Episode Transcript
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In this episode, Lance reads the story of Elijah’s visit to the widow at Zarephath, and speaks about God’s provision, even in times of famine and difficulty. Lance emphasises over and over the Lord’s faithfulness, that he has never failed, and he will never fail. Let’s listen to Things Which Fail Not.
If you will turn to the first book of Kings and chapter 17 from verse 1:
And Elijah the Tishbite who was of the Sojourners of Gilead said unto Ahab: as the Lord, the God of Israel liveth before whom I stand there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my words. And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying get thee hence and turn thee eastward and hide thyself by the brook Cherith that is before the Jordan and it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook.
And I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord. For he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith that is before the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening. And he drank of the brook.
And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land. And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Sidon and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks.
And he called to her and said fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel that I may drink. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her and said bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thy hand. And she said, as the Lord thy God liveth. I have not a cake but a handful of meal in the jar and a little oil in the cruse. And behold, I am gathering two sticks that I may go in and dress it for me and my son that we may eat it and die. And Elijah said unto her, Fear not.
Go and do as thou hast said but make me thereof a little cake first and bring it forth unto me and afterward make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: the jar of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah. And she and he and her house did eat many days. The jar of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail according to the word of the Lord which he spake by Elijah.
The little word I want to underline is this word here the jar of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail according to the word of the Lord which he spake by Elijah.
Now, in many ways I hesitate because I feel that first of all by saying something in the way of background one can only be gloomy.
That's the first thing. And one always hesitates about just being gloomy and negative. And yet, before one can bring the word of the Lord which is to me so positive and so full of encouragement and hope, one has got to face a very unhappy situation.
The fact is this that I believe that this coming year will be one of the most difficult years that we have ever faced as a nation.
I think that economically, forgetting all possibilities of war, we are in for a very, very terrible time.
A time of famine. Famine meaning poetically. A time of famine. A time of scarcity. Our days of affluence have gone and have probably gone forever.
We all felt, or I certainly did, and I know, shared by most of you here that the Yom Kippur War ushered in a new era as distinctly and as clearly as the First World War. The First World War swept away a whole order of things. It changed the face of Europe. It changed the face of the world. The Second World War really only finished off what the First World War began. I believe that the Yom Kippur War was no small, petty Middle East skirmish but marked the beginning of a new era in world politics and in the course of events.
Now we are in this country facing very real problems. The hand of God is upon this nation in judgment. There is no doubt about that at all, nor will that hand of judgment lift for a single moment. This nation has despised its God.
It has trodden underfoot the blood of his covenant. It has derided his word. We have leaders of the church saying things about capital punishment which, whatever our feelings may be, there is no place for any leader of any church to appear to be wiser than God.
For God has said that if a man shall take a human life, by a human being shall his life be taken. And in the end, the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
But when we have church leaders telling us that it would be better for us well, I won't go into it all because it's a sad and dark side. But the fact is this, that's an indication of the fact that we have no leadership in our nation. Now, leadership is either a blessing or a curse.
Whenever God blesses a nation he gives wise and strong and moral leadership. And whenever God curses a nation he gives weak and anaemic and spineless leadership. There is really no leadership in Western Europe at present. Indeed, there is precious little moral leadership in the whole free world.
No wonder some of you probably heard those wonderful words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn this morning on the radio and you heard what he said sadly about the Western world when broadcasting in Russian to the Russian people. He said, we in Russia, religion in Russia is stronger and purer than it has ever been. Not so he said here in the western world, because it has not been challenged.
So perhaps just to finish it off, for those of you who didn't hear, were those wonderful words he quoted from an essay by another Russian underground writer saying that everything has to go through death before it comes into life. And as the Russian people and nation has gone into death, she is now waiting on the threshold for the voice of God. Well now that's a wonderful word, isn't it? for any nation, but we can't say that for ourselves.
We have lived in prosperity and affluence, our standard of living has risen, our God has become material things and our country and nation is under the hand of God in judgment.
Now, even if no war breaks out in the Middle East, and there is every possibility that it will, we are still facing one of the most serious times economically that our country has faced. Now what does that mean? It means that the livelihood of everyone here in this room is jeopardised. It means that the little savings you have got will within a matter of months, due to inflation, mean less and less and less.
It means that there is a real possibility that before we meet again, if the Lord tarry like this next year, many of us will not have work and we shall be finding things increasingly difficult. That, I'm afraid, is the gloom side of what I've got to say this morning.
