1 Kings:17-24 When Life Gets Worse After The Miracle

Life has a way of pulling the rug out right after a breakthrough. You finally kick the habit, rebuild the relationship, or see God provide what you thought you would never have, and then something else hits. That whiplash can make you wonder whether God is close, whether you are being punished, or whether faith is even real when the pain keeps coming.

In todays sermon, we look at  sin, relapse, and why Christian accountability is not “extra,” it is normal. Temptation does not disappear because you had a victory, and shame loves to isolate you from the very people who can help you heal. we open 1 Kings 17:17–24, the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. After God multiplies food, the widow’s son dies, and she assumes her suffering is God calling out her iniquity. We name the tension many of us feel: if God won the war, why do the battles keep happening?

Three expectations guide the message: brokenness remains this side of heaven, God still listens to the cries of the faithful, and God keeps giving reasons to trust Him. We talk about honest prayer that sounds desperate, the power of community prayer and confession from James 5, and the hope of Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit intercedes when we do not know what to pray. Finally, we connect the widow’s “Now I know” to the center of the gospel: Jesus meets us on the road, walks with us through grief, and proves in the resurrection that darkness is not the end.

If you are tired, stuck, or questioning, come listen and take one step toward the light. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find it. What’s one area where you need to ride with God instead of blaming Him?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the City Life Church podcast. We hope it encourages you. If you'd like to learn more about City Life or our mission, connect with us online at CityLifeSandiego.org. And while podcasts and Sunday mornings are helpful, they are no substitute for deeper personal relationships in the church.

