God Taking Care of Elijah

(1 Kings xvii:1-16.)

I. The Analysis.

1. Elijah's Faith in a Living God (verse 1).--How much modern faith is in a God who once lived and acted sovereignly, rather than in the Lord God who now lives and acts sovereignly. It took, not more than ordinary faith, but real faith, to say to a wicked king:--''There shall not be"--confident that it should not be, because back of Elijah was the "Lord God of Israel" that "liveth."

2. God's Resources Unlimited to a Faith Harnessed to Obedience (verses 2-16).--Divine guidance as to the "eastward," and "by the brook Cherith that is before Jordan," is not to be relegated to a former dispensation, but is to-day at the command of the weakest child of God. However, the path of obedience has many side-tracks, and a turn to the right or to the left may so switch one off the line of guidance as to impede progress. But of this we may be certain, that at God's ''there" is everything needed for our development and welfare. His way, however, is not always along a direct route, for we, too, sometimes, "must needs go through Samaria."

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

I think we must find the heart of this lesson in a word which we may easily pass over unnoticed. It is the word "there," in verses 4 and 9: "I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there''; "I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee."

Suppose Elijah, having such a command, had said: "Of course the Lord does not care especially that the brook by which I am to live should be the brook Cherith. That would be to interpret His word after the manner of the literalists, in a hard, mechanical way. A brook is meant, not any particular brook, and I know a far pleasanter brookside in my own country of Gilead; I will go there." Does any one imagine that God's ravens, who seem to have been very exact literalists, would have gone elsewhere than to Cherith?

Or suppose he had chosen another city than Zarephath, or another house in Zarephath than that of the widow, would he have been on claiming ground in respect of God's promise? Clearly not.

The thought is that our heavenly Father has, for every one of His children, a life plan which of necessity extends to the minutest detail. Of necessity, because no act or thought in human life is unrelated or detached, but is intimately connected with every other act or thought. There were reasons in the divine choice of Cherith and the ravens, and of Zarephath and the widow, even though the reasons were not disclosed.

By the brook the prophet himself was disciplined for the greater tasks before him. What a lesson in patient obedience was his life by that slowly drying stream! Day by day the brook shrank in its channel until at last no water remained. Most of us would have taken that as a sufficient indication of the divine providence, and, like Obadiah, would have gone elsewhere looking for a more abundant supply. Not so Elijah. Not till the word of command came again, did the prophet move. How unlike very many of us! It seems never to occur to us that we may need the discipline of constantly diminishing resources. And thousands of God's dear children are in straits, and have little token of the Father's care, because they have chosen the "there" of their lives in self-will and self-pleasing.

Elijah himself committed that error later in his ministry, and for once in the life of that great prophet "the word of the Lord" came to him with an accent of rebuke: "What doest thou here, Elijah?" (1 Kings xix:9). It might be the beginning of better, larger things to many troubled Christians if they would set themselves earnestly to seek the will of God as to the "here" and "there" of their lives.