"Provision by a Poor Widow | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

I want to just point you to 1 Kings chapter 17, and we're going to focus on verses 8 through 16.

1 Kings 17 · chapter mention

So if you have your Bible, you can kind of follow along with that.

I'm not going to read it first.

This month we're talking about the school of faith, how Elijah learned to trust God.

This is really just part of it, but it uh but we're going to cover these uh four events taking place in Elijah's life and ministry.

And uh the prophet Elijah was powerfully used by God, and some of the most interesting experiences of any prophet in the Old Testament happened to Elijah.

So it's a very interesting story of his life and ministry, and God trained him, uh, and we can see that progression, how God trained him to walk in faith as we look at beginning 1 Kings 17 and the dramatic opening of his public ministry.

So Sister Shepherd taught last week about Elijah's sort of first semester in the school of faith.

When God sent him to the book Cherith, in the quietness and solitude of the wilderness, Elijah was positioned to hear God speak to him.

And that was important.

But as you know, and as uh Sister Shepherd mentioned, uh there was a drought.

Elijah had prayed and God had given a drought in order to turn the hearts of the Israelites.

And so Elijah's at the brook, but it's a time of drought.

Don't forget about that.

So as the days turned to weeks and even months, Elijah watched as the brook had less and less water flowing through it.

So just imagine him experiencing this.

The Bible doesn't really say what all happened, but in my imagination, um I would guess that Elijah assumed that since God was feeding him through the ravens, that God would continue the water flowing.

I mean, that would be the expectation.

God brought me here to this brook.

The water's gonna keep flowing, I'm gonna be taken care of here.

But every day he's watching the water get less and less.

And and if he would was anything like you and I, he probably had some kind of large stone or maybe a stick that he could push down into the earth, and so he could mark the edge of the brook.

As the bank of the brook is getting smaller and smaller, it's getting moving further away.

He's marking the territory as he's watching the brook get less and less, wondering what God is gonna do.

There's no denying that the brook is drying up.

There's no way to avoid it.

The brook is drying up.

It's clear the brook is drying up.

Something, something, God's gotta do something.

I'm guessing Elijah had talked to God about that a little bit.

I'm guessing God, uh Elijah had said, now, God, you put me here, but the brook's drying up.

What are you gonna do now?

What am I gonna do now?

But the Bible puts it very bluntly.

It just says, the brook dried up.

The brook dried.

Have you ever been there?

The brook dried up.

It was as though God was waiting to the very last moment to tell Elijah what was next.

But God had not abandoned Elijah.

He was simply moving Elijah to the next session in the school of faith.

And there at the brook, Elijah learned to trust God's direction and God's provision and God's help.

So God sent Elijah out of Israel and into a Gentile city called Zarepheth.

There he met a widow gathering sticks for what she believed would be her final meal.

Her flour was nearly gone, her oil was almost exhausted, her hope was fading.

And yet, this desperate woman, this desperate widow woman is going to be the vehicle through which God meets the needs of Elijah.

God's ability to provide is not limited to the resources that you and I have.

And so the Bible says in 1 Kings 17 and 9, Behold, I have commanded a widowed woman there to sustain thee.

This command must have surprised Elijah.

If you were selecting someone to take care of you, this would not be the choice.

This would not be who you would pick.

Just think about the culture and the time.

It was a famine, and it was a widow woman with a child to take care of, a single parent widow woman.

She was one of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the whole society.

And God chose her.

God said, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain you.

That is the plan.

That is God's plan.

That is God's plan.

And I think about that, even all through the scriptures, you know, it seems like almost every time you see God doing something, it isn't what you and I would select.

God's battle plans are not our battle plans.

God's provision plans are not our provision plans.

That's not like they're not teaching those battle plans at the military college.

Right?

God does it his way, he does it how he wants to do it for him to get the glory.

And so God was using this illogical choice, this illogical person, because God delights in demonstrating that his provisions comes from him, not from our resources.

That he provides, that he makes the way.

And throughout scriptures, we can see this God routinely uses unlikely people.

