9/20/2015 Elijah In Sidon – A Testament To God's Glory

Luke and 1 Kings Readings on Elijah and the Widow

Luke chapter four, beginning in verse 14, which can be found on page 692 of your new Bible. And then following that, 1 Kings chapter 17, beginning in verse seven, which can be found on page 247 of your new Bibles.

When you arrive at Luke chapter four, beginning in verse 14, please stand if you are able for the reading of God's word. Luke chapter four, beginning in verse 14. This is the word of the Lord. Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of him went out through all the surrounding region.

And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. So he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.

And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the world.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

So all bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, is this not Joseph's son? He said to them, you will surely say this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself.

Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country. Then he said, assuredly I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months.

And there was a great famine throughout all the land. But to none of them was Elijah sent, except Zarephath in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet.

And none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Assyrian. So all those who were in the synagogue when they heard these things were filled with wrath. And they rose up and thrusted out of the city and they led them to the brow of the hill on which the city was built, that they might throw him down over the cliff.

Then he passed through the midst of them and went his way. And now turning to 1 Kings chapter 17, beginning in verse 7. Chapter 17, beginning in verse 7. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, that's Elijah, saying, arise, what is Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you. So he arose and went to Zarephath.

And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, please bring me a little water and a cup that I may drink. As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.

So she said, as the Lord your God lives and you do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a jar. And see, 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, do not fear, and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me, and afterwards make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, the bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry until the Lord sends rain on the earth.

So she went away and did according to the word of Elijah. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord that she had spoken by Elijah.

God’s Glory in Elijah’s Ministry and the Widow of Zarephath

Dear Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, we thank you and praise you for your manifold mercy and kindness, which comes to us in so many ways each day. We humbly ask that you'll open our eyes and we might recognize your blessings and your mercies.

Father, I humbly now ask that you'll pour out your Holy Spirit on this gathering, that you'll open our eyes and we might see wondrous things from your word, that we might see your glory, and be transformed thereby, just as one day we will be transformed and your image will be lightened because we see you as you are.

We ask that you grant us a foretaste of that. Open our eyes and we may see the glory of your son Jesus Christ through your word. I ask that you'll pour out your Holy Spirit on Josh, grant him clarity and power by your Holy Spirit, make your word penetrate our hearts, make your word go forth clearly, and above all, have your way with us, to transform us into the image of your son, we pray.

We confess that we're inadequate and we have no power to make this happen, no matter how diligent our son, apart from your spirit. And again, we ask that you abundantly provide him to grant power, transforming power to your work, and we ask these things in Jesus' name, for your glory, amen.

Amen. Thank you, Steve. Please be seated.

Well, Elijah and the widow. God's merciful and miraculous provision for his prophet and for this poor, starving, Gentile woman. The word of God, taken from the people of God, sent to a people of stammering lips and another tongue, as Elijah was sent first to the brook Cherith, the word of God in Elijah, the exclusive place where God at that time was delivering his word through the prophet Elijah, taken away to the brook, and now told to leave the brook and go to this nation, Sidon, the city Zarephath, in this nation, far from Israel.

As did Paul, as did Barnabas with him, when they shook the dust of the unbelieving Jews from their garments and took the gospel of the Gentiles, so God has judged unbelieving Israel and sent his word by Elijah to Sidon.

As did Jesus, after he declared the fulfillment of prophecy, which Steve just read to you in Luke chapter four. He declared the fulfillment of what he had read from the book of Isaiah in himself. And what did he find?

The same as Elijah had found many centuries before, rejection. Ahab, at the time of this history, which we will look at this morning, was searching diligently for this prophet. We learn in chapter 19, when Elijah goes to his friend Obadiah, Obadiah tells him, Ahab has not left a stone unturned, as it were, to find you.

He's looked in every nation, and when a king of that nation says, I don't know where Elijah is, he makes him swear out an oath, an affidavit of sorts, to confirm that word. He's looking to kill the prophet.

Just as these men at the synagogue in Luke chapter four, when they heard the truth from the truth of God, they went to throw him off the cliff. What we have in 1 Kings 17 and seven through 16 is a passage laden with promises.

