ELIJAH - IN THE DRY SEASON
1 Kings 17:1-24
I remember once when it did
not rain in south
|
17:1 |
Confrontation |
Elijah vs. Ahab |
|
17:2 |
Concealment |
Command: “Hide by the brook
Cherith.” |
|
17:4 |
Promise: Food & water |
|
|
17:5 |
Response: Obedience |
|
|
17:7 |
Test: |
GOD’S MAN IN THE DRY
SEASON
Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was
of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of
Elijah comes out of the pages
of obscurity and onto the scene of ministry in a single sentence. We know only that he was from the settlers
of
Reuben
Gad
Half of the tribe of Manasseh
When Moses had led the
Israelites to the
Elijah now comes on the scene
from
Elijah was a man with a nature
like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it did not rain
on the earth for three years and six months. (James 5:17).
Why would Elijah pray such a
prayer? We normally pray for that which
is good for our country. But Elijah
prayed for the judgment of God to fall on his land and on his people. In doing so, he was praying in accordance
with the Scriptures.
13 And it shall come about, if
you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to
love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul, 14 that He will give the rain of your land in
its season, the early rain and the late rain, that you may gather in your grain
and your new wine and your oil.
15 And He will give grass in
your fields for your cattle, and you shall eat and be satisfied.
16 Beware, lest your hearts be
deceived and you turn away and serve other gods and worship them.
17 Or the anger of the Lord
will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there will
be no rain, and the ground will not yield its fruit; and you will perish
quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you. (Deuteronomy
11:13-17).
The covenant which God made
with
Now we can understand why
Elijah prayed this prayer. He was a man
for his times. The glory days of Solomon
had come and gone. The kingdom was now a
divided kingdom. Although the southern
Now comes Elijah. His name means “My God is Yahweh.” He stands before Ahab and he invokes a solemn
oath in the name of the Lord. “As the Lord
lives” - if this oath does not come to pass, then God will cease to live. When we were kids, we said things like, “I
cross my heart and hope to die.” God
says the same thing, only He means it.
The promise of the Lord is
that there will be neither dew nor rain.
This is the worst weather forecast in history. But it is more than that. It is a challenge. Baal is a god of fertility - a rain god. He will be seen to be impotent before the God
of Israel.
GOD’S COMMAND IN THE DRY
SEASON
The word of the Lord came to him,
saying, 3 “Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide
yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the
Having issued his prophecy,
Elijah was instructed to go to an isolated place. Why was this retreat necessary? There are several reasons.
1. Protection
from Ahab.
This
was a hiding place. It was one of
hundreds of tiny wadis which feed into the
2. Preservation
of Elijah.
It will
be here that the Lord meets Elijah’s physical needs - food and water. The Lord never promised comfort, but He DOES
promise to provide the basic necessities.
3. Preparation
for the Future.
The
Lord is preparing Elijah for a confrontation.
But that confrontation will not take place until Elijah has had the
opportunity to learn to trust in the Lord.
Here is the principle. You will
have nothing to say to the world unless the Lord first speaks to you. Not what you read in a commentary. Not what you are taught in seminary. Not what your pastor tells you. You cannot effectively share Christ until you
have Christ. Real evangelism is more
caught than taught. In order to be a
contagious Christian, you have to be infected with the real disease.
GOD’S PROMISE IN THE DRY
SEASON
“It shall be that you will drink
of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there.” (1
Kings 17:4).
Elijah is sent by God to this
out-of-the-way location. There is no
nearby city. There are no farms. There are no jobs. Elijah is to come here and he is to wait
during the dry season.
Here is the principle. God never said that you would not have dry
seasons in your life. What He has
promised is that He will provide in the midst of your dry season. Because of this, there are some things that
YOU can do in the dry season.
1. You
are called to wait in the dry season.
This
is a period of outward inactivity. There
are times when God says, “Stop” and the only thing that you can do is to
stop. That is a difficult thing,
especially if you are one of those “action-oriented” types of people.
2. You
are called to trust in the Lord during the dry season.
The
dry season means that you cannot see all that awaits in the future. Therefore you must believe the promises of
God. You must hold onto the Lord because
there is nothing else to which you can hold.
