The Spreading Blessing of Faith

1 Kings 7:7-16

1 WHEN THE PROVISION DRIES UP, v. 7

The nation may be plunged into drought – the rain locked-up tight in the sky above, but God takes care of His faithful people. The prophet Elijah is safely tucked away, out of Ahab’s reach, in the narrow canyon-like valley of the brook Cherith. And here he is, enjoying the miraculous provision of ‘Jehovah Jireh’ – the God who is the great Provider.

Meals are coming special delivery – Skip the Dishes, Raven-style. Not just bags of rice – plopped down for a faceless mass of people. This is God’s special, particular provision for His children who belong to Him – who Treasure Him and follow.

Verse 7 tells us that, ‘After a while, the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land.” It’s a reminder, just like every Christian today, Elijah is still living in the real world … a world marked by drought-thirsty people. You may be a citizen of heaven, through faith in Jesus Christ’s finished work … but you’re still living at the same address in COVID 2021 Abbotsford.

Something that hit me this week, as I prepared, is this: The brook wouldn’t dry up overnight. Elijah would have seen the water-level of the brook dropping lower and lower. Every day he has to bend down further and further to plunge his face into the refreshing, life-giving stream …. Until –

…. Finally, one day – there’s not even a trickle left to splash on his face. What do you think he was thinking as day by day, God’s provision becomes less and less?

What would you think, when God has provided for you, day after day, for years: Health has never been a problem before …. The bills have always been paid because the money has always come in?

Until … the body isn’t quite right … or the job is gone.

How many of us find that our first instinct is to either come to the immediate conclusion that EITHER – “God has forgotten me. What’s wrong with Him? Doesn’t He know I’m in need here?!” OR, we conclude: “What’s wrong with ME? I must have done something to make God mad. There must be some unconfessed sin in my life and now God’s punishing me.”

And in either case – you sink into the depths and God feels a million miles away. Well, it’s important to live sensitively – to examine ourselves

2 NEW MISSION, NEW FIELD, vv. 8-10

Well, God hasn’t forgotten his servant. Verses 8-9, “Then the word of the LORD came to him, 9 ‘Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’”

“I have a new mission for you: I want you to go get fed in Zarephath, Sidon.” Now those names mean as much to you as Tishbe or Turkmenistan. But for Elijah, hearing these specific names is a big, big deal.

First of all - Zarephath is 100 miles north of his hiding place at the brook Cherith. One hundred miles, without planes, trains or automobiles … that’s a long, LONG trek at the best of times. But remember - there’s a drought going on right now! Elijah has just seen his private water source dry up … and if you can’t get water from a stream - where are you going to find it on a 100 mile hike through scorching heat?!!

But more important than the challenge of the journey is WHERE GOd is telling Elijah to go.

Zarephath is a pretty unimportant town on the Mediterranean cost, between the big cities of Tyre (about 14 miles south) and Sidon ( about 8 miles north). And THAT means this city is OUTSIDE the borders of Israel. How can you be God’s prophet to God’s people .... when God is sending you outside the borders of the land?! You are supposed to stand in front of the royal throne and speak God’s message to the king .... now God is telling you to leave the land and be fed by, not a king, not a mover and shaker in teh business world, but by a foreign widow.

But an even bigger deal than all of this .... “Zarephath, which belongs to SIDON” - well, that’s not only foreign territory - that’s the very heart of Ba’al worship. In fact, take a look at 1 Kings 16:31, which refers to the great evil of king Ahab: “And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of NEbat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daugher of Ethbaal king of the SIDONIANS, and went and served Baal and worshiped him.”

Sidon is queen Jezebel’s homeland. And if this queen has brought in Ba’al worship that has poisoned the holy land like nuclear waste flowing in from abroad, Jezebel leading her husband to make it the national religion of Israel, the supposed, ‘holy people’ of the Holy God of heaven .... well then going to Sidon is like going to the nuclear reactors in Chernobyl, themselves.

Why would you go there at all?! The center of Baal worship, with its worship centers, surrounded by brothels - spewing immorality, but worse - spewing deadly false views of God and pushing the imposter Baal as a god to worship with your life … in a lot of ways, Elijah going to Zarephath is actaully less like going to Chernobyl and more like going to get food and be sustained in Las Vegas today.

This is NOT a place where God is honoured, let alone worshiped.

Can you see Elijah cleaning his ears? “Excuse me, LORD, I think I must have heard you wrong … I thought you said ‘Sidon’ for a minute there.”

But noticce Elijah’s response: He doesn’t complain … doesn’t even question … he rolls up his sleeping bag, packs up his backpack and, without a word … he starts the long, torturous journey to Zarephath, EXACTLY AS THE LORD TOLD HIM TO DO.

