Elijah's life demonstrates that faith in God's word is paramount, regardless of personal circumstances or temperament. The sermon traces Elijah's journey, highlighting his courageous confrontation with King Ahab, his period of isolation and dependence by the brook Cherith, his ministry in Zarephath with a widow, his confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, and his subsequent flight into the wilderness due to Jezebel's threat. Each stage presented unique challenges—speaking truth to power, quiet dependence, ministering in foreign lands, facing spiritual opposition, and enduring exhaustion—all of which Elijah navigated by trusting God's promises and power. The core lesson is that true faith is not dependent on external conditions but on an internal, unwavering confidence in God's word, enabling believers to face any situation with courage and obedience.
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Elias, that is, Elijah, was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. Now, you might turn over then to First Kings chapter seventeen. First Kings chapter seventeen. This is where this rather extraordinary man, Elijah, makes his dramatic appearance.
And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, Set 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. 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.
It came to pass after a while that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. I will just pause there for a moment or two. and gather up the threads of the life of this very, very wonderful man. We're continuing, of course, our studies, our series of studies on the lessons in the life of faith taking some of the notable men. We have called them for the sake of gravity and the material of the class the patriarchs. That's a very elastic kind of term. And properly speaking, refers to the fathers of the race, like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on.
But we have stretched it over here. Actually, what we're doing is taking some of these men, most of whom up until now have been mentioned in Hebrews chapter eleven, not all of them, Elijah for example. And we have been following different angles of the life of faith. noticing illustrations of these angles in the lives of different men now i'm sure you have noticed that the context the framework in which these men lived and carried on their work for god was quite different and we have come to a vastly different situation tonight in the man for example abraham isaac and jacob we have men Pilgrims and strangers, taken out, Abraham was, taken out of the land of the Chaldees, Babylonia, over at the River Euphrates, and brought over into the land of Palestine.
His son and grandson lived there, we're told, dwelling in tents with him and learning the lessons of faith from their father and grandfather. Then we jumped ahead a bit, and we took up the story of Joseph, a man who spent a lot of his life not in the land of Palestine and not with his fathers, but in isolation and rejection and trouble and persecution in the land of Egypt. And then the next man we took up was Moses. And Moses in a totally different set of circumstances, geographically, historically, in every other way. For Moses is the pivot between the two halves of Hebrews chapter eleven, the first being the people of Israel up to the Exodus, And from Moses on, the people who are mentioned in the chapter are people after the Exodus, that is, in the land.
Now, Moses is a man who serves as the link, who brought them out of the land of Egypt through the desert, not quite into the land, but to the borders of the land. So we have men who live this life of faith in a great variety of situations and contexts, both as their families, for the countries they lived in. And yet there's one thread that leads them through all these differences, all these different circumstances and situations and lifestyles. And that one thing is a deep and complete, total confidence in the word and promise of God.
Is it Abraham and Nara the Calvies? God speaks and Abraham obeys. That's all there is to it. That's faith. Arresting on the word of God. Is it Isaac and Jacob in the land and yet strangers? The same thing is true. Jacob, however, out of the land for a while because of his own perverse ways and being taught by God. But still there is that following is the word of God. Joseph at home with his father, then in the pit, then in the land of Egypt, then in the prison, no matter where, then in the highest pinnacle of the land of power and prestige, still the same thing. It's the voice of God that he's listening to. It's the voice of God that he's obeying.
And as we looked at Moses, of course, the situation is totally different from all the others, in that he's a man who brings the people out of one land toward another. Indeed, he brings them into another, for he spent most of his life, at least one third of his life, really, in the Sinai Peninsula, as far as that goes. Now, what I'm trying to get at is this, that we have seen men of totally different temperaments We have seen men of totally different inclinations. We have seen men in a context of totally different handling by God. The obedience of faith, the patience of faith, the disciplining of faith, the sufferings of faith, the choices of faith, and so on.
And then we came to David. And here is a man again who's completely different. He begins a shepherd boy and he ends up a king. And in between, he knows what it is to be the rejected one and the crowned one and then the exiled one when Absalom rose against him. So his life was a whole series of ups and downs. And yet through it all, the same thing holds true of him. My word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against him. Total confidence in the word of God. Now we sometimes think, oh well, you know, my life is so different from all these men. And my life seems to be different from almost anybody else's. The one little message I'm trying to get across to you now is that in the men we have already studied, and in the men we're going to study tonight, and in some of the men that we're going to study in succeeding nights, we have such a variety that God is saying it doesn't matter where a man may be.