Think of these people in a sort of uh before and after photo arrangement, right?

There's all kinds of advertisements, especially health or weight loss advertisement that shows before and after.

We think of these characters in the Bible, we often think of the after photo.

We think of what it looked like after they had experienced God's work in their lives, after they had gone through the miracles that God provided.

That's how we see them because we're after that.

But think about it, what it looked like before.

Moses was a fugitive.

You know, there were, you know, think of the old western, there was there was wanted dead or alive posters for Moses.

He's hiding out in the wilderness.

He's hiding out to be away from being captured.

It's a lonely wilderness.

The people here live nomadically.

He's following the grazing land.

He's not sitting in one place.

He's dressed different, he looks different.

All the appearances, this is not the guy that grew up in Pharaoh's house.

That's what he looked like when God called him through a burning bush and said, I haven't forgotten you, Moses.

I still have a work for you to do.

By now, Moses is completely transformed.

He spent 40 years of in the wilderness, and now he says, you know, God, I can't speak.

Well, I guess not.

After 40 years of talking to sheep, you probably can't speak too well.

He spent 40 years out here in isolation in this nomadic place.

He's only seeing a handful of people.

He's not in some vibrant, bustling place.

Now we know looking back, because we know the after picture that God has been preparing him for the years he's going to lead the Israelites in this wilderness.

But this is the before picture when God called him.

Gideon was hidden in a cave.

He was hiding from the very enemy that God is telling him to go and pursue.

And the angel of the Lord says, What does he call him?

Thou mighty man of valor.

Gideon's anything but a mighty man of valor.

He's done nothing mighty.

He is nobody.

He has no pedigree.

He says, I'm the smallest of the smallest of the smallest.

I'm the smallest family in the smallest tribe of all of Israel.

I'm the smallest of the smallest.

I'm the most unlikely.

But God chose him for God to get glory.

David, the great king, the one we applaud, the one we talk about, his greatness, his effective leadership, and all the things that he did, having a heart for God.

The prophet Samuel goes to Jesse's house without knowing who he's going to anoint.

He goes to Jesse's house.

He warns Jesse call your sons together.

I need to meet with you and your sons.

David is so insignificant that Jesse never thinks of calling him.

He's out there keeping the sheep in the back 40 somewhere.

He's out there taking care of the sheep.

He's fine.

Nobody's going to miss him being here.

Because he's the youngest.

Surely he's not the one.

That's the before picture.

But God has called him.

The disciples were just ordinary, most likely late teens.

Not the same as our culture today.

But they were just ordinary young men.

They were blue-collar workers, they were fishermen, and of all things, the white-collar person was a tax collector.

Everybody hates the tax collector.

Nobody in America wants to say they work for the IRS.

And so God chose a poor, broke, and broken single parent widow to sustain Elijah.

Prophet Isaiah declares the word of the Lord, behold, I will do a new thing, Isaiah 43, 19.

Now it shall spring forth, and you shall know it.

I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

I will do the extraordinary thing.

I'll do the thing you don't expect.

I'll do what you wouldn't imagine.

Many times in our lives we place limits on how God can answer our prayers.

We don't intend to.

We're just logical beings ourselves.

And so we think about provision through a raise on our job.

We think about provision through an investment gaining ground.

Or we think about provision through some certain person.

But don't limit God to what you can imagine.

Don't limit God to what you think is reasonable.

Let God work the way he wants to work.

He often picks the thing that you would never guess, that you would never imagine.

That's how he often works in our lives.

So faith, trust God's source even when we don't understand his method.

Faith, trust God's source even when we don't understand his method.

When Elijah arrived, he found the widow gathering sticks, and her explanation was heartbreaking.

Verse number 12, she said, I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, I don't have a cake to give you.

All I have is a handful of meal and a barrel and a little oil and a cruise.

And my son and I are putting it together so that we can eat it and die.

That's our outlook.

That's our expectation.

That's how it looks to her.

And she is also wondering how she was going to help this prophet in any way.

She was preparing her final meal for her and her son.

And Elijah made the audacious request make me thereof a little cake first.

