How He Sends It

Last Sunday closed the series on accountability with Galatians 6:1: accountability exists to restore, not to expose, and Peter was handed work, not probation. That series asked what we owe. A new one opens today, and it asks a different question: what is real in your situation that your eyes are not counting? The series is called கண்ணுக்குத் தெரிவதைவிட அதிகம் - More Than What You See. It runs five Sundays, with one story each Sunday: a jar that never empties, chariots nobody can see, a man who builds barns, Peter on the water, and two men walking to Emmaus.

Four of those Sundays answer four fears that live in our homes: where the next supply comes from, whether we are safe, who holds the future, and how worry actually stops. The fifth turns reading the Word and praying from a duty into something you want to do. Each week the story is told in full before any teaching, with one memory verse only, short enough to carry home and tell a neighbour who was not there. And the series will not promise that nothing bad will happen. Every Sunday carries a guard, because provision, safety and the future are the easiest subjects in the Bible to over-promise.

"The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the LORD which He spoke by Elijah." - 1 Kings 17:16 (NKJV)

"கர்த்தர் எலியாவைக்கொண்டு சொன்ன வார்த்தையின்படியே, பானையிலே மா செலவழிந்துபோகவும் இல்லை; கலசத்தின் எண்ணெய் குறைந்துபோகவும் இல்லை." - 1 இராஜாக்கள் 17:16 (TAOVBSI)

The widow's arithmetic was correct. Her total was wrong. She counted what was in the jar and left out the One who had spoken over it.

You Have Already Done the Arithmetic · நீ ஏற்கனவே கணக்குப் பார்த்துவிட்டாய்

Every household knows how to count what is in the house. You know what came in this month and what has to go out, and you know whether the two meet. If you do not know, you should; a family that cannot say what it earns, what it spends and what it needs this month is living as though it were rich. Some people really do live that way, the way Solomon's kitchen did, with whole herds slaughtered for the morning meal and nobody keeping count. Most of us are not Solomon.

So most of us have already done the sum. How much is needed this week, how much more by the end of the month, and where it will come from. To find what is left you do not multiply or divide or add. You subtract what goes out from what comes in, and you hope to see a plus sign at the end, like the red plus on a hospital board. For a great many families the answer comes out the other way, and the sum just lies down and goes to sleep.

Our arithmetic is usually correct. Something else in it is wrong, and that is what 1 Kings 17 shows us. A woman in this chapter did the same arithmetic: one handful of flour, a little oil, two sticks, one meal, and then death for her and her boy. Her sum was not wrong. Her total was, because she counted what was in the jar and left out the One who had spoken over the jar. That is the whole message.

A Handful of Flour · ஒரு பிடி மா

There is no rain. Elijah has told King Ahab that there will be neither dew nor rain except at his word, and then he walks away (1 Kings 17:1). Jesus later says the heavens were shut for three years and six months, with a great famine over all the land (Luke 4:25). No rain, no harvest, nothing.

God hides Elijah by a brook called Cherith and tells him that the ravens will feed him there. They bring him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drinks from the brook (1 Kings 17:6). We would like to know the details. Was the meat cooked or raw? How many ravens came? For a man with an appetite, surely ten or twenty birds making two or three rounds each would be needed to half fill the stomach. A Bible college teacher used to meet these questions every year from his first-year students, usually in the form, "Why did God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden at all? Why not only the tree of life?" His answer was that God would no doubt have consulted the student if he had been around at the time. Then he would ask them why God gave them a brain, or breath, or legs to walk on, and whether they could answer that. Whatever God does, He does rightly. Leave the questions you cannot answer and obey what the text actually says. And the text says plainly that God commanded the ravens and the ravens fed His prophet. It is a great miracle.

So Elijah sits by the brook. He eats what the birds deliver, drinks the water, perhaps bathes, perhaps even catches a fish. Then one day the water starts going down, and one day there is no water at all. The man who announced the drought is not exempt from the drought. He sits beside a dry bed, staring at it, with no instruction yet.

