Take God at his word to provide what you need!

School starts soon and with that the need for a lunchbox. If it were up to a child to provide their lunchbox and its contents, the results would vary widely and often come up short of what they need. You need money to buy a lunchbox, a vehicle to get to the store or a device to order it from, and then there are the contents of the lunch box. Again, you need money, a device and transportation to get to the store, and then the knowledge and discipline to get what is necessary for a well balance diet. It is too much for a child to provide. And it is not just kids who need help with their lunches. We as adults now order boxes of specifically portioned food with recipes right to our door, or we just order the food already made right to our door. What we all seem to want is someone to provide us with food that does not run out like an endless loaf of bread or bottomless can of tuna.

We may want someone to provide us with an endless supply of food, but that is not what we need. In our Gospel reading today from Matthew 14, Jesus provided a crowd of thousands with bread and fish for all to eat and still have twelve baskets of leftovers, but that is not what they needed most from him. On that day, when it was late in the day, Jesus’ disciples told him to send the large crowd away to get something to eat, but

16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” 17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. 18 “Bring them here to me,” he said. 19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

Jesus showed his disciples and the crowd God’s ability to provide enough food to feed thousands, but they failed to trust in Jesus to provide them what they needed as we hear in chapter six of John’s Gospel, 14 After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. The crowds looked to Jesus, but they had made him into a caricature of the Savior. They projected their worldly, material, sinful, etc. idea of what the Savior should provide them with on Jesus, rather than take Jesus at his word to understand what he came to provide.

When God spoke through his prophet Elijah for the first time, his words were about what he was not going to provide. In our Old Testament reading from 1 Kings 17, we hear the first recorded words of the prophet Elijah, which were spoken to Ahab, the King of Israel, 1 … “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.” Elijah’s first recorded words are of judgment; there would be a multi-year drought. This kind of news threatened panic, inflation, starvation, dwindling resources and weakening political stance on the world stage. Elijah’s first recorded words as a prophet of God seem out of place to be spoken to Israel, God’s own people, the people he established in his promise to Abraham, brought out of Egypt and fought for to give them the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. God provided so much, but now he would withhold something. God had made a covenant or promise with Israel to provide for them as long as they followed him, but Ahab no longer followed the Lord, the God of Israel. He married wicked Jezebel from Sidon, who brought with her the idol Baal, a fertility god, whose worship was violent and vulgar. Ahab also made an Asherah pole, for the fertility goddess, whose worship was equally depraved. This wickedness brought the nation of Israel to abandon God, and we hear this description of Ahab in 1 Kings 16, 30 Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. For their wickedness, God would not provide rain, but he did promise to take care of Elijah.

God provided something unique to Elijah during the drought. We hear how God took care of Elijah as we continue reading from our Old Testament reading from 1 Kings 17,

2 Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: 3 “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. 4 You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.” 5 So he did what the Lord had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. 6 The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.

Elijah took God at his word, and God provided for him during the drought. Miraculously, God changed the selfish, scavenger nature of ravens to bring Elijah food. God provides for the world through natural means, but he can also provide through the supernatural or miraculous. And this drought was a supernatural event.

Elijah was very clear about who the power was behind this drought. The Lord, the God of Israel, was pitted against the false gods Ahab had brought the Israelites to follow. There was a clear winner in the competition. At the conclusion of the drought, there was the undeniable truth of God’s existence and power, and Elijah as his prophet. This was a call to repentance; it was meant to humble and reveal sin. It was almost apologetic in nature with the presentation of a clear fact that destroyed any illusion that Ahab’s false gods were real.

You wonder whether God provides what you need. There are times when you get caught up in the superficial aspects of what you want from God. There are times when you need someone to tell you stop looking at God as your bankroll for DoorDash. There are times when your sinful nature fills you with selfish wants and Satan fills you with lies about what you need God to provide. There are times when you act like a raven, which is part of the crow family and considered to be smartest of all birds, but you do not fly above seeing every angle of your life. Sin has made us weak, and we fall for temptations that manifest themselves into plans for what our life should look like, so we wonder whether God provides what we need. There are times when you suffer, when there are years of drought in the lack of stability, joy, hope, health, etc. In those times, we look in so many different places and to so many different people to provide us with what we need, but they all fall short. Their words are like lunch, which satisfies for a few hours, and then you are hungry at dinner. You need someone who provides words for your soul.

The words you need to feed your soul only come from God. Elijah took God at his word as we hear again in 1 Kings 17, 2 Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: 3 “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. 4 You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.” 5 So he did what the Lord had told him. God spoke, Elijah listened and God provided him all he needed. God does the same for you. During the time of Elijah, the Old Covenant was still in effect, which reminded Israel that they were different from the other nations and showed them their sin, but there was another covenant. We hear about this New Covenant in Hebrews 9, 15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. The Old covenant could not save anyone, but the new covenant promised salvation to all. You need to be saved from your sins more than anything else in your life and only Jesus provides you with that salvation. The ransom for your life, was Jesus’ life as we heard in our New Testament reading from Ephesians 1, 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. You are free from your sins and their eternal consequences through Jesus’ sacrifice and by God’s grace. Through Jesus you have an eternal inheritance in heaven.

One way God continues to provide the salvation you need is through the Lord’s Supper. In Luke 22, we hear that the New Covenant is given to us in the Lord’s Supper, 20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” When you are in need and worn out by sin, God provides this meal to feed your soul giving you forgiveness, life, satisfaction, contentment and connection to him. Through his Word and sacraments God changes our hearts and perspective providing us what we need.

God has always known you. He knows what you need in the broad sense of forgiveness, eternal life and salvation. He also knows the unique spiritual battles you face. To get you through them, he has given you his Word, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit, angels and fellow Christians in your life to point you to the law and gospel. He also provides for your physical needs through his creation of the universe and all the systems in place that give you air, shelter, water, food. He has given you a family, friends, fellow believers and society for your mental and emotional wellbeing. When those needs are not being met or you think that they are not being met, those are the times to go back to Scriptures like what we read in our New Testament reading from Ephesians 1,

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

God adopted you as his child, and with that comes an outpouring of blessings. God has not left you to struggle to provide what you need for your life like a child would struggle to get a lunchbox and fill it with good things. Instead, even before the creation of the world, he knew you and how he would provide you with every spiritual blessing in Christ according to his glorious grace.

God’s blessings remain true for you even when you feel God is not providing all you need. Keep in mind that Ahab was allowed to live in his palace during the three-and-a-half-year drought and Elijah was fed by ravens, but when he died Ahab was disgraced in a disguise trying to hide his identity during a battle Israel lost, while Elijah was taken to heaven in a flaming chariot of fire without experiencing death. In the end your Savior has forgiven all your sins and will bring you to your heavenly home, and God provides for you even when it is a struggle to take God at his word to provide what you need. Amen.