40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 17:1-24 (Episode 314)

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Elijah is hunted but cared for by God by ravens. He is then sent to live with a widow and her son who are on the brink of starvation. God miraculously provides for the three of them day by day. And for the first time in scripture, we see someone raised from the dead. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, check out all the other things that 1517 does. We do events. We got endless amounts of articles. We got videos from past events. There's preaching helps.

There's all kinds of things for you to enjoy over at 1517.org. So please do that. Also, we haven't talked about this. I mean, however it is that you have run into this podcast, maybe you've run into it on the Bible app or you saw a link on social media and you clicked on it, hey, we do this every week, so go ahead and subscribe to the podcast so you can just get it dropped right into your iTunes or whatever, whichever vehicle you use to listen to podcasts.

We're on all of them, so go ahead and subscribe. And if you like the podcast, give it that five-star review and maybe drop a couple words about it. That does help us in the visibility. chad we are recording this uh right before the regional event in northwest arkansas but by the time it comes out the regional event in arkansas will have just ended i'll bet we had a great time i think we do yeah i'm looking forward to it yeah what is like two days away three days away yeah yeah that's right so it's gonna be on the horizon it's gonna be great uh for those uh who listen

to this podcast that are gonna be at the event thanks for coming i'm sure we had a blast uh if we didn't then i don't know what to edit this but i just can't imagine we have we not have we not had a blast at an event yet no that has never happened and i don't think it will ever happen it's always always fun it's gonna be good so all right well we uh we ended in chapter 17 just barely got into it at first kings and we got introduced just briefly just we just got a little taste of a guy named Elijah. And man, this was a good respite from all of these kings that have weird names, and some reign for a long time, some reign for not long, and they die, or they get murdered, or they murder someone else. And now we get a guy, it almost seems like God

at this point has decided that he is going to have a sort of capital P prophet again, right so god is like i'm going to put my words in someone's mouth this isn't just like a seer this isn't just like a man of god elijah is a different kind of guy we haven't kind of had a an elijah since maybe samuel like a big capital p prophet this guy's a big deal yeah yeah we didn't talk about this before we started recording but that was like a perfect segue into what i was thinking well i was thinking too uh because elijah is uh elijah and elisha are kind of the the next moses joshua duo we could think of them that way so you've had so far you've had uh two major prophets you had moses then you had samuel and like you said it's been a while since we've had

samuel so now along comes elijah and we'll point this out a number of times as we go through this story but elijah is very much a moses kind of character i mean they both come at critical junctures right now moses comes of course when israel is in bondage in egypt elijah comes when israel is in bondage to idolatry on her own soil and there'll be a number of connections parallels between elijah and moses and we'll point out as we go through here but then notice what happens after elijah he passes on his authority to elisha and where does that happen happens the jordan river kind of the same thing then that we see happening with with moses and joshua moses dies and who leads israel across the jordan river joshua does and then i would argue just to kind

of get the big picture here fast forward to the ministry of jesus and you see the same thing happening again you have john the baptist who comes in the spirit and power of elijah and then he passes on his authority he decreases we might say to allow the new and better elijah christ to to come on the scene yeah yeah i mean that those and that's at the jordan river of course as well um so yes so yeah you have all that and also i mean the thing about a lot elijah is You have a lot of prophets. You're talking about, hey, Moses is sort of probably more famous in people's minds than Elijah is. There's other prophets.

You have Isaiah is a big deal, and Jeremiah is a big deal, and there's some big prophets. But when it comes down to it, you can kind of go to the Mount of Transfiguration to know this is the case. Moses is the representative in all of human history of the law. Is he a prophet? He is. But what does he represent? He represents the law. Elijah is whom God has selected to represent the prophet. So in a lot of ways, because of what we see at the Transfiguration, you can, I think, safely say that Elijah is the premier prophet. I mean, there's John the Baptist, who's a different kind of prophet, and he comes in the spirit of Elijah. But there's a reason he

