When Blessing Seems to Turn to Curse

1 Kings 17:17-24

When Blessing Seems to Turn to Curse

1 Kings 17:17-24

READ 17:7-16.

There is not a person I am talking to right now, who has not had your life interrupted by tragedy. Sickness, the death of a loved one, a relationship collapsed, career derailed … your world fell apart around you. And when you reflect back on what was going on in your life leading up to the day of the crushing blow … you can’t get over how normal things seemed to be. Life was progressing just as it you thought it should progress. You were going to school, going to the office, planning for the future, building a family. The sun was shining and the birds were singing. But then came the phone call, the email, the visit … and in the blink of an eye – your life was forever changed.

Our text this morning, takes us to one of those kind of days. May God speak to you through His Word.

1 DEATH INVADES THE BLESSED LIFE, vv. 17-18

The Canaanite widow in the town of Zarephath has shown herself to be a person of faith AND obedience. She entertained this foreign prophet of a God who was not her own. She, with her own world of cares - trying and failing to eke out sustenance for her son and herself … she had more than enough responsibility on her plate.

But when this stranger, Elijah, asks her for a drink of water at the city gate - she puts her needs on the back burner and goes to get him water. Then, when he ‘ups’ the request and asks for something to eat, she gives him the honor of telling him the truth about her personal issues:

“I can’t even give you the tiny ‘crumb’ you’re asking for, because I don’t have it! I’m just heading home to use my very last rations of food to make a final meal for my son and myself. We will eat, then we will hold each other … and we will die and enter eternity together. We have no hope.”

But when Elijah tells her not to fear - instead to make him some bread, promising that the LORD, not her useless Baal the so-called god of fruitfulness … no, the LORD, ‘Yahweh’, the God of Israel … He will sustain you for as long as it takes until the rains start to fall again.

And with ZERO proof that she’s not about to surrender her last meal to a charlatan … with simple faith in the promises of the God of this stranger … the widow goes and does exactly what she is asked.

… And Elijah’s foreign God keeps his promises … right here in HER land.

This is something. In the middle of a drought, when there is nothing growing in the fields, no fruit dangling from the trees … every morning, this widow peers out her kitchen window, to see an increasingly parched, arid earth - neighbours outside, on the streets below, on that barren soil, scouring like scavengers in search of something to eat. The wealthy are a little more dignified but no less worn out - wheeling and dealing … labouring to ensure that food will be on THEIR tables next week.

Meanwhile, this house has become like an ARK of refuge on a flood of barrenness. This widow, who had literally been on the very verge of starving to death, along with her son ...

She simply turns from the window to the kitchen pantry, opens the door, lifts the lid of flour jar and oil jug … and there it is - the sustaining supply … enough to feed the family, including foreign guest - for one more day. Day after day after day, it’s the same story: a foreshadowing of Jesus, feeding thousands upon thousands with one boy’s tiny lunch. When God is dishing up the meal … the food never runs out. This is God’s miraculous provision … His blessing for the person who trusts him - no matter their place in the world.

Ah, but if you’ve been to the “Eeyore School of Optimism” - and this scene seems too good to last, you’re thinking, “Something has to go wrong here.” Well, you will be happy to know that you are right … sort of.

Verse 17, “After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.”

The widow’s reason for living is her son - and he gets sick. In fact, he doesn’t just get sick … he gets SO sick that the text tells us, ‘there was no breath left in him.’ That’s a euphemism. He stopped breathing. He died.

See the mom, sitting by the sick bed of her only child, watching his breathing become more and more laboured, seeing the greater strain with every rise and fall of his chest, until it stops rising altogether. He’s gone.

What just happened here?! This is all so sudden! Just when life seems to be turning around, just when she’s been delivered from starvation, just when the burdens of being a single parent with no way to provide … just when life seems to have been turned right side up and she has a reason to sing again .... her son … her reason for getting up in the morning … her love … he’s taken from her.

This widow has gone from rags to riches, to utterly naked and alone. How could God allow this to happen?!

You’ve been there before - in your own specific way. Your life was marked by trouble and suffering. You prayed and asked for God’s rescue. He rescued you. He brought you to saving faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. He took the burden from your shoulders. You had a reason to live and to sing and to look forward to each new day with eager anticipation: “What’s God got in store for today?”