Then the word comes: get up and go to Zarephath, a town in Sidon, outside Israel, and stay there. I have commanded a widow there to provide for you (1 Kings 17:9). He has no luggage to pack. He goes.

At the town gate he finds a widow gathering sticks. Not a bundle of firewood, the way anyone gathers fuel for cooking, but two sticks. He asks her for a little water, and as she goes to fetch it, he calls after her to bring a piece of bread as well. She tells him what she has: a handful of flour in a bin, a little oil in a jar, and a plan. She is gathering two sticks to cook one last meal for herself and her son, so that they may eat it and die.

Elijah does not tell her not to die. He tells her not to be afraid, to go and do as she said, but to make him a small cake from it first and bring it to him, and afterwards make some for herself and her son. Most of us, sitting at home with nothing, would have told him to go about his business: we are dying here and this man wants a dosa. She did not say that. God had commanded her, and she made the cake.

Think about the vessels. When there is only a little flour left, nobody keeps it in the big pot; it sits in a small bowl. A little oil is not kept in a ten-litre can; it sits in a small jar. A little flour, a little oil, and a woman who meant to eat it and die. She pours one ladle of batter and spreads it, and when she looks back the flour is still there. Another ladle, and it is still there. She pours oil, generously, the way you would for a crisp dosa, and the oil is still there. The flour did not finish and the oil did not run dry, right through the famine, for her, for her household, and for him.

Daily, Not in a Heap · நாளுக்கு நாள், குவியலாக அல்ல

Read the memory verse slowly. The jar never filled up. It simply never emptied. There was never a heap in that house, and there was never a lack in that house either.

When the widow first spoke to Elijah, she said there was enough for her and her son, for one meal. After she fed Elijah, the bin held exactly that: what two people needed, every time she went back to it. It did not overflow and it did not run out. God could have turned that handful into sacks of flour. He did not, and anyone who has made batter knows why. Make too much and it sours before you can use it, and soured batter goes in the bin. Have none for days and then suddenly a great deal, and it has not fermented and cannot be used either. God gave the right measure at the right time. A dosa in the morning, and by noon the batter had risen again; another at noon, and by evening there was enough again for the evening meal.

We are asking for the heap. We ask God for lakhs and crores, and we tell Him what we will do for the church once He gives it. But if God means to give the church money, He does not need to route a lakh through you so that you can pass on ten thousand of it; He can give the lakh to the church directly. Many people speak this way, and many pastors teach it too: give, and God will give you more. That is not what this story shows. We do not need more. This house did not even receive a day's supply in advance. It received what two people needed for one meal, and that never ran out. What I really want is the whole year sitting in the box so that I can stop depending. He gave her the day, and the day never failed.

"Give us this day our daily bread." - Matthew 6:11 (NKJV)

"எங்களுக்கு வேண்டிய ஆகாரத்தை இன்று எங்களுக்குத் தாரும்." - மத்தேயு 6:11 (TAOVBSI)

This is the prayer He taught us, and it asks for அன்றன்றுள்ள ஆகாரம், the bread of the day. Not a year's bread. The prayer itself assumes you will be standing in front of Him again tomorrow. God knows what we need today, tomorrow, next week, next month, a year from now and five years from now. If we received it all today, most of it would sour like the batter, of no use to us or to anyone else.

Twenty Lakhs in Advance · முன்பணமாக இருபது லட்சம்

Try a simple sum. Suppose a family has earned about ten thousand rupees a month. That is one lakh twenty thousand a year; add the loans and the interest that usually come with it and call it two lakhs. Over ten years that is twenty lakhs. Now suppose God had handed you all twenty lakhs ten years ago. Would any of us have put it away to last the decade? We would have built a house, bought jewellery, eaten well, gone to five-star hotels. Even if we were not wasteful, the money would be gone in short order: ten lakhs for a house, five for a car, two for a bike, two for jewellery, a lakh each for the children's jewellery, and the last lakh on a tour to Ooty, Kodaikanal and Kerala, because a new car has to be driven somewhere. Everyone who owns a car knows that the first thing after buying one is a trip. And only after the twenty lakhs are gone do we sit down at the Lord's feet, wondering what to tell the man who comes to collect in the morning.

