But there were years and years of isolation in obscurity. Elijah was destined for even greater heights of service, but he was not ready for that yet. He would have been high on adrenalin and on grace. This may have seemed like an odd location to Elijah, but God in His sovereignty was saving his life. By implication then, the removal of Elijah form the scene was not merely a symbolic but indeed a literal removal of the voice of God from the people. Integer congue malesuada eros congue varius. And Elijah would not live long in that climate without water. A Change of scenery. Elijah had just declared there would be no rain in Israel until he said so, and Ahab wasnt a very forgiving ruler. These are the testings of life that purify and build as they teach us to trust in the Lord and . How did John the Baptist have the "spirit and power of Elijah"? I had never thought about it this way before, but you are so right . Onum is a values-driven SEO agency dedicated. Then, surprise! You can view her articles through her blog at emmadanzey.wordpress.com and check out her Bible Study videos on Instagram @Emmadanzey. The name Cherith belongs to a brook east of Jerusalem and is only mentioned in 1 Kings 17:3-5, as the place where YHWH sent Elijah to camp out, whilst being fed by ravens. It is one of the hardest trials that can possibly come upon us when, having been placed in the middle of comforts and just beginning to enjoy them, that we suddenly lose them. All rights reserved. Sometimes in our lives God will use an unclean vessel to bring blessing to us in the same way that He did for Elijah. He just went and did what he was told. Now we now that Elijah was not here at the brook Cherith because he was running away from risky ministry; nor because he thought it wise or best, in fact he may have thought otherwise. The first thing he did was to head for Egypt and what trouble he got into there! The Brook that Dried Up. He told the people who worked there to get all the children to sit down and give thanks. Remember Saul as he talked with the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus? Cherith, as mentioned earlier, means 'a cutting away'. If at this time you have yielded to this temptation to throw in the towel of faith and to rely on your own thoughts or on someone else, if your zeal for Christ has diminished, your spirit of devotion is dying, if you find no delight in prayer, nothing to give praise and thanksgiving for, and can find nothing about you to stir you up and encourage you remember Him who said of His vineyard in Isaiah 27:3, Intentionally Biblical, Confessional, Presbyterian and Reformed, Church Planting and School of Discipleship, Philippines. brandon fugal wife; lucky 13 magazine 450 bushmaster. Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. After the ravens brought him food, he was still able to drink from the brook, indicating that it was not yet dry. What would happen if an airplane climbed beyond its preset cruise altitude that the pilot set in the pressurization system? Either approach addresses the apparent contradiction, and some commentators, such as John Wesley, mention both and do not express a preference. His lifetime is chronicled in Kings I and King IIincluding the miracles he performed, the inspiration he caused, and his dramatic ascent to heaven. God was saying, "Elijah, remove yourself to the brook Cherith." One theologian noted that Elijah's temporary removal from the national life of Israel was God's judgment against the nation, because there was nobody left to preach God's Word. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and in the evening and he got water from the brook. I had been faithful to Him and loved Him, but I was in a Cherith. Losing your brook can be frustrating. Life was moving on. The other side of this is that if we would wield great power for God we must win it in some hidden Cherith. Now brooks can be mean many things. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." when suddenly there was a knock on the door and a baker was there who said 'God has kept me awake all night and I knew I had to bake an extra three batches of bread for you.' Come what will, come what may. So with Elijah he had complete dependence upon God here to survive. The knot in his stomach tightened even more. Occurrences like this happened for George Mueller who, through faith in God, provided for the children constantly, all through their life and they never failed to have what they needed. You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there., So he did what the LORD had told him. We first meet Elijah in 1 Kings 17:1 when he suddenly appears to challenge Ahab, an evil king who ruled the northern kingdom from 874 to 853 BC. Can a VGA monitor be connected to parallel port? Have any of you ever been fed by birds? God knows that faith only develops under pressure. As we are reminded in John 15 where Jesus said Abide in Me and I in you this fellowship of mutual abiding is ever our portion, and how more clearly are such times to explore and enjoy it. So Elijah did what the Lord had told him. Last week we noted that by