Demonstrates God's power over death through the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. It highlights Elijah's prayer and God's intervention to resurrect the widow's son, emphasizing that true faith trusts God's provision even in the face of tragedy. The message connects this event to the broader theme of God's supernatural power throughout Israel's history and concludes by pointing to Christ as the ultimate triumph over death, urging listeners to place their trust in Him for salvation.
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First King Seventeenth. And verse seventeen. And it came to pass after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick. And his sickness was so sore that there was no breath in him. She said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to the members, and to slay my son? He said unto her, Give me thy son, and he took him out of her bosom and carried him up into his loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed.
and he cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, hast thou also dropped this evil upon the widow with whom I sojourned by slaying her son, and assessed himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the Lord and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived her name. And Elijah took the child and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother.
And Elijah said, See thy son liveeth. And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art the man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is true. I think this is a wonderful story, and this morning we'll speak on it. But first of all, I want to mention the fact that there are always certain crises in the nation of Israel in her history when God, through his servants, performed a lot of miracles. For instance, in the beginning of the nation of Israel in her history, There are miracles performed by Moses and by Joshua.
All you have to do is turn back and find out in Exodus the many miracles performed by Moses, I think that are ten performed by Moses, and six by Elijah. A question of miracles. To try and convince Pharaoh, king of Egypt, as well as succeeding generations, that this nation was chosen, selected by God, to be his peculiar people. And so this nation, you might say, had its brother's beginning in the midst of a demonstration of the power of God, the supernatural. Why, you think of Joshua and what he did, the Jordan dried up, the walls of Jericho fell down flat, and the sun stood still on a later day.
These are miracles. a cluster of miracles in the beginning of Israel's history as a nation. Then you come to these between Elisha and Elijah. Elijah is first, we've been speaking on him, we may take up the Elisha. Here again you have another cluster of miracles. Some say there are possibly eighteen miracles performed by these two men. On these occasions that we'll be reading about, we've already read three, we'll read the fourth this morning. And why these miracles are illicit? Because we have God's protest, supernatural signs of God's protest against idolatry.
This nation had gone into idolatry, worshipping Baal, replacing the living and true God with Baal, a God that did not exist. and to convince that nation and the enemy that God was displeased and disgusted with the worship of Pharaoh, and also to remind his people that this punishment would come upon them unless they're repented, he sent his servants with all these miracles, and will be taken them up one by one as they've come to them. Then again you have another foster of miracles, And this was a very important crisis in the history, not only of the nation of Israel, but of the world.
That was when the Lord Jesus came, and his discernment. Think of the miracles the Lord Jesus performed. Think of the miracles his disciples performed. Well, what was God's message here? God's message was this. This was the consummation of the law. as far as approach that God is concerned and the commencement of the gospel of the grace of God, as well as setting a sign of Israel and the coming in of the church. And so because of this change from God to grace, it was such a radical change that God demonstrated by supernatural power in all these miracles that this was a God.
that the Lord Jesus was the son of God. These were his credentials. And when the gospel of grace started to be preached, those who began preaching the gospel of grace so formed the law, God demonstrated that this message was from God by enabling them to keep or perform many, many miracles. And so you see in each crisis, of this nation and the world. God allowed miracles, the supernatural evidences of a living God to be performed. And there will be another cluster of miracles. That will be between the time Christ takes his church to heaven, the rapture, and when Christ comes in judgment to reign upon the earth.
or the beast running mate, the false prophet, down in the land, he will perform many miracles. The two witnesses in chapter eleven of Revelation will perform miracles. They will do almost identically as Moses did and Elijah, because in that coming day there will be a doubt for three and a half years, the last hatch of the seventy-a-peak of Daniel. You know we don't realize what a doubt means. In the case we're speaking on here in Elijah's day, the heaven would hail rain for three and a half years. If there were six months drought in the United States and not one drop of rain fell upon the fifty-one states, this country would just about be ruined.
