Faith is not achieved nor proven by words alone but by living under the authority of the Word of God and trusting it when circumstances seem hopeless. The story of the widow of Zarephath reveals that a burden may, in truth, also be God’s means of provision and grace in that time of need. When weakness and uncertainty press hardest, His grace remains more sufficient and His power is perfected in our dependence. The call is to rest beneath God’s Word, to trust in His covenant‑keeping goodness, and to discover that true closeness to Him comes along with faith and obedience.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] You know, there’s two sides to every story. And last week we were looking at the story of Elijah being provided for by the Lord by sending him to be a guest in the house of the widow from Erephath. And as contemplation of that was being discussed in our household, Michelle said to me, well, you’ve only told half of the story. The other half is about the widow. And so at her request, I’m here giving the story of the widow of Zarephath, not just the story of Elijah, her guest. That’s very interesting, of course, because Michelle and I have a way that the Lord has led us in which similar sorts of things have happened where the storyline was not necessarily just something that involved my guidance but also involved hers. And so that brings me to this passage and wanting to go over it again,

[00:01:09] even though last Sunday we’ve already seen it from Elijah’s point of view. But now we’re going to see it from the point of view of the widow. Well, the first thing to say here is we’ve been talking generally in church about terms. Often the Bible, to be understood, you need to understand the language it’s set in and what is meant by the words in their context. And that helps you to get nearer to the truth. But another aspect of coming to appreciate the word of God is a more spiritual one. One side of coming to know it is a somewhat mental, intellectual one where you have to delve into the meaning of words and you have to see the context of the storyline and that gives you information. Another one, though, is something that is brought about for you by how you seek to live out the word of God

[00:02:07] and how it proves itself in the living. And what I’m wanting you to do tonight as we go again through the storyline again is to look for that second style of assurance, of proof. The proof that comes when something is lived out, the word of God came and someone didn’t know whether to trust it, but when they lived it out, they come to the end and say it’s really true. And I want to finish tonight and see whether I do get to do this properly of bringing to visibility how to be a person who trusts in the word of God and its absolute truthfulness. It’s a deliverer of the truth. But it needs us to take a position of putting ourselves underneath the word of God. Sometimes, when we’re involved in theological education, there’s a temptation for us to place ourselves over the word

[00:03:03] and we will get out of it what we propose it’s trying to say. It’s sort of the opposite of what we really need to do. We need to not put ourselves over the word. We need to learn how to put ourselves under the word. and along the way I want to bring out as to how that works how do you put yourself under the word and so come to a place of trust in it and its truthfulness well anyway we’ll go through the storyline again and we have here of course the command to Elijah that he is to be looked after by the Lord in the first instance he’s given some just basic help by being told where there’s a brook water’s going to be running but he’s been given a task the task he’s been given is to announce to Israel that they have been disobedient and God is going to judge them with three years of famine

[00:03:59] famine brought about by no water there being an agricultural society the absence of any water is going to cause there to be a famine eventually and three years of this is going to be a real test but not only a test, something that will cause them to come back to God and so Elijah gives this prophecy to the people and he also gives it to Ahab who’s an evil king and eventually you’ll see that where the widow of Zarephath lives is in the area where Ahab’s evil wife Jezebel comes from and yet the Lord gets him to go to the very place he’s probably most in danger that was one of my big points of last week and he goes up to where Jezebel’s nearby and yet it’s there that God provides for him the safety through this woman well as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand

[00:04:59] there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word what we actually see here is an illustration it is an example or the evidence of how Elijah is in the Old Testament terms of the word a true son of God because the term back in the original usage in the Old Testament of someone who’s a son of God is someone who’s close to God and if you go through the whole of the Old Testament and pick out the occasions where someone is called a son of God you’ll find that someone who is being obedient to God someone who is close to God someone who is walking with God and has his word and that certainly is a good description of Elijah and so he would be a son of God. This morning in the service we were talking from Genesis in chapter 6

[00:05:48] and that passage talks about the sons of God going into the daughters of men and causing giants to be born. But that was using the term sons of God for the angelic host who in the beginning when God had his angels in heaven, God is God and nearest to God were the angels. They were those who were in the sense in that role of being closest to God. I wrote in my notes, being close or closest to God. It’s what this message actually is about or involves and is meant to evoke for us a desire to get closer to God and to prove how his word works. anyway this is Elijah notice how he says except by my word he’s got a confidence that when God gives him a prophecy it’s going to happen it’s rather daring don’t you think let me ask you a

