Elijah's life demonstrates God's sovereign plan and provision for those who obey Him, even in challenging circumstances. When Ahab's wickedness provoked God's judgment of drought, Elijah, whose name means "my God is Jehovah," was called to confront the king and then to hide by the brook Cherith, where ravens miraculously fed him. After the brook dried up, God directed Elijah to Zarephath to be sustained by a widow, illustrating that God's plans involve obedience, trust, and often unexpected changes that ultimately serve His purposes and bless others. The sermon concludes by emphasizing that believers, like Elijah, are strangers and pilgrims, called to trust God's faithfulness through all life's changes.
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Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. And how well you know that. But how often, like me, you forget it. Let's turn to First Kings chapter seventeen. I'm moving into Mr. Gilbert's territory today. Chapter seventeen of the first book of Kings, perhaps it would be as well to read just a verse from the earlier chapter, where we read in verse thirty-three and Ahab made a grove, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.
Verse one of chapter seventeen. And Elijah the Tishvite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be due nor reign these years, but according to my word. And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.
And it shall be, and sorry, verse five, so he went. and did according to the word of the Lord. For he went and dwelt by the brook-cherith that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening. And he drank of the brook. And it came to pass after a while. that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land.
And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zydon and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain. Let's pray together, shall we? Our Heavenly Father, this is such a familiar story to us. We have heard it, and we have read it time and again. And we know, Lord, that there are lessons here that in the past thou hast sought, perhaps, to teach us.
But because we are so slow to learn, it may be that this morning thou art going to underline them, so that we might go away challenged by the life of this man, Elijah, and God's dealings with him. Grant that thy spirit shall be free to do as he will, and to say as he pleases during the remainder of the service, in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. And Elijah, the Dishvite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be due nor reign these years, but according to my word.
Now we've already read that Ahab was a very wicked king, and we know that life was very cheap with King Ahab. In fact, if you read a little later on, after God has said to Elijah, Go and show yourself to Ahab, and on the way he meets a man who has been sent out by the king to search for little bits of fodder so that the beasts would not finally succumb. And as they meet, this man greets Elijah with the greatest of surprise. And Elijah says to him, Go and tell Ahab, Elijah is here.
And the man says, You really want to expose me to that man's wrath? You know that Ahab will kill me. That's the kind of man that Ahab was. Which makes this first verse very significant. because this man Elijah stood up to Ahab and said, you've asked for it, and now you're going to get it, because there's going to be a famine in the land, there will be no rain, and the drought is going to last for years. Now Ahab didn't kill him, Ahab would like to have killed him, and Ahab had in his mind to kill him.
But God was not going to permit that. Now we were only looking into the Old Testament from time to time with Mr. Gilbert that God had a wonderful way of sometimes hiding a message in names. The name Elijah for instance. Do you know what that means? It means my God is Jehovah. And it's obvious from this same verse that Elijah believed this. In his name there was the language of his confidence. My God is Jehovah.
But then he's called the Tishbite. And that word Tishbite means the stranger here. and that was certainly a statement of his character. For he was a prophet, and when God said, go, he went. When God said, stay, he stayed. When God said, well, he dwelt. And when God said, go, and tell the king it's enough, he went and did just that. Because he was a stranger. You know what the difference is between a pilgrim and a stranger? A stranger is a man away from home, and a pilgrim is a man on his way home.
And sometimes God uses those words interchangeably. So here you have a man who says, My God is Jehovah, and he's a stranger. Not just in this place, but in every place. But it goes on to say, Elijah, the fishbite, was of the inhabitants of Gilead. Now the word Gilead is a word that means strong. And there's no doubt about this man's strength. It was his strength in the Lord, of course.
Elijah wasn't always this strong. But he was... strong to the extreme as he confronted the king and announced the coming of the drought. Now this man whose God is Jehovah and who is a stranger, how be it a strong stranger, says this, The Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand. Now in the first name there was the language of confidence.
In the second name there was a statement as to his character. In the third name there was a description of his condition. Now when he says, The Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, the Hebrew word that is used there, is a very special word which means to obediently stand. And this is what he says to Ahab, the Lord God liveth before whom I obediently stand. Now there is the evidence of his conviction. He was a man who was going to obey God whatever the cost.
and that makes a very good introduction to what follows. We have a man who is outstanding, a man whose God is the Lord, and a man who is not afraid to confront the king. Now I want to talk about four things that are very simple that we find in the story, and the first is God's plan for Elijah. The second is God's pleasure through Elijah. The third is God's pressure upon Elijah. Only that's really the fourth. And God's pleasure is the third.
