a week. We don’t like that economy! We like our 401Ks and our investment portfolios. Don’t misunderstand me, God can use those instruments. But 11
man loves to bank his life on them. Val and I have a friend whose investment portfolio lost $½ million this past year. Neither can we lay up a reserve in the things of God’s Word. It’s not enough for us to come to here on a Monday night and say — I got my dose for the week. God does wonderful things — amazing things — each week when we gather in the name of Jesus. But we need MANNA each day from Him. Guys, we are like Elijah in that we too are passing through enemy territory. As long as we’re here — God will never forsake us. He’ll purify us. He’ll conform us to the image of his son. And the jar of flour will never run out and the jug of oil will never fail. His provision is there for us daily in his Word and in his Holy Spirit.
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1 Kings 17:8-16 Related Topics: Ahab; Jezebel; Elijah; One Sentence Ministry; The Brook keriyth; The Place of Preparation; The Place of Cutting; Whittled On By God; Absent Yourself; Obedience; God’s Word; God’s Provision; Zarephath; The Place of Refining; Widow of Zarephath; Creative Power of God;
CHAPTER 17 REVIEW Elijah, the greatest prophet of Scripture, stepped on to the pages of Scripture in the first verse of Chapter 17. In the New Testament Elijah is mentioned by name more than any of the other Old Testament Prophets. This is extraordinary because he’s not predictive like Daniel (think of Daniel 9 and the panoramic view of God’s dealings with Israel up to the second coming of Jesus), like Isaiah (the 5th Gospel), or Ezekiel (37 the rebirth of Israel, 38-39 the invasion of Jerusalem by Russia and a confederacy of Muslim nations). By contrast, Elijah is a prophet that speaks to his own generation and brings about a dramatic change in his own generation. And he steps on to the pages of Scripture with ZERO introduction, ZERO background. That’s the thing that I hope stirs each of our hearts! We look at OUR generation and think — What difference can I make? What chance do I have to bring about any change? I live in obscurity. Well, that’s Elijah. We don’t know how old he was. Was he 80? Was he 18? We don’t know anything about his parentage. He was a man who lived in obscurity in the area of Gilead and all we know about him is that He gets on his knees and prays. EVERYTHING began there and he changed an entire generation. 1
God finally sends him — He walks in before Ahab and says — “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” THEN the Lord says to Elijah in Verse 3 — Depart from here. He has a one sentence ministry! God says, 3…. hide yourself. This means much more than to go someplace where people can’t find you. It literally means “absent yourself”. The prerequisite for being used by God is that you “absent yourself”. John the Baptist would say — I must decrease and He must increase.
…. hide yourself by the brook Keriyth — Keriyth means to CUT or to WHITTLE. Elijah was going to discover that no man stands on Mount Carmel until he goes to Keriyth. No man can call fire down from heaven until they’ve been CUT away, WHITTLED on by God. And that is the hard bit about serving the Lord! The man or woman who loves Jesus wants to serve him, wants to be used by Jesus and for the glory of Jesus. But we don’t like the time of CUTTING and REFINING! 3
God has a Keriyth for each of us. God reserves the right to take us to a place that. Not just one time and one place, but He has those places where He teaches us to “absent ourselves” so that the world might see Jesus in us — Where He can WHITTLE away on our hearts.
You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 4
Elijah learned that every drop of water and every bite of food was a heavenly provision. Here’s the deal, we love Jesus. We get up, we go to work or school everyday. We have food in our refrigerator. We’re in good health. And complacency sets in, a sense of spiritual apathy sets in. Until one day a doctor’s report comes — Your wife has cancer / you have cancer. Suddenly, you find yourself waking up saying — Lord, thank you for my wife. Lord, forgive me for not thanking you for my wife / my health. You find yourself waking up saying — Lord, I have food today. Lord, I have antibiotics if I need them for my children. Lord, I have sustenance, I have a home. I have a roof…
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Keriyth was the place where God began to cut away from Elijah any sense of self reliance or complacency. In Keriyth, all of the sudden we’re looking to heaven every day.