Over half a million people in Detroit are unemployed today and this is because, so it was announced in the news, because of a recession in the car industry. Now, in America, the car industry has always been the indication of what else is to follow.
Well now that's the gloom side. We are facing times of very real problem as a nation. This year, we don't know what it will hold. But altogether, apart from another war in the Middle East which might or might not involve us, we are going to face one of the most severe times economically, materially speaking, that we have ever faced.
Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, said on British television in this week in a recorded interview, that he thought that the free world was facing a moral crisis. And when questioned as to what he meant by the words moral crisis, he said this. He said the free world is selling principle for material provisions.
Such a course is nothing less than Chamberlain's policy in 1938. We sold Czechoslovakia to bring peace in our time. We did nothing of the kind. We are going to sell Israel in order to bring peace in our time. It will do nothing of the kind. Now that's the gloomy side of it.
We must face facts. It's no good at all to just sort of like the proverbial ostrich bury our heads in the sand and say oh well, I'll sing a hymn. The fact is this when we begin to find things scarcer and scarcer and the cost of things tripling, then we will begin to realise almost too late that things are becoming too difficult for us. Far, far better to wake up in time and face the lions that we are going to have to live amongst. For we shall find that the Lord will close the mouth of the lion. And that's what I want to talk about. Now we'll leave all the gloom side. And here it is. Here's the word, the jar of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail according to the word of the Lord. I want to speak very simply about a few of the things that will never fail.
Your job might fail. Your livelihood might fail. Your standard of living might fail. Your government might fail. Your nation might fail. But there are some things that will never fail.
And the first is this the word of the Lord.
For the Lord says here the jar of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail according to the word of the Lord. Now we would have liked to have felt that there was more than a jar of meal. We would have preferred to have had a barrel of meal or much more. We would feel that was a little more comforting to us.
But the Lord's way of doing it is to keep things very small in times of famine. Ravens come with tidbits, but they come regularly in the morning and in the evening. Just when in a hot country you need the meal. You don't eat much in the middle of the day, but in the morning you eat, and in the evening you eat. And the ravens came with their tidbits and they never failed, nor did the brook fail according to the word of the Lord. It says again and again, according to the word of the Lord.
Now, you will notice one or two things. First of all, it is absolutely essential that we be found at the centre of God's will. Never forget that. That is the key. We can start to get frightened about these things and say I will find out some little farm somewhere in some sort of sort of forsaken spot of the country when I will be safe. You be careful.
You may end right next to some secret radar station which will be the first thing to go up. Far better to be in the centre of God's will. Oh, there's nothing like being in the centre of God's will. You can be at the heart of a war when you're in the centre of God's will and be safer than someone over here in peace.
You see, the need is to know what is the will of God for you. Not to be dictated by material circumstances or pressures, not to be forced into some kind of action through fear or panic, but to do what God wants you to do and to remain where God wants you to remain. For there you shall be safe and there you will find provision. It may not be, to start with, too sensational.
I suppose when Elijah sat there and the ravens first flew in on the first morning with that divine airlift of supplies to Elijah, I suppose he must have thought, you mean to tell me these birds are going to come in morning and night for so long?
But they did. Maybe the diet didn't vary very greatly, but it kept Elijah alive. He had no tea or coffee, but he did have a brook of water. What he needed he had. Oh, be found in the centre of God's will. I learned this lesson when I was a little boy. Our next door neighbours at the beginning of the war, before the first siren ever sounded let their house and fled into the country, into some place on the border, on the Welsh border.
And there, miles from any village, they got a small bungalow and felt they were safe. Every now and again, they used to come up to see us, see their home, which was let and would always come in to see us. And I always remember as a little boy, them telling my mother how brave they thought she was, that she should have stayed and with children. She should be decorated, they said. She should be given a medal. And so they went on and on.
You know, we went all through the war, we went through the Blitz. I remember the day where the whole of Richmond was on fire from end to end. I remember my father and mother from my earliest memories, saying to each other, Well, that's the end of Richmond, there’ll be no more of that left. Of course, it was, it did remain. But the fact was, it looked as if every bit of it had gone.
But I do remember the amazing occasion when some German bombers came up on a moonlit night along the river to drop their bombs on the Great West Road, the factories on the Great West Road and whether there was a Christian among them, I don't know. But this stray bomber wouldn't drop his bombs there, but went on up and up and up the river till he went past Oxford into the Welsh borderland.
