I want to take you back
to the point where Elijah cast his mantle upon Elisha,
which meant that Elisha was called, apprehended for that
ministry of succeeding his master after the master had
gone up to heaven. Then there were those journeys of the
two, the testing out of Elisha, from Gilgal to Bethel,
from Bethel to Jericho, from Jericho to Jordan, the
passage of the Jordan, the ascension of Elijah in the
chariot of fire, and the falling of his mantle upon
Elisha, Elisha having already made the request that there
might be a double portion of his master's spirit resting
upon him. This verily came to pass, so that the sons of
the prophets, when they saw Elisha return from the
ascension scene said: "The spirit of Elijah doth
rest upon Elisha" (2 Kings 2:15).
From there we take up
some of the impressive incidents which were the
outworking of that anointing, that double portion of the
Spirit, which fell upon Elisha: that maintenance and
extension of the testimony of the master in the power of
the Holy Spirit. It is difficult not to see the
correspondence between that Old Testament story and what
we have in the New Testament: our Lord, Master and Head,
through the Jordan (that is, through the Cross),
ascending to the right hand, the majesty in the heavens,
and His mantle falling upon His waiting, expectant and
committed servants, the Church, and from that time the
wonderful things which transpired in the pursuance of the
testimony of the Lord in and through His Church on the
earth.
Now I am going back to
the Old Testament story again, just to pick out of that
considerable number of impressive incidents the three to
which I have referred, and to add a little further word
to them, reminding you that this is not just Old
Testament history, Bible story, interesting and
instructive as it is, but that we stand at this time in
that very position. We are here as the Lord's vessel - a
part of it - in this very place. It may be a small part,
but it is a part of that vessel that is left here on this
earth while our Lord is away, in order to maintain His
testimony, or that He may maintain His testimony, here in
this world until He returns. That is our wonderful
calling, but that is our great responsibility, and
everyone here is involved in that responsibility if we
belong to the Lord. This ought to come upon us with great
force. You and I, taking it individually, are entrusted
with no lesser thing than the maintaining of the
testimony of Jesus on this earth in His absence. That is
our calling, that is our business, that is our
responsibility, but, blessed be God! that is provided for
abundantly by Him in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
There are just a few
further words to say on these three particular incidents
that we have lifted out from the larger number in the
ministry of Elisha.
Enlargement
Unto Spiritual Fullness
Firstly, the story of
that widow who had just two sons and was in a state of
great poverty. The creditors came and, she being unable
to meet her liabilities, they were about to take her sons
away, put them into servitude, and make them, by
servitude, pay her debts, leaving her alone in
destitution and desolation.
Elisha came to her, and
she made her appeal to him, telling him of her sad
plight, and he said: "What has thou in the house?
And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the
house, save a pot of oil" (2 Kings 4:2). 'That
is all I have.' He said: 'Go to all your neighbours and
borrow vessels, empty vessels, and borrow not a
few.' Well, we can use our imagination if we like. We can
see that woman hastening - and sending her sons - in all
directions, collecting all the empty vessels that she
could borrow, bringing them to the house. The prophet
said: 'Now pour out.' You know the rest of the story. She
poured and poured, every vessel was filled, until she had
no vessel left. The prophet would have said: 'Go on! Go
on!', but she said: 'There is not another vessel', and
the oil stayed.
It is a wonderful
story. It is an impressive story when we read it in the
light of the so much larger revelation of the Lord's
provision for maintaining His testimony. Of course, there
are many things in that story which are instructive, but
we are not going to dwell upon those details. I just want
to put my finger upon the one thing which seems to
include all the others, and there is so much in the New
Testament that is related to this in principle and in
spiritual value.
When the Lord is moving
in relation to His testimony, when He is really moving to
do something, He does not do it - as we say - by halves.
He does it abundantly. Now what I want especially to
underline in each of these stories, or accounts, is this
matter of spiritual enlargement. You will notice that
that is the governing thing in every one of these
instances: spiritual enlargement unto all that this
testimony of Jesus requires.
If you like, you can
put yourself into the place of those borrowed vessels.
Let this meeting place stand for that widow's home, and
we are all here as vessels, borrowed vessels, if you
like. They must be empty vessels, as we shall see. But
here we are. Now, so far as we are concerned, and so far
as you find the Lord's people anywhere are concerned, the
Lord's great thought is fullness, spiritual
fullness. The Lord does not believe in vacuums. He does
not believe in leaving things empty. Look at His work in
creation. The earth was without form and void. However,
God's thought is not to leave anything empty and void,
but to fill it, and you and I know how abundant creation
is. How it spreads itself, spontaneously! You cannot cope
with the fullness of the natural creation. But in the
spiritual realm we have the higher thought of God, which
is fullness.