See the prophet, meagre supplies on his back - no lunch bucket of food, no water in his water bottle … trudging mile after unforgiving mile through brutal conditions, no clue where he’s going to get his next drink of water, let alone eat his next meal .... all so he can end up in the heartland of evil, in the world of his day.

What could compel anyone to do something like that? Look at verse 8, “”The word of the LORD came to him ...”.

Here is a man who lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. He hears the word of God - He believes in the God who spoke … and so he obeys. That’s what living by faith means, friend.

On this Mother’s Day, I am thankful beyond words for a mother who lived her life by faith in the Word of God. I would question … ‘why are you putting up with that? Why

“You can never outgive the Lord” she would say. And then I would watch her live out that faith .... And through all of her trials - I saw her faith rewarded.

3 THE SPREADING BLESSING OF FAITH, vv. 10-16

Elijah finally arrives at his destination in v. 10.

As he passes the ‘Welcome to Zarephath” sign on the highway and approaches the city gates, the parched earth and a complete absence of any green vegetation makes very clear that the drought pronounced by the LORD, back home in Israel, is plaguing this city too. This is no oasis. there’s no more rain here than in Samaria.

The city gate is the centre of civic life. This is the place where business transactions happen. There’s no such thing as dumpter diving in the Ancient Near East, but if you are poor - this is place, in town, you go to find scraps lying on the ground … fallen crumbs of food to eat or sticks with which to build a fire.

God told Elijah that a widow in this very town is going to take care of his food needs. Sure enough - there’s a widow, here at the city gate, head down, shoulders hunched, scouring the ground with her eyes in a search for random sticks that she can gather to take home and build a fire with.

It’s clear that she’s a widow. First of all, she’s a woman, doing the work a man would normally be doing. She’s too old to be a girl, taking supplies home for her parents. Her clothes also give her away - she’s wearing the garb of mourning - and the state of those garments … clean and cared for, but fraying from overuse. This is a woman living in poverty in a world with no social safety net.

God’s words of instruction from verse 9 come back to Elijah’s mind. “I’ve commanded a widow there to feed you.” Now, just because God says He’s given His command - that doesn’t mean that He has actually, verbally spoken to the woman and spelled out his instructions any more than He .......

The prophet approaches the woman. He sees her intently searching for sustenance and dowsn’t have the heart to ask a total stranger for a meal. I mean, she’s a poor woman with a few measly sticks in her hand. Elijah starts with a small request.

Verse 10, “And he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I might drink.’”

“Excuse me … could I bother you for a cup of water?”

The woman casts a glance his way. Clearly this is a foreigner - his accent gives him away. And by the look and smell of him - he’s been on a long trip and hasn’t bathed in days. But no matter what she thinks of his appearance, she doesn’t object to his request. In fact, she stops her own work and head for the nearest water source, so she can show hospitality to this wild-looking foreign stranger.

Seeing her quick hospitality, Elijah gets a little bolder with the widow. Verse 11, “As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morself of bread in your hand.’”

He’s not asking for much. He’s not expecting a four-course meal. He’s not even asking for fries with his morsel - to make it a meal. “Morsel” - “Just a crumbe from the corner of the burger is all I need.”

But a tiny crumb is more than this woman can afford to share. Elijah can see she’s ppor - he has no idea how desperately poor she is.

Verse 12, “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.’”

“I’ve got literally next to nothing. IN fact .... the woman goes on .... “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.”

This is the woman that was supposed to feed Elijah? She is honestly getting ready to prepare the LAST meal that she and her son will eat, before wrapping arms around each other and surrendering themselves to their inevitable death by starvation.”

And every one of us who reads these words of this nameless widow … everyone one of us who has a child, or someone you love so much that you would honestly lay your own life down to protect them from any suffering … especially death .... we read these words and they cut to the core.

A couple of things we NEED to get here.

First of all - remember where we are, right now. This is Sidon - the home of Ba’al. This is the god whose statutues show him holding the lightning and thunder in his hands. This is the one who is worshiped because he’s supposed to control the forces of nature - rain and fertility belong to him. He makes the crops grow and gives food to sustain life. this is the god that queen Jezebel imported into Israel because he’s supposed to be the new, more progressive and globally accepted god than the LORD - Yahweh, the God of Israel.

And here we are, in Baal’s own back yard .... and he’s showing himself absolutely POWERLESS to feed his own people.

In fact - Baal’s land is suffering under the curse of the drought that Israel’s God pronounced.

Who wants to worship a powerless god? And that’s a reminder of how many people are living in the same kind of drought today.

“I have nothing to feed you with,” says the woman. “I’m about to lead my own son into starvation.”

So how does Elijah respond? “I must have heard wrong!” “There must be a DIFFERENT widow in town who at least has a little something to spare, because God surely wouldn’t expect me to take a poor widow’s last meal.”

