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1 Kings Chapter
Seventeen
1 Kings 17
Chapter Contents
Elijah fed by ravens. (1-7) Elijah sent to Zarephath.
(8-16) Elijah raises the widow's son to life. (17-24)
Commentary on 1 Kings 17:1-7
(Read 1 Kings 17:1-7)
God wonderfully suits men to the work he designs them
for. The times were fit for an Elijah; an Elijah was fit for them. The Spirit
of the Lord knows how to fit men for the occasions. Elijah let Ahab know that
God was displeased with the idolaters, and would chastise them by the want of
rain, which it was not in the power of the gods they served to bestow. Elijah
was commanded to hide himself. If Providence calls us to solitude and
retirement, it becomes us to go: when we cannot be useful, we must be patient;
and when we cannot work for God, we must sit still quietly for him. The ravens
were appointed to bring him meat, and did so. Let those who have but from hand
to mouth, learn to live upon Providence, and trust it for the bread of the day,
in the day. God could have sent angels to minister to him; but he chose to show
that he can serve his own purposes by the meanest creatures, as effectually as
by the mightiest. Elijah seems to have continued thus above a year. The natural
supply of water, which came by common providence, failed; but the miraculous
supply of food, made sure to him by promise, failed not. If the heavens fail,
the earth fails of course; such are all our creature-comforts: we lose them
when we most need them, like brooks in summer. But there is a river which makes
glad the city of God, that never runs dry, a well of water that springs up to
eternal life. Lord, give us that living water!
Commentary on 1 Kings 17:8-16
(Read 1 Kings 17:8-16)
Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, and
some, it is likely, would have bidden him welcome to their houses; yet he is
sent to honour and bless with his presence a city of Sidon, a Gentile city, and
so becomes the first prophet of the Gentiles. Jezebel was Elijah's greatest
enemy; yet, to show her how powerless was her malice, God will find a
hiding-place for him even in her own country. The person appointed to entertain
Elijah is not one of the rich or great men of Sidon; but a poor widow woman, in
want, and desolate, is made both able and willing to sustain him. It is God's
way, and it is his glory, to make use of, and put honour upon, the weak and
foolish things of the world. O woman, great was thy faith; one has not found
the like, no not in Israel. She took the prophet's word, that she should not
lose by it. Those who can venture upon the promise of God, will make no
difficulty to expose and empty themselves in his service, by giving him his
part first. Surely the increase of this widow's faith, so as to enable her thus
readily to deny herself, and to depend upon the Divine promise, was as great a
miracle in the kingdom of grace, as the increase of her meal and oil in the
kingdom of providence. Happy are all who can thus, against hope, believe and
obey in hope. One poor meal's meat this poor widow gave the prophet; in
recompence of it, she and her son did eat above two years, in a time of famine.
To have food from God's special favour, and in such good company as Elijah,
made it more than doubly sweet. It is promised to those who trust in God, that
they shall not be ashamed in evil time; in days of famine they shall be
satisfied.
Commentary on 1 Kings 17:17-24
(Read 1 Kings 17:17-24)
Neither faith nor obedience shut out afflictions and death.
The child being dead, the mother spake to the prophet, rather to give vent to
her sorrow, than in hope of relief. When God removes our comforts from us, he
remembers our sins against us, perhaps the sins of our youth, though long since
past. When God remembers our sins against us, he designs to teach us to
remember them against ourselves, and to repent of them. Elijah's prayer was
doubtless directed by the Holy Spirit. The child revived. See the power of
prayer, and the power of Him who hears prayer.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on 1 Kings》
1 Kings 17
Verse 1
[1] And
Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As
the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor
rain these years, but according to my word.
Elijah —
The most eminent of the prophets, who is here brought in, like Melchisedek,
without any mention of his father, or mother, or beginning of his days; like a
man dropt out of the clouds, and raised by God's special providence as a
witness for himself in this most degenerate time that by his zeal, and courage
and miracles, he might give some check, to their various and abominable
idolatries, and some reviving to that small number of the Lord's prophets, and
people, who yet remained in Israel. He seems to have been naturally of a rough
spirit. And rough spirits are called to rough services. His name signifies, my
God Jehovah is he: he that sends me, and will own me, and bear me out.
Said to Ahab —
Having doubtless admonished him of his sin and danger before; now upon his
obstinacy in his wicked courses, he proceeds to declare, and execute the
judgment of God upon him.
As the Lord, … — I
Swear by the God of Israel, who is the only true and living God; whereas the
gods whom thou hast joined with him, or preferred before him, are dead and
senseless idols.
Before whom —
Whose minister I am, not only in general, but especially in this threatening,
which I now deliver in his name and authority.
There shall not, … —
This was a prediction, but was seconded with his prayer, that God would verify
it, James 5:17, And this prayer was truly
charitable; that by this sharp affliction, God's honour, and the truth of his
word (which was now so horribly and universally contemned) might be vindicated;
and the Israelites (whom impunity had hardened in their idolatry) might be
awakened to see their own wickedness, and the necessity of returning to the
true religion.
Those years —
That is, These following years, which were three and an half, Luke 4:25; James 5:17.
My word —
Until I shall declare, that this judgment shall cease, and shall pray to God
for the removal of it.
Verse 3
[3] Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook
Cherith, that is before Jordan.
Hide thyself —
Thus God rescues him from the fury of Ahab and Jezebel, who, he knew, would
seek to destroy him. That Ahab did not seize on him immediately upon these
words must be ascribed to God's over-ruling providence.
Verse 4
[4] And
it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the
ravens to feed thee there.
Have commanded —
Or, I shall command, that is, effectually move them, by instincts which shall
be as forcible with them, as a law or command is to men. God is said to command
both brute creatures, and senseless things; when he causeth them to do the things
which he intends to effect by them.
The ravens —
Which he chuseth for this work; to shew his care and power in providing for the
prophet by those creatures, which are noted for their greediness, that by this
strange experiment he might be taught to trust God in those many and great
difficulties to which he was to be exposed. God could have sent angels to
minister to him. But he chose winged messengers of another kind to shew he can
serve his own purposes as effectually, by the meanest creatures as by the
mightiest. Ravens neglect their own young, and do not feed them: yet when God
pleaseth, they shall feed his prophet.
Verse 6
[6] And
the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in
the evening; and he drank of the brook.
And flesh —
Not raw, but boiled by the ministry of some angel or man, and left in some
place 'till the ravens came for it: in all which, there is nothing incredible,
considering the power and providence of God.
Verse 7
[7] And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up, because there
had been no rain in the land.
A while —
Heb. at the end of days; that is, of a year; for so the word days is often
used.
Dried —
God so ordering it, for the punishment of those Israelites who lived near it,
and had hitherto been refreshed by it: and for the exercise of Elijah's faith,
and to teach him to depend upon God alone.
Verse 9
[9]
Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there:
behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.
Zarephath — A
city between Tyre and Sidon, called Sarepta by St. Luke 4:26, and others.
Zidon — To
the jurisdiction of that city, which was inhabited by Gentiles. And God's
providing for his prophet, first, by an unclean bird, and then by a Gentile,
whom the Jews esteemed unclean, was a presage of the calling of the Gentiles,
and rejection of the Jews. So Elijah was the first prophet of the Gentiles.
Commanded —
Appointed or provided, for that she had as yet no revelation or command of God
about it, appears from verse 12.
Verse 12
[12] And
she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal
in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two
sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it,
and die.
She said —
Therefore though she was a Gentile, yet she owned the God of Israel as the true
God.
Two sticks — A
few sticks, that number being often used indefinitely for any small number.
And die —
For having no more provision, we must needs perish with hunger. For though the
famine was chiefly in the land of Israel, yet the effects of it were in Tyre
and Sidon, which were fed by the corn of that land. But what a poor supporter
was this likely to be? who had no fuel, but what she gathered in the streets,
and nothing to live upon herself, but an handful of meal and a little oil! To
her Elijah is sent, that he might live upon providence, as much as he had done
when the ravens fed him.
Verse 13
[13] And
Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me
thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for
thy son.
But make, … —
This he requires as a trial of her faith, and obedience, which he knew God
would plentifully reward; and so this would be a great example to encourage
others to the practice of the same graces.
Verse 14
[14] For
thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither
shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain upon the
earth.
The barrel, … —
The meal of the barrel So the cruse of oil for the oil of the cruse.
Verse 15
[15] And
she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her
house, did eat many days.
Many days — A
long time, even above two years, before the following event about her son
happened. And surely the increase of her faith to such a degree, as to enable
her thus to deny herself and trust the promise, was as great a miracle in the
kingdom of grace, as the increase of her oil in the kingdom of providence.
Happy are they who can thus against hope believe and obey in hope.
Verse 16
[16] And
the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to
the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah.
Wasted not —
See how the reward answered the service. She made one cake for the prophet and
was repaid with many for herself and her son. What is laid out in charity is
set out to the best interest, an upon the best securities.
Verse 17
[17] And
it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of
the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath
left in him.
No breath —
That is, he died. We must not think it strange, if we meet with sharp
afflictions, even when we are in the way of eminent service to God.
Verse 18
[18] And
she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou
come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?
She said —
Wherein have I injured thee? Or, why didst thou come to sojourn in my house, if
this be the fruit of it? They are the words of a troubled mind.
Art thou come —
Didst thou come for this end, that thou mightest severely observe my sins, and
by thy prayers bring down God's just judgment upon me, as thou hast brought
down this famine upon the nation? To call, etc. - To God's remembrance: for God
is said in scripture, to remember sins, when he punisheth them; and to forget
them, when he spares the sinner.
Verse 19
[19] And
he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and
carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed.
Into a loft — A
private place, where he might more freely pour out his soul to God, and use
such gestures as he thought most proper.
Verse 20
[20] And
he cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, hast thou also brought evil
upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?
He cried — A
prayer full of powerful arguments. Thou art the Lord, that canst revive the
child: and my God; and therefore wilt not, deny me. She is a widow, add not
affliction to the afflicted; deprive her not of the support and staff of her
age: she hath given me kind entertainment: let her not fare the worse for her
kindness to a prophet, whereby wicked men will take occasion to reproach both
her, and religion.
Verse 21
[21] And
he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD, and
said, O LORD my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again.
Come into him — By
which it is evident, that the soul was gone out of his body, this was a great
request; but Elijah was encouraged to make it; by his zeal for God's honour,
and by the experience which he had of his prevailing power with God in prayer.
Verse 22
[22] And
the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him
again, and he revived.
