Reading:
2 Kings 3 and 4.
As we meditate on these
chapters we must with every fresh step remind ourselves
of the significance of Elisha himself. That is, that he
came in on the ground of resurrection, to represent the
nature of the life and the Testimony of the Lord's
people. That was represented by the anointing, the coming
of the spirit of his ascended master upon him, indicating
that through Calvary, through the work of the Cross, he
was in union with heaven in the power of resurrection,
and everything that obtained in his life was in one form
or another the expression of that resurrection life. Thus
he came into touch with people and situations in various
directions in the power of resurrection, and whatever
Elisha touched was connected with the issue of life
triumphant over death.
There are three things
before us now, the details of which we shall not stay to
deal with, but just be content with taking out the
central thought.
1.
The Valley Filled With Water
Resurrection Life in the Midst of Pressure From
a Hostile World Outside
Chapter 3 is occupied
with the rebellion, or revolt, of Moab against Israel.
Probably you will recall that David had subdued the
Moabites, and had put them under tribute to pay to Israel
annually one hundred thousand sheep and lambs. That
tribute had continued through the reign of Ahab. With the
death of Ahab, Moab revolted. That revolt is mentioned
right at the very beginning of this second book of Kings
in the first verse of chapter 1. There is then a break in
the general history, in which Elijah is translated and
Elisha comes into his place. It is interesting and
significant that Elisha does come in right at that point.
If you get the larger
background of spiritual interpretation in the light of
the New Testament, what you have as represented by David
is the Lord Jesus in absolute sovereignty, overcoming all
spiritual enemies. You remember David went over the whole
ground of every foe which had ever lifted itself against
the Lord's people, and subdued them all, and established
his throne upon a universal victory. That is typical of
Christ by His Cross overcoming every spiritual foe. But
then we find, not so long after the universal victory of
the Cross spiritually established, the breaking out of
hostile forces against the Church, seeming to be a
contradiction to that victory, and yet not so in fact.
Elisha typically is connected with the Church, and his
ministry is to show and to bring in the power by which
the Church is to know its life of victory in relation to
the ascended Lord. That power is the power of
resurrection life.
So we find that
immediately upon Elisha's coming into his ministry, there
is this revolt of Moab against Israel. Things are not in
a very good condition amongst the Lord's people. Ahab has
been responsible for a good deal of spiritual declension,
weakness, contradiction. He has handed on a heritage of
unfaithfulness, and things are at low ebb spiritually at
this time. The alliance between Jehoshaphat, king of
Judah, and the king of Israel in Samaria, is an unholy
thing, a state of departure and weakness. That gives
Elisha his real value. It clearly indicates why Elisha is
brought in at this time. That is, the necessity is made
very manifest by the situation.
The first lesson,
therefore, that arises here for the Lord's people is the
manner of establishing beyond any question the Testimony
to the absolute Lordship of that One Who is at the right
hand of God, in a day when in general things are
spiritually at low ebb amongst themselves, and when from
the outside world itself, as represented by Moab, there
is severe pressure. How shall the Testimony of Christ's
universal sovereignty be displayed? On what ground can it
be maintained here? Elisha makes very clear to us by his
own typical person what the Divinely employed means for
that purpose is. It is a matter of conflict with the
world in a day of inward weakness.
The situation becomes,
as you see, very precarious. This designed resistance of
Moab finds the Lord's people without the resources to
carry it through. They move out, but they have no power
by which to meet the situation. When they come to the
actual moment of launching their assault they themselves
are completely crippled and paralyzed by the lack of
spiritual resource. The waters upon which they were
counting did not exist; they had dried up. When these
people came to the place where they expected to find the
streams of water, those streams were not there, and the
whole army was in peril of perishing for want of
resource.
The issue is perfectly
clear, and is stated by the king of Israel. This
confederacy is going to perish, this whole situation is
going to end in death, calamity, destruction. But
Jehoshaphat, who represents the spiritual instinct in the
situation - one who more than the others is in touch with
God, who does know the Lord, has a relationship with Him
- raises the question of consulting the Lord through His
prophet: "Is there not here a prophet of the
Lord...?" This leads to a consultation with Elisha.