Sin, Pornography, And Accountability

Elijah And The Widow Read Aloud

Final Destination And Relentless Brokenness

Expectation One Brokenness Remains

Expectation Two God Hears Cries

Expectation Three Reasons To Trust

Give Jesus Everything And Be Baptized

Emmaus Hope In The Dark

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Well, good morning, friends. We are going to be in the book of 1 Kings 17, 17 through 24. 1 Kings 17, 17 through 24 this morning. If you don't have a good Bible, we would love to give you one. If you have seven at home, don't be taken Bibles. But we have uh really nice study Bibles on both sides. We have them in multiple languages. Um and uh we would love to give you one. If you don't have one, put your name on it. Tenemos Biblias Bilingue disponibles o costada del salom. Bonjour, m'ensat sim, canta, nueva vec buenisit la nuegan bib creo aisiet pono gratis, nas I hope you're there with me in 1 Kings. Uh if you don't know where that is, just look in the front of your Bible and you'll see a concordance that will tell you where it is. So 1 Kings 17 is where we are at. Hope you're with me. I have come to the conclusion that being a Christian is not as clean as some people online advertise. Have you noticed that? It's not as easy as some preachers may say it is or pretend that it is. Like you pray for something, and then it happens. Like God gives you the spouse you dreamed of, and then they leave you. And you're like, what? Like God delivers you from cancer, and then you get cancer again. With God's help, you finally kick your addiction, and then it comes back stronger than ever. Like in my family, I grew up with pornography everywhere. Like my dad had like Playboys for like decades, and he had boxes and boxes of it, and like I sold it to my friends. I was like the local dealer at my high school so that I could get the things I wanted. So my first guitar that I had, my first amplifier that I had, it was just old Playboys that I sold to my friends at school. And I like I charged through the roof. And the fact is, is pornography was a part of my life. It was it was a major part of my life when I was growing up. I did not grow up in a Christian family. This was just a part of it. And you know, like when I would get the mail from my dad, you know, there was Playboys in it, and I would just, you know, take a peek and then they bagged it up, and then things changed. But like the thing is, is like I had pornography with me as long as I can remember. And then when I came to Jesus, uh, he freed me from pornography, from the addiction of pornography, and then just this is just gonna date me so bad. But then I was on uh my friend's MySpace account. Yeah. And uh he had this like Pac-Man game on there, and I was like, I'm gonna play the Pac-Man game on his MySpace, and I pressed to play it, and then pornography came up. And then I was trapped again uh for like a year. Now, you know how long ago that was, but then four years later, um, I was reading about the Chargers on sportsillustrated.com, and there was uh all this nudity on sportsillustrated.com. I was just trying to read about the Chargers, man. Um, and it was like near nudity, you know, like whatever you could get away with is what they got away with, but it sunk me back in. And you know, it does teach you that you know anything related to the Chargers brings death. But also, also, like it ensnared me again. Pornography ensnared me again. My my sin was there, crouched and ready to attack. And I wanted to blame somebody else for my for my for my problems. I wanted to blame my dad, I wanted to blame Sports Illustrated, I wanted to blame uh MySpace for having such a hackable uh program. But really, who's it? It was my my sin. It was my fault. Um I couldn't blame anyone but myself. It was a heart problem that only Jesus could fix over time. And I will tell you that I have not looked at pornography since then, and it's been uh I don't know what that is now, maybe 15 years. But I also believe that I understand the depravity of my own heart, and I know that I'm just as susceptible. So when you're around somebody who thinks that they're not susceptible to sin anymore, like that's a very dangerous place. When you're around somebody who doesn't want to be held accountable anymore, that's a very dangerous place. I will tell you, I'll be going out of town in June for a conference after our service, and I will have people checking in on me. What are you doing? Who are you talking to? How are how are you? This is normal, this should be expected with all of us, including me. But friends, the thing is, is I just thought I had kicked it. I thought I got over sin. But the thing is, when things go from bad to worse, we can blame or we can ride with God. And and I I encourage you today to ride with God. So today we're gonna be reading from 1 Kings 17, and I hope you're with me. And uh let's let's read from God's word. After this, okay, once again, if you're if you're new here or if you've you've we've taken a couple weeks off from this, I have to give you the after this. So, what was this, okay? God sent Elijah to a woman who was preparing a last meal for her and her son. God provided food on top of food on top of food. He opened storehouses, he generously spared this woman and her family. There was no physical way for oil and flour to not run out without God's natural intervention. She knew it, he knew it, but after this, you ready for me? Verse 17. The son of the woman who owned the house became ill. His illness got worse until he stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, Man of God, what do you have against me? Have you come to call attention to my iniquity? That's my sin, so that my son is put to death? But Elijah said to her, Give me your son. So