But think of three and a half years. That's what it's going to be like. in the coming day the day of judgment of God's wrath during the time the latter half of the great tribulation period. And that's what happened in reference to our case. Here, Elijah has commanded that heavens will fall their reign, and they did. And so the situation must have been very, very severe on this bouquet. Now we come to this fourth or first miracle that Elijah performed. By the way, Elijah's name is found one hundred times in the Bible.
What a remarkable character he is. I went through my concurrence the other day and looked up the verses, and it's amazing the thing that you find about this man, Elijah. He was a remarkable character. His model and his miraculous ministry was simply demonstrating this. The Lord Jehovah alone is God. Here are the people of Israel and they're calling for the idolatry of Baal. Baal, the God of Baalism. And his people were drifting into Baalism, the worship of another God, which really was not another, no living one.
An Elijah's message to them and to the world is this. A Jehovah unknown is God. There aren't any other gods. There's only one living and to God. I think I may have mentioned years ago about the little heathen girl. And she'd been brought up knowing idols, nothing but idols. And she had a little island at the head of their little hut where she slept, and all over the house they were islands. Their god, the god of that time, and essentially all over the town, islands, islands, islands. But a missionary lived in the little village.
And the missionary had a little girl about the same age as this little teller girl in Africa. And still the little girl, the missionary's daughter, was talking about the Lord Jesus and how the Lord Jesus came down from heaven and was crucified for sinners and died on the cross and was buried and rose again the third day. He's in heaven and the little white girl says, That's my God. That's my God. He's the true God. He's the only God. My God rose from the dead. who's a little left that can go her wedding one day quite disturbed.
And so she went and got her little gob at the head of the bed, and she took it out and dug a hole in the ground and buried it. And she watched it for three days. And on the third day she was hoping and hoping and hoping that her god would rise so she'd have an answer to the little girl of the missionary's home. Her God didn't come up on the third day. She took it out of the ground and smashed it. And the mother was infuriating. She said, well, I want a God who can be raised from the dead. I want the God of the little missionary family.
I want that God who rose again and is kept in heaven. Then that's the only God. You can take Confucius, Rudin, all these other so-called great beginners of these philosophies and idolatries we have in the country, the founders of all these various religions, their faith as to their gods and likely their souls, many of them, or the most. The only religion, if you want to use the expression, the only true salvation comes from a God who was buried and raised against.
That's the only Christianity to be found that has a living head. One who was buried and raised against. Christianity is God is in heaven, thrashing over death. That's the only religion or only philosophy that has such a plane that its founder is alive, he triumphs over death. wonderful to have such a saviour, isn't it? A saviour who is alive will never know. So this was the Elijah's message to the people of Pharaoh. Three have them treasure there, and all the prophets of faith. Jehovah alone is God.
That was his motto of life, and that was his message. And we'll see the climax of this in the future. in the great confrontation on Mount Sinai. So here you have the first bit ago we spoke on a couple of Sundays ago the judgment. Remember how when he told Rahab what he did? He stood in the presence of God and he told Rahab there would not be rain on the earth but according to his word and he fled. And God told him to go to carrot, and he said, I have commanded ravens to feed you. And they'll feed you morning and night.
And they fed him with bread and with flesh, and drank of the brook in the way. The brook that flowed through little carrot. That was quite an experience. And this was a minute. You know this week that I was picking on this. Why did God use birds to take care of Elijah? Why didn't he use some individual, some relative of Elijah? You know what God became of a mind? Birds can't talk. God wanted Elijah where he was staying to be a seeker. He didn't want Ahab to know, or Jezebel to know where the servant was, because he would kill him.
And God said it's going to be a strict secret. I'm not going to let anybody know. Human being know where my servant is. It's a secret. If I told one person, or if one human being knew, it likely would get out. Because that's what man loves to do, doesn't it? I give this mission to birds. They'll feed my servant. The whole time he's there, and it'll be kept to see. How wonderful that is. Do you know what? We have a connection with God punishing this idolatry. He says, Take thee to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them.
