18 Jan

JUNE 17, 2018   1 KINGS 17:7-24   “ARE YOU A CARROT, AN EGG OR A COFFEE BEAN?”

I my varied adventures in life I have discovered many things.  Some are great and some aren’t so hot.  On the great side, I have found how wonderful Jesus is and all the things that go with Him even if I don’t come close to knowing all about Him.  He is the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life.  After all He put Sharon and I together.  On the not so great side I have found so many people who think that their life is the toughest in the world.  They are so wrong.  We all have it tough.  So did our parents, grandparents and great grandparents and so on down the line. Life isn’t easy and we find ourselves in tough patches.  Today we are going to look at Elijah in the Old Testament.  He had it tough as they were trying to kill him for believing in God.  Can you imagine that?  Today this happens all the time especially in Muslim countries.  Let’s see if we can learn something from this hard pressed character.

John Williams III tells the story of a father whose daughter was complaining, “As soon as I solve one problem,” she said, “another one comes up.  I’m tired of struggling.”

The father who was a chef didn’t say a word but took his daughter into the kitchen.  He filled three pots with water, set them on the fire and started them boiling.  Then he put carrots in the first pot, eggs in the second and ground coffee beans in the third.  He let them boil awhile without saying a word.

The daughter couldn’t figure out what in the world he was doing and was losing her patience as only a daughter can.  After a bit, he went over and turned off the burners.  He fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl.  Then he got the eggs out and placed them in a bowl.  Finally he poured out the coffee into a bowl and said, “Darling, what do you see?”

“Carrots, eggs and coffee,” she answered.

Then he brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrot.  She did and noticed that it was soft.  He asked her to take the egg and break it.  She did and found that it was hard boiled.  Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee.  She did and enjoyed its rich flavor.

The daughter asked, “What does this mean, Father?”  He explained that each of them had faced the same adversity, the boiling water, but each reacted differently.  The carrot went in strong and hard but the boiling water softened it and made it weak.  The egg was fragile going in with its outer shell protecting its inner liquid.  When it came out of the boiling water its insides had hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique, however.  By being in the boiling water, they changed the water.  He looked at his daughter and asked, “When adversity knocks on your door, which will you be?”  I think that this is one of the messages we will find in this morning’s Scripture and it is one of the messages of the Bible as a whole.  We are to go out with our talents and make a difference in the world for God by helping to change it for God.

This is one of the struggles that Elijah had.  We talked a little about rejoicing in adversity not too long ago.  Well, here we have Elijah in major adversity.  Elijah was God’s prophet during the times of the first kings of Israel.  Remember that Israel had wanted a king just like all of the other countries.  God had warned them that they wouldn’t like it.  This is not too many years after King Solomon.  Ahab was now king with his queen Jezebel.  He was a very wicked king because he had gone away from God.  Israel was now worshipping the pagan fertility gods Baal and Asherah instead of our God.

One of the reasons it was so easy for Israel to worship other gods was that all the other cultures around them worshipped many gods.  So the Israelites figured that they could do the same.  We do the same thing today when we don’t follow the Bible because no one else is following the Bible.  Just because everyone is doing something doesn’t make it right.  Remember the lesser of two evils is still evil.  Anyway in the beginning of these periods of worship to false gods by the Israelites, they would worship our Lord God and then other gods at the same time like everyone else did.  Soon they would drop our God and just go with the pagan gods.  It’s interesting to study this but we don’t have time today.  I will only say that we do the same thing.

Because of their false worship, God sent Elijah to King Ahab to tell him that there would be no rain for 3½ years.  Of course the king was furious and Elijah had to go on the run or be killed.  God is working miracles here as we see in the first verses of Chapter 17.  Elijah is kept alive by a brook of water and some ravens who bring him bread and meat.  Elijah is a Jew and the raven is an unclean animal.  But Elijah knows that this is coming from God so he eats from the unclean birds.

Anyway, the brook dries up and God sends him to Zarephath to find a widow.  He does this and the first thing he asks for is water and some bread.  We should try to keep in mind just how dry it is.  It has been many, many months and there has been no rain.  There had to be people dying from hunger and thirst.  Do you remember how dry it was in the summer of 2012, I think it was, when the rains quit?  Well that is nothing compared to what was happening here.

The widow tells Elijah that she has enough flour for a last meal for herself and her son.  The widow had heard of God and goes and makes a meal for the three of them.  Due to her obedience they have flour and oil for the duration of the drought.

We have read many times in the New Testament of this type of thing happening.  But this is over 850 years before Jesus.  And God is using a Gentile, destitute widow woman.  These are the characteristics of someone who is at the absolute bottom of the social scale.  Imagine how Elijah felt.  Of all the people that God could have sent him to, He chose someone like this.

Now let’s fast forward 2850 years.  As I said things are exactly the same today.  I have a friend that goes by the name Donnie G.  He was so on fire for the Lord that they put him in a mental hospital.  But he was and still is changing lives.  He is trying to be like the coffee grounds in our opening story.  He is trying to make a difference for the Lord.  If you would have known me forty years ago, you would say that there is no way I could ever be here this morning.  The Apostle Paul murdered Christians before he gave his heart to Jesus.  God will take all of us who are totally unworthy and do miracles in our lives if we only will let Him.  I have heard people say that the Old Testament is not that relevant.  But please believe me when I say that it is telling the same story as the New Testament.