That makes no difference whatsoever so far as his relationship to me and my word might be concerned. Now we have the same thing right through. Daniel went down into the exile. Jeremiah stayed in the land. Ezekiel is something totally different. And yet each one of these men, whether by the river Kibar or up in the, among the captives, or up in the palace, among the princes, or back in the land, sitting among the ashes and the ruins, all these men had one thing in common. God was supreme and God's word was final. Is it in the Sinai Peninsula? Is it by the river Euphrates?
Is it in Heron? Is it in Shechem? Is it a man of patience or a man of abrupt impatience like Jacob? It doesn't matter. Temperament and disposition and geographical location and surrounding situations and circumstances of absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about, and that is the life of Satan. These men were men of faith and men of God, not because of the circumstances in which they lived, but in spite of them. And we've got to learn that. There is never an excuse for living a different kind of life, no matter where you may be. And I mean that geographically, temperamentally, in terms of family, circumstances, situations, whatever day of the week, whatever month of the year, whatever year of your life it may be, young or old or in between, rolling in wealth, or grinding in poverty, the story is precisely the same.
These men live and walk by faith. And now we have another one of them. Elijah. David was a king in the land. Elijah is a prophet in the land and under one of the wickedest of the kings of the land. Without any question, again and again we have this man's name tied in with another very wicked man who started it, all Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. But we read again and again he did. as Ahab did. And this man, Ahab, has been branded through the centuries as one of the vilest and wickedest self-willed men that would be possible to imagine. Did we not have James chapter five, where we read at verse seventeen, did we not have those verses?
We would imagine that this whole thing started by some kind of message out of the blue without any connection or any context. about this man, and abruptly he just took it into his head to walk up to Ahab one day and say, I took it into my head, there isn't going to be any rain, and that's that. But it wasn't like that. This man had long dealings with God, and his prayer was unquestionably based on promises and threats made by God in Scripture long, long before his time. Promises and threats, which he understood by Bible study. And his prayer life was based on his knowledge of God as he had learned him from Holy Scripture.
And I would talk about this when we come to the end, but I want you to keep it in your mind. He prayed for that rain to stop, for the rain to stop, because God had earlier said, if my people forsake me, I shall send prophets to them. And if I send these prophets and they will not hear the prophets, then I will step in and chastise them by saying, denying them rain until I break them and when I break them then they'll come back to myself and I'll send the rain Elijah read the scriptures quite obviously he claimed that promise he asked God to do what he said he would do and God did it but the prayer life was based on the life of the knowledge of God and of his word and I think a prayer life in order to be effective and in order to be what prayer really ought to be must always be based on God as known in his word Some people say and do the wildest things in prayer, and then expect God to fall into line, because they take a verse out of its context and say, well, it says, if you ask anything in my name, I'll do it.
And they just as soon pray that somebody's house might be found upside down tomorrow morning with the foundations in the air to prove that you're speaking to me or some such ridiculous thing. I will talk about this a little later. Getting back to Elijah as a man, the first paragraph of our notes, and they're rather... sharp and short and to the point tonight because of the nature of them. Elijah was one of the very few men who ever challenged God's people in such a way as to bring about national repentance and restoration. Now, it was not a permanent restoration, as we know. No restoration in Scripture ever has been. This one was not permanent, but it was a national restoration.
And I'm sure that we all sometimes wish that we had it in our power to stand up, to speak for God in such a way that people would be influenced. Now here's a man who did it. And he did it virtually single-handed. Now I know that God said he had all those thousands of others who never bowed the knees to Baal, but I have often wondered where they were when Elijah was up there on top of the mountain wrestling with demon powers. Now, I'm not saying that God made a mistake and that he didn't have them. He did have them. The point is that even when God has a good number of people, not all of them have the courage, the faith, or the caliber of a man like Elijah.
And I think this was Elijah's hurt all along. He probably knew that there were other people, but though they had not bared down to Baal, nor kissed Baal, as it says in another place, they still were not courageous enough to stand out for God as Elijah was. And so this lonely man did influence the nation in a very remarkable way. One of the nations, one of the reasons, sorry, for his ability to do this seems to be that he constantly faced challenges in his own life, and with amazing spiritual adjustments rose to each new demand, turning it into a stepping stone to development and higher service and achievement.
Now we've looked at this in other men, haven't we? We have seen Abraham in a series of revelations from God. Do you remember meetings with God and each one lifted him up onto a higher place. We saw Isaac in the same kind of situation, only in tests of patience. We saw Jacob in the same kind of situation, a series of disciplining, not interviews so much as disciplining. And, of course, we have seen Joseph and Moses and David, and each one faces a series of crises in his life, of one kind or another. Now, in this man's life, these crises are slightly different. In Abraham, it was a case of revelations and obedience to the revelation.
