First King, seventeen. And verse one. First King, seventeen and one. And Elijah the fishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, There shall not be do's or 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 Terran, 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 unto the word of the Lord. For he went and dwelt by the brook terrace, that is before Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook. And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. I will stop this morning because we want to spend our time on this remarkable incident in the life of Elijah. Elijah was the instrument God used to turn Israel back to God. They had apostatized the veil, and so God has laid his hand upon this man Elijah. They might turn Israel back to the true God. And the resources that he had are resources available to you and to me. That is, it was by faith that he did this, faith in a living God. You say, well, I don't have that kind of faith. And people make that as an excuse today. I don't have that kind of faith. Well, you may have this kind of faith that you're willing to pay the price for it. How do you get that faith? Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. If you have little faith, it's because you read very little of the Bible. If you read a lot of the Bible, you'll likely have great faith. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of the Lord. If a person doesn't study the Scriptures, they're not going to have very much faith. and they'll succumb to circumstances, small circumstances, when one with great faith would surmount those circumstances. How can you expect to know very much about a person unless you read about that person? And the more you read the Bible, the more you get to know of God. And if you spend time in this book and he is the author of this book, then you'll get to know something of God And the more you get to know of him, the more you'll be led to trust him and put confidence in him. The Spirit of God is given as a gift to all who trust the Lord Jesus. The moment you accept Christ, the Spirit comes in to abide. He's within your heart. But then if you're going to have the Spirit's power for life, a victorious life, and for fruitful service, you pay a price. And the price you pay is reading the word. And some of the experiences that Elijah had on this occasion. And if you read God's word and you have that faith in God, you will receive the Spirit's energy and power for service. Now I say again, the coming of the Spirit into a human heart is a free gift at confession. Salvation is free. But power with God and poor God in service is costly. You pay a price. And I trust that young Christians as well as old Christians be willing to pay the price for the fullness and freshness and fruitfulness of the Spirit's power. In other words, you must go to some of the places and the meaning of those places that Elijah went to care of, which means separation. and to Zarifa. And Zarifa is the place of the furnace, not a very pleasant place. So we find how we go in grace. In other words, before you're going to stand on Mount Carmel, it will be seeking on maybe next week or in a future message, on Mount Carmel. They are confronted. Here is Elijah. He's confronting those four hundred and fifty prophets of Bain. He's confronting Ahab, that wicked king, and Jezebel, his wicked wife. Here's the great confrontation on Mount Carmel. And of course, Elijah, by the hand of God, threw him, won that mighty victory, and turned the nation of Israel back to the living God. But he didn't do that. He didn't take that place in public until he knew the experience of piracy with God. He must go to Keres and to Zaretah before he stood on Mount Car. These are the pathways. This is the pathway and the stopping places on the ways of prominence in the things of God. God, first of all, said, as we noticed last week to Elijah, He came from Gilead, Ramos Gilead, almost an unknown. Nothing is said much about him. But God just put it upon his heart. He gave him instruction. You go to Ahab. You give your message to Ahab. That you've got a message. And the lean old rain from the sky. Only at my word. That was quite a message book. It means he would have control of the elements. And so he brought that message to Ahab and to Jezebel. There will be no rain upon the earth. But according to my word, and he left, and he went to Keth. He had some experience at Keth, and we'll go into that a little. But I want to get to this point. It's a hidden place. God wants his people to have that quiet place each day so they might spend a little time with him. Elijah might have said, all right, Lord, I'll go to tariff, but what next? What after that? God says, one step at a time. You go to tariff. And when you're through a tariff, and by the way, you're going to stay there over three years, when you're through your experience at tariff, Then I'll tell you the next step. One step at a time. That's the way the Lord leads his own. Take that and trust me, and I'll give you the next step when the time is appropriate. Remember that was true of the Apostle Paul when in Acts nine six, Paul says, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? This is your next step, Paul. You've been saved. Your next step is this. Go into thee. Go into the city, and that shall be told thee what thou oughtest to do. That's your next step. When God said to his people, the people of Israel, as they went through the wilderness, the manna fell from heaven every day. When Saturday came, or the day before their Sabbath, they received twice as much. So God says you're not going to go out on the Sabbath day and pick up your manner. You'll get it every day until the day before the Sabbath. I'll give you Christ of mine. And that will carry you over the Sabbath to the beginning of another week in Israel's history. It came down as each day's knee arose, so the manner came. Why we don't like that? We say that's too slow. That's not fast enough progress. I'd like