Reading:
1 Kings 17.What we have in view, of course, in the
first place, is the servant of the Lord. Once more God is
found reacting to a state of things amongst His Own
people, rising up in Divine discontent, and, as always,
laying His hand upon an instrument for recovery.
So
Elijah stands before us to represent such an instrument,
and, in God's dealings with him, we see the ways and the
principles by which a servant of the Lord is made an
effectual servant, in relation to the purpose of God.
The Sovereign Choice of God
The
first thing related to any such instrument is the
sovereignty of God. There is never any adequate, natural
explanation for the choice and appointment by God of His
servants. There may be things in the chosen instrument
which will be turned to account, when they are wholly
sanctified and brought under the government of God's
Spirit, but when all has been said, we have to recognize
that God's choice of His instruments is always a
sovereign choice, and not because there is anything
naturally in the instrument to warrant His choosing that
instrument and selecting it from others. He acts
sovereignly in choosing and appointing for His purpose.
But, although that may be true, and although God may go
beyond choosing and may endue that instrument with
spiritual power, yet the instrument must be controlled
and disciplined continually by the hand of God. Otherwise
that servant of the Lord, or that instrument, will be
found following in the direction of his own soul,
following his own judgments, being influenced by his own
feelings. The intent and motive may be very good, it may
be very godly, but that does not dispense with the
necessity of that instrument being continuously under the
hand of God, for government and for discipline.
That is
what comes very clearly before us at the outset in the
case of Elijah. There is no doubt about God's sovereign
choice, and there is no question as to God having endued
Elijah with Divine power. Nevertheless, we see him at
every step under the hand of God, and those steps are all
steps which are a disciplining of the man himself. God is
dealing with His servant all the time, and bringing him,
all the way along, under His hand, so that he never
becomes something in himself, but has everything in the
Lord, and only in the Lord. We make a great mistake if we
think that it is enough to have the Divine thought as to
Divine purpose, that is, to have the knowledge of what
God desires to do. That is not enough, that knowledge of
the thought of God is not sufficient. There has to be a
dealing with us in relation to that Divine thought, and
that dealing with us is usually in a way which is
altogether beyond our understanding.
If God
were dealing with us as sinners, that is, if He were
dealing with us because of certain personal sins and
personal faults, we could quite clearly understand that;
but when He is dealing with us in relation to Divine
purpose, as His servants, His dealings with us go far
beyond our understanding. We are taken out into a realm
where we do not understand what the Lord is doing with
us, and why the Lord takes certain courses with us. We
are out of our depth, we are altogether baffled, and we
are compelled - that is, if we are going on with God - to
believe that God knows what He is doing: we have just to
move with Him according to whatever light we may have,
and believe that these dealings with us, so far beyond
our understanding, are somehow related to that purpose
with which we are called, and that the explanation waits
some distance ahead, and we will find it when we get
there. God does not explain Himself when He takes a step
with us. God never comes to a servant of His and says,
"Now I am going to take you through a certain
experience which will be of this particular character,
and the reason for this is so-and-so." Without any
intimation from the Lord we find ourselves in a difficult
situation, which altogether confounds us, puts us beyond
the power of explaining that experience, and God takes us
through without any explanation whatever until we are
free, until the purpose for which that experience was
given is reached, and then we have the explanation.
The point is, that even an instrument,
sovereignly taken up by God in relation to His purpose,
while knowing His main thought as to His purpose, still
needs to be kept every moment, at every step, under God's
hand, to be disciplined in relation to that thought, to
be governed entirely by God.
Elijah, great man as he was, outstanding
in the history of God's movements, was brought to that
very point where, although He knew that God had laid hold
of him, and although he knew what God's intention was, he
could not, by his own initiative and by his own energy,
freely go on to fulfill his mission. He could not move
more than one step at a time, and even so that step had
to be definitely governed by God. He could only take that
step under the Divine direction. You see it here in this
chapter to begin with. He had to take just one step, and
then the next, and that by Divine direction, nothing
beyond that. The Lord does not turn even His greatest
servants loose with an idea. He does not liberate His
most mightily used instruments to take a free course,
even though they may know what God is after.
Divine Authority
Some of the reasons for that are clear.
Elijah's ministry was one of Divine authority. There were
powers at work which were more than human powers. The
case with Israel was not simply one of spiritual
declension. It was not merely that the people had lost a
measure of spiritual life and were on a lower level than
they should be, so that they had to have a deepening of
the spiritual life. That was not the position at all.
Baal had a mighty footing in Israel, and the evil powers,
the forces of darkness, were back of this state of
things. The situation demanded more than merely spiritual
help to Israel. Something more than a ministry of
exhortation and of spiritual food, something more than a
convention for the deepening of spiritual life was called
for. A ministry of Divine authority was needed, to deal
with a spiritual situation back of the condition in which
the people were found. There were mightier forces at work
then merely human faults and failings. The mighty power
of Satan was there represented by Israel's state. Elijah,
therefore, must needs fulfill a ministry of Divine
authority, and the very first public utterance indicates
that that is what his ministry was:
"As the Lord, the God of Israel
liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew
nor rain these years, but according to my word"
- 1 Kings 17:1.