Elisha in the first
place is moved by the unholy state of things. He refuses
to have anything to do with the king of Israel, because
of his unholy condition. Elisha seems to be inclined to
turn the whole thing down; but then he remembers
Jehoshaphat, and says: "...were it not that I
regarded the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I
would not look toward thee, nor see thee." Wherever
there is a true, a genuine looking in the direction of
the Lord, the Lord does not despise that, nor refuse to
take account of it. And so Elisha, taking Jehoshaphat
into consideration, deeply and terribly moved by the evil
of the situation, seeks to get detached from that side of
things and says: "bring me a minstrel." Let us
not be misguided by this to think that he sought
inspiration through the minstrel. No such thing! He did
not seek any soulish stimulus to get inspiration.
Revelation from God does not come that way. Elisha had
become terribly moved to wrath by the evil of the
situation amongst the Lord's people, and it was quite
impossible for him quietly to give the word of the Lord
while he himself in his spirit was entangled in this
thing. And the request for a minstrel was simply to get
quiet in himself, to get his own spirit detached from
this situation. You know that the quieting effect of the
minstrel is mentioned on more than one occasion in
different parts of the Scripture. Elisha disentangled
himself from this situation, and then, in that
detachment, was able to open himself to the Lord, and
receive the Lord's Word. "Thus saith the Lord, 'Make
this valley full of trenches."' We need not stay
with all the details of this story; we note the central
message.
Here we are in conflict
with a hostile company, in conflict with forces which are
bent upon the full and final destruction of the Lord's
Testimony in His people, forces which are taking
advantage of a day of general spiritual declension. In
ourselves we have no resource with which to meet those
forces, and that situation. How then will it be met? Upon
what basis will the Testimony be maintained and brought
out into fullness? Purely upon the basis of our knowing
the Lord in a new way in the power of resurrection. It is
a very simple lesson, but it is a thing which runs
through the New Testament continuously.
You see it marking the
life of the Apostle Paul again and again. You note the
uprising of the hostile forces to quench the Testimony as
represented by him, and a seeming advantage of those
forces from time to time, so that the Lord's servant
appears at times almost to be brought to a standstill. It
does look as though the advantage is on the side of the
enemy. And then, without any noise, without any sound of
wind or seeing of rain, there is a reinforcing with the
power of resurrection, and all the forces which have been
ranged against the Testimony in him are scattered,
confounded, and there is an establishment or a
celebration of victory.
On one occasion those
forces rose up and withstood the vessel of Testimony. It
looked as though they had gained the advantage, that the
enemy was in the place of power. The next thing you read
is that Paul rose up and went back into the city, and at
Lystra there was a great and abiding celebration of the
power of resurrection as working in the Apostle. At
Ephesus the same thing happened in another form - the
rising up of the forces antagonistic to the Testimony, a
riot, a driving out, and to all appearance the enemy in
the place of strength. Nevertheless we have a letter to
the Ephesians in which we have a great story of the
establishment of the Ephesian assembly, and the Testimony
there is of a very definite and positive form. And
concerning Ephesus the Apostle said that it was there
that he despaired of life. He was so sick as to despair
of life. Ephesus, though as a church non-existent today,
still moves in mighty power spiritually. We never read
the Letter to the Ephesians without recognizing how vital
it is, and it has gone on in its spiritual persistence,
in power and strength, for all these centuries. Eternity
will reveal marvelous fruit from the battle for Ephesus
which looked at times to be lost. The power by which the
Testimony was established was the power of His
resurrection.
What was true of Lystra
and Ephesus was true in many other directions and on many
other occasions. You see the rallying of the forces, a
situation which appeared to be very precarious for the
Testimony, and then, without any great noise, a rising up
and a working of the power of the risen life of the Lord
in the vessel, and a celebration of His victory. Instead
of the vessel of Testimony being destroyed, that very
life was the destruction of the forces which were set in
opposition.
