My own heart has been refreshed already with the fellowship of God's people in this place. I'm so glad I got invited. I really am. More and more as we press on toward glory, I'm aware that I need other Christians. And it should be such because we are not only members of his body, we are members one of another. And every joy within the body supplies strength. And I need you. And I believe you need me. We need each other. First Kings chapter seventeen. Reading the first seven verses this morning. And Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, get away from here and turn eastward and hide by the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went, and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and stayed by the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening. and he drank from the brook. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Elijah had been praying in the mountains of Gilead, and he had received from the Lord the answer that there was to be no rain for three and a half years upon the land of Israel. He went with that message to Ahab. No debating. He went with the message, delivered it to the king. And now he was alone before the hostile king, the pagan queen. He was in a land that was saturated with the blood of God's people, a land that had been overrun by heathen priests. Sometimes at the command of God we deliver his message, we go into the place where he's commanded and having fully obeyed him. We find ourselves in unpleasant circumstances. Elijah was a man of like passion such as we. That is, he had a nature like ours. I'll not speak for you this morning, but for myself. But there have come times when after obedience to God and something he wanted me to do, I said, why did I get into this mess? Why am I here? I've obeyed the Lord. It looks as if the circumstances would be a bit more pleasant than they are. And here was the light, what he must have thought. But in all of this, God was teaching... not only israel some lessons he was teaching his servant elijah some lessons and i want to mention four of those lessons this morning in a very practical way trusting that god will with it speak pointedly to each of us this morning in particular at least four lessons that Elijah needed to learn at this point. Number one, that God unfolds his will as we obey him. Very simple, fundamental truth in God's dealings with his people in all ages. Abraham has the title, the Father of the Faithful. You read in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, verse eight, that he went out, not knowing where he was going. Suppose Elijah had asked a lot of questions while he was yet up in the mountains of Gilead, when the call of God came to his heart. So suppose he said, why me, Lord? Why don't you pick someone else? After all, I'm content here in the mountains of Gilead. Why should I go to Samaria? He could have raised some questions up there in his homeland, but he never would have gone at the command of God and in the will and purpose of Jehovah. No doubt some other man would have been God's messenger to King Ahab. And right here, I believe, is at least one key to spiritual success in our lives. That we don't pry open a door. Nor do we seek to close one when God opens it. That we take the step which he bids in utter obedience and then trust him for the next one. had a friend who used to say, clean up the room you are in. And when you're finished with that, God will open a door to the next one. And this was the course which Elijah took. Utter obedience to God, step by step, and as he obeyed, God opened, unfolded his will. to Elijah. Trust and obey. Well, there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. You recall that the children of Israel gathered manna every day. But if one in that company chose to hoard some and to gather an extra supply more than needed for the day, Then he lost what he had, spoiled. And it's that way in God's dealings with us. Step by step, day by day, we may not see His plan, His purpose for tomorrow, but to be obedient today and to do so, then God will unfold His will to us as we walk in momentary obedience to that will. There's another lesson that Elijah was learning, particularly by this incident which we have read today, that sometimes God gets us alone to teach us. Verse three, hide thyself. He said, get away from here and hide thyself. Elijah, you've been faithful up until now. Now I have some further instructions for you. Get away from here. Go eastward to the brook Chara and hide thyself. Folks, Spiritual growth is not attained in meetings. Business is not holiness. For over twenty years now, I've been engaged in this itinerant ministry and averaged somewhere between twenty-five, thirty different churches a year. So I'm in all kinds of churches. A lot of Baptist churches. I might as well make a full confession now that I was pastor of a Baptist church for twenty-four years. Well, I'm really not making a confession. I'm just stating a fact. And I always am interested in reading the church bulletin where I go and that portion that's called the calendar for the week. And I must confess to you that sometimes after I have completed reading the calendar for the week, I am totally exhausted. that it's all day Sunday and then again Monday night and something Tuesday night and Wednesday night and Thursday night and Friday and then a lot of activities on Saturday and then again on the Lord's Day and around and around it goes and someone will come to know the Lord as Savior, a new convert and they'll say, get him busy, get him busy, get him busy and they'll thrust him into a