Elijah and the Widow

So um this afternoon um I was going to preach on uh the the appearances of Satan. I was looking over the sermon this morning and uh I realized well probably most people here know this a bit here and a bit there and a bit from somewhere else. So I switched this afternoon to something else. Um this is a picture of me after um 26 years of marriage on the screen. [snorts] And um but it's called Elijah and the Widow.

And so um I uh I wrote this sermon. I don't think it's on the internet. I hope it's not. I've looked all over. I cannot find it.

I'm trying to remember if where I ever preached. I don't think I ever preached it. So I'm going to talk about Elijah and the widow. Why am I talking about Elijah and the widow? Because this this story happens um in in in um First Kings.

And it happens the chapter before Elijah stands on Mount Carmel. It happens before the nation of Israel has to make a choice between God and the false gods of the nations around. It happens in First Kings chapter 17. And so before Elijah can go and stand on Mount Carmel, before Elijah has that confrontation between good and evil, before the people of Israel have to make a choice between the the worship of Jehovah and the worship of false gods, God allows him to go through his own time of trouble. And God prepares him and God shapes him and God um fits him for what is about to come his way.

And likewise, before Jesus comes again, actually before the time of trouble comes, God may allow each and every one of us to go through our own time of trouble as well. Not because he hates us, but because he wants to prepare us for what's coming ahead. And so, we're going to look at the story of Elijah and the widow in that context. Um, that that God allows us to go through wilderness experiences precisely because he knows what is coming and he knows what's the best way to shape us for what's coming down the pike. So let's bow our heads and we'll invite the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Our dear heavenly father uh what a blessed day you've given us today father Lord we thank you for the friendship for the fellowship for the spiritual and the physical food. Father we thank you for the ability to gather with like-minded brothers and sisters from all across the West Coast. And now, Father, as we share these these thoughts from the story of Elijah and this widow, I pray that um as we face our own moments of decision when the whole world will have to make a choice between God and the false gods of this world, I pray that if you allow us to go through an experience like Elijah, that we will come out the other end fit and ready for that final crisis. So Lord, um speak through me now, speak for me. May my words be taken from your throne of grace.

Father, bring to every person in the hearing of this sermon a lesson um from the Holy Spirit that they can apply in each of their lives. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. All right. So, um with this is our journey.

Oh, that's not a journey. If that were your journey, you'd be in trouble. Um that's actually the QR a QR code for Loud Cryins National. If you want to take a take a look at that, I would encourage you to come next year, June 11th through 20th. It'll be somewhere in in Oregon I hope at least and um it's going to be fantastic event.

So if you're interested take a look at that QR code. All right. So let's let's come back to our introduction here. Okay. So first Kings chapter 17 starts with um Elijah saying as the Lord the God of Israel liveth before whom I stand there shall be neither Jew nor rain these years except by my word.

That's a great opening sentence isn't it for an evangelistic series. And after that Elijah goes and he hides himself by the wadi cherith. And God says, "You would to go from here and hide yourself by the wy cherith which is east of the Jordan and you shall drink from the wii and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." And so Elijah goes from Ahab's house goes back across the Jordan or you going he goes east across the Jordan and he goes by the wad charith and god sends these birds every day to feed him. It's like a just in time food delivery mechanism. And as Elijah is sitting there by the brook, the birds come every day, but slowly but surely that brook starts coming down and down and down.

And he sits by that brook, and that brook is dying. And he knows it. And the birds can bring the food, but where's the water going to come from? And so Elijah is where God wants him to be, but he sees that that means of support is dying. You might say we we we might have today a ministry that is slowly fading away.

A church department where it's hard to get volunteers. A men's ministry group where things just don't seem to happen anymore. A marriage that is troubled and is coming to the rocks. A business that is turning towards insolveny. A house financial situation where the debts pile up month by month.

And we wonder, is this really where God wants us to be? Sometimes we sit by our own fading brook which is where Elijah is here. Some of the lessons I put on the screen that God wanted Elijah to learn says Elijah had to learn the value of the hidden life away from the glare of the the public glare. He had to learn that when God commands, God also provides. Elijah had to learn to trust God one day at a time.

Elijah didn't have a well stocked freezer. He didn't have a basement cellar with with food in it. No, God was giving him food on a day-to-day basis. He had to learn that the the Lord's prayer, give us this day our food for today or our daily bread, that applied back to Elijah as well. And Elijah had to learn that a brook that is slowly drying up and eventually dies is not necessarily a sign of God's displeasure.

And maybe you're sitting here today and there's a brook in your life that's slowly drying up and fading away. It's not necessarily a sign of God's displeasure. Maybe a sign that God wants to do an incredible change in your life. We'll come to that in a few moments. So, we're going to pick up the story in First Kings chapter 17 8-9.

And this is what the word of God says. It says, "Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah, saying, "Go now to Zarapath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there, for I have commanded a widow there to feed you." This must have been a wonderful word of the Lord that came to Elijah because Elijah has been hiding from Ahab. He's been hiding from the Israelite army. He's been hiding from the nations around who all searching for him. And he's been sitting there watching that brook get lower and lower and lower.

And eventually there's almost no water or no water left in the brook. And in the in the crucial moment, the word of God comes to Elijah and says, "Get thee down to Zarapath, which is up near Sidon, and go and live there because I've commanded a widow to look after you." Now the word the Elijah was living by the brook Cherith. Now Cherith means a place for cutting down, a place for cutting. After the adrenaline rush of the confrontation with Ahab, God had removed Elijah from the public eye. You can't live in the public lair all the time.

You have your time in the public lair. It is necessary and good at times to spend time in solitude with God to reconnect because your batteries get worn out. When you're when you're always ministering to other people and you never allow the God to fill you with the living waters aresh yourself, eventually the well runs dry in ministry. And I would say as a preacher, the well runs dry in approximately 8 days. I know that from personal experience.

If you're not filling the well from Sabbath to Sabbath, if I if I don't fill the well tomorrow or through this coming week, then by next Monday, the well will run dry. It's as simple as that. And Elijah's had to learn in the in the place of Cherith, a place for cutting down, that we do need time away from the public lair. We need time with God. We need time to reflect on God's calling in our lives.

And God commands Elijah to go from Cherith which means a place of cutting. He needs to go to a place called Zarapath. And the word Zarapath means a crucible or a place for refining. So Elijah goes. So after the confrontation with Ahab, God says to Elijah, "Get thee at once from here and go across the river Jordan because I've commanded the ravens to feed you and you're going to go to a place called cutting or to be cut down." And then God says a parallel command in the Hebrew.

says, "Get thee from here and go up thee to to Zarapath, for I've commanded not the ravens to feed you, but I've commanded a widow to fave you to feed you." It's almost word for word the same. And so God says, "Get thee up to to Zarapath, which belongs to Zidom." And you can imagine Elijah saying, "What? Like, Zarapath? Are you sure, Lord?" Like this is not the Bible belt. This is the Baal belt.

Are you sure you want me to go up to Zarapath? You know, uh we find in the Bible that uh before God has his heroes of faith have their Mount Carmel confrontations, he often gives them time in the wilderness. Moses is the most famous example. John the Baptist had his wilderness experience. So did David in his years as a runaway um a bandit in the hills of the wilderness of Zin in southern Judah.

But before Elijah can stand up in that final test of faith in his generation, God has his lamb to go through a wilderness experience. And we know there is a test of faith coming in our nation and upon our country and upon our land and upon our nation uh world. And uh I think that for many of us, God is going to allow us to go through a period of testing and shaping and forming before that takes place. If you if you feel like God has abandoned you today, it may not be that God has abandoned you. It may be that God is preparing you for something that's coming your way.

