Theon Hill | Finding Hope in Unhopeful Times: 1 Kings 17:8-24 (3/15/2017)

what's good Wheaton College how are y'all today it is truly a blessing to be with you all this morning I would like to speak to you on the subject of finding a hope in on hopeful times finding hope in unhoped 'full times my inspiration for this title comes from one of my favorite authors w eb des bois at the beginning of the 20th century America was not a very hopeful place for several groups children took to the streets of the nation's urban centers to protest the exploitation of child labor strange fruit as Billy Holladay would later sing swung from the trees as powerful symbols of domestic terrorism arising from frequent lynchings in the south and observers all around the globe watched with apprehension as tensions between nations began to escalate and what would ultimately become the first world war against this backdrop Du Bois welcomed a child into the world his thoughts on his son's birth are noteworthy for the ways in which they acknowledge tragedy without succumbing to despair he said my son was born to a hope not hopeless but on hopeful it's as if he's saying life is not completely hopeless but as I look at this world I find very little reason to have any hope regardless of where you sit this morning on the spectrum from blind optimism to total despair all of us if we follow Christ at some point will face the challenge of holding on to hope in the midst of on hopeful times Paul tells us that all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution it may not be day but at some point whether due to individual or societal causes God's child is going to be forced to Russell with the often tragic nature of life God's child would be tempted to echo the words of Jeremiah and lamentations when he said my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord in many ways the tension between hope and despair is the story of the Christian life the late preacher SM Lockridge reminds us so eloquently that we cannot get to the triumph of Resurrection Sunday until we pass through the tragedy and despair of crucifixion Friday the question is not if but when we're gonna face tragedy so this morning during the few minutes that we have together I want us to consider what it looks like to hope in the midst of on hopeful times if you're not already there please turn with me in your Bibles the first Kings chapter 17 verses 8 through 24 if you consider this chapter within the broader context the first Kings the chapter seems to disrupt the flow of the book in the chapters immediately preceding 17 the writer summarizes the reigns of the Kings in the Northern Kingdom and southern kingdom of Israel to trace the spiritual decline of the nation this decline reached its zenith in the northern kingdom during the reign of King Ahab interestingly his reign also marked a period of economic prosperity for the Northern Kingdom due in part to an alliance that he that his father made with the Phoenicians which explains why they have married if the Phoenician princess Jezebel if first King 17 were a movie it would probably be Star Wars rogue one it's not necessarily part of the main storyline of the book but it provides crucial information required to understand what follows you see in this period marked by economic prosperity and spiritual infidelity this brother named Elijah hits the scene and he ain't playing at the beginning of the chapter he boldly confronts King Ahab and tells him that because of Israel's spiritual infidelity there would be no more rain for three years except by Elijah's command I understand with an agrarian society like Israel a multi-year drought would be devastating as you might imagine Elijah is immediately branded as an enemy of the state a hab initiate a regional manhunt that crossed several countries in search of Elijah whom he referred to as the trebler of Israel so now this brothers on the run and he goes and lives not in a van but in a tent down by the river one thing that's consistent throughout the life of Elijah is that God consistently protected him he lives by the river and instead of the him feet in the birds God commanded the birds to feed him but over time the severity of the drought increased to the point that the river dried up so God told him to head north to a community named Zarephath where a widow had been instructed to feed him so he arrives to Zarephath looking for a meal and finds a widow facing some unhoped-for times upon seeing her he looks and asks you know miss would you mind giving me a cup of water as she's walking to get this water he makes one request he's like oh and can you give me a sandwich as well while you're at it her response in verse 12 reveals the depths of her suffering she says as the Lord your God lives now let's just understand this is the Bible's Way of saying real talk so she's like real talk I ain't got nothing baked I got a handful of flour and a little bit of oil in a jug and now I'm gathering a couple of sticks then I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son that we may eat and die you see this is to live in a food desert she didn't have any more food stamps she didn't have any family members or friends who could help her she had run out of employment opportunities so now her plan was to eat a final meal with her son whom she loved before they both died of starvation she faced a situation that was not hopeless but unhoped 'fl then Elijah said something that would forever change her life in verse 13 he says 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 a thuh says the Lord the God of Israel the jar of flour shall not be spent and the jug of oil shall not be empty empty until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth now if you look at this how does his brother respond he's like yeah here your situation but go make me something first now if you're just looking on this in the surface level it's tempting to read Elijah's response it's somewhat insensitive is like brother did you hear she's starving like she ain't got no food left there's no Mariano's Trader Joe's Whole Foods but I get some groceries she ain't got nothing but he wasn't being insensitive you've read the text closely rather he's providing a context for the woman's faith to be rewarded her faithful obedience to the word of the Lord saved her life now there's several interesting things going on here beneath the surface of this part of the story first you have to note the location of the narrative God calls Elijah to leave Israel and journey about 80 miles to Zarephath now we have to ask themselves who was the only person on earth who hated Elijah more than a hab a Habs wife Jezebel so let's just think about this God calls Elijah