On the Day of Pentecost
the disciples were in an upper room, gathered together,
and it says that these vessels "were all filled
with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:4). Go through the
book of the Acts and you will find that it is repeated
again and again: "They were all filled with the
Holy Spirit" (e.g. Acts 4:31), and you know that
that was always the teaching of the Apostles. Paul says: "Be
filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). At the
marriage in Cana of Galilee the vessels were empty, and
the Lord said: 'Fill them', "and they filled them
up to the brim" (John 2:7). The Lord's idea for
His people is that they should be filled.
That, of course, is the
first lesson about the testimony. You will never be able
to maintain this testimony unless you are a filled
vessel, full of the Lord, full of the Spirit, full of His
Divine life. It is essential, but it is blessedly
possible because it is the Lord's will and the Lord's
provision. "He giveth not the Spirit by
measure" (John 3:34). Fullness is His thought
and His will. Are you quite sure that you are a filled
vessel?
Now then: one thing is
essential: before you can be filled by the Lord you have
got to be emptied of everything else. 'Borrow empty vessels,'
said the prophet, "not a few" (2 Kings
4:3). Before the Apostles could be filled on the Day of
Pentecost they had to be emptied at the Cross - and they were
emptied! Ask Peter how he felt on that day! Ask the
two on the way to Emmaus how they felt! Ask Thomas how he
felt at that time! I think the one thing they would all
have said was: 'Utterly empty. Everything has gone.' But
that is the kind of emptying that is necessary - the
emptying of our own selves, our own self-confidence, our
own self-strength, our own self-wisdom, our own
self-will. Until that emptying of ourselves has been done
there will be no fullness of the Spirit. "Empty
vessels... not a few" - as many as you like.
And the other thing is
just that it is we who put the limit on the Lord. The
Lord never puts the limit on us. Elisha might have said
to that woman: 'Come on, let us have more vessels. We can
go on.' The Lord can go on if you will offer Him the
facility, if you will make the provision, if you will
give Him the opportunity, if you will let Him have what
He wants - as many as you can bring. If only you will go
on He will go on. The oil never stayed until the
woman stopped. And the Lord never stops until we stop. If
we are ready to go on, He will go on.
I repeat - we put the
limit on the Lord. It is such a tragedy that we do so and
limit Him. You know, that was the charge that was
leveled against Israel: "They... limited
the Holy One of Israel" (Psalm 78:41 - AV). It
was a judgment that they did that, for they said: "Can
God prepare a table in the wilderness?" (verse
19), and in doing so they limited the Holy One of Israel.
The Lord will go on
while we are conscious of need and while we put no limit
of unbelief or of any other kind upon Him. Fullness is
His thought and intention, and you can have continual
fullness. John's testimony, after a long life, when he
was an old man of about ninety - and he had started with
the Lord Jesus as a young man - was: "Of his
fullness we all received, and grace for grace"
(John 1:16). That is a long life of testimony, to be
able to speak at the end about fullness.
Do not think that it is
necessary, when you get old, that you should get empty.
That is just the opposite of what the Lord intends. He
wants fullness at the beginning and fullness at the end.
This is what should mark our lives: that we have always
got a margin of that which is of the Lord to draw upon.
Well, that is the
simple, yet far-reaching first lesson of the Old
Testament story. And you can read your New Testament
again in the light of that.
Enlargement
of Vision
The second incident was
that of Naaman, the leper commander-in-chief of the
Syrian army. You will recall the story, so I will not
give you details. We will just take him up where he set
out with his great retinue to visit Elisha with a quest
for his healing, having been advised by the little
captive servant maid in his home that there was a prophet
in Israel, and if he would go to him she was sure he
would heal Naaman, her master, of his leprosy. Well, he
arrived with his retinue, and you will remember that
Elisha did not even go out to meet him, did not make any
fuss of him at all, and did not even see him. He sent his
messenger, his servant, to find out what it was all
about, and then gave his command: "Go and wash
in Jordan seven times" (2 Kings 5:10). Poor
Naaman had a lot of trouble over that! "Are not
Abanah and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all
the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them, and be
clean?" (2 Kings 5:12). He had to get down very
low, off - as we say - his high horse of personal
importance and pride in order to receive. That is by the
way, and you can take all these details in as we go on.
That is not the message.
Having at last had his
pride overcome, and having come to see that it was either
his pride, on the one side, or his healing on the other -
he could choose which he liked - he came down on the side
of healing, and went and bathed himself in the Jordan
seven times, and was made whole.
Now, I say there are a
lot of details in the story; it is full of instruction.