In Joseph, it was sufferings and his reaction to the suffering. In Moses, it was choices and decisions. And what flowed from those choices and decisions. In David it was a series of battles, conflicts, wrestling, all the way from the bear and the lion through his own heart, his brothers, his father, Goliath of Gath, Saul, Jonathan, the whole lot, wrestling all the way up. Now Elijah is something different. Seems to me that this man is always having very special demands made of him. I really don't like this word challenge. It has been so used. It warns that there. It very badly needs retreading or maybe to be recycled and just come up with a whole new package or something.
And yet I can't find a word which fits it quite. And so I'm afraid I just have to fall back on this thing that rubs me. His life was actually a series of great challenges in the work of God. And surely we can use the word in a good sense. time and again this man is challenged by a whole new departure of God, and he seems to adjust and respond in faith. And here, this is the way we're going to look at it. Each one of them, each one of these new demands put upon him, he seems to rise to, to handle magnificently by faith, and he turns it, as we say, into a stepping stone to development and higher service and achievement.
Now in First King, We have noted that he was challenged to speak for God. That is by God. It wasn't just that circumstances did it. The man is put in a corner and something is required of him to speak for God at great cost and danger to himself, putting his life and reputation on the line at a time of crisis against all odds when no one else cares. as far as the record goes. Who else was burdened? Who else spoke out? Who else prayed as Elijah did?
God had his men, but they were rather quiet men. God often has his men and his women down through the years and even in our days, and he has many of them, very wonderful people, but here is a man concerned enough to wrestle with this whole thing and to do something for God about it. Now he has to speak for God. He has to speak for God. The requirement here, as we have noted, is courage. Courage. Things are very bad in Israel. Ahab is a murdering individual, as he did with Naboth. And yet he's a weak man.
And a weak man is always a very dangerous man, particularly if he has a dangerous woman behind him. And here is this weak man behaving like a child, sulking, pouting when he doesn't get his own way, acting as though he were a mere infant. And behind him is this power of evil from outside the country representing demon powers of her own Sidonian gods. A wicked woman, an idolater, and a picture of things very much more wicked even than that, as we have this picture for her name is carried right over into the New Testament. In the very last book of the Bible, thy sufferest, that woman, Jezebel, she becomes the type of a whole system of things in the New Testament.
Now this weak, petulant, sulky, vicious man who would stupid nothing in order to get a mere bit of a vineyard, a piece of an orchard that belonged to another man, had him murdered in cold blood. And his idolatry and the wickedness of himself and his wife had led the whole nation into ranked absolute pagan idolatry. Veil was the God really of the land. Now, the word Veil means Lord. And I think that this God represents a Lord other than the Lord, taking the place of the Lord. usurping the service and love and devotion, the time and the money and the worship and the homage.
And everything that goes along with that that should have been given to God is now being given to this other Lord, Baal. And so Elijah starts talking about this with God, and finally he goes to meet Ahab. Now this all signs so wonderful in a book as old as the Bible, because somehow or other we get the idea that this, you know, almost divorces it from reality. But you know, we are living in a very wicked age, even more wicked than they have. And we have men in our day who in the full light of the revelation of God in his Son, have nailed him to the cross.
That's a lot worse than the murder of Naboth. And those who did not know it physically and historically are doing it every day of the week and every large day of the year in dragging that holy name down and twisting and perverting his word, blaspheming his name, denying everything that's true and proper and helpful and healthy. And we live in an age like that. Not only that, but we live in an age when many men of whom one would expect better are allowing themselves to be dragged into teachings and doctrines that are dishonoring to the name of God and dishonoring to the word of God and to the son of God.
And we are in the middle of this. And suddenly there comes the challenge in our own hearts every once in a while, the uncomfortable feeling that somehow or other we ought to be doing something about this. but it takes courage, doesn't it? Because, of course, you can be called a fanatic and a freak. You can be called some crazy kind of person just because you don't fit into other man's standards. You can be nailed to the wall and say, you're just fault finding. You're all negative. And negative's got to be wrong. Why don't you say something different? Can't you go out and get some soup for these people? Something of the kind. And all the time, God is asking for those who are true to his son to stand up and call him Lord and acknowledge him and witness and testify to him and for him and confess our relationship to him and perhaps it might even be our lot to have to protest that is rebuke man I know this isn't popular but the Lord did it and I think that it's something that We have altogether argued and rationalized ourselves
out of doing. And they say, well, you don't get any persecution these days. You try administering some of the rebukes that some of the men of God administered to the ungodly pagan world round about them in their day and see if you don't get some persecution. You'll get it all right. However, looking at this man even in the slightly narrower context, he steps out and he faces a king. He knows this king, humanly speaking, has the power to snuff out his life like that, humanly speaking. And yet he does what God wants him to do. It would seem that this would put an end to his prophetic career. It would seem that this would put an end to his usefulness in every way.