And then, just like that - the doctor calls with the results of the biopsy - the test was positive. You wanted the baby so bad - and then came the pregnancy … and now there’s been a miscarriage.

And you can’t wrap your head around where you are: Here’s a woman who acted on the word of a God she hadn’t worshiped, based on the promise of a man she had never met before. And God blessed. He has been miraculously sustaining her life. But now, that same God has taken her son away. She’s worse off now than before.

On the one hand, at an intellectual level, there’s no problem here. As Job said, when he lost everything in one horrific day: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb; naked I will return. The LORD has given and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

God has every right to take away what He’s given. Every good theologian recognizes that - everything good you have in your life, right down to the very beating heart inside your chest -it’s all grace. And if it’s all grace - then how can you complain when God stops giving it?

But, on the other hand - God made a promise to provide. He has provided. That sure seemed to be a clue that He was intending to go on providing. But now death has invaded the blessed life and you don’t feel like you know God anymore. Does God only give his blessing to make the absence of it that much more painful?!

Elijah comes down the steps from his room upstairs and the widow lets her heart flow through her words to God’s prophet. Look at v. 18, “And she said to Elijah, ‘What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”

In other words: “I thought you came to bring blessing to me in my need … But now I see what really happened. I was flying under the radar and outside of God’s vision - But now that you’ve showed up - the holy eye of heaven has taken notice of my life, seen my sin and taken my son in punishment. Oh, that you would have never shown up.”

Can you identify? God’s presence seems to be a ‘severe mercy’ in your life (C.S. Lewis) – you know you are a sinner – you know you don’t measure up to the standards of a holy God. You feel like His presence is a spotlight on your sin, your suffering is His punishment … and you just want to be left alone to die in peace? What do you do?

One commentator says that the woman’s spiritual condition here is one of ‘DIS-belief’ rather than ‘UN-belief’.

When tragedy shatters the serenity of life – some people turn to UN-belief. “If this is what God allows – then I want no part of Him.” And they turn away. You’ve been tempted to reject God, at some point in life, we all have felt that temptation. The problem is – You can turn AWAY from God … but what do you turn TO?

Well, you can turn to yourself – that’s a popular option for spirituality on the talk show circuit … the New Age spirituality that says, “You are EVERYTHING. You are God.”

It’s the idea described in a book titled ‘the Secret’:

“The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there, for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you knos the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the Kingdom. You are the perfection of Life. And now you know The Secret.”

You are ‘god’? No wonder people flock to this idea – Absolute freedom, big on self-esteem (since you Are God), no Holy One in heaven looking over your shoulder … since you are God and God answers to no one. Isn’t this a great way to escape from a God who lets children die and suffering hit your life?

Oh, but becoming God yourself has a cost. I wonder if you’ve thought about it. If you are God - if you are the master of your own fate – then any pain that hits – any disaster, any tragedy, any heartache … it’s no one’s fault but your own. You are God – that means you are responsible for your own reality.

And being God means that there’s nobody upstairs Whom you have to answer to … sure. But it also means that there’s nobody to turn to when life hurts. There’s no one greater than you to pray to – because there is no one but you. You are in charge … and completely and utterly … alone. That’s quite a price to pay for being God, isn’t it?

Well, the widow hasn’t turned away from belief in God in her pain. She still believes that God is in control of this life, but now she DIS-believes that He loves her and that he really plans to keep His promises to provide for her.

Remember, the god this woman has worshiped all of her life - the god of her nation, is Baal. And even here in Sidon, Baal’s power isn’t unlimited. The god, ‘Mot’ is the god of death and he has a higher position in the pantheon than Baal does. Every year, the dry season comes because Baal, the god of fruitfulness is forced to surrender himself to Mot, the god of death and the fruitfulness only returns because Mot lets Baal rise again to begin another cycle.

And you think to yourself: “How superstitious is this?!” “How backwards these ancient beliefs are.” But I wonder, “Are they really that ancient?”

If you worship at the altar of government. If you think that, “If only we elect the right government and they enact the right policies … then we will be saved. Our problems will be solved and we will live in peace.” Well, not only has that never worked before - but even if it did - there is not a single government policy that can be of any use to you when you die.