And he's teaching you things like fortitude and patience and trust and dependency upon him. And so God says to Elijah, "Get you up to Zarapath." Now Zarapath, if you look at the map, um there is the map of ancient Israel. You got Israel green in the middle and you got um Samaria right um in the middle of the kingdom of Israel there where Ahab had his palace. You have Judah down in the south and north of Israel you have modernday Lebanon and you have Ty and Sidon and Zarapath is right up there just just close to Sidon there. This is the heart of the territory where Jezebel has come from.

And so when when God says to Elijah, go up to Zarapath, you think, well Elijah could be forgiven for saying, why should I go up there? Why didn't he go up there? Because the name the king of of uh Sidon was was known as Ethale or Ethbal. And that literally means I'm with Baal. Okay.

It's like you know when Hillary Clinton I'm with her. Remember those slogans? Yes. I'm with her. So I'm not saying that she's Baal.

But here you have Ethal means I'm with Baal. And the name Jezebel is from a Canaanite poem. And we have that Canaanite poem to this day. Um Isabel means in the Canaanite language, where is the prince? And the prince they're talking about um is Baal who's believed to have gone to sleep in the winter and he's got to come up in the spring in the in in the springtime to bring the harvests and and the rains in in the springs.

And so Jezebel's name is a reflection is from a Canaanite pagan poem that reflects her father's faith in in Baal. And her father's name literally means I'm with Baal. And this is where God says to Elijah, I need you to go and stay in this territory and you Elijah might be forgiven for thinking what are you sure you really want me to go there? Why do you want me to go there? You see the the [clears throat] crisis in Israel has been caused because the people of Israel have adopted the worship of the gods of Siden and Ty, which is actually Baal himself.

And so God says to Elijah, "I need you to go up into the heart of Baal territory." And they're going to realize in the heart of Baal territory that God is sovereign not just in Israel, but God is sovereign in in the heart of Baal territory as well. You're going to go into the heart of the enemy and I'm going to demonstrate my power there so they can all see and know that God is God not just of Israel. He's God of um uh Beirut and Ty and Siden. and by extension he's in control and he's sovereign in the affairs of Oregon and Washington and Michigan and all the states of the United States. So Elijah is told to go to where the worship of Baal is at its most fierce, at its most fervent, it's most faithful.

And so Elijah faithfully he goes north upon this journey. Now throughout the irony of this story is that you see on the on the screen there uh the people the cyro phoenicians as they're known uh to us as in history they had established trading centers all across the Mediterranean as you see there. Carthage was a cyphenician trading center. It was an outpost. They actually went all the way down to the south coast of Africa and there's records of them actually coming up the Atlantic there up to southern Britain.

So they were they were you might say the Amazon of their era. Um the Cyrofenicians, their ships went all across the Med. Um they went down into the Atlantic. Um north the Atlantic, south to the coast of Africa. And uh they were known for carrying precious cargos all around the world.

And because of this, they had enormous wealth, enormous influence and enormous power. And so it's no surprise when Ahab was looking for a wife, he decided to marry the daughter of Jeff Bezos. really he was marrying the daughter of the most powerful trading merchant king in the world at that time. And by tapping into that family, he was tapping into all that global network of contacts. And the irony of this, the irony of ironies is that the people of Phoenicia, the sire Phoenicians, they worship Baal.

Baal was the god of the rain. Baal was the god of the thunder. He was the god of the spring rains, the early rains and the latter rains. Baal was a good of God of good harvests, but throughout um their history, they couldn't actually feed themselves. And if you look in the Bible, there's at least three instances um you see them on the screen there.

In a time of King Solomon, when he needed wood for the temple, he asked the king of King Hyram who lived up there on the coast there. He said, "You send me wood." And what did the Cyphenician king ask for in exchange? He wanted food because Baal couldn't feed his own people. And in Ezekiel 27:1 17, you see once again that the people of the Symphonyians, the people where Jezebel comes from, even though they worshiped the God of agricultural productivity, they couldn't feed themselves, they relied on food from Israel. And you see again there in the time of King Herod, you remember the story of the king of the death of King Herod, the people of of Syrophenicia, they come, they ask the king, they need to ingratiate themselves to King Herod because they need food from Galilee.

They can't feed themselves. So the the irony about the Syrophenicians is that though they worship the God Baal, who's the god of agricultural productivity, they keep having to rely on Jehovah and Israel to supply them with their daily bread. And so Baal was their god, the god of the rain, the thunder, the storm, and the Jew. But Baal's inability to feed the Phoenicians showed the futility of idol worship to Elijah and to us today. So God says to Elijah, "Get thee from the brook Cherith and get thee up to um to Zarapath because I have a commanded widow there to feed you." It's identical command when he says, "Get thee across the brook Cherith because I've commanded the ravens to feed you there." So why didn't God just leave Elijah by the brook Cherith and keep the water running for the rest of the three and a half years of the drought?

It's a good question. Yes. Why didn't God why didn't God just say to Elijah, "Just just hang out in the wilderness. You've got a three and a half year pause. I'll keep the ravens coming.

I'll keep the water coming and you'll be absolutely fine. Well, there is a there is a truth about our spiritual lives and it is this. When we have a miracle on a daily basis, after a time it ceases to become a miracle in our thinking. Sometimes God needs to change our lives up in a way and take us and move us to maybe a more difficult location. Not because he wants us to suffer, but because we become complacent.

We're blind to God's goodness in our lives today. We're blind to his hands. We're blind to his provision in our lives. So God has to shake things up a bit in our lives in order that we now we now sense our need for him once again and we see his hand once again in a miraculous way. And so God says to Elijah, I need to leave this brook.

I need to leave these ravens and go and spend time with this widow. And so uh there is a passage in the Bible that discusses this. Um you know like the daily miracle of mana in the wilderness which did not stop the Israelites from their daily complaining. Sometimes God has to introduce change into our lives so that our sense of his presence might be constant and faith-building. Uh there's a passage here in Jeremiah 48 that discusses how they made wine in the ancient days.

And it says this, "Mo has been at ease from his youth, settled like wine in its drags. He has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, nor has he gone into exile. Therefore, his flavor has remained and his aroma is unspoiled." So what is Jeremiah talking about here? He's he's comparing the people of Moab to what happens when you make wine in the ancient world. And what they would do is when they want when they had grape juice want to turn it into wine, the juice was allowed to stand for a period of time to allow the fermentation to take place and the thick sediment would settle at the bottom.

And when the thick sediment um s sat at the bottom for a while, then they they would pour off the top the sweeter lighter stuff at the top and they would repeat the process time and time and time again to eventually you have a very very clear juice, clear wine essentially and all the sediment has been taken out. It's a natural process. Wine makers do this and Jeremiah refers to it down here in Jeremiah 48. Likewise in our lives, change can be unsettling, but it's sometimes necessary. Wine is only made sweeter and clearer when there is constant change.

When you're constantly pouring off the stuff and letting the the the fermentation take place and letting the sediment settle to the bottom. Change can make us sweeter, less demanding, less complaining, more willing to let go of what we want, more willing to do what God wants. When God allows us to go through change, we become less dependent and we we no longer finding our peace in people, places or possessions. But and we are seeking the peace that only God can give. So God allows us to go through through changes in our lives.