doesn't come in the spirit of moses or elijah or jeremiah or isaiah it's because elijah in in god's mind is the prophet yeah yeah so on the mind of transfiguration you've got i mean moses is basically synonymous with the torah right like they'll even talk about you you read from moses so even though it was beginning to change into a three-part division pretty much still by the time of the first century the old testament what we call the old testament was thought of as the the torah and the prophets so there you have the torah embodied in moses and there you have the prophets embodied in in elijah so yeah this is that's that's a perfect transition then to from from moses joshua to elijah elijah then to finally into john and to to christ so you can see how

throughout history god has been using these pairs in order to show the preparation and then the fulfillment of something so moses prepares the people to enter the promised land josh leads the cross elijah prepares the people for this repentance which then elijah carries on and then same thing happens with with john as he prepares the way for christ so that's the big kind of the big picture thing to keep in mind as we work our way through this and he made this is these guys are colorful i mean elijah is has got some we're going to see that in this chapter and then especially most famously in the chapter that follows this where you have the great theological duel happening between the prophets of Baal and the one prophet of Yahweh on Mount Carmel.

So we'll get to that, of course, probably in the next episode. But this one, this chapter we're in, which is 1 Kings 17, is fascinating on a number of different levels, both because of what happens explicitly and because of what is communicated implicitly. The implicit part is how this whole chapter is basically a theological diatribe, you might say, against Baal theology, Canaanite theology in general. And I'll point that out as we work our way through it. But kind of between the lines, you might say, this is the biblical author pointing out the ineptitude, the unreality, we might say, of Baal and other Canaanite deities. So we, like you said, we covered this first verse, elijah the despite says to ahab who is the king of the northern kingdom at this time

as the lord the god of israel lives before whom i stand there shall be neither do nor reign these years except by my word and i think i pointed this out at the end of the last episode that baal uh that most popular of canaanite deities is the god of the sky god of the clouds the god of weather the god of rain so this is the first of these uh attacks upon the reality and the power of the idol baal so you think that this god has control over this well here's a man the prophet of yahweh saying except by my word there's no dew there's no rain that's going to fall until i say so so it's not even like a god versus god it's the man of god elijah versus this false god in this particular case.

You know what's interesting about Elijah, too, as we just are introduced to him? He seemingly comes out of nowhere. With Samuel, you're introduced to his mother, and then you got him born, he's a child and stuff. Elijah pops in out of nowhere. You've not heard of him. He's not been referenced.

All of a sudden, Elijah shows up with the word of God in his mouth. And I like that because this is something that's cool about Elijah that makes him different. is he pops in out of nowhere and he is gone out of nowhere like i mean i mean that's just that's sort of how he is like one minute he's there and then one minute he won't be there yeah that is true that is true yeah it's samuel yeah we know all about his his uh his youth same with moses we both know them as babies we know but we hear about their death yeah we hear about their death as well but uh not elijah yeah he just pops on the scene and the next thing you know he's like

Going up in the clouds in a fiery chariot. That does make him a little different, doesn't it? He's a very different kind of guy. So that's the situation we're introduced to in verse 1. Verse 2 says, The word of the Lord came to him and says, Leave, depart from here, turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Kareth, which is east of the Jordan.

You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. so he went did according to the word of the lord he went and lived by the brook kareth which is east of the jordan and the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook and after a while the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land so first of all i i take an issue with the translation this is brook i don't know about most of the listeners here but when i think of a brook sounds like such a poetic word i'm gonna go i'm gonna you know have a little picnic by the the brook with the gently rolling waters it sounds so english it sounds so english i mean i don't know about you but by english

by english i'm talking about i don't mean american i mean like it sounds like a jane austen novel it does sound like a jane austen word i don't think i've ever used brook in like a casual conversation yeah my son and i were down by the brook the other day not unless i'm not unless someone have a picnic we'll go to the brook we'll cross the little wooden bridge and we'll spread out the the blanket and have some tea ravens feeding you bread and meat out of their beaks doesn't fit with brook very well in my mind well it's it's it's a little misleading too so so the hebrew word here is nahal and you kind of you basically have two different words for uh bodies not bodies of water, but like river streams in the Old Testament. Nahar is a river. That's

typically what we think of as a regular river. Now, Nahal is usually translated as a wadi. And a wadi is basically a place where water flows, often violently, when you have rain. But most of the time, it's just dried up. So if you drive around Israel, you look around, you see wadi it's all over the place it's you if a rainstorm thunderstorm came they'd be full of water but it's not like there's water in them all the time so that's what we're that's what we're talking about here it's not a spring it's not a spring yeah this is a place where most of the time if there's any water there it's right after it rains the rest of time is dried up well trad you and i both live in the relative south you live in the further south than i do but