Others worship at the altar of what money can buy: the cars, the jewels, the houses, the vacations .... and you can spend a lifetime accumulating ‘stuff’ - enough to fill barn after garage after warehouse after mansion. But death will come - and have the last word over all of your trinkets.

Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian novelist, ‘got this’. He writes about it in his famous work called A Confession.

Tolstoy was like the average European intellectual. In the beginning of A Confession he says he had been baptized and raised in a particular religion, but he chucked it. He basically dropped it. As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t sure there was anything outside of the here and now. He knew he would die someday and that would be it. It didn’t bother him.

Then he said around the age of 50 something strange began to happen to him. To paraphrase, he says, “Times of perplexity and arrest began to happen more and more often. I had a wife who loved me and whom I loved. I had a large estate which without much effort on my part continued to increase. My name was respected.” He was, of course, Leo Tolstoy, the famous writer.

“I enjoyed physical strength. Yet I could not live. My question, which at the age of 50 brought me to the verge of suicide, a question seeking an answer without which one cannot live, was this: Is there any meaning in life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? Today or tomorrow death will come to those I love and then to me. Nothing will remain but stench and worms.

But soon not only I will not exist, but eventually no one will exist who will remember anything I have written or done. Why then go on with the effort? What is it all for? What does it all lead to? What difference will it make whether I do this good thing or that bad thing or nothing at all? So I could give no rational meaning to any single action or to my whole life.

What was so surprising is how we can fail to see this. For a time it’s possible to live intoxicated with life, but as soon as one is sober, it’s impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud, and a stupid fraud at that. There’s nothing either amusing or witty about it. It’s simply cruel and stupid. How often I have been told, ‘You cannot understand the meaning of life, so don’t think about it; just live.’ But I no longer can do that.”

What Tolstoy is saying there is inevitable death makes all of life meaningless unless you do one of two things. One is you just don’t think about it. You put your head in the sand and live as if what you do matters – even when you know it doesn’t. OR – you find a hope that is strong enough to give you joy even in the face of death.

The widow doesn’t turn to UNBELIEF – “There is no God.” But she hasn’t found hope yet. The grieving mom’s first response is DISBELIEF: “God’s plan is to punish me.”

Overwhelming pain will force you to an intersection of decision: “What view of God will you hold onto?”

2 THE RESPONSE OF FAITH, vv. 19-21

So, how does Elijah, God’s ambassador in Sidon - how does he respond to the widow’s charge that God’s blessing has turned out to be nothing more than a cruel joke? Verses 19-21tell us Elijah’s response: READ

So Elijah doesn’t defend himself, or his God. He doesn’t give a theological lecture. He doesn’t sit the woman down and explain to her why, ‘bad things happen to good people’.

No, see his response of compassion. And may it be an example to every Christian of ‘how to respond to angry pain spewed out in a world that is broken by sin.’

Verse 19, “And he said to her, ‘Give me your son.’” And then, the scene slows right down. Did you notice that there’s no description of the child’s death? One minute, the boy’s alive and in the very next sentence, “all of his breath is gone.” Not a single detail.

But look at how the narrator describes in fine detail, how Elijah responds to a grieving mother.

Verse 19, “He took him from her arms” (which means this boy is still a child. If mom is holding him in her arms and Elijah is carrying him - this is no 30 year old, grown man, living in his mom’s basement) .... Elijah takes the boy in HIS arms … and carries him up .... step by step by step ....carries him up into the upper chamber where he lodged.” - some kind of shelter on the flat roof of the house.

Then he lays the lifeless corpse down on his own bed. Verse 21 tells us that the prophet climbs onto his bed, over top of the boy … and stretches himself over the boy’s body. And then he does it again. And then he does it again.

And we wonder: “What in the world is he doing here?” To be honest - nobody knows for sure. What we do know for sure is that this is compassion on display. Elijah is a Bible believing servant of God. And in his Bible, Lev. 22:4, Numbers 5 and 9 and 19 - God’s word tells Elijah that a holy man like he is - is not to touch a dead body. God is a holy God - the Living God - so dead bodies are considered UN-clean. And when a holy person touches an unclean corpse - a head-on collision takes place. Which will overpower the other? According to God’s Word, the corpse wins every time. The unclean body makes the holy person unclean - not the other way around.