In fact, the whole structure of it can be seen in a command, promise, obedience, fulfillment sort of pattern. The Lord commanded Elijah to go to the brook Cherith, promising that he'd have food and water there despite the coming drought.

Elijah obeyed and found God true to his word, as every day he was fed by the birds and was able to drink from the brook. The same pattern holds for his journey from there to Sidon, as well as for the widow, the command, do as I have said, he told the widow.

The promise, it shall not be used up or run dry. And of course, she obeyed and they ate many days, just as the Lord had said. Well, this is our text this morning. Elijah and the widow, the widow's jar of flour, excuse me, her bin of flour, and the jar of oil, sometimes called a cruz.

And here she is, found by Elijah, collecting sticks, unexpectedly confronted by this man of God and given this incredible promise that is proffered to her as the word of God. Thus says the Lord God of Israel, the bin of flour shall not be used up, neither shall the jar of oil run dry.

And on faith, she acts. What do we find in this passage? Do we find here a promise to ourselves that if we are doing God's work, if we're following his word, that we will be guaranteed to be cared for in this way?

Do we find promises like that, that we are to apprehend, claim, if you will, for ourselves and our lives? I would suggest we find nothing here in this passage, but one thing. The glory of God. We find in Elijah and the widow the glory of God.

God glorified himself earlier in the chapter, 17 .1, chapter 17, verse one, he glorified himself by warning Ahab through Elijah of the impending disaster. Recall that Elijah didn't just say, bad things are gonna happen if you don't act better, Ahab.

He said, thus says the Lord God of Israel, before whom I stand. The word of God came to Ahab. And that's God's glory, is it not? Is that not in accord with Amos, chapter three, and verse seven, where through the prophet, God declares that he does not act unless he reveals it to his people through the prophet.

And they're warned, and that is to his glory. This whole passage is God's glory. He glorified himself in the extraordinary means he used to care for Elijah and the widow. And I want us to come away this morning seeing this.

This is the point of the passage. This is the point of 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Revelation, Elijah, Nahum, Proverbs, Genesis. You get the point. God's glory. We must see God's glory, or we come away as ignorant as when we started.

God's glory is the point. The continuous wheat and oil are no more meant as promises we can claim for ourselves than is the answer of a drought meant to be taken as God's normal response to prayer. Remembering that Elijah prayed for the drought based upon God's word, and God answered that.

That doesn't make it normative for us. It speaks to God's glory. Too many Christians have been misled in the hope of seeing such things realized in their lives, coming away weaker in their faith, less sure of God, and stymied in their growth into the image of Jesus Christ by taking these extraordinary events, these amazing things that God did in a particular time and place meant for our enlightenment, written for our edification, for our instruction.

And yet, we must see this. We must see God's glory in it, or I feel we go astray and misunderstand the passage. We keep our eyes on the goal, I think we're much safer. The goal of scripture is to reveal the mighty works of God and his son, Jesus Christ.

The goal of scripture is for us to get a glimpse of God's glory, which is tantamount to knowing his works and seeing Jesus Christ as the sum and the goal of all that God does. Let us look at this magnificent story.

Let us see in it the unvarnished glory of our savior. And then let's go forth confidently in the promises of God, which in Jesus Christ are all yes and amen. Remind ourselves of the context here. I've alluded to it a little bit.

Elijah appears suddenly in chapter 17, verse one. He confronts Ahab's idolatry with this challenge from God. As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except at my word.

Now I'm fairly certain that this is either the opening or the closing statement of a much longer message. This word from God likely included a total indictment of Ahab's institution of his wife Jezebel's favored demon, which was Baal, the master of nature, sometimes called the God of thunder.

I think that this was just the part of the message, just the thesis statement, if you will. As when Jonah went to Nineveh and he said, you have 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed, and the city repented all the way up to the king.

I don't think it's unsafe to assume or speculate a little bit there in Jonah that he said quite a bit more than just that one sentence to bring an entire city all the way up to the king, this great city, to repentance.

And so with Ahab going before, or so with Elijah going before Ahab, excuse me, I think Ahab was given a much more complete warning than just that one word, just that one sentence. The direct word, what is important to the chronology we have is that drought is coming, and with the drought, of course, famine.