Make me a little cake first.

The widow was being asked to trust God before there was any evidence that God was going to come through.

Once the flower started replenishing in the barrel, and once the oil started replenishing in the cruise, once the process of the miracle started happening, it was a lot easier to have faith.

Once you saw it happening, but she was asked to take that first step before she saw anything, because oftentimes the first step of faith is the hardest step of faith.

It's the most challenging to us.

That first stepping out is the most difficult part.

And once we get in the flow of it, once we get moving, once we see God doing something, it's much easier to continue in the process.

The hardest part is that first act of obedience.

That's our humanity.

That's the part that requires, if I can say it this way, the greatest faith.

I don't know if it's the greatest, but it requires more faith for us to take that first step of obedience.

In the scriptures, the Bible tells about the crossing into the promised land of Jordan.

The priest had to step into the Jordan before it parted.

That's not the way it happened the first time, God.

The first time the Red Sea just parted, Moses stuck a rod out and it just parted and went across on dry land.

Let's do it that way.

We've seen that way before.

But no, we've got to get everybody lined up, everybody prepared to go.

What happens if it doesn't work?

Are we going to try to swim across?

What's going to happen?

It didn't roll back until their feet touched the water, touched the brim of the water.

It says they were dipped in the brim of the water when the Jordan rolled back.

You think about Peter walking on water, you think about what you would do in that moment.

It's like, wait, I've got to climb over the edge of this boat and get in that water before this happens.

Even though he said, bid me come, and Jesus said, Come, he still had to take that first step out of the boat.

The widow had to give before she received.

Because faith often requires action before results.

James chapter 2, verse 17 and 18 says, Even so faith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

James 2:17

Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works, show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

You cannot really separate faith and obedience.

Even when we read, as I've said more times than you want to hear, I'm sure, even when we read Hebrews chapter 11, we are again, we're in the after picture.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Every one of those people referenced there, they simply obeyed God.

When God said do something, they did it.

Do you think they didn't have any doubts, fears, anxieties, concerns about how this is all going to work out?

Some of them did not see the fulfillment during their lifetimes.

They simply acted in obedience.

You cannot separate obedience and faith.

And oftentimes it requires us to take that hardest, most difficult first step of faith.

It requires us to take that very first step, which is, oh, that's challenging, the first step.

Once we see God start working, then it's a lot easier to go from there.

It's when it first hits us, we first see that we should be giving tithes.

It's that first time we feel like we can't afford it.

And so God says, test me and see.

Try me and see.

Because he knows for us it's the first step.

After you've been paying tithes, and you start saying, Man, uh, you know, I didn't get, I didn't necessarily get more money in my bank account, but my car lasts longer.

I didn't necessarily get more of this, but God has provided in other ways.

It wasn't dollar for dollar exchange, but God provided and blessed me other ways.

And then it's like there's no regret.

And then it's like, no, absolutely, I want it to be not just tithe 10%.

I want it to be first fruits tithe 10%.

I'm gonna do it first because I'm gonna trust God.

I know God will provide, but sometimes that first step, or if you haven't been doing that for a while, getting back into it is sometimes the hardest.

That first commitment to do something, to volunteer, to do some part of ministry for God is often that first step.

We think of all the reasons why we can't, why it won't work out, why we're not qualified.

But if we take that first step, then God helps us.

The first time we witness to somebody through our minds, we're scared to death.

Hopefully they don't can't read our minds.

We're scared to death to say something.

They may ask me a question I don't know how to answer.

But when we start taking the first step, then the second step is easier.

The first act of sacrificial obedience.

But once we've seen God's faithfulness, trusting Him becomes easier.

Trusting Him becomes easier for us to do.

But oftentimes those promises that God gives us are actually contingent on us stepping out in obedience.

Elijah gave the promise to the woman in verse 14.

He declared to her what the promise was.

He said, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruise of oil fail.

He said, God's giving you a promise.

God's giving you a promise, but you've got to take the step of obedience first.

You've got to take the step of obedience first.

You've got to step out and do that because the promise is connected to your response.

