God Who Sends Us Into Incomprehensible Situations

(1 Kings 17:8–24)

1. Why did God tell the prophet Elijah—who had boldly declared to Israel’s wicked king Ahab, “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”—to “leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan” (1 Kgs 17:1–3)?

a. Why would God tell Elijah to hide at the Kerith Ravine even though He knew that without rain or dew, the brook would surely dry up (v. 7)?

(1) Why does God sometimes tell us who boldly proclaim His word to hide? Shouldn’t we keep proclaiming it courageously?

(2) Why does God allow us to experience dryness instead of refreshing showers?

2. When the brook eventually dried up “because there had been no rain in the land” (v. 7), why did God then tell Elijah, “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there” (vv. 8–9)?

a. Why did God not lead Elijah to a hiding place within Israel but instead send him to Zarephath in Sidon—a foreign land, the homeland of Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, whose father was “Ethbaal king of the Sidonians” (the name “Ethbaal” meaning “with Baal”)? This was a land given to Baal worship, and God knew it.

(1) Why does God sometimes deliver us from a place like the drying Kerith brook (v. 7), only to lead us into what appears to be an even worse situation—like Sidon?

(2) Why does God sometimes command us to go to places we would rather not go?

3. In Zarephath of Sidon (v. 9), why did God choose, out of all the people, a widow who was preparing a last meal for herself and her son before dying of starvation (v. 12) to supply Elijah with food?

a. Why didn’t God choose a widow with some financial means, who could have provided not only food but also other necessities? Instead, He commanded this impoverished widow, who confessed she had only “a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug” (v. 12), to feed Elijah. God surely knew she was at the point of despair.

(1) Why does God sometimes send us from poverty into even deeper poverty?

(2) Why does God sometimes send us to those who appear most helpless and destitute?

4. Why did God allow the widow’s flour and oil to be miraculously sustained so that she and her son could live for many days (v. 15), only to later permit her son to become sick and die (v. 17)?

a. Would it not have been better to let them eat their last meal and die together, rather than extend their lives only for the son to fall ill and perish? God surely knew the widow would blame Elijah (v. 18).

(1) Why does God sometimes rescue our loved ones from death, only to later allow them to suffer long illnesses and eventually die?

(2) Why does God allow calamity to come upon those who already suffer? (v. 20)

5. Our God is the One who sends us from the Kerith Ravine to Sidon.

a. Our God is the One who sends us from Sidon to the widow of Zarephath.

(1) God caused the widow who obeyed Elijah’s word to supply the prophet who obeyed God’s word.

(a) Elijah believed the promise of the Lord: “The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land” (v. 14), and the widow also believed the word of God that came through Elijah (v. 24).

(i) Therefore, just as the Lord had spoken through Elijah, the jar of flour was not used up, and the jug of oil did not run dry (v. 16). They all ate for many days (v. 15).

6. Our God is the One who delivers us from one crisis, yet permits us to face an even greater crisis.

a. God saved the widow and her son from starvation, but later allowed the son to fall ill and die.

(1) The purpose was to reveal the Lord as the resurrection and the life, for He heard Elijah’s cry and restored the boy’s life.

(a) God’s purpose in raising the boy was to revive not only his body but also the widow’s deadened soul—to bring her salvation.

(i) And so that she might confess: “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth” (v. 24; cf. 18:36).