We began a “reverse drill down” last week on the following prayer of Paul to saints in Ephesus:
“ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Paul is giving us the things necessary to be “filled with all the fullness of God”. This is the climax of his prayer so if we start with the premise that, indeed, we do want to be filled with the fullness of God, lets reverse engineer Paul’s prayer from the “fullness of God”, working our way backwards to where Paul kneels in prayer for the saints. In this way, we can identify the hinge points, the markers Paul uses, from praying on his knees to being “filled with all the fullness of God.”
To help us with this “drill up” exercise, we began last week looking at life pictures from 1Kings of Elijah with helpful wisdom from AW Pink. Elijah was one of two persons appearing with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration (Mark 9:4) and the man God took into eternity on His whirlwind chariot of fire without passing through death (2 Kings 2:11-12).
This week our quest is to continue looking into what it means “to be filled with the fullness of God” through Elijah’s context. We are using our scriptural microscope to examine the pictures of this exceptional man and will extend our look-see into it next week as well.
Last week we saw Elijah both hiding from Ahab and resting in God. Elijah is camped by the brook Cherith, east of the Jordan, for much of he 40 months of the drought (James 5:17). He is being fed by a raven with bread and meat, morning and evening, as he watches the brook gradually diminish into a trickle waiting on God.
Elijah already confronting king Ahab, told him God is withholding rain until he, Elijah, tells him otherwise. It is well into two years without rain and Ahab has been searching everywhere for Elijah without success. But God had other plans. God sends Elijah to Zarephath near Sidon to stay with a widow and her son to be fed rather than back to Ahab.
We need to refresh ourselves in the reason Elijah is in Samaria. He had a compelling love for God and could not understand why Israel had strayed out from under God’s law becoming so sinful. Elijah’s divine compassion drove him to do something about it, so he journeyed from his home on the east side of the Jordan. He has already confronted Ahab but now, his zeal and passion having been sitting in the cave by the brook month after month, he is in a place of care for a widow in Zarephath still waiting as God provides new testing.
Typically, the focus is on the widow and her son but this story is about Elijah as well as the widow. God told Elijah He had commanded a widow to feed him in Zarephath but when he arrives he encounters a woman who has no resources and is about to fix her last meal for her and her son. The widow confesses she only has a small amount of meal in the bottom of the barrel and a little oil in her cruse.
Elijah responds in this first public ministry by ordering the women to fix him water and food to drink first, because both her meal in the barrel and her oil will not run out until the rain returns. Elijah is not being selfish here, he is acting out his faith in God’s fullness while testing the woman whom he does not yet know.
This may seem like a small thing but Elijah has been walking for days and finally arrives. He finds at the end of his journey, not rest with 5 star accommodations, but more obstacles. But he is prepared. He asks for water and bread and he will sit and wait.
The heart of the widow has also been prepared and she is able to Respond to Elijah “and his God” in faith. The widow believes Elijah and tests his words through obedience. Days turn into months and the oil and meal continue to be flow. So now the widow can be comfortable experiencing Elijah’s God’s faithfulness and power. She is feeling secure knowing she is hosting God’s servant and the proof of his power is in the meal and oil which do not run out. But when we get spiritually secure we get into trouble. It makes perfect sense, we naturally look to sources outside of our circumstances when they become at risk. When our circumstances are secure, we feel inwardly adequate resting in self. It is a wonder God allows us as much freedom as we have.
“After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. And she said to Elijah, ‘What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son?’”
In the widow’s case, she turns to God’s provision for her, the man Elijah. Some interpret this as faith, some a lack of faith. In either case, God has not abandoned her, quite the contrary, God is making her righteous.
When our circumstances seem secure we focus on comfort. God uses our circumstances to bring us back into His fellowship. We tend to judge the widow’s “fullness of God” to be deficient. But God is still faithful and will discipline His child to bring them back into growing their faith in Him (Heb.12:5ff).
Elijah had an upstairs room just as did Elisha on a similar occasion. Elijah takes the boy from her arms and carries him to his upstairs room and shuts the door. In private intimacy, between Elijah and God, he cries a prayer to God and without hesitancy stretches himself upon the child three times praying for the child’s life.
Elijah was caught unawares by this event. But He had been conditioned by the brook, fed morning and evening by the raven, to depend upon God. The test for Elijah was to bring God’s faithfulness into the life of the widow. Now Elijah is ministering to another, sharing what God had taught him. He had been filled with the fullness of God at the brook but now God was expanding his space to grow his experience in God‘s power in him to others. The same power and intimacy God revealed to Elijah on a personal basis, He is now affirming to Elijah so that he can be God’s agent of faith to others. Elijah was becoming a more versatile instrument for God. He had the fullness of God before this event but now it was even fuller, he was being shaped to contain more of God in new ways. It was not that he was less full but his ability to receive more is enlarged. We will see this process in the steps Paul provides in his prayer to the Ephesians.
“And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And Elijah said, ‘See, your son lives.’ And the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.’”
This was an affirmation to Elijah of God’s anointing. We look at prophets and ministers without realizing they are human, vulnerable to deception and sin as any other. We will see next week the human side of Elijah even having been God’s personal instrument in bringing back to life a person who was dead.
This is exactly our experience in Christ Jesus. We were dead in trespasses and sin, but God’s life giving power has put life into our dead bodies giving us opportunity to learn faith, learn how to walk in the fullness of God. This is the grace in which we stand (Rom. 5:2).
Our life in Christ is in two modes, grace and faith. Grace is God’s love, faith is our response. God’s power makes them work. Being filled with the fullness of God includes God’s grace to us as well as our response in His grace. We see all of these factors working in both Elijah and the widow. They are at different levels of maturity which gives us insight. It is the genuineness of our response that governs our knowledge of God.
Before leaving this episode, lets set up next week.
After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, “Go show yourself to Ahab and I will send rain upon the earth.” – 1 Kings 18:1
There is a famine in Samaria because of the drought. Ahab doesn’t have grass for his animals so he has his head of house go out in one direction into the countryside while he goes into another looking for water and grass for their animals. It just so happens Ahab’s head of house is God’s man, Obadiah, who has himself hidden 100 prophets of God in caves and been giving them bread and water. Obadiah is out on the road in search of water when he sees Elijah coming toward him!