Love it. Penny and Jason sick. Ricky, that bunch is sick. We've all been sick. Garrett's sick. Got a lot sick out right now. 1 Kings chapter 17 this morning. Getting into the life of Elijah the Tishbite. Kind of touched on him last week. Elijah the Tishbite. the greatest prophet in the Old Testament, the greatest prophet that there was. The Bible's got a lot to say about Elijah the Tishbite, 1 Kings chapter 17 this morning. The Bible says, And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. Remember I touched on that last week. No dew or no rain for three years, buddy. He'd get awful dry, wouldn't he? And when your whole economy, when your life depended upon rain, he was pronouncing a curse. Now, you remember in 1 Kings chapter leading up to this, the nation of Israel had split. And you got the northern kingdom, You got the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was 12 tribes of Israel. And the northern kingdom had how many tribes? They had 10 tribes that made up the northern kingdom. The bulk of the people was northern kingdom. Had 19 kings. The southern kingdom broke into two. Who were they? It was Judah and Benjamin. They had 19 kings. The north never did have a good king. They had 19 kings and they was everyone bad wicked apostate kings. The southern kingdom had about 7 out of 19 that was pretty good kings. Hezekiah was one of them. Asa, Josiah was one of them. Jehoshaphat we're going to read about was one of them. Even the northern kingdom, even right after they split, they split themselves we read about. And it all started after Solomon died. Rehoboam and Jeroboam split the thing up. And you know what happened with Jeroboam, he got into apostate. After him, everybody was bad. We read about Basha, wasted life, and we've seen about Zimriah, and Omri, and then Ahab, who is married to Jezebel. And I've never seen a little girl named Jezebel. Mama don't name their children Jezebel. And we know all about wicked Jezebel. That's who Elijah is going to deal with. Now isn't it something that God calls the greatest prophet in the northern kingdom? The northern kingdom. the apostate place. Now, up until this point, God's been judging them kings, been judging that leadership, been judging that leadership. Now we're going to see God switch and he's going to start judging everybody. The whole everybody in that community, everybody in the north is going to suffer because of what's been done with the leadership. Does that make any sense of what we see going on, getting ready to see more of going on in our country? God for generations has been judging our people. We put leaders in and reflect our nature. We put leaders in and reflect who we are. And now we see the judgment of God, I believe, coming upon, it's been coming upon our nation and our world year after year. We see all this upheaval in the world. We see all this violence, an increase in violence, an increase in drug abuse, an increase in divorce. the family institution, the apostasy of the church, and the pulpits. All of this is the judgment of God upon our land. And one of the ways that God judges people is he pulls back the preachers. And you're seeing less and less of God calling men to going out here and starting these churches and trying in these little communities. You're seeing less and less of that. Some of y'all grew up in the 1960s and 70s. There was a whole slew of that. But the people wouldn't repent, the people wouldn't get right and do right, so God pulled it off. So now we're seeing this world the way we're in. We're seeing an increase in fires, wildfires, we're seeing an increase in flooding, we're seeing an increase in weather patterns, tsunamis, everything else because that's this world grown in God's judgment upon this earth. Gettin' man's attention, but man, he's not gonna do anything about it, and it's like the Bible says. But right in the midst of all that, God calls Elijah the Tishba, a common man. The Bible says he's from Gilead, which is a mountainous, rugged region. That means he grew up in the hills. He's just old hillbilly like you and I. And the Bible says he's a man, though James says in five that he's a man of like passions. He's just like you and I. He gets up, he gets down, he goes through discouragement, he gets depressed, he gets anxiety, he has fears, but he's the greatest prophet that ever lived. And I'm so glad that James tells us in James 5, 18 that Elijah was a man of like passion, just a common man, a Tishbite. We don't know much about Tishbites of Gilead. We don't even know who his mother and daddy is, but they must have been believed in God because they named him Elijah, which means my God is God Jehovah. So they named him accordingly. And here he is a common man going out, called of God, and he's going to stand up in that country where he is outnumbered big time and be courageous. And so listen, you and I, we walk out these doors, folks, we're outnumbered. We're outnumbered in our families. We're outnumbered in our communities. We're outnumbered on the job. We're outnumbered. People ain't going to listen to nothing you got to say or anything else, but we're still to go out. and live this life before people. And he was a committed man. He stood up. He stayed at it. He was a consecrated man. When they seen him coming, there's something different about him. What the Bible say, he wore leather, no leather girdle. I mean, he looked like he was different. He was set apart. God's people should be set apart. The reason we can't get folks in to the church house is because the folks in the church house have not been set apart