And in any case, it was a pretty big order, wasn't it, to say it isn't going to rain until I say so. How would you explain that one, by the way, scientifically? Some people say, you know, you've got to explain things to people. If you can't explain it, you can't expect them to believe it. That's a lot of trash. A lot of absolute unbiblical trash. Because faith has nothing to do with our rationalizing or understanding or weighing up. Abraham went out not knowing whether he went. And faith is based on God's competence. and God's ability and God's power, and not on whether I can explain it or whether I can't.
I would have liked to have heard Noah explaining scientifically how the flood was going to come when probably, or at least possibly, it hadn't even rained up to that time. And so here is this man, and he simply speaks for God. It's at great cost to himself, and it's at great danger to himself. He lays his life and his reputation on the line at the time of crisis. And all the odds are against him. Everything is loaded against him. And furthermore, he might have said, well, why am I getting myself uptight about this thing? There are all these other men of God who have never bribed to bail, and they're not doing this. Maybe it isn't necessary for me to do it either.
And maybe you're making excuses, and maybe I'm making excuses once in a while for myself, and saying, well, there are lots of other Christians who might do this. They're not doing it. That's never an excuse. At least it is an excuse. It's never a reason. And if God has something for you to do and he requires that you do it, whether the rest of God's people are up to doing it or not is none of your business. You do what God wants you to do in loyalty and faithfulness to his name. Now we'll come back to this theme. Look at the next part. That is chapter seventeen of first Kings and verses two to seven. Here we have something completely different.
There was something very dramatic about stamping out there and stopping old Ahab and his tracks. And I imagine that there are some people who naturally and temperamentally would rather enjoy a scene like that. There are occasions, there are situations when it might be easier to do something dramatic like this when... One's blood is out and when the adrenaline is flowing freely and people are watching, it's a kind of a dramatic moment and to go into the presence of the king and give the message and then stamp out and say, no, there it is. We'll see what God will do with you when your blood is out.
What comes next is sometimes harder than that. And it is the challenge of withdrawal. Here we have the challenge of retiring from the limelight. the drama, the emotional drive of nationwide activity, to live alone in seclusion with God by a brook. In the first, faith was required for protection, or, if God will, God's will, then for dying. In the second, it was required for merely eating to live. and to accept food from unclean birds into the bargain. This is something which, strictly speaking, he shouldn't have done, of course, because ravens, according to the dietary regulations of the earlier parts of Scripture, were unclean birds.
He was a Jew, and he shouldn't have had anything to do with them. But you see, it's a time of disorder. It's a time of failure on the part of God's people. And God's people, God is driving the message home to the minds of his people by saying, you are in such a condition that you won't even feed my prophets. And I am driven to feeding him through unclean birds. How does that make you feel? And sometimes this happens. You will remember that David too ate the showbread, and it wasn't really lawful for him to eat it. And the Pharisees knew what the Lord was saying when they accused him of working on the Sabbath, when he took ears of grain, and he and his disciples, the disciples really, took the ears of grain and blew the husks away and ate them.
They said your disciples are working on the Sabbath, you know. They're actually thrashing oats on the Sabbath. Now he didn't say a thing about their hypocrisy. He did say, have you never heard what David did when he was hungry? How he went into the sanctuary and he ate the showbread and it wasn't lawful for him to do it. Now the reason they shut up was because they got the point a lot quicker than Gentiles do. They should never have put their king in a place where he would have needed to eat the showbread. It was their total failure and rejection of their king that drove him like a wild animal out among the hills. And that eating of the showbread was their deepest condemnation. And they knew it. They got the message and shut up right away.
Why was the king of Israel the Lord of glory, the Lord from heaven? Why was he driven to eat grain in the hands of his disciples on the Sabbath day? That was the kind of thing that Ruth took, you remember. Probably the gleamings around the field that were left for the homeless and the stranger. But why should the God of heaven among his own people have been driven to eat that grain of the homeless and the stranger? Why? That was their condemnation. That was his indictment of them. And he put himself alongside David. And he said, you know why David had to eat that bread. And that's why I'm eating this bread. And they right away knew what he was talking about. Now this man...
God's prophets were supposed to be supported by God's people. When God's people got in the condition they were in here, of course, he was not only unsupported, but there was a price on his head, and they were looking, searching all over the country for him to kill him. And as I've said to certain people, it might be easier, perhaps, to go out into the limelight and to beard this wicked lion, Ahab, and really to tell him off. and then stamp out of his presence. But to go and sit day in, day out by a little brook. And God had said, There will I see thee.
