These Are Precedented Times: Faith Lessons from Elijah for Right Now
1 Kings 17: 8 – 24
Don’t Believe the Hype: These Are Not “Unprecedented Times”
Turn on the news. Scroll through social media. Listen to conversations at the coffee shop. “Unprecedented times,” they say. But I’m here to tell you something: they’re wrong.
While each era has its own cast of characters and particular brand of chaos, the human heart remains unchanged. Wars, hatred, division, corruption, cruelty, immoral leaders, these are precedented.
Fortunately, we have a guidebook (the Bible) on how to act in precedented times like these. People of faith have been here before. That’s why we are launching our new sermon series by looking to Elijah as a guide who had to deal with similar circumstances.
Why Elijah Still Matters
Why Elijah? He delt with a lot of the kinds of things we see today. And it seems Elijah was Jesus’ mentor for handling tyrants, people with misplaced values, and religious leaders who lost the plot.
When Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration, before his final descent into Jerusalem, he consulted with Moses and Elijah. He saw his ministry in line with Elijah’s and quoted our story for today in his inaugural address in Nazareth (Luke 4). If you want to get a deeper understanding of what Jesus and the New Testament are about, Elijah’s stories are required reading. They’re the handbook for precedented times like ours.
A Prophet Without a Backstory
Unlike most Old Testament heroes, we don’t get a backstory on him—no birth narrative, no story about his call. Just this: he’s a Tishbite, from Gilead. That’s Bible-speak for: this guy’s from the sticks. Wild terrain. No pedigree. No temple robes. Just dust on his feet and fire in his voice. The kind of person God loves to send when the empire gets too full of itself.
He suddenly appears when the most evil and corrupt king who ever ruled Israel started messing things up. King Ahab. 1 Kings 16:30 says, “However, Ahab son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him”.
Lesson One: Daily Trust in Divine Providence
So, what’s the first lesson from our precedented times playbook? When a severe drought and famine struck, God looked after the God follower and led him to a place where he found water and nourishment with Ravens bringing him food. Real ravens—the kind that don’t fumble in the playoffs. There, Elijah had to depend on God alone for his daily bread and survival. The first lesson in being faithful is learning to rely on God’s providence to get you through. It’s not about financial prosperity, but the spiritual resources to keep you from falling apart when times are difficult. Every generation facing precedented chaos has had to learn this first.
Lesson Two: Radical Openness to the Stranger
After some time in the wilderness, God says, “Head to Zarephath,” and explains there’s a woman who will feed you. Zarephath was in another country. The second lesson is about a spirit of openness to people who aren’t like you, to foreigners. That was Jesus’ takeaway from this story. He told his hometown folks in Nazareth that his mission extended beyond their town and country. He said there were plenty of widows in Israel, but God sent him to a widow in another land. The crowd tried to throw Jesus off a cliff after he said this.
Here’s the spiritual challenge: Can you see beyond your tribe? This was no “Nazareth first” mentality. It is always tempting to circle the wagons and only look out for our own. We ask, “Why should we send resources to ‘those people’ when we have needs right here?” Because God is always pushing us to our full humanity, which thinks bigger.
Christian Nationalists want to make this optional. They’ve got their theology backwards—me first, us second, them probably never. Two popes have declared this heresy. “Wrong!” they thundered. That’s not Christianity—that’s tribalism in a church costume. This is how we live faithfully in precedented times—we resist the pull to keep to ourselves.
At a time our government strips aid from foreign nations, we step up. We send mission teams to Kenya. We provide wheelchairs worldwide. We contribute to crisis relief. In doing so, we bear witness that we do not exist unto ourselves and take a stand against small-mindedness that robs us of our humanity. It gives us the humility to know that, as big as our problems may feel, some folks are dealing with much worse. Besides, it’s the right thing to do. If you want to become a better person, do the next right thing.
Here’s what precedented times teach us about relationships: Zarephath means “Smelting Place”—where metal is heated until it becomes something stronger. Here, a Hebrew prophet and a foreign widow enter the fire of trust and emerge transformed. The principle for living in precedented days like these is not to buy into xenophobia. Forge relationships with people who are not like you.
Lesson Three: Faith That Takes the Lid Off
Now comes the precedented times moment of truth. Every generation facing chaos reaches this point. There is a problem when Elijah finds the young widow that God directed him to. She doesn’t have any food. She is gathering sticks for the fire of her last meal with her child. After that, they will surely starve to death. Elijah must have asked God, “Are you nuts? I can’t ask her.”
She stoops to gather brittle sticks, dust swirling around her, preparing to cook despair.
God reassures him that if she helps him, she will always have enough for her and the boy.
This is the calculation every person in precedented times must make: Picture her calculation: “If this stranger is right, we live. If he’s wrong, we die tomorrow instead of today. What do I have to lose?” She’s trying to preserve the next generation.
In precedented times, we all face this same choice. The specifics change, but the test remains: imagine her reaching for her little jar of meal. The test of faith is whether she will take the lid off and use her meager resources to fix something for this stranger who is just as hungry as she is.
Unscrew the jar. Break the seal. Open what feels untouchable.
Every generation in precedented times faces this same test: Will you hoard what little you have, or will you take the lid off and trust?
You feel like your faith is too small? Take the lid off anyway.
You think your voice doesn’t matter? Take the lid off anyway.
You believe your kindness won’t change anything? Take the lid off anyway.
The Real Miracle: Showing Up with What You Have
The woman took the lid off, prepared the meal, and the next day, there was enough for another meal. Day after day, there was daily bread—enough. Now I don’t know about magic jars. But I know someone who opened her home and took in an Afghan refugee during the resettlement crisis. That’s what every faithful person in precedented times discovers: when you take the lid off, God shows up. Not with magic jars, but with the people you need, the purpose that drives you, and the faith to keep going—even when the world feels like it’s losing its mind.
So yes, these are precedented times. But that’s actually good news—it means we have a guide. Every generation has faced leaders who disappoint. The question is: How do we respond faithfully? We learn from Elijah and the widow. We practice daily trust. We stay open to others. And when our moment comes, we take the lid off and discover that God provides what we need to keep going, one day at a time.