July 1, 2024 • 67 mins
Welcome to OFBS Ep 6! This one was a WILD ride because I did not know where God was going to take me. I thought this podcast would be about Elijah, our favorite grumpy grandfather, but God took the wheel, did a K-turn in the MIDDLE of the road, and took me down a different path. And, I'm not mad at it! This podcast brought up such an important question: Who do you believe? There is so much stress (and sin) that can come when we try to secure our own future. But, when you rely on God, things that make no sense fall into place. Because that's just who He is (and that's on the Word of the Lord!) So, tune in to hear what can happen when you are not in confident in God (and the positives that come when you are!)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the Our Favorite Bible Stories podcast.
(00:13):
My name is Udochi and I am your host.
Welcome back everyone.
I've actually been pretty consistent.
I think the last episode went out two to three weeks ago, so we're back with episode question
mark six.
I think it's six, maybe five or seven.
I'm not positive, but who cares?
(00:35):
Yeah, normally I have more to say right now and I don't.
That's it.
So let's go into Song of the Week.
If this is your first time listening, I normally do a Song of the Week.
This is just a Christian song that I've really been loving.
I'm so subdued right now.
Maybe I'll get more chaotic later.
(00:56):
I went to my Christian playlist, which is like, I think there's about 1200 songs on
it.
And I don't know if there's really been a song that I've been gravitating towards this
this past week.
I think You Are by Virtue.
Any song by Virtue is phenomenal.
They know what they're doing.
(01:16):
Well, I guess they knew what they were doing because I don't think they're a group anymore,
but they're phenomenal.
Harmony is on point.
But no, they're just phenomenal and they do like really cool renditions of like classic
songs like they have one for Greatest Life Faithfulness.
They have boppy music.
Like if you want to be in the car singing at the top of your lungs, the Christian music
(01:37):
Virtue is...
Mary Mary is also for you, but Virtue is definitely for you.
Ooh, Anita Wilson, All About You.
That's good.
That's another.
It's like a more lighthearted, not lighthearted in terms of content, but lighthearted in terms
of like tone.
Anything by Bridge Music is phenomenal.
Ooh, Big God by Tarion.
(01:59):
I think it's supernouns it.
Tarion, that has been on repeat.
I have very much enjoyed that.
Um...
By Jave, I think that's it.
Yeah, so I have not named a song and instead said artist like I always do.
I'll go with Virtue You Are and Big God by Tarion because I have been playing that a
(02:20):
lot.
Yeah, love that.
Yeah, those are my songs and artists of the week.
I may as well just rename it artist of the week because I never just do one song.
Who cares?
Anyway, I'm in a really flippant mood today.
I don't know why.
It literally only started when I turned on this podcast.
Jesus be with me, Lord.
(02:40):
Guide my words.
Um...
Rose, Bud, Thorin.
Rose is something good that happened this week.
Bud is something I'm looking forward to.
Thorin is something not so great that happened.
Um...
I have several Buds.
One is I just fried some plantain.
It was so good.
I burnt it a little but I'm not gonna lie, I kinda like it that way.
(03:02):
So that was phenomenal.
And I may fry up another one.
Um...
Another Rose.
I...
This is a fun fact about me.
I love choirs.
Like, I am very much like a Black gospel choir person.
When I was younger, my parents bought the Mississippi Mass Choir tape.
(03:24):
It was on repeat in our house and I loved every single second of it.
If you have never seen the Mississippi Mass Choir...
This I give permission.
Pause this video and go listen to them.
They are phenomenal.
Um...
One more day.
I wish I could remember the name of the lady.
I'm not tired yet.
The soloist for I'm Not Tired Yet.
Oh.
(03:44):
She's amazing.
She sang that song for like 8-10 minutes.
And she sounded exactly the same the whole way through.
What a queen.
Love her.
Um...
Yeah, I'm a choir person.
Um...
I found the Spellman Choir.
They're phenomenal.
Their Christmas concert, I look forward to it.
I think I found it my freshman or sophomore year.
I look forward to it every single year.
(04:06):
It is so good.
Um...
But I found a new...
Also the Yale Gospel Choir is also quite good.
I recently found the North Carolina A&T Gospel Choir.
Let me just look that up real quick before somebody gets very offended, I believe.
That it's North Carolina A&T.
I believe that's how it's pronounced.
(04:27):
Let me check.
Yes.
Yes.
But I don't think anybody said agriculture technical state.
I think they say A&T.
So I found their gospel choir.
And I mean this in the most loving and joyful and kind way.
(04:48):
It is so unhinged.
And I loved every single second of it.
Every single second.
I watched the 2023 one and it started off with what looked like a stroll and I was like,
what's going on?
And then they basically just did this like in the audience performance of songs and then
(05:09):
they went up to the stage and they have so much energy.
And they are amazing singers because if I did a tenth of a tenth, if I did a fiftieth
of what they did, I would be out of breath.
They were full on dancing.
Like full on concert dancing.
Then they go up and belt.
Like who are you?
(05:29):
Talented.
That's who you are.
Um so they did a song called No Joy No Strength.
Um whoever, there was a guy that was leading it and he is an amazing dancer.
He has so much energy.
Wow I wish I could have that much energy.
Some people take their iron to get that much energy.
He seems like he naturally has it.
So love that for him.
(05:51):
So that, I guess those are two roses.
Um a thorn?
What is a thorn?
I have not been getting a good amount of sleep lately.
Which is very upsetting because I hate waking up tired.
(06:11):
That is like a top ten ick for me, for myself.
I hate waking up tired because no matter how much sleep you get after that, it's still
not, you still don't feel rested, fully rested.
So um yeah I need to, my sleep schedule needs to be better.
And tomorrow is Juneteenth so hopefully I can sleep in a little.
Um yay Juneteenth by the way.
(06:33):
If you're not American listening to this, look it up.
But yay Juneteenth.
And then a bud, something I'm looking forward to.
Oh actually, no that's too much information.
A thing I'm looking forward to.
(06:53):
I've been finding a lot of really good Christian podcasts and I'm looking forward to listening
to them.
I also Inside Out 2 just came out and I'm trying to convince my sister to see it with
me.
And it will work out.
I will win.
We will go see it.
It looks so so good.
And Iot Etibere, I love Iot Etibere.
I watched a video of her voicing Envy.
(07:15):
She's so talented.
Like she can do it all.
So um yeah I'm looking forward to Inside Out 2.
Alright let's pray and then start our um our story.
Which may have two parts.
So Dear Heavenly Father I want to thank you for this day.
I want to thank you for allowing me to come to the hour of this day as I am about to record
(07:37):
this or as I am recording this podcast.
I ask that you will just be in the midst God.
This is your holy word.
This is your precious word.
You said that you've honored your word above all of your names.
So be here in this moment.
Guide my words.
Guide my thought processes.
Guide the information that I am about to present.
May it be, may it be edifying and may it be worthy of my calling in you.
(08:04):
May it represent to you well.
Please keep me from anything that is not accurate or does not fully reflect what you want to
say in this moment.
Hide me behind your cross that there would be none of me and all of you.
And may you be glorified and adored forevermore.
(08:24):
In Jesus name I pray.
Amen.
Today.
Well, we're going to start with the backstory, but we are going to talk about Elijah.
I've really been in my Old Testament bag.
I've been reading through first Kings.
I started with Elisha.
Then I went back and was like, Elisha, Elisha's crazy.
(08:46):
Love him though.
Somebody said that they're like two old grandfathers, grumpy grandfathers.
And yeah, I could see that.
I could absolutely see that.
They're iconic.
But I'm going to talk about Elijah today.
I was really going to start with the story that most people know him for, which is, well,
actually he has a lot of unknown stories, but him and the prophets of Baal.
(09:12):
But I, when I was getting ready to do this episode, I realized that we need some context.
We need a good amount of context.
So this may be two parts.
It is very possible that we may not even get to the story of the prophets of Baal.
(09:33):
We may not get to it now because I really think that this context is important to understanding
what he did and why it mattered.
So we are going back several generations.
Maybe like six or seven could even be, oh, actually maybe it wasn't that much.
(10:00):
Oh no.
Yeah.
Maybe like six or seven generations to David, David, who was after, who was a man after
God's own heart.
David was amazing for the most part.
He had, he did do some, some, some things that are not appropriate, including sleeping
with Bathsheba.
(10:21):
So if there are kids listening to this, I doubt there are.
Maybe this isn't the episode for you.
Oh, actually skip this part.
But he slept with Bathsheba and he had a child named Solomon.
Solomon is known for having all of this wisdom.
God asked him, what do you want?
He said, I don't need riches.
(10:41):
I just want your wisdom.
And God said, because of your great answer, I'm going to give you riches on top of that.
He was one of probably the richest man in the whole entire, definitely the richest man
at that time, but possibly the richest man who have ever existed.
He had gold and gold and gold and gold and gold and bronze and bronze and silver silver.
He had mullah, mullah, mullah.
(11:05):
But he also, like his father loved women.
And in that time, it was very, very legal to marry several wives.
And he took advantage of that.
He he did.
And he married a lot of foreign wives.
So he married a lot of wives that were not Israelites.
(11:26):
And so this doesn't always happen because there are so many stories in the Bible of
the Israelites marrying outside of the clan.
Can you say clan there?
I'm going to.
And it actually being a really, really great thing.
An example is Ruth.
She was a Moabite.
An example is learning rehab.
(11:47):
She was from Jericho or she was a Canaanite.
There are so many other examples.
But in this time, Solomon was marrying a lot of like princesses and queens, maybe not a
queen, but a lot of princesses of like foreign nations.
(12:10):
And they were not trying to hear what God had to say.
They were not trying to worship the God of his father, God Almighty.
They liked their gods.
Lowercase G. And because of that, they would when they would come to stay, question mark,
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what the arrangement was because they had like 700.
(12:31):
So I don't know if they all were in the palace or not.
Maybe they were in their own countries.
We visited them.
I don't know.
I don't know what it is.
But what I do know is that they brought into their relationship their own gods.
And so Solomon's head basically turned away from God Almighty and he started worshiping
(12:51):
the gods of his wives and his concubines.
And so that made his head turn away from God.
And God told Solomon twice.
So this is first Kings chapter 11.
God told Solomon twice, what you're doing is not right.
(13:12):
Stop worshiping foreign gods.
Come back to me.
And Solomon did not.
And he actually is actually kind of crazy.
He built like high places and like basically altars to these gods.
And this is the same man.
So going back a little.
David was a man after God's own heart and he wanted to build a temple for God.
(13:34):
And God said, no, you have too much blood on your hands because he was a man of war.
So God said, your son will build my temple.
So Solomon built the temple of the Lord, the temple that the Israelites were worshiping
in.
If they were worshiping God, they were worshiping in the temple that Solomon built.
(13:54):
With those same hands and in that same lifetime, he then went, he later on went and built altars
to other gods.
And because he did that and because he was entertaining relationships that he should
not have, his head turned away.
(14:14):
And some people truly believe that he died without actually being a Christian or without
maintaining his relationship with God.
I wasn't going to talk about this, but I will now be careful who you are interacting with.