And then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit, and lest he perish quickly from off the good land with the Lord give adieu. That's in Deuteronomy chapter eight. This doubt was God's punishment of idolatry. That's why God sent this doubt, punishing idolatry. And it shall unless the doubt that came upon that land was peril. And as we pointed out, the good dried up. And God had to tell his servant to go elsewhere.
But here is the first miracle, the miracle of the devil. Anywhere but in God's appointed place, Elijah would have perished. Elijah would have died. He had to be where God sent him, right there beside the book. Had he gone away to some other place, the birds would not have found him. They came where God told those ravens to go, right when Elijah went. And he moved a couple of hundred yards up the cliff. He would have perished. He wouldn't have been there to get the food the birds dropped for him. And I want to say this, friend, you're going to have to be where God feeds his people with his will.
You're not going to, I think I mentioned last Sunday the week before, you're not going to get your soul fed in a modernistic church or in the courts. You're not. You'll have to go to the place where God sees His servants are given out the Word, His Holy Word, nothing but the Word. And this is a lesson for us today. You'll not get any food going and healing. about politics, or hearing about civil rights, or hearing about matters of another nature, turn to the word of God. God wants people today to go where they can hear the gospel of the sovereign grace of God.
And there's very much from Genesis to Leviticus. God says, that's where I'm going to send my servants. That's where I'm going to feed my people. That's where sinners will need to go if they want to hear the way of salvation. That's a lesson for all of us today. How emaciated Elijah would have been had it not been for the food that was brought to him by the river. Today I meet some Christian. They say that this, and they're emaciated. They knew very little about the mountain, about all that there was while Jesus died for a minute, I believe.
Have you not advanced any further than that? Have you not progressed? Have you not grown any more than that? Are you still in babyhood spiritually? Have you not developed? You're not going to develop unless you hear more than the gospel. You need to be taught the other things in God's word. teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. All the precious things in the Bible that some Christians don't even know. Is any wonder their babes still at the bottle when they have to be working on beef, eating some beef, something solid and substantial? So you have the two miracles already, the first one the doubt and the second one, the experience of Karen.
That was another miracle. And the third one, the miracle is the one of Zeraphat. He was God sending his servant to Zeraphat, and he might have wondered at the wisdom of God in this move. Because when he got to Zeraphat, after a long walk across the hard land, into Zion, which was outside the promised land, he flew by a widow picking up sticks. She had enough meals. in the barrel and not all in the twos, and just to that water to make one gig, and she was going to make it, and she and her son was going to die.
At the faint of starry, so dreadful was the doubt in those days at that particular place. And I, as a matter of fact, well, I don't know. I think the Lord kind of got signals crossed here. I don't see much hope of them indeed here. I left down there beside the river. The river dried up, and the rain would stop coming. But as anyone's saying, he obeyed the law. The most unlikely place to find a prophet, since it was the native place where his most vicious enemy lived, Jezebel came from sight.
And that's the very place God saved his servant. I thought of this, in fact, I just thought of it. Remember during the war how some of the German battleships went right through the British Channel, and Britannia was supposed to rule the way. And here old Hitler sent a couple of his big battleships right up the British Channel, and some of the writers came out and said, well, Hitler, he just put his hand in the lion's mouth and pulled the tail right through and skimmed England inside of. Sending their big battleship right under the noses of the British on their continent and here on their island, and here those big battleships in sight of the shore.
And there wasn't a shock fire. No hassle is afflicted. Right under their nose. Well, just like this. Here is God sending Elijah, and I tell you, Ahab would have given anything to get his hand on Elijah. Joseph, I too. God says, well, I'll send my servant right across the heartland right over into the place where Jezebel, the prophet. And I'll command the widow. right under the very nose of the enemy on command the women widow woman to feed my servant Elijah and that's exactly what he did what a typical situation a widow picking up the last the sticks to cook her last meals like the widow with the two mites she gave all that she had others may have given that day that the widow with a two mites gave all that she had.
