Sermon Text for Sunday, November 11, 2018
November 11, 2018 Text: 1 Kings 17:8-16
Dear Friends in Christ,
What are some things in your life that you would never want to be empty? If you had your way they would be perpetually full. How about your bank account and gas tank? How many of you would like your energy to always be full? What about your faith? Victories in your favorite teams win column? Your coffee or hot chocolate cup? Love you have to give, love you can receive.
Has any of this actually happened? None of us drive with the tank always full. Who has endless energy? Our bank accounts aren’t empty, but we still get nervous, don’t we? Even with free refills the cup does not always runneth over. Our teams lose. Experience shows us that eventually things run out. We live day in and day out with the cold reality that there never seems to be enough. As you sit in the pew today what are you thinking when it comes to . . .
“ARE YOU FULL?”
The widow from Zarephath in our text would have an easy time answering that one. Full? She was barely hanging on. The food available to her and her son was about to be empty. Enter the prophet Elijah.
Elijah had been sent by God to pronounce judgment on King Ahab and his land. This led Elijah to go into hiding and to have his every need met miraculously by the Lord. He now comes to the widow and her son, whom God had instructed to feed him.
He finds the widow gathering sticks. He asks for water and a morsel of bread. She responds with, “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.” (v. 12) Here we learn the gravity of her situation. She has little to offer. She is living in a land of scarcity. She is preparing a final meal for herself and her son “that we may eat it and die.” (v. 12) She is miles away from being full. She is hanging by a thread.
Logic tells us that if you are down to your last supper, you don’t give it away. Like the widow we can be guilty of a little hyperbole when it comes to being full. We think that God understands our scarcity. Yes, he does. The problem isn’t with him; it’s with us.
We want to protect and preserve. That is what logic tells us to do. It is easier to feed the poor when the cupboards are full. Tithing can be more comfortable when the account is overflowing. When things are full, life is good. When the unexpected happens, what are we going to do? When you reach the year of both kids in college and one of those kids has a two-day hospital stay to begin the school year are you feeling full? When the job you were hoping for or the relationship you didn’t see ending enters your life, do you feel empty? When you deal with the same problems over and over and over do you feel like life is hanging by a thread? Are you literally down to a last meal spiritually and emotionally?
These are all questions we ask ourselves because we trust in our own abundance. If we do this then we miss the movement of God in our lives. Logic is good but if it gets in the way of what God is trying to teach us then we lose out.
In our text God uses scarcity as a doorway to trust. Trust in the Lord and his provision is the only way this account makes sense. A widow obeys, she feeds Elijah and she and her household ate for many days.
God has been using scarcity to lead his people to trust for a long time. He provided manna in the desert. He brought water from a rock. He fed large groups of people with the scarcest of provisions. Then there were leftovers. With Jesus there is always enough. A lesson we struggle to learn but one that time and time again points us to the cross.
Jesus emptied himself on the cross to fulfill the full price of our sin. His mission was not about multiplying food to fill our stomachs but about ransom and restoration to free our souls and fill us to overflowing with grace and forgiveness. The writer to Hebrews reminds us that Christ came so we might be full of salvation: “He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Are you full? Sure you are. We are the fullest, blessed people on earth. I know a little about the family with the college kids and the hospitalization. We felt challenged but never empty. We were blessed by God’s provision. We still have half a year to go but we know the sufficiency of Christ is enough. I pray you see it the same. You have been crowned with Christ’s glory. You are loved with a never-ending love.
As God’s redeemed children, we need not fear scarcity because our Father is a God of rich abundance. When we put our trust in the Lord, when we put our trust in Jesus, we can be sure, no matter the circumstances, there is always enough. We are full.
Amen.