The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Ahab was king of Israel when Elijah was sent to Zarephath. He’s considered to be one of the worst kings of all the kings of Israel, and the only person in power to exceed him in evildoing was the woman that Ahab took as his queen: Queen Jezebel, princess of Sidon. Jezebel is remembered in history as the one who introduced the worship of the false gods of Baal to the northern country of Israel. She will also be remembered as the one who, quote, “cut off the prophets of Yahweh,” depriving the people of hearing the word of God preached and taught. These were terrible times for Israel, because the people follow the lead of their king and their queen. We can see how influential leaders in politics can be in our own world, in our own country. When leaders go off the rails, a good portion of the population follows. And that was the case in Israel in the time of Elijah. They turned away from the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, and as they fell further and further away from him, the Lord God withdrew protection from them more and more along the way.
Elijah was one of the many prophets who was, quote, “cut off” by Jezebel. To be cut off means to be exiled and to have a death sentence pronounced over your head. Elijah, you see, had been sent by God to King Ahab to tell him that God’s judgment was falling upon both him and upon the people of Israel because of his sins, and that there would be a terrible drought in the land until the Lord decided otherwise. The drought would last ultimately for three and a half years, and with it it would bring famine and starvation. After pronouncing judgment against Israel, the Lord God commanded Elijah to go out into the wilderness and to make his abode near a brook that God would lead him to. And in 1 Kings 17:2-6 God tells him, “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. He went and lived by the brook Cherith, that is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. But when the brook ran dry, the Lord God sent Elijah to a town called Zarephath, in the region of Sidon, Jezebel’s backyard, her hometown. There Elijah was sent to the widow and her son, whom he found there on the verge of starvation.
Now there was no safety net in Zarephath. There was generally no safety net in the ancient world for widowed women and orphaned children. A widow had few options in the day for sustaining a household, even in the best of times, and these were anything but the best of times. The widow and her son would have been considered undesirables, despised and rejected by the general population, even though the hardship in which they now found themselves was not brought on by anything they did. But it was regarded as a judgment nonetheless, by the gods of Baal, let alone the God of Israel, to be found destitute and in such dire circumstances. Some sin, something must have been done wrong. They were beggars and parasites in the sight of many within their own town. In our text we find the woman gathering sticks to make a fire, and with that fire she was going to make her last supper of flour and oil, to bake some bread for herself and for her son, their last meal. Once that was gone there’d be no more food, and as far as she knew, for her and her son, starvation, dying of starvation, was the only thing left to be done. Then there’s Elijah, an exile and a fugitive with a death sentence over his head. The three of them didn’t seem to have a prayer, despised by those in power and those within their own towns. The three had nowhere to turn but to the Lord God himself. Why would anyone have anything to do with such a burden, taking on the responsibility of feeding two more mouths, forsaken by the gods? Why would anybody bother? Why, by the world’s standard, would anybody pay attention to this widow of Zarephath and her son, and now this outlawed, discredited prophet? But the one true God does not go by the world’s standards. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:28: “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” That’s how God works in this world. He works counterintuitive to what the world expects. God also chooses very unlikely people, people with no reputation, people from far off, and calls them to his work of salvation. The entire list of characters from Genesis to Revelation is made up of seemingly nobodies, at least by the world’s standards: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Moses, David, Elijah, Mary, Peter, James, John, you, me. All nobodies, really, in the sight of the world, but somebodies made so by God’s word in the Old and New Testaments.
That’s the setting for our text this morning: wicked rulers, widespread unbelief and idolatry, a drought and starvation, a prophet on the run, a widow and son with no food nor money. It all looks rather grim for these three nobodies. And that’s where for real hope, real hope, Christian hope, not wishful thinking, enters the story. Christian hope is faith looking forward, based on what has been proven to be true in the past. Faith doesn’t rest on no reason at all. Faith understands what came before, the promises made and fulfilled by the Lord God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it turns to hope, taking hold of the promises that God gives now that he will fulfill in the future. We have hope because our God is a God who makes good on his words. And where a prophet goes, so also goes the word of God and the promises of God to his people. God’s word had been spoken, you see, before in Sidon. It wasn’t a completely strange thing. Solomon had previously spoken the word of God to the nearby King Hiram, a believer in the one true God. 1 Kings 5:7: “As soon as Hiram heard these words of Solomon, he rejoiced greatly and said, ‘Blessed be the Lord this day, who has given to David a wise son over these great people.'” At one point in our reading this morning the widow woman says, “As the Lord your God lives,” which indicates that she’s heard of the Lord God. It’s a specific Hebrew formulation: Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God, my personal Lord and God and Savior, Elohim, the God Almighty who creates by speaking his word.
When Elijah arrived in Zarephath, he called to the widow and asked for a cup of water. That’s normally a pretty basic request, and almost always honored. But in a drought like this, water was scarce, so it was a rather precious thing to give. Still the woman moves to honor the request. But before she can get all the way back to her house, Elijah ups the ante. He makes a greater request, a greater demand. He orders her, saying, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” That’s an even tougher request to grant in a drought. She doesn’t have, by the way, a morsel in her hand. And if you think about it for a moment, it sounds like a pretty selfish demand, doesn’t it, given the widow’s plight? Feed me first, and then you and your son can have the leftovers when I’m all done. Kind of sounds that way. Sounds like a prophet exerting some kind of right to something. But the widow explains: “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now 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.” Where there’s no food, death is what follows soon thereafter. It’s their future, the widow and her son. But faith, you see, doesn’t live by what’s seen. It lives by what’s promised. What has he done in the past? What is promised in the future? Faith lives on the word of God. Faith receives God’s promise. Faith trusts in what it hears from the prophets of God. And it is in that moment of looking death in the face that the Lord gives the promise to these three troubled nobodies. Verse 14: “For thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.'”
