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WHEN TO PICK UP HITCHHIKERS

There are a great number of “touchie-feelie” stories that float around about people who do good deeds. Most of them are frankly rather hard to pin down, but they usually involve stopping in the rain to help someone change a flat tire, or picking up a dripping-wet, stranded lady at two in the morning and giving her a ride to the emergency room of the hospital. Unbeknownst to the good Samaritan, the person with the flat tire happens to be Bill Gates’ mom. And the next day, lo and behold, your mortgage is suddenly paid off! Or there’s a new swimming pool in your back yard. And the mysterious man on horseback you gave a sandwich to turns out to be President Thomas Jefferson. (That was the Internet story floating around about 200 years ago.)

We had a terrific anecdote in worship the other day about how a kid named Alex jumps into a Scottish lake and saves Winston Churchill’s life. So the Churchills, in gratitude, pay for Alex to go to the university, which enables Alexander Fleming to discover penicillin. Fifteen years later, when a certain British prime minister is desperately ill, Alex gets to save his life a second time. Great, great story . . . except for the fact that it’s pure fiction.

Well, friend, to paraphrase an old adage, “Internet fables go ‘round the world while truth is still putting its boots on.” I had to reluctantly delete a favorite old story about an Elvis Presley Harley-Davidson motorcycle someone bought for $35 and later sold for $500,000 when I found out I had inadvertently passed along a bit of totally fanciful fiction. But you know, even if the person whose flat tire you help repair doesn’t turn out to be related to the Crown Prince of Microsoft, that doesn’t change what the Bible advises us to do in Hebrews chapter 13:

“Do not forget to entertain strangers,” we read, “for by doing so some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”

The classic Bible story being, of course, where Old Testament patriarch Abraham invited three wayfaring strangers to come on in and set a spell. He provided them with food and comfort and hospitality . . . and then found out he was taking care of God and two angels.

There’s an interesting parallel story to that one, and it’s right in the heart of our Elijah saga, found in the book of First Kings. We’ve studied these past three days that the Children of Israel had slid into deep apostasy; the entire nation was following the false god Baal. Every time it rained, every time good things happened, they gave this pagan deity the glory. Which is why God had Elijah march right into the palace of wicked King Ahab and tell him:

“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.”

Well, you might remember the next little bit from your days at Sunday School or Sabbath School. But this man of God, following the marching orders of heaven, fled the scene before Ahab could fire any heat-seeking arrows at him, and hid down in the Kerith Ravine, which was east of the Jordan River. “Down by the brook Cherith,” says the KJV. And for the next two years he was literally fed by the ravens. God Himself commanded the wild birds to bring Elijah food every morning and every evening. “Bread and meat,” the Bible says.

And you know something? I’ve never had to depend on God sending the birds in that way. All my life, the Lord has seen fit to allow me to earn a paycheck, and I get my bread and meat, so to speak, down at a local supermarket, just like most of you. But friend, what an incredible thing to realize that God CAN use ravens if He chooses. God can tell birds to provide for our needs. He can get money out of a fish’s mouth. He can feed 5000 people with one sack lunch. Every follower of God can claim the great old promise found in Isaiah 33:

“They will be kept by the power of God. Their refuge will be the fortresses of the mountains. Their bread will be supplied and their water will be sure.”

And really, the wheat growing in the fields, and the supermarkets having food on the shelves, and you and me having the mental and physical strength and skill to earn paychecks . . . those are all divinely sent miracles in their own right, when you stop to think about it. Far be it from us to do as those Baal-worshipers in Israel did, and give all the credit for blessings to the wrong deity.

But now we come to the Bill Gates-and-a-rainy-night story. After about two years of being waited on by the ravens, God speaks to Elijah again. The brook Cherith has finally dried up due to the drought, and the Lord tells him to go to the village of Zarepheth, over near Sidon.

“I have commanded a widow in that place,” He says, “to supply you with food.”

Now Zarephath was up north, a coastal town on the Mediterranean, about eight miles below Sidon. This was actually in Phoenicia, well outside of the territory of Israel. Bible commentators tell us that Zarepheth is still in existence today, more commonly known now as Sarafand.

Here’s a bit of irony — and we credit both the scholars who prepare the text notes for the NIV Bible, and the authors of the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Volume 2.

“At an hour when Israel was turning away from God to the worship of Baal,” the commentary authors write, “a woman of the country of Baal was demonstrating her faith IN the God of Israel.” And they conclude: “Seed sown in the most unlikely places may spring forth to produce its harvest of grace.”

Think about it. Elijah was a prophet to Israel. And yet Israel rejected him. Israel was to be the territory where people worshiped the true God . . . and yet they turned to Baal. So Elijah travels out of state to a place where Baal was the official religion — and there finds a hospitable welcome. A woman there, while not a full-fledged believer in Jehovah, was a receptive heart. Interesting twist, isn’t it?

The NIV scholars find a bit more irony here in this story.

“The Lord’s faithful servant Elijah was miraculously sustained,” they point out, “beyond the Jordan (like Israel in the desert in the time of Moses) while Israel in the promised land was going hungry — a clear testimony against Israel’s reliance on Baal. The fact that Elijah was sustained in a miraculous way apart from living among his own people demonstrated that the word of God was not dependent on the people, but the people were dependent on the word of God.”

Israel was supposed to be the place where the rain fell and the crops grew strong and the milk and honey flowed freely. If there was going to be any famine, it should be outside the borders, out in the deserts and the godless territories on the other side of the fence. And yet Elijah, who is faithful to God, is sustained out in the barren wastelands, while the Children of Israel are starving in the middle of town because of their disobedience. Listen, friend, it certainly pays to be on the side of the Lord, no matter what side of the railroad tracks you’re living on.

But now to this widow in Zarephath — because we come to the flat-tire part of the story. Interestingly, God tells Elijah, “I’ve told this widow to take care of you,” and yet when Elijah comes up to her it doesn’t appear that the Lord has even cleared His throat to hint to the lady that He’s given her an assignment. When Elijah asks her for help — a drink and a piece of bread — she doesn’t say, “Oh, yes, I’ve been expecting you. Lunch will be served in 15 minutes, Mr. Prophet.” There’s no evidence that God had spoken to her about his request.

That poses an interesting question, which is this: How can you know when the wild-eyed man standing in front of you, probably looking like Tom Hanks off the raft in Castaway, having not had a haircut or a manicure in the past two years, has a message for you that really is from heaven? This widow says to him:

“As surely as the Lord YOUR God lives, I don’t have any bread — only a handful of flour in a jar and a little 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.”

This poverty-stricken widow is literally getting ready for her last meal . . . and a total stranger says to her, “No, lady, give it to me instead. Your last morsel of food in all this world — let me have it.” How is she to know that he’s of God? Or that his message is of God? What credentials does he have that she can check? He promises her, “I’m the real thing. I’m God’s messenger. And if you take care of ME, God will take care of YOU.” How does she know what she should do? How do any of us know?