Because after the first, God's plan is his promise. And that is what Elijah leaned upon, God's promise to Elijah. Let's think about these four things. First of all, his plan. As soon as ever Elijah has made his pronouncement of the king, as soon as ever he has challenged the king and told him what to expect, God speaks to him. And the word of the Lord came unto him saying, Get thee hence. He says other things too. He says, Get out. That's the meaning of that word.
Get out. He says, Turn eastward, and then says, God, hide thyself. Now there are some important principles here that I'm not going to take time to dwell upon, but it was obvious to Elijah when God said these things to him that the first thing he had to do was give up. He had to give up any of his plans for himself. And that is always where being used of God begins, by giving up. And it begins at the spot that is hardest for us to face, because it isn't easy to turn our back upon our own way, upon our own plans and our own schemes for the future, and so on.
But the very first thing God says to him, Elijah, you've got to give up. Get thee hence. Whatever you have in mind, forget it, because I have a different plan. Have you ever had a time when you argued with God over what you were convinced God wanted you to do because you had something else in mind? If you've had that experience, you're not unusual. because I think all of us at some time have wrestled with God over something we didn't want to do and yet knew that God wanted us to do. The wise man, when God speaks to him, straightway gives up and says, Lord, it's what you want that matters.
And then Elijah is faced with the fact that he has no choice of direction. Turn, says God, and go east. Oh, but Lord, I had in my mind to go west. No, no room for argument. Lord, how about no? Did you ever try to compromise with God? Did you ever try when you found arguing with God didn't work, trying to twist his arm, trying to get him to give a little bit, and say, well, Lord, if not that, how about this? God says, Elijah, he's east or nowhere. This man had no choice as to his direction.
You had time in your life, times in your life, more than one. When the direction that you have to go, God gave you no choice in it, but it was not the direction that you would have chosen. Then the third thing he says is this. Hide thyself. This man was going to be lost sight of. That's why the man who met him on the road after a long period of time was so surprised. Elijah had been so well hidden, I'm sure that man thought that he was long since gone.
It's not an easy thing to give up your own way. It's not an easy thing not to be able to choose the direction that you're going to go. Perhaps the most difficult thing is to hide yourself, not to be free. Because humanly, this is what we want. You know, we all of us... You hear so much about civil rights these days. You hear so much about personal rights these days. You hear so much about... doing what you want to do. You have a right to do what you don't have a right to do.
And we know that because the word of God says you're not your own. You're bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ. So you've got to glorify God in your body and in your spirit because they belong to him. He is a very happy man who is lost sight of. in the things that God is doing through him. Men who are successful, truly successful, in the work of God are men who are very unobtrusive and because of the work are not particularly noticed.
Do you observe that? Hide thyself. That was God's plan for Elijah. He was to get up and give up, go to the east and hide himself. Now God was not intending that this man should be afraid of Ahab and run away. That was not on the board at all. God just wanted Elijah to go into the wilderness and remain there. God had plans, further plans for him. Now God made certain promises to Elijah.
He said, now when you give up and when you go to the east and you hide yourself, I'm going to take care of your situation. Now God always does that. When you give up, doesn't matter how painful the sacrifice so-called may be, when you give up and when you turn away from your own way to go the way God directs you, and there you're totally lost sight of, God immediately says, Now I'm able to take all of your affairs into my hands and I'm not going to mess them up the way you would if you were going your own way and doing your own things.
Now what about God's promise to Elijah? He says, I have commanded. I'm in charge of the whole situation. Do you know that's true with regard to your circumstances and your situation? With all that it has of things that may sometimes distress you, may sometimes even depress you. God is still in control and there's no doubt about it. But if we're going to fight him, we're not going to know the peace that he intends that we should. all the provision that he wanted to make for us. Here was God's promise.
It was a threefold one. He said in effect that there would be a brook. Now it was not any old brook, it was a special brook. It was in existence long enough to have been named and for Elijah to know the name It was not new, but it was a special book. And God names it and says, that is where you must go. Now, the book had been there a long time. This is just like God. You know, God has a way, so often, of putting things in place long before he puts them, makes them vital to his plans.