But that doesn’t stop Elijah. I love this guy. He will stand toe to toe with his king and fearlessly pronounce God’s curse on the powerful sinner - even if that sinner happens to sit on the throne. But then he’ll carry a child up the stairs, crawl on top of the body … and identify himself with the dead boy.

Do you see a foreshadowing of Jesus here? Remember the lepers, rotting flesh hanging from decomposing limbs, clamoring to come near to Jesus. Everywhere they go, by law they have to call out a warning: “Unclean … Unclean!” - -That way, everyone within earshot can hear and keep a wide berth so they don’t get infected.

Matthew 8 tells about the time when lepers came to Jesus, in faith. They didn’t dare get too close, but they did plead with him, “If you are willing, you can make us clean”. And he could have. We know he could have simply spoken the word - kept his distance and made them well. But Jesus responds by reaching out his hand, TOUCHING the deformed, repugnant skin … and THEN saying, “I AM willing. Be clean.”

So we know that Elijah’s stretching out over the boy is compassion. We also know that it’s no hocus pocus. This is no witchdoctor, reaching into his bag of tricks to conjure up a spell, to try and bring the boy back to life. We know that because the focus of Elijah’s response isn’t this stretching out. Elijah’s focus is prayer. In fact, he prays twice.

The first prayer is there in v. 20 “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?” He identifies with the widow in her pain.

Hear the pain in Elijah’s voice. He’s picking up the grieving mother’s pain, turning it into his own heartfelt prayer and taking it to God’s thrown. I wonder, do you ever pray like that? When someone comes to you - expressing their hurt and brokenness with how life has turned out .... you don’t ALWAYS have to have an answer. You need to go to God’s throne. And that’s what Elijah does.

But he doesn’t stop with the pain. He moves forward with a bold request. Verse 21b, “O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” This is bold faith. In fact, I’m not sure you recognize just how BOLD this prayer actually is. In Elijah’s day - God’s people, who believe in God’s Word - they recognize that God has the power over life and death. But, as of yet, nobody had actually BEEN brought back to life, once they died. Death seemed to be the end of the story … at least for now. Even David, when he had a sick son, prayed with zeal that the son would live. But as soon as the child died, David got up off of his knees and cleaned himself up. “He’s dead. Why should I fast now? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he won’t return to me.” That was David’s conclusion in 2 Sam. 12:23. The boundary between life and death has never been crossed in the reverse direction.

But that doesn’t stop Elijah. He dares to ask God for the impossible … the never-before seen under heaven. That a child, clearly dead, would come to life again.

“O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” (verse 21)

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3 THE LORD’S RESPONSE, vv. 22-24

Okay, so we’ve seen the widow’s pain. We’ve seen Elijah’s response of compassionate faith. But how does the LORD respond? Verses 22-24 answer that question for us. READ

Again the scene slows down - did you notice it as we read? “The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah … and the life came BACK into the child … and he REVIVED.”

Now, when v. 22 says that the LORD ‘listened’ .... the Bible is telling us He didn’t just hear - like a kid hears mom ask for the dishwasher to be emptied ....

In other passages, this Hebrew word can mean, ‘Obeyed’. And, up until now, in Elijah’s story, God has been giving instructions to his prophet, and Elijah has been the one doing the listening. Then the widow listened … and of course - that’s how the universe works! The powerful give commands and the servants obey. But here - with a dead body on the bed … the God of heaven LISTENS to the prayer of this puny man.

See him here, friend. The God who delights to LISTEN to the prayers of His broken children.

Imagine the scene as Elijah descends the stairs from the roof of the house - he may have carried the boy up the stairs, but now he comes down, holding the child’s hand.

See the woman’s tear-stained face turn to astonishment and then to joy, as Elijah places the boy’s hand in the hand of trembling mom. See the happy ending ....

but don’t stop there. This isn’t just a fairy tale ending. This is a theological statement - This story points us to a truth about God that you need to understand:

The One True God of Christianity - has absolute power … power over ever person and nation; power over every danger and threat.