Another item to notice is that the widow is giving all the she has.  She gives all of her flour and oil to a God that she has only heard about.  All throughout the Bible God is asking for our very best of everything.  And I think that He wants that today also.  If we give our very best to God, then he knows that He is number one in our lives.  If you are buzzing around telling everyone how much you love God but are giving Him nothing or next to nothing, then He knows that He doesn’t rank very high in your life.  This has nothing to do with salvation.  We have our salvation by faith.  But He wants us to work for Him in all ways that are possible.  Faith without works is dead!

We should move on to the second part before I run out of time.  Now we have this young widow woman who has done everything that has been asked of her, have her son die.  And she thinks like anyone would think in those days who didn’t know God that well.  She thinks that it is her sin that has caused God to be angry and take her son.  Now I’m sure glad that this doesn’t happen today.  Or does it?

We don’t have to look very far.  We have all heard it and maybe some of us have said it.  God is angry at me because of this or that.  He is angry because I have done wrong.  This is just God’s punishment.  Well, here is something for you to think about.  God is not in the punishment business.  It may happen once in a while but that is not the aim of our loving God.  Our Father will usually let the world take care of the consequences of your bad ways.  And Satan is in charge of this world.  When you make immoral decisions, Satan will reward you and that reward will eventually be in the form that we consider punishment.  However, he disguises it to look like it came from God.  And the first thing that we do is blame God like the widow in our story, and Satan gets off without any blame.  He should get all the blame.  Only bad things come from this monster!

Our Father loves us so much that He will let us make our mistakes so that hopefully we can learn from them.  As we looked at Romans 5, we saw that we are to rejoice in our sufferings or our bad decisions and have perseverance because perseverance makes character and character brings hope.  He wants us to turn from our stubborn and terrible ways to Him!  That is what He has always wanted.  And we can see that it is the same in 1 Kings as it is in Romans as it is today.  He wants a personal relationship with you so that He can guide you through these events.  He wants you to be able, with confidence, to put the blame right on Satan where it belongs; because he is the culprit.

Now Elijah takes the son up to his room and he asks God to heal him and He does.  This is basically the same thing that Elisha will do a little later.  It is the same thing that Jesus did during his time on earth.  It is the same thing that Peter did and Paul did.  Through the power of God they all raised someone from the dead.  And they did it for the glory of God and for the glory of God only.

Critics will take a look at all of these events of the Bible and say that they didn’t happen.  They say these people weren’t really dead.  Well, they are wrong.  There are many books out there that prove them wrong beyond a shadow of doubt.  Lee Strobel has a couple of them and they are an easy read.  If you have any doubts, read one of these because I don’t believe in coincidences but only in the power of God.  And if we start to listen to Satan and the critics, then we would have to believe that the whole Bible is just on tremendously big string of coincidences.  And that simply can’t be.  It’s scientifically impossible for all these things to be coincidences!  Trust in God all the time!

It is finally at the end of our passage today when the widow believes whole heartedly in God.  God has saved her from starvation and the death of her son.  Now she believes.  If we look at a passage like this and then look at our world about us, we can see just how broken it is.  Christians are fast becoming the minority in this country.  Many of our so-called churches will say we are wrong.  We are wrong because it can’t be proven by science.  Well, who invented science?  God invented science so we could discover all the great things He has done.  Society has perverted some of the sciences.  People say that Christianity is wrong because it is too easy and we have to work hard to get to heaven.  Well, that is not God’s way.  That is the way of the Devil.  It is wrong and so are all other religions wrong.  The Bible tells us that there will be many false religions and we are not to fall for them as King Ahab did in the time of Elijah.

I referred a little earlier of all the people that were raised from the dead in the Bible.  When you read the Bible from cover to cover, you will find a central theme with examples like these throughout the Old and New Testaments.  There are many stories told but they all have one thing in common.  They tell of the glory of God.  They tell us that He is supreme and all other religions are wrong.  If we look at the last verse in the book of John, he tells us that Jesus alone did so many miracles that all the books of the world couldn’t describe them.  There are only a few of the miracles of Jesus described in the Bible.  This is because if you cannot believe in these as proof of God and His plan, then you will not believe no matter how much proof is before you.  And as we can see there is a lot of proof in the Old Testament and the New Testaments.

We have seen today a widow woman who was on the brink of starving to death with her son give all that she had to God in an act of generosity.  Then we saw her deny God as her son dies after being saved from starvation.  And then she comes to know God even more as the son is brought back from the dead.  As we read this story 2850 years later, God is still being glorified.

This woman has been a witness to us throughout the ages.  As we leave worship today, think about all the people that are in the process of starvation from not being in God’s word.  Think of all the children that have never even heard of God or Jesus.  Then go and minister to them.  Think of all the people who are waiting to be brought back from the dead and don’t even know that they are dead like I used to be.  Then go out and tell them that Jesus is as real as you and I or this building.  This great life that we have in Jesus, this happiness and rejoicing, belongs to everyone.  So go out there and spread the word with whatever gifts you have.  Be a coffee bean!  Just remember, if you think that you are happy now, wait and see what how happy you will be when someone comes to Christ.  Now that will be rejoicing.  Praise the Lord!  And thank you Jesus for first loving us. Let’s pray.