[00:06:44] question when you deliver the gospel to people do you deliver it with the authority of how convinced you are I don’t think you necessarily should necessarily take the role of a prophet and say except by my word nothing else will everything’s going to happen just like I say because that’s a special role that Elijah had don’t take it to yourself if the Lord wants you to be a prophet he’ll speak through you and that’ll become evident but be a bit cautious about presented presenting yourself for something that’s just maybe your decision so to do but Elijah has been sent and he knows and he has a confidence he is one who is acting as a son of God because in the Old Testament reference to the word because he has this confidence that he has been given he’s

[00:07:35] a prophet he has the word of the Lord and he says there’ll be no june or rain except by my word so he is a person who’s got authority and has a message and the word of the Lord came to him depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook of Cherith where the east of the river Jordan and you shall drink from the brook and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. Now ravens do bring food sometimes to those walking around. I looked at this passage and I haven’t got an explanation. I can see them dropping a little bit of their pickings, you know, dead bodies of other birds that they’re eating or whatever. Where do they get the bread from? And it could well be that the word bread is a more general meaning nourishment. We don’t know whether it’s bread, you know, flour

[00:08:31] or whether it’s using the word in the more general sense. Sometimes it was back then. I can’t answer on that. But the ravens bring the food for him. He’s got water from the brook and the ravens are bringing him food to eat because the Lord is making that happen. He commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and he did according to the word of the Lord. Now one of the features of people who are folk who could be called sons of God in the Old Testament sense that there’s someone who walks with God or someone who is close to God, hence my title, being close to God, is that you act on his word. And the closer you get to God and the more you set yourself to do what he tells you, you’ll make mistakes. Sometimes you might imagine it’s the Lord telling you, but you go and do it.

[00:09:26] And God will approve of your attempt to do what you think is his word. And if you’ve got it wrong, he’ll correct you. And that does happen. Sometimes we feel it’s what the Lord wants us to do and it doesn’t work out. And then you don’t know whether it was that you got the message wrong in the first place or whether somehow or other God has got you moving in that direction but he wanted to steer you somewhere else. There were missionaries who headed off right at the beginning of World War II. They never made it to where they went to go because World War II started and their ship got redirected somewhere else and where they arrived is where they worked to prove that God was in it. So leave him to be God and you don’t always know what he’s doing and sometimes he gets us heading in a direction

[00:10:14] but he has a purpose bigger than we could imagine. Well, and he drank from the brook and the ravens came but he then has to prophesy that there’s going to be no rain in the land. There’s going to be a famine for three years. One of the features of this passage is that the difficulty that Elijah gets into is one where his own very ministry is going to create because he’s giving to Ahab these bad prophecies, bad from Ahab’s point of view and from the drama it’s going to produce and he’s going to be hunted down for his life by Ahab which is why it’s dangerous of him being sent up near where Jezebel has a home. But nonetheless, the word of the Lord came and he did it. And a good measure of whether or not you’re someone who’s learning from the Old Testament what it is to be a person who’s close to God

[00:11:14] is that you live by his word even though you may not always get it right and there may be times when in your seeking his will you say, I just don’t know and you have to do the best guess you can. There are those times where God somehow doesn’t seem to want to tell you everything. Then you obey according to what the last order was and you let him take his time to tell you what to do next and sometimes he can leave you without giving you a further word and you might have to just use your head and say the best I can see that I should do well go ahead and do what best you can see for it’s God’s responsibility when you’ve given to him your promise, you’ll follow where he leads. So when the command is clear, you do it. If it leads you to a place where you don’t know what’s next and you can’t work it out

[00:12:10] or you don’t know why you’ve got a big problem, it might be because you’re like Elijah and you’re going to get persecuted by Ahab types. Because you are a person of his word, do expect that there will be spiritual struggles come up to try and stop you. but that’s how to be close to God is to be a person like Elijah who lives by His word but you might find that that word will give you some of the difficulties the persecution that you have to go through that’s what it is to be someone close to God is that you get treated just as those people would treat God well the Lord stepped in though verse 8 the word of the Lord came to him arise go to Zarephath which belongs to Sidon and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you. So he rose and went to Zarephath.

