Elijah raises the Sidonian widow’s son.

1 Kings 17.17-24.

There’s some debate about this story: Whether Elijah raises a boy from the dead, or whether Elijah just cures a boy who’s gravely ill. Since the LORD has to put the boy’s soul—his lifeforce—back into his body, 1Ki 17.22 and a body without a soul is dead, I’m gonna say it looks like he died.

1 Kings 17.17 KWL

After these things happened,

the son of the woman fell ill;

she was head of the house.

The illness became very serious,

until there was no breath remaining in him.

“The woman” was the Sidonian widow whom the LORD had ordered to provide for Elijah. 1Ki 17.9 Verse 17 points out she’s the head of the house, which either means she’s in charge of the family—there are no adult men to lead it—or simply that she’s a homeowner. ’Cause she did own a house, and verse 19 tells us Elijah was living in its upper room.

We knew from verse 12 she had a son. We don’t know how old he was, but she could put him on her lap, 1Ki 17.19 so it looks like he was still little. We also don’t know what illness he had, but it stopped him from breathing. It must’ve come upon him suddenly, because Elijah appears to not have known about it till the woman confronted him in the next verse:

1 Kings 17.18 KWL

The woman said to Elijah,

“What are you¹ to me, man of God?

Did you¹ come to me to remind me of my wrongdoing,

and to put to death my son?”

I don’t think there’s any other way to read this, than to interpret it as a really angry reaction. So… what’s that all about?

“What are you to me?” is an ancient middle eastern saying, found in both testaments of the bible. Jesus actually says it to his mom. Jn 2.4 People presume it’s a light rebuke when Jesus says it, because we can’t imagine him yelling at his mom; she’s only trying to help! Jn 2.3 But every time the saying appears otherwise in the bible, it’s not light; it’s an outright rejection. It’s their version of “Get the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] away from me!”

But why does the widow want Elijah out of there? Because she thinks God’s at fault for her son dying. And why would she leap to that conclusion? She says it herself: עֲוֹנִ֖י/aöní, “my wrongdoing.” Not her רַע/ra, “evil”; not her חָטָא/khatá, “sin.” She didn’t break a command or anything. But she believed she did go farther in some way than she should have; she trespassed. Something so egregious, Elijah’s god took it out on her kid. Although you notice she never directly rebukes Elijah’s god. The ire is all directed towards the prophet. She probably didn’t wanna risk further smiting.

I have no idea what this trespass might be, ’cause the bible doesn’t say. I just know she really didn’t understand what kind of character the LORD has. He’s not a petty, vengeful god like the Baals the Sidonians usually worshiped. He’s not eagerly waiting for us to slip up so he can slap us down and send us to hell. God is love. But if the sort of gods you’re used to, or were raised to believe in, are the angry smitey sort, stands to reason you’d think any of your bad karma would unleash his wrath upon you.

Now you’d think because the LORD was miraculously providing them food, she’d have a better idea of what God’s like. But not necessarily. Sometimes it takes an awful lot to get the idea of God’s grace through our thick skulls. Some Christians never really get it, and spend the rest of their lives as legalists because they think God keeps a tally of our sins, and sends us to hell when the points get too high. Or kills our kids.

People regularly assume, wrongly, God’s gonna make us suffer a bit to restore our karmic balance. Yeah we’re repentant, but we owe the universe a little something for our wayward life before. That’s how people behave, so that’s how we presume God behaves. But that’s not who God is. So learn who God is. Don’t just assume it; read your bible and learn what he’s like.

So let’s see Elijah reveal what God’s like.

“As for me and my house…” [Js 24.15]

Joshua 24.15 KJV

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

 

Most people only memorize and quote the last 11 words of this verse. And we Christians love to put it in our houses. It’s our little reminder everybody in this house follows the LORD.

For some of us, it’s a little threat towards our misbehaving children: Stop following the world. Stop following that influencer, or that pop star, or exalting your money and possessions and collections. We serve the LORD in here.

Well… depending on how much sports memorabilia the parents own. I went to a fellow Christian’s house years ago, and immediately saw everything was about the San Francisco 49ers. Big, big American football fan; lots of Niners memorabilia all over the house. Collector plates, collector steins, framed and autographed photos of running backs, a Niner flag out front, Niner posters in the garage and bathroom. And yet there was a placard over the door: “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Well, maybe you will someday, once you’re done with the Niners.

