A God Like No Other

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Every other false religion, every other false God favors or rewards the insiders. He loves and accepts you because you keep the rules. But the true God reaches out for the outsiders because truth be told, we're all outsiders and we're all desperately in need of God's great grace. God seeks the outsider. He's seeking the outsider in this story. He still seeks the outsider today. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. A lot of us think of people from the Old Testament as primitive and backward, worshiping little stone statues or golden images. And while you may not find too many statues being worshiped today, rest assured that idol worship is still going strong. In fact, we might be worshiping a false God even when we think we're worshiping the God of the Bible. So today, Pastor J.D. explains how we can tell if we are worshiping the true God or a self-created figment of our imagination.

It's part of our series called Something Better. And Pastor J.D. titled this message, A God Like No Other. 1 Kings 17. If you recall, God picked a fight with evil King Ahab and his pet God Baal by declaring that it wasn't going to rain until Elijah said it was going to rain. You see, Baal specialized in being the rainmaker. So Elijah basically gets all up in his territory and says, you're not the rainmaker. God is the rainmaker.

And it's not going to rain until God says it's going to rain, and he's going to do it through, he's going to say that through me. Well, then God puts Elijah, remember I told you that Elijah's stories go back and forth between the big picture of what God's doing in the world through Elijah, and then it zooms down like Google Maps, right down into the small picture of what God's doing in Elijah's heart. So after Elijah declares that, God sends him to a little secret brook called Cherith, where God is going to give him water through this secret brook, since there's not any rain, and he's going to feed him through a fleet of courier ravens who give him beef jerky in the morning and night, and that's how he's going to eat. Well, after a while, the brook dries up, and so then God says to Elijah, I'm going to provide for you through a widow that you're going to meet in the region of Sidon. Now Sidon, if you recall, was outside of Israel, and it was where Jezebel was from.

It's her hometown. And it's also the place where Baal, that's like his home territory. So you got to think for a minute about how scary this is for Elijah. He is a wanted man at this point. Ahab has said, if you find him, tell him. He's a wanted man, and he's got to walk on foot through the wilderness right to the hometown of his primary enemy.

I mean, this is scary. He's got no food. He's got no jobs.

His pet raven's heads have fallen off. Everything has gone wrong for him. And what I told you is that what God is doing is God is making him weak so that he can learn to depend on him, because that's what he needs to have in order to experience the power of God. Here's our big takeaway from last week. If dependence is the objective, then weakness becomes an advantage. And what we meant by that is if dependence on God is the objective, if what God really wants from you is he wants you to be fully dependent on him, then weaknesses become an advantage because those are places that you more naturally begin to depend on God.

And that's what God has been doing. I explained to some of you that that is what God has been doing to you. You've suffered a setback recently in your job, or maybe a setback in your health, something that came out of the blue you didn't see coming. And you're like, I don't understand because this cripples my ability to be able to do what I think I need to do. Maybe you feel powerless in your parenting for the first time. You're looking and you're like, I don't know what to do. Or maybe you feel powerless in your marriage. Maybe you're single and you feel powerless to be able to obtain a relationship that you really want to have. And you're like, I've tried everything and I just feel like nothing's really worked. And I don't know what to do. Maybe you feel unsuccessful in your ministry.

I've been there many, many, many times. These things are divinely ordained to teach you to depend on God, to make you weak so that you can be strong, not in yourself, but in him. Because then the power of God is able to really display itself through you. And you become somebody that's not someone who simply displays your strengths that everybody is impressed with. You become somebody who is full of the power and grace of God, which other people can benefit from.

And that's a big decision you got to make. What do you want from life? Do you want to go through life showing how awesome you are, demonstrating to everybody so they can look up to you and admire you? Or do you want to be a source of healing and help and grace to people?

