Scripture: 1 Kings 17
Sermon: Wilderness Training
Preached: August 3, 2002 communion service Woodlawn CRC
Rev. Mike Abma
1 Kings 17
Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, ‘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.’ 2The word of the Lord came to him, saying, 3‘Go from here and turn eastwards, and hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4You shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.’ 5So he went and did according to the word of the Lord; he went and lived by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 6The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the wadi. 7But after a while the wadi dried up, because there was no rain in the land.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 9‘Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ 10So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’11As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’ 12But she said, ‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.’13Elijah said to her, ‘Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. 14For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.’ 15She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. 16The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.
17 After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. 18She then 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!’ 19But he said to her, ‘Give me your son.’ He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. 20He cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?’ 21Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.’ 22The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. 23Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, ‘See, your son is alive.’ 24So 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.’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
Before Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan,
before John Milton or St. Francis,
before John the Baptist or Amos or Jeremiah,
before any of these
there was a prophet who came to personify all the prophets.
His name was Elijah.
Elijah literally bursts onto the scene from seemingly nowhere.
He bursts onto the scene at a time of relative peace and prosperity in Israel. Ahab, was the king of Israel.
Jezebel, his Sidonian wife, was queen.
They were savvy and sophisticated politicians.
They had built their country by combining what looked like the best of Israelite culture and the best of Phoenician culture. By joining these cultures together, Israel was politically stable and economically secure. But this stability and security had come at a cost. Worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel, had to share time and space with the worship of Baal, the god of fertility, the god of productivity.
Elijah bursts on the scene to challenge all that. He arrives with his prophetic calling card – “As surely as the Lord the God of Israel lives, whom I serve,” and then he delivers his prophecy “there will be neither dew nor rain.” Since Baal was the god of fertility, of productivity, what better way to reveal the emptiness of this god than by showing it was impotent? In this chapter, the stage is being set for Elijah to go toe-to-toe with Ahab and all the prophets of Baal. But before that happens, Elijah needs to be ready. Elijah needs to get through his own boot-camp of faith. Just as Israel needed to first wander in the desert, the wilderness, to learn to rely totally on God, so too, Elijah needs his own form of wilderness training.
WILDERNESS TRAINING
The first part of this training was literally in the wilderness. Elijah was sent to the very fringes of Israel to the Cherith ravine on the east side of the Jordan River. As the predicted famine ravished the countryside, the only thing that kept Elijah alive as the water from the brook and the food the ravens miraculously brought Elijah every morning and evening (almost sounds like manna, doesn’t it). There are some commentators who have a hard time seeing birds feeding Elijah. It sounds too much like a fairy tale. They note the Hebrew word for raven looks remarkably like the Hebrew word for Arabs. So they believe Elijah was actually fed by local Arabs. I’m not sure whether this is really all that helpful. You see, Elijah does not live happily ever after by this brook. In fact, this chapter reads like a Lemony Snicket book — things go from bad to worse. And as things get worse, Elijah must depend more and more fully on God.
HUNGER AND THIRST
The first thing to go wrong is that the stream dries up. No more water. So God sends Elijah literally 100 miles on foot north to the land of the Phoenicians on the Mediterranean Sea. This is the land of the Sidonians, the homeland of Jezebel, the heart of the country that was causing Israel to compromise its faith. And God does not send Elijah to some wealthy textile trader or prosperous grain merchant with money or food to spare. No, Elijah is sent to the poorest of the poor, a widow who is down to her last meal.
Why to her of all people?
For a number of reasons, I think.
As a poor widow who was considered a nobody in her own society, she represented the very type of person prophets were to protect, to speak for, to provide justice for.
The widow also represented a test of Elijah’s faith and humility. Would this strong prophet be willing to submit to the mercies of this weak widow?
But there is another reason. Where Ahab and Jezebel, the powerful and prosperous Israelite king and Sidonian queen represented everything that was reprehensible to God, Elijah, the Israelite prophet, and this widow of the Sidonian town of Zarephath, represented everything that was potentially pleasing to God. In other words Ahab and Jezebel and Elijah and this widow are set against each other as opposite pairs – one faithless the other faithful; one proud the other humble; one disobedient, the other obedient.