But I want to get to our one thing, this matter of
enlargement, the way of the enlargement of the testimony,
and I want to take you over to the Gospel by Luke,
chapter four. You will remember that the Lord Jesus had
come to Nazareth, where He was brought up: "He
entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the
sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was
delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he
opened the book and found the place where it was written,
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me
to preach..." (Luke 4:16-18). There we are on
the ground of the Holy Spirit. We have come right back to
Elisha, to this double portion of the Spirit, this
anointing of the Spirit: "The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me."
Now note! After He read
the portion, stopping at a very significant point, He
said: "Today hath this scripture been fulfilled
in your ears" (Luke 4:21). And then He
went on to say: "No prophet is acceptable in his
own country". "Anointed...
prophet" - we are in spirit with Elisha all the
time. Now listen: "There were many lepers in
Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of
them was cleansed but only Naaman the Syrian" (verse
27). "In Israel... the Syrian", the
outsider, the one of another nation. They saw the point
in Nazareth and were filled with anger. They thrust Him
out and took Him to the brow of the hill upon which their
city was built, intending to cast Him over. Mark, in
referring to this incident, said: "He marvelled
because of their unbelief... and he could there do no
mighty work" (Mark 6:6,5).
This is the point. The
Lord deliberately struck a blow that day at the narrow
prejudice and exclusiveness of Israel, and said: 'In the
days of Elisha the Lord went outside of Israel.' Israel
had plenty of lepers, but the Lord went outside of Israel
to meet Naaman, the Syrian. The Lord's thought is not
some little, narrow, exclusive, bigoted thing that thinks
it is everything and has everything, as
Israel did. The Lord's thought is as big as everybody who
is in need, be he Syrian or Jew, or any other. Christ is
big enough for all the nations.
That was the great
trouble. You see, they were filled with anger when He
struck at their exclusiveness and said: 'Really, what you
people need is spiritual enlargement, to get away from
this narrowness, this littleness, this straitening of
your Lord and making Him so much smaller than He really
is. You need enlargement.' They were angry!
You notice that almost
exactly the same thing happened when this same Holy
Spirit made Peter go right away up north country to the
house of a Gentile, Cornelius, the centurion. The Holy
Spirit made him do it against his own will. Peter had
said: "Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten
anything that is common or unclean" (Acts
10:14). But the Lord said: "Arise... go with
them." The Holy Spirit was in charge, as
sovereign. He is going to extend the bounds of this
testimony, and is not going to tolerate this little
thing, with its smallness and exclusiveness - shut in. He
is removing the grave clothes. Fullness is His thought
for all. Now Peter had to go because the Spirit made him
go, and when he was there the Spirit let him know very
effectively that this was what He was doing, because
later Peter says: "As I began to speak, the Holy
Ghost fell on them" (Acts 11:15). Well, when
Peter got back to Jerusalem he went into a pretty hot
fire! The Apostles at Jerusalem hauled him over the coals
for breaking the bands of Israel, for forcing open the
nations. All Peter could say, almost apologetically, was:
"If then God gave unto them the like gifts as he did
also unto us, when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was I, that I could withstand God?" (Acts
11:17).
You see, that is what
brought about the death of Stephen. That is why they
gnashed upon him and stoned him to death. Why? Well, if
you read Stephen's address to them you will find that it
was all against their nationalistic limitation and
smallness and prejudice, and Stephen gathered it all up
in this one phrase: "Ye do always resist the
Holy Ghost" (Acts 7:51). The Holy Ghost is for
enlargement, and is against littleness, smallness,
narrowness and exclusiveness, and if He is, we ought to
be against it. To make Christ smaller than He is is to
resist the Holy Ghost. There were many lepers in Israel,
but to none of them was the prophet sent, but to Naaman,
the Syrian. I think we should see the point of
that.
Enlargement is the
Lord's thought. Not only fullness of the vessels, but
enlargement of vision to embrace all for whom Christ
died, and to love all who are subjects of His grace.
Enlargement
of Ministry
The third story is that
of the sons of the prophets coming to Elisha and saying: "The
place where we dwell before thee is too strait for us.
Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence
every man a beam, and let us make us a place there, where
we may dwell" (2 Kings 6: 2).
Here is the question of
enlargement again, from another standpoint and in another
way. What is it this time?
Well, first,
enlargement is the vessel being full, and all the vessels
being full.
Secondly, enlargement
is the enlargement of vision, the end of all personal and
collective introspection. It is a most fatal thing to be
turned in upon ourselves, and all the time to have a
narrower vision than the Lord's vision.
Now we come to the sons
of the prophets. What is this? The testimony is again
involved, and it is involved in the matter of service.
You see, they are the sons of the prophets, and now it is
the question of service amongst the Lord's people: an
enlargement unto service for the testimony of Jesus. I
think the best way in which we can get at this is to come
right over to our New Testament at once.