I will never forget, I was watching this podcast, it was a Let God podcast.
Love that podcast.
So sad it ended.
And one of the girls was talking about how her friend was watching Bad Girls Club when
(14:39):
she was young.
And because if you don't know what Bad Girls Club is, look it up.
And because she was watching it, she started being mean and wanting to fight people and
being really angry and yeah, just trying to fight people.
And her mom was like, what is going on?
(15:01):
And it was because of what she was watching.
It was because of what she was entertaining.
And so you have to be very, very careful of what you allow into your life.
And once again, I'm not saying that there's, I think it depends on the individual.
Everybody has things that they're supposed to stay away from.
Everybody has things that they cannot, they can't move with.
Everybody I have them, you have them.
(15:23):
Well, if you have not checked with the Holy Spirit, you definitely have some things that
would be better for you to stay away from.
And editor Udochi here, just to explain this a little bit more, I firmly believe that everybody
has specific things that they should abstain from.
(15:43):
And they're not universal things, but everybody has something that they should probably not
engage with, even though others can.
And so my personal convictions and the personal things I should abstain from will not be the
same things that you should abstain from.
For example, some people can't watch movies.
Some people can't watch TV shows.
Some people can't do XY LMNOP.
(16:04):
It may not be the same for you.
You may be able to watch movies and watch TV shows, but I think it is important to be
cognizant of the specific things that it would be better or you would benefit from staying
away from.
Because what you, the things that you intake, the things that you watch, the people you
hang around, the relationships and the conversations that you entertain have an impact on you.
(16:33):
You don't get to just do whatever you want to and come out and skate.
Like, no, everything you do can have an impact on you.
In fact, our bodies are constantly taking in our environment, learning more about our
environment, and storing the information away to be used at a later point.
So if you are constantly intaking content or music or conversations and things like
(16:59):
that that are not good, not saying, for all have sinned, fall short, or purgat, we will
all mess up in some way.
But if you are constantly entertaining things like that, eventually you will start to become
like what you are entertaining.
You are not immune from that.
And this is not just me saying it.
There are countless stories.
(17:21):
Is that not the saying birds of a feather flock together?
If you look at your friends and you're like, wow, these people are not great, but they're
hilarious and like, you will soon become like them.
Solomon probably didn't enter these relationships like, oh my gosh, these relationships are
going to make me turn away from God.
But did they?
They sure did.
(17:41):
And so because of that, because Solomon was worshipping foreign gods, did not listen to
God when he told him to stop doing that, God said, I'm going to tear the kingdom away from
you.
So at that time, Solomon was king of Israel and Israel was 12 tribes.
And so God basically said, I'm going to leave like, I think one or two because he loved
(18:02):
Judah and I think some parts of Benjamin, but he's going to tear the kingdom of Israel
away from him.
And so we get to this man called Jeroboam.
Jeroboam was one of the officials of Solomon and a prophet came to him and basically said,
you're going to be king.
And he said, this is first king still chapter 11.
(18:26):
And he this is verse 31, then he said to Jeroboam, take 10.
Another thing, God loves an audio visual demonstration.
So in this, Ahijah, he's a prophet, he goes, he has a cloak and he tears into 12 pieces
and he tells Jeroboam, take 10 of these pieces, because this is verse, what is it?
(18:49):
31, see, I'm going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you 10 tribes.
But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out
of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe.
I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtaroth, the goddess of
the city of Nihon, city, Sidonians, Sidonim, interesting, Chemish, the god of the Moabites
(19:13):
and Molech, the god of the Ammonites and have not walked in obedience to me nor done what
is right in my eyes nor kept my decrees and laws as David, Solomon's father did.
And he said, but I won't take all of it.
And then verse 37, however, ask for you, talk to Jeroboam, I will take you and you will
rule over all that your heart desires.
You will be king over Israel.
(19:33):
If you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in
my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands, as David, my servant did, I will be with you.
I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel
to you.
I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not forever.
And Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt and he stayed there until Solomon's
(20:00):
death.
So because of Solomon's sins, God said, you're done.
Your lineage, they're done.
They will no longer be king of Israel.
They could be king of Judah and some parts of Benjamin, but they will no longer be king
of Israel.
And so Solomon somehow got wind and I don't know how, but he was like, oh, so Jeroboam
(20:26):
is going to be the one to take after me.
Got it.
And he tried to kill him.
It didn't work.
And so Solomon dies and his son, Rehoboam, becomes king.
You know, I should have looked up what Rehoboam means.
Give me a second.
I just think it's interesting that...
Let me look at it.
Let me look at it before I say too much.
Rehoboam means...
What?
(20:47):
A wine bottle.
Can we be serious, please?
I mean the name.
Oh, does it really just mean wine bottle?
That's crazy.
That's hilarious.
Rehoboam's name means the nation is enlarged.
That's funny because the nation was actually taken away from him.
(21:11):
Well, no, we can say funny.
He did it to himself.
Well, God allowed it to happen.
I'll get to that.
What does Jeroboam mean?
Does Boam mean...
Does Boam mean wine?
Okay, we ain't got...
I don't...
What the heck?
A large wine bottle?
Yeah, I don't know.
They didn't tell me.
I couldn't find it.
Anyway.
So Rehoboam becomes king and Rehoboam goes to two sets of people.
(21:42):
He's like, I wonder how I'm supposed to rule.
He goes to the elders.
The elders that were with his father.
And he was like, what should I do?
And the elders tell him, this is in verse...
This is chapter 12, first Kings chapter 12, verse 6.
(22:04):
And he says, the king Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during
his lifetime.
How would you advise me to answer these people?
He asked.
And these people were like, your father put a heavy yoke on us.
Basically, your father worked us.
We don't want that.
They were like, if you lighten our labor that your father put on us, we'll serve you.
(22:27):
The king goes to the elders, his father's elders.
Wow.
Run it back.
The elders that served during his father's time is like, what should I respond to this?
And they said, if today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them
a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.
(22:48):
And then he goes to his friends.
Hello.
Remember what I said.
He goes to his friends and he asked the exact same thing.
He was like, what should I answer them?
How should...
Yeah, what should I answer them?
And the young men said, these people have said to this verse time, these people have
said to you, your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter.
(23:11):
Now tell them my little finger is thicker than my father's waist.
My father laid on you a heavy yoke.
I will make it even heavier.
My father scourged you with whips.
I will scourge you with scorpions.
So he rejected the advice of the elders and went with his old friends.
Editor Udochi here again, just to explain that the elders told Rehoboam, okay, tell
(23:35):
them that you won't put more weight on them, that you will make their load lighter.
And if you do that, they'll serve you.
And his friends were like, no, work them harder.
You see what my father did, y'all?
Even worse.
I will make you do so much more.
Can this be point two?
(23:55):
This isn't about Elijah at this point.
This is really about Solomon.
Well, it's about his little lineage.
Be careful who you take advice from.
Be careful who you go to for advice and pray about all things.
When I say pray, I truly do mean there's a verse that says this is the way there will
be a voice in your head that says this is the way of the Lord walking in it.
(24:18):
Yeah, Editor Udochi is back.
To be accurate, this is Isaiah 30, chapter 21.
It says, let me do New King James.
Your ear shall hear a word behind you saying this is the way walk in it.
Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.
(24:39):
So it's not technically in your head or the Bible doesn't say it's in your head, but it
does say that there will be a voice that will instruct you and let you know what to do.
Proverbs, I want to say three, five to six, but that may not be right.
Be right says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
(24:59):
In all thy ways, acknowledge him and he will direct thy path.
Let's break that down.
Trust in the Lord.
So have confident assurance in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding.
So the way that you think things should happen, the way you think things should go down, do
not take that as fact.
(25:20):
Do not just say, oh, this decision I'm going to make because I want to.
Do not lean on your own understanding, but in everything, bring God into it and all their
ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy path.
He will tell you what to do.
He will give you wisdom for your next steps because that's one thing we as human beings
think we're so smart.
We think we're so clever.
(25:41):
We think we've got it going on.
We think the world of ourselves.
But what this verse is basically saying is that do not trust yourself.
You, you and of yourself do not have the intelligence, do not have the ability, do not have the foresight
to make good decisions.
It can only come from God.
And here's what happened.
Jeho Boam listened to his little friends and Israel rebelled because Jeroboam had just
(26:05):
come back from Egypt because he heard that he heard that Solomon was dead.
And Egypt was like, I'm sorry, Israel was like, well, it seems like you're our king,
Jeroboam.
Jerjer?
Get on the throne.
And verse 15 says, so the king denounced it to the people for this turn of events was
from the Lord to fulfill the word of the Lord, fulfill the word the Lord had spoken to Jeroboam
(26:26):
son of Nabat through Ahijah the Shilinite.
So God hardened, wrote Rehoboam's heart because this was punishment for what Solomon had done.
And so the Israelites were like, Jerjer?
It's time.
(26:47):
And Jeroboam said, got it.
And he becomes king of Israel.
Now this is the real me and this is why we care about Elijah.
If we remember first Kings 11 verse 38, this is Ahijah speaking from God as the prophet
to Jeroboam when he was telling him you're going to be king.
(27:11):
If you do whatever I command you, I being God and walk in obedience to me being God
and do what is right in my eyes being God by obeying my God's decrees and commands as
David my God servant did I God will be with you.
I God will build you a dynasty and as enduring as the one I God built for David and will
(27:35):
give Israel to you.
I God will humble David's descendants because of this but not forever.
Case you didn't get that.
God told Jeroboam.
Jer.
Jerry.
Bobo.
If you obey me.
(27:57):
If you take my wisdom.
If you listen to me.
I will make you a strong strong ruler.
I will build a dynasty a lasting a lasting kingdom.
I will build it for you.
(28:18):
If you listen to me.
Kings chapter 12.
This is verse 25.
Then Jeroboam fortified Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there from there
he went out and built a penial.
Jeroboam thought to himself the kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David.
Remember this is after this.
(28:38):
So I have chosen him to be their king.
Jeroboam except for Judah and parts of Benjamin.
Jeroboam thought to himself verse 26.
The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David.
If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem they
will again give their allegiance to their Lord.
Rehoboam king of Judah.
(28:59):
They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.
After seeking advice.
The king made two golden calves.
He said to the people it is too much for you to go to Jerusalem.
Here are your gods Israel who brought you up out of Egypt.
(29:20):
Then he set up in Bethel and the other in Dan.
And this thing became a sin.
The people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.
And Jeroboam built shrines.
He appointed priests not from the Levites.
So the Levites back in Moses day God told the Levites you are the ones that are supposed
to be priests in my house.
(29:42):
He appointed priests that weren't Levites.
He made different festivals.
He made different sacrifices, different offerings.
And created basically a fake religion for Israel.
If you remember what I just said.
(30:04):
Literally the chapter before.
God told Jeroboam.
If you listen to me.
If you listen to me I will make you a powerful kingdom.
All Jeroboam had to do was listen and obey.
(30:28):
And God would make him a powerful kingdom.
Would make him a powerful ruler.
Would give him a dynasty.
But Jeroboam when he became king.
He said.