[00:13:06] When he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow, apparently there’s some city. By the way, when it says city back then, it doesn’t mean like Brisbane. There’s no highways. It’s probably a village, might be a better word. But when it came to the gate of the city, a widow was there gathering sticks. Now the significance of that is that she is absolutely at the minimum of help. It’s not as though she’s got a household, not like our house. People were coming and getting some furniture of Jess and Shona who were going to go overseas in six weeks and they’re going to shift from their house into Jess’s parents’ house that they’ve got nearby and all of that was happening today. So if you were in our house, you might have got trampled on by people walking in with all sorts of things bringing to our place

[00:14:00] or taking out some of Shona’s stuff and that’s what’s been going on. But this particular story doesn’t have anybody to help this woman. She has to go and gather her own sticks to make a fire. She really is someone very, very poor and doesn’t have any help. By the way, when it says a widow, my reading the story, imagine sort of an old lady with a cane. But that doesn’t fit with the young son. Most probably, and widows back then could start being widows very early. They might have had a child at 14 and then the husband got killed and she’s a widow with a little kid. So we don’t know how old she is and she doesn’t have any help. There doesn’t appear to be anybody to go and collect sticks for the fire. She’s out getting them herself. I’m reading a little bit into the story

[00:14:56] but I think my guess is right that she doesn’t have any help. And the widow was gathering the sticks and he called to her and said, bring me a little water in a vessel that I may drink. And as he was going to bring it, he called to her and he added to the request and said, bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. And she said, as the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked. She doesn’t have any extra spare food to bring along. You know, we’re very lucky today in Australia the amount of extra food there is when you have friends come over there’s all sorts of food, usually it’s not all eaten but this is a woman that’s got very little to even start baking up and he says bring me something baked and then make something for yourself and your son I’m trying to find where it is now on my screen

[00:15:57] and okay, but she says and she replies and says about can you go back just a little bit, we’ve jumped some and if I look at this one up here and as she was going to bring it he called to her and said bring me a morsel of bread in your hand and she said as the Lord your God lives I have nothing baked and she went on to say I’ve got nothing baked only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug you can hear her description and she hardly has anything and he’s this man who’s come by God’s direction and God told him that he’s commanded the woman to look after him so she can’t get out of it and now I’m gathering a couple of sticks and I might go in and prepare a meal for myself and my son that we may eat it and die I find such storylines in moving by the extremity that that poor woman is in

[00:17:10] to have laid on her a godly request to help the prophet now this is very interesting because the way God works is such that we’re going to discover in the storyline that he is going to be the one that provides and what is more her being landed with Elijah to feed is not going to be a big disaster for her that she can’t meet it’s going to be the way God is going to provide for her ministry that we as Christians are all called to and those of you who come out on Sunday nights are usually people who go twice to church on Sunday or your people here tonight because that’s when you’re available to worship the Lord and you love the Lord and yet sometimes God can come to us when we have so many other commitments and so many other things to attend to and it can be a burden somehow to hear

[00:18:14] the talk like our secretary gave us a little earlier you know you could volunteer to do the cooking of the meals he did it very well and you made it interesting and we weren’t offended but it was laying on us, you know. There’s not enough people doing the cooking, that’s why there’s no meal tonight. And sometimes when you’re in church life and the people who’ve been given the task to try and see it’s all getting organised have to lay it on us to say what the jobs need to be filled and you can sit there and groan a bit and say, look, I haven’t got any more spare time. Or it might be not so much you haven’t got any more spare time as is that you’re already giving too much or you’re giving such that you don’t really want to be lumped with another task.

[00:19:05] Now, I’m not going to ask you to put your hand up if you felt that because I’d have to put my hand up because there are times when you feel that you’re giving to the Lord’s things and then someone comes and asks you to do something extra. but what you need to understand here is that in this storyline this woman is not really aware of who it is that Elijah is she probably knows he’s a prophet, she’s heard that and God has commanded her to look after him so she must have gained something from that piece of news but there’s in her a sense of you’re asking me another burden, I can’t take it, I’ve got too much on my plate already but don’t miss the spiritual truth this passage has for you and for me that in that request you’re going to discover not only another burden but you’re going to discover God’s help