She had nothing left. And this widow was going to give all that she had. In fact, after she told him she was going to cook this one cake, and then she and her son were going to die, one hour he says, listen, you make a cake for me first. You say, well, that's something for a preacher to say, the selfish kind. Ask that bread and for the last she's got. that shall last me and give it to him that's what God said in other words he commanded the going to see Elijah you know what happened when she made him and doesn't say she complained she did just what he told her to do he was God's representative she went and did it and for that God rewarded him for every night prior after that They went to bed, the barley meal was empty, the trues of oil was empty.
And what they prayed for, if they prayed, maybe this Lord give us this day our daily bread as we awoke in the morning, and they went to the barley straight the night before, and it was just enough meal in the barley for one more meal. They looked at the trues and just enough oil to make sure that meal and they could take. And every day, Give us this day our daily bread. It was a day after day, day process. Why wouldn't that woman have loved to get up some morning and saw the bow pulled to the top? Wouldn't she have rejoiced? That's not the way God does this. God wants to teach his people how to trust him.
As we mentioned before, the manna fell in the wilderness every day. Not a whole lot at one time. My how, men and women. wrote to have something that, oh yes, I have security now. Anything to detract from completely trusting the Lord. God is doing his best to teach us the lesson of trusting in him from day to day. And we are not through here. We don't know what may happen to this guy. We may have occasions to put this to the test day by day of God. blessed this woman and she blessed Elijah by her faith.
And here was this day, this miraculous meal, this miraculous supply day after day after day, going to bed with nothing in the pantry, getting up in the morning, and there it is. God never failed. He never failed. He never disappointed them. Their need was met. Constantly, this is a maxim of the world. I'm going to read it to you. in Luke twelve and twenty, fifteen. And he said unto them, Take heed and beware of covetous. For, a man's life consists of not in the abundance of the things which he possesses. Oh, how people like that. Things that he possess, materially.
And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully, and he brought within himself, What shall I do? Because I have no room there to bestow my fruits. And he said, This will I do. I will pull down my barns and build greater. And then I will say to myself, Sell as much goods laid up for many years. Take thy heat, drink, and enough. That's what men like. Things laid up for many years. Farms pulled the bank, towed. The bank, the count, just the normal.
Here they are. All the pantries pulled and they've got something in the icebox. No! Can't put anything else in. Now sold, you can take to these. You don't have to worry about them more. It's all taken care of. Take thy knees, eat, drink and dinner. That's the world's match. Store it up. Put away, lay it aside for the future day. Christ says, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be retired of thee, then fool shall loathe in thee. If thou hast to die, God's trying to teach us not to be laying up down here, but laying up treasure in heaven.
We're neither moss nor rust, up the rough nor these break in steel. He's trying to teach us the lesson of today, trust. Tomorrow, trust. Don't put your confidence or your hope in anything material. The whole thing could collapse overnight. Day by day, trust in the living God. That's the lesson. How wonderful it turned out on this occasion. Then you have the fourth miracle, be trust in these others. But here's a fourth miracle in verses seventeen to twenty four of chapter seventeen that we read. The miracle of resurrection.
Here's a lesson for the homeland. The old man may be a hero at Cherit. He may be a hero at Zeraphat. He may be a hero at Mount Carmel that we'll be speaking on in the future. But I'll tell you, it's another question to be equally that common, equally that efficient in the whole. Isn't that so? I'll tell you, this is the place to really be tested in the whole. There is that constant help for the exercise of gentleness, of patience, self-sacrifice, and self-restraint.
A man can be great outside the home, and in the sight of the world look wonderful and do great things, but his home life is the true test of the man. How about the home? Elijah triumphed before Ahab. Elijah triumphed before death. He triumphed also on Mount Carmel. How did he make out in the home? He was just as victorious. He was just as triumphant in the home as he was in these other places, outside the confines of the pack. Here is the real text.