Into him again —
This plainly supposes the existence of the soul in a state of separation, and
consequently its immortality: probably God might design by this miracle to give
an evidence hereof, for the encouragement of his suffering people.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on 1 Kings》
17 Chapter 17
Verses 1-7
Verse 1
As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand.
The source of Elijah’s strength
This chapter begins with the conjunction “And”: it is, therefore,
an addition to what has gone before; and it is God’s addition. When we have
read to the end of the previous chapter--which tells the melancholy story of
the rapid spread, and universal prevalence, of idolatry, in the favoured land
of the Ten Tribes--we might suppose that that was the end of all; and that the
worship of Jehovah would never again acquire its lost prestige and power. And,
no doubt, the principal actors in the story thought so too. But they had made
an unfortunate omission in their calculations--they had left out Jehovah
Himself. He must have something to say at such a crisis. When men have done
their worst, and finished, it is the time for God to begin. The whole land
seemed apostate. Of all the thousands of Israel, only seven thousand remained
Who had not bowed the knee or kissed the hand to Baal. But they were paralysed
with fear; and kept so still, that their very existence was unknown by Elijah
in the hour of his greatest loneliness. Such times have often come, fraught
with woe: false religions have gained the upper hand; iniquity has abounded;
and the love of many has waxed cold. So was it when the Turk swept over the
Christian communities of Asia Minor, and replaced the Cross by the crescent. So
was it when, over Europe, Roman Catholicism spread as a pall of darkness that
grew denser as the dawn of the Reformation was on the point of breaking. So was
it in the last century, when Moderatism reigned in Scotland, and apathy in England.
But God is never at a loss. The land may be overrun with sin; the lamps of
witness may seem all extinguished; the whole force of the popular current may
run counter to His truth; and the plot may threaten to be within a hair s
breadth of entire success; but, all the time, He will be preparing a weak man
in some obscure highland village; and in the moment of greatest need will send
him forth, as His all-sufficient answer to the worst plottings of His foes.
Elijah grew up like the other lads of his age. In his early years he would
probably do the work of a shepherd on those wild hills. As he grew in years, he
became characterised by an intense religious earnestness. He was “very jealous
for the Lord God of hosts.” But the question was, How should he act? What could
he do, a wild, untutored child of the desert? There was only one thing he could
do--the resource of all much-tried souls--he could pray; and he did: “he prayed
earnestly” (James 5:17). “He prayed earnestly that it
might not rain.” A terrible prayer indeed! Granted; and yet, was it not more
terrible for the people to forget and ignore the God of their fathers, and to
give themselves up to the licentious orgies of Baal and Astarte? Physical
suffering is a smaller calamity than moral delinquency. And the love of God
does not shrink from inflicting such suffering, if, as a result, the plague of
sin may be cut out as a cancer, and stayed. Elijah gives us three indications
of the source of his strength.
1. “As Jehovah liveth.” To all beside, Jehovah might seem dead; but
to him, He was the one supreme reality of life.
2. “Before whom I stand.” He was standing in the presence of Ahab;
but he was conscious of the presence of a greater than any earthly monarch,
even the presence of Jehovah, before whom angels bow in lowly worship,
hearkening to the voice of His word. Gabriel himself could not employ a loftier
designation (Luke 1:19). Let us cultivate this
habitual recognition of the presence of God; it will lift us above all other
fear.
3. The word “Elijah” may be rendered, “Jehovah is my God”; but there
is another possible translation, “Jehovah is my strength.” This gives the key
to his life. God was the strength of his life; of whom should he be afraid? (F.
B. Meyer, M. A.)
Elijah before Ahab
“Elijah the Tishbite said unto Ahab.” All revelations seem to us
to be sudden. Look at the suddenness of the appearance of Ahijah to Jeroboam,
and look at the instance before us. No mild man would have been equal to the
occasion. God adapts His ministry to circumstances. He sends a nurse to the
sick-room; a soldier to the battlefield. The son of consolation and the son of
thunder cannot change places. You are right when you say that the dew and the
light and the soft breeze are God’s; but you must not therefore suppose that
the thunder and the hurricane and the floods belong to a meaner lord. “As the
Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand.” Imagine the two men standing
face to face. This is not a combat between two men. Mark that very closely. It
is Right against Wrong, Faithfulness against Treachery, Purity against
Corruption. As we look at the scene, not wanting in the elements of the highest
tragedy, we see
Elijah standing before the Lord
This solemn and remarkable adjuration seems to have been habitual
upon Elijah’s lips in the great crises of his life. We never find it used by
any but himself, and his scholar and successor, Elisha.
I. Life a constant
vision of God’s presence. How distinct and abiding must the vision of God have been,
which burned before the inward eye of the man that struck out that phrase!
Wherever I am, whatever I do, I am before Him. No excitement of work, no strain
of effort, no distraction of circumstances, no glitter of gold, or dazzle of
earthly brightness, dimmed that vision for these prophets. In some measure, it
was with them as it shall be perfectly with all one day, “His servants serve
Him, and see His face,”--action not interrupting the vision, nor the vision
weakening action. It is hard to set the Lord always before us; but it is
possible, and in the measure in which we do it we shall not be moved. How small
Ahab and his court must have looked to eyes that were full of the undazzling
brightness of the true King of Israel, and the ordered ranks of His attendants!
How little the greatness! how tawdry the pomp! how impotent the power, and how
toothless the threats!
II. Life was
echoing with the voice of the Divine command. He stands before the Lord, not
only feeling in his thrilling spirit that God is ever near him, but also that
His word is ever coming forth to him, with imperative authority. That is the
prophet’s conception of life. Wherever he is, he hears a voice saying, This is
the way, walk ye in it. People talk about the consciousness of “a mission.” The
important point, on the settling of which depends the whole character of our
lives, is--“Who do you suppose gave you your mission”? Was it any person at
all? or have you any consciousness that any will but your own has anything to
say about your life? These prophets had found One whom it was worth while to
obey, whatever came of it, and whosoever stood in the way.
III. Life full of
conscious obedience. No man could say such a thing of himself who did not feel
that he was rendering a real, earnest, though imperfect obedience to God. So,
though in one view the words express a very lowly sense of absolute submission
before God, in another view they make a lofty claim for the utterer. He
professes that he stands before the Lord, girt for His service, watching to be
guided by His eye, and ready to run when He bids. We may well shrink to make
such a claim for ourselves when we think of the poor, perfunctory service and
partial consecration which our lives show. But let us rejoice that even we may
venture to say, “Truly I am Thy servant.” Such a life is necessarily a happy
life. The one misery of man is self-will, the one secret of blessedness is the
conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. And is
there not a broad general truth involved there, namely, that such a life as we
have been describing will find its sole reward where it finds its inspiration
and its law? The Master’s approval is the servant’s best wages. (A.
Maclaren, D. D.)
Elijah before the king
Elijah was a mountaineer. He was a big man, with broad shoulders
and a tall and striking appearance. He had a massive frame and muscles that had
grown strong with climbing the mountains and wresting his daily bread from hard
circumstances. But he was, above all, a man of prayer, and the knowledge of
what was going on in Israel stirred his soul to its profoundest depths; yet he
could not act unless God sent him. With his hand lifted above his head this
strange creature of the desert and the mountains exclaims, “As the Lord God of
Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these
years, but according to my word.” Note his description of his relation to God,
“As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand.” There was the secret
of Elijah’s power. As another has well said: Every man stands before something
which is his judge. The child stands before the father, not in a single act,
making report of what he has been doing on a special day, but in the whole
posture of his life, almost as if the father were a mirror in whom he saw
himself reflected, and from whose reflection of himself he got at once a
judgment as to what he was, and suggestions as to what he ought to be. The poet
stands before nature. She is his judge. A certain felt harmony or discord
between his nature and her ideal is the test and directing power of his life.
The philosopher stands before the unseen, majestic presence of the abstract
truth. The philanthropist stands before humanity The artist stands before
beauty. The legislator stands before justice. The politician stands before that
vague but awful embodiment of average character, the people. The scholar stands
before knowledge, and gets the satisfaction or disappointments of his life from
the approvals or disapprovals of her serene and gracious lips. Every soul that
counts itself capable of judgment and responsibility stands in some presence by
which the nature of its judgment is decried. The higher the presence, the
loftier and greater the life. And so Elijah, standing before God, was in the
highest and most splendid presence that any man can know, and it was this that
gave him his lofty courage and his noble power. This was Luther’s power. He
dared to face the emperor and to face the worldly, sensual church of his time,
when from every human outlook it seemed sure that his life must pay the
penalty, because he stood in the presence of God. He knew that God was with
him, and that knowledge gave him a tremendous power over men. Wesley stood in
the presence of God, and a man who is conscious of that presence fears no mob.
Finney was a man like that, and God gave him wonderful fruits to his ministry.
(L. A. Banks, D. D.)
Elijah, the model reformer
I. Elijah was, in
the first place,
a model of--promptness. Whatever God told him to do, he went to work at once,
and did it.
II. Elijah was a
model of--patience--as well as of promptness. When God wanted Elijah to work,
he was, as we have seen, prompt to do whatever he was bidden to do. And when he
was told to wait for the further manifestation of God’s will, he waited
patiently. When the long three years’ drought came on the land, God told him to
go and hide himself “by the brook Cherith,” near Jordan. He went and remained
there in patience till he was ordered to leave.
III. But, in
carrying on his work of reformation, Elijah was, in the third place, a model
of--confidence; and we should try to follow his example in this respect.
IV. Elijah was a
model of--courage. (R. Newton, D. D.)
The hero prophet
I. The principle
of Divine selection. Elijah comes suddenly and unexpectedly upon the scene.
What has been his previous career we cannot say, all we know about him is that
he was rudely and scantily clothed, with shaggy hair, a conspicuous personality
among the people. However strange it may seem that such a man should be chosen
for such a work, it is nevertheless in keeping with the Divine procedure. God
makes His own selection of men to meet the demands of every crisis. For every
crisis in the world’s history God has taken a leader from very unlikely
quarters. A German monk for a great Reformation; a Wesley for a much needed
revival; Abraham Lincoln to guide our ship of state, in terrible times, amid
stormy seas; and a William Taylor, “rough and ready,” to become the “flaming
evangel” of “Darkest Africa.” God is always ready with a man to stand in the
gap. So it was in the time when the sin of Ahab and his people had become
abominable, He had in reserve a man already trained and willing to assert the
sovereignty of God to that crooked and perverse nation. This chosen Tishbite,
this prophet hero, recognises that he is--
II. God’s
representative, hence he manifests the utmost fidelity and loyalty.
