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The Voice of Stern Rebuke
This chapter is based on 1 Kings 17:8-24; 18:1-18.
For many months God miraculously provided Elijah with food
in his mountain hiding place by the brook Cherith. When the brook
dried up because of the continued drought, God told His servant:
“Arise, go to Zarephath [
known in New Testament times as Sarepta
].
... See, I have commanded a widow woman there to provide for
you.”
This woman was not an Israelite. She had never had the priv-
ileges that the chosen people of God had enjoyed, but she was a
believer in the true God and had walked in all the light shining on
her pathway. And now, when there was no safety for Elijah in Israel,
God sent him to this woman to find refuge in her home.
“So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the
gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he
called to her and said, ‘Please bring me a little water in a cup, that I
may drink. ... Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’”
In this poverty-stricken home the famine was causing severe
hardship, and the widow feared that she would lose the struggle to
sustain life. But in her great need she bore witness to her faith. In
response to Elijah’s request she said, “‘As the Lord your God lives,
I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil
in a jar; and see, 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
make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward
make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord God
of Israel, “The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of
oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.”’”
No greater test of faith could have been required. Regardless of
the suffering that might result to herself and her child, and trusting
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