Change teaches us to put down our roots in God and his character, not in any community, not in any house, and not in any job. Constant change leads us to the place where we can join with Moses and say, "Oh Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. change isn't necessarily a bad thing. Now, why did God want Moses to go to this particular widow? Well, Jesus kind of alludes to it in Luke chapter 4.

He discusses this story. This is the Jesus' opening sermon in the Gospel of Luke. It's known as the Nazareth manifesto. And it says there, "And Jesus said, truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is there were many is widows in Israel in the time of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land.

Yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarapath in Sidon. And when he spoke about this then when Jesus spoke about non being healed of his leprosy the people of Nazareth wanted to kill Jesus. Remember that story? So Jesus speaks about the widow of Zarapath um in the in Luke chapter 4 here. And even though there were many, many widows in Israel, and God could have sent Elijah to any of those widows, God in his wisdom sent Elijah up into the Baal belts to stay with an ostensibly a worshshiper of Baal.

So why would God send her up there? Send Elijah up there? Well, there was something about this widow that couldn't be found in any widow in Israel at the time. See, she was open to the voice of God and she was ready to trust to trust Jehovah with her life and not Baal because as I have commanded her, says God, God has spoken to this pagan woman and she's chosen to obey God rather than the gods of Ty and Siden. [snorts] She's chosen to trust as as her food is running out.

She's chosen to trust Jehovah God who everybody's blaming for the famine. and she's choosing to turn her back on the bales of of Syphenicia who are theoretically the ones who give you food. She's making a choice of faith even before Elijah gets onto her property. Jezebel was seeking Elijah's life. She's already killed all the prophets of God she could find.

And in Nazareth, Christ's hometown, they were so filled with anger at his teaching, they also sought to kill him moments after this teaching of Jesus in Luke 4. So for both Jesus and Elijah, both of them went to the Gentiles when they were driven from Nazareth. This widow lived in the Baal belt. She was surrounded by the worship of demons. Her home and her community had been destroyed by the drought of Israel.

It wasn't just a drought in Israel. Her own area was also subject to the same drought and she knew that her food was running low. But despite her precarious situation, she was open to Jehovah, to the God of Israel. You know this morning uh in in in Pastor Justin Tobias's sermon this afternoon he was talking remember the testament he gave at the end of that man who hated God and when somebody shows him some kindness he say he he says now I believe that God exists. Okay [snorts] there are people out there who may be ostensibly far from God but if they come into contact with a gracefilled and loving follower of Jesus Christ it can change their whole experience.

And this widow is no different to that man that pastor Tobias was sharing about in his tested sermon earlier today. We are not to write any people group off just because ostensibly they look like pagans. Everybody is within the is is within the reach of God. No people group, no individual is somehow beyond the reach of God to reach. It may be your neighbor.

It may be your children. It may be your and a loved one out there. But do not give up hope on anybody. And so God sends Elijah up to this widow living in the bail belt. And he says, "She's going to feed you there." So the story goes on.

He says, "He set out and went to Zarapath. When he came to the gates of the town, 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. As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, "Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand." But she said, "As the Lord your God liveth, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug. I'm now gathering a couple of sticks so I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, so that we may eat it and we may die." She was aware of her desperate situation.

Death was on the famine, on the horizon. The famine had cornered her. She was down to her last meal. Her last meal. How would you have felt if Elijah came and said, "Share with me your last meal?" I've noticed that when people are on death row, they they never ask for salad for their last meal.

Have you ever noticed that? It's always a mixture of carbs, sugar, and fat in various combinations thereof. But people on death row normally don't ask for for um for salad. I've noticed that. They're not concerned about whether it's plant-based, you know, high sugars, high sodium content, and no longer thinking about that at that moment in time.

But nobody interferes with that last meal. People get whatever they want for that last meal. Is that not right? Okay. The government recognizes that last meal is like a sacred ritual that people go through before they pass away.

And this woman is about to face her last meal. And really, Elijah, what are you thinking of asking this woman to share her last meal with you? She's going to say goodbye to a little boy in the near future. Just leave her in peace. But no, that's not what happens.

Elijah comes up to her and it's a strange story because um Elijah is not supposed to be asking for help from widows. The Mosaic law is pretty clear. Exodus 22:23 says, "You shall not abuse any widow or orphan." He wasn't supposed to be taking advantage of a single mom like this. James 1:27 says, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this, to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." So widows were a protected class. They were a special class.

God had commanded that people were to protect the widows in your community. And Elijah is an able-bodied man with no social responsibilities. And now he's asking this widow with her last meal in her hands. Would you please give me from your last meal? I'm sure this is the last thing that Elijah particularly wanted to do in that moment.

For him to seek assistance from a widow would have been unthinkable for a faithful Jewish man like Elijah. He was supposed to protect widows. He was supposed to provide for widows. He was supposed to um support widows, not impose upon her. And if God could feed him through those ravens, why should he impose upon this widow?

Why endanger her life by forcing her to harbor a wanted fugitive? And for a Jewish man to ask for water from a gentile unmarried woman, that was unthinkable. Just ask Jesus in John chapter 4. And what of her reputation? What are the neighbors going to say if a strange looking man just moves in with that widow?

I mean, really, the scandal. Who is this guy? He doesn't speak Zyro Phoenician. Or if he does, he speaks it with an awful accent. He must come from Britain, obviously.

Okay. Who is this guy staying with you? And if that widow ever hoped to marry again, having that strange bearded man living in her house for an extended period of time is probably going to finish any chance she has of of of maintaining social respectability and ever entering into a marriage ever again. So it's not just give me a meal that Elijah is asking of her. He's asking her to basically trust her entire future to him.

It's a big ask from Elijah to that widow. But Elijah knew that the only way he was going to survive that drought was if he was obedient to God. And that widow also knew because God had commanded her. Um go she also knew that the only way she was going to survive this drought was by was by being obedient to Jehovah God. o they both have this conundrum.

They're going to have to trust God with all the social complications that go with it. Or they're going to do what is socially right and proper. Elijah can say, "I'm not going to impose upon you." And she's going to say, "No way you're coming through my front door, mate." And they're going to go their own way. And they're both going to die. So, they have to make a choice here.

And what you notice about her response, go back to the text in red. The first the first question from Elijah is this. bring me a little water in a vessel so that I may drink. Now, does she go and get him water? Yes or no?

Yes. As she was going to bring it. Okay. So, she goes to get water. Now, um where does she get the water from?

In the villages of of the Middle East, they have communal wells. So, she's being asked to tap into a communal resource. And she has no problem sharing from this communal resource, i.e. the well. It's like when people come to church today and they say, "I'm hungry.

I'm homeless. I need help." We say, "Go to the Salvation Army. Go to Goodwill. Go to neighbor to neighbor. Go to Adventist community services.

We have systems in place in our community to care for people in your situation in life." She had no problem giving resources that didn't belong to her. She She had no problem giving water from the communal well. But the moment Elijah says, "And bring me a little morsel of your bread, the food that's in your hand." The next verse is but. But see, the first request for Elijah for water was from the communal well. That was no problem for the widow.

The second request was from her personal store of food. And then it becomes a problem. Are we any different? We're happy to help as long as it doesn't mean personal sacrifice. You're in trouble.

We have a we have a go and see our head elder. We give out $50 Walmart cards. They'll take care of you. Is that what some people do? Somebody say yes, please.

Yes, you're homeless. We'll go and check you into a hotel tonight and we'll bid you our farewell and we never come never cross our doorway again. Please just disappear. We're happy to tap into the communal well, but like this widow, we're not much different to her. When Elijah says, "Now I need you to give me something from what's literally in your hand that belongs to you and is your hope of sustenance for another few days." Then she has a problem with it.

