Reading: 1 Kings 19:19-21; 2 Kings 2:9-15 (1st
part); Acts 1:1-3; John 11:44.
These passages of
Scripture, taken from the Old and the New Testaments, are
a part of a revelation of the Lord's will as to the
maintaining of His own testimony on this earth. The Old
Testament story of Elijah and Elisha contains this truth
and this principle, although it is an illustration. The
New Testament passage in the Book of the Acts is no
illustration: it is the actual, literal fulfilment of the
illustration. Put together, you can quite clearly see
that the thing they both say is this: The Lord desires to
have a testimony concerning Himself maintained here in
this world while He is in heaven. During the time that He
is away it is His will and purpose that His testimony
shall be maintained here.
That is the meaning, of
course, of the spirit of Elijah resting upon Elisha when
Elijah had been translated to glory. Elisha, by that
anointing and enduement and clothing with the Holy
Spirit, was to carry on - but even in greater fulness -
and maintain the testimony of Elijah after the latter had
gone to heaven.
Now you can say quite
truly that the whole of the New Testament focuses upon
this. Up to the time of His ascension the Lord Jesus was
always pointing forward to that day. As we have seen in
our earlier meetings, He was saying: "I go
away... if I go" (John 16:7). He was
always thinking in terms of that time when He would leave
them, and was seeking to prepare them for that time. It
was hard work for them to accept it, just as it was for
Elisha to accept the departure of Elijah. He clung on to
him just as long as he could! And these disciples found
it exceedingly difficult to accept the fact that their
Lord was going away. He had said: "It is
expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away,
the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I go, I will
send him unto you" (John 16:7).
So the Lord was looking
on to this time of His ascension and translation to
glory, and was preparing His vessel for that time.
And then the vessel
being found in place. That is a very important factor: to
be found in place, prepared and on the spot when the Lord
went up. Not many days afterwards the mantle of the Lord
fell upon the disciples, and He made it perfectly clear
to them that the purpose of their calling was to maintain
His testimony in this world while He was away. And, of
course, that is the very purpose, object and vocation of
the Church and of the Lord's people.
Now, that is the
setting, the basis of everything. It is well for us to
grasp now, immediately, the inclusive implication of
that. Why are we here as the Lord's people, individually
and collectively? Why have we received the Holy Spirit,
as we have done - or ought to have done if we are truly
committed people? For one thing, all inclusively - that
the Lord may be able, by means of us, to maintain His
testimony in this world while He is away, and that He
will come back to find that testimony not only intact and
undiminished, but enlarged, increased, expanded, deepened
and strengthened. That is the answer to the question: Why
are we the Lord's people? And in that sense we are just
as important to the Lord as Elisha was to Elijah, and as
these disciples were to the Master.
Having set the
background or basis of things, there are a number of
details which come out in this connection.
Called
According to Purpose
Let us look at the
figure, the type, the illustration, in the case of Elijah
and Elisha. (We shall find the corresponding truths in
the New Testament.) First of all, there was the most
definite act of choosing. We read: "So he
departed thence, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat...
and cast his mantle upon him." Here is a crisis
in the life of a man, and a very definite crisis indeed;
a turning-point; the end of one phase and the beginning
of another. It is clear cut. And although Elisha did make
that request about going and kissing his father, he knew
in himself that the day of transition from one phase of
things to another had come for him. The hour had broken
when one order was past and another order was beginning.
And when Elijah seemed to give him his liberty and
discharge (and it is very interesting to note that the
Lord sometimes does that, to try us out. He says: 'All
right, what have I done to you? Go back.') Elisha found
he could not take it. Something had happened to him and
he just could not take his liberty. He could not return
to the old order of things. He went aside, slew his oxen,
made a fire of the wood of the instruments, offered his
sacrifice, gave to the people to eat, and went after
Elijah. Something had happened. He knew that he was a
chosen vessel. He knew that the hand of the Lord had come
upon him. He knew that that mantle signified a succession
to his Lord here on this earth, the endowment with a
heavenly vocation.