to leave his hometown and go to the hometown of his greatest enemy who was trying to kill him let's just like this would be like an individual fleeing political persecution in his or her own own country and going to North Korea to escape tyranny it doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a human standpoint why does God call Elijah to go to Zarephath well there's multiple reasons that we could suggest but I think one of the reasons why God calls him here is to demonstrate his power to be a protect his own see God's power to protect us is not limited by our societal conditions it's kind of like what David writes in Psalm 23 when he says you prepare a table before me in the presence of mine enemies God took Elijah to a place where you'd expect him to be most vulnerable and he told him make yourself at home I got your back but it's not just the location that speaks to God's power it's also the method that he chooses of preserving the life of Elijah and this Widow and her son when you consider this narrative have you ever thought about why God chose to provide food from in this manner saying the jars not gonna run out and neither is the oil gonna empty I mean if you think about the various ways God could have provided he could have given this woman advance notice that a time of famine was coming so she might have pulled something like Joseph and stored up food for it he could have pulled something similar to when Jesus fed the 5,000 it just had a food coming out everywhere but God chose her to chose to leave her with just enough food day by day in the same manner that he provided the children of Israel manna day by day in the wilderness in some ways the decision to provide food to the widow and her son this way anticipates the showdown that Elijah would eventually have with the profits of bail on Mount Carmel you see bail happened to be the choice of the God of choice and Phoenicia and bails popularity in Israel was rising at this time Bale was the God who was associated with fertility and with rain/storms in a time of a drought yet Bale could do nothing to alleviate the suffering of his people during this horrible drought when you consider this it's almost as if God is saying look at y'all the rain stops and neither your governments nor your God can do anything for you but I can be the most vulnerable members of your society merely by the words of my mouth he feeds them day by day why so that no one will forget the source you see God's power supersedes nature and all other Authority human or divine we would really like for this story to end here you know we got a nice story you know everybody's got food we're eating again and everything's great we'd like to think of it like the poor Widow finally caught a break and now everything will be okay unfortunately tragedy stuck again in the form of an illness that took her son's life if you think of the tragedy that she experienced think about this have you ever felt like God is just out to get you you know you're you're trying so hard but as you look at your life you just wonder like why God why God are you so upset with me what did I do to deserve all of this you can hear the woman's heart ache in her confrontation of Elijah in verse 18 she says what have you against me o man of God you have come to wring my sin to remind me of my sin to cause the death of my son her heartache came to life for me this past December when my wife told me on the 27th those two magic words I'm pregnant oh yeah we excited little first name redacted he'll is in progress throughout the first trimester I'm hardly slept at all I mean I'm sitting there listening to Will Smith's just the two of us I got jay-z's glory Stevie Wonder's isn't she lovely I mean I was just freaking out for that entire first trimester why because for the first time in my life I felt helpless in a way that I never had before this precious life which is inside of my wife was so vulnerable and there was nothing I could do to protect it the life of that child was in someone else's hands imagine what this woman went through as she saw her son and she saw the life leaving him something that no health care could fix she was already we already know that she's a widow so she's no stranger to grief now God takes away her son - what's interesting is that when strat when tragedy strikes it's very easy for us to lose sight of the goodness of the Lord what did the psalm is saying I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living it is true that God allowed her son to die in this passage but the tragedy blinded her to the fact that had Elijah not come neither her nor her son would have made it this far they would have died a long time ago of starvation in the midst of her agony please pay attention with me to Elijah's response in verse 19 he said to her give me your son and he took him from her arms and carried him up to the upper chamber where he lodged and he laid him on his own Ben he cried to the Lord Oh Lord God have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn by killing her son then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord o my god let this child's life come into him again now let me ask you a question to this point in scripture in first Kings 17 how many people have been raised from the dead 0 we've seen instances where God cured people of terminal diseases like Mariam from her leprosy but we've never seen anyone raised from the dead but surprisingly the Lord listens to Elisha and the child is resurrected on Elisha brings the widow back her son and he says see your son lives and her response to this news is so beautiful in verse 24 she says what now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth I think it's interesting that in one of the darkest moments of this woman's life and the region's history we see one at one of the most radiant displays of God's power you can almost hear the unbridled joy in her voice upon receiving her son back her joy stems from knowing that God God's will runs the show her joy stems from knowing that God's Word is sovereign there's something divinely comforting in knowing that God is in control in the midst of our tragedies I think this is why King David when he was on the run from Absalom declared because your steadfast love is better than life my lips will praise you not only does God's power extend over nature and authority but his power extends over life itself his steadfast love is the sustainer of life so we look at this story and we were forced to question what does this story teach us about being a hopeful in unhoped iams there's two primary things I think we can drop in this passage first living in unhelpful times requires a proper perspective of God's power many of my students