SERIES: Enlightening Epitaphs of the Kings and Prophets
The Widow of Zarephath: A Double Blessing for a Single Parent
Introduction: Do you know the origin of Mother’s Day? It’s not a biblical holiday, though the honoring of mothers and of motherhood is certainly a biblical concept. Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1908 in a little church in Grafton, West Virginia. Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her own mother, which she did by declaring the day Mother’s Day. Today it is a widely recognized opportunity to express our love and appreciation for our mothers, mothers-in-law, grandmothers, and the mothers of our children (to say nothing of the opportunity for Hallmark to sell a lot of cards!).
I am not given much to observing special days or even the ecclesiastical calendar in my preaching, except for Christmas and Easter and occasionally Thanksgiving. But it so happens that in our current series on the Kings and Chronicles, the next passage I want to preach is 1 Kings 17, which deals with one of the special stories of motherhood in the Bible. This mother happens to be a single mom, a widow with one son. We cannot talk about this woman, however, without introducing another character, a prophet of God like none other–Elijah the Tishbite.
Please listen to the Word of God as we read from 1 Kings 17:
Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”
Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.”
So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.
Sometime later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the LORD came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”
“As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread–only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it–and die.”
Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD gives rain on the land.'”
She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.
Historical perspective and introduction
The past several Sundays we have been focusing on two kings of the southern kingdom of Judah–Rehoboam and his grandson Asa. Today we move north to the kingdom of Israel, where Ahab has come to the throne in the 38th year of the reign of Asa. By the way, Israel had twenty kings in its entire history, and not a single one of them was godly; but Ahab was the most ungodly of all. We read in 1 Kings 16:30:
Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him.
This was the darkest hour of Israel’s history, spiritually speaking. You may recall that a century earlier Solomon had built pagan temples for his foreign wives, and for the most part they worshiped privately in those temples. Jezebel, however, was not content to worship her own deities in private; she sought to make the worship of Baal and his consort Asherah the dominant religion of the whole nation.
Baal worship was not your ordinary false religion. It was a despicable, immoral and degrading kind of worship focused on a deity whose primary function and power allegedly related to weather and fertility. Baal was the storm deity, often portrayed with a lightning bolt in one hand, and since he allegedly gave the rains, he was worshiped to insure the fertility of the land and the production of crops. Unimaginable sexual rites and rituals accompanied Baal worship, as his devotees “acted out” their fertility rites.
But when the night is darkest, light shines the brightest. And God’s light was carried into the darkness of Ahab’s rule by Elijah the Tishbite. Elijah was a prophet called by God to demonstrate to the nation of Israel in general, and to King Ahab in particular, that Baal was a false God–that he had no power over either the weather or fertility. Through Elijah the Lord God would show that He alone was the Giver of rain and He alone was the Lord of life. The account of the widow of Zarephath is designed to demonstrate the absolute superiority of the God of Israel in both of these arenas.
We don’t know much about Elijah’s background or pedigree. He just appears on the scene, and when his work is done, he disappears as suddenly, actually taken to heaven in a chariot of fire. Elijah was a loner who wore a garment of hair, bound with a leather belt. He was consumed by a zeal for God, which led him to proclaim boldly to King Ahab that God was going to shut up the heavens so that it would not rain until he, Elijah, gave the word. I want us to notice two profound spiritual principles in this introductory section of our story.
The principle of the power of fervent prayer. Our Scripture text tells us about Elijah’s bold announcement of an imminent drought to Ahab, but if that was all the information we had, we would probably conclude that Elijah was just a brave spokesman for God, that God is fed up with Ahab and reveals to Elijah what He plans to do.
But when we go to the NT book of James, we discover that the drought was a direct result of Elijah’s prayer life. James 5:17 tells us, “Elijah … prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.” The impression I receive from this is that the drought was Elijah’s idea, not God’s. Having said that, however, it is important to realize that Elijah’s heart was at one with God’s heart. He hated the idolatry all around him with the same righteous indignation that God Himself felt toward it. And Elijah also knew the Scriptures. In Deuteronomy 11:16-17 Moses had spoken for God:
Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you.