The kingdom will probably go back to Rehoboam.
So after seeking advice.
(30:51):
Remember after seeking advice not God's advice.
Not the advice he was told.
Not the wisdom he was told.
That even allowed him to know he would be king.
Not that advice.
He didn't seek the prophet who told him all of these things.
He sought somebody else's advice.
And he made a false religion.
(31:15):
Sometimes we are not confident in the promises that God has given us.
Or we are not confident in the belief that God does work everything out for our good.
So because we are not confident in that we go and make decisions by ourselves to bring
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about or solidify or secure the things that God has already promised to us.
We go out of our way.
We do all these extra steps to solidify a promise that God said he would.
That God said he would solidify.
That God said he would secure.
Rehoboam heard from God not only you're going to be king I will keep you.
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And said I'm not too sure about that.
He basically said I will basically mimic your practices, God's practices, the things God
told his people to do.
And tell Israel these things that I have fashioned by my own hands this will be your God.
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And that was done to secure his kingdom.
Jeroboam reminds me a lot of Saul.
Saul was the first king not Saul who's also Paul.
Saul who was the first king of Israel.
Saul did not actually believe that he could be king.
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Even when he was king he was not confident in his position despite the fact that God
made him king.
He wasn't confident in it.
So he would bow to the will of others.
And he hunted David.
Hunted David basically to the day that Saul died.
To the day that he died he hunted David.
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Because he was not secure in himself.
I think that was going to go there.
But are you securing yourself?
Because if you're not you will find yourself doing a lot of things that you don't need
to do to feel security, to feel confidence.
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You'll wear things you don't need to wear.
You'll say things you don't need to say.
You'll confront things you don't need to confront.
You will go and pick fights when you don't need to.
You'll enter into relationships that you don't need to.
You'll entertain friendship that you don't need to.
Because we do all of these things to secure ourselves.
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When in actuality God is the one who secures us.
And we've all done it.
We've all said something, done something, asked in a specific way because we didn't
feel confident.
We've all done it.
But this is an example of how bad it can get when you try to secure your future in your
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own way.
Not trusting your own understanding and not leaning on God.
Not acknowledging him in all things.
Not going to him.
And the reason I say this is because what Jeroboam did by creating high places for other
and high places are basically just like places of sacrifice, religious spaces.
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By him doing that.
By Jeroboam doing that.
Let's count.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
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This last one I have.
Seven.
Now we're in second Kings.
My gosh.
I believe there's an eight.
You have a lot of stuff.
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Seven.
Okay.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
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Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
Technically nineteen.
And we can even go after that because Judah did it too.
Twenty.
We'll stop at Israel.
Nineteen.
Nineteen generations after Jeroboam.
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The Bible is citing that the kings of those generations follow the detestable practices
of Jeroboam.
Nineteen generations later are still feeling the effects of what Jeroboam did because he
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was not confident and secure in what God told him.
Nineteen generations.
Literally if you read through 1 Kings, 2 Kings.
If a king did not do right in the eyes of God, it'll say it.
And it'll say that he followed the practices of Jeroboam.
That Jeroboam caused Israel to commit.
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The sins that Jeroboam caused Israel to commit.
Nineteen generations.
And it is because of those types of sins that Israel was eventually brought under, who is
it?
I think Assyria?
I think it was Assyria.
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Assyrian rule.
Nineteen generations.
All because of one man who used his craftiness for evil.
Anyway.
Honestly, this is a podcast in itself.
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So that is the setting of our story about Elijah, which we may not actually talk much
about because this podcast has been long.
So skipping a few generations, a few generations, we get to Elijah.
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Elijah is a prophet while Ahab is king.
You may not have heard of Ahab, but you have probably heard about Jezebel.
Jezebel was his terrible wife.
Jezebel was from, I think, no, where is she from?
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I can't think where she's from.
Sidon.
Jezebel was from Sidon.
And she was a very religious person.
But religious for her own god.
And so she was a worshiper of Baal, and Baal was the god of weather.
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And Ahab married Jezebel.
And rather than Ahab himself being really evil, he was just really weak.
He was a coward.
He didn't actually rule his kingdom.
He just submitted his will to what Jezebel wanted to do.
And because of that, because Jezebel was basically the one calling the shots, Israel had turned
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to Baal as a god.
They both built up high places, but he set up ones basically for her.
And 1 Kings Chapter 16 said, Ahab also made an asherah pole and did more to arouse the
anger of the Lord, the god of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.
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God was not pleased with Ahab.
Very much not pleased.
Editor Udochi here.
So just to explain a little bit more.
Jezebel, she was evil not just because she worshipped other gods, but because she introduced
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another type of foreign god to Israel.
And she actively killed people that were worshipping God Almighty, or people that were prophets
of God Almighty.
And so that combination, and Ahab not opposing her and instead bowing his will to hers, that
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is what caused God to be so furious with them.
Well actually, I assume that's what caused it.
We don't get like the full rundown, but it is very clear that the type of actions that
they were doing were very very upsetting to God, and warranted a more severe response
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than any of the other kings that were also doing evil.
And so Elijah, who was a prophet, he goes to Ahab.
This is chapter 17 verse 1, As the Lord the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will
be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.
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So this was basically a direct challenge to the God that they worshipped, because Baal
was the God of weather.
If he truly was the God of weather and had that power, Elijah saying there's gonna be
a drought would mean nothing, because he could just make things rain.
And yet, the brooks dried up, the water dried up, and every single place, all the lakes,
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all of it dried up.
There was a drought for several years.
And after Elijah said that, this is verse 2, then the word of the Lord came to Elijah,
leave here and turn eastward and hide in the kereth ravine.
So basically God told Elijah, okay you said your word, you said what I told you to say
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and get up out of here.
And so Elijah left and he was near the Jordan River and he was basically living next to
the river.
So he would drink water from the river before it dried up and ravens would come and feed
him.
If you've ever heard a story about Elijah, you may have already heard a story that talked
about this, but ravens are not kind animals.
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They are not kind birds.
They are not a parrot that may sit on your shoulder and copy whatever you say and sing.
Ravens, I'm pretty sure are predators.
And they're highly intelligent birds.
Highly highly intelligent.
They do not feed people.
They do not help.
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They are notorious scavengers.
They are all for themselves.
Ravens do not help, yet in a moment of divine provision, God sent ravens to feed Elijah.
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So they would come in the morning and they would come in the evening.
This is for someone else, which may also be me.
If God has asked you to do something, he has provided the provision to sustain you in it.
Because in him proclaiming the drought, he's also talking about himself.
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Because what water is he going to drink?
Or what crops would he eat if there's no water coming down to help them grow?
Or what animals if they can't even eat the crops because they're not growing?
And yet Elijah went up there and he said, you're done.
Water's done.
And God sustained him.
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But the brook dried up.
And so God told him, go at once.
This is still chapter 17.
This is verse, I think verse 9.
Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there.
I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.
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So Zarephath is not part of Israel.
It is part of Sidon, the place that Jesuit's from.
So God basically sent Elijah into enemy territory and said, go, I'll provide for you there.
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Sometimes God will tell us to go to places that make no sense.
What do you mean go and talk to that person that was mean to me?
What do you mean go to that place that fired me?
What do you mean go and go and help this person who was rude to me for so many years, who
made me feel small, who made me feel little?
What do you...
Like when God said, pray for your enemies, shouldn't you be telling, I'm sorry, where's
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the revenge?
God, you said, vengeance is yours.
Sometimes we would rather pray for the cold to keep on the person's head than for God
to forgive them of their sins and to intercede for what they are going through.
But because God is God, he told Elijah, go to Sidon and there's a widow that will keep
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you.
So we touched a little bit about this in the story of Ruth.
But widows were really at the low, low end of the social hierarchy.
They had almost no rights.
They didn't, unless you had like a grown son, you didn't have anybody who was going to defend
you or take up your cause.
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It was not easy to be a widow.
So even the idea of a widow providing for Elijah defies human logic of that time because
the likelihood of that actually happening, zero.
Slim.
Once again, according to human logic, it would be like, maybe find you a nice little house
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that'll let you sleep on their couch while they got some flour or before their cow dies
or whatever.
It would not be to go to a widow in enemy territory and trust that you will provide
a fort there.
But Elijah goes and he finds the widow.
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And verse 10, so he went to Zarephath, when he came to the town gate, a widow was there
gathering sticks.
So I went to a commentary and they brought up a really good point that there was a drought
of water, not wood.
So she wasn't even collecting big logs of wood.
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She was going and collecting sticks, which means that she didn't have, she didn't even
have the money to have wood in her house to cook things.
She didn't have the money to go buy wood or get somebody to bring her good wood.
She had to use sticks and she was collecting it.
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This isn't even a well-to-do widow.
This is the poorest of the poor widows.
She doesn't have much.
And yet still Elijah goes to her and says, would you bring me a little water in a jar
so I may have a drink?
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And so she goes to get it.
And after he says, bring me please a piece of bread.
And she replies, as surely as Lord your God lives, I don't have any bread, only a handful
of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug.
I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we
may eat it and die.
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Two things here, numero uno.
She is once again, the poorest of the poor.
She has a little bit of flour, a little bit of oil.
She has no hope for the future.
She said, we're going to eat this last meal and then we're done.
There is no more life for us.
There is nothing else for us.
This is my last action.
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And then we're done.
I think it's also crazy how she knew, how she knew about Elijah's God.
Because surely as Lord your God lives.
I wonder if maybe the story of what she did to Jezeb, of what he said, had made its way
to her.
I mean, it would make sense, it made its way to her home country.
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And that's also so sad because she had a son.
There could have been the hope that in the future that he would be able to grow and gain
money and be able to take care of her.
But now she's like, there is no hope.
This is our last thing.
And I also think it's fascinating that God didn't tell the widow what was happening because
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he said, I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.
But he didn't tell her, he didn't drop something in her spirit, he didn't drop something in
her head.
I mean, we technically don't know that.
But she seemed real confused by his request.
He's like, we ain't got nothing.
I have barely enough for me and my son.
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So to give it to you, sir, we ain't got it.
And yet, Elijah was like, don't be afraid.
The way I love the way that God, not confronts, but whenever he requests something of people,
one of the first things he says is always don't be afraid, taking care of their emotional
well-being before presenting them with something, understanding that a lot of things he asks
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us to do are fear inducing.
They don't make sense.
It doesn't work with the logic of our world.
And yet he's like, I still care about the fact that doing this makes you feel a type
of way.
I care about your feelings in this.
Because she's probably, it would make sense to be resigned, but also fearful of what will
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happen to us.
And so Elijah says, don't be afraid, go home and do as you have said, but first make a
small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me.
And then make something for yourself and your son, for this is what the Lord, the God of
Israel says, the jar of flour will not be used out, but the jug of oil will not dry
until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.
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So I'm not gonna lie, the first time I read that I was like, Elijah, can you stop?
Can you stop?
She's a widow.
She barely has enough for herself.
The type of guts you have to have to ask somebody after hearing that, nah, but take care of
me first.
Excuse me.
Once again, in human lives, we'd be like, Elijah, cut it out.
That is so disrespectful.