So it proved. And, dear
friends, if that sounds very specific and too wonderful,
I want to remind you that the New Testament teaches us
that that is true of every believer. "He chose us
in him before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians
1:4). Who is the 'us'? That is not an exclusive call
according to the order of Elisha or Paul, or Peter or
John. The 'us' is the inclusive 'us' of the Church into
which we are baptized in one Spirit.
I could quote much
more. This choice, this election, falls upon all those
who come under the apprehending hand of Jesus Christ when
they, like Elisha, let go, capitulate, and commit
themselves. They know that from that time onward they are
not their own proprietors. They are the bond-slaves of
Jesus Christ. They are the captives of a great and
heavenly purpose.
That is not only
something stated. It is a challenge to you and to me.
There should be something like that, in the nature of an
experience or a crisis, a definite transition, in the
life of every child of God, where that child knows that
'something has happened and I am no longer the master of
my own life. I am no longer the master of my own destiny.
I am no longer free to go the way that I have been going,
even if it has been with twelve yoke of oxen - a very
thorough-going, all-out kind of life in that world. It is
finished now, however big and great it was. I am in
another realm and belong to another Master. I am called
with another calling. There is another vocation resting
upon me.' I do not mean that you have to give up your
business in this world, but over and above everything
else rests this heavenly vocation, wherever you are. The
point is, dear friends, that we are "called
according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28), chosen "in
him before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians
1:4), an elect vessel as "members of his
body" (Ephesians 5:30) the Church.
I don't want to smother
everything by putting a lot on top of these things. I do
want the full force of every fragment to come upon us. If
you are not aware that this hand has come upon you, that
you, as Paul put it, have been "apprehended by
Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:12) - apprehended,
arrested, taken in charge was how Paul thought of
himself, and that is how it ought to be with every one of
us. We have just been taken in charge by Jesus Christ -
there is something defective in your committal to the
Lord and in your relationship. And be sure that there
will be a defectiveness in your testimony, or in the
Lord's testimony in and through your life. That is where
things begin.
But note: that was but
the beginning. You may think that is enough. No, it is
not, and you will find that other things follow.
Tested
as to Reality
And the next thing that
will follow this call, this outstretched hand of the Lord
toward you, this apprehending, this encounter with the
Lord, will mean that He will try you out as to whether
you really do mean business. He is not going to have
anybody in this great business of maintaining His
testimony who does not really mean business. "Go
back again; for what have I done to thee?" Can
you go back? If you can, then do. I always say that to
people. It means that you really have not come into
anything very real if you can. That is a test on every
matter which can be followed through to a thousand
details. If you can say: 'Why can't I? May I not? Is this
not allowed? Can I not go here, go there?' If you can,
go... if you can, do it! But I venture to
say that if something has happened, as you go to it you
begin to have a bad time and say: 'No, I cannot. I just
cannot'. You know that! However, the point is that you
will be tested.
And then follows this.
Elijah said to Elisha: "Tarry here, I pray thee;
for the Lord hath sent me as far as Bethel. And Elisha
said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not
leave thee. So they went down to Bethel." We don't
know what happened at Bethel, but it seems as though
Elijah immediately moved on further. He said: "Tarry
here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho.
And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth,
I will not leave thee." And yet again: "Tarry
here, I pray thee: for the Lord hath sent me to
Jordan." And Elisha said: "As the Lord
liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave
thee" (2 Kings 2:2,4,6).
You have heard this
many times before, but the point is this: The Lord is
going to prove us right up to the hilt, to the fourth
dimension, as to whether we mean business with Him, how
far our relationship with Him, for the sake of His
testimony, takes pre-eminence over everything else, and
how necessary this is to our life. Can we let it go? Can
we be put off? Can we put something else in its place?
Dear friends, the
question here, or the issue involved in this whole
matter, is the issue of spiritual capacity for this great
thing to which the Lord has called us. We need capacity,
you know. We know quite well that we are not going to get
through with this thing just willy-nilly, superficially.
We are finding all the way along that we need more and
more spiritual life, spiritual increase and spiritual
measure, and it is a matter of our capacity in this thing
for going on to the end. There are many who are falling
out by the way, many who are returning, and many who are
giving up and are put off and discouraged. The Lord knows
that. Many went away from Him. "Jesus said
therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go away?"
