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The sermon presents the widow’s inexhaustible meal and oil as a picture of God’s sovereign grace and covenant faithfulness. God chooses and preserves His people, including the weak, poor, and undeserving, and gives grace sufficient for each day rather than necessarily removing every trial. Saving faith itself is understood as enabled by grace in response to God’s command to repent and believe. The sermon offers strong assurance that Christ can save the chief of sinners and keep believers secure unto eternity.
Theological center: God’s sovereign electing love faithfully saves and preserves His people through Christ, supplying sufficient grace for every need.
Applications: Trust Christ for salvation · Respond to God’s command · Rely on daily grace · Consider sovereign election
Primary texts: 1 Kings 17:16 · Luke 4:25-26 · 1 Timothy 1:15
“And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah.” 1 Kings 17:16 IN the midst of wrath God remembers mercy. Divine love is rendered conspicuous when it shines in the midst of judgments. Fair is that lone star which smiles through the rifts of the thunderclouds, bright is the oasis which blooms in the wilderness of sand, so fair and so bright is love in the midst of wrath. In the present instance, God had sent an all-consuming famine upon the lands of Israel and Sidon. The two peoples had provoked the Most High, the one by renouncing Him, and the other by sending forth their queen, Jezebel, to teach idolatry in the midst of Israel. God therefore determined to withhold both dew and rain from the polluted lands. But while He did this, He took care that His own chosen ones would be secure. If all the brooks are dry, yet shall there be one reserved for Elijah, and if that should fail, God shall still preserve for him a place of sustenance, nay, not only so, for God had not simply one Elijah, but He had a remnant according to the election of grace, who were hidden by fifties in a cave, and though the whole land was subject to famine, yet these fifties in the cave were fed, and fed from Ahab’s table too, by his faithful, God-fearing steward, Obadiah. Let us from this draw this inference, that come what may God’s people are safe. If the world is to be burned with fire, among the ashes there shall not be found the relics of a saint. If the world should again be drowned with water (as it shall not), yet should there be found another ark for God’s Noah. Let convulsions shake the solid earth, let all its pillars tremble, let the skies themselves be rent in twain, yet amid the wreck of worlds the believer shall be as secure as in the calmest hour of rest. If God cannot save His people under heaven, He will save them in heaven. If the world becomes too hot to hold them, then heaven shall be the place of their reception and their safety. Be you then confident, when you hear of wars and rumors of wars. Let no agitation distress you. Whatsoever comes upon the earth, you, beneath the broad wings of JEHOVAH, shall be secure. Stay yourself upon His promise, rest you in His faithfulness, and bid defiance to the blackest future, for there is nothing in it direful for you. Though however I make these few observations by way of preface, this is not the subject of this morning. I propose to take the case of the poor widow of Sarepta as an illustration of divine love, as it manifests itself to man,…