Now in that day, there were no aqueducts, there were no reservoirs for water storage, so if it didn't rain, all the crops failed. And if crops failed, not only did people starve, but the economy suffered as exports got staunched, they being an export type of country for their agricultural goods.

And so other lands outside of Israel also suffered, some directly because like Israel, they had no rain, others because the foodstuffs they come to depend on weren't coming in. They had no food being imported, Israel had no commerce from the food they were selling, the whole land is withering.

And the challenge from God through Elijah to all the paganism that Israel at the time was falling under is this. You want to worship Baal, you want to worship and fall down before this God of nature, this God of thunder, as though he can do something, let him overrule this decree from the God of Israel.

Because the God of Israel has openly challenged Baal at his supposed strong points, and it's almost like a shrug of the shoulders, though that might seem too flippant, but it's like that, it's like, let him fix things.

As we unpack this text, keep in mind the heavenly perspective, that God is displaying his might in the face of this false God and his devotees. He's, as God contests Baal, so Elijah does Ahab. As God abhors all falsehood, so Elijah will go after Jezebel's prophets.

Everything that happens here on this terrestrial ball is but a dim mirror image of what is going on in the spiritual realm. And make no mistake, it is in the spiritual realm where the outcome is decided.

Verse 17, seven says that after a while, the brook dried up. Of course, that's the brook, Cherith. The language says that the creek's decline was a steady one. For some time, Elijah watched his only source of water flow slower and slower.

Every day, there is less and less for him to take. Now, here's the patient obedience of the faith. He had been directed to this spot, and there he stayed. He was told ravens would bring his food, and so they did.

Note carefully, he did not leave the brook Cherith while it was diminishing. He left at God's word. He didn't leave when necessity might have warranted. Common sense would have found a way to make a canteen and gotten out of there while the getting was good, while there's still a little water to pack up, as it were, and get going.

But faith is not necessarily common sense. It can be, and praise God, it very often is, but not necessarily, not always so. Elijah watched the creek dry up. He didn't leave because it finally stopped.

Note this carefully. He did not leave the creek because it finally stopped. Why did he leave the creek? Why did he leave the brook where he had been for many days? We don't know exactly how long. We're not given the precise timing.

He left when and because God told him to, and for no other cause. That's why he packed up and went to Zarephath, because God told him to go there. And it is wrong to think that God sent him there only, or even primarily, or even largely, for his provision.

And that's where we get some promises in quotes that God will take care of you as long as you're in his will, as long as you're doing his work. He will send you to Sidon, and some poor widow will care for your needs, and you will be okay.

That's not what's happening here. And we're not given a ubiquitous promise that we can take home in that way. The miracle of the flour and the oil, as necessary as that was for Elijah, for the widow, for that matter, the purpose behind it, was no more food than was Jesus changing the water to wine, only so there would be wine for the wedding guests.

I sort of stumbled over that a little bit. I wanna say it again. I got a little tongue-tied. The miracle of the flour and the oil, as necessary as that was for Elijah, and for the widow, for that matter, the purpose behind it was no more food than was Jesus changing the water, only so there would be wine for the guests.

Thank you. I got that one out. The flour and the oil were living parables proving that only God is God. The flour and the oil, though there was benefit to those who partook of it, the purpose behind it, the purpose behind the promise to the widow in the first place was to be a showcase of God's might, his power, his glory, his holiness.

They were living parables proving that only God is God. It anticipated Israel's confession of this at Mount Carmel, which, Lord willing, will come up in a couple of weeks. Jesus provided wine for a much larger cause than just to save the host the embarrassment of running short.

It proved his deity. It demonstrated the overflowing, the superabundant joy that is to be had by faith in him. Then God provided flour and oil at Zarephath for this widow and her son, for, I would argue, exactly the same reason.

Not for their stomachs, but for his glory. If God's jealousy for his glory results in blessings on our table, so be it. Let us enjoy what God has given, but we dare not expect it as if this history described a normative case, as if it were our right to expect.

You see, we cannot read this history or any other in the Bible and conclude that God always provides for our needs, at least for our physical needs, at least the way we see them. Applications like that fall flat in the face of reality.