III. Providential
provisions meet human exigencies. Elijah proved this fully. Delivering mercy is
not only timely, but also comes through unexpected means. It was a very strange
method God pursued with Elijah.
IV. No unreasonable
demand upon human resources. God is merciful. God is just. He may have given us
but little of this world’s good, but of that little He demands a portion. We
may possess but one talent, but we must not be selfish in the use of that. He
gives grace that we may use grace. We may further learn from this narrative the
duty of--
V. Unquestioning
obedience to God. Elijah did not speak complainingly of living alone by the
side of the brook Cherith and trusting to the ravens for his food; nor did he
say it was improper to go to the house of a widow and ask of her food to eat.
No, he trusted in the wisdom of God and obeyed His command. (G. Adams.)
The preacher-an ambassador
We send an ambassador to England; there is a difference of opinion
between our government and that of England. The ambassador is in a circle in
society, but he does not take his opinions from the English people; he cares
nothing what they think on national subjects; the crowd around him may be
indignant against this country, but the ambassador listens not to the voice of
the populace around him. He bends a listening ear for the telegraphic
communication from Washington, and whatever words he hears these he utters, no
matter how they may be received, no matter what the people or the Crown may think. He stands
an American in the midst of English society; he thinks the thoughts and has the
feelings of the government at Washington; he dares to say words, however
unpleasant, to the English Crown because the power that sustains him, though it
is invisible, he knows to be real. Well, now, so it is with a man, principally
the true minister of Christ. (Bishop Simpson.)
Standing alone
Thank God for the many instances in which one glowing soul, all
aflame with love of God, has sufficed to kindle a whole heap of dead matter,
and send it leaping skyward in ruddy brightness. Alas! for the many instances
in which the wet, green wood has been too strong for the little spark, and has
not only obstinately resisted, but has ignominiously quenched its ineffectual
fire. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Verses 2-7
The word of the Lord came unto him.
The word of the Lord
We have in our theme a suggestion of the Divine guidance. The word
of the Lord as a guide comes to the man of prayer. I suppose Elijah was greatly
disappointed at the message which came to him. He had the heart of a soldier,
and he grieved at the idolatry
which he saw everywhere. But it was the best thing for Elijah and for the
cause. We have a case like it in the New Testament where Philip, who was a very
popular preacher and was enjoying great success, was suddenly instructed by
word of the Lord to leave where he was and go away into the desert, It must
have been a great disappointment to Philip, a severe cross for him to bear. But
Philip obeyed, and it was on that journey that the treasurer of Queen Candace
came driving by, and the word of the Lord again indicated to Philip his duty.
Then Philip knew why the word of the Lord had guided him as it had. So Elijah’s
great soul was burning to tear down the idols of Baal and Ashtaroth; but the
time was not yet ripe, and God was saving the prophet’s life and giving the bold message he had
uttered time to work by guiding him away into the wilderness. God went with Elijah into the
wilderness, and long afterwards he knew the wisdom of Heaven. The word of the
Lord, if we are obedient to it, will work while we are hidden. No doubt Elijah,
if he had used his own judgment, would have backed up the Lord’s message day
after day with his own big body and his own ringing voice. But it was not the
time for that. God used Elijah for His message, and he delivered it well. He
acted promptly and faithfully, and with perfect courage, and then, against his
own judgment, he followed the word of the Lord and went into hiding and into
silence. (L. A. Banks, D. D.)
Get thee hence, and turn
thee eastward.--
Beside the drying brook
I. God’s servants
must learn to take one step at a time. Our Father only shows us one step at a
time--and that, the next; and He bids us take it in faith. If we look up into
His face, and say: “But if I take this step, which is certain to involve me in
difficulty, what shall I do next?” the heavens will be dumb, save with the one
repeated message, “Take it, and trust Me.” But directly God’s servant took the
step to which he was led, and delivered the message, then “the word of the Lord
came to him, saying, Get thee hence, hide thyself by the brook Cherith.” So it
was afterwards: “Arise, get thee to Zarephath.”
II. God’s servants
must be taught the value of the hidden life. “Get thee hence, and turn thee
eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith” The man who is to take a high
place before his fellows, must take a low place before his God; and there is no better manner
of brining a man down, than by dropping him suddenly out of a sphere to which
he was beginning to think himself essential, teaching him that he is not at all
necessary to God’s plan; and compelling him to consider in the sequestered vale
of some Cherith how mixed are his motives, and how insignificant his strength.
Every saintly soul that would wield great power with men must win it in some
hidden Cherith. A Carmel triumph always presupposes a Cherith; and a Cherith
always leads to a Carmel. We cannot give out unless we have previously taken
in. Bishop Andrewes had his Cherith, in which he spent five hours every day in
prayer and devotion. John Welsh had it--who thought the day ill-spent which did
not witness eight or ten hours of closet communion. David Brainerd had it in
the woods of
North America, which were the favourite scene of his devotions. Christmas Evans
had it in his long and lonely journeys amid the hills of Wales. Fletcher of
Madeley had it--who would often leave his classroom for his private Chamber,
and spend hours upon his knees with his students, pleading for the fulness of
the Spirit till they could kneel no longer. Or--passing back to the blessed age
from which we date the centuries--Patmos, the seclusion of the Roman prisons,
the Arabian desert, the hills and vales of Palestine, are for ever memorable as
the Cheriths of those who have made our modern world.
III. God’s servants
must learn to trust God absolutely. We yield at first a timid obedience to a
command which seems to involve manifest impossibilities; but when we find that
God is even better than His word, our faith groweth exceedingly, and we advance
to further feats of faith and service. This is how God trains His young eaglets
to fly. At last nothing is impossible. This is the key to Elijah’s experience.
There is strong emphasis on the word there. “I have commanded the ravens
to feed thee there.” Elijah might have preferred many hiding-places to Cherith;
but that was the only place to which the ravens would bring his supplies; and,
as long as he was there, God was pledged to provide for him. Our supreme
thought should be: “Am I where God wants me to be?” Only trust Him!
IV. God’s servants
are often called to sit by drying brooks. Cherith began to sing less cheerily.
Each day marked a visible diminution of its stream. Its voice grew fainter and
fainter, till its bed became a course of stones, baking in the scorching heat.
It dried up. What did Elijah think? Did he think that God had forgotten him?
Did he begin to make plans for himself? This would have been human; but we will
hope that he waited quietly for God, quieting himself as a weaned child, as he
sang, “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him.” Many
of us have had to sit by drying brooks; perhaps some are sitting by them
now--the drying brook of popularity, ebbing away as from John the Baptist. The
drying brook of health, sinking under a creeping paralysis, or a slow
consumption. Tim drying brook of money, slowly dwindling before the demands of
sickness. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
God’s care of Elijah
I. God suits his
workmen to their work. To the hospital He sends a nurse; to the battlefield, a
soldier; to penitence and sorrow, a son of consolation; to wickedness and
brutality, a son of thunder. Such was this rude, stern, volcanic Tishbite as he
comes to the rescue of his country; to champion a cause that seemed lost; to
stand alone against a huge and dominant iniquity; to challenge Ahab and Jezebel
in the palace of their licentious pleasure, in the citadel of their idolatrous
power. He came like the flash of a scimitar, uttered his appalling message,
voiced the wrath of the Almighty, and was gone.
II. The prophet
vanished, but the drought remained. We know little of the horror of a rainless
year. Our seasons come and go, and the bounteous heaven waters the bounteous
earth, until we cease to associate plenty, beauty, and life itself with the
unfailing rain. But to an Oriental dwelling on the desert’s verge, where food
is a precarious question of moisture, and bread a problem in irrigation, rain
is life; the clouds drop fatness. A rainless sky is a heaven of brass, and an
unwatered earth an earth of iron. At first there was no alarm. The farmers
sowed their seed in hope, the caravans trailed toward the horizon. But the
rains were late. Anxious eyes scanned the western sky, the streams became
gravel beds, the wells were drained, the vineyards withered in the burning sun.
The temples resounded with prayers to Baal, and great pillars of smoke rose to
heaven from the altars of Ashtaroth. At last, from out the fiery furnace,
Israel raised a cry of despair; and from the king in the palace to the beggar
by the,wayside came one common, desperate inquiry, “Where is Elijah the
Tishbite?”
III. When God
undertakes to hide a man we may be sure he will be well concealed, Elijah was
sent to a secluded ravine east of Samaria, through which the brook Cherith
still rippled to the Jordan. There he lived, solitary but safe, an idle but not
a useless prophet. When God sends a man into retirement and inactivity let him
not think that he is set aside. In the Divine purpose and plan, as poor blind
Milton discovered and sang--
They
also serve who only stand and wait.
(M. B. Chapman.)
Elijah and the famine
I. A great
national calamity. A nation without rain or dew for three years and a half!
“And,” it is said in the next chapter, “there was a sore famine in Samara.”
“National panics are to be regarded as steps in the demonstration of some great
problem of government which Almighty God is working out for the advancement and
sanctification of the world.”
II. The care of
Divine Providence. The calamities which befall nations visit also the people of
God who dwell in them. The tares and the wheat grow up together; and if the
tares are withered for lack of moisture, the wheat suffers from the same cause.
As a principle, God does not exempt His people from their share of national
calamity and sorrow. But, although He permits His people to suffer in the midst
of a general visitation, He never forgets or forsakes them. “Many are the
afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.”
Elijah had his part in the national distress, but the Lord remembered His
servant. The modern history of God’s providence furnishes many instances of suit
and service rendered to His people by the animal creation, scarcely less
wonderful than the supply of Elijah by ravens. I will relate one. Far up in one
of the Highland glens, lived a poor but pious woman named Jenny Maclean. One
day when her food was almost exhausted, and she was intending to take a journey
to get a fresh supply, a heavy snowstorm came on. Never had been seen in that
locality such a constant and heavy fall, with such deep snow-drifts. When the
heavens at last became clear, the whole face of the country seemed changed. It
was some time before the thought suddenly occurred to a shepherd, “What has old
Jenny been doing all this time?” No sooner was her name mentioned than she at
once became the theme of general conversation. But for many days, such was the
state of the weather, that no mortal feet could wade through the snow-wreaths,
or buffet the successive storms that swept down with blinding fury from the
hills. Jenny was given up as lost. At last, three men resolved, on the first
day that made the attempt possible, to proceed up the long and dreary glen, and
search for Jenny. They reached a rock at an angle where the glen takes a turn
to the left, and where the old woman’s cottage ought to have been seen. But
nothing met the eye except a smooth, white sheet of glittering snow, surmounted
by black rocks; and all below was silent as the sky above. No sign of life
greeted the eye or ear. The men spoke not a word, but muttered some
exclamations of sorrow. Suddenly one of them cried, “She is alive! for I see
smoke.” They pushed bravely on. When they reached the hut, nothing was visible
except the two chimneys; and even these were lower than the snow-wreath. There
was no immediate entrance but by one of the chimneys. A shepherd first called to
Jenny down the chimney, and asked if she was alive; but before receiving a
reply, a large fox sprang out of the chimney, and darted off to the rocks.