If so, then you're going to glory in your weaknesses because those are places you can point people to the power and grace of God that has been so beneficial to you. So that's where we're going to pick up this week as God continues to take Elijah to school, preparing him for this epic battle that he's going to have next week, 1 Kings 18, on top of Mount Carmel. All the stories are leading to the top of that mountain because he's preparing him for that battle. So here we go, verse 10, 1 Kings 17. And when Elijah finally, after 100 miles, got to the gate of the city, he saw a widow there gathering sticks, just like God told him would be there. And he asked her, would you please bring me a little water and a cup? As she was going to get it, he called her and said, hey, bring me a bite of bread, too. But she said, I swear by the Lord your God that I don't have a single piece of bread in my house. I have only a handful of flour left in the jar and a little cooking oil on the bottom of my jug. I was just gathering a few sticks to cook this very last meal, and then my son and I will die. But Elijah said to her, do not be afraid. Go ahead and do just what you said, but make me a little bread first.

Then use what's left to prepare a meal for yourself and for your son. Is Elijah a jerk? Is that what's happening here? It's like, hey, I know you're hungry, but make something for me first.

No, there's more happening, I'll explain in a minute. Verse 14, for this is what the Lord the God of Israel says, there will always be flour and olive oil left in your containers until the time when the Lord sends rain and the crops grow again. So she did, as Elijah said, and she and Elijah and her family continued to eat for many days. There was always enough flour and olive oil left in the containers, just as the Lord had promised through Elijah. All right, the end, lesson learned.

I mean, it's an awesome lesson. God can provide for you anywhere, even in Baal's hometown. He can provide rain. It's like a little cloud of blessing goes above the head of Elijah.

Baal cannot even provide for the people in his hometown. And here, God is taking care of this one little ray of cloud of blessing that just follows Elijah everywhere he goes. That's an important lesson to learn.

Essentially, what Elijah has learned is what David said in Psalm 23, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of mine enemies.

You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I'll dwell in the house of God forever. That's a great lesson to learn. I would put a period there.

I would move on to the next subject, but that's not what happens. Verse 17. Sometime later, the woman's son became sick. He grew worse and worse and finally he died. Then she said to Elijah, old man of God, what have you done to me? Have you come here to point out my sins and kill my son? But Elijah replied, give me your son. And he took the child's body from her arms, carried him up the stairs to the room where he was staying and laid the body on his bed. Then Elijah cried out to the Lord, oh Lord, my God, why have you brought tragedy on this widow who has opened her home to me, causing her son to die? And he stretched himself out over the child three times and cried out to the Lord, oh Lord, my God, please let this child's life return to him. The Lord heard Elijah's prayer and the life of the child returned and he revived. Then Elijah brought him down from the upper room and gave him to his mother.

Look, he said, your son is alive. Then the woman told Elijah, now I know for sure that you are a man of God and that truly the Lord speaks through you. Four things that you're going to see in this story about the true God. Things that make, if you will, the Christian God different from every other God that has ever been concocted in the minds of man. Now here we go, I'll give you four things. Number one, the true God is a God of the outsider. The true God is a God of the outsider.

Now let me ask you a question. Do you not think that there were a lot of widows in Israel? Sure there were. There were a lot of faithful widows in Israel during that time. And wasn't Israel God's people and then his hometown?

Why did God send Elijah to a Gentile widow outside of the region of Israel? You know what the first sermon that Jesus ever preached was? Here's a little Bible trivia for you. You know what the first sermon Jesus ever preached was? It was on this passage. It's in Luke chapter 4 is where it's recorded.

Let me read it to you. But in truth I tell you there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heavens were shut up three years and six months and a great famine came over all the land. And Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow.

The famine, Jesus said, affected everybody in Israel but the only one that Elijah was sent to rescue was a pagan widowed woman in Baal's hometown. And that truth made the Israelite leaders who were listening to Jesus' first sermon so mad that they tried to kill him on the spot. I was thinking back to my first sermon and the reactions I got to hit. I was 17 years old. I preached my first sermon. Everybody came down afterwards, patted me on the back, told me how proud they were of me.