under God. We've lost our witness. It's it's about it's so hard to get anybody into the house of God anymore I've seen this week. I had a on my job. There's a fellow that There he was a youth pastor in a church, and he there he is running around on the side with a little 15 year old girl He's 46 year old man running around with a little girl in his church 15 year old in 46 You know It ain't no wonder we can't get nobody to come to church for stuff like that. And I mean, it just goes on. It went on up the road here not too long ago in a church. It ain't no wonder. And when that happens in a church, folks, it don't matter if it's got Baptist on it, it don't matter if it's got Church of God on it, it don't matter if it's got Methodist on it or Presbyterian on it, people don't look at that. They lump us all in with that old mess right there. And I hate so bad to hear that stuff. I hate to see that stuff. Because we're dealing with people's eternal souls. And people lump us all in with them. It ain't no wonder people don't get involved in church. It really ain't. It ain't no wonder people don't send their kids to church. They're scared to death. This should be the safest place for kids to be at and a woman to be at is in the church house, in the house of God. But it's a shame and disgrace what has become of it. But Elisha was a consecrated man. And then in verse 2, the Bible said the Word of the Lord came unto him saying, Get thee hence and turn thee outward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. Cheroth means a cut-off place. I'm going to cut you off from the rest of the world, cut you off from everybody else. I want you to go out and hide yourself by the brook Cheroth there. Get thee hence and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cheroth, that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, Now look what God says, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee. Look at that word in your Bible, there. Verse four, there. So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord, for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And watch this, and the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook. It came to pass after a while that the brook dried up. Why? Because he just told them in verse 1, it ain't gonna rain, ain't no dew gonna fall for three years. Because there had been no rain in the land. Now the word of the Lord came unto them, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath. Where's Zarephath? That's in Jezebel's backyard. Now I want you to go from the brook to Jezebel's backyard, which belonged to Zidon, and dwell there. There's there again. There. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there, there's there again, to sustain thee. And he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks. And he called to her and said, fetch me, I pray thee, a little water and a vessel that I may drink. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her and said, bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand. And I want to talk to you in our Sunday school lesson this morning about living in a lousy situation. And I'll get to why I say that this morning about living in a lousy situation. But he got to a place, he's there. God wanted to get him to there first. And there is the perfect will of God for his life. When he's there, even though it's a dry time, even though it's a bad time, as long as he's there, he's right exactly where God wants him to be, right there. Now, for Ruth, getting there was what? It was a field. She had to get there to that field. And it was a rough place there, but she had to get there. For David, he had to get to a lot of theres in his life. He was on the battlefield there before Goliath, but he was in the perfect will of God for his life. For them three Hebrew children that I mentioned, Wednesday night, where was there for them? There for them was right in that furnace, wasn't it? Where Nebuchadnezzar threw them, He looked in there and he said, I see the one walking into the Son of God walking in there. But the Hebrew children weren't trying to get out of there, was they? They were just standing right in that fire with the Lord. It's a lot better in the fire with the Lord than it's out of the fire without the Lord. Amen? Because it ain't ever going to work out for you and I when we're out of the will of God and not where God wants us to be. There's a lot of places for Jesus it was a cross. He had to get there. Peter said no. You're not going to go to the cross and and and he said he called him Satan He said get thee behind thee get thee behind thee Satan because it was on a cross where Jesus was going He said nobody takes my life. The Jews didn't kill Jesus Romans didn't kill Jesus Listen if Jesus hadn't give up the ghost he'd still be hanging on the cross because the Bible says the soul was sent It shall die Jesus never sinned He's the only person that ever lived that waited until three o'clock in the day and said he'd give up the ghost. He gave up his spirit on that particular time. And the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. But it was there where he had to get to, where he wanted to get to. It was in the perfect will of God. There, for Noah, was an ark. And he was on that ark with all kinds of things, with skunks, with woodpeckers, with all kinds of things that smell and get on your nerves. But it's a whole lot better in there than what's outside there. Wouldn't you all agree with that? A whole lot better inside the little church where, yeah, it stinks sometimes and, yeah, there's woodpeckers