A Jar That Wouldn't Empty

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Now, Elijah the Tishbite of Tishbe in Gilead said to Ahab, As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word. And the word of the Lord came to him. Depart from here, and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, 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 and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that 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. Then the word of the Lord came to him, Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Siddin, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came 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 and a vessel that I may drink. And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. And she said, 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 now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die. And Elijah said to her, 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 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. And she went and did as Elijah said, and she and her husband, or she and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. After this, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill, and his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. And she said to Elijah, What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son. And he said to her, Give me your son. And he took him from her arms and carried him into the upper chamber where he lodged and laid him on his own bed. And he cried to the Lord, O Lord, my 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 Lord, my God, let this child's life come into him again. And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah, And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And Elijah said, See, your son lives. And the woman said to Elijah, Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth. This is the word of the Lord. Hey, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Thrive. My name is A.J. I'm one of the interns here. We have been walking through a series called A Table in the Wilderness, and it's really actually a question that's raised by the Israelites when they're traveling through the desert. It's a question that they actually raise very skeptically. They said, Can God spread a table in the wilderness? Although we might say a question like that, and we might not even say it out of skepticism, it's still a question that we've raised ourselves because we have found ourselves in our own kind of wilderness. We've said something along the lines of, Can God do this? Can God please help me figure this out? Can God open this door? Can God make a way? Can God do anything at all in this wilderness? It could have been a financial wilderness, a marital wilderness, employment. But there have been various forms of wilderness that we have raised this type of question. And the text that Victor was able to read for us, the text is really about God indeed meeting that need, meeting you in the wilderness. Yes. Of course you can, but it's really actually unexpected. And that's what first Kings chapter 17 is all about. It's really the unexpectedness of what's going on here. And so we're going to be asking a few questions. We're going to be looking at three points. And these three points are really about how God unexpectedly breaks boundaries, how God unexpectedly makes these promises, and how God also unexpectedly defeats death. So let's look at the first one. our boundary breaking God now how is this evidence in first Kings chapter 17 well Victor read for us in the very first verse it's actually in the begin...