Making God Known

Timmy is a Chinese orphan who was dumped into a welfare system that was stretched to its limits, overcrowded with need. Not only was he an orphan, but he suffered from a heart defect. Meaning that he was constantly weak, constantly ill, and could die at any moment, really. The government was faced with this really tough decision. Why invest thousands and thousands of dollars into a little boy who was bound to die at any moment?

And so, in fact, Timmy was pushed aside, locked up in a maintenance shed, and they waited for him to die. But one day, God performed an amazing miracle. In a city of several million people, God sent the only two non-Chinese people to this particular orphanage to stumble upon a little boy called Timmy in a maintenance shed. A couple from this church, Les and Lisa Weeks, who not only saw him, but had their hearts broken for him, decided that day that they were going to give their love to this boy. An incredible miracle of amazing, I don't know, statistics, opposite of statistics, the miniscule chances of them finding this boy, sending people from across the ocean, from another culture, from another language to find this little lost boy, to provide a home for him?

What are the chances? But then God did something even better. If you thought that was a miracle, not only did God find a home for Timmy, but He provided a way for Timmy's heart to be fixed. A few weeks ago, Timmy was operated on. The hole in his heart was sewn up with incredible skill.

In fact, this surgery was so unusual, so unique, it had never been performed by any of the specialists there. Miracle that he's alive now. Miracle that the doctors can say that his heart rate is normal for a boy his age. His blood pressure, normal. God did the impossible to bring Les and Lisa to fall in love with Timmy in the middle of China.

But only then for them to face an even greater impossibility of fixing a heart with a hole in it. Fixing a situation which doctors had written off. God did it in my understanding just to show that He's a God who can do miracles. He's a God that can perform even greater things than we can expect. This morning, we're going to be looking in this journey of Elijah at a similar situation, also including a little boy.

If you have your Bibles with you, let's open to One Kings 17 and we're going to be reading from verses 17 to 24. One Kings 17, verses 17 to 24. Now sometime later, the son of the woman, the woman who owned the house, became ill. He grew worse and worse and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, what do you have against me, man of God?

Did you come to me to remind me of my sin and to kill my son? Give me your son, Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, O Lord my God, why have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I'm staying with by causing his son to die? Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the Lord, Oh Lord my God, let this boy's life return to him.

The Lord heard Elijah's cry and the boy's life returned to him and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, look, your son is alive. Then the woman said to Elijah, now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth. So far, our reading.

Last time, we saw that God sent Elijah from the Ravine, the place that is known as Cut Off, out of the way, whoop whoop. Takes him from the Kerith Ravine, sends him a 160 kilometres plus to a place called Zarephath, which is not in Israel anymore. It's in a place called Phoenicia or modern day Lebanon. God sends him to this place. He has to walk a 160 kilometres with no water and sends him to a widow who's about to make her last meal.

So she and her son can eat it and then die. The place called Zarephath is a place the meaning means furnace. God sent him from a place called the cut off to a place called the furnace. Not fun. In this moment, God intends to prepare Elijah, to test him, to refine him in the furnace for a calling, for a purpose He has in mind for him.

He teaches Elijah to be a servant leader, to serve this woman who is severely depressed when his tank is dry. Literally, he's dying of thirst. But now we close in on another chapter of this story. We zoom in again on the three characters in this story. And we see God's greater purpose of salvation come about.

And that's how we have to read the Bible, just as a side note. We read these amazing stories almost as if we live it with them. We are zoomed into their lives, but we must also see what God is doing behind the scene. What God's greater purpose of salvation is. When we come to moments like this, we have to keep in mind not only what the characters are doing, what they show us about godly character, but we have to zoom out a little bit to understand the purpose of this story.

Good biblical preaching is like Google Maps. At one time, you have to explain the big picture, which is your Google Earth, yet at other times, you zoom in on the detail of the characters in the story, which is your street view. In fact, when you focus on one more than the other, you actually get a disjointed, confusing story. Seeing the big picture helps us to see where this particular story is leading us. In the Old Testament, the story is always leading back to Jesus.

It's always preparing for the coming of Jesus. All the stories of the Old Testament lead up to that point. The Google Earth stories teach us about the character of God, who He is, what He is doing, how He acts. Yet the street view, the zoomed in view, highlights God's dealings with us. It shows what our hearts that are sold out to God can do.

It shows us what transformed hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit can do. It gives us heroes who we can emulate, examples to follow. It gives us villains of people of examples how not to follow God. How to be enemies of God. So again, this morning we're zooming in on a story of Elijah.

We come to a sad moment where a mum loses her son. We aren't told how their son dies. It says that he lost the breath of life. That's all we know. But we find in the story two very distinct reactions to this tragedy.