And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. 7And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. 7
The drying brook caused Elijah to put his ear to heaven. God said he was going to sustain me here by the brook. If the brook is drying up, he must be preparing to move me. When our brooks dry, it sharpens our hearing a little doesn’t it?
Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there 8
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God said — Arise, go to Sidon. That doesn’t make sense. That defies logic. that is enemy territory. God is sending Elijah sending to the very place where Ba-al worship originated! God is sending Elijah to the very place where Jezebel came from — where her father was still king. The very person and practice that caused God to bring judgment on Samaria — and stop the heavens from giving rain for 3 ½ years —originated in the very place God is now sending Elijah 9
“Arise, go to Zarephath
Today this town is called Sarafand — in Lebanon. QUOTE: John Ross Macduff The Prophet of Fire: Or The Life and Times of Elijah, With Their Lessons p. 56
Zarephath got its name because it was a place where metals were mined; melted down and refined. I wonder if Elijah was thinking — Wait a minute — First God said —Go to a place called CUT or WHITTLE. And that’s exactly what He did to me there! Now He wants me to go somewhere that means the refining place. If I were in Elijah’s sandals, I wouldn’t have a peace about this. This was like going from the frying pan into the fire. But you see, the Lord was NOT finished with Elijah. He had done some cutting on Elijah, now He needed to do some refining. And Elijah is a different man. He knows that God has spoken. He’s learned at Keriyth that God can sustain. HERE’S OUR PROBLEM — When we visit our personal Keriyth and come out the other side, we think that we are a finished product! The truth is that we will not be a finished product on this side of heaven. Jesus has begun a work in us and He will be faithful to complete that work. But it won’t be done until we see Him face to face.
1 John 3:2-3 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 4
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“…. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”
In Elijah’s day and culture, and to the natural mind, it would have made more sense to wait beside a dry brook. Widows were notorious for their poverty in the ancient world. In that culture a widow with a son was the worst possible situation. In the day of Elijah if a widow was without a son had a hope of a reasonable life because it was the customary for a brother of the deceased husband to marry his brother’s wife so that she could bear a son to carry on the family name. But if you were widowed and already had a son, you were on your own. She’s in bad shape. Again, were it not for Keriyth it would have been absolutely reasonable for Elijah to think, “HOW is a WIDOW going to sustain me?”
I have commanded How He did that, we don’t know. Some suggest that the verb commanded is best understood as “I have ordained that . . .” We will see the influence of God on her life because she will go against every parental instinct in giving Elijah something to eat before feeding herself and her son. QUOTE: Spurgeon — Yet this woman seemed unaware of the command. This shows how God's unseen hand often works. "She does not appear to have been at all aware that she was to feed a prophet. She went out that morning to gather sticks, not to meet a guest. She was thinking about feeding her son and herself upon the last cake; certainly she had no idea of sustaining a man of God out of that all but empty barrel of meal. Yet the Lord, who never lieth, spoke a solemn truth when he said, 'I have commanded a widow woman there.' He had so operated upon her mind that he had prepared her to obey the command when it did come by the lip of his servant the prophet." (Spurgeon) 10
So he arose and went to Zarephath.
Last week we noted in Verse 5 concerning Keriyth — So he went!
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This was a very dangerous journey. Elijah’s one sentence ministry didn’t resonate well with Ahab and Jezebel. Take a quick look over 1 Kings 18:10 As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my lord has not sent to seek you. And when they would say, ‘He is not here,’ he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation, that they had not found you. 10
As Elijah is making this 80-100 mile journey, his life is at stake. People had to take an oath that they had never seen him. The topography parched. It’s burnt. Everything is dead. There’s nothing green. There’s no life. Every step of Elijah’s journey he saw the consequence of sin, of Ba-al worship. The destructive nature of sin and idolatry was being impressed on his mind — impressed on his heart — every step of the way. Even the very threat against his life was the result of man rejecting the True and living God.