But still, all over the place where I live, and I'm sure where you live, there's creeks. So we would call these creeks, or crick, depending on how long you live here. And you know this. I grew up running around playing in creeks. And in the summer, sometimes there's no water in them at all. So people collect stones from creek beds and stuff like that because half the time, there's nothing in them. But if you get a big, huge series of thunderstorms, sometimes those things are raging. I mean, so much so that they'd be dangerous, you know?

Yeah. Or you'll cross these low-water bridges, and sometimes you're wondering, why is there a bridge here at all? Because there's nothing there. But sometimes that thing is really moving. Because when it rains, you need that bridge. And that's what it seems. It seems like it's something like that. Yeah, these are like southern creeks, basically.

Yeah. Not a brook. and then uh the name itself uh kareth kind of interestingly it's that is from the the hebrew root karat which means to cut or cut off and it's the same verb by the way that's used in the very next chapter where jezebel the wife ahab the the queen was cutting off all the prophets of yahweh it's possibly a play on words here so the prophet of god so that he's not cut off by jezebel hides He flees to this brook, which is east of the Jordan, kind of in no man's land. In fact, one scholar calls it Wadi Boondocks.

This is like out in the middle of nowhere. So he's there, and God provides him with water from this wadi. And then this is fascinating to me, why he would, of all birds, command the ravens to feed him. the reason it's fascinating to me is because ravens are an unclean unclean species so if you go back to leviticus and you look at you know the very list various list of clean unclean animals ravens are unclean birds so we have unclean birds that are bringing food not just that they're unclean but they're bringing actual food that elijah is to eat while he's east of the jordan i might be wrong about this but i think ravens are one of our scavenger right yeah yeah so that

That makes you wonder where they're getting this food. It's an unpleasant image. I guess you better be hungry if the ravens are bringing food to eat. It's an unpleasant image. This might be a stretch, but I was thinking, you don't hear a lot about ravens in the Old Testament, but the big story where you do hear about them is at the flood, of course, where Noah releases a raven.

And so in that way, they're sort of a symbol of judgment. And that could be implicit here. I don't know. Maybe that's a stretch. but whatever the reason might be that's who god commands to feed elijah and they bring him uh bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening and he drinks from the book so i see this as so you got you got elijah who is not just a private individual elijah is of course a prophet and he's kind of the representative of the the remnant we might say, the faithful remnant. So what's God doing for this man who represents the faithful remnant of

Israel? He's taking him on the other side, on the eastern side of the Jordan, same place that Israel was before they ended their 40 years of exile, and he's taking care of him. He's feeding him, and he's providing drink for him, just like he did for Israel. He provided bread for them, the manna he provided meat for them the quail and he provided water for them from the rock so you have introduced here kind of these these exodus themes which again connects us back between elijah and moses so if you look at this story not in isolation but in the bigger picture god is doing for elijah what he did for moses for israel before and this is fine for a while but as verse 7 tells us after a while, the creek, the wadi, dried up because there was no rain in the land. So we've

learned so far that God is able to provide bread and water and meat for this prophet in a time of need. And the question that's going to keep arising in the rest of this chapter is, are there any boundaries that God is not willing or able to cross to provide for his people? that's kind of the the the question that keeps surfacing here so he's able to do this for elijah now we're going to find out if he's going to do the same in the region of tyre and sidon that's where we transition to next so verse 8 the word of the lord came to him and said arise go to zarephath which belongs to sidon and dwell there behold i have commanded a widow there to feed you So he gets up and he goes to this place called Zarephath.