he took him from her arms, brought him to the upstairs room where he was staying, and laid him on his own bed. Then he cried out to the Lord and said, Lord my God, have you also brought tragedy on the widow I am staying with by killing her son? Then he stretched himself out over the boy three times. He cried out to the Lord and said, Lord my God, please let this boy's life come into him again. So the Lord listened to Elijah, and the boy's life came into him again, and he lived. Then Elijah took the boy, brought him down from the upstairs room into the house, and gave him to his mother. Elijah said, Look, your son is alive. Then the woman said to Elijah, Now, now I know you are a man of God, and the Lord's word from your mouth is true. This is God's word. Would you pray with me, friends? Now I know. Now I know, Father. That you've done so much for us, but we are so forgetful. You provide miracle upon miracle upon miracle, and yet there are times when we look at the wind and the waves around us and we get we get afraid and we forget. We forget the many ways you've protected us. Lord, there are probably things that you've protected us from that we don't even know about. A black widow, a rattlesnake hiding under a rock. That momentary loss of concentration on the freeway, and yet you have been there for us. Even when we have not deserved it. But now no matter how many times you've rescued us, our roofs eventually leak, gardens get overrun by weeds and pests, our bones eventually become brittle and break down. God, when the temporary brokenness of our world overwhelms us, please remind us of your strength. Remind us of your good plan. Remind us of the daybreak when all we see is darkness. We know your plan is good, but we lose heart sometimes. Forgive us. Please give us confidence in your love and your kindness this morning. Teach us. May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing to you. We pray this all in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen. Well, I am here to date myself today, not in that weird way, but in a way to tell you how old I am. In my senior year of high school, a new scary movie came out. But there were no zombies, there were no aliens, there was no creepy clown or candyman or candy men. It was an invisible foe who stocked every character in the movie. His name was Death. His name was Death. The movie was called Final Destination. Um, it started with a young blonde dude named Alex. He's sitting on an airplane with 40 other students headed to France for a school trip. Alex seemed a bit nervous when a couple girls asked him to change seats on the flight so that they could sit together. Then after changing seats on uh on the flight, he goes to the new seat and his seat breaks. No big deal. As the plane took off, though, there was a mechanical failure and the plane exploded. Alex watched people burn and then he woke up. Covered in sweat. It felt incredibly real to him. But now he's back in the same seat, on the same 747, with the same things happening around him, headed to Paris. Suddenly the same two girls approached him, asking him to change seats in the exact same way. Alex ran to the head of the plane to his new seat where it broke in the exact same way. He freaked out, obviously, and he ended up off the plane with a few other students and a teacher, and he he watched the plane explode mid-air. The rest of the movie is about death stalking him and his friends. Even though Alex was delivered from the plane crash, he and his friends had cheated death, and death was coming to get them. It was a stupid movie. I enjoyed it as a kid. Also, I tried to watch some of it on YouTube, and I was like, wow, there were a lot of F-bombs in the first minute of that movie. Um, but the movie had a familiar ring to me. And um, I think a lot of times it feels like that in life. That like death and sin and problems are just chasing you down. Do you ever feel that way about sin and death? Like Jesus defeated it all, yes. But it still feels like it's chasing you down. It still feels like things are off. Like, where is my happily ever after? I did the right thing for Jesus and I lost my job. I gave up my sins and yet here they are taunting me again. Things seem off. I followed Jesus and I lost my friends over this. I didn't get new friends like I thought I would. I think maybe Elijah and the old widow felt the same way though. Like you get through everything only to have something new happen. Is there anybody that feels this way sometimes? Can I get an amen in the room, please? Yes, it's real. We feel this. We feel the brokenness of the world because it's relentless. It's relentless. Now, if God won the war, why do crappy things still happen all the time? Battles continue though, even though the war is over. But as the kingdom of God moves forward, we can have three expectations that I'm going to give you this morning. And my first expectation is this there will always be brokenness this side of heaven. There will always be brokenness this side of heaven. Why do you think we do an Ash Wednesday service every year? It's a reminder of the brokenness that is continuing on this side of earth, on this side of heaven. Verse 17, after this, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. His illness got worse until he stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, man of God, what do you have against me? Have you come to call attention to my iniquity so that this so that my son is put to death? So, like all after all God had done, this great thing feeding this family, something terrible happened. And she doubted God's compassion for her because she was a sinner like us. Does it remind you of any other text? We talked about it last week. Jesus met Peter for the first time, and he did this