Elijah’s prayer for a drought is not an arbitrary punishment or an act of vengeance. Elijah is simply calling upon God to do what He has promised. He is relating sin to its consequence: Worship idols and you can expect trouble.
But imagine even having the courage to pray that it would not rain for 3 ½ years! I don’t see that kind of bold, earnest prayer in my own life or in the lives of believers around me. I’m afraid we’re tempted to put people like Elijah in a category by themselves and to say, “This isn’t ordinary history; this must be a divine legend meant to inspire, but it can’t possibly serve as any kind of a practical example.”
Well, the Apostle James directly contradicts such thinking. Immediately before telling us that Elijah “prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years,”he writes these simple words: “Elijah was a man just like us.” This was no superman; this was no hyper-spiritual legend around whom fantastic myths have grown up. This was an ordinary man with extraordinary faith. Here’s the whole context from James: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.” (James 5:16, 17)
But if God intended for Elijah’s prayer life is to be a paradigm example for the prayer lives of NT believers, why don’t we see more amazing answers to prayer, such as he received? I would have to conclude that perhaps the primary reason is that we are not fulfilling two key requirements he fulfilled: he was righteous and he prayed fervently.
There is not an abundance of righteousness in the church today. The Christian church is, in general (thankfully, there are notable exceptions), weak and anemic and consumed by materialism, if not engaged in downright ungodly behaviors. And on top of that, for the most part we don’t know the meaning of earnest or fervent prayer. Many church-going Christians wouldn’t know what to do with an hour set aside for prayer. After the standard “bless-the-missionaries-and-the-sick” type of prayers that take less than a minute, and they are clueless as to where to go next. Prayer is hard work; prayer takes discipline; prayer is demanding.
However, neither do I want to give the impression that if we were praying as we should, we would necessarily see changes in weather patterns and miraculous multiplication of food. These are not the sorts of things we are encouraged to pray for by the Apostle James. First-class miracles were rare even in Bible times. Rather James urges us to pray for the healing of spiritual and physical illness in the lives of believers, while other Scripture passages focus our prayers on the spread of the Gospel and the spiritual growth of God’s people. Whatever our concerns are as God’s children, Elijah should be a wonderful encouragement to us regarding the power of fervent prayer.
The principle of the widening circle of sin. The sin of Ahab and Jezebel impacted many people through the long drought, and that should not surprise us. No one sins unto himself. You may think that your sin is completely private and no one else is affected by it. But it isn’t so. Sin is like a cancer which gets into a life, a family, a church, a city, or a nation, and it begins to affect even those who are innocent victims.
When God brings judgment upon a family or a church or a city or a nation–whether that is by direct divine action or through the natural consequences that God has built into His universe–that judgment usually touches more lives than just the guilty. That’s why we should be concerned about the great moral crises of our day, like abortion and drugs and alcoholism and child abuse and sexual promiscuity and pornography and gambling and cloning. Even though we may not be directly perpetrating these evils, eventually we may all experience the fallout.
In our story two of the innocent victims of the sins of Ahab and Jezebel are this poor widow and her son. The drought has caused a famine in the whole region, and the famine means the widow and her son are out of food. And even Elijah himself, the one who prayed for God’s judgment, ends up being a victim of that same judgment. The brook where God sent him to drink and to be fed by ravens dries up due to the lack of rain. I suppose Elijah might have legitimately complained, “Lord, what happened? I’m on your side!” And I suppose God may have answered, “I’m just answering your prayer, Elijah. I’m disciplining the rebellious Israelites like you asked me to, but sometimes there is collateral damage. Sometimes innocent bystanders get hurt. If I stop the rain like you requested, drought is the result–for everyone.”
I am sure there are some here today who are sitting by a drying brook or perhaps even down to your last handful of flour, figuratively speaking. You may have been obedient to God to the best of your knowledge and you may have been enjoying His blessing. But all of a sudden drought has set in. It could be financial or physical or relational. It might be mental, emotional or spiritual. And you’re tempted to ask, “Lord, what’s up with this? What did I do to deserve this?” The answer may be “nothing.”
