Days of Elijah (Part C)

When he had by himself purged our sins. Again, the guilt that a Christian retains for past sins, that's Satan messing with you. He's got a perch and you've made him comfortable on that perch. And he's going to stay there as long as you give him those little treats of guilt. He should be gone because Christ has dealt with them. Stop dredging the lake for the sins that God has cast into it.

Anyway, he's cast him away so you don't see him anymore. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of First Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick with the conclusion of his study called Days of Elijah in First Kings Chapter 17. Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah.

When the heavens were shut up, three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land. But to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath in the region of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. All of those things irked the Pharisees. She was a foreigner, she was a woman, she couldn't take care of herself. And Jesus said, God had to go outside of Israel to find somebody that would take care of Elijah.

Don't go around boasting about how self-righteous you think you are. Anyway, he's continuing here in verse nine. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you. She didn't know this.

She did not know she was commanded. This is amazing to me because in my life there are times when I don't know what God's doing and I need to know what he's doing and he does it. And it's sort of like, hmm, I landed on my feet. I thought I was gonna land on my head.

And somehow it worked out. So from needing again to be fed by ravens, he is dispatched to feed those in need. And he doesn't even know what's going to happen yet. She did not know her name came up before the throne of God. Neither did the prophet until God, and she doesn't know the prophet's going to be sent there. And we'll live with her for, not in the same facility. He'll be there, living in the upstairs apartment in those days that had an external entrance exit.

And he's going to take the child up that way. And that kept the appearance of evil away. Anyway, she didn't know she had an opportunity to serve. How many Christians, how many churchgoers have opportunity to serve God? Their name has come up to serve God and they don't.

And the years tick by and they just never serve. Am I ready for this? For God to avail himself of my usefulness? Even if it's a drought in my life, even if things are really bad in my life as they were for her, am I ready for God to use me nonetheless?

Or do I need him to take the drought away first? Because this is the picture she gives to us. She's collecting sticks for her death and she's, let's open it, verse 10. So he arose, went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, please bring me a little water in a cup that I may drink.

I like that he said please. He knows that, you know, she's not obligated to do this. It's a gesture of kindness he's seeking. And so, on his side, he acts on his reassignment. Okay, I move from Kiroth to Zarephath in Gentile territory. Now he's involved in the sufferings of the common people. No ravens bringing food now. And at the widow's house, he's made to feel what others are feeling.

Because he's going to hear it coming from her voice. Zarephath, like Sidon, like now the northern kingdom, was spiritually scarred, like many places today. We could go to certain areas in the country where we live and they're just scarred by the spiritually wicked blue cities.

You know, you don't want to be political, but you can't help, you know, some of us are just right there on the surface. Anyway, these scars, these hideous and cruel rites of Jezebel's religion, her hereditary religion, no less. She was born into this stuff and she wasn't going anywhere. When she arrives in Israel, she's quick to obey those pagan priests that she admired so much from childhood. And when they told her, you need to put altars here, you need to do this, she was on it. The devil has his dark outreach for souls also.

We're not the only ones that are supposed to be looking out for souls. Indeed, a widow was gathering sticks, is what it tells us here. She's a newly a widow, and the way we come, well at least I do, I don't know how others get to it. He recognized her by her mourning garment, the widow's garment. This was the case with Tamar in Genesis, Genesis 38 verses 14. So she took off her widow's garment, covered herself in a veil and raptors, and then she went on to deceive Judah. But she was wearing a widow's garment because her husband, of course, died. So that is how he knew she was a widow, when God said, I'm sending you to the widow of Zarephath. Also, we know that she was young because the child she has is small enough for her to carry in her arms and the prophet to carry up steps. So these are how we get an idea that she, you know, could have been a year or two, but it's not like she's been a widow.

You don't think about those things, you kind of think, well, you know, she's an older woman and no, she's actually probably pretty young. Anyway, verse 11. And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. So he asked for some water, and she's going to get it.

Now he asked for food and she said, boy, you're a greedy one, aren't you? No, she doesn't say that. So she said, verse 12, this is what she does say, as Yahweh, your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a jar, and see, 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.