If you read this story
in its details you will see that the thing which became
the life of the Lord's people became the death of their
enemies. We are in that position today very truly. The
full Testimony of the Lord is hard pressed. There is
great profession, a great deal of Christian tradition,
but the Testimony in reality is the Testimony to the
power of resurrection in the life as a living thing
within the saints. This is limited to a comparative few,
and the pressure is tremendous upon that Testimony, to
extinguish it altogether. The need is the need which is
seen here - a fresh knowledge of the Lord in the power of
His resurrection.
There are many remedies
for the situation which are being suggested. Numerous
Conferences are being held to discuss how the work of the
Lord shall be brought into a better condition, and made
more triumphant; as to how there can be more success,
more effectiveness, and so on; and we are wearied to
death of these Conferences, the discussions, the round
tables, which issue in nothing. THE need which
touches the heart of the whole situation, and which will
solve every problem, is a fresh knowledge of the Lord
Himself in the power of His resurrection, a fresh
experience of the risen life of the Lord Himself. There
is no other means by which these spiritual problems will
be solved, these spiritual deadlocks be removed. The only
way is the uprising of the fullness of His life, and then
the world will know. The Lord would say to His people
today that, rather than for better ways and means, the
need is for a life more mightily energized by that risen
power of the exalted Head.
Elisha, who comes on
the scene because he saw his master taken up into heaven
and received a double portion of his spirit, forever
tells us quite clearly that the Church's power in a day
of declension and antagonism is the power of the risen
ascended Lord. That is taking the heart out of the story.
But let us remember that there had to be a real
exercising of faith. The obedience of faith in the power
of the ascended Lord became the victory which overcame
the world.
2. The Widow's Oil
We pass on to the next
incident in chapter 4:1-7. The woman here was the widow
of one of the sons of the prophets. Inasmuch as the sons
of the prophets were representative of those who were to
be responsible for the Lord's interests amongst His
people, but who were in a state of immaturity and
preparation, we have the right background for what is
here in this chapter as spiritually interpreted.
(a)
The State of the Church
Unable To Meet Obligations
We find this widow of
one of the sons of the prophets in a state of terrible
impoverishment. She represents the spiritual state of the
Lord's people, and that state is one of inability to meet
the obligations. "Thy servant my husband is dead;
and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord: and
the creditor is come to take unto him my two children to
be bondmen." "I cannot face the creditor; I am
not in a position to meet these demands; my two sons are
going to be taken into bondage." Typically that
means that the sons, who are types of the works, the
fruit, of her life, are going to be taken over by the
merely formal religious world. The Church is simply going
to hand over its works, its fruit, and the world is going
to take possession; the Church is going to lose all the
value of its own activities.
(b)
The Power of the World Over "The Church"
This is quite clearly
the thing that is happening today. The world is using
"the Church" for its own ends. It is the world
that is getting gain out of "the Church" today,
though not in a spiritual and right sense. "The
Church" is in bondage to the world today. The Church
is simply on its knees to the world. Every concert, every
bazaar, every entertainment, everything like that in
"the Church" is her unwonted, perhaps
unintended, confession that it cannot live its own
independent life. It is dependent upon the world for its
very life. It says by these things, "It is no use
trying to get on; we cannot maintain things even as they
are, we cannot make ends meet, only as we recognize the
claims of the world, recognize the strength of the
world." Why do you provide entertainments and such
things in your "Church" for your young people?
Because you will never have your young people unless you
do. They must have something of the world in order to
hold them to "the Church" (so called), and thus
"the Church" is slavishly in bondage to the
world, on the knee to the world.
So the creditor comes
to take and to despoil "the Church" of its real
spiritual value. "The Church" is in a position
where it cannot meet its obligations out from itself. It
has not the spiritual resource with which to do so.
(c) A
Little Oil
"The Church"
has a little oil, like this widow. It is not altogether
devoid of the Spirit, not absolutely and finally bereft
of the Lord, but not by any means has it enough to stand
up and live its own life independently of outside
resources. To put that in another way, is to say that the
fullness of life is not in itself, therefore it cannot
face the demands made upon it. It has become an
institution, enlarged by human effort, extended by man's
organization, and therefore has become involved in the
demands which are beyond its own spiritual growth. Its
own spiritual growth has not kept pace with its external
development. The life is not commensurate with what it
has taken on, and attempted to do. That is the situation.