Isn’t that what you would expect? But that’s not Elijah’s response. Verse 13, “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.”

I’ll tell you right now - I f I had EVER been a guest at someone else’s place, as a kid (or an adult, for that matter) and asked to be fed first, my mom would have had something to say to me .... and it would NOT have been pleasant.” You always let others go first. And, if the person had nothing to live on and I said, “Me first, please ...” - I would have been in severe trouble!

Elijah says exactly that: “Feed me first please.” But he doesn’t stop there. This is a request with a promise attached.

In verse 13, Elijah speaks three of the most soul-soothing words that an anxious person can ever hear: “Do not fear” - don’t miss those words! He’s saying, “You are about to prepare your last meal .... you’re prepared for death … you are living in the midst of a world dominated by a virus, people around you are living in terror … you see the direction in which your world is going and the rising divisions that dominate … and you wonder, ‘How can our society carry on?! A house divided against itself will fall’. Jesus said that!” And you see the cracks in the fragile foundation of our society .... you see them getting wider and wider.

“Do not fear!” Elijah says to the widow. “Do not fear”, Jesus says to his disciples. “Don’t be anxious about ANYTHING,” says Paul to every Christian. And Jesus gives us the reason not to fear, in the very last book of the Bible. In Revelation 1:17-18, Our Saviour speaks to His people and says, “Fear not! I am the first and the Last, and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades”.

But this widow has NOTHING. Her son is going to die. How can she NOT FEAR?! Can you identify with this nameless foreign widow?

Well, Elijah says she shouldn’t fear, for the same reason that I say this morning, that you shouldn’t fear … because God makes promises and He keeps them.

Verse 14 - Elijah delivers God’s promise to the needy widow: “For thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘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.”

“God has the supply you need and He will not leave you to starve.” In fact, Elijah doesn’t promise an end to the drought here - what God promises is this: “No matter how long this drought lasts - the God of Israel who is holding back the rain from across international borders, will be pouring grain into your jar and oil into your jug … for as long as you need it.”

But before you can enjoy the supply .... FIRST comes a test. You need to step out in faith.

That’s a big ‘ask’. I mean, put yourself in the widow’s place. For your whole life, you have trusted that the god you grew up with supplies fertility to the world. Your food and your children come from Baal. Well, now it’s pretty clear that either Baal doesn’t exist, or, if he does - he doesn’t give a rip about you.

You’ve come to accept the painful reality that ‘we’re all on our own down here’. So, you’ll make the most of it - eat one more meal and stoically surrender to cruel fate. Is that where you are today? “This life stinks and it’s not getting any better anytime soon … so, I ‘ll take one more drink, get one more fix, make one more purchase before the credit card is maxed out, satisfy one more sexual indulgence .... whatever you’ve BEEN worshiping as your treasure … I’ll go to the altar one more time …and then, I’ll give up.” “God is dead and I will be soon.”

Now this strange foreigner is telling you to exchange your allegiance. Don’t give up on worship - but change the object of your worship. This prophet is telling you that the God of ISrael is actually the ONE TRUE God of power - that if you follow Him, He’ll take care of your needs.

See the woman, worn clothes, the trail of tears streaking down through the dust on her face as she tries to make an impossible decision.

Eyes blood-shot from crying - they jump from Elijah to the sticks for the fire in her hand, to her son ..... Elijah - sticks - son .... Elijah - sticks - son. What will she do?

Well, she will live by faith in Elijah’s God, that’s what she’ll do. She takes her sticks home to make a fire, on which to cook her cake. Verse 15, And she went and did as Elijah had said.” Notice how she walks by faith. Do you want to know what walking by faith looks like? Here it is friend, on display in the life of this widow - just as Elijah walked at the beginning of our story.

No questions, no objections .... just obedience. “She went and did as Elijah had said.” She scrapes out the last remaining grain from the jar, pours out the final drop of oil from the jug … walks PAST her hungry child … and takes the cake to Elijah the prophet from Israel.

THAT’S Faith.

And see the blessing of God. Verse 15, “And she and her household ate for MANY days. (16) The jar of flour was not spent, neighter did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the LORD that He spoke by Elijah.”

No mention of a truck pulling up to the widow’s door and unloading pallets filled with food. No - no big delivery of food. This is daily bread that demands daily faith in the loving provision of God. So every day, the widow goes to her barrel of flour and her jar of oil .... and she has just enough to make bread for one more day.

Why do you think God takes care of his people like that? When you are in financial need and you pray for God’s help … when the cancer comes - and you pray for healing … why doesn’t God just back the truck of blessing to your door and take all the suffering away in one massive delivery of blessing?

I’ll tell you why: because it’s far too easy for us to trust in the flour and oil God brings, INSTEAD of the GOd who brings flour and oil. And that’s a lousy trade. It’s GOD Who saves … not ‘stuff’.