And there, circling around on what he felt obviously was just open country, he dropped his bombs and one of them fell on our neighbour's bungalow. Of course, they were all in the shelter, they were all saved, but they lost everything. And that taught me as a little boy, before long, long before I was saved, how silly it was to run away from trouble. For when we run away from trouble, we often run into it and far worse than we run away from.
We only had one small pane of window broken in the whole war. They had the whole place blown up and all the furniture with it. Never run away. Always stay within the centre of God's will for God can give his angels charge over thee to keep thee when you're in the centre of his will.
But if you go out of his will, you take yourself out of the protective custody and guardianship of your Lord. Now that's one thing we learn from this that Elijah did all this according to the will of the Lord, according to the word of God. Now that's the first thing. Now the second thing is this. Look at this lady. She was a remarkable woman.
There are some remarkable ladies in scripture for the comfort of the sisters and this is one of them. Out she was, she'd collected two sticks and she was about to go in. Now I suppose at some point according to the word of the Lord she had received intimation from the Lord that some prophet would come and that she was to look after this prophet.
I suppose that came in days of prosperity. She never thought in her wildest moments that the Lord would require her to fulfil her ministry of hospitality when she had nothing to put on the table. But as so often with the Lord, when the point of test came she had nothing. There was famine everywhere. And that very morning she was out and she found two twigs, two sticks and there she was on her way back to have her last meal with her son.
The little bit of meal in the jar and the little bit of oil was just enough to bake a kind of loaf, a cake and to eat their last meal and then face starvation. And then the prophet of the Lord arrived and he seems a pretty uncompromising gentleman. He was testing her you see. He wanted to find out, now is this the widow? Is this the widow the Lord had spoken to? So he said fetch me please, I don't even know if he said please, a little water in a vessel that I may drink.
And she said yes and like a little lamb she turned round and went and as she was going to, he though, oh this is too easy, so he said and bake me a cake will you? Then that was almost too much for her. And she said as the Lord thy God liveth I have not a cake but a handful of meal in the jar, a little oil in the cruse and behold I'm gathering two sticks that I may go in and dress it for me and my son that we may eat it and die.
Then listen, Elijah says to her fear not, go and do as thou has said. Relief for the widow. But, panic again, make me thereof a little cake first and bring it forth unto me and afterward make for thee and for thy son.
I suggest that was the test. That was the test of whether a life could be laid down for God. You see, she had a son and a mother's heart is something unique. Even prophets don't come before a mother's son. She may well have argued that’s absolutely wrong, that great strapping man. I believe Elijah was a strapping man too.
If he could outrun Ahab chariots, he must have been some strapping fellow and the kind of country he lived in. He's always intrigued me, Elijah. Now, I should have thought she thought, Goodness, that great strapping man insisting that I bake the last bit of food I've got, make a cake of the last food provision I've got and give to him and I've got my own boy.
But she did it. And the word of the Lord was that the jar of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. You know, it's easy to hear a word of prophecy when we're not right in the storm and being put to the test.
She heard that word of prophecy and she listened to the Lord and she went in and she made that meal and she gave it to the prophet and then she and her son had their little part that was left over. And you know what happened? They had meal after meal after meal after meal together.
Now, what does this mean? Simply this, that if we're going to face hard times and we want to know what it is to be in the will of God, see that the deep issues of your lives are settled first. Once your life is laid down, you will find that God can move in. But where there is self interest, crisis will find you out.
You see, you may have all the word of the Lord and all the promises of God and all the provision of God but if you've got self interest, you can paralyse the whole operation. Just supposing the widow had said, oh, this is ridiculous.
If anyone's going to have a meal here, it'll be my son, I'll go without, but he'll have. Supposing she'd done that, that would have been the last bit of meal and the last bit of oil she saw. Because she launched out in faith and did the thing that was right, God kept her. Now don't tell me that it wasn't difficult. I would imagine a year or two on such meal and such oil must have been rather difficult.
The children of Israel moaned about the manna they got every day. I can only imagine that you could have had a lot of murmuring and groaning about this. The fact is that when God says he's going to keep you, he doesn't just play with things. For instance, turn to Isaiah and chapter 33 and verse 16, speaking about the one that walks righteously and speaketh uprightly and so on. It says this, verse 16, he shall dwell on high, his place of defence shall be the munitions of the rocks, his bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure.