What is a man in the home? You know, a man's moonlight either qualifies him or disqualifies him for a place of recognition in an assembly. Do you want a verse for that? Yes. In first Timothy three, five. For if a man know not how to groom his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? And here's the ascetic. He said, well, you can talk all right. You haven't been married. You don't know anything about home life. I'm glad I dodged that one. I sure am. Sometimes I wonder how I would get along if I didn't have my own way in the home.
That's one place I get my own way, but I don't know. Here's the real text. The man, the same man in the Ritter's House as he was on Mount Car. You know Martin Luther, always a giant, a rugged character for God. He faced the apostasy of Rome. He faced the fight on all his vengeance. And he was a giant. But you know his home life was something of beauty, according to those who had written a biography on Luke.
He was a gentle man. His letters to his family are full of affection and devotion. You can hardly understand. A man so bold, so confident, so courageous, when he lay down his bed, or when he was told, look what it is against you. He said, then I'm against the world. And in the home, that's where he really shone in the home. And God bless the man who shines his best in the home. And the woman too. That's where the real test comes.
Because this is a twenty-four hour situation. day after day, week after week. I don't know how Ruth Methuselah had the same life for nine hundred sixty-nine years. They must have a secret. God likely was the secret. As it was on this occasion, God was sufficient. And so we find the home life of a life. And what a wonderful home life it was. It was a strange thing. But right here after this widow had been so kind in looking after Elijah, feeding him, all of a sudden the child died.
Now this is no place for a funeral. Here this miraculous feeding of Elijah, of the widow and her son, day after day, there is God supplying, and then the child died. How about that? Where's your God now? Couldn't that God who put that meal in that barrel and put that oil in that cruise every day, couldn't he have stopped that child from dying? Couldn't he have prevented this avid sorrow to come into the life of his widow? She had already lost her husband. Here she is on starvation.
Die. and her son dies. How can you escape? Do you know must have been a lingering death? But here she is, and she's worked down through almost a fuzzle, as we say, her nerves on end because of the night after night ditto, watching, bending over that only son, and he dies. I wonder, This was why she talked as she did to Elijah, because she really said something she shouldn't have said. Notice in verse eighteen what she said.
And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, old old man of God? I thought, come to me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son. She got a little indignant, didn't she? What if because of the strain all the periods in which she had passed with Pamela and waiting on her son, she blames Elijah for causing the death of her son. Now Elijah, how are you going to take that all? You're being falsely accused. If there's anything, you'll bring out the eye and a man when his wife falsely accuses him, or bring out the eye and her when she's falsely accused.
It's that very point. False accusation. Here's Elijah and his hostily accused of bringing about the death of his widow's only son. Do you notice how he reacted? Give me thy son. Where does she have him? In her business, here she is hugging a dead child. Elijah says, Give me your son. Not a word. He took the child up. put it upon the cock that was up in his bed upstairs.
What did he do? He just about talked the same way to the Lord that the woman talked to him. Did you see that? And he said in verse twenty, And he cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourned by sparing a son? Lord, what did you do this for? So he was kind of a little on aid, wasn't he? Anyway, you'll notice what he did. And I want you to notice this too. He, his very presence, brought this woman's sin to the men. Some dark deed of the past, lurking away back a skeleton in the closet.
And she said, you brought my sin to them. something in my past like pots, pots. I don't know. Was it involving this son? You do not know. Though the very presence of Elijah, his influence in the home is carried out, yes, this, his very presence is a rejuke. His very presence brings up the past as well as the death of my son. I wonder if there's that influence in your life and mine.
You've got a life that convicts us. You've got something that others won't have. And your godly life is a rejuke, too. That was the case then, Elijah, Dave. You know, some might have attributed this to God's judgment. day to the son and said that. You know, I thought in reading this, this could have been a good time for a scandal to get out. Here's a man, a stranger, comes into the community and he puts up with a widow and a son. Now that's something to talk about. And then when the son dies, there they are, the Lord punish them.
No, the Lord vindicated them. The Lord looked after the man's character. If he puts God first, And so you find them talk that God vindicates his servant living there and the widow looking after him. And others may talk, why did God do this? Isn't this an indication of those sin and God judging them? You know, it reminds you of what you read over in John chapter nine, I'm going to read it. And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his book. and his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin?