God has a way of doing that. because he sees the end from the beginning. And so he arranges this, and he may not be going to fit it into a particular plan for a long time yet, but there it is. It's all set out. And so it was with the brook Cherit. It was a special brook. And God had put it there, placed it there, kept it there just for this time, and now it was vital to his plans. God is the same in your life, you know. God's doing this arranging way in the distance, and you don't know anything about it, but when the time comes that it's to fit into your life and his plan for your life, it'll be right there, just like the brook cherries was.
But it was not only a special brook, it would be, God said, in effect, a clean brook, because you are going to drink from this brook. Now that was very, very important. Because while a man can live for quite a long time without eating, he can live for many days. He cannot live many days without drinking. Water, good water is vital. And so here we have not only a special book, but a clean book, one from which Elijah did not hesitate to take and drink, because God had taken care of it.
And then it was going to be a sufficient book. It was going to last and last until God's special time. And then it would dry up. But right up until that point, it was going to be absolutely sufficient for Elijah. Now there's something miraculous about this, you know, because these springs, or rather these streams, these waddies in the east. They never last very long in the wilderness because the sun comes out and they evaporate and there is no rain, and so they have no source.
The occasional spring will even give out, and there are not many of those oases in the desert. This was a stream. It should have dried up long enough ago, but it lasted. It was a sufficient brook. to do what it had to do before it dried up. There would be a brook. And then God said there would be birds. The ravens are going to feed you. There are people who have tried to make these ravens into some tribe, some nomads, some tent dwellers who fed this man.
as though it were difficult for God to enable the ravens, and notice the plural, and by the way, the raven was an unclean bird in the old reckoning. And yet God chose the ravens, and every morning and every night, like clockwork, they came, and Elijah was fed by them. Yes, there would be birds. Now God doesn't always choose birds. I remember an occasion when God chose a big fish. You remember that? He was wiser than Jonah was. Because when Jonah said go here, when God said go here to Jonah, Jonah went there.
When God said to the big fish, I want you here and wait for the splash, the big fish was right there. The whale listened. Jonah didn't. Oh, God has control of the birds too. There would be a brook, he said, and there would be birds. From the one he would get a drink, and from the other he would be fed. But there would be something else. There would be a banquet. Now you say, now, isn't that stretching it a little bit? Don't you think that Elijah had to pull his belt in? Don't you think that this was a tough time for Elijah?
You know, there's a Hebrew word cool that is used here for the word feed. In fact, there are seven Hebrew words that are translated in our English Bible, feed. But this is not the usual one. If you will go down to the last verse that we read, verse nine you will find this word, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain. Now that's exactly the same word in the Hebrew, because what Elijah was going to get was not just food and drink, but the birds brought him bread and meat.
So he not only was fed, but he had a banquet. When God makes provision, according to his promise, there's nothing lacking in his provision. This, then, was God's promise to Elijah. Now, what about God's pleasure through Elijah? Well, we read very simply, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, hide thyself. And verse five says, So he went... and did according unto the word of the Lord. Now I know that this was God's pleasure through Elijah, because God is always pleased when we go and we do according to his word.
Always pleased. There are some people who look upon God as a very austere and stern and hard to please God. He isn't, you know. He really isn't. All you have to do is follow what he says. Go and do it. And you'll have a God that will smile on you, who will be very, very pleased with you. Don't you have an ambition in your heart to please the Lord? Well, how do you do it? You do it by going and doing according to his word.
That's how God got pleasure out of Elijah. First Elijah believed the word. Now that's to be expected. He was a prophet. Maybe sometimes he didn't do that. But on this occasion he certainly accepted the word of God and then he went as he was directed and he did as he was instructed. And so God was very pleased with Elijah, and into hiding Elijah went, nobody discovered him, and he and God, I think, had a real good time in the wilderness with the brook and the birds and the banquet. But now we read, And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up.
Now we're in trouble. The brook dried up. Now Elijah is directly responsible for his own undoing in that he brought the famine and the drought upon the land and it's the drought that has finally dried up the brook. And yet he was God's man in God's place Why, as the brook dried up? Don't you think that Elijah must have asked that question when he went with his little vessel, whatever it was, to the brook and for several days noticed it wasn't flowing as strongly, it wasn't quite as deep as it had been, and when eventually he went and he took his last vessel full and knew there wouldn't be another one?