that just peck you to death and aggravate you to death. But it's a whole lot better off in here than it is out there because the flood of judgment is coming. And so Elijah gets to where God wanted him to be. Gets there. After he declared that there's going to be a famine and no water in the land, God says, I want you to go by a brook. The only place there's water was there, where he had to get to, by a brook, a cherub. He said, look here, get thee hence and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook, sheriff, that is before Jordan. That's a place where God had told him to get. It was a place of promise. When you get there in the will of God, you can always trust in the promises of God. Somebody says this, they'll say, and you get this all the time, How do I know if I'm in the will of God? Well, are you in the will of God right now? Are you in the will of God right now? If you wanna know if you're gonna be in the will of God 10 years from now, you gotta be in the will of God right now. Right now. So here you are in a church house on a Sunday morning at 10, this is where God wants you to be at. This is, you're right here. Now, other areas of your life, are you in the will of God? You need to get in the will of God for those areas of your life. And once you get day by day, listen to me, The will of God is like headlights on your car. Y'all heard me say this before. The headlights on the car, if you're going to Lexington, it ain't gonna shine plumb to Lexington. It's gonna shine just enough down the road to get you down the road. And as you get down the road, it's gonna shine just enough to get you a little further down the road. And before you know it, you're gonna end up in Lexington, but the lights will shine little by little by little. That is the way the will of God works for your life. Are you in the will of God right now in your relationships? Are you in the will of God right now in different areas of your life? Are you in there today in the will of God? Because if you're not in the will of God today, then tomorrow, you're still not going to be in the will of God until you fix what is today. Amen? And he is right where he's supposed to be in the very will of God for his life, and there's a promise there when he gets there, to that place, that God's going to take care of him there. Now, it's dry everywhere else, but God's going to take care of him there. The Bible says in Romans 4, verse 21, and being fully persuaded that, talking about Abraham, What he had promised, he was able also to perform. God promised Abraham, I'm gonna give you a city whose builder and maker is God. And Abraham went on a journey. We know that journey of faith that Abraham took. But God promised it to him here. And he went there, and he went there, and he went there, and he went there. But he lived in the promise of God. God, listen, God has made you and I promises. And one of the promises that he made us is he'll never leave us, he'll never forsake us. That's a promise of God. He promised to us that when we're saved, we got eternal life. That is a promise of God. He promised that. And He's not breaking His promises. When God promises something, He's bound by that. The Bible says in Hebrews 6, 18, that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie. God will not, cannot lie. It's outside of His nature. He can't do it. We might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay a hold upon the hope sit before us. Folks, you and I got a promise out there in God. You know, something that God can't do. God has never seen a sinner that he can't save. If God takes a mind on it, and God gets set out there to do it, God ain't never met a sinner that he cannot save. He can save to the uttermost, he can save to the guttermost. God has never met a sinner that he can't save. God has never met a sorrow that you and I can go through that he can't comfort and help. And God has never had a situation that you and I can experience in life that He can't repair and He can't fix. Those things God can do. There's not one sinner, not one sorrow, not one situation that you and I go through that God cannot work in and do something in our lives. Psalm 138.2, here's what David said, I will praise thee with my whole heart, before the gods will I sing unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. Why? Why did David say that? For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. Because this word is a promise. And David said, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, that God holds this word above his own very name. So why can't you see why there is such a dumbing down of the Word of God and why there's very little teaching and preaching of the Word of God and delusion and a mess of the Word of God? Because the devil wants all he can do to disdain the Word of God. Because God holds His very Word above His own name, the Bible says. And there's promises in this Word. He makes us promises. And the devil don't want us to hold on to these promises. But Elijah had got to the brook Cherub where God had promised him. There, Elijah, when you get there, I will take care of you there. Now, if he'd stopped before the brook, Jerob, he'd have been out of the will of God, he wouldn't have got taken care of there. And he might have had, he might have thrown a charge at God, and God would have said, well, you didn't get there where I told you to. You get where I tell you to. It's like when God told Abraham to get out of Ur of the Chaldeans, Abraham kind of dilly-dallied around, his daddy had to die, and then he got up and got moving. But until his