(John 6:67). You see, it is this testing all the time
as to how much this really means to us, whether we are
just camp-followers, as we say, whether we are just
religionists, attenders at meetings, listeners to
addresses, readers of books, members of some Christian
fraternity; whether we are nominally bearing the name
'Christian', or whether we are of this order, able to say
truly from the heart: 'Look here, I have no alternatives.
There is no other way for me. This is very life, and the
alternative, if there is one, is death.'
The Lord will bring us,
as Elijah brought Elisha, to that severe testing in which
Elijah took great risks of being misunderstood. I cannot
dwell upon that, but he did. He could have involved
himself in a lot of misunderstanding with Elisha, and
Elisha might have said: 'Look here, this man does not
want me. He is trying to get rid of me. Evidently I am
mistaken about this whole thing', and, offended, he might
have turned away. Well, Elijah took risks like that, and
the Lord takes risks like that with us. I don't know how
many of you have got to the place (if you haven't, don't
worry. You may get there sooner or later) where the
Lord's dealings with us sometimes make us wonder whether
He really wants us after all. It does seem as though He
is trying to put us off. The ways of the Lord are to our
flesh sometimes very discouraging! We don't find a great
deal of natural, soulical zest when we are passing
through times of trial.
Well, leave that. Now
then, how much do you really need what you are in
by the call of God? How much is it really vital to
you in consequence? Is it a matter of life or death? Now,
you will need capacity, depth and spiritual enlargement,
and you will need to be brought to the place where you
are spiritually competent, reliable, able to take
responsibility, and the only way of coming there is as
Elisha came there, under the full enduement of the Holy
Spirit, for this great vocation is being tested as to
whether you really do mean business.
In the course of many
years I have had quite a lot of letters written to me
about the ministry in print, and this is one type of
letter that I have often received: 'When I first came
into possession of this ministry in print (referring to
the magazine) I could not understand it, I could not
appreciate it. It did not mean anything to me, so I just
put the thing away. But then, for a year or two, or more,
I went through deep waters and into such spiritual trial
that I had to cry out to the Lord for something to help
me in my difficulty. And then perchance I came on that
printed ministry. My word, I would never have believed
what was in it! It just met my need because I had gone
through something that made it necessary.'
Forgive me illustrating
in that way. I am not drawing attention to anything in
particular, but am simply saying this: that we come to
this place of evaluating our calling and setting a right
estimate and value upon it only by way of deep trial and
testing, where it becomes absolutely necessary to us, and
if we don't know the Lord in some new way, it is the end
of everything. The Lord tests us, you see, to enlarge our
spiritual measure and capacity unto the going through
with this great thing to which He has called us, to lay
the deposit at His feet at last, undiminished, but rather
increased.
This is what Paul said
to Timothy: "O Timothy, guard that which is
committed unto thee" (1 Timothy
6:20). Translated more literally that says: 'O Timothy,
guard the deposit. Something has been committed to you,
deposited with you, and you have got to hand it back to
the Lord at the last day. See to it that nothing is
lost.'
Well, we come to the
capacity for that along this same line as Elisha, and you
can see how it was with the apostles. How discouraged
they might have been, especially during those strange
forty days! Indeed, I think Peter showed some signs of
giving way. It was so strange, this coming and going of
the Lord during forty days! You could not be sure of Him.
It all seemed so unreal. He was here one moment, and then
He was gone, and you never knew when He would be here
again, if ever. It was all so intangible, and, you know,
this flesh must have something it can hold on to, and can
see and be sure of. This spiritual life is such a trying
thing to the natural man, and at last Peter said: "I
go a fishing" (John 21:3) ... 'Fishes are more
tangible. I know something about fishing, but I don't
know much about the spiritual life. It is too much for
me, so I go a fishing.' And the others said: "We
also come with thee." But you know what
happened and I need not follow that through. It did not
work. They had been called to something more than that -
fishers of men.