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That is so rude.
But he had confidence in God.
He heard.
Well, God, it seems like God also revealed to him that the jar of flour and the jug oil
won't go dry.
But God told him initially, go there or what is going to provide for you.
And he said, it seems like you're the widow.
So I'm not gonna go hungry.
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So if I'm not gonna go hungry and you're here and you're providing for me, you can't go
hungry either.
So yeah, the confidence, I'm telling you, one thing Elijah had, it was confidence.
He had the confidence to go and say it.
And I think the craziest thing is that she did exactly what Elijah said.
And I would have loved to know her emotional state at that time.
Was she like, you know what?
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Oh, well, we're all gonna die anyway.
I may as well just give it to him.
At least I've done some nice thing before I go.
Was she like, hmm.
Maybe he's telling the truth.
Because once again, she knows him as Lord your God, knowing that he serves a God.
And obviously this God is renowned, renowned.
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Because she was able to specify that it was a God that his people served.
Well, should have been serving.
So maybe she was like, you know what, let me give it a try.
Or maybe there was hope.
She was like, is it possible?
This man that has said all of these things, that they've come true, is it possible that
I will truly be sustained?
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And if it's possible, then here's your bread.
For whatever reason though, we know that she went and did exactly what Elijah said.
Brought her the bread, brought him the bread, and then made some food for her family.
And just like Elijah, just like Elijah had said, with inspiration from the Lord, the
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flour and the oil did not run dry.
For as long as Elijah was there, they had food.
So not only did God provide for Elijah, he provided for a woman who had nothing.
Lowest end of the totem pole was collecting sticks, not even having logs, not even having
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good firewood, sticks that were on the ground.
To have one last meal, he provided for her as well.
He could have sent Elijah, God could have sent Elijah to, in fact, this is even in Luke,
I was listening to this earlier.
If you want to listen to the Bible, this is just such a side note.
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There's this, I don't know what the name of it is, but if you search a certain book of
the Bible, and there's like this burgundy one with gold on YouTube, they basically do
dramatized versions of the Bible.
It has like music in the background, different voices.
If you think sometimes the Bible, you don't like reading it, it may be kind of a little
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tedious or whatever, try listening to it.
It was giving.
I was thoroughly entertained.
But I'm pretty sure in Luke, it says, let's see if that's true.
I'm pretty sure it's Luke.
Is it not Luke?
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Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
This is Luke chapter four, verse 24.
Truly I tell you, and this is after Jesus went back to his hometown, and they were like,
I know what's not in Jesus from down the block that's saying all this stuff, saying he's
the son of God, trying to preach scriptures.
We knew you when you were a baby, boy.
Don't play with us.
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Some people do that.
There are some people that will not let you grow.
Oh, that's another word.
He said, truly I tell you, he continued, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
I assure you that there were many widows in his own Elijah's time when the sky was
shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land.
Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them but to a widow in Zarephath and the region of
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Sidon.
And there is a man in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha, the prophet, yet none
of them was cleansed, only Naman the Syrian.
And people were mad when they heard that.
But I think it's a testimony that God is not a respecter of persons.
He don't care who you are.
He don't care what your God-in-Jewel bank account.
He don't care where you came from.
He don't care who your daddy is.
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He don't care who your mommy is.
He don't care about none of that.
He uses who he wants to use.
He could have sent Elijah to a widow in Israel.
He could have sent Elijah to a widow in different regions.
He could have sent Elijah to a rich widow.
There were rich widows.
But no.
He sent Elijah to a woman who had, once again, basically nothing.
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And I was also reading commentary that was basically saying, isn't it so fascinating
that God only gave them enough to survive that day?
And I was like, I wonder why?
Because he could have filled up the big thing of flour, could have filled up the jar of
oil.
And I don't know if this is true, but a commentary, which I think is such a fascinating perspective,
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basically said, because of the drought, there was then a severe famine.
Because once again, if you ain't got water, you can't water your crops.
So there's not food.
You can't water, you can't give animals water to drink.
And you can't even give them feed.
They can't graze grass or they can't eat whatever animals eat, corn, oats, whatever.
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They can't do any of that.
Because there's no water to grow that stuff.
So with the drought can come very easily a famine as well.
If word got around that homegirl had a bunch of flour and oil, and was making bread every
day, who knows what could have happened to them?
Who knows what could have happened to that provision?
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People could have come and tried to steal it, people come and tried to bother her.
There's so many other things that could have happened.
I just think, once again, we don't know the reason that God did that, because it doesn't
specify, but I do think it's so fascinating the method that God used to sustain them was
just enough.
And it was.
And that's truly all they needed.
They didn't need an overflowing amount of flour and all the vegetables and a beautiful
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garden.
All they needed was some flour and some oil and God gave them what they needed in that
moment.
And so later on, after she made the food, Elijah stayed with them and they were good.
So this is verse 17.
Sometime later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill.
He grew worse and worse and finally stopped breathing.
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He said to Elijah, what do you have against me, man of God?
Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?
Now hold up.
When I read this, I've read the story before, I was like, oh, remind you of your sin?
What's she talking about?
The Bible never tells us what that sin is, but it is so clear that whatever she did has
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been, she's been holding onto it and potentially living in fear of it.
Because she seems to have associated her son dying with whatever sin she committed.
She goes and she's like, did you come here so that way my son would die?
Did you come here as a reminder that there is an ultimate being that has seen what I
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have done and is now taking revenge, kept me alive only to kill my son?
Is that why you're here?
Which once again, very normal emotions.
She could have been a little bit more heated because this is supposed to be when it's her
child, this is supposed to be her future.
And it would seem a type of way that if God sustained them just to kill the son, why sustain
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them in the first place then?
If they could have died before this and not had any issue, but to be given the glimmer
of a better future and then to have that taken away.
She was upset.
And so then Elijah's like, give me your son.
So he takes him to the upper room and he cries out to the Lord.
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Because it seems like Elijah also did not know this was going to happen.
Because he was crying out to the Lord.
He was like, hello.
I wasn't... what?
And he said, Lord, my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with
by causing her son to die?
I think even then Elijah was acknowledging like this woman does not have a lot.
You've brought tragedy.
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It's one thing to bring tragedy to Israel because they sinned.
What has this woman done?
To bring tragedy even onto her?
Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord.
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.
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So a beautiful miracle was done.
The boy regained his life.
Life was breathed back into him.
I don't know how, we don't know how, but we do know that God...
Well, we do know how.
God breathed it back into him.
And says, verse 23, Elijah picked up the child and carried him down to the room and into
the house.
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He gave him to his mother and said, look, your son is alive.
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.
This first confused me because I was like, I'm sorry, girl.
Go check your flower.
Because if you make a cake right now, the flower will still be there tomorrow.
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How did that, how did that not, how did that not get you to believe?
Why did you require this other miracle to believe that God was who he says he is?
Well, that confused me.
But it also was like the way that God moves because for whatever reason, this incident
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made her confront a fear that had been in her heart, that she would be punished in some
way, shape or form because of the sin she committed.
And yet God just showed her, no, I can...
Oh, don't make me praise dance.
I can breathe life back into any situation.
I can restore and bring back to life any situation.
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It doesn't make sense that that child came back to life and also proved that God was
not me because he didn't let her live only to see her son die.
In fact, he used the situation to confirm himself in her life.
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Elijah could have gone to any widow, yet he went to one, God directed him to one in enemy
territory and God showed himself in her life.
That God would be so personal that he would show himself in her life specifically.
Hello, love God, man.
(01:02:13):
Another lesson I took from this story is not to judge people by their appearance or judge
situations by their appearance because once again, the logical thing to do would be like,
yeah, this one seems really, really poor.
I'm going to just go to somebody who looks like they could provide for me.
Yet all of those people that had the big houses and the big farms and the big stuff like that,
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were they not starving?
If this woman who had almost nothing, she was able to survive because God had given
it to her, had provided, securely provided for her.
So I think once again about not leaning on your own understanding, but acknowledging
God in everything.
And Elijah believed, he was like, you know what, if you say it's the widow, then it's
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the widow.
And he trusted God instead of trusting himself.
And it's something we all need to do, trusting what God says rather than trusting in our
own human logic.
I think that's the theme of this episode.
I didn't really know what it would be, but I think that's truly what it is.
Finding your security in God and not yourself.
(01:03:17):
Truly not leaning on your own understanding.
Because Derabohm leaned on his own understanding and look what happened.
Rehoboam leaned on his own understanding and who he wanted to trust.
Look what happened.
Solomon leaned on, let me not, let me not.
Solomon listened and leaned on his own comfort and his own, his own desires.
(01:03:40):
And look where it led him.
Yet in this moment, Elijah leaned on God's wisdom.
He did not listen to his own understanding, leaned on God's wisdom.
And he acknowledged him and he directed him to sustenance.
For three years, there was a drought for three years.
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No rain, no water came from the sky.
Yet Elijah was fine.
And by proxy, we can even say that God wanted to meet this woman in what she was going through.
That's the type of God we serve.
I mean, this is an example of that leaving the 99 for the one.
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When you're the one, it hits different.
And she was the one.
Literally, left all this world, came for her.
Yeah.
Trust the Lord with all your heart and lean on your own understanding and all thy ways
acknowledge him and he will direct thy path.
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Amen.
Amen.
I love saying it like that.
As I suspected, we didn't get to the other one.
We can do it later.
Or next episode.
But yes, thank you for listening.
I pray that this touched you.
I pray that God will use this to minister to your life.
I pray that he would show up in the way that you need him to in this moment and he would
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convict your heart.
Giving you the ability to truly put your trust in him, put your confidence in him, put your
security in him.
That he's moving and working on your behalf, even if it doesn't make sense.
This reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, Ephesians 2 10, for we are Christ's
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workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works he planned beforehand that we should
walk in them.
I definitely combined two different versions, but I love that.
That we are his workmanship, his craftsmanship.
He pieced together and said, this hand should go this place and this eye should go this
place and this nerve should go this way.
If you're a science person, be quiet.
(01:05:49):
I'm going somewhere with this.
This foot should go right here and should be angled exactly this way.
If you've ever created a drawing or if you ever watched somebody form something out of
clay, it's intentional when you're supposed to do something and how you're supposed to
move your hands and to create a finished product.
(01:06:10):
Just the way that the person does that, God is even more intentional in how he created
us.
He created good works for us to do.
Good things for us to do.
He did it before we were even born that we should walk in them.
(01:06:31):
Not run, not shovel, not fight, not scream, none.
It didn't ask for anything that requires effort or copious amounts of effort that we should
walk.
Listen, it's those that are running, except if you're in a race, those that are running
(01:06:54):
or someone that they really need to find something.
They really need to go and get something.
When you're running, there's a sense of urgency.
When you're walking, calm, cool, collected, there's an assuredness that comes when you
walk.
For example, if there's this guy in your heart and somebody was walking, everybody else
(01:07:15):
was running, I'm like either you're lazy or you know something I don't.
Maybe some of y'all need to go ask God, I've been running.
It's not really mathin' right now.
How am I supposed to be walking?
I don't know.
Just some food for thought.
