A Widow's Joy (1 Kings 17)

April 5, 2020

Last week we left our story with Elijah eating meat and bread from the ravens and drinking from the brook Cherith. We saw how God was taking care of him and providing him with double what he offered Israel while judging Israel for their idolatry with a drought. But think for a second about how difficult that would be for Elijah. 1 Kings 17:1 makes us believe that he came from thin air. I doubt that is the case. I imagine Elijah has lived around other prophets before telling Ahab that there would be a drought and escaping to the wilderness based on the way he is spoken of later in the book. I think it is safe to assume that Elijah was among the prophets who served God before he left. Now, Elijah is in the wilderness, eating and drinking in isolation without knowing what has happened to his friends and family.

Verse 7 says that the drought, which Elijah has been praying for dries up the brook Elijah has been relying on. Isn't that odd? God can bring water from a rock if he wants. He is feeding Elijah with ravens. Why does he let the brook dry up? God has a mission for Elijah. Great! He gets to be with people again. Where is he going to be sent? Zarephath. Zarephath? This is a city in a faraway country of Sidon. To get there, Elijah would have to walk through the drought-stricken land of Israel.

God's Mission For Elijah (17:8-16)

God is sending his prophet to a widow in Zarephath because God has commanded her to feed him instead of the ravens. When Elijah reaches the city, he finds the widow picking up sticks, and he asks her for some water. The widow starts to go gather the water for him. But, before she could get away, he asks her for a morsel of bread also. To this, she reveals that she only has enough to feed herself and her child before they die. This widow and her son have been so affected by the drought that they are about to die. God's punishment of this drought is reaching beyond the border of Israel to the surrounding nations.

Now, think about this for a moment. Why is this going on? Elijah is being sent to the region of Sidon for food and drink. Sidon is the home country of Jezebel. The queen's father is the king of the Sidonians. So God is sending Elijah into a pagan territory to find aid, but that's not all. He is sending him to a woman who is a widow, and she's dirt poor! Why would God choose her? What kind of message is this supposed to be sending? In Luke 4, Jesus says that it was to make a statement about God's love for those who are outsiders. There were plenty of widows in Israel, but Elijah was sent to Zarephath. It's like God is saying that his command to be separate from the nations around them was not because he thinks Israel is the superior race. God loves all of mankind. He only rejects the Sidonians because they reject him as they pursue idols. Jesus, when he points to this story in Luke 4, is saying that those who are outside of Israel are often found to be more accepting of the Lord's prophet than Israel. Of course, they wanted to kill him for saying that.

God is not a fan of social barriers that come between people. In fact, he shows us in this text that he wants to break those barriers down. God wants people to be able to come together and live without hatred toward one another. He wants his people to be a kingdom of priests who shine as lights to the nations. God might seem stingy as he rejects worshipping any other gods. But he is not against someone because of where they were born or what they look like. He is not against them because they are poor, rich, male, female, married, single, or because they speak with a different language or accent. He is the God of everyone, but they choose to reject him. In this text, he shows special care for those who are the weakest and the most helpless in society. He offers to provide for this widow and her fatherless child. This is in keeping with his promise in Deuteronomy 10:18 that, "He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing."

The widow is told by Elijah, a sojourner, that if she brings him a cake first, she and her fatherless son will have enough bread and oil to last throughout the drought. God promises her this because he cares for the widow and the fatherless. The widow listened and did what Elijah commanded her to do. The oil and flour never became empty. Why her? We get no indication that this widow did some tremendous act to deserve God's grace in sending Elijah to her. Imagine the anxiety and fear that she was feeling. She though they were about to die. God simply had mercy on her, promising her life as she was about to die because that's the kind of God he is. All she needed to do was trust in his promises and obey his word. God knew she would, and she did. Can you imagine going from preparing your last meal to experiencing the miraculous provision of endless food? Or could you imagine going from living in isolation, like Elijah, to living in the heart of the pagan society that has overrun your home country with a widow and her son? This is bizarre, isn't it?

Her Son Is Dead (17:17-18)

After they begin to enjoy the endless supply of bread, the story takes another unexpected turn. The child of the widow becomes sick and passes away. This leads to what is probably one of the most emotional scenes in all of the Bible. The widow takes the boy up in her arms. That means he is not a very big child. Can you imagine having to do this? She goes to Elijah and asks him, "What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!"