….And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. 10
QUOTE: Spurgeon — "You learn this from the fact that she had not even firewood. Now, there was no reason why she should not have had that even in time of famine of bread, for there was no famine of wood, unless she had been extremely poor."
And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” 11And as she was going to bring it, Elijah comes to the gate of the city and there she is, the widow God had chosen and commanded / ordained to provide for His servant. From verse 12, we can safely say that she was emaciated, eyes sunken in her head, her skin sagging on her bones, moving slowly. Her son is too weak to even leave the house. In the midst of a devastating draught Elijah says — Give me a drink of water. Remarkably — she begins to move, to get it. DON’T MISS THIS — In the time of her trouble and HER difficulty, she re-focused herself on somebody else that was hurting and gave out. She did not have much water, but she shared that which she did have. 6
HUGE POINT FOR US — Look across the property of YOUR life and look for someone with parched lips. QUOTE: Spurgeon — God indeed chose this woman, but He chose her for more than a miracle. He chose her for service. "The choice of this woman, while it brought such blessedness to her, involved service. She was not elected merely to be saved in the famine, but to feed the prophet. She must be a woman of faith; she must make the little cake first, and afterwards she shall have the multiplication of the meal and of the oil. So the grace of God does not choose men to sleep and wake up in heaven, nor choose them to live in sin and find themselves absolved at the last; nor choose them to be idle and go about their own worldly business, and yet to win a reward at the last for which they never toiled. Ah, no! the sovereign electing grace of God chooses us to repentance, to faith, and afterwards to holiness of living, to Christian service, to zeal, to devotion."
he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” “Wait a minute, I’m giving you water and I have precious little of that and now you’re asking for more” Isn’t that just like life? You give out and the person you are giving to wants more. MORE time — MORE attention — MORE of whatever they are seeking.
And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now 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.”
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Elijah discovered that the woman commanded by God to feed him was not only poor, but desperately poor.
And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. 14 For thus says the Lord the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour 13
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shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” We don’t know all of the dynamics involved in this moment, but there is something so impressive about her that 1,000 years later, in Luke 4, Jesus mentions this woman.
Luke 4:25-26 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. I think she knows he’s Elijah. FIRST — There’s nobody that hairy anywhere. And besides that, we know from 1 Kings 18:10 that messengers had been sent through her territory looking for him. She somehow knows that the drought is associated with his one sentence ministry in the presence of Ahab. When she says — Well, as your God lives — she’s essentially saying — It’s because of your God that I don’t have any bread. And, Elijah says — Well, as the Lord, God of Israel does live, 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
And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16The 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. 15
THIS IS HUGE — It doesn’t say that God gave her enough barrels to last a year. Elijah didn’t give her an address and when she showed up there it was a warehouse full of flour and oil. God didn’t give her a month’s worth — He didn’t give her a week’s worth — He didn’t give her a full day’s worth. Each time she went to the jar of flour — she scraped out the last speck. Every time she went to the jug of oil she poured out the last drop. Yet somehow — at lunch she returned to the jar she had emptied and the jug she had emptied — and there was enough flour and oil for lunch.
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Keriyth was miraculous, but this was CREATION. She has literally scraped out the bottom of the barrel and yet every time she goes back there’ enough for one more meal. I think this woman met Yahweh in her kitchen. I think that after a day or so of watching that, she fell on her knees and said – Ba-al isn’t God — You are God. I think she walked around there singing – Praise God from whom all blessings! God is SO INFINITELY WISE in His ways. QUOTE: Spurgeon — "Why did not God give her a granary full of meal at once, and a vat full of oil instantly? I will tell you. It was not merely because of God’s intent to try her, but there was wisdom here. Suppose he had given her a granary full of meal, how much of it would have been left by the next day? I question whether any would have remained, for in days of famine men are sharp of scent, and it would soon have been noised about the city, 'The old widow woman who lives in such-and-such a street, has a great store of food.' Why, they would have caused a riot, and robbed the house, and perhaps, have killed the woman and her son. She would have been despoiled of her treasure, and in four and twenty hours the barrel of meal would have been as empty as it was at first, and the cruse of oil would have been spilled upon the ground."