Did God provide for Zechariah's needs when he was murdered between the temple and the altar? Matthew 23, 35, the words of Jesus. Did he provide for Stephen when he was stoned for having told, and we might add, having proven from scripture that what he said was truth?

They were both murdered. What about James and John the Baptist? King Herod murdered them both. Read Foxe's book of the Christian martyrs. What of Paul, who wrote of trials and shipwrecks and beatings and privations and slanders and floggings and scourgings?

What of Jesus? Who, after having been declared innocent, was scourged and mocked and beaten and spat upon? Elijah, James writes, was a man with a nature like ours. But Jesus was not. He took on our nature when he humbled himself to be clothed in our human flesh.

But other than that, his nature was not at all like ours or Elijah's, because Jesus was without sin, and yet he was condemned to the cross. He no more deserved that than Elijah deserved food, either from ravens or from the widow.

But in all this, Paul's persecutions, Elijah and the widow's provision, Stephen's and James and the Baptist's death, God glorified himself. And in this, when God glorifies himself in the deaths of his martyrs or in the provision for his prophet or in the provision for his prophet and for his hostess, God is glorified.

He's more concerned for his glory than any of us can imagine. Four times in Ezekiel 20, the Lord says that he acts for Israel, but for my name's sake. In Ezekiel 36 .22, he says that this was not for your sake, O Israel, but for my name's sake, for my purposes, God being so jealous of his glory that we can't even imagine what he would do to preserve and magnify it.

Ezekiel's revealing the gospel of Jesus Christ in as clear a terms as the Old Testament has when he said, not for your sake do I do this, because he's speaking of the new heart and putting his spirit within the people, taking out the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh.

Not for your sake do I do this, O Israel, but for my name's sake. You see, the gospel of God's forgiveness is not really for our sake. I seem to be a little off topic from Ezekiel 17, seven through 16.

We will get there. We'll get there when we have God's glory clearly set in front of us as the purpose of all this, and who gets the credit for what happens and who benefits ultimately. You see, even the gospel of God's forgiveness in Jesus Christ, for those who will repent of their sins and flee to him, even that is not ultimately for our sake, but for his glory's sake.

Yet, what benefit do we gain? By repentance for our sins, by faith in Jesus Christ, you can be saved. By this, you are grafted into Christ and given his Holy Spirit, God himself residing within you, within us.

This is all for his glory, for his name's sake. But what a glorious prize is ours when God moves to magnify his own name. What benefit accrues to us? Nor is this glory better seen than in Jesus, the prophet, the one whom Elijah, as great as he was, was but a faint glimmer.

John 1, 14 puts it this way, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Where Elijah was a conduit of God's glory, Jesus is God's glory.

Later in the Gospel of John, chapter 12, verses 37 to 41, John writes this, but although Jesus had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke, Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts, and turn so that I should heal them.

These things Isaiah said when he saw his glory and spoke of him. When Isaiah saw the glory of God in chapter six of his prophecy, who was it he saw? It was Jesus. Man's refusal to believe does not diminish him at all, any more than Ahab's and Jezebel's and Israel's unbelief did anything but rebound to the glory of God.

Faith, Providence, and the Danger of Treating the Extraordinary as Normative

So Elijah, I did promise you we'd come back to 1 Kings 17. Elijah is sent from a dry creek to a starving widow, to Zarephath, about 100 miles from Cherith. Now I wanna stop and think about this for a moment.

First he goes all by himself to confront a powerful, idolatrous, violent, murderous king. Then he goes to Cherith to live all by himself at the mercy of ravens in a trickle of a creek. And from there he walks 100 miles, remember the creek had run dry by the time he left, to go to Zarephath, a city smack in the middle of Phoenicia, still ruled by Jezebel's father.

Jezebel's father's name was Epiphan, E-P-I-L, we learn that at the end of chapter 16. He's named after the God they worship, Baal. And that's the city Elijah's sent to. And his goal when he arrives there, according to the word of God, is to find a widow.

Not just a widow, but the widow that God had in mind. To find a woman, a person, at the lowest rung of society. The one who would, of all the people he might meet in any city in that whole area, who would be least likely to be able to care for his needs.