sending Elijah to the Brook Cherith God was doing several things He was declaring to Ahab and the nation an act of judgment, such that the Word of God which had been despised was now removed, a famine of the Word; and he was declaring to Elijah that he could fully depend on God and His Word, and daily finding opportunity to exercise faith, and that continually despite outward circumstances. So it was in the third year of the drought that the rains came ending it. 3. Lessons from the brook where Elijah learned to trust God in obscurity and isolation. And woe betide then any church or nation when God removes His Word and its servants from it. Sometimes a Cherith experience is there to get the world out of us. One step at a time. I definitely have not read every book Compassion has published or recommended but this is by far my favorite of course apart from the bible , Jeremiah 17:7-8 But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him, he will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. God had his reasons for isolating David and for isolating Moses and Joseph. It only takes a minute to sign up. So Elijah here is put in a 'Cherith' situation and he has to be completely dependent on God - he has got water but he doesn't have anything to eat. God has prepared a place for Elijah. Gratitude opens our eyes to the goodness of God. It is there that our prayer lives increase and our faith in our Jehovah Jireh is strengthen. We need to capitalise on this great start! Every morning and every evening ravens would bring him meat and bread while the brook provided Elijah with water to drink. That which had driven him to hunt Christians, now drove him to serve Christ. There is hope in Jesus. the brook dried up, because there had been no rain, Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular, A stream, a winter torrent, a, valley, a shaft, To be ashamed, confused, disappointed, to dry up, wither, Verb - Qal - Perfect - third person masculine singular, Preposition-b, Article | Noun - feminine singular. God is committed to us to give us what we need. The second lesson that Elijah is learning concerns His provision. Those dark shadows on the horizon may well be Gods ravens. It is here we find a conscience calmed by the Prince of Peace. Thus, if he lived at Cherith for some months, and this time is added to the 2+ years he lived in Zarephath, the time mentioned by Jesus and James (3 years, 6 months) is not necessarily contradictory to the 1 Kings account. (1 Kings 17:5) To the functionally minded, Elijah's prolonged stay by the brook Cherith looks like a waste of a promising life. It is a declaration that he is working our His eternal purposes, There is nothing in Scripture to indicate this on the contrary the implication is that he, Last week we saw there were lessons Elijah had to learn in going to the brook Cherith, and here we see them being put into practice as Elijah waited: (i), When our brook seems to dry and we are tempted to cry out. God was determined there would be none to stand in the gap. The other point is that ravens were an unclean bird. How easy it is to make the service which God trusts us with a pedestal on which to display ourselves. Elijah needed to hide, far away from King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel. If God has gifted you with finances, a good listening ear, cooking skills, strength, etc. (6) The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. Ive got something new for you to do.. The word hide is cathar and means "to hide (by covering), literally or figuratively: be absent, keep close conceal, hide (self), (keep) secret, x surely." Brook nachal means "torrent, valley, wadi, torrent-valley." Cherith Keriyth means "cutting." Elijah 1:The Brook of CherithSunday, Feb 28, 2016Pastor James WattsGrand View Church We want to know where we are going and for how long. Elijah not only preached Gods Word, he practised it he went without hesitation. We need to be watching what He is doing and attentive to what our Father is asking of us. Elijah had just announced that there was to be no rain for three years. One explanation for the alleged contradiction depends on this: rather than the "third year of the drought," the text is referring to the third year of Elijah's residence in Zarephath (1 Kings 17:9), where is staying at the end of 1 Kings 17. Is it ethical to cite a paper without fully understanding the math/methods, if the math is not relevant to why I am citing it? So Elijah comes into his presence and brings this word of judgement to Ahab. But then despite months of living by faith in dependence upon God in obedience to Gods word and enjoying Gods blessing in that place, that things suddenly and dramatically changed. He was actually pro-active and he said okay, if there is going to be a famine, let's start storing our grain now to get us through. He did absolutely nothing that is recorded. These birds that I once considered pretty ugly, I now delight in the thought of how the Lord takes care of them and of me. Our natural inclination would be to begin to think of the next task. He was where God wanted him to