Then she has a problem with it. True sacrifice doesn't come from our plenty, but it comes out of our means of survival. Sacrifice is made not just from abundance, but when we have nothing to give. And there's a truth in life, and it is this, that the greatest miracles take place in the darkest of moments. we want to see miracles in life, then we must be willing for God to allow us to enter into um difficult, dangerous, desparing moments because it's precisely when there is no human way out of that conundrum that God's power is most is made manifest in our lives.

[snorts] And because this woman was was willing to help Elijah in her darkest moment, this is my last meal and I'm going to go home and eat it and then I'm going to die. because she was willing to help in in the most difficult moment of her life. She saw an incredible miracle from God. And if we want to see miracles from God taking place in our lives, we need to reflect on the story of this woman. We may have failing bank accounts, failing businesses, dying congregations, troubled marriages.

Elijah knows these physical realities of for the woman. God knows the physical realities in our lives. But God knew that he commanded Elijah that this widow is going to is going to is going to feed you. And God has promised us, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And so in each of these stories, the story of Elijah and the widow and and I'll walk with God today, God says, I know things are difficult, but I'm asking you to hold on to faith.

Elijah doesn't reason with her, but he invites her to lift her eyes heavenward and to trust in Jehovah, God. Elijah says to her, he says, "Do not be afraid. Go and do as you have said. Get me the water. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.

For thus sayaith the Lord the God of Israel. The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth. Elijah does not argue with her. He does not rebuke her for a lack of faith. He invites her to a deeper faith.

He invites her in this moment of decision to choose faith over fear and to trust not Baal but Jehovah God. And so she has to make a decision in that moment in that spot. And by God's grace she made a decision. I once was invited to study with a lady in London the UK and she was a Methodist and she wanted to know about the Sabbath. And um she'd heard about the Sabbath.

So I I sat down. I prepared a series of lessons like 10 lessons long. The Sabbath in creation, the Sabbath in the Exodus, the Sabbath in um uh let my people go to celebrate a festival. You just want to rest. The Sabbath is in Exodus chapter 5.

There the Sabbath is in Exodus 19. The Sabbath in the Old Testament, the Sabbath and life of Christ, the Sabbath and Times of the Apostles, the Sabbath in the end final crisis and Isaiah 66, the Sabbath when we all get to heaven. I prepared this wonderful series of Bible studies with this lady. And we start out, let's just start out in Luke 4 where it says Jesus was in the synagogue on the Sabbath as was his custom. we're going to start out from there.

And she says, "Fine, I'll keep the Sabbath." I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've done all this work. I've prepared all the studies." It's not quite as simple as that. Like, you need to sit and endure me for at least the next 12 hours over the next 12 weeks before you're going to understand that you need to keep the Sabbath. She says, "Did Jesus keep the Sabbath?" Yes.

I said, "In that case, I'll keep the Sabbath." I was so upset with her, like, Lord, what's wrong with this woman? Doesn't she want to drink more deeply of the truths about the Sabbath? Apparently not. She'll learn these things in time. She made a decision in that moment.

And God honored that decision. And this woman here, Elijah, invites her to not be afraid, but to do what God has commanded her to do, and she's to choose faith over fear. Now, the Phoenicians believe that Baal supplied your daily meal, wheat, and corn. Baal was the son of the Philistine god Deeon. And Deeon is a Canaanite word for corn.

So Baal was, you might say, the son of corn or the son of the corn maker. Baal was also believed to supply oil. An ancient Canaanite poem reads like this. It says, "The heavens reign oil. The wadis run with honey.

So I know that the mighty one Baal lives. Lo, the prince, the lord of the earth exists." And so in this story here, Elijah is saying to this lady, it's not just about food. In this moment, I'm inviting you to choose faith over fear. I'm inviting you to choose Jehovah God over the gods of this world. I'm asking you to choose your pagan worldview or the true biblical worldview.

I'm asking you to look at my faith and as an example and trust in Jehovah God rather than Baal. Who does she trust with her daily bread? In the in the in the pandemic, the decision ultimately for many people came down to this. What is or who or what is your final source of authority? Who do you trust?

And many people made a decision on who do you trust? We were told to trust the science. Remember that? Trust the science. When the science didn't believe any of what the science was telling us if you follow the news, they didn't believe any of it.

Or we can choose to trust God and act under the convictions of the Holy Spirit. This woman has to make a life or death decision in this moment. Is she going to trust Jehovah or is she going to still continue her her belief in Baal? And Elijah is bringing that choice into her life. You know, I've met people um I met somebody in Hawaii just recently and they were ready to be baptized years ago and I said, "Why why aren't you already baptized?" They said, "Well, nobody asked me.

You literally meet people like that. You go to camp meetings, you go to Bible events, you go to evangelistic events, and there's somebody sitting there and you're astonished because they're clearly a Christian. They but they they live the Christian life. if they show the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives and say, "Why aren't you baptized?" "Well, nobody asked me." And Elijah comes to this lady and he's not asking her to be baptized, but he's asking her to place her trust in the creator of the universe in that moment. Is she going to trust the gods of this world, or is she going to trust Jehovah God?

And so, she makes up her mind. So, she went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for how many days? Many days. The jar of was the jar of meal was not emptied. Neither did the jug of oil fail according to the word of the Lord or the word of Jehovah that he spoke by Elijah.

God said go and Elijah went. Elijah said go and do and she went and she did. God's promises hinge on our obedience. Don't ignore our part in the promises and the miracles of God. The beginning days of a miracle are often the hardest for our situation.

The miracles take place in the most dire of circumstances. As a general rule, don't quit. When God is leading, it is often surprising. Man's obedience and God's faithfulness is a combination that leads to miracles. Then as today, God's faithfulness and man's obedience leads to miracles.

And that widow met Jehovah God. Not in the temple of Jerusalem, not in a synagogue. She didn't hear a sermon about Jehovah. She wasn't in a praise team singing songs about Jehovah. that woman of Zarapath, that widow of Zarapath, she met God every day at her kitchen table.

Because every time she went to that that that um jug and she looked inside, oh, there's there's a flower. And over here, oh, there's oil. I thought we finished yesterday, but it's always there. That woman did not meet God in the temple. She didn't meet in God in a cathedral.

She didn't meet God in local Adventist church. She didn't meet in the Jerusalem temple. She met God in her kitchen while she's preparing her daily breakfast. Praise God from whom all biscuits flow as the song says. You know God can meet us wherever we are.

He met her at the kitchen table. Maybe God wants to meet you tomorrow morning at your kitchen table. She stands on your prepare your food and you look out the kitchen window and you see the beauties of nature and the beauties of God's creation. Maybe God is inviting us to trust him again as our creator, to trust him for our future. When we pause and we slow down, you know, I don't pause and slow down for almost anything.

I mean, really, I'm really bad at this. I preach this, but I don't practice it. So, please forgive this hypocrisy up here today. I can walk with my wife for two miles each morning and have no idea what I've just walked through. I know I'm walking on the road outside and she's looking at the flowers and she's looking at the birds and she's looking at the bees and the corn and the grain and the the grapes and the peaches.

They're all ripening right now in Baron Springs. I'm just thinking about my ne next sermon. I'm oblivious to what is happening around me. So, I'm not a good example of this. Okay, I'll just confess up here.

Some of you are smiling. Some of your husbands are pretty much the same. My wife has to say, "Planet Earth calling for Conrad. Planet Earth calling for Conrad. Come in.