[00:20:12] for you through it all providing for your needs and indeed that’s why this story I’m giving twice last week concentrating on Elijah and how God provided for him but tonight for how God provided for the widow actually same source, God but the very task of God lumping Elijah with her in the miraculous way he’s going to make the jar never run out and the water, the jug whereas the jug’s got oil never run out look down that the jar of the flour shall not be spent that’s old English by the way it means completely consumed the jug of flour shall not get depleted the jug of the oil shall not be empty until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth in other words in the time of the famine this woman was granted a very special way of going through it with total provisions provided by the Lord it looked like a burden

[00:21:30] it actually was her salvation from you know having her son die having no food that’s what I’ve discovered about ministry that in the leaving it with God to work out what it is he’s asking of you and not criticising him for it not saying you’d given enough but thanking him for the privilege you’re actually opening yourself to a stream of grace and this passage tells of grace coming not just to Elijah but grace coming to this woman and her needs are going to be even worse stronger greater than that of Elijah well she and her household ate for many days the jar of the flowers we’ve read already was not spent neither did the jug of oil become empty according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah I’m not going to repeat all my stories of the Lord doing this sort of thing for me because I’ve told lots of them before so I won’t

[00:22:54] draw some of them out again but I’ve got a whole host of times when I felt God was putting on me that I had to find within myself what I didn’t know was there or didn’t think would ever be there but when I took a step of faith the biggest one and I won’t tell you the whole story but when he gave me a Bible verse if you abide in me and my words abide in you you shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you why do I take the position of proclaiming to everybody and teaching people that the word of God is inerrant truthful trustworthy something you can lean on and it will prove itself true there’s a whole lot of intellectual discussion I can get into but the fact of the matter is I don’t believe it to be true for those reasons only I can give all those reasons I was involved in teaching students many of them but the reason I believe

[00:24:02] the word of God is true is because it’s worked in times of desperation when I needed it to and it proved itself. This woman is going to be taught a great lesson. Well, after this, verse 17, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill and his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. It’s the second word for breath, the one that means absolutely no capacity to suck in any more breath and he’s going to die. But she complains to Elijah, O man of God, you’ve come to me to bring my sin to remembrance. Who knows what she still has as some sin she hasn’t accepted the forgiveness for or just what that means, I don’t know. To cause the death of my son. And he said to her, Give me your son. Took him from her arms and carried him up to the upper chamber where he was staying.

[00:25:15] Laid him on his own bed and he cried to the Lord, O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourned by killing her son? There is a place for taking to God the exact nature of your need. Don’t butter it up or lessen it. That seems to be that God took him there and now her son is dying. And he puts that to the Lord and says, Lord, have you brought that to happen by killing her son? And he stretched out himself on the child. Three times he cried, O Lord, O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again. And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. Someone who is a son of God is someone who’s close to God. And God is a God who listens to people who rest in him. People who make it their thing just to believe him. And the life of the child came into him again and he revived.

[00:26:28] And Elijah took the child, I wish I could have been there to see this, and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And Elijah said, See, your son lives. And the woman said to Elijah, Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord is in your mouth is truth. That last thing is when you’re a Christian and you’re brought to know the word of God is powerfully true because something’s happened when you trusted it and it came true. It might have been a promise. It might have been some guidance that you didn’t know where to look and suddenly God worked it out. And when you saw what God had done, no person can talk me out of believing the Bible is just true. It is the word of the Lord and my reasons, I’m not going to, I’m being tempted,

[00:27:35] but I’m not going to tell you, I could tell you half a dozen illustration moments where that simple trust got proven. And so it doesn’t matter what other people say. The word of the Lord has been proven true to me when I put my way to not trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths and when he directs your paths and it comes true, you just rest. It’s a fantastic thing. I’ve got another verse, the final one I gave you to put up. It’s from 2 Corinthians 12, 9. And when Paul had a problem that God didn’t answer, so it isn’t as though God always gives in to our prayer requests because Paul had some sickness or some physical need, we don’t know what it was, but he kept praying for it and he didn’t get an answer of a healing.