Remember what’s going on in Israel as Elijah is here in foreign Zarephath. Queen Jezebel has imported Baal into God’s holy land and King Ahab has made Baal worship the national religion among God’s people. But Baal can’t even do his job at HOME. He’s supposed to be the god who brings rain and fruitfulness, he’s not helping Israel any. Sidon is his home base - and it’s every bit as waterless as Israel.

Meanwhile, the God of Israel has crossed the border into Baal’s back yard. And He’s the One sustaining a needy, nameless widow and her son. And now, MORE than that - He is bursting through the power of death.

As Iain Provan puts it: “It is one thing to rescue people from the jaws of death, but can he do anything when death has clamped tight its jaws and swallowed the victim up? He can act across the border from Israel in Sidon, but is there a ‘border’ that he ultimately cannotcross, a kingdom in which he has no power? When faced by ‘Mot,’ [Death, the god of the underworld in Canaanite mythology] must the LORD, like Baal, bow the knee?”

And 1 Kings 17 trumpets its answer: The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ will NEVER BOW THE KNEE! NO ENEMY CAN handcuff the LORD’S supremacy, least of all death! No one in death’s turf is beyond the pull of Yahweh’s irresistible power. That what our text is saying.

In fact - if you read this passage in the context of the rest of the Bible - you get the sense that God DELIGHTS in bringing life.

Think about it – this is an incident from the Old Testament. We know about the power of God over death …. From the New Testament. It was when God the Son comes to earth that we see Jesus raising children back from death to life … Jesus raises Lazarus from the grave, days after burial. And God’s life-giving power was demonstrated, once and for all, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Although Jesus was dead and buried, as 1 Cor. 15:4 puts it, “… he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

That’s all NEW TESTAMENT stuff. But here we are, in Old Testament days, centuries before Jesus, in a foreign land … and God’s power over death is bursting out.

Have you ever bought a present for someone you love – and the present was just so great, you were so excited about it, that it was all you could do to not spoil the surprise ahead of time?

It’s almost as if God just couldn’t contain Himself – as if His compassion for the heartbroken nameless widow … His joy in bringing the dead back to life … It’s almost as He couldn’t keep the secret, so He overturns death by giving life to this boy and in doing so, He shouts, “Look and see, I am the God of resurrection.”

This is a pointing forward to Jesus Christ – anticipating the greater gift to come when Jesus Christ would break the chains of death once and for all. This widow’s son died again. The boy’s resurrection wasn’t final. But Jesus Christ was raised from the grave never to die again … and the promise of God in the Christian faith is that everyone who has put their trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ as God’s answer to our sin problem … everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ by faith alone – has crossed over from death to spiritual life.

As Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:1-5:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world.… But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:1–5).

Can I ask you today, have you been made alive together with Christ? If you haven’t – then what really matters in your life? – it will all be disintegrated by your death and then you WILL face the judgment of a Holy God.

But if you have been made alive, together with the risen Jesus … do you see how that changes EVERYTHING for you? You will still die – that’s life in this world broken by sin. But for you – death is not the invincible enemy. Death has been broken – God’s love smashed through death to grab hold of you.

Over the 25 years that I’ve been at Maranatha, we have more than our fair share of family members here, stare death in the face. Sometimes God answers our prayers for physical healing … sometimes He doesn’t. This past year we said farewell to some dear loved ones and even now, some within our family are battling cancer. One of them is our sister Melba. She’s been facing chemotherapy and spent week after week straight, lying in a hospital bed, with no visitors because of covid restrictions. Weeks on end, in a hospital bed, with a terminal disease … alone. It’s enough to drive most people to despair.

But Melba belongs to Jesus Christ – she has put her trust in His finished work. And because of that – in her situation, she was able to write this poem.

Melba Gilliland:

“I know that I am dying. But I’m SO GLAD that I’m still here.

When God looked down from His heaven above.

And reached out His loving arms. And wanted to take me home.

He gave me the strength to continue below.

To witness and tell of His love.

And the day the good Lord calls me home,

I can truly say, ‘I knew that I was dying, but I’ so glad that I. Am. Here.’”

In other words – “No matter what happens to me – I can’t lose – so I am glad – because I am in the loving arms of Almighty God!”

Can you say that today?

Romans 8:31, 38-39: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? … For I am sure that neither DEATH nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”