This man or his parents that he was born blind. They thought there was something wrong, and this man failed. Some of them had sinned back there, and this is the judgment. Jesus answered, Neither have this man sinned nor his parents, without the works of God, so they may manifest in him. First, when having a crippled child or something wrong with one of their children, there's no indication of the punishment of God, It could be a fault of nature. It could be an accident at birth. That's often the case. And I read this verse last night. Who did sin this man? I put down in my Bible, who did sin?
Adam. And all sickness and death ever since is the result of Adam's. It doesn't mean to say it's the result of the parents. If the result of Adam's sin, sin has entered into the world. Sin is the comfort of all these tragedies that come in through the lives of people. Of course, God can use that incident or that tragedy to speak to them. Then they might turn to him in their situation, in their circumstance. What is it that convicts of sin today? Is it this? That doesn't convict of sin, the prodigies of it. The Word of God is what convicts of sin today, and the Spirit of God is what convicts of sin today.
And what sin is it the Word of God convicts of, and the Spirit of God convicts of? Is it a moral sin? No. The Spirit of God has not been sent into this world to convict you of immorality, of brokenness, of sin. What is the sin? Christ said, When the Spirit shall come, he'll convict the world of sin and he makes it clear what that sin is of sin because they believe not on me you may not tell Allah and that would be impossible you may not steal you may not swear there may be no blemish on your life as you see and yet go to hell because you're guilty of one sin that sends people to him, the sin of unbelief, rejecting Christ-making, not alive.
You say, I don't see it that way. That's the way it is in the Bible. Remember, a blind man is no judge of color. He can't see it. A blind man is no judge of sound. He can't see them. And if you're unconverted, you're no judge of the Scriptures. The natural man understandeth not the things of the Spirit of God. Neither is he nor them. Their spirit is discerned. The sin the Spirit of God is in this world to convict men and women of is the sin of unbelief. Making war alive, they will not believe. Salvation is absolutely, only entirely in the work of Christ on the cross. And it's not your good work that saves you. It's his great work at Calvary.
And on this occasion, it was Elijah's life. And God speaking to his servant, that convicted this woman of her sin, that you'll notice, it was also Elijah and God's power in him that raised her sons in the dead, and gave her back, gave them back to the mother. Elijah had a message of death and condemnation. He had a message of life and salvation. We this morning have a message of death, but a message of life. We have a message of condemnation. We have a message of justification. We have a message, friend, of conviction. What a message of confession. You're a sinner, but thank God we don't stop death.
You can be a child of God. You can be saved by the grace of God this morning through Jesus Christ who died and born again and is now at God's right hand. Here is the power over death. It's found in Christ, a living Christ. It's yours, just in the kingdom. Will you receive Christ? Will you receive it right now? Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, in the name of the Lord Jesus, Christ will come before thee. He ask thy blessing upon thy birds, seal it by thy Holy Spirit. May some fleshless soul open his or her heart that is saved. May we thy people be encouraged by thy faithfulness.
meeting our need in times of adversity. We ask it in our Savior's precious name. Amen. In every soul by sin or flesh there's mercy with the Lord and he will surely give you rest by trusting in his word. Only trust him. Only trust him. Only trust him now. He will save you. He will save you. He'll save you now. If you haven't trusted, try to do so as you sing this hymn. If you'd like to, will you come up to the front? Or if you have trusted them, I'm not openly contested. This is your chance to stand singing two seven days.
A man with you, thy children, let me share with you. And if you leave this way, thy trust be made his way. Then it was him, none it was him, none it was him, He will save you. He will save you now.
The verse will be the last. Yes, Jesus is. Are you going to say yes? Or are you going to say no? Say yes. Either way. I'm going to set them as such this morning. First verse. Yes, yes, it is our purpose, our wish, and we yearn to rise. The evening will now be made, and you are very blessed. Come back to the meeting tonight.