Come in. Come in." I say, "Yeah, what were you talking about? Were you not listening to what I was just saying?" Well, I was. What was I talking about? Then you frantically rewind what?

Anything you remember. And then you say that. She said, "I said that 5 minutes ago." Well, I was just thinking about what you were saying. It's like a dance. You have to go this dance like like lawyers in a court, you might say.

But that woman met God in her kitchen every day. Jesus described it this way in Matthew 6. He said, "Seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." It's not what we possess that matters, but it's how we hold it in our hands. Do we clutch what we have, our little store close to our chests? Are we afraid that our material blessings will run out?

Invite you to try God today and to find out. That woman gave up a single meal and she gained a lifelong of food and she gained eternal life in the process. Sister White comments thus. She says, "The widow of Zarapath shared her morsel with Elijah and in return her trial and that of her son were preserved. her life and that of her son were preserved.

And to all that is us today as well, who in time of trial and want give sympathy and assistance to others more needy, God has promised great blessing. He has not changed. His power is no less today than it was in the days of Elijah. No less sure now than when spoken by our savior is the promise, he that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. You know Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 had three whenever statements.

He says whenever you pray, so does Jesus assume that his followers will be people of prayer? Yes or no? Yes. Then he says whenever you fast does he assume that his followers will be people will be people who fast? Yes or no?

And then he says and whenever you give arms to the poor does Jesus assume that his followers will be known for their generosity to those in need. Yes or no? Absolutely. I want to encourage you today Jesus assumes that if we are if we bear his name we'll be people of prayer. be people who fast because fasting goes with prayer and when we fast and when we pray we can actually give to bless those around us.

You say, "Well, how's that going to be possible?" Well, how much does it cost to feed a family of four these days for one meal? Okay. $50, $100. I mean, give me a figure. $50, let's say.

Yes. If you fast as a family for one meal, you've got $50 you can help somebody out with down the road. It's as simple as that. You go one day as fasting as a family, that may save you $100 worth of food. You've now got a $100 a week that you can give to a local food bank to help feed the poor.

So, when we fast and we engage in self-denial, we become a blessing to those around us. And if a hundred people in a church fasted one day a week, you would suddenly have $10,000 a week of food that you can give to a local food bank. Your church is now a center for helping the poor in your community. Just do the math. It's incredible.

And this widow demonstrated the truth that when we fast and and we give to somebody in need, we receive incredibly immeasurably more blessings from God than what we've given up ourselves. We don't like to talk about this much as Christians in the 21st century here in America or in Britain where I come from, but that these truths that they're timeless. Jesus assumes that his followers will be people who give to the poor. uh to his faithful servants today. Christ says to he that receiveth me and that to he that receiveth you receiveth me and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.

No act of kindness shown in his name will fail to be recognized and rewarded. And in the same tender recognition Christ includes even the feeblest and lowliest of the family of God. Whosoever shall give to drink, he says, unto one of these little ones, those who are as children their faith and knowledge of Christ, a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple. Verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. That's a promise from Christ himself.

That when we take care of the poor in our midst, God blesses us. God blesses us. When we rally around as a church community to help somebody in need in our church family, God blesses us. I was in a church once and and a lady in praise and praise and test me stood up and I was going to preach um something in Revelation and she stood up and she said, "Uh, my husband walked out this morning. I've got four little kids and I don't have money to pay the rent this month.

That was her testimony. And the church sat in shock like, you got to be kidding us. Like, your husband just disappeared. Yeah. He's said he's not coming back.

Just gone. And he's left me with just the food money and I've got no money to pay rent. So, what did we do? I said from the front, okay, we're going to change our sermon. We're going to talk about divorce and remarage this morning because that's what we did.

And um maybe it was a little early for her, but that's what I did. um as it was they reconciled some months later. So, praise the Lord for that. But what we did was the church. I said, "This lady needs help and she needs to know not just monthtomonth that she's covered.

Let's raise a year's worth of rent this morning in offerings." And we raised a year's worth of rent in that morning offering. And we gave it to that lady and said, "For the next year, your rent is secure." Do you know that that the impact that had on that family with four children? those four children who grew up in some difficult circumstances now some now some of them work for the Lord in the church in the Minnesota conference you know they saw the love of God in practice we heard this from pastor Justin Tobias when we demonstrate the love of God to those around us when we pull together as church families it's amazing what God can do through his people and the name of God is glorified in our communities when we help people out when I see evangelical churches paying off three four million dollars of medical bills for people in certain zip codes I think Why aren't we doing that as Adventists? Because the name of God is glorified in that community. Everybody is praising God because those Christians stepped up and helped out their needy neighbors.

And so I want to encourage us today, whatever congregation you come from, to be intentional and to be intentional about looking for helping those in need in your midst. You may have single moms who are struggling to pay rent. You've probably got some people in your churches paying holding down two, three, in some cases four part-time jobs just to pay the bills. You got people in your churches who everything is fine, but if they have one thing go wrong, like get a flat tire on the way home from work and their whole life turns into a financial tail spin because they're living really on the margin. I want to encourage you today to look out for those in your church.

Listen to what's going on in their lives and maybe establish a poor fund. Maybe have some criteria there, but be intentional about looking out for the poor in our midst because we do have people who are struggling to put food on the table in America today. They're paid working two or three jobs. And this I'm not a socialist or a Marxist or anything, but it is our privilege. It's our privilege.

I walked through the streets of Azbahan one day when I worked out there many years ago and there was this little babushkirt there. That's a Russian grandma and she held out her hand and she said, "Palister," which means please. I put my hand into my pocket and I thought I had a $100 note in this pocket and a $5 note in this pocket. And I put my hand in and I was talking with somebody else. I didn't pay any attention to her.

I pulled it out and just passed it on to her and just didn't even look at her and just carried on with my conversation. And a few minutes later, I heard bj that means my god. Bjvvic to who are you? And I what what's she talking about? Who are you?

And I turned around and she's weeping. This old this old grandma who's begging on the side of the road. And so we she came and she talked to me and she said, "Why did this $100?" I thought, "You kidding me? $100? Like like let's do an exchange here." She said, "$100?" She says she says, "I can get food for this month." I said, "Yeah, I guess you can." Yeah.

Yeah. And and she says, "Where do you live?" I said, "I live in an apartment over there." She says, "I have a request of you." She says, she says, "When you scrape your potatoes and when you scrape your carrots, could I come by at the end of every day and collect your scrapings? Cuz I'm going to make that into soup. That'll be my borch. You have the real carrot and the cabbage and so forth, but just give me the scrapings." So, I decided just to give her money after that.

I didn't want her to eat my scrapings. Um, I didn't want to give her my thumb either. Some of you know that story. But the impact on that lady of an unexpected boon of $100 notes in 1996 when $100 was worth a lot of money, it transformed her day. And her first instinct was not to say, "Praise that foreigner." It was to say, which means praise be to God in Russian.

Glaminia, what he has done for me. And so when we give to the poor um our maker is praised in this world and this woman experienced it. Elijah experienced it. We can experience it in our own lives as well. Little is much when God is in it.

But then we come to the catch in the story. Says after this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house became ill. His illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. So this little boy is dying. And she then said to Elijah, "What have you against me, oh man of God?" So that sweet relationship now there's there's there's a fly in the ointment.

What have you against me, oh man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance. I there's a guilty conscience there. She says there's something in her life that maybe Elijah doesn't know about. She says, "You've come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my God." That is, you're not just a man of God.

