1 Kings 17

Out of nowhere a man stands before the apostate king and shuts the sky. As Yahweh God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. He comes with no father named, no lineage, no posterity — suddenly there and as suddenly gone, like a servant sent on an errand, his one refrain that he stands before Yahweh; even his name, Yahweh is my strength, is the whole of his commission. Elijah strikes Baal at the root — for Baal was the storm-god, the giver of rain, and Yahweh withholds the very thing Baal claimed to control. The lone prophet against the throne and its idol opens with a word that takes the rain out of Baal’s hands.

Then Yahweh hides him and feeds him by the strangest means. At the brook Cherith — the cutting — ravens, the unclean birds, bring him bread and flesh morning and evening, and he drinks of the brook until it dries in the drought he himself called down. The prophet is sustained by birds the law calls unclean and a stream that fails; Yahweh’s provision comes through unlikely channels and is never more than a day at a time.

When the brook dries, the provision moves to the most unlikely place of all — Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, Jezebel’s own country, to a Gentile widow gathering sticks to cook a last meal for herself and her son before they die. Elijah asks her first cake, and her obedience is rewarded: the barrel of meal does not waste, neither does the cruse of oil fail, through all the long famine. The Gentile widow who fed the prophet on her last handful is fed in return through the whole drought — and Jesus will point to her as the sign that grace went past faithless Israel to a foreigner (Luke 4:25–26).

And then death comes into the house that the meal and oil had kept alive, and Elijah meets it head-on. The widow’s son sickens and dies; Elijah carries him up, stretches himself on the child three times, and prays, O Yahweh my God, let this child’s life come into him again — and the life returns, and he is given back to his mother alive. It is the first raising of the dead in Scripture, the firstfruits of a power that will empty a tomb in Galilee; and the widow’s confession is the chapter’s seal: now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of Yahweh in thy mouth is truth.

Read as a whole, the chapter is a parable of the advents, and it turns on two women. Jezebel — daughter of Ethbaal the Phoenician, the queen who brought Baal home — is the false bride enthroned, the apostate system in one woman; over against her stands this nameless widow with nothing but a handful of meal, the faithful ecclesia, whose first husband, the Adam-nature, lies under death. The prophet whose name is Yahweh is strength comes suddenly to the widow’s house and brings life to those sick with sin’s flesh; then he vanishes for a season (ch. 18:1) and returns with a word of judgment against the house of Ahab, as the Lord comes first to heal his own and returns to judge, judgment beginning at the house of God (1 Pet 4:17). And a bitter counterpoint runs in the south at the very same hour. Jehoshaphat, who had begun by opposing Ahab (2 Chr 17:1), marries his son to Ahab’s daughter (2 Chr 18:1) — so while Elijah is restoring life to a widow’s house in the north, the two royal houses are quietly contracting for apostasy. Peace between the kingdoms, bought at the price of the Truth; and it will nearly cost Jehoshaphat his life at Ramoth-gilead. The lone prophet shuts Baal’s sky, is fed by ravens and a Gentile widow, and raises the dead — and in it all the coming of the Lord to his widowed house is foreshadowed; the word in his mouth is truth.

Jeremiah 43

The word came clear in chapter 42 — stay and live — and the proud men answer it with a flat accusation. Thou speakest falsely: Yahweh our God hath not sent thee… but Baruch the son of Neriah setteth thee on against us. The true word is called a lie and blamed on a scribe — the dissembling heart, exposed by the prophet, now turns and attacks the messenger rather than obey the message. The ringleader is Azariah, whom Yahweh aids — a man who would not be aided by the very God his own name confessed. They have decided, and the word that crosses the decision must be discredited.

So Johanan and the captains take all the remnant of Judah — the men, the women, the children, the king’s daughters, and Jeremiah and Baruch with them — and march down into Egypt, to Tahpanhes — Daphne to the Greeks (cp. Jer 2:16), a royal city on the eastern frontier of Lower Egypt. They drag the prophet into the bondage-land he warned them against; the witness is carried captive by the very people he tried to save. The flight to Egypt is the flight of the flesh back to its old refuge, away from the place of discipline where Yahweh had promised to be with them — Israel forever hankering back toward Egypt as Lot’s wife hankered after Sodom, looking back to the very thing the judgment is falling on.

But Egypt is no hiding-place from the appointed judgment. Yahweh tells Jeremiah to hide great stones in the clay at the entry of Pharaoh’s palace, before the eyes of the men of Judah, as a sign: Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne upon these stones… and he shall smite the land of Egypt. And Babylon comes not only against the land but against its gods — he shall break also the images… and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians shall he burn — Yahweh striking the gods of Egypt by a Gentile sword as once he struck them by the plagues in the day of Moses. The Babylon they fled will follow them down; the conqueror’s throne will stand on the very pavement of Pharaoh’s house. And the ground kept the memory: when the mound at Tahpanhes was dug in 1886 it was still known by a local name meaning the palace of the daughter of Judah — the king’s daughters of verse 6 remembered in the dirt of the place they should never have gone. There is no country far enough to escape the hand of the One whose word they would not obey.

The chapter is a sober lesson in where unbelief ends. They asked the way, swore to walk in it, and then called the answer a lie and ran to Egypt for safety — and Egypt is exactly where the sword finds them. The refuge chosen against the word becomes the place of the judgment fled. The flesh always thinks it can outrun the word by changing its address; it never can. They call the true word a lie and flee to Egypt — and the God of the Exodus, by his Babylonian servant, sets his throne in Pharaoh’s own doorway.

1 Corinthians 1–2

Paul opens a new letter into a divided ecclesia — writing to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints. The KJV’s to be is the translators’ addition, printed in italics and absent from the Greek: they are not called to be saints one day, they are called saints, now, in all their squabbling. And his first word over them is comfort: God is faithful, by whom ye were called. It is the faithfulness that stood over Israel at Sinai, where Yahweh thy God is named the faithful God who keeps covenant with them that love him (Deut 7:9), in the very breath that called Israel out from the nations to be a separated, special people. The called of Corinth stand on that same covenant faithfulness — and then squander it lining up behind their favorite teachers, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas, until Paul cuts it off with a question: Is Christ divided? The cure for party-spirit is the undivided Christ, into whose name alone they were baptized. He was sent not with clever words lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect — for the wisdom of the proclamation is not in its polish but in its power.

Then the great reversal that governs the whole letter. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. The world looks at a crucified man and sees defeat and folly; the message of Christ crucified is, to the called, the very power and wisdom of God — unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called… Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. The wisest thing in the universe wears the shape the world calls foolish.

And the people God calls match the message. God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and… the weak… and the base… and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. Why? That no flesh should glory in his presence. He saves by the weak and the foolish so that the boast is left to him alone — the lone prophet, the Gentile widow on her last handful, the empty-handed child. The whole economy of grace is built to strip the flesh of its glorying: he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord — Paul’s word lifted straight from Jeremiah, let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am Yahweh (Jer 9:24), the boast moved off the flesh and onto the knowledge of Yahweh.

So Paul comes to them deliberately stripped of eloquence. I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified — and his speech was in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. The hidden wisdom of God, the mystery the rulers never grasped — for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory — is revealed by the Spirit, not reasoned out by the flesh. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit; they are spiritually discerned — and the called are given what no eye has seen and no heart imagined, the things God has prepared for them that love him. We preach Christ crucified — folly to the world, the power and wisdom of God to the called — that no flesh should glory but in the Lord.