God says his bread shall not fail. And as I said, I think last week, Norman Grubb used to say, I've heard him say more than once, God said, Your bread shall not fail. He never promised you butter or jam.
But he did say, Your bread shall not fail. And here we have this wonderful promise in Isaiah 33 and verse 16, he shall dwell on high, his place of defence shall be the munitions of the rocks. His bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure. Give us this day our daily bread. It has been a long, long time since our Lord's Prayer had real meaning for many of us in the affluence of our society.
His bread shall not fail. Turn to Joshua and chapter 21. Joshua, chapter 21 and verse four and five. 45, sorry verse 45, There failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel. All came to pass. Oh, what a wonderful word. Come wind, come weather. There failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel. All came to pass.
Has God said something about the days in which we live? He has. What has he said? He has said that the mystery shall be completed. Thank God for that. He has said that the top stone shall be brought forth with shouts of grace unto it. He has said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church which he is building upon the rock of his own life and nature and work.
There are good things which the Lord has spoken to us, surely. Are there not other things? Did he not say, he which has begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ? Has he not also said faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it. We have good things which our Lord has spoken. Do you think that a time of economic difficulty is going to cause the Lord to go into a deep freeze? Never.
Every single thing which the Lord has spoken, every good thing of which the Lord has spoken, it shall come to pass. Not one thing will fail of what the Lord has said. Here is something for our encouragement, stay within the centre of God's will, settle the issues which could mean self interest which can blind you to things and through pressure of circumstances, drive you out of the will of God and paralyse the provision of God to you.
Thirdly, let's remember this there will fail nothing of all that the Lord has spoken unto the house of Israel. There are many other things I could say in this matter too, but isn't it wonderful? It says in I Peter, chapter one and verse 24-25, The word of the Lord which liveth and abideth forever.
What a wonderful thing then. We have we have things that God has said. God has said he has good things which the Lord has spoken about and they will not fail. Here is something else that will not fail. If the cruse of oil shall not fail, neither will this fail. Not one single thing.
May I go back to this cruse of oil. I think it's not only right to take this literally, but wouldn't it be good to take it spiritually? I believe there is a supply of the Spirit of Jesus. You remember in the story of Pilgrim's Progress, there is one point where Christian saw the devil pouring, seeking all he could do to put out a fire, to put out the light, this wonderful blazing light.
But all Satan could do came to nothing. The fire burned on and Christian wondered. And then the angel took him round the back and on the other side he saw just as Satan was seeking to put out the light, the angels of God were pouring in oil and more oil and more oil. They were keeping it going. I think I'm right in the, perhaps not absolutely right on the details, but pretty right in the actual principle of the story. The fact is this, what Satan was trying to put out, God was keeping alive. How was he keeping it alive? Through the Holy Spirit.
Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts, the cruse of oil shall not fail. Do you know anything about the blessed ministry of the Holy Spirit? His indwelling, his infilling, his empowering, his anointing, his gifts? Oh, the blessed ministry of the Holy Spirit. In days such as we shall face is a great thing to have this promise from the Lord, the cruse of oil shall not fail.
May the Lord help us. Nor will the meal, for God will feed us spiritually as well as materially, physically. He will feed us. There will be something oh, the word of the Lord becomes so precious in times of trouble. More precious than our physical and material needs being met is the word of the Lord.
It shall not fail. Now, let's have another look at another scripture in Lamentations and chapter three. In this book so aptly entitled Lamentations, traditionally written just next to the garden tomb in the grotto of Jeremiah.
Lamentations three, verse 22. We have these wonderful gems in this book. It is of the Lord's loving kindness that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not, they are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him. His compassions fail not. The devil would have us believe when we enter times of great stress or pressure or trouble materially, that God is hard. That he is sort of hard and bitter almost and essentially far off. But the Scripture says his compassions fail not.
This little book of Lamentations was written in the midst of judgment, in the midst of the hand of God upon a whole nation in judgment. Terrible things came to pass in this judgment. And right in the middle of it there is this wonderful little word. It is of the Lord's loving kindness that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning. Isn't that wonderful? Every morning his compassions are new. You know, we sometimes get the idea when we speak about Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever that he's static.
That somehow he had compassion in the New Testament, he's got the same compassion now. It's a kind of static thing, almost mechanical. But they are new every morning. Do you know the Lord's a living being? And his compassion is not something that is static. It's new. Isn't that wonderful? It means he can be touched this very moment.
