“Tragedy While Faithful” | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

We're continuing our series, The School of Faith.

And so I invite you, if you would like to just kind of open your Bible and stay there in 1 Kings chapter 17.

1 Kings 17 · chapter mention

We're going to continue talking about Elijah's life and following this path of God's school, we're calling it, of growing Elijah's faith and confidence in God as he walks along the journey of his life.

And so today we're focusing on 1 Kings chapter 17, verse 17 through 24.

1 Kings 17:17–24

I'm not going to read all those verses at this point, but I'm going to point you there and we'll be referring to those as as we go along.

So one of the most difficult lessons in the school of faith here is learning to trust God when life makes no sense.

Now, I think probably all of us have experienced what that's like.

When things just don't make sense, when two and two didn't equal four after all, and things just did not come out like we anticipated or turn out like we planned.

And we're old enough in here to uh have moved beyond throwing a temper tantrum and saying everybody's mean to us.

We're far enough down life's journey to know that life just has those moments.

And life has those those challenges, and it's just part of our human existence.

And so by the time uh we get to 1 Kings 17, 17, at the beginning of this section of Scripture, things are going well.

Elijah has obeyed God.

As we talked about last week, the widow has obeyed God, and uh God has miraculously provided, in spite of being in this famine caused by the drought, uh, they're eating their meals every day because God miraculously has made the barrel continue to produce, and the crews of oil continue to have oil, and so they have all the daily provisions that they need.

And uh then tragedy strikes.

Then that unknown thing, that unexpected thing happens.

The widow's son becomes sick and dies.

And uh, what makes this story, I think, more difficult for us and for them, is that the tragedy occurs in the middle of them being obedient to God and God providing and God doing miracles, and yet in the middle of all that, tragedy happens.

And that is uh that's really some of life's most difficult challenges.

That's that's really something that we all have to deal with along our journey somewhere.

And it's easy for us to assume when things are going well, that that uh our faithfulness to God and God's faithfulness to us sort of exempts us from those things.

But we read it in the scripture and we've experienced in our life, and some of life's hardest trials comes in the middle of obeying God, comes in the middle of serving God, happens in the middle of doing what you're supposed to do.

But today I want to remind you that when God allows tragedy, God hasn't abandoned you.

That's not the end of the story, that hasn't concluded there.

God is still with you, and God still helps you, and God's grace is still with us as we go through this path.

And so verse number 17 says, It came to pass after these things that the son of the woman, she fell sick.

He became sick.

Again, we want to stress the timing to you today after all of these things.

After the miracle, after the provision, after the obedience, trouble happened anyway.

Because, well, that's life.

That's living broken people in a broken world.

And so we can't assume if we obey God, nothing bad will ever happen to us.

We live in this world.

And when we read the scriptures, it's clear in the scriptures that happens.

Again, as I mentioned last week, we we look at people's lives in retrospect in the Bible.

We're looking back at them, and we often see first the ending of their story.

So we see after the success.

We imagine them, we picture them, we see them in our minds after they've been successful, after God has blessed them, after God has provided for them, after they've done something for the Lord.

But when we read these people's story in the Bible, it seems like almost every major character in the story in the Bible, in the stories in the Bible has some kind of really difficult circumstance, really difficult tragedy or or sometimes abandonment, or sometimes abuse by others.

Joseph was faithful.

Joseph was faithful.

Maybe he was unwise in the way he approached his brothers, but he was faithful to God.

And he still ended up as a slave and in prison.

He still went through that.

Job was faithful to God, and he still lost his children and his possessions, his life.

And the whole book of Job is about that journey of processing that, of going through that, of experiencing that.

And we, in fact, the whole book of Job is really about just going through the questions and the torment in our minds and the questions by others, and all those things.

I mean, there's very little about what happened before, and there's really very little.

I mean, it's just a brief summary of where he was standing at the moment, and a brief summary of where things ended up.

All the rest of all of those chapters, 40 chapters are filled with this turmoil of trying to sort this out, trying to figure this out.

And it was uh such a thing in his life.

Daniel was faithful, but he still got tossed in the lines then.

He still had to go through that experience.

He still had people opposed to him.

Paul was faithful, but he endured persecutions.

And he endured church troubles.

He endured people troubles.

He had the normal things of life.

Because that's how life is.

Faithfulness doesn't shield us against suffering.

Faithfulness is what carries us through the suffering.

Faithfulness is what helps us endure the suffering.

Faithfulness is what helps us do what God has called us to do.