It is possible God isn’t dealing directly with you at all but with someone close to you, or perhaps He’s dealing with society in general and you’re just suffering the fallout. But if that’s the case, just as God provides for Elijah and teaches Him dependence while disciplining the Israelites, He can do the same for you. And just as He stretches the widow’s faith and brings her to the point of personal faith in Him, He may use suffering to do that for you. Never forget that even of Jesus Christ it was said, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”
The other side of this coin (and please don’t miss this!) is that the next time we are tempted to sin, we would do well to ask two questions. One is, “Am I willing to pay the consequences of this sin in my own life?” But we also need to ask, “Am I willing that my parents, my spouse, my kids, my friends, and perhaps even my church pay the consequences of my action?” The principle of the widening circle of sin is still operative in God’s universe.
Now I want us to dig deeply into the first of the two main scenes in the story of the widow of Zarephath:
Elijah obeys the Word of the Lord and finds life through the faith of a widow.
Elijah’s desperate situation because of the dried-up brook is a unique opportunity for God to demonstrate His continuing providence.
The principle of God’s continuing providence. The providence of God is His oversight and wise direction over everything that touches His children’s lives. We are not biological accidents abandoned in a hostile environment; we are God’s special creatures for whom He regularly makes provision–occasionally through miraculous intervention but more often through the laws of nature, which He Himself established for that very purpose.
While God doesn’t promise to supply all our wants or all our expectations, He does promise to meet all our needs. Yet He doesn’t always do so in the way we would expect. It was strange enough that God should provide ravens (unclean birds and definitely not kosher) to feed Elijah along a creek bed. But now He does something stranger yet. He says, “Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.”
There are several factors here that we must understand before we can appreciate the unique way in which God is demonstrating His providence. Zarephath was a town in Sidon, a country north and west of Israel, whose king was Ethbaal. Ethbaal was the father of Jezebel and it was Jezebel who was the instigator of the Baal worship for which Elijah has called down God’s judgment upon the people! Why would God send him from idolatrous Israel into a place even more pagan? If there’s no one who will give him refuge among God’s chosen people, how can he expect to find refuge in the home of Baal worship?
And not only that, but a widow is to take care of him? A widow in the ancient East was synonymous with abject poverty. There were no insurance policies, no pension plans, and no social security to provide for the needs of widows. Yet Elijah doesn’t argue; he goes straight to Zarephath, where at the gate of the city he encounters a woman gathering sticks and discovers that this woman and her son are down to their final meal. Elijah is about to learn once again that God isn’t obligated to do things our way or even in what we would deem a rational way. He has only obligated Himself to meet our needs in some way.
The principle of availability over adequacy. Why does God provide for a widow to provide Elijah’s needs? And why a widow from a pagan, idolatrous country? The best answer is probably simply, “Because she is available and willing to be used.” Certainly, she doesn’t have much else to commend her. Turn with me to the NT Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, where the widow of Zarephath is memorialized by Jesus.
“I tell you the truth … no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed–only Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke 4:24-27)
The context here is the rejection of Jesus by the people of His hometown of Nazareth. He makes the point that God’s people have always had a tendency to reject God’s chosen prophets, but then He goes on to make the additional point that God has always had a tendency to work through those whom most people would overlook. He chooses irrespective of human credentials, ego symbols, or apparent potential. He goes after hearts which are tender and clay that is malleable.
Just think about how many of the great men and women of faith in the Scriptures were nobodies in the eyes of the world, and sometimes even in their own families–Joseph, David, Mary the mother of Jesus, most of the Twelve disciples, and on and on you can go. I Cor. 1 states that this is actually the norm with God:
Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor. 1:26-29)
Are you a dark horse candidate when it comes to being used by God? Were you never a member of the National Honor Society, never a jock in high school, never pledged a fraternity or a sorority, never went to graduate school, never married into money, never belonged to a country club? Well, then, you’re a prime candidate for God to do something astounding through you. True, Paul doesn’t say, “Not any of you were wise, not any were influential, not any of noble birth.” God doesn’t arbitrarily leave such people out, but most of those He uses are really quite ordinary. The reason is that the ordinary are more inclined to lean on Him, and, after God makes something special out of their lives, they are less inclined to take credit for it.