“Alive!” replied Jenny, “but thank God you have come to see me! I cannot say
come in by the door; but come down--come down.” In a few minutes her three
friends easily descended by the chimney, and were shaking Jenny warmly by the
hand. “O woman!” said they, “how have you lived all this time?” “Sit down, and
I will tell you,” said old Jenny, whose feelings now gave way in a fit of
hysterical weeping. After composing herself, she continued, “How did I live?
you ask, Sandy? I may say just as I have always lived, by the power and
goodness of God, who feeds the wild beasts.” “The wild beasts, indeed!” replied
Sandy, drying his eyes; “did you know that a wild beast was in your house? Did
you see the fox that jumped out of your chimney as we entered? My blessings on
the dear beast!” said Jenny, with fervour. “May no huntsman ever kill it! and
may it never want food in summer or winter!” The shepherds looked at one
another by the dim light of Jenny’s fire, evidently believing that she had
become slightly insane. “Stop, lads,” she continued, “till I tell you the
story. I had in the house, when the storm began, the goat and two hens.
Fortunately, I had fodder gathered for the goat, which kept it alive, although,
poor thing, it has had but scanty meals. I had also peats for my fire, but very
little meal. Yet I never lived better, and I have been able besides to preserve
my two bonnie hens for summer. I every day dined on flesh meat too, a thing I
have not done for years before; and thus have I lived like a lady.” “Where did
you get meat from?” they asked. “From the old fox,” she replied. “The day of
the storm he looked into the chimney, and came slowly down, and set himself on
the rafter beside the hens, yet never once touched them. He every day provided
for himself and me too. He brought in game in abundance for his own dinner--a
hare almost every day--and what he left I got, and washed, and cooked, and ate,
and so I have never wanted.
Now that he is gone, you have come to relieve me.” “God’s ways are past finding
out!” said the men, bowing down their heads with reverence. “Praise the Lord!”
said Jenny, “Who giveth food to the hungry.” This incident was related by an
old clergyman who attended Jenny’s funeral. How much like the supply of Elijah
by the brook Cherith! Why are we surprised almost to scepticism at such facts?
III. The exercise of
human sympathy. It came to pass, after a while, that the brook dried up,
because there had been no rain in the land. The continued drought and heat of
the sun gradually lessened the stream; it dried to a narrow thread; then that
narrow thread dwindled and disappeared, and Elijah was left by the brook, with
no prospect before him but to perish, unless the Lord interposed to save him.
The Lord did interpose; and mark how--“The word of the Lord came unto him,
saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath.”
IV. The reward of
cheerful generosity. Elijah found the widow gathering sticks to dress her last
handful of meal for herself and son, that they might eat it and die. Elijah
said unto her, “Fear not.” The word of the Lord comes to us with a promise
similar in principle. “The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth
shall be watered himself.” That is God’s principle of recompense still. “He
that hath pity on the poor lendeth to the Lord, and that which he hath given
will He pay him again.” If that is true, if the Word of the Lord is to be relied
on, then no man is the poorer for what he gives to the poor. Lending to the Lord,
the Lord becomes his creditor: and surely He may be trusted with our deposits.
As good Matthew Henry says, “What is laid out in charity or pity, is lent out
on the best interest, upon the best security.” (J. H. Wood.)
Elijah at Cherith
I. Men must
be prepared to accept the consequences of their obedience to God. We do not
always see such consequences, and when they come upon us they very often find
us unprepared to meet them. Obedience to God often exposes men to hatred,
scorn, ridicule, opposition, inconvenience, loss of trade, loss of liberty, and
even life itself. But when we chose God’s service we chose these consequences,
and when they come they should not deter us from our duty. Daniel, when he knew
that the law was passed, condemning to the lions’ den any who should pray
except to the king for thirty days, went into his chamber and prayed as
aforetime. Peter and John determined to obey God rather than man, notwithstanding
the threat of stripes and imprisonment.
II. That God makes
provision for the exigencies into which obedience to the Divine commands may
bring His servants. He imposes no task but He provides strength for its
accomplishment. Whatever may be the consequences of their obedience, He will
not leave His servants to meet them alone.
III. This provision
is frequently not made known to the obedient until their need is pressing. When
the drought comes upon the land, God will not forsake His people; but His voice
shall be heard directing them to Cherith, where their need shall be amply
provided for. (The Study and the Pulpit.)
Elijah at Cherith
I. The uncertainty
of earthly comforts. When Elijah went to Cherith under the direction of God, he
would never dream of that brook becoming exhausted. What a picture of human
life this is! How many there are of whose worldly comforts it may be said:
“After a while the brook dried up.” One man is settled in life, with
circumstances all that could be desired, and he contemplates the future with
pleasure; but, unexpectedly something arises--bank failure, or commercial
crisis--which tells him that the brook is dried up, and he has to leave his
Cherith. Another looks with pride and hope upon a child--his pleasure and joy
flow from that child--but, unnoticed, disease settles upon it and takes it
away. After a while the brook dried up. And so with earthly comforts. They are
uncertain, and do not warrant the eagerness with which they are sought or the
value with which they are invested.
II. The certainty
of God’s care. Though the water of the brook failed, God’s care was not
exhausted. He had made provision for Elijah at Zarephath before He commanded
him to leave Cherith. Decay and change may characterise all our earthly
comforts, but they do not characterise God; He remains the same, and His care
can never fail.
III. Godly
generosity shall not lose its reward. Whosoever even giveth a cup of cold water
to a disciple, in the name of a disciple, shall not lose his reward. (The
Study and the Pulpit.)
It was the water that failed, not the ravens
. It was the natural, not the supernatural, provision that came to
an end. That for which the prophet looked upward morning and evening continued
steadily. That which had been flowing at his feet all day long began suddenly
to diminish. When a trouble comes straight from heaven we are more likely to
see God’s hand in it, and to submit patiently and trustfully. When, however,
the trouble seems to come quite naturally, we are tempted to look at secondary
causes, and to forget that God is behind them all (F. S. Webster, M.
A.)
Verse 6
And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning.
Elijah led by ravens
I. A morally great
man in great physical need. Elijah was a morally great man. Worldly greatness
is but tinselled paper. He only is great who is great in thoughts and noble
purposes. Elijah was such: a greater could not be found. Yet he was reduced to
the greatest need.
II. The God of
nature ministering to a lonely man. The Infinite Father knew His servant’s
destitution, sympathised with it, and sent relief to him morning and evening by
the ravens. Observe,
1. God makes the humblest things in nature serve His people.
2. God supplies His people as their wants return. (Homilist.)
Elijah fed by ravens
I. Irrational
creatures divinely directed. All creatures, from the lowest up to the greatest,
are under the Divine rule. Generally they are ruled by their own instincts.
Here is an exception.
II. Lower creatures
engaged in the service of man.
III. God’s attention
to the affairs of the individual.
IV. Help coming
from unlikely sources. (Homilist.)
The battle for bread
There is an incident in my text that baffles all the ornithological
wonders of the world. The grain crop had been cut off. Famine was in the land.
In a cave by the brook Cherith sat a minister of God, Elijah, waiting for
something to eat. Why did he not go to the neighbours? There were no
neighbours, it was a
wilderness. Why did he not pick some of the berries? There were none. If there
had been, they would have been dried up. Seated one morning at the mouth of his
cave, the prophet looks into the dry and pitiless heavens, and he sees a flock
of birds approaching.
1. Notice, in the first place, in the story of my text, that these
winged creatures came to Elijah directly from God. “I have commanded the ravens
that they feed thee.” They did not come out of some other cave. They did not
just happen to alight there. God freighted them, God launched them, and God
told them by what cave to swoop. That is the same God that is going to supply
you. He is your Father. You would have to make an elaborate calculation before
you could tell me how many pounds of food and how many yards of clothing would
be necessary for you and your family; but God knows without any calculation.
You have a plate at His table, and you are going to be waited on, unless you
act like a naughty child, and kick, and scramble, and pound saucily the plate,
and try to upset things. God has a vast family, and everything is methodised,
and you are going to be served, if you will only wait your turn.
2. Notice, again, in this story, that the ravens did not allow Elijah
to hoard up a surplus. They did not bring enough on Monday to last all the
week. They did not bring enough one morning to last until the next morning.
They came twice a day, and brought just enough for one time. You know as well
as I that the great fret of the world is that we want a surplus--we want the
ravens to bring enough for fifty years. You have more confidence in the Long
Island Bank than you have in the royal bank of heaven. You say: “All that is
very poetic, but you may have the black ravens--give me the gold eagles.” We
had better be content with just enough. If, in the morning, your family eat up
all the food there is in the house, do not sit down, and cry, and say: “I don’t
know where the next meal is coming from.” About five, or six, or seven o’clock
in the evening just look up, and you wilt see two black spots on the sky, and
you will hear the flapping of wings, and, instead of Edgar A. Poe’s insane
raven, “alighting on the chamber-door, only this, and nothing more,” you will
find Elijah’s two ravens, or the two ravens of the Lord, the one bringing bread
and the other bringing meat--plumed butcher and baker. God is infinite in
resource. When the city of Rochelle was besieged, and the inhabitants were
dying of the famine, the tides washed up on the beach as never before, and as
never since, enough shell-fish to feed the whole city. God is good. There is no
mistake about that. History tell us that, in 1555, in England, there was a
great drought. The crops failed, but in Essex, on the rocks, in a place where
they had neither sown nor cultured, a great crop of peas grew, until they
filled a hundred measures; and there were blossoming vines enough promising as
much more.