That situation cries out, as through the voice of this
woman: "There cried a certain woman..." It is a
pathetic position.
What is the remedy? It
is the same remedy, only applied in another direction. It
is Elisha, to begin with, the power of resurrection
again, the risen life of the Lord, the full issue of the
work of the Cross in absolute ascendancy over spiritual
death. Thus Elisha comes into touch with the situation.
Here we see that THE need in all such times of
spiritual inability to meet spiritual demands, is a fresh
knowledge of the Lord in the fullness of His risen life.
It will work at one
time as to the pressure of the world from without in its
antagonism, as represented by Moab. At another time it
will be expressed by reason of the inward impoverishment
of the Lord's people to meet the demands which are
legitimately laid upon them. Paul recognized those
demands and did not say that they were wrong. "I am
debtor" he said, "both to Greeks and to
Barbarians..." He was under obligation to meet the
spiritual needs of all men. But the spiritual needs of
the world can only be met as we know the fullness of the
risen life of the Lord.
"What hast thou in
the house?" "Thine handmaid hath not anything
in the house, save a pot of oil." "Go borrow
thee vessels... not a few." You notice that in every
one of these movements for renewal (revival, if you
like), the knowing again of the Lord in the power of His
resurrection, there is a challenge to faith. "Make
this valley full of trenches." See these men, with
no sign whatever that there would be any rain, with no
idea whatever as to where water could come from, yet in
obedience digging away and making the valley full of
trenches. Their part was the obedience of faith. They had
to leave the rest with the faithfulness of God. "Go
borrow vessels..." The natural man would have
reacted to such a suggestion with the question, 'But
where is the oil coming from for the vessels? I do not
see how it can be done!' That is always the attitude of
nature; wanting first of all a demonstration to the
senses before it will act. God's principle is the
obedience of faith. "Go borrow vessels abroad of all
thy neighbours..." 'But what will the neighbors say?
They will laugh at me!' Nevertheless obedience of faith
often involves us in situations which to the world are
very ridiculous. Such obedience involved Abraham in what
looked like a very ridiculous situation: "Now the
Lord said unto Abram, 'Get thee out of thy country, and
from thy kindred... unto the land that I will show
thee,"' "...and he went out, not knowing
whither he went." To all inquiries as to where he
was going he would have to answer: "I do not
know." How ridiculous that would appear to the
world! However, that is just where faith has its real
value, in that it is prepared to move, not caring what
other people think, but trusting God.
How are these
obligations going to be met? The means will be the risen
life of the Lord. First of all it will necessitate
stepping out in faith on the Lord's Word. Then it will
involve putting into operation the little that you have
of the Lord. Do you know the Lord in a little measure?
Have you the one pot of oil? Put it into operation in
faith! So many of the Lord's people are wanting to know a
great deal more of Him before they will move at all. They
have just a little knowledge of the Lord, and the Lord's
principle is that there is never any increase until we
have extended to the full what we have. Have you some
little knowledge of the Lord? Well, extend it to the
full, and act in faith in relation to it, and you will
find your increase comes that way. Believe that this life
in God is a fullness of life, although your measure of it
at present may be very limited. It is not the measure we
have that is the ground of expectation, but that from
which we received what we already have. It is the
fullness, of which we have received perhaps only a small
measure, that should be our confidence.
If the woman had simply
fixed her attention upon that one pot of oil, and said:
"That is the beginning and the end of all my hope
and expectation," then nothing would have happened.
But she had to see that vessel in relation to a fullness
which was boundless. If you take your little as the all,
you will not get very far, but if you relate your little
to God's all, you can go on. It is His fullness, not just
the measure that we have experienced of His fullness. The
fullness of God is a fact lying beyond our present
experience, but a fact concerning which we have to act in
faith.
