Sermon Tone Analysis
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Text: 1 Kings 17:17-24
Title: Returning Real Life
Textual Theme, Goal, Need:
Theme:
Goal:
Need:
Sermon Theme, Goal, Need:
Theme: Yahweh returns life to those who are obedient to his will.
Goal: to encourage God’s people that God is the God of true life.
Need: We often think of God as being the one who takes away life as a punishment.
Textual Outline:
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Account of the widow’s son’s illness and death.
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Widow’s Question: Did you come to remind of sin and kill son.
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Elijah’s Command: Give me your son.
i.
Elijah’s action: Takes son to the upper room and lays him on the bed.
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Elijah’s Question: Have you brought tragedy upon the widow.
i.
Elijah’s action: Lays on the son.
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Elijah’s Command: Give his life back.
i.
God’s Action: Listening and returning life to the boy.
ii.
Elijah’s Action: Brings the child down to the widow.
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Elijah’s Exclamation: Look.
He is alive!
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Widow’s response: Confidence that Elijah is from God and his word his the truth.
Textual Notes:
Sermon Outline:
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Introduction about how it is easy to believe God is bringing judgement or punishment through some evil that occurs.
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Why would you take my son?!
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Caring through asking the same question.
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Life comes through the power of God.
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When we experience the life giving power of God we see the truth of the word of God.
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Conclusion: Nail it.
God is the God of new life.
Sermon in Oral Style:
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Bad things happen.
But, WHY?
That question never goes away does it?
If we aren’t the one asking that question right now, it is someone else close to us.
WHY GOD?
*I remember going to church as I was growing up, and I got so sick of hearing sermons that dealt with that question.*
The pastor would talk about some of the bad things that had happened in our congregation in a vague way… illness, natural disasters, deaths.
I remember thinking… oh no, not this same sermon again.
Its amazing how some things you just absolutely will not understand until you have a few more years under your belt.
A couple of things that have really struck me recently are things that you might have already known for years and years.
*One thing that I have started to understand is that we will have a time in our lives where we look at our lives, stunned at what has just happened.*
We will look and say, why? …why… WHY?!?
It may not be right now that we are going through that, but the inevitable fact of life is that we will experience the brokenness of this life.
The inevitable fact of life is we all will have a time where we want to ask God, why?
*That “why” may also turn against God.*
We might start to think of God as the one who takes away life and health and wellness.
We might think of God as the one who punishes people for their sin by letting some sort of evil happen to them.
Because of the darkness of evil that has happened in our lives, *we turn God from the loving caring provider into a judgmental punisher.*
*Another thing I have noticed in the couple of years of ministry is that the Bible is filled with places where Scripture is meant specifically to reassure us when we begin to think that he is a big punishing God.
* Out to hurt those who have messed up in their lives.
Apparently it has been a part of human nature to think that God is constantly doing bad things to us when we do bad things in our lives.
*Scripture is always helping us in our times of doubt about the goodness of God, to see that he isn’t the God of death and punishment.*
He is the God who is slow to anger and abounding in love.
He is the God that gladly brings new life into situations of sin, or darkness, or hopelessness.
*The woman from Zarephath is going through that experience in the passage for this evening.*
She has already been through a lot.
Last week we looked at the passage just before this and we saw how God proves he gives fertility, really real life to those that trust his word and obey.
The widow does that as she is on to her last little cake of food.
She gives it to Elijah and God blesses her and her son with life.
The flour jar never runs out.
The oil jar never runs dry until there is food again in Zarephath.
*Then something absolutely life shattering happens.
In the midst of her joy and her love of life with her and her son, suddenly her son gets sick and dies.
*
Can you imagine?
So much hope for her life and the life of her son after this miracle God has done.
Then suddenly, her son is dead.
*Grief in this broken world is always only a flash away isn’t it?*
Listen to the thoughts that are going through the mind of the widow after the death of her son*.
In verse 18 she says maybe screams to Elijah**,* *“What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”*
Immediately her thoughts have turned against Elijah and his God.
At one moment she is being blessed because of her faith.
The next her son is dead.
*She thinks now that God has turned and is now punishing her for some evil that she has done in her life.*
*Logically it seems to makes sense.*
Good things happening to us are God’s blessings for doing good.
Bad things are God’s punishment for doing bad.
*Emotionally, that’s how it feels some times.*
I must have done something wrong for God to turn on me in this way.
Then we start laying the feelings of guilt on ourselves.
Why have I been so wicked?
Or we begin to blame God.
Why did you have to do such a terrible thing to pay me back for my sin?
That’s where this widow is at in her grief.
But she lays the blame on Elijah, the representative of God for her. *“Did you keep my son and I alive with the miracle of the food, just so you could kill my son and make an example of me and whatever sin I have done?
Is that what this is all about?*
She is probably on the verge of rebelling against Elijah and against the only true God of really real life.
About to kick Elijah out of the house and say forget God.
But Elijah snaps into action.
He takes the boy and brings him to the upper room where Elijah is staying.
Don’t picture a big house with a winding staircase.
This is a poor starving widows house.
Elijah brings the boy to the tiny little closet of a room put on the top of a little hut of a home.
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