Anyway, I thank God.
Once again, I'm sorry.
I don't really know what's going to happen in this podcast, but he shows up.
Yay, Jesus.
Okay.
I'll see y'all later for part two.
(01:07:39):
See y'all later.
Bye!
Thanks.
Good luck.
(01:08:01):
God bless you.
Hello and welcome back to the Our Favorite Bible Stories podcast.
(00:13):
My name is Udochi and I am your host.
Welcome back everyone.
I've actually been pretty consistent.
I think the last episode went out two to three weeks ago, so we're back with episode question
mark six.
I think it's six, maybe five or seven.
I'm not positive, but who cares?
(00:35):
Yeah, normally I have more to say right now and I don't.
That's it.
So let's go into Song of the Week.
If this is your first time listening, I normally do a Song of the Week.
This is just a Christian song that I've really been loving.
I'm so subdued right now.
Maybe I'll get more chaotic later.
(00:56):
I went to my Christian playlist, which is like, I think there's about 1200 songs on
it.
And I don't know if there's really been a song that I've been gravitating towards this
this past week.
I think You Are by Virtue.
Any song by Virtue is phenomenal.
They know what they're doing.
(01:16):
Well, I guess they knew what they were doing because I don't think they're a group anymore,
but they're phenomenal.
Harmony is on point.
But no, they're just phenomenal and they do like really cool renditions of like classic
songs like they have one for Greatest Life Faithfulness.
They have boppy music.
Like if you want to be in the car singing at the top of your lungs, the Christian music
(01:37):
Virtue is...
Mary Mary is also for you, but Virtue is definitely for you.
Ooh, Anita Wilson, All About You.
That's good.
That's another.
It's like a more lighthearted, not lighthearted in terms of content, but lighthearted in terms
of like tone.
Anything by Bridge Music is phenomenal.
Ooh, Big God by Tarion.
(01:59):
I think it's supernouns it.
Tarion, that has been on repeat.
I have very much enjoyed that.
Um...
By Jave, I think that's it.
Yeah, so I have not named a song and instead said artist like I always do.
I'll go with Virtue You Are and Big God by Tarion because I have been playing that a
(02:20):
lot.
Yeah, love that.
Yeah, those are my songs and artists of the week.
I may as well just rename it artist of the week because I never just do one song.
Who cares?
Anyway, I'm in a really flippant mood today.
I don't know why.
It literally only started when I turned on this podcast.
Jesus be with me, Lord.
(02:40):
Guide my words.
Um...
Rose, Bud, Thorin.
Rose is something good that happened this week.
Bud is something I'm looking forward to.
Thorin is something not so great that happened.
Um...
I have several Buds.
One is I just fried some plantain.
It was so good.
I burnt it a little but I'm not gonna lie, I kinda like it that way.
(03:02):
So that was phenomenal.
And I may fry up another one.
Um...
Another Rose.
I...
This is a fun fact about me.
I love choirs.
Like, I am very much like a Black gospel choir person.
When I was younger, my parents bought the Mississippi Mass Choir tape.
(03:24):
It was on repeat in our house and I loved every single second of it.
If you have never seen the Mississippi Mass Choir...
This I give permission.
Pause this video and go listen to them.
They are phenomenal.
Um...
One more day.
I wish I could remember the name of the lady.
I'm not tired yet.
The soloist for I'm Not Tired Yet.
Oh.
(03:44):
She's amazing.
She sang that song for like 8-10 minutes.
And she sounded exactly the same the whole way through.
What a queen.
Love her.
Um...
Yeah, I'm a choir person.
Um...
I found the Spellman Choir.
They're phenomenal.
Their Christmas concert, I look forward to it.
I think I found it my freshman or sophomore year.
I look forward to it every single year.
(04:06):
It is so good.
Um...
But I found a new...
Also the Yale Gospel Choir is also quite good.
I recently found the North Carolina A&T Gospel Choir.
Let me just look that up real quick before somebody gets very offended, I believe.
That it's North Carolina A&T.
I believe that's how it's pronounced.
(04:27):
Let me check.
Yes.
Yes.
But I don't think anybody said agriculture technical state.
I think they say A&T.
So I found their gospel choir.
And I mean this in the most loving and joyful and kind way.
(04:48):
It is so unhinged.
And I loved every single second of it.
Every single second.
I watched the 2023 one and it started off with what looked like a stroll and I was like,
what's going on?
And then they basically just did this like in the audience performance of songs and then
(05:09):
they went up to the stage and they have so much energy.
And they are amazing singers because if I did a tenth of a tenth, if I did a fiftieth
of what they did, I would be out of breath.
They were full on dancing.
Like full on concert dancing.
Then they go up and belt.
Like who are you?
(05:29):
Talented.
That's who you are.
Um so they did a song called No Joy No Strength.
Um whoever, there was a guy that was leading it and he is an amazing dancer.
He has so much energy.
Wow I wish I could have that much energy.
Some people take their iron to get that much energy.
He seems like he naturally has it.
So love that for him.
(05:51):
So that, I guess those are two roses.
Um a thorn?
What is a thorn?
I have not been getting a good amount of sleep lately.
Which is very upsetting because I hate waking up tired.
(06:11):
That is like a top ten ick for me, for myself.
I hate waking up tired because no matter how much sleep you get after that, it's still
not, you still don't feel rested, fully rested.
So um yeah I need to, my sleep schedule needs to be better.
And tomorrow is Juneteenth so hopefully I can sleep in a little.
Um yay Juneteenth by the way.
(06:33):
If you're not American listening to this, look it up.
But yay Juneteenth.
And then a bud, something I'm looking forward to.
Oh actually, no that's too much information.
A thing I'm looking forward to.
(06:53):
I've been finding a lot of really good Christian podcasts and I'm looking forward to listening
to them.
I also Inside Out 2 just came out and I'm trying to convince my sister to see it with
me.
And it will work out.
I will win.
We will go see it.
It looks so so good.
And Iot Etibere, I love Iot Etibere.
I watched a video of her voicing Envy.
(07:15):
She's so talented.
Like she can do it all.
So um yeah I'm looking forward to Inside Out 2.
Alright let's pray and then start our um our story.
Which may have two parts.
So Dear Heavenly Father I want to thank you for this day.
I want to thank you for allowing me to come to the hour of this day as I am about to record
(07:37):
this or as I am recording this podcast.
I ask that you will just be in the midst God.
This is your holy word.
This is your precious word.
You said that you've honored your word above all of your names.
So be here in this moment.
Guide my words.
Guide my thought processes.
Guide the information that I am about to present.
May it be, may it be edifying and may it be worthy of my calling in you.
(08:04):
May it represent to you well.
Please keep me from anything that is not accurate or does not fully reflect what you want to
say in this moment.
Hide me behind your cross that there would be none of me and all of you.
And may you be glorified and adored forevermore.
(08:24):
In Jesus name I pray.
Amen.
Today.
Well, we're going to start with the backstory, but we are going to talk about Elijah.
I've really been in my Old Testament bag.
I've been reading through first Kings.
I started with Elisha.
Then I went back and was like, Elisha, Elisha's crazy.
(08:46):
Love him though.
Somebody said that they're like two old grandfathers, grumpy grandfathers.
And yeah, I could see that.
I could absolutely see that.
They're iconic.
But I'm going to talk about Elijah today.
I was really going to start with the story that most people know him for, which is, well,
actually he has a lot of unknown stories, but him and the prophets of Baal.
(09:12):
But I, when I was getting ready to do this episode, I realized that we need some context.
We need a good amount of context.
So this may be two parts.
It is very possible that we may not even get to the story of the prophets of Baal.
(09:33):
We may not get to it now because I really think that this context is important to understanding
what he did and why it mattered.
So we are going back several generations.
Maybe like six or seven could even be, oh, actually maybe it wasn't that much.
(10:00):
Oh no.
Yeah.
Maybe like six or seven generations to David, David, who was after, who was a man after
God's own heart.
David was amazing for the most part.
He had, he did do some, some, some things that are not appropriate, including sleeping
with Bathsheba.
(10:21):
So if there are kids listening to this, I doubt there are.
Maybe this isn't the episode for you.
Oh, actually skip this part.
But he slept with Bathsheba and he had a child named Solomon.
Solomon is known for having all of this wisdom.
God asked him, what do you want?
He said, I don't need riches.
(10:41):
I just want your wisdom.
And God said, because of your great answer, I'm going to give you riches on top of that.
He was one of probably the richest man in the whole entire, definitely the richest man
at that time, but possibly the richest man who have ever existed.
He had gold and gold and gold and gold and gold and bronze and bronze and silver silver.
He had mullah, mullah, mullah.
(11:05):
But he also, like his father loved women.
And in that time, it was very, very legal to marry several wives.
And he took advantage of that.
He he did.
And he married a lot of foreign wives.
So he married a lot of wives that were not Israelites.
(11:26):
And so this doesn't always happen because there are so many stories in the Bible of
the Israelites marrying outside of the clan.
Can you say clan there?
I'm going to.
And it actually being a really, really great thing.
An example is Ruth.
She was a Moabite.
An example is learning rehab.
(11:47):
She was from Jericho or she was a Canaanite.
There are so many other examples.
But in this time, Solomon was marrying a lot of like princesses and queens, maybe not a
queen, but a lot of princesses of like foreign nations.
(12:10):
And they were not trying to hear what God had to say.
They were not trying to worship the God of his father, God Almighty.
They liked their gods.
Lowercase G. And because of that, they would when they would come to stay, question mark,
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what the arrangement was because they had like 700.
(12:31):
So I don't know if they all were in the palace or not.
Maybe they were in their own countries.
We visited them.
I don't know.
I don't know what it is.
But what I do know is that they brought into their relationship their own gods.
And so Solomon's head basically turned away from God Almighty and he started worshiping
(12:51):
the gods of his wives and his concubines.
And so that made his head turn away from God.
And God told Solomon twice.
So this is first Kings chapter 11.
God told Solomon twice, what you're doing is not right.
(13:12):
Stop worshiping foreign gods.
Come back to me.
And Solomon did not.
And he actually is actually kind of crazy.
He built like high places and like basically altars to these gods.
And this is the same man.
So going back a little.
David was a man after God's own heart and he wanted to build a temple for God.
(13:34):
And God said, no, you have too much blood on your hands because he was a man of war.
So God said, your son will build my temple.
So Solomon built the temple of the Lord, the temple that the Israelites were worshiping
in.
If they were worshiping God, they were worshiping in the temple that Solomon built.
(13:54):
With those same hands and in that same lifetime, he then went, he later on went and built altars
to other gods.
And because he did that and because he was entertaining relationships that he should
not have, his head turned away.
(14:14):
And some people truly believe that he died without actually being a Christian or without
maintaining his relationship with God.
I wasn't going to talk about this, but I will now be careful who you are interacting with.
I will never forget, I was watching this podcast, it was a Let God podcast.
Love that podcast.
So sad it ended.
And one of the girls was talking about how her friend was watching Bad Girls Club when
(14:39):
she was young.
And because if you don't know what Bad Girls Club is, look it up.