daddy died, until he dilly-dallied around, he wasn't even moving where he was supposed to be in. Those things wouldn't happen to him. God never told him to take a lot either, but he took a lot, and that caused some issues. And we learn from that life. But when we get to where we're supposed to get to in life, God's promises, the Bible says, it says, Corinthians 120, for all the promises of God in him are what? Yea, and in him, amen. That means they're right, and you can stand on it. That's what that means. All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him, Amen and to the glory of God by us. He gets to the place right here. He gets to there, right here, where God has promised him. Even though it looks lousy all around him, even though judgment's coming, he's right where he's supposed to be at. And dear brothers and sisters, we get to where we're supposed to be at in our lives. God will take care of us no matter what's going on around us. No matter what happens to us, God will take care of us because he's promised us that he would do that. And things are going to happen to us, and we're going to go through things, but God has promised us, just like Elijah, that he's going to take care of us when we get there to where we're supposed to be at. Now, let me show you something else. God says in verse 4, and it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I'm going to give you something to drink there. He says, I've commanded, watch this, I've commanded the ravens to feed thee. There, the raven is an unclean bird, and it is the most selfish bird that they are. Now, why didn't God choose a dove? Think about that. Why didn't God choose something else? An eagle. Man, that eagle, if I wrote the Bible, I'd have said, man, he's gonna have an eagle soar and drop down the stage. No, God says a raven. A raven, a very nasty, pig-stuff bird. A selfish bird. They fight and kill each other, ravens. God says, I'm gonna send a raven. I'm gonna send something there A raven. Something that you would never even think of to take care of you. Anybody ever had a situation in your life, you get there, God's promises are there, and God's provision. God says, I'm going to take care of you there. With something you might not even think about. Something so out of the ordinary, there. Remember when the children of Israel was out there in the wilderness, and God dropped the manna? The word manna means, what is this? That's what the word means. In Hebrew, what is this? So can you imagine that? When you're out there, you're a little bit hungry, and all of a sudden, manna starts falling, which is about this big, and it's like a little coriander type cake or whatever they say. I don't know, but it fell. Can you imagine the children looking at each other and saying, what is this? Manna, manna, manna, manna, manna. What is this? That's what they're saying. And God dropped it down to them. From an unlikely place, do you think they was looking up saying, Lord drop us down some cake from heaven. Oh, no, they was probably looking for something to scavenge around on a date But God dropped it down there to them there where they was where they was supposed to be Because he promised they'd get them out of Egypt He promised he'd take care of them and he provided for them when they was there and God will provide for us God will provide for us No matter what what place that we're in and here he's going to use such an unlikely thing in a raven Your thought about this He said, I'm going to cause that raven to bring you bread and flesh in the morning. And I'm going to cause that raven to bring you bread and flesh. I'm going to make sure that you took care of morning and evening. That's the way the Lord is, ain't it? Morning and evening. Now, I got to think about this. When Goliath got out there and defied the children of God. You all remember this Sunday school lesson. The Bible says he went out every morning and defied them. Then he'd come back in the evening and defiled them for 40 days. Eighty times Goliath went out in the morning and in the evening. Well, what else was going on in the morning and in the evening in the Jewish culture? They was praying every morning. They was praying every evening. So every time they gathered there to pray, Goliath would step out and defy the children of Israel while they were praying. God, it's never happened to you. You've got to try to pray and get anywhere where God and the devil's right there trying to defy you, trying to distract you. So that's what Goliath was doing. So he says, I'm going to take care of you, Elijah. Every morning when you're doing what a good Jew does and pray, and every evening when you're doing what a good Jew's doing, praying, I'm going to drop you bread and flesh. Where'd you get that bread and flesh? There was a famine going on. Who had the bread and the flesh, you think? I think them old buzzards, them old ravens, went down there and flew around, and old Ahab and Jezebel, and they scooped down there and got Jezebel's biscuit, and I believe they got down there and got Ahab's steak. And they couldn't do a thing about it, and God chose them ravens to fly over and drop it down to Elijah the Tishbite. That's what I think. Because only the royalty, only them that had money and influence and power would have had bread and flesh in the morning. Wasn't there bread and flesh in the evening? Just no common person in Israel wouldn't have had that, would they? I think them old ravens just went by there, and they didn't a thing. I believe they shot arrows at them and everything, so my imagination's going. And God