There, not anywhere else. There will I see thee. And to see those birds coming every morning and every evening and bringing him this bread miraculously, and to see the brook there that he could drink, And to watch it going down and down and down was possibly a bigger test than that of meeting Ahab. Now sometimes God does this. He did it to David. He put him on the throne and he tested him up there in the high place. He had already tested them in the caves of Delam. And then after having him on the throne, he put him off the throne and he put him in exile with his own son stealing the throne from him.
And David's reaction is always the same. the Lord. Just leave it to the Lord. If the Lord takes pleasure in me, he'll bring me back. And if he doesn't, that's his problem, that's his choice. And so this man walks out of the drama of the of the big work for God and he sits by the brook quietly and accepts it. And I wonder how we face up to that. Some of us perhaps do very well when we're challenged with some big job, when the weight is on us. Some of us, what do we hear every once in a while? about people who do better when the pressure is on. Well, here's a man who did very well when the pressure was on, and then he did just as well sitting by a brook.
His whole life changed abruptly with a bang. Go way into the land of forgetfulness. Just sit there. Well, I'm a preacher, you know. Not now you aren't. I've got things to teach you. That in itself will be a lesson which will be engraved in the pages of Holy Scripture. for all eternity. For this word will never go. It will never disappear. Isn't it wonderful that right through the ages of the ages this word will never pass away? Go into the land of forgetfulness. Just sit there. Well, I'm a preacher, you know. Not now, you aren't. I've got things to teach you. That in itself will be a lesson which will be engraved in the pages of Holy Scripture for all eternity. For this word will never go. It will never disappear. Isn't it wonderful that right through the ages of the ages this word will never pass away?
to think that we hold in our hands, and I believe it's the only thing in our age today that we hold something, not necessarily the binding, I don't mean that, this actual book, but this word of God, heaven and earth will disappear. The most fundamental things of this creation will melt with fervent heat, but my word shall not pass away. And the man sits there. And watch as the brook drying up, and he didn't panic. What about you? Can you do the quiet thing for God just as well as you do the dramatic thing?
Can you work just as well in obscurity for God as you do in the limelight? Would you be just as ready to serve God and His people in some very humble way, like fixing things up round about the chapel? as you would be standing up behind the pulpit on the platform here, doing something perhaps more public with the spotlights on you. Or would you be just as happy if God said, I'd like to have you in one of the hospitals downtown sick for a little while because of somebody there that I want you to get in touch with, and you couldn't get in touch with them any other way. Now, of course, he wouldn't tell you all this before, but then you've got to depend on it that God always has a purpose, even if he doesn't tell you.
Ahead of time, that is. Do you believe that God is sovereign and that God might want you to live for him in quiet obscurity and perhaps want and suffering? And maybe with everybody taunting, why doesn't he come out and preach? He was quite a big fellow a while ago. We heard that he did so and so and so. Where is he now? Sculking around some brook someplace. That's hard to take. But he took it and he lived for God. Now look at verse eight. And the word of the Lord came unto him saying, that is after the brook dried up, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon.
Now this was right outside Israel altogether, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. So he arose and went to Zarephath. sometimes called Sarepta in the other portions of the scriptures. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow woman was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her and said, Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread and nine hands. And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake. but an handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a cruise, a bottle, a jar.
And behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it and die. Delia said unto her, Fear not, go and do as thou hast said, but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after, make one for thee and for thy son, because thus saith the Lord God of Israel. the barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruise of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did, according to the saying of Elijah, and she and her son and her house did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruise of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he states, by Elijah.
The challenge of living in the danger of Jezebel's home country and of being totally dependent on a woman of that country, and worse still, a widow. God was really humbling this man, wasn't he? Now, I'm not saying this just because there's something wrong about the woman's part in the story, not at all. What I am saying is that for a man who has preached kings, and who has taken the stand that this man has, to go to a woman in need herself and be dependent on her, called for great grace on his part.
I know. And sometimes God does this to us. He wants us to learn humility. And he wants us to learn that whatever he asks of us is always good for us. So point one, he had to leave where he was and go away up to the northwest frontiers of Israel and cross the frontiers into the land of Sidon. But this is where Jezebel came from. And he knows that Jezebel is after him and that her husband is after him and that if she ever heard he was up there, it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to have him surrounded and cut off just like that. So now he's in a very special danger.
And he is up there and he's asked by God to go and live off somebody else. This is not an easy thing on the natural human heart. We have to see the hand of God in it. And this is exactly what happened. Now he met the woman. He must have had her indicated to him. And she was out gathering two sticks. I don't know why two. There have been all kinds of suggestions about it. Maybe some of you will come up with some answers to that. She just had a scrap, a handful of meal. Maybe it's because it wasn't going to take too much firewood to cook that much meal.