You saved our lives. You gave us a temporary hope and now my son is dying and it's your fault because you're bringing my sins and my life to remembrance. You know, she's really sounding off here. There's a guilty conscience here now. Instead of Elijah being the savior who's brought food into her life, now she says, "You're the man of God.

You came here to remind me of my sins and now you come here. Now my son is dead. Why have you come into my house?" But G but Elijah said to her, "Give me your son." He took him from her bosom, carried him into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. And he cried out to the Lord, "Oh Lord, my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying by killing her son?" Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried out to the Lord, "Oh Lord, my God, let this child's life come into him again." The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. The life of the child came into him again, and he revived.

Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother. Then Elijah said, "See, your son is alive." So 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." It's a powerful story. Yes. After this, says the text, this woman has seen that God can save life. God has given her an endless supply of of of flour and of oil.

She knows that God can save life. And because there's a man of God living with her and she's given her loaf of bread, her her piece of bread to him and he survived. That's her bargain with God that if if you if if I give you my this last meal, then that there will always be um oil and always be flour in the house. And she thinks I've got a covenant with God, my boy is going to live. I'm going to live.

And as a parent, she's really concerned her boy is going to live. And then the boy gets ill and the boy dies. It seems, well, I thought we had a covenant with God here. Like, did you save my boy from starvation just to see him die of a fever? Like, what kind of deal is this?

This sounds sick to me. I I made the sacrifice, God. Why you Why have you come Why are you not coming through a new part of the bargain? And she sounds off to Elijah. She takes the boy's death as a punishment from God.

Has she been found out by that hairy prophet? Why had she ever allowed him into her home? Why had she ever fed him? She should have just had her last meal and eat eaten it and died with her son and being buried and all that pain would have been done with. You see, it's it's bad enough to have to be in a desperate situation.

But to have your hope raised only to have it dashed again is emotionally twice as hard. And she's taken one beating after another and she's at the end of a tether and she just sounds off. In her grief and her pain, she speaks words of bitterness, of guilt, of despair, and of anger. She accuses Elijah here of coming to bring her earlier sin into remembrance and to kill her son. Was what she was saying true?

Absolutely not. But in seasons of of distress, distress and grief, we often say things we regret, don't we? We say things we don't regret. We speak before thinking. We men have a habit to do that I think more than ladies.

But we tend to speak without thinking. I think ladies have like 15 sentences ready to go at any one time and one comes out and it's already been it's been sitting there ready to go. My wife showed me a comedian once who saying, "Well, you know, you know, you're watching your husband eating breakfast and you're thinking if he does this, I'm going to do that. If he does this, I'm going to do that." The poor guy has no idea of the revenge being planned against him as he instantly eats his breakfast. And this woman though, in the midst of her anger, in the midst of her despair and her bitterness and the the the guilt of her past, she just sounds off to Elijah.

She lashes out. And and so we're no different to her. We distort. We project. We assume.

We blame. We get angry at other people. And clutching her dead boy to her chest, she lashes out at Elijah. Yes, sure, she's made mistakes in life. Who hasn't?

And she lashes out at the person closest to her. It's Elijah, so it must be Elijah's fault. And Elijah's response is beautiful. He doesn't argue. He doesn't say, "Well, you know, let's let's sit down and consider this.

I'm going to car hold a spoon and when I'm speaking, you need to be quiet and I'll give you the spoon. When you want to speak, then you'll speak. When you're holding the spoon." No, he doesn't engage in active listening. All that kind of psycho babble that we practice in marriage counseling these days. He doesn't do that.

He simply says, "Give me your son." and he takes her son from her arms and he carries that precious boy in his own arms. This was against the Levitical law. He wasn't supposed to be touching a corpse as opposed to Levit as in Leviticus 21 1-4. But he didn't just lift the load from her arms. He lifted the load from her heart.

Her burden was now his burden. Her heartbreak was now his heartbreak. They were in this together. He and she grieving over a dead boy. He bore her burden just as Christ bears our burdens.

And like Elijah, we are to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn. Tragedy reaches into everybody's homes, even those with faithfilled and faithful saints. And even where Elijah lives, the man of God, there isn't a home here today that does not have a tragedy somewhere behind that front door. I've learned as a person, no matter what the front door looks like, no matter whether it's a Ford or Ferrari at the front door, there's always a story to tell behind that front door. Tragedy reaches into every home one way or another.

There's always a tale to tell. There's always a concern on the heart. When you say to people, "How are things going?" The momentary pause before they say, "Well," tells you things are not exactly well. And it happens to the home of Elijah. And Elijah doesn't rebuke her misdirected anger.

He takes the boy up to his room. When he lays the corpse on the bed, what does Elijah do? He turns to God in prayer. His first response is not to argue. It's not to justify that.

Yeah, this boy died. These these things happened, dear. You know, boys die. He got a fever. You should have taken better care of him.

You shouldn't have let him out into the field without a cap on. He doesn't justify. He doesn't doesn't excuse. He turns first to God in prayer. Jesus described it thus.

He says, "Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you." Do you have a place of prayer today? Do you have a place where you turn first to God before you look for any other solutions? Jesus taught us to do this in Matthew 6:E 6 when he assumed that we are people of prayer. He assumed that we have places of prayer, places where we turn to first before we look for human means of of healing or human options to figure to deal with whatever problems we have.

Elijah had a place of prayer. He went upstairs to his room and he took the boy with him. His first response in that moment of tragedy was not to lash out. It wasn't to blame, but it was to go to his special place and to get alone with God. Isaiah or Psalm 91 says, "He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the almighty.

I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust." Elijah turns first to God, and he asks God boldly for a miracle. I think I've said this before, but uh when I fell in the Canadian Rockies in 2017, I twisted my back. I had chronic acute back pain for the last 5 years. It was terrible. And I was I would lie down.

I'd walk through the day, no pain. The moment I li lay down, the pain strikes the knot in my right on my middle of the back on by just right at the spine there. And I would get like three or four hours night sleep. Then I'd wake up and the pain was excruciating. And it was all through the COVID pandemic.

And I get up, I had to walk around to the living room like two or three hours to walk the pain off. Then it's time to get up. And so from like 2018 to 2023, 2024, I was been I've been running on like four to five hours a night sleep. It's been brutal. All right.

There are days when you're just dizzy where your head feels like the head's been taken off and you can't think of anything and and you're trying to speak and just nonsense comes out. Hopefully not in the pulpit at least, but sometimes nonsense comes out which is the words just come out jumbled up. I think there's a clinical word for it. Means you're worn out. And this lady called me in January this year.

She wrote to me actually. She had passed vine. She says, "I'm a prayer warrior." She said, "I want to pray for you." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, please pray for my ministry." She said, "No, no, no." She wrote back. She said, "I want something that's personal." So, I wrote back to her and said, "You know, I got this problem with my back." And I went to see the doctor and a number of doctors. Eventually, they did an MRI scan and they say, "I've got a nerve ends trapped up between some vertebrae, some I don't know the clinical term for it other than it's painful and expensive to deal with." And the doctor said, "We can inject you in there and it'll kill the nerve off the ending.

And in two to three years later, the nerve is going to grow back and you're going to have the same pain again." I said, "Is that the only cure you've got?" They said, "Yes." I said, 'Well, I'd rather not do that, thank you very much. I'll just I'd rather live with a pain than have this this this needle stuck into my spine every two years. So, I wrote to this lady and said, 'Well, I've got a problem with my back, and I haven't slept properly since 2017, and I need I need sleep. So, she writes back to me. She says, "You're now top of my prayer list." And she said, "I'll be praying for you." Did I think anything of it?