round of activities Now, you understand, if you're a lazy Christian, I don't want you to get any comfort from this this morning. I believe in activity and the right kind. But you know what happens? They're thrust into a round of activities, and it's not long until they dry up on the vine. And the same thing happens not only to young converts. It sometimes happens to those of us who have been long on the way. that if we do not take time to get alone in fellowship with the Lord, then we become fruitless and barren in our Christian life. I heard a poem. Preacher said I feel a poem coming on. It's a profound poem. Let me give it to you. Mary had a little lamb. It should have been a sheep. It joined a Baptist church and died for lack of sleep. That sometimes happens in other kinds of assemblies, too. Elijah, hide thyself. Go to the brook chariot. A little lonesome, was he? Indeed, I'm sure he was, but it was needful in his life. Three years in the Arabian desert for Paul. those three years is the time in which God gave to him great revelation. When God got ready to give the revelation of Jesus Christ concerning future events of the end time, he put John the beloved on the Isle of Patmos alone. It was those years in Bedford Jail that produced through Bunyan Pilgrim's progress. And before meeting Ahab, Elijah was alone in prayer in the mountains of Gilead, and before that contest on Carmel, Elijah was alone by the brook Cherith. Our Lord's disciples had returned from ministry, and they were enthusiastic and wanted to give a report of all that they had seen happen and all that they had done and the Lord Jesus said to them come apart into a desert place and rest a while and how often you and I need to hear that folks and to learn that we are not indispensable in the Lord's work. In nineteen sixty-eight, well I was still in the pasture one morning at six o'clock. I woke up and I couldn't get my breath and I was nauseated and an elephant was sitting on my chest and my left arm had gone numb and I thought I was going on to glory. The Lord chose to set me aside for two months. I was out of the pulpit for two months. And I found out in those two months that I was not indispensable. I found out that there were other brethren who could do the things that I was doing and do them better. I found out that the work of the Lord and that local assembly of believers in East Point, Georgia, would go on whether I was there or not. I'm not going to give you my medical history now. I'm going to show you my incision this morning. I just want you to know this. that as I look back over these years that God's allowed me to serve him, perhaps those two months were the most profitable in my life. The necessity to hide ourselves, to absorb the power of his presence, and to be taught of God. Maybe you're in a chariot this morning. charith of the sick room or the charith of bereavement or maybe the charith of broken relationships. Maybe for you it's the charith of solitude from the crowds. Maybe for someone here this morning it's the charith of business reverses. And God has said, Hide yourself. Come by the brook. Elijah, no doubt, was lonesome. But there he was, by the sparkling waters of the brook charat, and his meals were being served by the ravens. Every bite, every swallow was miraculous. And that grouse that had come upon the land Elijah was not outside of that drought, but he was above that drought. God had taken him to the brook, Cherith, and he was to learn in that time as never before an increasing, continuing dependence upon God. God often gets us alone to teach us. I think there's something else here, that this very circumstance, this drought that was affliction to the willful, the king and the queen and the willful people of Israel, that very drought became to Elijah something that was profitable. God had answered his prayer, and for that very reason he had to be in dependence upon Jehovah. There's a third lesson here, and that is that God is teaching us to lean, to trusting. Up until this time, for Elijah, everything was miraculous. Think of it. Down that narrow gorge, he went under the cover of those trees. to be safe from the armies of Ahab that no doubt were out looking for him. He was safe from them under the shelter of those trees and by that brook. And in verse four, Jehovah says to him, I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. by Elijah might have known some better place to hide. I'm sure he was not entirely immune to the topography of that land. He must have known of other places. But this was God's place for him. Nowhere else. He said there. There I will cause the ravens to feed you, and you'll drink of the brook. In what place do you find yourself today? I'm not speaking geographically, but in your experience today. No doubt there are some of God's people here today that are passing through some deep waters, and you find yourself today in the... A place of unpleasantness. A situation that is trying. And yet you know that you are there in the will of God. And if there is this consciousness of the will of God, there is the promise of his provision in that place. I think of a dear lady who over the years, my pastorate in Atlanta, came to me repeatedly. She is today one of our dearest friends, a lovely Christian, who at the time of her marriage, both she and her husband were unsaved. A number of years later, she came to know Christ as personal Savior. They moved from Birmingham to Atlanta. And she became interested in the study of the Word of God and came regularly to sit under the Word of God. Her husband never came. He was an unconverted man. He