1 Kings 17:6

And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning.

Elijah led by ravens

I. A morally great man in great physical need. Elijah was a morally great man. Worldly greatness is but tinselled paper. He only is great who is great in thoughts and noble purposes. Elijah was such: a greater could not be found. Yet he was reduced to the greatest need.

II. The God of nature ministering to a lonely man. The Infinite Father knew His servant’s destitution, sympathised with it, and sent relief to him morning and evening by the ravens. Observe,

1. God makes the humblest things in nature serve His people.

2. God supplies His people as their wants return. (Homilist.)

Elijah fed by ravens

I. Irrational creatures divinely directed. All creatures, from the lowest up to the greatest, are under the Divine rule. Generally they are ruled by their own instincts. Here is an exception.

II. Lower creatures engaged in the service of man.

III. God’s attention to the affairs of the individual.

IV. Help coming from unlikely sources. (Homilist.)

The battle for bread

There is an incident in my text that baffles all the ornithological wonders of the world. The grain crop had been cut off. Famine was in the land. In a cave by the brook Cherith sat a minister of God, Elijah, waiting for something to eat. Why did he not go to the neighbours? There were no neighbours, it was a wilderness. Why did he not pick some of the berries? There were none. If there had been, they would have been dried up. Seated one morning at the mouth of his cave, the prophet looks into the dry and pitiless heavens, and he sees a flock of birds approaching.

1. Notice, in the first place, in the story of my text, that these winged creatures came to Elijah directly from God. “I have commanded the ravens that they feed thee.” They did not come out of some other cave. They did not just happen to alight there. God freighted them, God launched them, and God told them by what cave to swoop. That is the same God that is going to supply you. He is your Father. You would have to make an elaborate calculation before you could tell me how many pounds of food and how many yards of clothing would be necessary for you and your family; but God knows without any calculation. You have a plate at His table, and you are going to be waited on, unless you act like a naughty child, and kick, and scramble, and pound saucily the plate, and try to upset things. God has a vast family, and everything is methodised, and you are going to be served, if you will only wait your turn.

2. Notice, again, in this story, that the ravens did not allow Elijah to hoard up a surplus. They did not bring enough on Monday to last all the week. They did not bring enough one morning to last until the next morning. They came twice a day, and brought just enough for one time. You know as well as I that the great fret of the world is that we want a surplus--we want the ravens to bring enough for fifty years. You have more confidence in the Long Island Bank than you have in the royal bank of heaven. You say: “All that is very poetic, but you may have the black ravens--give me the gold eagles.” We had better be content with just enough. If, in the morning, your family eat up all the food there is in the house, do not sit down, and cry, and say: “I don’t know where the next meal is coming from.” About five, or six, or seven o’clock in the evening just look up, and you wilt see two black spots on the sky, and you will hear the flapping of wings, and, instead of Edgar A. Poe’s insane raven, “alighting on the chamber-door, only this, and nothing more,” you will find Elijah’s two ravens, or the two ravens of the Lord, the one bringing bread and the other bringing meat--plumed butcher and baker. God is infinite in resource. When the city of Rochelle was besieged, and the inhabitants were dying of the famine, the tides washed up on the beach as never before, and as never since, enough shell-fish to feed the whole city. God is good. There is no mistake about that. History tell us that, in 1555, in England, there was a great drought. The crops failed, but in Essex, on the rocks, in a place where they had neither sown nor cultured, a great crop of peas grew, until they filled a hundred measures; and there were blossoming vines enough promising as much more.

3. Again, this story of the text impresses me that relief came to this prophet with the most unexpected, and with seemingly impossible conveyance. If it had been a robin redbreast, or a musical meadow lark, or a meek turtle-dove, or a sublime albatross that had brought the food to Elijah, it would not have been so surprising. But no. It was a bird so fierce and inauspicate that we have fashioned one of our most forceful and repulsive words out of it--ravenous. That bird has a passion for picking out the eyes of men and animals. It loves to maul the sick and the dying. It swallows, with vulturous guggle, everything it can put its beak on; and yet all the food Elijah gets for six months or a year, is from the ravens. So your supply is going to come from an unexpected source. You think some great-hearted, generous man will come along and give you his name on the back of your note, or he will go security for you in some great enterprise. No, he will not. God will open the heart of some Shylock toward you. Your relief will come from the most unexpected quarter. The providence that seemed ominous will be to you more than that which seemed auspicious. It will not be a chaffinch with breast and wing dashed with white, and brown, and chestnut, it will be a black raven. Children of God, get up out of your despondency. The Lord never had so many ravens as He has this morning. Fling your fret and worry to the winds. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)