Look at what God has done in this story: His faithful servant Elijah is living through a drought. God doesn’t take him out of the drought … He feeds his hunger and satisfies his thirst in the midst of the drought. But that’s not enough for God. There’s a lost and needy widow in a pagan, foreign land. She’s a nameless, nobody, lost in the crowd .... but she’s not nobody to God. In fact he uses this very drought as his means to send the prophet who has stood before a king … God sends Elijah, like a laser-guided drone of blessing - to take His rescue to the widow of Zarephath. He saves her from physical starvation .... but more than that, God blesses her with faith. Of all the people in all the cities and towns of the Middle East on this day, was there a more unlikely prospect to receive God’s grace than this?! It’s a stunning example of God’s love for ‘nobodies’ - like me.

Jesus referred to this woman, during his ministry on earth, centuries later, in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is a grown man, his reputation and fame are growing in the surrounding areas, when he goes back to his hometown of Nazareth and is speaking at the local synagogue, where he went as a kid.

He preaches, he closes up his bible, He sits down .... and he gets a respectable round of applause from the crowd. But he gets no worship. That’s because the people see him as no more than that local carpenter’s kid that used to crawl under the pews during the service.

This was his response to their lack of trust that he was the Son of God come to earth to save them from their sins, with the power of eternal life in his hand for those who belonged to him.

Luke 4:24-26,

He says to his neighbours: “You folks are acting like the people in Israel of old, who rejected God’s Word .... they missed God’s Saving work as a result. He sent Elijah to take salvation to a foreign widow instead.”

Some of you need to hear this today. You have lived your life under the blessing of God. He’s given you a Christian mom or grandmother who prayed for you and lived by faith. Maybe she became a Christian later in life, but you’ve seen her example. You watched her obedience and trust in action.

Maybe, like I did - you watched your mom face trials that would drive others to the breaking point. But those trials drove her to her knees. She trusted in Jesus Christ and His finished work alone. She made sure you were in church or Sunday School, when you just wanted to go to the beach.

And you’ve soaked in all these blessings, just like Israel did … but you’ve never committed yourself to her Saviour. You respect Jesus. You appreciate how much He means to the mom or grandmother you love .... but you sure aren’t ready to surrender your life into His hands and give up your last flour and oil, in confidence of His blessing.

I would warn you, friend. That the blessings you’ve taken for granted … they are meant to draw you to a decision.

Our text this morning reminds me of:

The Dutch Christian Corrie ten Boom had a similar experience in the German concentration camp at Ravensbrook. Corrie and her sister Betsie were captured by the Nazis for hiding Jews during World War II. Betsie became ill during their long imprisonment. Here is how Corrie describes giving her sister life-preserving vitamins:

Another strange thing was happening. The bottle was continuing to produce drops. It scarcely seemed possible, so small a bottle, so many doses a day. Now, in addition to Betsie, a dozen others on our pier were taking it.

My instinct was always to hoard it—Betsie was growing so very weak! But the others were ill as well. It was hard to say no to eyes that burned with fever, hands that shook with chill. I tried to save it for the very weakest—but even these soon numbered fifteen, twenty, twenty-five.…

And still, every time I tilted the little bottle, a drop appeared at the tip of the glass stopper. It just couldn’t be! I held it up to the light, trying to see how much was left, but the dark brown glass was too thick to see through.

“There was a woman in the Bible,” Betsie said, “whose oil jar was never empty.” She turned to it in the Book of Kings, the story of the poor widow of Zarephath.…

It was one thing to believe that such things were possible thousands of years ago, another to have it happen now, to us, this very day. And yet it happened this day, and the next, and the next, until an awed little group of spectators stood around watching the drops fall onto the daily rations of bread.

Many nights I lay awake in the shower of straw dust from the mattress above, trying to fathom the marvel of supply lavished upon us. “Maybe,” I whispered to Betsie, “only a molecule or two really gets through that little pinhole—and then in the air it expands!”

I heard her soft laughter in the dark. “Don’t try too hard to explain it, Corrie. Just accept it as a surprise from a Father who loves you.”

Then Corrie writes about the day that another prisoner brought some treasure back to the barracks: a piece of newspaper, a slice of bread, and a small sack of vitamins! “Back at the bunk I took the bottle from the straw. ‘We’ll finish the drops first,’ I decided. But that night, no matter how long I held it upside down, or how hard I shook it, not another drop appeared.”

Corrie ten Boom was encountering the same God that Elijah knew. Ravensbrook turned out to be aptly named, for there the ten Booms experienced the same providential care that Elijah received at his “raven’s brook,” and afterward. Elijah had enough to drink from the Brook Cherith—every day—until he licked the very last drop from the riverbed. Then the Lord sent him to the widow’s home in Zarephath, where he had enough to eat—every day—until the day rain