I want to talk to you today about trusting the Source of life with the stuff of life. Trusting God not only for the things we need in life, but also with the things we need in life. If you want to go ahead and grab a bible, we’re going to be in 1 Kings 17, starting in verse 7 today. We're in a series right now called When the River Runs Dry and it is based on the life of a prophet named Elijah. Last week we saw God send Elijah to deliver a message to King Ahab. Ahab was a Jewish king, but he had disobeyed God and married a Canaanite woman named Jezebel who, exactly like God warned, had led Ahab away from worshipping the true God to worshipping a false god named Baal. Now Baal was supposed to be the lord of the dew and rain, so God sent Elijah to Ahab to tell him, "Baal isn’t the lord of the dew and the rain and to clear up your confusion, the true source of the dew and rain says there is not going to be any more dew and rain until I say so." Now that made Elijah public enemy number one as far as Ahab and Jezebel were concerned, so God told Elijah to go hide in the Kerith Ravine and while he was there, ravens brought him food and he got water from a small river. But then...
7 Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. 8 Then the word of the LORD came to him: 9 Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food. (1 Ki. 17:7-9)
Ok, so just because the river ran dry, didn’t mean God had forgotten about Elijah. God had another way of providing for him, but Elijah would have to trust Him in order to take possession of that provision. I think that’s why God let this particular river run dry, because a dry river bed makes a great path to its source. It's interesting that he says, “Go at once." In the original Hebrew, it literally means "Get up!" and it implies that Elijah kind of wanted to stay where he was. That might be partly because it is always tempting to try to stay where God has worked in the past rather than moving on to what He wants to do in the future. But it’s probably also because what God is asking Elijah to do here is scary. God told Elijah to go to a village in the region of Sidon. Now here’s what you need to know about Sidon. First, it was Canaanite territory...and that’s scary enough for a Jewish prophet who challenged the legitimacy of one of the main Canaanite gods...but Sidon is also the hometown of Jezebel, the queen who brought Baal to Israel. So this is kind of like the Pope making a public statement that Allah isn’t real and Muhammed is a liar and then going to Mecca. Not a great idea. But...that’s what God has just told Elijah to do. And He said, "I have directed a widow there to supply you with food." Now Elijah’s probably wondering, how is that going to work? A Canaanite widow is going to provide for me? She is a Canaanite, so she is not going to be willing...and even if she was willing, she’s a widow, so she’s not going to be able to help me. Widows were the poorest of the poor in good times...but this is the middle of a drought and famine. So he’s got questions about how this is going to work, but what God is asking Elijah to do here is focus on Who, not how. Because if God is the Source of life, He can be trusted to take care of the stuff of life. And that’s what God’s asking Elijah to do here: trust me. Trust the Source of life to take care of the stuff of life. Now what does that trust look like in this case? What does Elijah have to do? Just say, "I trust you!"? No. He can’t just declare his trust, he has to demonstrate it. He has to get up and go even though there’s still a lot about what God is asking that he doesn’t understand. But We demonstrate our trust in God by putting obedience before understanding. Because that is what faith is. It’s the willingness to say “Who” matters more than “how”. Now I’m not talking about a blind leap of faith. I’m not talking about trusting someone who has given you no reason to trust them. God had already given Elijah plenty of reason to trust Him...and He’s done the same for us. That is what the cross is. That’s what the empty grave is. They are reasons to trust. But we trust who, not how, ok? Faith is the willingness to trust that the God who has provided will provide even though we don’t know how. And we demonstrate that trust by putting obedience before understanding.
10 So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to here and asked, "Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?" Now what he’s doing is testing her willingness. He expects her to say, "Why don’t you go to the well and get it yourself?" As an Israelite man talking to a Canaanite woman, he had no reason to expect her to be willing. But to his surprise, she was, and...
11 As she was going to get it, he called, "And bring me, please, a piece of bread." (1Ki 17:11)
Now he’s testing her ability. Because the water he asked for would have come from a well...and even in a drought, a deep well would still have had some water in it. So asking her to get water was a test of her willingness, but asking her for bread was a test of her ability. A widow living in a season of drought and famine probably wouldn’t have bread at all, let alone any to spare.
12 "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 olive oil in a jug."(1Ki 17:12a)
She is basically saying, I âm willing...but I am not able. And she takes a solemn oath...she swears that she doesn’t have any bread. But what’s interesting is that she swears by Elijah’s God. She says, the Lord your God. By the way, any time you see the word LORD in all caps, what that's telling you is that the word Yahweh is there in the original language. Yahweh is God’s proper name in Hebrew. So basically she says, as surely as Yahweh, your God. She should have said, as surely as Baal lives but she didn’t. Instead, she swore by Elijah’s god...and that suggests that maybe she had some doubts about whether her god had the goods.
(Are you following a god you have similar doubts about? [dig in here to different gods we all tend to turn to. What god are you tempted to turn to even when it fails to deliver the goods it promised?] Listen, some of you are here today because God has brought you here so that you could hear this. You’ve got a god that doesn’t have the goods. You keep turning to relationships or to a particular community. You keep turning to your career. You keep turning to Tik Tok. You keep turning to education. You keep turning to your grit and your determination...but those are all gods that don’t have the goods they have promised you!
