Well, I do invite you to turn with me to the Word of God in 1 Kings, Chapter 17. And while you're turning to that passage, I do want to reiterate what my brother Steve Lloyd said to you this morning, how much we at Kauai Reformation Church do so much appreciate you, your congregation, your love for us, and your prayers and concern for us, as well as your support. And I want to say back to you that we love you. And it is my honor to be with you here this morning and to worship the Lord with you. So let's together do that as we open the Word of God. 1 Kings chapter 17. I'm going to read the first 16 verses. Read the first 16 verses and then our focus will be verses 8 through 16. Let's humble ourselves now and hear not the words of man but the word of God. And Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word. Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, get away from here and turn eastward. and hide by the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. For he went and stayed at the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed, a widow was there, gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, Please bring me a little water and a cup that I may drink. And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, please bring me a morsel of bread in your hands. So she said, as Lord your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a jar. And see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die. And Elijah said to her, Do not fear. Go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me. And afterward, make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, the bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth. So she went away and did according to the word of Elijah. And she, and he, and her household ate for many days. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Elijah. Amen. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for these things. We know, oh Lord, that all scripture is inspired by you and profitable for teaching. reproving and correcting and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be fully equipped for every good work. And we pray, Lord, that You would bless now Your Word from this pulpit, that it may be proclaimed faithfully and boldly, and that it may accomplish the purposes for which You send it, and that it would not return void. And may that be true not only here in this place, but wherever Your Word is faithfully proclaimed on this day, the day that You have made. We pray, Father, that by it we may be changed. that we may be drawn to you and love you. For Jesus' sake, amen. Well, as you can see, this is a very powerful passage of scripture. Elijah is an amazing prophet of God who is of, as James says, like nature as you and me. And before I look at the passage, the specific passage, beginning at verse 8, where Elijah is sent to Sidon, to Zarephath, and Sidon to the widow, I want to give you a little bit of background as to what is taking place here. It will help us to understand some of the deep things that are taking place in our passage. And first of all, I want to introduce you to Ahab. Ahab is the most wicked king of Israel, the northern kingdom. He married a wicked woman, Jezebel. We read about this in chapter 16. Ahab is introduced to us. And Jezebel was the daughter of the king of Sidon. The marriage we read in chapter 16 was an offense to God. Because Jezebel and her father and all the people of Sidon were Baal worshippers. Jezebel was an avid Baal worshipper and Ahab went right along. And they, the two of them, did more to introduce the worship of Baal to the people of Israel than any other ruling family. While he was king, the people of Israel lost all regard. for the commandments of God and for obeying His will. Then we come to chapter 17 and we read that Elijah the Tishbite comes to Ahab. Without fear, he approaches the king of Israel and tells him that there will be no rain, nor dew, until he says there will be rain or dew. And what we need to understand here is that This is a direct attack against Baal. This was a direct attack against Baal, the Canaanite god of nature and fertility. Baal worship. I want to tell you a little bit about Baal worship. Baal worship took place generally on the top of the mountains. And what Ahab and Jezebel did is they put Baal statues up there and Baal altars up there on the top of the mountains. And on the top of these mountains there would be the priests and priestesses of Baal. Remember, Baal is the fertility god, the false god of the surrounding nations. And included in the worship of Baal would be the people going up to the top of these mountains and actually engaging in sexual activity with the priests and the priestesses of Baal, the fertility gods. And they would be praying to Baal to send rain, and if there was a drought, they would believe that Baal was angry with them, and it got so bad that they would actually sacrifice their firstborn on the altars of Baal. Something which God says He never thought of. To understand, this is wickedness. It's an abomination. Baal worship among the people of God. And so Elijah is declaring war on Baal. Yahweh is the true God. And to prove it, God is going to shut off the spigot. There will be no rain until I say so. And Ahab, there's nothing that you, there's nothing your wife Jezebel, there's nothing that this false god Baal can do anything about. When I say it will rain, then it will rain. That's what's going on in the background. And then we read, of course, that God instructs Elijah to move on, to go to the brook Cherith. And this, too, is important to