Good Monday to you my ‘Walking with Jesus” friends,
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “from bad to worse”. Perhaps you’ve watched it happen in a relationship or a business or the moral implosion of a nation. Let’s go back to Israel in about 870bc and let’s look closely at how the ‘northern kingdom’ Israel, under the leadership of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, ‘went from bad to worse’.
The closing Biblical line of our study yesterday said “Ahab did more to arouse the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.” (1 Kings 16:33) Now that is a remarkable leadership legacy isn’t it my friends? As you and I both know people respond to the leadership culture their leaders shape and it appears evil was flourishing under King Ahab.
Perhaps you remember the first major city of conquest for Joshua and the Israelites leaving behind their 40 years in the desert was the city of Jericho. (Joshua 6) When the demolition of Jericho was complete, in about the year 1405bc Joshua made a bold proclamation over the ruins: “Cursed before the LORD is the person who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho…” (Joshua 6:26)
Now, 535 years later, under Ahab’s evil leadership, a man named Hiel dedicated his life to rebuilding Jericho! Mr. Hiel was of the town of Bethel where Jeroboam had placed one of those golden calf idols, remember? (1 Kings 12:28-30) I would imagine Mr. Hiel and King Ahab both knew about Joshua’s warning 5 centuries before, but evidently both men ignored it! Ignoring warnings has a price to pay, especially when the warning is from God?
Look at what the record says was the price Mr. Hiel paid for starting the rebuild of Jericho: “He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and Hiel set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, in accordance with the word of the LORD spoken by Joshua son of Nun.” (1 Kings 16:34)
Life in Israel was going from bad to worse under the evil leadership of King Ahab and God responded with something that made things even worse! 1 Kings 17 is the remarkable story of Elijah the great prophet of God who was sent by God to Ahab to tell him God was going to close up the heavens so the cloudless skies would bring no dew or rain for a very long time! The way Elijah said it was this: “As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word!” (1 Kings 17:1)
Now that does NOT mean God gave Elijah authority over the climate and Elijah could decide when it would rain and simply speak the word and water would start falling from heaven. Oh no! Elijah was God’s spokesman and his role was simply communicating to Ahab what God was about to do, in this case, God was sending a drought! Israel, especially in the summer, can be blistering heat and high humidity, the kind of climate that causes you to keep a water bottle handy at all times, especially if you are outside in the blazing sunshine.
It should not be difficult for us to place ourselves in the blazing sun in Israel in 870bc! Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to hear that God is so angry with the evil of Ahab and the people of Israel, that God is cutting off every drop of rain and dew? What would you have done?
Word came to Elijah from God that he was to pack up and leave his town of Tishbe and go east, across the Jordan River and hide in the Kerith Ravine, for surely Ahab would be sending soldiers to search for Elijah as the drought swept over the land of Israel. God’s word to Elijah was quite remarkable: “You will drink from the brook and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there!” (1 Kings 17:4) No matter how you try to embellish or even glamorize that picture, it’s ugly. Can you see old Elijah laying on his belly on the hot ground with his face near the little trickle of water, scooping up handfuls of precious water into his mouth and wetting his face in this heat? Perhaps he found a cave in the rocks to escape the blistering sun. And then once or twice a day screeching ravens would fly in and drop food from their beaks onto the hot rocks by the brook.
Here’s something I found when researching ravens: they are ‘omnivorous scavengers’ preferring wilderness areas. Their diet is normally insects, small animals, grains, some fruits and human food scraps if they can find them. Now considering that, what should we suppose these ravens brought Elijah to eat each day? The Biblical record says: “The ravens brought Elijah bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.” (1 Kings 17:6)
So that tells me these ravens swooped down and snatched bread right out of someone’s hand or off the table or even right off the fire in nearby villages and brought it to Elijah. My guess is Elijah’s diet was very limited and he must have wrestled with being content with God’s provision: living in a cave to escape the heat, drinking from a drying up brook, and eating whatever birds brought him!
Have you discovered, my friends, that if you’re going to respond to God when He calls you into involvement with Him and His plans and purposes in our world, it may be a stretching time, a lean time, a very challenging time as you rely entirely upon God for His provision and daily guidance? That is exactly what Elijah was now living every day as the blazing heat dried up Israel and he watched the trickle of the brook dry up.
Tomorrow we’ll see what God did for Elijah next, but for today, I urge us to give serious thought to the price of joining with God as He accomplishes His purposes in our world! Are you living that or are you watching others live it, or have you resisted or maybe even rejected God’s invitations for your involvement with Him in what He’s doing in our world?
I found a worship song to help us consider the challenges involved in partnering with God as God involves you in what He’s doing, and I’ll meet you right back here tomorrow…
Today’s Scripture: 1 Kings 17:1-6.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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