When he comes 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, also bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. She says, now this is fascinating coming from the lips of a Gentile woman, a woman from outside Israel. She says, as Yahweh your God lives, 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 she says, I'm going to gather a couple sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son that we may eat it and die. So she thinks this is basically their last meal. Elijah says to her, don't fear.

Go and do as you have said, but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me. And afterward, afterward, make something for yourself and your son. And then he has this line. 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. So she did that. She did, as Elijah said. And then she and her household ate for many days and the jar of flour is not spent. This is a famous line, of course.

The jar of flour is not spent. Neither did the jug of oil become empty. according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. So this is a great story because, well, for lots of different reasons, but the most obvious is that God takes Elijah from where he was, and where does he send him? He sends him straight into the territory of Jezebel herself. This is where she comes from.

So she's a Sidonian princess. She's from Sidon, and there they worship Baal. They worship Assyrus. They worship the Canaanite pantheon. And that's exactly where God sends Elijah, right into her backyard, into enemy territory. There's a couple of things that sort of jump out in this story. One is that you can tell that the famine is having an effect. The creek is dried up, and then he goes and he's dealing with his widow.

Why don't you have any flour? Well, because nothing's growing. You have no wheat, no nothing. and people are beginning to feel the effects of the word that Elijah had spoken, which is that it wasn't going to rain. So you have to assume that some time has passed. It takes a minute for a drought to have these kind of ramifications. Two, he's run across, obviously, a woman of faith who, when he comes and says,

hey, give me a little something to eat, she makes the statement, as the Lord your God lives. Yeah, what a confession. and that is in contrast to I'm going to go die yeah yes right right and Elijah gets to do this thing where he says

now because you believe in this God who lives he's actually sent me here so that you may not die here's what you're going to do woman of faith you're going to make me a cake first this is a bold move yeah

very bold move yeah comes across first of all it's selfish right yeah and you're asking this person the prophet first her son's about to die yeah yeah the prophet first and i mean i gotta be honest if it's just me and my kid and this guy randomly shows up and says make me one first i'll be like sorry ma'am uh the first one's going to the kid yeah if there's anything left over i'll give you that but i'm not gonna feed you first yeah and uh but she she believes him and does it and and sure enough that you have this sort of and this is such a uh a jesus-like miracle right like i mean oh yes you know whether it's you know water into wine or the the feeding of the five thousand or the feeding of the four thousand

you know manna in the wilderness whatever it is like these this is the sort of thing that god does where he's like let me uh just like not have your oil or flour run out and god does such practical miracles because it's not like it's like he doesn't just make bread appear or just make you know just all of a sudden she walked in the living room and there was

the storehouses were full or something walked in the house the storehouse was full it was a miracle no it's just that little bit of oil is just going to always be a little bit of oil that little bit of flour is just going to continue to be a little bit of flour so you just continue living in faith yeah it's a

I think the perfect parallel all of this is the feeding in the four and five thousand you know where what does jesus do well he he works with a little bit and he makes that into much same thing's happening here it remains a little bit but it lasts a long time so it just keeps keeps on giving and of course same thing uh is same parallel exists between okay you have people in need same thing with the widow of course same thing with the people there with jesus in the wilderness and he by means of his word he provides for for their needs and so the same thing's happening here in both these both these cases and uh it's kind of an in your face to the people of israel too because here you have

a gentile woman who's surrounded by bail worship and so she's the one who believes she's the one who confesses faith not not just confesses faith but acts on that faith when elijah tells her to do what she does so you have her doing this and then you have the king of israel the top guy in israel and what's he doing well he's the exact opposite he is bringing the worship of baal he's he's polluting the land he's he and his wife are persecuting and killing the prophets so that's that's again one of these pretty common contrasts that you have in the scriptures where those that you think would never believe do believe and those that you think should believe do not. And we see that paralleled in the life and ministry of Jesus as well, where the Greek