And because she was watching it, she started being mean and wanting to fight people and
being really angry and yeah, just trying to fight people.
And her mom was like, what is going on?
(15:01):
And it was because of what she was watching.
It was because of what she was entertaining.
And so you have to be very, very careful of what you allow into your life.
And once again, I'm not saying that there's, I think it depends on the individual.
Everybody has things that they're supposed to stay away from.
Everybody has things that they cannot, they can't move with.
Everybody I have them, you have them.
(15:23):
Well, if you have not checked with the Holy Spirit, you definitely have some things that
would be better for you to stay away from.
And editor Udochi here, just to explain this a little bit more, I firmly believe that everybody
has specific things that they should abstain from.
(15:43):
And they're not universal things, but everybody has something that they should probably not
engage with, even though others can.
And so my personal convictions and the personal things I should abstain from will not be the
same things that you should abstain from.
For example, some people can't watch movies.
Some people can't watch TV shows.
Some people can't do XY LMNOP.
(16:04):
It may not be the same for you.
You may be able to watch movies and watch TV shows, but I think it is important to be
cognizant of the specific things that it would be better or you would benefit from staying
away from.
Because what you, the things that you intake, the things that you watch, the people you
hang around, the relationships and the conversations that you entertain have an impact on you.
(16:33):
You don't get to just do whatever you want to and come out and skate.
Like, no, everything you do can have an impact on you.
In fact, our bodies are constantly taking in our environment, learning more about our
environment, and storing the information away to be used at a later point.
So if you are constantly intaking content or music or conversations and things like
(16:59):
that that are not good, not saying, for all have sinned, fall short, or purgat, we will
all mess up in some way.
But if you are constantly entertaining things like that, eventually you will start to become
like what you are entertaining.
You are not immune from that.
And this is not just me saying it.
There are countless stories.
(17:21):
Is that not the saying birds of a feather flock together?
If you look at your friends and you're like, wow, these people are not great, but they're
hilarious and like, you will soon become like them.
Solomon probably didn't enter these relationships like, oh my gosh, these relationships are
going to make me turn away from God.
But did they?
They sure did.
(17:41):
And so because of that, because Solomon was worshipping foreign gods, did not listen to
God when he told him to stop doing that, God said, I'm going to tear the kingdom away from
you.
So at that time, Solomon was king of Israel and Israel was 12 tribes.
And so God basically said, I'm going to leave like, I think one or two because he loved
(18:02):
Judah and I think some parts of Benjamin, but he's going to tear the kingdom of Israel
away from him.
And so we get to this man called Jeroboam.
Jeroboam was one of the officials of Solomon and a prophet came to him and basically said,
you're going to be king.
And he said, this is first king still chapter 11.
(18:26):
And he this is verse 31, then he said to Jeroboam, take 10.
Another thing, God loves an audio visual demonstration.
So in this, Ahijah, he's a prophet, he goes, he has a cloak and he tears into 12 pieces
and he tells Jeroboam, take 10 of these pieces, because this is verse, what is it?
(18:49):
31, see, I'm going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you 10 tribes.
But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out
of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe.
I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtaroth, the goddess of
the city of Nihon, city, Sidonians, Sidonim, interesting, Chemish, the god of the Moabites
(19:13):
and Molech, the god of the Ammonites and have not walked in obedience to me nor done what
is right in my eyes nor kept my decrees and laws as David, Solomon's father did.
And he said, but I won't take all of it.
And then verse 37, however, ask for you, talk to Jeroboam, I will take you and you will
rule over all that your heart desires.
You will be king over Israel.
(19:33):
If you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in
my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands, as David, my servant did, I will be with you.
I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel
to you.
I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not forever.
And Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt and he stayed there until Solomon's
(20:00):
death.
So because of Solomon's sins, God said, you're done.
Your lineage, they're done.
They will no longer be king of Israel.
They could be king of Judah and some parts of Benjamin, but they will no longer be king
of Israel.
And so Solomon somehow got wind and I don't know how, but he was like, oh, so Jeroboam
(20:26):
is going to be the one to take after me.
Got it.
And he tried to kill him.
It didn't work.
And so Solomon dies and his son, Rehoboam, becomes king.
You know, I should have looked up what Rehoboam means.
Give me a second.
I just think it's interesting that...
Let me look at it.
Let me look at it before I say too much.
Rehoboam means...
What?
(20:47):
A wine bottle.
Can we be serious, please?
I mean the name.
Oh, does it really just mean wine bottle?
That's crazy.
That's hilarious.
Rehoboam's name means the nation is enlarged.
That's funny because the nation was actually taken away from him.
(21:11):
Well, no, we can say funny.
He did it to himself.
Well, God allowed it to happen.
I'll get to that.
What does Jeroboam mean?
Does Boam mean...
Does Boam mean wine?
Okay, we ain't got...
I don't...
What the heck?
A large wine bottle?
Yeah, I don't know.
They didn't tell me.
I couldn't find it.
Anyway.
So Rehoboam becomes king and Rehoboam goes to two sets of people.
(21:42):
He's like, I wonder how I'm supposed to rule.
He goes to the elders.
The elders that were with his father.
And he was like, what should I do?
And the elders tell him, this is in verse...
This is chapter 12, first Kings chapter 12, verse 6.
(22:04):
And he says, the king Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during
his lifetime.
How would you advise me to answer these people?
He asked.
And these people were like, your father put a heavy yoke on us.
Basically, your father worked us.
We don't want that.
They were like, if you lighten our labor that your father put on us, we'll serve you.
(22:27):
The king goes to the elders, his father's elders.
Wow.
Run it back.
The elders that served during his father's time is like, what should I respond to this?
And they said, if today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them
a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.
(22:48):
And then he goes to his friends.
Hello.
Remember what I said.
He goes to his friends and he asked the exact same thing.
He was like, what should I answer them?
How should...
Yeah, what should I answer them?
And the young men said, these people have said to this verse time, these people have
said to you, your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter.
(23:11):
Now tell them my little finger is thicker than my father's waist.
My father laid on you a heavy yoke.
I will make it even heavier.
My father scourged you with whips.
I will scourge you with scorpions.
So he rejected the advice of the elders and went with his old friends.
Editor Udochi here again, just to explain that the elders told Rehoboam, okay, tell
(23:35):
them that you won't put more weight on them, that you will make their load lighter.
And if you do that, they'll serve you.
And his friends were like, no, work them harder.
You see what my father did, y'all?
Even worse.
I will make you do so much more.
Can this be point two?
(23:55):
This isn't about Elijah at this point.
This is really about Solomon.
Well, it's about his little lineage.
Be careful who you take advice from.
Be careful who you go to for advice and pray about all things.
When I say pray, I truly do mean there's a verse that says this is the way there will
be a voice in your head that says this is the way of the Lord walking in it.
(24:18):
Yeah, Editor Udochi is back.
To be accurate, this is Isaiah 30, chapter 21.
It says, let me do New King James.
Your ear shall hear a word behind you saying this is the way walk in it.
Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.
(24:39):
So it's not technically in your head or the Bible doesn't say it's in your head, but it
does say that there will be a voice that will instruct you and let you know what to do.
Proverbs, I want to say three, five to six, but that may not be right.
Be right says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
(24:59):
In all thy ways, acknowledge him and he will direct thy path.
Let's break that down.
Trust in the Lord.
So have confident assurance in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding.
So the way that you think things should happen, the way you think things should go down, do
not take that as fact.
(25:20):
Do not just say, oh, this decision I'm going to make because I want to.
Do not lean on your own understanding, but in everything, bring God into it and all their
ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy path.
He will tell you what to do.
He will give you wisdom for your next steps because that's one thing we as human beings
think we're so smart.
We think we're so clever.
(25:41):
We think we've got it going on.
We think the world of ourselves.
But what this verse is basically saying is that do not trust yourself.
You, you and of yourself do not have the intelligence, do not have the ability, do not have the foresight
to make good decisions.
It can only come from God.
And here's what happened.
Jeho Boam listened to his little friends and Israel rebelled because Jeroboam had just
(26:05):
come back from Egypt because he heard that he heard that Solomon was dead.
And Egypt was like, I'm sorry, Israel was like, well, it seems like you're our king,
Jeroboam.
Jerjer?
Get on the throne.
And verse 15 says, so the king denounced it to the people for this turn of events was
from the Lord to fulfill the word of the Lord, fulfill the word the Lord had spoken to Jeroboam
(26:26):
son of Nabat through Ahijah the Shilinite.
So God hardened, wrote Rehoboam's heart because this was punishment for what Solomon had done.
And so the Israelites were like, Jerjer?
It's time.
(26:47):
And Jeroboam said, got it.
And he becomes king of Israel.
Now this is the real me and this is why we care about Elijah.
If we remember first Kings 11 verse 38, this is Ahijah speaking from God as the prophet
to Jeroboam when he was telling him you're going to be king.
(27:11):
If you do whatever I command you, I being God and walk in obedience to me being God
and do what is right in my eyes being God by obeying my God's decrees and commands as
David my God servant did I God will be with you.
I God will build you a dynasty and as enduring as the one I God built for David and will
(27:35):
give Israel to you.
I God will humble David's descendants because of this but not forever.
Case you didn't get that.
God told Jeroboam.
Jer.
Jerry.
Bobo.
If you obey me.
(27:57):
If you take my wisdom.
If you listen to me.
I will make you a strong strong ruler.
I will build a dynasty a lasting a lasting kingdom.
I will build it for you.
(28:18):
If you listen to me.
Kings chapter 12.
This is verse 25.
Then Jeroboam fortified Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there from there
he went out and built a penial.
Jeroboam thought to himself the kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David.
Remember this is after this.
(28:38):
So I have chosen him to be their king.
Jeroboam except for Judah and parts of Benjamin.
Jeroboam thought to himself verse 26.
The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David.
If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem they
will again give their allegiance to their Lord.
Rehoboam king of Judah.
(28:59):
They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.
After seeking advice.
The king made two golden calves.
He said to the people it is too much for you to go to Jerusalem.
Here are your gods Israel who brought you up out of Egypt.
(29:20):
Then he set up in Bethel and the other in Dan.
And this thing became a sin.
The people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.
And Jeroboam built shrines.
He appointed priests not from the Levites.
So the Levites back in Moses day God told the Levites you are the ones that are supposed
to be priests in my house.
(29:42):
He appointed priests that weren't Levites.
He made different festivals.
He made different sacrifices, different offerings.
And created basically a fake religion for Israel.
If you remember what I just said.
(30:04):
Literally the chapter before.
God told Jeroboam.
If you listen to me.
If you listen to me I will make you a powerful kingdom.
All Jeroboam had to do was listen and obey.
(30:28):
And God would make him a powerful kingdom.
Would make him a powerful ruler.
Would give him a dynasty.
But Jeroboam when he became king.
He said.
The kingdom will probably go back to Rehoboam.
So after seeking advice.
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Remember after seeking advice not God's advice.
Not the advice he was told.
Not the wisdom he was told.
That even allowed him to know he would be king.
Not that advice.
He didn't seek the prophet who told him all of these things.
He sought somebody else's advice.