However, the point is,
dear friends, that you and I are put through very
real testing and trials to find out whether we really
mean business with God, and how much spiritual things
count with us. Can we hold them lightly? Can we dispense
with them easily, or has this become a master thing in
our lives? Do we really know the bond of the Spirit, the
bond of the mantle which has laid hold of us? We are men
and women who are in the charge of the Spirit of Jesus
Christ and it must be like that to fulfil this vocation.
Alive,
But in Bondage
Now, there is another
thing. And this is a thing that you and I must be very
clear about; we must be on very sure ground in this
matter. That is why I took that little fragment from John
11 about Lazarus. The Lord had called him out of the
tomb, and he came forth "bound hand and foot
with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a
napkin". I don't know anything about
that, as I am not a mortician. If there is one here he
will understand why it is necessary to bind a dead man's
hands and feet and tie up his face. We will leave that.
But Lazarus came forth like this, bound hand and foot,
with a napkin round his face, and the Lord Jesus said: "Loose
him, and let him go." He is raised, brought
back into life, and is out of the realm of death and of
the grave, but he is still terribly tied up. He must be
loosed, freed from all traces of that old realm, with all
its ties, bonds, limitations, frustrations and burdens,
and be a man at liberty, set free for God. There is no
need for me to point out that Lazarus was here standing
in relation to the testimony of Jesus in a very vital
way. Read the story again. "This sickness is not
unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God
may be glorified thereby" (John 11:4).
Here is the testimony - "that the Son of God may
be glorified" - and the testimony has these
phases and aspects.
First: being brought
out from the realm of death into newness of life. Then it
has the other aspect of being completely set free from
all that which is of the past, a person absolutely at
liberty... at liberty? Yes, at liberty, but a liberty in
a bondage such as has never been before. It is the
bondage of the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ, the
absolute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. A lot of
Christians are saved; they are born anew; they pass from
death into life; but, oh! what a lot of trappings they
have brought with them into the new realm! A lot of the
old ties still follow them through, and hold them bound -
hand and feet and head. You know what I mean without my
illustrating, and it is true.
Let me put it in
another way. There are many Christians who have not yet
come into and under the absolute sovereignty of the Holy
Spirit. What do we mean by the sovereignty of the Holy
Spirit? Well, this is a thing that the Lord Jesus was
constantly trying to press and impress. Take that
fragment with Nicodemus. Undoubtedly, here is a man in
bondage, all tied up with natural ties. He is not even
yet through from death to life. And the Lord said to him:
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it
cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is
born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). You see what He
was saying? Have you ever tried conclusions with a
hurricane? Have you ever tried to set yourself against a
mighty, rushing wind? Well, look at the day of Pentecost,
when the Spirit came like a rushing, mighty wind, and see
who can stand up to that! Who can hold on his own
independent way when that is happening? The wind blows
where it likes, and you cannot say to it: 'You must come
this way, or go that way. You must do this, or that.' It
just does as it likes. That is all. The wind is
sovereign. And if you know anything about it, you know
quite well that the only thing to do is to set your sails
and let that wind carry you on. To try to withstand it
means trouble.
Now the Lord is
speaking about the Holy Spirit, and the words to
Nicodemus illustrate the day of Pentecost and what
followed. He is saying: 'Now, look here, Nicodemus, you
are all tied up with your legalities, your traditions,
and your natural life. You will have to come to the place
where you let go to the Spirit of God and completely
capitulate to Him. You will never get into the Kingdom at
all until that happens. Capitulate to the Spirit, and do
not say this, or that, or the other thing. That is all
taken out of your hands and put into the hands of the
Holy Spirit to say which way, and what, and so on.' The
sovereignty of the Holy Spirit means that all our old
ties are removed and these old bonds are taken off. We
are brought into a new captivity.
That is just the theme
of Paul's letter to the Galatians. On the one side there
are the bonds, and ties, and graveclothes of the law. On
the other side, how much Paul is saying to them about the
Spirit! "Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now
perfected in the flesh?" (3:3). He is appealing
to them not to be brought again under the yoke of
bondage, but to remain under this mighty mastery of the
Spirit, which he calls liberty, real liberty.