3. Again, this story of the text impresses me that relief came to
this prophet with the most unexpected, and with seemingly impossible
conveyance. If it had been a robin redbreast, or a musical meadow lark, or a
meek turtle-dove, or a sublime albatross that had brought the food to Elijah,
it would not have been so surprising. But no. It was a bird so fierce and
inauspicate that we have fashioned one of our most forceful and repulsive words
out of it--ravenous. That bird has a passion for picking out the eyes of men
and animals. It loves to maul the sick and the dying. It swallows, with
vulturous guggle, everything it can put its beak on; and yet all the food
Elijah gets for six months or a year, is from the ravens. So your supply is
going to come from an unexpected source. You think some great-hearted, generous
man will come along and give you his name on the back of your note, or he will
go security for you in some great enterprise. No, he will not. God will open
the heart of some Shylock toward you. Your relief will come from the most
unexpected quarter. The providence that seemed ominous will be to you more than
that which seemed auspicious. It will not be a chaffinch with breast and wing
dashed with white, and brown, and chestnut, it will be a black raven. Children
of God, get up out of your despondency. The Lord never had so many ravens as He
has this morning. Fling your fret and worry to the winds. (T. De Witt
Talmage, D. D.)
Verse 7
Verse 9
Arise, get thee to Zarephath.
Ordered to Zarephath
A friend of mine, spending a few days in the neighbourhood of our
English lakes, came upon the most beautiful shrubs he had ever seen. Arrested
by their extraordinary luxuriance, he inquired the cause; and learnt that it
was due to a judicious system of transplanting, constantly pursued. Whatever may
be the effect of such a process In nature, it is certainly true that our
heavenly Father employs similar methods to secure the highest results in us. He
is constantly transplanting us. And though these changes threaten at times to
hinder all steady progress in the Divine life, yet, if they are rightly borne,
they result in the most exquisite manifestations of Christian character and
experience. Another illustration of the same truth is given by the prophet
Jeremiah (Jeremiah 48:11). The quiet life is by no
means the greatest life. Some characters can only reach the highest standard of
spirituality by the disturbings or displacings in the order of God’s
providence. Will not this cast light upon God’s dealings with Elijah? Once he
stood in the vessel, “Home”; then emptied into the vessel, “Jezreel”; then into
the vessel, “Cherith”; and now into the fourth vessel, “Zarephath”: and all
that he might not settle upon his lees. Believe only that your circumstances
are those most suited to develop your character. To one who lives ever in the
presence of the unchanging God, and who can say, “Thus saith Jehovah, before
whom I stand,” the ever-varying conditions of our lot touch only the outer rim
of life; whatever they take away, they cannot take away that; whatever they
bring, they cannot give more than that. The consciousness of that Presence is
the one all-mastering thought; the inspiration, the solace, the comfort, of
every waking hour.
I. Faith awaits
God’s plans. “It came to pass, after a while, that the brook dried up, because
there had been no rain in the land.” Week after week, with unfaltering and
steadfast spirit, Elijah watched that dwindling brook; often tempted to stagger
through unbelief, but refusing to allow his circumstances to come between
himself and God. Unbelief sees God through circumstances, as we sometimes see
the sun shorn of his rays through the smoky air; but faith puts God between
itself and circumstances, and looks at them through Him. Only then, to his
patient and unwavering spirit, “the word of the Lord came, saying, Arise, get
thee to Zarephath.” Most of us would have got anxious and worn with planning
long before that. We should have ceased our songs, as soon as the streamlet
carolled less musically over its rocky bed. And, probably, long ere the brook
was dry, we should have devised some plan, and asking God’s blessing on it,
would have started off elsewhere. Alas! we are all too full of our own schemes,
and plans, and contrivings. “Lord, show me Thy way; teach me to do Thy
will: show me the way wherein I should walk, for unto Thee do I lift up my
soul.”
II. God’s plans
demand implicit obedience. “So he arose and went to Zarephath,” as before he
had gone to Cherith, and as presently he would go to show himself to Ahab. We
catch sight of God’s ideal; we are enamoured with it; we vow to be only His; we
use the most emphatic words; we dedicate ourselves upon the altar. For awhile
we seem to tread another world, bathed in heavenly light. Then there comes a
command clear and unmistakable. We must leave some beloved Cherith, and go to
some unwelcome Zarephath; we must speak some word, take some step, cut off some
habit: and we shrink from it--the cost is too great. But, directly we refuse
obedience, the light dies off the landscape of our lives, and dark clouds fling
their shadows far and near. Search the Bible from board to board, and see if
strict, implicit, and instant obedience has not been the secret of the noblest
lives.
III. Implicit
obedience sometimes brings us into a smelting-furnace. “Zarephath” means a
smelting-furnace. It lay outside the Land of Canaan, occupying the site of the
modern Surafend, which stands on a long ridge, backed by the snowclad steeps of
Hermon, and overlooking the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Many things might
have made it distasteful to the prophet. It belonged to the land from which
Jezebel had brought her impious tribe. It was as much cursed by the terrible
drought as Canaan. It was impossible to reach it save by a weary journey of 100
miles through the heart of the land, where his name was execrated, and his
person proscribed. And then to be sustained by a widow woman belonging to a
heathen people! Surely it was a smelting-furnace for cleansing out any alloy of
pride, or self-reliance, or independence which might be lurking in the recesses
of his heart. And there was much of the refining fire in the character of his
reception. When he reached the straggling town it was probably toward nightfall;
and at the city gate a widow woman was gathering a few sticks to prepare the
evening meal. To some it might have seemed a coincidence; but there is no such
word in faith’s vocabulary--that which, to human judgment Is a coincidence, to
faith is a Providence. “Everything that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go
through the fire, and it shall be clean” (Numbers 31:23). If, then, there is aught
in you that can bear the ordeal, be sure you will be put into the furnace. But
the fire shall not destroy; it shall only cleanse you.
IV. When God puts
His people into the furnace, He will supply all their need. God had said that
he should be fed, and by that widow; and so it should be, though the earth and
heaven should pass away. Difficulties are to faith what gymnastic apparatus are
to boys, means of strengthening the muscular fibre. Like the fabled salamander,
faith feeds on fire. And so with heroic faith Elijah said: “Fear not; go and do
as thou hast said: for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal
shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the
Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.” Our only need is to inquire if we are at
that point in God’s pattern where He would have us be. If we are, though it
seem impossible for us to be maintained, the thing impossible shall be done. (F. B.
Meyer, M. A.)
I have commanded a widow
woman there to sustain thee.--
The widow of Zarephath
1. This woman was a Phoenician, of Jezebel’s own race and country,
and by birth and training a believer in those very idolatries which the bloody
Queen was then establishing in Palestine, and against which it was the chief
part of the prophet’s burden to witness. From earliest days she had adored her
gods. Doubtless the gorgeous ritual of Baal-worship had impressed and awed her
senses, and under the terror of Astarte, the lover of blood, she had lived and
cowered. Yet it is in her home that the persecuted Preacher of Jehovah finds
refuge and welcome! And it is to her home that, in turn, he brings blessing.
The Prophet of the Separation is also the Apostle of the Reconciliation. The
essential germ of ultimate universality, that was in the Church from the
beginning, bursts forth even in him who is the vindicator of her Dispensational
exclusiveness. What a world of suggestion lies in the picture of Hebrew Prophet
and Phoenician widow, Jehovah’s champion and Jezebel’s countrywoman, under the
same roof, sharing the same meal, in friendship and fellowship! The sternest
anti-idolater of history by the side of an idolater, blessed and blessing! It
is a forecast and prophecy, amid the world’s enmities and hates, of the
reconciliation of the future to be wrought out by a greater than Elijah.
2. We have here, too, an illustration of the part which, in the
economy of God, suffering plays in the education and perfection of men. The
presence of common woe or want, of common peril or pain, has been to multitudes
as the very angel of God, conciliating feuds, softening asperities,
enlightening prejudices, cementing sundered souls, and forming those
sympathetic attachments which give warmth to character and sweetness to life.
These two in that marrow house at Zarephath, dwelling in harmony under the pressure
of a common straitening, represent in themselves the emollient and healthful
influence of suffering in softening and sweetening souls. They illustrate the
part which the “Divine economy of pain” plays in purifying from prejudice, in
bridging over the chasms of alienations and the gulches of hate. Dearth,
drought, and the wrath of evil men drove these two to their meeting, a meeting
for the gain of both, and of us too, and of all who have come between.
3. In this widow we have also a beautiful example of that faith that
pleases God and is blessing to the soul in which it abides. I dare say there
are some who may so unworthily judge about the matter as to think that she
somewhat superstitiously concluded that this stranger was a miracle-worker, or
that he was a God-possessed man, and that her “faith” was simply the credulity
that led her to that conclusion. But I hope such persons are few. Lot us not
draw that sharp line between faith and faithfulness which such a way of
thinking implies. The two are not, indeed, as some would seem to say, the same
thing. There is a difference; but it is such a difference as that which exists
between bud and flower, flower and fruit, or fountain and flow. Faithfulness is
that which impels a man to walk in the way of duty or charity, no matter how
hard it may be, and to bear the consequences, be they what they may. Faith
makes him do all that, but it adds its own element too. Her faithfulness would
have made her do her duty: her faith made the doing of it to be religious. In
this spirit and confidence she received her guest, followed her purest
instincts--the dictates of her womanly affections--into the ways of
self-forgetful charity, and looking up to the giving God overhead, left issues
to Him. I do not say she thought or reasoned about it any more than a child
would be likely to think or reason about the laws of respiration before
breathing, or a flower to speculate scientifically before giving out its aroma.
She herself was good, and kind, and self-denying, and she lovingly did her duty
so as, according to her light, to please the power of the skies. A very
commonplace village woman, in a lowly rut of life, tenderly doing the duty that
lay next to her hand; and, within, a trustful heart, and an eye to look up.
4. But the point to which, just now, I must give the chief and
closing emphasis is that she was a heathen. “But of a truth I say unto you,
There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, and unto none of them
was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Zidon, unto a woman that
was a widow.” The point to which he here calls attention, and which was so
distasteful to the Jews, is that the prophet was not sent to any of those
within the circle of the visible Church, but to one living outside, in the darkness
of a heathen land. And in her, the child of disprivilege, he found that faith
which he found not among the children of privilege. (G. M. Grant, B. D.)
The widow of Zarephath
I. Faith in the
promises of God.
II. Obedience.
Elijah obeys God at the risk of his own life. The widow obeys when requested by
the prophet to bring him first a little water, and then a little cake. As
disobedience led to the ruin of our first parents, so is it ever still the
cause of endless difficulties and dangers in our spiritual course.
III. That God’s
demands often increase gradually in their stringency. The prophet asks the
widow first for a little water, and afterwards, as if water was not
sufficiently difficult to be obtained in such a time of drought, he further
requests a little cake, when only a small store of meal and oil was left to the
poor widow. So God demands often the lighter sacrifices from us first, and then,
as our faith and our patience increase, He afterwards asks from us sacrifices
of a higher character; until at length, when, by a course of afflictions He has
weaned us from earthly attachments, He exclaims, “My son, give Me thy heart.”