would say, now, go down there, that looks like a good biscuit there, and you get that off Jezebel's plate. And them ravens went down there and got it. You don't think God can do that. God can do what He wants, can't He, to take care of His people? It's like that fellow in the war that time that was running, and he goes back in a cave, and they're looking for him, and he's back in that cave, and it ain't a real deep cave, but it's back there, and it's kind of dark back there, and he hides himself back there, and he says, oh, Lord, what am I going to do now? How are you going to provide for me now? And all of a sudden, a spider drops down at the mouth of that cave. And he looks at that spider, and he watches that spider, and that spider just waves, just makes a little old web at the mouth of that cave. Just a little old web. He's watching that spider. It's got him captivated. It's a true story. So the enemy goes by the cave, and they look, and they look in that cave, and they say, he ain't went in this cave because the spider web's hanging there. If he'd went in there, he'd knocked the spider web down. And that man that was running from his enemy said, thank God for the little spiders in life that saved me. Listen, God knows what he's doing to take care of these people. Jesus said, therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. It is not the life more than meat, and the body the raiment. God said, Jesus said in Matthew 6, behold the fowls of the air. He said, look at the fowls of the air. They sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather in the barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? If God is going to take care of the ravens, and God is going to take care of the turkey busters, and God is going to take care of the old nasty birds out here, the little old birds that just pick around, He says, He ain't going to take care of you. God makes sure all them birds are fed every day. Bill Gates couldn't do it more than one day, but God takes care of them birds every single day. He says, Now are you not much more better than they? He says, which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to your statue? You can't even add to yourself. And why take you thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field. How they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. When Jesus was talking to that crowd in that day, clothes was a very, very, very rare commodity that you had. And listen, if you had a decent pair of sandals and something to wear, man, you held on to it for years because it was so hard to get clothes at that time. Why take you of Raymond? He said, look at them lilies of the field. He said, how they grow. He said, they toil not, neither do they spend. He said, and yet I send you that even Solomon, and all his glory was not arrayed like in one of these. And we just studied Solomon and all the splendor and all the glory of Solomon and how they just took people back. And God said, that ain't nothing. That flower of the field, Solomon ain't even put together like one of them flowers of the field. Boy, we got a good God that takes care of us. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which his day is, and tomorrow's cast into the oven, shall he not... The Bible don't say more clothed you. The Bible says much more clothed you. Oh, ye of little faith. Boy, we got a God... Listen, I preach and teach a big old God. Not a little old God that can't hardly take care of nothing. We got a God that can take care of every single thing, every little issue, everything that ever come in our life. And if I didn't believe God was in total control of everything, unless I couldn't sleep at night, He is in total control of all things. Nothing catches Him off guard. Therefore, take no thought saying what we shall eat or what we shall drink, or withal shall we be clothed. For all these things the Gentiles say. For your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. He knows what ye need, but seek ye what? First, the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all, and all these things, Shall be added unto you. He says take therefore no thought for the morrow My mother used to tell me this all the time growing up for the morrow shall take thought of the things of itself Sufficient unto the day is the evil arrow thereof. You know what that means? Don't worry about what tomorrow Aggravation and problems you might got I mean you might have to think about think it out this way You got you got something coming up tomorrow that you just aggravate you to death worrying about Let's say any of those little things that we got to deal with, but in comparison to something that really could be happening, we wouldn't even give it a thought, would we? Let's say you got a financial issue you need to take care of tomorrow, it's aggravating you, or a situation on your job that you got something going on that's gonna aggravate you. But then you get up in the morning at about 8 o'clock in the morning, you get a phone call, your child just fell over, your spouse was in a major car wreck. Well, that other problem that you really spent all that time worrying about, it'd take a backseat real quick, wouldn't it? God knows what's coming in our life, dear people, and he's going to take care of us. And he gets Elijah to there, a place of promise. And while he's got him there, he said, I'm going to provide for you there. I'm going to get these ravens to feed you bread and flesh in the morning. And I don't see Elijah saying, well, how are you going to do that, God? God just says, I'm going to do what