Imagine the anguish and the loss she is feeling. It's easy for us to discount her loss. Losing a husband is one significant disadvantage in this society, but losing all of the men in your household would be catastrophic. The husband is your breadwinner and protector. Now she placed all of her hope in her son, who would grow up to take care of the place and take care of her as she gets older. He would have been her closest companion and her only family member until he gets married and has children of his own, her grandchildren. That small boy was more important to her than the food that God provided her. He was a symbol of hope. But now he is dead.

Do we see in this part of the story how quickly things can change? Life can go from bad to good, to worse in a very short time. The tendency of many people in the face of such loss is to jump to assumptions. This woman seems like an obedient and gracious person. She was very polite and respectful of Elijah at the beginning. Then she trusts in the promises of God through Elijah. But amid this tragedy, she turns and points the finger at Elijah and at God. She thinks that he has only given her hope to turn around and take it away. This woman has lost faith in the goodness of God. She used to think God was gracious and merciful, but now she considers him cruel and hateful, tormenting the weak and helpless. Immediately she assumes that this whole experience with Elijah was all an evil plot to make her suffer for sinful living. Notice how she speaks, "What have you against me," and "You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son." She is accusing Elijah of bringing all of this about.

But did you notice that she feels like this is judgment for her sins? She says, "You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance?" I wonder why she says that. Has Elijah been speaking to her about who God is and what God has done for the sin of his people? I imagine that they have talked a good bit and that Elijah has revealed the cause of the drought. She was putting her trust in God, but then, her son dies, and she thinks God is betraying her trust. This widow understands that she, like Israel, deserves great punishment for her sinful, idolatrous lifestyle. This widow is an outsider, not just by her nationality, but also because of her sin. But she saw a glimmer of hope as Elijah has helped her and provided her with life. Now that seems to be gone. So she accuses his prophet.

Contrary to her condemning statement, this is not Elijah's fault. He did not come to kill her son. But what is the point of God saving the widow and her son while promising to provide food for them if God was just going to kill them off anyway? This is bizarre as well. What is Elijah doing here? What is God doing here? Why take away her only source of hope?

Elijah Responds With Prayer (19-22)

Elijah takes the dead, unclean child and runs up into the upper room to petition God. He speaks to God, and his words reveal to us that he does not know why this happened either. He asks God, "Oh Lord, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?" At this point, God could have said to Elijah, "This is not a punishment for her sins. This is just time and chance. Go your way and deal with it in faith." Ecclesiastes tells us that time and chance do happen. He could have said that and been perfectly just and righteous in saying that. But that's not what happens because this is not time and chance. God has a specific purpose behind taking away the life of the boy. He has an important message for us in this event.

Next, Elijah prays for something that no one has ever seen in the history of mankind up until that point. Elijah had prayed for there to be no rain, and there was no rain. Now, Elijah prays, "O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again." He pours his heart out to God, praying in faith, and laying his body on the child's body. This is the same as last week! God hears his prayer. God shows that he has power over death and the ability to resurrect someone from the dead. The New Testament tells us that Abraham believed God would resurrect Isaac after he sacrificed him. But God stopped him from killing his son. Isaac never died. This boy died. Now, Elijah prayed for his resurrection. What faith! Elijah hands the boy to his mother and says, "See, your son lives."

The Widow's Joy (23-24)

In response to this, the woman says, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth." This is the appropriate response to have when someone raises someone else from the dead. God is able to save to the uttermost. Maybe she had begun to doubt God as he let her child die, but the widow now fully believed in Elijah's words. Whatever Elijah has said to this widow in the past has now been confirmed as she witnesses God's ability to raise her son from the dead. She no longer believes that God is a cruel, tormenting god. Now the widow believes that God is merciful and compassionate, abounding in steadfast love for thousands. She has experienced his mercy firsthand. God came onto the scene as she was about to die of starvation, and he came again as she lost her only son.