IV. That the
darkest hour often precedes the dawn. It was when the widow woman was about to
resign herself to despair, and to despondently await death, that the prophet
appeared with the promise of prolonged support for life. The darkest cloud
frequently has a silver lining. “Never despair,” is a good motto, and is a
still better one if coupled with another maxim, “Put your trust in God.”
V. That God is no
respecter of persons. This moral our Lord Himself draws from the story of this
widow of Zarephath, or Sarepta. The lesson that to the Gentiles also the
mercies of God were to be shown, was one that the prejudiced and self-righteous
Jews were loath to admit. In the same way the modern Pharisee is disinclined to
allow that salvation is possible for those who are outside his own little
coterie of professors. (R. Young, M. A.)
Lessons from the obedient widow
I. The
personalness of the Divine providence. It is always toward a Providential
personalness that the Bible reads, e.g. Joseph in his dungeon; Daniel in
Babylon; Saul in the house of Judas in the street called Straight--how
beautiful that is, God knew the street and number of the praying Saul who
became Paul; Elijah at Cherith; this widow at Zeraphath. In hard times get
vision of this fact and lean your heart against the solid truth of the
personalness of Providence.
II. What seem to be
often our worst trials, are really our best blessings. What could seem worse to
this widow than the advent of Elijah demanding that she make him the little
cake? But what seemed worst embosomed what was best--the unwasting meal, the
unfailing oil. Do not let us be overmuch scared at black trials; they may hold
the best benignancies.
III. How small
soever our resources, we can still do something for God.
IV. The value of
sharing. “This woman gave one meal to the prophet and God sustained her for two
years.” It is as we give we get. This is specially true in religious
experience. If we seek to impart the blessedness of our own faith we infallibly
get increase of faith.”
V. God first.
Elijah, representing God, commanded, Make me a little cake first. Ah, that
first I Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these
things shall be added unto you.” (W. Hoyt, D. D.)
Gracious people outside the church
Nature has her wild flowers, and they have their own loose lawless
beauty. Yet the
finest effects in form, colour, and fragrance are only to be found under
careful cultivation. Wild roses are no argument against the value of gardening;
for even cultivated flowers, if left to themselves, will revert little by
little to their wild, rude state. And so outside the church of Jesus Christ
there are good and noble, end in some senses morally winsome souls: and yet it
is true that, for the full cultivation of Christian character, we need the
garden of the Lord, Christ Jesus, by His Spirit being the Chief Gardener. Even
the wild flowers, in whatever measure they possess beauty and perfume, get it,
from His secret influence, though they know it not. In the realm of spirit it
is as true as in nature and history, “He upholdeth all things by the word of
His power.” (H. O. Mackey.)
Verse 13
Make me thereof a little cake first.
Faith tested
First, take the narrative in its literal sense; then, examine the
truths which are suggested by it; and finally, note its mystical import.
I. Literal sense.
1. Here is a test of faith: “Make me thereof a little cake first, and
bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son.” It was a sharp
test. Famine brings out selfishness in hideous shapes (2 Kings 6:28-29). To be asked to
give to a stranger a little cake from the “handful of meal” that was left,
before she met the cravings of hunger in herself and her son, must have been a
searching demand.
2. A woman, too, of Zidon, like the woman in the Gospel, when Jesus
came into those coasts; a woman without the privileges of the covenant of
Israel and the opportunities of God’s people; a flower in the common hedge, not
in the hothouse, but yet a flower--able to respond to the claim of God through
His prophet--“Make me a little cake first”; for “he that loveth son or daughter
more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37).
3. It was more than a test of faith; it was a test of trust. This is
something more. The prophet’s demand appealed to the will, and not merely to
the assent of the understanding. She had to make a sacrifice; it was a trifle
in itself--“a little cake”; but when people are starving it was not a trifle;
and she had to trust to a promise, from the standpoint of human calculation,
least likely to be fulfilled.
4. “She went and did according to the saying of the prophet” (1 Kings 17:15).
II. The truths
which the prophet’s demand suggests.
1. God to be served first. God must be loved--to use the language of
divinity--“with a love of preference.” As a king, St. Chrysostom says, should
be served as a king, so God should be loved as God, that is to say, “preferably
to all creatures.” In the same way, the claims of God and His service must
stand first. The demand, “Make me thereof a little cake first,” is like that
which our Lord gave on the mount, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness.” It is the law of the first-fruits.
2. God’s commands are to be taken upon trust. His positive commands
test not only our obedience, but our confidence in Him. Moral commands are
echoed from within, so that not to obey them “is not folly alone, but also
impiety” (St. Augustine); but commands of which we do not see the reason, yet
which must be obeyed as simply coming from God, are touchstones of trust in Him.
3. How little, after all, God requires of us! “Make Me a little
cake.” He gave our first parents licence to eat of every tree in the garden
save one--just an acknowledgment of His Sovereignty. He turns the water into
wine; we have only to fill the water-pots. His commandments are “not grievous”
(1 John 5:3), but we may have made
obedience difficult through having abused our powers. God asks little, but
makes a large return (Matthew 25:23). “The barrel of meal did
not waste,” etc.
III. Its mystical
import. When Aristotle in logic, and Plato in philosophy, ruled the day
(twelfth century), “Hugo and Richard de St. Victor were the great mystics of
the period (Milman), and it is from the former of these I transcribe the
mystical interpretation of the subject in hand. The widow of Zarephath
represents the holy Church--a widow--waiting for the advent of the Saviour.
Elijah came to the woman, when Christ, through the mystery of the Incarnation,
came to the Church. The woman was gathering “two sticks”; for the holy Church
received the faith of the Cross. The “handful of meal” is said to signify the imperfection of Divine
knowledge at the time when Christ came; and the “little oil in a cruse,” the
scarcity of grace. But Elijah multiplied both, because Christ, “full of grace
and truth,” imparted both to mankind. The woman sustained Elijah; for the faith
and holy works of the Church refresh the Lord: “I will come in to him, and will
sup with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).
IV. Lessons.
1. The leading lesson throughout is one of trust. “Fear not.” The
woman of Zarephath affords a striking instance of obedience and submission, not
only of the will, but of the judgment.
2. To remember that God should have the first claim upon us and upon
our substance, which increases through parting with it, as did the five loaves
as they were distributed to others by the disciples’ hands.
3. It is a great mistake to suppose that only the rich should give
into the treasury of God. The poor widow’s “two mites” were more to Christ than
the large gifts of the rich, because it was her all. (The Thinker.)
Verse 15
She went and did according to the saying of Elijah.
Modern liberality, and the widow of Zarephath
I. The treatment
he received was verily the manifestation of the woman’s mind towards god
himself. Were it otherwise, it would be hard to point out anything in which we
could be pronounced as doing
it for, or contrary to the will of Almighty God. He has Himself, however,
placed this matter beyond all dispute, for He has said, “He that giveth to the
poor leadeth to the Lord”; and Christ represents the judgment scene in telling
you that He will welcome His people with the assurance, “Inasmuch as ye did a
deed of charity unto one of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me.”
II. This gift is to
be no act of necessity, but one of pure oblation To grudge while you give, or
to give because the necessity of fashion, or custom, or demand is laid upon
you, is to spoil the gift altogether. That is but half a gift which is not
brought freely home. It is one thing to give of our substance in obedience to a
reiterated request; it is another thing to bring it unto God freely and with
delight.
III. Observe what it
is which God demands? Satan, the world, or vanities, let these obtain your service, and you are speedily
enhanced in their thraldom, and all is sure to be at length drawn into and
swallowed in their insatiable vortex. You cannot, even if you would try
deliberately to make the compromise, arrange for the bestowment of a certain
portion of your means, or time or thought, upon unhallowed pursuits. All
absorbing is the power of sin. The energies of body and mind insensibly flow
into its channel, and the votary becomes the slave, and ultimately the ruined
victim. But what is His demand of you, whose service is perfect freedom? Not so
much as He has a right to demand; far less than many, moved by His grace, are
willing to bestow. Sin, which absorbs all if it can, is but a robber at the
best, for it can lay claim to no sort of right whatever, while God, who has a
right to all, demands but little. What I do here claim, however, is, that
though the requirements of God be comparatively small, they are, nevertheless,
universal.
IV. No act for God
is performed without his favour, and the “blessing of the Lord it maketh rich,
and He addeth no sorrow with it.” (G. Venables.)
Verse 16
The barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail.
The inexhaustible barrel
In the midst of wrath God remembers mercy. Divine love is rendered
conspicuous when it shines in the midst of judgments. Fair is that lone star
which smiles through the rifts of the thunder-clouds; bright is the oasis which
blooms in the wilderness of sand; so fair and so bright is love in the midst of
wrath.
I. The objects of
Divine love.
1. How sovereign was the choice. Our Saviour Himself teaches us when
He says, “I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of
Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great
famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save
unto Sarepta, a city of Zidon, unto a woman that was a widow.” Here was Divine
sovereignty.
2. What undeservingness there was in the person! She was no Hannah. I
read not that she had smitten the Lord’s enemies, like Jael, or had forsaken
the gods of her country, like Ruth. She was no more notable than any other
heathen. Her idolatry was as vile as theirs, and her mind as foolish and vain
as that of the rest of her countrymen. Ah, and in the objects too, of God’s love, there is nothing
whatever that can move His heart to love them; nothing of merit, nothing which
could move Him to select them.
3. Her condition was miserable too, in the very last degree. She had
not only to suffer the famine which had fallen upon all her neighbours, but her
husband was taken from her. Ah, this is just where sovereign grace finds us
all--in the depth of poverty and misery. I do not mean, of course, temporal poverty,
but I mean spiritual distress. So long as we have a full barrel of our own
merits, God will have nothing to do with us. So long as the cruse of oil is
full to overflowing, we shall never taste the mercy of God. For God will not
fill us until we are emptied of self.
II. The grace of
God in its dealings.
1. The love of God towards this woman in its dealings was of the most
singular character.
2. The dealings of love with this poor woman were not only singular,
but exceedingly trying. The first thing she hears is a trial: Give away some of
that water which thy son and thyself so much require! Give away a portion of
that last little cake which ye intended to eat and die! Nay, all through the
piece it was a matter of trial, for there never was more in the barrel than
there was at the first.
