The Widows Faith

Introduction

Ahab is King of Northern Israel and makes very bad decision. He marries a woman named Jezebel and she introduces idol worship to the nation of Israel. He is considered to be an evil King

1 Kings 16:30 NASB95

Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.

1 Kings 16:32–33 NASB95

So he erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria. Ahab also made the Asherah. Thus Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

Ahab brought foreign gods to the land of Israel, introducing them to multiple gods they could worship. Ba’al was one of many gods in the Canaanite pantheon of gods. He wasn’t just some minion god but he was thee god of the Canaanite religion. He was the god of fertility and thunder. He was sacrificed to in order to win favor for childbearing. He was the god of rain so sacrifices would have been offered for the rain to fall.

They had rejected God’s law and sole authority and so was coming to pass. This was the punishment for disobedience.

Deuteronomy 28:23 NASB95

“The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you, iron.

So rather than trusting Yahweh or the one true God to provide life, vegetation and rain, they added another god to the equation.

God sends a famine as judgment, to remind the people who is really in control.

Drought produce massive damage to the economy, ecosystem and lives of those it affects.

The worst drought ever recorded happened in 1941 in China where over 3 million people died.

America has been affected by horrible droughts. So much so we named a whole decade after it. “The dirty thirties”

Drought and famine have major impacts because it usually causes sickness and death, especially to the older community as well as the children. It can lead to war and much suffering.

Farmers around this area, know how much drought affects the day to day lives of people.

This is a death sentence. Many people will die from this.

Big Faith understands the bigger picture.

Remember drought and famine are given because the people of God turned to Ba’al

Ba’al was often seen as the god of thunder and rain.

We see a natural disaster, but to the ancients it symbolized war. Jezebel brought in Ba’al worship, but ancient texts tell us something interesting about Ba’al. The Ugaritic Texts tell us about “the Ba’al cycle”. It is used to tell the story of drought and how the god Ba’al was fighting for the top spot in the Canaanite pantheon of gods. He fought the god Mot and Mot killed Ba’al. When Ba’al died it brought drought to the land. Baal was miraculously restored to life and brought back the rains.

The ancients saw this cycle as the seasonal summer drought and the fall rains. Baal was also seen as the god of fertility because life stemmed form the rain.

This story shows us there is a bigger fight than drought. There is a spiritual war going on in the hearts and minds of men. They have given themselves to idols and worship of beings that don’t even exist!

Understand there is a war for your worship! There is a war for your affections. It can take the form of needs or problems and then offer you solutions to them outside of God. There is a war for the core of who you are.

God knows this!

God knows that we are, as Tim Keller calls us, “an idol making factory”. We take the good things in life that God provides and we make them a “god thing”. The Israelites took the seasons and made them a god thing. They took trees, that are a good thing and made them into a god thing.

How do we do that in our lives?

We must be able to identify what a god looks like, because sometimes they have worked themselves into our way of life without us even knowing it.

Despair and sorrow.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters A Strange Melancholy

There is a difference between sorrow and despair. Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation. Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others, so that, if you experience a career reversal, you can find comfort in your family to get you through it. Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes from losing an ultimate thing. When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, there are no alternative sources to turn to. It breaks your spirit.

sorrow is consolable because you lost one good thing among many.

Despair happens when you lost an ultimate thing.

What does Idol worship look like today?

Love

We are looking for something to satisfy our longing and love.

We elevate relationships, lust and even marriages to the place of ultimate significance.

Trust

Idols give us a sense of control

If you are in control, who’s not? Answer = God

I get really angry when working on cars.

I am sharing with you one of my greatest weaknesses.

I wanted to control the situation but when I realized I couldn’t I freaked out.

Obedience

A god is something you submit to and choose to obey.

they give us meaning when we follow the rules and achieve success.

We create gods we can control, we can manipulate, we can sacrifice too so that we can maintain control of the situation and our lives.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters A Strange Melancholy

There is a difference between sorrow and despair. Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation. Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others, so that, if you experience a career reversal, you can find comfort in your family to get you through it. Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes from losing an ultimate thing. When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, there are no alternative sources to turn to. It breaks your spirit.