according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. She only had one verse. She lived by it! The word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah determined her life and future and the life and future of her son in one verse. We have the WHOLE BIBLE — How do we relate to the Word of the Lord? Do we allow the Word of God to determine our lives, our futures, and the future of our families? As we look at Elijah and we look at this woman, we need to ask the question, “What do You want me to learn from them Lord?” FIRST — God knows where we are and he knows where we’re going. He knows when our brooks begin to dry. He hears us screaming when our brooks begin to dry. Lord, you don’t love me anymore. Lord, are you getting
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even with me? Lord, why are you doing this? Lord, why is this going on? Lord, you’ve forgotten about me.
Isaiah 49:14-16 But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” 15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. 16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. The Lord says that He will never forget me. The nail prints in His hands remind Him of me always! When we are at our Keriyths, when our brooks begin to dry, when everything is running out on me, He hasn’t forgotten me. All that he’s doing is sharpening our hearing. He wants us to turn our ears towards heaven. If things are drying up here, we’re preparing to move. There’s somewhere to go. And when God speaks, His direction might not seem logical as man measures logical. Elijah… go to Zarephath, and Sidon. I’ve commanded a widow. That can’t be the Lord. That’s enemy territory. Widows can’t take care of themselves when there’s rainfall — and you want a widow to care for ME in a draught! LISTEN GUYS — There are no percentage clauses in the contract when we asked Jesus to become LORD of our lives. He is not Lord of our lives except for Keriyth or Zarephath — cutting and refining. When we get to CHAPTER 18 and the great showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Ba-al we will read
1 Kings 18:21 And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Elijah doesn’t say that out of the theory. He’s done the lab work. He says that it’s a reality in his life. The generation that we live in is going to hell and what we need to say to them is how long are you going to limp between two opinions? There’s life and there’s death. And, if you follow Jesus, you’ll live. 10
That’s where God’s taking us — to Carmel. But — the way there is through Keriyth and through Zarephath. The scenery along that journey may speak to us. We may see the consequences of sin all around us; the destruction, the drought on humanity. But, we have to understand this, Keriyth and Zarephath are not designed to destroy us. Zarephath is intended to REFINE us and FREE us. Remember Shadrach, Mishach and Abednego. When they were thrown into the fiery furnace there was only one thing that was burned! The cords that BOUND them. The fire freed them and when Nebuchadnezzer looked into that furnace he saw a FOURTH person with them, one like the son of God. God never takes us to a Zarephath to destroy. It is always to REFINE and FREE. Peter talks about our faith being tried like gold in the fire.
1 Peter 1:6-7 6In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The refiner would put the precious metal in the crucible, heat it until it became molten. The dross would come to the surface, and he would continue to scrape off the dross, the impurities until he could look down in the gold and see the reflection of his face. Then, he knew it was pure. That’s what God is doing. SECONDLY — We don’t like that daily dependence. It’s always been that way for God’s people; going back to the Israelites in the wilderness. God provided them with manna. Every morning it was gathered. Enough provision fell, but it was only provision for that day. They couldn’t store it up for a week. We don’t like that economy! We like our 401Ks and our investment portfolios. Don’t misunderstand me, God can use those instruments. But 11
man loves to bank his life on them. Val and I have a friend whose investment portfolio lost $½ million this past year. Neither can we lay up a reserve in the things of God’s Word. It’s not enough for us to come to here on a Monday night and say — I got my dose for the week. God does wonderful things — amazing things — each week when we gather in the name of Jesus. But we need MANNA each day from Him. Guys, we are like Elijah in that we too are passing through enemy territory. As long as we’re here — God will never forsake us. He’ll purify us. He’ll conform us to the image of his son. And the jar of flour will never run out and the jug of oil will never fail. His provision is there for us daily in his Word and in his Holy Spirit.
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