Friends, we are all faced with a series of great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems. We can say, “I don’t have much,” but the fact is we have all God intended us to have. We can say, “I can’t do much,” but we can do all that God wants us to do. The real question is never ability, but availability and faithfulness.
The principle of seeking first the kingdom of God. In verses 10 and 11 we find Elijah asking the widow for a drink. This itself is quite a remarkable request, given the terrible drought. But as she is going to get the water, he also asks her for bread. Then she reveals just how desperate her plight really is: “As surely as the LORD your God lives (she is probably not yet a believer in the Lord God; she refers to Him as Elijah’s God), I don’t have any bread–only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it–and die.”
Seeing the desperation in the woman’s eyes, the prophet says to her in verse 13, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.” Can you believe such a request? Can you imagine how hard it must have been on this destitute widow and mother to do what Elijah asks? A more severe test could hardly be dreamed up. But at the same time Elijah also makes a promise to her: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’”
She decides to put her faith in that promise, for verse 15 says, “She went and did according to the word of Elijah.” This widow is being challenged with the truth of Matt. 6:33 eight centuries before Jesus even preached His sermon on the Mount. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” The “things” Jesus is talking about are the essentials of life–food, clothing, shelter. The widow is about to discover that this principle crosses all ages and all cultures. Those who put God first are not going to regret it.
You know something, there really is a legitimate kind of “prosperity theology” in the Scriptures. It’s not the kind that promises health and wealth, Rolls Royces and Mercedes, or freedom from illness and tragedy. There are too many examples in the Bible of faithful people who were financially poor, or who suffered greatly, or even who died as martyrs. But God does offer a general promise to His children: you are going to live longer, healthier and happier if you live in obedience to Him and put Him first than you will otherwise.
The principle of seeking first the kingdom of God is one we must not ignore. Many of us have seen it work in respect to our giving to the Lord. We have learned to take God’s portion right off the top, before the bills are paid, and we have discovered that God is faithful to add unto us the things we need, and often the things we want. (I would caution us, however, that giving in order to get is not putting God first at all; it’s just a sneaky way of putting ourselves first, and God is not obligated to honor that). How many of us are also willing to apply this principle not only to our giving, but also to our careers, to our family life, to our friendships, to our time? Do we really put God first?
The widow puts God first, and the result is stated clearly: “She and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the Word of the Lord which He spoke through Elijah.” Seeking first the Kingdom of God is the surest way of having one’s needs met.
The principle of contentment with daily bread. Both the widow and the prophet have the opportunity to learn the lesson of contentment with daily bread, with the emphasis upon “daily.” Human nature, which was the same for Elijah and the widow as for the rest of us, would undoubtedly have preferred to have God arrange for the miraculous delivery of a two-year supply of sacks of flour and barrels of oil. They could then go into the storeroom each day and still praise God for His abundant supply.
The trouble is that once we have the abundant supply in our possession, it’s hard to remember to be thankful for it. When’s the last time we thanked God for our savings, for our pension, for our second car, or the food in our freezer? God knows that the healthiest discipline for our lives is having to trust Him day by day.1
When I was a young boy our family was dirt poor. I remember frequently hearing my parents pray for our needs to be met, and I saw many examples of God coming through–sometimes in some rather amazing ways. I think we are missing something today because most of us don’t need to pray for our daily bread. We know where our next one thousand meals are coming from–from our pantries or our bank accounts, or, in necessary, from our 401K’s. I’m not saying I want to go back to the poverty of my childhood, but I will say that I learned a lot about trusting God through those experiences.
The issue really boils down to this, “If God guarantees, as He does, that our needs will be met, does it much matter whether we can see the sources from which He will obtain it?” It might gratify our curiosity, but it would not make us more secure. We need to learn the principle of being content with daily provision.