His physical, then, temporal needs. Now if I were in his shoes, I think most of you would agree with me, but if I were in his shoes, if we were where he was, we would have concluded that we'd stumbled into a closed door.

We've heard this before, we've gone through this before, most of us have, this open door, closed door cycle that we go through. So, dried up creek, that can't be God's will for us. I must have been mistaken to go here.

So, God told me to go to this other place, and what do I find? A poor old widow. Better keep looking, this must be a closed door for me. We've heard this all before. And then I went over there, but that door is closed.

I went back to the door God had opened before, but there was no job there. Can we say that the brook had dried up? So, that door was closed. So, I went on to Vanity Fair, and what a door God opened for me there, and I got all my needs met, and everything I thought God was sending me to, there I found it.

And we go through this whole cycle, open door, closed door. What are we doing? We are all imitating Elijah. This history was written for our edification, for our comfort, for our rebuke. This example we're given, and I see we tend to see God's will where the going is easiest.

Where things line up with our preconceived notion, with what we got up in the morning and said, you know, it'd be really nice if I had this, or was able to live there, or worked at that place. We're sure we went into the open door when we see the job we want, the house we desire, the weather is just so, and on and on it goes.

We forget that Elijah knew God's will because God told him. And remember that he did not leave that creek because it dried up. It dried up, and sometime after could have been the moment, could have been a week later, we don't know.

That's when Elijah left. Compared to Elijah, we're just a bunch of little Goldilocks. We're looking for porridge that's just right, a bed that fits us just so. We seem to have this desire to appear holy, all the while having my perception of my needs being met.

We find what we desire, and then we force fit the scripture to declare that that must have been God's specific will just for me. Now much of this kind of silliness can be avoided if we refuse to go beyond what is written.

And one way to do this is to take the extraordinary events of the Bible as they're presented to us. Extraordinary. God does not regularly rearrange the dew to be on or off a fleece or change water to wine.

He has not recorded more than once having stopped the sun. Water flowed from rocks, how many times? Was it two times, maybe three? How many times did the Holy Spirit appear as tongues as a flame and give people the ability to hear in their own language?

Once, if I read my Bible correctly, just once. You see, discerning between what is normative and what is descriptive and what was particular to a certain time and event is not really that hard. All it takes is to read the Bible on its own terms.

And that's gonna spare us reading things like the second verse of Hosea and concluding that we should look for a prostitute to be a wife. If it's extraordinary in the Bible, the record of our extraordinary God doing extraordinary deeds, then how can we expect such things to be ordinary?

I don't mean to imply that God does not miraculously provide for his people. And I don't mean that every breath is a miracle and each heartbeat is a specific gift from God. I'm thinking of people like George Mueller.

In the 18th century, he ran an orphanage for poor and abandoned children as a ministry to Jesus Christ. He refused to seek out financial support. He depended fully and exclusively on what? On prayer. Now here's a brief excerpt from one experience out of many that he had.

The children are dressed and ready for school, but there is no food for them to eat. The house mother of the orphanage informed George Mueller. George asked her to take the 300 children into the dining room and have them sit at the tables.

He thanked God for the food and waited. George knew God would provide food for the children as he always did. Within minutes, a baker knocked on the door. Mr. Mueller, he said, last night I could not sleep.

Somehow I knew that you would need bread this morning. I got up and baked three batches for you. I will bring it in. Soon there was another knock at the door. It was the milkman. His cart had broken down in front of the orphanage.

The milk would spoil by the time the wheel was fixed. He asked George if he could use some free milk. George smiled as the milkman brought in 10 large cans of milk. It was just enough for the 300 thirsty children.

I don't imply that God does not today act miraculously for his people to meet their here and now temporal needs, but I'm saying when we read 2 Kings 17, seven through 16, and the perpetual oil and wheat, let us not take that as a normative promise of God to all his people at all times and every place.

The testimonies outside the Bible go on. During World War II, the Ten Boom family, a Dutch family, was sent to a Nazi concentration camp for having hidden Jews in their place. Corrie Ten Boom's sister, her name was Betsy, she needed this special vitamin treatment to stay alive, but the Nazi guards allowed nothing into the concentration camp where they were sent.