That is why God gives what is needed now, at noon and in the evening, and says: eat that.

There is a second half to this. The flour sat in the bin, but it did not become bread by sitting there. Every morning she had to go to the bin, take it out, cook it and wash the pan. Having flour in the house does not fill your stomach. If it did, we could stand outside a biryani shop for ten minutes and walk home full. We have to go in. Her blessing did not arrive by Swiggy or Zomato, cooked and packed with a plate you throw away. It came as raw material, and the work was hers. In Chennai, much of the time, my meals came exactly that way, in a parcel with the plate inside, eaten and thrown away with nothing to wash. God does not bless us into that kind of idleness. She went back to that jar every single morning, and every single morning there was a handful in it. The miracle was not in the quantity. It was in the going back. If what we need comes from God, then we have to go to God for it every day.

Spent, Never Finished · செலவாயிற்று, ஆனால் செலவழியவில்லை

The Hebrew verb in 1 Kings 17:16 is kalah (செலவழிந்துபோதல்): to be spent, used up, brought to an end. The same word is used of an army being wiped out. The flour was spent every day, and it was never finished.

The Tamil carries the same thought in its own way. The verse says the flour did not செலவழிந்துபோ, did not get spent to the point of destruction. Something can be செலவாயிற்று, used up in the ordinary way, without being செலவழிந்து, destroyed. Everyone has expenses. The question is whose spending ends in ruin. When God feeds and leads a household day by day, money is spent, but the household is not spent out. So that is what to ask Him: Lord, look after me as You looked after the widow of Zarephath, so that what is spent is never finished.

What we should not say is, "Lord, just clear this one debt and meet today's need, and I will look after the rest; I have skill, I can work, I will keep running." Imagine someone who genuinely offered to take care of you and your children for the rest of your life. Most of us would answer, "There is no need to think about generations. Just give me a lakh to clear what I owe and I will manage from there." We say the same to God when He promises to lead us every day.

Scripture has many promises of provision, and none of them works in a life that will not obey Him. James says some prayers go unanswered for exactly this reason:

"You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures." - James 4:3 (NKJV)

"நீங்கள் விண்ணப்பம்பண்ணியும், உங்கள் இச்சைகளை நிறைவேற்றும்படி செலவழிக்கவேண்டுமென்று தகாதவிதமாய் விண்ணப்பம் பண்ணுகிறபடியினால், பெற்றுக்கொள்ளாமலிருக்கிறீர்கள்." - யாக்கோபு 4:3 (TAOVBSI)

The widow was content with enough. Had she been one of the Israelites in the wilderness, within a week she would have been complaining that it was only plain dosa while the neighbours were eating biryani. That is why Scripture warns against hardening ourselves as Israel did in the day of provocation in the wilderness (Psalm 95:8); a neck that will not bend is the one that breaks (Proverbs 29:1). A supple neck that gets a crick can be turned and eased. A stiff one snaps.

The Guard · ஒரு எச்சரிக்கை

Hear the guard on all of this. She still had to cook every day. This is not a promise of ease, and it is not a promise of plenty. It is a promise of enough, and enough has never once failed.

Through Channels You Would Not Choose · நீ தெரிந்தெடுக்காத வழிகள்

"And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." - 1 Kings 17:4 (NKJV)

"அந்த ஆற்றின் தண்ணீரைக் குடிப்பாய்; அங்கே உன்னைப் போஷிக்க, காகங்களுக்குக் கட்டளையிடுவேன் என்றார்." - 1 இராஜாக்கள் 17:4 (TAOVBSI)

You might think the widow had the harder road and Elijah, the prophet who prayed in her house, the easy one. In fact Elijah's situation at Cherith was worse. The widow at least had a little flour and a little oil. At the brook Elijah had only water. Water keeps a man alive, and a man can live a good while on water without food. Without water he cannot live at all. So God put him where the water was, and sent the ravens.