And he made a false religion.
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Sometimes we are not confident in the promises that God has given us.
Or we are not confident in the belief that God does work everything out for our good.
So because we are not confident in that we go and make decisions by ourselves to bring
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about or solidify or secure the things that God has already promised to us.
We go out of our way.
We do all these extra steps to solidify a promise that God said he would.
That God said he would solidify.
That God said he would secure.
Rehoboam heard from God not only you're going to be king I will keep you.
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And said I'm not too sure about that.
He basically said I will basically mimic your practices, God's practices, the things God
told his people to do.
And tell Israel these things that I have fashioned by my own hands this will be your God.
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And that was done to secure his kingdom.
Jeroboam reminds me a lot of Saul.
Saul was the first king not Saul who's also Paul.
Saul who was the first king of Israel.
Saul did not actually believe that he could be king.
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Even when he was king he was not confident in his position despite the fact that God
made him king.
He wasn't confident in it.
So he would bow to the will of others.
And he hunted David.
Hunted David basically to the day that Saul died.
To the day that he died he hunted David.
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Because he was not secure in himself.
I think that was going to go there.
But are you securing yourself?
Because if you're not you will find yourself doing a lot of things that you don't need
to do to feel security, to feel confidence.
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You'll wear things you don't need to wear.
You'll say things you don't need to say.
You'll confront things you don't need to confront.
You will go and pick fights when you don't need to.
You'll enter into relationships that you don't need to.
You'll entertain friendship that you don't need to.
Because we do all of these things to secure ourselves.
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When in actuality God is the one who secures us.
And we've all done it.
We've all said something, done something, asked in a specific way because we didn't
feel confident.
We've all done it.
But this is an example of how bad it can get when you try to secure your future in your
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own way.
Not trusting your own understanding and not leaning on God.
Not acknowledging him in all things.
Not going to him.
And the reason I say this is because what Jeroboam did by creating high places for other
and high places are basically just like places of sacrifice, religious spaces.
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By him doing that.
By Jeroboam doing that.
Let's count.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
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This last one I have.
Seven.
Now we're in second Kings.
My gosh.
I believe there's an eight.
You have a lot of stuff.
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Seven.
Okay.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
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Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
Technically nineteen.
And we can even go after that because Judah did it too.
Twenty.
We'll stop at Israel.
Nineteen.
Nineteen generations after Jeroboam.
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The Bible is citing that the kings of those generations follow the detestable practices
of Jeroboam.
Nineteen generations later are still feeling the effects of what Jeroboam did because he
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was not confident and secure in what God told him.
Nineteen generations.
Literally if you read through 1 Kings, 2 Kings.
If a king did not do right in the eyes of God, it'll say it.
And it'll say that he followed the practices of Jeroboam.
That Jeroboam caused Israel to commit.
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The sins that Jeroboam caused Israel to commit.
Nineteen generations.
And it is because of those types of sins that Israel was eventually brought under, who is
it?
I think Assyria?
I think it was Assyria.
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Assyrian rule.
Nineteen generations.
All because of one man who used his craftiness for evil.
Anyway.
Honestly, this is a podcast in itself.
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So that is the setting of our story about Elijah, which we may not actually talk much
about because this podcast has been long.
So skipping a few generations, a few generations, we get to Elijah.
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Elijah is a prophet while Ahab is king.
You may not have heard of Ahab, but you have probably heard about Jezebel.
Jezebel was his terrible wife.
Jezebel was from, I think, no, where is she from?
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I can't think where she's from.
Sidon.
Jezebel was from Sidon.
And she was a very religious person.
But religious for her own god.
And so she was a worshiper of Baal, and Baal was the god of weather.
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And Ahab married Jezebel.
And rather than Ahab himself being really evil, he was just really weak.
He was a coward.
He didn't actually rule his kingdom.
He just submitted his will to what Jezebel wanted to do.
And because of that, because Jezebel was basically the one calling the shots, Israel had turned
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to Baal as a god.
They both built up high places, but he set up ones basically for her.
And 1 Kings Chapter 16 said, Ahab also made an asherah pole and did more to arouse the
anger of the Lord, the god of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.
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God was not pleased with Ahab.
Very much not pleased.
Editor Udochi here.
So just to explain a little bit more.
Jezebel, she was evil not just because she worshipped other gods, but because she introduced
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another type of foreign god to Israel.
And she actively killed people that were worshipping God Almighty, or people that were prophets
of God Almighty.
And so that combination, and Ahab not opposing her and instead bowing his will to hers, that
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is what caused God to be so furious with them.
Well actually, I assume that's what caused it.
We don't get like the full rundown, but it is very clear that the type of actions that
they were doing were very very upsetting to God, and warranted a more severe response
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than any of the other kings that were also doing evil.
And so Elijah, who was a prophet, he goes to Ahab.
This is chapter 17 verse 1, As the Lord the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will
be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.
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So this was basically a direct challenge to the God that they worshipped, because Baal
was the God of weather.
If he truly was the God of weather and had that power, Elijah saying there's gonna be
a drought would mean nothing, because he could just make things rain.
And yet, the brooks dried up, the water dried up, and every single place, all the lakes,
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all of it dried up.
There was a drought for several years.
And after Elijah said that, this is verse 2, then the word of the Lord came to Elijah,
leave here and turn eastward and hide in the kereth ravine.
So basically God told Elijah, okay you said your word, you said what I told you to say
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and get up out of here.
And so Elijah left and he was near the Jordan River and he was basically living next to
the river.
So he would drink water from the river before it dried up and ravens would come and feed
him.
If you've ever heard a story about Elijah, you may have already heard a story that talked
about this, but ravens are not kind animals.
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They are not kind birds.
They are not a parrot that may sit on your shoulder and copy whatever you say and sing.
Ravens, I'm pretty sure are predators.
And they're highly intelligent birds.
Highly highly intelligent.
They do not feed people.
They do not help.
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They are notorious scavengers.
They are all for themselves.
Ravens do not help, yet in a moment of divine provision, God sent ravens to feed Elijah.
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So they would come in the morning and they would come in the evening.
This is for someone else, which may also be me.
If God has asked you to do something, he has provided the provision to sustain you in it.
Because in him proclaiming the drought, he's also talking about himself.
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Because what water is he going to drink?
Or what crops would he eat if there's no water coming down to help them grow?
Or what animals if they can't even eat the crops because they're not growing?
And yet Elijah went up there and he said, you're done.
Water's done.
And God sustained him.
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But the brook dried up.
And so God told him, go at once.
This is still chapter 17.
This is verse, I think verse 9.
Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there.
I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.
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So Zarephath is not part of Israel.
It is part of Sidon, the place that Jesuit's from.
So God basically sent Elijah into enemy territory and said, go, I'll provide for you there.
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Sometimes God will tell us to go to places that make no sense.
What do you mean go and talk to that person that was mean to me?
What do you mean go to that place that fired me?
What do you mean go and go and help this person who was rude to me for so many years, who
made me feel small, who made me feel little?
What do you...
Like when God said, pray for your enemies, shouldn't you be telling, I'm sorry, where's
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the revenge?
God, you said, vengeance is yours.
Sometimes we would rather pray for the cold to keep on the person's head than for God
to forgive them of their sins and to intercede for what they are going through.
But because God is God, he told Elijah, go to Sidon and there's a widow that will keep
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you.
So we touched a little bit about this in the story of Ruth.
But widows were really at the low, low end of the social hierarchy.
They had almost no rights.
They didn't, unless you had like a grown son, you didn't have anybody who was going to defend
you or take up your cause.
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It was not easy to be a widow.
So even the idea of a widow providing for Elijah defies human logic of that time because
the likelihood of that actually happening, zero.
Slim.
Once again, according to human logic, it would be like, maybe find you a nice little house
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that'll let you sleep on their couch while they got some flour or before their cow dies
or whatever.
It would not be to go to a widow in enemy territory and trust that you will provide
a fort there.
But Elijah goes and he finds the widow.
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And verse 10, so he went to Zarephath, when he came to the town gate, a widow was there
gathering sticks.
So I went to a commentary and they brought up a really good point that there was a drought
of water, not wood.
So she wasn't even collecting big logs of wood.
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She was going and collecting sticks, which means that she didn't have, she didn't even
have the money to have wood in her house to cook things.
She didn't have the money to go buy wood or get somebody to bring her good wood.
She had to use sticks and she was collecting it.
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This isn't even a well-to-do widow.
This is the poorest of the poor widows.
She doesn't have much.
And yet still Elijah goes to her and says, would you bring me a little water in a jar
so I may have a drink?
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And so she goes to get it.
And after he says, bring me please a piece of bread.
And she replies, as surely as Lord your God lives, I don't have any bread, only a handful
of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug.
I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we
may eat it and die.
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Two things here, numero uno.
She is once again, the poorest of the poor.
She has a little bit of flour, a little bit of oil.
She has no hope for the future.
She said, we're going to eat this last meal and then we're done.
There is no more life for us.
There is nothing else for us.
This is my last action.
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And then we're done.
I think it's also crazy how she knew, how she knew about Elijah's God.
Because surely as Lord your God lives.
I wonder if maybe the story of what she did to Jezeb, of what he said, had made its way
to her.
I mean, it would make sense, it made its way to her home country.
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And that's also so sad because she had a son.
There could have been the hope that in the future that he would be able to grow and gain
money and be able to take care of her.
But now she's like, there is no hope.
This is our last thing.
And I also think it's fascinating that God didn't tell the widow what was happening because
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he said, I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.
But he didn't tell her, he didn't drop something in her spirit, he didn't drop something in
her head.
I mean, we technically don't know that.
But she seemed real confused by his request.
He's like, we ain't got nothing.
I have barely enough for me and my son.
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So to give it to you, sir, we ain't got it.
And yet, Elijah was like, don't be afraid.
The way I love the way that God, not confronts, but whenever he requests something of people,
one of the first things he says is always don't be afraid, taking care of their emotional
well-being before presenting them with something, understanding that a lot of things he asks
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us to do are fear inducing.
They don't make sense.
It doesn't work with the logic of our world.
And yet he's like, I still care about the fact that doing this makes you feel a type
of way.
I care about your feelings in this.
Because she's probably, it would make sense to be resigned, but also fearful of what will
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happen to us.
And so Elijah says, don't be afraid, go home and do as you have said, but first make a
small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me.
And then make something for yourself and your son, for this is what the Lord, the God of
Israel says, the jar of flour will not be used out, but the jug of oil will not dry
until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.
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So I'm not gonna lie, the first time I read that I was like, Elijah, can you stop?
Can you stop?
She's a widow.
She barely has enough for herself.
The type of guts you have to have to ask somebody after hearing that, nah, but take care of
me first.
Excuse me.
Once again, in human lives, we'd be like, Elijah, cut it out.
That is so disrespectful.
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That is so rude.
But he had confidence in God.
He heard.
Well, God, it seems like God also revealed to him that the jar of flour and the jug oil
won't go dry.
But God told him initially, go there or what is going to provide for you.
And he said, it seems like you're the widow.
So I'm not gonna go hungry.