And she said, all I have in mind is just to cook this for myself, my son, and then die. That's the end. That's all we have. There's nothing more after that. Oh, yes, he said. I represent the God of Israel. Eli Japh is his name. a wonderful name. And he steps in, first of all, with a very, very courageous message. Then he goes to the brook, and he sits there waiting on this God, whose representative he is. Then he picks up, he goes to the woman, and he said, You put God first in the person of God's man. And I promise you, on the authority of the Word of God, on the authority of God's message, that that barrel of meal will not waste.
You will eat of that same barrel of meal until the rain comes. And it happened that way. I've heard people say that they're sure many a time as she dipped in her mug to take meal out of the barrel that the mug probably scraped on the bottom of the barrel. Now, maybe it did, but I don't think so, because it doesn't say the handful of meal wasted not. It says the barrel of meal wasted not. And when God does things, He doesn't do them in this straping, dragging kind of way. When He loves, He loves to the uttermost. When He transforms, it's from glory to glory. Whatever God does, He does it abundantly. I have come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.
Everything that God does, He does in fullness and in blessing. He's the giver of every good and every perfect gift. And the woman didn't have a handful of meal from that day on. At least my Bible says she had a barrel of meal. A barrel of meal. That's God's measure. Now, however, the man had to learn to be in a place of dependence. And he reacted marvelously to it. He took the danger. He took the risk. He put himself in the place of dependence on a woman, a foreign woman, and a widow woman. A woman in a peculiarly needy and vulnerable kind of situation.
Now, chapter seventeen, verse seventeen, that it came to pass after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, felt sick. His sickness was so sore that there was no breath left in him, and 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 remembrance and slay my son? Whether she was referring to some particular sin in her life, that she had kept hidden there, and now that the finger of death had stolen in and taken her son away, I was going to say as soon as, it may not have been as soon as, but certainly connected with the coming of this man of God, she immediately wonders if maybe he's the one who has brought this on her.
And so he said unto her, verse nineteen, give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom and carried him up into a loft where he abode. And he laid him upon his own bed. 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 slaying her son? And he stretched 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. The Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived, 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, now I know that you're a man of God and so on. This is a challenge of facing death and its effects. Some people can face a big challenge like the king and his wickedness, the dangers of that. They can even face the challenge of withdrawals of the brook and depending on God in a totally different lifestyle. They may even be able to go outside the boundaries of their own land and depend on a widow woman or widow women and other dependent folk to supply their needs and carry it through. But here's a man who's now faced with this challenge of death.
Now let's not fool ourselves. In more than one sense of the word, you and I, if we have not already been faced with this business, we probably will be. How do we react to it? In a very practical, just surface meaning of it, in the face of death, someone who is dying, how do we handle it? Can we handle it? Are we sufficiently at home in the Word of God and in the plans and purposes of God to be able, even in the presence of death, to handle the situation for God?
in our own family, in somebody else's family. It's a real test. Not only that, but sometimes, of course, we're faced with spiritual death, and some of us really getting a flap. When somebody's right there in front of us, and they're asking for spiritual help. And we know that there's no way that life from God can come into them only through the Holy Spirit. But somehow, it seems as though somebody is needed, some instrument of the Holy Spirit, and we're there. And we have to... Try to handle it. Tell them God's message. Try to use the scriptures for their blessing. How do we react? The Lord himself, you know, took his three very special disciples into the darkened bedroom of Jairus' daughter, and he taught them a lesson of what he meant.
He also went to the tomb of Lazarus. And he gave the sisters a lesson. And I believe that if we are sufficiently in the presence of God and learn the character of God and learn what God really is, we too will be able to handle these situations, not in ourselves, but because of the one whose representative we are. Because of the one whom we have known through his word and because of his promises and his revelation of himself. And we too, even in these hours of testing in the facing of death and its effects in the lives of other people, we will not be helpless people panicking and flapping all over the place, but we will be men and women of God, who in that hour of trial can for God put our finger on what he wants done and do it.
Chapter eighteen verse one comes the second confrontation with Ahab. It came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go show thyself unto Ahab. Now we must hurry on because the time is running away on us very badly. But we have noticed in the notes that meeting Ahab with one short message of denunciation and judgment was one thing, especially when he went away to the book afterwards. But after three years of national suffering and growing hatred and opposition... It was quite another matter to go back and make the message stick, especially when the king had power to wipe him out, humanly speaking.
