“Bible places: Zarephath”
I Kings 17:8-16
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Have you ever been “down and out?” If you have, you’re not alone. There have been lots of others who’ve been “down and out” right there with us. See if you can tell me who they are.
Here’s the first one--he dropped out of high school when he was sixteen to enlist in the army. But they kicked him out because he was too young. When he was eighteen, he started to draw political caricatures, but his editor fired him because, he said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” So he worked at a bank until he knew it just wasn’t for him.
So he started his own company, something called, “Laugh-O-Gram Corporation.” But that didn’t go so well either. He was so poor, he ate dog food, and could never pay his rent. He went bankrupt five times.
He did manage, however, to create a cartoon character called, “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.” But when Universal Studios bought it out from under him, he was out on the street again.
That’s when he pitched his idea for a mouse. But his bosses said it would never work--a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women.
But it was a good thing he stuck to it, for eventually he won twenty-six Academy Awards and fifty-nine nominations--more than anyone else in history!
Who is he? Walt Disney, of course.
Let’s try another one--as soon as she graduated from college, she taught English in Portugal, then fell in love and married. But a few years later, he left her and their baby daughter, whom she now had to raise all alone. In her depression, she considered herself a complete failure. She was, in her words, “jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.” She even contemplated suicide.
But she did have an idea for a book. And after writing a few chapters, she sent it to one publisher (who rejected it), then another (who rejected it). Finally, on her thirteenth try (!), an editor’s eight-year-old daughter read it, loved it, and asked to read some more. So he agreed to publish it on one condition--that she keep her day job, because she wouldn’t likely make any money writing children’s books.
Today, she’s worth right around $1 billion.
Who is she? J.K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter!
And just one more--when he was seven, he nearly drowned. Good thing a friend was there to save him! He lost his mother when he was nine, and his fiancee and sister when he was twenty-six. He suffered from malaria, syphilis, and smallpox. He even got kicked in the head by a horse.
When he was twenty-one, he failed in business. So he started another business on borrowed money, but was bankrupt within a year.
So he tried his hand at politics. But that didn’t go so well either. In his 20s, 30s, and 40s, he lost his bids to become speaker of the state legislature, a member of the House of Representatives and United States Senate, and even Vice-President.
Who was he? Abraham Lincoln!
All of them--Walt Disney, J.K. Rowling, and Abraham Lincoln knew all too well what it was like to be “down and out.”
So it was for a woman in the words of I Kings chapter 17. Please turn with me in your Bible to page 379, as I read the words of our text. I’ll start at chapter 17, verse 8, where it says, “The Widow of Zarephath.”
“Then the word of the Lord came to him, ‘Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ So he arose and went to Zarephath.”
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
If you know anything about this story, you know that the Lord had punished the land of Israel with a drought and a famine for a little over three years. As the prophet Elijah said in chapter 17, verse 1: “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” Then off he went to hide by the brook Cherith, east of the Jordan river.
And who cared for him while he was there? Verse 6: “And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.”
But as it says in verse 7: “After a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.”
So now, where would he go and what would he do?
That’s when the Lord, again, revealed His plan--verse 9: “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there.”
So where’s Zarephath? It’s really kind of funny if you think about it. You see, who was currently the queen of Israel? A really wicked woman named Jezebel. And where was she from? You guessed it--Zarephath. In fact, her father was the king of Sidon, and Zarephath was their hometown.
Even more, it was up the coast, just outside of Israel, somewhere between Tyre and Sidon--Phoenician country. Baal central.
It was the last place anyone would ever expect God’s prophet to be! Yet it was there that the Lord told him to go.
And who would provide for him while he was there? Verse 9: “Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”
And that too, is a little funny if you think about it. Not just any woman. The Lord said a widow woman.
You know what she could have said? She could have said, “Look Elijah, I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but look at me. I’m a widow. I’ve got nothing. I can’t feed you. I can barely feed myself and my son. In fact, I’m making our last meal right now and, in just a few days, we’ll probably die of starvation. So why don’t you just run along and find someone else?”
And just think--she had already seen her husband die, and now, she watched, helplessly, as everything else around her died. The grass dried up, the trees dropped their leaves, and the cows and the goats were gaunt skeletons. Every day she scanned the wide, blue sky, hoping for just a hint of cloud or rain.
And every day, for the past year, she had rationed her flour and oil in an attempt to make it stretch to the end of the drought. And now, she would eat one last time.
Even Elijah must have wondered. Why bother this poor widow woman? Why not find some wealthy landowner or prince?
But isn’t that just the way God is? That’s what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and what is weak in this world to shame the strong. He chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him.”
Think about it--when He wanted to kill a giant, he sent David, a shepherd boy, with a sling and a stone. When He wanted to lead His people out of Egypt, He sent an eighty-year-old man named Moses, with nothing but a stick in his hand. And when He wanted to feed thousands, He sent a little boy with a five-loaf, two-fish lunch.
Little is great in God’s hands.
Let’s look again at the text. Verse 10: “So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.’ And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’ And she said, ‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.’ And Elijah said to her, ‘Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.”’
And what did she do? What would you do? Verse 15: “And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that He spoke by Elijah.”
Every day, she looked into her almost empty bowl and her nearly empty jar, and asked God to be faithful for one more day. And what happened? God was faithful, just as He said.
So what does all this mean to teach us?
It’s been said that it’s easy to praise God when you’ve got money in the bank, when the boss just gave you a raise, and when your marriage and your children are doing just fine. But if all you’ve got is a “God of the good times,” then you don’t have the God of the Bible, and neither do you have a faith that’ll see you through.
What will you do when the boss says you’re fired, when you run out of money, and when your doctor says, “There’s nothing more we can do”?
While every one of us might prefer to live with a full barrel, sometimes God lets the barrel run out.
Why? To keep us humble, to make us rely on Him. First, He sends us to Dry Brook University, then He enrolls us in Empty-Barrel Graduate School. And He does it to make us stronger, so that someday we can say, just like Elijah and that widow woman once said, “God will take care of me.”
One more thing--you have to look pretty close or you’ll probably miss it. Did you catch what that woman said in verse 12? Let me read it again: “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
Did you catch it? She said: “And now I am gathering a couple of sticks.”
You know what God did when He once gathered a couple of sticks? He took one, then laid it on the other, then He laid His Son on top of both of them. And there He suffered and died for all the sins of all the world.
Put two sticks in the hands of a widow, and she could make a meal.
Put two sticks in the hands of God, and He can save the world.
All thanks be to God!
We thank You, dear Father, for the miracle You showed in the life of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Help even us, every day, to put our hope and trust in You, for Jesus’ sake. Amen