to have a whole week's supply. And you know it's quite noticeable today. When people realize a crisis is coming and the energy crisis or food's going to be short, they start packing up, storing it up, going to the one market after another and getting all that it needs, all the food they need and all the produce and so on. And they start storing it up, storing it up for an emergency. You don't have to do that yourself. You can't store up grace for some coming or mercy. God said, As thy day so shall thy strength be. And so God fed his people a day at a time. Every morning they got up, there was their supply. They said, Lord, give me enough for two days. Give me enough for three days. No, just God didn't come down every day. And you'll have to get up and get it, because when the sun came up, it melted. Get up early and get it. And this is what God wants us to do. Have that quiet time with God. The best time is early in the morning. I learned that years ago when I was first saved, I'd wait for a while. I think I'll do that tonight. And when I come home and picked up my Bible, I was fast late before I got to a chapel, working all the day in the railroad shop. And then that when I saw it was early in the morning, and I got a big old alarm clock and woke myself up at five o'clock in the morning, determined to give God those best hours of the day. It's that quiet time, and that's what God wants us to take advantage of, as thy days, O shall thy strength. Now the second step in verses two and three, and the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Now how did the word of the Lord come unto Elijah? They didn't have the Bible. They didn't have the scriptures. How did the word of the Lord come unto Elijah? Did God send another prophet to him? No. Did God send an angel to him? He has no report of that. It must have been the still small voice of God speaking to his heart. So real and so distinct was that voice, and he dipped his heart as if God had spoken audibly from him. He couldn't do anything else but that. God said unto Elijah, and that's a lovely word, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, God, get thee hence and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the group test. Get thee hence, and you'll notice he didn't take any time to obey. Verse five, so he went and did according. And to the word of the Lord. That's nice when we obey immediately. When God tells us about it. Don't wait three or four weeks. Say, well, I'll pray about it. When God says, do something, he means to do it. Not tomorrow, but today. Yes, Elijah got his commission. And this word, as I mentioned in the beginning, means separate. Elijah, I want you to go down to the Brook Terrible. And he said, was led there by the Lord. It must have been a very secret place because Ahab, the king, and Jezebel, the queen, they were looking for him after he made that statement, that we know rain from the heavens until I say so. They knew the devastation and the ruin was going to come upon the land. And when a week passed and no rain, a month passed and no rain, and two months and no rain, things began to get desperate. And King Ahab and Jezebel wanted to know where that man is. He holds our very destiny in his hand. You want to find him. And you'll read this over in chapter eighteen five. And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land unto all fountains of water and unto all brooks. Fair adventure we may find grass to save the horses and mule the life that we lose not all the beasts. And he was sent unto time to find a life. Now God must have had a pretty good hiding place when he couldn't be found throughout all the land of the ten tribes and all the dead. But Lord led them to this place, the place called Cairn. You're going to be alone, Elijah. You're not going to have any visits from your brethren. I don't want anyone to know you're there. You'll be all alone. for I don't want anyone to leak the word that you're there because Ahab will pang you. But I'll tell you, who will know you're there? The ravens, butters. They'll know. And that's all that's to fight. And I'm going to cause those butters, those ravens, to bring you your meal, morning and night. But there's where you're going to be. All you'll see around you is the growing results of this famine. You can look up today and you go to that private place, that quiet place. Could you find a place more quiet than down by the brook, carry it? Yes, God's servant must be taught the value of the hidden life, private before public, low before God, before us, before man. knowing something of dealing with God in private before you deal with men in public. This has been God's rule. The disciples, they came back while they were full of themselves. This is what you read. Flushed with their success in Mark six and thirty and thirty one. And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus and told them all things of what they had done on what they had taught. Boy, they were filled with themselves. what they've done, what they've taught. And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place. I want you men to come aside. You become in place. I want you to know something of the quiet place. Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place. There the Lord had a talk with his disciples. How nice it is when we can stop hide ourselves. Sometimes God has a way of making it hide. It could be hide thyself in the sick chamber. It could be hide thyself in the caret of disappointed hope. It could be hide thyself in the caret of bereavement. These are unpleasant places. The whole hide and be alone with God. The best place. is chariot of the quiet place in your old bright room. That's what the Lord wants us to be exercising, getting along with God. I know it's quite an article, I hope, on it. I'm going to have to cut it out, but I didn't. One night this week in the Herald, it had quite an article about the trouble with present-day students in our schools and in university, a lack of beef. They're just not reading the way they used to. They're spending their time before the truth. They're spending their time doing this and that and everything else. They're not giving themselves to reading. That's what Paul told Timothy to do. Give thyself to do. And Christians would be a lot stronger and a lot happier today if they do more reading. Get into the quiet place and read your Bible. Go there. Elijah, as quick as you can, get to heaven. Think of these verses in your Bible. I looked up these verses this week. Psalm one, four, three, nine, I plead unto thee to hide me. Go to heaven. Hide thy shelter. I plead unto thee to hide me. Hide me in the secret of thy tabernacle and beneath the cover of thy game. Psalm seventeen eight, Keep me as the apple of the eye. Hide me under the shadow of thy dream. Thirty-one and twenty. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man. Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the sight of none. Psalm twenty-seven, five, for in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion, in the secret of his tabernacle jail. He hide me. Then again in sixty-four, too, hide me from the secret counsels of the wicked, from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity. If you study those verses, you see how God will hide you from these various things that come commonly into the life of man. The Lord Jesus gives the lovely text over in Matthew six and six about this quiet period. But thou, when thou prayest, entered into thy closet, When thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Just what I was saying a while ago. Sacred dealings with God, public dealings with men. Yes, the period of prayer, when God prays. Then the place of prayer, the clock. Then you have the privacy of prayer. Shut thy door. Then you have the persons in prayer. Thy heart is related. You don't know God as your father. You're not going to have any fellowship. If God is just all you know, a great being, a supreme being, who is a way out in space, and you haven't become related to him through Jesus Christ, and no man comes under the Father but by me, says the Lord Jesus. All a lot of people know is, well, God, what is God? The Lord Jesus has seen me, has seen the Father, and no man can come unto the Father, say to the Lord Jesus Christ, and only when you're born again do you know that link of divine relationship. We're born into this world, sinners. Our first birth, our firstly birth, qualified us, and equipped us for this pleasant earthly scene, this tangible scene. When you're born again, you're born into a spiritual realm, into a new relationship between God and your heart. He becomes your father, and you become his child, and you can have fellowship with him, our father, which I'm in heaven. God is not just your creator. And you the scripture. But when you are born again, he is your father. And you are his child. And this is the relation and the practice of prayer. When thou prayest, really doeth me. So promise, thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Isn't that wonderful? Here's the secret place. the place of prayer and of power. That lovely hymn, Hiding in thee. Hiding in thee, thou blessed walk of thee. I'm hiding in thee. This is a secret place. The shadow of his wings we read in some of those verses. Here you have prayer, you have protection. Here you have supplication. Here you are shelter. What a wonderful place to be. Hide yourself. Hide yourself Yes, where may I hide that? In the secret of his presence. Can you get into his presence? Yes, you can. It's open for all God's people. Just get your Bible and go into your temple. And I'm going to go further get on your knees. You say, go through all that trouble. If you mean business-yers, you go through all that trouble. You get into an emergency and you come up against an obstacle, a problem you cannot solve, a tragedy that's come into your life. Man cannot help you. You need help from God. Then go and get on your knees. Open his word, for he talks to you through his word and you talk to him through prayer. If you mean business, you'll know something of the quietness of the signal. Christians today, nominal Christians, you shock them today, and you tell them to read the Bible every day and have a session with God. That's why. Oh, they pay the preacher to do their prayer. They pay the preacher to read the Bible for this. He did that. He read all the Bible for all his congregations, did all the praying for all his congregations. He would have a preacher law, simple stern would have him. But the preacher's got to study himself, and he's got to pray to give out, to give out that the best thing is for you to get your own work. Today, people depend on spoon peel. They don't get it for themselves. You want someone to feed them all that. God says, go home and get it yourself. Get it in your own private place. Get it in your room, on your knees with the Bible before you. and reading. That's what God wants to do. Just like meditation through the long ages, absorb those qualities of sunshine, which it now gives out and gives back to burning cold. So when you're on your knees, you're absorbing that consciousness of God, that sense of God, that spiritual quality that's going to come out and benefit out. Think of David Rainer. I suppose you said about David Rainer, God's missionary to the Indians. He carried himself in the woods of North America when he went to preach to the Indians. That man wrestled with God so fervently that sometimes he fell into the snow and he cried to God for these poor, perishing Indians. He left The fall of his body in the snow, and the snow was melting because of the fervency of that man as he poured out his soul the block. Like this in Christmas heaven, that great revival in Wales, he hid himself in some of the hill country off Wales. Strict of John the Apostle. He went to his Patmos on the lonely Isle of Patmos. Before he got the vision of the revelation, God's plans for the future. Here he is in