So far we have seen that Elijah obeys the Word of the Lord and finds his life sustained through the faith of a widow. Next, we discover that …
The widow finds life through the faith of Elijah and acknowledges the Word of the Lord.
Please follow with me as we read the rest of the story from verse 17-24:
Sometime later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”
“Give me your son,” Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?” Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this boy’s life return to him!”
The LORD heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!”
Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth.“
There are two additional life principles that I want to present from this scene:
The principle of the trial of our faith. The widow of Zarephath exercised great faith when she obeyed the prophet of God, and God blessed her for it. But now her faith is subjected to an even more severe test. The widow, divested of her husband, now loses her dearest possession on earth, her only son. She suspects it is chastisement for some past sin in her life. She says to Elijah in v. 18, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”
She apparently subscribes to that popular superstition that tragedy is always tied directly to some particular sin. Frankly, it can be. When a young kid gets shot dealing drugs or a man dies from cirrhosis of the liver after years of abuse of alcohol, those are pretty clear examples of the fact that sin can kill. But most of the time when we face tragedy it is because we live in a fallen world, not because God is punishing us. He is not a vindictive God who holds grudges. I’m sure every parent who has lost a child has had the same thought cross his or her mind that this widow verbalizes, but we should dispel such thoughts as the Evil One’s attempt to destroy us. Since there is no evidence of any particular sin on the part of this woman or the boy that resulted in his death, we must operate on the assumption that this is a test of her faith.
This woman’s tragedy is also a test of Elijah’s faith. Imagine the pain he experienced when he saw this little boy die. He has lived a good while in this home and has probably become a surrogate father to the little boy. And then on top of his own grief, he is faced with the agonizing questions of the woman. Though he has saved her life, in her emotional pain, she is falsely accusing him of complicity in the death of her son!
There’s not a one of us who hasn’t experienced the confusion of this widow and this prophet as we struggle with tragedy. My good friend Joe Stowell writes,
Our instincts tell us to resist trouble. To fight it. To resent it as an intruder. To feel cheated. To tell ourselves, “I deserve better than this.” And as those thoughts settle in, the great scramble begins. We plot, manipulate, fret, seek revenge, doubt God and His goodness, threaten, harbor anger, flirt with bitterness, withdraw, and–if all else fails–throw a major pity party. And by the way, if you throw a pity party, don’t bother sending out invitations. Friends may try to cheer you up–and that would wreck everything.2
However, for those who are willing to seek the face of God in the midst of trouble, we discover that He is there. He tests us and stretches us, sometimes almost to the breaking point because weak faith cannot become strong faith without testing. The woman needs to come to know the LORD God personally. Elijah has some spiritual battles ahead of him that will make his experiences so far pale into insignificance. So, God troubles them, in order to strengthen them. I want to say to you with all the confidence I can muster that God doesn’t waste our sorrows. We may, but He doesn’t.
The principle of the power of God in a holy life. You recall from the Scripture reading how Elijah takes the lifeless form of the widow’s son to an upper room, stretches himself upon the boy three times, prays earnestly that his breath will return to him, and finally returns him to his mother healthy. A stupendous miracle occurs here that witnesses in a remarkable way to the deep faith of this man Elijah. When he asks God to restore the life of this child, he is asking for something that apparently had never yet happened in all of human history. There is no record of God having raised anyone from the dead from the time of Adam to the day Elijah prays for the widow’s son.
Unusual faith? You bet! But Elijah had something besides faith which made him usable as God’s instrument for one of the most remarkable demonstrations of divine power in the entire OT–he led a holy life. Someone has well said that God will not funnel His great power through filthy vessels. Elijah was a holy man, a man who loved righteousness and hated evil, a man whose heart panted after God. One evidence of his holy life is the jealousy he had for the name and reputation of God. I believe God is particularly responsive to our prayers when we are able to get beyond our own interests and concerns and focus on other people’s needs–but especially on His reputation.3 The widow sums up the character of Elijah well when she says in verse 24, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the Word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” I have no doubt that she is now a true believer in the Lord God of Israel.