III. The
faithfulness of divine love. “The barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of off fail,
according to the word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah.” You will observe
that this woman had daily necessities. She had three mouths to feed; she had
herself, her son, and the prophet Elijah. But though the need was threefold,
yet the supply of meal wasted not. You have daily necessities. Because they
come so frequently--because your trials are so many, your troubles so
innumerable, you are apt to conceive that the barrel of meal will one day be
empty, and the cruse of off will fail you. But rest assured that according to
the word of God this shall not be the case. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The miracle is Zarephath
God’s blessings, whether of oil, or corn, or sense, or grace, come
to us in accordance with three laws, and of these laws this miracle in
Zarephath is a signal illustration.
I. The law of
economy. The little which we have must not be wasted. The smallest capacity
must be utilised. The most rudimentary gift must be employed. Out of the
inventory of to-day comes the more of tomorrow. God works no superfluous
miracles. He wastes no energy in mere spectacular display. In his
administration everything is generous, nothing is wasteful; everything is
orderly, nothing is paroxysmal; everything by law, nothing by caprice.
II. The law of
continuity. There is no spontaneous generation in the chemistries of nature,
character, or grace. The new comes out of the old; oil comes out of oil; meal
comes out of meal; this year’s harvest comes out of last year’s corn crib; the
perfect truth comes out of the partial truth; the extraordinary is only the
ordinary carried up and completed. The supernatural is simply the natural
touched with life, quickened with God. What we receive is the increase of what
we have. What we may be is the outgrowth of what we are. Every future leaps out
of the loins of some past.
III. The law of
increase. Get a little meal underneath God’s blessing, in the drift of His
purpose, and it means more meal. “St. Theresa and two sons are nothing; St.
Theresa, two sons, and God are everything.” If we bring our weak faith to Him
He will increase it. If we bring our torpid hearts to Him He will make them
beat and burn. (M. B. Chapman.)
The barrel of meal and the cruse of oil
This miracle illustrates--
I. A principle in
connection with economy. The greatest generosity would often be to teach
economy. The economy of nature is as startling as uniform. The gas flung off by
the vegetable world--do you think it is wasted? It becomes a source of your
health and life! And the gas that you exhale in breathing is not wasted; it
becomes food for the trees, and that carbon. Whence is the rain that refreshes
the face of the earth? It is the result of economy, of God’s treasuring up the
water, absorbed by the sun. Of all the refuse of this earth that the rivers
bear into the ocean, there is nothing wasted. Out of it God is making the bones
of fishes, coral reefs, etc. And if the principle on which the Deity is
managing the great palace of nature were taken into the homes of destitution
that abound, there might be less drunkenness, etc., but there would oftener be
“the barrel of meal and the cruse of oil.”
II. A principle in
connection with providence.
III. A principle in
connection with piety. “Man liveth not by bread alone,” etc. We never starve in
spiritual life for lack of help.
IV. A principle in
connection with generosity, This woman gave and got. But let us remember that
she gave unselfishly, and not in order to get. Moreover, she gave to her
utmost. She gave to a prophet, in the name of a prophet, and she received a
prophet s reward. The reward is not always a material one; it is sometimes
sympathy, sometimes the benediction of poverty, and always the smile of the
soul and God. (H. J. Martyn.)
The cruse that never jails
I wish to spiritualise this incident, with its barrel of
unwasting meal and its cruse of unfailing oil, and see it in a type of that
unfailing happiness and peace and comfort for which men are for ever seeking.
We are all too well aware, though we are constantly deceiving ourselves about
it, constantly trying to hide it from our eyes, that the ordinary stores of
life’s joy do waste and fail.
1. One of our first sources of joy and comfort is youth.
2. Health is one of life’s great fountains of comfort and happiness.
Our health is a barrel of meal and a cruse of oil constantly being used up.
Most of us are already taking medicine to keep the worn machine sufficiently in
order so that we can make it work awhile longer.
3. Closely allied to health is strength, though many men and women
carry burdens through long lives on shoulders grown strong through
tribulations, never knowing what it is to have health. Many people exult in
their strength; many get happiness out of it; the mere ability to do things is
a great blessing from God; but that, too, is a failing cruse. After awhile we
come to know that there is only about so much force, about so much strength and
vitality, in a human being, and that if men or women use their strength in one
way it means they cannot use it in some other way.
4. This is true of all the joys and comforts that we get from earthly
fortune.
5. Then there is that great source of earthly comfort and confidence,
the joy which
comes from the fellowship and kindness of our relatives and friends. And now I
gladly turn away from this side of our study to contemplate with infinite
thanksgiving to God the cruse of oil that never fails. There is a life which
Jesus came to give us which is not affected with the passing of youth, with the
breaking down of our health, with the failure of our strength, or with the
frail character of our fortunes--a life that may grow more abundant under them
all and may never be more full of the vigour and enthusiasm of youth than when
it faces the king of terrors; a life that does not fail though one is thrown
into a dungeon with John Bunyan, or cast into the inner prison with Paul and
Silas, or exiled among the heathen with David Livingstone; a life that can do
without money, or health, or youth, or friends, and still remain sweet and
patient and glad and loving and brave. If you to-night will take God’s promise,
with the same simplicity of faith shown by this poor woman towards the promise
given through the lips of Elijah, you, too, shall save yourself alive unto
eternal life. (L. A. Banks, D. D.)
The widow’s barrel of meal
Nothing is more wonderful in the orderings of God’s Providence
than the economy of human supply, the marvellous adjustment of contingency and
constancy, of precarious means and uniform provision. We often speak and feel
as if the great marvels of God’s Providence were its signal interpositions, its
great deliverances or hair-breadth escapes occurring once or twice during a
lifetime, deliverance from a fire in which others have perished, from a railway
accident or shipwreck in which others have lost their lives. But, rightly
viewed, the true marvel of God’s Providence is its minuteness, its adjustment
of little things, its constant maintenance of the myriad laws and causes upon
which daily life depends, that pulse should follow pulse, that breath should
succeed breath, that day after day and year after year all the mysterious
functions of life should go on, and all the mysterious conditions of life be
maintained--the chemistry of the atmosphere, the balance of forces, the supply
of food, all the wonderful things of life within us and without us, by which
every hour and every moment we live and move and have our being. It is a
miracle in all ways, a miracle of power and wisdom, and a miracle of goodness,
that God’s loving arm should never for a moment be withdrawn, His eye never for
a moment be averted, His supplies never for a moment fail. It needs not a
miracle to demonstrate God’s mercy. And the peculiarity of God’s Providence is
that a general uniformity is blended with circumstantial uncertainty. The great
law is invariable--seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, day and night do
not fail; and yet how precarious and changeful the sunshine and shower, the
labour and the fructifying influences upon which they depend! How anxiously the
farmer sows and cultures l how easily his hope is frustrated! He knows not
which shall prosper, this or that. The uniform law has a margin of contingent
circumstance about it, in which much depends upon human effort and upon Divine
blessing. It seems in each individual instance as if there were no certain law
at all. And for moral purposes, for the education and discipline of men this is
an arrangement of wonderful wisdom. If our wants were supplied by some
mechanical law, there would
be no religious culture, no religious appeal; the daily and hourly play of
religious feeling Would be lost. We all know how rapidly uniformity produces
Indifference, even though it be uniformity of blessing; even the most
marvellous goodness ceases to impress us if it be invariable! If our food were
to be supplied by what we call miracle, it would surprise and affect us at
first, but if of regular occurrence we should soon cease to feel either
surprise or gratitude. The manna of the wilderness which excited such wonder at
first soon became as familiar as drops of rain. One great reason therefore why
God diversifies the experience of our lives is that by constant excitement he
may keep alive our sense of dependence upon Him. Every man’s experience attests
the healthful influence of this diversity of things. How near to God it keeps
us; how it enhances our sense of blessings!
1. How entirely dependent upon God we are for the common and
necessary things of our life! And yet there is nothing that we are more prone
practically to forget. Too often we become conscious of it only when they are
withdrawn.
2. Another lesson is, Into how small a compass the real necessities
of life may be reduced. Were we to take an inventory of this poor widow’s
effects, how short and meagre it would be! A little meal in a barrel, and that
perhaps not very fine meal, and a little off in a cruse. Were we to look round
her cottage, we should find no superfluities in it. No doubt her little
furniture had been all parted with, ere her last despairing resolution was
taken. If the barrel and the cruse were not the whole of her effects, yet from
them we may safely infer the rest. It is but an illustration of the process that every day goes on in many an
English home: the deportation of goods to the pawnbroker’s, sometimes
superfluities, sometimes precious objects of loving associations, sometimes the
very necessities of life, the bed upon which children sleep, the clothes that
should cover their nakedness, or keep them from the cold; sometimes these sad
shifts are the result of thriftless extravagance, or of sensual indulgence, but
too often they are the sad necessity of poverty, and those accustomed to comforts are glad to
hold body and soul together by the commonest and scantiest food.
3. Again: how easily God can supply us with what is necessary for us!
What innumerable agencies are at His disposal! If ordinary channels fail, how
easy for Him to employ extraordinary ones! One way is as easy to Him as
another, only it is not so common. Elijah was supplied by the ravens as easily
and as surely as when the corn waved in the fields. And then, again, when he
was an apparent pensioner upon the poor widow’s charity. Here were three
different methods in which God supplied His servant’s need--the one as much His
method, and as easy to Him, as the other. “He opens His hand, and satisfies the
desire of every living thing.” (H. Allon.)
Verses 17-24
And it came to pass after these things.
The test of the home-life
Many a man might bear himself as a hero and saint in the solitudes
of Cherith, or on the heights of Carmel, and yet wretchedly fail in the
home-life of Zarephath. It is one thing to commune with God in the solitudes of
nature, and to perform splendid acts of devotion and zeal for Him in the
presence of thousands; but it is quite another to walk with Him day by day in
the midst of a home, with its many calls for the constant forgetfulness of
self. And yet it would be idle to deny that there is much to try and test us
just where the flowers bloom, and the voices of hate and passion die away in
distant murmurs. There is a constant need for the exercise of gentleness,
patience, self-sacrifice, self-restraint. And beneath the test of home, with
its incessant duties and demands, many men break down, whose character seems,
like some Alpine peak, to shoot up far beyond the average of those with whom
they associate in the busy world. Thy home-life was chosen for thee by the
unerring skill of One who knows thee better than thou knowest thyself, and who
could not mistake. It has been selected as the best school of grace for thee.
And now, looking down upon thee, the Master says: “There is nothing in thy life
that may not be lived in Me, for Me, through Me: and I am willing to enable
thee to be sweet and noble and saint-like in it all.” Elijah was the same man
in the widow’s house as on Carmel’s heights. He is like one of those mountains
to which we have referred, piercing the heavens with unscaleable heights; but
clothed about the lower parts with woodlands, and verdant fields, and smiling
bowers, where bees gather honey, and children play. He shows that when a man is
full of the Holy Ghost, it will be evidenced by the entire tenor of his daily
walk and conversation.