My parents took me out for ice cream. That was my first sermon. Jesus' first sermon they tried to throw him off a cliff and it was because of this message.

This first point I'm making to you is what caused them to be so angry they wanted to kill him. God is a God of the outsider. You see, every other religion focuses on God rewarding the insider.

God blesses you and rewards you if you keep the rules. This woman was an outsider in just about every possible way, was she not? She's a gentile which makes her a racial outsider. She is a pagan which makes her a religious outsider. She's a woman which makes her, in those days, a gender outsider.

She is a widow which makes her an economic outsider. This is the one that God sent Elijah to save. You think that's significant, by the way? Significant enough for Jesus to make it his first sermon. This past Christmas I pointed out to you that there's some interesting things in Jesus' genealogy. Genealogy, if you recall, I told you was like a resume in those days. If you were going to be the ruler of a region, you published your genealogy and what you were trying to show is that you had a lot of great rulers in your past so that they would just know that awesomeness is in your blood. I told you that when kings in those days would publish their genealogy, we know this for historical fact, Herod, when he published his genealogy, omits people in his bloodline that were shady or embarrassing. So Jesus, what's interesting about his genealogy in Matthew 1 is not only does it not skip over the people that are embarrassing, it almost seems to celebrate them. There's a lot of women in Jesus' genealogy, which, again, no offense, in those days that was considered totally insignificant. You never put a woman in your genealogy. And not just women, by the way, not just faithful, good.

It was like women with a shady past. Father Abraham is mentioned right alongside Gentile prostitutes because in Christ they're equals. And that's because the basis of their acceptance before God is not on their righteous living, it's on God's miraculous grace, and that applies to Father Abraham and to Gentile prostitutes like Rahab.

And God includes their names in the line that leads to Christ so that you can be sure that your name can be included in the line that leads from Christ. That means no matter who you are, what you've done, there is room in his family for you. Do you feel like an outcast? You're not. He came for you. Do you feel like you're worthless? You're not.

He purchased you with his blood, which is the universe's most valuable possession. If you feel like an outsider, listen, that's actually an advantage. Because maybe you understand that a lot of people have trouble understanding, and that is that God doesn't come for people on the inside because there is nobody on the inside. All fall short of the glory of God. And if you are at a place where you realize that there's nothing about you that makes you acceptable to God, that's when you're in a place where you can feast on the richness of God's grace.

If dependence is the objective, then weakness is an advantage. If dependence on God's grace is your hope of salvation, then realizing that you're morally weak becomes your advantage. Every other false religion, every other false god favors or rewards the insiders.

He loves and accepts you because you keep the rules. But the true God reaches out for the outsiders because truth be told, we're all outsiders and we're all desperately in need of God's great grace. And when Jesus preached this, they tried to kill him because they wanted a God that rewarded them for how good they were. Jesus had a different message. God seeks the outsider. He's seeking the outsider in this story.

He still seeks the outsider today. Jesus was the friend of sinners. He hung out with prostitutes.

He hung out with tax collectors and he embraced lepers. And that's still where you're going to find him pursuing people today. And for some of you, he's pursuing you. By the way, if you know God, listen, that means that you become a friend to the outsider. If you've ever really understood the gospel, I don't mean if you grew up in church, I don't mean if you prayed some little prayer to ask Jesus in your heart, I mean if you've actually been embraced by the gospel, one of the things that always becomes true of your life is you become somebody that is characterized by reaching for those on the outside, not as somebody who just hangs out with a bunch of saved people.

Here's a gut check question for you. I've asked you this before, but if God today, right now, answered in one fell swoop every prayer you prayed last week, said yes to all of them, how many new people would be in the kingdom this week? If God in one fell swoop answered every prayer you prayed last week, how many new people would be in the kingdom next week? How many people are you engaged with on the outside? If I were to say right now, pull out your phone and tell me how many numbers of people on the outside that you could text right after this service and say, hey, come meet me for coffee because I want to talk to you about some things, how many people would that be in your phone? Is your life characterized as somebody who reaches to those on the outside?