No. I get through three, four, 500 emails a day. There's a lot of stuff crosses my desk and it's just another quick, you [snorts] know, you work through them as fast as you can. And the next morning, my wife says, "Well, did you sleep last night?" I said, "Well, yes." She says, "How long did you sleep?" "Well, I slept from 10 till 6." She said, "You had 8 hours sleep?" "Oh, yes." She says, "Did that lady start praying for you yesterday?" I said, "Yeah, bet. I bet she did.

I bet she did." So, I wrote to her and said, "When did you start praying?" She said, "I started praying last night." And I said, "Well, that's good to know." And my wife says, "You're going to say thank you." said, "No, I'm going to wait a whole week. I'm going to see whether this miracle actually has lasted, whether this was a freak of nature, you know, uh, you know, once in a century storm. I don't know what happened here." So, I waited the whole week for seven nights. I waited and I slept seven nights like a baby. That was in January this year.

And then I lost her email. And I've been wondering for months like, "Who was this lady? I don't remember her name. And then um and since January this year, I've I've had uninterrupted sleep with no back pain whatsoever. Like, praise the Lord.

Yes. We serve a God who heals. It was this this this this lady prayer warrior said, "I want to pray for you personally and um I expressed faith. Yeah, I pray for my back and God has healed my back. I haven't had an MRI scan.

I don't know what's happened to my nerve, but I thank the Lord that I have no pain. That's all I care about. If the nerve is still there, praise the Lord. It's just not giving me any more pain." All right. And so about three weeks ago, I was in Hawaii.

This lady wrote to me and she said, "How's your back?" I thought, "Thank you, Lord." She wrote to me. So I wrote back to her and said, "Well, praise the Lord. This is what happened." And she said, "Well, praise the Lord. I've been praying non-stop for you." I said, "Well, don't stop praying." Said, "And by the way, I'm out here in Hawaii and I met a young person who's got this serious health issue. Could I please ask you to put her on your prayer list?" She said, "Absolutely." So, she's now on that young lady's on this prayer warriors um prayer list.

You know, Elijah prayed and that boy was raised to life. We serve a God who heals people today. And I can testify to that today. Now, I don't know why God sometimes heals and sometimes he doesn't. All I know is the night that woman said, "I'll pray for your back." Six years of pain came to a miraculous end.

And I praise God for that. And so, God does answer prayer today. And so, God answers Elijah's prayer in this story. And he restores life to the boy. Elijah in turn turns the boy over to his mother.

a foretaste of what's going to happen to every mother who's lost a child in this world when Jesus comes again. To every miscarried child, every aborted child, every lost child, every stillborn child, there is the promise that one day, just as Jesus sends out, little girl talakum, which means like little lamb, get up. It's a term of endearment. And he restores her to her parents. And Elijah, the man of God, prays over this boy and begs God to raise that boy so he can give him back to his mother.

We have the assurance today that if we've lost a child through any of those means, spontaneous, you know, miscarriages, abortions, still births, whatever it may be, road accidents, there is a promise from God that believing mothers will receive their children again when Jesus comes again. The gospel is truly good news. It's not just an ethos for living. It is a power of God to set free and to save and to bring lost children back to their moms and their dads. And then the woman says to Elijah, verse 24, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth." Now Elijah finishes the chapter as Elijah the man of God.

In verse one, he is Elijah the Tishbite. But by the end of this chapter, Elijah is now recognized by this pagan woman as being a man of God. She's the first person to recognize him thus. You see, Elijah may be a prophet of God, but God is preparing Elijah for that that crisis of conscience on Mount Carmel in the next chapter. And before Elijah can stand on Mount Carmel, God has got to take him from being Elijah the Tishbite to Elijah, the man of God.

And so, he sends him to Ahab. He sends him by the brook Cherithan, the fading brook, and living day by day with the ravens. That's not something any of us would want to go through today. But God is teaching him to depend on God for his daily bread on a daily basis. And the man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And then God sends him up to Zarapath to a place of furnace to live with this strange woman. And uh he treats her with integrity. You see in this story, Elijah is living upstairs and she's living downstairs. Elijah has not taken advantage of this woman because what she says is now I know that you are a man of God and the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth. What she's saying is this.

Your confession of faith has got credibility. You're living with integrity. You haven't forced yourself on me. You haven't taken advantage of me. There was no quid proquo.

I raised your boy to life. You sleep with me every night. Nothing of like like that was going on. She recognizes that he is a man of integrity. That when he says, "I'm a man of God.

You can take him at his word and you can trust this man Elijah." And because she's lived with him now for a couple of years at least, she can now say, "I now know that you are a man of God." Not like the other men in my community, but you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord is in your mouth. He's not abused his position. He's not taken advantage of her. His personal life reflects his profession of faith. She knows the private man.

She's watched him for two years. She knows his love for Jehovah is obedient, is genuine. He is genuinely a man of God. Me, may I ask you today, does our private life match our public profession of faith? Could someone who lived with us from another faith background live in our homes and say, "After two or three years, now I know that you are truly the worshippers of Jesus Christ.

What goes on in our homes, you know, often stays in our homes. Young people leave the church often because they see hypocrisy. Mom and dad like this on church, they're like living angels. You get home, they're like raging bulls. If someone were to live in your house for the next two years, would they see integrity as Pastor Kelly was preaching about?

Would they see people men and women of God who refuse to take advantage of others? Who won't abuse their position, who don't abuse others, who can be trusted in the most intimate of circumstances not to force himself on somebody else in any way whatsoever. Does my life reflect in private reflect my public profession of faith. Oh, that if people of the Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist or animist faith, if they would live in my home for two years and see how I relate to my wife and how I relate to my children and how we deal with our finances and how we deal with our neighbors and all the rest of it, oh that after two years they might say, "Truly, this is a man and woman of God." Would your life pass that test today? Remember this is God preparing Elijah before the test on Mount Carmel.

And when the final crisis of conscience comes on our world and Satan has his deceptions poured out and Satan has his fake appearance of Christ and the mark of the beast comes, let me assure you of this. Every aspect of your life will be examined. It will be misinterpreted. It will be misconstrued. Is your life patently and transparently authentic and and honest and true and kind and loving?

Does your life really reflect the character of Christ? Look, I tell you from my own experience, somebody posted on Facebook the other day a question. They said, "Does Dr. Vine eat meat?" It was in the comment section, right? Does Dr.

Vine eat meat? They said, "I hear from close friends that he's a regular eater of meat." They said, "No present truths preacher should ever receive tithe if they're eating meat." That was the comment. So I wrote underneath. I said, 'Well, I said, 'You have my number and my email. If you really wanted to know whether I eat meat, you could have asked me.

I said, but just so you know, I'm vegan at home. I'm vegetarian on the road. When I go to England once every 10 years, I have fish and chips, which is comfort food, right? is cod, battered cod with chips bathed in salt and vinegar. And I'm I don't say this with any joy in my mouth or joy in my heart, but it's about once every 10 years.

It's not a common event. Not a common occurrence. All right. But you do need um you do need omega-3 oils in your heart your heart. So I'll take that as an excuse.

And so um what was I talking about? [laughter] All right. It's getting late here. All right. Um Oh, yeah.