I'm going to do for you. You just do what I'm going to do. You get where you're supposed to be, and I'll take care of what's supposed to be taken care of in your life. So there was a place where he could take care of him there. Now, also while he was there, he just went out there and told Ahab that it ain't going to rain and there ain't going to be no dew. And we're going to find out in 1 Kings 18 that they're going to go after Elijah. As a matter of fact, when he meets Ahab, Ahab's going to say, you're the one, buddy, troubling Israel. Well, God's man ain't troubling Israel. They're troubling Israel by the way they're living. But they're going to blame it on Elijah. So he's in a place where he needs some protection. And God's gonna protect him there by the brook chair. And listen, I believe Elijah went out there and got him a drink of water by that brook. After year one, I believe the brook got a little lower. I believe on year two, it got real low. And I believe on the last day, listen, when it was plumb dried up, where he just had enough to get a drink of water, is when God told him to get the Zarephath. So that's the way God works. I don't believe God just kept that river flowing. I believe he let Elijah see it get lower and lower and lower and lower because he had to depend on God. But while he's there, and God's promised him something, and while he's there and God's protecting him there, he's got to be protected there. Because Ahab's wanting to kill him. Jezebel's wanting his head. And they hate him. So look what God does. God says, now I want you to go from Cherith to Zarephath, of all the places. Think about this. of all the places to send him, you'd think you'd send him away from Jezebel. God sends him down to Zarephath, which we know Jezebel's from Zidon. It's right in Jezebel's backyard. That's where her people live at, Zarephath. Could you imagine Elijah saying, Lord, are you sure you want me to go to Zarephath? I mean, it's awful dangerous. Don't you think God knew it wasn't dangerous for him down to Zarephath? But God had already been working on the widow down there to take care of him. who was destitute as she could be, had already been working on her heart, had already been preparing some things down there, but God's building his faith, and God's building his strength, and that's the way God works. And God's doing all this privately, because in 1 Kings 18, guess what's going to happen? He's going to be publicly. See, God's going to see how we're going to do in private before we're going to stand up and do anything for God in public. He's going to see if He can trust us in our private devotional lives. He's going to see if he can trust us in areas of our life when we're going to do what's right and trust him before he's ever going to use anybody publicly. You know what happens to a lot of times? A fella gets saved and he don't go through a lot of things. He don't have a lot of life experiences. And this happens a whole lot in these mountains. Or he reads a little bit, thinks he knows the Bible, and he jumps out there and says, I'm a preacher, I'm a teacher. And he jumps out there. He's never had to trust God for nothing. never had to go through anything and never had to go through private battles with God or with anything. So he jumps out there publicly and the devil makes a mockery out of him and makes a mockery out of the church and further hates and further causes the community to look down at the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. God wants to develop us in privately to see if we're going to do right privately before he's ever going to use us publicly. And so he gets him here and he's protecting him there. I like what David said in the 23rd Psalm. He said, yea, thou walk through what? The valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil. Now you need to really do a study on the valley of the shadow of death. It was a dangerous place. He said, for thou art with me, for thy rod and thy staff come from me. Then he says in this, he says, thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. He said, you just don't prepare a table before me He said, You prepared a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. He said, Thou anointest my head with all three things. Here my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That shepherd would take those sheep out there, and he would help prepare food for them sheep. He loved them sheep. He lived around them sheep. And a lot of times the snakes would live in these holes out there, in these adders. And when they would bite the sheep, sheep would walk around these holes, the snake would come out and bite the sheep and kill the sheep. So how did that shepherd, he carried a vial of oil with him, how did that shepherd protect those sheep? He would go around these snake holes and he'd pour a little oil around the holes. And so when the snake would try to come out, it couldn't get past that oil, it'd slide back down into the hole. And while they were there in that part of the wilderness, The shepherd would prepare a table knowing that the snakes couldn't come out and bite the sheep. All those sheep herded up there. Ain't that the way the God, our Lord does us so many times out here? The devil trying to get at us, but he's got it where the devil can't get to us. Listen, you and I need to have the Lord protect us in our lives. hedge about our children, hedge about our homes, hedge about our church, hedge about every area of our life. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemy. Thou anointest my head with oil. What does that mean? And not only would he take that oil and pour it around those holes to keep them snakes from getting out and striking them sheep, you got in a sheep fold, you got old sheep, young sheep, you got little lambs. And a lot of times the older sheep would have those horns and they would fight each other. They'd butt heads. And they would hurt each other really. Y'all seen some of them big butt their heads. And that shepherd, that's their nature. And that shepherd would go over there. When the shepherd would go over there, they'd quit butting the heads. But as soon as the shepherd would walk away, the sheep would keep on butting the heads. So what he would do is he'd take that oil, and he'd put a little oil on their horns, and he'd walk away. So when they hit each other, they'd just glance off. They wouldn't really hurt each other real bad. Why don't you know you and I need the oil on us when we butt against each other with our heads? We won't really fight against you, we'll hurt each other. I'm glad that God does that with the oil. And a lot of times the sheep would get hurt out there, they'd get little cuts and scrapes on them, and the shepherd would doctor those cuts up and those wounds with the oil. Aren't you glad the Lord does that with the oil? Thou preparest a table before me, the presence thou knowest my head with oil. That oil would have to go in them sheep's eyes to keep its eyes good and clear. It'd have to go in those bugs that are getting their Ears, y'all heard me preach and teach this stuff before. Those bugs would get in their ears and if those bugs had got in their ears, what it took care of, those bugs over in that Middle East would go back into their brain and it would cause that sheep to go crazy. Listen, you see a lot of crazy going on because people need that oil put in their ears. Things they listen to and things they lean to because the devil gets in there and make you have all kinds of crazy thoughts, especially in this era in which we live in. We need oil, don't we? Applied us, protection us, protecting us there. He said, my cup runneth over. You know what that means? You know what that means? My cup runneth over. And that society, when you went to a house and somebody welcomed you in, you would pour them a cup of whatever fluid that you had, something, water, maybe whatever. Now, if you poured that cup, if you poured that cup up to the brim, it means when you get done with your drink, you leave. It's called the law of hospitality. But when they poured that cup up and it went over the cup and went into the saucer, that means my cup runs over. It means you drink that and there's plenty more coming and you stay as long as you want to stay. Boy, we got a good God. Ain't we got a real good God? And he's going to protect Elijah there by the brook. And he's going to protect Elijah down there in Zarephath because he's there. He's right in the very will of God. And he's in a lousy He's in a lousy situation. Anybody in here, we've all been in lousy situations. Do you know what the word lousy means? Do you know what it means? L-O-U-S-Y. Do you know what lousy means? Lousy means lice infested. That's what it means. And if you're in a lice infested situation, that's a lousy situation. That's a lousy situation. Lousy. Everybody feel like you just, and lice eat you to death. They cause all kinds of problems and all that stuff. a lousy situation. Listen to this. And y'all heard me tell this story before. Corey Timbo about the hiding place. Wrote that book, The Hiding Place. And Corey Timbo, which is an old woman raised in, she was a, they helped protect the Jews there in Holland. The Nazis come in and they found out they was helped protect those Jews in their watch shop that they had. And her and her sister Betsy were hauled off as prisoners in one of the worst concentration camps that they had. And they smuggled a Bible with them. They smuggled a Bible in with them. And they was determined in their mind, they knew one scripture and it was 1 Thessalonians 5 and 16 that says, give thanks in all things. That's what it says, give thanks in all things. So they held on to that verse and held on to that little raggy tag Bible that they had. They smuggled it in that concentration camp. It was illegal to have that in there. And Betsy prayed and thanked God for every aspect of their situation. And they would sneak in there, and they had a little back room in that concentration camp that they lived in. They'd sneak in there, and they would pray, they would read that Bible, and it began to grow. And every night, those German soldiers would come into that women's dorm and ravage those women in there. I mean ravaging women in there. But they stayed away from that back room where Betsy was at. And now Corey Timberland's daddy got killed. Her sister got brutalized. One of her sisters got brutalized in front of her. Her mother was brutalized, thrown in the gas chamber and killed. I mean, this woman went through horrible, horrible things. But yet she laid back there in that concentration camp with that little Bible, praying. And that little study group that they had kind of began to grow. And she got scared. She thought, Lord, Eventually, them soldiers, they know we're back here doing something. Eventually, they're going to come back here and they're going to say something. They're going to get us. But here's what they found out. One day, they was in their bed and they was eating up with lice. Cory was eating up with lice. Betsy was eating up with lice. They was eating up with lice all over the place. And they found out something, that