It was called Ravensbrück. They searched every prisoner and you were allowed nothing to be brought in. But the Nazi guards, when it was their turn, Corrie Ten Boom's and her sister Betsy's, rather than search them, they just waved them along.

So the vial and their Bible made it into the barracks safely. Let it never be said that this church does not believe that God acts today, here and now, in miraculous ways. I wanna go on a little bit more about Corrie Ten Boom.

There, inside the barracks, they found 25 women who also needed the very same vitamin drops on which Betsy's life depended. So Corrie Ten Boom took over, and she daily administered the drops to all who had need for the drops.

Her testimony, take this as you will, Christian woman, our former pianist, Don Penhill, we lost a few years ago, went to be with the Lord. He knew her. This is her testimony. The vial never ran dry. During all this time in this concentration camp, Betsy and the other women who needed this particular vitamin to stay alive had their needs met.

And the Nazi guards, known for their efficiency, never found it. Take that as you will. That's the testimony of a Christian woman whose faith was put to the test and who gave all the glory to God. God does provide for our needs.

When we sit down to dinner tonight, as most of us will, our tables are filled by God's gracious bounty. Every bite we eat is from his hand. And he does this so routinely, at least for us in this rich nation, it is so routine that we sort of get used to it.

I hope we maintain a balance between presumptuous expectation and faithful confidence in him. We don't serve a miserly God who we have to fall down and beg for a bite to eat and then thank God that you gave us just enough nutrition that I'll have enough power to get to the car and get myself to work.

That's not our God who gives bountifully and joyously to his people. There's a balance, I don't know quite how to describe it, presumptuous expectation, God, you owe this to me? You made me, you better feed me?

That's wrong. And just la dee da, and I expect it every day. And get used to it and forget to give real thanks for it. We're accustomed to God's largesse, but let's remember that he didn't suddenly stop working in marvelous ways when the canon of scripture was closed.

Let's just understand that our definition of what we need at this moment might not be, in fact, it usually isn't quite what God's definition is. I vote for God to be right. Elijah wasn't playing open-door, closed-door roulette.

He was obeying the Lord. In good times, a widow's lot would be only poverty. In times like these, poverty would be an improvement for a widow. Open-door, are we looking for an open-door? He found her gathering sticks.

She was only hoping to die as comfortably as starvation would allow. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to put to shame the mighty.

Foolish, weak, a poor widow, anticipating only starvation. It seems if you read the text, it's gonna be any moment. She has nothing left to eat. And who's put to shame by this? Baal, this demon god that this land worshiped, this was the center of worship of that god there in Zarephath.

Ahab, military, economically, politically, administratively, perhaps one of the most competent kings Israel ever knew. The most wicked king they'd ever had. He did more evil than all the kings before him, so I don't commend him at all in any of his parts.

But this mighty king, this powerful king, is he not being put to shame by a poor, starving widow? Elijah didn't look for someone of prestige like a rich widow or a powerful duchess or anything like that.

His eye was focused by his faith, for we walk by faith and not by sight. How easy it is for us to slip into a man-fearing, preference-giving way of looking at people. And so this panorama of God's power narrows down to the most implausible of all options.

Not just a town, but the center of Baal's devotees. Not just a widow, but a poor widow. And not just a poor widow, but a poor widow at death's door from starvation. Remember, Israel wasn't saved from the Midianites by a huge army, but one so small, 300 men, that as with Elijah and the widow in Sidon, only God gets the glory for his mighty acts.

Dependent on a woman, and a Gentile woman at that. And a Gentile woman who's a widow, and a Gentile woman who's a widow and poor. And a Gentile woman who's a widow and poor, and at that moment, at death's door.

Now that's a closed door, if ever there was one. Time to repent, time to find an easier ingress into God's will, right? Time to find a better, more open door that swings more smoothly, and when you look through it, you see something a bit more pleasant?

Just imagine if Elijah had. Just imagine if Elijah had said, well, no, God said I'm gonna be fed, and this woman's got nothing to feed herself. She's ready to die, so let's find one with a few more resources.