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So if I'm not gonna go hungry and you're here and you're providing for me, you can't go
hungry either.
So yeah, the confidence, I'm telling you, one thing Elijah had, it was confidence.
He had the confidence to go and say it.
And I think the craziest thing is that she did exactly what Elijah said.
And I would have loved to know her emotional state at that time.
Was she like, you know what?
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Oh, well, we're all gonna die anyway.
I may as well just give it to him.
At least I've done some nice thing before I go.
Was she like, hmm.
Maybe he's telling the truth.
Because once again, she knows him as Lord your God, knowing that he serves a God.
And obviously this God is renowned, renowned.
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Because she was able to specify that it was a God that his people served.
Well, should have been serving.
So maybe she was like, you know what, let me give it a try.
Or maybe there was hope.
She was like, is it possible?
This man that has said all of these things, that they've come true, is it possible that
I will truly be sustained?
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And if it's possible, then here's your bread.
For whatever reason though, we know that she went and did exactly what Elijah said.
Brought her the bread, brought him the bread, and then made some food for her family.
And just like Elijah, just like Elijah had said, with inspiration from the Lord, the
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flour and the oil did not run dry.
For as long as Elijah was there, they had food.
So not only did God provide for Elijah, he provided for a woman who had nothing.
Lowest end of the totem pole was collecting sticks, not even having logs, not even having
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good firewood, sticks that were on the ground.
To have one last meal, he provided for her as well.
He could have sent Elijah, God could have sent Elijah to, in fact, this is even in Luke,
I was listening to this earlier.
If you want to listen to the Bible, this is just such a side note.
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There's this, I don't know what the name of it is, but if you search a certain book of
the Bible, and there's like this burgundy one with gold on YouTube, they basically do
dramatized versions of the Bible.
It has like music in the background, different voices.
If you think sometimes the Bible, you don't like reading it, it may be kind of a little
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tedious or whatever, try listening to it.
It was giving.
I was thoroughly entertained.
But I'm pretty sure in Luke, it says, let's see if that's true.
I'm pretty sure it's Luke.
Is it not Luke?
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Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
This is Luke chapter four, verse 24.
Truly I tell you, and this is after Jesus went back to his hometown, and they were like,
I know what's not in Jesus from down the block that's saying all this stuff, saying he's
the son of God, trying to preach scriptures.
We knew you when you were a baby, boy.
Don't play with us.
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Some people do that.
There are some people that will not let you grow.
Oh, that's another word.
He said, truly I tell you, he continued, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
I assure you that there were many widows in his own Elijah's time when the sky was
shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land.
Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them but to a widow in Zarephath and the region of
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Sidon.
And there is a man in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha, the prophet, yet none
of them was cleansed, only Naman the Syrian.
And people were mad when they heard that.
But I think it's a testimony that God is not a respecter of persons.
He don't care who you are.
He don't care what your God-in-Jewel bank account.
He don't care where you came from.
He don't care who your daddy is.
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He don't care who your mommy is.
He don't care about none of that.
He uses who he wants to use.
He could have sent Elijah to a widow in Israel.
He could have sent Elijah to a widow in different regions.
He could have sent Elijah to a rich widow.
There were rich widows.
But no.
He sent Elijah to a woman who had, once again, basically nothing.
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And I was also reading commentary that was basically saying, isn't it so fascinating
that God only gave them enough to survive that day?
And I was like, I wonder why?
Because he could have filled up the big thing of flour, could have filled up the jar of
oil.
And I don't know if this is true, but a commentary, which I think is such a fascinating perspective,
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basically said, because of the drought, there was then a severe famine.
Because once again, if you ain't got water, you can't water your crops.
So there's not food.
You can't water, you can't give animals water to drink.
And you can't even give them feed.
They can't graze grass or they can't eat whatever animals eat, corn, oats, whatever.
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They can't do any of that.
Because there's no water to grow that stuff.
So with the drought can come very easily a famine as well.
If word got around that homegirl had a bunch of flour and oil, and was making bread every
day, who knows what could have happened to them?
Who knows what could have happened to that provision?
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People could have come and tried to steal it, people come and tried to bother her.
There's so many other things that could have happened.
I just think, once again, we don't know the reason that God did that, because it doesn't
specify, but I do think it's so fascinating the method that God used to sustain them was
just enough.
And it was.
And that's truly all they needed.
They didn't need an overflowing amount of flour and all the vegetables and a beautiful
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garden.
All they needed was some flour and some oil and God gave them what they needed in that
moment.
And so later on, after she made the food, Elijah stayed with them and they were good.
So this is verse 17.
Sometime later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill.
He grew worse and worse and finally stopped breathing.
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He said to Elijah, what do you have against me, man of God?
Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?
Now hold up.
When I read this, I've read the story before, I was like, oh, remind you of your sin?
What's she talking about?
The Bible never tells us what that sin is, but it is so clear that whatever she did has
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been, she's been holding onto it and potentially living in fear of it.
Because she seems to have associated her son dying with whatever sin she committed.
She goes and she's like, did you come here so that way my son would die?
Did you come here as a reminder that there is an ultimate being that has seen what I
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have done and is now taking revenge, kept me alive only to kill my son?
Is that why you're here?
Which once again, very normal emotions.
She could have been a little bit more heated because this is supposed to be when it's her
child, this is supposed to be her future.
And it would seem a type of way that if God sustained them just to kill the son, why sustain
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them in the first place then?
If they could have died before this and not had any issue, but to be given the glimmer
of a better future and then to have that taken away.
She was upset.
And so then Elijah's like, give me your son.
So he takes him to the upper room and he cries out to the Lord.
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Because it seems like Elijah also did not know this was going to happen.
Because he was crying out to the Lord.
He was like, hello.
I wasn't... what?
And he said, Lord, my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with
by causing her son to die?
I think even then Elijah was acknowledging like this woman does not have a lot.
You've brought tragedy.
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It's one thing to bring tragedy to Israel because they sinned.
What has this woman done?
To bring tragedy even onto her?
Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord.
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.
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So a beautiful miracle was done.
The boy regained his life.
Life was breathed back into him.
I don't know how, we don't know how, but we do know that God...
Well, we do know how.
God breathed it back into him.
And says, verse 23, Elijah picked up the child and carried him down to the room and into
the house.
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He gave him to his mother and said, look, your son is alive.
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.
This first confused me because I was like, I'm sorry, girl.
Go check your flower.
Because if you make a cake right now, the flower will still be there tomorrow.
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How did that, how did that not, how did that not get you to believe?
Why did you require this other miracle to believe that God was who he says he is?
Well, that confused me.
But it also was like the way that God moves because for whatever reason, this incident
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made her confront a fear that had been in her heart, that she would be punished in some
way, shape or form because of the sin she committed.
And yet God just showed her, no, I can...
Oh, don't make me praise dance.
I can breathe life back into any situation.
I can restore and bring back to life any situation.
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It doesn't make sense that that child came back to life and also proved that God was
not me because he didn't let her live only to see her son die.
In fact, he used the situation to confirm himself in her life.
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Elijah could have gone to any widow, yet he went to one, God directed him to one in enemy
territory and God showed himself in her life.
That God would be so personal that he would show himself in her life specifically.
Hello, love God, man.
(01:02:13):
Another lesson I took from this story is not to judge people by their appearance or judge
situations by their appearance because once again, the logical thing to do would be like,
yeah, this one seems really, really poor.
I'm going to just go to somebody who looks like they could provide for me.
Yet all of those people that had the big houses and the big farms and the big stuff like that,
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were they not starving?
If this woman who had almost nothing, she was able to survive because God had given
it to her, had provided, securely provided for her.
So I think once again about not leaning on your own understanding, but acknowledging
God in everything.
And Elijah believed, he was like, you know what, if you say it's the widow, then it's
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the widow.
And he trusted God instead of trusting himself.
And it's something we all need to do, trusting what God says rather than trusting in our
own human logic.
I think that's the theme of this episode.
I didn't really know what it would be, but I think that's truly what it is.
Finding your security in God and not yourself.
(01:03:17):
Truly not leaning on your own understanding.
Because Derabohm leaned on his own understanding and look what happened.
Rehoboam leaned on his own understanding and who he wanted to trust.
Look what happened.
Solomon leaned on, let me not, let me not.
Solomon listened and leaned on his own comfort and his own, his own desires.
(01:03:40):
And look where it led him.
Yet in this moment, Elijah leaned on God's wisdom.
He did not listen to his own understanding, leaned on God's wisdom.
And he acknowledged him and he directed him to sustenance.
For three years, there was a drought for three years.
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No rain, no water came from the sky.
Yet Elijah was fine.
And by proxy, we can even say that God wanted to meet this woman in what she was going through.
That's the type of God we serve.
I mean, this is an example of that leaving the 99 for the one.
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When you're the one, it hits different.
And she was the one.
Literally, left all this world, came for her.
Yeah.
Trust the Lord with all your heart and lean on your own understanding and all thy ways
acknowledge him and he will direct thy path.
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Amen.
Amen.
I love saying it like that.
As I suspected, we didn't get to the other one.
We can do it later.
Or next episode.
But yes, thank you for listening.
I pray that this touched you.
I pray that God will use this to minister to your life.
I pray that he would show up in the way that you need him to in this moment and he would
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convict your heart.
Giving you the ability to truly put your trust in him, put your confidence in him, put your
security in him.
That he's moving and working on your behalf, even if it doesn't make sense.
This reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, Ephesians 2 10, for we are Christ's
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workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works he planned beforehand that we should
walk in them.
I definitely combined two different versions, but I love that.
That we are his workmanship, his craftsmanship.
He pieced together and said, this hand should go this place and this eye should go this
place and this nerve should go this way.
If you're a science person, be quiet.
(01:05:49):
I'm going somewhere with this.
This foot should go right here and should be angled exactly this way.
If you've ever created a drawing or if you ever watched somebody form something out of
clay, it's intentional when you're supposed to do something and how you're supposed to
move your hands and to create a finished product.
(01:06:10):
Just the way that the person does that, God is even more intentional in how he created
us.
He created good works for us to do.
Good things for us to do.
He did it before we were even born that we should walk in them.
(01:06:31):
Not run, not shovel, not fight, not scream, none.
It didn't ask for anything that requires effort or copious amounts of effort that we should
walk.
Listen, it's those that are running, except if you're in a race, those that are running
(01:06:54):
or someone that they really need to find something.
They really need to go and get something.
When you're running, there's a sense of urgency.
When you're walking, calm, cool, collected, there's an assuredness that comes when you
walk.
For example, if there's this guy in your heart and somebody was walking, everybody else
(01:07:15):
was running, I'm like either you're lazy or you know something I don't.
Maybe some of y'all need to go ask God, I've been running.
It's not really mathin' right now.
How am I supposed to be walking?
I don't know.
Just some food for thought.
Anyway, I thank God.
Once again, I'm sorry.
I don't really know what's going to happen in this podcast, but he shows up.
Yay, Jesus.
Okay.
I'll see y'all later for part two.
(01:07:39):
See y'all later.
Bye!
Thanks.
Good luck.
(01:08:01):
God bless you.
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