understand as we approach our text. The brook Cherith is east of Jordan. That means it was out of or beyond the boundary of Israel. God was instructing Elijah to leave the borders. of Israel. Now why did he do that? Was it for Elijah's protection? There are some who believe it was. Jezebel, of course, was sending out her henchmen to kill the prophets of God. Was Elijah sent to hide there out of fear or to be protected from Jezebel? I don't believe that that is the case because east of the Jordan was enemy territory. There were safer places for Elijah in Israel. God could have used any of the 7,000 who had not bent the knee to Baal to house and protect Elijah. No, God didn't send Elijah east of the Jordan out of Israel in order to protect Elijah. Remember, Elijah is not just an Israelite. Elijah is not just a representative of true believers. He is an Israelite, and he is a representative of true Israel, certainly, but he isn't just that. He is the prophet, the mouthpiece of God. And this is so important to understand in understanding the passage that we're looking at. Elijah was called of God for one purpose, and that was to declare to Israel, thus saith the Lord. That was the purpose of prophets. Prophets are called upon to bring the Word of God to the people of God. Priests were called upon to bring the prayers of the people and the sacrifices of the people to God. But prophets were bringing the Word of God to the people. And God says to Elijah, leave Israel. This is something very profound. When God commands Elijah to leave Israel, He is telling the bearer and bringer of His Word to leave Israel. And when Elijah leaves, the preaching leaves. And so the absence of Elijah in that sense, and in a very real sense, is worse than the absence of rain in the land. As rain brings physical prosperity, the Word brings spiritual prosperity. And the Word of the Lord was Israel's lifeblood. It was by the Word of the Lord that God came to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, to Moses, Joshua, to David. It was by the Word of the Lord that God made covenant with His people. But now the word of the Lord is removed and salvation was no longer being preached in Israel. God, in other words, was sending a drought to their souls. Paul says in Romans 10, how can the people hear if there is no preacher? How will they respond to the word if they cannot hear the word? And in Isaiah 52 verse 7 we read, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns. So there you have how beautiful it is when that happens. You know, and they talk about that, you know, the beautiful feet. It means when there's a messenger running to the villagers in Israel, While there's a war going on, they could tell by the way the messenger is approaching them whether he has good news or bad news. Bad news messenger is probably going to come kind of slowly and dragging his feet. A good news messenger, you're going to see it. He's going to be lifted up. He's going to be running. He's going to be eager. And they're saying, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. But in this passage, God, all they're seeing is his back. All they're seeing is his back. How terrible it is to be without the Word of the Lord. Do you see what a calamity this is? God is sending a drought to their souls. And now, coming to our passage, God tells Elijah to go to Zarephath in Sidon. Don't miss that. Now Elijah, go to Israel? Go to Jerusalem? Go to Zarephath. and silence. Injury upon insult is taking place. Well, let's look at God's instruction to Elijah in verse 8 and 9. God says, Arise! Go! Now, again, it's always good to ask why. Why did God tell Elijah to arise and go? Is it because there wasn't any water in the brook? That's the way it seems to indicate. The brook ran dry and then God says to him, Arise and go. But I don't believe that that's the reason, because the brook ran dry. God's power is not stopped by a little dried-up brook. God has proven himself. He can provide water to an entire nation of people from a rock in the wilderness. The problem wasn't that there wasn't water in the brook terrace. That's the reason that Elijah had to leave. God commands and controls all the forces of nature. We sang about that earlier today. Even ravens obey him. and bring food. God was not hampered because there was no water in the brook. He can make flour and oil multiply. Certainly God could bring water to Elijah. It wasn't because the brook ran dry, in other words, that Elijah is called upon to go. It's because God intended for Elijah to move from the brook Cherith and to move to Sidon. Just north of the boundaries, of the borders of Israel to Zarephath. Zarephath was a village, a town right on the Mediterranean Sea. Go to Zarephath, arise, go, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Why did God tell Elijah to do this? When Jesus read the scriptures, read Isaiah chapter 61 in the synagogue, and he closed the scroll and said, today this word has come to pass in your hearing. And the people started questioning and wondering, you know, he's from Nazareth, who's this guy? And Jesus said that a prophet is not welcome and received in his own country. And then he talked about Elijah. And he said in that passage in Luke chapter 4, he said, I tell you truly many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a great famine throughout all the land, but to none of them was Elijah sent except Zarephath in the region of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. God intentionally is bypassing Israel and sending Elijah to meet a widow Out of the boundaries. In Sidon. In Zarephath. God is