That’s where this woman is... but she is starting to realize it. "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."(1Ki 17:12b)
She says,all we have left is enough for our last meal. Because of the drought that Elijah’s God declared and her god failed to defeat, she’s at rock bottom. She and her son are done. That’s rock bottom. And some of you know what it’s like to be in that place, to be at rock bottom. Some of you are there right now. You know exactly how this woman feels. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. Rock bottom is a terrible place to be and if you are there right now, I’m so sorry that’s where you are. . But I want to speak a truth into your life today. It’s a truth I’ve learned more times that I care to admit: rock bottom will teach you truth mountain tops can’t. As I look back on my life, almost all the most important truths I’ve learned about life and about God...they all became clearest at the lowest points in my life. And maybe the most important of those truths is this. I love what Tony Evans said about rock bottom. He said: "Sometimes God lets you hit rock bottom so you’ll discover He is the Rock at the bottom." (Tony Evans)
This woman had been taught her whole life that Baal was the source of her supply. And now, at rock bottom, she’s realizing the rock she had been told to trust is just dry dust blowing away in the wind. But there is another Rock at the bottom she can plant her feet on.
13 Elijah said to her, "Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son."14 For 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 sends rain on the land." (1Ki 17:13-14)
Now remember, whenever we see the word LORD in all caps in the Bible, like we do here, the original word is actually Yahweh. So what Elijah literally says here is, Yahweh is making you a promise. Yahweh will give you flour and oil until Yahweh sends rain. Baal hasn’t given you the stuff he promised, but Yahweh will. Baal hasn't been able to bring the rain, but when the time is right, Yahweh will. And on one level, this is a promise, but it’s also an invitation. Elijah is telling her a story, my God can be your God...and my God can do what yours never could. And what does it take for Elijah’s God to become her God? It takes faith. That’s what the bible says over and over again. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - (Eph 2:8). Faith is how we take hold of God’s grace and His goodness. So what does faith look like for her? What does it look like for this widow to put her feet on the true Rock? He asks her to bring him some bread first. And I know on the surface, that sounds selfish. But as a prophet who represents God, Elijah is asking her to follow a principle: We demonstrate our faith in the Source of life by trusting Him first with some of the stuff of life. By bringing Elijah, which is, in effect, bringing God some bread, she would be saying, I’m putting my trust in the source of life, not the stuff of life. You with me? By the way, this is why the Bible tells us to bring God our first-fruits. And it’s why we say here that giving first honors God. It’s not that God needs our money or our time or our talent. But when we give God a first portion of those things, we are demonstrating that our trust isn’t in those things. We’re saying this stuff isn’t my rock...this stuff isn’t my refuge...this stuff isn’t where my faith is. My faith is in the source, not the stuff. That’s what Elijah is calling her to do: to demonstrate her faith in the Source of life by trusting Him first with some of the stuff of life. And that is a big ask here, but...She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For 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. (1Ki 17:15-16) Because of her great display of faith, she had a great supply of food. And this is an example of a principle we see all over God’s Word. In fact, here is something very similar God said to his people through the prophet Malachi: 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe, says the LORD Almighty. 12 Then all the
nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the LORD Almighty. (Mal 3:10-12)
Now listen, God’s not a vending machine, but He’s not a slot machine either, ok? God’s not a vending machine. It’s not like put this in, press these bottoms and get this specific result. But God’s not a slot machine either where you have no idea if there is even going to be a payoff. There are principles and patterns in God’s Word and when we follow them, there is blessing. And that’s what’s happening here. Now I’d love to stop the story here, but we’re not done:
17 Sometime later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. 18 She said to Elijah, "What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?" (1Ki 17:17-18)
Now to really understand this, we have to understand that her anger and her bitterness here isn’t just because she lost a son she loved...she also lost something she was depending on. In the ancient world, as a widow, her son was who she would have counted on to take care of her as she aged. So he wasn’t just her son, he was the stuff of life. And her reaction, while it’s completely understandable, is also important because it reveals that she hadn’t yet fully transferred her trust from the stuff of life to the source of life. Listen: How we react to the loss of the stuff of life tells us a lot about our trust in the Source of life.
I want to encourage you to think of the last time you lost something that you saw as an important supply. Maybe you’ve lost a job or a relationship or the past couple of weeks you’ve been watching the stock market and your retirement account has taken a nosedive. How have you reacted? And what does your reaction to loss say about where your trust is?
On one level, this woman’s reaction is entirely understandable...but at the same time, it also reveals that her trust hasn’t been fully transferred to God yet, either. So what does Elijah do? He said…bring me the child. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. 20 Then he cried out to the LORD, ˜LORD my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?" (1Ki 17:19b-20) Kind of feels like Elijah is struggling a little bit with God here, too, doesn’t it? This feels a lot like "where are you, God?" or even a "what’s your problem, God?" And I’m so glad this is here...and you should be too. Because if even the prophet Elijah can struggle with God when confronted by something like this...then that means there’s a word for you and me. And the word is...normal.
Listen, struggling with God doesn’t necessarily mean that we lack faith. Faith doesn’t mean we never struggle, it means we keep choosing to take the next step of trusting God. Elijah is struggling here. But...he doesn’t stay in the struggle. Instead, he chooses to trust the God he’s struggling with: 21 Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the LORD, "LORD my God, let this boy’s life return to him!" 22 The LORD heard Elijah's cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. 23 Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, ˜Look, your son is alive! 24 Then the woman said to Elijah, ˜Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth. (1 Ki. 17:21-24)
Notice it’s no longer your God or your Lord. Now it’s just the Lord. She made a complete trust transfer from Baal to Yahweh...and that never would have happened without this difficult circumstance. And here’s the good news about when the river runs dry: Every dry river is an invitation to take our next step towards its Source. But, the good news is that we can take that next step while the river is still running. And that means even if the river does run dry, we’re not going to be devastated by it and, maybe, just maybe, the river won’t run dry...
What’s your next step of trust towards the Source? Maybe start with these: Serving others, living generously, inviting others to find and follow Jesus.
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