That action of faith
demanded on the part of this woman the bringing of
vessels. Those who have ministry in the Word know quite
well of what we are speaking: for example, that you do
not stop gathering the Lord's people together because you
feel empty. In the consciousness of emptiness, weakness,
smallness of resource, you go on, and you find the Lord
meets the need as you go on in faith. If at times we were
to act according to our own feelings we would say:
"We will not have a meeting today, we have nothing
to give." But the Lord is our Resource, and as we go
on the Lord comes in and fills the emptiness. It is a
sound principle for the Lord's servants to work upon. If
we are in the way of the Lord's Testimony we can trust
the Lord to meet all the need, though we may have a very
small measure consciously at any given moment. Do we
believe that the Lord can meet the need, and fill
wherever that need exists? There is no need represented
in this world which, if brought before the Lord, cannot
be met. If you have any doubt about that, there the
Testimony stops. The point where you cease to believe a
situation to be capable of solution by the Lord is the
point where your Testimony fails; you are contradicting
the power of His resurrection. The power of the risen
life of the Lord Jesus is without limit, and there is no
situation and no life which truly represents a need of
Him which cannot be met.
For this woman it was a
case of keeping on keeping on! She set the limit, not the
Lord. When she ceased to find vessels then the oil
stayed. The limit is not on the Lord's side.
The Testimony is along
those lines. There will be differing ways of application.
You and I will know how it touches us and our situation.
From time to time we shall find that this applies to the
position in which we find ourselves. It would be quite
impossible for us to cover all the ground of application,
but here is a fact stated. It is the power of His
resurrection which meets the obligations; not what we
have but what He is; not the measure of what we have
already received, but the measure of what there is yet to
receive. The Lord's thought for us is fullness, but we
shall not have it all at one time. His fullness will come
to us progressively. We shall not always be living in the
consciousness of being full, but we can live continually
in the knowledge of being filled again and again as the
demand arises.
3.
The Shunammite's Son
Let us turn to the
latter half of chapter 4, verses 8-37. We want to
condense this into as concrete a thought as possible.
There is a change here which is somewhat significant.
In the case of the wife
of the son of the prophets we have a woman manifestly in
poverty, in emptiness, in privation, and the oil brings
to her fullness in her emptiness. When we come to this
woman of Shunem we find that we meet quite another
situation. She is called "a great woman." That
means that, so far as temporal matters were concerned,
she was well provided for; in comfort, in plenty, in
affluence, in position; just the opposite of the other
woman. Unlike the widow of Zarephath, to whom Elijah went
and whom he sought to persuade to give him something to
eat, this woman has to try to persuade the prophet to
eat. It is quite the other way round. She has plenty in
every way but one thing. The prophet contemplates this
woman. He looks at her home, her table, her servants, her
possessions generally, and does not see anything about
her home that is lacking, and for him it is quite a
problem how to enrich her. The needs are not obvious; it
is something to cause consideration. What can be done for
a woman like that? Gehazi touches the vital spot:
"Verily she hath no son..." A deeper depth is
touched. Everything but the one thing which can really
mean more than everything else. One thing representing
more than all these outward things. That fact is
disclosed by the prophet's word concerning the son. The
woman replied, "Do not lie unto thine
handmaid." That seems to say: "There is one
desire of my life, but it is impossible, and I have had
to settle once and for all that that cannot be. I have
fought my battle: I have accepted the denial; and now
that is a closed door. Do not begin to bring me into a
realm where that whole thing is raised again, and I have
to fight my battles all over anew. Do not suggest things
that, should they never come to pass, would put me back
again into a place where all that I have means nothing to
me because of that lack!" Nevertheless the prophet's
word comes to pass, and from that time all things are
swung over to this son. Then "...it fell on a day,
that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he
said unto his father, My head, my head.' And he said to
his servant, 'Carry him to his mother.' And when he had
taken him, and brought him to his mother, he sat on her
knees till noon, and then died." She took him and
laid him on the prophet's bed and went for the prophet.
You know the rest of the story.