word is thaumazo, amazed. He's amazed at the unbelief of his fellow Israelites, and then he's also amazed, thaumazo, at the faith like of the centurion. So he's doubly amazed. He's amazed in a negative way with regard to the lack of faith on the part of the Israelites, and he's amazed in a positive way on the fullness of faith of the Gentiles. And of course, this story is referred to by Jesus in Luke chapter 4 when he preaches in Nazareth, right? He's like, Jesus almost gets thrown off the cliff. How dare you bring up a story about Elijah feeding a widow in the land of the Gentiles? Well, he's just basically illustrating a pretty common biblical theme that God works faith

when and where he pleases, and it's very common for his own people then to act in faithless sorts of ways, while those that you don't expect to believe actually do. Yeah, well, the reason that they get so upset with him is he brings out a point that I think none of them had ever thought about, which is you think this was the only widow

in all of Israel? It wasn't, and guess what? It wasn't even an Israelite, and that's the one who God took care of, and they just lose their minds over this obvious point that no one ever thought about before yeah sometimes making explicit something which is uh never thought about before is enough to land you in uh in some hot water and uh that certainly happened happened with jesus so we elijah starts out uh basically

being taken care of miraculously by god sending the ravens to feed him and then when god moves Elijah, Elijah becomes the instrument through which God takes care not just of himself, but also then of this widow and her family. So this is once more an in-your-face attack against Baal, because Baal was not able to provide rain and all the necessities for the people in this area. This was supposed to be kind of his area, right? In the ancient world, you ordinarily thought about the gods being as it were attached to a certain area that's what made the god of israel different he was the god of heaven and earth but you ordinarily thought okay these people they have their god and he's only active in their area and these people have their god and their god's only

active in this area so this is baal's area he should be able to provide here if he actually has any reality and power but of course since he does not that's why you have the the drought happening and don't you don't you as you read this don't you sort of get the impression that and of course you know god is going to say talk about a remnant and this kind of stuff but in this moment you get the you get the feeling that elijah and this widow might be like the only two believers on earth right i mean like you're not sure if there's anyone else so like god sends the prophet to the one other person that it still believes and that's that's sort of how it feels And it kind of feels like that, as you continue reading, that definitely seems like the impression that Elijah has.

Oh, that's definitely what Elijah thinks. I mean, you'll see that when he, after the confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, right? He's, I'm the only one left. Me and this widow is all that there is. Me and this widow, the whole rest of the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. But we're the only two faithful people still left. Of course, God will correct him there. But you can see how he would get that impression.

it's like he's looking around it's like i don't i don't see anybody else still worshiping yahweh so i guess it's just me and this widow we're the remnant yeah so uh he's there everything's taken care of and uh we'll find out later really the beginning of chapter 18 but he stays there for a while uh it's in chapter 18 will tell us that the word of god comes to elijah in the third year so third year of the famine so he's he's brought up by the brook by the the the wadi for a while moves into uh jezebel's backyard stays with this widow you know he's he's he's hiding himself because as we're going to hear in chapter 18 they have everybody looking for elijah ahaz have ahab has people all over the country hunting elijah so he's got to lay low and we find

out in this next section we're going to look at that this house that he's staying in has an upper chamber so that becomes his bedroom that's that becomes the place where elijah is going to stay during the time of this this drought so verse 17 and following introduces us to the third scenario first time elijah needed a place to hide he was hungry and thirsty god provided second god moved into another place to hide he provided food and and drink for this family but now we've got another issue. Now the problem is not going to be necessarily hunger. The problem is going to be death itself. So God was able to provide protection for Elijah, food for him, but will also God be able to provide life in the midst of death. That's what the next section is going to answer for us.

So after this, we're told the son of the woman, the mistress of the house became ill and his illness was so severe that there was no breath in him that hebrew word uh neshama is the same one that is in genesis 2 7 when god breathes into adam the breath of life so this is you might translate this as his illness was so severe that there was no life breath left in him so she says to elijah what have you against me oh man of god you have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son. This expression, what have you against me, can be translated different sorts of ways.

So it's literally something like what to me and to you. And then that comes over into Greek also that occurs several times in the Gospels. Like, you know, what is it between us? Or what do you have to do with me? That's kind of the idea here. So, what he had to do with me, or what's going on between us, or as the ESV has it, what have you against me, O man of God? You've come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son.