his quiet life. An old man passed nightly on his path. Take up Paul, the seclusion of the lonely prison. Or the seclusion of the Arabian desert. That's where Paul was taken. Before he gave us these wonderful epistles in the Bible. think of the son of God himself. He had the tariff on the mountain side where his locks were wrecked with the dew of heaven. He retired on the mountain side. His disciples had launched out onto the sea and he knew there was going to be a storm that night. He went up on the mountain side of Craven. He didn't like what over them? I'm Craven. He knew something on earth called the tariff of prayer and privacy. also into the wilderness of Judea, beneath the olives of Bethany and Gethsemane. Oh, the loneliness, the disciples could go only so full, and they couldn't when he heard that he was alone, sweating as it were, great dots of blood falling down to the ground and thinking of loneliness when he trailed to the cups of the cross, three hours of dust. My God, my God, Why hast thou mistaken me? That was his terror. Before the reins of blessing could fall upon this poor pastor in the gospel Jesus Christ had withdrawn to disarm the angel of God. He knew something of loneliness and solitude than no man or woman has ever known. See H. Spurgeon, a great preacher. He was ill for three years. The very active man knew little of sickness, but he was ill for three years. During that three years, God anointed his pen, and he wrote those five massive volumes on the treasure of David. The world has never produced the light. Five big volumes. I have them in the library up in North Carolina. I didn't bring them down. Five huge volumes, the treasure of David. written by Spurgeon through three years of ignorance. Have you, Achelle, a place where you learn God, a place where you prove God, a place where you absorb God? John Bunyan, who wrote that immortal pilgrim, progress from age of sixteen, was a rough and profane young man. And the age of nineteen, he was married to a young woman, and she was a Christian, but before she married him, He got him to go to church with her regularly, and he found Christ. When he found Christ, he began to preach Christ in the cottages and all around the countryside in barns or wherever people would listen to him in the villages, pung and preach the word of God. He became a remarkable preacher. To such an extent, in the year sixteen, sixty, he was arrested. For what? He was preaching the word of God against the views of the established church, the state church, and the parliamentarian. Here's an uneducated man, and he confounded the learned men because he's a man who had dealings with God. Once they came through and offered him the freedom, if he had stopped preaching, he said, I won't. All right, Bunyan, you'll spend ten years. I know. While in prison for twelve years, he wrote the Pilgrim's Father. Next to the Bible, in fact, he wouldn't have written it had he been running around the countryside today. But he wrote a book that lives today, the Pilgrim's Father. That was his challenge. His challenge. I wonder if he knows something. all these experiences. Here you have Elijah. He went to the carriage. He learned to trust God. How strange to be sent to a group that he knew himself would soon be subject to the drought and drought. Stranger still that ravens would be said to feed him, to cater to him. that he was sent with food that ravens never feed on themselves or he feed on rotten flesh, carrying. Strangest still that these ravens should come so regularly morning and night, and yet they didn't. I want you to go there, says God. Put the emphasis on that word there. There I commanded the ravens to feed you. Right there, Elijah. Don't choose any other group. There are many of them in the land. Don't choose any other spot. I commanded those ravens to feed you there. They're tied beside the group there. I want to say this. God will feed you when you're going to the place where he sends his message. God will not feed you a crumb in a modernistic church. You'll get fed there. You'll get fed where God's word is preached, where the whole Bible is presented, the whole Bible is believed in, and sought to be practiced by the grace of God. It's not a case of you choosing. It's a case of you getting where God sends his servants with his word. They may be like buzzards, but all the same. They've got the goods. Being these ravens will feed you there. That's the spot. And you go there. Elijah. That's what he wrote. How wonderful to think of Elijah there beside this book. God pledged. He said that you'd go. And you'd go there. I'll send my ravens. And they're going to feed you with bread and flesh. And they'll give you water to drink. Where in the world did these birds get the bread? I could imagine where they might get some of the flesh, but I don't know where they got the bread. Where did they get this food? God knows. He has a bakery. He has a storehouse. And these babies just carried this food to a life. You know, it's remarkable, King. People don't like to believe something like that. You mean to tell me why that means the supernatural, to believe that ravens would be commanded by God to do something contrary to their nature, to get clean food, and to get bread where they stole it. I don't know where they got it, but these ravens got this bread, this flesh, and they took it to the very spot where Elijah was. Why don't you say that's supernatural? I agree. And thousands of God's servants have been fed supernaturally down the centuries. They've been in God's face at God's time, doing God's faith, and God's will tell. I could tell many times in my old history where God met my need to some of his greatness. I think it was over in Germany. Here was a widow. And our only son was a cold winter night. And they were reading the Bible. Little boy was reading along with his mother. And they read this incident about the ravens. After a while the little fellow got up and they got through and he went and he opened the