’Cause in some states of the Union, footbalotry is way more popular than Jesus, despite all the lip service they pay towards Jesus. The high school football stadium is bigger than any church in town, because that’s the real center of worship in town. I’ve lived in such towns.

I’ve also lived in cities where Mammon was far more important. Sharing Jesus with people didn’t get very far, because the riches and cares of this world held their attention—and worship—far more than they were willing to give to Jesus. They made up their minds long ago about whom they’d serve, and were serving it with all their might.

Yeah, there are also alternative religions. In a country with freedom of religion, we have options! We can be Christian; any stripe of Christian, whether Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, high church, low church, the no-church go-it-alone sort, or obey-Pastor-or-you’re-going-to-hell cults. Or we can be Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, or make up our own. Or we can be an apathetic agnostic… or we can be an activist atheist and try to rip down religions for fun.

In Joshua’s day there wasn’t really a wide selection. Other gods existed, but they didn’t have priests in the area; they weren’t accessible; they couldn’t practically be Hindu. The Israelis’ choices came down to the gods of the area. Either the pantheon of their ancestors’ gods, the pantheon of Amorite gods, or YHWH the One God.

But you gotta choose one. Joshua chose the LORD. The leaders of Israel loudly said they too would follow the LORD. Js 24.16 And they personally might have.

But as we know from Judges, all their houses eventually stopped following the LORD and turned to the Amorite gods; to the Baals and the other gods of the land. And thus the Cycle began. And in Judges, Samuel, and Kings, went round again and again, as one generation followed the LORD and another didn’t.

Christian nationalists are terrified the Cycle might start happening in our country: As the United States gets less Christian, maybe God will start smiting us with plagues and enemy nations! Which is why they want to purge America of nonwhites non-Christians, and get us to start following the Ten Commandments again. We don’t get to choose this day which god we serve; it’d better be Jesus, or get out of the country. Joshua gave the Israelis options, but they don’t.

But the nationalists don’t realize (or believe) God has no covenant with the United States; we never cursed ourselves if we didn’t obey the Law of Moses in its entirety. He has a New Covenant with individual Christians, but the rest of our country can go their own way, and many do, and that’s why all the Mammonists, footbalaters, basebalaters, basketbalaters, etc.

So which god do you choose to serve? You gotta serve somebody.

When we hear God, but misunderstand him.

Whenever we pray, and hear what we think is God’s voice, we gotta properly confirm it is. Every single time.

And no, not because the devil’s always trying to trick us. I know fearful Christians who most definitely think that way, and I’ll talk about them another time. But it’s not always the devil. More often it’s people tripping ourselves up—talking to our own inner voice, confusing it with God, and claiming our own bright ideas are really God-ideas when they’re not. And no, I don’t mean “bright ideas” sarcastically; some of them are very good ideas. Like when David thought it’d be a great idea to build the LORD a temple. Sounded great to the prophet Nathan, but it wasn’t a God-idea! 2Sa 7.3-7 God’s idea is actually for us to be his temple.

But sometimes the issue is we actually did hear God—but our own hangups or ego garbled his message. Sorta like what happened with Simon Peter at the end of John.

John 21.20-23 NTFE

20Peter turned and saw, following them, the disciple that Jesus loved. This was the disciple who had leaned back against Jesus’ chest at the supper, and had asked, “Master, who is it that’s going to betray you?”

21“Master,” said Peter to Jesus, seeing him there, “what about him?”

22“If it’s my intention,” replied Jesus, “that he should remain here until I come, what’s that got to do with you? You must follow me!”

23So the rumor went around the Christian family that this disciple wouldn’t die. But Jesus didn’t say he wouldn’t die. What he said, rather, was this: “If it’s my intention that he should remain here until I come, what’s that got to do with you?”