And I just noticed what happened. Ahab said, sorry, in chapter eighteen, Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria, eighteen three. And Ahab called Obadiah, who was the governor of his house. For it was so when Jezebel, sorry, that's about Obadiah. Verse five. Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land and to all the fountains of waters and so on. Verse seven. And as Obadiah was on the way, behold, Elijah met him. He knew him and fell on his face and said, Art thou, that my Lord, Elijah?
And he answered him, I am. Go tell thy Lord, behold, Elijah is here. He said, what have I sinned and so on. He didn't want to go and say to Ahab, Elijah's down there at the corner, and he would come down looking for him. Elijah would have gone in the meantime, and poor Obadiah would pay for it with his head. But Elijah said, No, I'll stay here. There's no problem. I'm going to be here. Verse fifteen Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him today. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. Came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Are thou that he that troubles Israel?
He answered, I have not troubled Israel. But thou and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and has followed Balaam. Now we mentioned making the message stick. The first time Elijah merely foretold what was going to happen. That is so far as the record goes. This time he traces the responsibility for what has happened right back to Ahab's own personal idolatry and his leading the nation astray. Now that was very dangerous with a desperate of this man's temperament. And yet that's what happened.
Now that was of course a further challenge. Now in First Kings chapter nineteen the challenge of the world of demons. We're getting into really difficult stuff here. The challenge of meeting and wrestling with evil spirit powers represented by the cult of Baal. Let us never for a moment think that this was just a lot of mumbo-jumbo, that this business of Baal was just to deceive people. It was to deceive people, but it was very real demonism. The Holy Spirit said through the Apostle Paul, the things which the Gentiles sacrificed, they sacrificed to demons.
He didn't say they're just useless little sticks. He said this is connected with demonism. So here is this lonely man of God, and now he has to go and meet actually the demons in their representatives of the priests of Baal. Despite the fact that there were many who had not bowed to Baal, not one of them seems to have come forward to help Elijah in the time of crisis and witness. He is one lone but undaunted man standing for God against overwhelming odds. No wonder he later said, I only am left. And as he went up to that mountain, you know the story very well, the test is this. If the Lord is God, follow him.
And if Baal is right, all right, follow him. But you have to make up your mind. He is a man, you see, who has surmounted challenges himself, and now he, in turn, is spiritually equipped to challenge other people. He has met the demands of God head on. He has made spiritual decisions in the light of the Word of God. He has committed himself fully to God. They know it, and he knows it. Now he's able to stand and say the same thing to them. Here is God, the true God. Now what are you going to do about it? Of course, there was a big fight. Do you remember that day how the priest of Bale jumped up and down, and he taunted them and said, maybe Bale's gone for a walk, and he hasn't come back yet.
You should yell a little louder. Maybe he's gone for his afternoon nap. He's that kind of a fellow. And he goaded them until they were jumping up and down in the altars and cutting themselves with knives, trying to attract the attention of Bale. And away on about the time of the evening sacrifice, he said, you better stop. You're not getting anywhere. And then this man saturated those altars with water to prove to them that this was not something which could be explained scientifically. To prove that what he was going to do was altogether against every formula that they knew. It was divine, and it couldn't be explained. And I wish we could get this into our heads once and twice.
And this lonely man drenches those altars with water, digs a ditch round about them and pours it on. And some smart modernist said, wonder where they got all that water when there was a drought around when they hadn't even enough to water the donkey. If you happen to look where the mountain was, it was very close to the sea, actually. It was one of the ramparts, one of the parts of the table land that swept right down to the sea, and in all probability that's where they've got it. No real problem. But in any case, God sent fire from heaven, and the fire burnt up the offerings, dried up the water, licked the very dust and melted the very stones, devoured the whole thing, judgment on the offering, and then a judgment which came right on the earth.
bride up the whole thing and the people knew this was the hand of God. This man knew how to live so that people would acknowledge the finger of God in his life and in his dealings. Do you? Do you know how to live that way so that people would say that's got to be God? I know that fellow. I know that girl. It certainly isn't they themselves. But you know that's something different. That life is something different. That's really what this bonds down to. It was a manifestation of God through the intercession and life and faith and challenge of this one lonely man and nobody else with him.
Now, this is handling the world of demons. I think we, in a day like this, are living in a day of demonism. We're living in a day when the very presence and power of God are challenged. And when we need to be able to stand up and do what this man did in our own little way. Then comes the test and the challenge of physical and emotional exhaustion. Can't you just see me? Chapter nineteen. Of course, all these priests of Baal were killed. And this man, Elijah, gets himself in a jam over it.