We see how the widow, the mum reacted, and we see how Elijah reacted to this tragedy. When the son dies, his mother looks around for someone to blame. In verse 18, she says, what do you have against me? She says it to Elijah. What do you have against me, man of God?

Did you come to remind me of my sin and to kill my son? The woman blames Elijah for the worst thing that has ever happened to her. The death of her precious, precious son, her only son, her only child. She sees the death as a condemnation from God. In that moment of intense pain, of that intense emotion, she forgets just what Elijah had been able to do for them before.

She forgot that through him, they have been sustained by a miracle. A flour that didn't run out, oil that didn't run dry and flour that was always there, always available. Even though the prophet had done nothing to deserve her reaction, she blamed him. But anyone who has lost a loved one, especially a child, will know just this intense pain, this intense grief. And I guess in moments like this, we can say things that we regret.

But I think it always also shows in this situation just her misunderstanding. Just her lack of faith, really. If something bad happens, then God must hate me. If something bad happens to me, then God must hate me. So she blames Elijah for bringing condemnation onto her.

Just imagine the scene. She's standing there with tears streaming down her face. It is so heart wrenching, holding her boy in her arms. And at that moment, Elijah reacts in a completely amazing way. He doesn't say anything.

He holds out his arms and says, give the boy to me. Her world is crashing in on her, yet unexpectedly, he says to her, give me your son. He doesn't have any words of rebuke. He doesn't try to reason with her. Listen.

No. If it wasn't for me, you would have died months ago. He doesn't try to convince her. He doesn't try to remind her of all that she owes him or how ashamed she should be for her amazing attack on him. He simply asks her to place her burdens on him.

Elijah is again in a situation that he doesn't deserve, at least from a human perspective. He was at the Kerith Ravine, he's now at the furnace of Zarephath, and now he's being attacked by this. He doesn't question God. When God places him in this vice and keeps turning it, not just once in Kerith, not just once in Zarephath, not now. He doesn't fall apart at the seams.

Amazingly, he doesn't lose control. He doesn't argue with the woman. He simply, with quiet compassion, says, give me your son. Elijah, the man of God, takes the son in his arms and quietly walks up the stairs to the upper room where he was staying. Now the upper room where he was staying was probably an intense place of prayer.

He was a man of God. How do we react to tragedy? How do we react with bitter disappointment, with bitter heartache? What do we do when a test comes? What is our first response?

Do we complain? Do we blame? Do we try to reason our way out of it? This doesn't make sense. Elijah goes upstairs quietly and closes the door behind him.

In his room, then Elijah puts the body of the boy on his bed and he goes to God in prayer. Verse 20 says, he cried out to the Lord, Oh Lord my God, why have you brought tragedy also upon this widow that I'm staying with by causing her son to die? You know, Lord, it wasn't good enough to punish the whole of Israel for their disobedience. Your people that should know you, but now you are sending tragedy to Lebanon, to Phoenicia. You're it to this poor defenceless widow.

Why? Elijah may have been silent with this woman, but he's not silent before God, which is the real place where we need to go with our tragedies, with our pain. It's before God that he raises his tough questions. Lord, what are you doing? What are you doing?

What are you trying to tell me? Why would you break the heart of this dear mother who opened her house to me? I've obeyed you, God. I've waited on you. I've urged her to wait upon you.

And now this. Now this. This situation is beyond me. Lord, what are you doing? What do you mean by this?

Elijah couldn't understand that the son would die like this. After all, God had shown judgment on the nation of Israel for their idolatry. But this Phoenician woman didn't know God. Why punish her? The situation leads us to the issue of sin and suffering.

And we come to church often and we're all happy and we praise and we dance and the thing is, suffering is a part of our lives as Christians. Suffering is the hardest question to answer for Christians. If God is good, how does He allow bad things to happen? So we see even in those days, people ask why. Throughout the Bible, we see various ways people try to answer this question.

In those days, in fact, it was common for people to say, well, if you sin, you get punished. If you sin, you get condemned, you get judged. So this woman asked, have you come to remind me of my sin and to kill my son? You know, I'm a sinful woman. I do not believe.

I have not believed in God. I haven't followed His way. So now, are you have you killed my son in order to judge me? Similarly, in Job, the book of Job, we see that his three friends who saw Job's terrible situation, he had lost absolutely everything. And they say it must be because of sin.

You must have done something, Job, to deserve this. Even in Jesus' time, Jesus' disciples in John nine saw a blind man on the side of the road and said, Lord, is it because he sinned? Or is it because the sin of his father and mother that he is blind? When people suffer, they ask, what have I done to deserve this? There must be a cause and effect between what I do and what happens to me.