small little miracle with some fish. They've been fishing all night and they caught nothing, but Jesus said to cast out his nets one more time, and the nets were full, right? In Luke 5, Peter responds almost exactly as this woman did. Go away from me because I am a sinful man, Lord. Now listen to the widow's words. What do you have against me, prophet? Are you here to punish me because to remind me of my sin? See, it's interesting how as Christians, sometimes you you just get around people and they feel guilt. Like, man, I got no reason to judge you, but but I cannot tell you how many times I have shown up, I got my Bible in my hand, I'm not preaching anything, everyone's smoking weed, and there's like one guy that's like, Man, why you gotta bring your Bible and your like holiness around here when I'm trying to smoke weed or get drunk? And I'm always like, Man, I got like I wasn't saying anything to you. Like I'm just standing here talking to my friend next to you. But but they feel a certain conviction, right? Like you show up to church and you know you have sinned that you have yet to confess to God, and you don't want to be here. You you know I have to forgive this person. I don't want to, I'm not going. You know that you have to stop doing this particular sin that is destroying you. I'm not going and being around those holy people. Which is funny because you know, uh they're all just like you. Like any pastor who steps up to this mic and says that he's got it all figured out, he doesn't sin anymore, he's just the biggest liar. That's all it is. Like everyone, though, you just don't want to be around holiness. And God's church and all her brokenness, she is holy. Now, now here's the thing. Of course, we are still sinners, but we represent holiness to other people. Being around holiness convicts us of our sin. And this woman, she clearly recognized her sin when Elijah was around. Now you may recall, giving you some backstory, the widow is in the region of Sidon, right? The place known for the evil queen Jezebel. But it was also known as a nation that worshiped the false god Baal. Baal, who supposedly brought life and food. So Elijah stood before the king and queen and told them God would shut down the rain until further notice to let them know who the real God is. A direct assault on Baal, which led this woman to almost starve with her son, and God intervened. But as much as she was provided for, she was still aware of her sin. She had gone against the God of the universe, she had worshipped a fake God. Perhaps she was still doing it, we don't know. But my guess is she was actually probably growing in her faith. She was probably growing in her faith towards our true God, and she just felt unworthy because she wasn't there yet. She hadn't arrived yet, which we totally get, don't you? Like none of us have arrived. You come and you feel guilty because you're around these people that feel guilty that haven't arrived. Don't worry about it. None of us have. Now, Sunday, May 3rd, we're gonna baptize some folks in our church at Shelter Island. I hope if you've been baptized by our church, you'll go celebrate someone else. But that person, those people will declare that they have died and they have risen with Jesus. They're declaring they are living a new life in Jesus, but they're also still going to fail miserably. And their sin will hurt their relationship with God, with their friends, with their family, with their church, because they're human. It will hurt them. And they will need their church family to draw them to repentance in love, but they'll feel guilty around you because you represent holiness to them. But it's okay. They just need your help in understanding that when they repent, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. They will need to be reminded that they are loved. Even when the devil would use their sin to separate them from community, because that's his number one goal. They will need honesty when their sin is hurting them, but they will also need our radical grace that only comes from God. They will need us to draw them back again and again to God and community, like going back to a well. But here's the thing sometimes we think we need to punish ourselves. Sometimes we think we need to hurt ourselves. And all we do in that is we alienate us from the one who wants to save us. But in God's kindness, he leads us to repentance. Romans 2, 4 asks, Do you despise the riches of riches of God's kindness, restraint, and patience? Not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance. It's his kindness. So, friends, I say, stop thinking that God is mad at you. He wants better for you. He wants you to stop sabotaging your relationships, he wants you to forgive, he wants you to allow him to actually forgive you. But you don't have to punish yourself, okay? Now I remember in high school, I'm like going back to high school a lot, this sermon. I remember in high school, I was in world history, I was learning about the black plague, uh, known as the black death. We know about this, I'm not gonna describe it. And the people who who um who thought that they could uh heal themselves uh had a certain name. It was called flagellants. They beat themselves, hoping that God would see their repentance so that they would be healed and that their people would stop dying from disease. Now you're probably thinking right now, wow, Pastor Dale is so well studied. How did he even remember that? You know I was 14, I only remember it because it rhyme with flagellants, right? Like we all know that, right? The flagellants were the people that beat themselves. Flatellence is something totally different. But these people thought that if they could beat themselves enough, maybe, just maybe, God would have mercy. Because