And she's not being overly dramatic. She has nowhere to get food, stores the shelves are empty. She's a Gentile, showing deference to Yahweh, that's noticeable. She says a handful of flour in a bin. Well, it depends on whose hand is full, because God's hand holds the grain fields. You know, he owns a thousand hills and the cattle thereon.

There's never a resource problem for God, which becomes a problem for us, because we say, God, you can do this, why aren't you doing this? And, looking at, continuing in verse 12, and see, 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. Their last meal, as far as she is concerned. Now it says a couple of sticks, that's accurate to the Hebrew, two. That number, that Hebrew word is often, is used for the number two. She's using it, you know, in a loose, not a strict sense, you know, I'm getting a few sticks.

Well, she can grip two and break them in half and kindle her fire, if she knows what she's doing. These two sticks, Ahab and Jezebel, the two sticks of satanic work amongst the people, responsible for this very hardship that both of them are enduring, and of course others. And the day will come when those two sticks, Ahab and Jezebel, will be gathered for judgment. The day will come when the wicked will be gathered for judgment.

And this is part of our message, that it is avoidable. All Ahab had to do was side with Elijah. That's all he had to do.

He does not. Wicked rulers sit in office doing what is good for Satan. Yeah, these are the days, again, of Elijah. Verse 13, and Elijah said to her, do not fear, go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me, and afterward make some for yourself and your son.

Now this is just amazing. This is what God's Word is teaching us. Some think it's harsh when the shepherds insist that God be put first. Do you do your devotions? No, I got just so much problems in my life.

Have you made your offerings? I don't have any money. Well, everybody's got two cents. If you don't have it, steal it.

No kidding. Well, I guess if you're a prosperity teacher, that would be one of them. Anyway, you just, you know, put God first. Luke 21 verse 4, but she, out of her poverty, put in all the livelihood that she had.

She didn't wait for things to get better. It's not easy. This is not easy. It takes faith. He says, feed the prophet first. Then you can take, you know, contrary to women and children first, it's the reversal. Prophets come. Now this wouldn't work on the Titanic. You wouldn't say, sorry, prophets first.

Excuse me, ma'am. That's not what's going on here. She doesn't know he's a prophet yet.

He's just a stranger passing through. He may have had some indication of a prophet on his garment, but I had no indication of that, though, for us. Anyway, she doesn't know that he's going to take care of her.

Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things will be added to you. This is what we're seeing because she does this. She doesn't protest. We see that Matthew 6 33 in action on her part. She is a heroine in the story also. Hebrews 13, too.

Do not forget to entertain strangers for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels. Now it's a reference to Abraham directly, but indirectly it includes Elijah. She doesn't know who he is. She doesn't know where he's been, who she is in relation to God. Anyway, this is always the platform that God starts off with, what he demands. He demands that he be honored first and will not settle for second place. Now you have to use wisdom here because some will abuse this good God first and it really up to no good and they're really not using any brains.

They're just wicked. But Elijah's challenge to the widow would call for her to employ faith in the midst of her desperate situation and that's what stands out. He is challenging a mother's God given instincts to keep God first and her and her son second. He is challenging her to do that. Now you can say, yeah well she could have said, what's a few more minutes of hunger? It's going to take her a little time to get everything going and she's got to wait and serve him first and he's a stranger. I think it's a pretty high demand, but I also think God purposely has left this little tidbit in the story because it is not little.

It is big and I've always read this and say man it's kind of odd. He shows up and he says feed me first and she does it. Verse 14, thus says Yahweh God of Israel. This is his response to her. The bin of flour shall not be used up nor shall the jar of oil run dry until the day of Yahweh sends rain on the earth. It says now in verse 15, so she went away and did according to the word of Elijah and she and he and her household ate for many days. But it does not tell us if she believed him at verse 14.

Go and make my meal first and the food won't run out for us. I don't think she just said, okay I believe you because at the end of the story she's going to question his ministry. I think she just does it and God knew she would do it. There are sometimes those things about us that just are there.

We may not be able to articulate them but they are there. We did the right thing. Maybe when we would say well I wasn't thinking I just did this and that may be the case here. She's not really processing the thought. She's just okay. She goes and does it. God saw this was going to happen. He did not force her.

