Trinity
16
1Kg
17:17-24
9/15/24
It
was a feel good story that we heard in our Old Testament lesson last week. Yahweh announced through the prophet Elijah
to the wicked king Ahab that there would be no rain. A drought ensued, and at first God sent
Elijah to live by a brook that was east of the Jordan River. Yahweh fed Elijah as he sent ravens who
brought him bread and meat.
However,
when the brook dried up, God sent Elijah to a widow who lived in Zarephath
which belonged to the region of Sidon.
Elijah must have been surprised when God told him to go there. After
all, many of the problems in Israel had come from Sidon. Jezebel was the daughter of the king of
Sidon. She had married Ahab, and had brought the devotion to the false god Baal
into Israel. Now, Yahweh was sending Elijah to live in Jezebel’s backyard.
At
Zarephath Elijah encountered the widow who was suffering from the drought that
had come upon the land. In fact, she was
gathering some sticks with which she was going to make a fire and bake a little
bread using the last of her flour and oil.
It would be the last meal for her and her son as they then faced
starvation.
Elijah
did something surprising. He told the woman first to make a cake of bread for
him, and then to do so for her son and herself.
He announced to her, “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.’” The woman trusted the word of Yahweh spoken
by Elijah. She did as he said. And then
Elijah, the woman, and her son ate for many days because the jar of flour and
the jug of oil never became empty just as the word of Yahweh spoken by Elijah
had promised.
Elijah
was living with the woman and her son as they were fed by the jar of flour and the
jug of oil that did not run out because of God’s provision. However, we learn in our text that things
took a tragic turn. The woman’s son
became ill, and the illness was so severe that the boy died.
While
we are fully aware that death is certainly present, we also live with a sense
that it can always be held off. The
advances in medicines, surgeries and procedures mean that we don’t die from
things that used to be fatal. There is always the expectation – the hope – that
modern medicine can do something about the problem.
The
ancient world had no such expectations.
Death was an ever present reality for which they had little
understanding. However, in the death of
her son, the woman did not see a random event that was just part of life. She knew that Elijah was a prophet of Yahweh. He was a mysterious and powerful figure who
had delivered the miracle of food in their midst.
Yet
now while Elijah was present, the woman’s son had died. And she saw a definite connection. She says in our text, “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!” The woman
knew that she was in the presence of God’s representative. And she believed that this divine presence
had caused her sins to be remembered.
In the widow’s words we find a
perspective that we often lack. She
knows that Elijah is the representative of a holy and frightening power – a
holy power that makes her keenly aware of her sins. We are prone to lose sight of this fact –
that God is the holy God who is completely other. He is the One who determines what sin is -
for sin is any thought, word or deed that violates his will for life. And this
God is no doting grandpa handing out candy.
Instead, Scripture tells us that he is a consuming fire. He brings death; he brings judgment to all
who sin, because sin is always committed against
him.
The woman perceived her sinfulness,
and believed that the death of her son was God’s act of judgment. But Elijah
then acted to show that Yahweh is the gracious God who gives life. He told the woman to give him her son, and he
took him to the upper chamber where he lodged.
Elijah
laid the boy on his bed. He cried to Yahweh, “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.”
We
learn that Yahweh listened to the voice of Elijah. Life returned to the child and he lived. Elijah took the child and brought him down into the house and gave
him to his mother. The prophet said, “See, your son lives.” Then 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.” The
restoration of life to her son had shown the woman that Elijah was the prophet
of the true God, and that the word of Yahweh spoken by Elijah was truth.
In
our Old Testament lesson, the prophet Elijah calls upon Yahweh to raise the boy
from the dead. This miracle performed by
Elijah pointed forward to what God would do in Jesus Christ. We see this in the Gospel lesson. There Jesus meets the funeral procession that
is leaving the town of Nain. The only
son of a widow had died, and now they were going out to bury him.
Yet
when Jesus saw the mother he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do
not weep.” Then he did something
shocking. He came up and touched the funeral bier on which the body was being
carried and said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and
Jesus gave him to his mother.
Unlike
Elijah, Jesus didn’t pray to God and ask him to raise the man. Instead, he directly asserted his power over
life and death. Luke tells us that fear seized all who saw it and they
glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God
has visited his people!’”
The
people were right. In reporting this,
Luke wants us to know that Jesus came as the great end time prophet promised by
God. Moses had said, “The LORD your God
will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers--it
is to him you shall listen.” Jesus
performs miracles just like the great prophet Elijah because he is this One
promised by God.
After
our text, Elijah went on to win a great victory for Yahweh at Mt. Carmel over
the prophets of Baal and Asherah. But then the threat from Queen Jezebel that
she was going to kill him sent Elijah into the wilderness. Suffering from what
today we would probably call depression he said to God, “It
is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” He asked to die. And after arriving at Mt. Horeb he spoke
words of failure: “I
have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of
Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars,
and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left,
and they seek my life, to take it away.”
The prophets of the Old Testament suffered. The prophets were killed. Jesus Christ came as the great
end time prophet who was more than just another prophet. He was the Son of God who entered into the
world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He worked great miracles such as raising the
dead, healing the sick, and casting out demons. Yet Jesus’ greatest action
occurred by his suffering and death on the cross.
He
came to die on the cross in order to win forgiveness for our every sin. Paul told the Corinthians that “in Christ God
was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses
against them.” How did Jesus Christ
reconcile us to God? Paul says, “For our
sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.”
Jesus took our sin and received God’s judgment against it. God justly judged sin when Jesus Christ died
in our place.
And
then, God raised Jesus from the dead. In
our Old Testament and Gospel lessons today we hear about two instances of
individuals being raised from the dead.
However, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was completely different. The two individuals raised in our Scripture
lessons would one day died once again.
However,
when Jesus Christ rose from the dead, it was not just a return to life. Instead, his resurrection was the beginning
of the resurrection of the Last Day. Jesus was raised with a body transformed
so that it can never die again.
Paul told the Romans, “We know that Christ, being raised from the
dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.” Christ has conquered death through his
resurrection, and we will share in that victory when he raises us from the dead
on the Last Day.
In
Christ God has visited his people, bringing forgiveness and salvation. Yet that visitation did not come to an end
with the Lord’s ascension. Instead, God
continues to visit us today. He visits
us through his Word as the Spirit of Christ who inspired that word continues to
work through it. The Spirit leads us to
grow and mature in ever deeper faith as we trust and believe in Jesus Christ
and what he has done for us.
God
visits us through the Sacrament of the Altar.
Jesus is the host at each celebration of the Sacrament. His called and ordained servant in his Office
of the Ministry speaks his Words of Institution, and those words do what they
say as Christ gives us his true body and blood to eat and to drink. Here he delivers the forgiveness that he won
on the cross. And here he gives his
risen body and blood into our bodies in the pledge that that our bodies will be
raised to be like his when he returns in glory on the Last Day.
In
our text, Elijah brings the boy restored to life to his mother and she says, “Now
I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth
is truth.” We who know Jesus Christ
risen from the dead confess the same thing.
The word of the Lord given us through the prophets and apostles is
truth. It is the word in which we hear
the good news of the Gospel – the free gift of forgiveness and salvation
through faith in Jesus Christ. It is
also the word that now teaches us how to live as the forgiven children of God.
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