I firmly believe if this woman would have said, I can't do that, this would have been her last meal.

Barring someone else rescuing her.

But because she stepped out in faith, notice how the flow of things go.

God gives the promise and then he requires us to obey.

We want to see the miracle and then obey.

In fact, we often negotiate with God.

God, if you'll do this, this, and this, then I will respond in obedience.

That's not the way God works.

God says, you respond in obedience, then I will provide.

You step out in trust, you step out in faith, then I will do what needs to be done.

You put the fish in my hands, then I will break it.

Your fish is not enough, but if you put it in my hands, I will break it, and we will feed the four or five thousand people here.

But you have to put your part in first.

And if you will, then you will see the miracle that God wants to provide.

Again, you see that pattern all the way through scriptures.

Noah built the ark before the rain came.

Well, duh.

Of course he did.

I mean, that's the only logical thing to do.

Build the ark.

But think, Noah's gonna build the ark.

It's not like you and I we're gonna have to go down to you know, Bass Pro Shop or somewhere and buy a boat.

And hey, if things don't work.

Out, we got a boat.

We can go fishing or play or whatever it is, and that's not too exciting if you ever owned a boat because you know what a black hole of money that is.

But but again, you you you just go down and get it, right?

You just go down and buy it.

You just say, hey, I'm just gonna go and do it.

That's not what was happening here.

He's gonna be building a boat for decades of his life.

He's gonna be building a boat.

Abraham left his heritage homeland to go where God was calling him before he really understood where he was going.

There's nothing in Scripture that says, oh, he went there first and then God spoke to him.

That's kind of how we think of it, right?

I go to a place, you know, God, hey, this is a really beautiful place.

I'd like to be here.

God, would you send me?

No, he didn't know where he was going.

It's like going off to some foreign country with never been there before.

Maybe you've heard something about it, but you've never been there before.

Joshua marched around the walls before they fell.

Again, can you imagine that?

Can you imagine that?

Again, we we look at it, we've got the after picture.

We've got the after photograph.

We know what happened.

We're looking back.

We know the walls fell, they overcame, they defeated Jericho.

We know all that.

All they have is the word of God to say, y'all gather up, get your entourage, get your parade going, and quietly march around this city for six days.

Of course, you know, nobody in the city noticed what they were doing.

Just think what they're doing.

They're making a complete spectacle of themselves.

Everybody's wondering, what in the world are these people doing?

What is this gonna do?

They're just gonna walk around out here?

We're not too worried about them walking around out here.

And look, it wasn't a five-minute trek.

I mean, they get everybody together, it's all organized, they walk around.

It's like, hey, look what they're doing today, they're going around again.

What are they doing now?

They're going around multiple times.

I mean, it's just, you know, in my imagination, I know, but it seems like, you know, the these walls in Jericho, they were notorious for how large they were.

They're like, we would say, roads on top of the walls.

To me, it'd be like the people of Jericho are like, by now they've gathered to watch.

In fact, they've watched so long they've gotten bored and went back home.

It's like, I don't know what they're doing, but they just keep doing it.

Nothing's happening, the earth is not shaking, there's no thunderous clouds happening, no impending doom, nothing's going on, they're just walking.

It takes a lot of faith.

But the walls aren't going to fall unless we obey in faith.

And so the widow gave.

Because obedience releases the miracle.

We don't obey God to earn his favor, but many of God's promises are experienced only when we obey.

Joshua 1 and 8 says, The book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, for thou shalt meditate therein day and night, and thou shalt make that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.

For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and shall have good success.

For then, this is a contingency.

You do this obedience, and then God's going to make you prosperous.

Deuteronomy 28, verse 1 and 2, and it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe all and do all his commandments shall come into the estate, that the Lord will set thee on high above all nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee.

Deuteronomy 28:1

Thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.

God's promises are often only discovered through obedience.

God's provisions, God's miracles are often only discovered through obedience.

Many, many, many Christians claim the promises of God while ignoring God's instructions.

But the blessings often lie just past the obedience.

The provisions just, the promises just, they're just beyond the obedience.