This passage tests the depth of the faith of both Elijah and this widow. The faith of this widow is put to the test right when she meet Eilijah.. When asked for food, this widow uses almost the exact same words as Elijah earlier. She says, “As surely as the Lord your God lives, I do not have any bread.” She then goes on to say she is about to prepare a last meal and then she and her son would die for they had nothing left.
Elijah tells her not to be afraid. She asks that she make him some bread first and her jar of flour would not be used up and her jug of oil would not run dry until the rains returned.
What should she do? Here, it is this widow’s faith that is tested.
It is like the story of the man wandering in the desert for days. He has only a few gulps of water left in his canteen and that is it. Nothing more. So he spots what looks like a shack and decides that is as good a place to die as any other. He stumbles to this shack and finds it totally empty. Not a can, not a jar, not a thing. He sits down and raises his canteen to take his last swallows of water when he spots something that looks like it might be a pump beside the shack. He struggles to the pump and starts flailing the handle up and down. Nothing but rusty emptiness from the rusty cast iron. Hopeless again, he sits down beside the pump to take his last swallow of water. And when he does that, he set a plaque on the base of the pump. The plaque reads,
“Friend, there is a river of water flowing beneath these sands. Drink your fill at this pump. But to start the flow, you must first prime the pump. Empty your canteen in the hole above then pump.”
Should he empty the last swallows of water into the pump?
Should this widow use up her last bit of oil and flour to feed this prophet?
Faith is often a matter of surrender.
To get what God promises, we must trust him, surrender to him.
This widow surrenders her last bit of food to Elijah, and lo and behold her flour jar does not empty and her oil doesn’t run dry.
But do Elijah and this widow live happily ever after?
DEATH
No, another tragedy strikes which will again test the faith of both of them. The widow’s son becomes ill, gets worse and worse, then dies. This the widow can hardly bear. For her, this son was everything – her hope, her future, her security. In her grief she lashes out at Elijah, asking, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and to kill my son?
(I remember making a visit to one family. It was summertime. The windows were open. I rang the doorbell. I heard the couple inside talking. The husband said, “Uh-oh, here comes trouble.” While the wife came to open the front door, he slipped out the back door. Parents have the same type of thing with children. We want the best for them but when we bring up the church or religion or faith, they will sometimes react and say, Why are you always bringing that up – do you like laying a guilt-trip on me.”)
What is amazing is that Elijah in no way blames this woman for her grief or her words. What he does is take her complaint directly to God. Now it is Elijah’s faith that is shaken. Now it is his turn to surrender totally to the Lord. To be without food or water was one thing. But now they were facing death.
Elijah first carries the boy’s body to an upper room. Then he cries to God.
After his cries, he stretches himself out on the boy three times.
The Greek Septuagint of this passage has Elijah breathe deeply upon the boy three times. However we read it, the image is clear. For Elijah, this is an act of self-surrender. This is an act showing he is willing to give his life for that of the boy’s, his breath in exchange for the return of the boy’s breath.
CHRIST – OUR ONLY HOPE
It is hard for me to read the end of this passage without seeing it as a foreshadowing of that other great prophet, who in an act of self-sacrifice, stretched his body out in death so that we might have his life, who breathed his last so that we might be breathed upon by the Holy Spirit.
Our text ends with life, not death “Look, your son is alive.”
That is also the glory of the gospel — “Look, the Son is alive.”
In the end, when everything is taken away, food, water, even life itself, the death and resurrection of the Son is the bedrock of our hope and trust.
Back to Ahab and Jezebel for a moment.
Life is not about what we have stored in our barns or saved in our
401ks.
Security is not found in the Dow Jones or the GNP.
Happiness is not found in political stability or economic security.
The reality is that trouble will come,
and for some, perhaps for many
trouble is already here.
When trouble comes, we find ourselves on our knees
praying for a world that is hungry,
Praying for a friend who is sick,
Praying for a marriage that is falling apart,
Praying beside a grave for one that has passed away,
Whenever we are in the wildernesses of hunger, or loneliness, or sorrow, or grief,
we need to learn what Moses and the Israelites learned in the desert,
and what Elijah and this widow learned in their suffering.
We need to learn to live one day at a time,
to feed on the word of God
and to remember we are believers in the resurrection.
We need to remember that
perhaps we are in a wilderness right now,
but one day our deserts will bloom,
and our wildernesses will become gardens.
Until that day,
remember,
and believe,
and abound in hope.
Amen
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