I. Elijah teaches
us contentment. God’s rule is--day by day. The manna fell on the desert sands
day by day. Our bread is promised to us for the day. As our day, so will our
strength be. And they who live like this are constantly reminded of their
blessed dependence on their Father’s love. If God guarantees, as He does, our
support, does it much matter whether we can see the sources from which He will
obtain it? It might gratify our curiosity; but it would not make them more
sure.
II. Elijah also
teaches us gentleness under provocation. “Art thou come to call my sin to
remembrance, and to slay my son?” A remark, so uncalled-for and unjust, might
well have stung the prophet to the quick, or prompted a bitter reply. And it
would have doubtless done so, had his goodness been anything less than inspired
by the Holy Ghost. But one of the fruits of His indwelling is Gentleness. We
need more of this practical godliness. Many deceive themselves. If the Holy
Spirit is really filling the heart, there will come over the rudest, the least
refined, the most selfish, a marvellous change; there will be a gentleness in
speech, in the very tones of the voice; a tender thoughtfulness in the smallest
actions; a peace passing understanding on the face; and these shall be the
evident seal of the Holy Ghost, the mint-mark of heaven. Are they evident in
ourselves?
III. Elijah teaches
also the power of a holy life. Somewhere in the background of this woman’s life
there was a dark deed, which dwarfed all other memories of wrong-doing, and
stood out before her mind as her sin--“my sin” (1 Kings 17:18). What it was we do
not know; it may have been connected with the birth of that very son. There is
a wonderful invention, recently perfected, by which sound can be fixed
pictorially; and, from the picture, it may be produced again, long years after
it was spoken. Imagine your hearing once again the voices long bushed in death! But
memory is like this: it fixes all impressions and retains them; it never
permits them to be destroyed, though it may not always be able to produce them instantly
to a given call. Some memories are like well-classified libraries, in which you
can readily discover even the smallest pamphlet; others are so confused that
they are useless for practical purposes: yet even in these, nothing that ever
came within their range has ever been lost; and whenever the right clue is
presented, there is an immediate resurrection and recovery of sounds, and
sights, and trains of thought long buried. How terrible will it be, when the
lost soul is met on the threshold of the dark world to which it goes, by the
solemn words, “Son, remember!”
IV. Elijah teaches,
lastly, the secret of giving life. It is a characteristic of those who are
filled with the Holy Ghost, that they carry with them everywhere the spirit of
life, even resurrection-life. We shall not only convince men of sin; but we
shall become channels through which the Divine Life may enter them. Thus was it
with the prophet. But mark the conditions under which alone we shall be able to
fulfil this glorious function.
1. Lonely wrestlings. “He took him out of her bosom,” etc. We are not
specific enough in prayer; and we do not spend enough time in intercession,
dwelling with holy ardour on each beloved name, and on each heart-rending case.
What wonder that we achieve so little!
2. Humility. “He measured himself upon the child.” How wonderful that
so great a man should spend so much time and thought on that slender frame, and
be content to bring himself into direct contact with that which might be
thought to defile! It is a touching spectacle.
3. Perseverance. “He measured himself three times, and cried unto the
Lord.” He was not soon daunted.
It is thus that God tests the genuineness of our desire. These deferred answers
lead us to lengths of holy boldness and pertinacity of which we should not
otherwise have dreamed, but from which we shall never go back. “Men ought
always to pray, and not to faint.” (F. B. Meyer, M. A.)
The dead made alive
There are some good suggestions here for every one of us who would
win souls to Christ. For the condition of every one who is living without faith
and confidence in God is compared in the Scriptures to spiritual death, and the
conversion of a soul is spoken of as bringing the dead to life. First, there
is--
1. The personal interest, the actual effort; how many times we think
about winning some one to Christ, but we let all our interest ooze out in
thinking; we do not act.
2. We have suggested to us that we are to save them by prayer. Elijah
knew he had no power to bring this boy to life, but he knew God had the power.
He gave himself in prayer to God, and God heard his prayer.
3. We must add our personal influence to prayer. Elijah, as if to
infuse some of his own vitality into the body of the dead child, stretched
himself upon it three times. We never can tell when a personal touch may win a
soul to the Lord. (L. A. Banks, D. D.)
Germs of thought
The resurrection of the widow’s son at Zarephath.
I. Man the organ
of the miraculous. This is confessedly a miracle--an event altogether out of
the ordinary course of nature. In this very chapter there are no less than
three miracles wrought by Elijah. The heavens were sealed by him;-there was no
rain or dew for three years; and there was a famine. The widow’s meal and oil
remained undiminished, after supplying the wants of the widow, her son, and himself:--and
now her son is brought to life. Why does the Almighty thus employ man as the
medium of His miraculous agency?
1. It serves to impress us with the infinite regard which God has for
good men.
2. It serves to foreshadow the wonderful power which good men, when
perfected in eternity, may possess. May it not be that the grandest of their
miracles here are but symbols and types of their splendid achievements there?
II. Poverty the
home of the great. Elijah’s chamber was a small “loft” in that humble cottage.
This should teach us--
1. Not to make secular position a test of moral character. This in
every age man has been apt to do. Job’s friends did this.
2. Not to make secular wealth an end of life. Our life “consisteth
not in the abundance of things.”
3. Not to shun men because they are poor.
4. Not to neglect the cultivation of spiritual excellence because of
our poverty. Poverty is no excuse either for impiety or uselessness. Paul said,
“Though poor, yet making many rich.”
III. Evil the
occasion of good. This woman’s trial was great in the death of her son. It
would teach her--
1. How absolutely life is in the hands of God. It taught her that He
can take it away and give it back at pleasure. “The Lord gave,” etc.
2. How great the influence a truly good man has with heaven. (Homilist.)
“Out of the depths”
God’s chastisements are always for our profit. It is only “out of
the depths “that we can rise to the highest knowledge of God. So it was not in
vain that both the prophet and the widow passed through the furnace at
Zarephath.
1. The first is this, Trust and Obey. The departure from Cherith, the
journey through Samaria, the encounter with a widow so poor that she was forced
to gather sticks by the highway, were all a severe test of Elijah’s faith. He
had to look, not at outward appearances, but at the word of the Lord. So, too,
with the widow. If she had asked for a full barrel and a new cruse to start
with, it would have been only what our hearts are always craving. We say, “Give
us this day our daily bread,” but we like to see an assured income between us
and want.
2. But the woman was to learn a deeper lesson still. It may be summed
up in Remember and Repent. Before long God’s hand was laid upon her son, and he
fell sick and died. This awakened memories that had slumbered long. “Art thou
come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?” We do not know
whether it was her general sinfulness that was brought home to her or some
particular offence--some forgotten sin, buried and covered over in the
rubbish-heap of the past. We notice, however, that this sense of sin was not
awakened until death threatened her home, and her own son paid the first
instalment of the dread penalty of sin. And yet surely she had not been
resisting God’s grace. The word of the Lord in Elijah’s mouth had not been
rejected by her. It needed death, however, to bring about in this widow a true
sense of sin. “Grace and Truth” are both needed for the development of spiritual
life. Grace was manifest in the daily supply of food. Truth shone forth with
awful and searching power in the death of her son. Grace revealed the goodness
of God--Truth made to pass before her the evil of her own heart. And God’s
people, as well as the careless and ungodly, need to remember and repent.
3. Our third motto is Ask and Receive. There are deep mysteries in
life which yield to nothing but prayer. What a tangle there was in that home!
How mysterious--how, from the human standpoint, inexplicable, the blow that had
fallen! We are all prejudiced against God by nature, and unwilling to accept
judgment without murmuring. But in this case God’s dealings must have seemed
terribly severe. There is one explanation, however, of all these mysterious and
inexplicable dealings of God’s providence. They are sent to teach us the value
of prayer, to draw us out of ourselves, and to make us lay hold of that power
of God, which reaches even beyond the grave. What a prayer was this of
Elijah’s! Prayer is still all-powerful along the line of God’s will. We, too,
may know the power of Christ’s resurrection; indeed, a measure of resurrection
power should be manifest in our lives, if we are indeed risen with Christ.
4. Love and know, is illustrated by this story. It is beyond our
power to conceive the deep effect upon this widow of her son’s resurrection. “Now
by this I know that thou art a man of God,” was the widow’s comment. Clearly
the bitterness had given place to love. She had learnt that God only wounds to
heal. (F. S. Webster, M. A.)
Raising the widow’s son
The mother, overwhelmed with sorrow, severely rebukes
Elijah, and charges him with the loss of her son. This conduct may be accounted
for
I. No home exempt
from the trials and sufferings of this life. This widow would doubtless be
looked upon with envy by her neighbours. They would think that in the midst of
the distress suffered by them that she was free, and protected by an unseen
hand from wretchedness and woe. But a deeper sorrow than they imagined was soon
her portion. And in looking upon some homes we are apt to think that they are
strangers to the ordinary trials and sorrows of life. There is no home that can
exclude these.
II. The deepest
sorrow may be made the instrument of our highest good.
III. An illustration
of the power of prayer. (Thomas Cain.)
Verse 24
I know that thou art a man of God.
Elijah
1. From whom does the testimonial come? “I know.” These are the words
of the heathen villager, a poor widow, living in an out-of-the-way place,
probably as ignorant as she was poor. Possibly she had heard nothing of the
controversy about Baal, and knew nothing of Elijah’s great work; yet she it is
who sets up as a judge in the matter. “I know.” Quite so. Everybody is a judge
of goodness. Like love, for which goodness is only another name, it is a thing
which everybody can see and know and honour. There is no ignorance in the
matter of goodness.
2. Let us look at the character: a man of God. It is a grand
title--the grandest ever conferred on any man. Let us think that day after
day the character of each of us is being built up for eternity. The spirit and
aim of the life is making more fixed and defined that which we shall be for
ever. Let every one of us ask himself, Am I a man, a woman, of God? Whatever
else we are, all must be a failure if we are not that. Whatever else we are,
the best and highest life is ours only if we have surrendered ourselves to the
love and service of God.
Charged with blessing
Touch the hand of a man who is being thrilled by a galvanic
battery, and you will feel the shock. So, if we are charged with Holy Ghost
power, those who come into contact with us will soon discover it. There is more
connection with the name and character of Barnabas than appears. The man filled
with the Spirit became a son of consolation to others.
──《The Biblical Illustrator》