sending a message to Israel. Small town north of Israel on the Mediterranean Sea. To get there, Elijah had to, from the Jordan River, cross the Jordan, pass through the northern kingdom, the northern portion of the kingdom of Israel. Amazing. You have to see it in your mind. Here is the man chosen of God to bring the Word of God to his people, and here he is walking through northern Israel into the foreign country just north, a bunch of Baal worshippers, Poseidon, Zarephath. God is sending a message to Israel. What we see is God passing His people by. It was their privilege. It was the responsibility of the people of Israel to provide for and to support the prophets and the proclamation of God's Word. That was their responsibility. It was their prerogative. And now the Word is humiliating. Now that a heathen widow would be the one to be Elijah's hostess. The Word of the Lord would be sustained by the widow of Zarephath, an outsider. Understand this. And I think this is a picture of what we read in Romans chapter 11 where Paul is saying how the Israelites' unbelief is use of God as a blessing to the nation. And here is just a microcosm of that. Israel's unfaithfulness is being used for God now to be a blessing to a widow and a parapet. I actually think there's another reason why God sends Elijah to Sidon. Sidon was ruled, of course, by King Ephael, Jezebel's dad, wicked man. Sidon was a country of Baal worshippers opposed to Yahweh. Domain of Satan. And God sends Elijah to this place in order to support and sustain his word. Incredible. Not only as judgment against Israel, but to make a mockery of Satan. For God is saying, Satan, I rule. And I rule in Sidon, too. I rule in Zarephath, too. So Elijah comes and enters the town. He comes to the town gate. In obedience to the word of God, he goes to Zarephath and he meets a widow at the city gate. And there's three requests that he makes with the widow. The first one, he says, please bring me a little water and a cup that I may drink. And the widow doesn't say anything. She only goes and does what he says. But as she's going to do that, he makes a second request. Oh, by the way, please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. And then the widow stops. Turned around to Elijah and said, I can't do that. I don't have any bread. Explains to him that all she had was a little bit of flour and a little oil and she was collecting sticks to make a fire so that she could bake her final little piece of meal, little bread, so that she and her son could eat it and die. That's the state. The widow was in extreme poverty. You see, because the drought not only was limited to Israel, it was throughout all the area. There was no crops. There was a shortage of food. The widow was in extreme poverty. All she had was enough flour and oil to make one last meal for herself and the son. That was it. That was the situation she was in. And Elijah, being so empathetic, says, Okay, go ahead and make your meal, but first make me a cake, and give it to me first. And then afterwards, you and your son could have your portion. It seems selfish. It seems a selfish thing, what Elijah is asking. He was asking her to give everything she had. That's all she had. To make a little piece of a meal and he said, give it to me first. He was asking for everything she had and he wouldn't settle for anything less. How is that possible? What kind of a man is he like to ask such a thing? But remember, Elijah is God's chosen prophet. He is the bringer of God's Word. And his request was not simply for his own behalf, but was appealing to the widow to serve the Word of God. And when we see it in this light, then the request isn't so extraordinary, or at least so rare. God always demands our all. Always demands our all. God doesn't want just the little bit. God doesn't want the little crumbs from you. He wants your all. He's never satisfied with less than the total response. And it's seen in that light, and Elijah's request is not so surprising. In Israel, all of life was to be consecrated to the Lord. All their wealth, all their land, all their crops, their children, the whole of life, their families, was dedicated to the Lord. And now God is demanding the same thing from the widow of Zarephath. God always demands our all. Jesus said in Luke 14, 26 and 27, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. God will have our first, and God will have our all. and will not receive anything less. Is Christ really your all in all? We might sing, I surrender all, I surrender all, all to Jesus, I surrender, I surrender all. I think for a lot of Christians in the United States of America, they should sing, I surrender some. I surrender some. God wants our all. It was the same problem in the church in Laodicea, right? In Revelation. You're lukewarm. You have plenty of wealth. You have plenty of money. Jesus said, and I will vomit you out of my mouth. Brothers and sisters, God did not hold back for you. God did not even spare His own Son for you. God gave His Son to redeem you and to cleanse you, to reconcile you to Himself. You who were lost in sin, dead in sin, and in your trespasses, God brought you to life through His Son, and it was not some easy thing. He did not spare His own Son for you. And now, suddenly, give me your all. Elijah's request. Elijah's request to say, give me the first part, is not rude, is not selfish, but was a lesson to this woman that to be a follower of God demands your own. Well, we see then that the widow responds amazingly, She goes and does what he says. She makes her meal and brings him the first portion. God