The miracle of the flower and the oil did not exempt the widow from heartbreak.

God's provisions did not eliminate life's pain.

And the Christian life, just the same, is not exempt from problems, but it is, we are, and we do have the assurance that God is present with us.

So faithfulness is not measured by the absence of trials, but by trusting God through them.

And I'm going to say this to you.

When we look at ourselves, then sometimes we look at our lives.

Sometimes it's easier to know ourselves a little better and say, hey, I don't, you know, I didn't deserve this.

But sometimes when we look at other people, we just automatically assume they got what they deserved.

So I want to say this works both ways.

It works both ways.

Now, some people by their nature may struggle more with themselves.

Some people by their nature may struggle more by looking at others, but it works both ways.

Just because life happens doesn't mean that we are unfaithful to God.

Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

I'm going to read verse 32-39.

You know it well.

It says, And what shall I say more?

For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Barak and of Samson and of Jephthah and of David and Samuel of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant and fight, turned to flight the armies of aliens, women, received their dead, raised again to life, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.

And others had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, and yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword.

They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, and tormented.

I don't really want any of that.

I could live without some of those stories.

And in the parentheses it says, of whom the world was not worthy.

They wandered in the deserts and in the mountains and in the dens and caves of the earth, and these all having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise.

They didn't get the end of the promise.

They didn't see it in their lifetime, but they still had faith and trust in God, even though they went through some terrible hardships, some horrible things.

Job said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there.

The Lord gives, and in fact, in the Bible it says the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

So we can't avoid life.

Can't avoid life.

No matter how holy, godly, how prayerful, how committed you are to God, you can't avoid life.

So things, tragedies, happen in our lives.

And the devil would always like to come in and say something to the effect of if God loved you, this wouldn't have happened.

If God cared about you, if God was with you, this wouldn't have happened.

Always wants to come in and tell us that.

But when we read the Bible and we see people's lives, God's, some of God's most effective servants for his kingdom went through some terrible, horrible things in their lives.

But God was with them.

That didn't mean God didn't love them, that didn't mean God didn't uh care for them.

That didn't mean God had abandoned them.

He was still there, but they endured hardships and difficulties.

And it's important for us, and I want to say this as a pastor today, it's important for us to kind of have uh the right mindset about these things and the right understanding about these things.

In this particular story, this is not a story of persecution, uh, like some of the stories we read where you know somebody's being persecuted for the gospel's sake or persecuted for their walk with God.

This is the tragedies of life.

And it's important for us to understand that God doesn't put you through tragedies.

Life puts you through tragedies.

God walks with you in the tragedies.

Now, that doesn't mean God doesn't know and doesn't know it's gonna happen, but don't treat it like God put that on you.

That's life that put that on you.

It's God that's working with you.

We are broken people in a broken world.

And there's gonna be cars crash on the highway today because we're not as perfect a driver as we think we are.

And it's gonna happen.

That's life.

That's how life works.

That's the brokenness of people living in the world.

That doesn't mean God's putting it on you, but God can take anything that happens to you and turn it for your good.

God can bring good out of even the most difficult situations.

God can make you better, God can give you grace, God can help you minister to others.

And so please, I'm saying as your pastor, I'm trying to encourage you that these things happen in life.

These things happen in life.

Sometimes they happen to you.

Sometimes they happen because you made a mistake.

Right?

So sometimes you use poor judgment.

That's humanity.

That's not all, like it's it's you know, you may even be responsible.

That still doesn't mean that you did it on purpose, but you're still responsible because, well, you still did it.

All these things that we wrestle with in our minds, God is with us in the middle of all those things.

But even knowing that, we still experience the lost.

And we experience grief.

And so when the widow's son died, the widow cried out, What have I to do with you, O man of God?

Have you come unto me to call my sins in remembrance and to slay my son?

I think that's just really an interesting response.

The widow was at a terrible place when Elijah entered her life, but God wondrously provided food for her, her son, and Elijah.

She had gotten used to the security of having food every day, of going to the barrel and the oil and living in that promise that God has provided.

She had gotten accustomed to taking care of the prophet, doing what needed to be done to take care of him and whatever she was doing for him, providing a place for him to live.

Whatever all of that was, she was settled into the rhythm of life again.

And now when we do that, we start projecting into the future.

You know, when we're just trying to survive today, we're not thinking a whole lot about the future.

But once we, it's human nature, once things seem to be flowing, we start looking into the future, looking at how things will be with an expectation, with a with an idea of how it's gonna.