Jesus didn’t answer “What about him?”; he said, “What’s that got to do with you?” But notice the other Christians got it in their heads Jesus did answer—and said the disciple he loved (i.e. John bar Zebedee) would live till his second coming. And John did outlive the rest of the Twelve—if he’s the same John who wrote Jesus’s Revelation. John the Revelator certainly had visions of the second coming. But Jesus never said what they imagined he did. The Christians wanted an answer to Simon Peter’s question so much, they actually invented one and put it in Jesus’s mouth.

And sometimes we’re gonna do that. We’ll ask God a question, and he’ll respond, “It’s not your business to know about times and dates,” Ac 1.7 NTFE or whatever other thing which isn’t our business. But we’ll ignore that, take what little he’s told us, and try to extrapolate the data we want out of it. And it won’t be God. It’ll be our creative—but fallible and depraved—little minds, filling in blanks which God deliberately wants blank. It’ll be us trying to make an end-run round the LORD. Not smart! But Christians do this all the time. Without even thinking.

And this is why a Christian accountability partner who likewise hears God, comes in extremely handy. We’ll bounce our misbegotten ideas off on them—“I think the LORD told me this”—and they’ll respond, “Well he told me no such thing.” Or even “No he didn’t; he warned me you’d come up with that, and he wants you to stop putting words in his mouth.”

Yep, sometimes confirmation protects us from ourselves.

John the baptist’s appearance in 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘬.

Mark 1.2-6, Exodus 23.20, Isaiah 40.1-8, Malachi 3.1.

The very first appearance of John the baptist we see in ancient literature is in the Gospel According to Mark, which was written sometime in the 60s CE. The other synoptic gospels quote Mark, and John is likely a response to Luke and fills in some of its blanks. So since Mark was written first, here’s how he described John.

Mark 1.2-6 KWL

2Just as it was written by the prophet Isaiah—

“Look, I send my messenger before your¹ face,

who will prepare my way” for you.¹ Ex 23.20

3“A voice shouting in the wilderness,

‘Prepare the Lord’s way!

Make his paths straight!’ ” Is 40.3

4—so comes John,

who baptizes in the wilderness

and preaches a baptism of repentance

for the forgiveness of sins.

5All the land of Judea are going out to John,ᴾ

and all the Jerusalemites.

They’re being baptized by him in the river Jordan,

confessing their sins.

6John was wearing camelhair,

a leather moneybelt round his waist,

and eating locusts and undomesticated honey.

7John is preaching,

“One stronger than me,

comes after me.

I’m not worthy

to bend down and loose his sandal strap.

8I baptize you² in water;

he will baptize you² in the Holy Spirit.”

Mark begins his gospel by quoting Exodus and mixing it up with the prophet Isaiah. Yep, it’s a “bible difficulty,” for those who refuse to acknowledge any errors in the bible. But it’s not a bible difficulty for a lot of ’em, because they go with the way the Textus Receptus puts it, and with New Testaments based on the Textus:

Mark 1.2 KWL (from TR)

According to what was written in the Prophets—

“Look, I send my messenger before your¹ face,

who will prepare my way” before you.¹ Ex 23.20

Yep, later generations of Christians corrected Mark’s error. Nice of ’em! But this is one of the many reasons I dismiss the inerrantists’ claim the bible had no errors in the originals. It’s entirely possible there were more errors in the originals.

And in case this idea makes you anxious, I remind you none of the “difficulties” we find in the bible undermine the truth of the gospel. Jesus is still Lord, still the way the truth and the life, still should be followed, still saves us from sin, still returning. Still uses fallible men, like Mark, to share the gospel. Still can use you to do it too—and when you make mistakes, he can easily work around them. Don’t worry about being perfect; just follow Jesus as best you can, and trust him considerably more than your resources.

Okay, mini-sermon over. So the Textus changed the original to “the Prophets” instead of “the prophet Isaiah.” Well that doesn’t look like a difficulty! Except… it still is. To the Jews, “the Prophets” either refers to

• the second batch of Old Testament books written before the Babylonian exile (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi), or
• the books of prophecy written by the LORD’s prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi).

Exodus falls into neither of those groups. It’s in the Law, not the Prophets. So, still a difficulty. The inerrantists try to weasel out of it by pretending the quote in Mark 1.2 comes from Malachi 3.1, not Exodus—and Malachi is in the Prophets, no matter which definition of “the Prophets” you go with. But it’s not from Malachi at all, which I’ll show you in the next section.