We have two letters in
the New Testament - of course, we have several twin
letters in it - but we have this set of twins in the
Corinthian letters, and I need not tell you what is in
them. I think everybody knows what is in the first letter
to the Corinthians! It is a sorry state of no testimony
in the city. Oh, what an appalling spiritual smallness
there is in the Corinthian church in that first letter!
The second letter? Well, it is the enlargement of
ministry, isn't it? "Therefore", says
the Apostle, "seeing we have this ministry" (2
Corinthians 4:1), and he gives much light on what the
ministry is. I am not going to deal with those details,
but it is all a matter of enlargement unto ministry. The
cry of the Apostle to the Corinthians is this: "Our
mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians, our heart is
enlarged... be ye also enlarged" (2 Corinthians
6:11,13). 'Your trouble is that you are too small, too
little in yourselves, and too petty in your spiritual
life and your spiritual measure.'
What was it that made
them small and destroyed their ministry? Well, read the
first chapters again and you cannot miss it. "Each
one of you saith I... I... I... are ye not carnal...
after the manner of men?" (1 Corinthians
1:12; 3:3). And then he speaks about the natural man - "Now
the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God... he cannot know them" (1
Corinthians 2:14). He is under a veto, an embargo, a
limitation. Live on the ground of the self-life, whatever
form it may take, intellectually, emotionally,
volitionally, or in any other way, and you will be a
little person spiritually. You will be a petty person
spiritually, all tied up, limited, and you will have a
very small testimony. But "he that is spiritual
judgeth all things" (1 Corinthians 2:15).
It would seem that
between the two letters something happened, that they had
escaped from the littleness of the natural life and the
natural ground unto something more of the Spirit. They
had become enlarged in their spiritual life, in their
hearts and in their minds, enlarged by the power of the
Holy Spirit - and then you have the ministry: "We
have this ministry" ('We have this testimony') "We
have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding
greatness of the power may be of God" (2
Corinthians 4:7).
Oh, we need this basic
work to deliver us from ourselves! That is it, isn't it?
In every form, in every way - our self-estimates, our
self-will, our self-strength! All that, and then the
place of our habitation will be enlarged, we will build
something bigger, and the testimony will go on and there
will be a ministry.
I know how simple,
perhaps elementary, are the things that I am saying, but
they are basic, and very important.
The
Place of Jordan
In closing I want to
remind you of the place that Jordan had here in the life
and ministry of Elisha. He started at Jordan with Elijah;
it was at Jordan that he came into his ministry. Naaman
had to go and wash seven times in Jordan before he came
into the enlargement that the Lord was bringing about.
The sons of the prophets went to Jordan to cut down wood,
and it was there that the axe-head came off and went to
the bottom, and the iron was made to swim.
Well, here you are. 1
Corinthians is the natural life which goes downward. 2
Corinthians is the spiritual life of resurrection which
comes upward. There is no service in our downward
gravitation, is there? We are no use to the Lord like
that! Get down, and you are no use to the Lord at all.
Follow your own natural life and you get out of the
Lord's use. But when His Divine resurrection life comes
in by the Holy Spirit, the iron swims. That which would
otherwise always go down is made to rise. The power of
His resurrection is at work. It is the reversing of our
natures, bringing us into the life of the Spirit and the
ministry, and the testimony goes on.
May the Lord write
these lessons deeply in our hearts and make us really
understand His thought for every one of us: His spiritual
fullness - nothing less. That is your birthright - to
have of His fullness. There are no special classes for
this. It is for all - "they were all
filled". That is the Lord's thought for you and for
me - to be filled. It is His desire, and He desires that
we should have our vision continually enlarged. Oh, God
save us from becoming smaller in any way than the thought
of the Lord Jesus! The Lord save us from becoming
exclusive, shut in, tied up with limits that He does not
put upon things! Christ is so great. We need never fear
that we shall out-measure Christ, especially if we live
in and walk by the Spirit. We shall not find that the
Spirit's way is cramping, closing in. The Spirit's way is
unto Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of
the earth, the fullest bounds of Divine grace. And our
testimony - it is only another word for ministry -
ministry sometimes seems very professional. We think of
the ministry as being that of some special body of
people. Call it 'testimony', and then we are all in it.
Our testimony will be effective, will be released when we
are ourselves delivered from what we are naturally. Do
you know yourself? Oh, the terrible limitations there
are in our natures and temperaments! We are all made in
one way or another, and there are terrible limitations in
our make-up. The Holy Spirit can lift us free of
ourselves and our natural make-up, and enlarge us with
the enlargement of Christ.
May it be so!