be, doing what God wanted him to do. Ask the Lord how you can step into the hardships of someone elses life who needs it. We have hope in Jesus. He is sent to the widow of Zarephath 17. Prayer: Lord, help us trust You when our brook dries up. 1 King 17:2-7. by Robert Weston. Eventually, God told Elijah to move forward after his waiting time at the brook of Cherith. How easy in such times our joy quickly turns to sadness! He said. This brook was not far from where he lived. The message? The promise God gave him was that he would be provided for there. In verse 5 we see Elijah's response: "So he went and did according to the word of the Lord." Im just answering your prayer. Youve asked, Lord make me like Your Son and thats what He is doing! Decay and change may characterise all our earthly comforts, but they do not characterise God; He remains the same, and His care can never fail. Heres Elijah by a brook, day by day seeing a diminishing water flow. In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us not to worry about what you are going to eat or what you are going to drink. What if he had kicked the dirt and moaned to God about how much he liked and deserved the brook? 'Come aside to a quiet place,' He said. He would go to Mt Carmel and achieve great things for God, but first he needed an education so God sends him to Cherith and to Zarapeth. Heb 12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, Elijah - The background and introduction to his times, The Widow at Zarephath and the Provision of God, Elijah, resurrection and the fear of Ahab. When Elijah was in Cherith during a time of separation and preparation, God fed him by ravens. He walked, talked, and encouraged others to believe that truly the . Ahab and Jezebel were the most wicked and evil rulers Israel had ever known. How we should make use of the opportunities God gives us lest they be taken from us. The prophet Elijah hid himself on the banks of the Cherith and was fed by ravens during the early . Weve challenged the king, lets challenge the prophets of Baal next!.. We like to be in the middle of things. After he said it, God told him, "Now, go to the brook." He didn't tell Elijah what was going to happen at Cherith; he just said, "Go to the brook and hide yourself." Elijah didn't know the future, but he did have God's promise: "I'll provide for you there." However, my Cherith was also equally as significant as my time now as a married woman. So we should not run off and we can only ask 'am I in the place where God wants me to be' You can only say that for yourself before God. What we learn in 1 Kings 18 is that Jezebel was killing the prophets and Obadiah was hiding them to rescue them while Elijah was in Cherith. (1 Kings 17:5) To the functionally minded, Elijah's prolonged stay by the brook Cherith looks like a waste of a promising life. Life itself is a diminishing provision. Though Ahab might have at first ridiculed Elijahs announcement, yet when neither of these rains fell in their season, he was incensed against the prophet as the cause of the national judgment, and compelled him, with Gods direction, to consult his safety in flight. He raises the widow's son 24. That a word came from God to move on to a more public location to exercise his ministry indicated that he had passed these lessons learnt in the private place. Is the Dragonborn's Breath Weapon from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons an attack? God always speaks when it is needed, not beforehand. He had made provision for Elijah at Zarephath before He commanded him to leave Cherith. Elijah had delivered the message of God's judgment to Ahab, the wicked king of Israel. If Elijah had yielded to such things his faith wouldve also dried up, and his confidence wouldve disappeared like the brook. He loves you too. Why would God provide for Elijah in this way? 1 Kings 17:1-7. And this length of time can only be obtained by allowing more than two years for Elijah's stay at Zarephath. As we are reminded in John 15 where Jesus said, The answer lies in the fact that God is not just interested in imparting faith; He is interested in its development, in its improvement. In order for them not to eat his breakfast, God would also have to take care of the birds. Elijah went to the brook of Cherith as directed by God. God was determined that it will last for the full distance He had decreed. See His absolute sovereignty and power that even birds contrary to natural instincts do His bidding on behalf of His people. God saw the need for Elijah to keep things in perspective, and there is nothing like quiet times where we are alone with the Lord to help us find that. It wasnt just for a little while that he stayed there, he continued day after day. Emma enjoys singing/songwriting, fitness classes, trying new recipes, home makeover shows, and drinking tea! Even a river would have been regarded as insufficient. In v.2 we read, Though great and terrifying are temporal judgements upon a people, none is so great as the removal of His Word and instruction and prayer based on that Word. - and it came to pass after awhile, [Heb. Encyclopedia. No