door. The mother said, Sonny, what do you open the door for? It's a cold night. No wood in the fire. No food on the table. Why are you open it? It's mummy. I'm opening the door that broad ravens might come in. One of the men in the town, what they call a burgo master, he was going home, and he thought it strange to see a door open on such a cold night, and the light shining out, the candlelight. So he walked to investigate, and when he stepped in, he asked the meaning of all this. The little fellow said, We're waiting on God's ravens to bring us some food. And he read on the portion of the Bible. The Berger master said, I'll give God ravens. And he fed them for a few years. You have to be a well-to-do man. Oh, yes. God has his ravens. The brook dried up. Here is Elijah watching that brook. Watching it, watching it. He could look up to the sunny skies, no cloud, just the blistering sun coming down month after month. The lean's all wilted, no green grass, like the bodies of dead beasts. Getting nothing to eat, tonguing could shake their thirst as the river began to ebb. Through few birds around for they too, victims of the drought. Elijah sits and he watches the stream. What then? Well, the raven came this morning, and I'm going to get water as long as the ravens come. Finally, finally, there wasn't enough water to fill a tube table screw. The brook dried up. My, the hours that Elijah must have sat beside that brook and washed the waters. Finally, nothing but a gravel bottom. The brook dried up. sitting beside the trying books. Did you ever sit beside the trying books of losing popularity? John the Baptist says, he must increase. I must increase. Oh yes, some people may worry about appalling popularity, losing their popularity. If you're occupied with the God of terror, you'll not worry about that. Is it the brook of health you're sitting watching and you watch as your health is ebbing, sitting under a creeping paralysis or a slow consumption TV or cancers? Yes, the brook's drying up, all you face is the dust you get. Are you watching? Remember the God of paradise. This all was an afterword to carrot. But we'll see tonight. Maybe it's the brook of money. Oh, yes, you have a good bank account. It's better get saved up. But the dwindling before the demand of sickness and bad debts and other people's extravagances, your book's drying up. There you sit. Maybe it's the brook of friendship. and you're losing your friend slowly diminishing soon they'll go one could go on and think of the drawing book of family relationship as I read this yesterday I thought yes the last three years my family has shrunk considerably I lost a sister I lost a brother I lost a beloved brother-in-law and so the family shrinking do we sit looking at the drying group of the family circle that's getting smaller by the day. Oh, here's where the God of cherries is. That's what happened in Elijah's case. Why? Why does God permit these cherries in our lives? I'll tell you why. We might turn our attention to him, the living and the people. He turns our attention to that river that flows out of the throne of God, that river that can never be exhausted, that river that will never ebbed, that river that will never dry up. This is the river the Lord Jesus Christ speaks about in John four. He says, who shall ever drink of this earthly water, these earthly pleasures that be like the brook church? Whoso ever drinketh of these waters shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the waters that I have given shall never thirst. Here is living water from heaven, from the heart of God. It comes by way of the cross, stained and made crimson by the blood of Christ. This is a river that will never dry up. Earth, look deep. Are you sitting, looking at those drying rivers, or are you Do you have your eye fixed on a water supply that's free? Satisforsen the glory. It comes to me by the spirit of God. Through the word. Oh, what did the bridegroom save the bride in song song? Drink, go drink, my brother. Friend, if you want this living water, let it satisfy your spirits of thirst for that. Are you sick to spend hours looking at the drawing rivers of time and of life? Here is a river. Ah, yes, it must survive the flight of the ages, the river of the water of life in Christ's life. Will you come to Christ the source of all your supplies as your passage, your world subject to death? I trust you have come to Christ this morning with all your heart as a sinner and as a Christian going up to find the source of all your soul purpose after in the fullness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Father in heaven in the name of thy son, we come to thee. We ask thy blessing upon thy bird, we thank thee for the riches of God in Christ Jesus. We thank thee for our chalice, where we prove God be met our need. May someone be brought to the repair of this morning. A sinner brought under conviction to see that everything in this world is dying up, but there is sufficiency in the supply of living water in Jesus Christ. May we as Christians not while away are hours watching the dry books of this cruel world. May we become refreshed as we drink of that living fountain. Oh, we thank thee that the Lord Jesus Christ best thy word and pray in his name. Amen. Shall we sing a verse of truth? Of two hundred and forty-three, softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. see on the portals who's waiting and watching watching for you and for me come home come home away from the desert and the drought and the pailing waters falling leaves come home we stand and sing number two Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. See on the floor God is waiting and watching. watching for you and for me. From the home, from the home, you are willing to come home, earnestly, tenderly, Jesus and truly. I'd like to speak to us. We write up the fun afternoon meeting. Come back tonight and we'll be after this one. Unless you come back. We'll be in this very same chapter. So do it again.