Elijah and the Widow at Zarephath
Passage: I Kings 17:8-16
Remember where we are and what is going on. Israel is under the Baal worshipping King and Queen, Ahab and Jezebel. The politics of the nation has been corrupted to the core.
“Truth is on the scaffold, Wrong is on the throne.”
Psalm 11:3 “When the foundations are being destroyed what can the righteous do?” God raised up Elijah to be a prophet in the most desperately wicked time of Israel’s history.
On an earthly level Israel is in the midst of a serious drought and famine. Elijah declared there would be no dew or rain in the land. But nothing ever happens in our world at just an earthly level. There is always more going on behind the scenes, that doesn’t meet the eye.
I have urged you before to cultivate the spiritual discipline of seeing the hand of God in everything that is happening in the world and in everything that is happening in our own lives. God is never absent, He is always present and active and doing His will for His glory.
On a spiritual level Israel is in the middle of a God-war, a battle of cosmic proportions and implications. Yahweh has intentionally picked a fight with Baal.
Baal is the storm god, god of clouds and rain and floods, the god of fertility and fruitfulness. He is the agriculture god, the god of all things related to crops and harvests. If Whatcom county was back in those days, there is no question we would be worshipping Baal and his goddess wife Asherah. Our very livelihood would depend on us keeping Baal happy, even at the cost of a firstborn son or a daughter or two.
God suddenly stops the dew and the rain, and now He waits for Baal’s counter move. The brook Cherith runs dry and He still waits for Baal’s counter move.
Now the drama deepens, the tension builds, things go from bad to worse to terrible. The story moves from Cherith ravine east of the Jordan, to a hundred miles west to Zarephath.