The
Supreme Need: Fullness of Resurrection Life
What is it that comes
out as the central reality, the thing which is the SUPREME
factor in life? There may be many other things. There
may be a condition such as was found in one of the
Churches in Asia to which the Lord addressed these words:
"Thou sayest, 'I am rich, and increased with goods,
and have need of nothing;' and knowest not that thou art
wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and
naked!" There is a lack which by its very existence
makes all else that you have as mere poverty. You may
have all this, but the absence of one thing makes it
plain that you have really no heart in all that. The
thing which counts above all things is to know within our
own being the power of His resurrection. We may have much
that is good externally, even in a religious way, but the
one thing upon which the Lord puts His finger as the
primary, the paramount thing in the life of any child of
His, is not the abundance of the things possessed, but
the knowing of Him and the power of His resurrection.
Look at Philippians 3.
Paul there goes over all the things which were of value,
which men would value and regard as things worth having.
Then he sums them all up and says: "I count these,
after all, great as they are in the eyes of men, as utter
refuse, and suffer the loss of all things that I may know
Him, and the power of His resurrection." This woman
came to know this thing in a very deep way. The son was
given; that was wonder enough! And yet there might still
linger some suggestion that nature had had something to
do with it, that the gift of the son could somehow be
accounted for along natural lines. Psychology has tended
to undermine the whole realm of the objective and
exclusive activity of God. But God is going to
demonstrate that this was wholly outside the realm of
nature: and so the son dies, and is brought back to life,
and every question of nature having a hand in it has been
silenced. There is no room for anything natural when it
is a case of resurrection from the dead. That is the
ultimate Testimony. That cannot be explained in any other
way than "God"! Resurrection is knowing God.
Psychology tries to explain a good many things in
Christian experience, and some of us have had much
painful experience over the psychological explanation of
religious experience. But the Lord has put us outside of
that realm by making us know something for which
psychology can never give an explanation, even the
knowing of "Him, and the power of His
resurrection." Psychology cannot raise the dead.
There is an inner secret history of knowing the Lord in a
way that cannot be accounted for on any other basis than
the power of His resurrection.
That is where the
Testimony reaches its final point. It is the Testimony
that Jesus was raised from the dead. That may be but the
basis of the Testimony, but it is not merely the creed,
the doctrine, it is the inward knowledge of the risen
Lord. That had to be wrought in principle into the very
being of this woman, until it was beyond the reach of any
question. What was the full thought? It was Sonship. Read
Romans 8, and Galatians, and see what sonship is when
brought through into its fullest meaning. When the child
was born, that represented what the New Testament has to
say about our being children of God by birth. When the
son was raised, that represented what the New Testament
has to say about sonship by resurrection. The New
Testament teaches by its two distinct Greek words that by
our new birth we are children of God, but that sonship is
something in advance of childhood. It is childhood
brought to maturity in the power of resurrection.
"Adoption" is the word used, as we know. But in
the New Testament adoption has nothing to do with the
taking into the family of an outsider. It has only to do
with the adopting of your own child at his majority in
the place of honor and responsibility. The Greek father
adopted his own son when his son came to his majority,
and that was the moment when he ceased to be a child and
became a son. That is the New Testament teaching.
Here is the woman who
had the child, and that is wonderful. When we are born
again it is a miracle, a glorious thing. But when the
Lord takes us through experiences to bring us to know Him
in the power of His resurrection in our very being - not
something done outside of ourselves, but something which
has been done in us - and we are taken through deep
depths, until in our very being we come to know Him and
the power of His resurrection, that is sonship, that is
the Testimony. The Testimony in its fullness is not bound
up with spiritual infants, it is bound up with spiritual
maturity. This woman was great, and yet there was a
"but"! We may have a great deal, even in our
Christian lives and in our Christian work, and yet there
may remain that "but." There may be so much of
it external, on the surface. The necessity is that that
shall come right down into the depths of our inner being,
so that we know Him in the very substance of our being as
the Resurrection, and the Life.
It is only as the
Lord's people come to that position that they are
constituted a vessel of His full Testimony, and that
explains why He takes us now, as His children, through
the depths, that we may so learn to know Him.
Whatever the direction
the principle remains the same, whether for conflict, as
with the hostile forces around, or service, in the
meeting of our obligations, or in life, the coming to the
fullness of the Lord's thought. The one governing law is
"Him and the power of His resurrection";
knowing the risen life of the Lord.