GOD’S PROVISION IN THE DRY
SEASON
5 So he went and did
according to the word of the Lord, for he went and lived by the brook Cherith,
which is east of the
6 The ravens brought him
bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he would
drink from the brook. (1 Kings 17:5-6).
Elijah believed the promise
of God. How do we know that this is the
case? We know because of his OBEDIENCE.
What do you do when you have
trouble believing the promises of God?
Those times when you want to believe and you are praying, “Lord, I
believe, but help my unbelief!” What do
you do while you are waiting for such a prayer to be answered? You OBEY.
That is what Elijah did. And the
Lord honored his obedience.
The thing that I love about
Elijah’s obedience is that he was obedient in PRIVATE. You show me a man who is real in private and
I will show you a man who is real. Who
you really are is who you are when no one is looking. Do you want to know what I am really
like? Ask my wife and my daughter. They know the real me. As Elijah obeyed, he found that God had
provided. But that provision was not
realized until Elijah had first obeyed.
GOD’S TEST IN THE DRY
SEASON
It happened after a while that
the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. (1 Kings 17:7).
Things were going well for
Elijah until the drought caught up with where he was living and his brook dried
up. That often happens in the
Scriptures.
Abraham is told to leave his
family and his home and to go to a foreign land and he obeys and arrives in
Isaac is told by God to live in
the land and so he digs a well and suddenly the neighbors move in and take
over.
Joseph is given a vision from
the Lord that his brothers and his father and mother will bow down before him
and he is taken and sold as a slave into Egypt where no one ever bows down to
him.
Moses is sent by God to
confront the pharaoh and order the freedom of the Israelites and instead
pharaoh increases their workload and makes their bondage even more oppressive.
David is anointed as the
future king and he honors the Lord by standing up to Goliath and the next thing
you see is that he is a fugitive on the run.
That is the way God often works.
He give a promise and then there is a period of waiting for the
fulfillment of that promise and, more often than not, things appear to go from
bad to worse.
What do you do when your
brook dries up? When you are in the
place where God wants you to be and when you are doing the thing that God wants
you to do and things still go wrong.
When the blessings of God seem to dwindle and then vanish
altogether. When your prayers don’t seem
to make it any higher than the ceiling.
What do you do? The Psalmist once
asked that same question. He was also in
a dry place.
As
the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my
soul pants for Thee, O God.
My
soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When
shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2).
The answer which comes to him
in the midst of his dry place can also be used when you experience the same
place. It is seen when he
REMEMBERS. He remembers that there was a
time when he stood in the presence of the Lord and worshiped with joy and a
song. He remembers the past faithfulness
of God. And this memory brings him hope
for the future.
Here is the principle. Don’t depart from the stream when you are in
the desert. Don’t doubt in the darkness
what God has taught you in the light.
Remember that God has always kept His word. And know that He will continue to keep His
word in the future.
GOD’S TEST IN A FOREIGN
LAND
The older we are as Christians,
the more we understand that hardship comes.
The closer we come to God, the more acquainted we become with
grief. Jesus was known as “the man of
sorrows.” And as we follow Him, we will
partake of some of those sorrows.
“When God wants to use a person
greatly, he hurts him deeply.” - A. W. Tozer.
Elijah was such a man. God had given him a very unpopular message -
no rain. Now Elijah is hiding out. He had hidden for a time on the east bank of
the
No church.
No congregation.
No disciples.
Nothing but birds and a lonely brook.
And now the brook has dried
up. We don’t know how much time elapsed
between verse 7 and verse 8. But
eventually God called for a change of locations.
1. Retreat
to Zarephath.
Then the word of the Lord came to
him, saying, 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to
Zarephath
was an old Phoenician coastal city astride a promontory between
Elijah
was going into the lion’s den.
This
was a 100 mile trip. It would take
Elijah on a route through the
There
is a pattern shown here if we care to see it.
It is a pattern that is seen by anyone who is familiar with Jewish ideas
of that which is clean and unclean.
|
17:1-7 |
Elijah is fed by ravens |
|
17:8-16 |
Elijah is fed by a Gentile
widow |
In both
cases, Elijah was fed by that which was considered by the Jews to be
unclean. The raven was an unclean
bird. A Gentile widow was also
considered to be unclean.
Jesus
pointed out that the fact that Elijah went and stayed in the home of a pagan
woman is evidence of the fact that God does not play favorites (Luke
4:24-26). He did not play favorites in
that day and He does not play favorites today.