he would understand that this is true repentance. This is true repentance. But friends, Christ did not live a sinless life so you could earn his grace by beating yourself up. He also didn't die on the cross so you could continue to sin without consequence. He took consequence so you could have freedom from sin. Now, don't think that you are so powerful that you can conquer sin and death by feeling guilty or beating yourself up. You cannot. Jesus defeated the devil so you could walk in freedom. Freedom to be forgiven, freedom to forgive others, freedom to walk in the light. Now, this Sidonian woman innately understood what the Bible says in Romans. The payment for sin is death. Like I got what I deserved. But what she failed to understand was the grace of God even extended to her. A sinful woman who was not Jewish, who was from a sinful people, who represented the fake, false God Baal. But she had to understand that God's grace extended to her too. God's grace extended to her too. And we often say this: no sin is more powerful than the grace of God. You cannot out sin the grace of God. And so Elijah cried out to God on her behalf, and that's our second expectation as the kingdom of God moves forward. God still listens to the cries of the faithful. God still listens to cries from the faithful. And guys, I said cries. Like, man, if you go to God, I mean he listens, but if you go to God and you're like, God, thank you for the day, you're so good. And Father God, we just thank you because you do stuff. Uh God, Father, I just pray you help me with this thing, I guess, or whatever. I don't help me, help me with this, help me with this. And it's like, this dude cried to God. Like, you have the honor of praying, talking to the most holy God. And we don't, we don't just talk to him like he's some like idiot who's not listening. No, we cry out to God. If we have a real need, we cry to him. And this is what Elijah did. In verse 20, it said, Elijah cried out to the Lord and said, Lord my God, have you also brought tragedy on the widow I am staying with by killing her son? Then he stretched himself out over the boy three times. He cried out to the Lord. He said, Let this boy's life come into him again. So the Lord listened to Elijah, and the boy's life came into him again, and he lived. Now Elijah's prayer is very real here, isn't it? Like the best way I feel like in my modern language would be, What in the heck, Lord? That's what it feels like to me. I'm out here trying to serve you, right? And I'm kind of looking bad right now. This lady had mercy on me, and you took her son? Like he's mad. He's confused. And he's bringing it to God, and he's crying out to God, and it's good to be honest with God. Now, Dr. Tony Evans says Elijah's prayer showed that even he did not understand why God had brought about this tragedy. We feel Elijah here, don't we? We lose our job and we're like, God, where were you on that one? We get a better job as our hard work, you know. We blame God for the things that cause discomfort. For many of you, though, God wants to destroy your current way of life. The things only you know about, the sins you are juggling in private, he knows, and with your allowance, he wants to put those things to death too. But what that means is many of you are suffering under guilt and shame now. You are annoyed with him for messing with your life. And he does mess with your life. But the greatest thing in your life will often come through suffering. Charles Spurgeon was known to say God keeps the choicest wine in the cellar of our suffering and disappointment. God keeps the choicest wine in the cellar of our suffering and disappointment. And Charles Spurton liked him some wine. He had gout all the time, man. He said, I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of ages. I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me up against the rock of ages. I have so many quotes like this. I don't know which one is like truly him and exactly how it is. But the point remains the suffering is what draws us to the goodness of God. And in that way it can be a blessing. We hate it in the moment. We hate it in the moment, but it's still a blessing. For the widow and for Elijah in that moment, it didn't feel like a blessing, did it? No, they probably felt alone. They probably even felt cursed by God. Punished by God. But God was scheming in a good way. God has the whole thing rigged for his glory. See, when things go from bad to worse, we can blame God or we can ride with him and trust that he has our back. Now he wanted to use the prayers of Elijah, a righteous man, to save the boy. God wanted to show his glory here. James 5, 16 says this confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect. See, there's a reason Jesus healed so many people by his prayers. And there were times when his disciples were like, yo, this didn't work. We couldn't figure this out. And be like, all right, I got it. He was righteous, he was holy, he was perfect. And Elijah was also a man of God, an imperfect man of God, not Jesus, but one who was seeking after God. Now, did you guys know we have access to those prayers today? Fact is, our church has a group me account for our partners and for our city groups. Whenever someone has a need, they go there for prayer. When someone is planning on doing something fun, they will often post it there. But most importantly, we post our prayer requests. Sometimes someone will be in the hospital and make a prayer request in that group, and within minutes you'll have like 30 to 50 people praying for you right in that moment. And I know sometimes our people will end up showing up at the hospital praying for you, sometimes with like some kind of balloon or fruit basket. It's incredible. We've seen the great healing that has come through your prayers. The book of James, chapter 5, 13, says this. Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Now your elders have visited people in the hospital and prayed over people. We've gone to homes. We've seen people healed from cancer. We've gone to people who needed surgery that suddenly didn't need surgery after we prayed over them. I once prayed in the hospital over a woman who was healed from the flesh-eating bacteria. And I still will never forgive those doctors who were like, oh yeah, you could put your hand on her. And I was like, oh, thanks for saying that in front of her. I did not want to touch somebody who had the flesh-eating virus or bacteria. I'll just be honest with you. I was like, hey, the Lord can heal her from across the room. But she was healed. She was. And it's not just elders who do this, friends. Any of you can do this. You can pray for your friends. I didn't heal anybody. The same spirit that was in me for those healings is available and in anyone who has given their life to Jesus. Remember how we said coming to faith was just the beginning? Yes, you give your life to Jesus. You join the church and you get into real community. You get baptized. Sign up May 3rd. But at the same time, God's Holy Spirit begins to work in and through you. He is teaching you, he is using you. And when you don't know what to pray, he even prays for you and with you. Romans 8 says, in the same way, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness. Because we do not know what to pray for as we should. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. And he who searches our hearts knows the minds of the mind of the Spirit because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. What are we saying? The Holy Spirit prays for you. How amazing is that! Who is more righteous than God in you? God the Father listens to the prayers through the Spirit of God in the name of God the Son, Jesus. Yes, God listens to prayers of holy righteous people. Yeah, but the good news is the Father sees you as righteous when you have repented and given your life to Jesus. He listens to you whether you deserve it or not. Because of Jesus, we can approach God with confidence. Hebrews 10 says it well. Now, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way open for us through the curtain that is his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and a full assurance of faith that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope that we profess, for he who is promised is faithful. See, we can approach God with confidence because of the work of Jesus and the living presence of his Holy Spirit in us. Now I don't know if Elijah approached God with confidence in that moment. I honestly don't. I think he approached God with desperation and maybe a little bit of fear. Grief mixed with sadness and maybe a little bit of anger. But God in his grace still listened to the cry of Elijah. He did. And if you belong to Jesus, you always have reason to hope God is listening to your prayers. That's where we get our third expectation for uh as the kingdom moves forward. It is that God continues to give us reasons to trust him. God continues to give us reasons to trust him. Verse 23, then Elijah took the boy, brought him down from the upstairs room into the house, and gave him to his mother. Elijah said, Look, your son's alive. Then the woman said to Elijah, Now I know you are a man of God, and the Lord's word from your mouth is true. I'm like, Now, just now? See, the family had been saved from starvation, and nothing changed. My guess is the fake God Baal still ruled that household. But here the boy was brought back from death and it broke Baal's back. And the mother finally believed. Now, why didn't she believe the first time? I don't know. My question is, why don't we believe after seeing miracle after miracle after miracle? We may say we believe, but does our life show that we believe? Like when Israel was delivered from slavery in Egypt. God threatened the Pharaoh through Moses. He turned the river Nile to blood. Moses' staff turned into a snake. If that were me, I'd be like, hey man, I don't want any part of that. Just get out, go. I don't want any part of it. But that didn't change anything, did it? Pharaoh didn't need to see one more plague, he needed to see ten more. That's a problem. Israel saw all of those two. Israel, God's chosen people, they saw God work, they saw God deliver them from death, and yet they complained. When they finally made it to the desert away from Pharaoh, they said, God's gonna kill us in this desert. He just brought us here to kill us. Man, we're so thirsty, we are so hungry. Where's the beef? They cried. So God fed them. God fed them bread from the ground. He gave them water from a rock. He gave them more meat than a Texas steakhouse. But did they believe? No. What did they do? They complained. They were bitter at God, who they were sure clearly hated them. Then God promised to deliver them from the surrounding armies, but they grew afraid and they didn't trust him. Why should we trust God? What proof has he given us? And it's like, what proof? Moses is like, are you serious? Like you didn't see all this stuff that God did, the way he parted the water so you could walk through? You walked, you walked through like an aquarium. The way he healed you from your illness, the way he protected you? You didn't see that? Now we like to make fun of Israel, don't we? Like and the people in our Bible for their lack of faith. But haven't you seen enough of his love by now yourself? Haven't you seen enough of his miracles? Don't you remember the ways he delivered you from sin? Like Egypt, like Israel, like the widow, like most humans, we start having questions. We start