First the ravens (காகங்கள்). Under the law the raven is an unclean bird (Leviticus 11:15), a scavenger that eats what is dead: dead rats, dead bandicoots, whatever it finds. The God who told Israel not to eat that bird delivered His prophet's food in its beak. The raven had no toothbrush. It ate from a carcass, drank, and then picked up the bread and meat and carried them to Elijah. "I have commanded the ravens" also means the bird had no permission to swallow the meal on the way when it got hungry. God fed His prophet twice a day, for months, by the beak of a bird Elijah was forbidden to eat. The God who can make anything clean was feeding him through it.

Elijah did not argue. He did not object that the raven was unclean under the law of Moses and that eating from it would be improper. God said it, so it was right, and he ate.

"Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you." - 1 Kings 17:9 (NKJV)

"நீ எழுந்து, சீதோனுக்கடுத்த சாறிபாத் ஊருக்குப்போய், அங்கே தங்கியிரு; உன்னைப் பராமரிக்கும்படி அங்கே இருக்கிற ஒரு விதவைக்கு கட்டளையிட்டேன் என்றார்." - 1 இராஜாக்கள் 17:9 (TAOVBSI)

Then a widow, a foreigner, and starving. God says He has commanded her, and she has no idea. If she had known, she would have fallen at Elijah's feet at the gate and told him that God had spoken about him and all the dosas were his. She did not. She was not praying about Elijah; she was gathering sticks to die. All her eyes could see was a last meal and death for herself and her son, and then some stranger asking for food. She was somebody's supply and did not know it. This is what the series means by more than what you see. God was at work in ways her eyes could not see, and He met her need, without falling short, to the very end.

God works that way in our lives too. We think nothing is happening: I go to church and come home and nothing changes; I read the Word and understand none of it; I pray and do not even know what I am praying. The grandmothers who come every day and sit with their legs stretched out may wonder what they are doing there at all. We are tempted to treat them as a nuisance. Yet it is through the prayers of these grandmothers that the ministry here stands strong and that the families in this church live in peace, joy, health and strength. They pray every day, for everyone and for every ministry, and they cannot see the result any more than the widow could. God is doing what our eyes cannot see.

Look at what God put together at Zarephath. A widow with nothing, about to die, and a man with no food and now no water. Two empty vessels, and God made each the help of the other. If a king had fed Elijah, it would have looked ordinary. God chose the house where people were dying. Later, his successor Elisha would be given a furnished upper room in the comfortable house of a wealthy woman at Shunem (2 Kings 4:8-10). Elijah was sent to a house with nothing in it.

Had Elijah inspected the channel, he would have starved twice. We do inspect. We decide in advance which help is beneath us, or too small to matter, or from the wrong family. We think, this person cannot even pray properly, that one is a new believer, that one has a thousand problems of her own; what could I ask of them? Those are very often the people through whom God strengthens us and works miracles for us. Do not despise the hand it comes through. Provision has come to this church through people nobody would have picked, and it was still God who sent it. The channel is His choice, not yours.

"But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land;" - Luke 4:25 (NKJV)

"அன்றியும் எலியாவின் நாட்களிலே மூன்று வருஷமும் ஆறுமாதமும் வானம் அடைபட்டு, தேசமெங்கும் மிகுந்த பஞ்சம் உண்டாயிருந்தபோது, இஸ்ரவேலருக்குள் அநேகம் விதவைகள் இருந்தார்கள்." - லூக்கா 4:25 (TAOVBSI)

"but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow." - Luke 4:26 (NKJV)

"ஆயினும் எலியா சீதோன் நாட்டிலுள்ள சரெப்தா ஊரிலிருந்த ஒரு விதவையினிடத்திற்கு அனுப்பப்பட்டானேயல்லாமல் மற்றொருத்தியினிடத்திற்கும் அனுப்பப்படவில்லை." - லூக்கா 4:26 (TAOVBSI)

Jesus pointed at this woman in His own town. Many widows were in Israel in that famine, many of them close to death, and Elijah was sent to none of them, only to her. They tried to throw Him off a hill for saying it (Luke 4:29). God has a purpose we cannot see with our eyes, and often the question "why?" goes unanswered for a long time. God has many places He could put you, and He puts you exactly where He means you to be. You may have plenty of work and good earnings somewhere else, and still He tells you this is where you are to serve. A young person may wonder why he was born to these parents and not to the happy family across the street. Those families exist, and that is fine. God still says, I put you where I meant to put you. Can you accept that?