2. Elijah’s
Request from the Woman.
10 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, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that
I may drink.”
11 As she was going to get it,
he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.”
12 But she said, “As the Lord
your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a
little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in
and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die.” (1 Kings 17:10-12).
This
woman was a widow. Her husband had
died. There was no Social Security in
that day. If a woman did not have grown
children to care for her then she was on her own. That was the situation in which this woman
found herself.
This
woman had problems. She had not asked to
be a widow. Tragedy had struck her life
in taking away her husband as well as her means of livelihood. She was beyond hope.
3. The
Promise of the Prophet.
13 Then Elijah said to her,
“Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it
first and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and
for your son.
14 “For thus says the Lord God
of Israel, ‘The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil
be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth.’” (1
Kings 17:13-14).
Notice
the first words of Elijah to this woman.
They are words of comfort. “Do
not fear.” That is what God always
says to people. Churchill once said, “The
only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
That isn’t true. There are a lot
of things to fear. But if you fear the
Lord first and obey Him, then everything else takes care of itself.
Elijah’s
instructions are very specific. First
she is to move sacrificially to meet the needs of the prophet. Then she is to move to meet her own needs and
the needs of her son. As long as she is
faithful, then God will also be faithful.
This was a promise. She could
believe it or she could refuse to believe it.
15 So she went and did
according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many
days.
16 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. (1 Kings 17:15-16).
And
so, she learned obedience in the same way Elijah did. He is teaching her the same lesson that God
taught him by the brook. It is the
lesson of faith.
|
17:2 |
Concealment
by the Brook Cherith |
Command
To Elijah |
|
17:4 |
Promise |
|
|
17:5 |
Response: Faithful Obedience |
|
|
17:7 |
Test: A Dried-up Brook |
|
|
17:8 |
Concealment
in Zarephath |
Command
to the Widow Woman |
|
17:13 |
Promise: Faithful Obedience |
|
|
17:15 |
Response |
|
|
17:17 |
Test: A Lifeless Son |
It should
not seem strange that God sends trials to teach us obedience. The Scriputres teach us that even Jesus
learned obedience by going to the cross (Hebrews 5:8).
4. The
Testing of Faith.
17 Now it came about after
these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick;
and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.
18 So she said to Elijah,
“What do I have to do with you, O man of God?
You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my
son to death!” (1 Kings 17:17-18).
Now
the woman’s brook dries up. Her faith is
tested in the same way that Elijah’s faith had been tested. We could say that her brook has dried up. Her testing strikes at the most important
thing in her life - her son. In her
grief, she lashes out at Elijah and at God.
5. Elijah’s
Intercession.
19 He said to her, “Give me
your son.” Then he took him from her
bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living, and laid him on
his own bed.
20 He called to the Lord and
said, “O Lord my God, have You also brought calamity to the widow with whom I
am staying, by causing her son to die?” (1 Kings 17:19-20).
Elijah
had taken no seminary classes that prepared him to deal with this kind of
situation. So he goes to the Lord. He intercedes with the Lord on her
behalf. That is what Christ does for
us. When our faith is weak, He makes
intercession for us. When we do not even
know how to pray, the Holy Spirit prays for us in words which we are unable to
speak.
6. Resurrection.
21 Then he stretched himself
upon the child three times, and called to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, I
pray You, let this child's life return to him.”
22 The Lord heard the voice of
Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived. (1 Kings
17:21-22).
Why
did Elijah stretch himself over the child three times? I don’t know.
But it is significant that Jesus would rise from the dead after three
days.
7. Resulting
Faith.
23 Elijah took the child and
brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother;
and Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.”
24 Then 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.” (1 Kings 17:23-24).
This
is the climax of the story and the lesson of the passage. It is that the word of the Lord is true. I can’t promise that all of your problems
will be solved. But I can promise that
God is true.
Here
is the point of the narrative. If God is
able to breathe physical life into the dead corpse of this child, then He is
also able to breath spiritual life into the nation of
If
you haven’t noticed already, there is a Christ motif here in the story of
Elijah. This is the same God who came to
earth, entering time and space to...
·
Ask a foreign
woman for a drink.
·
Feed hungry
multitudes with a miraculous supply of food.
·
Rise from the
dead after three days.
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