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June 06, 2010
“It Is Enough”
I Kings 17: 1-16
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
Elijah was one of the greatest if not the greatest of the Jewish Prophets. For some reason, his prophecies were not written down in a book with his name on it. The exploits and prophecies of Elijah are recorded in 6 chapters of I and II Kings.
It might appear odd at first that Elijah was sent to minister to a kingdom that was and would continue to be lost to God. His prophecies started with the one we just read about. At that time, the 10 Northern tribes of Israel had already broken off from the Southern Tribes. This Northern Kingdom of Israel established its own form of worshipping God and often also worshipped False Gods. It would eventually be conquered by Assyria in 722 BC. But that would be about 150 to 120 years after Elijah
So Elijah was sent to a nation that would never completely return to God and would ultimately be destroyed.
But it is even worse than that. Elijah was sent to this apostate nation during the reign of the worst King of Israel. His name was Ahab. Personally he seems to have been mostly weak and willing to rule as others wished him to. The thing that made him so bad was his choice of a queen. He was married to Jezebel. As we can all tell from your response, her name is still infamous because of her behavior. She was a Sidonian Princess and a devout follower of the false god Baal. She tried to make Baal the official God of Israel and she imported or ordained in Israel 450 Prophets to Baal.
It was to this nation of Israel under the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, that God sent Elijah.
And this first prophecy of Elijah was one seemingly formulated to bring hardship and persecution onto Elijah. God directed him to tell the king that it would not rain for 3 years unless Elijah said so.
After Elijah delivered his message, God told him to get out of town; to go hide. God directed him to hide first of all to the East of Israel in the valley of a wadi that flowed into the Jordan River. (A wadi is a ravine or gulch that fills with water during the wet season and dries our during the dry season.) There would be water there for a while and God directed Ravens to bring him bread and meat in the morning and evening each day.
After a while, the brook dried up as the drought became more severe. Then God did another strange thing. He sent Elijah to the Northwest to the Sidonian village of Zarepath on the Meditaranean coast. Now Sidon was where Jezebel had come from, and the official god of all of Sidon, including Zarepath was Baal. So God sent Elijah to hide out among Jezebel’s people in the midst of Baal Worshippers.
And the woman he was to seek lodging with was on the edge of starvation. When Elijah arrived, she had only a handful of ground corn or grain and a little bit of oil to cook it with. Her plan was to prepare it for her son and herself and then slowly starve to death.
But Elijah promised her that if she prepared a little of the meal for him first, she would not run out of meal or oil for the duration of the drought. God gave just a little more each day in those jars for the provisions for that day.
Throughout the bible, God exhorts his people to depend on Him for their needs, and not to hoard food and wealth for the future. But most of us have been influenced by our wealthy, overabundance-hoarding culture to depend on our abundance, not on God.
We need to remember that in the Prayer of our Lord, he said, “Give us this day our daily bread”
We are called to depend on God in every area of our lives. We are not to sit back and let God do everything, we are to seek jobs, repair our homes, etc, but we are not to depend on ourselves.
And maybe that is why God has led us to receive communion as we do. It has puzzled some folks that we refer to this sacrament as the Lord’s supper and a holy meal, then in many churches offer only a small cube of bread and a very small cup of wine or juice.
It is true that early on in the Christian era, Christians had carry-in meals in connection with the sacrament of the Lord’s supper. There were problems that developed with that practice, so it seems to have been decided that for sacramental purposes, the re-enactments of the Lord’s supper only needed to offer a little bread and wine to be a reminder of that last great Passover meal.
But what about the grace of God that we are told comes to us as we partake of this meal. Is it smaller or greater depending on the size of the piece of bread or the cup of wine? No, the grace of God that comes to us as we partake of this sacrament is given as we have need and willingness to receive it. It is like the flour and the oil that the widow of Zarepath shared with her son and the prophet Elijah. It miraculously grew to accommodate their need for food each day.
The grace of God that is for you here in this sacrament is just enough for you. And there is enough to share with others by stretching your patience and your generosity and your compassion and your time for others. But you can only increase this grace of God for you by being willing to receive and use more of it.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at June 6, 2010 06:27 PM