Ungodly biblical principles.

Slavery is a biblical principle.

Seriously. It’s a well-established principle too. Abraham ben Terah had slaves. Ge 24.2 Many a bible will translate עֶבֶד/evéd as “servant” in order to downplay this, or because they figure ancient Hebrew slavery was entirely different from American chattel slavery, so the slaveholder/slave relationship was considerably far less like owner/cattle, and more like warden/ward. But not every slaveholder thought of it like warden/ward, and most definitely treated their slaves like cattle. Or their sexual property. Abraham’s son Ishmael was the son of Sarah’s slave. Five of Israel’s tribes were descended from children he begat with his wives’ slaves. (Oh by the way—polygamy is a biblical principle too.)

When the Egyptians made Israel’s descendants their slaves, the bible’s objection was they had been wrongly made slaves; not that slavery in itself was wrong. When slavery gets addressed in the Law of Moses, the LORD didn’t ban or forbid it; he put rules on it. Fr’instance slaves didn’t work on sabbath. Dt 5.14 Or if fellow Hebrews had to sell themselves into slavery, you were to treat them like employees, not slaves. Lv 25.39-43 The LORD mitigated slavery instead of outlawing it.

But because slavery’s a well-established biblical principle, the bible was regularly used throughout American history to support and defend the practice. Including its most evil excesses.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m absolutely not defending slavery. Certainly not saying we oughta bring it back. It’s illegal and needs to stay illegal; it needs to be banned in every country which still permits it, and slaveholders should be prosecuted as kidnappers, rapists, and murderers.

Today’s Christians largely agree with me; we recognize slavery is evil and wrong, and needs to be eradicated. But they also incorrectly think, because slavery is evil and wrong, it’s somehow not a biblical principle. Because they have some false ideas about what constitutes a biblical principle.

Y’see, when preachers talk about biblical principles, they insist all these principles are God-things. They’re God’s ideas. God’s expectations. God’s instructions. God’s commands—except they’re not actually commands, ’cause if they were commands God would’ve commanded them. But those who preach ’em, and those who believe in ’em, regularly treat them as functional commands.

So if slavery’s a legitimate biblical principle… that’d mean they have to obey it, don’t they? But slavery is evil and wrong. So, to their minds, it must not be a legitimate biblical principle. Scriptures must’ve been taken out of context, or misused, or they’re part of the old dispensation and we don’t follow those commands anymore. And this is why they’ll insist it’s not a biblical principle: Biblical principles must be followed, and they’re surely not gonna follow that one.

So here’s what they misunderstand about biblical principles:

1. Not every biblical principle is of God.
2. Not every biblical principle must be followed. (Especially the ones which aren’t of God!)

Slavery is a biblical principle because it’s in the bible, because the ancient Hebrews and other ancient peoples practiced it, because God had things to say about it (and often condemned its excesses), and because sometimes God and his prophets used its ideas to teach people about God. Israel was Egypt’s slave, and God purchased them. Dt 15.15 Jesus gave his life to ransom everyone 1Ti 2.6 from our slavery to sin. Ro 6.16 It’s a legit principle.

But does this mean we should practice it? Absolutely not: It’s not of God. He’s set us free, and we should likewise set all the slaves free. Liberty, which Jesus came to declare to God’s people, Lk 4.18 is the biblical principle we should practice.

Elijah hides with a Sidonian widow.

1 Kings 17.8-16.

Ancient Sidón was a Phœnician city-state on the Mediterranean coast, about 40km north of Tyre, another city-state the Sidonians originally founded. (Both cities are now part of Lebanon.) The Phœnicians were a seafaring Canaanite ethnic group, and 𐤑𐤃𐤍/tsidún in their language probably means “fishing village.” They were decidedly Baalists. The royal family usually served as head priests of Hadád and Asheráh, the weather and fertility gods. Ahab ben Omri, king of Ephraim (the northern tribes which the Deuteronomistic Historian calls “israel”) had married into this family: His wife was Jezebel bat Ethbaal, daughter of the king. They were setting up worship of the Baals in the very same way the Sidonians did, in Ephraim. In Israel.