So, I said, um, I said, "If you'd asked me, I would have told you." I said, "Um, uh, the way you ask it is you're trying to smear me here. You're not really trying to find out the answer to your question." I said, "God is less concerned about whether you eat a plant-based diet as whether you dine on the flesh of your brothers and sisters." I didn't get any comment back from that, but I'll tell you this. When you're in the public glare, you are subject to a level of scrutiny and people willfully misinterpreting, misreporting, misunderstanding, assigning the worst possible motives to everything you've ever done in your life. And I'm telling you that from my personal experience. It's people who want to take you down will miss will spin anything they can about you.

And this is what we're all going to face in the final crisis. Would you pass the Elijah test? If a woman of Zarapath were to live with you for the next two years, could she say at the end of it, "This family is truly a man and woman of God." And I have nothing bad to say about them. God had to allow Elijah to go through that process before he could stand on Mount Carmel and that choice between God and the commandments of men, between Jehovah and Baal. And I believe God is asking us today to ask to ask if we were to go through the same experience, would we be able to and the widow of Zarafath were to look at us before the mark of the beast comes our way and the whole world looks at us like under a microscope and examines everything we've ever done and said in our lives, would the world will the world be able to say that truly this man and this woman, this boy, this girl is a man or woman of God?

If not, if not, then tonight is the time to get on your knees. Say, "Lord, clean me up. Remove anything of my life that is not consistent with a holy God. Guide me with your spirit. Show me what needs to be put away and show me what needs to be filled into my life.

Day by day, moment by moment, lead me with your spirit so that as John the Baptist would say, every day he must increase and I must decrease. If somebody could live with you today for two years and come away with the conclusion that they profess to be Christians, but they're really not Christians, let's be honest with ourselves because today nothing nothing's really on the line. But when the mark of the beast comes and everything's on social media and people are looking for chances to destroy your reputation in public, if your life is not transparently ethical and loving and authentic today, it will be used against you one day. With the internet, everything you say is taken down and used in evidence against you. It's just the reality of the modern world.

Elijah passed the test. Would I pass the test? And would you pass the test today? Each of us knows the answer to that question. Let me come to our final slide here.

I'll draw this to a close because the time is up. As you look at this chapter, there's one thing that strikes me, and it is this. Elijah starts out as a Tishbite, a man from Tishbay. And he ends up being called a man of God. And what is the difference between Elijah being a man of Tishbay and a man of God, is that seven times in this chapter, I've given you upon the screen there, seven times in the chapter, it says the word of the Lord.

The word of the Lord. Verse one, Elijah says, "Except by my word." Verse two, the word of the Lord came to him. Verse 5, so Elijah went and did according to the word of the Lord. Verse 8, and the word of Jehovah came to Elijah, saying. Verse 14, for thus saith the Lord the God of Israel, speaking to the widow.

Verse 16, she did according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. And verse 24, she says, "And the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth." At each turning point in this chapter, every single turning point, every single interaction, as [snorts] Elijah journeys from being a man of origin to a man of God, you find the word of God. Everything in his life is driven by the word of God. That's the difference between being a man or woman of origin or a man or a woman of God. It's that everything in Elijah's life hinges on the revealed will of God and being obedient to the revealed will of God.

We're talking about Satan's delusions. This uh this this event here. We're talking about Satan's illusions. Ephesians chapter 5 says this. Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.

We can experience that same cleansing today and preparation for the final crisis when we feed on the word of God on a daily basis. And we run the word of God through our minds every single morning. And just as we shower in the morning and clean our bodies, so we also have the washing of water by the word which is running the word of God through our mind every single morning which prepares us for the day ahead. And when like Elijah, we can say in this this chapter in three and a half years, every major event in Elijah's life, everything he says hinges around the revealed will of God and him being obedient to God's will. Elijah goes from being a man of Tishbay to a man of God.

It is my prayer today that each one of us will go from being a man or woman or boy or girl of Oregon, Washington or California, wherever we come from, to a man or woman of God. And that happens not by accident. It's not not by a gift of providence. It happens when we partner with God and we we run the water of the word of God through our minds on a daily basis and then we live in harmony with God's revealed will. When we know the truth, we recognize the counterfeits.

When we love the truth, we'll be ready for Jesus to come again. Jesus is coming. Hebrews 9:28 for those who are eagerly awaiting for him. They don't just know that he's coming with their heads, but their hearts are engaged. We want Jesus to come as soon as possible.

Their minds, their characters have been transformed by the living word of God. We talked this morning about Christ living within you. Um Christ and his righteousness. The Christ is the living word. And we learn about Christ's living word through reading the the written word.

And we hear about Christ through the spoken word, through the preaching of the word of God. And so the word of God is to be a central figure of our lives. I just want to encourage you tonight in conclusion here encourage you tonight as we leave this place that from this day forward I will be a man or a woman for whom the word of God is the central place of my life that I am this year this time next year I will no longer be a man of origin I'm going to be a a man of God and the difference between this year and next year is I run the word of God through my mind every day and I've and I'm sub I am obedience to God's revealed will Elijah was ready for the Mount Carmel experience when He stood before the whole world because he was obedient to the word of God. When we are called to account for our faith between governments and princes and councils of men, when we're called to stand tall for God in the final crisis, like Elijah, we will only be able to do that if our lives are based on the word of God. So make the word of God the center of your life from this day forward.

Don't just have a Bible at home. Feed on your Bible on a daily basis. sh allow don't read the word of God so that you can master it for a sermon or Bible study, but read the word of God so that God can master you through its text. You read the word of God not so you can read a book about history or anything else, but you're reading the word of God so you allowing the creators to speak to you through this word. You're not just reading for information, you're reading for transformation.

And when we go when we partner with God on this journey, number one, we'll be able to detect the counterfeits around us. And number two, when we come under the close scrutiny that Elijah came under in this story with the widow and later on Mount Carmel, the world will be able to say that whatever they say about the Seventh Adventist, those men and women of Oregon, they are truly men and women of God. It's my prayer that when that moment of crisis comes to us, and it will come to us all one day, sooner or later, that when the world takes a closer look at us, they'll be able to recognize that these are men and women whose lives have been changed by the power of the living God. These are men and women whose lives, the power of the living God flows through as a life-giving stream to those around. These are men and women of God who, yes, they may be sinners with the past, but they are now saints with a future.

These are men and women of God who spend time with Jesus of Nazareth. They are men and women of the word of God. And because of that, they can stand the test in the final crisis. I read the Bible through every year. Whatever else I'm doing, I read it through.

We encourage you to do the same thing. Make it your lifelong companion. Make it the joy. Make it the focus. Make it the priority of your daily life so that God will change you in the process.

And when you are come under the microscope, the world will say whatever everybody else says about that man or woman, this boy, this girl, that man or that woman, they are truly a man of God. And we have nothing more to say about it. May God bless us as we walk this journey with him. And as Elijah walked that journey for three and a half years, we can make the same journey. And when we stand on our Mount Carmel and we see God do incredible things when the mark of the beast comes about, it's my prayer that the world will see that we are men and women who've been transformed by the power of the indwelling Christ.

Let's bow our heads and we'll close with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, it's been a wonderful Sabbath day. And Father, as we've heard the preaching of your word, we've been inspired. We've been convicted. We've been deeply moved.

We've been touched. I'm asking Lord that today is not the end of the journey. But maybe today you're going to send us by the brook Cherith. You're going to send us to the widow of Zarapath. You're going to send us to a place of cutting down or to a personal furnace experience.

Wherever we go, Lord, whatever happens to us in this coming year until we meet again, if your son doesn't come in the intervening period, wherever we go, may it be known that we are we are men and women of the living God, that we walk with Jehovah, we are obedient to his teachings and his power is manifest in each of our lives, in our homes, and our ministries. Father, we ask these mercies in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.