provides. God provided for her physical needs. Verse 14 is an amazing passage. Would she respond believing Elijah or turn away in unbelief? What a pivotal point in the life of this Widow of Zarephath. What is she going to do here? The very next step that she would take would be the difference between life and death. Very literal. If she turned away in unbelief, that would mean death. Physical, because she only had a little bit of oil, a little bit of flour, there was no prospect for her to have anything more. And she and her son would die. Spiritually. Eternally. What a pivotal point that is! And she responds in faith. She responds in belief. Remarkable. She believed Him. She obeyed Him. And God miraculously kept food in her house and on her table. In one sense we can say that God blessed her with a little. God didn't provide her with a big house. God didn't provide her with a lot of wealth. All that God provided her with was food on her table, her daily bread. And we could say that God blessed her with little. But let's not, let's not think that that's, you know, a small thing or even a bad thing. In 1 Timothy 6 we read, there is great gain in Godliness with contentment, but we brought nothing into this world, we cannot take anything out of this world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we should be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and into a snare and into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. The writer Proverbs says, better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great pleasure with trouble. God blessed her with little, but God blessed her with much as well. Remember he told Elijah in verse 9 that he has commanded a widow in Zarephath. Another English word to translate the Hebrew would be God has ordained that this widow would care for Elijah. And if we were to read further in verse 24, we would see that she makes a profession of faith in the God of Elijah. God blessed her with what she needed for life in this world, the temporal needs, and for what she needed for all eternity. Well, I want to just reiterate a couple of things in closing, brothers and sisters, One is, you think about this faith of the widow. She had never seen Elijah before. Nor had she ever seen the miraculous power of God before. Yet, she made a total and complete sacrifice. She gave up all that she had for the Lord. And so I want to ask you again, is that true of you? will not tolerate those who are lukewarm toward Him. God will not tolerate that. He demands you're all. He will not accept being second place to your money. He will not accept being second place to food, to sex, to popularity and fame, to power, to family. He will not accept being second place to anything. Whatever you might hold dear, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. God so loved you. This is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation for us. You love God in return. Can you say, I live because He lives, and I love because He loves me. But another point I want to make, and the words that I say might sound a little shocking to you, but covenant is not enough. Covenant is not enough. What do I mean by that? Please don't get me wrong. I believe wholeheartedly in what we call covenant theology and that God interacts with us by way of covenant. What I am saying is this, in this passage we see God bypassing His covenant people because they didn't believe, because they were unfaithful, they disobeyed and turned from Him. So what I am saying here is don't think Because I'm baptized, I'm in. Because I have the sign and the seal of the covenant, I'm in. God demands of you, children, God demands of you to repent and believe. And out of love, as we heard earlier, out of our love for God, for so great a salvation, we will respond in obedience. Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commands. but to rest on your laurel thinking, well, I've been baptized. I'm in the covenant. I'm part of the covenant community of God. Therefore, I have a path into heaven. We don't find that in Scripture. We are always told to repent and believe and to love the Lord our God. God can remove His lampstand from this place and move it somewhere else. Just as he did with the seven churches in Revelation, this event, it seems to me, in Elijah's life, should have served as a loud wake-up call to Israel. But brothers and sisters, I want us, in reading this passage, I want this to be a loud wake-up call to you. You love God with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength and serve Him with your whole being in faithfulness and obedience. Amen. Our Father in heaven, we pray that we would be faithful children, that we would be faithful members of your covenant. not ignoring Your ways, not ignoring Your commands, but humble ourselves before You in repentance and belief in Jesus Christ whom You have sent to reconcile us to Yourself. O Lord, we pray that we would love You and plead Your forgiveness. Plead, O Lord, that You would cover over our sins and cleanse us by the blood of Jesus Christ when we have loved our money and our possessions more than You. These false gods, these false idols that we raise up in place of You or even just alongside of You, O Lord, forgive us. We would not, O Lord, have You turn Your back on us. And so we plead that You would cleanse us and that by the work of Your Holy Spirit, You would change us and conform us more and more into the likeness of Your Son, Jesus Christ, that we may follow Your ways and live in obedience, loving You with all of our hearts. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.