There is a position, and there is an
authority by reason of that position. James says that by
Elijah's prayer the heavens were closed. That is going
beyond the merely earthly, human situation. And again, by
his prayer the heavens were opened. That is authority in
heaven.
Secret Preparation
Now that ministry of authority was born in
secret preparation before it came out in public
expression. The Apostle James tells us quite definitely
that "Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and
he prayed fervently (you have no mention of that in the
historic record in the book of Kings) that it might not
rain; and it rained not on the earth for three years and
six months. And he prayed again; and the heaven gave
rain..."
There is a secret history with God. He
came into his public ministry with abrupt announcement.
He simply stood there upon the platform of the universe,
as it were, and made his declaration. But that is not
all. There is a secret history with God behind that. All
such ministry of Divine authority has its beginning
hidden from the public eye, has its roots in a secret
history with God. That kind of ministry, born out from
that secret history with God, needs very special
government by God to preserve its safety, to safeguard it
from all those forces which can destroy it, and that is
why Elijah, having such a ministry, needed to be governed
in every step by God. There must be no generalization of
movement in his case, there must be specific movements,
God dictating every step. So God preserves that authority
as He produces it, that is, by a hidden life. Such a life
and such a ministry must not be exposed, otherwise it
will be destroyed.
Separation from the Self-life
So the
Lord said to Elijah, "Get thee hence..." Hence? Where
from? From this exposure, this publicity, this open place
with all its dangers. "Get thee hence, and turn thee
eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is
before Jordan." Hide THYSELF. Geography may have
little to do with it. What is here spiritually is
"hide THYSELF." Cherith means separation or
cutting off, and that is linked with Jordan. Cherith is a
tributary of the Jordan. We know what Jordan stands for,
the death of the self-life. In the major sense, the
Lord's servants have been to Jordan; that is, the
self-life has been set aside; but they have to keep near
Jordan, and Jordan has to govern them at every step. The
most paralyzing thing to a ministry of Divine authority
is "thyself." It is, in other words, the
strength of our own souls.
Elijah
was a strong-minded man, a strong-willed man, a man
capable of very strong and drastic actions, of pouring
out a great deal of his own soul-life with great heat,
and the self-life of a servant of God is a great peril to
the spirit. Paul makes it perfectly clear that, at an
advanced point in his ministry and in his spiritual life,
when God had entrusted him with visions and revelations
unspeakable, which it was not lawful for a man to utter,
the main and most immediate peril and menace to the
ministry of that revelation was himself. "Lest I
should be exalted above measure..." Then the
self-life had not been eradicated from Paul! Paul was not
clear of the peril of doing great damage to purely
spiritual ministry, and God had to take a special
precaution against the self-life of His own servant, not
the sinful life in its old sense, but the self-life.
"Lest I should be EXALTED..." I... exalted!
What is that? That is the exaltation of the EGO, the
self. What dangers are in that "I," and how
truly it stands in peril of getting into an exalted
place, a place of power, a place of influence, a place of
authority. It is in this sense that the Lord has to say,
"Hide thyself," "get to the place of
cutting off, of separation."
This was
so different from what you might expect. You see, here is
a man having had this deep, secret preparation with God
in much prayer, who finds himself brought out in Divine
authority to make a great announcement which represents a
crisis in the purpose of God. You would expect that, from
that point, he would go straight on from strength to
strength, from place to place, would at once become a
recognized authority, a recognized servant of God, and be
very much before the public eye. But God would guard
against any servant of His taking up a Divine purpose and
a Divine commission in himself, taking it up in his own
energy. That will destroy it, and there must be a hiding,
a very real hiding. If a geographical hiding is God's way
of getting a spiritual hiding, well, be it so. If God
chooses to send us out of the realm of public life and
ministry into some remote and hidden place, in order to
take us away from the imminent peril of our becoming
something, of our being taken up to be made something of,
our going on in the strength of our own self-life, that
is all well and good; but whether it be geographical or
not, the word of the Lord to all His servants would
always be, Hide THYSELF!
Adjustableness
Then you
see, connected with that, as a part of it, the servant of
the Lord must be found always in the place where he is
pliable, where the Lord can get a ready and immediate
response. The servant has no programme, therefore there
is nothing to upset. He has no set course, therefore the
Lord has nothing to break. He is moving with God, or
standing with God, just as the Lord directs. He must be
mobile in the hands of the Lord, that is, capable of
being moved at any time, in any way, without feeling that
everything is being broken up and torn to pieces.