First of all, look at the end of verse eighteen. The hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he girded up his loins and ran before Ahab, who was at the mountain, to the entrance of Jezreel, the city of Jezreel. Now, I tried to measure the different distances that this man traveled, the end of that chapter and the next chapter, and it adds up to a tremendous amount of moving around that he did in a relatively short time. That one race, by the way, from the mount to the entrance to Jezreel was pretty close to thirty miles. Check it out on your maps, not now, or you'll miss the rest of the story.
That's research work. That's a job you've been given to do at home, an assignment. That's the word I wanted. And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done. With all how he had slain all the prophets with the sword, Jezebel sent a message unto Elijah saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as a life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. Late in the afternoon, and she said, All right, Mr. Preacher, by tomorrow afternoon you'll be as dead as they are. And he knew that when this woman wanted to make anybody dead, she usually did it.
She did was Naboth anyway, and probably a lot of other people. She had had quite a bit of practice. And when he saw that, he arose and went for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah and left a servant there. Now, Jezreel is in the north, near Mount Carmel. And Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, is in the south. So he traveled approximately a hundred and twenty miles in that little John. He'd already run thirty. The maps of your Bible are really very interesting. He himself, having left his servant in the wilderness of Beersheba that belongs to Judah, he himself went another day's journey beyond that into the wilderness.
Now he's now in the wilderness, presumably the wilderness of the south. which, by the way, is the wilderness of the Negev that you hear about these days. Negev means the south. And he's now way out in the wilderness of the south of the Negev, going way down towards the direction of the Sinai Peninsula. He himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a juniper tree and requested for himself that he might die. The poor man was really overtired. Hmm. And I imagine he wasn't the first servant of God, whoever was tired. And I'm certain that he wasn't the last. And I'm sure there have been times when you've been very tired too.
And when we're tired and overstrained, sometimes we say silly things. And this was one silly thing that Elijah said. Because he was emotionally drained. Don't forget the tremendous struggle he had been through on the top of Mount Carmel with the very forces of hell. The emotional drain of that. is just beyond words. The strain and struggle of this whole business about the rain coming, because you see, in between he went and prayed about the rain, and the cloud is coming, size of a man's hand, and it's blowing in from the sea, and the whole tension, will God answer, will God not? He had to pray and send a servant seven times before he saw the cloud.
Can you imagine what this was doing to the man? It was just tightening him right up and he probably hadn't slept for days. Then he ran thirty miles. Then he traveled a hundred and twenty miles right down through the whole country to the Negev. Then he leaves his servant behind and he goes a whole day by himself. Can you imagine the torture of the man in all that time by himself? Even the servant left behind. And now his heart's just going lower and lower and lower. He's really had it. And Jezebel is going to kill him. So he goes and sits down beside this little juniper bush. And he said, Lord, I just want to die. Now, he really didn't at all. Because if he had wanted to die, all he had to do was stay at Jezreel, and Jezebel would have done that for him.
Just as easily as that. It says, as a matter of fact, in verse three, that he went for his life, meaning he ran for his life. He ran to get away from Jezebel. He didn't want to die. But when he got in this tantrum sitting under the bush, he said, Lord, just take away my life from me. We do say unreasonable things when we're very tired. It'd be nice if people didn't pay any attention to them, but sometimes they do. It's wonderful that God is so gracious and so patient with us. We become unreasonable and we say foolish things. We have to come back to God sometimes and confess them. But here is a very tired man, but he's wrestling with this business.
The challenge of facing physical breakdown and emotional reaction in God's service is no less real because it is suffered in God's service. Weiriness is just as much weariness when it's weariness for God. Despondency and mental and emotional suffering is just as much suffering when it's the care of all the churches. Paul knew this, and any Christian will know it who really deals with God. Under the juniper tree in the wilderness, he is obviously a man worn out and overstrained. who, under God's tender care, provision and guidance, found the answers and surmised it to Christ. What he thought should be done in one way and probably by himself, God showed him, would be done in a different way and by others.
Haseel on the international level. Jehu on the national level and Elisha on the spiritual level. Because he sat down, he said, I'm finished. I don't want to bother anymore. You've pushed me around and things have gone from bad to worse and I only am left. And one old preacher said, he sure he mumbled under his breath, and when I'm gone, there'll be nobody left. And so God started to talk to him. He said, no, no, this isn't like that. You're not the only one. Just stop and think. And then a very gracious God did two things for him. He gave him a good long sleep in verse five as he lay and slept under the juniper tree.
An angel touched him. He said, arise and eat. And then he looked, and behold, there was a cake, bacon on the coals, and a cruise of water at his hand. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again, and had another sleep. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went, and the strength of that meat, forty days and forty nights, unto Horeb, the mount of God, You know where Horeb is? That's Mount Sinai. Measure that on your maps. You see, we don't think about these distances.
That was another two hundred miles on top of the hundred