But the book of Job actually turns this whole thing upside down. It overturns the thinking of Job's friends. And actually Jesus rejected the question of the disciples. When He was asked whether it was his sin or his parents' sin, Jesus said, it's neither. It was neither this man nor his parents who sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

When it comes to suffering, the Bible leaves space. The Bible leaves some sort of ambiguity and doesn't assume an inevitable cause and effect situation. Oh, you know, I'm going through this tough relationship breakup. It must be because I've sinned. Or people that have said that to you.

It has some of the most painful moments when people say that of other people. Oh, it must have been because you did something wrong. The Bible leaves room for suffering which is unexplainable, at least from a human perspective. We just won't get all the answers on suffering, in that moment of suffering. We might in some time, a year down the track, ten years down the track, but we might also only see it on the other side of eternity.

When we can see the whole of the span of human history. Elijah made well, he obviously didn't understand. He said, why is this happening? But there was a purpose to it. And that is the point that I wanna make.

Our great comfort is this. There is meaning and purpose to our lives, including our pain, including our suffering. We don't live in a terrifying world of chaos and chance, where bad things happen and there's no reason for it. We live in a world of order and planning. We see it around us.

Everything is made with so much thoughtfulness. So even the suffering, the evil, the pain that we go through shows or has a comfort that God is still in control, that He is still watching over us. Elijah clearly had no idea why this tragedy had struck. His prayer in verse 20 shows he is bewildered. He is angry.

He was a man of deep faith, but he doesn't understand the logic of what is happening here. But instead of dwelling on the why, Elijah turns his attention on the who. He prays to the one who can give meaning and purpose to this. The one who knows what is happening here. He prays.

Elijah then hugs the boy three times, the Bible says. He pours his body over the boy. We're not sure why he does it. The Bible doesn't say. Some scholars say maybe it was to share some body warmth with him.

But after three times of doing this, the most amazing thing happens. The boy wakes up. Verse 22 says, the Lord heard Elijah's cry and the boy's life returned to him. Do you know what the amazing thing about this particular moment is? This is the first time in the Bible where someone from the dead comes back to life.

You know, we've heard the stories before. We know of Lazarus who rose from the dead. We know of Jairus' daughter. We know of Jesus who was resurrected. But imagine if you were praying for a boy to come back to life and there was no precedence for that.

He had no idea that God was able to do this. To bring someone back from the dead. They would have seen people die and that was it. It would have been the most absurd thing to ask. And yet the faith of Elijah was determined to ask for the absurd to happen.

Elijah carries the boy back downstairs to his mother and says, see, your son is alive. See, behold, look at this. She replies in amazement, now I know that you are the man of God, that the word of the Lord that you speak is the truth. The amazing story of God's grace in the moment of the most astounding pain. But what was the purpose of all this?

We've zoomed in on the characters here. We've understood a little bit of the faith that someone like Elijah had. The pain of someone that has gone through this tragedy. But what was the purpose of all this? What is the Google Earth view of this?

The story contains an exquisite irony. Elijah goes to Ahab, the king of Israel, who from age zero had heard about Yahweh, the God of Israel. But Ahab chose to worship Baal, the god of fertility. He chose to worship idols. Elijah says, you must worship God.

Ahab doesn't care. Elijah gets sent to Phoenicia, to a gentile woman that doesn't know God, does an amazing miracle, and this Phoenician woman comes to faith. That's ironic. In fact, in Luke four, verses 24 to verse 27, Jesus cited this story of Zarephath. He cites this particular story to support his comment that a prophet is not accepted in his own hometown.

That sometimes the godly preaching of someone is not accepted by someone that they understand. So Elijah spoke to Ahab, but Ahab didn't listen. Elijah goes to the woman in Phoenicia. She hears and sees this amazing miracle. She believes.

The bigger picture shows how God allowed a tragedy to happen, to perform an even greater miracle. A miracle that no one had seen before. A miracle that was absolutely absurd, that had no precedence. A flour pot and an oil jug that never run dry was one thing. A boy resurrected to life, that was something completely different.

As we'll see next week, God had to teach Elijah that He, who is God, is able to do the impossible. The absolute impossible. Next week, we'll see, spoiler alert, that God was able to set aflame logs that are absolutely drenched in water, that no possible human interaction would have even lit. God is able to do the absolute impossible. All this time, God is building Elijah up for this crowning moment in his life.

The jewel on Mount Carmel. Come next week. You won't be sorry. If you wish to be a man or a woman of God, you are going to be tested. It is unavoidable that you will face seemingly impossible situations.

Whether it's impossibly painful, whether it's just physically impossible. But all that is required of you, the Bible says, is faith in a God who is able to do the impossible. If you are a young person who desires to live a godly life that will leave its mark on this world, you must stand in the presence of your Saviour, trusting Him to work through all the trials that you may encounter. If you are recovering from a huge disappointment or loss, a loss of someone or something that you love dearly, know that the God of Elijah is your God as well. He is still the God of impossible situations.

He is still in control. He still has a purpose, a meaning for your life.