The Return Of The Raven

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

The sermon begins where Jesus begins: "Consider the ravens" (Luke 12:24) — birds that neither sow nor reap, keep no storehouse or barn, and are fed by God anyway; how much more are you better than the fowls? To it Williams joins Job 38:41, God's own question out of the whirlwind of Job's calamity: who provides for the raven his food, when his young ones cry unto God? God cares about you more than you think he cares about you — and when God says consider, he means ponder it, put it in your mind, don't forget it.

Considering the raven properly requires the law of first mention, and the first mention overturns the Sunday-school version. Noah opened the window of the ark and sent forth the raven (Genesis 8:6-7), and the raven did not fail to return — it went forth to and fro until the waters dried, coming back again and again for some forty days while Noah waited for a word. And there is more in the nature of the bird: Leviticus 11 counts every raven unclean, which means there were only two ravens on that boat — so for ravens to exist today, that one raven had to survive the waters and make it back, every time. God made sure of it. You've got to keep showing up like that raven: I didn't get my answer last week, but I'm coming back for a word.

The second theatre of the raven is famine. For three and a half years nobody had food — but the ravens had food, because God commanded them (1 Kings 17:4-6): go to the brook Cherith, Elijah, and the ravens will feed thee there. And they brought him not bare survival but bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening. The psalmist's word underwrites it: I have never seen the righteous forsaken. Faith is only truly tested when God is the only option left — no plan B, no back door — and that is exactly where he shows up.

The close turns on the one thing the raven cannot do. Ravens can neither sow nor reap; God's people can. Every seed put in the ground, every tear sown into the soil of unanswered prayers and unanswered promises, is moving toward a reaping. If the young ravens cry unto God and he hears them, how much more will he hearken to a praying saint? Cry out — the raven is coming back, and his mercies come with it, new every morning.