those soldiers would not go back there and bother them because they was so infested with lice. So because of the little lice bugs all over them in a lousy situation, it kept them from being ravaged and they survived because of the lice that was all over their body and they learned to give thanks to God for lice because God protected them with lice. Now you tell me we ain't got a big God that can use a little lice bug to protect people from the onslaught of Adolf Hitler and a German. That's how big God is. God says, look here, I'm going to show you all how I can protect my people. I'll use little old ice bugs. And you won't touch them because of the little ice bugs on them. That's what kind of God that we got in a lousy situation that we're in. A one woman wrote that she had cancer, a little young woman had cancer, had a little family, and she wrote this. She said, I've discovered that my cancer is a blessing. She said, it allowed me the time and opportunity not only to strengthen my faith and my relationships with my family, but also to use my experience to help other families with children learn to cope with challenges of a terminal illness. That's a lousy situation, but looking at it in God's way, it could be used in a wonderful way, amen? And God gets Elijah here to this place to protect him. Now, I look at something in my life that I went through in the last year when my dad died, and y'all have had people die too. That's a lousy situation. And listen, you're going to go through a lot either now, either something's going to happen in your family, or something's going to happen in your body. You're going to get to a place, and you're going to, it's going to be, you're going to say, this is a lousy situation. But there's a few things I learned from a lousy situation that I went through with my dad dying. One was I got to spend good quality time with him, that I would have not, you know, if he had suddenly had a heart attack and died, I'd have said, well, I wish I'd have spent more time. But I got to spend quality time with him. And I also had to go up there and be a servant. servant's heart, had developed a servant's heart. The Bible says in Psalm 102, serve the Lord with gladness. That means don't serve the Lord with madness, don't serve the Lord with bitterness, don't serve the Lord with hatefulness. The Bible says serve the Lord with gladness. Be joyful about serving and you develop a servant's heart. And also you get to sample and experience the hurts. That you can weep with those that weep and mourn with those that mourn. It means joyful though because we're all going to go through these things, dear people. And we've got to look at lousy, how are we going to respond to these things? You get to see family that you've not seen in a long time. I got to see cousins in Michigan and in Ohio that I hadn't seen in 25 or 30 years. And the biggest thing about God's people is we get to show the world how God's people react to suffering and sorrow. And the Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 4.13, But I will not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep. Look at what it says, That you sorrow not. even as others which have no hope. There's going to be a sorrow, but we don't sorrow like people that's lost out here. We sorrow differently. We grieve differently than others. There should be a different way that God's people view suffering and sorrow, because we've got a better land to go to. And it also gives an opportunity to share the gospel with people. You get up and preach. A funeral is the only time a lot of people are going to come halfway and be serious about anything, and you can minister to them. And I preached up here at Mike Newsom's funeral, The big crowd of people in there, they was quiet and took it all in. There's no way none of them people gonna come to this church. They ain't interested. But they came because a man died and out of respect, you can get their attention and minister to them. And also it's shed abroad the love of God. Romans 5, 4. Not only so, but we glory in tribulation, also known as tribulation. Work in patience, and patience experience, and experience what? Hope. And hope maketh not ashamed, because why? The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. It shows the shed love of God abroad, the power of the love of God. And listen, no matter what we go through, like Elijah, right here, by the brook, Cherith, and down in Jezebel's backyard down in Zarephath, God's grace is sufficient. His grace is sufficient. He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee. For my strength is made perfect in weakness, most gladly, therefore why rather glory in my affirmation that the power of Christ may rest upon me. You know what? I've said this and I know you have too. I don't know how anybody buries their child. I really don't. But you know what? If I had to bury my child, God would give me the grace to go through that. I don't need that grace right now. But if I did, God's grace would be sufficient. He'd get me through that. He'd help me. I don't know what it's like to go through some of the things that people in here have went through, but God's grace, He'd give them that grace to get through that. It's sufficient every time. I don't know what it's like to suffer with a cancer illness and lay on the hospital bed and go through something, but if I did, God's grace is sufficient. And if I ever had to get to a broke chair in my life, God would send the ravens down to feed me. God would take a widow woman and xeropath to help me, would He not? Let's stand this morning.