was given to drink. Terribly so. And it was a difficult thing for her. And she would come to me and she would say, Brother Paul, I've had all I can take. I'm going to leave him. And I would take her to the seventh chapter of First Corinthians and say, Sally, It says if the unbelieving husband be pleased to dwell with the believing wife, let her not leave him. And she'd say, yes, it does say that. I'll obey. And we'd have prayer. And maybe four, five, six months later she would come again. and go through the same thing with me again. And I'd go back to the same passage of Scripture and say, but Sally, this is what the Word of God says. She said, that's right. And this went over a number of years and this man became desperately ill. And dear friends, I shall never forget the day in the hospital when I stood by his bed. She on one side, I on the other. And I heard him say, I will trust Christ. And one week later, he went into eternity. because she stayed in the will of God, did not leave that place where God had put her. The unbelieving husband was sanctified by the believing wife, and he came to know the Savior just before he entered into eternity. Now, I would not suppose that there is such a case like that here this morning. But perhaps as a believer today, you find yourself in a situation that may not be pleasant. But you know that you are there where you are in the will of God. Jehovah said, Elijah, to the brook tariff. I will cause the ravens to feed you there in the place of God's provision for him. It was F.B. Meyer who said, the manna always accompanies the pillar of cloud. When you and I move in the will of God, We may be assured of his provision for us. What is he doing? He's teaching us to trust him, to lean upon him. Verse seven, here's the fourth lesson I mentioned. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Lesson number four, sometimes we have to sit by drying brooks. You can picture the scene. Each succeeding hour and day, there was less water in that brook, and the land became parched, and the whole land of Canaan baked under that sun, with no rain, and that little brook tariff began to dry up. What did Elijah say? Not a word. escapes his lips so far as the divine record is concerned. Not a word. Though the brook was drying up. Four men have had a tremendous influence on my life. First of all, my own father, who practiced on Monday morning what he preached on Sunday. Second man was Dr. William L. Pettengill, who was a frequent visitor to our home when I was a boy, and later came to minister the Word of God in a little church that I pastored in South Georgia. Third man was Dr. M.R.D. Hahn. Fourth man was a man by the name of Dr. George McNeely. Is there anyone in this assembly this morning that ever heard of Dr. George McNeely? Anybody? That's what I thought. He was of that generation of Petten Gill and I.M. Haldeman, men of that caliber, George McNeely, pastor a little chapel in Newark, New Jersey. Great strapping Irishman. You would guess that from McNeely, wouldn't you? He had come from the old country. As was true in the old country, many of the Baptist preachers in the old country still wore the clerical garb. When he came to America, he still wore the clerical garb. I'm not passing judgment on that this morning, and I hope that doesn't disturb you too much, but he did. The most original Bible teacher that I ever heard, a great, godly man. In his last visit with us in Atlanta, we were coming from the hotel to the church, and I said, Dr. McNeely, How is the work going in Newark? And I shall never forget his reply. He said, My brother, you have never sat beside a drying brook, have you? And that was his reply. I got no other word from him. And in his later years, There was but a little handful of people in that chapel that had in previous years prospered. And here was a good, a godly man sitting beside a drying brook. Maybe I'm talking to someone here this morning that sits beside a drying brook. Maybe it's the drying brook of health. or the drying brook of friendships, or the drying brook of popularity, contacts with others. You sit this morning beside a dime. Why does God allow the brooks to dry? Well, He allows the brooks to dry, dear friends, to teach us not to trust on His blessings. but to trust in him and in himself alone. Not to lean upon his favors, but to lean upon him. There's a song in Christian circles now that has become quite popular in use across the land. I wouldn't subscribe to all the words of it, but the course goes like this. Learning to lean. Learning to lean. I'm learning to lean on Jesus. Finding more power than I've ever dreamed. I'm learning to lean on Jesus. Sometimes he gets us alone to teach us. But as we obey, he unfolds his will. And in it all, he's teaching us to lean on him, even when we sit beside a drying brook. You may write over the whole story this morning, dear friends. God is faithful. Let's pray. Father, we are your children. And we want to thank you this morning that thou art teaching us. Oh, help us to learn the lessons well. And today, Father, if there is a new step of faith, a new spiritual venture, may we take that step knowing that the faithful God is with us. May we learn obedience in your school so that we may please the one who gave his son that we might have life. sanctify this portion of your word to our hearts. If, Father, any chaff has been given, I pray that the wind of the Spirit will blow it away, but that the seed of your word will find lodging in our hearts and lives and bring forth fruit to the glory of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.