Don't you think that questions may have arisen in Elijah's mind? He was a man of like passions as we are. The New Testament says so. And I know there are times when we have shaken at what has happened. We trembled because it looked as though we were in trouble up to our necks and we were just about to be abandoned. God never abandons his own. Never, not for a moment. More than that, he says, I will never, never let go your hen. Elijah expected to hear God speak to him, because obviously this place had become inhospitable, and that's not the way God works.
And if he's listening, God speaks to him. And mark you, when we're reading verse seven, and it came to pass After a while, if you look in the margin of your Bible, you will find there at the end of the days. Now I like that. Because the thought is here that God takes a day at a time. And God expects you and me to take a day at a time. It was at the end of the days. God had been watching the days, God knew what was going on during the days.
He knew when the last day came, because it was his time for it to come. This was time for a change. So, God has placed pressure upon Elijah in allowing now that brook, which I believe miraculously had flowed through the period of the drought to dry up. I think this man of God may have reason. My God is Jehovah. Now all these many months the brook has sustained me and the birds have sustained me.
Now because God has been faithful and because God doesn't change And so, God will still be grateful. God surely has gone ahead of me, and He's going to let me know what the next move is to be. Now, when you find yourself in a dilemma, when you find a crisis coming into your life, be encouraged. God has been faithful to you, and you know how faithful God has been. And God doesn't change. If he was faithful in the past, he'll be faithful in the future.
And even in the midst of your trial and testing at this time, God has already gone before you. Rest assured, God is still in control. Arise, he says. Get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zydon, and dwell there, for behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. Now the book Cherith was just south of Jericho. That's way down to the south. Zarephath was between Tyre and Sidon, way up in the north.
and there was more than a hundred miles between them. I'd love to know how God sustained Elijah while he went from Chilip to Zarephath. But we are not told. But I'm quite sure that during those more than a hundred miles, which undoubtedly Elijah would have to walk, the God who fed him here, and who was going to feed him there, provided for him on the way. He must have done, because Elijah turns up safely in Zarephath. And this was God's change. Oh, when it changed.
If Elijah was at all fearful when the brook dried up and the change became apparent, And you know, humanly speaking, we are like that. We just don't like change. And the older we get, the less we like it. And the more intrusive it seems to be, and the more capable we are of resenting it. And yet it's going to come. It's going to come. And when change comes, as surely, no matter how threatening it may seem to be, as surely as we walk with our hand in God's hand, it's going to turn out for our good.
He's promised us then. Elijah fudges over a hundred miles to the north, and he reaches Zarephal. And here's the change that took place. Instead of the wilderness, He's going to go into a home. Instead of the birds, he now has a caring widow to look after him who respects him as a man of God. And instead of the desert, there are the lovely blue Mediterranean breezes, because Zarathat was right on the coast.
This surely wasn't a bad change. And it doesn't matter how threatening the change may be for you. It isn't going to be a bad change. What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. You know one of the reasons for that change? Not only so that Elijah might be a little more comfortable, and I'm sure he was. but because that widow had a desperate need, and she had a son who was going to have a more desperate need, and Elijah was going to meet both of those needs through God.
God has his eye on the needy, and God wants to use his people as a means of blessing to those who have need. and sometimes the changes that he brings about in order that this might be accomplished, we cannot understand and we may fear. But in the end, Elijah was so glad he went to Zarephath. Now let's go back to the beginning again, the very first verse here. It says, And Elijah, the fishbite, who was of the inhabitants Now that word inhabitants again is very interesting.
It's only, the word that's used is only translated inhabitants in this one place. Nine times in other places we find that word is translated sojourners. Three times we find it's translated strangers and once it's translated a foreigner. So really he was of the sojourners, the foreigners, the strangers. We touched on that at the beginning. I want to touch on it at the end. This world is not my home. I am just a passing through.
When we settle down in this old world, then it's going to take a jolt. to reduce our comfort. We must never forget we are strangers away from home and pilgrims going home. And that shouldn't alarm us at all. Since the one who has the plan and the purpose and who will make the provision right up to the end is the one who cannot Let's pray together, shall we? Our Father, we think of this godly man, and we know that in his life there were times when he was very human, and when that which was human in him made him afraid.
And yet, Lord, we thank thee that when he walked with thee, He was totally happy, useful and victorious. Lord, this is what we want for our own lives. May it through the Lord Jesus be so as we go in the direction that He sends us, are hidden behind Him and willing to accept what He sends, knowing that in the end, We are going to be grateful for it. We ask in His precious name. Amen.