The same holds when God's direction looks wrong by our own reckoning. How can I leave this job for one that pays less, when I am already earning thousands and could lose everything? By my sum it is a mistake. But if I have a settled confidence that God has spoken, then what He said is right, even when my arithmetic says otherwise. Elijah listened, and the miracle was not only for him. The widow gave, and there was enough in her house not only for her family but for the prophet as well.

When the Brook Dries Up · ஓடை வற்றிப்போகும்போது

"And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land." - 1 Kings 17:7 (NKJV)

"தேசத்தில் மழை பெய்யாதபடியினால், சில நாளுக்குப்பின்பு அந்த ஆறு வற்றிப்போயிற்று." - 1 இராஜாக்கள் 17:7 (TAOVBSI)

So far: God meets the needs of each day, day by day and never in a heap; and He blesses us through channels we would not choose and could not have chosen. The third thing is the hardest.

The brook dried up while Elijah was being obedient. He was in the exact place God sent him, doing the exact thing God said. Food came, he ate, he drank, and then one day there was no water. The drying was not a punishment, and it was not a mistake.

Israel obeyed God too when they left Egypt. A short way out, they saw the Red Sea and wanted to go back. God split the sea, and on the other side they complained again that there was no food and no water, and that they would rather have died in Egypt (Exodus 14:11-12). Elijah said nothing of the kind. Here was a man who had obeyed God and was now left without even water, and the thing God had promised seemed not to be holding.

Many of us know that moment. God said go, and we went gladly. A little later the water is gone, and we decide we made a mistake and start digging: one foot, two feet, three feet, and nothing comes. Then we say, is this God? Someone at home says, I told you not to go to that brook. Where will the crow get food from? Where will water come from with no rain? But nobody asks where the water came from all those months. Or we say, how can I manage without the salary from the Sunday shift? I can only run my family if I work on Sundays. Then where did God provide for you all the years before that job came? Did He not look after your children and your home until now? He did. Yet the moment the brook dries, people run, and they run away from God.

Elijah did not run. He sat beside the dry brook. He did not get up on his own and go looking for someone to feed him. The ravens were still coming, but food is no good without water, and he had only God's word.

"Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying," - 1 Kings 17:8 (NKJV)

"அப்பொழுது கர்த்தருடைய வார்த்தை அவனுக்கு உண்டாயிற்று, அவர்:" - 1 இராஜாக்கள் 17:8 (TAOVBSI)

Notice what God did not do. He did not refill the brook. The God who commanded ravens could just as easily have commanded a camel or a giraffe to carry water and pour it in. He did not. He moved the man: get up and go, you have been here long enough. Sometimes the answer to a dry place is not more water in that place.

A thing running out can be an instruction (வழிகாட்டுதல்), not a verdict. When something that was full and blessed begins to fall short, it often means God is giving the next direction. The dried-up places in our lives are often not a mark of our failure; God is telling us this place has served its time and there is a next assignment somewhere else. A person who stays seated in one place long enough, even in church, starts chatting with the neighbour and checking whether the nail polish is still on. We are not meant to stay put. I have read every drying brook in my life as abandonment, and some of them were road signs.

But look at the order. He did not move when the water dropped. The text says the word of the Lord came to him, and then he went. He sat by a dry brook and waited for a word. Road signs tell you which way to turn, but you have to read them before you turn. When something begins to run short, do not rush to fix it in your own strength; wait, like Elijah, for the next direction. We said this before: we are to walk with God, not run ahead of Him and not lag far behind.