She probably expected that at some point that the prophet Elijah would leave and go about his way.

She probably even expected at some point this barrel and cruise might stop producing as the economy, as the as the world got better around her, as the drought ended.

She might even have expected that.

All of the visions of the future in her mind, all the projections of what she thought life was going to be revolved around this son, this child.

She's a widow.

She's a widow.

She's taking care of this child on her own.

Her life revolves around this child.

And in her culture, maybe she receives some help from the community.

Maybe she receives some assistance from the community in various ways, but mostly she's on her own to survive her life.

And the hope of her life is that her son is going to grow up to become something, to be something, to get a career, make a good living, and help her and help himself.

And her life was all projected in her mind with that.

And then her son died like an earthquake.

It rattled her very being.

He got sick and he died.

And the Bible obviously doesn't tell us the whole story, but in the Bible, it seems like he got sick and he died.

That it was a pretty quick thing.

Grief and sorrow must have consumed her mind and her heart.

And everything else faded into the inconsequential.

And in that frame of mind, she looked for someone to cry out to, and someone to blame.

And the convenient target was Elijah.

If he wouldn't have been here, we would have died long ago.

But you gave us hope, and now you've yanked the rug out from under us.

And so she's expressing this frustration, this grief, this anger about where she was and the difficulty of where she was.

And grief often does that.

It creates in our minds and in our hearts some probing and difficult questions.

And so people ask those questions while they're trying to make sense of their loss.

Is God punishing me?

She said, Is there some sin that I'm being punished for?

Did you do this, Elijah?

She's blaming Elijah, but in her heart she's saying, Did I do something to deserve this?

And it's the same conversations that people still have.

Why did this happen to me?

Why did this happen at all?

Why my child?

Why now?

Why my family?

Why after all this time of serving God?

God's doing a miracle right here, and my son still died.

How does this happen?

Grief changes our perspective.

It causes us to look at things through the eyes of our circumstances.

We start seeing God through our circumstances rather than seeing our circumstances through God.

Somehow the circumstances of life slip into our mind, and everything we see about God, we see through those circumstances.

We see through those difficulties.

When we're not going through it, it's much easier to lift our hearts and eyes up and look at our circumstances through God and God's power, God's strength.

But when we're experiencing tragedy and grief, it's like the whole thing gets flipped upside down.

And this grief has overwhelmed her and changed her perspective.

Because we don't understand things.

In the middle of the chapter of love in 1 Corinthians 13, it says, For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part, but then shall I know even also as I am known.

I think you could take that verse and expand it to our lives for quite a while.

Isaiah 55, verse 8 and 9, God speaks for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8

Something about grief, there's something about this sorrow, there's something about the tragedies of our life that causes us to ask those questions that only eternity can answer.

There's just no real answer.

People are carrying heavy burdens and wrestling with difficult questions because of life.

God is not shocked by your questions.

God is not offended by your questions.

You haven't backslid because you have questions.

When life goes wrong and life doesn't work, God hasn't abandoned you.

God's not offended at you.

It's our humanity wanting to know why.

It's our mind.

Wanted to figure out some formula of why.

And so we have to be careful not to condemn ourselves nor condemn others when they're going through this process of these questions that cannot be answered.

Even great men and women of faith have wrestled with questions that only eternity can answer.

And I can give you the answer that God gave Job.

And I'm going to sum it up in just a few words in those last few chapters in the book of Job.

God says to Job, I'm God and you're not.

Yeah.

I mean, it's pretty raw when you read those last few chapters of Job while God responds.

But he's basically saying, you're not God.

You're going to have to trust me to be God.

You're going to have to let me be God.

Sometimes faith is not about you having the answers, it's about trusting God when you don't have the answers.

It's about finally saying, you know what, God, I'm going to take that question.

I'm going to put it on your bookshelf, and I'm going to leave it there.

You know the answer.

I don't know.

I don't have to know.

I just need you.

So to extend that even further, we can flip from looking at the widow to Elijah because Elijah is here trying to be the representative of God to this woman.

And so what is he going to do to respond?

So he takes this child to his room and he prays.

And when Elijah prays, he prays an honest-hearted prayer.

He said, Oh Lord my God, have you also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn by slaying her son?

Elijah did not pretend that he understood.

Elijah did not pretend that he was the great guru that knew the answers to all of life.

He didn't have the answer.

He did not know.

And perhaps for Elijah, perhaps for Elijah and his growth in faith, for his ministry, this was the most important part of this equation.

It's because none of this makes sense logically.