Now, you see, with
Elisha it came to the point of a final committal, or
commitment, at Jordan, and that is what Jordan always
means. It is a type of the Cross, where for ever the
bound is met and passed through, or over, from the old
self-governed, self-directed life and way to the absolute
mastery of the Spirit. When Elisha got through that, to
that point of complete committal, the mantle of Elijah
came down on him, as everybody recognised. "The
spirit of Elijah doth rest upon Elisha" (2 Kings
2:15). The final committal is at Jordan, at the Cross,
where there is full abandonment to the absolute
sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, for Him to say: 'This
way, or that way. Hither, or thither', never allowing us
to dictate anything at all.
But, oh! What a lot of
limitation continues in our life because, well, we want
to say which way, what it is to be, and what it is not to
be. We have arguments with the Lord and we have
controversies with the Holy Spirit, but once He gets that
complete sovereignty you see what happens.
We spoke earlier of the
inestimable blessing of an opened heaven. Well, Elisha
came into that, didn't he? "Chariots of Israel,
and the horsemen thereof." An opened heaven and
the Spirit coming through the opened heaven, as the
master went into glory. It is the parable of this truth
that we have here in the Book of the Acts, and that book
is the continuation of this testimony. It has so often
been pointed out that it is a book which was never
finished. Perhaps you, like me, have often wished that
Luke had written his third volume and carried it
somewhere nearer to completion, telling us what happened
afterwards. But, no, the Holy Spirit never allowed that
story to be ended, because it is not ended yet. We are in
the third volume of the Acts of Jesus Christ now! That
volume of the doings and teachings of Jesus Christ is
being written now, and we will read it later on.
But, dear friends, the
truth is the same. The same Lord is in heaven. The same
Holy Spirit has come forth from heaven to us. The same
testimony of Jesus as was committed to those disciples
and apostles has been committed to us. The same glorious
endowment is ours, the endowment of the Holy Spirit. What
an endowment!
I wanted to take you to
some of the things in the life of Elisha, to talk to you
about that poor widow and her oil, the collecting, the
borrowing of very many vessels from all her neighbours,
and the miracle of the never-ending oil while there was a
need. Well, you can see yourself what that means. The
blessed, wonderful sufficiency of the Holy Spirit to meet
all need, to pay all obligations and to get through with
the testimony to the glory of God. One passage from Paul
is enough to include that: "God is able to make
all grace abound unto you; that ye, having always all
sufficiency in everything, may abound" (2
Corinthians 9:8). That is the woman and her pots of oil
overflowing - the all-sufficiency of the Holy Spirit,
however long we live, to meet the last demand. What a
blessed thing that is!
And I wanted to talk to
you about Naaman and his mighty experience of this power
of the Spirit, but we must leave him.
And, then what about
the sons of the prophets of Jericho, who said: "Behold
now, the place where we dwell before thee is too strait
for us. Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan... and
let us make us a place there, where we may dwell" (2
Kings 6:1,2). The question of enlargement again, of
capacity for usefulness and service. You know they went
down to Jordan, and as they were cutting down the trees
for this enlargement, the axe-head of one came off and
fell into the water, which was evidently so deep that
they could not see where it was. Elisha said: "Where
fell it?" And then the result - and by this act of
Elisha "the iron did swim" (2 Kings 6:6
- RV margin). That is the focal point of it: that, dear
friends, which by nature would always sink and go to the
bottom, is made to reverse its course and swim. What a
story is in that of spiritual experience through the
centuries! You and I by nature are always ready to sink.
That is our way! Even in the work of the Lord our way is
so often the down way. We say we get down - 'I am down
today.' We are gravitating downwards - the forces of
gravity are too much for us. And then, by the miracle of
the Holy Spirit, ascendancy comes in and takes charge,
where the natural course would be downwards. I have no
space to enlarge upon that - I just indicate it.
These are things which
become very true in the spiritual life when the Holy
Spirit is in charge. The order is reversed. You and I
naturally have a great propensity for getting down. The
Holy Spirit reverses that natural way and brings us up
again and again. This heavy iron of our natures is made
to swim. You know something about that!