Now, I don't know exactly what she might be referring to here. She might be thinking of something specific that she's done in the past, and she thinks that by, as it were, drawing God's attention to her family, he's punishing her for that. or maybe she just thinks not necessarily of something specific she did but just her sin in general and she thinks basically she's being punished because of because of her sin uh god is remembering that and he's acting in a way to bring about the the death of her son so we don't know enough about what what's going on in her mind but that seems to be the what's kind of prompting this response that she has. If you believe that this is the prophet of God

and he's on the run and there's not a lot of believers running around, you start to believe for good reason that God is sort of focused on your house. It's not bad theology

to think that your sin cannot stand in the presence of God. The wages of sin. Yes, the wages of sin is death. and in her mind she's like i'm hiding the prophet here but this is really backfired because turns out i'm a sinner and this is the penalty for my sin that seems like a reasonable thing for her to be to her for her to be processing yeah yeah she's hiding her sin

but she thinks as a result or she's hiding the prophet but she thinks as a result her sin is unhidden it's become known god might be not concerned too much with the non-israelite widow and her son until the prophet's living in your upstairs yeah yeah i mean this this makes perfect makes perfect sense i mean how many of us have had something bad or even terrible happen to us and one of the first thoughts is what have i done is that this kind of the typical human reaction i you know this terrible thing happened what have i done to bring god's judgment down down upon me and that's kind of the same reaction that she's having here so we have death we have sin we have death. We have the woman worried about her sin, and we have her son who is actually dying. So

how is God going to deal with the sin, and how is he going to deal with death? Well, as we see, he's going to overcome both of them. So he says to her, that is Elijah says to her, give me your son. And he took him from her arms. So I'm assuming this is a pretty young kid. So he took the boy in his arms and carried him to the upper chamber where he lodged. Now, this is the first time we hear about, this is where he's staying. So he's got an upper chamber. He's hiding up there. Carries the boy up there, lays him on his own bed. And then we're told that Elijah begins to cry to the Lord. This is, by the way, a pretty standard approach in the Psalms. First, what's he going to do? He's going to cry out with a sort of lament or complaint. And then he's going to follow that

up with a petition so here's the lament or the complaint oh lord my god have you brought calamity literally have you brought evil calamity or evil even upon this widow with whom i sojourn by killing her son so as is common in the psalms there is no hesitation to question god i like like to point that out yeah because it's very clear that elijah thinks that if this is the case that there is an injustice that has happened. Yes, precisely. Which also does fit with the psalms, too. Very often,

the perceived injustice of the situation that the psalmist is in is what prompts him to cry out, why is this happening? Where are you? How long? Yeah, this widow is hiding me. I'm your prophet. This woman is helping me hide. What's going on here?

And you responded this way? You multiplied. You're going to kill her son? Multiplying the wheat, multiplying the oil and now what is what is this like this is yeah this makes no sense uh and i think it's fairly obvious that elijah does not like it no he's not happy with not happy with what he perceives to be god's judgment upon this woman and her and her son it does seem like a little bit of a question too it's almost as if he is saying this is kind of how i read this that elijah's saying if this is you you need to fix it and if it's not you you need to fix it you still need to fix it

yeah whether you are killing this child or whether this child is just dying because of a sickness it doesn't really matter right you are the you are the one who not only can but needs to fix this there's a tremendous boldness here and i mean what's james will of course james points to Elijah as the one that prayed and the drought came and the drought ended. Well, he could have used this as an example too. Look at the example of Elijah who prayed and life was restored to this son of a widow. So what's he going to do? Verse 21 is a description of how he took the boy up there and then stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, oh Lord my God, let this child's life, literally that's nephesh, which is sometimes translated

soul or soul or life, but let this child's nephesh life come into him again. We're not told, of course, why he stretched himself on the child three times. We do know, though, that the number three is associated quite frequently in the Old Testament with a revival or rest or God doing something big for his people. Over and over that occurs. In fact, I think that's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that Christ was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. The scriptural pattern that we see is on the third day or after three days