It just requires us to be obedient.

Sometimes the miracle we desire is waiting on the step we're unwilling to take.

And did you notice in this story, again, I I like this, I've mentioned it before, I've preached about it before, but I'll spend just a moment on it here.

This miracle is fascinating.

It's fascinating to me because God did not fill the widow's house with flour and oil.

He didn't overflow the barrels.

He didn't give him enough, give her enough provision to last throughout the drought.

Each day there was enough.

Each day there was enough.

It was a daily miracle.

It was a miracle occurring every day, not all at once.

Verse 16, the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruise of oil fail.

The miracle continued.

Every morning they still needed the miracle.

Every day they still trusted God.

Every day God proved that he was faithful.

And again, we see the great big miracles where God did this huge thing all at once, but we also see miracles all throughout the Bible where God did a little at a time.

He provided manna for the children of Israel every day, six days a week.

And he explicitly, he explicitly declared to them, you cannot gather more than you need in a day.

If you do, it'll just spoil.

And of course, they tried.

Because that's human nature.

But it just evaporates.

It just evaporates on the ground when we're done.

It's just like it's gone.

Just enough for the day, except for day six, and then you can get enough for six and seven.

This is God's provision.

A little at a time.

Maybe that's why Jesus taught in the what we commonly call the Lord's Prayer that we should pray, give us this day our daily bread.

It's the same concept in 2 Corinthians 12 and 9, where Paul learned that God's grace was sufficient.

God's grace was enough to carry him.

God's grace was enough to sustain him in spite of his difficulty.

Whatever his difficulty, and most people say it was a health issue, but whatever his difficulty was, whatever that thorn in the flesh was, that he never quite named, God gave him enough grace to sustain him every day, to provide for him every day.

Lamentations chapter 3, verse 22 and 23 says, It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed.

Lamentations 3:22

Because his compassions fail not, they are new every morning.

Elijah said it, God's going to sustain you.

And the Bible says it did not fail.

It kept on providing, it kept on producing.

It's sort of that same thing.

The Lord's mercies, his compassions, they fail not.

They are new every morning.

Which prompts the exclamation concluding that verse.

Great is thy faithfulness.

So when we understand that, it prompts us to declare, Great is thy faithfulness, because it's new every morning.

God provides every day.

God sustains us every day.

Great is thy faithfulness.

I mean, what would happen if God provided all that we needed in one big pile, one big mountain of resources?

Why doesn't He do that?

Well, because probably we would declare our independence because we have what we need.

We would forget that we need God in our lives.

It's part of a challenge of us living in a wealthy culture that most of America doesn't sense a real need for God because their lives are doing okay.

Sometimes doing very well.

They have enough resources to do what they need.

They have insurance to cover their health needs.

They have money to buy their groceries and their cars and their homes, and they have enough.

So there's not a desire, a need compelling them.

And so they're not pursuing God because it's filled with other things.

And maybe God doesn't provide all at once sometimes because he knows that's where we would go.

Sometimes, if God provided all at once, we would use the extra for something else.

Or at least what we saw as extra.

We would use it for something else rather than what God intended to do for us to do with it.

It's a common human dilemma.

If I have excess, then I tend to waste the excess.

I tend to use it on things that really don't matter that much, or at least is not in the right timing.

The children of Israel, God had them borrow from their neighbors.

Their neighbors wanted to get rid of them.

The neighbors wanted them to go.

We've had enough of you.

Go.

And they gave them of their possessions.

The children of Israel left Egypt with the Egyptians' possessions.

They got in the wilderness.

Moses went in the mountain to speak to God, and the enemy does what he likes to do.

He convinced them to take their excess and use it for idolatry.

And they gave of the gold and silver that they had so that Aaron could make that golden calf.

But that was not God's intent.

God's intent was for that gold and silver to build the articles of the tabernacle and to be a sustaining blessing to the Israelites to carry with them.

But they had so much after having so little that they didn't pay attention to it very well.

They didn't handle it very well.

And probably every one of us have done that in our lives, right?