He recognized that the ingredients were there. She would be given the opportunity to be useful and she took it. So he tells her, he challenges her faith. What if she didn't do it? What if she said no after my son and I eat you can or you can eat. What if she did that?

God wouldn't have sent her there. She, her son, and the prophet will all eat. Elijah lived with this widow and her son for some period of time while the drought continued.

We get that, we'll come back to the touch on it briefly. Verse 16, the bin of flour was not used up nor did the jar of oil run dry according to the word of Yahweh which he spoke by Elijah. Now King David made this observation.

He said I have been old, well I've been young and now I am old. Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor their descendants begging for bread. The Bible is always putting in front of us a chance to believe.

It first gets us to, you know, ready in our theology and then life happens to us and we get to see if we believe the things we claim to be so precious, the things we sing about. Verse 17, now it happened after these things that the son of the woman who owned the house became sick and his sickness was so serious that there was no breath left in him. Now that Hebrew word means just what it says.

The breath was gone, it was dead is what we would say. This is going to be the first recorded instance of revived life in scripture. God allows this death. God overcomes this death.

It certainly doesn't always do this way but this is going to intensify. Verse 18, so she said to Elijah, what have I to do with you, O man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to kill my son? Man, she is broken and understandably. She said with bitterness, of course, regardless of the tone, the words themselves, make that clear.

Recorded for our edification, our education to learn how to and how not to behave under the pressures of life. Sometimes when I make a pastoral call at some bad event, I'm ready for someone using me as the point of contact to lash out at God. It has not happened. It happened to Elijah. It could happen to me.

It's happened to others. Have you come to, she says here in verse 18, have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance? Is it a surprise to you to find Christians who believe in the salvation of Jesus Christ and yet still live life in a state of guilt in their own heads? They know they've done wrong and Jesus says, I forgive you for that, but then that's not good enough. I know it's not always easy, but you, it's worse, it's harder, harder to keep that sin, to carry that burden around with you when he's removed it. Again, even believing him for salvation of their souls, do you still think he's not strong enough to take the guilt of your actions away from you? He's thoroughly dealt with the guilt, but they insist that he is not. These verses should mean something to him.

I'll just take a few because there are quite a few, but we'll just take maybe two or three. Micah, the prophet, speaking to a guilty people, a guilty nation, he will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. God does just that. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us. It washes it away.

It's gone. Mark's gospel, chapter 2, this is when those good friends broke to the ceiling to get their friend to Jesus. You want friends like that, but that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. That's what sent the Pharisees, you know, into turmoil.

Jesus was claiming to be God. Who else can forgive sins? I mean, I can forgive a trespass against me, but I can't forgive a sin. If it weren't for Jesus Christ, I could forgive people all I want. They would still be going to hell.

I forgive good people. They still would not be going to heaven. It took Jesus Christ to make that happen. So God had proven his presence in this house when they were starving to death.

When Elijah arrived, you'd think that she would be a little bit more ready to believe, but it's such a heavy load on her. Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 3, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins. Again, the guilt that a Christian retains for past sins, that's Satan messing with you. He's got a perch, and you've made him comfortable on that perch, and he's gonna stay there as long as you give him those little treats of guilt. He should be gone, because Christ has dealt with them. Stop dredging the lake for the sins that God has cast into it.

Anyway, he's cast him away so you don't see him anymore. When I think about things that I have done in the past, like maybe I've drank someone else's vanilla milkshake, I get out of that. I will sing psalms, I will quote scripture about other things, I will start praying for people, I will punish the enemy in that way. You're gonna mess with my head, I'm gonna take that opportunity to pray.

And over these years, it has been a great tool. Anyway, sometimes, not many, once or twice, I've had to pray longer than I expected, and yet God is faithful. And to kill my son, that's what she says, her profound hurt, you can hear it in her voice. This is what the Jews did to God. You've led us out of Egypt so you can kill us off in the desert. Numbers 21, I read this Sunday, and the people spoke against God and against Moses, at least I referenced it. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our souls hate this worthless manna.