thinking stupid things like, man, maybe sex likes me more than God does. Maybe the bar scene offers me something more than him. Maybe overworking gives me something better than God can. Maybe sports loves me more than God. Maybe sleep and rest is better than being a part of this beautiful thing, this beautiful prescribed thing called God's church. Now perhaps the widow believed, but didn't think the grace of God extended to sinful people. And yet here we saw the grace of God available to a non-Jewish woman, and finally, finally, something got her to believe. When she was clinging desperately to hope. When things go bad to worse, we can blame God. Or we can ride with him and we can trust he has our back. Now there are people who have seen miracles and still they've denied God soon after. Tell me you haven't had somebody like that in your life. It's usually us, but you know. And yet in grace, God continues and continues and continues to pursue us. That is that is a remarkable grace. Maybe some of you saw God do something great and then you had another tragedy in your life. Maybe you forgot all of God's promises for you. Maybe you saw his miracles and then you saw Christians acting like idiot human beings. Maybe you saw God's miracles and your own sin caused you to deny him. Or maybe you just think you've never seen enough to believe. I just want you to know God is still chasing you, God is still pursuing you. Do you feel enslaved to your sin right now? God has the ability to free you. He's so much bigger than your sin. Jeremiah 32. Oh Lord God, you yourself made the heavens and the earth by your great power and with your outstretched arm. Nothing is too difficult for you. It does not say, except for so-and-so's, that one sin that they cannot figure out. Jesus also said, What is impossible with man is possible with God. See, Jesus died on the cross for your sins. He rose again on the third day. He came back to life to show you he was bigger than your sin, bigger than the devil, bigger than death. And I encourage you, give him your whole life. Give him your children, give him your spouse, give him your sin, give him everything. He's more trustworthy than you with it. Be baptized, May 3rd, and start living a life with his church. It is beautiful, it is broken, it is full of grace and forgiveness. But yes, sometimes God will do something amazing, and then right after, something bad will happen. It's a thing. Consider Jesus' life. He came and he healed thousands of people from demons, from blindness. People who had never walked before, had skinny little legs with no muscle tone, ran. A beloved daughter died, Jesus gave her back to her parents. Crooked hands were made straight and nimble again. And after all that, after Jesus showed off all his godness, he was arrested. He was murdered. And I think some of you are sitting in that moment right now. You thought God was real, but life has hit you from so many different angles, and you are left wondering if he is actually who he said he is. You saw the miracles, but now if you feel silent. But the crux of our faith is when things seem darkest, that's when Jesus rose from the grave. When things go bad to worse, we can blame God or we can ride with him. See, a few days after Jesus died on the cross, there were a few dudes walking on a road to a place called Emmaus. And Jesus showed up right in the middle of their walk. They were dragging their feet, they were grieving. And Jesus, in the best way possible, I just love Jesus. He's so cool. Um He's like, hey man, I'm paraphrasing, why are you so glum? What's going on, guys? How you doing? You alright? And they're like, How insensitive of you. Have you been living under a rock? Do you not know what has been happening all these days? There was a guy who we thought was gonna save us. We thought he was our deliverer, we thought he was our king, we thought he was everything, and then and then they killed him. Do you not know about any of that? And he's like, Oh, tell me more. You know, just like whatever, sure. They told him everything that had happened, like he didn't know already. Jesus had looked like the Messiah. He did all these miracles, his teaching was fire from heaven, it didn't change anything. After all that, after all that work, after all that teaching, after all that healing, after all that suffering, he died. Messiahs don't die, do they? But then he spent the next several hours telling them how all of the Old Testament was pointing to him. Even our text today points to him. It wasn't long before they sat down with him to eat when he revealed his true self. They had been with Jesus the whole time. Through their suffering and their pain, Jesus had walked with them the whole time. When things had seemed good, he was there. When things looked bleak and they feared for their lives, Jesus was there. The resurrected Jesus taught his disciples how all these bad things would happen, even death. You might be in the same place right now, friends. But God will never waste your suffering. He will never waste your pain. It all has a purpose. And let me just say, be really careful who you say that to. Your friends don't all need that. They might just need you to sit with them. Friends, there will be a day when pain and suffering are no more, but today is not that day. Today is a day to embrace trust in the suffering. You've seen God do miracles again and again. Trust that he loves you even when you can't feel it. You can trust him. So I say this, City Life Church, and guess. When things go from bad to worse, we can blame God or we can ride with him. We can trust that if we give our lives to Jesus, his Holy Spirit will help us in the rough times and in our good times. We know that our good and loving God will always have our back. Let's pray.