is when God works something great for his people. So maybe that's why Elijah is doing what he is. certainly a resurrection theme with the three days going on here so he stretched himself lays himself on top of this child three times and then he cries oh lord my god let this child's life come into him again and i love verse 22 and the lord listened to the voice of elijah yeah so multiple times we have elijah doing so god says do this and elijah does it god says do that elijah does it now it's it's reversed elijah says to god do this and god does it he's he's actually this i mean this is the language of obey we've talked about this multiple times that in the in the

hebrew when you obey someone you literally it's listen to the voice of so god obeyed that's a a remarkable insight into the ways of god yeah elijah asked for god to do this and elijah asked for god to do this and he actually listened to and did exactly what elijah asked him well you do notice too that it says that three times he cried to the lord and he says oh lord my god let this child's life come in him again that that's there's a period at the end of that not a question mark yes yeah yeah there's there's no there's no uh it's a it's a command it's not a request right this is a this is a bold bold command on the part of it isn't prefaced with a would you please and it's not there's not a if it be your will at the end you know i have no

problem praying that way i pray most of the time uh with the caveat if it's your will because i don't know what i'm asking for it usually but elijah does know what he's asking for and he's not asking if it's if it's their will he's just saying you need to do this it's it's a very uh it's very much of a moses kind of prayer in fact we uh we read i don't have the references here in front of me but back in deuteronomy i think it's deuteronomy 9 and 10 we're told that the lord listened to the voice of moses and the situation there was the golden calf and god wanted to destroy all israel and moses says no god you can't do that and god listened to the voice of moses Well, here he's listening to the voice of this Moses kind of prophet, Elijah.

And that's what happened. The life of the child came into him again, and he revived. This is, correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is, I believe, the first resurrection or resuscitation into life that we have in the Old Testament. Yep, yep. Yeah, I mean, Moses, as great a prophet as Moses was, he never brought somebody back from the dead. In fact, it's only done by two people in the Old Testament.

It's done by Elijah, and it's done by Elisha. And it's then again not until the ministry of Jesus where you have the one sent by God bringing people actually back from death itself. Yeah, that's why this is a different kind of miracle for sure. So this miracle is unique. We've heard many, many miraculous things through all the books of the Old Testament that we've gone through. This is a miracle of a different kind. This has not happened before.

Yeah, and the parallel here is great with one particular incident in the life of Jesus. So in verse 23, we read that Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and ESV has delivered him to his mother. Now, if you look in the Greek translation, the Septuagint of that phrase, he gave him to his mother i checked this morning the the exact same greek phrase in every particular is used in luke 7 15 when jesus gave the widow's son at nain back to his mother so luke in luke 7 15 he uses that particular phrase in in like in every detail it's exactly the same i think in order to make sure that we catch the parallel between what happened here with elijah and a

widow, and then what happened in Nain when also Christ raised the son of the widow there. So here you have, in this whole chapter, you have Baal supposedly in charge of rain being proven to be of absolutely no power, authority, or reality, and then you have God active in providing food, providing water, providing the remedy for sin, we might say in the case of this widow and certainly also providing life in the midst of life in the midst of death so it's very much of a you could really refer to this as kind of an easter chapter a resurrection chapter god demonstrating here through the ministry of elijah that there are no boundaries that he will not cross in order to provide for his people he's going to cross the jordan he's going to cross into

the land of the sidonians he's going to cross even into death itself in order to bring back the the one who was was lost to death which is great testimony to what kind of what kind of god that we have yeah and then you gotta love this response from the from the widow as the chapter ends where she says now i know that you are a man of god and that the word of the lord in your mouth is true i would say so now yes now you do know that is a that is definitely a confession like seem like she believed it before that is this is what's interesting about she makes that confession we've seen that confession. She believed it. Now she knows it. Now she knows it. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's a great way to end because we have this confession of faith, kind of an affirmation of the faith that was already there on the lips of a Gentile woman outside the land of Israel, showing that, again, God crosses all these boundaries to make sure that he takes care of his people. That's right. Well, all right, man, we are out of time. That is chapter 17. Next week, we will get into a little confrontation, a little showdown.

We're going to have a little duel. This is going to be fun, so I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, me too. All right, I'll see you then. See you then. you