God may not perform the kind of miracle through us or for us that He did through Elijah and for the widow of Zarephath. After all, even in the Scriptures there were only three great periods of miracles–the time of Moses, the days of Elijah and Elisha, and the time of Jesus and the Apostles.4Miracles will never be normal; if they were, they wouldn’t be miracles. But if our lives are holy before God, He will do some things greater than we have yet dreamed of. On the other hand, if our lives are clogged with sin and apathy and selfishness, we will automatically cut ourselves off from His unique blessings and His power.
As you probably know, names in Scripture almost always have significance, and this is true of the little town to which God sent His prophet Elijah. It was called Zarephath, which means “a smelting furnace.” God’s purpose in sending Elijah there was to use the situation in his life as a smelting furnace to remove the dross of pride and self-sufficiency. His purpose in the widow’s life was to teach her to trust God with everything she possessed.
All mothers have a monumental task, but no one in this room had it tougher than the widowed mother of Zarephath. She had lost her husband, she was a single mom, then she faced the possibility of watching her only child starve to death, and finally she watched him die of an unknown illness. Yet she learned through it all that God is worthy to be trusted. May I suggest to you today that if God is allowing you to go through the smelting furnace, it is either to cause you to see your need of a Savior or to help you become more like the Savior. Either way, the experience is well worth it.
Conclusion: I want us to look at the cross that Joe White carved and built here on Friday night. If you think of that cross, you will be better equipped to endure the smelting furnaces in your own life. Most likely, none of us will ever be crucified, but the pain and suffering Jesus endured at Calvary covered nearly every kind of sorrow we experience. Once again I quote from Joe Stowell:
Have you ever felt lonely, displaced, misrepresented, or misunderstood? Have you ever found yourself severely restricted? Denied of your rights and privileges? Betrayed by a close friend? Have you ever been left out of the power group and plotted against? Have you ever done right and suffered for it? Have you ever tasted the bitterness of injustice? Have you ever longed for your friends to stand with you in your moment of need, only to sense they’re really too consumed with their own needs to pay much attention? Have you ever experienced unbearable pain? Have you ever felt abandoned by God?5
These, and many more, are the sufferings Jesus endured on our behalf. He bore them in love, patiently and willingly for us. The question is not, “Are we willing to suffer?” We have little choice about that. The real question is, “Are we willing to meet Jesus there–right in the midst of our pain?” If we really desire to experience Him, we need to stop blaming God, reverse our self-centered demand for relief, and thank Him that He loved us enough to suffer like this for us.
DATE: May 12, 2002
Tags:
Mother’s Day
Fervent prayer
Providence
Availability
Contentment
Trial
Holiness
1. Bible scholar, F. B. Meyer, in Elijah and the Secret of His Power, 47, has suggested that . . .
If God were to give us the choice between seeing our provision and keeping it ourselves or not seeing it and leaving Him to deal it out, day by day, most of us would be almost sure to choose the former alternative. It gratifies our sense of importance to count up our stores, our barrels, our sacks…. It gives such a sense of security. But we should be far wiser to say, ‘I am content to trust You, Father, the living God who gives us all things richly to enjoy. Keep the stores under You own hand; they will give me less anxiety, they will not lead me into temptation, they will not expose me to the jealousy of others less favored than myself.
2. Joseph M. Stowell, Simply Jesus, 68.
3. Gene A. Getz, Elijah: Remaining Steadfast Through Uncertainty, 60.
4. A large percentage of all the miracles in the Bible are found in these three periods. I think there’s a reason for that: these were the same three periods during which the vast majority of God’s Word was being given to His people. These miracles validated the messengers of God. We must also recognize that there will be a fourth great period of miracles as the church age draws to a close, but no one knows how close we may be to the consummation. While faith healers and certain charismatic spokesmen frequently claim we are already in that last great period of miracles, I fail to see much evidence of it. It will come, however, and we need to be very discerning so that we can distinguish between the work of God and the works of Satan when it comes. We don’t want to be too gullible, nor too skeptical.
5. Stowell, 70-71.