have heard me mention this passage in class before but I love Romans chapter 1 verse 16 where Paul says for I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek sometimes we read that passage a little too fast we think yes God saved us but that passage is saying more than just about that God saved us it's saying that God's power is so great that everything that goes even even the lesser needs beyond our salvation God's power is sufficient to overcome this passage tells us that not only is God powerful and accomplish our salvation on the cross but he is powerful enough to go overcome everything we face in the journey between womb and tomb when you fall to your knees and pray do you speak to a God who is powerful enough to answer or is it just a formality before real life begins as we often sang in church and it's chance the rapper reminded us at the Grammys how great is our God we not only need a vision of our God as powerful but we need the imaginative capacities to envision God acting on our behalf Elijah was able to ask God for something that had never happened before because he was able to conceive of a God who was able to deliver this morning my parents are with us and right down here my father is with us and i'ma tell a little story on him asking but I'm gonna do it anyway when I was in junior high my dad had a CD that I absolutely hated he listened to Chicago gospel singer Mahalia Jackson every time the car got on get in the car and I'd hear all of a sudden fresh slow and I here we go again and you know I'm in junior high at the time I don't see when I was in junior high this is the time when like getting jiggy with it by Will Smith it just came out so I had different ideas and what we're about to listen to but I always took for granted the power of what Mahalia Jackson was singing when she sings the spiritual and the gospel songs until I came to a really difficult moment of my life and I thought back on all of the times that I heard Mahalia Jackson sing as we were driving around and I thought of one song in particular I thought of her song a city called heaven this is a song that was sung by the slaves and if you imagine the if you can imagine the reality of American slavery think about living a life where you're constantly subjected to torture rape physical psychological and spiritual abuse where do you muster up the courage to go on with no expectation that it's gonna change it's because you have to learn the ability to imagine something different what she sings about in a city called heaven she says I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow tossed in this wide world alone I have no hope for tomorrow so I've started to make heaven my home you see a vision of heaven gives us the hope to move forward in the midst of tragedy one of the things that we have to learn to do is whenever life seems seems too tough to go on start with heaven and work your way back you see the kind of hope I'm talking about does not require us to stick our head in the sand and pretend like people are not suffering around the world in places like Syria angle appellation Wheaton College this type of hope gives us courage to stare into the face of suffering and understand that God is still on the throne understand the battle for hope in the midst of unhoped will times is not a one-time conflict but one that must be fought anew every time his tragedy strikes our ability to hope is kind of like a paycheck many times we is one paycheck away from financial ruin in the same way we are often one tragedy away from spiritual ruin we must constantly seek hope anew we see this a couple chapters later with Elijah from the triumph of this and his conquering of the prophets of bale following that episode he is in complete despair he's had such great experience at serving the Lord but he feels like he has nothing to show for it he screams at the Lord I'm giving you the Theon hill version I've been hustling for you I've been speaking truth to power I've been faithful to your word but all I had to show for it are threats against my life and the fact that I'm the only one who survived to the purge of your people what does God tell Elijah you don't know my planning you don't know who I got on my team ultimately what this passage teaches us is that God's power supersedes our vulnerability God's power supersedes our vulnerability as I close this morning I just want to draw your attention to one place in scripture where we see this this truth come out um in particularly poignant fashion one of my favorite books is the book of Habakkuk I like a bakit because I'm a rhetorician and we like to talk about arguing and the book of a backache is literally a three chapter argument with God and he's like hold up you saying we're so bad but you're picking the nation worse than us to judge us that don't seem cool and so he goes back and forth and in Chapter one he's presenting his case and Chapter two God is like hey hey hey I'm on the throne you need to fall back Chapter three seems like a bad Cook has learned his place and his conclusion to the book teaches us all what it means to have hope in the midst of unhelpful times he says in verses 17 through 19 though the fig tree should not blossom nor fruit be on the vines the produce of the olive fail and all the fields yield no food the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd of the stalls this is where it gets beautiful yet will I rejoice in the Lord I will joy in the God of my salvation God the Lord is my strength he makes my feet like the deers and it makes me tread on my high places our ability to recognize the power of God and imagine that power at work in our lives gives us the ability to have hope in the midst of on hopeful times let's pray dear Heavenly Father there are so many needs in this room that I cannot begin to fathom the Lord I know that you recognize each one of them Lord I know that you know the hairs on each one of our heads so Lord what I would ask tonight or this morning Lord is that you would give each of us a renewed vision of your power that you would allow us to have the imaginative capacities to understand the fact that you were always working on behalf of your own that we would have the imaginative capabilities that allow the children Bierzo to make of that walk through the Red Sea that allowed them to march through march around the walls of Jericho and gave Daniel confidence when he was in the Lions Den may our hope be a light to those who are languishing without hope and may we become an encouragement to our brothers and sisters as a result in Jesus name we pray go in peace [Applause]

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Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2017