And some of you, you're not shaking your head no, but I'm not even getting a smile or a nod.

So I always say, you know, I we we experienced that when we were young.

When we were in Bible college, my wife and I had really, really good jobs.

And uh we made, we paid off all our bills, we saved our money, we had all this stuff, and and uh not all this stuff, but for then it was a lot.

God blessed us, and uh we we used most of it we used wisely, but we probably spent stuff we didn't need.

We, you know, not probably, we did.

And that was important for us to have that because I think my wife wore those same dresses for about 10 years after that because he couldn't afford anything after that.

So we went to the ministry, and it's like it really took 10 years before we made that much money again.

Just remember, we were Bible school students.

I was I was 21 years old when I graduated from Bible college, so I finished early graduate, early, all those things, 21.

We made that it took us 10 years to make that much money again.

We were just just college students.

But we didn't understand the principle that God has given us.

We did, we had savings, we paid off, we had no debt, we had all those things.

We thought we were preparing ourselves well, but then we realized how little we could live on, and that we really didn't need some of those things.

And if we would have had that excess money, it certainly would have helped us.

And we realize sometimes God provides before the need arises.

And if we're not careful, we'll spend the provision and then we'll suffer when the need arises.

Right?

And so God gives us oftentimes as we need it.

God's provisions are always sufficient.

They're not always abundant, but they are always sufficient.

God has abundance, but he doesn't always give it to us in abundance, because he can manage it better than we can.

Ephesians chapter 3, verse number 20 says, Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

And when we read that verse, exceeding abundantly above, what we often imagine in our mind is this mountainous heap of blessings.

But maybe God's not just talking about the volume of blessings, but how long they last.

They last so much longer than we would have expected.

They sustain us so much longer.

So it's not just the big mountain, it's how God works.

We often want God to provide now for the years to come, but God frequently only provides for today.

We want certainty, but God wants faith.

We want reserves, but God wants reliance on Him.

The greatest miracle for the widow and Elijah was not that the barrel was full, but that the barrel was never empty.

The greatest miracle was not that the cruise or the container of oil was full, but that the container of oil never ran out.

That was the miracle that God did for them.

So at the brook, Elijah learned to trust God's directions, but at Zarephus, Elijah learned to trust that God could provide through the most unlikely means, the most unlikely sources.

To do this walk by faith that God had called him to do, he needed to know that God was going to take care of him every day, that God was going to sustain him, that God was going to be with him.

That God would give him what he needed.

And we live our lives for God.

We come to terms with that we can trust God, that we can live for God every day, that we can know that God's going to take care of us, that God's going to be with us, that God will direct our steps, God will give us what we need.

It's not always in our timing, it's not always the way we want it to be.

It's not always through the means we expected it to come, it's not always through the things we expected to happen, but God provides and God sustains and God works in our lives and God blesses us and carries us and helps us.

Is life tough at times?

Yes, it is.

Sometimes God provided in ways that, well, thank you, Lord, and I appreciate it, but it wasn't so pleasant.

You know, you know, when God provided through a second job, that's not really what I wanted.

I wanted money to show up in the mailbox, kind of thing.

You know what I mean?

But God provided through a second job or a second way of working or a second way of sustaining.

Because God had a bigger plan, he had a bigger purpose than I could imagine.

Could be that he put me on that second job because there's somebody I need to witness to, which was more important to him than how much money I made.

More important to his kingdom.

So we're gonna trust God.

We're just gonna trust in him, we're just gonna grow in the faith that God has given us, grow in God's help.

School faith teaches us that God's resources are never exhausted.

No matter how it looks to us, no matter how it appears to us, that his promises never fail.

If we will obey him, can you stand together with me?

If we will obey him, if we will commit ourselves to simple obedience, we talk about great faith, we talk about large faith, we talk about big faith, we talk about having faith, we talk about it in so many ways, but faith often comes down to our day-to-day obedience to God, obedience to his word, trusting that if we do what he's told us to do, if we do what he's instructed us in his word, that he will provide, that he will take care of us, that he will come through on every promise, and we trust in him today.