Are you involved here at our church helping reach out to those outside of our normal circles, the refugee, the recovering prisoner, the homeless? In fact, let me give you a little insight here, okay, before I move on to our next point. I don't mean to preach like a fortune cookie, but just let me do this. This woman came to know God because a weirdo entered her life.

Fair enough? I mean, this is weird. Elijah shows up, it's like, hey, I know you're hungry, why don't you make me something to eat?

That's weird. Some of you who aren't Christians, listen, this is the fortune cookie part, have been recently engaged by a weirdo. I know, they're sitting right by you and it's just, it's awkward again.

And you're like, I'm not really sure why we have this relationship. I'm just trying to get you off my back. I'm here at church, okay? What if I suggested to you that you may not brush that off quite so quickly because there might be something divine in it?

God revealed himself to this woman through a weirdo who reached out to somebody he shouldn't have reached out to and showed some compassion to her, and she couldn't understand why, but that was the vehicle that God used to display himself to her through. Summit Church, my challenge for you is this, be that weirdo. Okay? That's the coolest sermon point I've ever come up with in my life, all right? Be that weirdo. Be that weirdo. Then the word of the Lord came to him, arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.

Dwell there. That's good weird. That's good weird. And I want you to be that weirdo that's characterized by reaching out to people that have nothing really in common with you because that's just what gospel people do.

Be that weirdo. And I'm not talking about creepy Christian weird goofy, like you need to put a bumper sticker in your car. It's like, in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned. Or, you know, the Darwin fish with all the piranha Christian fish eating that fish. Or you having 12 cats named after the 12 apostles.

Or you starting a coffee shop called Hebrews. I'm not talking about any of that stuff, all right? That's just goofy. That's bad goofy. Bad weird. I'm talking about you being weird because they're like, I don't understand why we have this relationship. I don't know why you're showing this kind of interest in me. You're kind of weird. But that weirdness is the vehicle that God uses to display his grace to the outsider.

Number two. The true God is a God who sometimes contradicts and confuses us. The true God is a God who sometimes contradicts and confuses us.

This woman's son dies and she doesn't know why. She's like, God, is this because of my sins? Are you killing my son because of my sins? She goes to the prophet of God, Elijah. Elijah is a prophet. He's a theologian. He is a seminary graduate. So what's his response? Oh, well, let me just explain to you why all this. No, he doesn't know either. He goes to God and says, God, I don't understand why this kid's dying either.

Can you help here? Notice what they don't do. They don't blame God. They don't start accusing God. The woman acknowledged that she's a sinner and so God has every right to do what God's going to do. They don't, Elijah doesn't give her a pat answer and say, well, here's the easy answer for why this happens. It turns out from our perspective, we realized it had nothing to do with her sin.

It had to do with a battle that was going on between God and Baal and God was going to glorify himself. Elijah doesn't promise her that if she'll just have faith, she'll never again have any pain in her life. No, they just go to God asking God for help, appealing to his mercy. They have what I call a humble faith, a humble faith. Humble, they recognize that God often does things that they don't understand.

Faith, they never cease believing in the goodness of God, even when their questions aren't being answered. A lot of people attempt to have faith, listen to this, without being humble and it will never work ever, I know from experience. Here's what I mean by that. In order for you to really believe, God has to pretty much do exactly what you think he should. And if God doesn't do that, then you're going to lose your faith.

Or how about this? I know a lot of people who in order to obey God's laws, they pretty much have to agree with him. And that's why you got sections of God's laws, you're like, I just want to, not me. My God doesn't, yeah, I'm going to opt out of that section of what God teaches about this or that subject. But can I tell you something humbly but harshly?

If your God doesn't say things that offend you, do things that confuse you, and sometimes enrage you, I would suggest you probably don't know the real God at all. You just know a projection of your own imagination. Yeah, there's an old movie, Stepford Wives. Old movie, maybe some of you haven't seen it, but you got a group of guys in the movie who get really sick of how difficult their wives are. And so they come up with these robots who look like women, but they'll do exactly what they want them to do. And so it's awesome for a while, but at the end, it's very unsatisfying because they're not actually in a relationship with another person.