Man, that was intense. God was angry with them, so angry. He sent the snakes to serpents to bite them, and if he didn't bite you and die, you just got grossed out and died.

Well, some people. Anyway, snakes have a role in this world, and I don't know what it is. I'm not so sure God is sure, because one person told me, don't shoot the snakes, they eat the rodents. Yeah, they eat like once a week. They eat one mouse a week and they're good, or every three days. And meanwhile, the rodents have had a litter of 50 more. They're not doing their job. My other one is, don't kill the spiders, they eat the bugs.

They are the bugs, and they leave a mess behind. Oh gosh, some of this reasoning. Anyhow, I'm going to say tongue in cheek.

Anyway, all right. She'll have a lot to think about when this child is raised from the dead. Will she not? Like, she's got to go to the prophet. I made your favorite bread.

Why? I feel bad about what I said. Anyway, verse 19. And he said to her, give me your son. So he took him out of her arms and carried him to the upper room where he was staying and laid him on his own bed.

So this is, the child is small enough for this. Her role was to let the man of God have him and not interfere, which called for a lot of discipline. Elisha will have a similar incident. He is not presumptuous. He's, God stand back. God will heal.

Thus saith the Lord. He's not doing that at this time. He is on full alert. He doesn't know what God is going to do. And there's an element of desperation in how he deals with this. He's got to be saying to himself, what did you get me into?

Anyway, I mean, he's a man with a nature like ours. I would be saying, God, how could you? Was it too much to keep the child healthy? Couldn't you kill the pet dog or cat or something? Well, not kill. God doesn't do this, but he allowed it. Anyway, so he took him out of her arms, carried him up to the upper room where he was staying and laid him on his own bed. Again, his quarters were not accessible from her quarters.

That kept that line of protection between the two. Verse 20, then he cried out to Yahweh and said, oh, Yahweh, my God, have you also brought tragedy on the widow with whom I lodged by killing her son? So he's, you know, he's on full alert. Poor prophet, man. It's horrible to feel helpless in the face of some great need. It's just, man, all I can do is pray. And God says, now don't say all I can do is pray. Pray. And that's what he's doing. Verse 21, he stretched himself out on the child three times and cried out to Yahweh and said, oh, Yahweh, my God, I pray, let this child's soul come back to him.

So the situation is desperate. This is prayer from a devastated heart. You can't say, well, there's no doubt in here.

He just named it and claimed it, brother. That's just the most dumbest, blasphemous, un-biblical approach to doctrine that is, where does it come from? Anyway, this is what failed ministry or failure in ministry is like. So you take it to God, you just go to the Lord. Elijah sounds awful. God, how could you? Verse 22, and the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came back to him and he revived.

What a moment in time this must have been. You can just see Elijah, you can see the air go out of the balloon, the pressure, you know, just go right out. He's like, oh, thank you. Verse 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, whew. He said, see, your son lives. Yeah, he is man enough to tell us he did not have the faith entering into this fight. He is man enough to say he cried out to the Lord with all he had and we can still hear and feel the sigh of great relief in Elijah's voice. Verse 24, then the woman said to Elijah, now by this I know you are a man of God and the word of God in your mouth is the truth. Well, didn't you know that before when I was with the food thing?

I mean, you're pretty desperate there. I'm puzzled by her need for further validation. There were false prophets that moved around and she may have just, you know, sort of this emergency wiped away all the other stuff and anyway Elijah proved himself once and now because of God again and she says in the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.

Well, we want the world to say that about us. People need help identifying God's true people because there are so many frauds out there and we are supposed to help them with that. Later the Shunammite woman shows the same hospitality to Elijah, has a room for him and her child also will pick this up when we get to 2 Kings but the question is for us, are we going to be useful?

That widow was useful. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of 1 Kings has had a lasting imprint on your life. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series or share it with someone you know, please visit crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too so you'll never miss another edition. Just visit crossreferenceradio.com and follow the links under radio. Again, that's crossreferenceradio.com. Our time with you today is about up but we hope you'll tune in next time to continue studying the word of God. Join us again as Pastor Rick covers more in the book of 1 Kings on Cross-Reference Radio.