None of this makes sense to understand.

And he comes to God and said, God, are you also, are you going to cause this terrible thing to happen?

He didn't offer some nice cliche.

Be careful what you say at funerals.

So much of what we say to people makes no sense and is not very comforting.

And I'm not saying you shouldn't be comforting.

I'm just saying, you know, it's amazing what people can say sometimes in that moment.

They're just searching for an answer themselves.

He didn't act like Elijah didn't act like he had everything figured out.

He just brought the child and all of his confusion about it to God.

Sometimes we, sometimes we as Christians, sometimes we as believers, sometimes we are afraid to bring our questions to God.

We're afraid God might get upset with us.

We're afraid that we should be able to understand this.

We tell ourselves, or maybe the enemy tells us, that if we were truly in touch with God, we would know.

And we're afraid to address the questions.

It's okay to bring your questions to God.

It's okay to bring your heartache to God.

It's okay.

Faith does not deny the reality.

Faith is not about denying the reality of what you're in.

I know in those moments when the doctor comes and gives the report, sometimes we don't even want to hear.

Because we feel like if anything is negatively said, that's going to prevent God from doing what he wants to do.

But faith does not deny how bad the doctor's report is.

And you don't have to deny it.

That's not the same as trusting God.

Though he slay me, yet I will trust him.

Even if that happens, I'm still going to trust.

That's faith.

That's faith.

So having a question and having a concern and having a frustration and even having some anger because of the grief, it's not a lack of faith.

And it's not scary to God.

But faith causes us to bring all of those questions to God.

David asked questions.

I'm so glad again I say this.

I'm so glad the Psalms are not just songs of rejoicing and dancing.

I'm so glad they're all not Psalms 150.

You know, I'm so glad.

I'm glad there's Psalms where the songs are exasperation and frustration because things aren't working like we would like for them to work.

Psalm 73 says, but as for me, my feet were almost gone.

My steps had well nigh slipped.

I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

So it's a different question, but it's the same concept.

How are these people that aren't doing right, being prosperous?

And I'm doing right, and I'm in hiding.

I'm in survival mode.

He said, My feet had well nigh slipped.

And then verse 16 says, when I thought to know all these questions, it was too painful for me.

Until I went into the sanctuary of God.

And then I understood their end.

And then I understood a bigger picture of things.

And then I got a better grasp of things.

When I went to the house of God, and I started acknowledging God and saw that God had something better for me.

And I already mentioned Job asked why.

Jeremiah asked why.

Jeremiah 15, 18, why is my pain perpetual and my wound incurable, which refuses to be healed?

Will you all together, will you be all together unto me as a liar and as waters that fail?

I mean, that's strong words.

But much of Jeremiah's ministry is spent mourning because of the destruction that the people had experienced.

Habakkuk begins the prophecy that's written in the book of Habakkuk in verse number three.

As soon as there's sort of an introduction, verse number three, he says, O Lord, how long shall I cry and you not hear me?

This is the reality of life that we are going to experience some hardships we're going to experience.

But these people, these men that you're reading about, these people in the Bible, they're people of faith.

They're people used by God.

They're people that have great things happen in their ministry in their life.

What's the difference?

The difference is unbelief walks away from God with my questions in hand.

But belief takes my questions to God to give them to him.

The difference is that faith says, I've got all these questions I can't answer.

I'm going to take them to God and put them in his hands.

I'm going to take them to God and trust him with the answers.

Even if he doesn't tell me the answers, I'm going to trust him.

It's going to be like the child who was who needed help, and Jesus said to his father, if you have faith.

And the man in tears cried out, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

I believe you can, but I don't see it in my mind.

Psalm 13, verse 1 and 2 says, How long will you forget me, O Lord, forever?

Psalms 13:1

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long shall I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart daily?

How long shall my enemies exalt me?

Honest prayer is not the opposite of faith.

It's how we take all of this and put it in the hands of God and trust him with it.

It's sort of the process that you and I need to pour it out on God and give it to him.

I always say, you know, God forgives immediately.

When you're honest hearted and you repent, God forgives immediately.

But sometimes you and I need a little bit of time to let it go.

Sometimes I need to shed some tears.

Sometimes I need to wrestle with it a little bit because I got to let it go.

I've got to release it from my life.

I've got to make some changes.

God can forgive immediately, but I need a process sometimes to get me beyond it.

And it's the same with this.

Sometimes I need to bring it all to God.

Don't be intimidated to pray honestly to God.

Pray honestly, pray sincerely, pray persistently.