Hence the prophet Elijah of Tishbe told Ahab the rain would stop till he said so. Then he hid in a wadi till it went dry; then God sent him, of all places… to Sidón.

1 Kings 17.8-9 KWL

8The LORD’s word

comes to Elijahᴾ to say,

9“Stand up.

Go to Sarepta, to Sidón, and stay there.

Look, I ordered a woman there, a widow,

to provide for you.”¹

Sarepta (Phœnician 𐤑𐤓𐤐𐤕/Tsaríptu, “refinery”—of metal or dye; Hebrew צָֽרְפַת/Tsarfát, KJV “Zarephath,” in present-day Lebanon) was another coastal city-state 13km south of Sidon, just near Ephraim’s border, and at that point in history was Sidonian territory. Had a big shrine to Asheráh. Being on the coast meant it’d never run out of water; or food, if you know how to fish. But the drought would still affect wheat and barley farming, so bread would be harder to come by.

It’s kind of a clever place to hide, actually. Elijah was a prophet of YHWH, but because Sidon was decidedly Baalist, your average fool would presume Elijah was far too “holy” and “devout” to live among such pagans. As if he wasn’t already used to all the pagans in Ephraim.

The LORD’s word (i.e. Jesus before his incarnation) told Elijah he’d ordered this Sidonian woman to provide for him. So she wasn’t pagan; she heard God. People have a tendency to believe everyone in a particular people-group or country are monolithically of the same religion, or hold the same worldview, or have the same politics, or are otherwise uniformly alike. And even if their king or dictator or despot demands they all conform to his standards, you know that’s not how humans work. There are always holdouts. This woman was one of them. Let everyone else follow the Baals; she and her house followed the LORD.

Which really came in handy because she was destitute. Thankfully the LORD sent her a prophet who knew how to pray for miracles.

Christian leadership and age discrimination.

Arguably Timothy of Lystra first met Paul of Tarsus when he was a teenager. That’d make him old enough to come along with the apostles on their travels, but young enough for Paul to think of him as a son. Pp 2.22 When Timothy became the leader of a church in Ephesus in the 60s of the Christian era, Paul would’ve been in his 50s and Timothy in his 30s—certainly old enough to lead, but certainly not the oldest guy in that church. Quite possibly not even the one who’d been Christian longest, since Paul had evangelized Ephesus years before he ever met up with Timothy.

In any case being in your thirties meant it was necessary for Paul to make this comment in his first letter to Timothy:

1 Timothy 4.12 NKJV

Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

Because people will look down on your youth.

I know from experience. When I was in my 30s, I was asked to run our church’s pre-service bible study. Our head pastor felt I was up to it. Others not so much, ’cause they wanted to run it. Yep, all the participants were older than me. But I had three advantages over them:

1. Our pastor did after all ask me to lead the group.
2. I had become Christian in my childhood. The rest became Christians as adults. So set our physical ages aside: I’d been Christian about 10 years longer than most. There was only one fella who’d become Christian in 1975, same as me. Of course you can be spiritually mature at any age… but when you get so worked up over something as minor as the youngster leading the bible study, y’ain’t showing any such maturity.
3. Trust me: When you’re leading a bible study, it helps when you can actually do bible study. I’d been to seminary, so I knew how. The others knew how to do bad word studies, and quote popular Christian authors. For all the good that does.

Admittedly, I didn’t let their hangup bother me any. I figured if it bothered them badly enough, they’d quit the group. They didn’t, and stuck with me for a year and a half. So no, don’t get the idea I was wringing my hands over their disapproval, and constantly meditating upon 1 Timothy 4.12 to keep my spirits up. My spirits were fine. Studying to prepare the lessons was teaching me all sorts of useful stuff. Hopefully teaching them this stuff too.

But as Paul stated elsewhere in his pastoral letters, the main qualification for Christian leadership is good character. They gotta be trustworthy people. Hence his advice to Timothy: Become an example in word, lifestyle, love, faith, and purity. Be a solid Christian. Be of good character. If you’ve got that, age won’t matter to anybody but people who lack good character.

Yeah, I know. Lots of Christians lack good character. That’s why young people aren’t often put in charge of things. Either they themselves lack character, or they have plenty but the other leaders don’t.