You see, unbelief is our natural reaction, faced with all kinds of plights and troubles in this world, in our life, whether it’s financial or personal or family troubles or money troubles or sickness. And yet, why? The first thing faith does is doubt. That’s what tends to happen to faith that’s tainted by sin, our kind of faith. But the true response is to cling to the promises that God gives us in his word. The natural reaction is unbelief. But in this moment the woman trusts the word that Elijah spoke. She fed Elijah, and lo and behold, there’s enough food left over for her and her son, not just for that day, but for every day thereafter, until the Lord sent rain. Remember, God told Elijah to go to the brook. He also told Elijah that when he got there he would drink from the brook, and ravens would deliver his meal, takeout every morning and every night. That’s not an easy promise to believe. Birds going to feed you twice a day, rather than the other way around. It’s a reversal of what nature normally does. But Elijah believed because of the trustworthiness of the one making the promise. The ravens brought Elijah bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook whenever he was thirsty, until the brook went dry due to the drought. You see, Elijah was a person of faith, and the Bible is filled with people of faith. The list I went through, plus a hundred more others in the scripture, were people of faith, saints and sinners in the same moment, just like you. When Elijah said to King Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand,” it’s in the present tense. It’s a kind of strange construction for the sentence. It indicates that there in that moment, Elijah and the Lord are standing face to face. Elijah knew it would come to pass that which God had promised, that the drought would come, and he himself would be fed. The epistle of James says this about Elijah: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Then James goes on to speak of Elijah as, quote, “a man with a nature like ours.” And he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. When James says that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, he’s saying that the prophets of God, Elijah specifically, is just like you and me: saint and sinner in the same moment. And that’s how faith prays. Faith prays by taking hold of the words of God, and holding to it, and holding God to his very own words. The Lord God had proven to be true by the ravens. Elijah knew he would be proved true again. So he ordered the woman to do as instructed. And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was never spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that Elijah spoke.
We’re not in Zarephath. We’re not in a drought. Elijah and the prophets lived many centuries ago, and since then an awful lot has changed in the world. But there’s always a natural disaster someplace, poverty, scarcity, and evil actors. There will always be in our lives times of anxiety and worry about the future, and rebellion against God. There will be sicknesses and challenges to our faith, over and over again. And confidence in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit will be shaken time and time again. And there will be death in our lives, and come to us physically, until our Lord returns in the resurrection of the dead. But of all the troubles that befall humanity in this world, there is one trouble that stands out above all, one that we never really even think about. It’s the scarcity of the preaching of the promises of the Lord God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s the scarcity of the preaching of the word, especially the preaching and teaching of the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. Where the gospel is proclaimed, people repent, you see, and they believe, just as the widow did. Those who hear and believe are made alive and enjoy God’s favor. Where the gospel is not preached, where it is replaced by some other message of false salvations and utopias, there’s no true grace and there’s no true life to be found. But while it is scarcely found, the Lord still sends preachers into the world and to his church, to feed his called servants on his word and sacrament ministry. Where the word of God is proclaimed, sins are forgiven. The work of salvation is advanced. The same God who spoke his word to Elijah, to a widow, and to a son, nobodies, proclaims his word to you and makes you somebody, a child of the heavenly Father. And where the word of God is proclaimed, miracles are possible, as long as they are in accordance with the will and the ways of God. Elijah spoke God’s word, and the flour and oil did not run out. Likewise God continues to provide for you in good times and bad, your daily bread, as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And while you do not hear him speak outside of scripture, you know he has spoken. For Hebrews tells us, in the days of old he spoke to us through the prophets, but in these latter days he has spoken to us in his Son, Jesus Christ. The Lord speaks, and sin and eternal death are removed from you, because he went to the cross in your place. That’s a far greater miracle than feeding the widow of Zarephath and her son and the prophet Elijah. The Lord spoke at your baptism, and he sent the devil scurrying away as he clothed you with his very own righteousness. He speaks his absolution and gives you everlasting life. He speaks at the Supper and gives you his very own body and blood for the remission of all your sins. That’s better than the bread at Zarephath. Christ declares, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” You were once in far worse shape than the widow of Zarephath, who knew that death was near, because you were once dead in your sins, blind, too blind to know Christ. But by the grace of God, his word was spoken to you, and faith was created. For that’s how God makes things happen. He speaks his word, there in creation, after that through the prophets and the apostles, and now those who echo their refrain. Now you know that for Christ’s sake, God does not hold your sin against you. Death might be frightening to you on this side of the grave, but it’s no match for your Savior, who went to the cross to conquer death for you. And in your steps he will keep you and deliver you from every trouble. Before you can be kept and delivered from trouble, though, you must find yourself in it. And that’s usually not too hard for sinners. To be delivered from something, you must be in it to begin with. Thus we live in a vale of tears, waiting for the promises of our deliverance to be fulfilled. Thus these miracles of grace and life are bestowed upon you as the Lord speaks his miraculous word to you, creating for you miracles we don’t even see or know. And the greatest of all the miracles is: your sins are forgiven. You are holy children, his people of substance and consequence, his creation. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.