We enter a story where a war is being waged and we understand how God shows himself to be the true God and the only one who can bring life out of death.

Big Faith sees God as the provider.

Elijah is engaged in this war, and his provisions come from God. He is unable to provide for himself. in the midst of this drought, God provides for Elijah two ways,

He provides by sending him to a creek where God sends ravens to feed him. Elijah is running for his life after he gives Ahab the news that drought is going to come to the land and

Elijah is sent to a town called Zarepheth to a widow.

1 Kings 17:9 NASB95

“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.”

The widow provides for Elijah.

Elijah provides for the widow.

Big faith trusts God with our provision

Elijah had no food except for what this widow was willing to share.

Elijah just walked over 100 miles to Zeraphath.

He might be a little hungry.

The widow had no food except for what she has to share with her son.

The widow knows she and her only son are going to die. She is preparing for death.

Big Faith trusts God with everything.

1 Kings 17:10–12 NASB95

So he arose and went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and said, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.” As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die.”

The famine has run its course. People are dying and here comes the man who’s God is responsible. “As the Lord YOUR God lives” (V 12)

She knows he is an Israelite, “he’s not from around these parts”.

Her god has failed her, she is preparing for death.

That god she put her hope and trust in, has let her down. She has no where else to turn. She’s a Gentile, she would’ve been viewed by the Israelite people as unclean and detestable. They were told not to intermix with gentiles, yet here was this man of God.

What will she do?

1 Kings 17:13–16 NASB95

Then Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. “For thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth.’ ” So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through Elijah.

1 Kings 17:13-16

She trusts in Elijah. She trusts in Elijah’s God. She trusts in a living God. She steps out on a very short limb (she was going to die anyway) and trusts in God. Baal had failed her but the true God had not.

She had to give up control. Her god had failed her and now there was nothing left. When she gave up control God could step in and save the day.

"If you are not willing to have a God who is uncontrollable, you will never have a living God." - Tim Keller, Sermon, “The Widows Faith”

Everyday she had to trust that God would provide. She only had that bowl and that jar.

She had to trust for a daily provision.

God literally provided for her daily bread

Big Faith trusts God with everything.

The woman trusts God with the little she had. When you don’t have much it may be a little easier to trust.

But then something else happens where she has to trust God with everything. Her Son dies.

1 Kings 16:17–18 NASB95

Then Omri and all Israel with him went up from Gibbethon and besieged Tirzah. When Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the citadel of the king’s house and burned the king’s house over him with fire, and died,

1 Kings 16:17-

1 Kings 17:17–18 NASB95

Now it came about after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick; and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. So she said to Elijah, “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death!”

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 17

He said to her, “Give me your son.” Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living, and laid him on his own bed.

20 He called to the LORD and said, “O LORD my God, have You also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying, by causing her son to die?”

21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the LORD and said, “O LORD my God, I pray You, let this child’s life return to him.”

22 The LORD heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.

23 Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said, “See, 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 in your mouth is truth.”

Jesus is everything. He is our substitute, he is our daily needs.

John 6:35 NASB95

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.

Elijah performed two miracles.

Provided food so they could continue living and not die.

He provided their daily bread.

He provided the practical so they could continue to live.

Provided life when life was taken.

God gave the son life after death had struck.

When tragedy struck, Elijah Elijah brought life where there was death.

People read these stories and think how awesome God is and how we need to have big faith like Elijah, but the reality is, Jesus had the biggest faith of all!

Jesus was the better Elijah. Jesus was the better miracle worker, because he comes to give life, not just so you can lose it again, but so you can have it everlasting in the presence of God.

Jesus was the only son who took our sickness upon himself and died in our place.

Jesus is the true bread, our daily bread, that will never leave us hungry or thirsty.

Jes

Gospel Connections

Elijah saves the the family from death, but also provides through the famine

Elijah provides daily sustenance, Jesus is our daily bread

The son gets sick and dies, Jesus is the only son of God who takes our sickness and dies in our place.

Jesus is the living water for those is drought.

- Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

- but in all these things we OVERWHELMINGLY conquer through him who loves us.

Jesus is the provider for those who are in the drought.