God doesn't need some rehearsed thing that somebody said you should say or some prayer you read.

God wants your honest heart.

And you come with your honest heart, even though it's filled with questions and frustrations, come and pour it out to God and leave it on the altar there for God to take care of.

And that's challenging for us.

It's challenging for us.

Because we have a tendency to come and bring it to God and then pick it up and take it back with us.

And it's just our human nature.

And, you know, maybe we don't pick it up immediately, but a few days later we come back and pick it up.

You know, it's just our human nature.

And so it's a process for us.

Sometimes we need to do it repeatedly for a little while to get beyond it, to move forward, to let God work in our lives.

And so after praying, Elijah stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, and then something extraordinary happened.

The Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came back into him and he revived.

I really wish we had more information.

But I'm afraid if we had more information, we'd have a lot of people going and laying off top of dead children and trying to get them back to life, you know, because they would make it a formula.

It is very interesting.

This is the first recorded resurrection in the scriptures.

This was something not seen before.

Later, God would perform two other resurrections recorded in the Old Testament.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that that happened in Elisha's life, who followed Elijah and who requested a double portion of Elijah's spirit.

Because in 2 Kings chapter 4, the Shunammite woman who was also taking care of Elisha, her son dies, and he is resurrected, as Elisha prays for him.

2 Kings 4 · chapter mention

And then, just so that God would keep his word, in 2 Kings chapter 13, a group of people were fleeing from the enemy.

2 Kings 13 · chapter mention

They had the body of a man, and the nearest place to put this body was in the tomb of Elisha.

And when they put the man in the tomb of Elisha, he came back to life.

Again, I wish there were more.

I want to know more about the stories, you know.

But Elijah did what Elijah could do.

Elijah could not raise the child.

He could care for, he could pray for, he could intercede for, but he could not raise the child.

He did the part he could do, God does the part he can do.

You're not responsible for the impossible.

You're only responsible for the possible.

You don't have to do the impossible.

You just do the possible.

You just trust God.

You just come to God and ask him.

It's one of the most important lessons of life.

We're responsible for the possible, but we're not responsible for the impossible.

I'm responsible to behave, to act, to do what God has told me to do.

God is responsible to fulfill his own promises.

We baptize people in the name of Jesus in the water to wash away their sins because that's what the Bible says to do.

I don't wash away their sins.

Even if I'm the one putting them in the water and calling on the name of Jesus, I'm not washing away their sins.

I'm just obeying God.

That's the only thing I can do.

If God doesn't do something, they just got wet.

That's all.

But God does something miraculous.

God does something powerful.

He washes away their sins.

We pray God answers our prayers.

We obey God works.

We plant, God gives the increase.

We trust God and God performs the miracles.

Luke chapter 18, Jesus said, these things are impossible with men.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

But with God, all things are possible.

Faith doesn't require us to do the impossible.

Faith just requires us to trust God.

We don't need to exhaust ourselves trying to do God's part.

We can't change people's hearts.

We can't convert people.

We can't save them.

We can't perform miracles.

But we can pray.

And we can obey and we can trust God.

And God will do the impossible.

And so this story of the passing of the widow's son reminds us that trouble comes even when we're faithful.

That grief prompts some difficult questions.

That our honest, our honest questions, our honest prayer is not a lack of faith.

That God does the impossible.

Would you stand?

And this story has a great ending because the Son is resurrected.

Not all stories have the same ending as we read to you in Hebrews chapter 11 in their lifetime.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

But either way, we're going to trust God.

When there's tragedy, we're going to trust God.

When there's unexpected, we're going to trust God.

We're going to know that this isn't the end of everything because something not good has happened.

Or something difficult has happened.

It may change our lives.

We may change our perspective.

It may change the trajectory even of our lives.

When we experience these hard things in our lives, but God can somehow tease out of those terrible things of life.

Things that will be a blessing to us, will be a help to us, be an encouragement to us.

And if not, simply us, at least help us to reach to other people and help us to minister to others and to care for them when they're going through their difficult times.

There is no one in the world more than this people sitting in this place, while standing in this place today, that should be filled with compassion and grace and love, knowing that God has walked with us through times we can't define, questions we cannot answer, difficulties we did not expect, but God has been with us, and God has strengthened us, and God has helped us.

It may not all be like we thought it would be, it may not all be like we expected it to be, but God has been there, and God has helped us through all of our circumstances of life.

And so we are grateful and thankful to the Lord today.

Would you lift your hands to Him and thank Him?