[00:28:51] But God said to him as the finalisation of the conversation, my grace is sufficient for you and my power is made perfect in weakness. My grace, you know the word grace is God’s freely given beneficence to you. I don’t know how to word it. Grace is when he gives you what you need. You’re not deserving it. That’s grace. Grace is also a word that’s used in the arrangements God makes with us, covenants, if you like to call them that. And grace is what he does in keeping his side of the covenant even though you don’t deserve it. So covenant-keeping grace is often what this word is put to the use to mean. And God’s ability to keep you in his covenant though you didn’t do your part perfectly. My grace is sufficient for you. you may be here tonight. You wonder whether you deserve to be allowed to be a person who is a son of God

[00:30:18] or daughter of God because you’re someone that’s close to God. Being closest to God is being a son of God. Someone that he considers his special person to be close to. The eyes of the Lord rove to and fro throughout all the earth seeking to prove himself powerful to those whose hearts are perfect toward him. By perfect it means resting, resolved, issue, finish, just trusting God. the eyes of the Lord are coming to Salisbury Baptist Church and he’s looking at all of us and he’s wanting to prove himself powerful on behalf of any heart who will rest in him and his power and trust in his grace. That’s why Paul went on to say therefore I’ll boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses. so if you’ve got a weakness that’s previously kept you back from believing you could be someone close to God anybody we don’t answer but anybody here felt like giving up

[00:31:41] because maybe you wrecked it with you and God because you didn’t hold up your end of the stick. Well the Apostle Paul says therefore I’ll boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me and when you realise that your weaknesses qualify you for this promise if you’ve got a weakness that you struggle with or you’ve got a history that doesn’t paint you doing too good with God tell him all that but tell him that you believe in his goodness and his grace and you’ve heard at church this verse my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness it’s actually it’s actually the secret of a Christian source of spiritual strength your weakness you know it and you just trust him that he’ll look after you in your weakness and strangely enough his power comes through made perfect in your weakness

[00:33:03] you get the lesson boast in your weaknesses too by putting faith in God to look after the whole issue and because of certain incidents in my life where I just had to trust God to overcome the wreck that seemed to have come about from my circumstances not succeeding that’s the source of my strength I’m just copying Paul my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me and here our example person is Elijah who shows the power of God in answering his prayer anybody close to God gets prayers answered not all of them by the way sometimes the Lord lets you know you didn’t get the right thing to pray for but if you get close to God you discover something about God is that he’s how I word this not irreverently I was going to say

[00:34:24] he’s falling over backwards to answer your prayers the falling over backwards isn’t quite coming out right but I think you get the picture the eyes of the Lord rove to and fro throughout all the earth they’re coming to us tonight and he’s looking for people whose hearts will be perfect means rested in him given over to him close to him decide tonight to be one of the people that gets really close to God and you don’t have to do that as a boast of how good you are do it as someone who’s going to answer his promises someone who’s going to step out on his available work of the spirit not by might nor by power but by my spirit says the Lord that’s a promise and a half not by might and power those words were used for the abilities that humans get and when you see other humans with human abilities doing things recognize a person who’s probably going to have to get humbled before they’ll find this

[00:35:44] lesson for them but when you realize that it’s his grace that is sufficient for all of your needs. You’ve discovered the secret of the Christian life and you can come close to God and he will make you one of the people like Elijah was to God. Elijah could boast, you’re not going to have any more rain except by my word. He knew the Lord was with him. And we can know that the Lord is with us through his promises and by taking up a few, saying to yourself, I’m going to put this promise into an experiment and see how God does. He won’t turn you off, that’s not testing God, that’s believing God. Take his promises and step out on them and though it won’t need you to be the strong one, his covenant keeping grace will show itself as sufficient for all that you need. Well, that’s what happened to the woman.

[00:36:52] She discovered that the one that she had to give herself to, the ministry, it wasn’t too different, you know, from making a meal for here. She could do it at home and look after Elijah. That’s why she had to collect a few sticks. She’s going to make her last meal. But whatever it is that God lays on you to do, thank him for the opportunity to prove him in it and prove how his grace will be sufficient for you and his power made perfect in your weakness. Let me pray. Father, I thank you for the word of God. I want to thank you for the task you give me in the years of my frailty, I guess, physically. I’m not as quick a talking and energetic person running around as once I was. but I thank you, Father, for the power of the word of God and the strength that you choose to give to people in their weakness. Why do you do it? I think I know it’s because when we know it’s come by your grace, we just rest in the God that you are, the God of covenant, keeping grace, and we praise you in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.