Think where Elijah would have ended up if he had run the moment the water dropped. King Ahab had been searching for him for years, sending to every nation and kingdom to find the man who said it would not rain (1 Kings 18:10). Run in a panic to find water anywhere, and you fall into the hands of the king's servants, and your work becomes sitting in prison instead of doing the work of God.

Do not move before the word, and do not stay after it. Both are how we end up stranded, and the second one is the harder to see.

Everything may have dried up. No joy, no rest, nothing to look forward to. God is still with you. He is ready to do a great deal through you, and He has many plans concerning you. So the question is yours: when the brook dries up, what do you do? Do you get up and run, do you start digging, or do you wait for the word of God?

Conclusion · முடிவுரை

This sermon was titled How He Sends It: how God meets our needs. He gives every day what that day requires, never the whole heap at once. He sends it through channels we would not choose; the very place we say we will never go is often where He says, go, and I will bless you there. And when the brook dries, He does not always refill it; He gives a word and moves us on.

So if you are Elijah, obey. If you are the widow, thank God. We may think we have nothing and are as good as dead, and still God may have placed us there to keep someone else alive. Many people answer every request by saying, I have nothing myself, no money, no time; I cannot even come to prayer. The widow could have said that, and it would have been true. Instead she gave to the man who asked, first, and then she and her son ate.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." - Matthew 6:33 (NKJV)

"முதலாவது தேவனுடைய ராஜ்யத்தையும் அவருடைய நீதியையும் தேடுங்கள், அப்பொழுது இவைகளெல்லாம் உங்களுக்குக்கூடக் கொடுக்கப்படும்." - மத்தேயு 6:33 (TAOVBSI)

Tell God the worries you are carrying. He fulfils the desire of those who fear Him (Psalm 145:19), and every one of His promises stands for us.

This series will spend five Sundays on things that are real and not visible, and it began with the one that presses every week: where the next supply comes from. If you are counting tonight and the number does not reach, you are not being punished, and you are not alone in that house. The widow's arithmetic was right too.

"And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:19 (NKJV)

"என் தேவன் தம்முடைய ஐசுவரியத்தின்படி உங்கள் குறைவையெல்லாம் கிறிஸ்து இயேசுவுக்குள் மகிமையிலே நிறைவாக்குவார்." - பிலிப்பியர் 4:19 (TAOVBSI)

Paul finishes it for us. Not according to what is in your jar, but according to His riches. The flour did not finish and the oil did not run dry, not because the jar was large, but because the Lord had spoken over it, and His word has not run out yet.

Declaration Prayer · அறிக்கை ஜெபம்

பிதாவே, என் பானையில் இருக்கிறதை மட்டும் பார்த்து கணக்குப் பார்க்கிறதை நிறுத்துகிறேன்; அதன்மேல் பேசின உம்முடைய வார்த்தையை நம்புகிறேன். அன்றன்றுள்ள ஆகாரத்திற்காக உம்மை நோக்கிப் பார்க்கிறேன்; நீர் அனுப்புகிற வழியை நான் அசட்டைபண்ணேன். ஓடை வற்றிப்போனாலும், உம்முடைய வார்த்தைக்காகக் காத்திருப்பேன். இயேசுவின் நாமத்தினாலே, ஆமென்.

Father, I stop counting only what is in my jar; I trust the word You have spoken over it. I look to You for the bread of each day; I will not despise the way You choose to send it. Even when the brook dries up, I will wait for Your word. In Jesus' name, Amen.

One Thing This Week · இந்த வாரம் ஒன்று மட்டும்

Go to the jar this week and thank Him for the handful, before you count what is missing. And if you are somebody's raven this week, do not argue with God about it. Carry the bread.

Next week - Part 2 of கண்ணுக்குத் தெரிவதைவிட அதிகம் (More Than What You See): கண்ணுக்குத் தெரியாதவர்கள், Elisha at Dothan and the chariots nobody can see. The memory verse to carry in: 2 Kings 6:16 - அதற்கு அவன்: பயப்படாதே; அவர்களோடிருக்கிறவர்களைப்பார்க்கிலும் நம்மோடிருக்கிறவர்கள் அதிகம் என்றான்.