He can be moved, as it were. This very moment. Just as he was moved in the days when he walked on this earth. His compassions, they fail not.
And then I want you to look at another scripture. I'm sorry all these ones are rather difficult. Some of you don't know your Bibles too well, but you'll just have to get to know them. Habakkuk chapter three and verse 17. Well, I'll read from verse 16. Habakkuk. That's not so easy to find. Habakkuk, chapter three, verse 16.
Listen to these words. I heard and my body trembled. My lips quivered at the voice, rottenness entereth into my bones and I tremble in my place because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble for the coming up of the people that invadeth us. For though the fig tree shall not flourish, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olives shall fail and the field shall yield no food, the flock shall be cut off from the fold and there shall be no herd in the stall, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord, Jehovah, the Lord is my strength and he maketh my feet like hinds feet and will make me to walk upon my high places. The word fail does not come in, and yet what I would say is this that our praise shall not fail if the Lord's word will not fail, and all the good things that he has said will not fail, not one thing of it, aught of it shall fail. If the jar of meal will not waste and the cruse of oil shall not fail, our bread shall not fail.
If his compassions will not fail, neither shall our worship. We shall be put to the test here, I'm quite sure, many of us. We may not suffer as the third world will suffer, but nevertheless, relatively we may suffer in other ways.
At that time it will be a great temptation no longer to praise the Lord, no longer to worship the Lord. But, oh, think what a spirit is here of Habakkuk. The spirit of Habakkuk, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. And you know, when we become worshippers, God changes our elephant-like feet into hinds feet. Hinds feet can be just about an inch or an inch and a half in diameter.
And with those feet they can leap from rock to rock to rock to rock in the most craggy parts of the mountain and not fall. Their feet are sure. How could they live in such difficult places?
We would feel far more secure to have elephant type feet. Great ponderous things that crush everything down. But elephants were not making for living in the craggy parts of the mountains.
They were made for the plain. Many Christians are like elephants. God wants to slim you spiritually. He wants to bring you to the place where you've got hinds feet. But let me tell you this you'll never get hinds feet before first you learn to worship.
If you are saying now, Lord, you do this thing in me and when you've done it, I shall praise you, I shall worship you. He will say, well, I'm sorry, it is impossible. You must learn to worship the Lord. And when you learn to rejoice in the Lord and worship, you will find, without hardly knowing it, your elephant's feet have gone. You've got hinds feet and you are nimbly jumping from rock to rock the very things that would have got you down, you are living in the midst of and glorifying the Lord. Praise shall not fail. Well, there you are.
On the one side a gloomy prospect, but on the other side glorious prospect. Mr. Callahan said that he thought that we were facing as a nation, this last week he said it and on Thursday evening, that we were facing as a nation a far more severe recession than the 1931 recession.
Now, whether that's true or not, we've certainly got difficult times ahead of us. And this is altogether apart from any war in the Middle East. We have only to have an outbreak of war in the Middle East and our economy will teeter over the brink.
What shall we do? Be very careful, everybody that you are in the will of God. Don't go around changing jobs just at present. Don't go around thinking big, high-flown ideas unless the Lord is greatly with you. If the Lord speaks to you, do according to the word of the Lord and in fellowship with the people of God. But watch it.
There's a gloomy prospect in front of us and the enemy will try to just make us go along the normal routine to trap us into a place where we're very, very miserable and somehow alienated from the provision of God. We will find all that we need within the will of God and by the word of God. And so I end with this word from Deuteronomy chapter 31 and verse six:
Be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be affrighted at them. For the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee, he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. He will not fail thee.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we bow in thy presence.
We ask that we may not in any way, Lord, be filled with fear or panic or anything like that through the word that we have had this morning. Steady our hearts in thee, Lord, we pray. For we are thy people, and the things which we have believed for years are finally beginning to come to pass.
O Lord, we pray that we shall have our hearts and our minds riveted on that which will not fail. For we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken. O Lord, work, we pray, in all our hearts and lives. Make us aware, Lord, of the days into which we are moving. And, Lord, above everything else, cause every one of us, and us as a people, as a company of thy people, to be in the centre of thy will in these days.
For we praise thee, Lord, that jar of meal will not waste, nor will that cruse of oil fail, until… Lord, we thank thee, and we worship thee in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, thy Son. Amen.
May you know God’s new compassions for you each day. May you rest in the steady faithfulness of the Lord. May you know the deep, deep love of Jesus.