"Get
thee hence... and hide thyself by the brook Cherith...
and it came to pass..." that the brook would not dry
up, and the fact that the Lord told Elijah to go to the
brook Cherith did not mean that the Lord was going to
preserve the brook forever. It was a step, and the Lord
said, in effect: "That is the next step. I do not
promise you that you will stay there always. I am not
saying that that is your last abiding place, and that you
will settle down there forever. That is your next step:
go there and be ready for anything else that I
want."
This is
a spiritual condition, of course. No one is going to take
this literally. If we were to begin to apply this
literally, as to our business here on earth, we might get
into confusion; but we have to be ready in spirit for the
Lord to do anything that He likes, and never to feel that
there is any contradiction when the Lord, having directed
us in one way, now directs us in another. It is a matter
of being in the hands of the Lord, without a mind of our
own made up, though the way be hidden from our own
reasoning, from our own will, from our own feelings,
hidden from all our soul-life, so that the Lord has a
clear way with us.
The brook dried up! Well, are you
dependent on the brook? If so, you are in a state of
utter confusion when the brook dries up. Are you
dependent upon the Lord? Very well, let all the brooks
dry up and it is quite all right. Dependence on the Lord
is a governing and an abiding law of true spiritual
power. Elijah has been spoken of and written of as the
prophet of power. If that is true in any special way, he
was very certainly the prophet of dependence.
That relationship to the Lord made it
possible for the Lord to do other things, and to lead him
on into new realms of revelation and experience. Oh, what
a thing adjustableness is! If we are not adjustable, how
we prevent the Lord from bringing us into his full
revelation and purpose.
Those disciples of John the Baptist were
adjustable, and because of that they came to know the
Lord Jesus. You will remember those disciples of John who
followed Jesus, and said, "Master, where dwellest
thou?" He said, "Come and see." Now, had
they been fixed and settled, saying, "We are John's
disciples and we must stand by him; we must stay with
John, and move with him; let Jesus have His Own
disciples, but we stand by John." They would have
lost a great deal. But they were open and adjustable, and
moved beyond John.
Those other disciples of John whom Paul
found at Ephesus many years afterward, to whom he said,
"Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye
believed?" were adjustable. When they heard what Paul
said, they were baptized into the Name of the Lord Jesus.
They were ready to go on from John to Christ, and so they
came into the greater fullness (Acts 19).
Unless we are adjustable we shall miss a
great deal. Elijah was adjustable, and so God could lead
him on. The Lord allowed the brook to dry up because He
had something more for His servant to learn, and
something more to do through him, and so He said,
"Arise, get thee to Zarephath... I have commanded a
widow woman there to sustain thee." He went to
Zarephath, and was made a blessing by his obedience.
Experience of Resurrection
Then he was brought by his new movement of
obedience and faith into a new exercise, a new
perplexity, a new trial; for the woman's son died. The
woman was a widow with one son. The death of the son
meant for her the loss of everything. It happened while
Elijah was there, being looked after by this woman, and
he was there in his obedience to the Lord. He had done
this in obedience to the Lord, and now, in the line of
obedience to, and of faith in the Lord, the Lord allowed
this catastrophe to come into the very home to which he
had been sent. It clearly raised a big question in
Elijah's heart. "God set me here, I know that! God
raised me up and commissioned me, and in the course of
the fulfilling of my commission He brought me into this
situation! There is no doubt about the Lord having led
this way, and now here I am, having done what the Lord
told me, having taken the course that He indicated, and
everything has come into death and confusion; there is a
terrible contradiction here!" All sorts of questions
can arise when you get in a position like that, and you
can begin to go back on your guidance, begin to raise
questions as to whether, after all, you were led, or
whether you made a mistake in your guidance. Do that, and
you only get more and more into the mire. What is all
this about? God had a revelation for Elijah beyond
anything that he had yet received. He was going to bring
him into something more than he had yet known. He was
going to show his servant that He is the God of
resurrection; and that has to be wrought, in a deep way,
into the very being of His servant, through trial,
through perplexity, through bewilderment. Thus the Lord
allows the widow's son to die, and the house to be filled
with consternation, and all concerned to ask big
questions.
The prophet goes up to his chamber and
brings the thing before the Lord, and lays hold of God,
and so relates himself to this situation that he and the
situation are one, and the boy's resurrection is the
prophet's resurrection. There is identification of the
prophet with the situation in death, and then in
resurrection. The mighty meaning of the power of His
resurrection, with new experience of that for the servant
of God, was an essential lesson, if this authority was to
be maintained, and this ministry to work out to its
ultimate meaning in the overthrow of the powers of death,
which were working destruction. The servant of God must
go through it all in his own heart.
This discipline of Zarephath was relative
to the whole ministry of the prophet. Zarephath means
testing and refining, and it was indeed a refining fire.
But Elijah came out, and everybody else concerned came
out, into a new place in resurrection.
The Lord write these things in our hearts,
and show us how they still remain as spiritual values
connected with the reaching of God's end, the fulfilling
of His purpose.