1 Kings 17: Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes it seems that troubles never come one at a time but in bunches.

Did you ever feel that God had delivered you from one disaster, only to land you in another?

Today I want us to consider the story about the famous prophet Elijah and a poor widow who befriended him and won an honored place in Bible history.

I. It was one of the darkest times in the history of the Kingdom of Israel.

A. The king was Ahab, one of the wickedest kings Israel ever had. But his queen, Queen Jezebel was, if you can believe it, even more wicked than he was. Queen Jezebel encouraged King Ahab in his wickedness.

Jezebel wasn’t an Israelite; she came from Sidon, a city of the Phoenicians, far north of Israel. This is in modern day Lebanon.

Jezebel had her own ideas about worship. She brought with her 450 priests of the god Baal and 400 prophets of the goddess Asherah.

Ahab made an altar in the capital city Samaria for Baal, and led Israel away from the Lord, the God of Israel.

B. Then came the fearless prophet Elijah.

Elijah appears suddenly on the scene in 1 Kings 17. He was sent to announce a terrible judgment. He said to the king: “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word!” (I Kings 17:1).

After he had delivered this message, the Lord instructed him to save his life by going to the Brook Cherith, a little stream in the wilderness, 90 miles away to the south.

God told Elijah that during this terrible drought, he could drink from the brook and that the ravens would feed him.

B. So Elijah set out and walked the several days it would have taken him and settled down by the brook Cherith.

Every day the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening.

The raven is a nasty bird. He is a scavenger that feeds on dead animals. But evidently the bread and meat was okay, because it kept Elijah healthy.

C. Then the brook dried up because there had been no rain for so long.

With Elijah it was just one thing after another.

He had escaped from King Ahab, who was determined to kill him.

The brook had provided drink, and the ravens had provided food, and now the brook had dried up.

D. So once more God spoke to Elijah: “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you” (1 Kings 17:8).

Elijah must have been surprised by this announcement because Zarepahth was 120 miles north, and it was in the heathen country where Queen Jezebel came from.

When God told Elijah that he had commanded a widow to feed him, Elijah may have supposed that he would find some rich widow with a pantry full of food. But that’s not what happened.

II. Reading from 1 Kings 17:10-16:

So he arose and went to Zarephath; and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.”

And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; and now, I am gathering a couple of sticks, that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”

And Elijah said to her, “Fear not; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel, ‘The jar of meal shall not be spent and the jug of oil shall not fail, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’”

And she went and did as Elijah said; and she and he, and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not spent, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by Elijah.

B. Let’s picture the scene.

Here comes Elijah, after living outdoors for some weeks, he hadn’t changed his clothes or shaved. He didn’t smell very good. He must have seemed pretty rough to the lady.

The woman was desperately poor. She was preparing a last meal for herself and her son before they starve to death.

But she obeyed the prophet. She set out right away to get the water.

But then Elijah called after her: “While you are at it, bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

I wonder whether Elijah suspected how much he was asking. And the woman told him her situation.

When Elijah promised that if she would give him that first little cake of bread, her jar of flour and her cruse of oil would not give out until the rains came back, he was asking for an unreasonable amount of faith on her part—faith that this foreigner was truly a prophet, and, if she obeyed, she would be rewarded.

B. This woman had faith.

There must have been something about this strange foreigner who called after her that marked him as a prophet.

Of maybe she was one of those generous souls who was accustomed to putting others’ needs before her own. In the name of his God, he promised her that her needs would be taken care of. And she believed him.

She took a chance.

Faith is always “taking a chance,” taking a chance that God is real and that his promises are true. Faith is a venture. There are no guarantees.

There is always room for doubt. If there weren’t room for doubt, faith would not be faith.

And she was rewarded. The jar of meal kept being miraculously replenished and the little jar of oil kept being miraculously replenished until the rains came again and the famine was over.

C. So here is a lesson for us about how God works in a life.

The little I have will stay little if I hold it tight in my hands.

But if I give God what I have—whether it is little or much—he will bless me with abundance.

What God asks of us is to give him first place in our life.

Jesus made the same point when he told his disciples, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

My life is my most precious possession. And Jesus asks me to give him my life.

He says, in effect, “Keep your life for yourself, and in the end it will dwindle away and be gone. But if you can trust me enough to give yourself to me, I will make your life a blessing to you and to others for ever and ever.”

So what does it mean to give myself to God?

When I first became truly committed to Jesus, these two little sentences from 1 Corinthians jumped off the page and lodged in my heart. Here they are: “You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Jesus died for me. He gave everything for me. Now he asks me to give myself to him.

Giving yourself to Jesus is made up of a lot of little things—little acts of kindness… using our money for God… spending time with someone who is sorrowing… forgiving someone who has hurt you… praying seriously every day... feeding on the Bible and letting what you read there mold you to Christlikeness…

One preacher put it this way. “We think that giving all to Jesus is like taking a $1000 bill land laying it on the table—‘here is my life, Lord, I’m giving it all.’ but the reality is that he sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $1000 for quarters. We go through life putting 25¢ here and 50¢ there. Usually giving our life isn’t glorious. It’s done in all those little acts of love 25¢ at a time” (Fred Craddock, quoted by Pheme Perkins in The New Interpreters Bible, on Mark 8:39-9:1)

CONCLUSION

This would be a good place to end my message, but there is more in the story.

Elijah stayed with the widow and her son for many days.

And after a time, the son became ill and died.

The widow came to Elijah and cried out, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!”

In those days people believed—and some people still do—that when bad things happen to people, it is their fault. God must be punishing them for something they’ve done.

Some people also believe that the good things that happen to us are rewards for our good behavior.

It is true that sin has its price—but it is not always in this world.

It is also true that goodness has its reward—but it also may not be in this world.

So Elijah was stricken with grief.

He took the child and carried him into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his own bed.

1 Kings 17:19-24:

Then he cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?”

Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s soul come into him again.”

And the Lord hearkened to 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 from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother: and Elijah said, “See, your son lives.”

And the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”

We don’t know the name of this woman, but she has an honored place in scripture.

Jesus spoke of her in a message in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth as an outstanding example of faith (Luke 4:25-26).

You may feel like you have little faith. You may pray for more faith. You may have doubts

But faith in the Bible has little to do with having no doubts.

Faith in the Bible has to do with obedience.

Jesus said that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains.

Jesus isn’t telling us to get more faith. He is telling us: “You have enough faith; now use it.”

A woman was entertaining a guest. She took a silver teapot out of the cupboard. As she did, she remarked to her friend: “Dreadfully tarnished! I can’t keep it bright unless I use it.”

It’s the same with our faith. We can’t keep it bright unless we use it.

And the way we use our faith is by obeying God in everything we do—big or little.

Our part is to step out and do the right thing. We put our faith to work by seeking to please God in everything we do.