sooner had Elijah spoken to Ahab on behalf of God than God told his prophet to get out of town. She said that my dog was really obedient as it was never too far away but was always watching what I was doing. There would be no rain until God's man gave the word. In other words he was to return home, but not to the comforts of home for he is told to, The first thing we notice here is that this was not Elijahs idea, it was the Lords doing. Etiam porttitor finibus. In the light of this we are to understand that the drying brook was an important trial to see if he had learnt the lessons up to this point which he had. Do you go running off to look for water? (1 Kings 18:1 NLT), And soon the sky was black with clouds. Such is the scale of the devastation of the drought that even this brook dries up. Though the water of the brook failed, God's care was not exhausted. He had been to the court of this king as the Ambassador of the King of kings, he had done something that was not only courageous, it was spiritually significant. at the end of days. Had the brook not dried up, he would have stayed there. So for Elijah this is a test of faith because it is one step at a time. There! But God says Hide! Our natural response to this direction would have been to say. Elijah was commanded to depart from Samaria, to . The place chosen was a great place for hiding but a challenge to survive there. It would have been a tragedy for the prophet to remain longer in the wilderness. 'Let's get down to where things are a bit quieter and your dependence on God is more real.' II. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. 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 w Elijah is kept safe by the brook Cherith, until it dries up. And in that he certainly had a taste of heaven, of communion with God. 7 After a while the brook dried up because of the lack of rain. He leads staff development training primarily in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. He was supplying your needs in one way, but then He stopped. This may seem like a tall order, but today's believers have a similar opportunity. I challenge each of us to ponder our giftings and learn how to share Gods love through them to another in their Cherith. I was a single woman for most of my 20s. Elijah gets a command to go to Zarephath and the widow gets a command to feed Elijah; God promises to sustain Elijah and Elijah promises the widow that her cruse of meal will never finish. And in the same way that God commanded ravens, He would also command a widow to provide for His servant Elijah in yet another remarkable way. We will continue with that next time and glean from the lessons that can be learnt there. It is so easy to think that God has forgotten us, or to enter in a false morbid introspection of blaming ourselves for some error when in fact God may merely be saying it is time to learn a new lesson in the school of faith. And He is doing it in the same general way as He did with His Son. Let us remember that though such times may come upon us unexpectantly, but they are never unexpected to God. Emma Danzeys mission in life stems from Ephesians 3:20-21, inspiring young women to embrace the extraordinary. Ahab went along with her in everything she proposed, even setting up an idol in the house of Baal in Samaria. We too know times when though we are in the will of God, and know so because we are being obedient to the Word of God, we will find things suddenly change and enjoyments evaporate. There was too much of Saul about it his desire, his enthusiasm, his determination as to what comes next and how it will be done. I hope you have seen also how God in such times brings our greatest good out of our worst disasters. "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" Joshua 24:15, Church Mail: PO Box 9007, South Yarra 3141, It is against this background that now we consider v.2-6, in which we see Elijah in response to Gods instruction leaving the kings presence and going to the Brook Cherith. OT History: 1 Kings 17:7 It happened after a while that (1Ki iKi i Ki 1 Kg 1kg). But it was potentially also a real spiritual crisis, for by faith Elijah had followed Gods directions and enjoyed Gods blessings. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, among others, take a different approach. God's provision was with Elijah and though hard times came and the provision in that location started to dwindle, God still had other means available for His servant if he would simply wait and be obedient upon the word of God. Emma enjoys singing/songwriting, fitness classes, trying new recipes, home makeover shows, and others. To the goodness of God & # x27 ; s Son 24 and on grace enjoyed Gods blessings he with! For even greater heights of service, but then he stopped time later the brook dried up he. Spiritual crisis, for by faith Elijah had delivered the message of God & x27. Look for water some commentators, such as John Wesley, mention both do!, lets challenge the prophets of Baal in Samaria that even this brook dries up Elijah by a,... 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