Understanding God

As we learn about Elijah and the widow, we learn a fundamental concept about ourselves: When things get dark, we struggle to understand God. Maybe there is someone here who has been given many bizarre turns in life. Look at Elijah. Elijah goes from being isolated and alone to being stuck in the middle of a pagan society with a widow and her son. Then her son dies, and he gets blamed for it. So he struggles to understand what God is doing. Now, look at the widow. She goes from being close to death with her son to being saved and living with a prophet of the God of Israel, who is responsible for the drought. Then, right when she thinks she is saved, her son dies. Everything had become dark, so she accuses God of being cruel and evil toward her when she trusted him.

As Americans, I think, we typically struggle with believing that God would allow anyone to suffer for their sins. Instead of thinking about a judging God, many of us like to think of this loving, Baal-like god who simply accommodates us. So when suffering happens, we do not know how to deal with it. We live in a fantasy world where pain should not happen, but that's not realistic. We have become blind to the suffering that is everywhere. Suffering will happen to everyone. We do not know how to mesh the God of love and the suffering he is allowing us to go through.

But the God that the Bible describes does not fail us even when we lose everything and suffer. In this text, we see that God is a God of judgment against those who sin but also a God of love. We might think that God is unjust as he takes away her son. But he is entirely just and right in allowing the widow’s son to die. It is not like she is a perfectly righteous person who deserves a silver platter life. But God is allowing this to happen in order to teach her not to rely on the son as her ultimate hope. He loves her enough to correct her as we do our children. The boy was her idol and her hope, not God. In the suffering, God is revealing to the woman that she has made her son her new idol. But God is also full of compassion and love. He lets her suffer, but he does not want her to lose everything. Why did he do this? She needed to see that God alone rescues from destruction.

Have you ever been in one of these situations? How many of us have been in a dark place where we lose sight of who God is? Why does this happen, and how does this story help us understand God better? This ultimately occurs because the god we have created in our minds fails us. We have created a god who is not the God of the Bible. As humans, we tend to create a god in our minds that judges everyone else and always makes good things happen to us. When God does not fit the mold that we have given him, when he allows us to suffer, we accuse him as though he is unjust. We act like God has failed us because we didn't get to keep what we had put our hope and trust in. We did not get to keep our job, our house, our car, our animal, our money, our spouse, or our family.

When things got dark, both Elijah and the widow are wondering what God is doing. However, Elijah's response is better than the widow's. He did not know what God was doing because he recognizes that God is a judging God, but he trusted in God's loving nature. Elijah's actions show that he knows God is both judging and loving. Elijah goes to Zarephath because God is both. He prays because God is both able to judge those who are rebellious and ready to show them compassion if they turn. I don't believe Elijah understands why God is doing what he is doing, but he trusts God to be good and righteous altogether.

The Widow's Joy Can Be Our Joy

Can you believe that God decided to kill the widow’s son? He did that to give her a greater hope and to give us a greater hope. This story answers a big question for us. That question is, "How does God decide who he will show mercy to?" Did he just pick this widow at random? No, God chose the most hopeless, the most helpless, and the weakest pagan he could to set the example. He even wants her. There are ultimately no outsiders to God's wrath or God's love. He does not discriminate or exclude anyone. He shows no partiality in judgment, nor does he show partiality in salvation. He is the source of hope for everyone. But he knows what is in the heart of man. He sees how we respond when dark times come. When we turn to him and depend on his loving nature, we can find help.

This is a picture of resurrection. The widow's son did not have to die for her sins. Why not? Because God sent his son to do that for all who trust in him. God allowed us to murder and crucify his perfect son so that we would not have to endure the punishment we deserve for our sins. Like this widow, we are all without hope, but God loves those who are hopeless and provides them with the promise of resurrection.

Jesus has taken away the sting of death so that we can make it through the difficult times. We are looking forward to a hope that is greater than anything on this earth. This woman has hope in her son, but her son will die. We have hope in our jobs, family, friends, money, our country, or our hobbies. But these things will fail us. God gives us a hope for a joyful eternity. But God wants us to know that his word is the truth, and he wants us to put away our idols to worship him alone. God must inflict those who are evil with his wrath, but he has shown once and for all that he does not want to do that. He wants them to turn from their evil and trust in him before it is too late.

Conclusion

Are you an outsider? Does your misunderstanding of God make you struggle to trust him? He loves you in spite of your sins against him. He does not want bad things to happen to you, but he allows them to happen so that you can demonstrate trust in him. He also does not want to condemn you, but he will if you continue to rebel against him.