They're just in a relationship with a projection of themselves. Tim Keller says that many people have what we would call a step for God, in that it's not a real God who sometimes contradicts and confuses you. It's simply a projection of what you want, and you don't know the real God. You know a projection of your own imagination.

Write this down. A God who always conforms to your mind is usually a projection of your mind. A God who always conforms your mind is usually just a projection of your mind.

Listen, do not hear arrogance in this. One of the ways that I know that God is the true God is because of how many unanswered questions I have. I'm like, who would have made this up? If I invented a God, he would always reward the righteous. He would always take care of the people that I like. But God, the God that I see in the Bible, is confusing. He's constantly doing things that made me say, what? Why would you say that?

Why would you do that? I don't get that. Humble faith. Willingness to live with unanswered questions, yet confident in God's goodness, even in the midst of those questions.

That's what you see going on with Elijah and this woman. Is that like your faith? Is that like your faith? Some people, when they suffer, they assume that God just doesn't care. Some people begin to rage against God. God, how dare you? Other people turn God into some kind of genie that will always heal and always bless if he'll just show enough faith.

And that works awesome until it doesn't. And then you show up in my office, having been in one of those kind of churches, and you're like, I did everything right. I named it. I claimed it. I prayed all night. Confessed every known sin.

Thank God in advance for the answer. And my son still died. It's because you've never had humble faith. Humble faith is a willingness to live with unanswered questions, that you cease, never, never cease to believe in the goodness of God. Can I tell you this?

Listen to this. Humble faith is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. Do you believe in a God made in your image that always agrees with you?

Or do you believe in the true God who sometimes contradicts, challenges, and even confuses you? That takes humble faith. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D.

Greer. In this series, we've been seeing how God revealed himself to Elijah and how as Elijah's view of God expanded, he learned to trust God more. Similarly, the mission of Summit Life is to help you dive deeper into the gospel and know God deeply. So J.D., can you tell us how this study, Something Better, Something Greater, will help us grow in our faith?

It's remarkable how 3,000 years later after Elijah and Elijah, the issues that we're dealing with haven't changed that much. What we did in Something Better, Something Greater, was showed you how the ministries of these two very important prophets, some would say the most important prophets of the Old Testament, how these two prophets not only prefigured Jesus, they show you how to make a difference in this generation. So we put together an eight-part study that would take you deeper into the lives and ministries.

Honestly, Molly, I don't know of anything similar to this because these are prophets that, while they show up all the times in the New Testament, you just don't hear that much teaching about them. One of the reasons I was so excited about having this series air on Summit Life is because I think it'll acquaint a lot of our listeners with a couple of people they've heard their names of but never really understood the secrets of spiritual power that are told in their stories. This eight-part study will take you deeper into their ministries, show you how to think about what you learn from them, how it changed their lives, what you learn from them, how it changes, how you deal with the people around you, how you think about God, and how you think about yourself.

You can get it today by going to jdgrier.com. It allows you to get connected to our ministry, and it's a resource that just allows us to say thank you for doing that. Thank you, JD. Knowing God for who He really is changes our whole mission and our whole direction in life. When you really start to understand God's heart, you'll have a new passion to reach the lost with the life-changing truth of the gospel. That's our mission at Summit Life, and we'd love for you to be a part of what God's doing through this ministry. When you donate today, you're reaching people around the world with gospel-centered Bible teaching. And to show our gratitude, we'll send you a copy of the new book by Pastor JD.

It's titled Something Better, Something Greater, A Study of Elijah and Elisha. Request your copy today when you donate at the suggested level of $25 or more. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or if it's easier, you can give and request the book online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. I'm so glad to have you with us today. Be sure to listen tomorrow when we continue our study of Elijah and the widow. That's Friday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.